The Daily Examiner continues to go downhill

The Daily Examiner continues to go downhill in its 150th year.
Which is a bit hard to do when you are in the middle of a rather flat Clarence Valley flood plain, but this newspaper is managing the feat.
Tabloid headlines, advertorials, articles which are nothing more than vehicles for product placement, pages in the first half of an issue which are so chocka with paid advertising that it is easy to miss the single news item - and now changes to its website which mean that local news is crowded out by interstate (dominated by Queensland) and international news.
These days if you want Northern Rivers news online then you'd be wise to link to anywhere other than APN newspapers.
It's no wonder that the Far North Coaster online magazine is becoming a popular read.
It fills a niche which Northern Rivers newspapers have obviously abandoned.

A heart as big as Phar Lap's........... brave, beautiful... a hero [ASTI communities please note that this post mentions someone who has passed away]

An important leader in the Yamba Aboriginal community, in northern New South Wales, has died.

Christine Ferguson, 52, died a week ago.

She was the chief executive officer of the Birrigan Gargle Land Council.

The chairwoman of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, Bev Manton, says she was a pioneer in the fight for justice.

"Christine's been involved with the lands rights network since its inception and I guess she has kind of grown up with that political background and fighting for the rights of her people," she said.

"She was just one of those lovely people who could negotiate and not be aggressive about it, but still be forceful and obtain the results that were required."

Christine Ferguson is survived by her son Jason and three granddaughters. She was also guardian to a young boy. (Indigenous Community News Network)

The authors of North Coast Voices will miss her friendship and, along with the rest of the Clarence Valley and the Northern Rivers region, mourn her passing.

** Post title is composed of excerpts from the many eulogies at the funeral service on Friday 27 March 2009 in Maclean, NSW.

What bird is that? Channel 7 finds out the hard way

This week an item on efforts to rid the North Coast of the Indian Mynah, an introduced species, hit a hiccup when Channel 7 Prime News showed the wrong photo of the feathered miscreant.
See if you can spot the difference (besides species, height, body shape and weight, plumage).
Yes - one is a noxious pest and the other a protected native species. Oh, dear. Apologies all round from Channel 7.















TOP: Indian Mynah
BOTTOM: Masked Lapwing Plover

North Coast Area Health Service "stealing from your child's Christmas account": Steve Cansdell

It's not often I find myself in agreement with the NSW Nationals MP for Clarence Steve Candsell, but when he likened the North Coast Area Health Service's fund transfers - from special purpose and trust funds holding money raised by the community for specific hospital services - as being like "stealing from your child's Christmas account" he was spot on. (Clarence Valley Review on 18th March 2009)
The fact that the NSW Auditor General has called for a formal review of how the NCAHC is handling these funds is little comfort for the region.
The health service has been sprung doing this before and will do it again, because the sad fact is that overall lack of adequate health funding plus slapdash management has meant that public health services on the NSW North Coast are operating on a wing and a prayer.
The situation makes the Rees Government's talk of a billion dollar upgrade for the Sydney Opera House look heedless and heartless.

Initial response to Conroy's response to Q&A

Senator Stephen Conroy's appearance on ABC TV Q & A program last night was either a masterstroke of political obfuscation or a demonstration of just how little understanding the Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy has of his own portfolio.

Conroy was given ample opportunity to put the case for national mandatory ISP-level filtering.

In the course of doing so he inadvertently made a few matters abundantly clear:

• Lists of banned URLs compiled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) are open to human error.
• These errors can and do exist for sometime before being corrected.
• The owners of banned URLs are not made aware that they are on any blacklist.
• Once on the blacklist it is unlikely that a banned site will be removed, even if the offending material is removed from the website in question.
• The official ACMA blacklist contains more than just content that has been refused classification or is unlawful under Australian legislation.
• The blacklist can and does contain political content, using a commonsense definition of the term political.
• The ACMA list of banned URLs is not monitored by an independent agency and has little or no ministerial or parliamentary oversight.
• On their own initiative ISPs are capable of further expanding the blacklist provided to them by ACMA. Such expansion is not monitored by the Department of Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy.

Unfortunately Senator Conroy made something else abundantly clear.
He is willing to tell a great many glib half-truths to the electorate in an effort to defend the Rudd-Conroy plan to censor the Australian Internet.

Q & A espisode for Thursday 26 March:
download episode WMV MP4 (average size 200MB)

What the blogosphere is saying this month about the Rudd-Conroy plan to censor the Australian Internet

First up, ACMA is already using its soon-to-be executive muscle to bully Australian-hosted websites into not linking to sites on its 'blacklist'. One of the sites disbarred — among many others — is a perfectly legitimate anti-abortion site that at worst could be described as 'cheesy'. ACMA's bullying is on the pricy side, too — AUD$11,000 a pop. The blacklist (as you would expect) has been leaked, while Conroy himself is now planning to 'monitor blogs'. Quite apart from the egregiousness of this exercise in censorship, it is important to realise that Ruddy is trying to bypass parliament with this stuff, so that they don't have to deal with that pesky Senate (Xenophon and the Greens as well as the Opposition in this case). Government by executive order, anyone? Skepticlawyer 23 March 2009

Is Conroy a fundy? Will this site be on his list 'cause we all know that you can't be good without religion. *Palm/Head*
You don't have to look online for sexual predators, look no further than your local church. Atheist Nexus 21 March 2009

Stephen Conroy is a Cnut 21 March 2009

STEVE CONROY BELONGS ON THE BACK BENCH AND FAILING BEING ABLE TO GET THAT RIGHT, MAY POSSIBLY FIND PURPOSE AND MEANING AS A DOOR STOP. Thinkers Podium 23 March 2009

It was only a matter of time, but it's finally happened. The DBCDE has alienated enough of its private sector partners that one of them has leaked the blacklist. Websinthe 19 March 2009

Apparently, Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is wetting his bed over the thought that his fellow Australians might think somewhat less of him for so enthusiastically promoting the idea of an Internet filter. Kerplunk 23 March 2009

Guys, we're in trouble.
My assistant was reading the internet to me this morning, and do you know what she said? She said that the average punter doesn't think the filter is going to work. We're spending a couple of hundred million dollars on this thing! If John and Jane Easy-to-Scare think we're wasting money in the middle of the GFC, we're f##ked, okay? F##ked.
We've got to get these shmucks back on-side.
Leaking the list was a good start. Lots of scary-sounding websites, "violent"-this, and "rape"-that, and whoever came up with the dentist? Genius. That is the kind of attention-to-detail that makes me proud to be part of this shadowy conspiracy. People are scared of the dentist; visits are painful and expensive and wasn't someone raped at a dentist once? Why, it's almost as if "false-positives" in the list are a good thing! Nicely done.
In 1960, I bet if you told an American that men would walk on the moon, they'd have said you were crazy, then robbed you at gunpoint. But as soon as the Americans faked that moon landing, all those doubting pieholes became true believers.
I want you guys to find out what can we learn from the American experience, and how we might apply those learnings to the trial. I want it on my desk by the end of the day.
Look, we're doing good work. The Lord's work. We can't allow these Mountain Dew-sucking deviants to keep running circles around us. Get your shit together, get me some answers, then get me a latte and a mini-muffin.
Lots of love,
Fake Stephen Conroy Department of the Internets 20 March 2009 [apologies to the fake Stephen Conroy but obscenities are masked because existing voluntary filters being used by some ISPs make North Coast Voices emailing posts option difficult to use successfully otherwise]

Here's a summary of the views of many in the real and virtual world. Senior nanny Conroy is a dipstick, an unresponsive loon, an ill-mannered and unpleasant smear tactician, an intellectual thuggee, and a morally derelict moralist dedicated to calling opponents of his oppressive, inept, useless and futile proposed filtering regime supporters of paedophilia.

Never has one man so singlehandedly struggled to institute a policy reviled by so many without actually listening to anything anyone was telling him, for reasons that have to remain inexplicable and mysterious, even when far-fetched notions that he belongs to Opus Dei or just wants to suck up to Steve Fielding are trotted out.

He's no more capable of sophisticated policy analysis of the new world of the intertubes, new media and new digital content than a Balmain member of the Labor party armed with a hammer and a baseball bat. If it's a nail, bash it with the baseball bat. If it's the intertubes, hit it with the hammer. The Michael Duffy Files 23 March 2009

Senator Conroy has a lot to answer for. Between trying to destroy filter the internet and keeping the whole NBN process clouded in secrecy (so nobody can criticise his handling of it, we suppose), there are a lot of arguments and issues that the Minister needs to answer for. And considering he's going to be a guest on the ABC's Q&A program next Thursday, this could be our chance to ask him the tough questions.

So, this is a call to arms. All of you Gizmodians who are interested in asking why Senator Conroy has so badly mishandled everything he's touched so far should head over to the Q&A website and ask their questions. Melbourne readers should also try and get into the audience for the show. And everyone make sure you watch Q&A next Thursday to watch just how Conroy responds to the difficult questions. Gizmodo 20 March 2009

...Conroy's filter proposal represents the greatest assault on free speech and an open society in the country's history. By its very nature, it is categorical and self-concealing, far beyond the sleazy and capricious "sedition" laws of the Howard government. For the left and the libertarian right it has to be recognised not only as an utter priority, but as the point on which a political realignment occurs. Crikey 19 March 2009

It is disappointing that the Communications Minister's department, and the Age, are so ignorant that they think Whirlpool is a blog. Whirlpool discussion forum 22 March 2009

It's almost MadiGrass time. Come on down, Barack!

One of the oldest annual peaceful protests in Australia takes place on the NSW North Coast every year.
Yep, it's almost MadiGrass time again at Nimbin.
Time for all those old counter-culture warriors to dust off their good duds and march 'n' party for an end to Aussie prohibition of Teh Weed.

This year's poster fair cracked me up.

It's a good bet that U.S. President Barack Obama never thought he would feature at this rally.