0% emissions, 100% renewable energy!

News for the ‘vox pop’ Category

Deaken University home of Censorship

Flicking through the news and amused by the b-tard trolling of that 11 year old shit talking YouTube user I came across an interesting article that claims this is a valid example of why censorship is a good thing. It’s irony is in the fact that all the dramu and trololol could be stopped simply by deleting everything, turning off her friggen computer, and going outside to play. Something that I, at 11, did a lot of. I definitely didn’t sit online talking smack about killing people gangsta style, whilst dressing like a pedobear magnet slut with my bra showing talking shit about how hot I am. Makes you wonder what kind of parents she has. Oh wait, that’s right. Her dad backtraced it.

I came across something very, very disturbing.

Professor Matt Warren, the head of Deakin University’s School of Information Systems, said as long as parents who don’t understand the internet kept giving their children access to it, there needed to be ways to control its use. “You simply can’t have free access to the internet,” he said. “It has to be controlled, censored and people have to be held accountable for their actions on it. “We punish people who drink, we punish people who speed and we have to implement laws to that effect when it comes to the internet.”

Prof Warren said that parents might think allowing children to access the internet in their bedroom was a way of helping them do their schoolwork, but the reality was, a lot of parents simply didn’t understand the medium. “The child isn’t ethically aware of what they’re doing,” he said.

Read more of the article at if you’re bored: http://www.news.com.au/technology/jessi-slaughter-and-the-4chan-trolls-the-case-for-censoring-the-internet/story-e6frfro0-1225894369199#ixzz0uDqfpNcT
This guy is a ‘professor’ at a ‘university’ of information systems, yet shows sophmoric and assinine examples of logical fallacy. I was going to use this post to @ tweet their universities Twitter account and rail at the guy, but a brief google search yielded a LOT of people are having the same backlash. “Professor Warren you are a moron..” starts on Tweet, along with many other amusing blog posts and tirades online at this douche: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=professor+matt+warren+twitter&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a
So, instead of slagging at him here, in trying to find a way to contact him directly I found that Deaken University had ‘locked’ access to their staff database. A phone call later, and: -
Name: Professor Matthew Warren
Position: Head of School
Centre: School of Information Systems
Area: Faculty of Business & Law
Campus: Melbourne Campus at Burwood
Tel: +61 3 924 46567
Email: matthew.warren@deakin.edu.au
Personal Assistant: Julie Asquith
Tel: +61 3 924 46628
Email: julie.asquith@deakin.edu.au
Don’t abuse it, but definitely give him a call (far better than an email) and explain to him that his views are detached from reality, and frankly he’s a dick who shouldn’t be teaching let alone a professor of anything. He brings the entire concept of a University into disrepute, given that uni’s generally promote openness of communication and education and censorship is never the right answer, period.
Posted: July 20th, 2010
Categories: critical thought, epiclullz, rant, vox pop
Tags:
Comments: No Comments.

Australian Coup: Backplot to conspiracy to Attack @kevinruddpm

As loath as I am to get into political debate or discussion on my blog, we’re in a unique position in Australia where we are currently having the leadership of our government challenged by another person who has backing of super sekkrit factions, factions who seem to make decisions on behalf of the Australian people as to who their elected representative is, highlighting the flaws of party-politics as opposed to direct-elected representatives.

Allegedly angered by a morning newspaper report leaked from the Prime Minister’s office, questioning her loyalty, Julia Gillard called senior powerbroker and fellow Victorian MP Bill Shorten. “It pissed everyone in the caucus off,” said a NSW senior factional leader. “And it pissed her off, too. She has been nothing but loyal. And to have that happen was not only stupid but unwarranted.” Sadly actions speak louder than words as our first female Prime Minister–something much overdue–may very well be in power through skullduggery as opposed to free election. This taints all progress of equal rights for women in Australia and will put the potential of our first female PM into a situation where people will point out that it wasn’t the fill of the people.

Just before Question Time at 2.30pm, the Deputy Prime Minister assembled a select group of Cabinet colleagues and co-conspirators. They had been trying to get her to challenge his leadership ‘for weeks’, giving strong backing to the claims from the Prime Ministerial office questioning her loyalty to the elected leadership and the will of Australian voters.

By late afternoon, Shorten, fellow Victorian Senator David Feeney, NSW MP Tony Burke and South Australian right wing factional leader Don Farrell went to see Ms Gillard in her office.

They had been conspiring for the past week and they wanted her to challenge. Powerful AWU boss Bill Ludwig told the ABC Mr Rudd is “toxic”. “We have a better chance of holding government with Julia Gillard that we would have with Rudd,” Mr Ludwig said. Former Premier Peter Beattie has backed Ms Gillard, telling the ABC “she is a very talented woman”. Transport Union boss Hughie Williams said Ms Gillard will prevail. “It’s quite obvious they have the numbers. We’ll have a new prime minister of Australia,” Mr Williams said.

Queensland Senator Barnaby Joyce said the overnight coup attempt against Mr Rudd has been engineered by factional leaders who have taken over the running of the country. “It is running on auto-pilot in the face of faceless people and faceless men who (were) never elected,” Senator Joyce said.

“We’re basically realising that the whole direction and metaphor of this Government was flawed and we’re off to – gosh only knows.”

It is interesting to note that many conservative biased media outlets are painting this as ‘loyal Gillard reluctantly challenges leadership’, media outlets that tend to follow the normative Liberal bias, however it should be noted that the ‘factions’ behind this coup are ultra-conservative Laborites and traditionalists as opposed to progressives.

Shortly after 7pm, Ms Gillard’s office called the Prime Minister’s Office and told them that Ms Gillard wanted to see the PM. The pair had been due to have dinner later in the evening at the Lodge. Mr Rudd was called back from a function to celebrate the 20th anniversary of parliamentary service for Senator Nick Sherry, around the corner from his office in the Ministerial wing of Parliament House.

With Ms Gillard was Defence Minister and fellow left-wing factional heavyweight John Faulkner, a NSW senator.

She informed the PM that she intended to challenge him for the leadership. She wanted a ballot. The pair remained behind closed doors for almost two hours.

As the two were locked in an intense negotiation, interrupted twice by Rudd loyalists Anthony Albanese and Lindsay Tanner, the factional leader from NSW Mark Arbib hit the phones.

Shorten, dining in the Canberra suburb of Kingston with colleagues including Sports Minister Kate Ellis, was also glued to the phone. But by 9pm the conspirators were confident they had the numbers to swing behind her should she decide to do it.

The answer was revealed at 10.20pm when the PM called a press conference and revealed he had been visited by Ms Gillard, and confirmed that the challenge was on, after media outlets erroneously claimed his press conference was because he was ‘resigning as prime minister’.

This morning, at 9am, she goes into a special caucus meeting with the conspiratorial bulk of the members of the NSW Labor Right, the Victorian Right, the South Australian Right and the Victorian Left behind her.

Queensland right-wing powerbroker, Senator Joe Ludwig, was also on board. The deal was that Treasurer Wayne Swan – the man who voted against Rudd in the spill against Kim Beazley – would be Ms Gillard’s deputy.

The Victorian Right had been courting Gillard for the past two weeks, urging her to challenge. “We can’t win with this bloke,” they told her. Ironically, if Labor enact a change in leadership the chance of them winning at the next election, or next several elections is slim to none given that trechery is not really smiled upon by the average punter.

Arbib, the NSW numbers man who put Rudd into the leadership in 2006, had been sounding out support among select MPs for a change.

The internal polling provided by the party’s national secretary Karl Bitar was worse than the public polling, which had already put the Government in a losing position. But some outlets Gillard’s loyalty prevented her from doing the unthinkable.

Posted: June 24th, 2010
Categories: critical thought, politix, rant, vox pop
Tags:
Comments: No Comments.

IT Crack Monkey @KevinRuddPM’s Reality Check Bounced

As most of my international readers (and let’s face it, that’s like 800,000 per week of you, Australia only has two modems, and we have to share) are aware, our government here have been pushing an agenda to ‘censor’ the internet with a mandatory ‘clean feed’ for some time. There were protests many years ago to try and stop them but the overall response of the average punter back when they could have made a difference was “It’ll never happen.” so as much as it pains me to say it, we kind of do deserve what we get with that. But recent pure asshattery to come from our parliamentarians–who are so detached from reality they can’t even operate VCR’s, which is ironic as you can’t even buy them anymore–is something that explains why anti-virus companies were very pro-filter.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communication (They don’t represent us, just batshit vocal minorities, I assure you) have stated that all Australian’s should be forced to install anti-virus and firewall software on their computers before being allowed to connect to the internet under a ‘new plan’ to ‘fight cyber crime’. And if their computer did get infected, internet service providers could cut off their connection until the problem was resolved.

Those are two of the recommendations to come from a year-long multi-million inquiry into cyber crime. They spent all the money on K-Rudd’s crack and then did an all nighter the night the findings were due. Results of the inquiry, titled Hackers, Fraudsters and Botnets: Tackling the Problem of Cyber Crime, were released last night in a 260-page report, there is no mention whether it met copyspace clearance however and may have been plagerised from first year ethics students at UWA.

In her foreword, committee chair Belinda Neal said cyber crime had turned into a “sophisticated underground economy”, before taking a rasping breath from the pipe under the table. “In the past decade, cyber crime has grown from the nuisance of the cyber smart hacker into an organised transnational crime committed for vast profit and often with devastating consequences for its victims,” Ms Neal said. I postulate whether she is referring to the ‘russian mobsters’ who ‘hacked’ a dentists website and ‘uploaded child pornography’ to ‘make money’ as Senator Conman Conroy stated when asked why a dentists office was on the super secret government black list.

During its inquiry the committee heard a growing number of Australians were being targeted by cyber criminals and that increasing internet speeds were likely to make the situation worse. Something we don’t inherently need to worry about in Australia given that we still pay several hundred dollars per month for speeds not exceeding ADSL1 technology branded as ADSL2+ with a lot of fine print that anything over 56k dialup ‘in their terms’ is ADSL2+ (forget international standards here folks).

It also heard the problem was costing Australian businesses as much as $649 million a year. Including dentists with large kiddy porn collections replacing their virtual store front. The committee looked at several different examples of cyber crime, including hacking, phishing, malware and botnets. They intently carried out this research by leeching torrents, using Back Orifice on inter-office computers, and asking each other for their banking details from fraudulent hotmail accounts, such as imnotsenatorconroy@hotmail.com.

Among its final 34 recommendations were:

  • The creation of an around-the-clock cyber crime helpline. This, I agree with. I don’t pay for phone calls so I will ring them and chant “Cocks, cocks, cocks.” until the end of time.
  • Changes to the law to make unauthorised installation of software illegal. What the fuck, seriously.
  • Companies who release IT products with security vulnerabilities should be open to claims for compensation by consumers. This I agree with. Microsoft, give me moneys.
  • Another of its recommendations was to create a new “e-security code of practice” that would define the responsibilities of internet service providers and their customers. Cocks, cocks, cocks.
  • The code of practice would see companies like Telstra give their customers security advice when they signed up and inform them if their computer ever appeared to be compromised. More fine print we won’t read and will click yes to.

For their part, customers would have to install anti-virus and firewall software before their connection was activated and endeavour to keep the software up-to-date. It pisses me off enough as it is when they ask what kind of computer I’m using to access the net, when half the time I’m not even using a computer at all, nor any OS they’d have heard of. Find me anti-virus software for my xbox, or my iPhone hard-booted to run Lunix (yes, Lunix, no, it’s not a typo)  please K-Rudd.

If a customer’s computer was infected by malware, the service provider could introduce gradual restrictions and eventually cut off their internet connection entirely until the machine was “remediated”. This implies that the Government will not only be ‘filtering’ us, but also packet sniffing our shit in a clandestine way.

This entire thing just makes me want to pre-emptively ring that hotline, or maybe Senator Conroy’s office. In fact, brb, cocks, cocks, cocks time.

Posted: June 22nd, 2010
Categories: critical thought, epiclullz, journalism, op ed, piracy, politix, rant, scams, technology, vox pop
Tags:
Comments: No Comments.

Why Australian’s Pirate, Survey Results from CoreData

Figures

I’ve always said if they don’t give us what we want when we want it we’ll pirate it. Screw going to the movies, my plasma is higher def than your projector and my sound quality is vastly superior. Screw waiting years to see 20 minute shows stretched to 1.5 hours of adverts, I’ll download my shows and watch them nao kthx. :P Below are the results of News Ltd’s survey, please note a lot of their inferences are based on the assumption that all persons answered honestly (ie: ‘rich get stingy’, more like people lie about their income, etc) so evaluate it with critical thought: -

WHY do people turn to the web to get TV shows, movies and music without paying for them when they know they should?

We asked more than 7000 illegal downloaders to tell us just that. Here’s the breakdown of their answers.

Overview

The online survey was completed by 7324 respondents who said they had illegally downloaded or streamed TV shows, movies or music in the past 12 months.

Respondents were asked to choose the most applicable reasons for illegally downloading or streaming media from a list of about 12 possible choices, for each type of media — TV shows, movies and music.

They were also asked how much they would be prepared to pay for a similar legal and convenient service if it existed.

Some of the key findings were:

CONVENIENCE was as much of a motivating factor as money for people who illegally downloaded or streamed media.

MORE than two-thirds of respondents say they would be prepared to pay for a similar legal service if it existed.

GEN Y is prepared to pay more for legal downloads of TV shows and movies than any other age group, while people between 31 and 50 are more likely to pay top dollar for music.

THE young (under 20) and elderly (61 and over) are least likely to say they would pay for legal content.

TV shows are illegally downloaded more regularly, and by more people, than movies or music.

Click here to read the original story

Read on for more results on each type of media.

TV shows

6694 respondents said they had illegally downloaded or streamed a TV show in the past 12 months. Of these, 86.8 per cent said they did so regularly.

When given multiple choices to explain why they illegally downloaded or streamed TV shows, most respondents chose:

1) I’ll have to wait too long to see it on TV (50.7 per cent)
2) I want to be able to watch it whenever I want (41.5 per cent)
3) It doesn’t have ads (38.9 per cent)
4) It isn’t shown on TV at all (35.9 per cent)
5) It’s convenient (35.6 per cent)

When asked how much they would pay for a convenient legal option, respondents chose:

1) $1 per episode (39.2 per cent)
2) Nothing (33.6 per cent)
3) $2 per episode (18.7 per cent)
4) $3 per episode (8.4 per cent)

Shows not so social: Less than 1 per cent of respondents said they downloaded TV shows to share them with friends.

Movies

5902 respondents said they had illegally downloaded or streamed a movie in the past 12 months. Of these, 72.7 per cent said they did so regularly.

When given multiple choices to explain why they illegally downloaded or streamed movies, most respondents chose:

1) Going to the cinema is too expensive (43.5 per cent)
2) It’s convenient (42.4 per cent)
3) I want to be able to watch it whenever I want (42.4 per cent)
4) It’s free (28.7 per cent)
5) It’s an old movie I can’t find on DVD or Blu-ray (25.8 per cent)

When asked how much they would pay for a convenient legal option, respondents chose:

1) $2 per episode (45.6 per cent)
2) $5 per episode (28.3 per cent)
3) Nothing (21.6 per cent)
4) $10 per episode (4.4 per cent)

Paying promise: More pirates said they would pay $5 per film through a convenient legal service than those who wouldn’t pay anything. The most popular choice was $2.

Rebel retirees?: Respondents aged 61 or above were the most likely of all age groups to say they illegally downloaded movies once a week or more.

Music

5712 respondents said they had illegally downloaded or streamed music in the past 12 months. Of these, 69.5 per cent said they did so regularly.

When given multiple choices to explain why they illegally downloaded or streamed music, most respondents chose:

1) I want it in MP3 format without copy protection (43.2 per cent)
2) It’s convenient (37.0 per cent)
3) CDs are too expensive (36.5 per cent)
4) It’s free (33.2 per cent)
5) I want to know if I like it before I decide whether to buy it (28.2 per cent)

When asked how much they would pay for a convenient legal option, respondents chose:

1) 50c per song (48.8 per cent)
2) Nothing (33.6 per cent)
3) $1 per song (14.7 per cent)
4) $2 per song (2.8 per cent)

The rich get stingy: Respondents with an annual household salary of more than $350,000 were more likely than other income groups to admit illegally downloading music on a regular basis.

The news.com.au illegal downloads survey was carried out between April 16 and April 22 in conjunction with market research firm CoreData.

This information is disemmination of news data as per the Copyright Act.

@KevinRuddPM, An Open Letter Re: Cigarette Tax

Dear K-rudd,

You know, that almost makes you sound like a rapper. I am writing this merely to mock you, knowing the people reading it will appreciate the tongue in cheek as I illustrate the ‘fair shake of the sauce bottle’ you’re dishing out to smokers. I’m aware you’re about as detached from reality as a politician can get, but I do know the 12 year old korean sweat shop workers you have in your off shore PR department will read this and hopefully also get a chuckle at your expense.

Smoking, filthy habit, right? Some say it’s as hard as heroin to kick. In Australia, the land of the ‘surprise tax’ as I like to call it (we’re already one of the most taxed nations yet we have ‘stamp duty’ tax on … everything, which is usually 10% (see: bankrupting on your first home or car purchase by surprise tax) as well as road tax, breathing tax, you fucking name it tax) but now we have taxes on taxes. Cigarettes were always taxed at a premium, where a pack of fags would set you back $7 in the 80′s and early 90′s as opposed to $1-2 outside Australia.

Smokers clog up the healthcare system, right? What with their dying all the time and stuff, why not tax them? Fine. Smokers pay a lot more tax than any other Australian, with almost 90% of the price of them being ‘tax’ all going to the medical system. But fuck giving them organs, they’re smokers. Hell, let’s tax them more. Now we’re nearing $1 per cigarette, and what happens? The price of ‘quit smoking aids’ which always work out to cost more than cigarettes go up too.

As much as governments pretend to want us to not smoke they realise that the tax they can milk out of us by keeping us alive an average 10 years more is far less than what they can by taxing our addiction. I say this as an intermittant lifelong smoker, who quits as often as he restarts, but fairs fair this new tax has gone way too far.

Heroin addicts get shooting galleries, social support, free housing, $380 a fortnight and FREE methadone to inject instead. Smokers get mortgages, bills, two point seven five children, two cars, and a fuckload of surprise tax on top of their taxed taxes of cigartaxes and placebo ‘quit’ substitutes that freely state in their instructions that they won’t give you the ‘fix’ or ‘buzz’ of cigarettes (and thus never last more than a week in a smokers addiction).

So, I propose this K-rudd, rather than making heroin far more appealing to Australian’s, how about you cut back on the smoking tax, or even it out across the three big killers, obesity (being the biggest killer in this nation) and alcohol (and see how long it takes until parliament house is burnt down and you’r nailed to the flag pole given how crazed Aussies seem to be about drinking (coming from a non drinker here)), which I might add are two elements I do not participate in. Maybe we should have photos of the mega-litres of fat sucked out of womens arses and thighs and the horrible chaffed cellulite gone necrotic fat people get attached to every edible product? Why stop there, why don’t we up the gore level and throw up some awesome pics from ogrish of splatter deaths from drunken road kills of people?

Or better yet, maybe repeal the tax and stop being a cunt, eh?

Much love,

BaSH (Your #1 Fan) PR0MPT

Ps: Why the fuck did I vote for him? I guess he was Obama before Obama, he looked good because the competition was horrendous, and promised the right things, then backflipped on all of them.

Posted: May 6th, 2010
Categories: critical thought, hypotheticals, op ed, politix, rant, vox pop
Tags:
Comments: No Comments.

Justin Boober in Sydney

7,000 screaming pubescent teenage females rushed the barricades like estrogen fuelled psycho hose beasts for the party frank of a 16 year old boy who resembles a 9 year old (polar opposite of a manchild) who sounds like a 12 year old girl.

What’s wrong with this picture? What the fuck is right with it? (If you answered nothing, read on, else beat yourself across the head, re-read, and repeat until enlightenment)

It’s 2010, when our prime minister lied about stopping Japanese illegal whaling, withdrawing our troops from America’s war against adjectives, and getting rid of the vile fuck-the-workers “work choices” scheme … we saw no one swamp the streets to protest.

In 2008 during the mandatory censorship protests we saw only 5,000 mob Town Hall to protest the decay of Internet freedom in our nation not to mention free speech at the draconian hands of Senator-can’t-program-a-VCR Conroy.

What is wrong with a society which has crazed teen girls acting like sleazy 40 year old men with their hand in their pocket over some kid? In what jilted fucked up take of reality do we see people mobbing barricades and police lines over some b-grade net celebrity? When did Australia turn into the US?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware that teenage females are the least intellectually gifted let alone autonomous minority in our society and I’m also aware that they’re brain washed to be the future of mindless consumption technicians that will keep our male workforce subjugated; but there’s something seriously wrong with parents who don’t discourage clearly unhealthy behaviour.

I don’t have children, well none that Centrelink can prove are mine, and I’m personally a fan of ‘late term’ abortions up to the age of 35, but seriously, seeing this in the news disgusted me.

These silly little trollops need to watch less OC/hills/jersey shore and get the fuck back into a classroom or better yet an adidas sweat shop. We boggle our logic to no end trying to figure out why women are paid less than men and have more dick-in-butt ratio in the socio-economic front yet allow borderline psychotic behaviour and encourage hive mentality and worship of TV-told-me-to tin gods. No male would get away with that over any female without their mates outright telling them they’re bent in the head and probably slap them around when they won’t talk about anything but their obsession. Not to mention the extremes many young girls go to (see: changing their online surnames everywhere to reflect obsessed marital fantasies) are just bizarre and unhealthy.

How young females can’t see that there’s no such tangible thing as a ‘fanboy’ but ‘fangirl’ is an ever present term and not appreciate that they’re jipping themselves out of individualistic thought or gender rights progression is beyond me.

Pre-pube girls, grow the fuck up. Pre-pube girl parents, put them in therapy you disillusioned cunts.

Posted: April 26th, 2010
Categories: critical thought, hypotheticals, journalism, lifestyle, news, oddities, op ed, pop culture, rant, reviews, vox pop
Tags:
Comments: No Comments.

The Abuse of Child Abuse

I came across an article by a journalist recently that discussed the abuse of child abuse and the utilisation of it as an excuse for poor life choices, below is a pungent passage that really outlines how these anti-abuse crusaders are truly batshit insane, direct link to the article after the excerpt: -

In her autobiography, In The Best Interests of the Child, Hetty Johnston, founder of Bravehearts and unquestionably Australia’s most prominent voice on child sexual assault, documents three childhood incidents that, as far as she is concerned, place her within the realm of the abused: the first sees Hetty and her sisters returning from the beach one day when “a man stepped out of a public toilet that happened to be situated in a park on our route and dropped his towel to reveal his nakedness”; the second takes place at the beach also, when an argument with an unknown adult results in the man slapping young Hetty in the face “so hard that I could only see stars for about five minutes”; and the third involves a man at an indoor pool who, while playfully throwing children in the pool, places “a hand in my crutch as he thrust me skyward.

“For me,” Hetty writes, “these occurrences have not left any indelible imprint but they do raise an interesting point. Statistically speaking, I had become the ‘one in four’ girls who had been sexually assaulted before the age of eighteen. But these were statistics I was to discover later in life. Right now, I was just a kid trying to negotiate the adult world. No big deal really.”

This passage is striking. Not only does it reveal to us the relatively commonplace occurrences that pass for “child sexual assault” in the minds of today’s crusaders, but it exposes them as incidents that, as unsavoury as they may be, are almost rites of passage for children of the modern world, blown off as “no big deal” by Hetty Johnston herself, one of the hottest, angriest winds in the current storm of hysteria. Could all this fear and counter-fear be about something which, for the most part, is nothing to get excited about?

To read more, go here: http://blogs.news.com.au/jackmarxlive/index.php/news/comments/the_abuse_of_child_abuse/

Posted: April 18th, 2010
Categories: journalism, lifestyle, op ed, vox pop
Tags:
Comments: No Comments.

The Great Australian Filter, Or Why RC Sucks

I was reading several articles on the usual rah rah fight the power stuff you see about the internet filter, along with typical neo-conservative bullshit as to why their morals should be enforced on all of society, then I read the following few paragraphs: -

“The Rudd Government does not support Refused Classification content being available on the internet. This content includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.

Under Australia’s existing classification regulations this material is not available in newsagencies, it is not on library shelves, you cannot watch it on a DVD or at the cinema and it is not shown on television. Refused Classification material is not available on Australian hosted websites.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and will probably have this thrown in my face at a later date, but … ever wonder WHY the internet is so popular? Because you can’t get good porn in a newsagent, fuck, when have you EVER seen a porn flick in a cinema? Or on TV? Maybe 60 year old pollies can get their budgie smugglers in a bunch over softcore nipple slips, but seriously.

It’s 2010, let’s all be mature here. Permit me another copy-paste: -

“Hunt’s 1974 study suggests that the demographic changes led to a significant change in reported occurrence. Males in 1974 were 4.9% (1948: 8.3%), and in females in 1974 were 1.9% (1953: 3.6%). Miletski believes this is not a reduction in interest but a reduction in opportunity.[9]

Nancy Friday’s 1973 book on female sexuality, My Secret Garden, comprised around 190 fantasies from different women; of these, 23 involve zoosexual activity.[10]

In one study, psychiatric patients were found to have a statistically-significant higher prevalence rate (55 percent) of reported bestiality, both actual sexual contacts (45 percent) and sexual fantasy (30 percent) than the control groups of medical in-patients (10 percent) and psychiatric staff (15 percent).[11] Crépault and Couture (1980) reported that 5.3 percent of the men they surveyed have fantasized about sexual activity with an animal during heterosexual intercourse.[12] A 1982 study suggested that 7.5 percent of 186 university students had interacted sexually with an animal.[13]”

This is ganked straight from Wikipedia. Another quote from Wikipedia on HUMAN sexuality: -

“The largest and most thorough survey in Australia to date was conducted by telephone interview with 19,307 respondents between the ages of 16 and 59 in 2001/2002. The study found that 97.4% of men identified as heterosexual, 1.6% as gay and 0.9% as bisexual. For women 97.7% identified as heterosexual, 0.8% as lesbian and 1.4% as bisexual.”

So whilst I’m well aware that the statistics used were from the US, let’s also point out that they were in the 70′s, before the internet has opened the minds (and beds) of billions of people to freaky shit.

Now let’s just take a minute to evaluate things. The ACMA is trying to enforce morals and values of the average Australian. What is the average Australian in 2010 with internet access? Do we find bestiality that abhorrent? It’s popularity in no way validates it as being moral, or right, nor does it’s immorality imply it is inherently wrong as let’s face it, on my shelf in my study I have a book published in the 70′s of human psychological problems and paraphillias, and listed amongst all kinds of fucked up stuff is homosexuality. That’s 30-40 years ago. Attitudes change, society becomes more open minded, or at least tolerant of the fact that it’s no ones business who fucks what in the where as long as it doesn’t involve abuse, harm, or illegality, right?

I’m not so much defending merely bestiality; let’s face it sexualised violence is NORMAL in porn. Be it Rocco Sifreddi turkey slapping the neighbourhood bike through to gently-gently spank me I’ve been bad crap it’s absolutely beyond any doubt blown into the mainstream with BDSM becoming almost ‘trendy’.

So what do we do here? Do we blanket arrest people who participate in bestiality and sexualised violence? I’m not even going to TOUCH on the issue of kiddy fiddling that is indefensible, however the pedo’s will still be trading their filth on CD’s in flea markets or where ever rock spiders hang out these days, but the fact of the matter is that blanket arrests seem dumb for people who like spankings, right? So to does the idea of censoring MILLIONS of internet users access to the net at a MANDATORY level of ‘RC’ content when your concept of ‘RC’ is so fucking outdated that it makes your tie look en vogue.

In conclusion, Senator Conroy and the nanny state Waffen-Shutzstaffel … kindly fuck off.

Posted: April 8th, 2010
Categories: lifestyle, op ed, politix, pop culture, rant, vox pop
Tags:
Comments: No Comments.

Goodbye Democracy, Alo Presidente (Or: Chavez is a muppet)

As we learned last summer in Iran, whenever a dictatorial regime senses trouble in Totalitarianville, one of the first things it does is tighten its grip on the media. And whenever the thick walls of censorship go up, Twitter is there to slip through the cracks.

Case in point: Venezuela, where we may be witnessing the signs of an Iran-like brouhaha. With its economy floundering, crime rates skyrocketing, and civil unrest escalating, Venezuela isn’t exactly the happiest place on Earth these days. In the face of this discontent, President Hugo Chavez has decided to step up his propaganda game and has unleashed a major campaign to suppress any oppositional media outlets. When five cable stations recently refused to broadcast one of his speeches, Chavez ordered them to shut down operations, a decree that set off a firestorm of protests, police intervention, and the eventual death of two student dissidents.

The catalyst behind most of these protests is, of course, Twitter, which anti-Chavez activists have used to organize demonstrations and to spread their cause internationally. Dissidents have also taken to Facebook, where a group titled “Chavez esta PONCHAO!” (“Chavez, you struck out!”) is already 80,000 members strong. Chavez, not surprisingly, has undertaken efforts to squash this social media mini-revolution, going so far as to equate Twitter, the Internet, and text-messaging (?) with “terrorism”. As FOX News reports, Chavez has promised a “radical” response to the Twitter-fueled uprising, and has already “launched an army of Twitter users to bring down online networks and try to infiltrate student groups.”

Chavez used his weekly propaganda television and radio show ‘Alo Presidente’ to rally Latin America behind the ’cause’ of his Argentine counterpart Cristina Kirchner by making a direct demands to Buckingham Palace.

“Look, England, how long are you going to be in Las Malvinas? Queen of England, I’m talking to you. The time for empires are over, haven’t you noticed? Return the Malvinas to the Argentine people.” ignoring the fact all occupants of the Falklands are British citizens and don’t want a bar of South America and their petty dictators.

Still addressing the Queen, he went on: “The English are still threatening Argentina. Things have changed. We are no longer in 1982. If conflict breaks out, be sure Argentina will not be alone like it was back then.”

He described British control of the islands in the South Atlantic as “anti-historic and irrational”.

Mrs Kirchner sought to win new allies in Argentina’s claims to the islands when she made a direct appeal for support at a meeting in Mexico of the Rio Group of Latin American and Caribbean countries. Venezuela and Nicaragua rallied to Argentina’s side even before Mrs Krichner’s appeal, and it was reported that Brazil was ready to support any resolution backing Argentina’s sovereignty claims.

Argentine anger is likely to increase after Desire Petroleum, the British oil company that has towed a rig from Scotland to about 60 miles off the north of the Falklands, announced on Monday it had begun drilling, the natural gas and oil surrounding the Falklands are naturally the only reason Argentinians suddenly interested, as most South American countries are in dire financial shape.

Argentina is attempting to hamper oil exploration, insisting last week that all vessels using its ports must now seek permission if they plan to enter or leave British-controlled waters. Argentina wants other South American countries to impose its transport restrictions to the Falklands but it is unlikely to win support from those closest to the islands such as Chile and Uruguay.

Chile, Argentina’s traditional enemy, has long been a major supplier to the Falklands. An operations manager of a Uruguayan shipping agency who came out to Port Stanley on Saturday to discuss business was dismissive about the effectiveness of the latest Argentine decree.

Meanwhile, passengers from the British cruise liner Star Princess disembarked at Port Stanley on Monday for a day trip after the vessel reported leaving Buenos Aires with no demand for permission to sail to the Falklands.
Stepping on to the jetty for a few hours watching penguins or touring one of the battlefields from the 1982 war, passengers said the ship’s captain had reassured them several days ago it was “perfectly safe” to get off at when they reached the islands.

However, Maurice and Sylvia Bellamy from Felixstowe reported some unusual Falklands-related advice had been issued over the ship’s tannoy system.
“They told us we had to refer to the islands as the Falklands when we were there but as the Malvinas when we were in Argentina,” said Mr Bellamy, 74.

Argentina wants other South American countries to impose its transport restrictions to the Falklands but this would mean that they, too, could miss out on the lucrative profits from providing refining and port facilities if, as drillers believe, large amounts of oil and natural gas are retrieved off the Falklands.

###
Related Articles
Latin America backs Argentina in Falkland dispute
Falkland Islands: Argentina can’t scare us, say islanders
British cruise ship tests Argentine blockade in Falklands
Shares in oil explorers connnected to Falklands rise
British firms could be hit in Falklands oil revenge

Posted: February 25th, 2010
Categories: journalism, op ed, politix, vox pop
Tags:
Comments: No Comments.

Skating & Censorship

Two things made me facepalm today, I was going to tweet about them but after many rewrites it was impossible to squeeze either into 140 characters.

Skatestan. Australian skaters in Afghanistan trying to use skating as a segue to engage kids there, a nation where 50% of the population are 16 and under.

The organizers pointed out that girls thrashing boys gives them a life lesson that they can do anything men can. I can’t help but wonder how many stonings will derive from changing one element such as the belief of Afghani women.

Sure, empowerment is good, but when you forget to tell the boys a girl beating them doesn’t mean they can flog her; well that’s plain silly. Need I even mention the fact skateboards will just provide suicide bombers with a way to go out kickin’ rad style? :P

The second is Anonymous DDoSing Australian government websites. It merely reaffirmed politicians detached-from-reality belief that the Internet is a haven of criminals and kiddy touchers. Especially given every anon and ther dog were throwing themselves, curtains and all, at the press wanting to get their name in print; such awesome soundbytes of “Don’t fuck with our porn!” isn’t marginalizing your cause at all!

Posted: February 10th, 2010
Categories: op ed, pop culture, vox pop
Tags:
Comments: No Comments.

 

Twitter Facebook MySpace Flickr YouTube rss2


SponsoredTweets referral badge