Mark Newton, a network engineer with Australian ISP Internode, is becoming very well-known as a result of his opposition to the Australian Government’s plans to censor the Internet. He’s published an article called “Filter Advocates Need To Check Their Facts” today at the ABCs website. I am sure that Newton knows far more than I ever will about computer networks, but if he knew much about politics, he would know that the facts are neither here nor there. His article has a superior, sneering tone all the way through it, and anyone who opposes Internet censorship in Australia needs to drop that attitude and work out how to actually win this argument.
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Last December, in the middle of the political dead season, Australia’s Minister for Communications, Stephen Conroy, announced that the then-newly-elected Rudd Labor Government would start up a compulsory filter of the Internet. Back then, Senator Conroy laid down the line that we will hear again and again from the Government:
“Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of
the internet is like going down the Chinese road,” he said.“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.”
Continue reading ‘Defeating Australia’s Internet Censorship Plans’
Academic Paul Norton has written an article at left social-democrat blog Larvatus Prodeo. It’s about the Senate’s Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee’s Inquiry into Academic Freedom, and specifically about a submission by the “Make Education Fair” campaign (pdf, over 4 1/2 Mb), which appears to be run by right-wing Young Liberals and the Australian Liberal Students’ Federation. Norton’s article is in response to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald of Friday October 10th, 2008, headlined “Academics Rally Against Young Liberal Witchhunt”.
Most of what Norton says about the Make Education Fair submission seems fairly true. While some of the examples may be true (there’s rarely enough proof to clearly say that bias is as bad as they say), it’s a reactionary document, which seems to push the idea that any sort of university course that questions the status quo is illegitimate in itself. It’s also poorly argued and appears to take quotes out of context to push its point.
But pointing that out is like shooting academics in a barrel where free wine and cheese are on offer. Norton’s argument against the Make Education Fair campaign is that it is a threat to academic freedom. This appears typical, as it is repeated in this article by Katharine Gelber, an academic at the University of New South Wales, and this page at academicfreedom.com.au, set up by the NTEU (the academics’ union).
Continue reading ‘“Academic Freedom” is a cop out by the fearful liberal-left’
The Brisbane GoMA (Gallery of Modern Art) has a new show starting mid-November. It’s called Optimism and it’s about contemporary Australian artists. I really like the poster, and we should be quite impressed with GoMA’s record this year.
First, Andy Warhol, then Picasso’s Collection. Both very popular (Warhol got over 120 000 individual visits) and this shows that GoMA management are thinking hard about what sort of ambitious major exhibitions will bring in a lot of interest from the public. I think this is a very positive way for a big cultural institution to act, and it’s one of the reasons I feel optimistic.
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There is an online argument brewing about an attack on Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) Associate Professor Dr Anthony Burke, among others. The attack on Dr Burke was published in a Quadrant Magazine article, written by Mervyn F. Bendle. Bendle argues that Burke represents the “political Left” who have taken over academic terrorism studies, “with all the anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-terrorist, and postmodernist ideological gobbledygook that entails”, and appears to suggest that Dr Burke should not be employed by ADFA.
I went to visit the Sidney Nolan: A New Retrospective exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery yesterday. I didn’t know much about Nolan except for his famous Ned Kelly paintings.
(For non-Australians, Ned Kelly was a famous bushranger (highway robber) who was hanged in the late nineteenth century, and is still an iconic Australian figure today – Nolan’s paintings of him were used as the basis for costumes of some of the dancers in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games opening ceremony).
Of course, seeing the images on screen is unsatisfactory compared to seeing the real thing, but if you’d like to browse some of Nolan’s work you can start here at a Google image search.
While I admire Nolan’s technical skill, I kept feeling that much of Nolan’s work – especially after his early period – both represents and re-inforces an Australian cult of failure that is one of the most damaging forces standing against a progressive culture in Australia today.
Continue reading ‘Sidney Nolan and Australia’s Cult of Failure’
I’ve just set up a Twitter account for Strange Times. That means that anyone who wants to can get an SMS message on their mobile phone when a new story gets posted here.
You can either follow the above link and sign up for a Twitter account, or just send an SMS message saying “follow strangetimes” to +447624804123
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