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Internet Censorship in Australia?
Enaku writes "Right wing Australian Christian political party Family First wants an annual levy of $7 to $10 on all internet users in Australia to fund a $45 million mandatory national internet filtering scheme aimed at blocking pornographic and offensive content at server level. (Read Family First's Policy Statement on Internet Pornography and Children (pdf) ) Great firewall of Australia, here we come!"
These people are fascists and need to be marginalized. They want to take away our freedoms. Fuck them.
What about the children? WHO WILL SAVE THE CHILDREN?
:) )
"Why is the Internet Industry allowed to avoid their responsibilities on this?"
Why the hell aren't you watching your kids? What the hell ever happened to active parenting? If you don't want your kids to see such content then keep them off the damn internet,or at least monitor what they do online.....Furthermore, filtering may do more harm than good by keeping useful information blocked anyway............The "internet industry" is composed of a hell of a lot of people, and there is no one person to lay such responsibility on anyway.....The internet is not a cable tv show or a movie - it wasn't designed with a ratings system in mind.........
I found it odd that they cite plenty of numbers on how often kids had accessed pornography, the survey simply stated -
In November last year Dr Michael Flood of the Australia Institute cited a new study showing that concerns about pornography and children were warranted: "Children who regularly see violent pornography are more likely to be sexually aggressive and to believe that sexual abuse is normal".
What study? What percentages? What numbers?
Finally, From TFA -
"This may have the result of putting cost pressures on some of the smaller ISPs, but there are arguably too many of these at the moment, and adequate competition could be maintained with 30 ISPs rather than the hundreds in existence now," it said.
Screw the small guys, huh?
(Sorry bout the long rant, can't sleep
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
free speech
real democracy
respect for other people
This is a new form of "left wing" that I was previously unaware of.
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Fundamentalist anything is bad. I don't care what these people beleive, just so long as they don't force me to do anything.
The party wants the internet filtered at server level, warning that children exposed to online pornography could exhibit "disturbed, aggressive or sexualised behaviour".
i 100% agree. we should start by blocking the bible. it's full of obscene, graphically explicit sexual passages and extreme violence.
there's plenty of examples of people exhibiting disturbed, aggressive and sexualized behaviour after reading the bible.
if porn is going to be filtered, there can be no exceptions. no online bible for you!
Censoring the Internet is like censoring the telephone system.
Both are information tools, use them with care.
As an Australian, I have one thing to say;
/.
Fuck the children.
This is the job of the parents, and the blame for any problems due to lack of supervision lie squarely with them. I'm not paying a red cent for anyone elses irresponsibility.
Thankfully, Fundies like this dont really have much of a say in politics down here, so hopefully this wont really be heard anywhere outside of
I'd be more than happy to help you off your cross.
See here's the thing about your bogus framing of the debate. There has never been an example of an atheist (outside of a Stalinist country) demanding a plaque declaring "There is NO god." be hung in every school. No children have been asked to declare God dead as part of a loyalty oath, in a political effort for immoral politicians to attempt to appear moral.
So give it a rest, Christ could use a day off from your imaginined persecution.
Because if we're not aware of what some deluded people want to do to our freedom online, we might get caught by surprise when someone manages to actually pull it off.
Although spreading their message might not be a good idea if you argue that talking about them gains them support just because people hear about them.
Miri it is whil Linux ilast...
Blows lots of money down the drain. 45 million for a system that will be easily circumvented by kids who are more tech savvy then their parents. If China, a nation dependant on controlling all media, can't stop people from getting around their internal content firewall, what do these christian wack jobs think 45 million dollars will get them?
Australia is a very secular country, so Christian parties are notable. Also notable is that they are conservative. This is something that consistently baffles me. The New Testament's doctrine is patently pacifistic and egalitarian (as opposed to that of the Old Testament, which was superseded by this). Neither of these are traits of conservatism as a political ideology. Christ didn't kill anyone in response to their wrongdoing. Christ didn't brand people as irrevocably and unequivocally evil, either; he said anyone could come to God. If you try to create a political ideology out of Christianity, its ideas are radically anti-establishment. That Christianity became associated with maintaining a repressive status quo (often brutally) all the way through history after Constantine is a travesty. It proves that if you mix Christianity with centres of power (be they states or churches), religion tends to be thoroughly misrepresented (scapegoated, typically). Basically, leaders who base their leadership on religion have either set out to misuse religion as a means of repressive enforcement or have been corrupted by a serious conflict of interest along the way. Christianity should not be politicized.
Which brings us to the present day. You can disagree with my theology if you want, but flipping back to Genesis, wasn't the fundamental idea that God gave Adam and Eve freedom, freedom to do wrong and make errors, so that they would love Him for Him, not out of necessity? There were certainly consequences of wrongdoing, but the role of punisher was God's and God's only and fundamentally, humankind was given the freedom to choose (we chose poorly). Isn't it yet another misrepresentation of Christianity to associate it with repression? Not only is personal morality God's business, He has decided that it is wrong to stifle choice because it doesn't inspire true faith.
Of course, Christianity holds that pornography is wrong. But to politicize its message has only ever messed it up.
I'm a political activist for the Greens, Australia's main left wing progressive party.
Family first is a FAR RIGHT party!
Not left!
David
stuff
nah, vote green, preference labor.
stuff
Here's the rest of George Carlin's rant about "protect the children":
Today's kids are way too soft. : : : For one thing, there's too much emphasis on safety and safety equipment: childproof medicine bottles, fireproof pajamas, child restraints, car seats. And helmets! Bicycle, baseball, skateboard, scooter helmets. Kids have to wear helmets now for everything but jerking off. Grown-ups have taken all the fun out of being a kid. : : : What's happened is, these baby boomers, these soft, fruity baby boomers, have raised an entire generation of soft, fruity kids who aren't
even allowed hazardous toys, for Chrissakes! What ever happened to natural selection? Survival of the fittest? The kid who swallows too many marbles doesn't grow up to have kids of his own. Simple stuff. Nature knows best!
Another bunch of ignorant bullshit about your children: school uniforms. Bad theory! The idea that if kids wear uniforms to school, it helps keep order. Hey! Don't these schools do enough damage makin' all these children think
alike? Now they're gonna get 'em to look alike, too? : : : And it's not even a new idea; I first saw it in old newsreels from the 1930s, but it was hard to understand, because the narration was in German! But the uniforms looked beautiful. And the children did everything they were told and never questioned authority. Gee, I wonder why someone would want to put our children in uniforms. Can't imagine.
And one more item about children: this superstitous nonsense of blaming tobacco companies for kids who smoke. Listem! Kids don't smoke because a camel in sunglasses tells them to. They smoke for the same reasons adults do, because it's an enjoyable activity that relieves anxiety and depression.
And you'd be anxious and depressed too if you had to put up with these pathetic, insecure, yuppie parents who enroll you in college before you've figured out which side of the playpen smells the worst and then fill you with Ritalin to get you in a mood they approve of, and drag you all over town in search of empty, meaningless structure: Little League, Cub Scouts, swimming, soccer, karate, piano, bagpipes, watercolors, witchcraft, glass blowing, and dildo practice. It's absurd. : : : They even have "play dates", for Christ sake! Playing is now done by appointment! But it's true. A lot of these striving, and parents are burning their kids out on structure. I think what every child needs and ought to have every day is two hours of daydreaming. Plain old daydreaming.
Turn off the internet, the CD-ROMS, and the computer games and let them stare at a tree for a couple of hours. Every now and then they actually come up with one of their own ideas.
You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone.
Thanks George!
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
"what happens if we get a hung parliment? we don't want a bunch of political deal makers running the show!"
"can you imagine extreme greens running the show? it'd be chaos!"
gee, I dunno which would be worse, people making deals to save the old growth forests in Tasmania, or people making deals to censor freely available information.
'no political dealmakers' indeed!
The political compass separates the traditional left/right line into a plane -- the horizontal axis is left/right which indicates to what extent you believe government should control/regulate the economy, and the vertical axis is authoritarian/libertarian which indicates to what extent you believe governement should control people's behaviour.
It seems to me (I Am Not An American) that Americans regard their left/right line as running from top-left to bottom-right (left is authoritarian, right is libertarian), whereas in many other countries, the line is seen to run from bottom-left to top-right.
Obviously I've exaggerated the slope of the lines somewhat!
(None of which explains what religion has to do with it.)
Disclaimer: Slightly left of center, libertarian, atheist, British.
I dare ya
I couldn't agree more.
....pre-Constantine, as you noted.
...Now that is pro-Life!
There's a strain of Christian thought that through history has emphasized a distinction between Christianity and Religion, per se. Of course, we don't hear this emphasized by the religious Christian groups today as it has generally been championed by those who have resisted the status quo (Of more recent note, cf. Karl Barth and other Neo-orthodox who rallied against old Christian Liberalism that clung to the state and endorsed pretty much anything that came from it, including horrid old doctrines like Eugenics; or cf. the whole Liberation Theology movement in present day Latin America and elsewhere).
It's so ironic that theological conservatives are today the ones who are quickly willing to side with big government and do things like try to legislate rules on marriage to push their own moral world view on others. The earliest Christians, renowned for their anti-establishment conservativism (no Ceasar worship?! Gasp!!) were pacifists in the truest sense.
When the early Christians had a problem with abortion (contemporary forms of the practice), they didn't kill people for it, they waited at the dumps and adopted what children they could.
And now, I sit in Sunday School, and listen to people who honestly believe that if Jesus were here today, he would be writing his senators and politicking on trendy moral issues. It burns me the hell up to have Jesus rendered so trite and tied entirely to local drama. Have they ever even read the damn book they talk about so much?
So, instead of just complaining and throwing in the towel, I now teach Sunday School, and I teach about Jesus and use his words which sound oddly out of place in my Baptist church. It gets me in trouble, and some days I really really want to quit, but also on rare occassions, it turns on lights and people begin to see that there is a difference between Christianity (following Christ) and Religion (the polical, moral, and pop psychology package) and maybe the world is a little better place.
What else would a Geek with a degree in theology do? There's an itch; it needs to be scratched.
"Man has always been his own most vexing problem." --Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Nature and Destiny of Man"
I can name some examples (such as scandinavian countries, the netherlands) that are more left-leaning and have at least equal free speech protections, if not better, than the US.
I don't think it has to do with left or right. In germany for example both left and right have a tendency to mix in peoples lives and want to regulate everything, "protect" people for themselves etc.
The anglo saxon countries in particular are over sensitive when it comes to sex (but not to other areas that might warrant regulation), however in the US this is overridden by indeed a higher esteem for free speech and/or mistrust for central government (depending on how you look at it).
If anyone in Aus finds one of these Family First people, ask if they believe in higher taxes to help the world's poor. If people have control of their web habits, they will be tempted to look at porn. Likewise if people have control of their money, they will be tempted to sin by spending it selfishly. If the government should remove the temptation of porn, shouldn't it also remove the temptation of money?
When dealing with the "evolution is a religiuos belief" idiots, it's important for you not to give them this kind of ground on their sophistic confusion of science and faith. There's an important distinction between religion, which deals with the non-falsifiable, and science, which deals with the falsifiable. Read some Popper.
On the issue of evolution itself: the moment a Creationist asks for another antibiotic because they have a resistant bacterial infection, they are dealing with natural selection in real time. Disbelief in evolution won't save you from its effects.
I think the reason many religious authorities seek to ban or strongly restrict pornography is because it is a very strong competitor for some of the same feelings that drive religious worship. :)
Pornography allows individuals to worship the human body as the perfect form instead of a god who is supposed to be the only form of perfection.
You could also argue that the meaning of life is not what various religions teach but to procreate,
making pornography a form of "religious study"
After all as long as you have descendants a part of you (though probably not a soul) will live after you die, and it is a lot easier and (much more fun!, I think) to bring this about than going through a lifetime of religious worship and devotion.
Why are Christians conservative? The answer, it turns out, is not a matter of religion or theology, but instead sociology and psychology.
Basically put: It's not the christians as individuals that are perpetuating the conservative line, but the organizations that are in power.
It turns out that an organization's level of conservatism is usually related to how large/powerful the group is. Playing it conservative helps preserve things the way they are now, which is beneficial to the people on top.
Think about this: At the height of Christianity, the church was as strong as the government (Or was an integral part of the government). That's also when things were so conservative that speaking out in the wrong ways could get you killed.
As always, there are exceptions to the rule, but generally it goes like this: The people in power want to preserve their power. They will write policies and teach conservative views to make sure most people view the world the same way they do. The ones with liberal views are then going to be (generally) those who have the least power.
Interestingly, there comes a time when the conservative line takes away too much power from your average Joe, and they join the liberal ranks. The liberals overthrow the conservatives, and the cycle continues.
It's not about Jesus and his teachings, it's about the church having had large amounts of power. As Christianity is in the decline you will find there will be a higher ratio of Christians who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, instead of those who profess to follow Jesus but do what they want anyway.
Don't really know what the next conservative religious group may be. My colleagues say it'll be the pagans, which (as a pagan leader) scares me. Why? Simply put: To organize and make powerful paganism would be to remove what I consider to be it's greatest benefits: The power given to individuals through self-discovery.
~D
http://www.modernwiccan.com
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
... which is the, often misunderstood, message in the great Life Of Brian.
"E's not the Messiah, e's a very naughty boy."
And that comment on 'theory, not fact' further proves that you have no idea how the scientific process works. A theory is a set of conjectures that have been tested and not proven false. A theory can never be proven true, because it's impossible to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. Hell, the whole idea that bacteria and viruses cause infectious disease is a theory itself. Again, read a damn book.
WWD4D?
Like how the religious right is trying to amend the Oregon constitution (and other states') to outlaw gay marriage.
They just *love* to take our rights away according to what they *think* read in the bible.