I loathe to bring this up in a blog post, it’s probably more worthy of a 100 page collaborative effort amongst bloggers.

Rev Fred Nile, the NSW Christian Democrat best known for his lifelong crusade against anything that could be crusaded against, has once again fixed his sites on another great threat to society.

Is it the collapsing env-ronment? No.

Is it the collapsing ec-nomy? No.

Is it the collapsing ed-cation system? Nope, not that either.

It’s bre-sts.

That’s right, this upper-house member of the NSW parliament is fighting the good fight against topless women on public beaches. Thank God, the idea of my daughter seeing an exposed pair of bre-sts on a public beach worries me awake at night.

I’m particularly fond of his following statement.

“I think it’s just a matter of having community standards, If we observe those then we can all live together in in harmony.”

What a waste of parliament’s time. I find it ironic, this same man that talks of living in harmony introduced a bill into NSW parliament repealing the act protecting homos-xuals from open villification and tried to ban Muslims from entering the country.

Obviously I’m not the only person that thinks Nile is distracted by pithy morality to the detriment of real issues, apparently the whole idea has already capsized under the waves of common sense.

This kind of distraction is not limited to wowsers such as Nile though. Every time I hear about ‘issues for the christian vote’ both here in Australia and in the US elections, subjects such as ab-rtion, g-y marriage and cens-rship rise to the top. How on earth are these important when we’re facing env-ronmental and economic collapse of the highest order?

I can see where it comes from though, people want to know that their le-ders care about the community and have a relatively predictable moral blueprint. Surprises are not welcome in politics.

The issue with this, however, is that there is only so much room available on any given agenda, and if they are taken up with trivialities designed purely to prove a moral viewpoint then real issues lose out.

I can see why there’s so much to complain about these days, everyone’s been too busy working on the trivial little projects of the religious right to work on the real issues that might improve things. Dear Nile, if you want harmony, try practising some tolerance first. You can bring this kind of trivia up once we’ve solved the real issues. Let’s focus on creating an economic environment where every ch-ld or potential ch-ld would be comepletely free from pov-rty instead of spending $44 million on ensuring they don’t see bre-sts on the internet.

I think that if anyone is to blame for our world not being everything it can be, we need to look at the people who are distracting politicians from real issues such as h-man r-ghts, the env-ronment, ec-nomics and ed-cation.

##Update: Mildly censored any word that the Labor government is likely to want filtered.

I knew something was wrong when I took a step and missed the planet. The feeling was pretty much confirmed when the woolies basket I was holding collided with the aisle wall. I couldn’t break in time; I ran straight into the back of it.

I was having an off morning. My first order of business was taking my anti-depressants. I’d run out a few days ago so I popped a couple of Ibuprofen to head off the impending back tension.

It only took half an hour for my back to be in knots. The cocktail of budget computer chair and restless nights of wrestling old demons had been getting the better of me lately. I took a couple of Ibuprofen to fix it.

Naomi rolled out of bed and asked if I could head down to wollies for some supplies. She place a $20 note on the desk. No problem, I took a couple of Ibuprofen just in case. She reminded me to get some more of my anti-depressants.

The walk to the chemist was a bit of a blur. I’m sure I spent most of it thinking of something deep, or was I just concentrating on that niggling tension in my back? Either way, I stressed about looking like a junkie in front of the chemist, I was tired, slightly incoherent and wearing crocs and a blue bonds singlet. She looked at me like I was a junkie. I’m pretty sure I was wearing pants.

I fumbled the medication into my bag and headed for woolies where I picked up 3 litres of Aloe Vera drink. I also bought some scones that Naomi had wanted. I completely forgot to go to Harvey Norman to check up on when our fridge was supposed to be delivered today.

The walk home was filled with thoughts of getting back onto my anti-depressants. The last week had been fairly painful without them. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke and I don’t look at porn, there was very little but sheer luck keeping me sane over the christmas period. Sheer luck and roughly a dozen Ibuprofen every day for the headaches.

The stairs to my apartment winded me slightly. This was only really a problem when I opened my bag and couldn’t find my medication. I looked in every possible pocket in my bag, in my pockets, even elsewhere in the apartment. I remembered fumbling it into my bag. It must have fallen out at some point.

Naomi had to watch as I collapsed on the bed and rode the fence between sleep and weeping.

It’s all okay now. Naomi took me up to the chemist to get some more anti-depressants, not that they should have kicked in yet. I think it’s just the idea that things would be going uphill over the next few days that turned me around.

The shocking lack of coordination that I experience with too much Ibuprofen will fade soon. The fridge will arrive eventually. My back will hold out.

So tell me, what is the opposite of expression?

This was posted by Tonedef, presented here unedited and uncut before my IntenseDebate system decided to sh!t itself.

I would like to see people walk away from religions on a voluntary basis, not by force. More like a child choosing not to suck its thumb for comfort anymore as it grows up and progresses onto the next stage. Religion has not been a particularly useful tool for humanity; it has had much effect, yes, but hasn’t done enough good to outweigh the bad. Sighting the stupidity of many humans is not really justification for the acceptance of religions as a legitimate form of social control. People should be encouraged to be the best they can be rather than “Controlled” and if they are too stupid to participate, the laws of nature dictate that they will perish outside the group’s cooperative protection. Thus eliminating the weakest of the species to let it move forward. These artificial structures we create within society are not doing the human race much good in the long run. Humanity needs to either accept that it just doesn’t care what happens to it and continues to blunder along as it does or wake up to itself, and make moves toward sorting itself out. Unfortunately nobody wants to draw a line in the sand when they think they might not be on the good side of the line.

While that would be nice in theory, as I’m sure that any being powerful enough to create the universe isn’t so small as to require our petty servitude for sustenance, I think it is invalid to make any judgement on the good aspects of religion being outweighed by the negative as there has been no point in history where some form of spirituality or mysticism has not been practiced.

So the question here is, does Religion have a place where humanity is headed? That question makes a few very foolish assumptions, first of all that Humanity is headed somewhere, secondly that our heading is not being determined by spirituality and mysticism due to the lack of state-church seperation and thirdly that the religious attitudes of today’s churches and sects are at all indicative of their potential use to society.

I think that the first assumption is valid only in as much as we cannot hit the brakes either way.

The second assumption is scary. To think that the mobs of God-terrified christians and oppressed Muslims don’t have every fibre of their being tuned to taking over our government is ignorant. It’s not hard to see, once you step back from bias, that Christianity poses a bigger threat to society than Islam. That being said, nobody should begrudge them their desire to live a certain way, it is only their need to cover up their failings through mass conversion that is a problem.

The third assumption, that Churches are operating at their potetial, is pessimistic and a shame. I think that religion could be playing a far more beneficial role in society instead of the superficial, narrow-minded and myopic role it takes now.

Tonedef’s position on natural selection is, unfortunately, short-sighted. As much as I joke about natural selection being sorely missed by anyone in a customer-facing job, I think that humanity as a species is at a stage where we can seriously look at avoiding natural selection and survival of the fittest altogether. Arrogance aside, it is something we can work towards, a situation where our medicine and our technology means that nobody has to been born into a position of net loss. That is, every birth strengthens the species.

Religion, along with abstract financial markets, are in fact aiding natural selection by diverting resources from technological improvement and understanding of our species. Keep in mind that this topic originated from my comments towards a blog advocating Creationism. Creationism is a theory that serves no useful purpose as it does not encourage further questioning or understanding. It does not provide a useful path on which we can travel. It is an aspect of cultural stagnation.

Religion could also be taken as a distraction from more meaningful answers to the questions of life. As long as people stay stuck in the metaphors, there is no way that their real meaning can shine through to progress us towards a more enlightened or pragmatically peaceful society. Religion, even the radical sects, are by nature conservative. Conservativism is the forethought of stagnation.

All that being said, advocating that anybody should change their beliefs system is hypocritical in the extreme. Presenting an idea and allowing someone to follow it is acceptable, actively pursuing them to do so or condmening them for not is unacceptable. Religion having any say in government is anethema to peace.

My position is a ‘hands off’ approach. We keep out of their beliefs and they stay the hell out of government. I for one will never again vote for somebody who brags about having a religious connection. I will not support their devisive and anachronistic agenda.

I will, however, attend my church occasionally and most probably baptise my daughter. Why? Because I bloody well can, and that’s the whole point.

A fellow tweeter pointed me to a blog run by, as my friend describes, a ‘disgruntled sect of literalist (creationist) Anglicans’. This post is criticising Mike Paget, a minister who accepts science. Given the relative progressiveness of Australian Anglicans, I think that this blog might be considered ‘fringe’ amongst the Anglicans.

Keep in mind here that I’m a Catholic for militant purposes. Here was my response to the post criticising Paget.

It’s a little presumptuous to label yourself a ‘wake up call’, especially when you advocate something as anachronistic and unhelpful as creationism.

Criticising a brother member of your Diocese alone is bad enough, criticising him for adhering to the teachings of said Diocese is downright unfaithful.

God did not give you a brain to throw it away on the ‘God just went click’ theory of the universe and he certainly didn’t give it to you to be devisive in his church.

Surely there are more constructive things to be concerned about.

Now, it should be obvious by now that I am not even remotely concerned about a couple of protestant factions beating up on each other; the Catholic part of me thinks they should burn in hell for their seperatist ways and the other 99.99% of me couldn’t care less and is happy for anyone to think anything about anyone. Hell, I’m seriously considering Pastafarianism.

I actually think Anglicans are pretty cool, Naomi informs me that they recently ordained a lesbian. I can’t think of anything more progressive.

That doesn’t, however, stop me treating myself to a bit of shit-stirring for christmas. Creationists, after I’m finished with Conroy, you’re next. Let fly the dog’s of war!

They didn’t stand out from the crowd, their silhouettes gave no indication as to the nature of their association. They were laughing, chatting and having a few well deserved Friday night drinks. It was only once one of them turned and recognised me that I was able to pick them out from the other patrons of the Ship Inn.

There are no obvious demographic indications that these people would otherwise get along. The Male/Female split is roughly half, the ages range from 18 to 49 with an average around 30 and there are few professional links outside of their online exploits.

You wouldn’t pick it, but these dozen people lead a strange and exciting double life. They all have jobs, mortgages and families but they are also bloggers, tweeters, techies, podcasters, citizen journalists and for the most part, opponents of the government’s ISP filtering scheme. According to Bernadette McMenamin, these people are all supporters of child pornography. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I have never met a group of people that spend so much time thinking of effective methods of making the internet a better place for everyone. The Australian blogosphere, heavily inclusive of this group as it is, has been rife with public and not so public discussion on how to best keep our children safe while keeping the internet as a state-free-zone. I don’t say ‘our children’ metaphorically, some of us are parents too.

The difference between these parents and the parents targeted by the scare tactics used by the Government, Clive Hamilton and especially Bernadette McMenamin is that these parents are heavily involved in the internet community, not as technogibberish speaking engineers, but as people who treat the internet as their workplace.

The children of these tech savvy people don’t ‘accidentally’ become exposed to internet porn. Their children aren’t targeted by chat-room stalkers. Their children aren’t threatened by the internet. This is not because of the wizz-bang filtering gadgets that these folks employ, it is because of the way these parents have taken the time to learn how to practically keep their children safe on the internet.

One of the fathers at the table is asked about his daughter. His face swells with pride as he taps away on his iPhone. He turns it around and shows us a striking image of his 17 year old daughter in her formal dress. A princess if ever I had seen one, and you could tell her dad felt the same way. I looked over at one of the other fathers at the table as he shared a story about his own children growing up. That one look reminded me of the intensely protective nature of parenting.

I wouldn’t blame a single one of these guys for doing anything, no matter how stupid, in the name of protecting their children. I could even understand them wanting to censor the internet. I would almost shut up about it if they managed to do it.

Yet these fathers and mothers are amongst thousands of other parents that have shown their disgust at the idea of an ISP filtered internet. These parents have looked at the task of protecting their children and, with the full force of both logical thought and parental urges, told the government that they are not going to accept this policy.

Long gone are the days where geeks were 20-something males that sat in dark rooms feeding on pizza and coke whilst coding arcane technologies. The geeks that the government are now up against are mums, dads, teachers, lawyers, tradesmen, children, elderly. Labelling us a ’small group of internet libertarians’ is anachronistic and wrong. The situation is now one where politicians are gradually losing touch with the make-up of society.

Rudd and Conroy are perfect examples of the party-room disconnect. Both Rudd and especially Conroy are young by the standards of the offices they have achieved. Both were able to achieve such political success through intense devotion to the political machine, in this case the flashpoint factionalism of the Labor Party. Rudd hails from a background in the beauracracy, an effective petrie dish for the kind of ‘us and them’ mindset that leads to ‘policies for people’s own good’.

Have a look at Conroy’s Biography and you see a man that was born into the Labor Party, took it deliberately with both hands, and has never left its sheltering arms. The man’s only exposure to the communications industry, as far as the DBCDE website can tell, is his work as a minister, shadow minister or an advisor to a shadow minister.

It is unlikely that Conroy’s exposure to the internet and similiar technologies has ever been out of a passionate drive to innovate and create. This is why the IT community is in uproar at Conroy’s proposed solution to protecting Children. Conroy’s solution not only shows a complete lack of inginuity, creativity or true problem solving but also relies on an ideology that is naturally opposed to innovation, Censorship.

It’s little wonder then that the parents I spent time with last night are so vehemently against the filter. To them it represents a typically political grab at popularity and only a recycled and misdirected attempt at real protection for their children.

Now with Senator Conroy announcing that the live trial will attempt to filter p2p and torrent traffic as well as mainstream web traffic, the disconnect between the DBCDE and reality has never been more obvious. The technical difficulties are not even the issue, they are insurmountable with the budget Conroy has proposed and even if the entire industry did get together to make the system work properly, the cost would be enough to fund an all out war on child abuse by the AFP.

The arguements made by the pro-filter lobby, mainly comprising of filter vendors and the religious groups after the government was abandoned by the child protection lobby, completely disregard the true problem with this filter. Even if ISP filtering worked exactly as Conroy intends it to, the money and effort used to do so would have achieved results an order of magnitude greater if it had been given to the police.

Child porn and its distribution on the internet are real and dangerous problems. They will not, however, be solved by centralised filtering that is not fully transparent to the populace it is designed to protect.

The real heroes of this war are the police, only they can achieve the wholistic approach to stopping child abuse in Australia. Combined with an effective education program for the use of PC based filtering, we could actually have a real solution on our hands.

This is the comment policy on Mike the Participant’s blog.

A condition of posting comments on this blog is that everyone who does so must do so with their full name and provide an e-mail address that can be used to verify their identity.

It is also a condition of publication that you must declare any vested interests you have in the debate, financial or otherwise.

If you are closet supporter of child pornography, I am afraid you will have to declare this. If you work for an ISP or a filter-vendor, you will have to declare that.

If your only interest is freedom of speech, I am sorry, but you will have to declare that.

My response, as much as I hate to admit some of it.

By the way, I have those things that I need to declare:

I support free speech
I support Task Force Argos
I support the AFP
I support the fight against child porn
I support PC based filtering

I have no financial interest in any ISP, filter or government.

I’m going to duplicate my comments on ‘Mike the Participant’s’ blog here just in case he moderates them in any way. I also don’t expect a debate/war/shitmatch to be clean or gentlemanly from his end.

Link to his original article: here

My response

It’s good to see that you’ve completely missed the point about why the ACMA and the internet won’t mix.

If the ACMA blacklist is complaint based, somebody has to find the site first and then report it. If child pornographers are still out there, it means they’ve managed to avoid the police, let alone somebody actually stumbling upon them by accident.

So now they go behind closed doors and the ACMA plays catchup with a better resourced and more determined group of criminals.

The ACMA link isn’t just about future political censorship, it’s also about it being a completely pointless misdirection of funds that could be spent on better enforcement.

The Rudd Government’s filter threatens to hamper the education and opportunities our children can look forward to in the future.

#NoCleanFeed is being overshadowed by Rudd’s 5% environmental backdown. While this is a shame on one hand it does remind me that there are things more important to the evolution of man then free speech. I mean, we can hardly criticise the government for trying to create a generation of children who won’t know what speech without government oversight is like when they are also trying to create a generation of children who won’t know what clean air smells like.

Jon Seymour from BroadBanned put it most aptly when he says:

If the opt-out filter is pervasive, the next generation of school kids
only experience of the Internet is going to be of one that has been
interfered with by Government. They will grow up expecting Government
interference.

This is utterly true and a Labor Government should know better. Government interference in communication is already pervasive amongst mainstream delivery channels, and they argue that it should apply to all areas of life. Government interference is not desirable in all aspects of life. Even if the Government wishes to have a hand in social direction, it must do so in a way that law abiding citizens can avoid.

Let me get this straight for any layman that might read this. Even if The ISP filter didn’t slow it down, imagine what will happen when the filter malfunctions while you’re sending your credit card details over the net. The privacy and security issues in case of a filter collapse are mind boggling, even if performance is taken out of the picture.

If this filter was about protecting children from Child Porn, it would have been stopped after the Tasmanian trials proved that it wouldn’t work. This so called ‘raft of policies’ that the government keep harping on about are poorly funded and little more than token gestures. Their lack of commitment shows in their defunding of the Net Alert program.

If Rudd is so keen on protecting children, why has he pulled support for the PC based filters, taking them out of reach of many low income families? They claim that the lack of uptake of the software indicated the project’s failure. This couldn’t be more set up if they tried. Not only did they not advertise the program, they allowed poorly configured and poor quality software to represent the government’s commitment to child protection.

I’ve been using Intergard for months now. While it is the best the Government offered, it is complete crap and requires a lot of maintainence to work with. The only reason Rudd has abandoned PC filtering for families at home is because they want to score points by looking different to Howard. Net Alert didn’t have the commitment it needed. With some effort and proper advertisement, Net Alert would have had a much greater impact on internet safety.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Conroy’s policies have nothing to do with internet safety. They are designed to please the right wing academics that would ordinarily have been against labor and to placate the public into thinking that something was being done.

————-

I appreciate everyone that commented on my comic, it means a lot to me that NoCharCom is actually read occasionally. I’m going to stretch myself in the next few days and bring out a three part post.

By the way, I have a BIG project in the works for myself that should amount to a slightly more serious effort on my part to have fun wuth this blog.

Okay, be honest, does this look even remotely realistic? 1-10 where 10 is utterly realistic. You might need to click for the full view to get the full effect.

This from the horses mouth, I’ll be attending. #btub interested?

Dear Madam or Sir,

Aboriginal Fine Art cordially invites you to our grand opening celebration. This event will take place on Friday December 18th, 2008 between 7pm and 11pm.

The grand opening marks our enthusiasm to be part of the Brisbane community. Our organization has more than 25 years of experience in the Aboriginal Art Industry, and we are excited to now be in Queensland and provide the local community with a space where they can both purchase and appreciate high quality Aboriginal Art. Our organization encompasses all facets of the Aboriginal Art Industry, with established galleries in Melbourne and Sydney and a state of the art studio facility located in Alice Springs. Aboriginal Fine Art here in Brisbane is the newest installment in our list of quality art establishments, providing only the highest level of artwork and service.

To mark this special event, Queensland Aboriginal Artist Kurun Warun will attend the celebration and prepare a special collection. Kurun Warun is also a troop leader of the Aboriginal Dance Troop Toolumby Waddama and will perform at the event. Kurun’s current work as well as a biography can be viewed on our website at the following link: http://www.aboriginal-fineart.com.au/artists/view/kurun_warun/

We kindly ask that you RSVP for this event as spaces are limited. To RSVP, simply respond by email to the gallery or phone us directly at (07) 3012 7550. If you have any questions regarding the opening celebration or general enquiries about our art, please feel free to contact our gallery.

Thank you for your interest in Aboriginal Art and I hope to see you at the opening festivities.

Kind Regards,

Badi T. Sheidaee

Director

logo.jpg

Shop 4/79 Adelaide Street (located on Albert Street Mall)

Brisbane QLD 4000

P: (07) 3012 7550

F: (07) 3012 7549

E: mail@aboriginal-fineart.com

Website: www.aboriginal-fineart.com.au