Most astonishing (to me, anyway) is that one of the Christians leaders is Anglican.

Calling the religion an ideology driven by world domination, a submission to the Land and Environment Court yesterday said a proposed school at Camden was a “beachhead” in Islamic takeover of southwestern Sydney, threatening the Australian way of life.

The attack, co-signed by local heads of Baptist, Anglican, Presbyterian and the Evangelical Sisters of Mary churches, formed the spearhead of Camden City Council’s defence to a court challenge over its rejection of a development application for the Muslim school.

“Islam is not simply a private religion. It is driven by a powerful political agenda, it is an ideology with a plan for world domination,” the letter said.

“The Quranic Society application to establish an Islamic school in Camden is typical of a regularly repeated pattern to form a beachhead in an area for the development of a sub-culture which, for the most part, regards its own legal system as superior to the current Australian law.”

True Christian ecumenism in action.

He recalled the bloody past of Turkey’s national hero.

The Turks are seething over remarks Mr Atkinson made about the role of one of the country’s towering figures, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in the tragedy that engulfed its Pontian or Black Sea Greek minority between 1915 and 1922.

Kemal was the commander who broke the hearts of the Anzacs at Gallipoli and then held out a hand to Australia by declaring its fallen soldiers would forever be sons of Turkey. He is revered in his homeland as the founder of the modern Turkish republic.

After doing the honours at the launch of a plaque commemorating what he called the “genocide” of Pontian Greeks by Turkish nationalists led by Kemal’s forces — a contention flatly rejected by Ankara — Mr Atkinson poured petrol on the flames by declaring that anyone who disputed this version of history was practising a form of “holocaust denial”.

When Alan Ferguson, Deputy President of the Senate, criticised Mr Atkinson’s speech, Australian Greeks became outraged. After Mr Ferguson apologised, it was the Turks’ turn to be outraged.

Mr Atkinson, however, has not backed down.

h/t: Tongue Tied 3

Earlier this week, ACMA banned a graphic but legal anti-abortion website. With this latest, entirely predictable, fiasco, the whole censorship scheme is looking more foolish with each passing day.

A BUNGLED list of “banned websites” is not official, the Communications Minister says – but the matter might be referred to the Australian Federal Police.

“ACMA is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police,” Senator Stephen Conroy said.

A dentist’s practice, a tuckshop convener and a kennel operator in Queensland have all been wrongly included on the list of websites to be censored.

The owners of the websites are furious their small businesses have been implicated on the list, which includes links to child pornography, rape, incest and bestiality websites.

ACMA insists that Australians caught linking to or otherwise distributing the ”secret” list could face criminal charges and up to ten years in prison.

h/t: Australian Politics

On March 10, ACMA issued Sydney web hosting company Bulletproof Networks with an “interim link-deletion notice” for allowing its customer, the Whirlpool internet community website, to post the link to an anti-abortion web page blacklisted by the regulator.
[...]
The interim notice, obtained by The Australian, stated that on February 19, ACMA received information that a Whirlpool forums page “may contain links to other websites that may contain ‘prohibited content’ or ‘potentially prohibited content’”.

According to the notice, ACMA determined that end-users in Australia could access the content on the blacklisted web page.

ACMA gave Bulletproof around 24 hours to act.

And act Bulletproof did. Whirlpool removed the prohibited link in very short order.

ACMA sent the notice after it received a “complaint” about “offensive content” from an anonymous internet user.

h/t: Australian Politics

A LESBIAN couple who said having two IVF babies instead of one damaged their relationship have won an appeal against their doctor and been awarded $317,000 [Australian] in compensation.
[…]
During the initial proceedings, the ACT Supreme Court heard that following the twins’ birth, the mother had lost her capacity to love.

The couple’s relationship had also suffered as they became mired in everyday tasks associated with raising two children.

Andrew Bolt nails this one:

Blessed twice over and they sue. What kind of mother has love for one, but none for two? And when do they tell one of their children that they were unwanted and caused their mother to stop loving?

The court should have told them to grow up, get out and act like real mothers.

I feel sorry for both of their kids.

During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne’s northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council’s help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. “We’ve lost two people in my family because you dickheads won’t cut trees down,” he said.
[…]
Another resident said she had asked the council four times to tend to out-of-control growth on public land near her home, but her pleas had been ignored.

Policy changes are “likely”, promised Nillumbik Mayor Bo Bendtsen, but Mr Spooner said it’s too late now, isn’t it. The man has a right to be angry, I’d say.

Vindication has come to an Australian family that was prosecuted for illegal clearing of trees.

THEY were labelled law breakers, fined $50,000 and left emotionally and financially drained.

But seven years after the Sheahans bulldozed trees to make a fire break — an act that got them dragged before a magistrate and penalised — they feel vindicated. Their house is one of the few in Reedy Creek still standing.

Columnist Miranda Devine says green agitprop is now a proven killer.

It wasn’t climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend. It wasn’t arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought. It was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts, and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation to protect themselves.

But the ideologues have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Burnoffs following Victoria bushfires a ‘threat to biodiversity’
[…]
A Department of Environment spokeswoman confirmed yesterday it had received a public submission to list controlled burning as a “key threatening process” – the same category that applies to climate change, land clearing and feral cats, pigs and foxes.

The fires have probably killed millions of animals in Australia. Doesn’t that qualify as a “threat to biodiversity”?

h/t: Australian Politics

The book was self-published and sold only seven copies when first released. The offending paragraph refers to an unnamed fictional “Crown Prince” who had many wives and concubines, some of whom he treated disgracefully. (The paragraph’s full text can be found about halfway down this page.)

Freedom Against Censorship Thailand thinks the prosecution of Harry Nicolaides is a part of a larger plan to intimidate the Thai people.

So why did Thai government seek to pursue its lèse majesté case against Harry Nicolaides? They did it to appear tough, to declare open war on any commentary surrounding the monarchy and to create a climate of fear in Thailand in which censorship would be accepted as necessary. They picked a weak target to demonstrate even foreigners were not immune.

The conviction and sentence are major news in Australia. Nicolaides’s family is blasting the Australian government for not doing more to keep him out of jail. The foreign minister has asked the Thai government to pardon him.

In Thailand, however, the media are barely reporting the controversy because they don’t want to risk being perceived as criticising the royal family.

Strangely, the book has not been formally banned and is available at Thailand’s National Library.

Australia’s No2 with people-smugglers

So, who’s No. 1?

PAKISTANI people-smugglers recommend Australia as the second-best destination for seeking asylum after Canada, according to one of the 134 Asian and Middle Eastern asylum-seekers intercepted off the Australian coast since October.

Sadiq Bahram, an ethnic Hazara from Afghanistan who has reached Australian waters twice from Indonesia since 1999, said known in Pakistan were former police officers who charged $US15,000 ($21,000) for passage to Canada, $US10,000 to Australia and $US9000 to Europe.

In the first interview with any member of the seven boatloads of asylum-seekers now living or being detained on Christmas Island, Mr Bahram said: “They tell me Canada is the best, second is Australia and third is Europe but I tell them I want Australia, I love Australia and its people …

How long before Mr Bahram appears in an Australian tourism ad?

h/t: EuropeNews

The Australian left isn’t saying much about it, so it falls to the libertarians at Britain’s spiked to spread the news: The proposed scheme to impose compulsory filtering on Australia’s internet originated with “progressive” Clive Hamilton and the Australia Institute.

The Australia Institute is a think tank established by Hamilton in 1994 to lobby for increased government regulation over market forces. It ‘participate(s) forcefully in public debates’, with the express aim of developing policy initiatives which ‘reassert the place of ethics’ by prioritising ‘justice, equity and sustainability’ over economic efficiency.
[…]
Hamilton and the Australia Institute began their campaign for internet censorship back in 2003, with a deliberately targeted media splash, based on some rather spurious research supposedly documenting the evil effects of porn on Australian youth (for more detail see here).

This is all written up on the Electronic Frontiers Australia website (see here and here), but has remained largely unmentioned by the major ‘left’ blogs in Australia, which have tended to oppose the censorship scheme anaemically, at best.

Agitation for internet censorship made little progress under the Liberal Party government of former Prime Minister John Howard. After last year’s victory of the “far more moralistic and authoritarian” Australian Labor Party under Kevin Rudd, however, the campaign moved into high gear. Mandatory ISP-level filtering is now moving toward implementation.

This Saturday, 13 December, rallies against internet censorship are scheduled for Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, and Perth. Click here or here for more information.

Queensland’s Deputy Opposition Leader Mark McArdle told parliament today that teachers were being advised to reconsider their pen choice because it may offend children.
[…]
“Given your 10-year-old Labor government presides over the lowest numeracy and literacy standards of any state in Australia, don’t you think it’s time we focused on classroom outcomes rather than these kooky, loony, loopy, lefty policies?” Mr McArdle asked.

Premier Anna Bligh called the question trivial at a time of “such economic peril”.

Whatever happened to “Children are our future”?  Notice how quickly the kiddies get tossed under the bus when some clueless government bureaucrat produces an asinine policy document.

h/t: Tongue Tied 3

The key shortcoming is ISP filtering will slow down the web to all Australians by as much as 60 per cent, depending on the sophistication of the filtering program that your ISP has in place.

Australia has one of the slowest broadband delivery systems in the OECD and if Conroy has his way, it’s going to get a lot slower.

There is also solid evidence that the system will be ineffective and unnecessary.

[I]n the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) 2005 report, Kids Online at Home, 50 per cent of parents trusted their children not to head off to the web’s dark corners and 67 per cent of parents reported supervising their children’s internet use to some degree.

The overall view of the report is that there are filters currently in place and that these filters are of the safer, saner type, stemming directly from parental authority.
[…]
The rock spiders who download this [child pornography] material do not Google search their way onto a web site. For the most part, paedophiles operate in sophisticated and complex networks and rely heavily on peer to peer (P2P) technology which ISP filtering cannot prevent.

This is shaping up as another costly and pointless government boondoggle that will have negligible effect on the alleged problem but will impose huge costs on citizens who have done nothing wrong.  Kinda like Canada’s gun registry.

h/t: Andrew Bolt

AN Aboriginal group plans to sue the Victorian Government for ignoring its heritage in the renaming of Mount Niggerhead, a mountain in the Alpine National Park.
[…]
State Environment Minister Gavin Jennings pledged last week to rename the rocky outcrop Jaithmathangs, after one of the traditional languages of the Bogong High Plains.

But another Aboriginal nation, the Dhudhuroas, says the peak is part of their country and the proposed new name is just as offensive to them as Mt Niggerhead.
[…]
“This is offensive to our people. The Jaithmathangs are from the other side of Omeo, which is miles away. The name is linguistically and culturally inappropriate.”

The government is planning to go ahead regardless. Dhudhuroa members are considering legal action.

h/t: Andrew Bolt, whose readers have lots of good suggestions for an appropriate name.

THE Federal Government is planning to make internet censorship compulsory for all Australians and could ban controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia.

Australia’s level of net censorship will put it in the same league as countries including China, Cuba, Iran and North Korea, and the Government will not let users opt out of the proposed national internet filter when it is introduced.

The government admits the censorship scheme will not stem the flow of child pornography and other illegal material because it will not cover peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

This is shaping up like Canada’s gun registry: A complete waste of taxpayer money and government resources. I hope the CRTC doesn’t get any stupid ideas from Australia’s pointless political charade.

h/t: Australian Politics