Let's Take Over

Pro-Choice Labour Day march, and anti-abortion counter-protest - planning meeting Mon Apr 11 - Trades Hall, South Brisbane

2011-04-05T11:30:00.000+10:00

The Pro Choice Action Collective is planning both to march on Labour Day, and a counter-protest against an anti-abortion rally. They're having a planning meeting on Monday April 11.

The meeting will also discuss sending a group to a feminist conference in Melbourne in late May, and plans to organise a big rally sometime before the State election.

If you can't get to the meeting but you'd like to help, you can email prochoiceaction@gmail.com

The meeting is on Monday April 11 at 6.30pm at the Trades and Labor Council bulding at 16 Peel St, South Brisbane, on the corner of Merivale St - click here for a Google Map with public transport details.There's a Facebook event for the meeting, and the Pro-Choice Action Collective also has a FB group.

Public Meeting Tonight - Will Thousands of Refugees be Sent Back to Afghanistan?

2011-03-29T10:00:00.000+10:00

The Refugee Action Collective is holding a public meeting tonight about the risk that thousands of refugees will be sent back to Afghanistan from Australia. The risk comes after a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Australia, Afghanistan, and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in January. A media release issued by the Australian Government in January said the Memorandum "paved the way for the return from Australia to Afghanistan of unsuccessful Afghan asylum seekers".

Speakers at the meeting will be immigration lawyer Sonia Caton, Dr Sarah Davies from Griffith University, and Hassan Ghulam, an Afghan community worker at the Romero Centre in Dutton Park.

Hassan Ghulam (with microphone)

The meeting is on the second floor at the Trades and Labour Council building at 16 Peel St, South Brisbane. Click here for a Google Map with public transport details.

Photos and Speeches from Pro-Choice Rally, Brisbane, October 9 2010

2010-10-10T17:01:00.001+10:00

The rally was organised by the Pro-Choice Action Collective (PCAC) to protest the upcoming trial of Tegan Simone Leach in Cairns. Ms Leach is charged with aborting her pregnancy, under Section 225 of the Queensland Criminal Code.

Press “play” on the audio players under each photo to hear what that speaker said.

Click here to see a set of 30 photos from the rally.

Panorama of the audience. Click on this photo (and all the other photos) to see larger versions at Flickr.

101009 Pro Choice Rally - Susan Shaw of PCAC

101009 Pro Choice Rally - Helen of PCAC reads message from Margaret Kirkby of Womens Abortion Action Campaign

Anti-abortion protesters are countered.

101009 Pro Choice Rally - Kate Calcutt of Children By Choice

101009 Pro Choice Rally - Sarah of PCAC reads message from Debbie Brenner of Radical Women in Melbourne

101009 Pro Choice Rally - Margaret Lee, Secretary, Queensland Division of the National Tertiary Education Union, speaks at Brisbane Pro-Choice rally 101009

101009 Pro Choice Rally - Kathy Newnham of Pro-Choice Action Collective

101009 Pro Choice Rally - Ellen from PCAC reads out message from pro-choice activists in Perth

101009 Pro Choice Rally - Priya from PCAC reads a message from Tanya Roberts of the Womens Global Network for Reproductive Rights

101009 Pro Choice Rally - Queensland Greens Senator-Elect Larissa Waters

Liberals preferencing Family First in Qld Senate; FF think gay marriage is like child abuse

2010-08-08T18:15:00.003+10:00

In the race for the Queensland Senate, the Liberal National party is giving its preferences in the Senate to Family First, led by Wendy Francis. Francis said today on Twitter that legalising gay marriage is like legitimising child abuse. Even though she appears to have deleted her tweet, quick action by Twitter user Toby Nieboer means we have a copy of what she said:

Click here to see the original Twitpic by Toby Nieboer

So, what does it mean when I say the Liberals (actually the Liberal National Party, the Queensland branch of the Liberal Party, led federally by Tony Abbott) are giving their preferences to Family First?

Well, if people voting for the Senate in Queensland just put “1” in the box for the Liberal National Party, they give the LNP control of where their vote goes if the LNP has any votes left over after all their candidates have been elected, or have been knocked out of the race. And the LNP have made a decision that Family First will be the very first party with a chance to use any of their left-over votes. Makes you wonder just what sort of ignorant bigotry the LNP leadership is comfortable with.

So, if you’re voting for the Senate in Queensland (or anywhere else in Australia), you should vote “below the line” instead. This means you control where your vote goes, not some party boss you’ve never heard of. In Queensland this means you need to fill out all 60 boxes in the Senate, from 1 to 60, in order, with your favourite candidate at number 1 and the one you hate the most at number 60.

There’s a site called “Below the Line” which helps you – you still have to work out which parties you like, but once you’ve done that, it lets you print out a personalised How to Vote card reminding you how to fill out your Senate voting paper. You can take that card into the polling booth with you.

Update: Over on the Brisneyland community on LiveJournal, GreenGlowGrrl has done some research into the Queensland Independent Senate candidates - well worth a read if you are voting below the line in Qld

Pro Choice rally on Saturday March 13 outside Parliament House, Brisbane

2010-03-11T14:30:00.000+10:00

4ZZZ News reported on Monday on a pro-choice rally to be held outside Parliament House this Saturday, March 13 2010.

The rally is being organised by the Pro-Choice Action Collective - there's a Facebook event here.

Click here for a Google Map with the details of how to get to Parliament House by public transport.

Racist Bigot sets up "Boong Drunk" Facebook page for people to become fans of - Please RT

2010-03-11T07:29:00.002+10:00

Some racist bigot on Facebook has set up a page where people can become a fan of being "Boong Drunk". A counter-page has been set up calling for the first page to be banned.

The delightful picture used as the logo for the page

If you'd like to report this page to Facebook as being inappropriate because it's bigoted and racist, click on the link above to go to the page and hit the "Report" button, shown in this screenshot with a big red circle around it:

Just in case you're unaware, "Boong" is a highly offensive term for Aboriginal Australians. You may want to click on the "thumbs up icon there for the non-offensive definitions and the "thumbs down" icon there for the offensive ones.

Rally protesting Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Thu Mar 11, Parliament House

2010-03-09T14:30:00.000+10:00

There's a rally this Thursday, March 11 2010, protesting the recent death of an Aboriginal man in custody in Brisbane. The 4ZZZ News blog reported the story on Monday and has all the details.

Sound and pictures: Black Deaths in Custody Rally

2010-02-08T20:08:00.001+10:00

This article has a recording of the rally held today at Police Headquarters, Roma St, Brisbane City. There are also photos of the rally.

To listen to the recording of the rally, click on the link and press "play" on the audio player at the Let's Take Over Posterous blog.

There will be another community rally to discuss what to do about police violence against Aboriginal people this Saturday, at 11am outside Parliament House. There's also a forum about Indigenous people and Queensland's legal system at All Hallows School in Fortitude Valley at 3pm on Sunday.

Download now or listen on posterous

Black deaths in custody rally 100208.mp3 (10679 KB)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Let's Take Over

Interview with Sam Watson re tomorrow's rally against black deaths in custody

2010-02-07T15:31:00.001+10:00

Download now or listen on posterous

Sam Watson Interview re black deaths in custody rally 100208.mp3 (2901 KB)

I spoke to Sam Watson yesterday about tomorrow's rally against black deaths in custody. The rally will be held at 1pm on Monday February 8th outside Queensland police headquarters at 200 Roma St, Brisbane City - for public transport details click here.

Press "play" on the audio player to hear the interview.

Posted via email from Let's Take Over

Rally against black deaths in custody - Mon Feb 8 2010, Roma St, Outside police HQ

2010-02-06T13:50:00.000+10:00

There's a rally on Monday February 8th 2010 to protest black deaths in custody. It's at 1pm outside the Queensland Police HQ at 200 Roma St in town - click here for a Google Map.

The rally will call for an end to bashings and deaths of black deaths in custody, and for justice for black prisoners who have already been killed in custody. Rally organisers state that no Queensland police officer has ever been convicted of any Aboriginal death in custody, despite Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley changing his story before giving evidence into the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee in Palm Island in 2006.

The rally will also demand another Royal Commission into black deaths in custody.

The best way to get to the rally by public transport is to catch a train or a bus to the Roma St Transit Centre - the Google Map shows the Roma St transit centre and the police HQ. The Translink journey planner will help you find bus or train timetables.

Australia Bans Small Breasts? No, these reports are UNCONFIRMED! #nocleanfeed

2010-01-28T20:29:00.001+10:00

NOTE: I am a member of an anti-censorship group in Brisbane. This article is my own opinion, not the opinion of that group, and has not been shown to or approved by any members of that group.

There has been anger and much head-shaking over a report claiming that "Australia bans small breasts", published on the Somebody Think of the Children blog. The report is based on a media release from the Australian Sex Party, in which the Party's Fiona Patten says:

The Board has also started to ban depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. This is in response to a campaign led by Kids Free 2 B Kids and promoted by Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett in Senate Estimates late last year. Mainstream companies such as Larry Flint’s Hustler produce some of the publications that have been banned. These companies are regulated by the FBI to ensure that only adult performers are featured in their publications. “We are starting to see depictions of women in their late 20s being banned because they have an A cup size”

However, the original mdia release contained no more detail than that. One publishing company mentioned, no specific decisions cited, no basis for the story other than the an unconfirmed statement by a leading figure of a political party. I happen to support the broad aims of the Australian Sex Party, but they have taken a side in public debate which means their words must not be taken at face value, but checked.

The original story spread quickly throughout the Internet, as this Google search shows. It wasn't until 18 hours after publication that an update was published on the STOTC blog. There is no information from the Classification Board on any specific ban, only a general statement that publications with depictions of persons who appear to be under 18 must be refused classification (that is, banned).

The second article also says Ms Patten attended a training session at the Censorship Board where she was shown material that had been refused classificiation due to the size of women's breasts in the material. The article says Ms Patten says some of the banned titles include "Barely Legal", Finally Legal" and "Purely 18" - the links go to the Classification Board's database showing the bans on each of those publications.

However, one of these bans was made in 2008, one in 2003, and the rest in 2001 or before. Reasons for these bans are not given in the database. Ms Patten says:

That information [details of why a publication is banned] is not provided to the applicant when their publication is Refused Classification.

However, the Classification Board's website says:

What if I disagree with the Classification Board's decision?
You can ask a Classification Applications Officer for a copy of the
Classification Board's reasons for decision. You can also apply for a
review to the Classification Review Board, an independent review body.

Reasons why a publication is banned can be seen by the publisher. Not a single one of the classification decisions so far alluded to by Ms Patten took place after "Senate Estimates late last year". And yet this media release, and the reporting of it by a leading anti-censorship blog, has led to the impression that small breasts are to be automatically banned by Australia's censorship board. Well, I call bullshit.

For what it's worth, it may well be true that moral conservatives are trying to pressure the Classification Board to clamp down on depictions of "barely legal" type pornographic magazines which usually try to imply that their models are only a few days or weeks older than 18. Australia seems to be a pretty dirty-minded country which likes to hide it's dirty-mindedness behind rage at even slight sexual deviancy. But there's no proof of that in anything the Australian Sex Party has said in their media release. When we fight against censorship we need to have our facts clear and make sure they can't be easily shown to be wrong. We shouldn't whip up a moral panic by claiming that others are trying to whip up a moral panic. We certainly shouldn't upset people (and I've seen quite a few people upset about this today) without knowing our facts are correct.

And if someone has a barrow to push - even if (especially if) we agree with them - we need to make sure we don't take what they say at face value, but carefully check everything they claim before getting people angry about something that might turn out to be not true.

Pro-Choice Action Collective Working Bee, Wed Jan 13

2010-01-10T14:00:00.002+10:00

The Pro-Choice Action Collective is having a working bee at QUT's Kelvin Grove campus on Wednesday January 13 to prepare for their stall at the Big Day Out.

The meeting is in the Queer space on Level 1 of C Block (the Student Services building) - click here for a Google Map.

The current campaign is because a young woman in Cairns, and her partner, were charged with allegedly importing a drug so she could have an abortion. If you're on Facebook, there is a FB event here, and you can join the Pro-Choice Action Collective's FB group here.

The working bee is from 2pm till 8pm. The best way to get there is to catch a bus to the QUT Kelvin Grove Busway station - click here to use Translink's journey planner to find bus timetables.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Refugee Action Collective organising meeting Wed Dec 2 6.30pm

2009-11-30T14:00:00.001+10:00

The Refugee Action Collective Queensland is holding an organising meeting on Wednesday December 2.

The meeting is at the Trades and Labour Council building at 16 Peel St in South Brisbane (click here for a Google Map) and starts at 6.30pm.

The TLC building is right near the Cultural Centre bus station and the South Brisbane train station. Click here to use the Translink journey planner.

For more information on what's happening at the meeting, call Paul at the Refugee Action Collective on (07) 3392 3843

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

2009-10-12T13:00:00.000+10:00

The Justice for Palestine group is presenting the Palestinian Days film festival from this Friday, October 16, to Sunday, October 18, at the Schonell Theatre at the University of Queensland's St Lucia campus - click here for a Google Map.

There are seven sessions over the weekend. The opening session at 6.30pm on Friday October 16 costs $20 or $12 concession, and includes food and will be opened by Ambassador Izzat Abdul Hadi, head of the Palestinian delegation to Australia. All other sessions are $10, or $8 concession. Tickets for the entire festival are $50, or a day pass is $15 or $15 concession. If you can't afford a session, please book and let the organisers know and they'll be able to arrange a discount or free entry for you.

The features at each session are:

Friday October 16, 6.30pm

Lemonade - Palestinian brothers try to transcend their predicament as refugees by selling lemonade in their school break.

Arna's Children: a film about a children's theatre group in Jenin run by Arna Mer-Khamis.

Saturday October 17, 11am

Letter from Sarah - a 12-year old Palestinian girl writes a script about her life.

Palestine Blues - looks at how the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the building of the Wall, has affected the Palestinian people. By Nida Sinnokrot.

Saturday October 17, 2pm

Frontiers of Dreams and Fears: looks at the life of Palestinian children living in refugee camps.

Jerusalem - the East Side Story: about the Israeli efforts to drive Palestinians out of East Jerusalem.

Saturday October 17, 7.30pm

Palestine, Summer 06: Captures the mood of Palestine as Israel attacked Gaza and Lebanon.

Arus el Jaleel (Bride of Galillee): Story of Fatma HAwari, bombed by Israeli forces in 1948 and left in a wheelchair.

Sunday October 18, 11am

Gaza Strip

Sunday October 18, 2pm

Jenin Jenin: The Palestinian side of 2002's Battle of Jenin.

Since You Left: Mohammed Bakri visits the graveside of his mentor, Emile Habibi and reflects on what has happened since Habibi's death.

Sunday, October 18 6pm

My Beloved Homeland: Features music from Palestinians, including warsinger Rim Banna, Jawaher Shofan, the El-Funoun Popular Palestinian Dance Troupe, Mustafa al-Kurd, and the Sarayett Rammallah Troupe for Performance and Dance.

The Iron Wall.

test autopost to facebook from LTO posterous

2009-09-03T15:19:00.001+10:00

test autopost to facebook from LTO posterous

Let's see if this works

Posted via web from Let's Take Over

Brisbane Pro Choice Action Collective rally this Saturday Aug 29

2009-08-27T15:09:00.002+10:00

The Pro-Choice Action Collective is holding a rally this Saturday, August 29 2009, at 11am in Queens Park, Brisbane City (click here for a Google Map), to demand that the Queensland Police drop all charges against a young woman in Cairns who allegedly used misoprostol to abort a foetus she was carrying, and that the Government also repeal all anti-abortion laws.

This issue has become more urgent as this week Queensland doctors have said they will not carry out abortions unless the Government assures them that they will not be charged with a crime.

If you're on Facebook, there's an event about the rally if you click here, and also the Pro-Choice Action Collective has a group set up on Facebook.

Brisforcewatch meeting Fri Aug 21 6.30pm : The community watching the cops

2009-08-20T13:52:00.001+10:00

Almost three years ago, Adrian Walker spoke at a rally demanding justice over the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee, an Aboriginal man killed by Queensland Police Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley. Walker said that black people need to start "policing the police":

On Friday night, at the Kurilpa Hall, 174 Boundary St, West End, at 6.30pm, Brisforcewatch is starting up. That's what they plan to do - watch the cops, and help try to keep the notoriously violent and abusive Queensland Police under control. There's going to be a discussion led by someone from the Caxton Legal Service, about your rights when you've been arrested, and an introduction to the concept of Brisforcewatch. There's also going to be music by Brisbane band Run Pig Run.

It's a drug and alcohol free event, entry is free and free food is available. If you can bring a plate or some cash to cover the costs, that would be really good.

Click here for a Google Map showing where the Kurilpa Hall is at 174 Boundary St.

Thank you Twitter - maintenance time changed to help Iranian protesters #iran9 #nomaintenance

2009-06-16T13:25:00.002+10:00

You probably know by now that there are big protests going on in Iran, after allegations that the recent election there was rigged by the Government of President Ahmedinijad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameni. This morning (Australian Eastern time) I noticed some messages on Twitter asking Twitter to hold off on some maintenance, so that Twitter would be available for use by the Iranian protesters who are being attacked by the police.

This led to a pretty ugly discussion with one Twitter user in particular. I'll update this story with some details of the discussion later, but the more important thing to talk about is this poll and this article posted by Twitter user @samclifford.

The poll asks:

With regards to the delaying of Twitter's maintenance and the troubles in Iran, where do you stand on the issue of corporate responsibility?

And the three possible answers are:

Service providers have an obligation to the safety of their users if a diminishing in the quality of service would have an adverse effect on user safety

Service providers have no obligation to the safety of their users but may choose to get involved if they wish

Service providers should do no more than provide the service

I voted for the first option, as it is the closest to my opinion, but I think things are a bit more complex than that, so this article is about what I think.

The main difference I have with the first question is that it talks about a fairly abstract obligation of safety to users. I think that rather than having just that obligation to users, Twitter should be actively taking sides in the current Iranian protests. The people who are protesting right now in Iran are the natural allies of the Internet-aware generation in the Western world, and one of our common enemies is the repressive dictatorship of reactionary priests that runs Iran.

Twitter is of course a capitalist, privately owned business. There are no legal obligations on it to support protest against dictatorships. But what happens if the Iranian people overthrow their regime and install a modern bourgeois democracy in its place? That democracy is bound to remember who helped it, and who it was that cowardly supported the old regime because they didn't want to rock the boat. I'd argue that not only does Twitter have an obligation to help the Iranian protestors, but that it is also in their strategic interests to win allies among people who are struggling for freedom right now.

On a more selfish level, many people on Twitter have noticed that CNN, a leading 24-hour cable news channel, utterly failed to spread news of the Iranian protests, while Twitter was ablaze with the news. It's definitely in Twitter's interest to be known as the place where news breaks first, and Twitter's ability to spread news quickly might just lead to it catching up on the cable networks that have dominated the 24-hour news cycle for the last two decades.

And those reasons might just be why Twitter agreed to change the time of the scheduled maintenance. In fact, it was a little more involved than that. Twitter's network is hosted by a company called NTT America - their Enterprise Hosting Services division, to be precise. It was NTT that had planned the maintenance on their system, so Twitter had to go to NTT and make a case for postponing the maintenance, and the final call was NTT's. Even if the decision was made for purely selfish reasons, it's the right one. Congratulations and thanks to Twitter, and to NTT.

UPDATE: Now the important part of the post is online, here's the details of this morning's silly conversation.

I noticed the #nomaintenance hashtag (click here for an explanation of hashtags on Twitter) this morning and retweeted a message asking for Twitter to postpone maintenance so that the protesters in Iran could use Twitter. Almost immediately I was challenged by user @Geordieguy who asked if I were serious. He also posted a message for all his followers to see, claiming that asking Twitter to postpone maintenance was "Luddism" and "bullying". The discussion went on for a bit, and I was misrepresented, and the #nomaintenance hashtag was said to be the same as lynchmobbing.

I pointed out that at least by actively supporting the Iranian regime (by attacking efforts to help their opponents), Goerdieguy had placed himself on their side. This was met with laughter, but it is in fact exactly what I meant.

If people under attack from riot police say they want and need a service like Twitter to be up so they can use it, and other people try and help them, and you attack the people who are trying to help, you put yourself on the side of the riot police. No ifs, buts or maybes. And if you put yourself on the side of the cops, expect to be called out for it.

Sure, it's a minor thing and Twitter being available isn't going to overthrow the Iranian regime by itself. A lot more needs to happen. But a free flow of information is absolutely vital to help rebellions like this succeed. It's not enough on its own, but without it, you've got nothing.

Sex Party calls for NRL players to organise group sex at brothels #fb

2009-05-18T11:30:00.000+10:00

I've just been sent a media release by the Australian Sex Party, thanks to Michael Meloni of the Somebody Think of the Children blog, who passed it on to me after getting it from them.

The release says that the NRL should make all players get educated about brothels, and that NRL clubs should arrange legal group sex sessions for players who want them.

The release comes after a week and a half of allegations that former Rugby League star and now TV personality Matthew Johns helped to gang rape a young woman in New Zealand in 2002.

The release says:

Sex Party Calls for Brothel Education in NRL

Footballers who wanted to engage in group sex should be educated by their clubs about how to organise these liaisons as legal, commercial arrangements.

Australian Sex Party convenor Fiona Patten, said that most Rugby League clubs had made brothels and escort agencies ‘no go’ areas for their players thinking that they were enhancing the moral standing of their teams. “In reality, these prudish bans on commercial sex have inadvertently led to an increase in group sex with groupies who try to access popular players”, she said.

“ The NRL needs to set up a brothel liaison office and to conduct brothel information sessions with all players, including those who profess to be religious.”

Ms Patten said that most teams in the NRL would have a local brothel they could adopt as their own and which would bend over backwards to help them learn about how to use its many services. “If players are away on tour, they could ring a local brothel or escort agency and arrange a service with a qualified sex worker for five or six players. Strict times would be adhered to, numbers of clients would be checked and fees would be paid up front.”

There are approximately 200 legal brothels and up to 6,000 sex workers in NSW. Commercial sex has been legal since 1995 and one of the main reasons that state governments went down this road was to ensure the safety of workers and clients alike. Rugby League clubs which actively discourage their players from seeking out legal commercial sexual services on moral grounds have inadvertently contributed to sexual violence and bad behaviour in the code.

Ms Patten said she would be happy to broker a meeting with NRL officials and representatives of the sex industry to establish a discreet and professional relationship between the two. “This relationship could then become a model for other sporting organisations who have to coordinate large numbers of sexually active men who sometimes drink to excess with groupies and fans around them”, she said.

The Australian Sex Party was in the process of developing policies on sex and gender in the sport.

Some other articles worth reading about a culture that punishes the victims of rape while supporting the men who rape women:

Sleepydumpling on just what rape is, exactly, with a classic example of a woman doing the "slut shaming" in the comments, following on from this comment of hers on Twitter.

This article by Zomb1etron.

This article at Hoyden About Town by Lauredhel, about Sydney Morning Herald reporter Asher Moses who called the woman involved in the group sex with Matthew Johns and others a "slutty groupy", and claimed on Twitter the group sex was consensual even though he is in no position to know the truth:

Moses has since deleted this post on Twitter but this screenshot is from Twitter Search, which archives Twitter messages for 55 days.

And finally this article from Sydney's Daily Telegraph, about the reaction of gay former Rugby League player Ian Roberts to the way The Footy Show rallied around its star Matthew Johns, and how this is similar to the way the Footy Show has consistently mocked him:

He'd tuned into The Footy Show to see what Johns would say, and was disappointed that the apology, and Johns' subsequent remarks, have focused mainly on the pain of his own wife and family.

About the girl involved, Johns has repeatedly said he's sorry for her "embarrassment and pain" - implying that although she was an entirely willing participant at the time, she is now motivated by shame and anger.

"It was almost like he was the victim, that she asked for it," Roberts told me. "My God - that poor woman has suffered for all this time.

I've been hearing talkback callers this week saying she's being vindictive, that she asked for it. My God, she was 19!

"It's taken her seven years to mature. She was totally outnumbered in the room. She was a defenceless human being.

She was alone with all those men, and none of them said, 'Come on, guys, that's enough.' Not one of them was man enough to admit to this before now, and none of the other men who were in that room are brave enough to own their actions, to step up now and say 'Yeah, it was me.'

"And anyone who says she asked for it - shame on you. She was just a kid."

Brisbane Unions: Labour Day celebrations Monday 4th of May 2009

2009-04-29T10:00:00.000+10:00

The Labour Day 2009 celebrations are on on Monday May 4th, at the oval at the RNA Showgrounds in Fortitude Valley - click here for a Google Map.

Brisbane's union members will be marching from Spring Hill through Fortitude Valley from 10am and the celebrations will kick off at the showgrounds from 11am, with free bands, free kids' rides and lots of political debate. If you want to march, click here for more info, or visit your union's website.

This slideshow shows the photos I took of the march and celebrations two years ago, in 2007:

And this video shows Kevin Rudd, then Opposition Leader and now Prime Minister of Australia, talking at the same event in 2007:

Fight back against #stalkdaily and its worm that hijacked Twitter today

2009-04-12T20:38:00.007+10:00

UPDATE: Anonymous in comments says to go here to find out what to do if the worm has infected your Twitter account - the info looks pretty good. The comment also says that the domain uuuq.net was hosted at Zymic.com, not GoDaddy.

UPDATE: Twitter user jay_neff has done some research on Mikeyy Mooney and found out he appears to be from from Winnfield, Louisiana

UPDATE: I have made mistakes about who is hosting the servers. This is because I thought the companies that rented the domain names - apparently GoDaddy and Dreamhost - were the same ones renting the server space. See further corrections below and in the comments.

A 17 year old embryo scammer/spammer calling himself "Mikeyy [sic] Mooney", who says he is the founder of Twitter rip-off stalkdaily.com, has admitted launching a worm that has hijacked people's Twitter accounts today.

UPDATE: before admitting to being behind the worm, "Mikeyy" LIED to people on his own stalkdaily.com site asking him about the twitter hijacking - see Screenshot 5 below for the evidence of this, or check the account "mikeyy" on stalkdaily.com - No, I'm not linking to it!

A full account of the worm is available here at the Mashable site. The worm has deliberately changed the web link in people's Twitter profiles to point to "Mikeyy"'s own rip-off site, and has also hijacked people's twitter accounts and sent spam messages from them, promoting himself. If you notice an account that is sending messages about "Mikeyy", DO NOT CLICK ON IT!!!! Your account will be hijacked too. Twitter will no doubt let us know when all is safe again.

I did a whois lookup to see who owns the stalkdaily.com account. There is no personal info available, unfortunately, but ~~the whois search reveals that the stalkdaily.com site is hosted by Dreamhost~~.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: The stalkdaily site is hosted by FastServers, NOT Dreamhost. FastServers' abuse reporting address is abuse@fastservers.com

I have sent a similar email to the one I sent to Dreamhost to FastServers - please consider sending one yourself. CORRECTION ENDS.

So I have sent an email to abuse@dreamhost.com asking them to cancel this loser's accounts:

Dear Madam, or Sir,

I am writing to let you know that a website hosted by you - according to a whois lookup - admits responsibility for launching a worm that has exploited security holes in the Twitter.com website, of which I am a member. The worm has been hijacking accounts and sending spam updates from those accounts, which has directly impacted my enjoyment and use of the twitter.com site. I attach a screenshot of the Twitter Search site, showing these spam messages.

The website is www.stalkdaily.com

I attach a screenshot of the front page of www.stalkdaily.com where the purported owner of the site - or someone with permission to post to that site's front page - admits that they are responsible for creating the worm. The article the link on the front page leads to is at http://www.bnonews.com/news/242.html

Since the worm links people's Twitter accounts to stalkdaily without their knowledge or consent, I can only assume that this is a breach of your terms of service.

I would appreciate it if you would delete all accounts held by this account holder immediately.

If you want to get this moron punished, please do the same - send a complaint email to abuse@dreamhost.com asking them to cancel "Mikeyy"'s accounts. Let's get this fool kicked off the Internet, if only for a while.

If your acccount has been infected, this link will tell you what to do:

http://mashable.com/2009/04/11/stalkdaily-twitter/?disqus_reply=8093439#comment-8093287

UPDATE: This blog post seems to show that the actual domain where the malicious script was hosted is uuuq.com. A whois lookup of that domain name ~~indicates it is hosted by GoDaddy~~. [UPDATE: A comment and the page it says to look at indicates that the script was hosted at zymic.com]

I have used this page to submit an email to GoDaddy as well:

Dear Madam, or Sir,

I am writing to you about the Twitter worm active today, April 12 2009, that was apparently hosted at a domain name that GoDaddy hosts.

Details of the worm can be found here: http://mashable.com/2009/04/11/stalkdaily-twitter/

This blog post: http://dcortesi.com/2009/04/11/twitter-stalkdaily-worm-postmortem/

indicates that malicious script that was used to hack the Twitter website, affecting my user experience there, was hosted at uuuq.com. A whois lookup: http://reports.internic.net/cgi/whois?whois_nic=uuuq.com&type=domain

indicates that GoDaddy is the host of this domain.

I assume that hosting malicious scripts on your servers is a breach of your Terms of Service. I ask that you delete all accounts hosted by the owner of uuuq.com

Regards,

David Jackmanson

UPDATE: This post at the Mundoreves blog says the new attack on Twitter is by a script hosted at ireel.com. The Whois lookup for ireel.com indicates it is hosted by Ideal Media in Quebec, email address - yes, a HOTMAIL address, which makes the company sound pretty fly-by-night AT BEST.

So I've sent another email off:

Dear Madam, or Sir,

I am writing because of this blog post: http://www.mundoreves.com/display/HOME/2009/04/12/Examining+the+StalkDaily-Mikeyy+twitter+worm... , which indicates that malicious script has been hosted on your site that has been used to hack the Twitter.com site, which has affected the experience of many users, including myself.

I would appreciate it if you could check this, and if it is indeed the case, if you would stop anyone hosting this sort of malicious script on your servers.

Regards,

David Jackmanson

Screenshot 6 below shows the whois lookup that provided me with this information.

Click on the screenshots below to see full-sized versions of them.

Screenshot 1: Stalkdaily.com's "Mikeyy" admits he is behind the worm:

Screenshot 2: Twitter Search shows how "Mikeyy" has infested the Twitter timeline:

Screenshot 3: Whois lookup screenshot confirming that stalkdaily.com is hosted by Dreamhost:

Screenshot 4: Whois lookup screenshot confirming that uuuq.com - host of the malicious script - is hosted by GoDaddy.com

Screenshot 5: Evidence that "Mikeyy" LIED to members of his own stalkdaily.com site about his involvement in the Twitter hijacking:

Screenshot 6: Whois lookup for ireel.com

Are you working over Easter? #workingeaster

2009-04-09T12:30:00.000+10:00

So, are you working over (Catholic/Protestant) Easter in a country where, like here in Australia, almost everyone else goes on holiday for a four-day weekend? I am, for a couple of shifts, and I'll be using the #workingeaster hashtag on Twitter to connect with other people who are working. So if you're working at Easter and want to chat about what it's like to be on deck on a public holiday, leave a comment on Twitter using the #workingeaster hashtag or, if Twitter doesn't interest you, leave a comment here on this blog post.

(What the hell is a hashtag? Click here for more info).

If you're on Twitter, a service that lets you find out what people are doing, you might want to follow the Let's Take Over's Twitter account and you'll get updated every time there is a new story on the Let's Take Over. Or if you want more, follow my personal account (David Jackmanson) and find out what I'm up to.

If you're from the USA or somewhere where the city doesn't shut down this long weekend, here's how Good Friday's almost total shutdown in Australia caught American recording artist ?uestlove by surprise two years ago.

It's not that Australians are particularly religious compared to people in the USA, but Easter has long been a very popular holiday with both Christian believers AND those who hold to other creeds, or none, in Australia.

BTW ?uestlove gets it a bit wrong, he's on the Gold Coast, not in Brisbane, but he does say Brisbane properly (it's BRIZ-bun, not Briz-BANE, - Briz-BANE is how you say the name of Brisbane in California, near San Francisco).

Reports of #nocleanfeed #nocensorship forum hosted by @newmatilda

2009-03-26T03:59:00.000+10:00

Nic Suzor from Electronic Frontiers Australia speaks at "The Tangled Web", a forum on internet censorship organised by newmatilda.com. New Matilda's Twitter account is here, and their overview of the internet censorship debate in Australia is here.

On Tuesday March 24th 2009, newmatilda.com, a website with "Independent news, analysis and satire covering politics, consumerism, international affairs, and culture.", presented "The Tangled Web", a forum about Internet censorship.

Michael Meloni of somebodythinkofthechildren.com, a blog discussing censorship and moral panic, used CoverItLive to send out a live call of what was happening at the anti-censorship forum, which you can read if you click here.

Meloni was joined by media commentator Stigherrian and Mark Newton, an employee of iiNet who has been a big public critic of the Australian Government's plans to censor the Internet, who commented online. There were plenty of comments from people taking part online, and you can read it all if you click here.

Irene Graham, a meticulously detailed anti-censorship campaigner at libertus.net, and Senator Scott Ludlam, a member of the Australian Greens elected from Western Australia in 2007, who has questioned Senator Conroy about the Government's censorship plans:

Kieran Salsone, of the Websinthe blog and NoCharCom online comic, also did a live call of the foru, which you can read here for the next fifty days or so (the latest messages are at the top, so you are reading backwards). After that link stops working, you can still click here for screenshots of the coverage.

Peter Black, law lecturer at QUT and author at Freedom to Differ, speaks at "The Tangled Web", a forum about Internet Censorship organised by newmatilda.com, hosted by the Queensland University of Technology on Tuesday March 24 2009.

The forum was sound-recorded, and Peter Black said the recording should be online soon.

Rod McGuinness, Managing Editor of New Matilda magazine, which organised the forum on Internet censorship.

Human Rights Consultation, Brisbane - report

2009-03-24T14:45:00.000+10:00

Last night (Monday March 23rd, 2009), I went to the National Human Rights Consultation session in Brisbane. It was quite interesting, although it had the limitations of a discussion based on Government and law, and the consultation process is also limited by the terms of reference the Government gave it, which means they cannot recommend a Constitutionally entrenched bill of rights.

The four members of the Consultation panel are the Chair, Frank Brennan, Mary Kostakidis, Tammy Williams, and Mick Palmer. The consultation began with a speech by Tammy Williams who asked "What are our human rights - what exactly are our rights and liberties?". Williams pointed out that our human rights are protected by a variety of different laws, or in some cases, by nothing in the law at all. She threw a couple of situations out there that go beyond "traditional" conceptions of human rights, including asking if people with diabilities should have the right to attend mainstream schools, or if married couples have the right not to be separated when they enter nursing homes.

Then Mary Kostakidis started to facilitate a discussion at the various tables (there were about 30-odd tables at the event with about 12 seats each). The first at-the-tables discussion was based on the three key questions being asked by the Consultation:

* Which human rights and responsibilities should be protected and promoted?
* Are human rights sufficiently protected and promoted?
* How could Australia better protect and promote human rights?

At our table we introduced ourselves to each other and started to discuss these questions in a broad way. We had a human rights worker, one person with general interest in the field, one person (me) whose focus is more on what people need to do to stand up for their rights instead of relying on the law, one person who thought how we treat each other is important (and also access to secure, safe food), and one person who was a little skeptical of people's willingness to defend human rights.

After the table discussion, a microphone went around and people spoke from the floor. Comments from the floor included:

Most Australians don't have their rights violated, but we do often meet those whose rights are violated. One example is those members of the Bali Nine who are on death row in Indonesia - it's been suggested that the Australian Federal Police co-operated with Indonesian authorities, and thus exposed Australians to the death penalty.

Youth rights are often violated by the police. For example, a fundraiser for imprisoned Aboriginal man Lex Wotton last weekend was harassed by the police.

Some things people are worried about include ASIO's detention powers, Police use of Tasers and water flouridation.

Children being vulnerable after leaving domestic violence and taken into the care of potential abusers.
One person said he was "skeptical of the process" and said the "human rights industry" was determined to introduce a charter which would be interpreted by judges.

Kostakidis then moved the discussion towards the specific question of "what rights ought to be included in the list of our rights?", which attracted the following comments:

Rights of the disabled, especially those who can't articulate their own needs. Disabled people are often forced to live in nursing homes, or end up in prison.

Rights to shelter, a fair trial, health, freedom and the rights of the unborn child.

Rights of mentally ill people not to be shot by police. Right of physically disabled people to be treated equally in hospital.

Right of all women to choose whether to have an abortion or not, and to access fertility treatment.

Anti-torture to be enshrined in Australian law

Services are needed to teach immigrants with no experience of the rule of law, and no concept of it, what Australian society is like

We then moved onto another discussion at our tables, this time discussing each of the three questions (see above) in turn.

Question One: Which human rights and responsibilities should be protected and promoted?

Things that came up from our table included:

focussing on the rights of all people, not just citizens (two of us (including me) agreed that, ideally, we'd tear down all borders - not that that's likely in the near future).

We have a responsbility to defend our own rights - laws are useless without the will to stand up and use them.

We need to stand up for those rights in UN conventions that Australia has already agreed to.

Education and refugee rights

We have a responsibility to help to empower those living under oppressive regimes.

We have a responsibility to respect each other.

Question Two: Are human rights sufficiently protected and promoted?

This turned quickly into a discussion of when it is legitimate to suspend human rights, say in times of national emergency.

There are dangers in this - there were wildfires in Southern California a few years ago, and "Minutemen" (vigilante border patrollers) were stopping people of Hispanic appearance and detaining them if they had no papers. So many Hispanic people did not evacuate and died as a result, or were arrested as they sought help.

Active citizenship is what is important here - people need to decide what they would do if they had responsibility for solving a problem so they can decide what is and is not justified.

We need to be willing to take risks to defend our rights.

Question 3: How could Australia better protect and promote human rights?

Adopting a Human Rights Act

Should such an act cover merely political rights and liberties (eg right to vote, free speech), or also social and cultural rights (eg rights to housing, food and language) as well? Opinions differed at our table.

Government transparency and Freedom of Information Acts

Should rights be in the Constitution or not? (despite the Government not being willing to allow the Consultation to recommend that).

After the table discussions, Mick Palmer facilitated a discussion where people stood up and said what had come out of their table discussions. Comments on this included:

Procedural rights, community rights, the danger of suspension of the rule of law, more resources are required, an independent judiciary and an ability to get your rights back when they are violated are all important. (Palmer commented that often procedural rights are good, EG in the Cornelia Rau case, but they just get ignored).

We need the ability to appeal abuses of human rights.

Often procedural rights are NOT good enough, in the case of the disabled and mentally ill.

Protection of the safety of those who work with the mentally ill if they are potentially violent.

Human rights should never be suspended.

In the case of war, for example, freedoms must be suspended.

We need a responsibility for how our soldiers etc act when outside Australia.

Who polices the laws and defends human rights? Example was given of a Sikh student told not to come to a school unless he cut his hair (which is something forbidden by the Sikh religion).

One woman complained that while immigrants get thier homes "completely fitted out", Australians going to the countries where those immigrants come from would get nothing.

Judges should be the LAST line of defence against human rights abuses - human rights need to be so deeply ingrained in our culture and actions that rights abuses become rare.

Civic leave from work should exist so people can join in taking action on things like human rights.

There should be a free to air channel that shows G-rated programs until 10.30 at night.

Rights can only exist if ones duties are carried out, especially our duty towards children.

Home birth should be a right - there are planned new laws that will make home birth illegal by 2010 (Actually this is not true, a Maternity Services Review has issued a report whose recommendations, IF ADOPTED, would make home birth effectively illegal (by requiring midwives to have insurance which no insurance companies offer) - this is NOT the same as legislation being planned or introduced)

My thoughts on all this: I think the key is people being prepared to defend their own human rights, and the rights of others. I'm not so excited by the idea of a Human Rights Act - it can't hurt, but my ideal solution would be to entrench strong rights and freedoms in the constitution (eg the right to vote, the right to free speech, the right to freedom of and freedom from religion, and so on) and leave many other rights to the political process rather than producing a legal document. I think a manifesto of desired social and cultural rights, rather than a legal Act, is the right way to go.

Also, I thought the discussions at the tables were much more valuable than the individual people speaking up, as there was no way to get a real back-and-forth discussion going with 200 people there and only two hours time. It's a lot easier to see arguments and counter-arguments here, and to discuss them in the comments, then it was to discuss them last night - especially with so many people there to push specific agendas.

What do you think?

@kevinruddpm can't use apostrophes, tries to delete the evidence

2009-03-17T20:48:00.000+10:00

It seems our politicians on Twitter have a lot to learn. Just one day after Queensland Premier Anna Bligh got caught deleting a message insulting the Green Party,sent (she says) from her Twitter account by an over-zealous volunteer, the Prime Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd, has also been caught out not knowing how to use apostrophes correctly, and deleting the evidence when called on it.

This afternoon, the KevinRuddPM account posted a St Patrick's Day message:

Wishing everyone a happy St Patrick's Day - especially Australian's with Irish heritage!

The apostrophe in "Australian's" is incorrect. About twenty people noticed this inability to punctuate correctly, and a few hours later, the Prime Minister's account had a new St Patrick's Day message, using the correct punctuation.

What is mildly interesting is that whoever is operating the PM's account deleted the original, incorrect message and did not bother to acknowledge that a mistake had been made. If you examine the PM's Twitter acount here you will see only one message, but if you look at this Twitter Search result, you will see both messages - you can delete a message that you sent from your own account, but it will still show up if you search for it.

This is, of course, really not very important in itself. So the PM (or whoever is operating his Twitter account) made a punctuation mistake. So what?

What matters is that this shows how politicians like to operate. Make a mistake, hide the evidence, correct the mistake and pretend it never happened. This is because politicians are usually control freaks, thanks to the world they operate in where even small mistakes are jumped on by their enemies. Being a control freak is normal behaviour for a politician, and in fact it would be incompetent for a politician NOT to keep tight control over their environment. If you've ever listened to the Federal Parliament's Question Time on the radio or seen it on the TV, you know how this works.

However, politicians are now trying to use social networking services like Twitter and Facebook to get in touch with people, and the sort of behaviour that works with other politicians doesn't work at all in that sort of environment. People expect to be engaged with, they expect their questions to be answered, they don't expect people to use their Twitter or Facebook accounts just as a way to punch out media releases. But Australia's politicians have, so far, mostly done just that.

I'm not saying that politicians should personally be on their Twitter or Facebook accounts. We pay them to do a difficult and busy job, and I'm sure they have a lot more to do than to answer my concerns about, say, Translink and Brisbane's public transport. So I don't mind the fact that most politicians' social networking accounts will be operated by other people.

What I do mind is the complete lack of engagement. If social media is going to change politics, it's because it makes it really easy to discuss issues, and easy to get together and decide what to do. If politicians want to take advantage of that - if they really are interested in people's feedback and want people to start coming up with new ideas - then those politicians are going to have to change the way they act. Empty promises and bland assurances won't be enough to convince people who band together to find an answer to a problem.

Either politicians will start learning to use social networking on the Internet to engage (indirectly) with a lot more people than they ever have before, or people will use the Internet to make politicians more and more irrelevant.

Don't let Fake Stephen Conroy @stephenconroy be silenced! PLEASE hand over the Twitter account!

2009-03-17T17:35:00.000+10:00

The very funny Fake Stephen Conroy @stephenconroy Twitter account is about to go silent forever, now that it's been revealed that Telstra employee Leslie Nassar is the man behind the account.

Are you on Twitter? Do you want @stephenconroy to rise from the ashes? If so, I suggest sending an @reply to the @stephenconroy account suggesting that Nassar runs a contest to find the funniest possible replacement. It doesn't have to be complicated, he could just set up a freemail account and pick the best candidate at his personal whim.

Fake Stephen Conroy must live!

Despite denial, Freeview lawyers pulled spoof ad from YouTube

2009-03-10T12:19:00.000+10:00

Yesterday, Margaret Simons' The Content Makers blog reported that a Freeview spokesperson had denied they were behind the removal of an ad spoofing Freeview from YouTube.

Today, Simons' blog reports that this is wrong:

This morning I received the following e-mail from Rob Shilkin, the Head of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs for Google Australia (Google owns YouTube).

“Hi Margaret - I’ve been reading your blog. We don’t ordinarily comment on individual videos or any DMCA notices that may be filed, but due to some confusion that is circulating online, I’ve made some enquiries internally. I wanted to confirm that we received a DMCA notice for lawyers acting on behalf of Freeview Australia Limited to remove the video in question. More information on the DMCA process is here: http://www.youtube.com/t/dmca_policy

Kind regards!

Rob Shilkin

Rob Shilkin
Head of Corporate Communications & Public Affairs
Google Australia & New Zealand

The spoof ad in question is available to watch here, and available for download via the Tech Wired AU blog.

Streisand Effect, anyone?

Freeview Australia spoof ad disappears from YouTube

2009-03-09T14:55:00.000+10:00

"Freeview" (Wikipedia) is a campaign by Australian free-to-air channels to convince you that free-to-air TV is not mostly boring rubbish. The campaign boasts about the fact that Australians will have fifteen digital channels to choose from on free-to-air TV, instead of the six free-to-air channels that Australians have (at least the ones who live in a major city).

What the campaign doesn't mention is that most of the new channels are just exact rebroadcasts of the already-existing free-to-air channels (exceptions include ABC2 and SBS World News, which broadcasts foreign-language news reports). So some Melbourne comedians doing a show about TV today decided to parody the Freeview TV commercial.

The parody was posted on the Internet's most popular video-sharing site, YouTube, but today it disappeared, due to a "terms of use violation".

However the video is available on several other video-sharing sites, including this copy from break.com:

Freeview: More of the same sh#t - Watch more

The Tech Wired AU blog has an interview with one of the creators of the spoof video commercial, and a link where you can download it yourself. Meanwhile, Margaret Simons' blog at Crikey, The Content Makers, reports a denial by Freeview that they have plans to sue the makers of the spoof, and also a denial that they had anything to do with its removal from YouTube.

Translink Brisbane Needs to Change

2009-02-24T14:24:00.000+10:00

I have just extracted, with great effort, a free daily ticket from Translink. On February 5th this year, a bus was half an hour late and then drove past me when I was frantically waving at it with both hands. After 18 days (and two follow-up calls from me to the call centre) the complaint I made about this was finally returned. However the smooth arrogant so-and-so that I talked to refused to look into other issues I've had with this route, and rotten things I've seen - they refuse to open a case for you unless you call the call centre.

So for every single incident you want to complain about, you have to lodge an individual complaint and wait a fortnight.

Obviously this system is deliberately set up to make it difficult for people to make complaints, so Translink can claim that people love them. I'm sick and tired of this, and I want to do something about it. Everyone knows how desperately unreliable Translink, especially Brisbane Transport, is and their pretence that they offer a good service is sickening.

I don't expect Translink to spend the millions of dollars it would take to put on enough bus routes and raise drivers' pay enough to fix the problems of poor weekend service and missing buses (I understand that when a driver is sick or absent, the run is just cancelled, which is why sometimes buses just don't turn up). That's a political decision, made by politicians in Cabinet, and would need a lot of pressure from the public.

However, some things that are reasonable to expect:

1) Translink actively tries to find out what problems people are having with their system, rather than passively relying on peope to lodge complaints with the call centre. This would include (but not be limited to) a translink officer opening a case when people complain about Translink on Twitter, since Translink now has a twitter account. Other social networking sites, like this one, should also be monitored to find out problems

2) Translink replies to complaints within one working day

3) Translink supplies drivers new to a route with adequate maps (unlike the ridiculously un-detailed maps that the drivers are given) so that drivers do not have to rely on asking passengers for directions (I have seen this twice)

4) Translink immediately reviews all timetables to make sure they are realistic. This would mean that bus drivers are under no pressure to drive dangerously, putting passengers at risk of being thrown to the floor.

If you agree at least partly with me, I'd like your help.

1) Can you please tell about any experiences you've had on Translink public transport. This means we'll be able to prove to people that Translink's spin

2) Can you please discuss my suggestions or add your own.

I realise that a lot of the problems I've talked about here are with Brisbane Transport. But since BT don't deal with your complaints, and Translink does, they are the ones we need to go to in the first instance. In any case, the more public fuss we raise, the more pressure we put on people to start making some changes.

I've also started a Facebook group about this

Video: Don't Divorce Us - US Homophobes will rip marriages apart

2009-02-07T14:34:00.001+10:00

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

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If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

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This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Stopping Australian Internet Censorship: Strategy Discussion #nocensorship #nocleanfeed

2009-01-15T12:01:00.003+10:00

On Saturday January 10th, I went to a meeting of the Brisbane branch of the Digital Liberty Coalition, and came away with the job of drafting a leaflet for the next small public protest, planned for Australia Day.

The leaflet needs to reflect the strategy of the anti-censorship campaign. After the December 13th 2008 rallies in six capital cities, plus the one in Hobart a week later, some very useful debate about strategy and tactics cropped up. I want this article to bring that debate to as wide an audience as possible, and I want to use that debate to draft the leaflet. There are several different possible strategies, and we need to know what people think is the most effective one.

Using the terms "Clean Feed" and "filtering" instead of "censorship"

I brought up this topic at the meeting last night, after this comment about the December 13th 2008 rally in Melbourne:

Several speakers and posters referred to internet “filtering”.

That, like the “no cleanfeed” campaign name, reflects success of the enemy’s slick marketing strategy which has involved spending millions to spread the concept of “internet safety” - and similar doublespeak.

Other speakers did not mention filtering and spoke only of “censorship”. I suspect the organizers understand the point, and are trying to make the shift, but have not yet grasped the fact that making the shift itself requires open discussion/debate of the difference at rallies - ie take the opportunity of those speakers or posters referring to filtering to explain the purpose of a policy of never referring to filters, but only to censorship.

Also, such policies need to be debated at organizing meetings and formally adopted, so people fully understand (and can change) the tactics.

The Government's tactics are based on getting people to assume that the Internet is dangerous and dirty, and that people need to Government to clean it up for them. I agree with the argument that using words like "clean feed" and "filter" put us on the back foot. I think that use of those words should be discouraged by people campaigning against the Government's censorship plans.

It's been argued here that this means making anti-censorship the main thrust of the campaign, and that this is bad because we need to convince people who do not support free speech as a principle. I agree that we do need to win over people who don't hold free speech as an absolute good, but I think when we mention the Government's plans, we can still label them as what they are - censorship - while still appealing to moderate people. We do that by not making anti-censorship the main thrust of our arguments. For instance, the same comment I just linked to says "many people who are anti-Mandatory ISP Level Filtering don’t care about
the censorship angle either - they are against $44m white elephants".

If we decided, for example, to make that point about white elephants the main thrust of the anti-censorship campaign, when we mention it we would say "The Government's internet censorship plan will cost $44 million of your money" instead of "The Government's internet filter will cost $44 million of your money". Using the word "censorship" does not in itself imply making censorship the main thrust of the campaign.

At the meeting last night, we discussed how we might go about convincing people who use Twitter (including many Australian anti-Internet-censorship activists) to not use the "hashtag" #nocleanfeed and switch instead to #nocensorship. (A "hashtag" is a word with the "hash" symbol (#) in front of it. Hashtags can be tracked using a service like twitter search. Click here to see the most recent twitter posts with #nocleanfeed, and click here to see the most recent twitter posts with #nocensorship. If you look at the posts on and after January 10th 2009, you'll notice a lot of debate has already sprung up about which hashtag should be used.

In fact, which hashtag is used on twitter is not that important in itself. Twitter is mostly going to be used by people who are already active in campaigns or engaged with the issue. But calling the Government's plans either "censorship" or a "filter", or "clean feed", in front of the public, over and over again, will allow one idea or the other to seep out into the community.

How do we reassure people when the Internet can't possibly be controlled?

One idea that I originally quite liked is that we should tell people who are worried about what their kids might see on the Internet that they can install programs on their own computers, so they can control what their kids can and can't see. This comment made me think twice about that:

...the line pushed by ISPs and others that parents can control kids access effectively is completely unrealistic.

It is also radically inconsistent with simultaneous arguments that
censorship won’t work because people who want to get access to
forbidden porn can easily use technical workarounds.

Basically its dishonest campaigning. The real options are government
censorship or kids being able to access porn and parents needing to be
able to help them to deal with that.

A better argument is that governments taking responsibility
undermines kids and parents learning how to deal with it, when this in
fact is the only way to deal with it, since government censorship merely encourages furtive interest in the forbidden.

IIt's dead easy to get around the filter. Anyone with even my low level of technical knowledge can use a proxy to get around censorship. And all it takes is one good article in plain language and millions of people without even my knowledge will be able to use one as well.

So, how do we reassure people who might be convinced by pro-censorship arguments because they are afraid of what children might see online? I see two major lines we can use here:

1) We can say that the best way to protect children is to have an open, honest relationship with them, so that they will feel free to tell you about what they see online.

2) We can keep on saying that money needs to go to the police who actually hunt down online predators, instead of on a filter that won't work.

Seeing paedophiles everywhere is a form of child abuse in itself.

This article at Strange Times suggests a new approach to the argument. The idea is that, as social conservatives look for (and see) child abuse everywhere, even in innocent photos of naked children, they are the ones who are creating an atmosphere of sexualised childhood. They are the ones with dirty minds who see a ped under every bed. This argument implies that we need to label Rudd, Conroy, Hamilton etc as the ones who are really damaging children.

So then, here is my first draft of a leaflet for January 26th (and, I hope, beyond) that uses some of these arguments. Please post your comments, suggestions, corrections etc - these ideas need to be debated by as many people as possible. Pro-censorship trolling not welcome at this debate.

For reference, see the leaflet that was handed out at the anti-censorship rallies on December 13th 2008. This leaflet can be downloaded from here.

Stop Internet Censorship in Australia

Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia.

All of these countries exercise strict controls over what its citizens can read online.

The Rudd Labor government wants to add Australia to that list, and is pushing ahead with a controversial plan to subject all internet users to a secret and unaccountable blacklist.

Please read more about the plan, learn about what the government is doing to our rights online, and find out more about what you can do to protect those rights.

WILL IT WORK?

No. Anyone who wants to get around Government censorship can use a "proxy". This is a simple and easy way of hiding what you are doing on the Internet, and it means that you'll be able to look at anything the Government doesn't want you to see. Websites like www.hotspotshield.com and www.torproject.org make it easy for you to use proxies to get around censorship - they are already used by millions of people in the dictatorships where the Internet is censored. Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans, Saudi Arabians and many others don't let their governments tell them what they can see and do online - and Australians won't either.

So if it won't work, why are you worried?

Because we take child protection seriously. Minister Conroy's excuse for trying to censor the Internet is that children are victims of pornography on the Internet, both by seeing it online and by being forced to make child pornography. But the best way - the ONLY way - to stop child pornography online is to make sure the police who hunt down child predators get the money they need to do their job. Minister Conroy's censorship plan will cost $40 million (and that's just for starters) - every single cent of that should go to the police, instead of to a censorship plan that won't work.

What about children who see pornography online? If people like Minister Conroy have their way, we'd all be scared, and lock the Internet up tightly. People like Minister Conroy would like that, because people who are scared need the Government to protect them, instead of looking after themselves. Instead of doing what the Government wants, and jumping at shadows, you can protect your children by having an open and honest relationship with them so they will tell you about what they see online. That way, you'll be able to seriously discuss it with them, you'll be able to give them the help and support and power they need, and you'll know if something is giving them problems.

This is a big choice, and it's a little scary for some people. But if you want your children to grow up strong, and able to look after themselves, censorship isn't the way. It teaches them that they need someone else to hide the bad parts of the world from them. A better way is to teach children that parts of the world are pretty bad, and they need to be strong so they can deal with it.

Instead, we have a Government which assumes that everyone is a potential child molester who needs to have parts of the Internet hidden away from them. Isn't that a pretty weird and creepy way for your Government to think?

How do we stop this censorship?

The Government needs to pass a new law to make this happen. At the moment, the Greens and the Liberal/National Coalition are against the censorship plan, which means the Government won't be able to pass that law - so they won't be able to censor the Internet. The Greens look pretty solid, which means we need to concentrate on the Liberals and Nationals.

There are two sides to this debate inside the Liberal and National Parties. One side doesn't want the Internet companies to do the Government's dirty work - that side supports free speech. The other side gets their support from pro-censorship people, and would love to support the censorship plan. So we need to do everything we can to make sure that the pro-free-speech people inside the Coalition win the argument.

That means we need to convince as many people as we can that this plan is a bad idea. When Liberal Party MPs and Senators talk to their voters and supporters, we want those supporters to tell them not to support Internet censorship. So when you're talking to your friends and relatives, think about the arguments in this leaflet, and discuss them. Remind your friends and relatives that the only way to protect children online is to fund the police properly, and that it's the job of parents to help their children deal with life, and that parents don't need the Government to tell them how to raise their children.

Where can I find more information?

Look up these websites, and join in the discussion:

www.nocensorship.info

www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com

www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442

overclockers.com.au/wiki/Australian_Internet_Filtering

www.whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=cleanfeed

www.efa.org.au

www.nocleanfeed.com

If you're a member of the Twitter website, check out

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=nocensorship

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=nocleanfeed

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Protest Israel's attack on Gaza: Fri 9th and Saturday 10th of January #gaza

2009-01-07T12:00:00.001+10:00

This Friday and Saturday there will be public protests against the Israeli attack on Gaza.

At 5pm on Friday January 9th there will be a roadside vigil at Brisbane Square, across George St from the top of the Queen St Mall in the city - click here for a Google Map.

And on Saturday January 10 at 12.30pm there will be a rally at Queens Park, on the corner of Elizabeth and George St in the city - click here for a Google Map. The rally will be followed by a march through the city.

For more information phone Abdalla on 0413 783 853.

EDIT: for details on rallies around Australia, keep checking back at the Socialist Alliance site.

Technorati Tags: brisbane, queensland, australia, protest, gaza, israel, palestine

#nocleanfeed: Rally against Internet Censorship in Australia, Saturday December 13th 2008

2008-11-30T21:43:00.001+10:00

On December 13th 2008, there will be rallies in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth to protest against the Government's plans to censor the Internet in Australia. This video has all the details and also some advice about what to say when you're talking to people who are worried about what kids might see online. Please spread this video and news about the rally far and wide.

Rally details:

Brisbane:
Saturday 13th of December 2008
11am-3pm
Brisbane Square (between the casino and city library, Victoria bridge end of Queen St Mall)

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=42526399601

Sydney:
11:00 AM 13th of December, 2008
Where: Town Hall Square, George Street, Sydney (beside Town Hall)

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=49916537640

Melbourne:
Date: Saturday 13th of December 2008
Time: 12:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: Outside the State Library, corner of Swanston St and La Trobe St.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=46838735931

Hobart:

Saturday, December 13, 2008
11:00am - 1:30pm
Parliament Lawns
Hobart, Australia

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=39329861995

Adelaide:
Saturday, December 13, 2008
12:00pm - 4:00pm
Parliament House Stairs
North Terrace

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=39343300875

Perth:
13th of December 2008
12pm-3:00pm
Stirling Gardens, City

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=45738419714

Brisbane_Anti_Censorship_Rally_planning_meeting?

2008-11-26T17:24:00.001+10:00

If anyone is interested in planning the Brisbane rally against the Government's plan to censor the Internet, there is a meeting on Sunday November 30 at 3.30pm at Post Office Square in town.

The rally itself is on Saturday December 13 at Brisbane Square, George St, at 11am. Brisbane Square is right opposite the end of the Queen Street Mall, just across George St.

For more info on rally planning go to the forums at http://www.nocensorship.info/

Mobile post sent by djackmanson using Utterli. Replies.

#nocleanfeed T-Shirts for sale

2008-11-11T18:42:00.000+10:00

It's the merchandise that Senator Stephen Conroy can't censor, even if he wants to! Click here for #nocleanfeed T-Shirts you can buy. Or make them yourself.

Against Australian Internet Censorship? We Must Change Our Arrogant, Flawed Strategy. #nocleanfeed

2008-11-10T17:59:00.002+10:00

Mark Newton, a network engineer with Australian ISP Internode, is becoming very well-known as a result of his opposition to the Australian Government's plans to censor the Internet. He's published an article called "Filter Advocates Need To Check Their Facts" today at the ABCs website. I am sure that Newton knows far more than I ever will about computer networks, but if he knew much about politics, he would know that the facts are neither here nor there. His article has a superior, sneering tone all the way through it, and anyone who opposes Internet censorship in Australia needs to drop that attitude and work out how to actually win this argument.

Newton begins:

One of the minor irritants associated with the recent internet censorship debate has been the continual need to correct basic factual errors promulgated by the Government's supporters.
In my observation, it's obvious that the debate has polarised into two camps. One of them is largely populated by people who know what they're talking about and who mostly oppose the ALP's censorship plan; and the other is dominated by woolly-headed adherents to the principle that it'll all be alright if you just close your eyes and wish hard enough.

Oh, poor you! Winning a political debate isn't about getting irritated by "factual errors", it's about assuming your opponents will be dishonest, figuring out exactly who they are trying to win over with their dishonesty, and working out counter-arguments that will actually appeal to those people.

Now, if you were someone who was worried about the Internet, who thought that the Government's plan might be a good idea, but were prepared to listen to arguments on the other side, how would that second paragraph strike you? Everyone who sympathises with you has been written off as "woolly-headed". Could you get any more arrogant? These first two paragraphs of the article reveal how much of political "debate" in Australia is just people telling each other how smart they are and how stupid anyone is who doesn't agree.

One of the most common basic factual errors was repeated on these pages [on the ABC - ed] on November 4, when former Victorian Family First candidate and Australian Family Association researcher Anh Nguyen magically transmuted into a network security expert by suggesting that "ISP level filters are being trialled due to the difficulty of securing PC-based filtering solutions."
While I'm sure the writer has a deep understanding of the needs of his cause, he clearly doesn't have a grasp of the technology he's talking about.

Mr Nguyen, our opponent, is very smart to be aware of the needs of his cause. If we allow the enemy to be aware of the needs of their cause, and refuse to acknowledge that this argument is about politics, not technical solutions, then we remain blind to the needs of our own cause. We need to make sure that people who might support the filtering are not strong enough to persuade the Liberal Party to change its position. If they get strong enough to do that, the Liberal Party will vote for the filter and we will fail.

To put it simply: There is no security difference inherent in taking filtering from the PC and moving it to the ISP. In either case the systems work in the same manner and the same bypass methods are available. And yet, as the recent ACMA-commissioned report showed conclusively, the ISP version will slow subscribers down and reduce the ability of parents to adjust their filtering preferences to suit their own parental judgement about what is best for their children.

No doubt Newton is correct on this. But unless we reach the people the Government is trying to appeal to with the filter, and convince some of them that we have a better solution that will suit their needs, then being correct is meaningless.

How is that better than PC-level filtering? And can we agree, for the
purpose of future discussion, that everyone will be able to bypass it
at will no matter what proponents come up with, and that anyone who suggests otherwise must immediately stop being taken seriously?

No, we can't. I don't judge my opponents in a political fight by whether they are right or wrong. I judge them by how many supporters their arguments are likely to win. That is what is missing from the arguments of people who oppose the filter - a clear understanding of why the Government is attracted to Internet censorship.

It's perhaps not surprising that a family expert who misunderstands technology could get something this basic wrong, because the Minister in charge has blazed a trail of such colossal blinding wrongness that it's probably difficult for listeners to distinguish truth from fiction.
I'm not talking about normal, everyday wrongness. I'm talking about the kind of wrongness that comes with its own theme music and marching band.

Congratulations. We're righter and smarter than the Government. Does that convince one single person to change sides and oppose censorship instead of supporting it? Or does it just let those of us who oppose censorship feel superior?

For example, on page ECA 76 of Senate Hansard on October 20, 2008, the Minister, a man who is paid a lot of money to know what he's talking about, emitted this stand-up howler in reference to other countries that have already implemented his proposed Australian system:
Senator Conroy-- Just to indicate the countries that have implemented along the lines that Abul [Rivni, deputy secretary, Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy] is talking about include Sweden, the UK, Canada and New Zealand. This is not some one-off excursion.
In actual fact, none of the countries Senator Conroy cited have anything like what he's proposing for Australia. With the exception of New Zealand, which doesn't filter and has no plans to introduce it, all of the other nations he's ever cited as examples to emulate offer voluntary, non-government, industry-sponsored, opt-in schemes very much like the one which the Internet Industry Association has already created in Australia. Indeed, the only countries which feature government-imposed internet censorship are nations which place more emphasis on opinion suppression than internet access, such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
I know the Minister doesn't like those comparisons, but if the shoe fits...

Once again, true, but so what? The Minister is lying or misinformed. SO WHAT? He's a politician. If he were a duck he'd quack, if he were a pig he'd taste great roasted with apple sauce, but he's a politician, so he lies. Everyone already knows this! It's nothing new or surprising for Government Ministers to twist the truth to suit themselves. It's unlikely to surprise anyone. [Edited after comment by tomvoirol - click here to see the comment]

If I was afraid of the Internet and was prepared to censor it, my response would be "Well, if those countries don't censor the Internet, then they should!". Winning cheap debating points doesn't change a single mind.

As the Minister's marching band plays, the chorus repeats, and he inserts his factually challenged international comparisons into virtually every press statement on the subject, so much so that it's clear that he lacks even the most basic grasp of his own policy.
This isn't a unique event for the Minister either. On the same page of Hansard he also misleadingly implied that the ACMA blacklist, intended by the previous government to reference material unsuitable for children, is actually a list of illegal material. Senator Conroy, haven't you read your department's own legislation? Don't you have a duty to know what you're talking about?

The people who support his plans to censor the Internet don't give a damn if he's wrong on the facts and the technology. What they care about is that someone is doing something they think will make them safer. If we don't start dealing with this issue on that level, we will lose.

To supporters of the Government's proposals, I have to ask: Do you honestly believe that Australian parents are so uniquely incompetent that we, unlike literally every other Western democracy on the planet, need to go down the ALP's proposed path to protect our own children? After spending 30 years proving that our nation can successfully raise children in an environment of ubiquitous access to uncensored online services, are you able to explain how profoundly Australian parents must have failed to justify this radical proposal?

What if they do believe that? How will you deal with someone who is not intimidated by your superior tone? What if they just say "Yes. I think we need to censor the Internet."? Where to from there? Do you have a single argument that might appeal to someone like that, any argument at all that might convince them to think again? Or will you just write them off as a stupid, ignorant moron?

And, while I'm asking questions, let me conclude with one more: When we're talking about this, can we acknowledge that although opinions can vary, the facts are inviolate. Is it too much to ask for you to get them right?

Is it too much to ask people who oppose Internet censorship to try and put themselves in the shoes of people who are worried about the Internet? To actually try and consider what it might be like to be someone else? To get out of the headspace of people who agree with you?

I think that we need to reach people with two main arguments:

1) We need to encourage people to use and understand home-based filtering technology. We need to make it easy for them to use it, and to check up on what their young children are doing online. It's fairly simple to make instruction pages or YouTube videos that would teach people just how easy it is to get more control over the Internet. We need to actively promote these resources to people who are worried about the Internet. That means that when someone says they are worried about the Internet, we say:

"Have a look at these tools we've put together. They explain exactly how you can protect your children from the bad side of the Internet."

Instead of:

"You must be a fundy Christian moron! Why cant you get your facts right?"

2) We should focus on how the Government's filter will slow down the sites that EVERYONE uses on the Internet: EBay, Amazon, sites where you can book cheap airline flights, the mainstream media's websites, etc.

At the moment, the Liberal Party and the Green Party are against the Government's censorship plan. The Liberal Party is divided into different groups: some of them will oppose the plan because it is bad for big business (the Internet Service Providers) and some will support censorship because they get votes from reactionary, right-wing Christians. We must make sure we win every single person we can away from supporting censorship. If the forces in the Liberal Party who support censorship get stronger than the forces who are against it, then the Liberal Party will change sides and we will lose.

Click here to see my previous article on Australian Internet Censorship.

Potty mouthery = deletion at Flickr

2008-10-03T09:50:00.001+10:00

Responding to a Flickr automated warning with obscenities gets user deleted.

read more | digg story

2008-09-23T23:32:00.001+10:00

The Brisbane GoMA (Gallery of Modern Art) has a new show starting mid-November. It's called Optimism and it's about contemporary Australian artists. I really like the poster, and we should be quite impressed with GoMA's record this year.

First, Andy Warhol, then Picasso's Collection. Both very popular (Warhol got over 120 000 individual visits) and this shows that GoMA management are thinking hard about what sort of ambitious major exhibitions will bring in a lot of interest from the public. I think this is a very positive way for a big cultural institution to act, and it's one of the reasons I feel optimistic.

Mobile post sent by djackmanson using Utterli. Replies.

Public criticism of academics is not an attack on academic freedom, nor is it McCarthyism

2008-09-23T08:14:00.000+10:00

There is an online argument brewing about an attack on Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) Associate Professor Dr Anthony Burke, among others. The attack on Dr Burke was published in a Quadrant Magazine article, written by Mervyn F. Bendle. Bendle argues that Burke represents the "political Left" who have taken over academic terrorism studies, "with all the anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-terrorist, and postmodernist ideological gobbledygook that entails", and appears to suggest that Dr Burke should not be employed by ADFA.

Bendle does appear to froth at the mouth a bit, and makes the serious mistake of conflating Marxism and post-modernism:

...the study of terrorism had either been ignored in Australia or had been colonised by the radical, postmodern Left, which was assimilating the study of terrorism to its prevailing ideological paradigm based on class, race, gender, anti-Americanism and cultural relativism, often under the guise of the neo-Marxist “critical terror studies” approach.

This foolish frothing gives Bendle's opponents a free kick, which they gleefully take. However, political debate is a game of four quarters, not just a single free kick, and Bendle's online opponents fail to address what he is actually saying about Burke. (I'll discuss that later in this piece).

Instead of addressing what Bendle has to say about Burke, and working out whether it has merit or not, academics Terry Flew and Mark Bahnisch have two main complaints:

1) That it may be a form of McCarthyism

2) That it is in some way inappropriate, and bad for academic freedom, for this sort of public debate to happen.

Firstly I'll get my free kicks out of the way. Although he has now withdrawn it, it was Burke - NOT the "McCarthyist" Bendle - who called for an investigation into the person who criticised him publically, the same Bendle:

Dr Burke, 42, fumed that Dr Bendle had improperly suggested he was pro-terrorist and called for JCU to investigate whether this amounted to "serious academic misconduct". However, he last Friday withdrew his demand to vice-chancellor Sandra Harding for an investigation, conceding "it may be that administrative action is not the best way to address the problem".

Test

Dr Burke, who describes his political orientation as "liberal-left", rejected Dr Bendle's claim that he had overreacted by seeking a university investigation.
"It's a funny situation when you have people utilising academic freedom in a sense to attack it," Dr Burke said.
"But you have got to stand up for your own position ... I just don't like people saying that I support terrorism, when I don't."

In his online article, Bahnisch quotes the second of the two quotes I have included here: but omits the first line, thus hiding the fact that Burke, the poor academic attacked by "McCarthyists", called for an official investigation.

There's also an amusing comment on Bahnisch's article:

"If Bendle really described Burke as “pro terrorist” then Burke should sue him and Quadrant for defamation."

Bahnisch agrees.

Criticism of someone's views and questioning if they are fit to teach military cadets is McCarthyism, but trying to start official enquiries against someone who does that, or suing someone who does that, is cool. Apparently.

The second point is related to the first: the idea that it is in some way inappropriate to carry out this sort of debate in a public forum:

I think that’s right, but there’s the added dimension here of links between the security state and academia, and also of the willingness of academics to prosecute basically private (and often employment related) disputes through the pages of the public press. The latter was a significant component of the attacks former QUT academics John Hookham and Gary Maclennan launched on Michael Noonan’s PhD project on disability and humour. It doesn’t appear to have occurred to Bendle, with all his complaints about so-called breaches of “scholarly etiquette”, that he might have committed one himself by attacking Burke publicly in such risibly inquisitorial terms.

I'm really not sure how a debate on whether an academic is fit to teach military cadets is a private, employment-related dispute. Surely matters such as this are utterly fit and proper topics for public discussion. Universities are funded partly by taxpayers, after all. I don't agree with the idea that an academic should be protected by a cone of silence, so that only other academics can discuss, privately, the political effects and implications of their work.

Now, turning to Bendle's article: well, it doesn't start well. The first page has a paragraph of guilt by association, and the foolish conflation of "neo-Marxism" and post-modernism.

When Bendle turns to Burke, he starts off by claiming that Burke equates:

the Israeli government’s policies on the Palestinian question and international sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq with terrorism “in that they targeted civilians and sought to inflict suffering and fear for a political purpose”.

Bendle claims that Burke's worldview is "radical pacifism", and says that

Burke denies any ultimate legitimacy to sovereign nation-states, and denies that they have any right to preserve their security, defend themselves from attack, police their borders, or pursue their national interests, when these might impinge upon “the Other”.

and quotes Burke saying:

“dreams of security, prosperity and freedom hinge, from their earliest conceptualizations to the contemporary politics of the national security state, on the insecurity and dying of others”.

and:

On the question of terrorism, Burke declares that “our critical task is not to help power [that is, the USA] seek out and destroy the ‘enemies of freedom’ [that is, terrorists] but to question how they were constructed as enemies of ‘freedom’ [and how] we … might already be enemies of freedom in the very process of imagining and defending it”. As Burke’s use of scare-quotes indicates, he doubts that terrorists are enemies of freedom or that freedom has any particular value, while claiming that it is “we” who are its real enemies anyway.

I would ask a few questions here:

1) When using the world "critical", did Burke mean "most important" or mean "analytical"? If he meant the second, then the whole quote is being misrepresented.

2) How can Bendle be sure that the quotes are scare quotes? Burke might merely be being careful to point out that his terms have not yet been defined in his work.

3) How can Bendle be so sure that Western civilisation is not, and can never be, an "enemy of freedom"? He appears to reject the idea as impossible.

Later in the article, Bendle says:

according to Burke’s extremely abstract and tendentious postmodernist perspective, the security of the Australian community is “imagined on the basis of a bounded and vulnerable identity in perpetual opposition to an outside—an Other—whose character and claims threaten its integrity and safety”, and as a result, our community “is always an exclusive one, bounded by a power that seeks to enforce sameness, repress diversity, and diminish the rights (and claims to being) of those who are thrust outside its protective embrace”.

If that is indeed what Burke says, then it seems fairly unexceptional to me.

Finally, Bendle sums up Burke, saying:

Moreover, in reading Burke’s polemics, one gets an impression not only of the “radical pacifism” deplored by Ungerer, but of a deeper, almost pathological tendency revealed in Burke’s antipathy for liberal democracies and mainstream Australians, and his relentless sympathy for terrorists, illegal immigrants, communists, and “the Other” in its multitudinous forms. Burke’s vision of international relations involves a desire to be absorbed into a transnational, ethically pure collectivity, combined with a desire to be passive, supine and receptive, to be penetrated and even violated if need be by the looming, ever-present “Other”, whose active and invasive power apparently expresses, in Burke’s mind, assertiveness, initiative, potency, and all that is good and humane in the world. Clearly, students at the ADFA will be given lots to think about by their new associate professor.

In a letter to The Australian published on Monday, Burke says that students of the ADFA educational unit "Terrorism and the International Order":

were told that terrorism is a serious threat that states have a right to secure themselves from. They discussed the unique strategic challenge posed by terrorism—that force
has an important but limited utility in countering it, and the real
front is less in Iraq or Afghanistan than in the minds of those who
become radicalised into believing that civilians are legitimate targets
of violence. This has been recognised by the RAND Corporation and MI5,
which recently conducted a study of radicalisation in the UK.

And an article in last Saturday's Weekend Australian says:

Dr Burke told The Weekend Australian that while Dr Bendle had quoted
him accurately, he had misrepresented his broader view that terrorism
was immoral and politically counter-productive.
"The quotes are accurate, but the characterisation is not," he
insisted. The inference that he was pro-terrorist was an outrageous
slur, Dr Burke said.

Burke is apparently to rely to Bendle in a future issue of Quadrant, so it will be interesting to see exactly what he says about Bendle's accusations.

Bendle and his howling colleagues in the reactionary right tribe have not convinced me of anything about Burke. Tim Blair has, of course, joined in, with all the ignorant commenters who appear to have read nothing of what Burke says apart from what is quoted by his enemies But tribalism is not just a problem of the Right. Both Flew and Bahnisch, who appear to be coming at this issue from a liberal/social democratic Left position, decide not to get into the merits of the argument, but complain that it should not even be happening. I suppose as academics they are merely protecting their own turf by demanding "what happens in the faculty stays in the faculty", but their ridiculous claims that Bendle's attack is in some way "McCarthyist" - and their ignoring of the fact that Burke's initial reaction was to call for an official academic enquiry - help to close off debate, not encourage it.

This is the sign of an intellectually timid, fearful culture that demands that no-one outside it should dare be exposed to its internal arguments. It leads to the tribalism I've just described, where Left and Right shout at each other, tell their supporters that the other is teh EVUL, without bothering to engage with an unpleasant idea ever. This is not the way to conduct a search for truth.

Sidney Nolan and Australia's Cult of Failure

2008-09-22T10:08:00.001+10:00

I went to visit the Sidney Nolan: A New Retrospective exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery yesterday. I didn't know much about Nolan except for his famous Ned Kelly paintings.

(For non-Australians, Ned Kelly was a famous bushranger who was hanged in the late nineteenth century, and is still an iconic Australian figure today - Nolan's paintings of him were used as the basis for costumes of some of the dancers in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games opening ceremony).

Of course, seeing the images on screen is unsatisfactory compared to seeing the real thing, but if you'd like to browse some of Nolan's work you can start here at a Google image search.

While I admire Nolan's technical skill, I kept feeling that much of Nolan's work - especially after his early period - both represents and re-inforces an Australian cult of failure that is one of the most damaging forces standing against a progressive culture in Australia today.

One example of this is the Riverbend polyptych (a work of art containing "many panels"). One of the panels from Riverbend II, a similar work, can be seen here, and a crack team of revolutionary art critics armed with shoe cameras and dodging security guards took this clip of the whole 9-panel-work, over 9 metres wide:

Riverbend Polyptych from http://djackmanson.vox.com/

You can't see the detail very well in the video, but you can get some idea of the sheer overwhelming size of the work. In most of the panels, redgums push close to the edge of the river, while tiny (in comparison) figures of Ned Kelly shoot at tiny figures of policemen. In the far-right panel, the trees recede and you can see open river - I felt a physical sense of relief while I looked at this panel, after the oppressive closeness of the rest. The message I got from this work is that there is no room for people in this landscape.

According to an art book I flicked through at the exhibition, three of Nolan's major themes were Kelly, the failed Gallipoli invasion of 1915 (which bent the spine of Australia's optimism for decades to come) and the failed Burke and Wills expedition to the Australian desert in the middle of the nineteenth century - an attempt to cross the continent from north to south and back again.

Nolan didn't make any of these things famous - he merely picked up on what was around him (and in fact I remember learning about all of these things at school, as would many other Australians). But he did decide (or, because of who he was, was inspired) to use them as recurring themes in his work. But surely he was re-inforcing the pessimism and cynicism of a country that was far better at making icons and heroes out of people who failed, rather than those who succeeded (how many legends are told of the successful Australian actions on the Western Front in WWI, compared to the bloody failure at Gallipoli?)

This got me thinking about the relationship between culture and individual decisions. Nolan wasn't acting in a cultural vacuum. Was/Is it possible for an artist or a movement of artists to have any effect at all on cultural norms? What if a master artist in Australia's history had chosen to consistently paint and represent success? Would this have even been possible? Would she have been ignored? How does culture change, and what role do individual decisions have in that?

All this, has implications for the creation of a pre-revolutionary culture in a bourgeois society. Is it possible to create inspiring and successful works that actually convince people to change their attitudes a bit, or at least to emphasise some attitudes that were previously buried?

Utterz_makes_mobile_blogging_easy?

2008-09-08T22:40:00.001+10:00

Utterz can make moblogging much easier if you post to more than one of your blogs from a mobile. Utterz lets you send video, photos, text and even voice to a single email address and, with a few very simple email commands, you can choose which of your blogs gets updated with that new post.â€©â€©If you only have one blog but you want to post video from the road and have it automatically get posted to the blog, Utterz can do that too. It's especially useful if you only have mobile email, not full web access from your mobile.â€©â€©I have Utterz set up so I can post to 3 blogs, my livejournal, my twitter account, plus youtube and blip.tv. If I wanted to, I could tell any or all of those to post automatically with anything I send to Utterz. That doesn't suit me, so instead I use simple commands at the end of my posts to tell Utterz which service to send the update to. These services are pretty good to be getting on with, but support for posting to Brightkite, Zooomr (especially) and Vox would be very useful too.â€©â€©The funny thing is, Utterz aren't selling themselves as a moblogging manager. The main feature they promote is that you can make a voice call to an Utterz phone number (and there must be plenty of them, because they have one here in Brisbane, Australia) and record a voice message which can get sent to your blog. This is an interesting idea as it brings live mobile voice blogging within reach of anyone with a mobile phone, even if it has no data access at all.

â€©â€©Utterz also has the usual social functions built in: people can comment on your posts (unless you choose to make them private), friend you and so on. But it's real strength is as a way to easily manage your mobile blogging. All your mobile posts are stored at Utterz as well as on your blog, and you can easily decide to send your posts to one, some or all of your blogs.

Mobile post sent by djackmanson using Utterz. Replies.

9/11 Paranoia? JUST SAY NO

2008-06-21T22:10:00.001+10:00

You can buy this T-Shirt if you click here and visit my shop at Spreadshirt.com (I made it after ripping off an idea from the 9/11 Truthers).

Or you could look on Google Image Search, download one of the "inside job" images and make up a T-Shirt yourself. I'd hate to profiteer without giving you the chance to do it yourself. But if you can't be bothered, I'll willingly take your money.

Government-enforced religion at the half-way house

2008-06-16T21:28:00.002+10:00

Last October, I went into rehab to give up a very bad marijuana habit. I managed to kick the habit, and I graduated in early February and moved into a half-way house called Crana House in the inner-northern suburbs of Brisbane.

I was assessed by public servants working for the Queensland Government's Alcohol and Drug Information Service. I learnt while being assessed that one of the conditions of living at Crana House is to attend 12-step meetings (Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous). There is a six-week trial period at Crana House during which you have to attend three 12-step meetings per week, and after the trial period is up you have to attend at least one 12-step meeting per week, and at least two other recovery-related activities.

I'd never been to a 12-step meeting before I became a resident in Crana House, and so I started going along to NA meetings. I was aware that they were based on a belief in God, and since I am an atheist I was a bit concerned about that, but I decided to give it a go and see what they were like. Once, before going into rehab, I had suggested that a religious group may not be for me because I didn't believe in God or a "Higher Power". The psychiatrist I was talking to said that a Higher Power didn't have to be God - one person apparently called the bus his Higher Power as it took him past the pub to AA meetings.

When I started going to meetings, I found that this philosophical fudge was not used by most of the people there. People at meetings generally talk about "God", in the sense of a supernatural being with a distinct personality. This was the first major problem that I found I had with the 12-step program. I don't find the idea of believing in physics or gravity or the group a satisfactory substitute for a belief in God. I don't need to replace God with anything. As far as I am concerned, there are just people - nothing else. If I am going to find the strength to overcome addiction and other toxic habits, it's going to have to come from within me.

Now, if it were just the God stuff, I probably wouldn't have big problems with the 12-step stuff. But as I went to more meetings, I found deeper problems, far more important than religious belief. The third step of NA says:

We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

One of the deep strains of thought that I kept hearing at meetings is that people with addiction must not obey their own will. The only way to remain free from drugs, according to this type of thought, is to let a Higher Power take over your life. You have to find out God's will, and obey it instead of yours.

Well, even if I did believe in God, I would consider that as a way to give up my responsibility to make my own decisions. I am not about to hand over my will to anyone or anything. I believe that my will in the past has led me to make rotten decisions, including the decision to depend on marijuana for a decade and a half. And I believe that I now must change my will and use it to make better decisions - or I will have very unpleasant consequences. But all those decisions are mine, and mine alone. Even if I believed in God, I wouldn't be able to blame him for my own decision to use marijuana, and I would deserve whatever credit there is for giving up.

There are other things I have heard at NA meetings that keep reinforcing the idea that our lives are not our responsibility. One big one is the idea that addiction is a "disease". It is very common to hear people talk about "my disease" at meetings. Well, I reject that. Addiction is a choice. I chose to use marijuana, and now I choose not to. I haven't been "cured", I have changed the decisions that I have made. Talking about addiction as though it is a disease lets you avoid the moral responsibility for the things you have done.

If you've found 12-step programs successful, then you will probably find a lot to object to in what I've said. If 12-step works for you, good on you. It's not my job to judge you and decide how you should live your life. But hear me now: These are my deepest beliefs that I feel at my core. Going to 12-step meetings violates who I am. So please don't bother telling me that I am wrong, or that I don't understand the steps, because I DON"T CARE. What I care about is the fact that I am forced, by public servants, as a condition of my accommodation, to attend meetings that violate me at my core. My other alternative is to live on the streets.

We had a house meeting tonight at Crana House. There was a discussion about recovery-related activities, and I explained how much I hate going to 12-step meetings. The public servant who attends the weekly house meetings said that EVEN IF the committee (all the residents of the house) were to vote to allow me to replace 12-step meetings with something else, she would veto it.

Who has authority over Crana House? Legally, it's very unclear. There appear to be no written rules saying exactly who has the authority to decide what is acceptable and what isn't. This legal murkiness is being exploited by the public servant so that she can claim whatever decision-making power she chooses.

The house is leased from a private landlord. I do not know if the lease is in the name of the Committee, the Alcohol and Drug Information Service, or some other person or organisation. Therefore I don't know who has the legal power to decide who shall live here and under what terms. The rent, food and utility bills for the house are paid by the residents out of their weekly rent. Council rates and such things are paid for by the Department of Health (which "owns" the Alcohol and Drug Information Service). I don't know if there is even a written lease.

So it's entirely possible that the public servant is pretending to have power she doesn't have. But even if she does have that power, I am being forced, as a condition of residence in a Government facility, to attend religious meetings - religious meetings that violate everything I believe in, at that.

I think it's entirely fair that people living in a half-way house like this should have to prove that they are doing the things they need to do to stay clean. People living here should have to go to activities that promote their recovery, and they should have to account for their activities, and if they don't go, they should be evicted.

But the Government has absolutely no place forcing people to attend religious meetings - for that is what the 12-step movement is - as a condition of residence in any facility whatsoever.

A Brief History of Creation Science

2008-05-12T20:11:00.001+10:00

Just found this rather good video by YouTube user sapperbloggs.

In his commentary on the video, he says:

A brief history of Creation Science, and why the USSR is to blame for starting it all. [NB this is not as crazy as it sounds - watch the video - DJ]

If you wish to refute a point made in this video, please do so.
If you wish to use bible verses to refute a point made in this video, I will direct you to a video I made called... 'Why I think you're a twat'

The bulk of the information here is from a lecture given by Dr Martin Bridgstock, a senior lecturer at Griffith Uni in Brisbane. That said, my opinions are MY opinions, not his.

Brisbane Politics: Anonymous Anti-Scientology Rally May 10 2008 Brisbane, Australia

2008-05-11T09:55:00.001+10:00

On Saturday May 10, Anonymous groups around the world protested aganst the "Church" of Scientology's "Fair Game Stop" policy. This report has photos and video from the protest in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Attendees included Yoshi and a redshirt, and there was rickrolling.

read more | digg story

Brisbane Politics - Cyclist Protest Ride by CBDBUG

2008-05-06T18:04:00.001+10:00

Via Public Polity:

Call TONIGHT if you want to go on this ride - the phone number is below.

Calling all cyclists who are fed up with Local and State Government failures to provide safe and direct routes for Brisbane cyclists.

Detours of bikeways due to major infrastructure projects like the North South Bypass Tunnel, AirportLink and Northern Busway are severely impacting upon the ability of cyclists to ride in safety, particularly on Brisbane’s north side - which is already poorly served for cycling access.

A protest ride is being organised by the Central Business District Bicycle User Group (CBDBUG) to highlight the frustrations of cyclists and the dangers we face.

Time: Friday 9 May 2008. 4:15pm for a 4:30pm start.

Meeting Point: Corner Gregory Tce and Bowen Bridge Rd Herston

Route: Bowen Bridge Rd Herston to Federation St Lutwyche and back to Gregory Tce (Total Distance: 3km)

(Click here for a Google Map of the starting point and the route)

The ride is pro-cycling, not anti-infrastructure development (although we would like a more balanced development)

A media release will be organised as part of the protest, highlighting these issues - we need a decent turnout by cyclists riding on the day to really make our point.

The ride will not go ahead unless we have at least 20 confirmed starters, so please RSVP to John Lister on john@whcp.com.au or 0428 667 827 by Wednesday 7 May 2008.

All riders must adhere to Qld Road Rules and ensure that you:

* Wear an approved and fastened bike helmet at all times
* Have a bell or horn in working order
* Do not ride more than two abreast

For more information on the CBD BUG visit us at http://www.cbdbug.org.au or the CBDBUG blog at http://cbdbug.blogspot.com, or email convenors@cbdbug.org.au

Brisbane Politics: May 1968 Seminar, Friday 16th May, Ahimsa House, West End

2008-05-03T20:29:00.001+10:00

Via Public Polity:

Paris 68-08. Was 1968 the most revolutionary year of the 20th Century?

When: 16th May, Friday 6:30pm

Where: Emma Goldman Room, Ahimsa House, 26 Horan St, West End (Click here for a Google Map)

A forum on the world-wide struggles and themes which were raised in that year and have continued through to the present.

Speakers from these sponsoring groups:

Brisbane Labour History Association, Institute for Social Ecology, Rank
and File Group, 17 Group, The Greens, Indigenous Activists.

Speakers will include:

There will be ample opportunity for participation from the body of
the meeting. All are welcome to speak in this two hour seminar on 1968
and the late 60s generally. Live music and records from the time. BYO
and food available.

Brisbane Politics - Anonymous' AntiScientology March, Saturday May 10th.

2008-05-01T21:14:00.001+10:00

Via the Brisbane Anonymous website (but I put the links in):

In Anonymous’ continuing efforts against the Cult of Scientology, Anonymous is holding its fourth global protest. Taking place on May 10th, it will be aimed at exposing the tactics used by the Cult of Scientology to silence its critics and media investigating the cult.

The Brisbane chapter of Anonymous will be marching through the streets of Brisbane in support of this message, and members of the media and the public are welcomed to join in with us.

Fair Game Stop will be a parody on the name ‘Fair Game’ and thus a ‘Game’ and ‘Computer Game’ styling will be prevalent.

When: 10:30am to 3pm May 10

Assembly Point: Post Office Square - Assembling at 10:30, speeches at 10:45 and marching at 11. (Click here for a Google Map)

Marching to: Brisbane Square, along Elizabeth Street.

Marching back: 2:30pm to Post Office Square again, along Adelaide Street, with speeches etc.

Bring:

Masks
Flyers
Signs (No wooden sticks please)
Something game related (Games will be played on the day)
Food/water
A fun attitude

Brisbane Transport - Made Of Fail

2008-03-30T14:03:00.002+10:00

Yes it is. The buses here are getting beyond a joke.

For more info click here to read my post in the 'brisneyland' LiveJournal community.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Review of "God's Crucible - Islam and the Making of Europe" in the New Yorker - Muslim revisionism?

2008-02-03T12:12:00.001+10:00

Via Opinion Dominion comes news of a review in the New Yorker, by Joan Acocella, of David Levering Lewis' book "God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215".

Aocella sums up the book:

The Muslims came to Europe, he writes, as “the forward wave of
civilization that was, by comparison with that of its enemies, an
organic marvel of coordinated kingdoms, cultures, and technologies in
service of a politico-cultural agenda incomparably superior” to that of
the primitive people they encountered there. They did Europe a favor by
invading. This is not a new idea, but Lewis takes it further: he
clearly regrets that the Arabs did not go on to conquer the rest of
Europe. The halting of their advance was instrumental, he writes, in
creating “an economically retarded, balkanized, and fratricidal Europe
that . . . made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory
religious intolerance, cultural particularism, and perpetual war.” It
was “one of the most significant losses in world history and certainly
the most consequential since the fall of the Roman Empire.”

This is a bold hypothesis.

While some of the criticism of the book appears to be sound, I think that Aocella, and Steve at Opinion Dominion, have failed to see that Lewis has at least clearly implied that there is some way that civilisations can be judged as backward or progressive.

At Opinion Dominion, I said:

Having just read the review, I'm not sure the book is as pernicious as
you and the reviewer appear to think, despite the examples of special
pleading for the Muslim regime in al-Andalus.

I think it is positive to be specific about why one thinks one civilisation is
superior to another - as long as this does not devolve into self-hatred.

Without making such distinctions, it would be impossible to say that today's
liberal bourgeios democracies are better places to live than the
stagnant fascist dictatorships that blight much of the Arab world today.

I certainly don't see that criticising the civilisation of mediaeval
Europe necessarily leads to the mistake of refusing to defend today's
civilisation against Islamo-fascist terrorists today - I imagine that
is one of the broad lines which causes you to have doubts about this
book?

I also can't help wondering why a civilisation that was once so much more advanced that Frankland fell so far behind it.

I'd suggest you drop into Opinion Dominion to continue the debate over the book, the issue of judging civilisations, and the most important question - what was Islamic underarm deodorant made out of in Al-Adalus?

One Hundred Thousand Brave Burmese March for Freedom, While Troops Start to Crack Down and Amateurs Outwit the Censors - photos and videos

2007-09-26T20:36:00.001+10:00

NOTE: Further updates here at Last Superpower.

By flickr user racoles

Tuesday, September 25th, Yangon (Rangoon) - the Associated Press reports:

Five truckloads of soldiers were seen heading downtown in Myanmar's largest city Tuesday soon after tens of thousands of people led by Buddhist monks defied orders to stay off the streets and marched in another peaceful anti-government protest.

Monks have taken over leadership of anti-government protests that began over a month ago, leading marches for the past eight days that are the largest anti-government protests since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising was brutally suppressed by the military.

The soldiers' movements in Yangon followed announcements by the junta earlier in the day warning monks not to take part in the demonstrations and the public to stay at home or risk arrest.

Two army divisions were either already in or moving toward Yangon from outlying areas, including the 22nd, which took part in the suppression of the 1988 uprising, according to diplomats and ethnic guerrillas.

From YouTube user dennisbier09 - march on Monday September 24th.

AFP reports on bloggers getting around censorship and getting photos of the protests onto the Internet.

The article mentions The Mandalay Gazette (based in California), which publishes 4 pictures of the march here.
The Gazette also provide this picture showing the protest outside Aung Sun Suu Kyi's house

Also mentioned is the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma, which has a photo album here.

The BBC is publishing accounts from people inside Burma here.

Flickr user racoles has 12 photos of the protests, including this one below:

From YouTube user dennisbier09 - march on Monday September 24th (Part 2).

Wed Sep 26th - Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports, via monstersandcritics.com:

Yangon - Myanmar troops used batons and tear gas Wednesday to keep tens of thousands of marching monks and their layman followers out of Yangon's holiest shrines in a standoff between rifles and rust-coloured robes that is expected to end in bloodshed.

Barricaded police and soldiers beat monks and laymen back from the east gate of the Shwedagon Pagoda with batons and tear gas twice Wednesday afternoon, leaving dozens injured.
There were unconfirmed reports of two monks dying in the melee.
At least 30 monks and 50 civilians were taken away in military vehicles to an unknown destination.
Monks have used the Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon's most revered temple, as a launch pad for their peaceful marches for the past nine days.
The show of force, however, failed to stop the monks from marching elsewhere.

This Google Map shows the layout of Yangon, with the important Shwedagon and Sule Pagodas marked.

NOTE: Further updates here at Last Superpower.

Andrew Johns: STFU Australia - None of your business

2007-08-31T13:32:00.001+10:00

The personal troubles of Andrew Johns are none of Australia's business.

Shut the f**k up. Unless you are family, or a close friend or very close colleague, it's got nothing to do with you.

I'm tired of your self-righteous posturing over the fallen "role-model".

Find your own path in life, and teach your kids that as well. In particular, learn well that people you admire might not be all you think. Deal with it.

Two final thoughts.

1) This story broke after Johns was stopped by a "routine" police stop-and-search operation at Kings Cross station after the Notting Hill Carnival. Given that the Carnival is a major event of London's Carribbean community, is this a case of Johns being caught up in a racial-profiling operation?

2) How was this made public? Was it from someone in the police?

Debt Relief - not helping Africa, says Ghanaian film

2007-08-30T13:44:00.001+10:00

Last Superpower points to two articles from spiked online magazine saying that debt relief is not helping Africa to develop the industry it needs to be rich.

One article is by Ghanaian film-maker and teacher, De Roy Kwesi Andrew, called "You hate being affluent? Then swap with us", where he argues that industrial development is exactly what Africa needs, and that the debt-relief/Live8 approach is grossly inadequate.

Andrew's article is about a lecture tour he did in the UK, promoting the film "Damned by Debt Relief". A short version of the film, placed on YouTube by YouTuber worldwrite (the producers) is below:

FLASH: US Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales resigns

2007-08-27T23:00:00.001+10:00

Via the BBC breaking news twitter account, and the Houston Chronicle, comes the breaking news that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned.

Mr Gonzales has spent many months dogged by controversy over the sacking of 8 US Attorneys.

"From Here 2Ipernity" - Flickr Censorship2

2007-06-24T14:38:00.001+10:00

For more information, see the Flickr group "Against Censorship at Flickr" and the Against Censorship at Flickr wiki.

Beating flickr's censorship

2007-06-18T14:00:00.000+10:00

NOTE: This is a cross-post of my article from the group "Against Censorship At Flickr". I have cross-posted it here so it is out of the reach of flickr and Yahoo employees (just in case).

First of all, read what Cornelio (cgc0202) has said. His two threads are here, and here.

Cornelio uses figures from Yahoo's reports to show that even if every single pro member of this group refuses to renew, that will NOT affect Yahoo much - they have revenues of over US $6 BILLION a year, and they have over US $ 1.5 BILLION of cash on hand.

However, as Cornelio also points out, Internet giants can fall.

It seems to me that we need people to commit to a long-term campaign of spreading doubt about flickr.

The reason I originally joined flickr is that when I finally got regular Internet access at home (about 1 1/4 years ago), flickr was the site that kept being mentioned as the place to store and share photos. It was the 'market leader', so to speak, the site that first came to people's minds.

So the first obvious thing is that flickr needs to be criticised whenever there is a chance to do so. Say you see an article on Digg that links to a discussion on flickr. You could put a comment on Digg and on the story that Digg links to saying "Flickr has some good features, but ever since they starteed censoring users, I have not trusted them - I moved my account to X".

Or, if you like flickr and want to stay, you could say "flickr has some good features, and I am still there, but you might want to be careful and make sure they don't censor you".

You could link back to this group so that people can see more.

So, we need people who are ready to start watching parts of the Internet. Any volunteers? You could watch digg, or create a Google Alert, or anything like that.

Do you have a blog, or do you comment regularly on a blog where you might be able to raise this issue. Please speak up and say what you are willing to do.

I am willing to create a simple blogger/blogspot website that can be a discussion place for these ideas. We have to assume that this group might be closed down by flickr.

Someone has already created a story on Digg that links to this group. If you are willing to help in a campaign, please go to Digg and digg the story. If you are not a member of Digg, then join.

This will be a useful way to see how many people are willing to spend a few minutes helping a campaign. At the moment, the story has 37 diggs. With 10 000 people in this group, if the story can't get at least a few hundred diggs then I would think we don't have enough serious people to put up a fight.

SOLIDARITY AND DISCIPLINE

Solidarity and discipline will be crucial. To me, 'solidarity' means that we unite around a publicity campaign to create doubt about flickr, and we do NOT attack other members of the campaign for their decision to either leave flickr or stay.

I plan to scale back my flickr presence a LOT, and will not renew my pro account. If you agree not to call me a 'Rat', then I will agree not to attack you for making a different decision to me.

'Discipline' means that we do not do stupid, counter-productive things like flooding groups or going off on crazy rants. Anyone who does will be helping flickr and yahoo, and should not be trusted.

Anyone who says 'but it's the fault of the German laws' should, the first time, be pointed to the reasons as to why this is incorrect. On the second time, they should be treated as someone in the pay of flickr or yahoo, and not trusted.

Please speak up now and say what you are prepared to do to help.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Censorship @flickr makes people angry

2007-06-16T23:58:00.000+10:00

For more info on flickr's latest act of censorship, click here.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

T.I.S.M's "Morrison Hostel" - cover version by me

2007-06-13T22:21:00.000+10:00

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Brisbane Thugs - two bullies ruin bus ride

2007-06-12T23:34:00.000+10:00

Nasty incident on the West End (Brisbane) bus tonight, when the bus couldn't get out of the bus stop because a car was parked inside the bus zone. I didn't see the start of it because I was sitting up the back, but the driver appeared to be talking to someone who refused to move the car. When the driver asked loudly if there had been 'any witnesses' to an threat by someone I walked up to the front of the bus, just beside the driver, with my camera out.

I tried to take a photo of the people who appeared to be hassling the driver, but one of them threatened to 'shove the camera up your arse', so this story is text only (I'm in no condition to fight aggressive testosterone-ridden thirtysomethings).

One of the thugs claimed he was a lawyer, and also tried to pretend that I had committed some offence by breaching his privacy in trying to take his photo. (A complete lie, which I'm sure he knows if he really is a lawyer). I decided to wait until the cops came, partly because every other passenger had bailed out long before. I wanted the driver to have some backup for his side of the story, and I wanted to let him know I was on his side.

While we were waiting for other people (security guards etc) to arrive, the thugs smugly opened the bonnet of the car and pushed it forward a few metres. The driver had already called for backup so he had to stay and explain. I think the thugs were going to try to claim that the car had always been there and that the driver was lying. They also took some cameraphone pix of the bus.

The situation defused - the cops asked what was happening, they asked me a few questions and the usual name/address/DOB stuff, and the driver drove off.

I got off at the next stop and gave the driver my phone number - the thugs had threatened to complain about him (!) and so I said he should call me if he needed a statement to back him up.

It makes me pretty angry that these blokes - who, by the look of them, were a couple of quite successful bullies - are able to ruin things for at least five or ten people. Anyone who gave a damn wouldn't park in the bus zone (how else did a broken down car get in the bus zone near the coner of Vulture St and Boundary St if it hadn't been parked there when it was working in the first place).

Mongrels.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

More bloody train inspectors!

2007-05-03T23:31:00.001+10:00

More bloody train inspectors!, originally uploaded by Let's Take Over.

So I am on the train at 2315 hrs and 6 ticket inspectors get on the train. The state government has been boasting about hiring more inspectors recently. What a lousy job, throwing poor people off trains. They do not act as security guards who make sure that trains are actually safe to ride...That would actually be useful. They just slap $150 fines on people. Any system that gave a damn about people would make public transport free to ride. But it has been a long time since helping poor people had anything to do with the Labor Party. At least they were not observant enough to realise they were being photographed...

Feeling negative

2007-04-28T14:12:00.001+10:00

Feeling negative, originally uploaded by Let's Take Over.

Just playing around with sending cameraphone photos to blog via MMS and flickr.

Picture of Mike

2007-04-24T21:58:00.001+10:00

Picture of Mike, originally uploaded by Let's Take Over.

This is a picture of Mike that I am sending to the internet.

Sketch effect with original photo

2007-04-24T11:57:00.001+10:00

Sketch effect with original photo, originally uploaded by Let's Take Over.

This photo was not edited after shooting. Rather, the effect was laid on the shot as it was taken. This is to see how large the photo turns out when sent to flickr and blogger.

Sketch effect with original photo

2007-04-24T11:56:00.001+10:00

My other camera is grown up

2007-04-23T20:13:00.001+10:00

My other camera is grown up, originally uploaded by Let's Take Over.

It generally behaves more responsibly than the mobile phone. It takes clearer, better-defined photos, but does not have any mobile communication. The mobile is very low fi, but I can email photos directly to the internet via mms. I can also include up to 1000 characters in this part of each picture's post, and there is a Sydney number I can call to do live audio recording down the phone line that gets sent to the blog as well. I only pay my usual rates for that - 10 c per minute. And this is only just over 500 characters.

Test photoblog

2007-04-23T19:40:00.001+10:00

Test photoblog, originally uploaded by Let's Take Over.

Test of photoblogging via mobile phone

Let's Take Over #1

2007-04-23T18:27:00.001+10:00

Gabcast! Let's Take Over #1

SMS mail forwarded by SMSPup

2007-04-23T18:02:00.001+10:00

Moblog test: see my new photos at Flickr http://tinyurl.com/ywb9kr

Moblog

2007-04-23T17:58:00.001+10:00

Moblog Test

2007-04-23T17:49:00.001+10:00

SMS mail forwarded by SMSPup

2007-04-22T22:58:00.001+10:00

Flash: Test only

Alanis Morissette sings 'My Humps'

2007-04-07T10:34:00.001+10:00

Just in case you haven't seen it yet.

MELBOURNE PATRIOT CAUGHT TAKING BRISBANE COMMIE HELP

2007-04-05T22:07:00.001+10:00

antiwarrally062309-Juanita Wheeler, originally uploaded by Let's Take Over.

Pro-Labor 'Patriot' Andrew Landeryou's rather nasty Melbourne-based, scandal-happy, but sometimes-well-informed political blog The Other Cheek, needed to make a crude distortion of Juanita Wheeler for a story about a hotly-contested Queensland Greens preselection. So he turned to the photo above, taken by me. It's under Creative Commons, so you're free to use it, but you're supposed to give credit, and Landeryou didn't.

We're not surprised known patriot Landeryou didn't credit the photo as he should have. The patriot would be unlikely to give any credit to Let's Take Over, the far-left blog that's a big part of this photostream.

And he's already bankrupt, so you can't sue even if you could prove money damage, which you couldn't, so it would be a waste of time. And the whole idea of Creative Commons is to spread your work, so I guess I should just write a witty comment or something.

But we are surprised that a right-winger(1) like Landeryou would have to turn to a commie photostream like this one. Maybe I should take more photos of politicians and spread the word that they are here.

(1) "he's so right-wing, he votes Labor" - David Williamson once said in a play about someone else entirely

The photo is from the story 'How Pakistan Tortured my Brother', where Les Thomas spoke. He's brother of Jack Thomas ('Jihad Jack'), who says he was tortured while under arrest by political police in Pakistan.

The story features photos of the rally and march, acerbic yet progressive commentary, audio recordings of the speeches (including the good one by Les Thomas) and maps of the route of the march.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over "news feed" (sometimes called an "RSS feed" or "XML")

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Discussion: Where Public Holidays Come From and Why That's Important, at Larvatus Prodeo.

2007-04-03T12:38:00.000+10:00

There's a good discussion going on at Larvatus Prodeo about a recent essay at Online Opinion, called "The Postmodern Left" by Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler, authors of The War On Democracy.

The general tone of the discussion started off harsh, in part because of a very unsatisfactory performance IMAO by some pro-postmodernist people in this long discussion a month or so ago. The essay by Lucy and Mickler is not very clearly written and provides no clear 'call to action'.

However, Adam Gall turned the discussion in a useful direction when he explained, better and more clearly than Lucy and Mickler themselves, why he liked their work.

There was some discussion of class politics and how you would best make it popular, and Adam Gall seems to want to make some T-Shirts that prod people into understanding that even things like public holidays are only won because organised workers are powerful enough to win them. Or at least along those lines.

Worth a read.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

2nd Test - can twitterfeeds and twitter send this blog to your mobile?

2007-03-31T08:36:00.000+10:00

Once again, what it says above. First one seemed to work, mostly :)

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Twitter might actually be useful?

2007-03-30T20:08:00.000+10:00

I might have found a way for you to get notifications of new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your mobile phone, via Twitter.

This is really just a test post to see if this story does get sent to my phone.

Hope it works.

Type the rest of your post here.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Jill Filipovic Googlebomb - For Great Justice!

2007-03-27T12:36:00.000+10:00

This is a crosspost to effect a Googlebomb, correcting an injustice against feminist blogger Jill Filipovic.

See this post by tigtog at Larvatus Prodeo for more info.

Jill Filipovic, who blogs at Feministe and Ms. JD, is a NYU law student who has been the subject of cyber-obsession on a discussion board allegedly populated by law students. The discussions regarding Jill Filipovic (and many other female law students) are sexist and sexual in nature, rating the women's physical attractiveness and fantasising about sexual contact, both consensual and non-consensual. Neither Jill Filipovic or any other of these women contributed, or gave their permission to be discussed, to the discussion board in question.

Jill Filopovic's name and class routines etc have been regularly posted to this board, and at least one of the pseudonymous board-members claims to be Jill Filipovic's classmate. Photos that Jill Filipovic posted (with full rights reserved) to an interent photo-storing and sharing site have also been posted to the sleazy discussion board without her permission. This is a horrendous invasion of Jill Filipovic's privacy, a violation of copyright law, and calls the ethics and character of the alleged law-students participating in these discussions on the discussion board into question.

A major side-effect of an already nasty situation is that the sexist, objectifying cyber-obsession threads come up on the first page of internet search results on Jill Filipovic's name. To an inexperienced user of the internet, it may even look as if Jill Filipovic and other female law students chose to compete in these Hot or Not rating competitions, instead of having their pictures posted without permission.

This post is an attempt to balance those internet results to point to the significant writings of Jill Filipovic instead, using the Googlebomb tactic and also linking this post to social networking sites (eg. del.ici.ous, Stumbleupon). Please feel free to copy any or all of what I've written here to your own blog in order to help change the top-ranked search engine results for Jill Filipovic. If you don't have your own blog then please at least link to one of Jill's this post[s] listed below at your preferred social networking site and give it the tag "Filipovic" (as well as any others you think appropriate).

I have linked to these sites in this post:
Jill Filipovic's bio page at Feministe
Jill Filipovic's blog posts at the Ms. JD blog
Jill Filipovic's article about these scummy lawschool sleazebags at Feministe
Jill Filipovic's article at Ms. JD: When Law Student's Attack

If any of the other female law students stalked by the same sleazy site wish to copy this text with names altered, you hereby have my full permission to do so. All other rights reserved. (C) 2007 tigtog

NB - this post has been reproduced as per request in tigtog's article at Larvatus Prodeo.

Should you wish to reproduce it under the terms of that request, you can find a raw HTML version of this post here. This means you can cut and paste the raw HTML into your blogging software, instead of having to add each link by hand.

The use of that part of this file that is my work is subject to the same conditions as the use of the original work, as defined by tigtog.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Flash: Senator Santo Santoro announces resignation from the Australian Senate

2007-03-20T21:21:00.000+10:00

Flash: Senator Santo Santoro announced in the last 20 minutes that he is resigning from the Senate, effective at the end of the current two-week sitting.

He had already resigned as Minister for Aging last week after a scandal where he did not disclose share trading to the Prime Minister or the Senate.

powered by ODEO

Press play to hear what he said.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Greens branch official Sam Clifford approves of police arresting peaceful protesters at Queensland University of Technology

2007-03-06T12:32:00.001+10:00

Sam Clifford, who posts on livejournal as ronaldraygun is the Membership Secretary of the North Brisbane branch of the Queensland Greens.

He's argued here that it's perfectly OK for police to be called to arrest members of the group Students for Social Justice, who were protesting the detention of David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay.

For the record, I disagree with SfSJ. Hicks is being held perfectly legally as a prisoner of war, as authorised by the Third Geneva Convention. (The kangaroo court that the USA proposes to try him in is another matter).

I also think Hicks should give his parole and be released, but should also be watched by the security services. He took up arms with a reactionary, malignant group - the Taliban.

But the hypocrisy of this Green is incredible. He thinks that 'permits' and 'rules' are more important than free speech. SfSJ have the right to state their opinion, without the self-important busybodies who run the QUT Student Union censoring them and calling the police.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Jugging in Brisbane's New Farm Park - every second Sunday

2007-02-12T09:59:00.000+10:00

I took some photos and silent video of the juggers in New Farm Park yesterday.

Details of the New Farm Park games here.

For more info go here to read the jugging story at Brisbane Is Home.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Choice of newsfeeds for Let's Take Over - for people with fast and slow connections

2007-02-11T08:47:00.000+10:00

If you're reading this in an RSS newsreader, you'll notice that the feed has changed - now you only get a sample of the story, and get told to click on a link to get taken to the Let's Take Over website.

This is because the feed was taking a long time to load for people who have slow connections.

If you like the full story in your feedreader, start using this feed instead:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/letstakeoverfullfeed

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

If you have a fast connection, use this feed instead - it takes longer, but you can read the full stories in your newsreader

Click here to get all new stories from Let's Take Over sent to your email address

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Mulrunji: Community meeting re police march, Jagera Arts Hall, Musgrave Park, South Brisbane - Tuesday February 6th, 1.00-2.30 pm. Bring a plate.

2007-02-02T20:40:00.000+10:00

Last Friday, the Qld Attorney General, Mr Shine, announced that S/Sgt Chris Hurley will be charged with manslaughter over the death of Mulrunji in a police cell on Palm Island in 2004.

The police reaction has been very angry. Huge meetings have been held on the Gold Coast, in Townsville, Brisbane, Cairns and Toowoomba, and the Queensland Police Union is planning a march on Parliament, although this story from 20 minutes ago in the Courier-Mail says the march will not be in the next week or so, which appears to have been the original plan.

There will be a community meeting at Jagera Arts Hall, Musgrave Park, South Brisbane on Tuesday February 6th at 1.00 pm to discuss what to do about the police march.

All are welcome (except police spies, I guess, but what can you do?), and please bring a plate of food to share.

If you have any questions, you can call Sam Watson on 0401 227 443. (+61 401 227 443)

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Mobile Phone Addiction? What a load of old TOFFLENOSH!

2007-02-02T09:01:00.000+10:00

First of all, thanks to Livejournal user jagwire for coining the word 'tofflenosh'.

Now. A woman called Diana James, apparently a 'consumer behaviour expert' from Brisbane's Queensland University of Technology, has been all over NewsRadio this morning, babbling on about her survey which, apparently, 'reveals Aussies' social obsession with mobile phones':

More than 2500 phone owners completed Ms James' online survey, which focused on the psychological, financial and social impact of Australian's skyrocketing use of mobile phones.

She found 22% of these people considered themselves to be heavy or very heavy users and 8% had experienced monthly bills that were over $500.

OK. Anyone here who has done first-year-dumbed-down-for-arts-students-statistics at uni, like I did, will know the evidentiary value of an online survey that depends on people deciding to do the survey themselves: precisely four fifths of SOD-ALL.

For a survey to be valid, it needs a genuinely random selection of subjects. They do teach that at QUT, don't they? 'Cause if you really thought this was a problem, surely you'd want accurate figures?

But what really gets me is this bit:

"Instead of consuming the technology in a healthy manner, the technology starts overtaking other aspects of their life"... Ms James says most people use their phone responsibly but the time spent on it is increasing.

Oh, I'm so glad that 'most people' have Ms James' approval for the way they use their mobiles. I have been sitting up at night for months now, concerned that some concerned ~~social scientist~~ social impressionist, ('cause this sure ain't science), did not approve of my use of convenient modern technology.

This sort of thing seems very common in Australia, in my impression. There seems to always be someone who is ready to be 'concerned' about someting their fellow Australians do.

Well, instead of being 'concerned', how about turning your mind to the boring business of helping to make people strong and free and powerful, so they can make their own decisions?

I well remember similar babble from reactionaries about video game addiction in the '80s. I don't remember those babblers popping up in the oughties and saying 'actually, those kids who played computer games are now part of the wave of those creating and using the most powerful computer-based tools that history has ever seen, ever.'

As you can see, I'm a little angry, so I'll let comedian Ben Elton, in one of his more intellectual and introspective moods, wrap this up:

"Oh, do F*** off!"

Cross-posted at my LiveJournal.

If you'd like to try a simple way to get all new stories from Let's Take Over (and many other sites) sent to one place, click here for info on the Let's Take Over 'news feed' (sometimes called an 'RSS feed' or 'XML')

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.

This means that you may use any work by me, David Jackmanson, that you find on this site for any purpose at all, as long as you give credit to Let's Take Over and include the site's web address.

It's your responsibility to check that the work is created by me and not somebody else. Accounts on sites like flickr or Odeo that are listed as belonging to 'Let's Take Over' or 'djackmanson' will probably be mine.

Invasion Day in Brisbane: Murri Activists rally and march, and S/Snr Sgt Hurley will be charged with manslaughter over Mulrunji's death

2007-01-31T10:19:00.001+10:00

At 10am on Friday, January 26th, Murri (Queensland Australian Aboriginal) activists organised a rally and march for 'Invasion Day'.

January 26th is a public holiday in Australia, for 'Australia Day', the anniversary of European settlement at Sydney Cove in 1788. Aborignes for many years have organised protests, since they feel they have little to celebrate.

At the 2007 Brisbane rally, at Parliament House, George St, lawyer Andrew Boe announced that police Snr Sgt Chris Hurley will be charged with manslaughter over the death of Aborignal man Mulrunji in a police cell on Palm Island, North Qld, in 2004.

If you click on any of the photos in this article, you will go to where the photo is stored on flickr, where you can see different sizes and download any photos you want to use. See the end of this article for the Creative Commons licence.

UPDATE: Leftcast's article on Invasion Day has 15 minutes of sound recordings from the rally.

Because Dave Riley at Leftcast has chosen to use Odeo Studio to store the audio, it is very easy for me to put it on this website - press play to listen:

powered by ODEO

Approaching Parliament House, George St. Click here to see the exact location of Parliament House.

Sign on corner of George and Alice Sts.

Police dirt bikes outside corner gate of Parliament House, Cnr George and Alice Sts.

On the phone.

Socialist Alternative stall.

Steve Hitchens protesting outside Parliament House about the Muddy Bay development in Airlie Beach, North Qld.

International Socialist Organisation selling the Socialist Worker at their stall.

Socialist Alliance stall.

Socialist Alliance signs for the march.

Police on corner of George and Alice Sts, opposite Parliament House.

T-Shirt sellers on corner of George and Alice Sts, adjacent to Parliament House.

Socialist Alliance's Jim McIlroy.

Preparing a banner.

Getting ready to film.

Sam Watson discusses arrangements with police.

Inspector in charge (right of photo), and Senior Sergeant who appeared to be acting as his XO.

Secondary inspector and his Senior Sergeant. This inspector took charge of the van of the march, while the inspector in the previous photo (in the formal cap, not the baseball cap) appeared to be the one in overall charge. I was surprised to see the police violating the principle of unity of command - that is, the idea that there should only be one person in charge, who should be the highest rank present.

What would happen, for instance, if the two inspectors gave contradictory orders?

Of course, it's possible that the police have some system to get over this.

Police officers, road bikes and patrol car on George St, near cnr of Alice St.

Police on Alice St side of 80 George St, which contains Parliamentary offices and accommodation.

Sam Watson opened the rally. He mentioned the ceremony that had been held at 7am that morning, where Dundalee was remembered. Dundalee was an Aboriginal warrior who fought white encroachment and was hanged in 1855, on the site of what is now the Brisbane General Post Office on Queen St - click here for the exact location.

Watson called for a moment's silence to remember the 'great men and women who struggled' for Aboriginal rights. He also spoke of indigenous 'warriors and patriots' and non-indigenous people who had helped in the struggle, or who died in it.

He made a particular point of noting both the Jagara and Turrbul people, who come from the area that is now Brisbane.

Lionel Fogarty sings. This was the same song that he sang at the November 18th 2006 rally. A recording of him singing on November 18 is here: just press play to listen.

powered by ODEO

Lawyer for the Palm Island council, Andrew Boe, announces that police S/Sgt Chris Hurley will be charged with manslaughter over the death of Mulrunji in a police cell on Palm Island in 2004.

Audience and 4 bicycle police.

Uncle Des Sandy, a Jagara elder speaks. He welcomed all elders, making a special point to welcome non-indigenous elders and leaders.

He said: "You are an honorary member of my tribe - for today only. Tomorrow I might chase you down the street with a spear".

Uncle Des also acknowledged the Turrbul people.

Teenagers with banner.

Bobby Weatherall spoke, and demanded a end to the 'undeclared war against Aboriginal people'.

"We are sovereign nations, we always have been and we never ceded it".

He talked about how non-Aboriginal people celebrate 'the privileges they have gained' at Australia Day celebrations, while Aboriginal people 'wait for running water and a proper house'.

He also said "We know about lawyers justice, and we know we're not a part of it".

Brother Lyle Monroe speaks. He was born in Moree, and now is from The Block in Redfern, Sydney. First of all, he mentioned the death of TJ Hickey in Redfern, which many Aboriginal people suspect was caused by police.

He said that "Today should be the unity of the East Coast". He said the East Coast Aboriginals have to re-unite: "If we don't there is no future".

Brother Lyle called for a one-day sit-down/stop-work protest by Aboriginal police liason officers. He also demanded to know what had happened to all the barristers and solicitors who learned their trade of criminal law in the Aboriginal Legal Services. "Open your mouths, or forever shut them!". He particularly criticised Warren Mundine and Linda Birney.

He said that January 26th is "no longer a day of black survival, no longer a day of black musicians entertaining people in the park and selling trinkets".

He also called on Aboriginal people to 'remember the great leaders, Jack Patton, Bill Ferguson and William Cooper'.

Sister Vicky speaks. She said that there is "no justice in Queensland for Aboriginal people", but:

Never give up the fight
Never give up the marches
Never give up the rallies
Never give up the protests
Never, NEVER, give up!

Sister Betty Munro speaks. She criticised the Sydney black leadership, saying that Sydney had become the cradle of black conservatism, where once it had been the cradle of black radicalism. That is why, she said, it was 'important to be here today':

"You are still standing and still fighting".

Van of the march heads up George St, - 80 George St (Parliamentary offices and accommodation) in background.

Click here to see the route of the march.

Senator for Queensland Andrew Bartlett of the Australian Democrats marching along George St.

Rear of the march heads up George St near Parliament House, including two women from 'Fair Go For Palestine'.

Van of march approaches State Administration Centre, 100 George St - click here to see the exact location.

Speaker at State Administration Centre, 100 George St.

Police Cavalry at corner of George St and Queen St Mall - click here to see the exact location.

Identification markings on Police horse.

Van of march approaches cnr of George St and Queen St Mall.

March passes cnr of George St and Queen St Mall.

"Never Stand When You Can Sit, Never Sit When You Can Lie Down" - police officer waits for march to approach cnr of George and Herschel Sts - click here to see the exact location.

(I think its an old Army saying, perhaps?)

Van of march approaches cnr of George and Herschel Sts.

Van of march enters Roma St from George St - click here to see the exact location.

Audience outside Qld Police HQ, Roma St - click here to see the exact location.

There were more speeches at Roma St, and then the march continued to the Jagara Community Hall at Musgrave Park, South Brisbane.

Click here to see the likely route of the march from Roma St to Musgrave Park.

Click here to see the exact location of Musgrave Park.

But I had to go home and spread the news on the net about S/Sgt Hurley being charged with manslaughter, so that's all from Let's Take Over.

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