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Comment by Varqu | Hacker News Reader

It looks like Australia is close to China not only geographically but also by the censorship practices.

It’s more that Australians don’t care about things that don’t actually mean anything, it’s accepted that the politburo will pass laws that are irrelevant and the general population ignores the ones that don’t matter

This has worked so far because we don’t have extremist police who apply the law to the letter- they themselves see laws as mostly suggestions

Except that, in practice, they are miles apart in what actually gets censored.

Not really. You can't discuss Australian war crimes openly in the media - this will get you shut down quite rapidly.

Something most people don't understand is that Australias' sovereign, the Queen, is used to keep embarassing state secrets well and truly out of the public eye. This is an intolerable state of affairs that will hopefully get addressed when she dies, and the Australian Republic movement gets fresh air under its wings ..

Australia has secret prisons, and a star court for the things it doesn't want the world to know. Witness J, K, L, M, &etc.

> Australia has secret prisons, and a star court for the things it doesn't want the world to know. Witness J, K, L, M, &etc.

So does america. I'm not sure how a republic movement could save australia from having these things when one of the largest republics in the world also has, e.g. hundreds of thousands of censored warcrimes on wikileaks and guantanamo bay

The US is a military junta masquerading as a republic. Presumably Australia's republic movement will address the issue of the corruption of the republic, eventually.

Pretty weird military junta that gives its opponents executive power every 4-8 years

.. puts its populist puppets in place, you mean. Just as it has done, with great success, in every sovereign country it has usurped in the last 50 years.

Odd that many of our recent presidents were not in the military, and that top generals are regularly fired by civilian government. The whole vote on everything all the time, even dog catch, thing seems like a real waste of time for a Junta.

The Junta has a trillion dollars a year to do whatever evils it wishes to the world. I don't think any of the generals are going to be butt-hurt about being fired, especially when the revolving door between the CFR and the JCoS is so well-greased with the blood of innocent people across the globe. The goal isn't local power, that is a done deal - the purpose of the junta is the projection of global power.

The proof is in the pudding: Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Ukraine, etc.

A Junta is an oligarchy lead by a military council. The US literally has civilian rule, you're misapplying the term. Myanmar has a junta, the US does not.

>A Junta is an oligarchy lead by a military council.

The USA has exactly this, in the form of the revolving door that connects the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the CFR.

https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/

Its figureheads give the impression of democracy, but nobody voted to murder 5% of Iraqs population - the generals went ahead and did it anyway.

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