Usefully Useless

Alright, Australia, just what the hell is wrong with you? Something bad in the water down there? I’ve been covering your shenanigans on this blog and they’re getting more and more surreal.

One such surrealist, a certain Pauline Hanson, set her political career all about anti-immigration with her party One Nation. Like certain elements over here, she claimed it wasn’t at all racist.

Let that be forever buried: She’s becoming an immigrant herself! Why? Why doesn’t it count when she’s the immigrant? Apparently because she’s white.

And that’s not racist.

Pauline, my dear, can you pick somewhere other than Britain to bring your pathetic immigrant arse? We’re getting about full of racist pondlife, we plain don’t have enough ponds. I hear Siberia is nice at this time of year.

Australians, what the hell is wrong with you people? Is this some elaborate scheme to prove that you’re incapable of self-rule so we’ll take you back?

Answer? They’re all repressive power-mad regimes and they all want to censor Google. Wait, Australia?

Oh yes. Australia continues to hurtle along the line of a government approved Internet only. Clueless Communications Minister Stephen Conroy wants mandatory ISP censorship of any content ‘refused classification’ by the government and recently set his sights on dissenters on YouTube.

Wanting Google to filter YouTube of any comments critical to the rulers, Conroy stated in the state-filtered media “Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government,” moments after trying to justify it with “in Australia, these are our laws and we’d like you to apply our laws” where it’s clear that Conroy admires the Great Firewall of China and wants to build his own Great Internet Barrier Reef.

Google, naturally, told the repressive regime to go screw itself. Conroy’s comments come just days after Google’s spat with the Chinese authorities and Google’s decision to stop self-censorship in China.

The idea is that the Australian govermnent wants to block anything it doesn’t like the smell of using the Australian movie, video games and entertainment ratings board. If the government gives out a “Refused Classification” notice, said content disappears from the Internet.

Australia, you are a tiny economy and a negligible player on the world stage – Any prestige you may have was inherited from us. If you want a policy of isolation, don’t be surprised when people treat you as the totalitarian hell hole without respect for basic human rights that you are. You’re already facing huge skills shortages and let’s face it, a land which is variously deadly venomous or on fire isn’t an attractive target for skilled workers. Adding a power-obsessed regime into the mix makes it not just unattractive, but a place to avoid.

Hard-line extremism seems to be everywhere. Stop them talking about who’s god is bigger than who else’s, and you’ll find the BNP and Iran have a lot to agree on. Far-right extremist parties are popping up all over the place, typically playing on the hyped-up “Islamisation” card to convince people that doing as the Muslims do is a good thing, sacrificing your own freedom for some “greater good”. It doesn’t make much sense when put like that, does it?

The latest band of gullible idiots comes to you from Switzerland. Newcomers to the extremist brigade, the Swiss have recently decided that they’re going to ban minarets. Yes, you read me right, minarets. So much for the Swiss’ muchly bragged about “direct democracy” protecting the rights of the people, how can it protect the minorities from the tyranny of the majority?

The Swiss apparently agree with Iran that banning the construction of religious buildings they don’t like is the way forward. As Iran doesn’t permit the construction of Christian churches, the Swiss believe the Muslims are worth copying, so have pretty much banned the construction of Mosques.

Here’s a hint, you idiots, if you want to fight something you don’t generally accept and copy their beliefs!

So while Europe seems to be busy converting to extremism, is there really any need for external threats like the Taleban anymore? We’re quite capable of destroying ourselves, thankyou very much.

The BNP have always had a policy of misdirection, this is the root of all right-wing populist parties, especially the fascist ones. That is, they’ll lie and say whatever the hell it takes to win votes when their true motives are often the opposite.

One such fraud was unmasked as the liar he is. In a propoganda video he made, he spoke of three murders in the Barking and Dagenham area.

The only problem was that the “three murders” were entirely made up. Trying to patch the sinking ship, the BNP member in question (Richard Barnbrook, London Assembly), says his words “came out wrong” for one of the invented murders and he spoke “too soon” for the other two.

Expect more of this in the coming months as the general election looms. It’s a policy of the BNP to say what needs to be said and create what “truths” need to be created in order to defraud the vote from the public.

They never did sit well with the idea of democracy (they intend to outlaw elections) so this latest example of their hostility against core British values should come as no surprise from a party which, after all, is deeply rooted in very German and very anti-British ideals.

News: The US Senate has cancelled the F22 “Raptor” project.

My thoughts: About flippin’ time. The F22 was a disaster to begin with, an extremely temperamental superiority fighter (i.e. a Cold War relic) with an utter dislike of anything moist (the radar absorbing paint was ruined by rain, mist, fog, clouds!) and needing upwards of one day’s maintenance for each flying hour.

The only reason it got to production was the contractors spreading the work piecemeal out to almost every state in the US to maximise their lobbying opportunities! This, of course, increased expense and maximised the economic impact of the contract being cancelled. Used to sucking from the government teat for so long, shielded from the realities of a free market, military contractors are reportedly in disarray.

News: Ireland outlaws blasphemy

My thoughts: This will not end well. Ireland’s constitution is a legislative nightmare, guaranteeing free speech with one sentence and outlawing it with the next. The constitution itself both guarantees the right of free speech, but at the same time criminalises blasphemy.

Until last week, Ireland had quietly brushed it under the rug. If they were to define blasphemy by Catholicism, they’d have a whole bunch of very angry Protestants, Jews and Muslims who were outlawed. Define it by any one faith and you’ve just outlawed all the others. So the Irish legislation, mandated by its idiotic constitution, plain criminalises free speech, anything that causes “outrage among a substantial number of the adherents”. Now I don’t know about you guys, but there’s not a lot out there that DOESN’T cause outrage among a substantial number of adherents of ANY religion. The Northern Irish lot have been at it for GENERATIONS!

So who wanted this law? Crazed Catholics? Postal Protestants? Mad Mullahs? Rabid Rabbis? Violent Vicars? Well, no. The Irish politicians realised that their constitution demanded it and so put it into law. This is the danger of having a constitution in the first place, changing it is much more difficult than changing a ruling party, especially when it’s holding your nation to ransom. Worse still, a “paper dictator” always reflects the views and ideals of the time it was created, regardless of how outdated they may be today.

The Irish constitution is fundamentally incompatible with a free society and must either be discarded or amended. The Irish constitution weighs in with the following: The preamble says that all state authority is derived from the “Most Holy Trinity” and that public homage is due to “Almighty God” and that blasphemy is an offence that shall be punishable by law.

In more detail, the constitution is actually incompatible with itself.

Article 40.1 guarantees equality under law, protecting one group by oppressing another is not equality under law. Article 44.2 states the state shall not make any discrimination on the grounds of religious profession, belief or status which is clearly going on here. Article 44.2 further states that the people have the right to freedom of conscience and religion. The law moves the burden of proof to the defendant (who must prove he did not intend to cause outrage), a violation of the Irish constitution’s Article 38 and of the European Convention on Human Rights (Schedule 1, Article 6).

So as mandated by the Irish constitution, Ireland must violate the Irish constitution!

As many of you know, I’ve followed the War on Child Welfare closely in this blog. Nothing, however, could prepare me for the stunning revelation I got from my mother this morning.

She’s the “Child Protection Officer” for a local kids football team, at least one of the bigger ones. Her duty is basically to ensure that none of the parents who turn up to watch their children play sports are allowed to take photos. I am not lying and this is a legal obligation for all children’s sports if they want to compete in an officially sancioned league – And there are no other leagues.

What it essentially results in is these football teams disbanding since they’re grassroots organisations in small local leagues and they just don’t have the money to send someone on a legally mandated training course every year. They’re all self-funded, the government offers absolutely no help at all, other than legislation demanding that they spend money. That’s why only the bigger ones survive, the others are forced to close. There’s a close correlation between juvenile sports and reductions in juvenile crime, as well as the obvious health benefits.

To make matters better, club officials all need Criminal Records Bureau checks (CRB check), this is nothing new. However, a few years ago the law was changed so that a CRB check is non-transferrable. When I had an Enhanced CRB check done (“enhanced” means it shows even spent convictions) because I was working with children and vulnerable adults, it was valid no matter what I was doing or who for over its twelve month validity period.

That’s all changed, each different position needs its own CRB check, all identical, for the same person. In my mother’s case, she needs a CRB check to be a governor of the local primary school and an ECRB for her volunteer work with the football team. The ECRB for the football team cannot be transferred to the school. Even if they were both ECRB or both CRB, they could not be transferred, organisations have to pay the £70 even if the employee or volunteer already has a valid CRB certificate.

It all amounts to a war on child welfare and child health. By forcing these unnecessary expenses on children’s activity, sports and health groups, the government hopes to shut them all down.

Closely related is my kid sister’s dancing. She regularly goes to dancing competitions and, guess what? For “child protection reasons” photography is banned at competitions. Except by the official photographers… Who then put every photo online and try to sell them. (Link goes to one of her competitions). Exactly how is banning parents from taking photos of their children and then putting the “official” photos online for anyone to see and buy any form of “child protection”?

What does this government have against kids?

In an economically trying time, the parties of the left traditionally do best. The European Parliament election has taken significant swings to the right, what’s going on? Centre-right parties such as the Dutch PVV and extremists like the British BNP and French National Front, these are parties which wish to abolish minimum wage laws, cut benefits and clamp down on religious freedom. Why would people vote for parties which would make an economic crisis even worse?

The answer is that they didn’t, at least not knowingly. The right is traditionally populist, they will say what the people want to hear. So they run on campaigns of limiting immigration, wanting people to believe that immigrants are taking their jobs (truth is the average immigrant creates jobs by virtue of making the economy larger), this fits in nicely with the anti-patriotic nationalist views of these parties.

However, the right in Europe has long been marginalised. We can all remember what the Nazis did, their direct descendants such as the British BNP and French National Front had to wait until the bad feelings towards them subsided a little. This allowed a lot of other right-leaning groups who weren’t as extremist to pop up.

Hence the votes were fragmented among all these populist parties clambering over themselves to tell the people what they want to hear while hiding their true intentions.

The message from the voters was, then “We don’t understand politics anymore”, people who don’t understand how tremendously bad these parties would be are the ones who’re most easily taken in by their carefully researched populist messages.

It’s politics of the lowest common denominator.

A report from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (specific to the UK) concludes that “Awful things are said to happen on extremist websites and in Internet chat rooms, but few are able to identify what exactly it is that causes so much concern. As a result, many of the policy proposals that are currently in circulation are either irrelevant or unworkable.” (clicky for a longer analysis)

They go on to say that content filtering is likely to drive extremists underground and that extremists online anyway simply attract other extremists: Preaching to the converted. Recruitment and indoctrination are done offline, like with all religions.

This isn’t dissuading our insane Home Secretary, who seems determined to force on her political beliefs to everyone’s Internet by censoring anything she doesn’t like.