I'd like to discuss a variation of perception with you; Interpretation. The way we interpret the world around us dictates how we interact with it, and the experience we will have. But I'm sure you already knew that. What you may not have known however is that individual interpretation applies to everything we personally come in contact with. Lets take for example reading text. The way you interpret what I write in this blog may differ quite dramatically from how I intended it to be interpreted. But to apply a good example we'll use a simple sentence.

Lets take the sentence "The quick brown dog jumped over the log". Every non conjunctive word (ie. "the" in this case) in that sentence is open fully to interpretation. Your idea if constitutes "quick", "jumped" and "over" will most likely differ from mine. As will your interpretation of what sort of dog it would be and the size, type and description of the log. In this way there are an endless number of combinations in which to interpret that sentence. Lets for this example focus on the word jump from that sentence. A jump to one person might mean that the dog only just clears the log, to another person it could mean the dog almost just walks over the log, to another person the dog could comfortably clear the log and yet again to someone else it could mean the dog was quite high in the air indeed. The variations of this one word alone are quick numerous, having not listed them all here; but only a select few.

In this same way we interpret everything we see, hear, feel, smell and taste, entirely in an individual way, with endless combinations on how to interpret the event. Our memories of prior experiences play heavily on our interpretation of things, but are not in any way the only ruling factor. Our personality, current mood, the terms of the social situation we are in at the time, the context of the event, the environment we're in all play heavily amongst other factors on our interpretation. For this reason, not only does our interpretation of an event end up individual to us, but also to the moment in which it is interpreted. For it is likely, with a variation in some of the contributing factors, such as current mood, our interpretation of the same event will change.

Now lets apply this to real life situations where interpretation may have considerable effect. The legal/justice system comes first to mind for me. Take the written laws and the process of enforcing those laws through the judicial system. Each individual judge, being a living being; is subject to this same individual interpretation as everyone else. The way a judge interprets a certain law can not only vary from others in the court room, but indeed from how the law was originally intended to be interpreted. In the same way, the judges interpretation of a law is subjective to the same factors such as mood as everyone else. On top of that, the exact same influences affect what the judge views as a fair punishment. With all that in mind is it any real wonder why we have such huge variation in who is punished for what and in sentencing?

It is because of this individual interpretation that juries we formed. But the jury itself can become subject to influence of interpretation. If a half of the jury members, being vocal agree on an interpretation of an event, their vocal nature of this fact can influence the interpretation of other members of the jury. So if for example you have 3 or 4 members of a jury who feel that the defendant is guilty because of A, B & C and theses jury members are very vocal of their feelings and dominant in the group the rest of the jury members will change their interpretation to fit. Remember humans are herd animals, we instinctively slot into dominant or submissive roles when placed in a group situation. Does any of that sound like justice to you?

Another example is rental housing; through inspections. What the real estate person feels is appropriate will depend on their mood, their personality, how they feel about the tenant, etc. What passes one time, could not pass the next even though the same person from the real estate does the inspection. In fact third party interpretation can positively or negatively influence every aspect of life. Whether or not you get that job, whether or not you keep that job, all comes down to interpretation. Arguments you have with friends, family and spouses come down to interpretation. Even whether you have religious faith is a matter of interpretation.

In this way our reality is as individual as our interpretation of it. For this reason it could be argued there is a distinct absence of absolutes. That while facts exist, such as the sky most commonly looks blue through-out the day; there is a lack of absolute. That is to say the shade of blue for example is a matter of interpretation.

The Australian Federal Police's (AFP) "High Tech Crime" division has only just now realised the risks of identity theft social networking sites pose. The slow speed with which they have realised these risks is a scary thought on it's own. These are the members of the AFP who are meant to understand computers, the internet and how crimes are committed with them. And yet it has taken how many years since the inception of Social networking for these apparent masters of technology to realise what to me has always been a rather obvious risk.

High Tech Crime Operation acting national manager Karl Kent said

"Children are providing personal details on these sites such as their full name, date of birth, their place of residence and even the school they attend. Online fraudsters can use this information to open credit card accounts and commit financial crimes in the child's name."

His warning of course doesn't apply only to children, adults are at just as much risk if these same details are displayed. Federal Police advised users to change the default privacy settings on their social network of choice to more secure settings. But lets think about this for a moment, what is the most popular social networking site on the internet? Answer: Facebook with it's 400+ Million users world wide. But as I have discussed previously in this blog Facebook MANDATE without option or choice by the user that your name, date of birth, likes/dislikes (in the form of fan pages), "Home Town", country of residence and profile picture are all a matter of public domain.

That is to say Facebook allows google and other search engines to collect that data from EVERY ONES profile without exception. Once google has hold of it that information is then accessible by ANYONE on the internet, even those who don't hold a Facebook account let alone be on your friends list. Doubt me? Read Facebooks privacy policy yourself, it's all in there. So 400+ MILLION people across the world have their details; the very same details an identity thieves need; publicly accessible anywhere on the internet, by anyone without any option to stop that from occurring.

If that wasn't scary enough, thanks to the demanding language Facebook use in their sign up form and the general nature of how social networking works, most Facebook users have input their real, true details instead of fudging them a little. In fact to fudge your details on Facebook is actually a major breech of the Facebook terms of service and will result in immediate termination of your account. Weird huh? It's almost like Facebook WANT you to have your identity stolen.

Links;

iTWire Article

Queensland police a completely useless, getting involved in civil matters, for which they hold no powers, while real crimes are being committed. A level of sexism exists in that they will respond to a female, but if a male is in the same situation they won't respond at all.

My personal example of this is as follows; A few years back my eldest son was living with me, happily when his mother snatched him from my house when I made the mistake in hindsight of leaving her alone with him. I immediately called emergency 000 but was told it isn't an emergency and that I should call my local police department. So I did just that and was told it's a civil matter, and as such they can't do anything. That they wouldn't be sending out a car, that they wouldn't be doing anything about it. They further advised me that I could not lawfully take one step in her yard. I of course ended up taking the matter to court but that's a whole different story all together.

Flash forward to tonight when Sarah and I ended (over what isn't important) and of course I wanted to take Dee with me. What happened in between is of no importance to the story other then to say no criminal action took place. I sat in the bedroom with dee trying to put him to sleep, quietly. At 8pm police arrived at my door to attempt to deal with the civil dispute. I very quickly put the two responding officers in their place and they left as they had no business getting involved. Sarah and I were still in the same house, dee was not in harms way nor neglected in any way.

Clearly this shows that if you're a man and your ex takes your child, the police don't care, but if your a woman and it happens the police respond and make up a bunch of lies. Thankfully I understand the law very well and called them on their lies, put them in their place and they left as they should have. But how many fathers don't know the law, how many fathers get stitched up by the police? That is an utter disgrace!

Now ask yourself this, while they were here arguing with me over the fact they had no right to be here, how many ACTUAL criminal offices took place? Ask yourself, while they were hassling me with my civil matter, how many children in ACTUAL danger went unheard? How many people were assaulted in that space of time on a FRIDAY NIGHT? Heck in the space of that time I heard no less then FIVE (5) people SPEED passed my house.

The Queensland police need to get their freak'in act together. The law clearly states they have no power or right to intervene in a civil dispute. None! They only have the right to become involved when someone commits a criminal act, or threatens to do so; which of course includes an act of violence. Where so such criminal offenses have taken place, or are likely to take place they have NO POWER nor the right under the law to become involved in the situation. They need to go out their and fight crime and stay out of civil matters. Civil courts are for civil matters, not police.

War, human suffering, industralised land clearing, climate change, over population...the list goes on and on and on and one thing unites them all. They're caused by money. I'm sure when money was introduced it seemed like a good idea, a standardised unit of value to create a "universal" valuing system; and in that purist form it's a brilliant idea. The problem is it's a system which doesn't account for emotions like greed.

Humans have a huge tendency toward greed and it never ceases to amaze me how even a relatively small sum of money can absolutely change an otherwise kind, generous person into an arrogant, selfish monster. Oh yes, the statement money is the root of evil is entirely true. Think about it.

Ever war in recent history was fought over money, heck some of those wars were only fought so the arms dealers could stay in business. Think about how many 100s of MILLIONS of lives have been lost due to wars fought over money. Not freedom or defending territory or anything like it's made out to be, but pure cold hard cash. This Iraq war being fought at the moment for example, all over oil and keeping a few big name arms dealers in business. It makes me sick to think all those soldiers are dying or coming up with mental disorders, all their families worrying and suffering, so a few rich blokes can make some more money. That is disgraceful and disrespectful to the soldiers and their families.

And climate change, geez. Industralisation occurred to produce products in greater numbers so the business owners could make more money. From Industralisation green house gases were released setting in effect a chain reaction for which we are seeing the beginnings of the results now. Massive land clearing, logging, mining and so forth, all spurred on by money, all adding to the climate change effect. And when presented with the climate change data over the passed 40 years the excuse to not do anything about it? "It will to strongly negatively impact on our economy" or in other words, money.

Without money there would be no poor, homeless or starving people in the world. Not less! NONE! Think about it. If you got rid of money over night what that would mean for these people. Even over population has it's roots in money, for with money as an incentive larger and larger farms have been developed making an abundance of readily available food. As food becomes easier to obtain population booms. It's basic biology 101. Yep, there really aren't many problems humanity is having today that don't have their roots in money.

Now defenders of money might say "it's not a perfect system, but it's all we have". That is a complete cop out. Before money it was barter, if the advocates of the barter system had copped out like that money would never have been invented. What we need is to develop further on the system of money, to advance forward in our system of trade. I mean money, as a system was created thousands of years ago, isn't it about time we brought our trade system into 2010?

I got through a 419 scam today, so keeping in the same vain as my previous post about scammers I figured I'd play around with him. This is what he wrote.

From: "Roselyn J. Ghang"

Reply-To: joernestine@aim.com
Subject: Important: Reference Number: 87K4/336/T071/0010
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:04:01 +0700
Received: from smtp.saigonnet.vn ([221.133.1.3]:34579 helo=mailserver.saigonnet.vn)

Reference Number: 87K4/336/T071/0010
E-mail: BALIWANE@aim.com
Dear Winner,
This is to officially inform you that you have been approved for a lump sum pay out of Five Hundred Thousand U.S Dollars in this year GLOBAL INDEPENDENT E-LOTTERY PAYMENT RECONCILIATION BOARD UK,Reference Number: 87K4/336/T071/0010.
You are advice to Contact: Dr.BALI WANE, Foreign Service Accredited Attorney Overseas Subscribers Agents EMAIL: BALIWANE@aim.com

1. Full Name : ........................................
2. Address : ..........................................
3. Marital Status : ...................................
4. Occupation : .......................................
5. Age : ..............................................
6. Sex : ..............................................
7. Nationality : ......................................
8. Country : ..........................................
9. Telephone : ........................................
10. 1Fax Number : ......................................
11. Email Address : ...................................

Congratulations on behalf of the entire managment.
Yours faithfully,
Roselyn J. Ghang
Online National Co-ordinator,
Global Impact Lottery.

What I find very interesting is how ANYONE could possible fall for these scams. I mean the English is incredibly poor, there are NO LESS than THREE different email addresses associated with this email. It's sent from a server originating in Vietnam and more over NO ONE entered the "GLOBAL INDEPENDENT E-LOTTERY" because well, it doesn't exist. If you didn't enter a lottery draw why would you believe it when someone emails you of all things tell you that you've won. Especially when they ask for a bunch of details that lets face it if you'd entered it and forgotten you would of already had to have given them. It truly amazes me that there are people out there with so little common sense as to fall for this sort of scam. Anyway I replied twice to different email addresses. The first reply is to the listed replyto address joernestine@aim.com

0 12:54:02 +1000
From: my email
To: joernestine@aim.com
Subject: Re: Important: Reference Number: 87K4/336/T071/0010

Hi Joe,

Was nice to hear from you. How's Nancy and the kids going? All good I hope. I see your English still isn't doing very well, but if you keep practicing I'm sure you'll get there in the end. It was interesting that you mentioned Dr Wane, I haven't spoken the him in agers, how is he going? It's strange the a man who has worked so tirelessly to restore peoples gentiles after they've been attacked by swarms of hungry sand flies; would now be working for a lottery draw. Are you sure he's working there now? At any rate can you tell him I said 'hi' next time you see him and ask him how his transgender surgery is going.

All my love to Nancy and the kids,

Peter.

I wrote this email to see if there is actually life on the other end of joernestine@aim.com if there is this opens up new possibilities for fun. The second email is addressed to the one the scam said to reply to BALIWANE@aim.com and provides the details requested only in fake form.

Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:25:32 +1000
From: my email
To: BALIWANE@aim.com
Subject: Reference Number: 87K4/336/T071/0010

Dear Rev Wane,

It was so good to hear from Jackie that I had won the national dependent e-lottery with a sum of half a million dollars. Of course I make several times that amount of money each week but I've never been the type to snub my nose at free money. I have provided my details below as Jackie requested.

1.Full Name : Peter Frapton
2.Address : 810 Whickermore Drive, Branson Missori
3.Marital Status : Married
4.Occupation : Senior stock analysist at First Canada Capital Inc.
5.Age : 38
6.Sex : Male
7.Nationality : Canadian
8.Country : Canada
9.Telephone : (417) 334-3300
10.Fax Number : (417) 337-9246
11.Email Address : I don't have one, sorry.

I am very excited, will my picture be in the paper? I am very much looking forward to the big ceremony where I am presented with the giant cheque. I've been given one of those before and it was a great day. The giant cheque still decorates my penthouse as a bit of a joke ey. Anyway thank you so much for letting me know I have won, I will be awaiting your reply.

Regards,

Peter

Things to note about my reply. I referred to him as Rev and not Dr. I referred to the person who wrote me the first email as Jackie instead of Roselyn and I gave the impression I was extremely rich so their greed would take over completely. In my details you'll know that I said I'm from Branson, Missouri and purposely misspelt Missouri. I then claimed I'm from and live in Canada which of course isn't near Branson Missouri. The best bit about the lot is of course I'm in Australia so if they fall for it, it shows how computer illiterate they are and opens up more opportunities for fun.

The most important thing however to note is that the phone numbers I have provided both originate in Branson Missouri, one at the Branson Police Department the other (fax) at the White Oaks Police department. When the scammer calls he is definitely in for a surprise. I'm hoping though that he will chose to email me back first so I can lure him in a little deeper before he calls, meaning his more likely to say something incriminating when he calls the police.

A reminder for parents to stay vigilant while their children are on the internet came this week from a somewhat unexpected source. It seems a Pennsylvania school is being sued after the deputy principle went ahead and punished a 15 year old student for "inappropriate behaviour" while he was in his BEDROOM. The "inappropriate behaviour" is of course rumored to be in the context of self pleasure.

How did the deputy principle even know about this event taking place you ask? It seems the webcam in the school provided macbook was remotely turned on allowing live, remote viewing. The deputy principle was certainly all to happy to furnish the boy with photographic evidence.

The FBI have now been called in to investigate the potential breech of multiple federal and state laws. The scary thing is it isn't isolated to this one child. There have actually been rumors going around the school between students that the teachers were spying on them through the webcams with a large amount of students claiming the little green activity light on their webcam would turn itself on randomly.

But beyond the obvious privacy issues this sparks off I fail to see where any one at the school thought that had not only the right, but responsibility to discipline a child for actions taking place in their own home. Their authority ends at the school gate as far as I'm concerned. What a child does whilst in the care of their PARENTS is certainly none of the schools business. The school district board now claims to have disabled the feature, but given they had denied it's existence for months, and are trying to cover up this whole indecent I really don't believe much they have to say.

This is certainly a case in proof that you really CAN'T allow your child, even teenager, alone with a computer that is connected to the internet. Of course that doesn't mean you have to sit next to your teenager while they muck around online like you would a younger child, but it does mean computers with internet access should be in high traffic walk ways of the house. In this way you can glance at their screen (and the activity light of the webcam) every time you walk passed. If they're rushing to close something down when you do, then you know you need to investigate further.

The internet can be an utterly powerful tool, which enables better education, flow of truth and friendships. But it does need to be understood properly BEFORE you mess with it, and children (and teenagers) need to be supervised while using it and taught proper, responsible usage skills.

iTWire Article 1
iTWire Article 2

I seemed to get a better response (although limited) from embedding use a youtube video instead of a vimeo one. If you like the video please be sure to rate it up. Cheers guys and be sure to check out the special ending.

The long talked about and much contested Australian mandatory internet filter has new opposition in the form of the "Australian Library and Information Association and Inspire Foundation". Dubbed the 'Safer Internet Group' and with members such as web giants Google and Yahoo! the group actually stand a good chance at achieving their objectives, which would see a revision of the legislation to better target illegal acts such as child porn while leaving the rest of the internet open, uncensored and free to use.

The filter works in the same way any home blacklist software on either your modem/router or home PC does. The government plan to place URLs of websites they and the public find which you wouldn't want a child to see onto the black list. Once on the black list no one in the country will be able to view the site or any pages listed on it. This I believe is why companies Google and Yahoo! are stepping in, because at the end of the day it would hurt their bottom line.

Take for example if the URL to a specific YouTube video was placed on the list, this would have the effect of causing ALL users who visit YouTube to pass through the filter leading to YouTube videos that aren't blacklisted under the filter not loading and a general slow down of the site. Independent testing by the government in Tasmania in 2009 showed the filter would also significantly slow down general web usage, dropping your speed by 30% during normal usage periods and during high traffic periods by up to 70%!

The Safer Internet Group is points out something I have argued since the inception of this filter, stating

"As a large proportion of child sexual abuse content is not found on public websites, but in chat-rooms or peer-to-peer networks, we know the proposed filtering regime will not effectively protect children from this objectionable material,"

and continuing

"In fact, the policy may give parents a 'false sense of security' encouraging them to reduce their supervision."

Under this filter arrangement websites of a criminal nature will NOT be mandatory passed on to the police, they will ONLY block the content under the filter and leave the matter there. The AMCA (the government body responsible for rating commercial TV and radio) will manage the filter and attempt to apply the same guide lines to the internet that apply to TV. Meaning if they find something you wouldn't want your 9 year old to see, then no one in Australia can see it either, regardless of age.

As I have already previously stated, if the goal is ultimately to stop cyber crime there are FAR better and more effective ways of achieving that goal than instituting a mandatory filter across the internet. Education is key, explaining to the general public internet safety, about email scams, phishing and so forth. It troubles me that there are still grown adults who will today fall for a Nigerian 419 scam (The ones where they say you've won a stack of money, but you need to give them a few grand to collect it). And the filter isn't designed to combat these types of problems, in fact it really isn't designed to combat ANY kind of truly harmful cyber crime.

Kiddie porn will still be just as prevalent as it is now, but legal porn won't be viewable. Everyone will still get just as many spam and scammer emails as they are right now, but watching a legitimate video YouTube will become slow and tiresome. Phishing websites will still continue to exist as often by the time anyone figures out it's a phishing website the phishers have already abandoned the site in search of the next prize. Yet internet banking will take forever (opening people using wireless internet to even future hacking attacks and fraud).

The ONLY criminal activity that I can see the filter would actually combat is the downloading of copyrighted materials such as music, movies, games and software through bit-torrent sites and so forth. But again, that will only stop the use of it in a web based way, it will NOT stop peer-to-peer downloading using software like LimeWire. Beyond that, it will all be business as usual to the cyber-crime world. The ONLY people who are impacted by this filter are the law abiding Australian public whom will lose their right to freedom of information. Not only will legal porn sites be blocked, but so will any sites which even so much as TALK about things that are "undesirable". This includes NEWS sites and BLOGS which are seeking to educate on the issues surrounding a criminal activity or just talking about a criminal activity in a negative light.

Think about it, all those websites giving you tips on how to avoid pedophiles getting in touch with your children, clearly community education groups, being added to a blacklist that no one can visit. How does that make logical sense?

Thankfully with the "safer internet group" lobbying the government, combined with the legal action the Australian Internet Services Association are taking to try and block the filter things should hopefully change on this front. Hopefully someone amongst this group can get Senator Conroy to understand he does NOT know what is best for Australians better than they do themselves, nor does he know what is best for our children better then we their parents do. Lets hope they move fast on this though, as the legislation only needs to pass through the senate before it's law and is already scheduled to be in place by the end of THIS YEAR!

Links;

iTWire Article

I stumbled onto this site the other day which suggested ways to have fun with those annoying email scammers. I seem to get one or two of them in my email a week so I thought I'd give it a try with my own little sense for flare on the whole idea of messing with them. I got two of them through today. The first one is from some man, claiming to be a girl wanting to "tell me something important".

From: hassa10nababy@katamail.com
Reply-to: hassanababy@gmx.com
Date: 16/02/2010 8:15 PM
To: My email
Subject: Hello,

Hello,
How are you? hope fine, I Want to introduce my self to you before I go further, My Name is Hassana lsaac. I will like to have a good relationship with you, if you wouldn't mind, I will like to hear from you soon through this email address (hassanababy@gmx.com) because, I have something very important I will like to tell you. Thanks and God bless you,
Miss Hassana lsaac.

I thought for a moment of doing my usual rutine of simply clicking the junk mail button and never having to hear from "Miss lsaac" again. But then I thought again and decided to mess with "her". First I replied to the email address she sent this from (the one she didn't want me to reply to) saying simply "Hi, how are you?". I though I can certainly do better than that, so I then emailed the address she DID want me to email to (hassanababy@gmx.com) with the following reply.

From: My email
Date: 17/02/2010 2:27 PM
To: hassanababy@gmx.com
Subject: RE: Hello,

Hi Glenda,

It's nice to hear from you, it's been awhile. What happened with that gentile warts problem? I hope it's all cleared up now, or is that the important thing you wanted to talk to me about? It's weird that you've turned into a Christian, I always thought you were a committed satanist. I should let you know we're having a sacrifice next week, you should come along. It's a nun this time, it'll be great.

Looking forward to hearing for you,

Peter

I'm awaiting "her" reply and I'll update you when it comes through. lol

It's important to note that when ever I sign up for things online which I think will give me spam, or indeed I reply to a scammer/spammer I use the name peter. This helps to distance me so no spammers or scammers know my name or details. This will become apparent in the email from the next scammer which I received a few hours later.

From: Paul_Meyers@mytopdealbrands.com
Date: 17/02/2010 2:47PM
To: My email
Subject: Partner with an online guru Peter

Hi Peter

My Name is Paul and I’m an internet professional. For almost 10 years now I have been working in
online advertising and last I will show you verified proof of how I made $136,808 in a single month.

Over the years I’ve seen it all, from the top opportunities on the web to the absolute scams. I’ve helped
my good friend Mike to make money online and now I’m going to help you. Truth is I’m no saint, I need
your help just as much as you need mine.

I’m not here to fill your head with false promises about myself or what you can achieve. Let me show you how.

Click here to learn more:
[insert stupid spam link]

Noting how well I figured the last email had gone I figured I should try something similar on this guy.

To: Paul_Meyers@mytopdealbrands.com
Date: 17/02/2010 3:01 PM
From: My email
Subject: RE: Partner with an online guru Peter

Hi James,

It's great to hear from you. It's been what 2 months since you emailed me last? How is Nancy and the kids? Well I hope. It's been awhile since I've spoken to Mike, tell him I said 'hi' and ask him if he ever found out which one of the prostitutes he was banging gave him Venereal Disease?

It's great to see your new job manually picking leeches off the rare and engaged Swap Camel has netted you so much revenue in the last month. Sadly I must tell you that the life of a Camel Leecher isn't for me, I'd miss the city far to much. Anyways it was great to hear from you james. I hope to hear from you again soon. All my love to Nancy and the kids

Peter.

I like the idea of purposely getting their name wrong, because when they reply it lets me know in the first sentence whether or not they're a real person or a robot. IF they're a real life person they'll correct their name and the rest of the details in my reply. If it's a robot it'll go on telling me a bunch of non-sense. Of course if it's a robot it'll end up straight in my junk mail pile. If it's a real person however I'm going to have lots of fun playing with them. I'll be sure to continue to post the fun I have with scammers into my blog for you all to read.

The other brilliant thing about posting this up is that I've included their email addresses. By doing so all the email address collection bots that spammers and scammers deploy across the internet will collect their addressed from my posts and end up spamming and scamming them. lmao. I've also decided to produce a new page on TJandSarah.com where you can enter in the email addresses spammers and scammers use to contact you. But instead of creating a black list like most people would I figure I can make this list HIGHLY visible to spammers sniffing for email addresses. In this way it's likely that they'll end up spamming themselves as well as all their other colleges

Sure it won't fix the spam problem, but it'll certainly be a laugh knowing their spamming themselves. Keep checking back on TJandSarah.com for updates on when the list will go live.

In 2009 the Australia Federal Police raided 20 residences across Sydney and Melbourne after a massive operation looking for terrorists. 5 immigrant men were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. This is the FIRST recorded time in Australia's history that ANYONE has attempted to commit an act of terrorism on Australian soil. A HUGE stock pile of tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition was found at the homes of the men as well as stock piles of chemical agents used in the production of explosives.

The 5 men subsequently CONFESSED to their terrorist plot, explaining to Australia Federal Police offices (ON RECORD) that they had planned to attack the Hollingsworth Army Barracks in Sydney, take the complex over and hold Australia at random with it. That's right, they wanted to take over an entire Army base, and with the amount of ammunition and explosives they had stock piled, it was certainly something that they were likely to have achieved should they have been able to execute their plan.

Fast forward now to earlier this week when the 5 men were sentenced to jail. Individually the men received sentences ranging from as little as 17 years to a measly 21 years MAXIMUM jail time! That is to say, that is the MAXIMUM amount of time they can be held for these crimes, but can be paroled much earlier. With such like sentences it isn't any wonder the men were laughing and smiling in court while their sentence was handed down. The men have maintained the whole time that they HATE Australia, resiting exactly that publicly as late as just before they were sentenced.

To me this is absolutely INSANE! How can people convicted of conspiring to murder Australian soldiers on Australian soil, to hijacking an ENTIRE military base and holding it for ransom be give such absolute light sentences. These are the sorts of people you either want to execute under the treason act (They're immigrants who have undergone citizenship of all things) or jailed for their ENTIRE life without chance of parole.

Was the judge off his rocker with this one or what? Does the judge honestly think they're going to come out of jail and not want to commit another act of terrorism? I'm sorry but these are the sort of people who hold conviction to this sort of plan. Sticking them into an Australian jail is only going to make them more angry with Australia and more committed to killing Australians. This is wrong on so very many levels and puts our nation at risk in the future.

I don't even get the logic of the terrorists here; I mean they're a group of men who have immigrated to Australia with their families from a poorer country. They have been given multiple opportunities they would not have been granted any other way. We have welcomed them as citizens and they have undergone at their own free will that process. And yet they hate Australia? I'm sorry but why is that exactly? And more over, if you hate us so freak'in much the answer is simple, don't come here And if you get here and then realise you don't like Australia...LEAVE! Is it really that hard a concept to get? I think it's an easier concept to grasp then learning how to make complex explosive devices and do surveillance on a military base.

The government needs to step in here and declare this a matter of national security. The men need to be remanded in custody for the remainder of their natural lives. Unless this happens (and honestly I can't see it happening) expect a terrorist attack on Australia in around 21 - 22 years time.

If you ever wanted to see justice come to missionaries, this story it is. The 5 Male and 5 female Christians from Ohio, USA who entered Haiti and stole 33 children have been denied bail. The group of 5 couples attempted to take the Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic with the idea of setting up an orphanage. The ill equipped group failed their duty of care with all 33 children suffering dehydration and hunger when they were stopped by border authorities. Some of the children also were injured and required urgent medical attention.

But perhaps even more scary is the fact the Christians seeming had forgotten (or perhaps they simply didn't care) to actually check the children they took really where orphans, with most of them actually still having living parents. A Haiti court has denied the group bail, ordering them to be remanded in custody; charged with kidnapping minors and criminal association.

In situations like this you just have to smile at the fact justice has actually prevailed. But you can't help but feel bad about all the millions who didn't have justice go their way. One would think by now Christian missionaries would be outlawed, I mean consider this; In the USA it was Christian Missionaries who stole native Indian children and denied them their culture. In Canada Christian missionaries did the same to the Inuit people and here in Australia they stole aboriginal children and trained them as servants. Now look at all the pain, suffering and money this has cost those countries? Yet we allow Christian missionaries to go forth from those very same countries and cause ever more havoc around the world.

At what point do our governments see the harm this is doing, at what point do they see that by allowing this practise to continue it costs governments more in tax payer funded charity. At some point surely our governments will see sense and benefit from ruling it illegal to go over seas as a missionary. Personally I think anyone who does such should be stripped of their citizenship and their actions dealt with in international court as crimes against humanity. Just remember, the worst acts in history were ALL perpetrated with the "best of intentions".

At any rate, I want to see more of these poor, third world countries standing up to missionaries, charging and imprisoning them for crimes like those of the 10 Christians in Haiti. If all third world nations did this, then perhaps just that would be a big enough deterrent to stop missionaries entering those countries in the first place.

The Australian Film and Television industry have lost a class action against West Australian ISP iiNet. The brief charged iiNet with authorising it's users to breach copyright laws by allowing them to use bit torrent software.

With common sense on his side Justice Dennis Cowdroy ruled that iiNet was not responsible for the breach of copyright. Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft who launched the action are of cause very upset with the decision with their spokesman Neil Gane stating
"It's very difficult for the movie industries to compete with a free alternative which is perpetrated by theft"

You're right Mr Gane it is difficult to continue to make billion dollar returns on movies you make when people can download them for free. But with movies like Avatar making 1 billion dollars at the box office in the first 3 days of it's US release I hardly think the industry is in any real danger. What the industry needs to understand is that regardless of what laws the bring in, someone will always be offering free copies of the latest movies. And people will continue to download them, and that isn't always a bad thing. Most of the time these downloaded copies are of poor quality, and certainly never anything approaching High Def.

If people want to see a movie in good quality, their only real choice is to purchase it. So the Movie and Television industry need to look at these downloads as a way for people to preview a movie by watching it in low quality, then if they like the movie they'll of course be much more likely to go out and buy it. That said however, the price of cinema tickets and DVDs certainly doesn't help the piracy issue. Honestly why pay $20 each to go see a movie at the cinema when you can download the movie for free?

Heck, even if you couldn't download it for free, there would still be an almost equally sized amount of people not going to see movies at the cinema simply because they don't want to pay the exorbitant prices. At the end of the day, movies were invented as the working mans pass time, they were meant to be affordable. But instead modern studios have increased prices to unbelievable levels and they're still going up. Here's a hint for the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, drop the prices and you'll immediately see more people buying your products legitimately.

Thankfully todays judgement by Justice Cowdroy is likely to be adopted in the US, EU and UK as we all share and model copyright law from each other. This means ISPs a likely to remain without blame for the piracy issue.

Links;

ABC News Article

In the whole of Australia's history until 2009, terrorism in our country has been limited to 1 single plot to assassinate the Queen during a visit in the 1970's. Beyond that we have always lived in a safe, happy country, free from extremist views and forth coming violence.

In late 2009 that all changed when at least 5 Arab immigrants conspired to attack and take over hollingsworth military base. Fast forward to today and you'll note that two acts of terror occurred! First we have an attempted hijacking of a Sydney commuter bus by an immigrant man trying to escape police. While over in Darwin an Insurance building has been bombed! And while thankfully no one was fatally injured in either of these events, they do certainly highly a growing trend.

Here we have persons whom have immigrated into our country, committing acts of terror on our soil. A country which was previous a sanctuary from terrorism now exposed to it on our own soil. And I blame Kevin Rudd and his ridiculous approach to immigration. The simple fact of that matter is that it's precisely because of situations like this that until Kevin Rudd came along Australia had always maintained such a minimalist immigration policy.

Honestly, what does Australia need with 260,000 Indians a year? How does that help our country? It's time we took a real hard look at our immigration policy and set things right. The way things were, whether you agree with it or not, worked. It kept us and our way of life safe. Enter Kevin Rudd and his extremely liberal immigration policy and suddenly we have a growing trend of terrorism inside Australia. It's not racism, it's common sense. Large numbers of immigrants, especially when they can get in without proper security checks through student visas, will cause extremists to enter our country. We need to take a good hard look and decide if we want to continue our peaceful way of life, or whether we'd much rather plummet into a country plagued by terrorist attempts and inevitably terrorist successes. I know which I'd prefer, how about you?

It was "revealed" in todays Sunday mail (and I assume at least all other APP publications) that murdered multimillionaire businessman Herman Rockefeller met his killers through an internet sex site. The article continued he had "at least five (5) secret pre-paid mobile phones" and had "at least one mystery girlfriend".

The article also noted that Mr Rockefeller is a married man with 2 children before it continued to drag his name through the proverbial mud. I find it utterly appalling, that a journalist would stoop so low as to write such an article. A man has been killed, and I honestly don't see how his past transgressions are any of our business. Indeed, by making such public statements about the man when he has only recently been murdered must be causing untolled heart-ache and distress to his family.

And the worst part of the whole thing morally is that Herman Rockefeller isn't here to defend himself. At any rate I fail to see how the interworkings of anyones personal life, including their transgressions, where they don't directly effect public life, should become public knowledge. I'm sick of hearing about this or that persons sexual transgressions, it's none of my business nor is it any of yours. It only adds mountain to an already painful situation. It also cheapens the publication, reducing it to little more than a trashy tabloid magazine. I feel journalists should be legislated in such a way as to prevent them reporting on such things.

If it doesn't effect more people than a persons private family, then it honestly shouldn't be reported on.

So I thought I'd start doing a weekly wrap-up by way of vodcast. We've had a bit of a problem getting the video on YouTube as it runs for 13 minutes and YouTube apparently don't want to know you if your video goes over 10 minutes. So contray to what the video says, currently you can't want this episode on YouTube. I will keep you posted as to developments on whether we decide to trim future vodcasts to fit youtube, or just give them the flick.

So I was thinking about this Mandatory Internet Filter that Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy are bringing in to Australia and something dawned on me that hadn't before. See previously I was pissed off that this filter will stop Australians' seeing anything and everything that the ACMA decide someone under the age of 16 shouldn't see. Not just legal stuff, but just stuff in general that someone under the age of 16 apparently shouldn't see.

But it dawned on me that a filter of any kind has to take our information about where we're going online and what we're doing online and sort through it. Of cause due to the nature of the internet your ISP already has this information but under the privacy act can't do anything will it. But as this filter apparently exists to keep us safe from harm and includes sites which are illegal in nature; one would expect there to be logging going on.

Logging is the capture and storage of information pertaining to computerized activity, in this case being your online activity. It's something ISPs aren't allowed to do, but something the government do intend to do. It's bad enough we have companies like Google and Facebook giving us the online big brother treatment without our government giving us the same.

I for one think Australia is better than that. That we aren't a paranoid country, and up until now haven't had paranoid governments. The ability for a government to collate data about each households internet usage without criminal cause for line tapping, without the consent of those who occupy the household and on a mandatory basis is unconstitutional. Sure our constitution doesn't protect freedom of speech, but what the Australian constitution does protect is the individuals right to go about their business in a lawful manner without interference from a government agency.

Seriously, who voted for Kevin Rudd? Because everyone who did is a freak'in idiot. I tried to tell you all not to do it, I warned you he'd screw up Australia. He's more interested in playing fairy tale princess meeting "important people" and flying around the world than in anything that benefits Australians. This government artificially took Australia into a time of economic downturn through scare tactics and misinformation. It lost a lot of Australians their jobs and set us back quite dramatically. They then blew out the budget and put us into such heavy debt that our childrens children will still be paying it off.

But not only are they a clueless government, incapable of making a truly healthful decision, not only are they wasting billions of tax payer dollars, dollars you and I worked hard for, but they have also shown themselves to be a fascist, big brother government intent on controlling the populous at whole. This isn't what our fathers and great grandfathers fought and in some cases died for. They'd roll over in their graves to see the country like this. So thank-you to everyone who freely chose to vote for Kevin Rudd, because in that free choice you have doomed all Australians to have none.

The following letter is from a network engineer named Mark Newton whom has brought up multiple concerns about the internet filter with the AMCA. But instead of addressing these concerns, in true fascist nature Senator Conroy and his office have attempted to bully Mr Newton into a campaign of silence on the issue. I am reposting this letter as I feel it captures a great deal of the concerns at the heart of this issue. I have pulled this letter from homepagedaily.com

Senator Stephen Conroy

------

Mark Newton's letter:

20 October 2008
The Hon Kate Ellis MP
Minister for Youth and Sport
161a Main North Road
Nailsworth SA 5083

Dear Ms Ellis,

I am writing to you to express my concerns about moves by Senator Stephen Conroy to implement the "clean feed" proposal described on page 5 of Labor's Plan for Cyber Safety by Senator Conroy prior to the 2007 election.

My objections to this policy are detailed below. In your reply to this letter, I would appreciate a direct, detailed response to each of these issues. I am making the assumption that collating such responses will be a simple matter, because a proposal as important as this one obviously wouldn't have proceeded as far as it has if these basic concerns had not been considered and alleviated. If that assumption is unfounded, then that fact should justify revisiting (or, alternatively, abandoning) the "clean feed" proposal.

While I approve of the general thrust of the Cyber Safety proposal, I have serious objections to the "clean feed" section, which will erect an online Government censorship regime in Australia for the first time.

I also have significant objections about the professional conduct of Senator Conroy as he has pursued this issue. The Senator has attacked critics by comparing them to child abusers; refused to provide details of his policy then maligned opponents for their "speculative" remarks; lied to the Australian voting public about the availability of an "opt-out" in December 2007; and failed to consult with the 21 million Australian stakeholders who will be most affected by this plan, in contravention of the Prime Minster's oft-repeated aim to implement a "Government for all Australians" [1, 2, 3]. Rather than addressing the serious policy objections which I outline below, Senator Conroy has preferred to respond with aggressive, offensive, extremist bluster.

The Government has not demonstrated a need for an online censorship regime.

While I accept that the presence of illegal material on the Internet is a cause for some concern, I'm appraised of two important points which the Government appears to have missed.

Firstly: Australians have been using uncensored Internet access for at least 30 years, and there's no evidence of a burgeoning problem concerning access to illegal material. I have been using the Internet almost every day since 1989 and have never seen any content that I'd expect to require Government intervention. Without demonstrating a need for this system, how can the Government credibly claim that it should be mandated?

Secondly: There is little evidence that Australian parents require Government assistance. Indeed, those who claim that parents require such assistance have a remarkable track record of being wrong.

In 1989 / 1990, the Senate Select Committee into Online Services carried out an enquiry into the nature of content available online, and made a rash of recommendations in favour of some kind of censorship scheme based on the expectation that unfettered access would harm the fabric of Australian society.

The passing of time has shown that 1990 Senate's concerns were completely wrong: Almost 20 years have passed since that enquiry, and Australians have enjoyed uncensored Internet access for the entire period. Society has not fallen apart, there is no emergency, children are not being raised in moral vacuums and turning into rapists and axe-murderers, parents are diligently and capably excelling in their efforts to raise their children into fine, upstanding citizens. Today's parents are comfortable with ubiquitous access to unfiltered Internet, having grown up using Google to assist with homework assignments, publishing blogs and websites, using email to stay in touch with friends and family, and treating the Internet in its current unfiltered form as a valuable resource for the education and social engagement of their children.

This fact is reinforced by the public's unresponsiveness to the previous Government's offer of free filtering software for family PCs. When only 140,000 users downloaded the free software over 12 months, and less than 29,000 of them were still using it three weeks later, Senator Conroy concluded that the $84M filtering software distribution plan failed because it wasn't mandatory, rather than the more rational conclusion that the failure of the initiative could be traced to lack of public desire.

The image of technologically-disconnected parents floundering helplessly in a sea of pornography as they fail to adequately raise their children is a reflection of the appalling lack of Internet-savviness of our politicians, not society at large. Politicians assume that parents are ignorant about the Internet because politicians are ignorant. Yet parents came to grips with it years ago; the last remaining social group in our country who expresses difficulty with the Internet appears to be baby-boomer Federal politicians, whose child-rearing days are mostly well behind them.

It is thoroughly insulting to Australian parents to undermine their efforts by asserting that the way to prevent societal decay is for the Government to step in and make decisions about the appropriateness of online content. That is a parent's role, not Senator Stephen Conroy's role.

The government has not demonstrated that mandatory online censorship is technologically feasibly.

Senator Richard Alston, in his tenure as Minister for Communications and the Arts, passed amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act in 1999. As accompaniment to that legislation, the Minister directed the ACMA (then ABA) to establish NetAlert, and for NetAlert to carry out periodic assessments of the "state of the art" of filtering technology.

Since that time, NetAlert and the Department have commissioned separate studies by the CSIRO, Ovum, and most recently RMIT and Enex Testlab. All of the studies have uniformly demonstrated that online censorship technology:

* slows down Internet access;
* inaccurately blocks content which should not be blocked;
* inaccurately fails to block content which should be blocked;
* is ineffective at inspecting or blocking "Peer to Peer" traffic that comprises over 60% of Australia's Internet traffic; and
* fails to accurately distinguish between legal and illegal content even when specifically configured with lists of illegal content under laboratory conditions.

The most recent trials, conducted in Tasmania by Enex Testlab earlier this year, found that the most accurate product tested incorrectly blocked 3% of innocent material, and incurred a "slowdown" performance penalty in excess of 70%, and failed to reliably block the ACMA's prohibited content list. It stuns disbelief that the Minister for Broadband would be interested in pursuing these systems whilst at the very same time advocating for a $20B National Broadband Network (NBN) intended to increase Internet speeds.

There is no evidence on the public record to demonstrate that mandatory online censorship is technologically feasible. Every time experts have been asked, they have uniformly concluded that it is not possible. Furthermore, advances in technology cause Internet speeds to increase faster then censorship systems' speeds, meaning that as time passes the performance penalty caused by these systems becomes worse.

It is very poor public policy to proceed with mandatory implementation of provably failed technology.

The government has not demonstrated that online censorship is effective.

Any Australian can obtain encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN) access from the United States for less than $5 per month [1, 2]. This is the same technology that human rights activists use in China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to hide their activities from the Government, and provides an effective, guaranteed bypass of any effort by any National Government to filter Internet content.

There is no requirement for complicated software to use these services, VPN clients are installed by default on all common Operating System platforms. Australians who wish to hide themselves from Government Internet censorship efforts are only a few clicks away from total anonymity.

The government has failed to consider unintended consequences arising from the policy.

In order to implement a censorship scheme, the ACMA will need to make its blacklists available to ISPs.

There are approximately 400 ISPs in Australia. Even if each ISP only has a handful of staff in a position to access routers and scrutinise network configurations, that still leaves several thousand ISP technical staff with full knowledge of the contents of the blacklist.

A moment of consideration of that state of affairs yields the unavoidable conclusion that the blacklist will be "leaked". Many sites on the Internet specialise in providing repositories of "sensitive" Government data for the purpose of providing public access to documents against Governments' wishes, and a Government blacklist is exactly the kind of content those sites exist to publish.

When the Government makes a mistake, it will be public [1, 2, 3]. It is simply not believable that putting the same people who called for the destruction of the Bill Henson photographic exhibit in charge of a blacklist of pornographic imagery can end well. It also strains credibility to assert that there is value in putting the people who decided that Mohammad Haneef should be pursued on terrorism charges, or that David Hicks should rot in Guantanamo, in charge of a list of illegal terrorist material. Governments of both sides have a long and distinguished track record of embarrassing failure in these areas, and the public is wise to be sceptical of moves to place further faith in the demonstrably flawed judgement of our public officials and political representatives.

Leaks have other hazards: It will only be a matter of time before someone, somewhere in the world, testifies in open court that they knew where to find child pornography due to the assistance and enablement of a leaked copy of Senator Conroy's Internet blacklist. The Government will no doubt launch a flurry of PR spin to demonise the leaker and portray itself as an innocent victim of circumstance when it happens, but one fact which will not be in dispute when it happens is that the Government was warned and carried on regardless. How much child exploitation is the Government willing to accept as "collateral damage" associated with this policy? More than zero? How much more?

Encouraging people who wish to bypass censorship to use encrypted VPNs carries a further unintended consequence, namely that the Australian Federal Police are unable to effectively execute Interception Warrants on encrypted traffic. Implementing censorship will drive criminals towards encryption by blocking non-encrypted methods of accessing the content they desire. I invite you to ponder the likely political effect of the revelation that Australian law enforcement was unable to gather evidence to convict a child abuser or a terrorist because the ALP's censorship system had inspired the offender to encrypt their Internet traffic.

Senator Conroy has invalidated the government's claim for a mandate by lying to the Australian public about the scope of the policy.

In December 2007, Senator Conroy was widely reported in the press as stating that "...anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service."

In October 2008, Darren Pauli from IDG/Computerworld obtained confirmation from the Minister's media spokesman that no opt-out will be available, "... the filters will be mandatory for all Australians."

As far as politicians' lies go, this one is breathtaking in its audacity. The Minister took the false impression that Australians will be able to (in his own words) "opt out of the service" to the last election, and allowed it to persist for almost an entire year even as the policy progressed to "live trials" with no opt-out provision. Then when the truth was exposed he launched personal attacks to denigrate critics as "extremist" "speculators".

Summary and Conclusion

Nearly a year has passed since Senator Conroy announced his plan, and none of the concerns described above have been addressed. The 21 million people comprising this policy's largest stakeholder group have not been consulted. We have not even been provided with the details we'd need to assess whether Senator Conroy's efforts to implement the policy are consistent with the Australian values, societal fabric, and child-rearing aims that the policy is purportedly designed to protect.

It disturbs me that Senator Conroy's response to these criticisms has been to label those who disagree with him as "speculators" and "extremists" and to compare them to child abusers. My criticisms are not "extreme", and I am not a child abuser. I am a voter, and I expect Senator Conroy to show some respect by answering my concerns without resorting to hysterical personal attacks. Senator Conroy's job is to convince the Australian public that his idea is worthy, but his habit of resorting to bluster, offensiveness and secrecy has severely undermined that role. Without Senator Conroy's detailed responses to these issues, the responsibility for any undesired "uninformed speculation" lies directly upon his shoulders.

I call upon you to:

1. respond to the policy concerns that I have outlined above; and
2. represent my interests in the Party Room to persuade Senator Conroy and the Prime Minister Mr Kevin Rudd to change track by abandoning the "clean feed" proposal.

The general aims of the ALP's cyber-safety initiative are worth defending. In particular, budget allocations for education programs and investigative law enforcement are commendable. But the "clean feed" proposal is impossible to defend on technical, moral, financial and public policy grounds, and should be reviewed for suitability for inclusion in the Government's policy agenda before being allowed to proceed any further.

Sincerely yours,

Mark Newton

-----

On the 15th of December it was announced that a Mandatory Internet Filtering system would indeed be installed in ISPs around Australia and should be switched on within 12 months time. Supporters of the filtering cite that it will stop child pornography so it's a good thing. How wrong can you be?

"Fact, online child pornography is most often distributed by private email attachments to avoid detection. The internet filter will ONLY block out websites"

Child pornography which is distributed online, is most often by private email between pedophiles as apposed to putting it on a website which would open the creator of the website, and it's members up to all sorts of criminal prosecutions. Simply put, if the main distribution network for child pornography was websites, then there would be a lot more pedophiles in jail. If your sole reason for supporting the filter is stopping child porn, then you need to rethink your position.

So what are the facts about the list? Well, the filter has it's roots all the way back in 1999 when the then liberal government introduced laws which gave the Australian Communications and Media Authority; authority over internet content displayed in Australia. Under that law Content hosted in Australia and classified Classification restricted, or 18+ without an age verification system would be issued a take down notice. Such content hosted internationally would be added to a black list for use in voluntarily installed software on home PCs.

In August 2007 the Australian government through it's NetAlert department offered free, voluntary downloads of internet filtering software to be installed on home PCs. Late 2008 the scheme was shut down, with ACMA Senator Stephen Conroy citing it had not been successful with very few Australian's downloading the software. Clearly that should have woken him up to how Australians feel about filtering the internet, but instead it only inspired him into ISP level filtering instead.

"This very much seems to be a situation where Stephen Conroy feels he knows what's better for Australian's then they do for themselves. If you look up fascism in the dictionary, it will define it very much in that way."

During the elections which seen Labor form the federal government, they claimed the ISP level filtering would be an opt-out scheme. Of course an opt-in scheme would have been more desirable but at least in an opt-out scheme you of course have a way to not be filtered online and gain unrestricted access to information on the internet. But since forming government the policy has changed to one of mandatory filtering at the ISP level. This means every household, school, business, organisation or other entity connected to the internet will be under the power of the internet filter without any way to remove it. If you have an internet connection, the internet filter affects you.

So what is the big deal right? I mean surely they're only going to block out websites that are illegal... right? Wrong! All Restricted Classification content, X18+ content and R18+ content will be blocked. Speficially the AMCA criteria states;

• * Any online content that is classified RC or X 18+ by the Classification Board. This includes real depictions of actual sexual activity, child pornography, depictions of bestiality, material containing excessive violence or sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use, and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.
• * Content which is classified R 18+* and not subject to a restricted access system that prevents access by children. This includes depictions of simulated sexual activity, material containing strong, realistic violence and other material dealing with intense adult themes.

In other words, ALL pornography will be subject to the filter not just child pornography. As well anything which is of an adult nature, that being something you wouldn't want someone under the age of 16 to see. All added to the filter and blocked from view for EVERY Australian, regardless of their age. But this isn't subject just to porn, there is so much more on the list than porn but before I get into that, consider this.

On the 18th of March 2009, wikileaks leaked a copy of the black list onto the internet. A user of the popular internet consumer forum whirlpool posted a link to the black list on the site. The AMCA then issued a notice to Whirlpools hosting company Bulletproof Media that fines of 11,000AUD would apply per day, for every day the link remained on the site. The AMCA furthermore when to extraordinary lengths to forcibly have the black list removed from the wikileaks website. So, consider this, the black list comprises simply the URLs (or domains names) of websites which can not be viewed through the filter. If the filter is such a great thing, then why is it that they are so guarded against the general public viewing the list?

The answer? Because of what the list actually blocks out. From the leaked list it was found that a Brisbane dentist's website was blocked, as was a tuckshop vendors website and the website of a dog kennel. These websites clearly have nothing to do with anything even remotely illegal or 18+ in nature, but yet somehow they're on the list?

But it goes further. In may of 2009 the Australian press, citing wikileaks as it's source broke the news that Dr Philip Nitschke's online Peaceful Pill Handbook, which is a website dealing with euthanasia has been added to the list, as have a range of other websites dealing with the same topic. Apparently the right to a peaceful death for the terminally ill remains out of the scope of reasoning for the federal government even though it isn't illegal in several Australian states.

But still, EVEN MORE FILTERING! In June 2009 the AMCA and the Australian government confirmed that the internet filter will block downloadable games, flash-based web games and websites which sell physical copies of games (like ebay and amazon) that do not meet the MA15+ standard. If the AMCA don't think someone under 16 should see it, then neither should anyone over 18 apparently.

"This isn't about stopping cyber crime; it's about controlling information the public see"

Already many anti-censorship websites campaigning for the filter to not go through have been forcibly taken down by the government. Other sites containing content which is anti-government, or does not support the government has been either forcibly taken down, or added to the black list.

In short the filter classification system stops anyone from not only committing an illegal act online, but from discussing anything that is illegal online, be they for or against the action. It further stops any member of the Australian public, regardless of age viewing any content not suitable for children. It blocks out anything that is deemed to be racist, or that submits a view other than that shared by the censor. Under this classification system, websites like wikipedia (which is a free, user contributed online encyclopedia)have already been announced to be added to the black list; and social networking websites like facebook (due to their user groups, fan pages and applications) have only a limited amount of time before they too are added.

It seem the ONLY way this filter is going to be revoked is if the majority of the Australian public, publicly announce this distaste for the filter and their desire to axe the scheme. If even that didn't work, well then it would be clear that we indeed no longer live in a democracy society. As it stands the labor party are moving very steeply toward a fascist dictatorship not only on filtering but on many issues. It time Australia, that we cut the government back down to size, before we end up in a situation where we suffer from tunnel vision due to lack of information and millions of Australian jobs are lost.

Links;

Wikipedia Article
Electronic Frontiers Australia
No Clean Feed
Labors plan for cyber safety (pdf)
USA Today article
Sydney Morning Herald article (March 19)
Sydney Morning Herald Article (December 15)
ABC News Article

As the year draws to a close we start to reflect on what that year has brought; and one can't reflect on such things without realising a considerable amount of the individuals privacy has been lost. So the question draws, will history hold 2009 as the year privacy was lost?

Facebook and Twitter and of course the Google machine have been the big violators of our privacy in 2009, gathering wads of data on us. This year Facebook made no less than 4 changes to their privacy policy, each one inching just that much more of your privacy away. As a result not only is everything you place on facebook up for documentation and collation with them, but so their privacy policy states, so is every other website you visit including how you interact with every site you visit.

Facebook also teamed up with Microsoft to place facebook on the Xbox 360, automatically updating your facebook status with what games, movies and music your using, as well as various other detailed information about them. Of course once the data is on facebook they file it away to make just that much more of an accurate picture of you. The world went twitter mad in 2009 as well, updating each other with their smallest, most tedious of actions. twitter itself; with a very facebook like privacy policy violated our privacy collating all the data we unwittingly delivered to them.

But it doesn't stop there, facebook took our twitter content and got us to stream it directly from twitter to them where the data could become facebooks to gather as well. And all the while the google machine gobbled up data from facebook, twitter and every other corner of the internet. Google's privacy policy shifted this year to allow for the collection of even more data. Your name, age, date of birth, the school you went to, your medical records, your likes and dislikes, your ex's, school grades, the games, movies and music you involve yourself with, your marital status, your credit rating, how much money you make, how much you paid for your house and how you paid for it...it's all their, publically viewable through google if you only know what to search for.

But where facebook collate each piece of our data as their policy allows for more collection, google play a more shifty game. For google the game plan is to creep through gathering more and more data, but to wait until the time is write to change the policy on collating the data.

But make no mistake, the time WILL come, after all Google are a targeted ads company, gathering data about you and collating it is what their business model is made up of. And with new services like Google's Public DNS and comments from Googles CEO Eric Schmidt on CNBC like

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

the stage is certainly set for a future where google know and collate EVERYTHING you do online. And what's more, knowing google; it will all most likely become publically available as well. The thought becomes even scarier when you consider that more and more devices are moving online.

The future see's devices like the Television and Radio, the telephone, the washer/drier and even the fridge all moving online. Even the video game console seems set to be replaced by a Set Top Box to link into a virtual unit. In this future one can expect your weekly shopping list, your phone calls and even how often you wash your clothes and how much water you use to added to the list of google indexed and publically available content. A wise man once said, "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The big question now becomes, where do we go from here? Knowing what has happened to privacy through 2009 do we allow our privacy to further unravel or do we steal it back from the fingers of sleazy two faced advertising corps, back into our own control?

Imagine for a moment if you will, a world where your every action, your every personal whim is public domain. Imagine for a moment, the erosion of privacy in such a way as to allow corporations to know more about you than you know about yourself so they can advertise products directly to you. Image becoming even more of a consumer slave than you already are.

Imagine no longer, for this is the future that awaits. Advertising companies like Google and Facebook thrive on this information, without it they would be pennyless. So it comes as no surprise they are ever changing their privacy policies to allow just that little bit more of your information to be collected and collated.

Lets take Facebook as an example. Their recent privacy policy change makes way for new services to be introduced such as the new partnership with Microsoft. By linking you Xbox 360 to facebook you allow them to gather an incredible amount of data about your life. Not only what games, movies and music you play, watch and listen to. But also what times of day and in what manner you interact with them. What source they come from (great for weeding out pirate or download copies of movies, games and music), how long you interact with them.

They learn about your habits, just that little bit more. On it's own perhaps it's not so bad. But put that together with all the other information they have on you, your photos', your countless comments and status updates, your messages... it's all there for them to collate in order to produce a reliable picture of who you are. Take it in that context and it's just one more piece of the puzzle.

But lets escape the internet world for a moment and move to bricks and morter retail. What loyalty cards have been doing for years, soon RFID will do automatically. That is to say, track your purchases. We are fast moving into a world where each and every product you buy will be marked with an RFID chip. This means when you go to the store there will be no waiting in a queue, you simple exit the store with the things you want to buy.

A RFID frequency scanner will pick up all the items you have and charge them directly to your bank account or credit card. Sure that sounds super quick and easy. But it also means they'll know what days you shop, at what time, and what items you buy on what days. Your patterns will be analysed and targeted advertising can be delivered to you.

This of course is simple the tip of the ice-burg. There is plenty more to come, the implementation of free flowing tolls and smart card public transport ticketing are examples. Privacy folks is a thing of the past; we've given it up every time we sign up to a service like facebook. The big question is, will our children, or our grandchildren even have a proper concept of what privacy even is?

Traditionally hackers and virus programmers will go after the most popular Operating System for the device they're trying to attack. For example when it comes to computers, while there are SOME virii for MAC OS and linux the vast majority infect only windows systems. But with Microsoft windows representing 89% of the market it's not hard to see why this is so.

Enter the iphone, and although you wouldn't know it because everyone seems to have an iphone, they don't have the ruling share of the market. Nokia still owns 80% of the mobile phone market, while the iphone only represents 10.8% of the market. So I guess it comes as some what of an oddity that while Nokia phones remain virus free, Apple iphones do not.

Perhaps it's yet another demonstration of how poorly made the iphone is. There are currently multiple iphone viruses in the wild, each doing different things. Some are relatively harmless doing simple things like changing your background image on you; sure that'd get annoying but it's not the hugest of big deals. Others however are not so tame. Lets take iPhone/Privacy.A for example; this virus silently infects jailbroken iphones spreading wirelessly between handsets. Once your iphone is infected it steals personal data such as your smses, emails, phone book, calendar and any data recorded by iphone apps.

But jailbroken iphones aren't the only ones at risk. There are viruses in the wild that infect non jailbroken phones too and do similar things. It seems to me that the iphone os is extremely insecure being that hackers have targeted the device when they only hold was is a relatively small market share. Surely if this was about hacking quantity Nokia phones would be the target, yet to date nokia phones have not suffered a virus.

Just one more thing on the ever growing list of why your iphone is a piece of junk. Lets go over the main points breifly. The iphone is over priced and delivers substandard features such as low quality (compared with other phones on the market) cameras. The iphone is prone to explode, over heat &/or burst into flames without warning. And the iphone is plagued by virus attacks. Someone people remind me here why you own an iphone and think you're cool for having one? Seriously, sounds like a piece of garbage to me. Perhaps it's time for a new phone, check out the Nokia N97.

It's a relevant question; what happened to horror films? Once upon a time, good nature slashers with oldly little blood and psychological thrillers filled out screens. It was the age of classics, the age of masterpieces, when horror was how it should be. Sure they weren't always realistic, but that was part of their charm. Part of what made them greats; that separation from reality which reminded you it was just a film.

Cinema was created for escapism, a means for the common person to take an hour or two out of their lives and escape to somewhere else. For horror, this was a change to get a good, fun scare and have a giggle about it after the movie. Sadly, cinema seems to have lost it's way. The ideals which addicted us to film in the first place are lost or waining, and this is none more truthful than with horror.

Today's "horror" films have removed the safety net. They have chosen not only to turn their films more realistic but to ablitterate the classics as well. Gone are the cinematic greats, the super killers. Originals like Halloween, Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, ruined. Turned from horror to snuff.

And that is all horror has become; snuff. Filled with torture, gore and rape. The viewer is placed in the thick of it, close up, unable to turn away, unable to disassociate it from reality. Gone is the laughter from viewers when the movie ends, replaced by a sickening feeling and slight guilt, like perhaps you shouldn't have just witnessed that.

True horror, as the past has proven does not require gore. It should have a healthy balance of comedy, suspense and death. But it seems the new generation of horror film makers have failed to learn the principals of a good horror flick. Borrowing a classic title and a character may be a guaranteed way to generate some box office dollars, but turning it into these monstrosities only serves to annoy and frustrate people.

It is almost as if, somewhere in Hollywood 2 bets were placed, one for who could make the most horrific film and another for who could screw up a classic the most. Irreparable damage is being done to people by watching this new breed of horror. Their brains are literally being physically damaged! Will it be that at some point, someone will be able to sue the writers, directors, produces and studios behind these films for the brain damage they've caused? Will these films one day serve as reason enough to get someone off murder?

We need to remind ourselves what the purpose of cinema is, to escape reality. It is not, and should never be, to watch mindlessly as a freak realistically kills people in the most horrific ways imaginable. Horror has become sick, ill and twisted. A perverted version of the glory it once held. For what the slasher film did to revive the ailing horror genre, the staged snuff is reversing. All in the name of a quick buck, but I ask you, if horror dies, where will the next quick buck come from?

So often we preach of free society, so much so we are willing to send our young men and women off to protect it. But in a country where democracy has mutated into the beginnings of dictatorship what freedoms do we truly have left?

Our system of government is meant to function in a way where a politician is merely a representative of their electorate, no different then any other member of the public. It is designed this way because it's far easier to have 1 person demonstrate the general will of their electorate then it is to have everyone in the electorate demonstrate it.

To do this a politician is meant to be a part of the community able to understand what the majority of that community wants and how they feel on issues. They are then meant to take that will and represent it in parliament, doing their best to achieve said will. This is democracy, how it is meant to run. Democracy isn't just the choice for who to vote for, it is a set of rules on how they will operate once voted in.

What we get today is NOT democracy. Sure we get to vote, but what happens after we vote? Are our voices heard? Is the general will of the people followed? People talk so much now days about politicians being "out of touch" and brush it to the side as if it is just normal. But the mere fact they are "out of touch" is a demonstration of how little democracy is actually left.

Another is the fact that hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars are spent on advertising to sell us new schemes, laws, taxes or anything else the government want to do. In a democratic society these things shouldn't need to be sold to the public, because they should already be the will of the public. If you have to sell something to us, then it shouldn't be happening in the first place.

We but face facts, we are not a democratic and free society anymore. We are a society where a government tells us what we can and can not do. We are a society where our wills are not heard nor followed. We are a society where our freedoms and privacy are lost, more and more daily. None of this is down to a terrorist in a far off land, it is due to greedy, power hungry people in our own country. And it is a violation of the constitution by which this country is governed. Think about it...

Taxes; they're meant to go to keeping this country running. They're meant to go into Hospitals and Schools, into Roads and essential services. They're meant to go into a fair, equal and reasonable welfare system. But they don't. TJandSarah.com has received insider knowledge of Australia's social welfare system and how through it, you're paying to keep drug addicts in habit.

Centrelink has many payments which it offers, which with different rules. None of which however is more cooshy then the Disability pension which see's recipiants not required to look for work, but still earning quite a reasonable and livable sum of money. It is a payment which is meant to be for people who have a disability which prevents them from holding down employment.

TJandSarah.com have been advised by a source at centrelink that this payment is NOT living upto what it is meant to be. We were advised of a case involving a man who had lost one of his arms and had come into centrelink to claim the disability pension. You would think this would be easy for him wouldn't you? But his claim was denied because he still has one arm which apparently makes him capable of work.

So what does this all have to do with drug addicts you ask? Well while people who have lost limbs are denied the pension, TJandSarah.com have been told by a senior Centrelink offical, that Drug Addicts regularly qualify for the payment. Apparently chosing to drink excessively, shoot up or otherwise take drugs qualifies you as a disabled person under Centrelinks definition.

A payment, whose funds are gathered from our taxes, and was meant to support those in our society phsyically incapable of doing so themselves is being rorted by drug addicts the nation over. While you go to work day in, day out these addicts are able to live it up on money collected by the government from YOUR tax dollars! They then use this money to continue thier lifestyle of addiction, and even to purchase their substance of choice!

Furthermore, by being under this payment there is no incentive for them to ever stop their addiction. There are no requirements to look for work, no requirements to seek rehab, no requirements to report in at all. Drug addicts are getting a free ride, and we the tax payers of Australia are funding it.

If we want to truly battle the drug problem then how can we honestly enable these people in their addiction? Why would anyone ever stop using if they get such a sweet ride because of it? If anything the system in it's current state encourages addicts to remain that way, as if they were to ever clean themselves up, they would lose their payment.

We need urgent welfare reform to (1) disqualify any addict from receiving the disability pension (2) require all persons whom have addictions to not only seek employment but to undergone a mandatory drug rehab program and (3) make the disability pension easier for persons who genuinely have a disability to access and claim.

In a move that mimics the notorious Nigerian spam emails which claim you have won a large sum of money, scammers have now turned to SMS. The ACCC has issued a warning to all Australians about the scam SMS's which claim you have won 3rd prize in a lucky door prize at a press conference at Melbourne's Rialto Tower. Recipients of the scam SMS's are given what seems to be a Melbourne based phone number, but is actually routed overseas.

For those whom go as far as calling the number to 'claim' their 'prize', the ACCC has advised that the scammers have been asking for personal information such as full name, address, date of birth, drivers license number and bank details. These details can then be used as part of a larger identity theft scam later.

According to the ACCC the scammers are requesting people pay $2000 to the scammers which they claim is 20% of the "winnings tax" in Macao. Reportedly once the scammers have your details they become quite insistent that you pay them the $2000, allegedly calling often demanding the money be paid.

Two examples of the Scam emails have been provided by the ACCC which state;

Last notice: Your mobile phone No. has won the 3rd prize in our activity, the cert No.:L6501, please contact our company asap, and your right will be cancel if it overdue or without cert No.,GSCI hotline:03-9001593

Last Notice: Your mobile No. has won 3rd prize in our activities with cert No.J4192,pls contact us ASAP, or else your award will be cancel. GSCI company:03-90105706

Given the closeness in tact of the scam to the Nigerian email scams I am truly surprised anyone has been caught up in this scam. It really throws me that someone can get a text message like the ones above, which have obvious short hand and grammatical errors in them and yet still reply to it? But the thing that really gets me is how anyone can think they won 3rd prize in the lucky door prize at a fictional press conference they never attended.

Indeed unless they actually work for the press, and thus attend press conferences, why would you think for a moment you'd won anything? It's really easy to see these are a scam, one the ACCC says originates in China. Perhaps we should all use a little more common sense when it comes to things of this nature. For those of us whom refuse to use common sense and involve themselves in obvious scams, it is perhaps their own fault.

Links;

ACCC's warning

Live in another country? Sick of it and want a change? Perhaps you're being persecuted, or maybe your country just sucks. Think living in Australia would be great? Awesome, no need to fill in those pesky immigration forms to get permanent residency buy your way in! Yes dear reader there is a back door into Australia and it is the source of the Indian and Asian flood.

Legislation was passed awhile ago which made it guaranteed & easy to get permanent residency in Australia if you are an international student who studies here. The legislation which has no caps placed upon it, is now being exploited. In a move which is nothing more than people smuggling fake colleges are being set up around the country for the purpose of allowing people to buy there way into the country.

Students whom enroll in these fake colleges simply pay their money to the "college" then are told to go on holiday and they'll be marked as attending classes. We have a situation where people are not properly screened when becoming a student, nor are they screened when becoming a permanent resident as a result. This has caused a situation where-by persons whom would not ordinarily gain entry to Australia, let alone permanent residency are doing so.

Can you smell the hypocrisy? On one hand we are told "boat people" are evil and should be imprisoned. The cold truth about "boat people" is they are often simply people whom have undergone tremendous adversity and persecute in their own country and have paid to flee to somewhere "safe". Yet Australia is building an international reputation for mistreatment of assimilate seekers, as we imprison them without charge nor defined length of imprisonment, in appalling conditions.

Meanwhile on the other hand, we are now letting random people from anywhere in the world enter and gain permanent residency without effective screening, simply because they came to Australia to study. It looks to me that your treatment in Australia depends on where you spend your money. Perhaps someone should let the "boat people" know all they have to do is pay to become a student and they'll get to fly legally into the country.

We need to plug this hole which left as is, will crumble our country and our culture under the feet of Indian and Asians. We need to set clear limits as to numbers of persons whom can study in Australia as an international student. We need to set clear legislation as to what constitutes an educational facility, and create a body capable of monitoring and enforcing said legislation. And while access to permanent residency should be made easier for international students in order to keep their skills in the country, they should not be exempt from the proper immigration process. Furthermore, permanent residency legislation in regards to students should be confined solely to Universities and TAFE colleges. Private college students should be exempt.

There are numerous countries around the world whom by way of immigration policy, their society is crumbling. The UK and America are examples of which. We need to heed the warnings which these examples demonstrate and create an immigration policy which protects our way of life, our culture and our society.

The consumption of goods and services, even when they are unneeded and sometimes even completely useless to us has steadily increased since the 1940s. As media has encroached ever more into our daily lives, so forth has advertising. The first major revolution in advertising came with the introduction of Television.

Suddenly with a television or a "TV", advertisers found a direct route into our living rooms. By linking their ads to popular TV shows or personalities, advertisers caught us while we had those warm fuzzy feelings associated with something we like. In doing so, we then associated their products and brands with those same warm fuzzy feelings. And so was born the age of the consumer, and we were set on a path which would have implications for social structure, mental health and even the environment.

With this new found power to creep into our homes, advertisers managed to con us into some pretty dodgy deals over the years. But as the years have moved on from the introduction of television, so has legislation and indeed the consumer. When advertising first appeared on TV, merely being associated with a program or personality was enough to send thousands running for the nearest stockist. As immunity to this approach grew, advertisers changed tactics, instead listing on the neat things the product can do or how great it will taste. We were shown fake images and told things which boarder on fraud. Again, the consumer changed, and so did the advertisers tactic.

Today, we find ads which instead of insisting a product is brilliant, we're simply told it will make us "cool", more popular or happier. These claims again are of course untrue and it is again only a matter of time before the consumer becomes impartial to such advertising campaigns and things have to change once more. But no matter how these ads are delivered, the core message is always there, and has been since the word go. It is the core message which ultimately drives consumerism; that being one needs all this "stuff" to be happy. That your life will somehow go unfulfilled without these products, and you will struggle to ever find happiness. Indeed we know this to be a complete and utter lie, and yet still the mass population fall for it.

In sheep like behavior, the mass population simply follow directions and purchase what they're told to. But indeed this is having the opposite effect than had been intended. There is much evidence to show consumerism actually decreases fulfillment and happiness, for it is simply an incarnation of materialism. Through consumerism we are fostering an "I" society; that is to say, a society focused inwardless in selfish need to make their own pile of "stuff" larger. We have a society which has over complicated itself in the aid of gathering said "stuff". Think about it, we go to work daily, to earn enough money to buy the never ending conveyor belt of "new stuff". We do this without thought or wonder, indeed like a trained monkey we feel happy about doing it.

The costs of which are our sanity and the environment we live in. For the many of us incapable of buying the "coolest" new toy, we feel less of a person, incomplete, after all that is the message the advertisers would have us believe. These feelings can lead to depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, even obsessive compulsive behavior. We are bombarded to buy ever more "stuff", to the point that obesity has hit epidemic proportions. It is strange to think, but the very thing that keeps capitalist economies running could, through over indulgence, break the economy all together.

But perhaps before that even occurs, our environment is at the brink of collapse through pollution caused by consumerism. Our waste has caused the environment to wither and die. The only solution for which is to cease our consumer behavior, and removed the products from which, from our society. But, human behavior what it is, I can hardly see that happening. Greed runs rampant in this modern capitalist world. If you are what you buy, then truly, what are you?

--edit--
Part 2 in this series will appear on Friday the 21st of August 2009. I apologise for any confusion

Consumerism. Marketing teams and companies alike would have us believe it will make us happier; that it will somehow improve and fulfill our lives. But deep down I think we all know that is an outright lie. Yet for some oddity, some of us, nay most of us, get sucked into the game. We consume at ever greater rates, products and services which fill us with empty promises of better, more exciting lives. Of more friends, a better job, more sex appeal, the list goes on..

Why do we do it to ourselves? What tricks are used on us? And is this limited to just adults? How much of a consumer whore have you truly become? These are just some of the questions I hope to explore in this multi-part series on consumerism. Expect the first addition to be released 6pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (GMT+10).

Chinese authority the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets claims Rio Tinto; a company the Chinese government recently attempted to buy majority control of; has been spying on Chinese steel companies. The National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets alledges that Rio Tinto was able to over charge a total of $122 BILLION dollars as a result of spying on steel companies by four detained Rio Tinto staff, including Australian Stern Hu.

Rio Tinto maintains no spying ever took place on it's behalf by any of it's staff; and furthermore that all if their detained staff are innocent of the charges. While I certainly would not put industrial espionage passed a company as large as Rio Tinto, this sounds much more like sour grapes. The fact remains that the Chinese government are still rather pissed off at their failed bid to purchase majority ownership of Rio Tinto earlier this year. This sounds far more like the sort of thing China is likely to do as a result thereof.

The legal system being what it is in China means it likely that these poor soles will be charged and either imprisoned or killed, regardless of their guilt. Just another hard learned lesson about doing business with a country like China. And truly, while they may have the largest economy in the world today we certainly shouldn't base our economy on theirs as we currently do. Indeed if the Chinese economy went bust overnight Australia would be in a real pickle, and that is certainly not how we should be. Certainly now with a culture and politic manner that China holds.

It is rare that I come across a modern day movie that I like, but french film À la folie... pas du tout (He loves me, he loves me not) certainly makes the cut. It is a movie that is well thought out, leaving plot holes tiny and scarce. The clever script is taken to another level both with insightful direction and divine acting on behalf of the lead roles.

À la folie... pas du tout tells the story of waitress/student Angélique whom is madly inlove with Cardiologist Loïc and plans to run off with him. Almost needless to say Loïc is married, and his wife is pregnant with their first child. Add to the mix, student doctor David whom himself has fallen for Angélique and you have a mature paletted thriller. The exploration of Angélique's erotomania indeed takes this film to another level.

Audrey Tautou plays Angélique exquisitely with her odd, but innocent look barely hinting at the world that lives inside her mind. The film is of course in french and thus subtitled, but I hope that will not put you off this masterful work. It plays in two halfs, first telling things as Angélique see's them, then once more from the perspectives of everyone else. Writer/Director Laetitia Colombani has certainly out done herself with this film, it will jerk your heart strings then send you on a white knuckle ride.

Links;

IMDB
Cinephilia

The court room rant by suspected terrorist Wissam Mahmoud Fattal on Wednesday echo the inevitable culture clash. 33 year old, salami born, Mr Fattal said that the Australian military kill innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan and continued

"You call us terrorists, I've never killed anyone in my life."

before expressing his dislike of Australia and that he wanted to leave.

But the last I checked up until he was arrested for allegedly plotting to kill Australian soldiers he wasn't being held captive here. In fact, if he disliked Australia so much and wanted to leave, why didn't he do just that? And this is the point, he didn't because even though he has Australian citizenship and thus swore allegiance to Australia; he still views himself as a Samali. And as a Samali man he wants justice for the people of "his" country, and friendly nations.

The point I have been trying to make isn't racist, it's simply an inevitable fact. If you bring people into a country, and those people still act as if they are in their previous country, and still have allegiance there to, you will no doubt create civil unrest. If you want a peaceful society, everyone has to be on the same page. That is to say, multiple cultures can not peacefully co-habitate the same area for an extended period of time.

As Australians we have, through the course of our history developed our own unique culture. A culture which is now under threat. This is not to say that people from another country are somehow inherently bad, or wrong or anything of that nature. It is not to say that we don't get many people immigrating who at their core are good people. What it is to say, is that for our community to exist peacefully, immigrants have to let go of their old culture and lives and embrace ours.

I would not for example expect I could immigrate to Iraq without accepting their local customs and ridding myself of those I learned in Australia. Similarly those moving to Australia can not expect to immigrate here without doing the same.

Wissam Fattal's comments highlight just how easy it is for extremists to gain entry into Australia. We have an immigration system now, which has inadequate screening and processing of potential immigrants. No person should be able to permanently reside here, who is unable to speak English, and who is unwilling to assimilate into Australian culture. We have gone from a system which let in 10,000 people a year, to one which lets in a similar number each month. Our country and our economy can't cope.

Reporter Tim Vollmer and a photographer from the Daily Telegraph have gained entry to Sydney's Holsworthy barracks by just showing their drives licenses. The pair where able to spend 40 minutes inside the military installation taking photos before military staff noticed their presence and called police. Sydney's Holsworthy barracks is the same military installation that the 5 men arrested in Tuesdays terrorism raids had planned to attack.

This incident has highlighted concern that unarmed private security are responsible for securing Australian military bases, as apposed to armed soldiers. One must question how an unarmed security guard is capable of securing a military compound, especially if said compound was ever to come under attack. The ease with which Time Vollmer and his photographer gained entry to the base is very telling of how capable private security are.

But it isn't simply a matter of the private security offices who allowed the pair entry to the base, it is the fact that it then took military personnel 40 minutes to become aware of their unlawful presence. One could easily take a stroll around a military base, take in the sights in that time period. Or more over, if one was so inclined would be able to gain entry, plant a bomb and leave without ever being caught.

And yet still after this whole incident Mr Rudd continues to demonstrate how out of touch he is with reality; with his response to Mr Turnbulls questions about said security arrangements, saying they are adequate. The government has none the less ordered a review; which will no doubt affect no change what so ever anyway. It is clear that with the current governments immigration policies in place, that there will be more attacks being planned.

We have enjoyed a nation with a relaxed, insecure nature. But as we let into the country extremists, and persons whom hate Australia and all that she stands for, we are forced to tighten our belts and become the overly paranoid society that other western nations have become after such immigration policies. Can you feel our culture and freedom slipping away?

Links;

ABC News

The Australian Federal Police, in co-operation with ASIO and a number of other policing agencies conducted 19 raids across Melbourne suburbs this morning. Four men of Somali and Lebanese decent have been arrested as a result of the raids, charged with conspiring to commit an act in preparation for or planning a terrorist act.

Police say the men whom are allegedly affiliated with Islamic militant group al-Shabaab had planned to attack Australian military bases and kill as many soldiers as they can before they themselves were killed. This marks the first ever planned suicide attack on Australian soil, in the history of Australia. Police are not ruling out further arrests as the case unfolds.

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland commented there had been seven months of surveillance leading up to the raids. He continued by stating

"Details of the planning indicated the alleged offenders were prepared to inflict a sustained attack on military personnel until they themselves were killed,"

and that

"The investigation has also identified travel of Australian citizens to Somalia to participate in hostilities in that country."

Fearing reprisals on the general Islamic community the Police have commented that, any such reprisals would only further fuel the "recruiters". But this goes back to the fundamentals of who we are letting into this country. We have ridiculous laws which imprison "boat people" without charge or release date, under the false pretense we have to watch who is coming into the country. Then something like this happens, and four men who legally gained entry into Australia and in fact became citizens start causing trouble.

These are some of the very problems I'm talking about when I say that people should assimilate and leave their old culture in the country they're moving from. We are seeing problems brought onto Australian soil which should not be here and it is all down to our now lax immigration policy. It is as simple as if we weren't trying to flood the country with immigrants in some idiotic hope of warding off the aging population and keeping the economy afloat, then we wouldn't have acts like this even being planned.

What is it going to take in order to change the immigration policy of the Rudd government? Will Australians need to be killed by terrorists on Australian soil? Will that do it? Or would that too have no affect on the governments immigration policy? We have a situation where the flood gates have been opened, and if Australia's culture is to survive we need to work at closing those gates, and quickly.

Links;

ABC News
Channel 10 News
Press Conference