Australia’s first political prisoner, Scott Parkin, has finally won the right to know the contents of an adverse ASIO security assessment which caused him to be deported in 2005.
Amazing the leaps forward you get in democracy with just one tiny little change of government.
-weez
Associated Press sent a takedown notice last month to a blogger who has, like nearly every other blogger, cited snips of AP stories as part of his posts. Apparently AP haven’t heard of ‘fair use‘ and are utterly clueless about the independent yet loosely connected nature of blogs and bloggers.
I’m not nearly as concerned about getting a takedown notice from AP as I am with their negotiation of a ‘bloggers’ fair use agreement’ (as though bloggers have different rights or responsibilities than any other publishers) with some schmoe who claims to be the head of the ‘Media Bloggers Association,’ which is supposed to represent all bloggers.
When did bloggers en masse become a monolithic entity? When did I sign on to this ‘Media Bloggers Association?’ When did the Associated Press gain legal powers in excess of the fair use provisions of US copyright law?
Can’t you just hear a new Village People song- “It’s fun to play with the Deeeee-Emmmm-Ceee-Ayyyyy…”?
AP appear to have had a small commonsense epiphany according to Tigtog and are backpedalling at approximately Mach III, save for this silly negotiation with this ‘bloggers’ association’ which I’ve never heard of before.
I could see AP’s complaint if a blogger did nothing but mechanically quote entire AP stories verbatim with no other intent than to republish the story, without any additional commentary or discussion- and who earns income from advertising on their blog site. However, I’d have thought that instead of takedown notices, AP would be handing out pay-per-click cheques to self-funded bloggers who cite snips of AP stories and link back to an AP member publisher or broadcaster, which earns income from advertising on their site.
I’m quite happy to provide details to AP to send payment in consideration of my free linking to AP story publishers- when their commonsense kicks fully back in gear.
-weez
WRAP: AP recognised the silliness of their ways and have tiptoed away.
Rachel Evans, NoToPope Coalition
(image: ABC-TV)
The High Court’s decision to strike down the ‘annoy‘ provision of Iemma’s draconian anti-WYD protest laws is certainly welcome- truly free speech is never subject to prior restraint.
[NoToPope activist] Rachel Evans said, “We want to call on all Sydneysiders and defy what the State Government has tried to do in quelling our freedom of expression”
Important stuff. Major pat on the back to the NSWCCL for running this case.
A better case for a constitutional bill of rights would be hard to find. Bob Carr and other anti-bill of rights advocates insist that a bill of rights would encourage an excessively litigious society. Frankly, if we had a bill of rights, the case to challenge the WYD protest laws wouldn’t have been necessary. The government would have recognised the folly in enacting such laws, knowing they would not survive a court challenge. A bill of rights will in fact reduce litigation. However, a useful bill of rights has to be part of the constitution, not statutory, where politicians can rejigger it at will, along party lines.
Regrettably, the language proscribing ‘inconveniencing’ WYD attendees remains:
Premier Morris Iemma says the Government will not be appealing against the court’s decision. He says police still have adequate powers.
“Two words have been struck out – the words ‘and annoyance’,” he said.
“‘Inconvenience’ is still there and they can still achieve the same objective, and that is to ensure that people who do want to make a point in a protest can do so without disrupting the pilgrims or the events.
Mr Iemma says a court decision to invalidate World Youth Day annoyance laws will not affect the ability of police to carry out their duties.
“That’s the law, we obey that, and the event proceeds, the police have got the powers to ensure that it is not disrupted,” he said.
No wonder Iemma’s satisfied; ‘inconvenience’ is as broad and nebulous as ‘annoy.’
However, if as Mo sez, the police retain sufficient authority to manage the event, what was the purpose of the excessively authoritarian laws in the first place? Sure didn’t do much for the popularity of the Iemma government, did it?
-weez
Mr Iemma said World Youth Day would would showcase the city to a global audience and generate $150 million in revenue.
Mmmmkay, so 10% GST on $150 million is $15 million, which is then shared amongst 7 states and territories. NSW got 29% of the GST take in the last negotiations. 29% of $15 mil is $4.35 mil.
$4.35 mil would cover only about 10% of the $42 million paid to compensate the racing industry for the loss of use of Randwick Racecourse and is around 5% of the government’s reported $86million spend on World Youth Day (month).
Could be the new maths… but I’m just not seeing the value for money, particularly when Australians’ freedom of movement and civil liberties are suspended in compensation for their trouble and expense.
-weez
“Obviously when Paul challenged me and finally won, we weren’t bosom buddies, we didn’t get into lengthy social intercourse for some time,” [Hawke] said.
“We’re friends now and he’s coming for dinner here shortly.”
Hawkie didn’t mention they’d be having long pig. π
-weez
image: Chris Britt, Springfield, IL — The State Journal-Register, via Cagle
Ahead of the election, Barack Obama has sold his soul for acceptance by what he thinks is middle America by giving the telcos retroactive immunity for violating American citizens’ rights to privacy on King George’s orders. Obama knows full well that this is utterly morally repugnant but his greed for votes has overtaken his good sense.
Obama’s been on a good thing by following the wishes of voters, which were clearly demonstrated by our ousting of the Repuglicans from the House & Senate in 2006 on the Dems’ promised anti-Iraq war platform, despite the fact the Dems have fully reneged on that promise to get us out of this illegal war.
Incidentally, also in the Dems’ reneging department, Nancy Pelosi is going straight to whatever hell she believes in for saying ‘impeachment is off the table.’ She effectvely said American democracy is off the table because impeachment is the citizens’ tool built into the Constitution designed solely to remove bad governments.
Barack’s bad move probably won’t shift a lot of supporters to McBush, but it may well make some voters simply stay home.
-weez
Not fooling anyone (click for larger image)
Amazing how the Iranian military got two of those smoke plumes UTTERLY identical in a photo they released.
Great missile technology… or fully lame Photoshopping? You tell me. I’ve only circled a couple of the obvious edits- there’s more.
WHY would the Iranians want to give the hawks in Washington and Jerusalem a reason to blast them back to the stone-age? Or did they? I wonder where this image actually came from- don’t you? Perhaps it came from the same joint that brought you Iraqi weapons of mass distraction.
I guess it could be worse.
-weez
MORE: Iran ‘doctored missile photo’
Olympia Nelson – image: ABC-TV
Olympia Nelson, the now eleven-year-old model who appears at age six in a photo taken by mother Polixeni Papapetrou and which has been published on the cover of the July issue of Art Monthly Australia, has taken Kevin Rudd to task for his damning of her mother’s work.
“I’m really, really offended by what Kevin Rudd said about this picture,” seethed Olympia. “That was really, really rude. For him to be talking about my picture, the picture with me in it, it doesn’t feel very good.”
And she’s right. Rudd is entitled to his opinion of the work but he’s not entitled to hurt Olympia’s feelings. Be an 11 year-old girl for a minute- the leader of your country just said he ‘hates’ a naked picture of you. That’ll work wonders for any adolescent’s self-image, won’t it? Art critic and Olympia’s father, Robert Nelson remarked, “It’s a funny thing about so many of the people seeking to protect children that they have no compunction at all about saying that they look revolting in these pictures.” The Monash University Associate Art Professor said in another interview for The Age that Its interesting that if the Prime Minister comments on, say, the greenhouse effect, he gets expert advice first. I would like to know which art expert advised him on this. We can only conclude that expert was Hetty Petty or some equally art-literate person from the same school.
It’s a rare 6-year-old girl who hasn’t scuffled into a pair of mummy’s heels or put on far too much of grandma’s costume jewellery, and then sashayed around the room like Elle McPherson. Is this projecting adult desires on children, as claimed by Hetty Petty? No- this is simply what normal little girls do. Normal, doting mums have been known to take happysnaps of such impromptu fashion shows. Mums who are professional photogs are apt to take the opportunity to make great art.
How this innocent play becomes “sexualisation of children,” in the words of Brendan Nelson, who vows to make a police matter of this magazine cover, is beyond me. If Morris Iemma is out of touch, Brendan Nelson is living on Mars. The paedophilic pornography paranoia amongst politicians, all seeking to look tougher than the other on child sexual abuse, has now gone fully overboard. When a parent can’t even take photos of their own kid in an under-12 footy match, the lifeboats have been chucked over the side as well.
Politicians and the public need to get a grip on what the ACTUAL risks are to children from sexual predators. The greatest number of sexual abusers are not strange bogeymen hiding in the bushes but rather are either family members or persons well known to the victim. Lots of self-styled child protection advocates will tell you that they fear pictures like those taken of Olympia will sexually excite predators- but do they actually KNOW what is sexually exciting to a paedophile? You reckon they’ve interviewed a few? I’ll suggest not. These advocates are doing nothing but trading on fear of the unknown.
So, how do you protect your children against sexual predators, when an abuser could be practically anyone you know? You teach your kids what to look for in terms of inappropriate behavior. I’ve said it many times before on mgk- if you want to protect your kids from drowning, you don’t ban water- you teach them how to swim.
The magazine cover image has been forwarded to the OFLC for classification. Let me make a bold prediction- it will be rated G or PG… and a lot of wowsers will, for a second time, have a lot of egg on their faces.
– weez
The vast majority of NSW residents are opposed to Iemma’s obsessive desire to hand over control of NSW electricity generation to private interests. A similar proportion of residents thought Iemma (and Rudd) were off the mark for opining that Bill Henson’s art photos of nude adolescents are ‘revolting’ or ‘disgusting.’ Iemma has spent an inordinate amount of effort covering the arse of his minister Bosco the Clown in the wake of the ‘Iguanagate’ affair. Iemma’s further spent $86million of public money on a party for his pope and associated flying monkeys from the wealthiest religion on earth, when NSW hospitals are in crisis due to lack of funding. THEN Morrie passed absurd and draconian laws in NSW against ‘annoying’ or ‘inconveniencing’ World Youth Day Month attendees, which actually are more intended to prevent embarrassment to the NSW government than inconvenience to WY D M pilgrims, drawing withering fire from all quarters, Catholics included.
So, what does Morrie do when Art Monthly Australia runs this image on their current cover…
Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs,
from the series Dreamchild, Polixeni Papapetrou, 2003
…which Noise Ltd censored and also doctored by darkening it in a Hensonesque way, to make it seem as though it IS somehow inappropriate, at least for Henson haters:
The above, as displayed on the News Ltd website
well, of course… Morrie puts on his ‘moral panic’ facade.
Girl, 6, in nude cover protest
July 06, 2008
A TAXPAYER-funded magazine has put a naked six-year-old girl on the cover in protest at the “hysteria” over similar images by photographer Bill Henson.
The July edition of Art Monthly Australia also includes several provocative photos of children posing naked in adult jewellery as well as naked teenage girls.
Olympia wearing her grandmother’s jewellery #4,
from the series Play, Polixeni Papapetrou, 2001
In the editorial, Maurice O’Riordan said he chose the 2003 picture of the young girl in the “hope of restoring some dignity to the debate” and to “validate nudity and childhood as subjects for art”.
The image, taken by Melbourne-based Polixeni Papapetrou, is believed to be her own daughter.
Mr O’Riordan, who does not have children of his own, told The Sunday Telegraph he did not care if it stirred community complaint.
“I believe the image is of a six-year-old girl,” he said.
“Maybe this is bold, but I don’t see the need to give in to that sort of hysteria or the prospect of complaint.
“I couldn’t really understand the furore.”
The artist, Ms Papapetrou, said she supports the use of her work for the magazine’s cover.
“We need to be clever enough to distinguish art from other types of images, otherwise we live in danger of eradicating any image of childhood in this culture for future generations to see.”
Art Monthly Australia receives more than $50,000 in funding from the Federal Government’s Council for the Arts and lists the New South Wales Ministry for the Arts under sponsors and partner. The State Government has issued grants to the magazine in previous years.
NSW Premier Morris Iemma immediately threatened towithdraw future funding after he was contacted about the images yesterday.
“Images of this kind are distasteful, exploitative of children – a cheap, sick stunt at the expense of a young child,” [Iemma] said.“We’ve now reached a sad point where some people think naked kids can boost their sales and get them a headline. We will have no role in funding them while they use images that exploit children.”
More than 5000 copies of the magazine have been distributed across Australia. The magazine also includes images by Bill Henson.
In May, police raided the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Paddington, confiscating several images by Henson including the photographs of a naked 13-year-old girl.
The photos sparked major national debate and angered several organisations, including child-welfare groups, with Premier Morris Iemma labelling the works “offensive and disgusting”.
Mr Henson was cleared of any wrongdoing following a police investigation. […]
Proof positive that Morris Iemma couldn’t catch a clue
in a bucket- or is willing to pull the populism lever in the misguided hope that it will do something about NSW Labor’s abysmal approval ratings.
Papapetrou’s loving photos are an act of devotion and adoration for daughter Olympia, simple depictions of a child at play- not exploitation.
This is a bit of a Rorschach test. There’s nothing in the least ‘provocative’ about the Papapetrou images- unless, of course, the viewer has unresolved feelings about their own sexual attraction to children, in which case just about any image of a child could be called ‘provocative.’
Morris Iemma has proven over and over that he quite simply does not have the leadership ability nor sense of being the employee of the people of NSW necessary to successfully execute his office. If Iemma doesn’t quit soon, he’s simply handing NSW government to Batty O’Farrell. While Iemma’s at least as far to the political right as O’Farrell on any number of issues, a Liberal controlled NSW state government would be even worse.
Sorry, Mo- but your approval ratings are not going up until you start behaving in the best interests of the people of NSW. Noise Ltd should be saving their black boxes for Morrie’s mouth.
-weez
