It’s illegal to support a terrorist organisation, not to support Palestine/Lebanon etc. those are two different things, cheers.

Yes, they’re two different things. I brought it up because there are plenty of people there too who are openly in defense of Hamas and Hezbollah, even handing out pamphlets in support of them. The only real legal suppression I’m aware of is over people flying Hezbollah flags in the past month (the symbolism you mention).

The law is tricky but basically either pushing for terrorist acts, or displaying designated terrorist symbolism, or provide support to a terrorist organisation.

Which are not particularly relevant to the situation of aussie.zone federating with lemmy.ml. Them writing posts which side with Hamas or Hezbollah isn’t violating those laws.

Condorcet

Nice.

edit: for those who aren’t aware

So supporting terrorist organisations isn’t against australian law? Hamas is designated as a terrorist organisation and advocating for them is therefore banned under australian law.

Hi! I go to pro-Palestine/Lebanon/etc. protests on the weekends here (among other things) and can confirm for you that publicly declaring approval of designated national enemies is not illegal. It would be pretty absurd for a liberal democracy like Australia to do so. Please don’t invent laws to pressure our admins.

Don’t be an ignorant troll, comrade. That’s clearly not what they were talking about.

Yeah, dismal job from the ABC this time. If you want a better account with quotes, there was one shared here.

it seems to just be a constant drama among everyone, is it not?

Correct, it is not. That isn’t close to constant nor everyone.

i want to block the whole instance

See instructions from our admin here: https://aussie.zone/comment/13007067

The thousands of users necessarily affected are far more important than up to five admins being hypocrites and jerks when it comes to specific political topics.

Ultimately I think aussie.zone users should be the most serious consideration, and as admin Nath said, users here who disapprove can easily block their admins or their instance at will.

1. I can’t find any comments in that linked post ‘talking about blocking that instance’ or ‘moving to different software’. Nor do I think a designated drama community on another instance is a good litmus test for opinions.

2. The only post I’ve found talking about blocking that instance, apart from OP, is a troll post you made (on a post about the UN voting on the blockade of Cuba which almost the entire UN has consistently voted against every year for over 30 years [wikipedia])

Lemmy is a Fediverse software which is able to federate content with other instances and even other Fediverse softwares (e.g kbin). Federation is what allows an instance (e.g. aussie.zone, the one I’m on) to interact with others (e.g. reddthat.com, lemmy.ml, mander.xyz, etc.), so we can visit their communities, subscribe, post, vote on their posts, comment, and more.

Defederation is removing federation, which in this case would mean aussie.zone can’t interact with lemmy.ml, view their communities and posts, etc… It would occur if the aussie.zone admin sets the site to stop federating with lemmy.ml.

Defederation can be useful if an instance is abusive and systematically federates unwanted content, for example in early days before the reddit API exodus, there was a particular ‘free speech’ instance with a lot of neo-nazis which was defederated by most other instances before it shut down. In another case back then, some troll was registering new accounts every day on any instances without signup questions, so they could evade bans and post shock pornography on lemmy.ml. lemmy.ml ended up defederating from every open instance until they secured their registration form to avoid the abuse. You can see a list of federated and blocked instances by going to an instance and clicking on the Instances button at the bottom of the page. You can see aussie.zone blocks a few dedicated pornography instances, and a few explicitly political instances.

The admins of that instance are pretty blatantly disregarding their own rules in order to push their agenda. If that shouldn’t be grounds for defederation, I don’t know what should.

I personally don’t think staff of a community or instance choosing how they administrate posts there is a solid grounds for defederation, nor do I think defederation is a useful response.

If you find their moderation and staff intolerable (and fwiw I also think some of those bans are poorly justified), I recommend you block those communities or their instance from your account. But I don’t think blocking their users from contributing here and blocking us from contributing there is appropriate.

Further details: the USyd student magazine’s article on this.

Perhaps there’s a new market for crystal cases then.

This is straight from a think tank commentary site (their words).

ASPI was established by the Australian Government in 2001 and is partially funded by the Department of Defence

The following copypasted from Wikipedia:

In 2020, Myriam Robin in the Australian Financial Review identified three sources of funding, in addition to the Department of Defence. ASPI receives funding from defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Thales Group and Raytheon Technologies. It also receives funding from technology companies such as Microsoft, Oracle Australia, Telstra, and Google. Finally, it receives funding from foreign governments including Japan, Taiwan and the Netherlands.

For the 2019-2020 financial year, ASPI listed a revenue of $11,412,096.71. The ASPI received from the Australian Department of Defence 35% of its revenue, 32% from federal government agencies, 17% from overseas government agencies, 11% from the private sector, and 3% from the defense industries. Finally, it receives funding from foreign governments including Japan, Israel, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.

So it’s important to understand the article with that bias in mind - this is sponsored content.

It’s nice to have access to a compact layout. The in-built Lemmy compact themes are ineffective, as far as I can tell.

Honestly, with news like that the title doesn’t do it justice (as appropriate as it is). I’d pick something more like “Labor Party members revealed as corrupt union gang”, or “ALP loots hundreds of thousands from CFMEU”.

Labor has justified suspending industrial law and union democracy, claiming that the appointed CFMEU administrators are independent and acting in the best interests of union members. However, documents leaked to Jacobin by the “Defend the Unions, Defend the CFMEU” rank and file group directly contradict these claims. According to payroll documents covering the period between August 1 and September 30 this year, the bulk of CFMEU administrators are career Labor Party operatives. Administration started in mid-August, and for roughly one month, they paid themselves over $170,000, taken directly from union coffers.

Did you verify that, or did you just copy paste a machine-generated comment?

afaik, ‘cooker’ has risen as a slang term for the wackier conspiracy theorists:

From Wiktionary:

5. (slang, Australia) A person who makes or uses illicit drugs, especially methamphetamine or cannabis.

7. (slang, derogatory, Australia) A person who is cooked in the head; a crazy person.
8. (slang, derogatory, Australia) A conspiracy theorist, especially one who is involved in politics.

I don’t see the contradiction, they sprayed them as a deterrent without making an arrest. (And apparently chemical irritation doesn’t count as an injury)

Oh, I didnt know about Tuntable Falls. Thanks.

If we include smaller communes, then Wikipedia has a sizable list of intentional communities which is fun to explore. I found Cheran interesting, they had problems with organised crime coming into town and logging, disappearing people who tried to stop them, and the police and politicians were complicit, so the town kicked them all out. Now if you try to drive in with a political sticker on your car, it will get torn off at the checkpoint. A short Vice video on the place had some interesting interviews, including a local patroller who said crime plummeted and is now basically as simple as pub fights that locals can split up, and an interview with a political representative who was voted in, despite them not really wanting the job as they would get paid more in their previous job at the university. Reminds me of a Douglas Adams quote:

[…] To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. […]

If I indeed think that oath is, as you said, an outright stupid anachronism, then why should I consider it poor conduct to openly reject the oath?

On the other hand, I think it’s the appropriate conduct for anyone who wants to be a political representative of me, because I am an anti-monarchist. I do want my representatives to falsely affirm the oath, only because if they reject it then they can’t represent us in the electoral system. I see no positive meaning in that oath, no honour in upholding it, no hypocrisy in betraying it.