An Onymous Lefty

An outdated blogroll makes baby Jesus cry

2009-04-18T08:32:00.004+10:00

I know it takes a while to open up the site admin and update the link to someone on your blogroll (say to change anonymouslefty.blogspot.com to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com) - but here's the thing: it makes everything better. Try it - you might be surprised by how good it makes you feel.

This community service announcement brought to you by ICBHMPSLHIOTNS* (TM).

*I can't believe how many people still link here instead of the new site.

Please update your bookmarks/blogroll to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com

2009-03-26T10:34:00.002+11:00

Yup, the move to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com has gone better than anyone could've hoped or expected.

It's definitely a much better place to hang around than here. (Looks around in disgust.)

If you missed the call on the weekend - please update your bookmarks/blogroll.

WordPress wins An Onymous Lefty

2009-03-22T12:19:00.004+11:00

Introducing:

anonymouslefty.wordpress.com

You know how everyone's been grumbling about the many flaws of Disqus? How it's slow, and the comment box is - ludicrously - at the TOP of the thread instead of after the last comment, and how it just generally makes commenting here awkward and unpleasant?

And how I haven't been able to find an alternative, since Haloscan is dying, JS-Kit won't install, and Blogspot's comments are just completely inflexible?

Well, how about this solution - we move. We all pick up our stuff, and wander over to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com. It's alright, you can leave your comments here, they won't be going anywhere, and the old posts will remain right where they are, too. But if we all totter over to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com, you might be pleasantly surprised by what you'll find.

Yes, it's this blog with a marginally different format AND FUNCTIONING COMMENTS!

Hurrah.

Please update your bookmarks.

Queenslander wins Queensland election

2009-03-21T22:50:00.000+11:00

Oh well. Better luck next time, guys.

I'll second that

2009-03-21T10:17:00.004+11:00

The Age editorialises that Lynne Kosky should go. I don't think any Victorian would disagree.

Sure, she's not at the level of a Stephen Conroy, who combines malice, dishonesty and determination to do evil all in one complete package of fucktardetry - but she's spent almost two and a half years honing her own unique mix of incompetence, laziness* and general responsibility-avoiding bloody mindedness while a matter of great practical importance to Victorians was left to collapse in her unwilling hands.

I mean - increasing numbers of commuters are now collapsing on the service, while Kosky's department plays funny buggers with media and refuses to supply public documents unless they go through the whole time-consuming FoI process.

Seriously, how much worse could a trained circus animal have done? I reckon this elephant with a paintbrush would've actually done better - at least it appears to be able to respond to the people talking to it.

Brumby - please sack her. And permit her replacement to actually fix the mess.

*And how can someone be that lazy when they've got an entire Department to which they can delegate?

Site News - Grrr

2009-03-21T10:05:00.006+11:00

To those who complain that Disqus was a poor replacement for Haloscan - I just spent an unrewarding hour trying to move comments either back to Haloscan (although that's pointless; Haloscan's a few months away from being deleted) or to the company that took it over, JS-Kit. No matter what I do, it absolutely refuses to work. Comments do not appear. Meanwhile, Blogger's comment administration is even more limited than Disqus, and free WordPress neither gives you full control over the template html nor lets you ban IPs. And I can't even get any help uninstalling Disqus - simply deleting the references to disqus in the template doesn't work, and their support forum doesn't even have a search function.

So - I'm sorry. I'd love to move to some kind of competent commenting system, but there don't seem to be any available, and I can't seem to get rid of this one.

(PS Scott: first warning in advance.)

ACMA - Protecting Australians from Linkers

2009-03-20T08:21:00.007+11:00

~~Sad~~ Good news. I am taking this blog offline to avoid being fined and prosecuted under ACMA's ~~ludicrous~~ strong and entirely appropriate new online ~~censorship~~ community protection policy.

You see, I have in the past linked to articles on a site called "Wikipedia". On each of those articles there's a search bar in which someone could type "Wikileaks". Following that link would lead someone - possibly an IMPRESSIONABLE AND VULNERABLE CHILD WHO NEEDS PROTECTING - to ~~wikileaks.org~~ the site in question. Then they'd be able to click on the link to Denmark's or Australia's alleged list of banned sites, and if they then cut and pasted some of those URLs into their web browser then they'd find CHILD PORNOGRAPHY.

In other words, I linked to someone who linked to someone who linked to someone who linked to someone who hosted "prohibited content", and have therefore - under ACMA's new principle of GUILT BY LINKING - ruined the Australian internet.

You're all going to have to take your sites down, too. Sorry.

UPDATE: Oh, to hell with it. Let's do it in one link.

Is that a knock I hear on my door?

According to Conroy's logic, Kevin Bacon's a child pornographer

2009-03-20T08:06:00.006+11:00

Only four degrees of separation, too. Kevin Bacon has used Google, which links to Wikileaks, which links to Denmark's list of banned sites, which includes the URLs of child pornographers. Shame on you, Kevin Bacon.

And to think I used to like his movies.

Hyperlink here while you still can

2009-03-19T11:40:00.004+11:00

I look forward to seeing the first such prosecution appealed all the way to the High Court:

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

Say this were upheld - say the High Court decided it had been wrong to imply a right to "freedom of political communication" in the Constitution - that would get the issue of a Bill of Rights back on the agenda pretty quickly, wouldn't it?

UPDATE: The leaked list of websites that ACMA would block is ridiculous. No wonder they want to block the site that hosts it.

UPDATE #2: Conroy denies that the list is the real one. But of course he hasn't leaked the real list for us to compare because - and he reportedly said this with a straight face - the URLs would somehow threaten "cyber safety".

Moreover, the now notorious bully is issuing heavy-handed threats:

Conroy also took the chance to slam the unknown party which leaked the list of URLs, saying they could be the target of criminal prosecution.

"ACMA is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution," Conroy said.

Conroy is an authoritarian menace. He is a threat to Australians' civil liberties. What a miserable choice we have - we have the Liberals with their extended detention without charge, and we have the ALP with its destruction of free speech. Thank God we can at least vote for the Greens.

Meanwhile, he's threatening to prosecute you for linking to a list he says is fictional anyway. The guy is mad.

Not alone

2009-03-19T08:46:00.000+11:00

You, too?

Why do we recognise child marriages but not gay marriages?

2009-03-19T07:34:00.014+11:00

While we're on the subject of things that should or shouldn't be crimes, who's up to support section 41(4)(c) of the Victorian Crimes Act 1958, which provides the following complete defence to a charge of sexual penetration of a child under 16?

(My emphasis; screenshot of section as at 19/3/2009.)

So - why is someone thinking they're "married" to a child a defence? Why are we (as represented by the State) letting teenagers who (according to this same Act) we don't believe are old enough to have sex, get married? And - since subsections (a) and (b) already cover the alternative - to people more than two years older than them who know that they are younger than 16?

Particularly given that we've made a point of not recognising marriages of, say, gay people married overseas.

Why is 41(4)(c) still in the Crimes Act?

If you have sex outside marriage, you deserve to die

2009-03-18T19:20:00.000+11:00

The Catholic Church can't stone adulterers any more, but it can do everything in its power to kill them anyway:

The Pope today reignited the controversy over the Catholic church's stance on condom use as he made his first trip to Africa.

The pontiff said condoms were not the answer to the continent's fight against HIV and Aids and could make the problem worse.

Or, as tigtog put it:

Actually, I think I can guess what the ????? replaces in Benedict's brain - "desperate people turn to the Catholic Church to make them feel better (as they suffer and die)". Then: "profit". He might not be a nice bloke, but he's not completely stupid.

When you grow up you'll agree with me

2009-03-18T13:38:00.002+11:00

You know the staggeringly arrogant conservative line that anyone who hasn't joined their ranks by middle age "hasn't a brain"? (Or the line regularly repeated by free market hardliners that anyone who doesn't agree with them "doesn't understand economics".)

You know how these people can say that with a straight face? Because they define maturity and wisdom according to whether you agree with them or not. You can't be a mature leftwinger because being a leftwinger is by definition immature. You want equality of opportunity? You naive child! You think all people, including the poor, should have access to good quality health and education services provided by the state and funded by a progressive taxation system? Aww, how cute! Now shut up and let the adults talk.

Take Andrew Bolt's column today - Garrett grows up - in which he patronisingly applauds Peter Garrett, now that he doesn't really stand for any of the things he used to. The TERRIBLE, by definition infantile things with which Andy disagrees. And now that Garrett has abandoned those principles...

It wasn’t his new views that were dishonest. His old ones were - those fading lies of the adolescent Left about the US, uranium and wicked capitalists...

...Garrett’s grown more since - and until Saturday, I hadn’t realised quite how much. In fact, now that he’s stopped singing, I’m almost a fan. Behold the man.

I think I'm going to be sick.

UPDATE: Some old musings on the subject.

Why does SA A-G Michael Atkinson want to treat fifteen year olds as adults?

2009-03-18T11:44:00.008+11:00

South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson - a man who insists all Australian adults be treated as 15 year olds despite the vast majority of us (who don't live in his electorate) not having any right to vote against him (whither democracy?) - has been having a particularly edifying spat with online gamer websites over the last week. (Presumably hoping to provoke a few unhinged people into sending some abusive emails with which he can smear anyone who plays videogames.) His basic argument is fatuous in the extreme:

It confuses my (sic) why so many gamers are arguing that they should have the right to play games that enable them on-screen to bash, torture, slay, slaughter, rape and take drugs.

No, that's what 15 year olds can do NOW, because you are blocking an R18 rating. If Australia had an R18 rating, Grand Theft Auto IV would've been restricted to adults, and not just given minor edits (that don't prevent the things you describe) and released as MA15+. Atkinson's insistence on treating adults as if they were fifteen year olds has an unavoidable corollary you'd think would disturb even him - it results in fifteen year olds being treated as adults.

The issue boils down to this: should fifteen year olds have access to all the media consumed by adults? Is there no difference between the maturity of an adult and a fifteen year old? If the answer to either of these questions is no, if you think there IS a major difference between yourself and a fifteen year old, then Australia needs an R18 category for videogames and promptly. Please, Mr Atkinson, stop stalling.

For the sake of the impressionable children.

(Cross-posted to When Games Suck.)

UPDATE: I've sent an email along these lines, for all the good it'll do us, to Atkinson on both his electorate and ministerial email addresses.

UPDATE 2: And emailed the other A-Gs. Sent them each an email entitled "R18 category needed to keep adult videogames away from impressionable teenagers" and begging them to "protect children by locking adult content away from them under an R18 category for computer games".

Does your boss own you?

2009-03-18T08:51:00.006+11:00

Telstra management apparently think they own their employees:

A web prankster impersonating Communications Minister Stephen Conroy on Twitter has been outed as a Telstra staff member.

The staffer has now been silenced by the telecommunications giant...

"I've been instructed not to talk to the press, so you'll need to talk to Telstra PR," he said.

But just how much should the company you work for get to restrict your political activities outside work? The staffer was not representing himself as a Telstra employee, or that his views coincided with those of Telstra, and provided he wasn't doing it on work time or from a work email account, what business is it of Telstra's what he does? Telstra management may not agree with the views he expresses - but so what? Do we really want a world in which the person who signs your paycheck gets a say not only in what you do at work, but also what you think or say outside it?

He's something Telstra could've said when they found out:

Provided you do it on your own time, and make it clear that you're not purporting to represent us, IT'S NONE OF OUR BUSINESS. We recognise that you are an independent adult living in a free country, and legal activities in which you engage in your own time are no concern of ours.

The alternative - what they've actually done - is really creepy.

UPDATE: And now their attempt to dishonestly have it both ways (shut him up but pretend they haven't) has blown up in their faces. I hope FSC is okay.

Some things are sacred

2009-03-17T11:35:00.009+11:00

Days after this farce, the Herald Sun asks this morning IS NOTHING SACRED?

PUNTERS will be able to bet with the TAB on Good Friday this year for the first time.

And Tabcorp is right - Good Friday is as good a day for people to be taken advantage of by a betting conglomerate as any other...

Meanwhile, on the subject of holy writ, I'd love to see the Hun editors release a list of the things they consider "sacred", and put it on the second page of each day's print edition by way of fair warning to those who are about to be exposed to their words.

The Articles Of Herald Sun Editorial Faith.

"Criminal sentences are never long enough." "The Greens want to inject your child with gay heroin." "Taxes are always too high." "Paedophiles are EVERYWHERE." "Unions are thugs." "The public have the right to know any titillating detail we can dig up about anyone they've ever heard of."

Other suggestions? What have I left out?

Almost painful to watch

2009-03-16T16:07:00.004+11:00

Ouch. Don't think anyone will make the mistake of thinking Jon Stewart's a soft touch again. (Watch all three parts.)

Pity that Rick Santelli dickhead didn't have the balls to defend his hateful rant... although, having watched the Cramer interview, Santelli wimping out of the one he was booked for was probably the most sensible thing he has ever done.

Moved on

2009-03-16T07:26:00.001+11:00

Why is this still a criminal offence in 2009?

49A. Begging or gathering alms

(1) A person must not beg or gather alms.

Penalty: 12 months imprisonment.

*Looks out window. Checks for smoke from steam trains, the sound of horses' hooves clattering up the street, convicts being marched onto sailing ships, gentlemen in comical hats. Nope - Can't see any evidence of having been transported back to Dickensian London. Apparently it's still 2009.*

How is it that we have made it a crime - and, worse, kept it a crime - for a human being to ask us for money*? How is it that our government considers it a good use of taxpayer dollars to spend money on police, lawyers, courts, judges and prisons, to incarcerate the most miserable and downtrodden in society? It doesn't matter whether it's someone desperately trying to garner enough money to buy their next meal (note: not considered enough for "necessity" and therefore not a defence under this strict liability offence) or someone who wants to get drunk in the park - how is irritating people a crime? Modern life is full of irritation - the idea that we fight back by locking up the sources of mild annoyance least capable of defending themselves is sickening.

If someone is threatening or intimidating people, putting them in fear, that's already a crime that the police can charge - common assault. If someone is stalking your business by constantly sitting in the doorway and blocking customers, you could apply for an intervention order.

But to criminalise - CRIMINALISE - the very act of simply saying "do you have a dollar?" Just because it makes us feel uncomfortable?

That's a very, very sad indictment on our society.

*unless they're a registered charity or are some shonky spiv flogging something at our doorstep or over the telephone.

ELSEWHERE: Some law journal articles from 2004-5 on the retention of the offence here and here, and an ABC Law Report on the subject.

In particular check out the links in the first one to comments by bastards like Robert Doyle who were worried about Melbourne's appearance on the world stage if we didn't get rid of beggars [by locking them up], and comments from actual beggars explaining why they beg. In particular:

‘Begging up money is very embarrassing but I’ve got to live too,’ said Kenny, a 32-year-old homeless man who had often begged. Brian, another homeless man, similarly stated that ‘[i]f you’re living on the street, you don’t have an address, so you can’t get on the dole, and so basically that’s the only way to get money’.

As for the effect of punishing begging in the criminal courts?

As one beggar put it, ‘we end up having to beg just to pay off the begging fine’.

Brilliant.

Oh, and retailers? Guess what beggars are forced to resort to whenever there's a crackdown on begging? Yes, that's right. Are you sure stopping them asking other people for charity is such a good idea?

UPDATE: Ever noticed that when people are defending a law which makes it a crime for someone to sit passively on the footpath with an upturned hat and a sign, they have to add other factors? "He might be being aggressive!" "She might smell of wee!" etc. As if that justifies making it a crime for someone to sit passively on the footpath with an upturned hat and a sign.

UPDATE #2: By the way, if anyone's going to retort "but when was the last time someone actually got jail for this offence" - homeless people get locked up on it all the time, and because they don't have stable accommodation, they're refused bail by a bail justice and have to wait until they can go before a magistrate. Which, if they get picked up on Friday afternoon, won't be until Monday morning, after a weekend in the cells.

Hun asks itself a very good question

2009-03-15T23:11:00.012+11:00

Indeed, Hun. Please do explain - what (apart from selling newspapers) have private photographs of a candidate as a teenager got to do with her election campaign?

"Accountability"? Get your hand off it, Robyn.

ELSEWHERE: Scott at Pure Poison slams Riley's offensively stupid effort, and Keri's got some questions, too.

UPDATE: Jonathan Green asks in Crikey:

Can you imagine a situation where 30-year-old nude photographs, of, let's see, Peter Costello, were presented to a Sunday newspaper editor and that editor, without having actually contacted Costello, saw fit to publish them?

Actually, yes, except for the "without having actually contacted him" part. I think they'd publish them like crazy.

Allowing = "pushing"

2009-03-14T22:38:00.001+11:00

Ah, homophobic bigots - they're amusingly lacking in self-awareness, aren't they?

Microsoft sneakily infects customers' computers overnight

2009-03-14T20:26:00.013+11:00

Um, no, Microsoft. Despite your sudden objectionably relentless "Office Genuine Advantage" harassment (which you won't let me remove), my copy of Office XP Pro is entirely legal and valid. (Isn't that what the shiny hologram stickers all over the disk were meant to ensure?) And guess what? I don't feel any need to jump through extra hoops now, seven years after I bought it, to prove that to you.

The only suggestion your nasty little nag thing will come up with to make the nags go away is that I download ANOTHER piece of your malevolent software to confirm that it's "valid" - to infect my computer with a second nasty piece of your DRM garbage to follow the unwanted malware you installed without permission on my computer yesterday via "automatic update" (now switched off) - and you know what? No. I am not running any more of your crap. I do not trust you. You clearly do not have my interests at heart. More than that, you clearly have nothing but absolute contempt for me as a (now former) customer.

I gather from the internet that if I send you my Office XP disk you might consider sending me a copy of your new, even more bloated office suite. And even if I believed that (I don't) - I DO NOT WANT YOUR NEW SHIT. I just want the software I bought seven years ago to still work. As it did yesterday, until you screwed it up. I do not want threats every time I turn it on. I do not want your garbage "genuine advantage" programs clogging up my computer resources every time it's restarted.

I am now downloading Open Office. I will never buy your software, of any sort, ever again. My next computer will run linux.

Go. To. Hell.

UPDATE: Open Office works brilliantly! Wish I'd dumped Microsoft years earlier.

UPDATE #2: A sweet, sweet sight:

I can't tell you how sure I am.

I can't deal with Lara again

2009-03-14T08:53:00.006+11:00

If the market worked, wouldn't there be a phone company out there that let you talk to a human without screaming at the phone and didn't try to charge you for the privilege of receiving a bill?

On those criteria, Vodafone's out. So far "out" that I am going to take some pleasure in warning customers away from them.

But to where? Do any of the following companies have a system whereby when you call for help you don't have to deal with a frustratingly stupid "voice activated" menu system and can get to a human being? Preferably in Australia?

~~Vodafone~~;
Optus
Telstra
3
Anyone else?

Your tales of phone company related frustration/murderous rage in the comments. Which other ones should future customers strike out?

Public services for the rich

2009-03-12T08:00:00.009+11:00

News.com.au reports on the upcoming Budget:

Among a raft of schemes being targeted is the Medicare safety net, introduced by John Howard to take the pressure off family medical expenses. It costs $300 million a year and the Government is looking to reduce that.

This is likely to see the scheme made off-limits to high earners, while the range of eligible medical procedures could also be wound back.

Whilst I approve in general of the principle of taxing the rich to provide decent public services for the poor, I actually think it's important that we do more than that - I want those decent public services provided TO ALL. Including the rich.

How is it a good idea to tax the rich to pay for Medicare and then send them off to pay for their own much better medical system as well? Not just because it increases their resentment ("Why am I paying for something I'm forbidden to use?") but because it actually works to downgrade the public system. If the powerful don't use the public health system, then they will care less about it, and it will get worse. Likewise public education.

Much better for the government to pay for the health needs of the rich and the education needs of their children just as much as it does for the rest of us. It would pay for this by taxing them significantly more than they're taking back out. The alternative is encouraging and expanding divisive two-tier systems on basic services, which are profoundly unjust. Why should any kid get a lesser education than some other kid simply because his or her parents won't pay for a better school? And why should any human being be pushed down the queue for medical assistance simply because they're not rich? Decent, first-class services should be available - but to everyone.

For example, I'd be more than happy if Melbourne Grammar, which I was once fortunate enough to attend, received more government money - provided that in exchange it didn't charge fees. Meaning that entry wasn't restricted to those children whose parents had not just the inclination but the means to pay. Because then that money is going to educate kids based on ability, and is available to the children of the poor as much as the rich.

If the public health and education systems were as good as they should be in a first world country like ours, then the rich wouldn't even feel the need to have separate doctors and teachers. If they do, then there's something wrong with the public offering.

Now I do object to public money going to things only the rich can afford - like private education and private health insurance. That just reinforces inequalities, and is effectively little more than a tax cut for the rich. But I don't object to public money going to basic, necessary services that everyone - rich and poor alike - can access. And should access.

Because we shouldn't be kicking the rich out of the public health system, or the public school system: we should be encouraging them back in.

Take that, nature

2009-03-12T07:10:00.002+11:00

Other nationalities' spirit, perhaps, but not Aussie spirit.

UPDATE: Some photos by photographer Neil Creek, taken at Kinglake a month and a day after it was destroyed. Heartbreaking stuff. (I'm still not particularly comfortable with the last image, and what has been used by the townsfolk to symbolise "solidarity and determination".)

Seriously, Lord, couldn't you have talked more about the things WE don't like?

2009-03-11T07:41:00.006+11:00

People claiming to represent "Christians" in general are outraged by the Australian government finally overturning the nasty, women-killing "gag rule" that prohibited Australian aid money going to medical clinics in the third world if they dared to also perform (or refer to organisations that would) operations that are entirely legal here - specifically, abortions.

Our accidental Senator (seriously, thanks ALP!) is up in arms about it, and the fundamentalist nutters who call themselves "The Australian Christian Lobby" despite only representing a very limited fraction of people who identify as Christian, are threatening TERRIBLE VENGEANCE upon the government.

There could be serious votes lost, if Malcolm Turnbull cynically keeps his mouth shut and lets the fundamentalists think he's on their side.

Anyway, I was curious as to how abortion came to be considered such a fundamental "Christian" issue - particularly since polls regularly show support for abortion laws at a figure which must include large numbers of people who identify on the census as "Christians". Because I have read much of the Bible, and I've never seen any passages in which this supposedly crucial issue was discussed. Is it like homosexuality, the other big "values" issue for fundamentalists like the ACL people, about which Jesus never spoke a word?

Yes, it is. There's no part of the Bible where abortion is spoken of directly, either in the Old Testament or the New. A fairly major omission for something that apparently defines so many Christians' votes (rather than the things Jesus actually DID speak about).

Writers with more patience than I have gone through each of the passages anti-abortion Christians use to try to back up their shouted claim that GOD HATES ABORTION, and pointed out how much of a reach the conclusion is.

In essence, to be persuaded by what they're shouting, you'd have to accept three not in any way clear propositions:

That God is real.
That the Bible, cobbled together as it is arbitrarily and from disparate materials by the early Christian church hundreds of years after Jesus died, is inerrant and unquestionably represents God's Word exactly as He intended it.
That God is implacably opposed to things He never specifically mentions; that verses on the face of it about entirely different things also OBVIOUSLY mean that God wanted us to view abortion as murder, even though He never says so directly, and there are at the very least equally compelling interpetations of those words that justify no such conclusion.

(And that's just considering their case on its religious merits, and ignoring the dire consequences for women when abortion is illegal, or the immorality of the state telling someone their body, their very being, is nothing more than an incubator over which they no longer have basic rights.)

Seriously, when will these people calling themselves "christians" start concentrating on the stuff that, according to them, Jesus actually did talk about?