I just took part in the “Soapbox” public speaking competition, a little part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House.
Well I didn’t get past the first round, but it was huge fun. The “facilitators” in the red, green and yellow hats (if you were there, you’d know what I mean) did a terrific job of making it go well.
Anyway, in order not to waste my speech, here is the text:
Democracy demands terrorist software
We know that the government’s proposed Internet filters are half-baked and unpopular – but worse than that, they are really the very opposite of what we should be doing.
We know that power looks after power– the law is framed that way. And we know that money looks after money – by and large, the rich stay rich. Those in power can lose huge amounts of other peoples’ money and still grow their own millions. Just think of Telstra or Goldman Sachs.
Those in power now want to get their hands on our information so that they can control us. Elsewhere at this festival David Mutton is putting forward the appalling idea that – I quote – “intrusive, coercive surveillance” is somehow a good thing, and that – again I quote – “issues of privacy, informed consent and free will are irrelevant“. Now that’s what I call a really dangerous idea!
Those in power, in this case represented by the Minister for Broadband, Stephen Conroy*, want to stop us from having free access to information. But at the same time, security organisations now want to intercept and store every electronic message that we send. They want to track the author of every bit of information that is out there.
Those in power want to do this because they think they can. The Gestapo and the KGB also wanted to record the thoughts of ordinary people. And for very much the same reason.
Are we serious about democracy? Then we need genuinely free exchange of information. That means we need privacy and security software that · protects the identity of people who publish, ·that gives us free access to information, and · stops spies from snooping on our conversations.
We must do research into privacy software, not into filters!
*I wanted to quip “… or should that be Minister for Narrowband, or even Minister for Narrowminds”, but I didn’t have spare seconds in the two minutes.
According to an article syndicated, amongst other places, in the Sydney Morning Herald , Everton has hired Maori dancers to perform a dance based on the “haka” (as used by the New Zealand rugby team) as Everton and Arsenal run onto the park at Liverpool on Saturday.
The club has now, it seems, received “written threats from a leading Maori lawyer”, claiming that “the dance trespasses on Maori rights and disrespects their cultural heritage”. The club management, it appears, intends to go ahead, as indeed they should.
There are legal issues here, and there are also issues about modern culture. As to the legal issues, I am of course not an expert, but if the original “haka” is indeed traditional, then by definition it was not composed by those represented by the lawyer. Their claim is presumably based on genetic and cultural descent from those who first developed the dance. As an Englishman, do I have a right to prevent Maoris from performing (possibly bad) versions of Shakespeare? I think not, even though I do believe there is a Shakespeare way, way back in my ancestry. The dance has been used as part of the pre-match entertainment by Maoris for many years now. The idea that someone in New Zealand has some kind of intellectual right by means of which they can prevent someone doing a modified version of that dance in Liverpool, England, seems to be stretching the law a bit far. The club has indeed hired people of Maori appearance to do this dance, so in any case shouldn’t they be the target of the lawyer’s action? Those Maoris are the ones who are selling the dance to the club, after all. Here it is:
The whole question of the extent to which we have “rights” over the culture that was developed by earlier generations is one that interests me. (The meaning of “aboriginal painting” is an example of these muddy waters to which I hope to return one day.)
And then there is the question of culture. According to the article:
Intellectual property lawyer Maui Solomon told the Herald on Sunday he thought the haka, which starts “Everton! Everton! He, ha, he, ha!”, was “totally disrespectful”
As the Germans might say – “Na und?” And so? I have, of course, no knowledge of the hearts of the Everton management, and cannot comment on whether or not they respect Maori culture. In an ideal world we would all respect each other’s differences, although I certainly hope that would still allow us to make fun of them. Let us, for the moment, assume (perhaps unfairly) that they really are being disrespectful. Frankly, I do not want to live in a world where the appearance of respect is enforced by the law. Too many people have fought too long and too hard to win us the moderate freedom that we now have to speak our minds to have that thrown away for the sake of every group that feels threatened by the way it is represented elsewhere. We can make comical drawings and jokes about Muhammad, we can say that the Queen of England is a frosty old bat, we can satirise Christian priests, the Pope, Nelson Mandela, our Prime Ministers and other political leaders, not to forget the Dalai Lama or, indeed, “Western Buddhists” like myself. And we can giggle at Maoris sticking their tongues out, stamping the floor and going “Ha Ha”. I am not sure whether blasphemy is still on the statute book, but it has become, thankfully, a pretty irrelevant law. I would, let me repeat, hope that we have respect for each other in our hearts, and that we would therefore refrain from doing things like the above under certain circumstances, especially those where they are particularly likely to cause hurt or offence. But it would be a grim, grey, oppressive and oppressed world in which the law was used to impose the personal taste of the few on the general taste of the many.
The media here are making much of the young, net-savvy Iranians using social networking sites to get the news out. Most people believe the Iranian presidential election to have been rigged, most outside journalists have had to leave Iran, but the Iranians are said to be twitter-ing and facebook-ing away about what is going on. And don’t we just love it, because it is the Iranian regime that is threatened by the net?
So good. Freedom of information really does work in favour of democracy! Our governments should be financing research to keep information free, and to protect those who publish it – software to keep government snoopers out of our e-conversations, and to provide security and privacy. The Great Firewall of China, the Australian plans for ISP-level filtering, plans to keep logs of all e-mail exchanges – these are toys that would have made Big Brother green with envy.
Feuerberg’s article summarizes a report entitled “Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians,” released on Capitol Hill, June 4 – the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre – sponsored by Freedom House, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia. Its 80 pages find that four authoritarian states—China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela—are setting forth a new authoritarian model for countries to follow, and that they have the resources and sophistication to be highly influential in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Continue reading Global Free Information?
The Australian Government considers that knowledge about good methods of voluntary euthanasia should be forbidden, and would like to ban this website about the use of nembutal. Take note before it’s too late!
I guess I’m not entirely sure what I feel about euthanasia, but I’m quite sure that I don’t concede my right to know about these things to the government, or to a list that it draws up in secret.
I read that “cybercriminals are exploiting the worldwide hysteria over swine flu to peddle fake drugs and steal credit card details”. Symantec’s Mayur Kulkarni wrote in a blog that “the scare has spawned a spamming frenzy, like sharks smelling blood in the water”.
All of which underlines my curiosity about why we are panicking at all. Where is the sense of proportion? It’s not that I want to make light of those people who have been very ill – or even died – as a result of this disease. And I do presume that the WHO knows what is talking about, and that there is indeed some cause for concern. But what has actually happened so far? When I last read the figures (and that was yesterday, so they may have gone up since then, of course) seven people are confirmed as having died of swine flu so far in Mexico, over a period of a few weeks. Mexico City is said to be nearly at a standstill. But wait a minute! In a city the size of Mexico City somewhere getting on for 1000 people must die of one thing or another every day, some of them, no doubt, from flu. In America, more than 60,000 people die of flu each year – between 150 and 200 a day. Every one of those, presumably, was as unwanted as the deaths from swine flu. So far swine flu has been responsible for perhaps a few tens of deaths.
Once again, let’s not make light of it, and if the WHO is issuing warnings, no doubt we should take them seriously. Perhaps things will get very, very, very much worse than they are now. But why is there such a panic? Do we find this more comforting to worry about than things like the global financial crisis, Robert Mugabe, the Gaza Strip of the CIA’s “renditions”? Perhaps we feel that by going around in a surgical mask we can do something about this one, where we feel relatively powerless in other areas. Or do we somehow want there to be a pandemic? Does swine flu promise to satisfy an obscure yet powerful need for danger and alarm?
Perhaps there is something I’m failing to understand, and I do hope that I’m not tempting fate when I ask – what is all the panic about?
“Senior members of the Bush administration who approved the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures could face prosecution, Barack Obama said today, in a surprise about-turn by the president.” So says the Guardian today.
I’d been thinking that if ever I were caught out using violent abuse to “persuade” someone to do or say what I wanted, I could have tried to imitate the American government by claiming immunity on the grounds that it was all in the past, and that we should now be trying to move forward.
(Removes tongue from cheek.) I hope this apparent about-turn is a real one!
This isn’t the interesting, focussed blog you might have been looking for…
"Pica Pica" is, as I'm sure you knew, the name for the common magpie. It's no more than a collection of bits and pieces I wanted to make available for friends and family. I have other blogs for dharma related material (at DangZang), and a small one for translation at my work site.
At last the catalogue project that I began so long ago has reached a sort of completion. Improvement will always be possible, through more detail and ironing out mistakes. But at least I now know what I’ve got, and will avoid that embarrassing moment when you start reading a wonderful text that you ordered from […]
Happiness is booming: its stock is riding high. In 2012 you will be able, for a mere thousand Australian dollars, to take part in a conference on “Happiness and its causes” in Sydney. Unless, that is, you happen to want to join the additional workshops, which take another 700 dollars or more out of […]
Everton Haka
According to an article syndicated, amongst other places, in the Sydney Morning Herald , Everton has hired Maori dancers to perform a dance based on the “haka” (as used by the New Zealand rugby team) as Everton and Arsenal run onto the park at Liverpool on Saturday.
The club has now, it seems, received “written threats from a leading Maori lawyer”, claiming that “the dance trespasses on Maori rights and disrespects their cultural heritage”. The club management, it appears, intends to go ahead, as indeed they should.
There are legal issues here, and there are also issues about modern culture. As to the legal issues, I am of course not an expert, but if the original “haka” is indeed traditional, then by definition it was not composed by those represented by the lawyer. Their claim is presumably based on genetic and cultural descent from those who first developed the dance. As an Englishman, do I have a right to prevent Maoris from performing (possibly bad) versions of Shakespeare? I think not, even though I do believe there is a Shakespeare way, way back in my ancestry. The dance has been used as part of the pre-match entertainment by Maoris for many years now. The idea that someone in New Zealand has some kind of intellectual right by means of which they can prevent someone doing a modified version of that dance in Liverpool, England, seems to be stretching the law a bit far. The club has indeed hired people of Maori appearance to do this dance, so in any case shouldn’t they be the target of the lawyer’s action? Those Maoris are the ones who are selling the dance to the club, after all. Here it is:
The whole question of the extent to which we have “rights” over the culture that was developed by earlier generations is one that interests me. (The meaning of “aboriginal painting” is an example of these muddy waters to which I hope to return one day.)
And then there is the question of culture. According to the article:
Intellectual property lawyer Maui Solomon told the Herald on Sunday he thought the haka, which starts “Everton! Everton! He, ha, he, ha!”, was “totally disrespectful”
As the Germans might say – “Na und?” And so? I have, of course, no knowledge of the hearts of the Everton management, and cannot comment on whether or not they respect Maori culture. In an ideal world we would all respect each other’s differences, although I certainly hope that would still allow us to make fun of them. Let us, for the moment, assume (perhaps unfairly) that they really are being disrespectful. Frankly, I do not want to live in a world where the appearance of respect is enforced by the law. Too many people have fought too long and too hard to win us the moderate freedom that we now have to speak our minds to have that thrown away for the sake of every group that feels threatened by the way it is represented elsewhere. We can make comical drawings and jokes about Muhammad, we can say that the Queen of England is a frosty old bat, we can satirise Christian priests, the Pope, Nelson Mandela, our Prime Ministers and other political leaders, not to forget the Dalai Lama or, indeed, “Western Buddhists” like myself. And we can giggle at Maoris sticking their tongues out, stamping the floor and going “Ha Ha”. I am not sure whether blasphemy is still on the statute book, but it has become, thankfully, a pretty irrelevant law. I would, let me repeat, hope that we have respect for each other in our hearts, and that we would therefore refrain from doing things like the above under certain circumstances, especially those where they are particularly likely to cause hurt or offence. But it would be a grim, grey, oppressive and oppressed world in which the law was used to impose the personal taste of the few on the general taste of the many.