POLITICS, POETRY & SATIRE
The beauty inherent in superb music leads and heals the planet, and Joan is a bewitching, transformatory artiste aware of her consummate power.
“The general feeling these days is trust no-one, all the media is lying to you … there’s such a sense of distrust in the air. For me, the most subversive you can be these days is to be totally honest, and to really laud beauty”.
Richard Neville and Julie Clarke’s book “The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj” gripped us decades ago – hard to believe he still remains awaiting trial in a Nepalese prison for passport forgery, with the prosecution stalling for lack of the old case file.
Earlier this month, the prosecution hedged the trial, saying they had not received the case file from the attorney-general’s office.
The trial that Sobhraj’s lawyers are eager to rush through and the state is stalling is over the crime charge Nepal police used in 2003 to arrest Sobhraj from a casino in the capital.
Police say he came to Nepal in 1975, using the passport of a Dutch tourist, Henricus Bintanja. Sobhraj has rejected the claim, saying he never came to Nepal before 2003, when he used a bonafide passport issued to him by the French embassy in Paris.
The fake passport case became important when the police further charged Sobhraj with the murder of American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975.
@intrepidteacher created these videos which express his thoughts and feelings about a unique learning place – the Daraja Academy in Kenya. Great music too!
Testimony from eyewitnesses, friends, neighbours and human rights experts about the incident tell the story of how a woman carrying a baby and white flag was shot in broad daylight by an Israeli soldier.
Nasser al Najar, Rawhiyya’s husband, still has the bloodstained white flag he says his wife was carrying when she was killed.
In 1949, the newly formed state of Israel, many of whose citizens had been victims of Nazi war crimes, signed the Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in time of war.
Among the conditions of the convention Article three states: “Persons taking no active part in the hostilities … shall in all circumstances be treated humanely.”
Article 32 states: “Civilian hospitals organised to give care to the wounded and sick … may in no circumstances be the object of attack.”
But during Israel’s recent war on Gaza there is evidence to suggest that these conditions were frequently ignored and that the Israeli military disregarded the laws of war.
Additional reportage on the horrific targetted killing of civilians by Israeli soldiers is at Al Jazeera.
In the SMH, Asher Moses reports that Opposition Senator Minchin has obtained legal advice that the conservative Labor government will almost certainly have to pass legislation to enable net censorship filters to be installed at ISP level.
With Senator Xenophon changing sides on the issue, net censorship legislation would be comfortably blocked in the Senate.
Senator Nick Xenophon previously indicated he may support a filter that blocks online gambling websites but in a phone interview today he withdrew all support, saying “the more evidence that’s come out, the more questions there are on this”.
…
Xenophon said instead of implementing a blanket mandatory censorship regime the Government should instead put the money towards educating parents on how to supervise their kids online and tackling “pedophiles through cracking open those peer-to-peer groups”.
Technical experts have said the filters proposed by the Government would do nothing to block child porn being transferred on encrypted peer-to-peer networks.
“I’m very skeptical that the Government is going down the best path on this,” said Xenophon.
“I commend their intentions but I think the implementation of this could almost be counter-productive and I think the money could be better spent.”
Of course, Rudd, Conroy and Co. might produce some juicy carrot to entice Xenophon back into the faith-based net totalitarian camp. Yet with recent polls showing immense public disagreement with the government’s censorship proposals along with overwhelming criticism from technical experts, the prudish Pixie mob will face an uphill battle to implement their ludicrous, unworkable filters.
This week, a national telephone poll of 1100 people, conducted by Galaxy and commissioned by online activist group GetUp, found that only 5 per cent of Australians want ISPs to be responsible for protecting children online and only 4 per cent want Government to have this responsibility.
A recent survey by Netspace of 10,000 of the ISP’s customers found 61 per cent strongly opposed mandatory internet filtering with only 6.3 per cent strongly agreeing with the policy.
