Rights

Hugo Campos is a passionate advocate for the rights of patients to access their data and become empowered participants in their own health care. His $30,000 implantable cardiac defibrillator continually collects information about his body, yet he has no access to this valuable data. He is on a mission to change that

Two evangelists have become the unlikely standard bearers for free speech in Australia as they fight a council ban on their preaching.

The brothers’ fire and brimstone sermons had become a regular piece of street theatre on Friday evenings in Adelaide’s CBD.

Brothers Caleb and Samuel Corneloup used the popular shopping precinct of Rundle Mall as a pulpit, preaching their version of the gospel and attracting protests from those opposed to their views.

But what started as a passionate public debate over morality has found its way to the High Court, where it could become a judgement on freedom of speech.

It was retailers who first called for action against the street preachers, telling the Adelaide City Council that the weekly fracas was turning away shoppers.

We have had complaints, many complaints from traders and from passers-by who felt that they had been spoken to in an unreasonable manner, Adelaide City Council’s Peter Smith said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A judge has told two burglars that if they choose to raid a home where the householders legally own a gun they should accept the risk of being shot.

Judge Michael Pert QC made his remarks as he jailed Joshua O’Gorman and Daniel Mansell for four years at Leicester crown court after they were blasted by Andy Ferrie’s shotgun while attempting to burgle his farm cottage in Welby, near Melton Mowbray, in the early hours of 2 September.

Rejecting a plea that he take into account the shooting, which injured and allegedly traumatised the defendants, the judge said: That is the chance you take.

O’Gorman, who was shot in the face, and Mansell, who was hit in his right hand, had pleaded guilty to the break-in at an earlier hearing.

Alan Murphy, prosecuting, said they had a string of convictions between them — via redwolf.newsvine.com

This is what blowback looks like:

In Sydney, a protest against a provocative film ends in scenes of violent clashes between some protesters and the police.

In Canberra, a young woman in a headscarf is confronted by a random stranger who offers to punch her for the police.

My smart, quick-witted friend has been taking martial arts classes, so I’m pretty sure that this bigot would have bitten off more than he could chew, had he actually tried to land a punch on her. Luckily for him, my friend told him that she’d prefer to be beaten up by the police rather than by him, and offered to call them on his behalf. He was left confused, but he can console himself that at least he didn/t feel the force of my friend’s Anaconda Choke.

Stories like these generate a range of contradictory responses even within the same individual, never mind an entire community. My most immediate response was pure, undiluted outrage. What the hell makes anyone think that they can treat my friend and other women like her in such a manner? To assume a licence to stand in judgement on a total stranger, and deliver the verdict in such a repulsive manner? Who does he think he is? Are we really supposed to respond to such abuse by showing how friendly and likeable and ordinary we can be?

(My friend, by the way, is both friendly and likeable, but not ordinary. They broke the mould when they made her. She’s extraordinary) — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Where do I start? Perhaps with the viral image that will come to define this episode: a child who’d be three or four hoisting a sign triumphantly above his head blaring Behead all those who insult the Prophet while a woman, presumably his mother, thinks this is cute enough to capture on her smartphone. Alternatively, I could begin with the observation that the trailer for the anti-Islamic film that ostensibly started this all, Innocence of Muslims, is now a blockbuster, with YouTube hits in the millions thanks largely to the protesters around the world who think nobody should see it.

No. Let’s start with the fact that so few of the protesters who descended on Sydney’s CBD this weekend seem actually to have seen the film that so gravely offends them. When asked by journalists, they bluntly admit this, one even adding that she refuses to watch something so offensive. It’s almost impressive how cyclical this stupidity is. But it’s also instructive. In fact, this is the key to making sense of something so gobsmackingly senseless. The protesters — at least the ones quoted in news reports — know nothing except how offended they are.

That, you see, is all that matters. This isn’t about a film. It’s about an excuse. We know because we’ve seen it all before, like when Pakistani protesters vandalised American fast food outlets and burnt effigies of President George W. Bush in response to the Danish cartoons.

We know because so much of the weekend’s ranting was nakedly gratuitous: Our dead are in paradise, your dead are in hell. Pardon? Which dead? Weren’t we talking about a movie?

This is the behaviour of a drunkenly humiliated people: swinging wildly with the hope of landing a blow, any blow, somewhere, anywhere. There’s nothing strategic or calculated about this. It doesn’t matter that they are the film’s most effective publicists. It doesn’t matter that they protest using offensive slogans and signs, while protesting against people’s right to offend. It doesn’t matter that they object to insulting people on the basis of their religion, while declaring that Christians have no morals. This is baffling only until you realise these protesters are not truly protesting to make a point. The protest is the point — via redwolf.newsvine.com