Northern Rivers artist's water themes

Gone fishing by Lyn Hope

Water cycle by Colin

Long Neck Turtles by Chris

Displayed at TNN Gallery

Welcome to Senator Conroy's World Wide Wait

The Age on Thursday last:

THE Federal Government is planning to make internet censorship compulsory for all Australians and could ban controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia.

Australia's level of net censorship will put it in the same league as countries including China, Cuba, Iran and North Korea, and the Government will not let users opt out of the proposed national internet filter when it is introduced.

Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy Minister Stephen Conroy admitted the Federal Government's $44.2 million internet censorship plan would now include two tiers - one level of mandatory filtering for all Australians and an optional level that will provide a "clean feed", censoring adult material.

and in The Australian IT section:

INTERNET speeds could slow by 30 per cent under the Government's proposed web filtering scheme, even though it will do little to block illegal content.

That's the warning from technical experts, who also say the plan could expose users' financial details during online banking sessions and see popular websites including Facebook and YouTube banned.

The warnings came after Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy Minister Stephen Conroy confirmed the Federal Government planned to introduce a mandatory internet filter, shelving plans to allow Australians to opt out of the scheme.

Internet service providers, who would administer the filter, have been asked to conduct live trials of the filter before the end of the year.

But System Administrators Guild of Australia president Donna Ashelford said the plan was deeply flawed and would slow internet access down by about 30 per cent according to the Government's own laboratory trials.

Despite this, the national web filter would only censor web content, Ms Ashelford said, and could not deal with the remaining 60 per cent of internet traffic, much of which occurred over peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent and LimeWire.

"The bulk of internet traffic is over peer-to-peer networks and the bulk of illegal content is trafficked is over peer-to-peer networks," she said. "There is no choke point at which they can block that material. I do not believe this is an issue that has a technical solution."

Electronic Frontiers Australia board member Colin Jacobs warned the web filter could also unwittingly make the internet unsafe for financial transactions by breaking the secure encryption used by banks online.

Five of the six web filters tested by the Australian Media and Communications Authority this year were able to filter websites using the secure protocol HTTPS, which would leave financial details exposed to the internet service provider in charge of operating the filter.

"If they sit in the middle and get between your web browser and the bank's server it really breaks open the security and leaves the details open to attack," he said.

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy is reported:

"I will accept some debate around what should and should not be on the internet — I am not a wowser," Senator Conroy told The Age. "I am not looking to blanket-ban some of the material that it is being claimed I want to blanket-ban, but some material online, such as child pornography, is illegal."

In response to arguments that the proposal would affect basic civil liberties and the principle that households should be able to be their own internet policeman, he said: "We are not trying to build the Great Wall of China.

"We are not trying to be Saudi Arabia, and to say that is to simply misrepresent the Government's position." [my emphasis]

What a pity that Senator Conroy has already been exposed for lying to the Australian people on the matter of his national ISP-level filtering plans.

His present assurances are not worth a penny and, this can be confirmed by his evidence before the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communication and the Arts this month, where he and his department finally admit that nowhere in the free world has mandatory ISP-level filtering been legislated.

However, even before Conroy imposes the Great Wall of Australia we will have to endure his national pilot scheme which will censor as laid out in evidence to the same Senate estimates committee:

Senator LUDLAM—So within the constraints of not having briefed your minister yet, how much can you tell us about how you see that project rolling out in terms of timetables for the live trial and then what happens after that?
Mr Rizvi—At a very broad level, the purpose of the pilot is to look at two streams of potential filtering.
The first stream of filtering is in terms of just filtering the ACMA black list and different methodologies for filtering the ACMA black list. What we will seek to test is the impact of that type of filtering in terms of a range of criteria. We will also test more sophisticated types of filtering that go beyond just simply testing the ACMA black list through to filtering larger black lists and also looking at other types of filtering including dynamic filtering, filtering using key words—those sorts of methodologies—to see what the impact of that type of filtering is in terms of both the ISP and the customer.

Oh lucky, lucky Australians with Internet connections - every possible form of censorship (including it seems 'little black box' hardware) will be tried on hundreds of thousands of unwilling guinea pigs whose very livelihoods and businesses may grind to a snail's pace because the Internet servers involved are likely to have a collective technical nervous breakdown.

Australians are so impressed with Conroy's plan for a little digital bookburning that Courier Mail readers responded to Thursday's poll in this way by 4pm yesterday:

Poll Results

Q. Do you support the planned internet filter?

Yes 9% (452 votes)
No 90% (4493 votes)

Sum votes:
Total votes: 4945 votes so far **Poll was still open at time of time of writing**

** Thankyou to Michael Meloni at Somebody Think of the Children for posting the above new 'portrait' of the Minister which I cheerfully filched for this entry.

Some of the saddest words uttered this year

Yesterday, Harry Nelson, former Yuendumu Council President, presented Minister for Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin with a statement signed by 236 residents in a meeting of the community before the Minister opened the new Yuendumu pool, funding of which predates the intervention.

The statement read:

We, the residents of Yuendumu, want you to listen to the following statement and take our message back to the Federal and NT Governments:

When John Howard and Mal Brough lost their seats, we were happy. But now you are doing the same thing to us, piggybacking Howard and Brough's policies, and we feel upset, betrayed and disappointed.

We don't want this intervention!

We talked to the Review board, and now the Government is not even listening to the report, and is keeping this intervention going almost unchanged. It is an insult to us.

This is our land. We want the Government to give it back to us. We want the Government to stop blackmailing us. We want houses, but we will not sign any leases over our land, because we want to keep control of our country, our houses, and our property.

We say NO to income management. We can look after our own money.

We want the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 reinstated now, not in 12 months.

The Government Business Manager is useless, expensive, and we don't need them. We want our community councils back instead. We want community control, not Shires. We don't want more police, we don't want more contractors, we don't want more government people.

Everything is coming from the outside, from the top down. The government is abusing us with this intervention. We want to be re-empowered to make our own decisions and control our own affairs. We want self-determination. We want support, funding and resources for things coming from our community, from the inside.

Yuendumu has a lot of things to be proud of. Our community programs, like the Mt Theo program, the bilingual education program, Warlpiri media, the Old People's program, Warlukurlunga arts centre, childcare, the youth program, should be supported, celebrated, and used as a model for other communities.

We want to keep our bilingual education program and use our own language to teach English, maths, and other things in schools.

We want you to give us respect and dignity, and stop telling lies about our people.

We want the Government to listen to us, talk with us, consult with us, and do things proper way.

[Crikey.com.au,28 October 2008]

*

I know money matters, but........

The global financial crisis appears to be dominating the media recently.
While this is understandable to a degree, the fact remains that Australia is not in financial dire peril right at this moment.

However the Murray-Darling Basin is in dire peril and its crisis directly affects the cost of meat, dairy products, fresh fruit and vegetables for us all and its long-term prognosis will have a direct effect on the national economy.

So it was more than disappointing to see this Media Monitors break down of the media-led focus on issues last week:

Click to enlarge

Media Monitors has also looked at the media response to climate change in Making Sense of the Climate Change Debate 2008 report and found that less than a third of Australian media reports over the period assessed are solution focused (including blogs of which only about 6% mention solutions), with a small 7.25% of all media reports mentioning reducing oil and coal consumption.

What was apparent though is that overall (when compared to the rest of the world) the Australian debate was very focused on what to do, how to do it and when to do it.

That was then and this is now.

With governments across this country having the attention span of gnats and seemingly glued to populist politics garnered by daily perusal of the media, there is a danger that the plight of the Murray-Darling Basin, greenhouse emission reduction plans and climate change solutions generally will slip further to the edge of political radars.

The real crisis is current and looming climate change impacts as well as ongoing water sustainability.

It is time to remind domestic media of this fact and insist that a brief journalistic flurry in response to yesterday's release of Treasury modelling of the proposed national carbon pollution reduction scheme does not mitigate the need to keep global warming high on the national issues list and so reflect ongoing national concern.

You go (you godless) girl!

News.com.au yesterday ran this story:

LONDON'S iconic red buses could be plastered with the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life", in an atheist advertising campaign responding to a set of Christian ads.

Comedy writer Ariane Sherine, 28, objected to the Christian adverts on some London buses, which carried an internet address warning that people who rejected God were condemned to spend eternity in "torment in hell".

She sought £5 ($12.90) donations towards a "reassuring" counter-advertisement - and received the backing of the British Humanist Association (BHA) and atheist campaigner Professor Richard Dawkins.

The campaign has already smashed its £5500 ($14,215) target and the slogan is planned to hit the side of several London buses in January.

"We see so many posters advertising salvation through Jesus or threatening us with eternal damnation, that I feel sure that a bus advert like this will be welcomed as a breath of fresh air," said BHA chief executive Hanne Stinson.

Prof Dawkins said: "This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think - and thinking is anathema to religion."

Ariane Sherine gives me a bit of 'faith' in the younger generation's ability to leaven the loaf.

Her blog detailing the Atheist Bus campaign is here.

Photo from Ariane's website

Should GM food be adequately labelled so that the consumer has a real choice?

Should GMO food be adequately labelled so that the consumer has a real choice in the matter of what they purchase to eat?

Farm Online's Stock and Land asked a similar question on Monday:

Q: Should there be mandatory labelling laws to advise consumers if food contains ingredients from genetically modified (GM) crops?

Yes

(88.1%)

No

(10.4%)

Undecided

(1.5%)

Total Votes: 840
Poll Date: 27/10/2008

A small sample admittedly from what is probably a relatively small readership, but it should give the Rudd Government some indication that Australians may not be happy with the state of food labelling in this country.

Poll can be accessed here. Vote if you feel inclined - let the world know how you feel about GMO.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Spring Arts Fair, Dunoon November 1 2008

A year ago a tornado hit little Dunoon on the NSW North Coast.

...causing huge damage to local homes and all but flattening Dunoon Public School.

To raise money for the students and their chosen charity Kids for Kids, the school will be transformed into an art gallery for the inaugural Spring Arts Fair next Saturday, November 1.

Around 15 professional artists who live in and around Dunoon have donated artworks for the event. Students have also been putting paint to canvas and these will be displayed alongside the collection of professional paintings, photography, sculpture, felting, drawings, garden sculptures and handmade jewellery that will be for sale. Prices range from $20 to $300, so there's something for everyone. Student artworks will be $10, with family and parents given first option to buy.

There will be sparkling apple juice, stuffed olives and camembert served (it is an art event after all!) plus a jumping castle, a mural painting workshop on the school toilet block and a monster sandpit raffle with prizes including an accommodation package, macadamia hampers, plant nursery vouchers, yoga and fitness classes, dinner vouchers, toys and even a poster autographed by Eric Bana. One in four tickets wins a prize, and the list is not yet complete!

Funds raised will help the school and assist Kids for Kids to continue improving the lives of children living in impoverished regions around the world.

The Spring Arts Fair will run from 4-6pm.

For more information phone Renee on 6689 5868 or Madeleine on 6689 5542.

If you are on the North Coast this Saturday, drop by and support a very worthy effort by Dunoon Public School and the local community.

Photograph of Dunoon tornardo from www.australiasevereweather.com