Unforeseen consequences for indigenous communities from Howard/Rudd NT Intervention?

ABC News reports:
The North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA) says there has been an increase in racial discrimination in communities since the Commonwealth Intervention was launched last year.
NAAJA and Central Australian legal group CAALAS has handed a submission to a Senate Committee Inquiry into the effectiveness of the Commonwealth intervention.
The submission described the intervention legislation and policies as inherently discriminative and says they have produced "unforseen consequences" on the ground.

Full June 2008 21 page joint submission by the NNAJA and CAALAS here.

Excerpt:
A typical example is the comment by a particular community that the "white cops are going over board" and are treating the community members as though "we’re criminals". The community members stated the problem was with the new recruits, rather than with the older police, and gave the following examples of their concerns:
· As soon as some people are seen drinking, all of the houses in the community are searched.
· Police are searching the houses without even explaining what they’re doing or finding out who owns the house or who lives in the house.
· Police have been conducting searches on houses in the community when they are in the community looking for someone on a warrant or a summons.
· When conducting searches, police have been breaking sacred items that are used for ceremonies because the police view these items only as weapons.
· Female police have been looking at sacred objects that women are not allowed to see. This is being reported back to communities, making problems for the community members in relation to witchcraft.
· Aboriginal women and their bags are being searched by male police officers.
· There have been a lot of instances in which unopened alcohol has been destroyed by the police outside the boundary of the community.
· At the local bus-stop, Aboriginal people’s bags are searched purely because they’re Aboriginal.
· Police know that taxis and mini buses are bringing alcohol into the community but taxi drivers and mini bus drivers are not being caught by the police nor having their vehicles confiscated.
· Intoxicated people are being taken into protective custody while sitting on the verandahs of their house.
· Police are refusing to give their rank number when they’re asked.

Senate Select Committee on Regional and Remote Indigenous Communities
There have been 29 submissions received here. Including submissions from Amnesty International, Rio Tinto and the Minerals Council of Australia.

Last word on Belinda Neal?

THERE should be at least one change for the third State of Origin match - Belinda Neal in the front row.

ANTHONY McMAHON
Chatsworth Island*

*Letter to the Editor in yesterday's The Daily Examiner, Grafton

Grow up Christopher Pyne

Viewers of ABC TV's Lateline on Friday 13 June can be excused if they thought Liberal front bencher Christopher Pyne is related to Alexander Downer or went to the same schools the Member for Mayo attended.

Pyne, described by ABC's Virginia Trioli as "the Opposition's well-mannered Shadow Minister for Justice" debated recent political issues with Craig Emerson, "the ever-polite Minister for Small Business".

Pyne was pompous, arrogant and downright rude.

Among other things Pyne, in classic à la Alexander mode, remarked:
Well, the Troy Buswell story is done and dusted. ... He put his leadership to a vote in the Western Australian Liberal Party and the Liberal Party voted to continue with his leadership.

Enough said!

World prefers Obama

US citizens would do well to read the following article by Anne Davies of London's Telegraph. It appears in The Sydney Morning Herald.

If Barack Obama were running for leader of the world, instead of leader of the US, he would probably romp home.

The annual global survey of attitudes by the independent Pew Research Centre shows that the Democratic nominee for president has won the confidence of people in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia and is strongly preferred as president of the US over his rival, the Republican John McCain.

In Australia, 80 per cent of participants said they had confidence in Senator Obama, against 40 per cent for Senator McCain.

Similar results were reported from Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and Tanzania.

American participants in the survey gave the two senators roughly equal scores.

The poll results came as a presenter on Fox News television was taken off air after she accused Senator Obama and his wife, Michelle, of greeting each other with a "terrorist's fist jab".

E. D. Hill made her comment after the presumptive Democratic nominee and his wife affectionately bumped fists on stage last week as he prepared to make his victory speech.

Read the Pew Research Centre's findings here.

Cane toads on the march in Clarence Valley

Image from http://fireflyforest.net

Cane toads have become a perennial problem for the Clarence Valley and are now popping up again in local canefields.

Yamba, Angourie and particularly nearby Yuraygir National Park have been gradually keeping a lid on toad numbers, but now new hotspots are appearing at Warregai Island, Palmers Island, Mororo Nature Reserve, Chatsworth Island, Micalo Island and Townsend.

According to The Daily Examiner cane toad capture numbers are:
Yamba/Angourie - 30,128 between 1999-2008
Brooms Head - 1,507 between 2004-2008
Mororo/Ashby/Warregai Isl/Chatsworth Isl - 844 between 2006-2008
Palmers Island - 395 between 2007-2008
Woombah - 6 between 1999-2004
Iluka - 1 in 2003
Grafton - 2 between 2001-2008
South Grafton - 1 in 2004
Copmanhurst 1 in 2007
Total = 32,890 (at least)

If you come across any of these pests in your local area please dispatch to that Toad Hall in the sky.
NSW National Parks & Wildlife would be happy to tell you how to do so humanely.

Then and now: images of John McCain

B&W photograph of baby John found at Friends of John McCain
Image of presidential candidate John found at Freaking News

Friday 13th June 2008

Iruscan is the King of the Cats

Art on the coast

Bush Melody 1996 by Irene Daly from the Regional Art Collection

Grafton Regional Gallery recently announced that its combined collections are now valued at an estimated $1 million plus.

Congratulations to Clarence Valley Council and gallery director, management and staff.

Juan's a jolly swagman and other signs of Internet stupidity

There's been a bit of talk out there this week about Nicholas Carr's The Atlantic online article Is Google making us stupid? This article is a good read.
Over four pages Nicholas worries that deep reading is now an effort after years of being able to get a quick information fix via the world wide web and points to concerns that the type of technology we are now using is changing the way we read and think. That surfing the net is turning us into information browsers rather than critical thinkers.

I don't believe that the human brain and individual neurological response to telecommunications technology has changed all that much over the last thirty years or so.
What is more likely to be affecting those expressing a disinclination to read lengthy books etc., is the effects of aging on brain and stamina.
We are all getting that much older! Quite a few of us will probably show evidence of dementia before our bodies give out.

The young are of course acting just as we all did - using what's at hand to try and carve a difference to mark independence and group indentity.

What the Internet and Google does demonstrate however is that we now like to share how gullible or stupid we all are with the whole wide world.
In days past urban myths travelled by word of mouth or turned up as page fillers in the side bars of newspapers such as The Mirror and The Daily Telegraph or magazines like Post.
Now they are found all over the Web dressed up as new and news. They flood our email inboxes at the slightest provocation.
What is worse, just as many people as before uncritically accept this so-called information as fact.
Myths which after all these years are no more sophisticated than that old chestnut about a spider in the beehive hairdo or the tale of seeing Kentucky Fried take delivery of something for their commercial kitchen that wasn't chicken.

So we currently have web pages or emails telling us that:
Britain is trying a modern version of sending convicts to the colonies and we need to beware
A previously convicted terrorist was one of those who flew a plane into the Twin Towers
The common word for human waste came from a cargo direction to ship high in transport
The word news is made up of the first letters of points of the compass
NASA's climate change data was affected by the Y2k bug
John Howard never had a father.

Neither the technology nor Google is making us stupid. We are what we are and what we are creates most of what is the Internet.
Therefore we are quite safe from Google's Machiavellian dream of a world run by Artificial Intelligence.com.
And, no the Waltzing Matilda swagman wasn't Spanish.

Telstra's Solomon 'Sol' Trujillo upset over Wikipedia biography

It appears that Telstra's Sol Trujillo was irked enough by editing of a Wikipedia biographical entry (to include opinion on conduct of the company and his own employment history) that he threatened defamation according to Chilling Effects.
Since the letter below was sent, the Wikipedia entry is back to bare basics.
However, Mr. Trujillo forgets that the Internet does not, so the allegedly objectionable entries can still be found.
The delicious irony in all this is that the editing Mr. Trujillo is objecting to was done using a 3G mobile phone.

March 7, 2008

Sender Information: [Individual] Sent by: [Private] Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP New York, NY, 10281, USA

Recipient Information:
General Counsel and Legal Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
San Francisco, CA, 94107, USA

Sent via: email, fax, and express mail
Re: Defamation of Solomon Trujillo

Dear Mr. Godwin:

We represent [individual] and are writing to demand that defamatory statements that appear on Wikipedia immediately and permanently be removed from the following URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Trujillo.

Specifically, an anonymous user (IP 119.11.111.17) (the "anonymous user") has since at least March 1, 2008 repeatedly inserted the following false and defamatory language in the referenced article:

[redacted]

This false and defamatory assertion has been repeatedly removed, but the anonymous user keeps replacing the false and defamatory language.

We demand that Wikipedia and Wikimedia permanently remove the above language from the article, including all of its history pages, and to permanently block the anonymous user from editing the page by 7 o'clock eastern time today. If Wikipedia and Wikimedia do not remove the improper language by that time, and take the steps necessary to block its being reinserted, Mr. [individual] intends to commence litigation against Wikipedia and Wikimedia on Monday, March 10, 2008.

Very truly yours,

[Signed]