Slashdot Mirror
Australians to Increases Surveillance Powers?
Anonymous Coward writes to tell us The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that new laws being presented to parliament this week would allow police and spy agencies additional power to monitor communications of people not suspected of any crime. From the article: "Under the changes, police will be able to tap the phone calls and trace the emails and text messages of third parties to suspected crimes. Police will have 45 days to monitor a person not under suspicion in the hope it will lead them to the person or people they do suspect."
Hasn't the Australian government had intern camps for non residents for years now? Barbed wire ringed camps out in the desert for concentrating illegals in the same place?
I haven't heard of those for a few years now.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Democracy has been dead in Australia ever since the day Gough Whitlam was sacked (1975).
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
The Saudi royal family were allowed to leave the US by air in the aftermath of 9/11, when no US citizen could even go near a plane. They also provided funding for the Carlyle Group, which is connected to both the previous and the current Bush administrations.
If western authorities start cracking down on Wahabi preachers in general rather than specific individuals, it may make the Saudi royals look bad to the Wahabi religious leaders, and they don't want that as the religious leaders are keeping the royal family in power.
With so much money and oil at stake, the US government will look the other way when Saudi preachers are misbehaving, and encourage their allies to do the same.
The reason he's still around is because people are trained to think in a bipartisan manner... to think of things in black or white.
They have up or down, black or white, good or evil, left or right, liberal or conservative. Its a symptom of the maturity of our civilisation, and hopefully the next 50 years will see the population as a whole grow beyond this and eradicate the absurd bipartisan system.
Theres not black or white. there aren't even shades of gray. There's a spectrum of colours of varying intensity, white being a haze of all the colours, and black being an absense. Left & right are just two different directions along the circumference of the same circle. The liberal party was once liberal & the labor party often wants big government. They're just set up to be "Opposition" - its insane.
There are potentially as many different ideas as there are people, but until we all stop staring at the TV screens and start to think for ourselves, we will continue to be manipulated into this bipartisan way of thinking.
Our democracy is one created through trial and error, and not one which stands to serve any underlying principles (ie the notion that all men & women are equal in this country and all deserve an equal opportunity to participate in government)
Equally our "Australian way" is just a hodge podge of whatever johnny says it is at any given moment, just like bush manipulating patriotism to his own gain. This needs to be rethought so we can understand that democracy further suggests the equality of all human beings, and the logical conclusion of this is we must "live and let live" or "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" or "treat others as you wish to be treated" or "judge not lest ye be judged"
Choose your quote, the meaning is the same & is the basic principle this country and any other country that uses the word "Democracy" should be working toward. Every single thing that's passed should be passed with the intention of upholding this principle.
This surveilance nonsense definitely doesn't fit.
Rich Gentlemen Hide - The Existential Comic
I don't think New Zealand will be that much better than Australia, for long.
I, too, am an Australian citizen, and I can see myself leaving the fascist country that Australia is becoming within the next 5 years. Australia used to be a wonderful country until John Howard. Anyway, Canada and Sweden are looking pretty good, at the moment.
Did you know that Australians are eligible for refugee status in countries that comply with the UN convention relating to the status of refugees since the sedition laws were passed? If voicing your political opinions could potentially see you prosecuted under the sedition laws, then you can seek refugee status.
Until 1967, it was limited to European WWII refugees, but that constraint has been lifted.