Australian political and religious leaders response to Gaza 2009

Political cartoon from Your Democracy

Australia recognises Israel's right to self-defence

Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, Leader of the Federal Labor Party, 5 January 2009

HAMAS must accept Israel's right to exist within secure borders

Malcolm Turnbull, Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia and Leader of the Federal Opposition, 5 January 2009

The Australian government must end its acquiescence to Israel's military operations in Gaza

Bob Brown, Leader of The Greens, 9 January 2009

Dead silence so far from Warren Truss, Leader of the National Party of Australia

No word from Cardinal George Pell, Head of the Catholic Church in Australia

No current statement from Phillip Aspinall, Primate of the Anglican Church in Australia.

However he did sign the HEADS OF CHURCHES STATEMENT ON PALESTINE AND ISRAEL in July 2008. Along with these other national heads of churches:
Rev Dr Ross Clifford, President, Baptist Union of Australia
Lyndsay Farrall, Presiding Clerk, Australia Yearly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
Rev Alan Filipaina, Moderator, Congregational Federation of Australia and New Zealand
Rev Gregor Henderson, President of the Uniting Church in Australia
Richard Menteith AM, National President of Churches of Christ in Australia
Archbishop Mor Malatius Malki Malki, Syrian Orthodox Church of Australia and New Zealand
Archbishop Paul Saliba, Antiochian Orthodox Church, Australia and New Zealand
Rev Dr Michael P Semmler, President, Lutheran Church of Australia
Pastor Chester Stanley, National President, Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia
Archbishop Stylianos, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of Australia

No comment found from Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence, Senior Rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Sydney

Israel is committing an act of terrorism. It's the duty of all the free people in the world to stand against it and stop this evil.

Ibrahim Abu Mohammad, Islamic scholar from Sydney, 2 January 2009

2009 Internet scams, hoaxes and threats and the NSW North Coast

E-Victims has released its top 10 Internet scams expected to plague users this year.

ScamBusters also has a similar top ten list:

10. Travel and vacation scams. Travel scams have always been around. But this year we expect to see more Internet-based ruses like bogus offers of cheap airfare and event tickets. The huge Olympic Games Internet tickets scam of 2008 was just the start.

9. Phony auction and classified sales. Yes, eBay, Craigslist, etc. scammers continue to reel in the victims. Despite attempts by the sites themselves to clamp down on the con artists, we expect the tricksters to re-double their deception efforts.

8. Investment and pump and dump scams. We've broadened this category after reporting on a number of failed or phony investment schemes that have cost victims tens of millions of dollars.

7. Work at home and job scams. With unemployment on the rise and the growing popularity of working from home, we think this scam will become more prevalent in 2009.

6. Grandparent, family tragedy and death threat scams. These are extremely common scams where people ask for money by claiming a relative is in trouble or that a murder contract has been taken out. Mostly, they come by phone but increasingly are seen in emails.

5. Viruses and spyware.

4. Nigerian scams, again with lots more new twists.

3. Lottery scams. You've won! New ones are appearing from Canada, the Caribbean, inside the US and from the Far East.

2. Economy related scams. We predict huge growth in loan- and credit-related scams, but foreclosure scams may ease slightly as pressure eases on banks. We'll see.

1. Identity theft and phishing. Despite tougher counter-measures, this scam is still way too easy for the criminals.

Currently in Australia a phishing email is doing the rounds which falsely alerts the recipient to an Australian Tax Office refund.
Surprisingly, by last Wednesday morning this scam was not yet posted on the ACCC-managed Scam Watch .

Australians reportedly lost up to a billion dollars in these scams in 2006-07, but what is more worrying is that identity theft is often being used for purely malicious ends in email attacks mounted as 'payback' for some form of personal disagreement.

There is some evidence that emails of this sort may have be sent from the NSW North Coast over the last 6-12 months.

So, if you receive an email with content or language that appears out of character for the named sender:

• First, contact the sender directly (not via email reply link) and attempt to verify the suspect email;
• Secondly, contact the local police if the email is fraudulent as identity theft can be an offence under Australian law if it involves stealing, fraud, forgery, uttering, computer hacking and misuse, or personation.

Art cradled in Casino, NSW

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by
Ronald
Torrens



Bush
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by
Tania
Walker

Windows Error Message # 1984

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Still time to get your entry in for the 2010 Bureau of Meteorology calendar

The Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society's Australian Weather Calendar photography competition for the 2010 calendar will close on 31 March 2009.

Still time for photographer's on the NSW North Coast to send off their favourite lucky weather photo to see if the Northern Rivers can be represented in the next calendar.

This is definitely a for the love of it competition, but lots of fun if you make the final cut.

Entries must have a meteorological theme, such as clouds, thunderstorms, lightning, rainbows or tornadoes.

Entries must be provided initially as photographic prints, at a minimum size of 15x10 cm. Digital pictures must be a minimum size of 5MB uncompressed (about 1700 x 1150 pixels), such as are produced by 2 megapixel cameras. No more than 10 entries per person are permitted.

Entries must be accompanied by a completed entry form that contains details of any and all digital alteration to images.
Photographers must be willing to provide the image in its original format (negative, transparency or digital file) if the picture is shortlisted.

Winning photographers are awarded three complimentary calendars. No prizemoney is offered. All rights associated with the images are retained by the photographer.

Entries must be sent to:

Weather Calendar Competition,
Public Affairs Group,
Bureau of Meteorology,
GPO Box 1289,
MELBOURNE VIC 3001

More information:Telephone (03) 9669 4668, fax: (03) 9669 4113, e-mail: librarypic@bom.gov.au

And you thought is 'twas only Muslims.........

I stumbled across a website yesterday called the Catholic League: for religious and civil rights.

Intriguingly it links to annual reports on anti-Catholicism (up to 2007) and other supposedly anti sentiment - Christmas Wars and The Jewish Community Should Rethink Its Attitude Towards Pius XII.

But what really fascinated me were the cartoons this report objected to in 2007, like the one above.

It seems that it isn't just the Islamic faith which is touchy over caricature and political comment.

And this mob keep a yearly tally!

Bambauer rains on Senator Conroy's parade - download full text of Internet censorship paper

FILTERING IN OZ:

AUSTRALIA'S FORAY INTO INTERNET CENSORSHIP

Derek E. Bambauer*

Abstract

Australia's decision to implement Internet censorship using technological meanscreates a natural experiment: the first Western democracy to mandate filtering legislatively, and to retrofit it to a decentralized network architecture.

But are the proposed restrictions legitimate?

The new restraints derive from the Labor Party'spro-filtering electoral campaign, though coalition government gives minority politicians considerable influence over policy.

The country has a well-defined statutory censorship system for on-line and off-line material that may, however, be undercut by relying on foreign and third-party lists of sites to be blocked.

While Australia is open about its filtering goals, the government's transparency about what content is to be blocked is poor.

Initial tests show that how effective censorship is at filtering prohibited content – and only that content – will vary based on what method the country's ISPs use.

Though Australia's decision makers are formally accountable to citizens, efforts to silence dissenters, outsourcing of blocking decisions, and filtering's inevitable transfer of power to technicians undercut accountability.

The paper argues Australia represents a shift by Western democracies towards legitimating Internet filtering and away from robust consideration of the alternatives available to combat undesirable information.

PDF of draft paper at SSRN

Image from The Sydney Morning Herald