An Important Government Functionary. One of many.
Originally aired on ABC TV: 07/08/2014 — via Youtube
The penchant of Victorian courts for throwing suppression orders around like confetti came unstuck overnight with WikiLeaks publishing an injunction by the Victorian Supreme Court. Victorian courts have a history of being willing to issue gag orders.
The revelation is reminiscent of the running battle between sites like WikiLeaks, social media, British MPs and UK courts up until 2011. Superinjunctions developed as a legal manoeuvre exploiting the British Human Right Act 1998, which established a right to privacy binding on government bodies, and were frequently used by celebrities anxious to prevent the feral UK tabloids from revealing private information. However, large companies began using them as well, as a superinjunction prevented even the reporting of the existence of an injunction. WikiLeaks was one of the organisations to out the multinational company Trafigura, which had used a superinjunction to prevent mainstream revelations of its dumping of toxic waste in Africa. London law firm Carter-Ruck became notorious for its use of superinjunctions, but badly overplayed its hand on Trafigura when it tried to use them to ban reporting of parliamentary questions about Trafigura, leading to a social media backlash — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A leaked discussion paper from both Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has floated the possibility of websites being blocked, and measures to compel ISPs to take steps to prevent their customers infringing on copyright online.
Five months after first flagging a crackdown was on its way, Brandis appears to be pushing ahead with plans to crack down on Australians using programs such as BitTorrent to obtain copyright-infringing content such as TV shows, music, and films.
The discussion paper, leaked to Crikey, had been expected to be released this month, following Brandis meeting with representatives in the US and UK governments on their respective copyright infringement deterrence schemes.
It outlines a number of potential legislative measures the government can implement to deter what the paper said is a long standing issue
with Australians having high illegal download rates
.
The government states in the document that it believes even if an ISP doesn’t have a direct power to prevent its users from infringing on copyright, there are reasonable steps
it can take to deter infringement.
In a move to undo the 2012 High Court judgment that iiNet did not authorise its users’ copyright infringement, the paper proposes amending the Copyright Act to extend authorisation of copyright infringement and the power to prevent
infringement would just be one factor the courts would consider in determining whether an ISP was liable for infringement — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Wikipedia blocks US Capitol computers from editing online encyclopaedia after ‘disruptive’ revisions
Wikipedia has imposed a ban on page edits from computers at the US House of Representatives after anonymous changes were made to entries about politicians, businesses and historical events.
In response to what it calls disruptive
revisions, Wikipedia has a 10-day ban blocking any editing from an IP address at the US Capitol, which is shared among a number of computers.
One entry referred to former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld as an alien lizard who eats Mexican babies.
Another said that John F Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted on behalf of Fidel Castro
.
The ban came after unusual revisions were pointed out by Twitter account @congressedits, which describes itself as a bot that tweets anonymous Wikipedia edits that are made from IP addresses in the US Congress
.
The account was created by a software developer named Ed Summers — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Derek Debit, retailer of Joe Hockies.
Originally aired on ABC TV: 24/07/2014 — via Youtube
Senator Clive Palmer
Originally aired on ABC TV: 17/07/2014 — via Youtube
Lionel Dropout. Customer Relations Consultant
Originally aired on ABC TV: 10/07/2014 — via Youtube
The High Court has granted an interim injunction to block the handover of 153 asylum seekers to Sri Lanka, just hours after the Government confirmed another vessel had been returned.
On Monday the court heard an urgent claim from barristers seeking to protect the group, which includes 32 women and 37 children and is believed to be under the Government’s control at sea.
We argued that the asylum seekers are entitled to have their allegations — claims against the Sri Lankan government — heard and processed in accordance with the law,
solicitor George Newhouse said.
The Minister can’t simply intercept them in the night and disappear them
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Lorne Dennis, Respected Sports Commentator
Originally aired on ABC TV: 03/07/2014 — via Youtube
An alleged spy has been arrested in Germany accused of passing the US information from a committee looking into NSA activities.
It has heightened diplomatic tensions between the two countries following allegations in the Edward Snowden leaks that the US electronic spy agency tapped Angela Merkel’s phone along with wider surveillance of German citizens.
The German government has not denied reports by Der Spiegel and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the suspected spy was a double agent and worked for Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND.
The newspapers said the man allegedly passed the US information about a German parliamentary committee’s investigation into the NSA’s activities.
He claimed to have worked with US intelligence since 2012, they reported — redwolf.newsvine.com
In February 2012, as leader of the Greens, I made a courtesy call on Tony Abbott. He had just pipped Malcolm Turnbull in a party room vote for the leadership of the opposition. He looked straight at me and said, I am an environmentalist!
I did not roll my eyes or argue. I had heard the like before. The CEO of Tasmania’s Hydro-Electric Commission, after flooding Lake Pedder and at the height of the controversy over damming the Franklin River, maintained that he was an environmentalist. So have a string of other dam-builders, loggers and gougers of the Earth.
Quite a few embellish this absurdity by calling themselves the true or real environmentalists. Even the Japanese whale killers fire their grenade-tipped harpoons in the name of environmental science.
US president George Bush senior flew to the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 claiming to be the environmental president. One US cartoonist had him being greeted there by three other male heads-of-state with I’m Little Red Riding Hood
, I’m Miss Muffet
and I’m Goldilocks!
.
John Howard went no further than to claim that he was greenish
, but Tony Abbott is staking his claim to be the environmental prime minister. In Washington last week he repeated his self-assessment — I am a conservationist
— to bewildered journalists — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Phil Mexpert. Cinema Reviewer
Originally aired on ABC TV: 12/06/2014 — via Youtube
Last month Australia’s Attorney-General George Brandis labeled his citizens the worst pirates on the planet and vowed to help content holders turn that position around. But Brandis’ industry-leaning position soon became clear as he repeatedly refused to answer questions as to whether he’d properly consulted with consumer groups.
Brandis has, however, consulted deeply with the entertainment industries. His proposals for solving the piracy issue are straight out of the MPAA and RIAA cookbook – three strikes and account terminations for errant Internet users plus ISP blockades of torrent and similar sites.
The reason why the debate over these measures has dragged on so long is down to the defeat of the studios in their legal battle against ISP iiNet. That case failed to render the ISP responsible for the actions of its subscribers and ever since iiNet has provided the most vocal opposition to tough anti-piracy proposals. Today, iiNet Chief Regulatory Officer Steve Dalby underlined that stance with a call for consumers to fight back against foreign interests
.
The Hollywood Studios have been relentlessly lobbying the Australian Government on a range of heavy-handed solutions, from a
Dalby explains.three strikes
proposal, through to website filtering — none of which take consumers’ interests into account,
On three strikes, Dalby notes that even though customers will be expected to pick up the bill for its introduction, there’s no evidence that these schemes have curtailed piracy or increased sales in any other country — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Claims that processing of asylum seekers had been under way for weeks before violence engulfed the Manus Island detention centre are challenged by a secret recording of a meeting of security supervisors as tensions built to crisis point.
During an hour-long briefing of senior staff, the then acting regional manager of security provider G4S, John McCaffery, said he had been told that no refugee-status determinations would take place for the foreseeable future
because of lack of funds.
The revelation casts doubt on Immigration Minister Scott Morrison’s assertion on January 16 that processing had recommenced on Manus and had been under way for three or four weeks. The recording also reveals that, contrary to stated policy, there were at least three unaccompanied minors among the 1300 detainees on the island before the violence that culminated in the death of Reza Barati and injuries to scores of others — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Most people know John Oliver for his work on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show — but at the end of April, he got his own program: the satirical weekly Last Week Tonight.
In the episode which just aired on HBO, there was an entire segment devoted to our own Tony Abbott. Cue: the national cringe. Abbott is introduced as a hard-lined right wing Prime Minister, who rose to power promising to be pro-business and religiously anti-immigration. Literally: religiously anti-immigration.
With a quote from Abbott to prove it — Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it is not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia,
Abbott says — the narrator skewers the hypocrisy of a national leader who claims immigration to be against Jesus’ way, even though he was himself born in London.
What is it about Tony Dumb-Dumb that’s led to his current approval rating of 30%?
he asks. Could it be that he’s personally insulted everyone else in the country, from women to gays to anyone remotely Irish to elderly cancer-ridden phone sex workers?
And it only ramps up from there — via Junkee
Lars Torders. An incendiary device repairer
Originally aired on ABC TV: 29/05/2014 — via Youtube
The managing director of the Whitehouse Institute of Design, who is understood to have personally funded an unadvertised $60,000 scholarship for the prime minister’s daughter, issued a direct plea
to Tony Abbott to reduce red tape across the board
in higher education at an exclusive event last year, but the institute says any suggestion these remarks were an attempt at lobbying or seeking to interfere with the regulatory process are ridiculous
.
The statement follows further revelations published by the independent news site New Matilda that the prime minister attended a champagne reception for the 25th anniversary of the institute where Leanne Whitehouse, the institute’s managing director, delivered a speech to attendees including the prime minister — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Police on Thursday confiscated a heap of ashes displayed at a Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral (GAM) exhibition — allegedly all that remains of US$500 million in pagarés
— or debt paper — stolen and burned by artist and activist Francisco Tapia, aka Papas Fritas
.
A video by Tapia went viral in student circles earlier this week wherein he confessed to burning the legal papers certifying debt owed by Universidad del Mar students and had thus liberated the students from their debt obligations. The video and its widespread circulation no doubt prompted the police raid at the art exhibit.
It’s over, it’s finished,
Tapia said in his impassioned five minute video. You don’t have to pay another peso [of your student loan debt]. We have to lose our fear, our fear of being thought of as criminals because we’re poor. I am just like you, living a shitty life, and I live it day by day — this is my act of love for you.
Although authorities began shutting down Universidad del Mar last year for financial irregularities and encouraged students to seek out alternative universities, the university is still collecting on its student loans.
The destruction of the documents occurred during a toma
— student takeover — of the campus and means the embattled university owners must now individually sue each of its students to assure debt payment — a very costly, time-consuming process — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Today, in an extraordinary and rarely seen move, the CFMEU, in response to community pleas for help, has placed an historic Green Ban
on Thompson Square, Windsor.
Just as, in the early 1970’s, green bans protected Australian architectural heritage and social history; today this venerable and honourable tradition has been called upon in defence of the oldest remaining public square in Australia.
In the 1970’s green bans occurred against a background of the Askin Government and increasing developer power. Today’s green ban occurs against a background of eroded environmental protection and diminished heritage safeguards in response to an increasingly powerful developer lobby.
In 2014 the power of development over community concerns is well illustrated by the Windsor Bridge proposal and today’s announcement is made against a backdrop of ICAC investigations into political donations, power and influence; although more sophisticated financial arrangements are evident than the infamous brown paper bags
of the past — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Christopher Pyne, Leader of the House and Education Minister.
Originally aired on ABC TV: 22/05/2014 — via Youtube
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