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Darren Churchill ACT- Media Release: 26th February, 2010: Proposed police powers laws labelled “Draconian” by Democrats
- Media Release: 22nd January 2010: ACT Democrats join Great Australian Internet Blackout.
- Media Release: 20th January 2010: Canberrans must have a guarantee that South Australian Movie Laws won’t be copied by ACT Assembly, say Democrats.
- Media Release: 14th January 2010: Canberrans Need Action Not Words in Opposing Internet Censorship, say Democrats
- Media Release: 02 December: Canberrans Let Down as Humphries Toes Party Line, say Democrats
- Begin Rant – Kathryn Crosby
- Begin Rant: The disenfranchised and forgotten Australians
- Begin Rant: Cheesecake and the path not taken
- Begin Rant: The dangers for rural health in Rudd’s proposed health care takeover
- Begin Rant: You really can’t get mad cow from a meat pie.
- Begin Rant: Internet Censorship reflective of Rudd’s wider control agenda
We Can’t Allow Senator Conroy’s Internet Filter To Be Decanted. Huxley Was Right, Not Orwell
June 8, 1972, in the village of Trang Bang, nine year old Phan Thi Kim Phuchad had stripped off her burning clothes following a napalm bomb attack on her village. The photo won Nick Ut a Pulitzer Prize. It was Ut who took Kim Phuc and the other children to the hospital.
Under the seriously flawed – if not itself depraved – internet filter proposed by Australia’s Senator Conroy we would be unlikely to see this photo. We are lucky to be able to see it and in turn appreciate the gravity of the scene and the proof that innocents are horrifically treated in war, simply because poor little Phan ripped off her burning clothes in an agony of searing, horrific, flames and fled naked from her obliterated villiage.
This photo demonstrates why internet censorship cannot be tolerated.
We know there are dangers on the internet, particularly for children. It is our parental responsibility to make sure they are not exposed, not Senator Conroy and his Huxlean legislation.
A filter like that one proposed for Australia by Senator Conroy – the chief proponent of Australia’s own digital “Great Wall of China” – is not and cannot be a solution. Senator Conroy and his merry band of byte blockers would consider this heinous example of man’s inhumanity to man pornographic or to quote the Senator’s own dark expression: “Inappropriate”.
It fits many if not most of the definitions he has put forward. Yet surely, the blocking of an image like this is as sickening as those who ordered the napalming of the Trang Bang village.
George Orwell famously wrote 1984 and Animal Farm. While both poignant warnings in their own right, with 1984 warning us to be wary of invasive, government controlled technology, it is Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” that contains the prophecy.
“Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches.”
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 3
Conroy’s crude filter and it’s supporters lump logical argument into a grab bag of aspersions. Opposing the filter exposes one to any number of despicable characterizations. But Huxley’s quote is paramount in relation to the Senator’s reckless, industry and democracy-threatening censorship.
Senator – there are many options available, including international work on preventing “inappropriate” content by ending the financial streams of those engaged in it. It’s more work, yes, but it does work. Filtering Australian internet services is a laughable waste of time, money and effort. Truncating our information technology sector with a filter based on Victorian-era terror is socially, politically and economically disastrous.
As soon as it’s released it will be circumvented – and those who do the evil the Senator is keen to protect us from will still exist and will still be doing that evil – but Senator Conroy won’t be able to see them behind his filter. Australia’s very own “Ostrich 2.0″ of the world wide web.
Senator Conroy’s preoccupation with “naughty bits” is an issue Senator Conroy needs to deal with in his own life, not yours, not the lives of Australians. The Senator should not, nay, must not force Australia to lay down to his own private version of what constitutes good or bad content.
It’s so fatally flawed it’s remarkable Conroy’s expert advisors haven’t pointed it out to him – or perhaps they have and the Dear Senator is mimicking the odd bird with it’s head in the sand pictured above? I remind the Senator of Huxley’s words:
“The greater a man’s talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offense is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual – and, after all, what is an individual?” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 10
“And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 16
Tags: agony, aldous huxley, aldous huxley brave new world, animal farm, aspersion, aspersions, australia, Australian Democrats, bomb attack, brave new world, business, byte, case in point, chief proponent, conservatives, democrat, economic foundations, flames, george orwell, grab bag, gravity, great wall of china, huxley brave new world, innocents, international monetary crisis, internet censor, internet censorship, internet filter, kim phuc, labour party, little girl, logical argument, merry band, napalm bomb, parental responsibility, political thought, politics, pulitzer prize, sectional interests, senator conroy, senators, socialists, trang bang, wall of china
