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A leading insurance company is proposing that all drivers over the age of 85 be required to display "S" plates on the back and front of their cars, i.e. small white plastic signs with a big red S on them. Along with the plates, there would be restrictions on where and when a senior citizen can drive, and a "black box" installed in every senior's car would monitor and assess their driving habits.

The company proposing this nanny-state nonsense claims that older drivers pose a greater risk to other, and I guess younger, road users.

What a complete load of bollocks that is. Consider the following stats (Source: Roads and Traffic Authority 2007).

- Injury is the single biggest killer of Australian youth; more than all other causes combined
- 45 per cent of all young Australian injury deaths are due to road traffic crashes
- Of all hospitalisations of young Australians, almost half are drivers involved in a road traffic crash and another quarter are passengers
- Young drivers (17 – 25 years) represent one-quarter of all Australian road deaths, but are only 10 – 15% of the licensed driver population
- A 17 year old driver with a P1 licence is four times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than a driver over 26 years
- The biggest killer of young drivers is speeding and around 80 per cent of those killed are male
- One-third of all speeding drivers and riders in fatal crashes are males aged 17 – 25; 6 per cent are females aged 17 – 25

Clearly, this company is targeting the wrong age demographic.

Personally, I'd rather share the road with senior citizens who have had decades of driving experience and aren't in any blazing rush to get anywhere than with the impatient young petrol-headed ratbags I encounter almost every time I venture out onto the road. Whenever I witness these testosterone-fueled twits and their acts of arrogant ratbaggery I see a statistic in the making - it's only a matter of time. I can only hope that when the time comes, they only take themselves out and not some other more level-headed older person who has the sense and the patience to drive responsibly. I think older people are more likely to place a higher value on their hides and not risk needlessly chucking away what time they have left. I know I do (he says after riding motorcycles until he was 50 :-() But I rode responsibly).

My father is now 88 years old and is one of the most competent drivers I know. Mentally he is as sharp as a tack, has reflexes like a fighter pilot, and is as fit as a fiddle (just this afternoon he has pruned back a mulberry tree, whipper-snipped and mowed his front and back lawns, and taken the dog for a walk whilst barely cracking a sweat). When it comes to handling a motor vehicle he runs rings around half the numbskulls I see who can barely keep within a lane and have the peripheral vision of a blinkered Clydesdale, yet if this cockamamie system is implemented it will greatly impact Dad's motoring freedom, his quality of life, and whatever regard and consideration other people may show towards him on the road. They'll see an S-plate and their instinctive reaction will be "doddering old fool ahead" and will contemptuously monster him or take stupid chances to try and get past him, potentially putting him, themselves, and others at even greater risk.

This is just a proposal at this stage - hopefully that'll be all it is. Apparently some online poll showed that 68% of those responding were in favour of it. I believe this result is more indicative of which age group is more likely to be on the net than any kind of accurate public opinion cross-section.

I guess the fools who want to implement this system think they won't ever get old themselves. If they drive the way that some I've seen do, they probably won't. And they're more likely to be tagged by some reckless young hoon in a souped-up muscle car than they are by a careful law-abiding silverhead driving a Hyundai Getz. Rotten drivers come in all ages, but older rotten drivers tend to be rotten at much lower velocities. This is just out-and-out age discrimination.

Since when do insurance companies dictate the road rules anyway? That's not their flipping call.

Sounds like a poorly thought out plan.  I wonder what would happen if an 85+ year old was simply borrowing their childs car? Maybe they should shave all 85+ year old people bald and tattoo a big red "S" on their forehead and back of the head. Then of course, they would need to legislate punishment for old folks letting their hair grow to hide the "S".  Also, older drivers need to be told that they cannot turn their heads because the person behind might not see the "S".  Oh, one more thing - they cannot have tinted windows either.

Just goes to show how stupid people are.

Agree 100%.

Discrimination against Seniors is evil to the core and anyone getting their insurance through that company would do well to find another policy carrier hast pronto.  Vote with the Aus$ by walking away in mass and giving them a good firsthand taste of being singled out and excluded into oblivion.


Could it be that there is something more going on since the stats you presented show the idiocy of this insurance company's intent?

To me it looks a planned initiative to isolation and removal seniors from society.  :-\\

**Before I go any further let me first say "Present Company Excluded."  Through long exposure you've all passed the acid test and are known good eggs and it is not my intent to insult anyone here.  :) **

I don't know how health care is set up in Australia but here in the U.S. there is a strong Progressive push going on to nationalize single payer which means the Government running and administrating the whole shebang.  The first step of implementing this plan was getting Obama Care (Prezzie Obama called it Obama care himself when they were still trying to install this crap so I intend to call it that especially in light of all the lies required to force it into being installed) passed as law which has been stuffed down out throats without a single damn one of us getting to vote on it.  And when the topic of Death Panels was brought up we were promised (among many other lies concerning this farce) that there was no such thing.

Much like the age cutoff point of 85 for drivers you refer to fragger it has been leaked that our now established insurance Death Panels have determined that people over the age of 60 and under the age of 18 who are no longer part of the core population can expect to receive highly reduced levels of medical treatment as it is deemed too expensive to waste precious funds and resources on anyone outside of the valuable core population ages 19 - 59.  There are other criteria specifically defining individual types within that preferred age range who are also deemed as disposable baggage.  So run right out and get your now available DNA testing so the results highlighting your known potential future genetic health risks can be reported to the (Govt. hand picked) insurance companies (those who supported bringing Obama Care online) so it can be decided what level of medical care you can expect to receive...  Or not.

But hey!  Look on the bright side.  If you find yourself within one of the less preferred undesirable groups know that Voluntary Self-selected suicide is really starting to catch on so you don't have to suffer unnecessarily when you're turned down for life extending procedures or denied expensive medicine to manage your condition or control pain.



  :-D

Purely skippable personal rant but I'm on a roll

My personal observation (and opinion for what that's worth) is that people of that age demographic (here in the U.S.) politicians have decided that it's necessary to weed them out of the voting process primarily because they have roots in and personally remember life at a time when the hard core Leftists (Liberal) and Progressives (Freaking One World Order, America Hating Nut Jobs who have entrenched themselves in both Democratic and Republican positions of power) were at least held in check by equally powerful political opponents on the Right (Conservatives) that had the guts to punch the hell back.

For too long now the professional politicians have all come out of the same collages having taken the same courses in Political Science being taught by a high percentage of (Self-Professing) Communist Professors who are still angry and seeking vengeance for the 1950's Black List butt kicking dealt them through Senate hearings because of the Cold War sentiment.  How the hell can we expect to select anyone to lead who still holds something resembling an admiration for the ideals of a polite society.  And I'm not talking about a politeness enforced through political brute force and mandatory group think.

What we get now days are freaking incestual connections most obviously represented in the case of President Bill Clinton (Democrat) and his successor George Bush the 2nd (Republican) who even though they were political opposites (in theory) not only attended and graduated from the same collage but were fraternity brothers.  Even after graduation they continue to chum around sharing many family vacations celebrating their friendship and shared successes as established power brokers.

Now Bill's wife and the last Bush's younger brother both fully expect there to be a coronation so one or the other can step into their rightful place as the royal ascendent.  The U.S. is a Republic so I simply cannot grasp why anyone in America is putting up with this stinking vaudevillian emulation the Windsor/Tudor infighting soap opera?  :D

first off, thanks for the amusing read, gents. :)

Then, to both mandru and fragger: That insurance company. None of you have questioned the amount of people in those groups of 85-year-olds and, say, 18 to 26-year-olds.

I am throwing this in because I think there is more behind it than just old people.

Spoiler

erm.. there are old people behind it? Really? Well, I think they're more likely against it.. quite a silly choice of words I admit :-()

I'm not an expert but I still think that IF you guys were experiencing the same problem that we are over here in Germany, then you'd find yourselves in a demographic situation of fewer and fewer young people but more and more old people, a graph they love to show to demonstrate the effect usually looks like an inverted pyramid, as in bottom up, top down. So here we'd have, say, an enormous amount of old people but comparatively few young ones.

Like in the US, here health insurances focus on people who are still capable of working (as in earning money) to get those people into their system so the money flow goes the right direction. Other than in the US, all of the people insured with our mandatory health insurance system, run by our government, keep receiving highly reduced levels of medical treatment. Reduced every year. While at the same time the insurances keep rising their monthly rates. We do have a private sector but that is currently getting hammered and it is not important for this discussion.

So if you guys only had very few "young" people whom you'd need to get their money in order to run the insurance.. a whole bloody enormous lot of "older" people wreaking havoc out there, you might find yourselves in a slightly different dimension. Hordes of elderly people bumping into one another and every obstacle they could possibly hit, moving or stationary. And there comes a handful of youngsters about to get pounded..

I know it was a tad over the top, I might even have exaggerated a bit, but you'll have to admit that without being able to see the relation, the dimensions, without knowing actual numbers, the whole list of injuries killing youths is worthless.


We don't know the most important facts. We can't compare anything and therefore the whole setting is nonsense.


Just my two cents  :-()

Quote from: fragger on November 08, 2015, 11:27:04 PM
- Young drivers (17 – 25 years) represent one-quarter of all Australian road deaths, but are only 10 – 15% of the licensed driver population

There are good young drivers and bad young drivers, just as there are among any "age group". But drivers under the age of 25 are way over-represented in the accident rates. In the case of the above statistic, considering the fact that yes, there are far more older drivers than younger ones on the road, then this stat indicates just how over-represented younger drivers are. It's not a question of total numbers of one age group compared to another, it's a question of overall proportionality.

But stats aside, what angers me is this blanket condemnation of a group of people whilst scorning any notion of individual assessment. I should have mentioned this in my initial post, but drivers over the age of 85 in Oz already have to take a driving test every two years, and once over 75 you must undergo a medical examination every year to continue holding a license. These are not proposals, these are enacted laws and have been in place since 2011. So this S plate proposal for drivers over 85 is essentially branding them as incompetent even if they have proven themselves competent.

What's the point of having to prove your driving ability every two years if you're simply going to be publicly denigrated out of hand just because you're of a certain age? It's discriminatory and it totally negates the existing evaluation procedures.

From what I've heard in the TV news is that the age demographic in Germany is being abruptly changed with this sudden influx of immigrants and refugees among whom the average age is 26 year old as well as being male.

Apparently the town of Sumte (a small slice examining the impact of this migration) which has been reported as having an established population of 100 was initially required to accept an additional 1000 people but that number was reduced to 500 and will eventually expanded to 700 or 750.

I don't know if there are open elections and voting for civic concerns in Germany but if there is I don't see how the original long established residents of Sumte will ever make their voices heard again.  For some reason the phrase "Atlantis sank beneath the waves" keeps going through my head as I hear updates on these reports.

Quote from: mandru on November 11, 2015, 07:18:31 AMI don't know if there are open elections and voting for civic concerns in Germany

I don't think there are any. Just elections to choose from what's left on the bottom of the gene pool (politicians)

 :-D

 :-D

I guess they're the same everywhere  - a waste of space ::)

Then you guys should come visit us, oh, before you do that.....   
just arrange so your tank lands here before you do, you will need that kind of protection   :angel: >:D
Traffic lights are just a nuisance, why must I sit at a red traffic light wasting time if there are no cars crossing the intersection    :D
Oh darn it, I forgot something at the shop, no problem, just make a u turn in the face of oncoming traffic, those cars "will" give you right of way.
When there's a traffic jam in a one, two or three lane road we just make another one over the solid line into the oncoming traffics lane   ::)
You cannot get a drivers licence without getting training from a registered learner driver training school, or you can bribe the owner of a un-registered learner driver "school" to buy a licence for you, especially if you (failed) a number of times.   >:((
Oh what the hell !!!!!!  Who needs a licence, drive without it, you can always bribe the traffic officer when you get caught  >:D

sounds pretty wild..  :-D

 :o

Is it anything like this? (video quality is crummy, but you'll get the gist).

The real fun starts at around 1:00:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ec3ie8Ja90 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ec3ie8Ja90)

Two wrongs don't make a right but three rights do equal a left.

I've finally ingrained on Mrs. mandru the defensive driving concept that when approaching a typically over busy intersection that's not equipped with a left turn light (remember that we drive on the right side of the road here) that it is safest to go a block beyond where she wants to turn left and circle the block making three rights so that she has the light and right of way when crossing through that questionable intersection.


Just last week she had a three day civic event where she and her assistant were standing duty at an educational booth promoting Safety Precautions that would benefit senior citizens or anyone else that's not an immortal.  Typically they would have traveled to the event from the office together in our car since Mrs. mandru is eligible to receive reimbursement for business related mileage.

But on one of the days the assistant had some personal business to attend to beforehand so she was due to arrive in her own care before the doors opened.  That didn't happen.  It turned out that the assistant was delayed because she was involved in a fairly serious accident (at least for her car, the seat belt spared her of anything beyond being rattled and bruises) on her way to the event.

The first thing Mrs. mandru's assistant said when calling to explain her being late was "I'm sorry.  In rushing to get there I forgot your motto of three rights make a left and my cars been totaled."

 ???

Although it looks a mess fragger, there's a distinct pattern those people are following, you could say order in the disorder.
What we have here is something totally different, remove all those cyclists and the scooters and replace them with unroadworthy Toyota Hi-Ace 12 seater mini buses carrying up to 25 passengers with drivers having suspect drivers licences.

This is just a sample of what we have, remember we drive on the left-hand side of the road
NOTE: The first clip, see if you can count how many got into the vehicle,
remember it's a 12 seater
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebVsEvDMCis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebVsEvDMCis)     

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSWys-5IBvA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSWys-5IBvA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2BSdkEImf4&list=PLlymoviEH0fhod14q3PBWkAOqJyNx_93H (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2BSdkEImf4&list=PLlymoviEH0fhod14q3PBWkAOqJyNx_93H)

You are right, nex. A mate of mine went to Indonesia some years back and the way he described the traffic in and around Jakarta sounded like it would have looked just like that clip from India. Yet there seemed to be very few accidents. The locals have become accustomed to a traffic system which looks chaotic to someone from overseas but actually has method to it, which to the locals makes sense and is simply the norm.

Regarding those clips you linked to:

Clip 1: Holey moley! There was about two dozen people cramming onto that minibus. As they were squeezing in I was watching the cab getting lower and lower to the ground on its suspension :-()

Clip 2: Now that's road rage! What got me was not only the extreme behaviour exhibited by the driver, but the way the onlookers didn't lift a finger to help the victim even after the van had driven off.

Clip 3: Words fail me.

crikey cor blimey ???

What is shown in the clips is only a drop in the bucket.
Some years ago traffic cops pulled off one of these mini busses during a routine check-up,
This was on a Monday end of an Easter weekend, about 40 KM outside a town called Polokwane, not far outside this town is the Zion Christian Church (ZCC) the largest African initiated church in Southern Africa, with millions of members.
On Monday a few of these millions are returning home from the Church grounds to Johannesburg, during Easter weekend this road is the busiest in the country, about 3000 vehicles per hour one way.
Ok, to get back to the cops pulling off this Mini bus taxi, the cops found the driver using a
vise grip for a steering wheel, there were no seats in the vehicle but a lot of people flat on the floor squeezed in like sardines in a can about three deep, the cops emptied the taxi and the head count came to 35, excluding the driver and two passengers who was sitting in the front with him.   

that must have been the record for the most efficient use of one taxi. :-D

 :-D

You guys won't believe in what "roadworthy" condition some of these vehicles are, and the problem,  potential passengers are too scared to complain because there are no other form of transport from within the townships where they live to the workplace or, they might just get what the guy in the clip got for getting up the nose of the taxi drivers

 :(

Mechanic: "I couldn't fix your brakes... So I made your horn louder."  :) :-X

heh heh heh :-D

 :laugh:

 :laugh:

This clip proves what I wrote in a previous post concerning these Mini Bus Taxi's.
Watch the top left hand corner of the screen, A car approaches two stationery cars on a bend in the road with this mini bus coming up from behind, remember, we drive on the left hand side, and our cars are right hand drive.

http://www.msn.com/en-za/cars/traffic/video-taxi-drivers-lucky-escape/ar-CCsR8m?li=AAaxc0E&ocid=U218DHP (http://www.msn.com/en-za/cars/traffic/video-taxi-drivers-lucky-escape/ar-CCsR8m?li=AAaxc0E&ocid=U218DHP)

 :o WHAT DAFUQ?! ???

 ???

That's what happens when gas prices drop a few cents, people go crazy.

 :-D

Whoa :o

lol DKM2 :-D

I don't think I'd get into one of those taxis for a million bucks. Well, maybe for a million. Nah, make it two million, and throw in an Ironman suit.

Is it nerve or stupidity that allows someone think they can push on the gas pedal knowing that there's no brake.  ???

I don't know nex, That's sheer crazy.  I would think that if it could be documented by a dash cam someone or some group seeking safer roadways would be happy to pay some kind of bounty for every one of these rolling death traps rendered permanently inoperable.

No really.  I have bad dreams about driving a car that slowly creeps out into an intersection or onto a railway crossing no matter how hard I'm standing on the brake.  :o

give your dream a twist and think you're a vehicular headbutt champion ready to show off. :-D

Quote from: mandru on January 19, 2016, 08:24:59 AM
No really.  I have bad dreams about driving a car that slowly creeps out into an intersection or onto a railway crossing no matter how hard I'm standing on the brake.  :o

Isn't it funny. I don't have that one, instead my recurring bad vehicular dream is I'm riding a motorcycle which is gradually deteriorating - bits are falling off and parts stop working. I usually end up by the side of the road or some place trying to fix it, and of course being a dream the parts morph into the wrong things or I just can't figure out how to get them to fit. Often as the dream wears on it ceases to be a motorcycle at all and becomes a pallet jack or a wheelbarrow or something.

Stupid dreams ????

I'm more into Russ Meyer-themed dreams.

lol ^-^ You're the melon type :laugh:

funny with double-vision  :-()

Quote from: mandru on January 19, 2016, 08:24:59 AM
Is it nerve or stupidity that allows someone think they can push on the gas pedal knowing that there's no brake.  ???

I don't know nex, That's sheer crazy.  I would think that if it could be documented by a dash cam someone or some group seeking safer roadways would be happy to pay some kind of bounty for every one of these rolling death traps rendered permanently inoperable.

No really.  I have bad dreams about driving a car that slowly creeps out into an intersection or onto a railway crossing no matter how hard I'm standing on the brake.  :o

There are an estimated 200,000 of those mini bus taxi's on our roads mandru, I would guess about a third of them are totally un roadworthy, and about half of those 200,000 taxi drivers have bogus drivers licences.
The traffic authority cannot/will not do anything about it simply because these taxi's transport the millions of black workers to and from w@&k daily, and also many of these taxi's are owned by traffic cops     :D

 ??? :laugh: :D

 :o

 ???

Hard to battle something so well entrenched and with some "authority figures" being a part of it.

Yeah sounds like our current administration.

They have penchant for violating constitutionally guaranteed civil rights by trying to disarm U.S. citizens through creating new oppressive restrictive regulations in the name of gun control instead of enforcing the laws that are already on the books on one hand while at the same time they've run thousands of guns to murderous Mexican drug cartels (Fast and Furious a failed then abandoned sting operation) and equipped and trained foreign armies known to throw down their weapons and abandon post running for their lives at the first sign of the enemy leaving all of that armament, ammo, vehicles and the bases we paid to house them in the hands of terrorists.  :D

I know I'm potentially sticking a fork in the toaster here :-() but I am curious about something. It's to do with the constitutional rights of all American citizens to bear arms, and the American attitude towards it.

I know it can be a touchy subject and I don't wish to start any kind of moral, political or ideological debate about whether it's good or bad, or right or wrong. Not being an American and never having lived there, I don't think I'm qualified to make any kind of definitive statements about it. But I can't help thinking why exactly this constitutional right appears to ignite such inflammatory debate in America.

It's not so much the right to own a gun that I'm on about here, but at what point a weapon is deemed acceptable for general public ownership. I don't see that anyone needs a Vulcan cannon to defend their property, but some firearms enthusiasts in the U.S. seem to believe that the Second Amendment confers a right for them to own any kind of firearm at all, no matter how ridiculously disproportionate to the actual need for it.

I stress I'm not being critical, merely curious. I'd also like to say here at the start that I believe people have an intrinsic right to defend themselves from physical attack by whatever means come to hand, just as any animal will naturally try to defend itself.

Here is the wording of the Second Amendment from the original hand-written copy (the ratified version has slightly different punctuation and capitalisations, but the words are the same):

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed".

My understanding for the reasoning behind the inclusion of the Second Amendment, and the reason for the wording, is this (and anyone please correct me if I've got anything wrong here):

When the Constitution was drafted, the country had just fought a war for the survival of its national ideals and to be free of the yoke of crippling taxes and duties from the English Crown. The War of Independence (or the Revolutionary War, whichever the correct term is) hadn't gone well for the fledgling country - in fact its leaders were very acutely aware that if it hadn't been for the aid and alliance of the French, who at that time were also at war with England, they would not in fact have won that war. The reason was the sheer lack of American numbers. By itself, the American military at the time simply didn't have the numerical strength to repel an attack from England on its own and there was no guarantee that England may not try to whip the colonial upstarts back into line again at any time. Nor was there any assurance that some other European power wouldn't try to attack them for whatever reason. And next time, they might not have a powerfully ally which was prepared to fight on their side.

So in the event of an attack by any major foreign power, the American military forces simply would not be sufficient to meet the threat on its own. Their numbers would have to be bolstered by the addition of armed private citizenry. Thus the concept of the "Minuteman" was born - civilian militiamen who could be called upon and be ready "at a minute's notice" to take up arms and do their patriotic duty to defend the country. It would fall to ALL Americans, military and civilian, to protect the homeland.

Less than a century later, the Civil War ripped the country apart and once again demonstrated (to American sensibilities) a need for citizens to be armed, not just against threats from overseas but now even from threats at home. The impact of the Civil War on the American national psyche cannot be understated. The historian Shelby Foote called it "the crossroads of our being" and claimed that

"Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I believe that firmly. It defined us. The Revolution did what it did. Our involvement in European wars, beginning with the First World War, did what it did. But the Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things".

The drafters of the Constitution weren't oracles - they had no idea of what would happen in the future and certainly could not have foreseen a world like that of today. As far as they knew, there would always be foreign threats to the United States and its citizens would always need to be on hand to help deal with any threats that arose.

It must be borne in mind too, I think, that a firearm in the eighteenth century was a flintlock weapon which had to be painstakingly reloaded after every shot, and due to its projectile being a loosely-fitting, roughly-cast ball that rattled its way down the length of a smooth, unrifled barrel when fired meant that the weapon was hopelessly inaccurate at a range of anything more than about fifty yards. The drafters of the Constitution could not have foreseen the technological developments of the future regarding weaponry. Even the inclusion of rifling for sidearms and shoulder arms as part of a mass production process wouldn't be widely adopted until around the time of the Civil War (though rifling was known about at the time of the drafting of the Constitution, but because of the degree of precision required for it to be effective it meant that it was largely restricted to the manufacture of large-scale weapons like cannons).

So I guess what I'm curious about is why Americans still cling so fiercely to the Second Amendment, since the very real and practical need for its inclusion in the Bill of Rights passed long ago. The citizens of no other country in the world seem to be so passionate about defending their right to own firearms as those of the United States. I have no doubt that this attitude has been forged in the conflicts that marked the country's historical evolution. I'm just curious as to why it endures so strongly, why the defense of the Second Amendment is so vehement, and why there are those who take it to what seem to me to be ludicrous extremes. I would have thought that a Glock 19 would make a home invader just as dead as an AR-15 would (and might go easier on the decor).

It should be pointed out too that the Second Amendment is not an American constitutional innovation. It was based on a statement from the English Bill of Rights (1689) which decreed that the right to bear arms was a common-law right, not only as a defensive measure for the country but for the citizens themselves against any personal threat.

Final thought: Does the word "arms" actually imply firearms only? A rock in your fist is essentially an "arm". Any hand-held object used to inflict wounds - a knife, a sword, a pitchfork - is an arm. But I'm getting into semantics here.

well put fragger, I am curious in the very same way. I am looking forward to replies from our American friends now :)

Quite complicated in my opinion. I do not see a reason for automatic weapons either - in the 1920's you could purchase fully automatic machine guns through mail order.  Now full auto is illegal for most citizens, but rapid fire semi automatic assault weapons are not.  Some people seem to enjoy playing with them, others think it ridiculous.

The NRA is a huge organization that I cannot ever see go away, and wields considerable political influence. Gun ownership is such a bid deal that politicians have problems even with strengthening the background checks.

Some people simply should not have weapons - a few months ago a young mother was shot by her small child while they were shopping.  Her idiot husband made her go to concealed carry classes and then carry a weapon in her purse - while riding in the shopping cart, the child picked it up and accidentally shot her in the head killing her instantly.

Just this week some idiot husband, who had also purchased a weapon for his wife (baby blue Glock) claimed to be disassembling the weapon to clean it and shot her accidentally in the chest killing her.  Although it could be argued that he is lying and simply murdered her, the stories are not unique.

I personally also carry a weapon whenever I go hiking or anywhere we are in a somewhat isolated area.  A few years ago someone was murdered on a hiking trail not far from here, one which my wife and I frequent.  I even keep the weapon close all the time, but NEVER have a round chambered.  After all, it takes only a second to rack a round.  My golden rule that I never violate - when a round is chambered, I am prepared to fire the weapon within the next few seconds.

One time decades ago I was deep in the national forest with my girlfriend - had a day camp setup.  A couple of Deliverance hillbillys drove to within 100 yards or so of us and simply sat there staring at us until I let them see I had a weapon - then they backed the way they came and left the area.  I would have felt quite helpless had I not had that weapon, so I always have one near when in any kind of sketchy area.

Maybe I'm just a paranoid violent kind of guy, but I would not willingly give up my weapon.

We Canadians just carry bottles of Maple syrup and a few strips bacon.
'want some?' they give up every time!
;)

And that's how the war of 1812 was won!  :laugh:

 :laugh:

 :-D :-X

fragger, your query about the tenaciousness of many U.S. citizens and their 2nd amendment rights has many facets and it would be easy to go off in too many long drawn out directions.  I'm going to try to avoid getting too far out in the weeds by attempting to keep my reply simple as simple and on point as possible.  :-\\

First I'll toss out the premise that if the undercutting and Governmentally enacted illegal encroachment on any Civil Right is allowed then it follows that every other Fundamental Right is on the auction block to be destroyed or twisted to oppress the citizens.  There are laws that protect our Rights and while those laws through proper actions and consensus of the full powers of the Congress if upheld by the Supreme Court (establishing that there is no infringement of the core foundation of that Right) can be changed.   Any other method to attempt by any means the violation or stripping of any those Fundamental Rights Must Be defiantly opposed and resisted by the Citizenry!

I've stated elsewhere in these forums that a Governmentally created (not by Full Congress) enforcement office the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has claimed full control and ownership of every raindrop that falls in the U.S. and if a citizen is found in violation of hoarding rainwater in any way the EPA can bring legal action against them levying monetary fines retroactively from the start date of the citizen's violation and possibly leading to imprisonment and seizure of their property if compliance is not met.  Congress has never allowed the EPA this power of law but there it is.  Regulation backed with the Enforceable Power of Law.

If the EPA can claim control of every raindrop it is not a hard stretch of the imagination to see the possibility of a Governmental office drunk with power deciding they also own and control all of the equally natural occurrence of sunlight.  And yet this tyranny has been nurtured and allowed to spread because We as amassed citizens have become too comfortable and unfortunately too many of us are willing to surrender Rights for the security of protection.  Besides most of us have no need or desire to own a rain barrel, right?  But it's that indifference that has given the Government a foot in the door leading us to be nibbled away by actions seemingly as harmless (without deeper examination of their long game) as being nibbled at by penguins.


While (as you observed) the founding fathers of our country were not oracles they were (within the quorum of their combined and long internally debated discussions of the parameters that would be essential for the type of government they wanted to establish and live within) scholars of history and the very nature of Rulers and the Governments that had preceded them..  They were acutely aware that there was a critical mass that occurred in every form of Leadership that would eventually devolve into nothing more than a ruling class , favored citizenry, and essentially bonded slaves/peons who could never hope to elevate themselves out of poverty.  Each and every preceding form of government no matter how benevolent the intentions of those who founded it always drifted towards the eventuality where the growth and empowerment of the Leaders became the primary focus of Government and the needs and dignity of the people were debased and abused.

As the parameters for the revolution and creation of a new Government was being debated the founders of what would become the U.S. knew the grasp of tyranny.  Personally each of them (in the early colonies) chaffed against the fact that ultimately they did not own the land on which their homes were built or the land they had cleared and developed into usable farmable property so that it could be held within future generations of their families.  Everything belonged perpetually to the Crown of England and each ascendant to follow.  The acting agents of the Crown could at any time and on any arbitrary whim arrive and sweep families off the Crown's holdings and deed the fruit of their efforts to someone who had more favor with the Crown or even His agents.  It was deeply understood by the quorum of the founder's that Generational tyranny always ramps up never down unless countered with focused strength of revolt.


The often overlooked lesson in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar is that each dagger plunge by each of the Senators there on the steps "Of the Voice of the People" was a dissenting vote cast against their leader Caesar.



I'm sorry fragger this has become far longer than I wanted but you ask important questions.  I was trying to avoid eating up my full morning responding and now it's noon.  :(

I'll try to sum this up by saying any tyranny even the subtle Soft Tyranny of "It's for your own good!" (which your questions about many of our attitudes towards protecting the 2nd Amendment falls firmly within) is most often best met with torches and pitchforks the instant it pops its ugly head up.  If only to defer and delay further attacks as an attack on any Right is an attack on all Rights.

We had a Mayor (Bloomberg) in New York City (which for a very long time now has had a near total ban on all handguns) who placed a ban forcing the city's restaurants to remove salt from the customer's tables and made the sale of fountain drawn sugary drinks over 16 ounces illegal.  He has now tossed his hat into the upcoming presidential election (an equally lunatic billionaire to confront Trump's billionaireness?  ::) ) and because the citizens didn't en mass jump up and kick the snot out of his overreaching sorry butt you know he will drag that over inflated mentality "It's for your own good!" into the White House if he gets voted in.

Every Right that is diminished (not just the 2nd Amendment) devalues and corrodes the foundation of every other Right.  And it's not just the 2nd Amendment that's currently under concerted attack.  The attack being directed on our Freedom of Speech (our 1st Amendment) through the Political Correctness Front is equally as slimy but far more subtle and insidious.  By making words criminal and their utterance punishable by law as Hate Crimes that makes it so that citizens are forced with an iron fist to reconfigure in their thoughts and behaviors.  It's not popular speech that needs to be protected.  There's a movement here in the U.S. pushing to make speaking out or presenting evidence to the contrary about the validity of Climate Change criminal.

The 1st Amendment was created to protect unpopular or offensive speech as often Foundational Truth is highly offensive to anyone standing on the wrong side of what is right and wrong.  The deepest irony surrounding the attack on the 1st Amendment is that the PC police has only succeeded in making the progress and gaining the popularity it has by fully leaning on their Right to lie openly twisting and redefining the meaning of words as protected by the very same amendment they seek to pervert and corrupt.

But then it's not PC to argue in favor of the 2nd Amendment thus we are painted as vigilantes, red necks, scoff laws and every other dirty name in the book that would never be tolerated being applied to any other protected demographic in the country...  And the penguins continue uninterrupted to nibble away.

There is of course the serious need for self defense side of this too but PZ covered that and I agree with what he said.  When a family or individual is in their home (or wherever they may be) needs protection in a matter of a very brief matter of seconds it's not reasonable for them to be expected to have to wait minutes for the police to arrive.

What we need is for the scores and scores of existing gun laws to be aggressively enforced not have new laws heaped on top of what's already there only to have the President's office selectively dictate which laws will enforced or ignored and which groups of the the populace will be scrutinized and persecuted.

Thanks for the responses chaps :) And thanks for giving up your morning mandru! I didn't expect you to do that, but I appreciate it and am grateful for you to do so.

I realize there can be no easy answer to this. Like you guys said, there is a multitude of aspects to it.

Just as an exercise, allow me to paint a portrait of an "average" American as seen by non-Americans who know next to nothing about American history, have no grasp of any facet of the American character, and who have never really gotten to know, nor have ever had any close friendships with, any Americans. So this portrait is in fact not a portrait at all but a crude, cartoony caricature:

The American is loud, arrogant, opinionated, self-absorbed, fanatically patriotic, a great lover of money - and possesses an all-consuming love of firearms.

There's an impression many non-Americans have that there's some kind of fervently patriotic American mindset that enshrines the gun up there with any kind of archetypal object of worship one can care to name. There's a sense that there's something more to American gun-love than just having the right to own one, something profoundly cultural or psychological, that makes an American react to any proposed changes to their "God-given" right to own a firearm almost as grievous a threat as one to their very existence. Other American civil liberties have been eroded, especially since 9/11, but whenever the right to bear arms is attacked, Americans scream blue murder, like it's the one right that is sacrosanct above all others.

This impression is driven home further whenever there is yet another mass-shooting reported in the U.S. I've heard people here say things like "Well, as long as Americans continue to worship their guns and refuse to give them up, these things will keep happening". People seem to believe that America is the world's leader in gun-related death, which is of course not true (but sadly to say, it is up there).

I stress that these impressions are ones held by many who have never been to the U.S. or have never really known any American people. Those of us that have, and do, know better, but the impression remains rampant nonetheless. When ignorant non-Americans see Charlton Heston waving a rifle over his head and yelling "From my cold, dead hands", see movies and TV shows pouring out of the U.S. full of violent gunplay and see news reports of shooting rampages on almost a regular basis, it's not hard to see how the impression gets fed.

I don't share these impressions, but even so, I do wonder if there isn't a kernel of truth to them. I also wonder sometimes how it is that the Second Amendment is viewed - or rather, is allowed to be viewed - by some Americans as giving them carte blanche to own anything at all that goes bang and makes a hole in something, no matter how loud the bang or how big the hole (and for some, the bigger of both the better).

I totally understand and agree with what those of you in the U.S. are saying when it comes to home defense and I personally see nothing wrong with having a handgun in the house for defensive purposes (even though in this country you're not even allowed to have that). As long as it's handled responsibly, every effort is made to keep it strictly out of reach of children (if such a thing is entirely possible) and all household members who have access to it and may have occasion to use it are fully trained in its proper use including correct safety procedures, I don't see a problem at all. PZ (and I'm sure mandru) has the proper attitude towards a weapon (PZ, I was taught the same thing during basic weapon training in the Air Force - don't chamber an initial round unless, or until, you're about to fire). In PZ's case it's understandable that he own a gun. If there was an outside possibility that something big, fierce and furry might attack me while I'm doing something outside the house, I'd want to be armed too :-() And from what mandru has sometimes reported about his neighbourhood, I would certainly want to pack some heat myself if I was living there.

But I take issue with the Second Amendment being effectively used like a license by some private citizens to amass small arsenals of high-end personal weaponry by claiming, "It's my right". I've seen clips on YouTube of ordinary civilians demonstrating military-grade weapons that they own. I don't think it's very wise to allow private citizens to own such weaponry, unless they are very, very thoroughly screened and vetted and can provide some legitimate reason for ownership. A handgun for home and personal protection is one thing, but who needs a .50 cal Barrett M82 sniper rifle or an M2 Browning machine gun in their home? Who needs an Uzi for that matter? This is what I don't get - how this is allowed under the Constitution as it stands. I admit I'm not cognisant with America's complete set of gun ownership laws, so for all I know it isn't in fact legal for these folks to have these weapons and they're risking penalties by posting their clips online, but they act as though they have every right to have these things, i.e. such ownership is "guaranteed" by the Constitution, and they don't seem to be in fear of any kind of legal action being taken against them by publicly displaying their toys.

From what you said in your last post mandru, it sounds as if there might in fact be laws to govern who can own what kind of guns. If the powers that be are aware that people own these kinds of weapons, and if that ownership is illegal but they just let it slide, then as you say mandru the problem lies with those whose duty it is (supposed to be) to enforce the laws. Maybe it's fear of being politically mauled by the NRA, or maybe it's just fear of losing votes from a lot of ticked-off gun-loving constituents, but there seems to be a very laissez-faire attitude toward preventing any G.I. Joe wannabe from getting his hands on whatever extremely lethal piece of combat weaponry takes his fancy. I can't help but think of that nine-year-old girl a year or two ago who was given the opportunity to fire an Uzi at a gun range as a birthday present from her father, and who consequently lost control of it on full-auto and shot the instructor in the head. Not only has the instructor's family been devastated, but that young girl will now have to grow up with the knowledge that she killed someone.

How in the world was that allowed? I think there's something seriously wrong when a Constitutional clause is taken as tacit approval by a father to allow his child to play with a weapon as lethal as a fully automatic 9mm Uzi. I find it astounding. If I'd been that instructor I would have told the girl's father to get the hell off the range and buy his daughter a new Barbie outfit instead. But Dad probably would have just taken his girl to another range with a more amenable instructor.

To boil it all down, I can understand the resistance to what is viewed as a threat to a basic civil liberty, but I can't understand why there is such stiff resistance to introducing some kind of common sense application of the Second Amendment or adjusting it to take into account the more than two centuries' worth of technological advancement that has been made in the sphere of weaponry and the fact that America is no longer in danger of a land invasion which will require its citizens to answer a call-to-arms. If America is attacked today, the attack would probably come in the form of nuclear, biological or chemical weaponry, against which the weapons of militiamen or armed citizens will be useless. Today, a Beretta handgun is a reasonable choice for personal protection, an Ak-47 isn't, unless you think your home might be invaded by a Spetsnaz squad. I also don't think that such an over-proliferation of firearms allowed by a 240-year-old Constitutional Amendment, possibly more guns than there are people to fire them, is a healthy thing.

It seems to me a bit like having a wolf by the ears. On the one hand you have a right to bear arms, on the other you have the possibility of people getting killed by them, on purpose or by accident. A flat-out ban on firearms will certainly not solve the problems. In Australia you can't own a handgun unless it's for competition shooting (in which case it must be kept locked up at the range, you can't take it home with you) yet drive-by shootings by Middle Eastern crime gangs in Sydney have become alarmingly frequent. Making them illegal won't keep them out of the hands of criminals.

There's no easy answer, and any weapon of defense can become a weapon of attack depending on whose hands it's in. Sometimes I think the world would have been a better place if guns had never been invented. But there'd still be clubs, spears, knives, daggers, swords, halberds, pikes, maces, battleaxes... fists...


Btw mandru, now we're even Steven. You gave up a morning, I gave up an evening :-()

interesting read so far. :-X

Sorry about your evening fragger but happy to get a reply and I guess I'm balancing out your initial post.  ;)

I'll give a bit of background bio here that may shed some light on my exposure and roots into the firearm culture.

When I was 8yrs old I was out in the front yard goofing around probably doing something stupid out of boredom like beating the hell out of the puffball mushrooms that always popped up in the lawn.  My dad stepped out of the house, tossed me the keys to our hydraulically equipped (both front and back) Ford tractor that had interchangeable forks, buckets, plows, harrows and so on.  The front lift could hoist about 1500 Lbs (680 Kilos) before the back wheels would start to get loosey-goosey and losing traction, so it was a real workhorse.   He said "There's the tractor, the cable is in the bucket (front lift), go pull that stump and put it over there in the middle of the clearing to start me a burning pile." and went back in the house.

I'd driven the tractor before on occasion which you could call dad training me in on operating it but had never actually been allowed to engage in a "w@&k" task.

Longer story made shorter I walked around the stump (it was about 12 to 14 inches across and cut maybe 2 ft above the roots) sizing it up, noted where the roots were placed, gave it a couple exploratory nudges popping up roots on one side and then used the gap created under the exposed root to loop the cable through and then back up around the main body of the stump a few time at different angles so that the cable couldn't slip it's grip and come back and slap me.  I dragged the stump to the indicated place, coiled the cable placing it back in the bucket and put the tractor back in its spot before returning the keys to dad.  While he was inside the whole time I'm sure he never stepped away from the concealment of the kitchen window curtains while watching me like a hawk.

When I returned the keys to him he said "Good, I'm going to keep the keys on the hook in the utility room and switch over to the forks for the tractor.  Every day when you get home from school and before I get home from w@&k I want you to go out and spend an hour pulling out that patch (almost an acre and a half of trees with 6 inch trunks and smaller) of new growth alders.  Get the dirt all good and shook off the roots so you can stack them over there with that stump and we'll burn them each time we get a good sized pile." 

The weight of the new chore hit me like a stiff prison sentence.  ???   But about a month later I was given a BB gun and dad and I went out back with his scoped 30-06 rifle and he walked me through proper handling, loading, aiming and firing.  I was also given the injunction that I would treat the BB gun with the same handling respect or it would be taken away until I was old enough to able to obey the skills for proper usage.

As time went on getting piled with various new and more demanding chores (no matter how grudgingly I complied) there were also additional adult perks added.  At 10 yrs old I was given a .22 rifle that had been passed down through the family and for a month we attended a gun handling class (a series of four classes every Monday night) at the local elementary school gymnasium taught by the County Commissioner who actually lived in our area and wanted competent new gun handlers in areas where he himself might be hunting.  Ironically in the same setting where now kids get expelled for pointing a finger and saying bang, bang or in playing with their buddies pretending to pull the pin and throw a hand grenade I learned the skills of how to (solo or as part of a hunting group) carry a firearm, safely board and debark from a rowboat, how to climb though a barbwire fence and the ultimate skill of simply not kill yourself or possible companions stupidly.

Somewhere between 10 and 12 I started to help my dad by Gofer-ing (go fer this - go fer that) in the ongoing effort of clearing more of our land by working with dynamite blasting old massive redwood stumps (some up to 8 feet in diameter) that had been selectively logged for lumber to build early settlers in the area's homes (a hundred years earlier - those old cedars last forever) along with the large alders we ourselves were cutting for firewood.  At 14 I was carefully walked through the steps getting the read of a stump to find its weak points, determining proper depth and placement and size of simple charges and finally the arming a charge with either crimp cap (timed fuse) or electrical blasting caps.  At 17- 18 I did some solo odd jobbing blasting stumps for some of the neighbors so I could buy cases of canned vegetables and put my foot down on slaving away weeding in the bloody 2 acre garden (remember that patch of alders I had to take out with the tractor instead of being allowed to be a kid?  :'( )  my dad insisted on planting every year.

Then when I graduated from high school (after a brief summer job with a logging crew) I skipped over the hill and escaped from the rural life into Seattle and I never looked back.

But it was always my showing responsibility that preceded the trust earned to allow an expansion of what my father wanted me to learn.


Now that's out of the way.  On to my reply to your last post fragger.

As to the rest of the world's perception of us I don't really pay too much attention about that.  I've got my own more pressing concerns that are much closer to home and I personally can't do much to affect the attitudes of an impressionable world.  I spend a lot more time dwelling on the crime in our cities and how almost universally the law enforcement's hands are being tied to the detriment of polite society in the name of political correctness.  But from your description of world perception of us there's a lot that is being overlooked as well as spun to make us look like cruds.

The world fails to realize that 99.9% of U.S. citizens aren't the people being shown in rap videos or the latest top box office movie smash hit.  ::)

As to the concept that we spend family time all joy riding around in our armor clad SUV's target practicing on traffic signs and minorities for giggles with our Uzi's while passing around a gallon jug of Jack Daniels is also a large misconception.  The news channels and the on-air talking heads (even within our borders) shovel more hot steaming crap in the form of lies and misleading information than the nation's total byproduct output from all our dairy farms.  They intentionally fail to properly educate the uninformed viewers by making the distinction between semi-auto (legal) and automatic weapons (only legal with extensive qualifiers and intrusive background clearance).  They often go out of their way to push the thought that there are millions of crazy gun nuts running around with kill sticks set up so that a single pull of the trigger sprays an unending stream of murder.  :D

If somebody's not maimed or massacred it's unlikely to reach the news cycle and sweet and light doesn't sell news papers.

The necessary requirements for licensing to be qualified to legally own and operate an automatic weapon is brutally thorough to the point that I wouldn't be surprised to hear that only 1 in 10,000 U.S. citizens are properly licensed and that the number of known violent criminals with automatic weapons out weigh those legally held easily by a margin of 10 to 1.  I honestly believe the core of our trouble arises from many of those "known violent criminals" being part of a protected group and are being shielded by the very highest levels of law enforcement.

It's like we have to accept the fact and conditions that there are races or religions even in the premise that there are some who must never be profiled.  Regardless of what the shooter was screaming as they slaughter people their protected group must remain unnamed but it is perfectly OK for news casters as well as in news print, blogs, etc... to defer attention and aim public wrath elsewhere by skipping the facts of the incident (supplied by clearly racist eye witnesses  ::) ) and propose that the shooter is possibly a christian NRA member.  That may sound odd to you but blaming the diametrically opposing non-protected groups happens over and over.



Just to be a Concealed Carry (CC) in my State I took a mandatory study course on the local laws so that I could learn all the ways I could foul up and land in jail.  I've submitted forms with my full personal information, I've been photographed, fingerprinted and every 24 hours my extensive personal file (like the ticking of a clock) is fed through the Federal crime data base to see if I've been involved in any infraction that would result in local State law enforcement showing up at my door to confiscate my license and notify me that my Privilege (notice that CC is not a Right) of carrying a concealed weapon has been rescinded.

As I've said elsewhere there are scores and scores of laws surrounding our firearms.  Decent citizens obey those laws while being held under the microscope and observed with a scornful eye.  Then every time a criminal improperly uses a gun its regaled as absolute proof that the vast law abiding population are all blood thirsty killers at heart and all guns need to be stripped away from them.

Are we the legal and law obeying gun owners fervently and aggressively standing up for our 2nd Amendment Rights?  Damn straight!

We're sick and freaking tired of being the law abiding cat who wants little more than to sit quietly by our warm hearths and constantly getting the snot beat out of us every time the scofflaw dogs come in and crap on the living room rug after a night of carousing and stealing carrion out of the neighbors garbage cans.

It only makes sense that even in the presence of a harshly punishing new law that makes all firearms illegal hardened criminals won't ever stumble on a bump of conscience or reach a moment of epiphany and say to themselves "Oh, guns are illegal now?  I better go straight away and turn mine in" so that all guns once and for all vanish from our country.  And only a fool or politician with a highly amoral agenda would think (or pretend to think) otherwise.

Well written gents, and it is interesting to read of other's perspectives  :-X

A good illustration of the phrase "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" is this: The whack jobs that go on shooting sprees in public spaces here usually choose one of two main venues: schools and Churches.  What both have in common is that no one in either institution is armed.  The cowards always choose places where there will be no possible resistance to their cowardice.  I fearfully imagine the increase in victimization if weapons were outlawed (not that it will ever happen in the U.S. - even I will fight for my 2nd amendment rights in that event)

mandru, I give you a +1 :-X for that last post of yours. Thank you for writing/sharing :-X

when you mentioned biased news and said, "sweet and light doesn't sell," it reminded me of our news and generally speaking media and why I haven't watched TV for more than 15 years now, haven't listened to any radio for more than 5 years. "Important" news (hell, there usually are no important news) reach me through people's talk or friends mentioning them. Those news I then try to find on the net from at least three different sources, preferably from three different countries so I can filter out the crap. The crap that's on the media melts my brains but doesn't help me with my life. It only eats up my time.

However, I like conversations with people who still have a mind, preferably so if it is of their own.

Thanks again mandru, wonderful post +1 And thanks for sharing the details of your early life, I'm touched and flattered that you think well enough of us to share that with us :) Geez, you had a tough upbringing mate ??? I already had a great deal of respect for you, but that respect has now increased by a couple of magnitudes.

And thanks for clearing up some of my questions regarding firearm ownership laws in the U.S. I was never silly enough to think that all you need to do is walk into a gun store and pick up a shiny new assault rifle like buying a new power drill, but I truly didn't know what was required there, so now I have more of an idea. You don't ask, you don't learn :-()

Maybe I was a bit harsh with a few of the things I said. I still think it's a terrible thing to let a little girl fire an Uzi as a birthday present, but I didn't mean that as an indictment on the U.S. or its laws. I just think there's a failing, or something that needs fixing, if there is any kind of loophole or whatever in a system that allows a nine-year-old onto a firing range with a fully automatic weapon in her little hands, but I know that's not indicative of the country's attitude as a whole (and obviously, neither the girl's father nor the instructor were subjected to anything like mandru's extreme lessons in responsibility). I really included that example as a demonstration of part of the impression-forming process, even though I do find it personally shocking.

Quote from: mandru on January 26, 2016, 12:17:30 PM
Are we the legal and law obeying gun owners fervently and aggressively standing up for our 2nd Amendment Rights?  Damn straight!

Quote from: PZ on January 26, 2016, 01:23:35 PM
I fearfully imagine the increase in victimization if weapons were outlawed (not that it will ever happen in the U.S. - even I will fight for my 2nd amendment rights in that event)

But see, this is exactly what I meant at the beginning of this discussion. As someone who has grown up in a country where the presence of a firearm in the house would be about as unlikely as finding the Holy Grail sitting on the mantelpiece, the level of vehemence in defense of the Second Amendment seems difficult to comprehend. I repeat, I'm not intending to be critical, just trying to understand the cultural differences that have driven us to have such diverse attitudes. I just find it interesting.

Nobody in this country is allowed to own a firearm of any sort unless they're a farmer, a competition shooter, or engaged in some other line of w@&k in which a firearm is necessary. Outside of those, exceedingly few Aussies own, or ever have owned, a firearm (I've never owned one and I don't know anyone who has), yet they feel no compulsion to get one regardless of any threat of personal attack or home invasion. Even the drive-bys being committed by Middle Eastern gangs in Sydney that I mentioned earlier are not making Aussies flock to the gun store clamouring for a weapon to protect themselves. This is why we have trouble understanding why Americans appear to have such an attachment to their guns. We don't seem to feel such a need to own one. Is it because we never fought a foreign power on our own soil? Because we never fought a major armed conflict against one another? Because we don't have anything like the population size or the crime rate? Who knows, but even though Americans and Australians have a lot in common, there are some huge differences between us. The attitude towards guns seems to be one of them, possibly the biggest one.

Now if they were to propose outlawing beer in Australia... :-() But there you go, this is another example of caricaturing. Aussies are in fact one of the world's largest consumers of beer, yet this no more makes us a nation of belligerent drunkards any more than America's enormous rate of gun ownership (compared to ours) makes them a nation of rootin' tootin' hell-raisers.

As to caricatures, here's the Australian one (probably every nationality in the world has its negative caricature):

The Australian is loud-mouthed, beer-bellied, perpetually drunk, stupid, boastful, ill-mannered, scornful of anything non-Australian, disrespectfully treats the world like a personal playground.

As with all nationality caricatures, there is a tiny percentage of individuals who do in fact fit it. There is a kernel of truth, like I said before. The overwhelming majority of American gun-owners may have the proper responsible attitude, but it can't be denied that there are those who don't, and unfortunately these are the ones who cause the rest to get tarred with the same brush. The above caricature is as hurtful to me as the American one is to the overwhelming majority of Americans who don't fit it, but there are Aussies who do behave badly overseas and give us all a bad name (especially in Bali. They hate us there, and as far as I'm concerned, with good reason. Being a virtual stone's-throw away and with everything there being cheap, it's a magnet to every booze-swilling Aussie ratbag in the country. They go there for a cheap and boozy good time with no respect for the local people or their culture, then wonder why they get bombed in nightclubs by west-hating Muslim extremists).

The negative impression of Aussies overlooks the facts that Australia has long had one of the world's highest literacy rates, produces a disproportionately large percentage of leading scientists, engineers and medical researchers (disproportionate meaning the numbers in these professions per head of population) and has one of the world's highest standards of living. Aussies are bright, well informed, have good intentions and love to travel. But to many in the rest of the world, we're beer-swilling yobs bent on piss-marking as many other countries as we can and annoying the dickens out of everybody.

In the end, I'd rather hang out with a responsible American gun owner than an Aussie who lives up to the caricature :-()

As I said earlier, the impressions of what makes an American tick that are held by many people overseas are certainly not ones that I share, nor would anyone with more than half a brain who either reasons with common sense or simply knows better via first-hand experience. Those gross caricatures of "the ugly American" are the product of ignorance and vile, uninformed judgmentalism, fed by a sensationalist mainstream media which can be almost on a par with politicians when it comes to being, shall we say, economical with the truth. And since only bad news sells, and since most people who watch/read the news would never bother to verify elsewhere if what they're watching/reading is honestly reported and all facts are fully researched and faithfully disclosed, their warped perception of reported events gets warped even further (on top of the initial warping performed by the media as part of the selling process).

I watch the news sometimes but only through what I call my "reality glasses". I like to have some idea of what's going on in the world but I never take anything as gospel from the media. If there is anything that piques my interest (such as anything to do with space exploration, which the mainstream media have about as much grasp of as I do of macrame technique) I'll verify it through whatever more trustworthy means may be available to me. Most of the "news" is triviality. Take away the sport, the celeb gossip, and all the other trite twaddle and there's very little left that's actually newsworthy or important enough that people truly need to be made aware of it.

But anyway, my thanks to my American friends here who have set me straight on a few things :) I admit I still don't fully understand but I've gotten a lot closer to doing so. Heck, I don't fully know what makes Aussies tick :-() And I've met some people whose behaviour I could never fathom - probably because nobody could...

I find it interesting that if I had had the intention and the words, I would have said and written essentially the same posts as fragger just did. Meaning, over here we have the same questions and ideas and all that regarding Americans and their guns. Also, we're not allowed to carry guns and all that just the same way fragger described. To me it is strange to think of someone walking around with a weapon let alone having an arsenal at home or taking a kiddie to the gun range.

This site and its core members have shed light on many aspects of their private life as well as their culture in a way no other source could have. I am really enjoying the company of the fine people of our multi-cultural circle.

Fragger, to you too a +1 :-X for all of the above that you wrote and for getting those replies in exchange. :)

Thank you Art :) I agree, we have some wonderful people here.

And I have to say, the replies from mandru and PZ have only served to increase my respect for both gentlemen, as well as giving me a better insight into the cultural attitudes of their country. Thanks for that, you guys :) I greatly value these exchanges and I learn from them.

Thanks for the comments fragger, and you have a good point.  From the earliest days of my life we have been exposed to the wild west and their "shootouts at the OK coral".  As youngsters, we played "army men" in our neighborhoods nearly every day so real and imagined weapons were part of our lives from the very beginning.

When I was a young adult (still living at home) I purchased my first .22 rifle and my friend and I went hunting for pleasure much like one would get geared up for fishing (the same sense of excitement).  As I became older, I purchased other weapons, one of them a 22.250 Remmington 700 BDL with bull barrel - so accurate we could hit objects the size of a quarter dollar at over 300 yards (I reloaded my own custom ammo).  It was fun while I was young, and while I still have that weapon, I have not fired it in at least two decades.

I now only carry a 9 mm Glock as a personal defense weapon as I mentioned, so there had been quite the transformation in my weapon-owning lifetime.

Your point about us being exposed to, and owning weapons our entire lives is a good one, and is likely why I personally am possessive of what I have.

Man, this is good, thanks to all you guys for the interesting reading.     :-X
Here in SA we are also fighting for the right to own and carry a firearm for self protection, while the criminal elements walk around carrying AK-47's and will not hesitate using it even if they just want to steal your nice wrist watch.
If you shoot the ba$t@rd, you get locked up immediately and have to prove to the court that you shot him in self defence, and if he didn't fire the first shot, your goose is cooked, and you need a damn good attorney.     :o
There are bad apples everywhere, not just in the USA. Unfortunately movie makers and their like has created a misconception about the American people, yes, I have met the occasional American as fragger described  (loud, arrogant, opinionated, self-absorbed, fanatically patriotic, a great lover of money - and possesses an all-consuming love of firearms), by changing fanatically patriotic, to non-patriotic it describes many of my fellow countrymen.       :-\\
I have met a number of Americans and they no different from people I've met from other countries, anyway, America's history is a damn site more interesting than SA's history.   My wife and I often watch Extreme Makeover Home Edition, what those people do is amazing and it shows the world what the American people really are, I promise you, none of that will ever happen here.        :'(

Thanks guys for the 1 ups and an extra thanks for putting up with me being a bloviating old buffoon.  I have to struggle to keep some of my longer posts focused on covering a topic to convey information instead of turning the post into a preachy personal journal with all the merit of a "Kilroy was here" graffiti tag.  :(

Some additional info I unintentionally omitted about purchasing a firearm (at least where I live).  Requirements vary from State to State but in the State of Utah we are able to go into a shop, select a gun and the shop clerk (by phone) will call to run our identification number (Federally recognized ID card required) through the Federal Crime Registry.  Typically if an inquiry is clear the shop will receive a call back within 15 to 20 minutes to report an OK to purchase notification.  Many States do have a 3 day waiting period before a purchase is allowed.

Also I found it interesting that I'm checked every 24Hrs through the Federal Crime Database but police officers are only run through once or at most twice a year.

 ??? that's a difference.

Then again.. someone working for the police should generally be considered OK regarding that Federal Crime Database or you'd essentially be saying that all police officers are criminals. They may be incompetent but not criminal. :-D

Quote from: mandru on January 28, 2016, 10:16:56 AM
...thanks for putting up with me being a bloviating old buffoon.

Nonsense :)

rubbish. :-D

You guys are lucky mandru, over here you first have to acquire a competency certificate from a recognised firearm training centre, then you can go purchase the firearm, if you buy it from another person the firearm must be handed in at a registered dealer for safekeeping, if from a dealer he keeps it until you have the licence.

You have a mountain of paperwork to be completed, you also need four passport photos, at least two photos taken of your bolted to a wall gunsafe which must be an approved SABS (South African Bureau Of Standards) safe, at least two character witness letters, one must be from your spouse. They also contact your spouse by phone just to double check.

The firearm is kept by the dealer until you receive your firearm licence which can take up to six months, the licence must be renewed every five years, and all the above must be done over again, accept, the firearm does not have to be handed in, oh, and if you and your spouse each have your own firearm, you need separate safes, you may not have access to hers and she may not to yours.   

What if you don't have a spouse, or you live alone?

That's a pretty hefty procedure, nex ???? But here, you can't have a gun at all, period, unless you can prove you have a valid reason for ownership as I mentioned earlier. You can't even own a single-shot, compressed air pellet gun, which is not much more than a toy, without a licence. I looked into it a few years ago as I had one when I was a kid (no licence required then) and I thought it might be fun to pop off at some inanimate targets in the backyard from time to time. But nope, I'm not allowed to have one.

I too have got a compressed air pellet rifle (actually, gas cartridge) and the rifle got a proper scope, too. I acquired it more than 20 years ago when there were no licences needed. As far as I know, I may keep it but wouldn't be allowed to buy one these days.

I do think we're lucky nex.  I'm really grateful to be living in this time, in this place and under my current circumstances but the 'go along to get along' movement that is attempting to turn us all into one mind/one body sheeple where freedom of thought is guaranteed as long as you think the way they want you to - really gets my goat.  ;)


Jeez fragger that's so hard for me to even get my head around.  It's counter to the image I always had in my mind's eye of the typical independent Aussie and there were really none of the negatives you mentioned.  Even the inclusion of barroom brawling as part of that picture I carried was probably best represented by a scene from an old John Wayne movie Donovan's Reef.  A group of Australian navy men had come into a small bar where they determined that there was more of them than the number of American sailors present for a good punch em up.  Among the Aussies there was a pair of brothers so to even things up the older brother turned to the younger brother and turning his cap around backwards said "There, now you're a Yank".  Accepting the terms and conditions the younger brother nodded and promptly punched the older brother in the face knocking him to the floor. 

And the row was on.   There was no adversarial hostility, it was all in the spirit of a sporting event and I don't think that anyone was really bothering to keep score.  :)


So what's left,  Bow and arrow?  Get really good with a boomerang?  Perhaps you're allowed to sprinkle an attacker with a small swarm of freshly and carefully collected Jack Jumper Ants from a Prince Albert tobacco tin that you carry in your breast pocket?  ???

They haven't illegalized darts in bars have they?

Sounds pretty much like you're not allowed to fight back until after you've been stabbed.  Maybe not even then.  :(

What gets my blood pressure up is that since the new gun laws had been introduced gun control has not improved.

Just this morning I had a conversation with a Police Colonel and he agreed that the new legislation is aimed at ridding the law abiding citizen from owing a gun that can kill the comrades of the new regime, because statistics show that 99.9999% of our criminals are
"new South African", and this Colonel is not even white!! 

Same old story huh, nex? Legislation seldom is passed to benefit the common people. It's always those in power who are the intended beneficiaries.

Bloody hell, I thought Apartheid was over... Looks like it's going the other way now. Or has it been for a while now? When it was "abolished" I wondered at the time if there wouldn't be a pendulum swing in the opposite direction.

@mandru, that's pretty much right, there have in fact been instances where someone has inadvertently killed a would-be assailant in self defense and have found themself looking at a manslaughter charge and jail time. Almost always common sense has prevailed before it came to that, but it shouldn't even be a consideration. As far as I'm concerned, if someone tries to rob you, and if in fighting back you accidentally fatally harm that person, well tough luck, the robber brought it upon themself. I could throw a wadded-up piece of paper at someone in play and it could be made into an assault charge if the targeted person had no sense of humour or had a vindictive streak towards me.

This is a society where a woman once had a man sued - successfully - for sexual harassment because he committed the heinous crime of holding the door open for her at a restaurant on their first, and naturally only, date. She claimed that this act constituted humiliating and belittling treatment. The date, I might add, was arranged via a dating service, which suggests to me that this was the woman's plan all along.

This country has definitely become a bleating nanny state. The rugged, bronzed, in-your-face Aussie seems to have become a museum relic, like a fossil. Those tough-as-nails bastards who fought at Gallipoli in WWI must be rolling over in their graves at what this place has become. To think we once staged an armed uprising back in the gold rush days to fight extortionate government mining licence practices at a place on the goldfields which later became known as the Eureka Stockade, and even though the miners lost the contest of arms, the purpose was achieved. That's about the nearest thing we've had to a revolution, and the "Eureka Flag"

[smg id=8558 align=center]

with its stylized Southern Cross became an unofficial national symbol. I'd actually like to see it become the national flag, as would many of my peers, but it won't happen as long as the country is ruled by anglophiles and kowtowers to the British Royal Family, so we're stuck with that bloody Union Jack in the corner of the flag for the foreseeable future. Also, for those in power the Eureka flag is an uncomfortable reminder of a time in history when they had it royally stuck to them by those they were trying to rip off, that there was a time when corrupted authority was actively challenged by force. They don't want people remembering or identifying with that.

That spirit appears to be going by the wayside. These days everything is political correctness, a society where one can be charged with vilification if one tells an innocent, good-humoured joke at the expense of a particular nationality and someone, not necessarily of that nationality, happens to overhear and takes offense. I can't say actress, hostess or stewardess anymore without being taken to task by some righteously indignant flouncing fop. I'm sick of being told how to live, what to think and what attitudes I should have. I don't like being told what I can or can't say. I try to be mindful of other people's sensibilities, but if I say anything that someone feels is derogatory or takes issue with, they should take it up with me in person, not go dobbing me in to the courts like some crybaby in a schoolyard running off to tell the teacher. If they express their disapproval to my face, I'll respect them for doing that and I'll apologise for any hurt or offense I may have caused. If they try to sue me for it behind my back, they can get stuffed and I'll see the gutless wonder in court.

But getting back to firearms licences here, how's this for ridiculous: If I was a farmer, I would be allowed to obtain a firearms licence for a rifle (I think up to 30-06 caliber), but that licence would not entitle me to own any type of Airsoft gun ???? So I'd be allowed to fire real and hefty rounds that can kill, but not little plastic balls that might leave a welt on someone's skin. Airsoft weapons fall under Category A firearms licences, which includes replicas as well as sidearms and longarms that fire projectiles, lethal or not. This category also includes pellet guns, BB guns, and paintball guns (Skirmish site operators are allowed to have licenses for these last, but the guns have to remain at the site. Players can't buy their own, they have to use the site's guns).

In fact, in my state, NOBODY is allowed to own an Airsoft weapon under any circumstances. The reasoning, we're told, is because they so strongly resemble real firearms that they could be used in armed hold-ups, and if responding police see a perp wielding what appears to be an actual gun, they may open fire.

Point one: Since when is an armed holdup reliant on the perp having a firearm? When I worked in a gas station, I was held up twice - once with a mini-speargun and once with a screwdriver. Heck, you could just threaten to beat someone up with your fists in order to rob them. Point two: This "reasoning" simply demonstrates the trigger-happiness of the police (our cops are a tad eager to pull their Glocks, even though when they actually shoot someone, and even when they do in fact have very good cause, they get hauled over the coals for it by the media, by armchair critics, and by their own internal investigations department).

In Britain, regular police officers don't carry firearms at all, yet any citizen can own an Airsoft gun, which is a typical example of English common sense.

Give the Aussie powers-that-be time and they'll get around to banning Nerf guns eventually.

Madness, I tell you.

You're right fragger, the tables have turned, unfortunately not for the better of the country.
The new government introduced what is called Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and is forcing big companies and organizations to have at least a 50% of other colour people in most levels in the workforce up to top level management positions, even up to shareholder level.

Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) is a racially selective programme, seen as racist by certain citizens, launched by the South African government to redress the inequalities of Apartheid by giving certain previously disadvantaged groups (Blacks, Coloureds, Indians, and Chinese who arrived before 1994)[1] of South African citizens economic privileges previously not available to them. Although race is the overriding factor, it includes measures such as Employment Preference, skills development, ownership, management, socioeconomic development, and preferential procurement.

All would have worked well if the transition was done in a proper manor that would keep the standard of expertise up, but many highly trained and experienced people were "retrenched" to make way for a inexperienced arrogant chip on the shoulder "New South African", but the funny thing is, unemployment rate has gone up since the change to the country with more millionaires now than 20 years ago, don't make sense, does it?

The New South Africans has virtually been given "the keys to the town", they can call you all sorts of names and you have to swallow it, if you call him anything else but Sir! your a$$ gets dragged to court for making racist remarks.

At least once a month our TV broadcasters show either a documentary program of how the black people of the country struggled during the apartheid era or a movie of how their "brothers" struggled in the USA.
I'm sure by now the whole world knows about the Marikana massacre in August 16 2012,
Only the people who were there at the time have an idea of what actually happened. Knowing the black people of this country,  with every get together being a protest, strike or displeasure towards anyone they carry some form of weapon, in some footages taken during the Marikana incident it shows these thousands of strikers carrying weapons, yet the unions  maintain it's peaceful, you carry a weapon to a meeting and claim you are peaceful? like hell!!!
Now put yourself in a cop's shoes, you see a wall of shouting bodies waving deadly weapons above their heads charging you, somewhere a gun goes off, is it a panicking cop, or one of these strikers who fired the shot? nobody knows, and nobody will ever find out. The cops, mine owners and the Government are blamed for everything, the strikers are the innocent victims.

I was born and grew up in the midst of the Apartheid era, yes there were segregation, some rules were downright idiotic but all of us had to abide by those rules.

Black people lived out of town in townships, they had their own public transport, public toilets were a no go, there were even separate entry/exit doors at our Airports, but once inside the terminal they could go anywhere accept there were designated rest rooms.

Most big towns and cities had a 6pm curfew, they were only allowed in the street after curfew if they had written permission from whomever they worked for and their "passbook" (later years all South Africans were issued a similar book at the age of 16y it was then called an ID book). all black people had to carry their passbooks wherever they went no matter the day or time, if not and the cops catch them they get locked up, appear in court the next day and get 30days in prison.

They were not allowed to buy or have any alcoholic drinks in their possession, I remembered as a youngster,  Fridays were payday and my dad would arrive home after w@&k with three bottles of Brandy he bought from the local bottle store, he then sat outside on the porch scratching all the labels off the bottles with his pocket knife. After dark three black guys working under my dad would arrive, the bottles were wrapped in brown paper and the three guys left with the bottles.

While growing up we spent all our Christmas holidays on relatives farms and my cousins and I. played with the farm workers kids, although I grew up in the Apartheid era, I never saw myself as a racist, my mom also had a job so we had a black lady working in the house like most people did and many still do, I was basically raised by one, she had a secure room outside on our property with its own toilet facilities and she had free access to the house, she fed my brother and I coming home from school every day, she mostly prepared dinner as well.

As far as I'm concerned, Apartheid should have been scrapped 40-50 years ago, then this country would have had better educated black people by now and this country would not have been in the s#!t the way it is presently, so if I sounded like a racist in my previous post, I'm not, and believe me, many white South Africans are not, the Apartheid thing started a long, long time ago before most of us were born.

  In 1652, a century and a half after the discovery of the Cape sea route, Jan van Riebeeck established a refreshment station at the Cape of Good Hope, at what would become Cape Town, on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch transported slaves from Indonesia, Madagascar, and India as labour for the colonists in Cape Town

The Boer Republics successfully resisted British encroachments during the First Boer War (1880–1881) using guerrilla warfare tactics, which were well suited to local conditions. The British returned with greater numbers, more experience, and new strategy in the Second Boer War (1899–1902) but suffered heavy casualties through attrition; nonetheless, they were ultimately successful.
Within the country, anti-British policies among white South Africans focused on independence. During the Dutch and British colonial years, racial segregation was mostly informal, though some legislation was enacted to control the settlement and movement of native people, including the Native Location Act of 1879 and the system of pass laws. Power was held by the ethnic European colonists

interesting read, thanks nexor :-X

Indeed  :-X

Fascinating to read how others live in their country.  This is the kind of information you simply cannot gain from the lying media (which is nothing more than entertainment)

The forum's not allowing me to post a Quote but nex said:

"...so if I sounded like a racist in my previous post, I'm not, and believe me, many white South Africans are not, the Apartheid thing started a long, long time ago before most of us were born."


No worries nex.  No matter where we live, the world we all live in today is all but unrecognizable from the world we were born into.  :-X

The things that were done right are quickly forgotten and lost to history.  But things done wrong stay around to hound to us forever.

Thanks for the informative post, nex :-X I don't think anybody here would brand you a racist for telling it like it is.

We never had anything like Apartheid here, but I can relate to how things in South Africa have deteriorated in regard to race relations. There's a similar thing happening here regarding Aborigines.

Before I go any further, there's something I should clarify. I and many others often refer to an Aboriginal person as an "Abo", not out of any racist or derogatory tendencies but simply because it's less of a mouthful than Aborigine and it's used in a familiar and egalitarian manner. Heck, I've known and heard Aboriginal people refer to themselves and other Aboriginal people as Abos. But according to the PC brigade, you can't call them that in public - it's racist. Try to tell these dolts that it's not a racist term but merely an abbreviation and you'll be self-righteously shouted down. They don't have a problem with those from Britain being referred to as Brits or "Poms", or Americans being referred to as Yanks, but Abos must be treated with the utmost deference by voicing their racial designation in full, every time. These fools are apparently oblivious to the irony of the inherent racism implicit in their say-so.

Abos suffered atrocious treatment during the penal and colonial days in Australia. Things hadn't improved much by the end of the 19th century, but then there was a horrible episode which has come to be known as "The Stolen Generation" which took place during roughly the first half of the twentieth century, where Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their parents and removed to special schools and church missions for the purpose of education and indoctrination into white society. The intention was good but the result was devastating to Aboriginal families, as one could imagine when people's children are taken from them, quite probably never to be seen again. The idea was to rescue children from a hopeless cycle of poverty, alcoholism, despondency and domestic abuse which had blighted the Aboriginal population ever since whites first began to invade their country starting in 1788 (and let's make no mistake, an invasion was indeed what it was). It was believed that these children would have a much better shot at a decent future if they were removed from an environment of hatred, resentment and despair that had plagued Aboriginal society since the white invasion which even then, from a historical standpoint, was still very recent.

This misguided, ill-informed, and arrogantly stupid act probably did more to embitter Aboriginal people towards whites than any other action in the history of racial relations here. As often is the case, it was the do-gooders that did the most harm. The pain and resentment ran raw for many years until it was partially alleviated when in 2008 the then Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, delivered a formal apology on behalf of the Australian government to the Aboriginal people in an emotive and beautifully worded speech that went a long way towards reconciliation. The apology was delivered in public outside Parliament House in Canberra to a huge audience of Aboriginal people on the House's lawn, and many were moved to tears, saying that this was what they'd always wanted to hear and that now the healing could begin.

BUT - there remains a core contingent of Aboriginal people who stubbornly refuse the apology and any attempt at assimilation, and who seem to revel in their roles as official victims. Any failing, hardship, lack or character flaw they may have or experience is conveniently attributed to "white fella society" even when it's blatantly apparent that the cause of their grievance has been brought about by their own actions. They use their historical dispossession as an excuse for bad or antisocial behaviour, for sponging off the government, or for any kind of want or desire that remains unfulfilled.

I once got to know a lady back in Sydney who worked for an Aboriginal Reconciliation organisation. She told me that the biggest obstacle they faced was changing the attitude of many Aboriginals themselves and that there are many who do in fact use their resentment of whites as a blanket excuse for ALL their misfortunes, no matter how self-inflicted those problems may be. There are those who are simply inherently lazy, who believe the country owes them a living and won't get off their bums to look for w@&k, instead relying on government handouts for dough. They have this attitude that all whites are to blame for everything and that white society is obligated to pay for their lodgings, food and booze and to allow them to live on their bums in perpetuity. Some even claim that all non-Aboriginals should leave the country and give it back to them (but as my friend pointed out, these are Aborigines who have been born and raised in the inner city and who would no more be able to survive in a stone-age outback environment any longer than a white 3rd-generation Surrey Hills barista would. Give them two weeks, my friend said, and they'd be begging the whites to return and start civilisation back up again). They play the victim card whenever it suits them and they rort the system with their "look what you've done to us, whitey, pay us for it" attitude. My friend claimed that it was these Abos with their "poor us" attitude, not whites, that constituted the biggest impediment to moving forward with any kind of reconciliation. Incidentally, this lady was herself a full-blooded Aborigine.

I've tried to talk to some of them over the years, but sometimes you simply can't. At best you'll be ignored, at worst they'll have a go at you for trying. My mother was walking on the sidewalk in town once when a couple of Abos came the other way, and one of them went out of his way to shoulder-bump her aside. Thankfully she didn't fall, but she almost did. And thankfully I wasn't there to see it, because if I'd thumped the ba$t@rd for doing it, guess which one of us would have been charged with assault?

Racial reconciliation is a two-way street, and it's often the former victims of any kind of persecution who stand in the way of it. It's understandable to a degree, but things will never get any better until the grudge is dropped, the former victims stop seeing themselves as victims even when the victimisation has passed, governments and do-gooders stop mollycoddling them, and the aggrieved stop using their once-were-victims status as a free-ride ticket. The racial tension certainly won't ease when the former victims become the new practitioners.

interesting.

Over here in the Old World we haven't got the problem you guys who are living elsewhere are facing. Over here, we are the natives. We "import" our problems by allowing foreigners in who start to blame us. Hell, I remember a case when some Muslims went to court to have the Christian symbol, the cross, removed from a school's classroom because it offended them. Many immigrants don't even speak our language even after having lived here for decades but they damn well know how to get our tax money from the state.

Fascinating that the only thing different in our societies is the precise detail of what has occurred.  Evidently people worldwide are the same - the only difference is the circumstance.  As I read what you chaps wrote the same prejudices and injustices occur everywhere.

there are lazy bums all around the world getting dragged behind society and people who are pillars of society (who w@&k and so forth) -- we don't only have those lazy complaining parasites but also have "citizens with migration background" (PC for immigrants) who are most valuable or at least as valuable as any other people. Indeed, same as you guys with your natives.

True mate.

I would actually love to be a lazy bum, but there's no money in it :-() If I could do it without being a financial burden on the rest of society or sponging off my fellow taxpayers, I would. In fact I wouldn't concern myself with money at all if I didn't have to.

I have no desire to be filthy rich, or even just rich, but it would be nice to have just enough money to live on and not have to bother with it ever again.

There's a clip or two on YouTube about people who have won fortunes on lotteries and have blown the lot through their own stupidity. Like the teenage girl who won three million dollars, then squandered it all in short order on gifts, parties, designer clothes, jewellery and breast implants. Or the guy who blew through about 15 million in a few short years on flashy cars, drugs and prostitutes. There was a woman who took her huge lotto win to Atlantic City and proceeded to gamble it all away. She now lives in a trailer park. Can you believe that? She wins a huge pile of money, then blows it all trying to win a huger pile of money. Damn fool, serves her right, I reckon.

What do they say about fools and their money? These people are beyond being mere fools - they're more like their own worst enemies.

If I won a fortune like that, the first place that money would go would be into a secure interest-bearing deposit, and I would live off that interest. Depending on how much there was, I might buy a nice house and a couple of other things, but the rest I wouldn't touch - and I sure as hell wouldn't go telling the world about it (a few of those people on YouTube ended up getting bumped off by greedy relatives and partners). If it was way more than enough for me to live on, like several hundred million (or something crazy like I believe someone in the US won recently), I would donate some of it to a worthy cause - but I would want to make very certain it actually went to whoever I donated it too and not into someone's pocket, or into the government's coffers (some still would anyway, and the gov would take a good dollop of my winnings in the first place, the lousy bloodsuckers. Like they don't get enough out of people like me already).

On the subject of the government, and seeing as how we are in the Rant topic, our illustrious new Prime Minister (the latest one to sucker-punch the actual elected PM out of the way before shouldering his way though the revolving door and taking the title for himself) is talking about raising our General Sales Tax from 10% to 15%. We first got slugged with a GST back in 2000 by the then PM, John Howard, whose prior declaration of "There will never be a GST under any government of mine" was the one big election promise that encouraged the gullible masses to vote the sniveling little runt into the hot seat, and was the first promise he broke once he got there. He then went on to break just about every other promise he'd ever made before signing us up with George W's "Coalition of the Willing" despite 94% of Aussies being opposed to any involvement (and didn't he revel in that role! Grinning like a Cheshire cat in the media, he was like, "Hey, look at me! I'm up here rubbing shoulders with George and Tony! I'm playing with the big boys, I'm a mover and a shaker! Oh, what was that, George? How high do you want me to jump?" Cor... pathetic, fawning little sack of chimpanzee s#!t. To this day I would love to give him the mother of all Chinese burns for sending good people into war to be killed, maimed and mentally wrecked just so he could hit the big time for a while and parade around on the world stage with his heroes, like a nerdy little sycophantic brat trying to brown-nose his way into the cool kids clique. I'm sure George and Tony had a ton of laughs zinging him behind his back. Or maybe to his face - it wasn't like Little Johnny had any kind of wit to zing back with, nor the backbone to stand up for himself).

You've probably sensed that I don't hold John Howard in very high regard, but let's face it, it's not easy to respect a proven liar suffering from small man syndrome with the personality of a soggy dishcloth and the wit of Dopey the Dwarf. I guess I could rate him half a point up from shower stall mildew if I was feeling generous, and he only gets that because I guess he couldn't help being born an objectionable, whiny-voiced little chimp-faced dick. Anyway, the GST that we would never have was fixed at 10% with the promise that it would never rise (yeah, sure, Johnny, we believe you. You lied about everything else, but we'll totally trust you on this).

I'm actually surprised that the pollies have left it alone for this long.

So now the new PM, Malcolm Turncoat Turnbull, is saying that the government is considering raising the GST to meet the massive budget deficit that they, the politicians, along with their big business cronies, have created. The budget could easily be moved back into the black if they forced the biggest companies in the country to pay their proper taxes instead of allowing them to shunt their profits off to tax-dodge havens like the Cayman Islands and Switzerland (where Turnbull has most of his considerable amount of money squirreled away already), but no - it's "let's hit the taxpayers up for it". Again. He's drawn all kinds of flak over it, not just from the public but even from people in his own party, but he insists it's "merely an option that's being discussed, nothing is confirmed". Which, in pollie-speak, means, "it's going to happen, expect it soon".

Honestly, you wouldn't feed these creatures. People are struggling to get by now, let alone trying to cope with a 5% rise in the GST. Politicians seem to think people are just bottomless sources of income.

Well, that post turned into a bit of a diatribe, but I'm being a lazy bum today and I've had a couple :-()

People like that live in trailers for a reason - they belong there, and no amount of money is going to change their point of view.

PS: I'm going to be a jobless bum a year from now, just not a drain on society nor anyone else  :-()

RetiredGord springs to mind.. he's been absent a tad too long for my taste, anyone heard of him?

No, I've not seen anything of him, but he was a Facebook fan a while ago, and didn't appear on the forums much

Interesting read guys, about the gun laws, the self-declared victims all over the world, native or import, PZ getting retired :-X :)

I would love to hold a real gun once. A friend of my mom's once told her that her son wanted to become a cop. She didn't understand why. How on earth could that kid see anything good in being a cop?? I knew. "That's because then he's allowed to carry a gun, mom!"  :-D
In Holland gun laws are just the way Nex describes. Probably even stricter. I know about these gun safes. You evne have to store your ammo in a different safe as the gun, and the gun always must be stored dismounted.
The difference is; overhere ppl aren't waving around with AK's on the streets when they disagree with something... yet.
With the recent Yugoslavian war many arms have disappeared into illegal cirquits and from time to time they popup, usually being held by a criminal doing naughty things.
And with what's happening in Libia, Ukrain, Siria and Turkey it's probably getting worse by the minute.

If there's one thing I disgust in people is victimship. All over the world, as is being proven by former posts, people claim to be victims for whatever thing happened centuries ago, or even longer. Where I w@&k, in prison, we have the biggest collection of innocents mounted together, and they all claim to be victim of something. They don't even realise they are held there partially to protect their own, hadn made victims against them. Good lord how I hate it when people start whyning about the bad conditions of our health care in prison and how bad all these psychologists do their jobs not being able to get them out earlier for clinical treatment >:((

If one wants psychological treatment, the first thing they should be aware of is that they have to change something about themselves. Thus accept that there's something not entirely right about themselves. When they can see that, they might enjoy the benefits of good psychological treatment. Because they will do it themselves. Home-made healthcare so to speak. That's what these ppl need. And a big fat kick to their ignorant asses >:(

Interesting thoughts Binn.  :-X

The whole societal tolerance (if not encouragement) of victimhood to be worn like a badge on their sleeve annoys me as well.

Here in the U.S. one of our founding principals is the concept "United We Stand" which includes the immediate follow up "Divided We Fall".  But there is a strong corrosive influence that is being promoted by the highest levels of our Govt. Leadership that promotes the dividing up of our population into numerous  smaller groups of special little flowers for anyone who feels that they have been wronged allowing them to wallow in their victimhood to get free stuff or privileged consideration for opportunities that everyone else has to w@&k for.

Yes.  There have been horrible historical injustices that have occurred but there comes a point when in society a climate of opportunity arises where it is up to each individual to recognize that there are some debts and wrongs that can never be repaid making it their personal responsibility to determine that it is simply time to pick up the pieces and make something of themselves by refusing to fit into the mold that they have been told their entire lives they were cast from and triumphing over and owning the barriers that they have been told by peers that there is no way to overcome.

At first glance there is very little difference between the words Victim and Victor but that small influence of the "im" versus the "or" in the last two letters of those words makes all the difference in the world.  It is only through strength and perseverance that someone can rise from the first and become the other which a far more impressive badge to wear on one's sleeve.

In addition to so many people being "victims", they are immediately looking to sue someeone to gain financial reward for the victimization, imagined or otherwise. 

Simply disgusting.

reminds me of stories we heard had happened in the U.S. and when we tell them while shaking our heads, we'd go, "that's only possible in America." One of those stories is that someone sued Mickey D. because the coffee was too hot and the court's decision was McD had to pay an insanely high amount like a million bucks of compensation for personal suffering. Here we'd probably think, "heh, burned your mouth? Stupid bitch, serves you right if you try to swallow a mug full of freshly brewed hot coffee." And not even the stupid would come up with the idea of suing McD for fresh hot coffee being too hot.

I just remembered something that you might tell while shaking your heads and go, "that's only possible in Germany." Come over here, fire up a PC, open your browser and go to YouTube. Then click on just about any music video that springs to mind and find a message like, "Unfortunately, this video is not available in your country because it could contain music from <add random music company here>, for which we could not agree on conditions of use with GEMA."

:-D

I also remembered another story from the U.S. when Bush considered tomato ketchup worthy to be declared staple food. It led to some weird situations when students would go to the refectory at a college or university and order their meal, they'd get a plate full of tomato ketchup. It's cheap and since it's staple food, it can't be wrong. For some reason, however, it didn't become a general rule for how diets were to be composed at university canteens all over the country.

That is indeed a huge difference Mandru, victim or victor. It reminds me; people who truly become victim of something or someone, they don't want to be victim. They were forced into that position and will probably do the necessary to become victor again.
People who choose victimhood (victimship, lol) somehow have something to gain with it. It's fake. Parasitism. Usually trying to abuse caring people.

I realise that people can have a hard time because of the position or situation they were born into. And I will be the first to recognize the inequality from which they suffer. But they still have decisions of their own to make, which gives them a chance to achieve the desired. Helping them is a good deed, but will also keep them weak. Help can be a dangerous thing. Even a helping hand has a responsibility, hence the wise Australians stealing the children from the Abos.  :angel:

Quote from: Binnatics on March 06, 2016, 11:53:31 AM

In Holland gun laws are just the way Nex describes. Probably even stricter. I know about these gun safes. You evne have to store your ammo in a different safe as the gun, and the gun always must be stored dismounted.
The difference is; overhere ppl aren't waving around with AK's on the streets when they disagree with something... yet.

The problem we facing is firearms in the hands of the wrong people

http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/weapons-disappearing-from-police-custody/ (http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/weapons-disappearing-from-police-custody/)

It has also been revealed that the South African Police Service (SAPS) has been fuelling the illegal arms trade.  In a reply to a parliamentary question the Minister of Police admitted that in 2010/11 a total of 1 335 SAPS firearms were 'lost or stolen'.  101 of these were rifles, 46 were shotguns and the rest were handguns.  Only 167 of the firearms have been recovered.

Quote from: Binnatics on March 07, 2016, 01:14:40 PM
Even a helping hand has a responsibility, hence the wise Australians stealing the children from the Abos.  :angel:

I think that was a classic case of do-gooders doing more harm than good - or more accurately, no damn good at all. Good intentions, but directed by short-sighted ignorance and self-righteousness driven by religious fervour. A similar thing took place in the U.S. during the late 1800s involving a society of white people who officiously called themselves "Friends of the Indian". Actually, it wasn't similar, it was pretty much an identical thing: they took Native American kids away from their parents in the West and sent them off to schools in the East to "educate" them and teach them how to fit into white society. They even forbade the kids to use their traditional names, so that a name like "Running Elk" would become something like "Rebecca Evans". The effect on Native American families was the same as it would later be on the indigenous population in this country - psychological, emotional and societal devastation to the indigents, and it didn't help the Indian kids one whit.

This is why it irks me a bit when some Americans criticize us over "The Stolen Generation" - it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black. But even so, I feel that our sin was all the more greater because it had already been tried in the U.S., and yet the dreadful consequences were ignored by those in Australia who apparently believed themselves to be more enlightened and so they went ahead and repeated the mistake, with the same result. What was that definition of insanity again?

In any case, how thick-headed and up yourself would you have to be to believe that wrenching children away from their parents would be a beneficial thing to do, and that everybody would end up happier and better adjusted for it? Damned fools.

As an interesting aside, here is another example of the know-it-all attitude driving political correctness - the fact that white hand-wringers tell everybody that the correct term for the indigenous population in the U.S. is "Native American". From what I've heard, "Indians" themselves actually don't have a problem with being called Indians and many actually prefer it. An individual Indian would probably appreciate being referred to as a Navajo, a Cheyenne, a Shoshone, etc, but these labels can't serve as collective names for the whole. I'm just waiting for the day when some dickhead in Canberra tells us that we should henceforth refer to Aborigines as "Native Australians". I've known some Abos and in fact I'm working with one right now, and I know that they are proud to be known as Aborigines. To call them something else would constitute yet another arrogant kick in the guts from self-righteous "White Fella" society and as usual with such politically-correct sanctimony, it would do much harm and no good.

When in historical terms a society falls into it's deepest darkest evil it's always under the influence of two conditions.  I've mentioned these two terms elsewhere but they bear repeating.

The first Fatal Conceit is manifest in leaders taking the position that they because of the esteemed status they have achieved have been enlightened with higher ethics and goals for steering the citizenry.  But the end results of choices and deviation from actions that actually benefit the people invariably falls in favor of strengthening the power hold of leadership.  This is seen as "We know what's best for you, shut up and get in line."


The second Tyranny of Experts always takes the form of manipulation of facts and people by setting forward an elitist opinion where highly learned experts (always with a slanted agenda) decry that doom is unavoidable unless a false and often destructive course of action is immediately enacted.  It is sold to the population in a way that pits the very citizenry against itself.

A citizen can either embrace the false narrative along with any actions leadership impose on them and take pride in their now shared elitism (becoming one of the cool people) or anyone opposing or attempting to debunk the deception will be shunned and belittled as being narrow minded, selfish, and stupid.  Equally qualified experts who introduce unadulterated facts that expose the lie will be discredited, mocked, and usually have their research funding, jobs and possibly even their lives taken away from them.

Leaders can construct their own narratives but  facts are facts  and no one should be allowed to attempt to create their own or prevent truth from coming forward.  Anyone with a lick of sense knows that a fabricated fact is a lie and any non-fact or theory must  always  be open to debate from all sides.


Lately I've started looking at the world through the lens of these two terms and at least for me the observable poor choices of leadership historically and in current events and almost invariably one if not both of these conditions are present.

Quote from: fragger on March 07, 2016, 08:47:25 PM
In any case, how thick-headed and up yourself would you have to be to believe that wrenching children away from their parents would be a beneficial thing to do, and that everybody would end up happier and better adjusted for it? Damned fools.

Well there are cases in fact where parents are withdrawn form their parenthood by the government to protect their children against their destructive habits, such as drug addiction, extreme violence, mental illness or a combination of those. I think that is sometimes inevitable, although it is the hardest of available measures and shouldn't be taken easily.

@ Mandru, I think you got a point there. It would be interesting to approach devastating leaders decisions through that lens. Still I wonder, what would be the definition of a good leader ????

It's a different thing when families are closely investigated for dysfunction on a one-by-one basis. It's the application of such an approach to an entire race, regardless of the status of individual family units, which is ignorant and immoral.

When it is demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that children are being harmed in a dangerously dysfunctional family environment with no hope of improvement to the situation, the well-being of the children must be paramount. On a family-by-family basis, regardless of racial considerations, then of course it's permissible and ethically imperative that the children be removed from any destructive household for their own welfare. Naturally there will be pain and misery involved, but it's better than a potentially fatal alternative for the little ones.

But to apply this practice to a whole population of people purely on the basis of race and with no consideration given to the status of any individual household - that's when it becomes abhorrent and callous. It's conceivable, and probably very likely, that more harmonious family environments than dysfunctional ones will be adversely affected by such an arrogant blanket approach to the situation.

It would be interesting to go back in time and find out the ratio of good/bad environments of white families compared to indigenous ones in either country, if such a thing were possible - which of course it isn't at this remove. I'm willing to bet there were more dysfunctional white family units than there were native ones - when the natives were still being allowed to live in their traditional ways and settings, not already force-fed into white society, as the latter is when the cultural-shock driven dysfunction really sets in. How would white parents react to having their children taken away from them simply because they're white? The same way the natives did.

@mandru, I couldn't agree more. I don't buy anything any "expert" tries to sell me unless I can verify its validity independently, or if it goes against my own common-sense, or even just my gut, or if I can even be bothered about it to start with. I don't accept any government-promoted concepts of what's right or wrong, what's moral or immoral, or what's environmentally sound or unsound. I let my own moral compass guide me through the first two and my own knowledge, study or common sense to reckon out the third.

It alarms me how so many people will enroll into a thought school (e.g. global warming) solely on the strength of being told that it has been "scientifically verified". I've met people who will blindly jump on a bandwagon with a belief that scientists, like celebrities, are never wrong nor have any ulterior motives. After a while the bandwagon gains enough momentum that those of us who refuse to jump on board risk being run over and even if the bandwagon eventually breaks down, these people will happily jump onto the next passing one simply because they're told that they should, that it's the trendy thing to do or because their clueless media idols are already on board.

As to the definition of a good leader: One who genuinely puts the welfare of the populace ahead of all other considerations and acts accordingly in all areas, even if it means having to put aside personal agendas. One who listens to their constituents and does his or her best to give the majority what they want. Western government is supposed to be about representation (of the people and their wants/needs) - not to be powers unto themselves. It's impossible to please everybody and no matter how good a leader may be, there will be those who resent their leadership. But one of the core pillars of democracy is the concept of "majority rule" - government of the people, by the people, for the people - i.e., representational. It's a noble and enlightened model of government and (in its ideal form, at least) is the only sensible way for any thinking, feeling, intelligent human being to go about peaceful civilization.

I've always believed that the best candidates for positions of power are those who don't actually want it.

That is a clear disquisition Fragger, I am tempted to believe you are right. But there are some things that made me realise that democracy isn't the holy word when it comes to leading a society.
One of them is the fact that the majority isn't too cleaver. Look at how easily populists are winning terrain in governments all over the western society. They operate smart enough to, with the help of the abilities internet provides to the dumb, get large amounts of blockheads to vote for their parties with simple and ruthless manipulation of people's feelings of discontent. They just scream "Less, less, less immigrants!!!" and get another 100k likes on twitter or whatever :-\\
Another is the fact that many nowadays societies (middle east for example) are simply not ready for democracy. These countries need strong leadership and too many meople in these countries seem not to have learned to argue instead of fight when you disagree to something.
Maybe democracy only survives if there's a certain minimum of prosperity, which buys the people time to listen to eachother and think about what others might feel and want.

I don't know what good leadership is. I think about some things that I find most important. One is freedom. My base rule is that the freedom of one stops there where the freedom of another gets threatened. And freedom being the most important value next to the basic needs like safety, shelter and nutricion should be managed by a leader. A sort of freedom manager. Sounds like a judge, no that's not it :-\\
The parliamental democracy seems to be the best solution to how election of leadership should be done, but what puzzles me is responsibility. Somehow political leaders can easily walk away from that. They just focus on the next election, short minded freeks, and after a while they can make more money in a multinational and they're gone. It shouldn't be so easy to walk away from the political podium. Although how to arrange that... no idea.
That makes me think of something else that is an important issue regarding leardership. Goals. A leader got to have a goal that is clear and possible and supported by, here we go again, the majority of the people.
And he who leads should always be aware of any minority having their equal rights as well and can't be threatened by the ideals and desires of that majority.

Damn complicated.  :-D

I was speaking more from a standpoint of hypothetical ideals as opposed to dirty reality, but you're right Binn, it is complicated. Western democratic governments only really pretend to be democratic, but they're not - they are more like monarchies but without the bloodlines (except for the Kennedys and the Bushes, of course :-()). No democracy in the world today is truly democratic, and I don't think there have ever really been any. It's a ideal concept that never really got put into practice, just like socialism. That has never existed either, except among relatively small groups of people like Aborigines, the Bushmen of the Kalahari or American Indian tribes. In all these cases, there are no leaders (although they are sensible enough to take counsel from their elders) - instead, everything is decided by general consensus, and everything belongs to and is shared among the tribe. That, by definition, is socialism. The concept of an "Indian Chief", adorned with a big bonnet of eagle feathers, sagely striding around and laying down the law, is a complete myth.

But as soon as you have a leader who decides off their own bat what is best for everybody, you no longer have a democracy - you have a dictatorship.

A majority rule approach (in theory) is the only really fair way for a government to govern, but in order for it to be beneficial, the majority do have to know what's good for them, I agree with that point. Unfortunately, an awful lot of people don't - or rather, they know what's good (or what they want) for themselves, but not what's good for society as a whole. What one person thinks is a good idea, another thinks is bad. Such a system will only w@&k if people are willing to put the common good above their own personal wants, which in turn means it requires a level of altruism that large populations of human beings generally lack. In a truly, hypothetically ideal society, there shouldn't even be any need for money. Everybody does what they're good at, and either trades their goods or services with someone else or puts them into the common store, from which those who need them, get them. Everything is done solely for the benefit of society as a whole. The incentive would be the knowledge that what they're doing is helping their fellow humans and contributing to the maintenance and well-being of civilization. A system like this worked well enough for people like medieval rural Britons, but would it w@&k with large, technologically-advanced civilizations? Who knows. Maybe once a population exceeds a certain rough size, a system like that would break down, or society would just never advance beyond a certain stage. Or would it?

Who really is wise enough to say what's good for society anyway? One example could be the development of space technology. Some think it's important, some think it's a gross waste of time and money. The fact is, if no space technology had ever been developed, we wouldn't be having this online discussion right now. There would be no near-instantaneous global communications, no GPS, and no weather satellites (and if you think weather prediction is hit and miss now, imagine it with no orbital aids). Computer technology would be decades behind where it is now, there would be no internet, and nothing like the games we enjoy today. We wouldn't have Blu-tak, WD-40, scratch-resistant glass, modern insulation, memory foam, water purification, aircraft anti-icing systems, space blankets, and solar power cells, to name just a few spin-off products (in fact we wouldn't even have the term "spin-off" - the space program was where that term originated). LED/LCD technology might even still be decades away. People would be surprised at just how much our current level of technology is due to the impetus originally given it by the space race. Is any of that high technology really important? Some would say it isn't - the same people who say they can't live without Facebook and their iPhones, who live in Canada but like to watch Wimbledon live on TV, or whose lives may be saved by the advanced computer-driven medical equipment now in existence such as CAT scanners, metabolic sensors and hand-held diagnostic devices - technologies all courtesy of the space program. I have actually heard someone bitch about the space program being a waste of time, then a few days later I heard the same person say they loved their car's navigation system. I guess he thinks it works by magic.

All this is to make the point that what some people consider important, others don't, and nobody can really tell where something will lead. In the case of space, who was right: the advocates or the naysayers? I'm sure that when the space race first began to hot up in the early sixties, nobody could foresee where the technology would lead. Even the idea of a pocket calculator was unthinkable as late as 1969 and the first moon landing. Neil Armstrong once said that at the time of Apollo 11, if you'd suggested to him that within a few years people would be wearing digital watches, he would have said you were crazy.

So nobody really knows whether some things might be good or not in the long run, and thus we don't really know what might be good for us. Quite probably, most people were against the time and money being spent on the space race at the time, and there are still many who believe that today's technology does more harm than good (for the record, all things being considered, I think we're better off for it). How many people would really want to be living with, say, 1970s-era technology today? Then again, we wouldn't know any better if we were :-()

In fact, human society is one big anarchy. He who is strong or cleaver enough, rules his surroundings. All current agreements, laws, moral beliefs, common values and community structures are the result of individuals trying to obtain what they think is important.

Is it the ongoing train of cause and effect, or is there any meaning in all this? What the F* are we after all? Here we go again :angel:

Quote from: Binnatics on March 10, 2016, 10:06:39 AM
In fact, human society is one big anarchy. He who is strong or cleaver enough, rules his surroundings. All current agreements, laws, moral beliefs, common values and community structures are the result of individuals trying to obtain what they think is important.

I think that mostly applies to those in power, not the common flock of humanity. I think most people have an intrinsic sense of what is right or wrong (these people just don't get on the news) and all they really want out of life is to enjoy themselves and be happy.

This country is prone to "natural disasters", and the remarkable thing is how communities will all pitch in to help one another when they've been hit by a flood or a bushfire. This is when one tends to see humanity at its best - everyone working together to restore the community as a whole, while immediate personal concerns and desires get put on hold. I don't know how many of you live in cities, or whether any of you have lived in the country (or what country life may be like in your part of the world). I know where some of you live, but not all of you. I can only go by what I have experienced living in a rural area in my own country.

The sense of community is very strong here. When I go for my morning walk on the beach, everyone I pass, almost without fail, will exchange a smile and a greeting, and they will happily stop and chat even if I've never clapped eyes on them before. With rare exceptions, you can walk up to anybody and just start talking to them. There's this sense of "I live here and you live here, therefore we're all in this together". Same if I'm out walking the dog, or just walking to the shops. It doesn't matter if I've never seen them before in my life, practically everyone will smile and say hello. I know all the local shopkeepers by name and unless there are other customers waiting to be served or the shopkeeper has something pressing to do, a simple purchase will often invoke a friendly chat - it's like part of the transaction. Having been born and raised in a city, and having lived in cities all my life, I was taken aback at first - people generally just don't act like this in a city. But I very soon realized it's just the way they are - "this is our community, we love being a part of it, and if you love being a part of it, you're with us". The level of common courtesy and consideration is also quite striking by contrast to the city. After living here for over seven years, I have never seen one instance of road rage in our town, have never seen a fight, or even heard a heated argument. People hold doors open for each other (regardless of gender) and won't hesitate to step up and help if they see someone who needs it. If I'm waiting to pay for a single item at the supermarket and the person ahead of me has a lot, they will say, "Oh, here, if that's all you're buying, you go first". I have no doubt whatsoever that if some kind of natural disaster were to strike this town, everybody would help everybody else like one big family, just as they have elsewhere across the country.

So in the country at least, I don't think people are anarchic by nature and they seem to have a better sense of what really matters and what doesn't. If they were self-centred to the core, concerned only with flashy lifestyles and showy trinkets of affluence, they'd be living in the city and scrambling all over each other to shove their noses deep into the trough along with all the other materialist hogs. Having lived now in both city and country, I will say without hesitation that I will take country people over city people any day of the week.

I think the larger a population becomes, the more impersonal it becomes, and that's the whole problem with cities. For that reason alone I will never live in a city ever again.

As to what we are, I think we're a species that has begun to evolve beyond a mere animal existence but we don't know what it is that we're supposed to do next. And some humans still have too much of the animal thrashing around inside them.

ah, so that's why we shave. So they won't notice too quickly. GROARNF! :-D

Photo's I've seen of OZ confirms what I thought life would be like in your neck of the woods fragger.
That kind of behaviour from people might only be found in far off out in the country one horse towns where everyone knows everyone.
We live about 600km from the nearest coastal town/city, about ten years ago sold a holiday flat we had in a small resort town called Umdloti along our northern coast, with a population of about 2,500 - 3,000, and even the permanent residents will tell you it's not safe walking alone on the beach unless you have a Rotweiler with you.
Wherever you go one can see most people have the same attitude where only three people matters to them....... I, ME, and Myself, the devil will take care of the rest, yes you get the exceptions but they are mainly found amongst their own community. 
We tried minority rule, it worked in a way but could not continue forever, now we trying majority rule, and thus far it's a total disaster either the ones in power just take what they want or make up rules to enrich and empower themselves more.

Even participating in a tight social network with good manners serves you personally. You do it because it is your best known way of getting what you want. I think humans are selfish to the bone.  GROARNF! >:D

 :-()

Sorry guys, but I'm just not quite that cynical. Not anymore, anyway. I don't employ good manners as a using technique, or to get something I want. I don't have it in me to be like that. I use good manners to try to make the world a nicer place to live in. Maybe that's a naive attitude, but I don't care. If it has a positive effect, fine. If it doesn't, I haven't lost anything by trying. All I know is that when I've done someone a good turn or helped them out, and they've given me a heartfelt thanks in reply, I feel that much better about myself. So unless by saying "getting what you want" you mean my wish that the world would be a better place to live in, I don't go along with that sentiment. There are people that fit your descriptions, for sure, but I'm not one of them and I know others who are not. And that gives me some hope.

If I'm out walking the dog and a stranger passing me smiles and says hello, what could they possibly be wanting to get out of me? What would strangers walking on the beach be trying to con me out of by offering me a greeting? A little bit of friendliness, maybe?

Yes, everybody is selfish to one extent or another, I think it's tied in to the survival urge. If I was still living in Sydney I might be in complete agreement about everybody being rotten, but after living in the country for seven years I now only agree partially. I've seen first-hand that there are people who still have some decency in them. Maybe I just got lucky and happened to find a rare place with a healthy community spirit, but I have travelled around some of this big country and I've struck the same thing in other towns that I have stayed in while passing through. In those cases it was almost always customer service people or hotel staff that I've dealt with, people who are paid to be friendly, and I'd heard about "country hospitality", but being a city-dweller I dissed those sort of notions as cutesy rural myths. There quite probably are dusty outback dumps where you might get the snot beat out of you for looking at someone the wrong way. If there are such places, they'd most likely be found in the Northern Territory or in the far north-west of the country. I've never been to that region of the country, but I do know that it's still pretty rough and spartan to a large extent in those areas.

I get the impression that a person's attitude to others is largely shaped by where they live. I've become a lot less cynical about people since I've been living where I am now. I've also become more relaxed and easy-going, I used to have a much shorter fuse. There's a sense of being valued here. It's not a huge town but it's not tiny either (approx. 4,700, up from about 3,500 when I arrived) so although some people know others, it's not a case of everybody knowing everybody else, the place is just a bit too big for that. People get self-obsessed in city environments because everybody else is the same way. It's like a virus. Trying to be nice little antibody gets you nowhere, so you might as well just be another viral cell and join in with the infecting of the host.

Apparently people are leaving Sydney in droves (but far more people are arriving there from elsewhere than are leaving, so it's not exactly shrinking). I'm willing to bet that the majority of those leaving are those that have spent most or all of their lives there, like me. I use to love the place, about twenty to thirty years ago, then over the years the relationship gradually soured until I actually came to hate it. It used to be a friendly and vibrant city to live in. But now it's become just another crowded, traffic-choked,  heartless metropolis, and to rub it in you have to pay through the nose to live in it.

Another factor that drove me out was race. I genuinely am not a racist person at heart, but I would be lying if I were to say that racial considerations played no part in my decision to move. I can pinpoint the exact moment when I started to get the poops: it was during a half-hour train ride from the CBD to the 'burbs. It was one of those times where the carriage just happened to be full of talkative people, yet I could not hear one word of English being spoken. It was a cacophony of mostly Asian and Middle Eastern dialects, and it really began to get on my nerves. I don't mean it made me cranky (although it did) - it was more a case of my eardrums feeling like they were being bludgeoned. Looking around, I realised that I was the only Caucasian in the carriage. The racket of loud, jabbering foreign voices bugged me so much that I had to change carriages.

I'm fine with multiculturalism and ethnic diversity, but I do believe it can get out of hand, and it has in Sydney. Whole suburbs have been taken over by non-English speaking nationalities, and depending on where you go, you could be mistaken for thinking you were in Beirut or Ho Chi Minh City. Even all the shop signs in those suburbs are in other languages. I don't mean English and say, Vietnamese, together - I mean Vietnamese only. I find it depressing and so help me, un-Australian, and it makes me feel like a stranger in my own land. Besides, I don't see how we're supposed to achieve anything constructive if half the population can't understand the other half, which is the way things are rapidly going. Where I live now, there are no Middle Easterners and exceedingly few Asians, and they are Chinese, who seem to be naturally keen assimilators. What's happening in some parts of Sydney is not multiculturalism, it's isolationism - "no outsiders allowed" enclave-forming. I'm a third-generation Aussie, living in Australia, and I can be considered by part of the population to be an "outsider"? And if I complain about it, I can be branded a racist. I mean, how racist do you want to get? Moving to someone else's country and then refusing to speak the local language and shutting out anybody who isn't of your own ethnicity constitutes pretty damned racist behaviour in my book. If they're gonna be racist towards me, in my own country, then I'll bloody well be just as racist back at them. Fair's fair.

Oops, I rambled a bit there, but it's a Saturday and it's too hot to go outside :-()

 :-D

Speaking their own language and hang out with their own types is probably giving them the easiest living in Sydney. I think I would do the same if I was emigrated to, let's say, Germany together with a lot of other Dutch. It's so much more relaxing to talk Dutch to the Dutchies instead of forcing my tongue into horrible movements trying to communicate with the natives. Natives who only live in other neighbourhoods and do different types of jobs, who I only see when I accidentally meet one in the metro.

There's a huge amount of people wanting to get inside Fort Europe. They think they get a better life there. Others who have knowledge of transport onto Europe, exploit the 'refugees' and make them pay large sums of money to get aboard their rusty vessels. We call those people people smuggles and see them as the worst criminals. The 'refugees'probably are thankful to them. They operate in the border zones where no authority wants to burn his hands on the filthiest movements of the human race.

I may be cynical, but I'm damn sure we're nothing better than what nature gave to any living creature. We are just more complicated. Yet still going for what's best for our own :-\\