Religion and Anti-Aircraft Cannons

From the guys that brought you "Hamas Booby traps a school AND a zoo", here is the sequel "Hamas hides an Anti-aircraft cannon in a mosque" (via LGF)




Please note that these are the same people that at least a 1,000 people were protesting IN SUPPORT OF, in Melbourne, Australia on Jan 4, 2009.

(Protest sign outside the State Library, Melbourne, 2009 - source)

(You certainly don't speak for me or the majority of Australians you pro-Hamas seditious cow,
Jan 4, 2009, Swanston St, Melbourne - source)

Get your hands off my Feed!

shot of crowd at the Anti Internet Censorship rally in Melbourne, Saturday 13th Dec

So on this rainy Saturday afternoon, the No Clean Feed people organized a protest against the Australian Government's proposed internet censorship scheme. About 200-300 people turned up and they had about half a dozen speakers from ISPs, Amnesty International, Electronic Frontiers Australia, "Internet professionals" (not quite sure what that guy did) and some 'random dude' (more about Mr random later).

some dude from an ISP (Sorry, I didn't catch his name - ed)

A couple of take-away points:

• The scheme will use a blacklist of web sites that every internet company will be forced to use.
• This blacklist will be decided by the government.
• This blacklist has been 'protected' by Freedom of Information laws (FoI) so that ordinary Australians will not know which websites have been banned, and therefore will have no recourse to protest the banning of certain websites
• Telstra and Internode (Australia's largest and 2nd largest ISPs respectively) have point blank refused to take part in the trial.
• The proposed scheme will only prevent people from accessing certain websites. Illicit material swapped via peer-to-peer (P2P... think Napster or Kazaa) or any other mechanism that doesn't involve a web browser will not be stopped. For those not technically minded, I can assure you that the "bad people" on the net rarely use webpages to trade in their stuff.
  
  

The speakers for the most part all made some good points, and the temptation to compare the proposed internet censorship scheme to Hitler's bookburning was there in full effect from some of the more politically aligned speakers.


The crowd composition was mixed; families, IT workers, socialist activists, turtles.

An Anti-Censorship turtle?

I saw one keffiyeh and Mr random, as part of his speech against censorship asked the crowd "Did you know that there has been a genocide going on in Palestine for 40 years?" with some mutterings of assent from the crowd.

Now, for Mr random to say that would rather suggest that his internet at home is already being filtered by his own very misguided views. Also he started his speech saying "My dear old mum had a saying: I might disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it." The more astute of you (or anyone who can use Google) may have noticed that Mr random's dear old mum did not invent this quote, it was the french philosopher Voltaire who said "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

Now I'm all for using quotes, whether they be from Mr random's dear old mum or one of the Enlightenment philosophers, but if you do use a grandstanding quote, I would suggest you attribute it to the right person, otherwise you might look a little 'foolish' however he clearly had the crowd on his side and those that might resent his misappropriation of a quote (ie. me) kept quiet.

St George slaying the dragon of censorship

All in all, not a bad turn out. If the socialist group organising the rallies can realize this issue transcends the usual left/right perspectives, they will have a greater chance of success. If, on the other hand, they use it simply as a springboard to indoctrinate individuals into socialist activism (which, by my conversation with the earnest young lad where I signed the petition, seemed to be going) they will be battling against the usual political apathy of the average Aussie, which is legend.

The crowd about to start some chants on the steps of the State Library

Negative coverage in The Age?

This is just awesome.
(Full link here [http://www.theage.com.au/national/local-muslim-clerics-accused-20081120-6ctp.html] because The Age doesn't have a stellar record at keeping archived articles or making it easier to search for them)

Clearly I don't believe that the misogynistic elements of a certain faith are "awesome", only that this story is reported on the front page of The Age. And that is awesome. Because our media organs are reporting some "uncomfortable" facts without couching it in multi-cultural-politically-correct-tolerance terms. The editorial board fight between the multi-culturalists and the feminists about covering this story would have been history-making. I'm glad the feminists won. I hope they keep winning.

It says women, community and legal workers and police involved in the consultation were particularly concerned about domestic violence, and suggested that imams aimed to preserve the family at the cost of women.

And a bit further on:

The report also cites sexual assault allegations connected with under-age marriages.

Note: this isn't in some backwater 3rd world middle eastern country. This is in Melbourne. Australia. OK, Shepparton is mentioned as well, but I still consider that part of Australia.

Community members quoted in the report believe that imams' narrow religious training in an increasingly complex world, lack of life experience, poor English and lack of understanding of Australia create problems for the community. For example, ill-informed comment by imams drew a wedge between the mainstream and Muslim communities.

Well...duh....

But we can't have this kind of reporting without some dissembling from the imams to make up the 'balance':

The secretary of the Board of Imams, Sheikh Fehmi Naji El-Imam, said he could not understand how the council could write such a report and denied the complaints "absolutely".

"They must have heard stories here and there and are writing about them as though they are fact," he said.

Note that the report was using "community members" as the source for their stories, clearly members of the Islamic community in Melbourne. But Sheikh Fehmi denies them "absolutely". That's fine. The Sheikh's 'religion' denies "absolutely" the separation of Church and State, which works for us quite fine thank you, so clearly denial runs deep (and not a river in Egypt).

The fact that this report was commissioned by the Howard Government and reported positively on the cover of The Age may force me to rethink my opinions of this left-wing propaganda leaflet broadsheet.

Here's some further (slightly nicer) coverage on the Sheikh and his faith:

"Cleric vows to end segregation in mosques"
<http://www.theage.com.au/national/cleric-vows-to-end-segregation-in-mosques-20081121-6e4u.html>

Good luck with that...