GEORGE ORWELL….. You would love this..

George Orwell.   You know the author of the book 1984.   The story of a world where repression reigns, and everything that people do is watched and monitored. Not a happy world at all.

Well look what’s happening in my part of the world..   We have a state election which is going to happen in March.  Our government today announced laws that made it that if you were to make political comments prior to and during the election period you had to give out your full name and postcode for any comments that get published.

South Australian Government gags internet debate

• From: AdelaideNow
• February 02, 2010 8:30AM
• 325 comments

Anonymous comments banned for SA election

• Michael Atkinson says speech still free
• Media says censorship is ‘draconian’

SOUTH Australia has become one of the few states in the world to censor the internet.

The new law, which came into force on January 6, requires anyone making an online comment about next month’s state election to publish their real name and postcode.

The law will affect anyone posting a comment on an election story on The Advertiser’s AdelaideNow website, as well as other Australian news sites.

It could also apply to election comment made on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The law, which was pushed through last year as part of a raft of amendments to the Electoral Act and supported by the Liberal Party, also requires media organisations to keep a person’s real name and full address on file for six months, and they face fines of $5000 if they do not hand over this information to the Electoral Commissioner.

‘Still free speech’

Attorney-General Michael Atkinson denied that the new law was an attack on free speech.

“The AdelaideNow website is not just a sewer of criminal defamation, it is a sewer of identity theft and fraud,” Mr Atkinson said.

“There is no impinging on freedom of speech, people are free to say what they wish as themselves, not as somebody else.”

Mr Atkinson also said he expected The Advertiser to target him for sponsoring the law.

“I am also certain that Advertiser Newspapers and News Limited will punish me personally, viciously for being the attorney-general responsible for this law,” he said.

“You will publish false stories about me, invent things about me to punish me.”

The Advertiser’s editor, Melvin Mansell, said: “Clearly this is censorship being implemented by a government facing an election.

“The effect of that is that many South Australians are going to be robbed of their right of freedom of speech during this election campaign.

“The sad part is that this widespread suppression is supported by the Opposition.

“Neither of these parties are representing the people for whom they have been elected to govern.”

The Right to Know Coalition, made up of Australia’s major media outlets including News Limited, publisher of The Advertiser and parent company of news.com.au, has called the new laws “draconian”.

“This is one of the most troubling erosions of the right to free speech in Australia for many years,” Right to Know spokeswoman Creina Chapman said.

Ms Chapman also pointed out that newspaper blogs such as AdelaideNow were moderated and publishers and broadcasters took responsibility for the material they published.

Liberal doubts

Opposition justice spokeswoman Vickie Chapman said yesterday while the Liberal Party had supported the amendment to the Electoral Act, she believed it would be too broad to implement if it included Facebook and Twitter.

Ms Chapman said Mr Atkinson should introduce a regulation to limit its scope.

“It is clearly not the intention of what we understood that to be,” she said.

The SA law – which could also apply to talkback radio – differs from federal legislation, which preserves the right of internet users to blog under a pseudonym.

The law will apply as soon as the writs for the March 20 election are issued. The writs for the election can be issued any time between now and 25 days before the election. The law will then lapse at 6pm on polling day.

And within the same day they have now made a backflip on this.  Saying that the laws will be repealled, with a caveat….. They will repeal them after the election.  A bit presumptuous don’t you think?

Attorney-General Michael Atkinson vows to repeal election internet censorship law amid reader furore

• Derek Pedley From: The Advertiser
• February 02, 2010 11:00PM

ATTORNEY-GENERAL Michael Atkinson has made a “humiliating” backdown and announced he will retrospectively repeal his law censoring internet comment on the state election.

After a furious reaction on AdelaideNow to The Advertiser’s exclusive report on the new laws, Mr Atkinson at 10pm released this statement: “From the feedback we’ve received through AdelaideNow, the blogging generation believes that the law supported by all MPs and all political parties is unduly restrictive. I have listened.

“I will immediately after the election move to repeal the law retrospectively.”

Mr Atkinson said the law would not be enforced for comments posted on AdelaideNow during the upcoming election campaign, even though it was technically applicable.

“It may be humiliating for me, but that’s politics in a democracy and I’ll take my lumps,” he continued in the statement.

R Rated Videos will be almost hidden from view…. I hate conservative governments.

[url]http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/industry-alarm-at-r-rated-cover-up/story-e6frg6nf-1225819431495[/url]

FILM distributors are alarmed by new laws that quietly came into effect in South Australia this week restricting the promotion and display of R-rated movies.

Adults aged over 18 seeking to buy or borrow a copy of Mad Max, the acclaimed desert war drama Three Kings, starring George Clooney, the Brad Pitt classic Fight Club or the 2009 Blu Ray release of Sasha Baron Cohen’s fashion parody Bruno will now find them in plain packaging displaying nothing more than the film’s title.

The rule will apply to titles for sale or rent unless those titles are quarantined from all other audiovisual materials, in an area signposted with a warning.

Under changes to the state’s classification act, which came into effect on Sunday, businesses will face fines of up to [B]$5000[/B] for displaying a “poster, pamphlet or other printed material” for films classified R18+.

The new law applies to general outlets containing films with classifications lower than R18+, and not adult-only premises.

Several distributors expressed surprise at the announcement of the law coming into effect, saying they had learned of it only yesterday. Potential Films managing director Mark Spratt, who has distributed numerous R-rated titles, including the contentious French drama Romance, said he was “gobsmacked”.

“It’s gone completely under the radar,” Mr Spratt said.

Plain packaging would prevent consumers making informed decisions about these films, including critically acclaimed titles such as Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now, he said.

“It’s certainly discouraging people to look for these films, discouraging shops from stocking them and (creates) an extra hassle for (distributors),” Mr Spratt said. It also had the potential to harm retailers in South Australia as consumers who wanted to buy the titles with their packaging intact would shop interstate or online.

The law was announced by the office of South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, whose conservative campaigning is well known to the film industry.

Foyer stands and posters, cinema ads and billboards for R-rated films are unaffected.

This is just insane

So now movies like Bruno, Mad Max, and Three Kings will not be allowed to be on open display in shops but just in plain packaging with just the movie title on them.

Err what sort of jerkoff law is this?

And how much will this affect the retailer who now will have to store the covers to their products so that a plain wrap cover can be put on some with just the title.  This is the kind of censorshop and lunacy countries like China do with their censorship of the internet and police state…

The Fucking Japanese….. Japs why do you want our whales?

For being the biggest bunch of dickless wankers….

The Japanese have illegal whaling vessels in our oceans near Antarctica hunting whales for so called “scientific research” and in 2007 the government promised to investigate this and they did but the photos taken were “too offensive to the Japanese” which is a load of bull …..

Now the Sea Shepphard who patrol those waters to watch the Japanese have had one of their ships rammed by a Japanese ship and what does our government do.  They sit on their hands and say “we’ll investigate this”  in other words do nothing.

There is no need in 2010 for whaling of any kind why can’t the bloody Japanese just piss off and go back to their own country and hunt whales in their own oceans?

Just pisses me off that we have such spineless politicians in Canberra.

A little rant about technology.. Phone Cameras. Arrrrgh!!!!!!!

See this is something I have a problem with with technology. Why do we need cameras inside everything we buy? Even my fucking Nintendo DS has a camera inside it, and I just found out that the new ipod now also has a camera.

It’s bad enough some twit thought phones would be better if we put cameras inside them. I just don’t get it. Can someone explain to me why phones need a camera? Who thought that was a good idea.

Why do you need a camera in a phone, or in an ipod, or games consode. It’s just cramming too many different technologies and ideas into one box that I frankly think we don’t need.

I no longer have an ipod. I didn’t like the propriety nature of the files for music and the fact it can’t play a wide range of formats. I instead bought a nice generic brand mp3 player with 8gig capacity and it plays almost anything I can throw at it and doesn’t have any DRM or other nonsense. Best of all it has no fucking camera.

Even Steve Wozniak former founder of Apple thinks the Iphone will soon be dead because it’s too restrictive and won’t let the user customize it. Look him up, he talks about that in a recent interview he made.

Late Term Abortions….. I feel very torn

So here we go… I think abortion is something all women should have access too. Especialy in caases where their life might be in danger if they continue with carrying the baby to full term, or if they are the victim of rape and did not want to have the child. No objection to any of the above.

But when I saw the pic in the other thread which I found I really felt torn becuse it was a late term abortion at 23 weeks.. I just feel torn that anyone would wait that long to have the procedure. I admit it made me feel a little squeamish.

OK not showing the picture because I don’t wish to offend anyone but here is a link for you to make up your own mind..

Dilation And Evacuation Procedure At 23 Weeks Old

Better Late Then Never

Well it’s back to blogging…. Better late then never. What have I been up to? Not much hehe… I’ve been busy in the photo world with a few photo shoots now under my belt and a few lined up for the future.

Half the problem is finding models to work with. Half the time they act like “Precious Princess” and will give you the run around till they finally decide that they will work with you and do a shoot.

Luckily I have only met one or two girls that fit the bill for “Precious Princess.” They are funny people actually, one insisted that I have some bottled water for her at the shoot, and the other insisted that we shoot at a certain time of the day, and begrudgingly I agreed to both of them and did the shoots.

Oh and here have a look at my links below.

And there you go another day, another blog.

The first link is for my DA (DeviantArt) page where 90% of my photos are located on the net.

This is the link to my Model Mayhem profile. This is where my official page is which I use for most of my work.

LEGO Star Wars on the Nintendo DS You bastards I want my money back.

What a fucking crap game.

I have the PC verion and it’s beautiful to play. The PSP version is even fun to play but I just got this on the DS and it’s craptactular and not worth the money I paid. I am going to try and get my money back….

I got to the second part of the first SW episode and on the way to Mos Eisley you have to change characters all the time. Well this is kind of sucky….. I got to the part where you had to free R2D2 and C3PO from a jail cell. I did that and they followed along then I changed to R2 because the enxt part of that level requires a door to be opened by him. You have to pass through an archway in a wall. But the little droid got stuck inside the wall graphics and that ended up bogging the game down and turning the fucking screen all wonky.

So first thing next week when I have calmed down sufficiently is I will trek down to EB Games and complain loudly about the crap game I bought. Aren’t these things ever tested? And that’s not the only bug.. Sometimes in the cantina where you start from you can jump through furniture or even walk through things you shouldn’t…….

This game sucks on the DS…. Nintendo fanboys of course will love this game to death….

What’s the point of being honest or living an honest life?

Is living an honest life a good thing, or should we all just bend rules and obfuscate truth and honesty wherever possible?

OK watching CSI NY tonight and this thought crept into my head.  The topic of the episode was the untimely death of this woman who was a “problem solver” in that she gets paid to make messy problems or situations go away.  Such as people who may want to sue the police commissioner of sexual harassment. She made the claimant go away and shut up.

Anyway the episode started with her being found dead. Everyone is looking for her and a flash drive that she carries that has all her files and dealings on it.  Many high up in society are now nervous that the contents of this flash drive may come out.  So obviously reputations are on the line to say the least…

I got to thinking OK this is fiction but what would be the worst that could happen if a nosy reporter or such got their hands on the flash drive ane leaked its contents in the newspapers?
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What I’m pondering from this episode is this.    If everyone is so corrupt that they wanted this woman dead and all her files hushed up if they were found then what’s the point of living an honest life?

Why teach kids to be honest when all the adults running the world do shady deals and other stuff? Why not teach kids that to get ahead in life you should lie, cheat, and backstab people around you?

Anyway I await your thoughts….

Well Mr. Rudd…. Is This Australia Or Are We Now A Defacto State Of China?…..

And with that I begin my very first rant….

For some time the Rudd ALP government in Australia has been toying with the idea of internet censorship.  But this won’t be done on a voluntary basis where individual computer users can add filter software to their own computers and control what they themselves see or not but it will be imposed on every internet user as they want the ISP’s themselves to shoulder the burden of filtering the internet.

This smacks of over zealous government as far as I am concerned, and it’s the kind of thing you will see on mainland China where the government actively filters and censors their own internet. Even google had to makc changes for Chinese users.  This sucks. 

This whole push has been done also without first asking the people if they want it or not. It’s also being fuelled by conservative religious groups and independent polliticians allied to these groups, who wish to push the censorship barrow.

The other thing that is quite interesting and bizzar IMHO is that this is all being done almost in secret.  There has been very little to no publicity about what they want to do and the whole process of implenenting this upon the populace.  Feels quite fascist and tyrannical, that they are not making any public statements about this.  At this current point in time they are supposed to be trialling the actal filter hardware with ISP’s but it’s very hard to get actual information on the trials unless you dig around.  Other forums have been discussing this such as  the Whirlpool forums and much discussion has been had over there..

Well with that in mind I now open the floor to your comments.