It's cyber warfare when government advocates it and left-wing extremism when dissidents use it

In early 2009 President Obama ordered a review of U.S. cyber security.

When the U.S. begins to openly discuss a cyber warfare command it is seen as a legitimate weapon in the arsenal, albeit allegedly for defence.
Cyber assault is also seen by governments around the world as a legitimate vehicle for espionage.

However, when the U.S. canvasses what non-government agency or individual might use cyber attack to achieve a political aim, then it's all about the left wing and hacktivism according to a U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security report.

Not only is it about the left-wing; it's about particular types of so-called left extremists - anarchists, environmentalists and animal rightists.

And among these three groups, singled out for particular mention are anti-logging protestors and anti-GM activists because loggers and farmers use IT technology now.

I'm sure many who oppose old forest logging or the introduction of GM crops to Australia will be amused to find that the U.S. Government considers them extremists and a threat if they happen to own a computer.

However, what is really amusing is the thought that no-one at Homeland Security appears to believe that the right-wing is computer literate enough to mount increasing numbers of cyber attacks over the next decade.

Five views of Obama's first 100 days

The Wall Street Journal:

Just as the times of Barack Obama defy the easy descriptions and old labels, so too does the man himself.
Indeed, if the first 100 days of President Obama's term have proved anything, it is that he is a hard man to classify. He has confounded, at one time or another, people at just about every spot across the political spectrum. He likes big and activist government, but he isn't a classic liberal. He is more of a social engineer than a guardian of the old welfare state.
He's phenomenally popular among Democrats, but has found the most support for some of his foreign-policy moves among Republicans. He's pulling combat troops out of Iraq, but more slowly than he once promised -- and at the same time has laid plans to add more troops in Afghanistan than the Bush administration envisioned.
Asked whether there is yet a discernible Obama doctrine in foreign affairs, a longtime national security operative pauses and responds: "If there is a doctrine, it would have to be engagement." Which is more a tactic than a doctrine.
He sometimes sounds like a protectionist, but so far has acted mostly like a free-trader. He talks a lot about fiscal discipline, yet is overseeing the nation's first trillion-dollar deficits. He's made history as America's first African-American president, yet probably talks less about race than did the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

From Fact Check:

After 100 days in office, we find President Obama is sticking to the facts – mostly.

Nevertheless, we find that the president has occasionally made claims that put him and his policies in a better light than the facts warrant. He has claimed that private economists agreed with the forecast in his budget, when they were really more pessimistic. He's used Bush-like budget-speak trying to sound frugal while raising spending to previously unimagined levels. And he has exaggerated the problems his proposals aim to cure by misstating facts about school drop-out rates and oil imports.

At the same time, there's been no shortage of dubious claims made about the president by his political opponents. Republicans have falsely claimed that Obama planned to spend billions on a levitating train and that his stimulus bill would require doctors to follow government orders on what medical treatments can and can't be prescribed, among other nonsense.

And those whoppers are mild compared with some of the positively deranged claims flying about the Internet. No, the national service bill Obama signed won't prevent anybody from going to church, for example. And no, he's not trying to send Social Security checks to illegal immigrants.

Market Watch from Dow Jones:

President Barack Obama reaches the 100 days milestone "more popular than his policies," says MarketWatch reporter Robert Schroeder. And it's a mixed milestone, with some major accomplishments, but a lot of uncertainty about the next 100 days and beyond. "He can point to several things such as the stimulus, children's health insurance, the plans to withdraw from Iraq," says Schroeder. "But there are still lots of people out there in the country, including many who voted for him, who are still unemployed, anxious."

From the Centre for Public Integrity:

From his first day in office, President Obama has spoken about transparency in government. He has added the word accountability to many of the initiatives of his administration. There is indeed a better sense of openness in government that we can all applaud. The Center is happy to have faster responses to our Freedom of Information Requests. However, even as we mark the President's first 100 days in office, the Center for Public Integrity is only too well aware of the many ways that government still misses opportunities for even greater transparency and accountability in the public interest. Our mission and our work remain the same, to make institutional power more transparent and accountable through our original investigative journalism.

The best example of what this means is our recent investigative work: digging into the Climate Lobby funneling money to the Congress and the so-called "Clean Coal" campaign; uncovering the home appraisal bubble pushed by lenders; and revealing the steep drop in Pentagon fraud and corruption cases while the number of federal contracts to private industry soared.

The Sydney Morning Herald:

As the economy has worsened in the first three months of this year and credit markets remain sclerotic, complaints are growing from Wall Street to Washington that Obama is doing too much, spreading himself too thin.
Almost in the same breath, though, there has been criticism that he has ducked hard decisions, such as postponing a commission on the social security system in the face of Democrat opposition, or not pushing ahead with a ban on assault weapons after another spate of mass shootings.
The New York Times wrote this week: "His early willingness to deal or fold has left commentators, and some loyal Democrats, wondering: where's the fight?"
"The thing we still don't know about him is what he is willing to fight for," Leonard Burman, an economist at the Urban Institute, and a Treasury department official in the Clinton administration, was quoted as saying. "It's hard to think of a place where he's taken a really hard position."

Rudd is Obama's bitch

If I held any remnant hope that a change in government meant Australia's foreign policy was no longer dictated by Washington, that fell away yesterday when Kevin Rudd announced that he would be sending more Aussie soldiers to the US & NATO alliance war in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
When Rudd fronted the cameras to tell us he was sending more troops into harm's way he mentioned the US President by name at least 5 times.
And don't think it wasn't noticed that this announcement was timed to take advantage of whatever nationalistic sentiments were still in the air after ANZAC Day.

The hunt is on for 1.2 million 'missing' Australian voters

There are over 1.2 million people in the Australian population who are eligible to vote but who haven't registered with the Australian Electoral Commission according to a recent media release.

Electoral Commissioner, Ed Killesteyn said the AEC was stepping up its efforts to find these missing Australians and encourage them to enrol to vote.
"We are currently sending over 550,000 personally addressed letters across the country to where we think these Australians—about half of those missing from the electoral roll—might be living.
The mail-out package will include an enrolment form and reply paid envelope.

I will be interested to see how this drive to find these 'missing' voters turns out.

Because I can't help wondering just how many are phantoms created by incorrectly spelt names being originally entered into government digital databases.

I once had a digital shadow because one letter was left off my name during an AEC update of the rolls and this caused me no end of problems at the polling booth until it was sorted.

Who reads Bolt and Blair anyway? An update

I've often wondered who actually reads Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair's MSM blogs.

It seems I'm not alone in this as it is mentioned from time to time in the blogosphere.

Google Trends cannot give a definitive answer, but it most usefully supplied this short profile of who visits News.com.au websites in 2009.

It is likely that those who read Murdoch's online newspapers mostly hail from Australia and America, favour the Herald-Sun, are sports fans and look up telephone numbers on the Internet.

Not the same profile as those visiting the Prime Minister's official website , the Australian Financial Review online, Crikey's website, the Club Troppo blog or even visitors to local newspaper the Northern Star .

Byron Shire Echo finds itself kissed by the pawn fairy?

Smack bang in the middle of a Byron Shire Echo article on 21st April 2009 about an upcoming event involving school children came this little line.

I'm still wondering what it's all about.
What one earth is mention of an American site like this doing on a free online newspaper?
Will the Byron Shire Echo be the first NSW North Coast newspaper to make it onto Conroy's URL blacklist? {smiling evilly}

Update:
The Byron Shire Echo's woes continue.
I'm told that visitors to its website on 6 May 2009 found that they had been diverted to yet another p#rn site and a video involving a group grope.

South Park's ignorance of Australian politics only refects the rest of the world

There have been a number of mentions of a recent episode of the animated comedy South Park which depicted the Australian Prime Minister as John Howard instead of Kevin Rudd.

I honestly don't think the issue rates much attention, because it only reflects the real level of the world's knowledge of Australia and this lack of depth has been well-known for years.

Kevin Rudd and Labor coming to power in 2007 may have created a wave of interest across the nation but in general the world shrugged, yawned and rolled over.

Here are Google Trends for the terms Kevin Rudd and Prime Minister Rudd (January 2007 to date) showing the spatial distribution of Internet searches using that search engine.

"kevin rudd"

"prime minister rudd"

It is evident that only in Australia is there enough interest in Kevin Rudd to drive high volume search traffic.

If anyone thought otherwise then they have been reading too much into national mainstream media reports since Kevin 07 and his team contested the last federal election.