A lesson for Senator Conroy perhaps?

The Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, likes to think that the world is on his side when it comes to the 'rightness' of Internet censorship.

However, the real world has a habit of intruding..................

According to Computerworld: the voice of IT management this week:

The US Supreme Court has refused to resurrect a law requiring Web sites containing "material harmful to minors" to restrict access based on age, presumably ending a 10-year fight over whether the law violated free speech rights.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to hear an appeal by former President George Bush's administration, which asked that the court overturn a lower court's ruling against enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA). In July, the US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit struck down the law, saying it was a vague and overly broad attack on free speech......

Opponents of the law, including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Nerve.com, Salon.com, the Urban Dictionary and the Sexual Health Network, argued the law amounted to government censorship and was so broad that it would affect many Web sites, including those that included information on sexually transmitted diseases.

Opponents of COPA have successfully challenged it in court several times. In 2000, the 3rd Circuit upheld a lower court's injunction against the implementation of the law, and in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the injunction but sent the law back to U.S. district court. In 2003, the 3rd Circuit ruled that the law violated the U.S. Constitution.

Inconvenient facts also keep emerging in Australia...............

According to Crikey on Friday:

"Freedom of speech is fundamentally important in a democratic society and there has never been any suggestion that the Australian Government would seek to block political content," intoned Senator Stephen Conroy on Tuesday.
Yet the very next day, ACMA added a page from what's arguably a political website to its secret blacklist of Internet nasties.
The page is part of an anti-abortion website which claims to include "everything schools, government, and abortion clinics are afraid to tell or show you". Yes, photos of dismembered fetuses designed to scare women out of having an abortion. Before you click through, be warned: it is confronting. Here's the blacklisted page.
Mandatory Internet filtering, says Senator Conroy, is only about blocking the ACMA blacklist. The blacklist, he repeatedly insists, is "mainly" child-abuse and ultra-violent material. He's protecting us from ped-philes, stopping terrorists, that sort of thing. It's like the regulation we have for TV, films and books. Except it's not. It's not even close.

Bundjalung to Brazil

The Northern Rivers Echo last Thursday:

Alstonville High School student Mirryndah Nixon-Anderson’s highest priority while on a 12-month exchange in Brazil is to learn Portuguese and teach her host family some of her own Bundjalung language.
The 16-year-old from Goonellabah leaves for Sao Paulo on Friday where she will live and study for the next year thanks to the Rotary Club of Lismore Central, which is sponsoring the exchange.
As part of the adventure she’ll also go on a 21-day safari in the Amazon and she’s practically jumping out of her skin with anticipation.
“When Rotary rang to offer me the place I ran to tell mum and I was nearly crying I was that excited,” Mirryndah said. “I’ve been counting down every single day – it’s scary but it’s going to be awesome.”
Mirryndah’s dad, a professional Aboriginal dancer with the dance company Descendance, has taught Mirryndah several dances to share with her host family and her aunty Patsy Nagas has given her some paintings to give as presents. She already knows some Bundjalung language and is also looking forward to telling Bundjalung stories and leaving her hosts with a sense of what her own culture is all about.
“I think it’s important to tell them about where I come from because Aboriginal Australia isn’t really a well-known culture overseas,” she said. “I want to share some of that history with them.”

I'm sure everyone wishes Mirryndah the very best as she embarks on the trip of a young lifetime.

Photograph from The Northern River Echo

Turnbull and Joyce: exactly who holds the reins?

Ever since John Howard stirred the possum in a classic piece of political mischief, by encouraging the Queensland Liberal National Party's Senator Barnaby Joyce to consider moving from the federal upper house to the lower house, it has been interesting to watch the bull ants scurry about the disturbed nest.

According to The Australian:
"SENIOR Nationals have hatched a plan to breach the constitution of Queensland's Liberal National Party to ensure that a National takes the Senate spot of Barnaby Joyce if he shifts to the House of Representatives.
The move has shaken the Liberal Party, which is guaranteed the spot under the LNP constitution if it is vacated, and threatens to split the recently formed LNP in the run-up to a state election.
Liberal sources said federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull had told the LNP leadership through intermediaries that the plan was unacceptable to him and to the Liberal Party.
Mr Turnbull declined to comment yesterday."

It's all rather amusing when you consider that Joyce and other Queensland LNP pollies are now members of the Queensland branch of the Liberal Party of Australia and up to six of these MPs have a right to sit in the Liberal Party Room according to Senator Mitch Fifield in his recent Finding Our Way Back speech to the Young Liberals.

Indeed Fifield was quite blunt about the type of dilemma that Turnbull now finds himself in:
"The simple fact is if we are not in Coalition, we can’t win. We won’t win. If we are not in Coalition at the next election we may as well not bother turning up. 1987 is a case in point, where the coalition split caused by the Joh for PM push cost John Howard any chance of victory."

Yep, a divorce at this stage will cost the Libs any chance at either gaining power at this year's Queensland election or the 2010 federal election.
Mal needs to take it like a man, because the Nats appear to have the upper hand for now and they know it.

What on earth was eBay's Australian management thinking?

I know that eBay is now an extremely large online business with a high traffic volume, but nothing excuses finding this posted on its Australian website this week.

One is never permitted to mention a chappie called [redacted] who employs Pakistani slave labour to churn out shockingly putrid copies of early [redacted]. We are not permitted to ever mention his trade name which ends with [redacted] or his second personal name which approximates the Brand Name of Australia's leading Lawn Mower which is a Beauty of a Mulching Beast called a [redacted]. Off limits too is any reference to his well known past time of grooming young lads on the internet by sending them unsolicited gifts - junk which some poor Pakistani labourer has spent a day making for 4 or 5 rupees. He is not only protected by the Storm Troopers of the Gulag Much Vaunted Safety Division here at the Bay but also by the FBI who despatch IC3 agents all over the world whenever he sqeaks or squeals ............

The fact that eBay Australia does little to rein in this serial offender against good taste and good manners speaks volumes for its obviously lackadaisical attitude towards the company's wide pool of clients and their customers.

Makes one think twice about buying or selling on this site which appears to have a high tolerance for inappropriate and splenetic posts.

A Sunday meander through Northern Rivers art

Rock Pools At Brooms Head by Steven Giese
A Dog's Tale by Julie Hutchings
A Native Waterlily by Debrah Novak

All three artists exhibit at Arthouse Australia, Yamba NSW

Taylor makes yet another mark after Twenty20 Final

Mark (Tubby) Taylor, former Australian XI captain and now Cricket Australia board member made a proper goose of himself at the awards presentation after the Twenty20 Big Bash Final at Sydney's ANZ stadium on Saturday night.

NSW won the match by one one run, thanks to a bye from the last ball of the match.

Victoria batted first and scored 4/166. Opener Rob Quiney scoring a fantastic 91 off 56 balls while recent Test debutant Andrew McDonald hit 30 runs off 29 balls.

NSW's best bowler was Aaron Bird who finished with 3/21 off his 4 overs.

The NSW side incuded the Kiwi ring-in Brendon McCullum who managed to score just 10 off 11 balls.

Although it was a pyjama cricket match, this game produced the goods for players and spectators - it went down to the last ball.

However, the lowlight of the day/evening was Taylor's "gem".

Taylor, whose public speaking skills are not his greatest asset, took to the microphone and announced that the player who made a fantastic contribution for Victoria (Quiney) was not the recipient of the award.

The TV audience sitting comfortably in their lounges at home heard Taylor's words quite clearly, but poor unfortunate Quiney and his Victorian team mates didn't.

Quiney, thinking he'd been announced as the winner of the award, headed off in the direction of Taylor but then Taylor announced that NSW player Ben Rohrer, who hit 44 off 20 balls and steered NSW to victory was the player of the match.

It makes one wonder how often Channel 9 has to hit the idiot button to ensure that idiotic remarks made by Taylor don't go to air. This writer reckons the controller/s of the idiot button must work overtime.

See the match scoreboard here.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Bill Leak for his pic of Tubby (above) ... www.portrait.gov.au

Has President Obama given an undertaking that his new administration will discourage any move against the architects of the Iraq War?

The US Department of Justice website lists all presidential pardons and commutations granted by George W. Bush up to March 2008.

Since then it has released media notification of the granting of least 34 other pardons - 14 in November 2008, 19 in December 2008 and 2 in January 2009.

Now it would be hard to word any pardon for the human rights violations and alleged war crimes committed by the former president, members of the Bush Administration and/or their agents, because George Bush appears to have quashed or suspended many of the US federal legal provisions which recognised or protected against such violations.

However, this does not make the former Bush Administration fire proof and so one is left to wonder if the new US President, Barack Obama, has given the past president an undertaking that neither he or his administration would assist in any international or domestic investigation of these individuals and would resist calls for their prosecution.

I would like to know the answer to that query as would a number of others.