Your personal privacy and Australian politicians' get-out-of-gaol-free card

It is well-known that browsing the Internet often brings down unwelcome types of cookies onto a personal computer. However, one does not always think of this possibility when clicking onto politicians’ websites.

The Sydney Morning Herald reminds us:

Politicians are letting foreign-owned companies covertly gather information about voters.

The websites of Barry O'Farrell, Kristina Keneally, Tony Abbott and the Greens plant spying devices on visitors' computers, which can track them as they browse the internet.

Information gathered about a user's online behaviour can be used to build detailed profiles to help target advertisements - a practice many believe is a threat to privacy.

Online tracking is done mainly by cookies (text files) and beacons (invisible images)…….

The devices allow a third-party company to see which elements of a page the user has clicked on, potentially identifying information held in the URL, such as an email address.

A tracking device, owned by Yahoo! and dated to expire in 2037, was planted on this website's test computer when visiting the website of the federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.

The site of the Premier, Kristina Keneally, placed devices owned by ShareThis, a company that collects information about online habits.

All four websites planted YouTube cookies, even though this website's computer did not play any videos.”……

The websites of Ms Keneally, Mr Abbott and the Greens also planted flash cookies which can hold more data than standard cookies. They also have no expiration date and are stored on an external server, which makes them difficult for users to detect or delete…….

The Australian Privacy Commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim, said aggregated data might enable identification of individuals.

Now at the time of writing the stated privacy policies of Tony Abbott, Kristina Keneally and Barry O’Farrell did not spell out the extent of information gathering they were allowing on their websites.

Perhaps it’s time they did – even if a loophole in the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 apparently allows the collection and compilation of digital and tracking data on the grounds that Members of Parliament, local government councillors and their respective contractors and sub-contractors (as well as political party volunteers) are exempt from this act’s provisions when participating in the political process.

Privacy protection is obviously a one-way street in this country and internet users are playing in the path of oncoming traffic.

Murray Darling Basin Plan brings the loons down from the hills

I can almost feel sorry for those small irrigation cockies who face the prospect of having the national water nipple plucked from their gaping mouths and really try to tolerate their irrational rants against the coming Murray Darling Basin Plan.
However, if ever I needed proof that conspiracy theories aren't just the province of the American far-right then this media release from the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia provides ample proof.
Read and enjoy this particular absurdity:

Media Release 9th of November 2010
Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 03 9354 0544 Fax: 03 9354 0166
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au

Isherwood: Murray-Darling is another British imperial land-clearance; i.e. genocide

In an emergency address to the nation, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood charged that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s Basin Plan to shut down Australia’s food bowl was part of the British Empire’s drive to slash the world’s population down to only two billion or fewer people from its present almost 7 billion, using a characteristic tool of British imperialism—“land clearances”, which the British historically deployed to genocidal effect against Ireland, Scotland and more recently sub-Saharan Africa.

Click here to view Craig’s national address, delivered in Brisbane on 6th November.

Craig exposed that the British Crown, through Prince Philip’s World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), established in 1961 to reduce global population under the cover of “saving Nature”, has directed every aspect of the process that has culminated in the MDBA Plan:

• The John Howard-led Coalition government passed the Water Act 2007 not for any ostensible domestic reason, but in slavish fealty to the diktats of the 1971 Ramsar International Convention on Wetlands, which was written by the WWF, in particular by longtime Ramsar chief, Dr Luc Hoffmann, who has been a director of Prince Philip’s World Wildlife Fund since 1963; to this day, the WWF is the major Partner Organisation of Ramsar.
• Prince Philip personally founded the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) in 1963 as an arm of his WWF, and it is the ACF, together with the WWF-founded and bankrolled Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists [sic], that have spearheaded the years of lobbying and PR to shut down the basin’s agriculture, in accordance with the Prince’s expressed creed, “You cannot keep a bigger flock of sheep than you are capable of feeding. In other words conservation may involve culling in order to keep a balance between the relative numbers in each species within any particular habitat. I realise this is a very touchy subject, but the fact remains that mankind is part of the living world. … Every new acre brought into cultivation means another acre denied to wild species.” [emphasis added]
• Given the intense opposition to shutting down Australia’s food bowl, Prince Philip has sent in Ian Sinclair, a longtime member of his Privy Council—the official ruling body of the British Empire—to chair the token consultation meetings, to ram through the WWF/Ramsar policy on “wetlands”.
• Craig detailed three historical examples of this British imperial policy of “land clearance” now being applied in the Murray-Darling Basin, in which entire peoples are simply forced off the land in pursuit of British imperial goals, foremost of which is “population control”:
• Ireland, especially in the 17th and 19th Centuries, which the British sought to “replant” with Englishmen of “superior breed”, by confiscating 80 per cent of arable land, extracting almost all the food—except potatoes—as “rent”, and killing millions of Irish in the process.
• The Scottish Highland land clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, when hundreds of thousands of Gaelic-speaking Scots were forcibly-evicted from their homes in the Scottish Highlands by English and Scottish aristocrats—the British oligarchy—to either perish, to move to narrow strips of poor land along the coast, or to emigrate to North America, Australia and New Zealand, where to this day live far more descendents of Scottish Highlanders than in Scotland.
• The post-1961 genocide of sub-Saharan Africa by Prince Philip’s WWF, which financed the sequestering of vast swathes of the African continent as “nature preserves”, for which, in British East and south-central Africa, evictions on a scale far larger than the Highland Clearances were carried out. Entire tribes were forced from their traditional homes, to the point that already by the late 1960s, 20 per cent of the land of many African states which had supposedly been given “independence” by the Crown, had in fact passed under permanent supranational control as “wildlife parks” and “nature preserves”, and the process has greatly expanded since. The WWF was involved in the mass-murder of Africans using ex-British SAS mercenaries, agent-provocateur operations which killed thousands in South Africa, and providing staging points under the cover of nature preserves for attacks on nations, including the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Craig blasted the mentality of Australian victims, who protest against the oppressive and genocidal free trade and/or green policies that destroy their livelihoods, and which are destroying their very nation, but refuse to look at, and thus fight, the British Crown source of those policies, and its imperial system, based on a genocidal hatred of nation-states, and human beings.

Memo from Joe: Having f*cked up the party and government I now depart

Photo from The Daily Telegraph on 11th July 2010

It's now set in concrete - NSW Labor powerbroker the Hon. Joseph Guerino Tripodi will not contest the March 2011 election in the seat of Fairfield.
Having played a major part in crippling the Iemma, Rees and Keneally Governments he now retires with a decent superannuation payout after 16 years of political knife-wielding.
There are now so many sitting NSW Labor MPs announcing cut and runs (15 at the last count) that there will be no-one left to turn out the lights the night before next year's poll.

Eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month: Lest We Forget

Lest We Forget
Field of poppies in France

A shooting range proposed for Yamba?

It seems Yamba's Golf and Country Club is moving to have a shooting range added to the facilities available for its members and guests.

This week's Putts & Pars (golf news and results in The Daily Examiner) included a piece contributed by the regular correspondent from YG&CC, Bill Williams.

Bill went to some length to report on the extent to which the recent deluge impacted on the club. He opened with a remark that black cockatoos were sighted in the area late on Wednesday - a portent that things were not looking good in coming days and wet weather was to be expected. And of course, the warning signs were spot on - the heavens opened up on schedule - and afternoon players in Thursday's golf competition finished with wet tails/tales.

But, Bill's report contained an even more serious piece. "The club is concerned that a number of golfers have been hit with golf balls this year. Just recently there were two incidents. The first resulted in a serious injury and the other required hospital treatment."

Bill requested (quite appropriately) all members, for their own good, to reduce accidents by not putting themselves in a position which makes them vulnerable and not hitting when players are still in range. Bill then proceeded to make further requests of players to take various steps to prevent injury to fellow players.

However, Bill's piece contained a real sting in its tail. Bill concluded, "Players not abiding by these requests will be shot."

Shot? Did I read that correctly? Hey, Bill, isn't that taking things a wee bit too far?

If the club is deadly serious and intends implementing such drastic action surely it will do the proper thing and
lodge a development application with Clarence Valley Council to have a new shooting range constructed on its grounds.

And GMOs march on and on.......

For those concerned about the prevalence of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in Australian crops, there is now an online global register of contamination events.

This GM Contamination Register is the first of its kind in the world.

Genetically modified crops were first commercially grown on a wide scale in 1996. But, there has always been concern about their effects on both health and the environment. A specific concern has been that once released, it would not be possible to contain or control these organisms yet there is no global monitoring system.

Because of this failure of national and international agencies, GeneWatch UK and Greenpeace International launched this joint initiative in 2005 to record all incidents of contamination arising from the intentional or accidental release of genetically modified (GM) organisms (which are also known as genetically engineered (GE) organisms).

It also includes illegal plantings of GM crops and the negative agricultural side-effects that have been reported. Only those incidents which have been publically documented are recorded here. There may be others that are, as yet, undetected.

This site is intended to be a resource for individuals, public interest groups and governments. The register can be searched to see where, when and how contamination has taken place. It includes information about, and links to, sources and the GeneWatch UK and Greenpeace web sites as well as other useful sites.

If you would like to know when incidents are added to the GM Contamination Register, send an email to:
info at gmcontaminationregister.org (replacing 'at' with the @ sign) with 'UPDATE' in the subject line.

Here is an Australian example:

* In June 2000, Monsanto reported to the Australian authorities that in May, approximately 57.6 tonnes of Roundup Ready GM cotton seed from field trials were ginned at three gins in Queensland without segregation and identity preservation. This constituted between 4.5 and 9.1% of all cotton seed ginned on that day at the designated gins.
As a result of the lack of segregation and identity preservation, the Roundup Ready cotton seed was mixed with non-Roundup Ready cotton seed. The mixing meant there was no possible means to track the exact fate (export, animal feed or crushing) of the Roundup Ready cotton seed. Sale of whole seed to the domestic market as animal feed is in contravention of Australia’s GMAC’s advice. The seed was not packaged and secured, therefore seed escape was possible.

This is the current list for Australia:

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Australia - 15 kgs of Monsanto's GM cotton seed was spilled during transport >> more

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Australia - an unapproved variety of GM cotton was found in GM Roundup Ready cotton seed >> more

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Australia - contaminated oilseed rape seed imported from US >> more

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Australia - unapproved GM cotton (grown in a field trial) was mixed with non-GM and approved varieties of GM cotton after harvest >> more

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Australia - wheat exports bound for Columbia contaminated with GM maize >> more

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Australia – contamination of oilseed rape exports by unapproved GM variety >> more

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Australia – farmer’s conventional oilseed rape crop contaminated with GM >> more

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Australia – first field resistance to Bt toxins recorded >> more

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Australia – oilseed rape trials contaminated with GM >> more

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The Australian Government Office of the Gene Technology Regulator can be found here.

WDCS International asks: Will you take a few seconds to be part of conservation history?

The time to act is now!

Global plea on behalf of Australia's diverse marine life sent out 9 November 2010

Largest Conservation Decision In Australian History Hangs In The Balance. HELP MAKE HISTORY - PLEASE ACT NOW! Dear Friend Within weeks the Australian government will make a key decision in creating the largest network of marine protected areas in the world, but it hangs in the balance. We need to you to help persuade them to make the right decision. At stake is critical habitat for more than 50% of the world’s species of whales and dolphins and Australians are calling out for international help in making sure this decision goes the right way. Click here to send an email to The Hon Tony Burke MP, Minister for the Environment. Your email could make all the difference. Australia has one of the largest marine territories in the world. A huge variety of fish, sharks, whales and seals live in the continent’s spectacular submerged mountain ranges, deep sea canyons and reefs. These waters provide refuge for the magnificent blue, humpback, and southern right whales, as well as bottlenose, spotted and striped dolphins, to name a few. However, right now they are unprotected, and with oil and fishing industries undermining moves to increase protection, the international community needs to take what action it can. The Government will make its first major decision for the western region within weeks, and the decision will set the standard of protection that will then be applied to the rest of Australia’s waters for the next 10 to 20 years. This protection can't come soon enough. Be part of a historic decision! Please send an email today. - it will only take you a few seconds and could make a world of difference for whales and dolphins. Thank you Chris Butler-Stroud WDCS Chief Executive The spectacular biodiversity of Australia's waters. (c) Andrew Halsall, courtesy SOML Hundreds of dolphins are killed in nets in Australia's waters every year. (c) Greenpeace AP HELP US MAKE HISTORY! Send an e-mail now to the Australian Minister for the Environment.