Senator Conroy – LIAR
Thursday March 19th 2009, 8:25 am
SENATOR CONROY: We are happy to have an open debate about these technical issues. However, the Government does not view this debate as an argument about freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is fundamentally important in a democratic society and there was never any suggestion that the Australian Government would seek to block political content.
In this context, claims that the Government’s policy is analogous to the approach taken by countries such as Iran, China and Saudi Arabia are not justified. – Senator Conroy, DBCDE Blog, Dec 22, 2008
…and then, ACMA bans a politically controversial site, one which has nothing at all to do with the government’s claimed goal of stopping child pronography… and then starts threatening anyone who links to it with an $11,000 per day fine. No, there’s no resemblance to Iran, China nor Saudi Arabia, is there?
Senator Conroy, you’re a lying authoritarian– and we will not tolerate it.
Back down or be prepared to go back into the political wilderness.
-weez
March In March against internet censorship – Saturday – Canberra
Thursday March 19th 2009, 7:09 am
The Australian Government have not just stepped but hurled themselves blindly over a line that should never have been crossed.
Time to hit the streets!
WHAT
March in March is an upbeat event to give people an opportunity to stand up, be heard and hold the government accountable for their plans of forcing mandatory censorship on a very unwilling public.
WHERE
Parliament House side of Federation Mall, Canberra
WHEN
1:00 PM 21st of March, 2009
(Press conference at 11:00 AM)
WHY
The DLC have been organising rallies in capital cities for the past three months raising awareness as to the governments plans to censor the internet and the negative impact involved.
This is only the tip of the wedge of censorship being driven into our society by a vocal minority, as they say, the best time to defend your freedom is while you still have it.
While Senators change their minds daily, and the media report that the filter will go ahead, or won’t go ahead almost as regularly–the fact remains–this issue will not be put to bed unless Australians defend their democracy against the very ideology of censorship culture.
If you can’t be there, protest by publishing! ACMA have ‘banned’ (you can still access these pages) Wikileaks and a politically controversial but otherwise lawful anti-abortion website.
This is complete bullshit- and it stops right here and right now.
-weez
MORE: Don’t miss ABC Radio National’s Background Briefing program from 15 March. “Conroy’s clean feed” is a very complete summation of the story to date, but doesn’t include the recent misstep by ACMA in banning a legitimate political protest site and threatening anyone who links to the ‘banned‘ site with an $11,000 per day fine.
Nanny says…
Wednesday March 18th 2009, 9:19 pm
You can see this:
But you can’t see that.
-weez
$11,000/day fine for a hyperlink
Wednesday March 18th 2009, 3:29 pm
An anti-censorship advocate who reported an ‘offensive’ website to ACMA as a test of their policies, succeeded in getting the site added to the present ACMA banlist. Now ACMA is threatening Whirlpool with $11,000/day fines for publishing a link to the site they’ve now banned. The ACMA banlist is proposed to be used as the basis for Labor’s mandatory internet filter.
Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day
Asher Moses
March 17, 2009 – 11:48AM
The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.
Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark’s list of banned websites.
The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA – an anti-abortion website. (link is live, ACMA ban doesn’t do much, does it? -Ed.)
ACMA’s blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.
But even without the mandatory censorship scheme, as is evident in the Whirlpool case, ACMA can force sites hosted in Australia to remove “prohibited” pages and even links to prohibited pages.
Online civil liberties campaigners have seized on the move by ACMA as evidence of how casually the regulator adds to its list of blacklisted sites. It also confirmed fears that the scope of the Government’s censorship plan could easily be expanded to encompass sites that are not illegal.
“The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship,” Wikileaks said on its website in response to the ACMA ban.
[…] (balance of story at SMH)
All proof positive that what anti-filtering advocates have said all along would be the worst nightmare- the government isn’t going to use the filter to censor porn, it’ll be used to suppress political speech.
Well, fuck that.
Sit back and watch, children. You’re about to see one of the biggest backfires in Australian politics, followed by one of the most celebrated backflips. It may even result in the dissolution of the OFLC and even the end of ACMA’s ability to ban content.
It will NOT be pretty.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
-weez
Quit your day job, Pete
Sunday March 15th 2009, 9:21 am
image: ABC
Seriously, do we have to wait for the next natural disaster resulting in the deaths of hundreds or thousands to get the Oils on stage? As concert ticket prices go, that’s bloody high.
-weez
The most dangerous blonde in the GOP…
Friday March 13th 2009, 5:17 pm
…is NOT Ann Coulter. It’s Meaghan McCain.
Despite the fact that she’s a bit of a youngun and has not got her head around macroeconomic matters, her message of centrism and withdrawing the GOP from the lunatic fringe is exactly what will be the undoing of the Democrats.
As long as the Repuglicans live merely to be politically opportunist and reflexively oppositional, operating on the fringe of Nutball City, the GOP will be in the wilderness. So bring on Rush ‘Brought to you by Viagra’ Dimbulb, let Ann Coulter compare her rectum to Obama’s breakfast, encourage Hannity to sneer the unsneerable sneer.
It’s all an own goal.
-weez
Tony, for the love of god, shut up
Thursday March 12th 2009, 6:13 am
More manufactured outrage from the Member for Warringah.
From the ABC:
Abbott attacks ‘two-faced’ Rudd on abortion aid
Federal Opposition frontbencher Tony Abbott has accused Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of betraying Christian voters by allowing a ban on overseas aid for abortion services to be overturned.
This would be the same Tony Abbott who in January 2007 wagged a finger at now PM Rudd for using religion as a political wedge.
Abbott says Rudd uses religion politically
Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott has accused Labor leader Kevin Rudd of using religion for political purposes.
The now marginalised Liberal opposition is in complete disarray. All they can do is be reflexively oppositional, self-servingly hoping to garner some votes going into the next election, not work cooperatively with the government for the benefit of the Australian people.
image: Ross Bateup for The Australian
Does Tony simply not understand that his party is no longer in power because the Australian people don’t support their religious extremism?
Keep your superstition in church, Tony-o. It sure hasn’t helped to keep you in government.
-weez
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Tuesday March 10th 2009, 9:46 am
As an expat American, I’ve for far too long endured my nation of birth having a reputation of being run by the faerie-tale believers. Religion, namely fundamentalist evangelical christianity, got to make rules for science for 8 years.
Obama is swiftly putting the Christian Taliban into perspective. A single-digit percentage of religious nuts in the US population have had too much influence for too long. They never should have been allowed to dictate limits on science- and now they won’t.
The days of religionists making rules which bind everyone, whether those folks are faerie-taleists or not, are done. If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one. If you don’t like stem-cell research, you’re completely entitled to not use any medical treatments that are developed from it- but you’re no longer in a position to tell everyone else what medical care or treatments they can and cannot have.
-weez
