Starting next month, the vast majority of Australia’s Internet users will find their access censored, following a decision by the country’s two largest providers--Telstra and Optus--as well as two smaller ISPs (itExtreme and Webshield), to voluntarily block more than 500 websites from view.
The decision from the two ISPs comes after numerous failed attempts by the Australian government to set up a centralized filtering plan.
In the new voluntary scheme, ISPs will block sites containing “the appropriate subsection of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) blacklist as well as child abuse URLs that are provided by reputable international organisations,” according to News.com.au.
The problem with such a plan is multi-layered: First, there is no transparency in the selection of URLs to be blacklisted, and no accountability from the regulatory bodies creating the blacklists. The “reputable international organizations” providing child abuse URLs have not been named, but may include the Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based organization that in 2008 advised UK ISPs to block a Wikipedia page containing an album cover from the 1970s that they deemed might be illegal.
The ACMA itself has run into problems with its blacklist as well. After Wikileaks published the regulator’s blacklist in 2009, it was discovered that the list contained the website of a Queensland-based dentist, as well as numerous other sites unrelated to child sexual abuse or illegal pornography.
Second, filtering does little to curb the trade of child pornography, much of which is traded across peer to peer networks and VPNs. Filtering it from the world wide web may simply push it further underground.
Third, there appears to be no appeals process in the Australian ISPs’ scheme, thereby making it difficult for sites erroneously caught up in the filter to challenge the block.
Lastly, the introduction of a filter sets precedent for the ISPs to filter more sites in the future at the behest of the ACMA. If the ACMA were to make the decision that sites deemed "indecent" or politically controversial--for example--should be off-limits, would the ISPs comply? Jillian York @'EFF'
Fresh video footage appearing to show Vancouver's famous riot couple seems to end speculation that the picture was faked, and indicates that sympathy more than passion was the motivation behind the kiss that was captured on camera.
The footage, uploaded to YouTube, seems to show Australian Scott Jones comforting his girlfriend, Alex Thomas, after she was knocked to the ground by an officer's riot shield.
The photo of the couple, taken by photographer Richard Lam, became a global sensation and was taken as Lam was documenting the riot that began after the hometown Canucks lost ice hockey's Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins. The picture became an internet sensation and fuelled speculation that the embrace was staged.
The video shows the crowd retreating as the couple find themselves caught in the path of two riot police. Both officers collide with the pair with their shields, knocking them to the ground. The couple appear to be holding up their arms up in defence. The camera moves on, returning to show the man comforting the distraught woman.
Jones and Thomas have been inundated with offers to describe the events surrounding the famous kiss and had said they did not want the "extra stress" of media appointments. But they are now believed to have hired celebrity publicist Markson Sparks PR.
Jones is an aspiring comedian. "I think for Scott, it's a tremendous opportunity for him to springboard his acting and standup comedy," Markson told the Toronto Star. "Overseas people know more about that photo than the Stanley Cup." He said the couple's global exposure could be worth a potential $10m. Dominic Rushe @'The Guardian'
Onstage at the Birchmere last week, Bob Mould set down his sky-blue Stratocaster and picked up a book.
It was the story of a teen who flees an abusive home, starts a band, hits the road, gets hooked, gets sober, goes solo, comes out of the closet, detours into electronic music, works a stint in pro wrestling, reinvents himself as a DJ and finally decides to write it all down.
It was his autobiography.
Performing songs and reading from his book for the first time ever, the 50-year-old punk legend punctuated his recollections with overwhelmed sighs. “It’s very reminiscent of May of 1989 all of a sudden,” Mould said from the stage, nervously pushing his glasses up his nose.
He was referring to his solo debut after the implosion of Husker Du, the hair-on-fire hard-core punk trio Mould formed in Minneapolis in 1979. Triangulating indelible extremes in melody, volume and speed, the band’s breakneck sound would ripple across the ’90s and beyond, influencing Nirvana, Foo Fighters and every band since that’s ever tried to coax an angry barre chord from an electric guitar...
The number of Australians receiving pharmacotherapy treatment for dependence on opioid drugs such as heroin continues to rise, and the proportion of older clients is also increasing, according to a report released today by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
The findings of the National Opioid Pharmacotherapy Statistics Annual Data Collection: 2010 report show that on a snapshot day in 2010 there were over 46,000 clients who received pharmacotherapy for opioid dependence.
‘There was a rise of just over 2,600 clients between 2009 and 2010 which is consistent with the growth of pharmacotherapy treatment we have seen in recent years,’ said Amber Jefferson of the AIHW’s Drug Surveys and Services Unit.
‘Since 2006, there has been a shift towards older clients receiving treatment, with the proportion of clients aged 30 years and over rising from 72% to 82% and the proportion of clients aged under 30 falling in 2010.’
‘While the number of clients receiving pharmacotherapy for opioid dependence increased in 2010, the number of clients below the age of 30 has dropped since 2006.’
‘The ratio of male to female clients has remained the same over recent years, with males making up about two-thirds of all clients,’ Ms Jefferson said.
Also consistent with findings in previous years, methadone was the most common pharmacotherapy drug, with close to 7 out of 10 clients receiving this form of treatment. The remaining clients received either buprenorphine or buprenorphine/naloxone.
‘There was a small rise in the number of dosing point sites in Australia, up from 2,157 in 2009 to 2,200 in 2010,’ Ms Jefferson said.
Most opioid pharmacotherapy dosing point sites were located in pharmacies.
The number of clients per dosing point site across Australia has been rising slowly in recent years, with 21 clients per dosing site in 2010 compared with 19 in 2006.
The AIHW is a major national agency set up by the Australian Government to provide reliable, regular and relevant information and statistics on Australia’s health and welfare. Click here for more information and to download report Via
Back before inkjets, printing was a time-comsuming laborious process, that took teams of people working together to produce just one book. Now days, any crabby person can sit at home and crank out stuff on a blog or even make internet video. This movie will make you happy as you watch others toil for 'The Man' under primitive conditions...LOL! Via
Notorious hacking group, Lulzsec, has just released a heap of Arizona law enforcement files. The group says it did this, "not just to reveal their racist and corrupt nature but to purposefully sabotage their efforts to terrorize communities fighting an unjust "war on drugs"."
The group is also promoting a fan-made rap song (below). It claims to be a new genre which some have dubbed hackstep although the group itself calls it, Hackcore.
The post came with a bittorent file link with raw information plus numerous alleged logins and passwords of law enforcement officials. One password is claimed to be, "12345".
The claimed file leaks are being investigated and we'll have more as they appear.
The leak puts paid to claims by the global media and other hacking groups that the Lulzsec is in disarray due to leaders being arrested and exposed.
The full unedited statement is below:-
CHINGA LA MIGRA BULLETIN #1 6/23/2011
We are releasing hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement. We are targeting AZDPS specifically because we are against SB1070 and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona. The documents classified as "law enforcement sensitive", "not for public distribution", and "for official use only" are primarily related to border patrol and counter-terrorism operations and describe the use of informants to infiltrate various gangs, cartels, motorcycle clubs, Nazi groups, and protest movements. Every week we plan on releasing more classified documents and embarassing personal details of military and law enforcement in an effort not just to reveal their racist and corrupt nature but to purposefully sabotage their efforts to terrorize communities fighting an unjust "war on drugs". Hackers of the world are uniting and taking direct action against our common oppressors - the government, corporations, police, and militaries of the world. See you again real soon! ;D Nick Ross @'ABC'
After the recent Vancouver riots, it became clear that the world is surveiling itself at an unprecedented scale. Angry citizens gave police one million photos and 1,000 hours of video footage to help them track down the rioters. If we aren't living in a surveillance state run by the government, we're certainly conducting a huge surveillance experiment on each other.
Which is what makes two new apps, CopRecorder and OpenWatch, and their Web component, OpenWatch.net, so interesting. They are the brainchildren of Rich Jones, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate who describes himself as "pretty much a hacker to the core." Flush with cash and time from a few successful forays into the app market, nine months ago Jones decided to devote some of his time to developing what he calls "a global participatory counter-surveillance project which uses cellular phones as a way of monitoring authority figures."
CopRecorder can record audio without indicating that it's doing so like the Voice Memos app does. It comes with a built-in uploader to OpenWatch, so that Jones can do "analysis" of the recording and scrub any personally identifying data before posting the audio. He said he receives between 50 and 100 submissions per day, with a really interesting encounter with an authority figure coming in about every day and a half.
To me, something like OpenWatch could help solve a major problem for investigative reporting in an age when newsrooms are shrinking. We've still got plenty of people who can bulldog an issue once it's been flagged, but there are fewer and fewer reporters with deep sourcing in a community, fewer and fewer reporters who have the time to look into a bunch of different things knowing that only one out of a hundred might turn into a big investigation. Perhaps providing better conduits for citizens to flag their own problems can drive down the cost of hard-hitting journalism and be part of the solution for keeping governments honest.
At first, the app did not have grand aspirations. Jones built it for some friends who'd gotten into some trouble with the law and who could have been aided by a recording of their interaction with law enforcement. But Jones' worldview began to seep into the project. Informed by Julian Assange's conception of "scientific journalism," Jones wanted to start collecting datapoints at the interface of citizens and authority figures.
"It's a new kind of journalism. When people think citizen media, right now they think amateur journalism ... I don't think that's revolutionary," Jones told me. "I don't think that's what the '90s cyberutopianists were dreaming of. I think the real value of citizen media will be collecting data."
Already, CopRecorder is in the hands of 50,000 users, who've just happened to stumble on the app one way or another. Jones hopes that they'll upload their encounters with authority figures so that he can start to build a database of what citizens' encounters are like in different places. Then, he figures, patterns will emerge and he'll be able to point out to the world exactly where the powerful are abusing their authority...
June 30th marks a very considerable mobilisation of industrial action in Britain, in the shape of a large public sector strike. The Trades Unions are making their first tentative steps towards politically motivated action for a generation, with a massive withdrawal of workers labour in response to government plans for pensions reform; whilst the pensions dispute is the legal justification for industrial action (under Britain’s strict, Thatcherite anti-strike legislation), in reality the issue is the tip of the iceberg. The consensus behind the strikes is that of a political fight against the cuts in general. The range of action we will see on June 30th will stretch far beyond those “directly” affected by pensions plans, with a cross-section of those worst hit by the cuts expected to engage with the day of action– the disabled, those who face massive reductions to vital welfare benefits, students,schools pupils and parents and other public-service users.
The participation of these groups raises old questions about how people not traditionally represented by and outside of trade-union structures and activities can appropriately take direct action if they cannot withdraw their labour. But it also raises other issues that need to be addressed; notably, how changing conditions of production and employment in a 21st century, late-capitalist economy have affected the viability of the mass strike alone as an effective tool of social struggle.
There is no doubt that the withdrawal of labour is still the primary tactic working people have in defence of their interests, and as a process that broadens understanding of the dynamics of a class society through praxis; that is, in the very act of striking we can begin to understand our position and our potential for re-imagining social relations outside of the wage relation. But society today isn’t encapsulated by the unionised mass worker, but rather by the short term contract, the service industry worker, the temp and those whose labour isn’t rewarded at all. How are those most badly affected by cuts- the single-mother and the unpaid carer- supposed to withdraw their labour? It’s simply not possible. The difficulties faced by those in precarious jobs, with short term contracts, alienated and disconnected from their workmates and threatened by aggressive management, are similar. Simply calling on them to “unionise! don’t work!” is rhetoric, not a tactic...
War, as I came to report it, was something fought between people with causes, however crazy or honourable: like between the American and British occupiers of Iraq and the insurgents who opposed them. Then I stumbled across Mexico's drug war – which has claimed nearly 40,000 lives, mostly civilians – and all the rules changed. This is warfare for the 21st century, and another creature altogether.
Mexico's war is inextricable from everyday life. In Ciudad Juarez, the most murderous city in the world, street markets and malls remain open; Sarah Brightman sang a concert there recently. When I was back there last month, people had reappeared at night to eat dinner and socialise, out of devil-may-care recklessness and exhaustion with years of self-imposed curfew. Before, there had been an eerie quiet at night, now there is an even eerier semblance of normality – punctuated by gunfire.
On the surface, the combatants have the veneer of a cause: control of smuggling routes into the US. But even if this were the full explanation, the cause of drugs places Mexico's war firmly in our new postideological, postmoral, postpolitical world. The only causes are profits from the chemicals that get America and Europe high...
BBCWorldBBC Global News Chinese state media reports artist Ai Weiwei released on bail after confessing to tax evasion and as he suffers from chronic disease, AFP
"Been a long time since I made a true foundation-styled mix, so really wanted to do one again. Had an idea of combining a whole bunch of (early) roots tunes with their deejay cuts by a variety of singers, groups and deejays. This is the result, well-known tunes with lesser known deejay cuts, well known deejay cuts with lesser known vocal efforts and I guess everything in between. Main selection criterium was: good music. Setlist would probably look different tomorrow, but this is what I came up with this time. Big music, in late 60s to mid 70s style (although some deejay cuts might be recorded somewhat later), enjoy the riding of the riddims!" (BMC)
1a) Marcia Griffiths - Working To The Top (1) 1b) Count Machuki - Dr. Sappa Too (1) 2a) Lloyd Charmers - What Can I Do (XYZ) 2b) U Roy - Officially (XYZ) 3a) The Maytones - Black And White (2) 3b) Cat Campbell - President In School (3) 4a) Jimmy London - A Little Love (Impact) 4b) Dr. Alimantado - Mary Lou (Impact) 4c) Peter Tosh - A Little Melodica (Impact) 4d) Impact Allstars - A Little Version (Impact) 5a) Eric Donaldson - Lonely Nights (2) 5b) U Roy - On Top Of The Peak (3) 6a) Clancy Eccles & The Dynamites - The World Needs Loving (4) 6b) King Stitt - Jump for Joy (5) 7a) Carl Dawkins - Get Together (Techniques) 7b) Carl Dawkins & Tony - Get Together (Techniques) 7c) Version (Techniques) 8a) Keith Hudson - Rudy Hot Stuff (Mafia) 8b) I Roy - Hot Stuff (Mafia) 9a) Claudius Linton - Crying Time (Outa National Music) 9b) Prince Heron - Crying In Babylon (Outa National Music) 9c) Soul Syndicate - Crying Dub (Outa National Music) 10a) Burning Spear - Door Peeper (6) 10b) Prince Jazzbo - Imperial I (7) 11a) The Abyssinians - Declaration of Rights (8) 11b) Sir Harry - Musical Rights (Clinch) 12a) Errol Gordon - Reggae Music (9) 12b) Jah Woosh - Reggae Music (9) 12c) Errol Gordon - Reggae Music Version (9) 13a) Bob Marley & The Wailers - Trenchtown Rock (Trax On Wax 10") 13b) U Roy with Bob Marley & The Wailers - Kingston 12 Shuffle (Trax On Wax 10") 13c) Bob Marley & The Wailers - Grooving KGN 12 (Trax On Wax 10") 14a) Ken Boothe - Black Gold & Green (Soul Beat) 14b) I Roy - Red Gold & Green (Soul Beat) 15a) Gregory Isaacs - Thief A Man (10) 15b) Dr. Alimantado - Gimme Mi Gun (11) 16a) Eric Donaldson - Love Of The Common People (12) 16b) Dennis Alcapone - Alcapone Guns Don't Argue (13) 17a) Junior Byles - Curly Locks (Clocktower) 17b) Johnny Lover - Ital Locks (Clocktower) 17c) Vital Drums (Clocktower) 18a) Derrick Harriott - Do I Worry (14) 18b) Scotty - I Worry (15) 19a) Horace Andy - Don't Think About Me (I Am Alright) (Mafia) 19b) Big Youth - Can You Keep A Secret (Mafia) 19c) Chuckles - Melody Maker Version 2 (Mafia) 20a) Heptones - Love Without Feeling (Moodisc) 20b) Big Joe & Mudie's All Stars - Lick Them Face (Moodisc) 20c) Mudie's All Stars - Dub Them Face (Moodisc) 21a) Larry Marshall - Mean Girl (16) 21b) Prince Far I - Natty Farmyard (17) 22a) Gregory Isaacs - Loving Pauper (Jahara) 22b) I Roy - Pauper And The King (Jahara) 23a) Dennis Brown - Baby Don't Do It (18) 23b) Lone Ranger - Monkey Sue (18)
more details and download as - One track @ 192 kbps - One track @ 320 kbps - Tracked version .rar archive HERE @ Better Must Come
