Is the Internet Filter Australia's Berlin Wall

The history of the last twenty years of the Twentieth Century were, for me, marked by a millennial fervor that swept through society like a great wave of hope. Watching the Berlin Wall topple, seeing the defiance of Tiananmen Square and even the spontaneous outpouring of goodwill that happened during the Sydney Olympics are moments which shine brightly for me. Each of these were individual but also collective statements that spoke about our desire to connect with one another, to experience and make history with our own hands, and to own the consequences of our actions.

Living in the relatively benign political landscape of Australia has meant that such movements largely pass us by. Wholesale political and ideological change can occur here each four years – at the voter’s discretion. Depending on the mood of the public, we can swing from the reformist centre left position taken by the Keating Government to the deeply conservative position adopted by the Howard Government – and not a drop of blood is spilt, not a single car is burnt in anger, and life resumes under the umbrella of what is essentially a radically transformed ideological agenda.

The reason that such large scale political and ideological change can take place, I believe, is in large part to the robust and open democracy which Australia’s political leaders have built over the last hundred years. Fundamental to this has been the freedom of political thought and expression – backed up by rigorous, independent (and in many instances, judicious) review of government decisions.

The internet filter proposed by Senator Stephen Conroy threatens all this. Thus far, the government have focused their arguments around the highly emotive issue of child pornography. There is no question that access to this sort of material should be prohibited. However, only 32% of the sites listed on the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s “blacklist” are related to child pornography. This means that a whopping 68% of sites on the list are there for other reasons – political, ideological, etc – and at the whim of the government in power at the time.

Moreover, the blacklist is NOT available for public scrutiny or independent review. A copy of the blacklist was released on the Wikileaks website earlier in 2009 (a site which is, itself, blacklisted).

In this radio interview with Latika Bourke, former High Court Justice, Michael Kirby suggests that the internet filter may well be the “thin edge of the wedge” when it comes to controlling what the Australian population reads, what it has access to and therefore, how it can behave online.

The internet is, on the whole, a marvellous advance of not only information but also of freedom and of ideas, and of ideas of liberty … we’ve got to just be careful … because if one government, our government, begins to intervene in this, there’ll be other governments that just want to get into it to control the freedom of ideas … ideas which will break down the Berlin Walls of the future. (6:19)

Former supporter and co-author of the original report recommending internet filtering, Michael Flood, has now switched camps. In an interview with Rachel Maher, he suggests that, as a society, we should be having more complex and robust discussions about censorship, access to non-classified material and and the social and educational benefits that accrue through such access:

His discussion of pornography is complex and enlightening and leads us through to the kinds of debate the Federal Government and civil society should be aiming to have: debates that could look simultaneously and intelligently at both harm reduction and access for adults to sexual material online.

But as pointed out by this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, content which is legal for viewing and consumption will also be filtered. This includes information which, while sometimes mildly confrontational, has social and cultural value, including websites which provide:

• Harm minimisation information for recreational drug users
• Space for the discussion of gay and lesbian sexuality
• Analysis of the geopolitical causes of terrorism

More detail and reading on the internet filter

There are plenty of websites offering perspectives and ideas, history and analysis on this controversial subject.

• Libertus.net's perspective on the censorship debate
• Google's policy response to the filter announcement
• Stephen Collins suggests that we are moving towards a “Nanny State” mentality
• Craig Wilson wonders can the blogosphere topple a government (or at least a policy)
• David Olsen recommends changing the language around the #nocleanfeed debate
• Will Briggs calls the results of the government’s pilot program into question
• Tim Plaisted asks precisely how a filter will protect children, especially in light of incidents like this
• Ben Barren walks us through an interesting scenario
• Senator Kate Lundy shares her thoughts

What can you do about the internet filter’s impact on our democracy?

Bernard Keane suggests that any letter writing campaign must be far more strategic than many sites suggest. It is not just a matter of bombarding the local member of parliament or Minister Conroy’s office. It’s about carefully crafting our efforts to raise our concerns with a number of departments. The idea is to generate a significant amount of work across multiple offices of the government.

Please read Bernard’s recommendations carefully, but remember to:

• Carefully craft your letters – don’t use form petitions
• Draw in multiple departments and policy areas such as the internet filter + Telstra + national broadband
• Write this letter specifically to your local member of parliament – even if they are a member of the Opposition
• Write another version of the letter, with a different focus (eg bring in a discussion of Australia Post or issues relating to Education) to Stephen Conroy
• Write additional letters to individual Federal Ministers asking how the filter will impact their portfolios and the businesses and individuals they represent – Kim Carr for IT, Jenny Macklin for families, Tony Burke for impact on farming communities etc

Above all, be polite. No matter how passionate and frustrated you may be, remain focused on communicating your frustration not simply expressing it. 

Gavin Heaton @'Wikileaks'

Khmer Rouge prison chief Duch found guilty

♪♫ OK Go - This Too Shall Pass

What a brilliant video 

- how in hell did I miss this before now?

HA!

Blawan - Sonic Router Mix

1. Titus 12 - Step Up (Mosca Remix) [Unreleased]

2. Afefe Iku - Bodydrummin' (S63 Refix) [Silver Label]

3. Ludacris vs Joe - How Low Claptrap (DJ Orgasmic Bootleg) [Unreleased]

4. Wookie - Weird Science [Manchu]

5. Randomer - Be Electric [Unreleased]

6. Mistamen - Lengthy Riddim [Bass Tourist]

7. DJ Faz - Believe [Locked On]

8. Menta - Sounds Of Da Future [Sounds Of Da Future]

9. Unknown - Unknown [Unreleased]

10. Untold - Angry Hat [Unreleased]

11. Commix - How You Gonna Feel (Pangaea Remix) [Unreleased]

12. Unknown – Unknown [Unreleased]

13. Ramadamman - Fall Short [Swamp81]

14. Blawan - Potchla Vee [Unreleased]

15. Oris Jay - Trippin (2010 Dub) [Gusto]

16. Untold - Come Follow We [Unreleased]

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(Thanx Hubba!)

Secret files: Wikileaks reveals 'unseen war'

Afghanistan - The War Logs

@'Wikileaks'
@'NY Times'

@'The Guardian'

@'Der Speigel'

White House statement on the Wikileaks leak

"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents – the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted. These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people.

"The documents posted by Wikileaks reportedly cover a period of time from January 2004 to December 2009. On December 1, 2009, President Obama announced a new strategy with a substantial increase in resources for Afghanistan, and increased focus on al Qaeda and Taliban safe-havens in Pakistan, precisely because of the grave situation that had developed over several years. This shift in strategy addressed challenges in Afghanistan that were the subject of an exhaustive policy review last fall. We know that serious challenges lie ahead, but if Afghanistan is permitted to slide backwards, we will again face a threat from violent extremist groups like al Qaeda who will have more space to plot and train. That is why we are now focused on breaking the Taliban’s momentum and building Afghan capacity so that the Afghan government can begin to assume responsibility for its future. The United States remains committed to a strong, stable, and prosperous Afghanistan.

"Since 2009, the United States and Pakistan have deepened our important bilateral partnership. Counter-terrorism cooperation has led to significant blows against al Qaeda’s leadership. The Pakistani military has gone on the offensive in Swat and South Waziristan, at great cost to the Pakistani military and people. The United States and Pakistan have also commenced a Strategic Dialogue, which has expanded cooperation on issues ranging from security to economic development. Pakistan and Afghanistan have also improved their bilateral ties, most recently through the completion of a Transit-Trade Agreement. Yet the Pakistani government – and Pakistan’s military and intelligence services – must continue their strategic shift against insurgent groups. The balance must shift decisively against al Qaeda and its extremist allies. U.S. support for Pakistan will continue to be focused on building Pakistani capacity to root out violent extremist groups, while supporting the aspirations of the Pakistani people."

- National security adviser, Gen. James Jones

The WikiLeaks Afghanistan leak

AP

A U.S. flag hangs from the roof of an Army base, in the volatile Arghandab Valley in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Saturday.

The most consequential news item of the week will obviously be -- or at least should be -- the massive new leak by WikiLeaks of 90,000 pages of classified material chronicling the truth about the war in Afghanistan from 2004 through 2009.  Those documents provide what The New York Times calls "an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal."  The Guardian describes the documents as "a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency."
In addition to those two newspapers, WikiLeaks also weeks ago provided these materials to Der Spiegel, on the condition that all three wait until today to write about them.  These outlets were presumably chosen by WikiLeaks with the intent to ensure maximum exposure among the American and Western Europeans citizenries which continue to pay for this war and whose governments have been less than forthcoming about what is taking place [a CIA document prepared in March, 2010 -- and previously leaked by WikiLeaks -- plotted how to prevent public opinion in Western Europe from turning further against the war and thus forcing their Governments to withdraw; the CIA's conclusion:  the most valuable asset in putting a pretty face on the war for Western Europeans is Barack Obama's popularity with those populations].
The White House has swiftly vowed to continue the war and predictably condemned WikiLeaks rather harshly.  It will be most interesting to see how many Democrats -- who claim to find Daniel Ellsberg heroic and the Pentagon Papers leak to be unambiguously justified -- follow the White House's lead in that regard.  Ellsberg's leak -- though primarily exposing the amoral duplicity of a Democratic administration -- occurred when there was a Republican in the White House.  This latest leak, by contrast, indicts a war which a Democratic President has embraced as his own, and documents similar manipulation of public opinion and suppression of the truth well into 2009.  It's not difficult to foresee, as Atrios predicted, that media "coverage of [the] latest [leak] will be about whether or not it should have been published," rather than about what these documents reveal about the war effort and the government and military leaders prosecuting it.  What position Democratic officials and administration supporters take in the inevitable debate over WikiLeaks remains to be seen (by shrewdly leaking these materials to 3 major newspapers, which themselves then published many of the most incriminating documents, WikiLeaks provided itself with some cover).
Note how obviously lame is the White House's prime tactic thus far for dismissing the importance of the leak:  that the documents only go through December, 2009, the month when Obama ordered his "surge," as though that timeline leaves these documents without any current relevance.  The Pentagon Papers only went up through 1968 and were not released until 3 years later (in 1971), yet having the public behold the dishonesty about the war had a significant effect on public opinion, as well as their willingness to trust future government pronouncements.  At the very least, it's difficult to imagine this leak not having the same effect.  Then again, since -- unlike Vietnam -- only a tiny portion of war supporters actually bears any direct burden from the war (themselves or close family members fighting it), it's possible that the public will remain largely apathetic even knowing what they will now know.  It's relatively easy to support and/or acquiesce to a war when neither you nor your loved ones are risking their lives to fight it.
It's hardly a shock that the war in Afghanistan is going far worse than political officials have been publicly claiming.  Aside from the fact that lying about war is what war leaders do almost intrinsically -- that's part of what makes war so degrading to democratic values -- there have been numerous official documents that have recently emerged or leaked out that explicitly state that the war is going worse than ever and is all but unwinnable.  A French General was formally punished earlier this month for revealing that the NATO war situation "has never been worse," while French officials now openly plot how to set new "intermediate" benchmarks to ensure -- in their words -- that "public opinion doesn't get the impression of a useless effort."  Anyone paying even mild attention knows that our war effort there has entailed countless incidents of civilian slaughter followed by official lies about it, "hit lists" compiled with no due process, and feel-good pronouncements from the Government that have little relationship to the realities in that country (other leak highlights are here).  This leak is not unlike the Washington Post series from the last week:  the broad strokes were already well-known, but the sheer magnitude of the disclosures may force more public attention on these matters than had occurred previously.
Whatever else is true, WikiLeaks has yet again proven itself to be one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world.  Just as was true for the video of the Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, there is no valid justification for having kept most of these documents a secret.  But that's what our National Security State does reflexively:  it hides itself behind an essentially absolute wall of secrecy to ensure that the citizenry remains largely ignorant of what it is really doing.  WikiLeaks is one of the few entities successfully blowing holes in at least parts of that wall, enabling modest glimpses into what The Washington Post spent last week describing as Top Secret America.  The war on WikiLeaks -- which was already in full swing, including, strangely, from some who claim a commitment to transparency -- will only intensify now.  Anyone who believes that the Government abuses its secrecy powers in order to keep the citizenry in the dark and manipulate public opinion -- and who, at this point, doesn't believe that? -- should be squarely on the side of the greater transparency which Wikileaks and its sources, sometimes single-handedly, are providing.
Glenn Greenwald @'Salon'

Is Wikileaks growing up?

The Bechdel Test for Women in Movies

(Thanx 'boingboing' and Hazel!)

Julian Assange of Wikileaks explains why he decided to publish thousands of secret US military files

Afghanistan - The War Logs

The fog of war is unusually dense in Afghanistan. When it lifts, as it does today with the Guardian's publication of selections from a leaked trove of secret US military logs, a very different landscape is revealed from the one with which we have become familiar. These war logs – written in the heat of engagement – show a conflict that is brutally messy, confused and immediate. It is in some contrast with the tidied-up and sanitised "public" war, as glimpsed through official communiques as well as the necessarily limited snapshots of embedded reporting.

The war logs consist of more than 92,000 records of actions of the US military in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December 2009. The logs were sent to Wikileaks, the website which publishes untraceable material from whistleblowers. In a collaboration with the New York Times and Der Spiegel, the Guardian has spent weeks sifting through this ocean of data, which has gradually yielded the hidden texture and human horror stories inflicted day to day during an often clumsily prosecuted war. It is important to treat the material for what it is: a contemporaneous catalogue of conflict. Some of the more lurid intelligence reports are of doubtful provenance: some aspects of the coalition's recording of civilian deaths appear unreliable. The war logs – classified as secret – are encyclopedic but incomplete. We have removed any material which threatens the safety of troops, local informants and collaborators.

With these caveats, the collective picture that emerges is a very disturbing one. We today learn of nearly 150 incidents in which coalition forces, including British troops, have killed or injured civilians, most of which have never been reported; of hundreds of border clashes between Afghan and Pakistani troops, two armies which are supposed to be allies; of the existence of a special forces unit whose tasks include killing Taliban and al-Qaida leaders; of the slaughter of civilians caught by the Taliban's improvised explosive devices; and of a catalogue of incidents where coalition troops have fired on and killed each other or fellow Afghans under arms.

Reading these logs, many may suspect there is sometimes a casual disregard for the lives of innocents. A bus that fails to slow for a foot patrol is raked with gunfire, killing four passengers and wounding 11 others. The documents tell how, in going after a foreign fighter, a special forces unit ended up with seven dead children. The infants were not their immediate priority. A report marked "Noforn" (not for foreign elements of the coalition) suggests their main concern was to conceal the mobile rocket system that had just been used.

In these documents, Iran's and Pakistan's intelligence agencies run riot. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is linked to some of the war's most notorious commanders. The ISI is alleged to have sent 1,000 motorbikes to the warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani for suicide attacks in Khost and Logar provinces, and to have been implicated in a sensational range of plots, from attempting to assassinate President Hamid Karzai to poisoning the beer supply of western troops. These reports are unverifiable and could be part of a barrage of false information provided by Afghan intelligence. But yesterday's White House response to the claims that elements of the Pakistan army had been so specifically linked to the militants made it plain that the status quo is unacceptable. It said that safe havens for militants within Pakistan continued to pose "an intolerable threat" to US forces. However you cut it, this is not an Afghanistan that either the US or Britain is about to hand over gift-wrapped with pink ribbons to a sovereign national government in Kabul. Quite the contrary. After nine years of warfare, the chaos threatens to overwhelm. A war fought ostensibly for the hearts and minds of Afghans cannot be won like this.

Delve deep
@'The Guardian'

Grant Phabao and Djouls - 21st Century Afro Extravaganza

The Paris DJs extended family has among the most pro-active in spreading the good word about worldwide African music. Celebrating the recent releases by One Foot In Jail or Franck Biyong on our brand new Colored-Inc. label, and announcing the upcoming albums from Oghene Kologbo (thru Kraked) or Ebo Taylor (thru Strut), here's nearly 4 hours of 21st century afrojazz, afrobeat, ethio-jazz, afrofunk and afrolatin grooves
- selected and mixed by Grant Phabao and Djouls who are currently producing new tracks with Afrodyete from the Breakestra, Zak from The Souljazz Orchestra, Franck Biyong, Doctor L, Gregsky and a few others...

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The Tunnel Of Death

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