RIP crocodiles 🤣I am happy with it, actually.
He will destroy crocodiles
(Also, I find it funny that a dating app bot messaged its ad immediately below a post regarding Bob Katter of all people. I have no idea why I find it very funny, though)
Into the Cincoverse - The Cinco de Mayo EU Thread and Wikibox Repository
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
I knew Katter was old but not that old.
He was leader of his party since 1911,holy hell!
He was leader of his party since 1911,holy hell!
I think it was on page 39.
And here we were thinking the Texas and CSA results were the crazy ones.
And now we know that Australia can suffer just as much as the American South iTTL.
Muahahaha
between Katter and a PM Paul Hogan in the 90s, crocs are fuckedI am happy with it, actually.
He will destroy crocodiles
(Also, I find it funny that a dating app bot messaged its ad immediately below a post regarding Bob Katter of all people. I have no idea why I find it very funny, though)
Whoops!
Katter is, or course… yeah. But was Bishop that bad?
What if they’re all crazy?
I have to assume it's the Emperor in one of his guises guiding humanity.
Probably a descendant. (Grandson, following in the family tradition?)
For being such a nutcase his affinity for Aboriginal issues seems… genuine? But then he’s bugnuts elsewhere?
Weird guy. But exactly the right kind of weird for my oeuvre
Lads it’s a typo
Too bad. I choose to believe there is a picture of him in the attic that is slowly getting older and more uglier as he stays the same age.
TheLoneAmigo
Donor
Let’s not forget Bishop spent much of her legal career using unethical tactics to prevent asbestos victims from receiving compensation from James Hardie…
Where to begin? I’d just read his Wiki page, but amongst other infamous diatribes he claimed there are no gay people in North Queensland and refused to discuss his opposition to gay marriage by immediately pivoting to a lengthy screed about people being eaten by crocodiles and how he was focused on that instead
The Economist (March 20, 2024)
Paradigm Shift Beckons for China
March 20, 2024
Lee Kung-ching has worked at a commercial bakery in Nanking, China's capital, since graduating China National University in 2007; in the seventeen years since he has become foreman, but the role is a far cry from what he and millions of other young Chinese his age were promised when they were secondary students working themselves to the bone in the country's ultra-competitive schooling system, only to see the dreams of their youth imploded in the 2002 financial crisis and the SARS pandemic just a year later. Lee is thus emblematic of the "Lost Generation," the large demographic cohort of Chinese born between 1980 and 1989 at the height of the country's unprecedented economic boom - and the apex of its authoritarian Fourth Republic - who were teenagers during the transition to democracy in the 1990s and who were promised the world, only to see it taken away by now twenty years of deflation, high unemployment, chronically stagnant equity and real estate markets, and drug-fueled gang violence that no government has seemed able to stop.
It is no wonder then that it is this cohort, along with the ironically named "Resilient Generation" (1990-99) who mark one of the two flanks of the base for New Party (Sintong) candidate Hau Lung-pin - son of Fourth Republic-era dictator Hau Pei-tsun. The younger Hau enters the election, which will last the whole week of March 24-31, with a commanding polling lead that he seems unlikely to relinquish, and he promises a hard turn to the right for China if he prevails, as is likely. Hau is no stranger in the National Capital Region, having served two three-year terms as Mayor of Nanking, a role in which he has spent enormous political capital improving the capital's famously shoddy metro network, built hundreds of new parks, schools and primary care clinics, and most importantly carried out a vicious campaign against opium dealers and prostitutes in the city that has raised serious human rights concerns.
Hau seems nonplussed by the critique. He presents as a young 71, and by Chinese political standards that makes him practically a fresh face; outgoing President Soong Chu-yu, himself elected on a wave of populist discontent four years ago, was nearly eighty at his own election. Aware of his father's militant image, Hau has made enormous efforts to pose with pregnant mothers and schoolchildren on the campaign trail, made a point to attend China OneLeague baseball matches all over the country as a campaign gimmick, and has adopted two dogs otherwise slated for meat markets. He is humble and self-effacing on the trail, and is regarded as being whip-smart on policy behind closed doors.
All this shields what would be a draconian policy program were he to be elected (and have a National Assembly majority, which is less certain). Hau has proposed life sentences in China's already-crowded prisons for small-time drug dealers and the death penalty for their bosses. He has proposed a national database of those who are arrested frequenting prostitution and for people's employers to be mailed copies of their arrest reports for various vice offenses. As if his tough-on-crime persona is not enough, the devout Presbyterian is also a ferocious culture warrior, promising to fire gay teachers from Chinese schools and universities, repeal various laws of the last twenty years that made it easier for women to sustain their own careers, and impose tax penalties on single mothers; making matters more concerning, he would be the third President since the late 1990s to have ties to megachurch tycoon Li Hongzhi, the founder of the Wheel of God fundamentalist Christian movement that has taken previously irreligious Chinese social networks by storm over the last decade. He has pledged that he will honor the term-limit provision of the Chinese constitution, but has suggested that Presidents should be able to return after a four-year interregnum, suggesting that he may desire a re-run in 2032 if elected now, which would break the "one and done" provisions that have governed China since 2000.
Hau's economic strategies would, unlike his authoritarian populism, be more mainstream and look much like those pursued by his father during the military dictatorship; heavy subsidies for export development, funding education (especially in areas where China is behind, such as generative data or cognition programming), and lavish new infrastructure projects. The problem is that this type of developmentalism has been pursued by every Chinese government since the 1930s in some form or another, and that similar grand promises have badly burned the Lost Generation since 2002-03 before. Hau's pledges on how to actually arrest China's two lost economic decades are just more of the same, which is why he's proposing a ruthless crackdown on culture after Soong's ruthless crackdown on political corruption over the last four years did little but make Chinese more jaded than before he was elected.
As for Hau's competitors, it is hard to see what they can do to make up the gap. The center-right, nationalist liberal party Kuomintang, which has governed China for much of the time since the democratic transition was completed in 2000, have nominated Hunan Governor Li Ganjie, an affable engineer running as a political outsider, but who lacks the panache of Hau. The People First Party of outgoing President Soong show just how personalist they really are by not even bothering to run a serious candidate, and various centrist and left-wing parties failed to muster a joint ticket as initially hoped. China seems to be lurching towards a return to the autocracy of the past, a time that Hau has successfully made voters who vaguely remember it nostalgic for - a time of rapid growth, and safe streets. Hau is unlikely to be able to restore it - but for the jaded, angry electorate that looks poised to deliver him the Presidency of China, that may not matter.
March 20, 2024
Lee Kung-ching has worked at a commercial bakery in Nanking, China's capital, since graduating China National University in 2007; in the seventeen years since he has become foreman, but the role is a far cry from what he and millions of other young Chinese his age were promised when they were secondary students working themselves to the bone in the country's ultra-competitive schooling system, only to see the dreams of their youth imploded in the 2002 financial crisis and the SARS pandemic just a year later. Lee is thus emblematic of the "Lost Generation," the large demographic cohort of Chinese born between 1980 and 1989 at the height of the country's unprecedented economic boom - and the apex of its authoritarian Fourth Republic - who were teenagers during the transition to democracy in the 1990s and who were promised the world, only to see it taken away by now twenty years of deflation, high unemployment, chronically stagnant equity and real estate markets, and drug-fueled gang violence that no government has seemed able to stop.
It is no wonder then that it is this cohort, along with the ironically named "Resilient Generation" (1990-99) who mark one of the two flanks of the base for New Party (Sintong) candidate Hau Lung-pin - son of Fourth Republic-era dictator Hau Pei-tsun. The younger Hau enters the election, which will last the whole week of March 24-31, with a commanding polling lead that he seems unlikely to relinquish, and he promises a hard turn to the right for China if he prevails, as is likely. Hau is no stranger in the National Capital Region, having served two three-year terms as Mayor of Nanking, a role in which he has spent enormous political capital improving the capital's famously shoddy metro network, built hundreds of new parks, schools and primary care clinics, and most importantly carried out a vicious campaign against opium dealers and prostitutes in the city that has raised serious human rights concerns.
Hau seems nonplussed by the critique. He presents as a young 71, and by Chinese political standards that makes him practically a fresh face; outgoing President Soong Chu-yu, himself elected on a wave of populist discontent four years ago, was nearly eighty at his own election. Aware of his father's militant image, Hau has made enormous efforts to pose with pregnant mothers and schoolchildren on the campaign trail, made a point to attend China OneLeague baseball matches all over the country as a campaign gimmick, and has adopted two dogs otherwise slated for meat markets. He is humble and self-effacing on the trail, and is regarded as being whip-smart on policy behind closed doors.
All this shields what would be a draconian policy program were he to be elected (and have a National Assembly majority, which is less certain). Hau has proposed life sentences in China's already-crowded prisons for small-time drug dealers and the death penalty for their bosses. He has proposed a national database of those who are arrested frequenting prostitution and for people's employers to be mailed copies of their arrest reports for various vice offenses. As if his tough-on-crime persona is not enough, the devout Presbyterian is also a ferocious culture warrior, promising to fire gay teachers from Chinese schools and universities, repeal various laws of the last twenty years that made it easier for women to sustain their own careers, and impose tax penalties on single mothers; making matters more concerning, he would be the third President since the late 1990s to have ties to megachurch tycoon Li Hongzhi, the founder of the Wheel of God fundamentalist Christian movement that has taken previously irreligious Chinese social networks by storm over the last decade. He has pledged that he will honor the term-limit provision of the Chinese constitution, but has suggested that Presidents should be able to return after a four-year interregnum, suggesting that he may desire a re-run in 2032 if elected now, which would break the "one and done" provisions that have governed China since 2000.
Hau's economic strategies would, unlike his authoritarian populism, be more mainstream and look much like those pursued by his father during the military dictatorship; heavy subsidies for export development, funding education (especially in areas where China is behind, such as generative data or cognition programming), and lavish new infrastructure projects. The problem is that this type of developmentalism has been pursued by every Chinese government since the 1930s in some form or another, and that similar grand promises have badly burned the Lost Generation since 2002-03 before. Hau's pledges on how to actually arrest China's two lost economic decades are just more of the same, which is why he's proposing a ruthless crackdown on culture after Soong's ruthless crackdown on political corruption over the last four years did little but make Chinese more jaded than before he was elected.
As for Hau's competitors, it is hard to see what they can do to make up the gap. The center-right, nationalist liberal party Kuomintang, which has governed China for much of the time since the democratic transition was completed in 2000, have nominated Hunan Governor Li Ganjie, an affable engineer running as a political outsider, but who lacks the panache of Hau. The People First Party of outgoing President Soong show just how personalist they really are by not even bothering to run a serious candidate, and various centrist and left-wing parties failed to muster a joint ticket as initially hoped. China seems to be lurching towards a return to the autocracy of the past, a time that Hau has successfully made voters who vaguely remember it nostalgic for - a time of rapid growth, and safe streets. Hau is unlikely to be able to restore it - but for the jaded, angry electorate that looks poised to deliver him the Presidency of China, that may not matter.