BF2S Forums Australian politics thread.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Its a simple law - get caught trafficking drugs in Indonesia you die.

It's not quite that simple when you have bribery and corruption everywhere. Anyone wonder why a French national scheduled to die along with Chan and Sukumaran is being given a reprieve? Now Chan and Sukumaran's first lawyer is claiming there was a lengthy negotiation on what price would secure the pair which sentence, (it's illegal under Indonesian law for a lawyer to meet with judges to discuss sentencing, let alone engage in bribery,) and that after a deal was struck the Government interfered to insist on the death penalty anyway, (also a no-no.) Now there may be those, (the Indoneisan Government for example,) who will say this is an act of desperation by the pair's legal team but somehow I doubt it. This is Indonesia we're talking about which, as you say, is an unenlightened country and this sort of thing tends to happen there.

Dilbert_X wrote:

They aren't mules, they are the middlemen, without middlemen there is no drug trade.

You're right of course but only in a world where there was a finite amount of greedy idiots willing to risk their lives for financial gain. There's not. And as long as there's a supply and there's a demand there will be ways of connecting the two bases. Indonesia has been executing drug traffickers for how long? And it's not slowing down. Meanwhile Portugal have been treating their drug problem on the demand end and having huge positive results. Without demand there certainly is no drugs trade.

Singapore is a tiny city state of 5.4 million not a complex country of 253 million so it's a very different situation. But even then drug seizures are increasing in Singapore and their heroin problem is actually getting worse, at least according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Suggests to me that executing drug traffickers isn't doing shit there either.

Either way Indonesia's corruption rating is currently thirty-something out of a hundred. The idea that any executions there are just is laughable.

You do know that one of the guys to be executed tonight is so badly affected by schizophrenia he didn't know what he was doing at the time and doesn't believe the death penalty exists, fully believing he will wake up in his cell tomorrow? And there's a woman who had the suitcase given to her by the "employers" of a new job she was taking, with the heroin hidden in the lining and never knew what happened?

The Filipina probably had sex with the warden.

She looks so oppressed in prison. She was probably the ringleader. Filipinas are untrustworthy.

Jaekus wrote:

You do know that one of the guys to be executed tonight is so badly affected by schizophrenia he didn't know what he was doing at the time and doesn't believe the death penalty exists, fully believing he will wake up in his cell tomorrow? And there's a woman who had the suitcase given to her by the "employers" of a new job she was taking, with the heroin hidden in the lining and never knew what happened?

Its a corrupt, brutal shithole, what else is there to say? Those arguments don't apply to Chan or the other guy though.

Last year's budget = unfair
This year's budget = hilariously hypocritical.

Not only did all reference to budget emergencies and the terror of debt and deficits vanish, one of their keystone policies was one they ripped off from Wayne Swan; a policy they scrapped upon coming to power. And of top of that but they've made it more generous by 207.7%.

My pick: If this friendlier budget sees the Coalition lift in the polls there's going to be an election this year.

My co-worker almost tazed me a few weeks back. Unfortunately the camera system at work stopped him.

Jay wrote:

The butthurt grandstanding over the Johnny Depp dogs makes me think you're a bunch of wankers. You have kangaroos boxing each other in your suburbs. What's a little yorkie got on that?

Celebrity status and a private jet does not make you immune to the law or give you the right to endanger our biosphere.

Jay wrote:

The butthurt grandstanding over the Johnny Depp dogs makes me think you're a bunch of wankers. You have kangaroos boxing each other in your suburbs. What's a little yorkie got on that?

Yes, Americans should be free to travel to foreign countries, break laws and regulations, lie to officials, sign false statements - and anyone who says otherwise is a wanker.

Australia has a fairly fragile ecosystem, we don't want our venomous animals endangered by anything which could be brought in my some drug-addled hipsters mutt.

Depp might get a fine, I bet his pilot is in more trouble.

cane toads really fucked over the ecosystem though

Jay wrote:

Haven't you ever seen Arachnaphobia? There's no stopping deadly things like yorkshire terriers from taking over whole towns!

Dude, every single country in the world you have to declare to customs if you're bringing in a pet. Even your own government.

http://www.cdc.gov/animalimportation/dogs.html

It's about preventing the spread of communicable diseases to an isolated environment. Australia's wildlife has already been fucked enough by foreign species.

Now Jay is going to drone on about freedom and how spreading pathogens is good for the economy.