Women in Saudi Arabia are to be given the right to vote and run in municipal elections, the Gulf Kingdom’s King Abdullah has announced.
He said they would also have the right to be appointed to the consultative Shura Council.
The news will be welcomed by activists who have long called for greater rights for women in the ultra-conservative kingdom.
The changes will take effect from next year, the king said — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Italian government is preparing an anti-piracy law that could ban Internet users from access after one alleged infringement, a lawyer and an analyst warned.
ISPs would be required to use filters against services that infringe copyright, trademark or patents under terms of the draft law. The proposed changes to Italy’s e-commerce directive were drafted in July by members of parliament belonging to the Il Popolo della Libertà (PdL) party of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. After analysing the proposed amendments, Paolo Brini, spokesperson for ScambioEtico, a grassroots movement committed to copyright reform, concluded the Italian government is in fact proposing a one strike
out Internet law.
Citizens could be disconnected from the Internet if a provider is notified of an alleged copyright, trademark or patent infringement on the Web, Brini said. ISPs would have to blacklist citizens who are only suspected of infringements and providers might be compelled to install filters to sniff out copyright, trademark or patent abuse, he said. Furthermore, ISPs that do not comply with the filter requirement could be held liable under civil laws — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Malcolm Fraser has accused both sides of federal politics of appealing to a redneck
minority in the asylum seeker debate.
The former prime minister says the Federal Government has a responsibility towards asylum seekers from Afghanistan because of Australia’s military intervention in that country.
Mr Fraser allowed tens of thousands of refugees into Australia after the Vietnam War in the 1970s and says people trying to flee the war in Afghanistan also deserve protection.
He says the current debate over asylum seekers is one of the most terrible in the history of the Parliament, with both the Government and Opposition chasing cheap votes at the expense of the lives of vulnerable people — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In Australian politics, a Dorothy Dixer is a rehearsed or planted question asked of a government Minister by a backbencher of his/her own political party during Parliamentary Question Time.
The term is used in a mildly derogatory sense. Often, the question has been written by the Minister or his/her staff rather than by the questioner, and is used to give the Minister a chance to promote themselves or the work of the Government, or to criticise the opposition party’s policies, to raise the profile of the backbench Member asking the question, or to consume the time available for questioning and thereby avoid tougher questions. It is a common and widely-accepted tactic during Question Time in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
While it is not very common in the Australian context, it would be possible for a backbencher on the Government side of the house to ask a member of the Government a question without it being regarded as a Dorothy Dixer. Such a question would be one that the Minister was not aware of in advance, or that the Minister had not planted, or both.
It is common for Dorothy Dixers
to end in the question: Is the Minister aware of any alternative policies?
This enables the responding Minister to launch into extended criticism of the Opposition and its policy on the question’s subject matter, while still remaining technically relevant to the question as asked, as Standing orders require.
The term references American advice columnist Dorothy Dix‘s reputed practice of making up her own questions to allow her to publish more interesting answers. Dorothy Dixer
has been used in Australian politics since the 1950s, and has become increasingly common in everyday usage, although the term is now frequently shortened to Dixer
. However, its origin is unclear; the term is virtually unknown in other countries where Dix’s column was equally popular — via Wikipedia
UK passport holders may be able to opt out of identifying themselves as male or female under proposals being investigated by the Home Office.
Discussions on the introduction of gender-free documents are still at an early stage, with officials in the UK and other countries examining the security implications of not requiring transgender people to state whether they are men or women.
Passport holders might be able to simply put an X in a box marked sex
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
The unseemly squabble between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott over offshore processing of asylum seekers ignores an unspoken but inescapable reality: one in four refugee claims are currently decided onshore, with asylum seekers residing in the community. Families are monitored and unaccompanied children closely supervised, but unlike those held behind razor wire in remote detention facilities, they are free to come and go.
Despite all the bluster and tough talk about stopping the boats and breaking the people smuggling business model, Australia has been quietly doing what most Western countries (including the United States and Britain) do: processing asylum seekers in the community with minimal social discord.
And there is capacity in the system to process far more in this way, perhaps 50 per cent of current claims. Both the Red Cross and the Immigration Department, who oversee the bipartisan policy of community detention for families and children, believe about 2000 of the 4110-plus asylum seeker claims could be handled this way — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Transsexual Australians will be able to get a passport in their preferred gender without undergoing a sex-change operation.
Under new guidelines released by the federal government today, gender reassignment surgery will no longer be a pre-requisite for sex and gender diverse
people to get a passport identifying them the way they wish — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Independent Senator Nick Xenophon says he has named a priest at the centre of an alleged seminary rape scandal because the Catholic church failed to stand the man down while investigating the allegations.
Speaking under parliamentary privilege last night, Senator Xenophon named the priest as Monsignor Ian Dempsey, a parish priest in the Adelaide suburb of Brighton.
Senator Xenophon said there were allegations that Monsignor Dempsey raped the Archbishop of the Traditional Anglican Communion, John Hepworth, more than 40 years ago — via redwolf.newsvine.com
ANRA represents Australian retail businesses with a turnover of over $100 million a year, including Coles, Woolworths, Franklins, Bunnings Warehouse, Just Jeans and Jay Jays.
Speaking to ZDNet Australia at the hearing into the economic structure and performance of the Australian retail industry today, the CEO of ANRA, Margy Osmond, said that a carbon tax would see consumers go offshore to get better prices, leaving Australian bricks-and-mortar businesses to suffer with high costs and low sales — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, introduced a new bill Thursday that aims to protect citizens’ personal information from online data breaches. The bill would also punish companies that are careless with customers’ information.
The goal of the proposed law is essentially to hold accountable the companies and entities that store personal information and personal data and to deter data breaches,
Senator Blumenthal said in a phone interview. While looking at past data breaches, I’ve been struck with how many are preventable.
The new bill, called the Personal Data Protection and Breach Accountability Act of 2011, comes at a time when online privacy and security are hot topics in Congress. The White House has also been involved in discussions around new online privacy rules and legislation — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Paul Howes, Michael Danby, Andrew Bolt, Gerard Henderson: have all joined in a very public campaign that draws a line between the Brenner protests and Fascist anti-semitism.
It’s certainly true that, throughout Australia, fascists are increasingly taking an interest in the Max Brenner rallies. But here’s the thing: they’re not supporting the protests.
They’re supporting the stores.
The newest face of what’s euphemistically-called the nationalist community
is an outfit called the Australian Protectionist Party. The APP was formed by Mark Wilson, a former organiser of the fascist British National Party, who emigrated to Australia in the 1980s. One of the APP’s most active members is Nicholas Hunter-Folkes. He was formerly the administrator of a charming Facebook group called Fuck off, we’re full
. More recently, however, he launched a new Facebook event entitled Protest Against the Mad Marxists
: essentially, a counter-rally in support of the Sydney Max Brenner shop.
The hardline left, radical Muslim and student groups have been campaigning for the closure of any business with links to Israel,
he explains, […] The left totally ignore the aggression and agenda of the Islamists in the Middle East and also in Australia.
Another prominent APP leader is Darrin Hodges, a long-time racist activist. Joe Hildebrand once identified Hodges as the semi-anonymous poster on the Nazi Stormfront site explaining that: I’m more interested in the purer form of fascism… and while I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘worship Hitler’ thing, his comments on multiculturalism and politics in general are still just as relevant today as they were 70-odd years ago
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
California’s Legislature sent Governor Jerry Brown a bill seeking to ban the sale, trade or possession of shark fins on Tuesday, over the objections of two senators who called the measure racist because the fins are used in a soup considered a delicacy in some Asian cultures.
The bill has split the Asian delegation in the Legislature. It was introduced by Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Cupertino, and was supported by Senator Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, who said it is needed to protect endangered shark species — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Australian judges have lashed out at Prime Minister Julia Gillard, saying it was irresponsible of her to criticise the High Court over the Malaysian asylum seeker decision.
The backlash comes one day after Ms Gillard was forced to dismiss speculation of a leadership plot against her in the wake of her scathing attack on the court’s ruling.
Ms Gillard told the ABC’s Madonna King yesterday: I’m not going anywhere
, after earlier blaming the court for missing an opportunity to combat people smuggling in the region.
I’m the best person to do this job. And I’ll continue to do it. And what this job is about is leading the nation to a better future,
she said — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The High Court rejection of the Malaysia Solution
is almost certainly the beginning of the end of the Labor Government. Even more likely, the end of Julia Gillard’s ignominious Prime Ministership.
This, folks, is what you get when the order of the day is trimming, compromising, placating and general brown-nosing. It is not a sustainable model of government.
You can’t win over the racists who don’t want any brown and yellow people coming here, no matter how they come, which is the core constituency chanting stop the boats
.
Everyone else has long since worked out that any offshore processing solution is both ridiculously expensive and inhumanly cruel.
Labor needs to turn this around with a frank acknowledgement that refugees, however they get here, are Australia’s problem and need to be dealt with by the Australian Government on Australian soil.
Without a truly bold stroke that cuts through all the crap, they’re gone, and Tony Abbott is our new PM.
The ludicrous expense of offshoring probably provides the way to do it. If you can’t sell the notion of processing people onshore, in or near our capital cities, where help and support is readily available to assimilate the influx, on the basis of simple humanity – and that is how low we have sunk – you can at least make a decent fist of selling it on economic grounds. Protect the budget surplus!
Onshore management of refugees is faster and cheaper, and delivers less-damaged people sooner. Provided with language teaching, social integration services, legal support and surrounded by members of their own ethnic community, refugees integrate into Australian society far sooner and better, and become a net economic benefit to the country, rather than a drain.
As it is, we are spending millions of dollars on something which, if truth be told, is nothing more than a vast bribe for the votes of racist rednecks — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A German ban on selling Doom to teenagers has been lifted after 17 years.
The classic video game was put on an index of controlled titles in 1994 as it was deemed likely to harm youth.
Like pornography, sales of the violent shoot ’em up were restricted to adult-only stores.
The rules have been relaxed because officials believe that Doom is now only of artistic and scientific interest and will not appeal to youngsters.
However, one version of the game remains on the index because it features Nazi symbols on some levels — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Today the Copyright Infringing File Sharing Act officially came into force in New Zealand.
Those who are caught sharing copyrighted material online will from now on receive warning letters via their ISP.
On receipt of a third notice, copyright holders can take Internet account holders to the Copyright Tribunal where they will face fines of up to $15,000 and disconnection — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The government’s Malaysia Solution has been scuttled by the High Court. The government is casting about for alternatives. The opposition is gloating and urging a revival of the Pacific Solution and reintroduction of temporary protection visas. Both need to step back and take a good look at what they are trying to do, apart from political point-scoring — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Pentagon has spent more than $720 million since 2001 on fees for shipping containers that it fails to return on time, according to data and contracts obtained by USA TODAY.
Since 2001, the Pentagon has spent more than $720 million in late fees for shipping containers.
The containers –— large metal boxes stowed on ships and moved from port on trucks — are familiar sights on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan where troops use them for storage, shelter and building material. Yet each 20-foot container returned late can rack up more than $2,200 in late fees. Shipping companies charge the government daily container detention fees
after the grace period ends for the box to be returned.
The $720 million represents a thin slice of the Pentagon’s $553 billion budget. Yet military spending is under intense scrutiny as the Defence Department has been ordered to trim $350 billion in spending over the next 10 years and could face steeper reductions from budget cutters — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A protection area is being expanded in upper Spencer Gulf in South Australia for giant cuttlefish.
Critically low numbers had been found this season.
In the past there had been more than 250,000 cuttlefish but this year’s count was just 25,000.
Scientists are trying to find a reason — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Facebook and Twitter are preparing to stand firm against government ministers’ calls to ban people from social networks or shut their websites down in times of civil unrest.
The major social networks are expected to offer no concessions when they meet the home secretary, Theresa May, at a Home Office summit on Thursday lunchtime.
Ministers are expected to row back on David Cameron’s call for suspected rioters to be banned from social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, following the riots and looting across England a fortnight ago — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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