I… don’t know what the hell is going on.  Telstra, harbinger of telecommunications doom, monopolistic behemoth extraordinaire, profit driven dinosaur which ambles across the land devouring its small, innovative mammalian competitors, has made a radically pro-human rights submission to the national human rights consultative panel.
I find it very disturbing to read words put forward by [...]

I really wanted to believe that this was fake when it was first emailed to me – but no, there it is on the Catch the Fire Ministries website: Pastor Danny Nalliah, leader of that esteemed fundamentalist Christian group, tells us that the horrendous bushfires in Victoria in the past week which have so far [...]

Australia continues its proud tradition of protecting the practice and expression of (Christian) religious beliefs, but failing to do the same in respect of atheism: article.  Sigh. There are buses rolling around Adelaide with Christian messages on them as we speak.
And it’s the best form of discrimination too – the kind by private citizens and [...]

I totally agree with this proposal: that telemarketing should be entirely ‘opt-in’ rather than ‘opt-out’.  In other words, unsolicited commercial telephone calls should be illegal unless the victim recipient has previously agreed to receive them.
At the moment I simply hang up on telemarketers, but I strongly resent (a) the interruption and (b) being put in [...]

This is quite a good summary of some of the legal issues in the iinet case.

Further to the previous post, there are national protests on 13 December 2008 in relation to Labor’s mandatory Internet filtering scheme. Details here. Attend, if you don’t want the federal government to decide what you can and cannot see on the net.

No doubt stung by the fact that no-one in the electorate actually pays them any attention at all (or maybe just because they don’t have to pal up to right wingnuts like Steve Fielding any more), the Liberal Party appear to have had some sort of cathartic experience about the role government should play in [...]

A couple of ex-Exclusive Brethren members are asking Justice North in the Federal Court in Victoria (VID904/2008) to order that the AFP investigate the cult: link.
Former Brethren members Lydia Desai and Priscilla D’Souza have accused Exclusive Brethren members in three countries of crimes including genocide, people smuggling and slavery.
Justice North is on the progressive end [...]

To add to the previous post, there is an epic flame/legal/political/technical discussion of the iiNet case at Whirlpool: link.
There’s also a discussion at Slashdot: link (more from a “you crazy Australians and your crazy laws” perspective).

You might remember this from a few days ago – a federal minister reading directly from the film and music industry script about the evils of piracy.
Now, in what seems not to be a coincidence (perhaps a coordinated campaign was agreed to in some Bond villain-esque meeting room), the film studios have decided to have [...]

This just happened in one of the busiest locations in the Adelaide CBD in the middle of a weekday afternoon: link. It sounds like two groups of Sudanese youths had a very serious fight with knives. This is literally 100 metres from where I work, and in fact I walked through the front [...]

And so it begins: link. If you copy DVDs, you are directly supporting drug trafficking and the rape of small children. As if you didn’t know that, you raping, drug-dealing monster, you.
The USA has been subjected to a torrent (get it?) of this kind of crap in recent years, but we have largely [...]

This is probably the most significant issue for Australian democracy since the amendments to the ASIO Act by the Howard government: link.
More on it later.  If you already know about it, get a move on and write to your state’s senators.

This kind of thing makes grim but not at all surprising reading. Just as they did in the 1950s and 1960s, the powers that be are making it their business to infiltrate groups of citizens attempting to exercise their legitimate democratic rights. Not surprisingly, the targets seem to be progressive and human rights [...]