Now that's a big
Isa Barra or two!!
Thanks to the unknown
Mt. Isa ambo for the
pics from Lake
Moondarra.
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
One of the reasons why Crikey blogs can now be considered mainstream media
I have to say that I don't regularly read Crikey's blogs and therefore have no real idea what went on in the Pure Poison comments section which apparently made News Limited rather irate.
However, even a small blog like North Coast Voices has had a very slight brush with Tim Blair's ever faithful winged monkeys (moron, bonehead, swampy and run for the hills girly man were my personal favourites in reply to Water Dragon's original NCV post mentioning Blair and Bolt), so I wonder if perhaps the News Ltd bloggers didn't get a dose of the general nastiness they have so obviously tolerated/encouraged in their own readership.
It's a sad day indeed when a new blog so quickly falls victim to its mainstream media host's capitulation to Murdoch's bullies:
Things we shouldn't have said about Andrew Bolt
While Crikey (as part of the mainstream media) could be considered obliged to ensure that comments associated with blog posts are neither defamatory nor incite racial/religious hatred or violence of any sort, there was no need for it to give such prominence to its own grovel to a media group which itself often offends in its own slipshod comments moderation.
For the most part I have found the blogosphere to be relatively polite, fair and honest in what it posts online.
Pauline Hanson: I'm baaack!
Pauline Hansen has announced that she is standing for the Queensland Parliament in the 21st March 2009 election.The flamboyant redhead has updated http://www.paulinehansen.com.au/ and is now seeking donations and selling t-shirts.
Her bio is a bit of a hoot because it currently stops before her last attempt at federal election in 2007.
Her bio is a bit of a hoot because it currently stops before her last attempt at federal election in 2007.
Pauline is a bit peeved at all the publicity about her last failed bid:
"Once again the question of electoral funding has reared it ugly head, WHY? My running in this election has nothing to do with electoral funding as many would have you believe.I am fed up with the lies, innuendoes, misreporting and blatant attempts to discredit my name and reasons for standing in the election.Independent and political party candidates for the purpose of election funding is eligible to claim reimbursement of election campaign expenses for votes polled if the candidate reached the qualifying threshold (more than 4%) of formal first preference votes in the electorate contested.A Queensland electorate has approx 32,000 voters. Every formal first preference vote receives approx $1.50 per vote from the electoral commission if the candidate reaches over 4%.Any campaign expenses exceeding the electoral funding are not reimbursed. Receipts must be produced for funding reimbursement."
What is missing from her website is any updated policy or promises.
Did she ever really have any?
The other Mr Billabong falls on tough times
Brisbane's Courier Mail reports:
Former chief executive of Billabong, Matthew Perrin, who made hundreds of millions of dollars from the Aussie surfwear group, is broke.
Perrin today filed a debtor’s petition with the Insolvency Trustee Service of Australia and placed all his corporate entities under external administration.
Mr Graham Starkey of PA Lucas & Co has been appointed as Mr Perrin’s trustee in bankruptcy.
Once a Gold Coast lawyer, Perrin rode the crest of the Billabong wave, selling his shares and making several hundred of millions as a result.
His slide into bankruptcy was caused by his investments in a property and supermarket group located in Xian and Hunan provinces in China.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
International Women's Day events in the Clarence Valley, 6-13 March 2009
There is a range of activities during the week before and after 8th March, the official International Women’s Day. Clarence Valley Council and the NSW Office for Women’s Policy are supporting the following events.Friday 6 March
Breakfast organized by Clarence Valley Women Inc with guest speaker, UrsulaWilkinson.
Grafton Community & Function Centre, 59 Duke Street, Grafton.
7.30 am – 9 am $15 per person or $8 for pensioners/students
RSVP by Tuesday 3 March to Vicki on 0409 035 433 or cvw16@bigpond.com
Saturday 7 March
Breakfast organized by Lower Clarence Women’s Group.
Sassafras Restaurant, 16 Coldstream Street, Yamba.
Guest speaker Pauline Plant - Clarence Valley Citizen of the Year.
Contact: susan.howland@clarence.nsw.gov.au
8 am – 9.30 am - $15 per person or $8 for pensioners/students
Purchase tickets by Friday 6 March at Sassafras on 6646 1011
Sunday 8 March
Iluka women are gathering at the Picnic Area at Iluka Beach with guests Pat Jenkins – ‘Magic of Carbon in our Soils’ & Rivka Forest - ‘The Art of Healing’
10 am -12 noon. Bring your own drinks, folding chair, sun protection. Morning munchies provided.
Contact: Kerrie Howland 0432 665 305 for information.
Sunday 8 March
Lower Clarence Aboriginal Women’s Group invite women to join them for morning tea at the CWA rooms, River Street, Maclean. Contact: Susan on 0427 975 131 or susan.howland@clarence.nsw.gov.au
Friday 13 March
Yamba Evening View Club - Morning tea, two guest speakers, a fashion parade by Clovelly’s of Maclean & Yamba, a light lunch, raffle, lucky door prizes and entertainment.
Treelands Drive Community Centre, Treelands Drive, Yamba
9.30 am – 2 pm. $10 p/person payable at the door
RSVP Anne Dinham on 66462644 or better still email to dinhams@aapt.net.au by Tuesday, 10th March
Some trees are more equal than others or Malcolm Turnbull exposed once more
Not for the first time the suspect nature of the Federal Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbulls' commitment to a sustainable environment comes to light.First his revelation that planting trees across Australia will save all in the face of climate change and then the media rediscovery of the fact that Turnbull actively support forest logging in the Pacific:
JUST as Malcolm Turnbull tries to outsmart Labor on environmental issues, a file of documents has emerged linking the Leader of the Opposition to a mass logging operation in the Solomon Islands.
The tiny island of Vangunu is a speck on the world map; a dot in the Pacific and home to just over 2000 people. It forms part of the collection of thousands of land masses that make up the Solomon Islands.
Once covered in pristine rainforest, the island and the surrounding Marovo Lagoon were the subject of lobbying by the New Zealand government and environmentalists to have it World Heritage-listed in the late 1980s.
Almost two decades later, the island is again being talked about - only this time for different reasons.
The emergence of a carefully-documented file detailing mass logging operations and the ongoing impacts in the region has Vangunu back in the spotlight.
More specifically, the file - obtained by The Sunday Telegraph - records the involvement of Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull over that time.
Mr Turnbull was the chairman of a company called Axiom Holdings after he and fellow investors purchased a 16.21 per cent stake in the company in 1991.
The company was one of several companies with logging activities in the Solomons.
It was also one of the largest.
One wonders just how long the Coalition king makers are going to tolerate this man, whose diverse financial dealings make him vulnerable to criticism (and sometimes legal action) on so many fronts.
Photograph of Vangunu from Picassa Web Albums
How Internet filters work 101
I was recently denied access to the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) on the grounds that it contained illegal content.
From New Matilda, 25 February 2009
Monday, 2 March 2009
Letter to Guest Speak on corruption and p@edophilia
Last week a letter was submitted to Guest Speak for publication.
This letter contained a number of untrue or defamatory statements so cannot be included here.
However, as the general subject matters were alleged police corruption and p*edophilia and because ramifications from various government inquiries are still flowing, North Coast Voices has included the following historical links for readers interested in these issues.
This report of the Kimmins Inquiry addresses the first four terms of reference related to the possibility of systemic wrongdoing in the Queensland Police Service in the handling of suspected p#edophilia cases. The report on the final term of reference (which looked at isolated complaints against individual police officers) was published separately in February 1999.
This report examines the fifth and final term of reference addressed by the Kimmins Inquiry. The fifth term of reference related to 56 separate complaints that were made of isolated incidents related to police mishandling of cases involving suspected p#edophilia rather than of systemic wrongdoing.
Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct also known as the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
Courier Mail: Shadow Land reporting by Michael Ware.
Royal Commission Into Whether There Has Been Corrupt Or Criminal Conduct By Any Western Australian Police Officer also known as the Kennedy report
Exposing corruption within senior levels of Victoria Police, Office of Police Integrity
Exposing Victoria's underbelly, February 2009
Royal Commission into the NSW Police Service Final Report also known as the Wood Royal Commission.
VOLUME1.pdf (1,733kb)
VOLUME2.pdf (2,140kb)
VOLUME3.pdf (5,944kb)
VOLUME4.pdf (6,732kb)
VOLUME5.pdf (2,483kb)
VOLUME6.pdf (12,098kb)
Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical comment from NSW Northern Rivers residents. Email ncvguestpeak at live dot com dot au to submit comment for consideration.Google Trends a bit dodgy right now?
It pays to be careful these days when surfing the Net because nothing is sacred to spammers, scammers and other worldwide nasties.
According to Computer World on 27 February:
"Cyber crooks are using one of Google's own tools to poison search results with links that spread fake security software, a researcher said Thursday.
"Malware distributors have abused Google Trends before," said Craig Schmugar, a senior threat researcher with McAfee. "But I've never seen them use it as aggressively as they are now."
Google Trends, a tool the search giant rolled out last June, highlights the most popular searches of the past hour. At mid-day Thursday, for instance, the No. 1 search phrase, according to Trends, was "Obama budget."
Scammers and malware makers are closely monitoring Google Trends to guide them in selecting search phrases and legitimate news content, which they then integrate into their own fly-by-night sites, said Schmugar. The idea is to "game" Google into ranking their malware-hosting sites near the top on scores of high-profile, current events-related search results.
"I'm not talking about just a few sites," Schmugar said. "I've collected a lot of them, with poisoned links [in Google search results] that are pretty high up, almost always in the top 10."
And Google Flu Trends is raising privacy concerns itself, with "The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request asking US federal officials to disclose how much user search data the company has recently transmitted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, as part of its Google Flu Trends effort."
However, Google Inc deserves a pat on the back for its "This site may harm your computer" function even if it has a few glitches.
According to Computer World on 27 February:
"Cyber crooks are using one of Google's own tools to poison search results with links that spread fake security software, a researcher said Thursday.
"Malware distributors have abused Google Trends before," said Craig Schmugar, a senior threat researcher with McAfee. "But I've never seen them use it as aggressively as they are now."
Google Trends, a tool the search giant rolled out last June, highlights the most popular searches of the past hour. At mid-day Thursday, for instance, the No. 1 search phrase, according to Trends, was "Obama budget."
Scammers and malware makers are closely monitoring Google Trends to guide them in selecting search phrases and legitimate news content, which they then integrate into their own fly-by-night sites, said Schmugar. The idea is to "game" Google into ranking their malware-hosting sites near the top on scores of high-profile, current events-related search results.
"I'm not talking about just a few sites," Schmugar said. "I've collected a lot of them, with poisoned links [in Google search results] that are pretty high up, almost always in the top 10."
And Google Flu Trends is raising privacy concerns itself, with "The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request asking US federal officials to disclose how much user search data the company has recently transmitted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, as part of its Google Flu Trends effort."
However, Google Inc deserves a pat on the back for its "This site may harm your computer" function even if it has a few glitches.
On the money.........
It seems there is no end to greed in the ranks of the rich in Oz.
Example One:
"ALMOST 400,000 millionaires are receiving the age pension and 51,200 people in the nation's top income bracket also are getting the welfare payment.
As the Government prepares to lift the pension rate for the poorest single age pensioners, it has emerged tens of thousands of people receiving the payment are very well off.
And a key welfare group is calling for a crackdown on the rich receiving the pension, which would include homes worth more than $1 million in the age pension means test.
Research carried out for the Brotherhood of St Laurence has found the age pension system is helping the rich because the means test exempts the family home.
Other very wealthy retirees are able to fiddle their income so they can receive a part-pension.
The research by NATSEM shows 14 per cent of the nation's 2.8 million pensioners have an average net worth of more than $1.6 million when the value of their home is taken into account.
But even if the value of the home is disregarded, 51,200 age pensioners have incomes that place them in the highest income bracket."
Example Two:
Example Three:
Sunday, 1 March 2009
In the deep blue on the NSW North Coast
Images from Cook Island, Tweed Heads and Julian Rock, Byron Bay.
More photographs can be found at Underwater Australasia.
Herdict - a way to dob in Conroy's filter?
From The Future of the Internet and how to stop it a new feature was launched last week:
Jonathan Zittrain’s brainchild Herdict was officially released today. (Watch the project’s mascot — a sheep — demonstrate “the verdict of the herd” in a short video… does its voice sound familiar?)
Herdict is a tool that employs the distributed power of the Internet community to provide insight into what users around the world are experiencing in terms of web accessibility.
People can participate by reporting websites that they cannot access, testing sites that others have reported, or downloading the browser add-on for reporting sites on the fly.
Herdict is a portmanteau of ‘herd’ and ‘verdict.’ Using Herdict Web, anyone anywhere can report websites as accessible or inaccessible. Herdict Web aggregates reports in real time, permitting participants to see if inaccessibility is a shared problem, giving them a better sense of potential reasons for why a site is inaccessible. Trends can be viewed over time, by site and by country.
Herdict Web builds out from the OpenNet Initiative’s research on global Internet filtering.
The OpenNet Initiative tests Internet filtering through an academic methodology. Herdict Web takes a different approach, crowdsourcing reports to learn about and display a real-time picture of user experiences around the globe.
Watch Prof. Z discussing Herdict Web at a recent Berkman luncheon, or listen to a podcast of Herdict on Radio Berkman.
Try Herdict Web courtesy of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard University).
Report that Senator Xenophon may be changing his support for the national Internet censorship plan.
Jonathan Zittrain’s brainchild Herdict was officially released today. (Watch the project’s mascot — a sheep — demonstrate “the verdict of the herd” in a short video… does its voice sound familiar?)
Herdict is a tool that employs the distributed power of the Internet community to provide insight into what users around the world are experiencing in terms of web accessibility.
People can participate by reporting websites that they cannot access, testing sites that others have reported, or downloading the browser add-on for reporting sites on the fly.
Herdict is a portmanteau of ‘herd’ and ‘verdict.’ Using Herdict Web, anyone anywhere can report websites as accessible or inaccessible. Herdict Web aggregates reports in real time, permitting participants to see if inaccessibility is a shared problem, giving them a better sense of potential reasons for why a site is inaccessible. Trends can be viewed over time, by site and by country.
Herdict Web builds out from the OpenNet Initiative’s research on global Internet filtering.
The OpenNet Initiative tests Internet filtering through an academic methodology. Herdict Web takes a different approach, crowdsourcing reports to learn about and display a real-time picture of user experiences around the globe.
Watch Prof. Z discussing Herdict Web at a recent Berkman luncheon, or listen to a podcast of Herdict on Radio Berkman.
Try Herdict Web courtesy of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard University).
Report that Senator Xenophon may be changing his support for the national Internet censorship plan.
St. George, NAB and other banks to charge 'disloyalty' fees when customers use another bank's ATM machine from 3rd March 2009
Sign Bradbury's petition against increase in bank fees:
Last week the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Mr Glenn Stevens, appeared before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics and commented on some impending reforms to ATM fees. The RBA, in consultation with the banking sector, has put together a package of reforms that will have an impact on the way people use ATMs. These reforms come into effect from next Tuesday, 3 March. Under the proposed regime, transaction fees will be charged by the owner of the foreign ATM—that is, an ATM operated by a bank other than the customer's bank—to the customer directly.
To provide greater transparency in relation to these fees, the fee will be displayed on the screen during the transaction—allowing the customer to cancel the transaction if they do not wish to proceed and pay the fee. This relatively simple reform is intended to make ATM fees more transparent and promote competition between financial institutions and ATM operators by allowing customers to identify and choose to use the cheapest ATMs. Underpinning these reforms is the abolition of the interchange fee. Under the existing arrangements, each time a customer uses an ATM that is not operated by their own bank their bank is charged an interchange fee by the ATM operator, and that fee is generally passed on to the customer through a transaction fee. Depending on the bank, these fees could range from 50c to $2 per transaction. Now that the customer will be required to pay the ATM fee directly to the foreign ATM operator under the new rules, there is no longer any real cost to the customer's bank and therefore no justification for a customer's bank to impose any transaction fee upon the customer for using the foreign ATM. The only possible argument for the imposition of a fee is to recoup the cost of processing the transaction.
Mr Stevens estimates that any such administrative cost would be 'at most 10c and quite possibly a lot less'. If these new arrangements are designed to ensure better disclosure of ATM fees then this simply will not be achieved if the customer's own bank continues to levy a fee, which will not be disclosed at the point of the transaction, on their customer for using a foreign ATM. The only way that customers will be able to have any faith that these new arrangements will lead to a better disclosure of ATM fees is if banks and other institutions do not impose transaction fees upon their own customers for using ATMs not operated by them.
However, I understand that some institutions are planning to continue to charge customers a fee. These fees have been described as 'disloyalty fees'. I think most customers would find the notion of a fee for 'disloyalty' just a little bit rich coming from their bank. To my knowledge, only the Commonwealth Bank and Citibank have announced that they will not charge their customers a disloyalty fee for using a foreign ATM. I congratulate these two institutions for doing the right thing by their customers. I am concerned that other institutions have foreshadowed an additional foreign ATM transaction fee, which will mean that customers will be slugged twice every time they use a foreign ATM. The National Australia Bank say that they will charge a 50c fee every time a customer uses a foreign ATM, on top of the fee the customer will directly pay to the operator of the ATM. There is no justification for these 'disloyalty fees'. The costs to the banks of processing these transactions are negligible, yet some have seen this as an opportunity to profiteer.
While banks in other countries have been collapsing and governments spend billions or even trillions of dollars to recapitalise and bail out their banks, four of our banks are among the only 18 banks in the world to have a AA credit rating. This is unquestionably a good thing. Ensuring our banks have strong balance sheets and return profits in these difficult times is critical to the overall health of our economy. It is, however, reprehensible that banks and other financial institutions propose to slug customers a fee for using a foreign ATM when the bank is not bearing any real cost, especially when many of these institutions have been the beneficiaries of significant government support in the form of bank guarantees.
I know many people in my electorate—and, no doubt, right around the country—are very angry. That is why I am launching an online petition on my website, www.davidbradbury.com.au, where people can sign on and register their opposition to being hit with these unfair bank fees. I will keep those people who sign my petition updated with further information on the charges that institutions choose to impose from next week. I call on the banks to do the right thing and drop these absurd and unfair fees.
{From Open Australia 26/02/09}
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