There is a lot of really great stuff coming out of the States with regards to Net Neutrality at the moment.
The best thing about it is that all the activists working on this issue are very clued into all the relevant technology and are fully exploiting all Web 2.0 has to offer.
The latest one I’ve come across is over at Four Eyed Montser, with their latest campaign: 
Save the Internet | Rock the Vote
Treasurer Peter Costello said the Government would legislate to strengthen the secondary boycott provisions of the Trade Practices Act, giving the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission unprecedented powers to stop boycott action by unions and other organisations, including community groups.
Something in me thinks, “now you’re just making it too easy to rebel, all I have to do is boycott something and I’ll be arrested.” Surely we’re allowed to base our consumer choices on whatever we want and if that happens to be that a I do not employ the services of a company because it is responsible for massive ecological violations and human rights abuses that include slave labour and the encouragement of the execution of indigenous dissidents. Isn’t freedom of choice a corner stone of a neoliberal economy?
Still, at least we’re not in Egypt.
I’m a little slow off the mark with this one but friend of the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice and former forum presenter Joo-cheong Tham had a piece in the Age the other week which is certainly worth a read.
ON AUSTRALIA Day, the Prime Minister described this country as a “great democracy”. This claim is not without truth. Freedom is one measure of a democracy and we can be assured that the coming federal elections will be free in one respect: donors will be free to donate as they wish and parties free to receive whatever money they wish.
In our Lobbyocracy campaign we’re quite aware that a lot of the dirty back door deals going on are happening in local governments. There’s always some local government that is being publicly shamed for conflicts of interest or brown paper bags full of cash.
The latest is Geelong Mayor Bruce Harwood who approved the development of a nightclub after holidaying with the developer on his yacht in the French riviera.
So I was relieved to read in the same article that the Ombudsman has made the following recommendations:
- the Ombudsman and Macquarie University would undertake a review of conflicts-of-interest issues across state and local government.
- the review may lead to recommendations to change Victoria’s Local Government Act.
- the Ombudsman would increasingly focus on local government, the single largest source of complaints last year.
I don’t know if they will happen or not but they are very obvious and much needed changes.
A German friend of mine who is in Melbourne at the moment asked me the other day, with a bit of a smirk on his face, if I liked John Howard. I assured him I wasn’t too fond of the man and we had a bit of a laugh about him (he’d be a great source of amusement if he wasn’t running the country). I admitted to him that it often left me feeling embarrassed to be an Australian.
Then I read this in The Age this morning:
AUSTRALIA’S close defence alliance with the United States is to be further entrenched with the building of a new US military communications base at Geraldton in Western Australia.
The Age has learned that the US is to build the base, which follows three years of secret negotiations with Canberra.
Ok, fair enough. My instinct screams at me that this is a bad idea, that it will only further global insecurity and leave Australia with more blood on its hands as it further aids the mass murder perpetuated by the US government.
However I can understand why we would do it and I can understand that matters of such a high level of national security would be negotiated behind closed doors. I oppose it but and yet to come up with a way that our government can be more open and transparent with regards to such matters while not putting our national security at risk. That said, I should emphasise that our government is nowhere near open and transparent enough – even with regards to issues of national security. We have a right to know why we are going to war.
And then I read on:
Details of the deal [for the military base] emerged on the same day as the US finally told Australia it would not allow even its key allies, including Australia, to buy its best fighter aircraft, the F-22 Raptor.
Leaves me feeling like a chastised 10 year old. Do we really think they would share any of the intelligence gathered at this new military base?
I noticed an ad in The Age today from Metlink that Melbourne’s zone three has just been incorporated into zone two.
It’s a small step but an important one making it more cost effective for people in Melbourne’s outer south east to catch public transport. Of course these are also the people who generally have to travel the furthest to work so the more of them on public transport the better. I know that at the last state election this was a Liberal Party and Family First policy but can’t remember if it was an ALP policy and I believe the Green’s policy on public transport when much further.
Now if we could just get some trains with a functioning breaking mechanism.
We’ve just upgraded to Wordpress 2.1. There seems to be a problem with the blogroll which will hopefully be overcome sooner rather than later.
It’s not that we’re being snobby and not linking to anyone.
That said, if anyone wants a link please just leave a comment and if you notice any other problems with the blog please let me know in the comments (I really hope the comments are working fine!).
(Update: bit of a hack job but we seem to have a blogroll again.)
I don’t know that I can’t particularly add anything to the debate about education at the moment except to say that Howard is clearly living in a vacuum.
It is as though he doesn’t realise that things have changed, time has passed. Books have been written in the last 50 years or so that are of a high literary standard (and written by people that aren’t dead white men), not to mention the fact that there has been massive technological advancements that has changed the way we communicate for ever. English is about nothing if it isn’t about communication so it is important to acknowledge changes in the way we communicate. Not to mention the fact that here are a much wider range of voices out there.
I also think you’d be foolish to ignore pop culture. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be reading Shakespeare in high schools, I’m just saying we should acknowledge that it was once pop culture written for the uneducated masses who just liked to see plays with loads of sex and violence.
OpenDemocracy have decided to open up even further and show where all their money is coming from.
I guess what is most interesting is that they are doing this as a fundraiser – showing that they are low on cash and how far a donation can go.
It’s an interesting idea – if only the Centre’s budget was big enough and interesting enough to warrant doing the same.
