Wednesday 27 January 2010

Placing those climate change denialists into perspective


Information Is Beautiful attempts to visulise those oft cited numbers used to support anti-global warming claims.


Click on images to enlarge

Tuesday 26 January 2010

26 January 2010 is also a day we celebrate........


.......the courage and resilience of those original Australians, the Aboriginal communities across this nation.

A thought on Australia Day 2010: 'according to local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not shown'


The Great Rudd screenshot found at The Orstrahyun


据当地法律法规和政策,部分搜索结果未予显示。
According to local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not shown.

This is the current legend at the bottom of a Google China search result page due to that country's mandatory national Internet censorship.

This is also the information Australians may see at the bottom of a Google Australia, Yahoo! or Bing search result page sometime after Australia Day 2011 if the Rudd Government insists on censoring the Australian Internet.

The Scot and A Currency Lad battle it out over Teh Republic


There is nothing like a uninformed argument over constitutional monarchy versus republic and it was played out again in the letters column of The Daily Examiner on 23 January 2010 between a Scots-born Aussie letter writer and a Currency Lad deputy editor.
Yawn..............

The crown

SUBJECT: Throwing in the crown. I do not think that the editorial by Mr Carroll in the DEX edition of January 20 served his newspaper well. A referendum on the subject of Australia becoming a republic was held just a few years ago. The case for a republic was led by Malcolm Turnbull and failed at the ballot box. I wonder if Mr Carroll seriously considered why this should be.
Was he aware that the most stable countries in the world are constitutional monarchies and that most of the world's refugees are escaping from republics controlled by despots and the like.
A lot of those people have found sanctuary in this country and many more wish they were here.
Leave the subject alone Mr Carroll. It will resolve itself in time and is deserving of more than your immature and vain comments in the editor's column.

THOMAS MACINDOE, Yamba.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The referendum was held more than 10 years ago, and not 'a few' as you suggest in your missive. Times have changed, Thomas. Yes, the case for a republic was led ineptly - by Malcolm Turnbull. The republicans were divided over the proposed republican model - and the rest, as they say, is history. As most would agree, the referendum should never have been about the proposed model. Thomas, are you seriously suggesting Australia would descend into anarchy without the guiding influence of Queen Elizabeth? Rot. -Adam Carroll.

Monday 25 January 2010

The Iraq Inquiry: so what did the then Australian PM John Howard know and when did he know it?


The Brown Labor Government has convened an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the unlawful invasion of Iraq by Britain (as part the Coalition of the Willing) and lack of evidence supporting the reasons given for going to war.

This coalition included Australia, but thus far former Prime Minister John Howard and his Cabinet are escaping scrutiny at home, with the exception of an October 2003 censure motion passed by the Senate.

Perhaps the Chicot-led inquiry (which is still conducting public hearings through 2010) will give some indication as to Howard's role in staging the invasion, given he was so publicly proud of this role and his association with then British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush on 28 March 2003:

Howard of course picked up the ball and enthusiastically ran with it without too much urging as he had earlier told the National Press Club on 13 March 2003:

I did speak to him [President GW Bush] yesterday. He didn't ask me to lobby anyone, but if you want to know, I have already spoken to a number of countries and I hope to speak to others. I had a conversation with President Musharraf of Pakistan last week. I'm pleased to say that part of the conversation was an indulgence by both of us in our common love of a particular sport. And I spoke two nights ago to President Fox of Mexico, and I hope to speak to one or two other leaders over the course of the next day or so. But I have not been asked to lobby by President Bush. I have not been asked to lobby by Tony Blair. There are somethings that I can usefully do, and I'm doing them, but we haven't been sent a list of countries to lobby. It doesn't work that way, whatever may be the view.......
In the end, all of these things involve questions of judgement. We're not talking about proving to the, beyond reasonable doubt, to the satisfaction of a jury at the Central Criminal Court in Darlinghurst, if you'll excuse my Sydney origins, I mean if you wait for that kind of proof, you know, it's virtually Pearl Harbour. You've got to make judgements, and judgements are made and I have given you the judgement of the [inaudible] and I've given you our judgement. I mean, people are saying well, you know, where is the further proof? I mean, what I am saying is you have Iraq with weapons of mass destruction, Iraq's terrible track record, refusing to disarm, the world in effect buckles at the knees and doesn't disarm Iraq....
Iraq is demonstrably, to use my language, a rogue state. If we don't make sure that Iraq is disarmed, that of itself will encourage other rogue states to acquire and develop weapons of mass destruction....

Of course the British inquiry may never reveal any information on the part Howard played, as it is well within the realms of possibility that as soon as this inquiry was mooted the Australian Government made representations to the effect that all mention of our involvement should be kept to a minimum during proceedings. The Rudd Government would not enjoy talk of war criminals and national culpability in an election year, given its current tacit support of the War on Terror.

From The Iraq Inquiry website:

The Prime Minister announced on 15 June 2009 that an Inquiry would be conducted to identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict. The Iraq Inquiry was officially launched on 30 July 2009. At the launch the Chair of the Inquiry, Sir John Chilcot, set out the Inquiry's Terms of Reference:
"Our terms of reference are very broad, but the essential points, as set out by the Prime Minister and agreed by the House of Commons, are that this is an Inquiry by a committee of Privy Counsellors. It will consider the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, embracing the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the military action and its aftermath. We will therefore be considering the UK's involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned. Those lessons will help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country."
The Inquiry committee members are Sir John Chilcot (Chairman), Sir Lawrence Freedman, Sir Martin Gilbert, Sir Roderic Lyne and Baroness Usha Prashar.
The Inquiry will take evidence over a number of months, with as many hearings as possible held in public. Hearings will begin in the autumn and continue into the New Year. A report of the Inquiry's findings will be published at the end of this process, but as the Inquiry has such a complex task ahead of it the report is unlikely to be ready for publication before summer 2010. The Inquiry committee intends to include in the report all but the most sensitive information essential to our national security. The report will then be debated in Parliament.

So far over sixty witnesses have been heard in sitting days spread over seven weeks. Evidence presented so far is posted on the website as transcript or video.

Censored! Great Australian Internet Blackout


As part of ******

Sunday 24 January 2010

EFA questions about mandatory national ISP-level Internet filtering which shoud be answered by Austrlaia's Comminications Minister


Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers Australia has posted the following questions for the Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy:

The top 10 filtering questions yet to be answered

The Rudd Government's mandatory ISP filtering bill will soon be introduced into Parliament, and we can only hope that the debate there will focus more on the real merits of the scheme – which are few and far between – than empty rhetoric about protecting children. When the debate happens, here are some questions the Government needs to answer under the glare of public scrutiny.

1. Given the trouble and expense of this policy, you must have some pretty convincing evidence that children are being constantly exposed to RC material. How was your research conducted and will it be released to the public?

(In fact, research indicates that of all the threats kids face online, accidental exposure to disturbing content is about the least significant.)

2. Two-thirds of Internet-connected households don't have school-age children. Isn't forcing a filter onto them as well as businesses unnecessary?

(We have never heard a cogent explanation why the filter should be mandatory and not opt-in, or why it's a better solution than more comprehensive and customisable PC-based filters.)

3. Given the reasonably poor uptake of filters by parents in the past, what makes you so sure the Australian people want a filter at a national level?

(Survey data shows that parents who don't install filters do so mainly because they consider them unnecessary or too restrictive, not for technical or cost reasons.)

4. Why did you meet with the Australian Christian Lobby before making last week's announcements? Have you met with groups opposed to the filter?

(Conroy's office ignores our polite requests to make our case.)

5. In targeting child pornography, isn't the blacklist mechanism, which relies on the media regulator and the Australian public, a poor way to track down this material compared to investigations by law enforcement professionals?

(Illegal material is not typically published on the open web, and when it is, is usually taken down quickly.)

6. In the past you have indicated that the blacklist will include material imported from overseas groups like the Internet Watch Foundation. Is it still the case that lists prepared by unaccountable third parties overseas might be part of Australian censorship?

(The Internet Watch Foundation's list caused controversy in Britain when it added a Wikipedia page to its list in 2008.)

7. The Enex trial indicated tests at speeds far below those promised by the new National Broadband Network. Won't the filter interfere with the rollout of this much more important project?

(We can't understand why the Government is pursuing the filtering policy so zealously when the $43 billion NBN is so clearly a higher priority for the country.)

8. Experts say than an ISP filter is easy to circumvent by anyone who wants to. Doesn't that undermine the usefulness of the entire enterprise?

(It's inevitable that getting around the filter will be easy. Therefore, it only prevents accidental access to any site on the list.)

9. When they reach banned websites, will Australians see a message from the government informing them why the page was blocked, or will the page just refuse to load?

(We have many more worries about transparency in the system, especially concerning the oversight of the list itself.)

10. What would stop some future conservative governments adding to the blacklist in a campaign against dangerous or immoral content?

(Of course, this question only has one answer: Nothing. Once the blacklisting has begun, it's hard to imagine it will never expand, let alone ever be rolled back.)

Sadly, EFA suspects that if these issues have been considered at all by the Government, they do not have good answers ready. We maintain that until all of them can be addressed satisfactorily, mandatory ISP filtering amounts to nothing more than a political stunt designed to wedge the opposition and garner some easy votes.

Australian Health Minister Nicola Roxon is not telling the truth about the Medicare e-card


Remember over the course of 2009 the Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon assuring everyone within hearing that the new Medicare smart card would contain data and, give access to a database, which could be checked for accuracy by individual patients and that information would only be given out if the individual patient agreed to participate in the e-health scheme?
This is what the Minister was putting about at the time:
Eventually, the plan is for each person to have an individual e-health record, which holds their personal details; a summary health profile that can be shared with the person's permission between treating doctors; event summaries such as hospital discharge reports, care plans and test results, and a self-care management record where people can add their own material. and Ms Roxon has said participation in e-health records schemes would be voluntary and yet again All Australian residents will be allocated an Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI) to support better communication between healthcare providers involved in patient treatment – but no patient will be forced to use it to access any health service.
Believed her did you?
Well, she told whoppers - barefaced and knowingly.

The proof is in the draft Healthcare Identifiers Bill 2010 which contains no precise provisions along those lines.
All the bill does is allow for the collection, storage and dissemination of personal and health information without the patient's explicit knowledge or consent.
This outrageous bill relies on p*ss poor protections found in the Commonwealth Privacy Act, which has few teeth to redress bureaucratic wrongdoing in relation to misuse of personal information or inaccurate record keeping.
The Privacy Act was never designed to cover a national health information datatbase and National Privacy Principles also only contain general intents that informed consent be given for data collection and dissemination or that an individual be given access to their information {thanks to Clarencegirl for pointing that out to me}
As for what looks like exemption for incorporated medical practices from any application of the Criminal Code in relation to improper handling or misuse of personal health information compiled for or received from the national database - well the mind boggles.
While NEHTA's claim that “There is also a very strict audit trail so that any individual can know that someone has accessed their record in the system which is an additional layer of security" is just plain absurd when there is no legislative requirement in place which would allow any individual patient to be informed if their records had been accessed and by whom.
But what really has the Rudd Government falling down that rabbit hole into an alternative reality is the fact that politicians and "well-known personalities" will be given special false identities to prevent their medical records falling into the wrong hands.
Apparently the threat of your personal medical details falling into the wrong hands is an acceptable risk, but the risk is not acceptable when it comes to the personal medical details of Rudd & Roxon or their mates. {Yep, three cheers here for egalitarian Australia}
And what is the Rudd Government going to do with all this very detailed information (right down to whether a twin was delivered first or second) it intends to collect?
Well b#gger all, because no state or territory or hospital or medical practice or doctor or community nurse is anywhere near geared up for this giant trawl though the nations' private life and may never be.
For state governments have not proceeded past a sort of glorified memorandum of understanding on e-health in effect until 30 June 2012.
Roxon's information collection through compulsory sixteen-digit health identifiers is looking more and more like a national identity database in disguise.
No wonder there's such an uproar among the privacy watchdogs.
When did the Australian Labor Party lose its basic common sense?

Saturday 23 January 2010

You don't have to pay peanuts to get monkeys


Our local newspaper just announced that Tweed councillors are asking for a hefty pay rise.

TWEED councillors have "selflessly" voted to push for a 55 per cent pay rise – not for themselves but for the many other people they say will consequently be encouraged to stand for election.
Councillors voted six to one on Tuesday night to ask the NSW Remuneration Tribunal to raise their annual councillors' fees by $8500 with only Greens Party councillor Katie Milne voting against the motion.
The move will take their pay to $24,000 a year except for Mayor Warren Polglase who will get $57,840 as well as a car, if the tribunal approves the increase."If you pay peanuts you get monkeys," said Cr Kevin Skinner. "By providing a higher form of remuneration we give an opportunity to someone in the community who otherwise could not afford to be a councillor."

I thought I'd share this particular 'poll' on simian pay rates.

If a pay rise was performance based, who do you think should not get one?






















G & T
Tweed

UN State of the World's Indigenous Peoples report does not paint a flattering picture of Australian society

According to Inter Press Services on 14 January 2010:

"Indigenous peoples suffer from poorer health, are more likely to experience disability and reduced quality of life and ultimately die younger than their non-indigenous counterparts," says the State of the World's Indigenous Peoples report released by the Department of Social and Economic Affairs (DESA) at the United Nations. This alarming statement is corroborated by statistics in the report which find that consistently, and internationally, indigenous communities are more likely to contract tuberculosis, malnutrition, diabetes, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and to commit suicide than non-indigenous communities. There are also significant gaps in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous people – a difference of as much as 20 years in Australia and Nepal. A collaborative study produced by the Public Health Agency of Canada and Statistics Canada shows that the Inuit are over 150 times more likely to contract tuberculosis than the non-indigenous population. Suicide rates among indigenous youth are strikingly high when compared with non-indigenous youth, particularly in Brazil, where a study carried out by the Brazilian Ministry of Health found that between 2000 and 2005, the rate of Guaraní youth suicide was 19 times higher than the national average. The report also finds that indigenous women and children are particularly vulnerable to poor health, and women are disproportionately affected by violence because of structural discrimination and racism, and the added dimensions of gender bias and poorer levels of education. The report links the denial of certain fundamental rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to poor health among indigenous communities, and cites a failure of the Millennium Development Goals to identify and consider indigenous concepts of health, which, beyond the individual's physical and mental well-being accounts for the well-being and spiritual balance of the community.

The State of the World's Indigenous Peoples report is the result of a collaborative effort, organized by the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Chapters were written by independent experts.

The report acknowledges that in February 2008 the Australian Government formally apologized to the Stolen Generation and that in August 2009 it also endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, reversing the position of the previous Howard Government.

The UN report further noted the disproportionate percentage of indigenous Australians serving time in goals around the country and broadly linked this to discrimination in earlier stages of the justice process.

The report highlighted the fact that indigenous Australians generally live shorter lives, have poorer health care and education, higher than normal levels of inadequate housing and endure higher unemployment rates.

The Koori Mail reported on 15 January 2010 that the Rudd Government rejects elements of the UN findings:

A UNITED Nations report, The State of the World's Indigenous Peoples, is based on outdated information, according to the Federal Government. A spokesperson said rather than a 20-year gap in life expectancy, the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced in May 2009 the new figures were now between 9.7 years for women and 11.5 years for men...


The State of the World's Indigenous Peoples:
Foreword by Mr. Sha Zukang Under-Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs
Introduction by the Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues