Joshi
@Joshi@aussie.zone
Clean hands, Cool head, Warm heart.
GP, Gardener, Radical progressive
- Comment on The fact that this is a real image is infuriating 1 day ago:
I don’t think that this is a distraction, yes the policies and actions of these people need scrutiny more so than symbolic things like this.
But
This salute is associated with a historical movement that has been disavowed by all but the most extreme rightists throughout the 20th century, it is both shocking and revealing that mainstream political and business leaders now seem to be embracing it openly.
- Comment on The fact that this is a real image is infuriating 1 day ago:
Looked this up as I optimistically thought it might be an unfortunate still that looked nothing like a nazi salute on video, but nope.
- Comment on It's been a feature of Australia's elections since federation. Albanese supports a change 1 week ago:
The US has a weird political culture in a lot of ways. I know France and Germany have fixed term lengths and I certainly don’t get the impression that they have that problem.
- Comment on It's been a feature of Australia's elections since federation. Albanese supports a change 1 week ago:
As always I have serious reservations about calling representative government democracy at all, that being said I think that fixed term lengths is a greater step forward in democracy than a longer term length would be a step back. If that’s the compromise I think it’s worthwhile.
- It's been a feature of Australia's elections since federation. Albanese supports a changewww.sbs.com.au ↗Submitted 1 week ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 11 comments
- Comment on Shortage of antipsychotic medication [quetiapine/Seroquel] leaves mental health patients in limbo 2 weeks ago:
It is a supply chain issue not increased demand and it is not just Seroquel but a huge variety of medications as I said in another comment.
I don’t understand the issue in enough depth but I’ve had discussions with people who do and who think increased local manufacturing is the only way of addressing this. What’s more a government owned pharma corp mandated to ensure steady supply of off-patent essential meds could probably be run at a profit.
- Comment on Feeble defence from ABC confirms abject failure to report Labor accurately 2 weeks ago:
Labor haven’t been left wing for decades, but they are a vaguely competent liberal party as opposed to the vastly incompetent conservative coalition.
- Comment on how do I show a coworker that I care about her after her mother died? 2 weeks ago:
This is a genuinely difficult situation to deal with, nothing wrong with asking for advice.
- Feeble defence from ABC confirms abject failure to report Labor accuratelyindependentaustralia.net ↗Submitted 2 weeks ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 15 comments
- Comment on how do I show a coworker that I care about her after her mother died? 2 weeks ago:
It obviously depends a lot on your relationship with them but what people usually need at times like this is to know you care, that they aren’t alone, and that you are there to help if needed.
It’s also important to give them the option to opt out of anything you offer and allow them space.
Something like ‘I know this must be a really hard time for you, you’ve been in my thoughts. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you out or even just talk’ then leave it at that unless they want to talk or need help. It acknowledges their grief, offers help, but crucially doesn’t make an obligation for them.
- Comment on Are affordable apartments easy and cheap suicide prevention? 2 weeks ago:
First off, I’m a huge housing first advocate and it is completely uncontroversial that for a wide range of outcomes housing first policies are vastly superior not to mention just that it is morally correct.
Whether unsuitable housing/homelessness is directly implicated in suicidality is an interesting question so I did a little bit of digging.
One study from Taiwan showed a relationship between housing affordability and suicidality but the effect is only present when using one measure of affordability and disappears when measuring affordability in other ways suggesting it may not be a real effect.
Another, older, study from the EU found that lack of affordable housing had no impact on suicidality but the driving factor in the increase in suicide during the great recession was job loss.
You could interpret this evidence as mixed but IMO unless more convincing evidence comes out I would have to say that at a societal level it isn’t a big factor.
The impact of housing-price-related indices on suicide rates in Taiwan
The findings revealed that higher housing rental index values were associated with increased suicide rates in young and middle-aged adults compared to the elderly population, regardless of sex. However, this association was not observed with the other two housing-price-related indexes (i.e. housing price index and housing price to income ratio).
BACKGROUND During the 2007-11 recessions in Europe, suicide increases were concentrated in men. Substantial differences across countries and over time remain unexplained. We investigated whether increases in unaffordable housing, household indebtedness or job loss can account for these population differences, as well as potential mitigating effects of alternative forms of social protection. And RESULTS Changes in levels of unaffordable housing had no effect on suicide rates (P = 0.32); in contrast, male suicide increases were significantly associated with each percentage point rise in male unemployment, by 0.94% (95% CI: 0.51-1.36%), and indebtedness, by 0.54% (95% CI: 0.02-1.06%).
Compared to baseline, there was an overall trend of decreased past-month suicidal ideation (estimate = –.57, SE = .05, P < 0.001), with no effect of treatment group (i.e., HF vs. TAU; estimate = –.04, SE = .06, P = 0.51). Furthermore, there was no effect of treatment status (estimate = –.10, SE = .16, P = 0.52) on prevalence of suicide attempts (HF = 11.9%, TAU = 10.5%) during the 2-year follow-up period.
- Comment on Shortage of antipsychotic medication [quetiapine/Seroquel] leaves mental health patients in limbo 2 weeks ago:
Medication shortages are the biggest ongoing problem that no-one is talking about.
I’ve been a doc for 10 years and before COVID I can think of one medication shortage that impacted patient care, now it’s a constant issue. The TGA has 414 ongoing shortages that are listed including 41 that are critical (Medicine shortage reports database )
We’ve had to deal with shortages of everything from reflux medication to liquid morphine for palliative patients to a shortage last year of amoxy-fucking-cillin!
Many of these can be dealt with by substituting a similar medication but this has often lead to subsequent shortages of the alternatives. Needless to say it isn’t ideal to be chopping and changing antipsychotic medications.
- Comment on We pored over the newly unsealed 2004 cabinet files. Here's what stood out 2 weeks ago:
Thread complete.
- Comment on Labor looks likely to win 2025 Election 2 weeks ago:
The two party preferred polling rarely exceeds like 4 percentage points difference between ALP/Coalition, if only 10% of home owners notice a difference and shift their vote it’s back towards a likely ALP victory.
- Comment on Communism 3 weeks ago:
Okay, so the first thing to recognise is that terminology in left wing theory can be super confusing and the same words can be used to mean different things at different times or in different places, or sometimes in the same place at the same time.
Communism however in modern usage is fairly straightforward as it is used almost exclusively as it is defined in conventional Marxist doctrine(and yes there are many branches of Marxism).
That said big C Communism means a state of being that is achieved as the end point of societal evolution where there is no state, the means of production is controlled by the community and the needs of all are met.
In conventional Marxist thought the way of achieving this is through a transitional stage of socialism where the means of production is controlled by a “Vanguard” state. Many states in history have claimed to be communist in ideology(they are working towards this stateless utopia) but none have claimed to have achieved communism, only to be in the process of transitioning to it.
To all the leftist theory heads out there, don’t at me, I know this is a huge oversimplification, it is deliberate for someone who is obviously new to this.
- Comment on Is road or rail more expensive? 3 weeks ago:
Not the question asked, but relevant: When each individual enterprise considers its own transport needs, road transport is usually cheaper. However, when looking at the collective needs of an entire economy, rail is usually a way more efficient and cost-effective option.
Private rail companies will only invest where there are epic amounts of cargo or passengers to move, which when left to the private sector leads to massive under investment and over-reliance on road transport. There is no coherent argument against having extensive government investment in rail.
- Comment on What do drain unclogging liquids actually do? 3 weeks ago:
I’m not aware of any that are acid, usually they’re strong alkaline, NaOH or KOH which is extremely corrosive, but there are some that are enzymatic that are supposed to break down organic material, not very well in my experience.
- Comment on Labor looks likely to win 2025 Election 3 weeks ago:
The observation I found most interesting here is obvious but hadn’t occurred to me. That is that the RBA is going to find it increasingly difficult to justify not reducing interest rates going into the election. As much as that has almost nothing to do with the government if voters are feeling economic pressures lifting and the ALP can get some media traction with it they’ve got a chance.
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 27 comments
- Comment on Workers demand sacked CFMEU organiser be reinstated 5 weeks ago:
The criminal prosecution of the wrongdoers is one thing but denying the democratic rights of union members to choose their own membership and firing effective organisers who had nothing to do with the corruption is a blatant attack on the rights of workers.
While those of us on the progressive side of politics have been disappointed by the rightward drift of the Labor party for decades the anti-CFMEU legislation represents a profound abandonment of its historic mission to stand with the working class and trade unions.
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 1 comment
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 0 comments
- Submitted 1 month ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 1 comment
- Comment on Australia changes position to support [UN] vote demanding Israel end occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem and West Bank 1 month ago:
History will judge this government harshly for not taking a stance earlier.
- Comment on Australia denies visa for Israel's former justice minister Ayelet Shaked 1 month ago:
They’re only willing to call out a generation defining genocide with subtle things like this rather than average making a statement that might make a difference.
I swear I’m tearing my hair out at this government, there are several people at a high level, including Albo himself, who seem to have good instincts and want to do good but are so terrified of being called socialist or radical that they end up doing nothing or pushing a conservative platform.
- Comment on Sydney University academics pursued for speaking out against Gaza atrocities 1 month ago:
Again. I am answering in good faith assuming you will do the same.
I am perfectly willing to concede that I may have understated the size of the initial attacks and for the sake of argument I will concede your claim that there are 10s of thousands of Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
The issue at stake here is that at least 180,000 civilians have been killed to say nothing of the injuries and other traumas. The IDF has deliberately targeted civilian populations who had nothing to do with the attacks.
Again, I may not be opposed to a proportionate response but to killing hundreds of thousands in response to what you claim was a crime of 6000 people is not proportionate, it is brutal and unnecessary and likely to be counterproductive to any hopes of reducing violence from either side in the future.
Do you have a position on this specially? Do you deny the death toll, or do you assume that all 180,000 killed were terrorists?
I am genuinely interested in your response.
- Comment on Sydney University academics pursued for speaking out against Gaza atrocities 1 month ago:
Certainly there is a justification for a strong response against Hamas. What you need to grapple with is that the response has been against the entire Palestinian population and has caused an enormous death toll of civilian non-combatants.
If I may take your example of the Taliban, a clearly reprehensible organisation. It would not be appropriate for opponents of the Taliban to indiscriminately attack the civilian population of Afghanistan in much the same way that it is not appropriate for the IDF to target the civilian population of Palestine using the crimes of Hamas as justification. Indeed during the Afghanistan war the US and allies took precautions to target fighters and minimise civilian deaths and were rightly criticised when they failed.
Over 10 years of the War in Afghanistan the civilian death toll in Afghanistan was most years less than 4000, in Palestine the civilian death toll is 4 times that in 1 year.
There is no double standard here, no one is saying Israel shouldn’t have responded in a proportionate way to the initial Hamas attacks but what Israel is doing is targeting the civilian population in response to the (admittedly reprehensible) actions of, yes, a few dozen people.
I am genuinely interested in hearing your response here, please don’t take this as a personal attack but I hope you understand my perspective here.
- Comment on Could letting 16-year-olds vote improve youth health? These countries have tried it 1 month ago:
Original MJA article here
[Young voices, healthy futures: the rationale for lowering the voting age to 16
- Comment on Sydney University academics pursued for speaking out against Gaza atrocities 1 month ago:
I am answering here assuming you are commenting on good faith. Please give me the same courtesy.
The fact is that the Israeli government chose to respond to actions of a few dozen people by occupying a nation and routinely killing masses of civilians including the bombing of hospitals and schools.
The initial attacks were abhorrent and arguably justified a strong response against the perpetrators, it is difficult for many of us to understand how you can justify punishing an entire nation for the actions of a few dozen people, it is this that draws claims of genocide
The civilian death toll in Gaza is now estimated at more than 180,000. Any argument that this is a proportionate and appropriate response must be either ignorant or in bad faith.
I am happy to respond if you disagree or want to challenge my response here.
- Submitted 1 month ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 6 comments