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Will Australia Follow China's Google Ban?
gadgetopia writes "A news report in Forbes says that China has blocked Google with its great firewall; now the world waits to see if Australia's Minister for Censorship, Senator Stephen Conroy, will do the same following his outrageous attacks on Google."
...but things can fall apart amazingly fast once you start heading down a certain road.
They sure do, but it is still by no means certain this legislation will pass. The Australian Government needs the support of the Senate to get its legislation through Parliament, and it has already had several setbacks in that regard, hence the likelihood of a double dissolution election this year.
Conroy himself is an arrogant little shit, and apparently Kevin Rudd is being equally so by leaving the asswipe in that portfolio. But we can hope that the Opposition's taste for obstructionism might yet be put to some worthwhile use.
Even if you grant that he was right (which I absolutely 100% do not) what he did was still horrible. He ruined people's lives out of idle suspicion, with little to no evidence to back it up. He split the country and indeed the world on how to handle communism and communist sympathizers and probably damaged his own goals at least as much as he helped them. Anyone who disagreed with him was immediately investigated and accused, regardless of how flimsy the evidence was. The man who called him out on the senate floor (Joseph Welch) was an American hero who showed real courage and could have just as easily have found himself being accused next.
As for the communists being 'everywhere', research has shown that of the more than 150 people accused by McCarthy evidence against them exists for only 9 of them. A significant minority of the people would have come back clean enough on a background check that they would have been granted security clearances. Finally, your assertion that communists took over one of the major parties I can only assume is idle trolling, I will simply respond by saying that if soviet controlled militant communists controlled 50% of the government for the past 40 years history would have turned out rather differently.