Is it art or is it pr0n? Australia decides it's ALL filth Australian painters and photographers may soon need to watch their step, as an overhaul of child pornography laws in New South Wales looks set to remove the defence of "artistic merit" from the statute books. The issue arose when Police raided an exhibition of works by Melbourne artist Bill Henson in May 2008. They were …
the cover of Nirvana's "Nevermind" (with the little naked boy in a swimming pool)
that "virgin killers" album cover
a large number of parents (i'm sure they've got pictures of their kids as naked babies)
Manneken Pis in Brussels
Need i say more? my state government is (and has been for a while) a useless bunch of reactionary prats.
So presumably the NSW police will be raiding churches and public buildings across the country to tear off and destroy all those disgustingly pornographic cherubs and other statuary, and burn all those mind-warping religious paintings containing them too.
And I suppose they'll have to ban Valentine's Day too - that Cupid is clearly dangerous..
Australia is rapidly disappearing up its own backside as it tries desperately to shield its citizens from everyday life. This new law will have some extremely unpleasant fallout, not just from artists but other mediums that use nudity as an artform. A recent game I played called The Void has a large number of nude figures in it, although unusually for a game, these most definitely fall within artistic bounds than voyueristic. The recent changes in the law will prevent such games becoming available there.
I applaud Rebellion's approach to the issue - rather than release an edited down version of the new Alien vs Predator game, they simply refused to release it there, pausing only to make an extremely derogatory remark about Australian censorship.
If I remember correctly, quite a few books actively encourage women to have sex during pregnancy as it can strengthen and work the downstairs muscles!
The perverts writing these horrendous texts should be arrested immediately for peddling this wicked filth and actully making money from the sales of these books! They should be taken out and flogged in public! Hanging is too good for 'em!
BRING BACK THE CAT!!!
"The report recommends that once such material has been found to be unlawfully pornographic, whether or not it is intended to be art is irrelevant."
Depending on how you read it, this is either circular or specious. Nudity really isn't pornography. I have absolutely no desire to look at this sort of thing, but the principle is appalling.
It's gone from: "What can we censor? Anything illegal."
To: "What's illegal? Anything we've censored."
It makes perfect sense, provided you accept that pictures in and of themselves can be bad, and that you accept people cannot be held responsible for their own actions. Why make fine distinctions? It's All Bad, Mate. It even appears that this wonderful warmhearted bint from the local think-of-the-children pressure group thinks the mere existence of "bad" pictures is harmful to "the children". Does that sound perfectly sensible to you?
I for me don't agree there should be laws against possession of pornographic pictures, and further think that if you assume people cannot be held responsible it makes no sense to even try and punish them. So, what are they up to anyway? Is this some sort of perverted tax or fill the prisons racket? Call it yet another puritan surf trip gone wild on the moral panic wave.
Paris, for her childlike innocence.
This kind of witch-hunt nonsense makes me wonder more about the state of mind of the lawmakers rather than anyone else. They clearly have serious and hugely suspicious problems about their own and other peoples' sexuality. Perhaps THEIR homes and computers ought to be the first to be checked out?
Looks like I have to destroy all those photos of the family in the sauna. It might be a Finnish art, but the kids don't have any clothes on so it must be something pervy according to these backward, Victorian-minded morons. Since when has the naked human body been anything but natural (except in those gentlemen's magazines with the bits hanging out and arms and legs all over the place - highly unnatural)? I think some of these "consider the kids" fanatics need a right good wotsit*.
The fact is that people who are a danger to little kids (and big kids) don't care if they are dressed or not, or what they are dressed in. It's the same as rape - it doesn't matter to a rapist what a woman is wearing. The more you put taboos on things and associate non-sexual things with sex, the more you increase the interest and excitement. Ask any Catholic about it. And ask a few Swedes about the opposite effect - commonplace is boring. What we need is a bit more grown up thinking rather than radicalism.
Looks like some Australians think that everyone must be a criminal. Is that because they're all a bunch of ...
... better stop there or my Aussie cousin might get a bit miffed.
* you can buy wotsits from your local supermarket in the UK. It's a potato snack. They may even have magical powers to cure the mental problems exhibited by some Aussies**.
** There is no solid medical evidence of this, but it's just as valid a proposal as banning genuine art.
Time was when an image of a naked child symbolized innocence. Decades ago I had a landlord who had hanging proudly on the wall of his living room a photo of two of his children as toddlers, naked as jaybirds, confronting a long-horned cow on a beach. A photo that won a contest and was published in the newspaper for all to see.
Now the dirty-minded fundies can't see naked children as anything other than evidence of depravity. Do they (the fundies) realize how transparent their objections to depictions of the human body are?
And worse, they are succeeding in imposing their hyper-sexualized view of nudity on entire populations.
I saw a clip of some Oz fundie railing about skimpy swim suits on the beach and topless women sunbathing. He was a withered old fart who, I would guess, hasn't had an erection in decades, much less the opportunity to deploy said engorgement as God intended. It was laughable. Perhaps there was an element of jealousy, too, in that he couldn't don Speedos in public without causing gales of laughter.
Interfering busybodies, just like those who run the NuLabour Nanny State in Britain.
We here in Britain will catch up within a few years. People I once thought were sensible support the idea that drawings are no different to real pictures. These people at the same time seeing no problem with pretend violence. We white English sourced folk are terrified of sex in all forms it seems, I wonder if it's because the rest of the world is better at it?
Right on mate, got it in one.
We Aussies are in our overcrowded Tardis and headed straight for the first millennium complete with cheer squad and fearless leader Rudd at the helm. Pronouncements from on high say we'll be in plenty of time for the First Crusade--95 years in fact.
A few of us who were forcibly dragged on board however have niggles about the iPhone not working, no electricity, no El Reg, no penicillin when the plague hits and that the en suite mightn't even have a grassy floor but rather one of mud and s#@!
[Warning to minders: ensure that fearless leader's blinkers and rose-coloured glasses remain on until arrival. We wouldn't want any last minute change of plans, now would we?]
Isn't it already illegal here for new things? Remember the guy who is now a registered sex offender because the parents of some kids wanted him to make a picture of them (the kids) as fairies and he'd taken images for it that he was intending on converting?
The west is fucked. You know, thinking about it, I'd be happy living in Japan even though I'd be working a 6 day week, stupid hours, and only 4 days holiday a year for very little money. Has to be better then living in the west.
Are they planning to use those full-body scanners at Ozzie airports?
Are they planning on scanning children or assuming that terrorists/drug couriers won't use them as unknowing "mules"?
Are they going to arrest anyone looking at those images?
...Hilarity ensues.
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." -- Lyndon B. Johnson
It does seem like the world in general has started down a scary conservative path in the last few years. It is no longer rational law but extremist or fundamentalist law. Perhaps it is harder to see it as it happens because such laws are truly meant to be for the good of others. But, often it seems that instead of making a conservative law for rational reasons, they make a radical law for conservative reasons. The worry is, once started down such a path it is hard to stop. What is next to be censored? When does it end? After we burn the libraries? When the only people who are free to think and act are the ones willing to break the law?
>>Perhaps it is harder to see it as it happens because such laws are truly meant to be for the good of others.
Orwell knew about that kind of "meaning well":
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/history/european/2397-the-60th-anniversary-of-orwells-1984
Forget all those stories about he-man Australians who come home from wrestling crocodiles and drink a few tinnies of lager from the eskie while the Sheilas admire them.
Apparently they can't handle anything to do with sex, and are terrified of it. What a nation of wimps they must be. After all it's their own government saying this so it must be true.
Unfortunately, it's not a joke, a new puritanism has hit Australia and the average kangaroo-brain hasn't realised it yet.
We other few Australians with slightly larger sheep-sized brains, having failed to find a solution to the crisis, mull around in paddocks awaiting the sheep dog to round us up for slaughter.
"The arts community might be concerned about the loss of their rights" The arts community? What about every person in Australia?
Personally, I'm fed up with these pinko, left-wing liberals; it's obvious to me that any picture of a child can only be for sexual gratification as there's no-one left with any sexual maturity greater than that of a nymphomaniac bonobo on heat.
it's the reactionary, conservative politicians proposing this as they try to please their right-wing supporters. NSW politics has been firmly in the grip of the the Right for many years now. Please don't try to claim it's anything to do with the Left in any form. The Left are the sort of people you see opposing these kinds of proposals. For example, the Greens and Democrats have been the only really vocal opponents of (right-wing) Senator Conroy's internet censorship proposal.
All that aside, it's dickheads like most of our politicians (especially the ones from NSW!) that make me feel shame for my country. First against the wall, you bastards...
Absolutely agree. But what the $#@! can we do about it?
Australian citizens haven't taken to the streets in any force since the anti-Vietnam demonstrations of the late 1960s; even then this was an aberration in an otherwise very conservative country. There is no mood for any such radical action now, it'd take a landmine under Australians to get them to even think about civil disobedience let alone act upon the thought.
Unfortunately, whilst we were asleep at the wheel, our institutions were taken over one by one. The parliament, the public sector and our education system--perhaps putting the wrong ideas into kids' heads is a form of child abuse and someone ought to be held accountable.
So too has the media been parasitised, especially shock-jock radio. Not only can any loony get on the radio but the stations have amalgamated into gigantic state and country-wide networks whereby the propaganda is more easily spread.
I'm damned if I know how you break this nexus, and I'm damned if I know what one does when one finds the very heart and fabric of our democracy has been infiltrated and subverted to the degree which it has.
How does one undo the damage of years and years of propaganda when those causing the problem are still entrenched in power and in BOTH the left and right of politics? This is not only an Australian problem but it's alive and well in the UK and the US--in fact, the problem is present in most western democracies but the disease is especially virulent in English speaking countries.
The only idea I can come up with is that the libertarian left strikes an accord or covenant with the libertarian right. Both sides would not only have to redefine what constitutes the extent, limits and reach of government, its bureaucracies and its utilities but also they would have to fully and wholeheartedly agree on those limits and extents. Only then would we be in a position to take on the mealymouthed do-gooder creations who have infiltrated both the left and right of politics and just about ruined our democracies.
By outnumbering them with a model of democracy and government whose extents and limits fall far short of their interfering, paternalistic nanny state may we have any chance at all of recovering from the rotten mess we're in.
If you've a better idea then sprout forth.
The country I call home is rapidly become more screwed up by the day thanks to a bunch of muppet politicians who should be the first against the wall come the revolution.
What it basically means to Australia is that you cant take pictures of your kids in the bath to send to your parents. You couldnt even take pictures of your toddlers running around in the backyard nekid.
And all this time, I thought the USofA got the lion's share of the UK's prudes during colonization. Turns out Oz apparently got their fair share, maybe more. I used to think Australia would be a nice place to move to, if I ever got sick of the society-protection/political BS here in the USA, but it's looking like it wouldn't be much of an improvement.
thats the systine chapel painted over for a start.
But as observed previously, this is'nt about child pr0n, this is more about politicians wanting to 'appear' to do something about a subject in the media.
"I want to ban all nakkid pictures of children" goes a politician who gets a 5% support rise in the next poll.
"ah-ha" thinks a rival
"I promise to ban all children in case some one sees one naked"
Followed by
"instant imprisionment for people who see children naked via their jobs..... after all they may of spent 2 years of A levels followed by 7 years of medical school just so they get to see children with no clothes on"
I do look at UK laws and wonder what the hell some dumb grey dullard was thinking that nobody should have any other opinions and which other dull grey dullard thought it was a good idea to make it the law, but then I look at some of the ozzy laws and think "It could be worse! - look at those whiny fuckers!"
*\. Cold one mate, yeah stick it outside for a bit no frigging heat wave here * -(snowball)
I've never been a big fan of "exceptions" in laws. The way I see it, writing an over-broad law and then putting in an exception is backwards. If you write the law properly it shouldn't need exceptions.
The US federal law about simulated child porn has an artistic merit exception (needed to get it past 1st Amendment objections), but it's proven pretty worthless once they decide to go after someone. That hasn't actually happened very often, so maybe it still helps, but if I were an artist I'd be awful nervous to think a subjective determination of "merit" was the only thing between me and jail.
On the other hand, the federal law on real child porn has no such exception, and instead relies on a (relatively) objective definition of what constitutes a pornographic picture. I'm not necessarily holding it up an ideal law, but you don't see art galleries getting raided here.
As long as the Aussie law is similarly sensible... yeah right. Too bad about the paintings, but at least maybe people will realize it was a bad law faster this way.
It's worse than you think. It applies to any image of a naked child. Should you as a parent, look at your naked child, you have formed a (temporary admittedly) image on your retina. Thus you are guilty breaking this law and should hand yourself in to the nearest ploiceman immediately.
While not immediately relevant to this particular news article, I recently happened to learn of an example of some mainstream porn that may soon be illegal to possess in the UK: The Babysitter 6, directed by Jim Powers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299505/).
As fellow El Reg readers are probably already aware, the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 will criminalise possession of "prohibited images of children" - including cartoon porn, such as the London 2012 logo and other Simpsons porn.
Why could this criminalise possession of mainstream porn such as The Babysitter 6? Because that particular video portrays "the performance by a person of an act of intercourse or oral sex ... in the presence of a child".
First, there's British porn star Flick Shagwell, introduced as a (fictional) babysitter. While no actual baby is shown, Shagwell is introduced to the fictional baby, and then goes on to engage in oral, vaginal and anal sex in the same room, on a bed adjacent to the baby's cot. This is mainstream porn, in which the fictional presence of a baby is purely to establish that the character played by Flick Shagwell is a babysitter.
Then there's Aurora Snow, introduced as a babysitter taking a baby for a walk in a pram. She just happens to meet some guy she then engages in oral, vaginal and anal sex with. Again, while no actual baby is shown, these sexual acts are portrayed as taking place in the presence of the fictional baby. Again, this is just mainstream porn in which the fictional presence of a baby is just to show that Snow's character is a babysitter.
These scenes appear to portray the following acts listed in subsection (7) of section 62 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009:-
"(a) the performance by a person of an act of intercourse or oral sex ... in the presence of a child;
(b) an act of masturbation ... in the presence of a child;
...
(d) an act of penetration, in the presence of a child, of the vagina or anus of a person with a part of a person’s body or with anything else".
When sections 62 to 68 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 - the so-called cartoon porn law - are brought into force, possession of The Babysitter 6 is likely to be a criminal offence, unless found not to be "grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character". (I don't think there's much doubt that it qualifies as "pornographic".)
And after news of the animated tiger "extreme" porn case (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/06/tiger_police/), how confident can we be that the police and CPS won't try to prosecute someone for possession of a copy of The Babysitter 6? What other mainstream porn will it be dangerous to possess?
"(d) an act of penetration, in the presence of a child, of the vagina or anus of a person with a part of a person’s body or with anything else"
How long before a woman is convicted for nipping into a public toilet to change a Tampax without first abandoning her infant child? Or for using a suppository to control the piles she got due to the next pregnancy?
>When the only people who are free to think and act are the ones willing to break the law?<
The law is a fecking ass, feel free. I don't know about Australia, but here in the UK the prisons are full to bursting, real crims are walking about with tags on their legs and the justice system is creaking with binge drinking alcoholics and mentals who used to be in bedlam until they all got closed down. As one great philospher said, 'fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.'
'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law' Hassan i Sabbah.
IMHO of course.
This post has been deleted by its author
I have to live in this IQ-forsaken hole that's called New South Wales. It's a timid, risk-averse, conservative society in the grip of a moral panic, caused by an irresponsible media and a 40-year systemic failure of the education system. Attitudes are plummeting us back to Victorian times.
Australia has always suffered from what's known here as a 'cultural cringe', a highly tuned inferiority complex based on the correct assumption that culture is better just about everywhere else, especially Europe.
Australians has one of the most conservative populations on earth, you only have look at the voting trends since federation (1901) and you'll see it's voted conservative for about two thirds of the time. And, if you consider that the so-called left (Labor Party) is also extremely conservative then that covers most of the past 100 years or so. We lead the earth in small-minded petty thinking.
Take the current Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, he's supposedly on the political left but in fact he's a conservative, bigoted Trojan horse who's undermined the party which he heads. Moreover, his religious beliefs are just about to manifest themselves in an Australian Internet Censorship. Right, this democracy will be the first country to have internet censorship outside totalitarian states such as China. Think of Rudd as a pip-squeak version of Tony Blair with self-aggrandisement chevrons on his arms and you'll get the picture.
Unfortunately, the other side of politics isn't any better. Not long ago we chucked out Prime Minister John Howard, he was the conservative of conservatives, devotee and loyal follower of George W. Bush Jr, and warmonger--he sent Australian troops into Iraq.
That's how Australia is: a country full of intellectually-moribund, sport-obsessed tragics who keep getting involved in other people's wars. This mob would never have the gumption to put into power anyone of intellect. For starters, we'd have difficulty reconsigning intellect if we fell over it. Even when we finally do so, we then ritualistically chop intellect down in what's known here as the Tall Poppy Syndrome--put your head above the average and you'll be soon cut down to size.
We don't manufacture or build things in Australia anymore, all of our trades-based industries have been sold off to the Chinese and our trades jobs are going the way of the dodo. Training here has gotten so bad that the average bloke has enough difficulty working out one end of a screwdriver from another let alone the complexities of say a woodworking hand plane.
Our once-free university education system, the envy of the world in the 1970s, is now kaput. $100,000 or so might get you a degree if you're lucky. Lucky enough to get in, as our universities have been 'sold-off' to overseas students who now buy their degrees with extra money and lots of plagiarism courtesy of Wiki.
You would think the architects of this latest anti-porno/censorship bill was actually the New South Wales Government--that wretched dishevelled rabble of pathological liars and sycophants who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery--but you'd be wrong.
For many years now, Australia's governance has taken place through lowest-common-denominator talkback radio, it's hugely influential here. Thus, in the dying days of a very unpopular government, any loony or popularist cause will get up when the radio squawks loudly enough. Zealots, the Right, the Religious Right, and corporate interests are Australia's rulers.
It's little wonder that were now making international headlines about the triviality inconsequential. I'm expecting a ban on 'Lady Chatterley's Lover to be reimposed any day now.
Oh, BTW, we're very good at digging minerals out of the ground and flogging them off raw and unprocessed. Processing, what's that I hear someone ask?
Execute priests and lock up anyone who was an embarrasement to the state in a locked mental mental ward.
Anyone notice how much less uptight about nudity the communists were?
Seems to be one of the few good things about communism, commonsense regarding nudity and virtually no bloody priests spouting crap and no blood sucking royals either
....anon as its now an offence to plot the overthrow of the govt...big surprise.
If intent is irrelevant, and any nude depiction of a minor is unlawful, then looking at photographs becomes more illegal than looking at the real children. Because surely parents need to look at their kids from time to time - but to look at a photo of the same thing is forbidden!
You're not wrong - the feedback loop between wowser journalists, hounded by power and money hungry news corp proprietors and politicians desperate for their approval has lead to a succession of increasingly stupid, venal and intrusive laws.
I'd also venture that they're noweher near representative of the majority of the population but as Australia is only marginally more democratic than the UK (which is to say not really at all) laws have only a passing aquaintance with their views.
If all nude depictions of children under all circumstances are always pornographic, then I reckon the problem will sort itself out quickly enough. Australia will no longer be able to train or create medical textbooks for pediatricians. Give it a generation or two, wait for the resulting depopulation, send another wave of folks to re-settle the now-barren continent, change the laws. Problem solved!
My otherwise incredibly useful and at least once or twice potentially lifesaving copy of The Family Doctor home-diagnosis/treatment book would be the first to be chucked on the bonfire by the baying hordes.
You'd better hope none of your kids (from birth upto the age of 18) have any form of health issue in the underwear department from now on - or at least, nothing that requires a lineart diagram to properly show the symptom or method of diagnosis and how to deal with it. In fact as it does similar for adults, better slap a "mature readers only" sticker on it and send it to the restricted shelf, after expurgating all the images of minors.
On behalf of all Australians, I'd like to apologise for the simple-minded half-wits who are presenting these laws.
Do kids need to be protected from child exploitation? Yes, absolutely.
Is this proposed amendment going to do anything to help? No bloody way!
I wonder if this means that every Australian gallery and church would have to take down all those naked cherubs?
Bureaucracy gone mad.... mad I tell you!
Right on. Every reasonable person wants and expects the best for all kids.
But unfortunately this issue is just the tip of an iceberg when it comes to bad governance in Australia. Last week it was something else, next week it'll be another hair-brained proposition courtesy of Australia's top woolly-thinking department.
It's a tragedy that Australia has sunk so low that's its' the subject of such international ridicule.
Please, someone. There must be some country out there that wants a fly-blown desert full of minerals, surely?
It would be dead easy - our government is just a bunch of useless criminals and / or pathetic whingers who need 50 Executive cabinet committees and overseas junkets to work out which foot goes in which shoe. Let alone wiping their own, oh, sorry thats censored.
Please invade us, give the pollies a 9mm to the back of the head and start again. Please put us out of our misery as we seem unable to do it ourselves. We voted these fricking morons into office in the first place.
"This kind of witch-hunt nonsense makes me wonder more about the state of mind of the lawmakers rather than anyone else. They clearly have serious and hugely suspicious problems about their own and other peoples' sexuality. Perhaps THEIR homes and computers ought to be the first to be checked out?"
You have to wonder *exactly* why some of these obsessive bedsheet sniffers are *quite* so obsessed. They certainly seem to have a hugely acute sense of what Mr Average Paedo finds arousing. Quite amazing given Australia has IIRC about 6m people in total giving what 600? 6000? the *actual* rates for the incidence of paedophillia.
thumbs up for the observation. Thumbs down for the this malarkey.
@Graham Wilson
"Oh, BTW, we're very good at digging minerals out of the ground and flogging them off raw and unprocessed. Processing, what's that I hear someone ask?"
Coupled with an education system that sounds like a big fail, you make it sound like the economy of a 3rd world country.
@Graham Marsden
"Seeing your children naked in the bath gets you tagged as a paedo...?"
When did you see the UK Governements draft White paper? So many laws to enact, so little time before they get booted out.
Seriously the UK Governemnt has set up a scheme which will require at *least* 11.6m adults to be subject to enhanced criminal record bureu checks. The "Enhanced" bit is the inclusion of *any* allegations made against the subject, which may be both unsubstantiated *and* may be anonyemous. And since the allegations are not shown to the subject there is *no* appeal procedure.
In reality (with rare but *prolific* exceptions) *real* child abuse is commited mostly by *other* family members and friends. The one group basically *excluded* from this ludicrious law. meanwhile IRL 7-10 children a week who are Local Authority books as causes for concern continue to die in the UK, as they have done so for the last 10 years.
Overall result. FAIL
@John Smith 19
"Coupled with an education system that sounds like a big fail, you make it sound like the economy of a 3rd world country."
That's pretty much the right conclusion, Australia is now a 3rd-world country in a number of respects, but it definitely wasn’t so about 40 years ago.
1. We're traded hi-tech and industrialization for buying cheap imports from China and elsewhere. Consequently, we've deskilled our workforce especially in highly skilled areas where those skills are of a strategic importance to the country. In manufacturing, we can't even make a hot-dipped galvanised bucket anymore let alone something like a turbine blade. The Government says these old-world, smokestack industry jobs will be replaced with better ones. Correct, and they've already been replaced--but in China, not Australia!
Gone are the apprentices, gone are the skilled metalworkers, gone are the skilled toolmakers, and gone are the factories that housed the industry in which they worked. Large multistorey flats and apartments now adorn the same landscapes, they house migrants who do unskilled and service industry work. There's no doubt the net skill base has dropped down and careers which are of strategic importance to the country have disappeared.
2. Hi-tech's gone too. The electronics, medical, pharmaceutical industries etc. have either gone or are about stuffed, what's left of them just repackages stuff made overseas. Australian hi-tech works, myself included, have had to work overseas because incompetent governments have nuked our professions. And, as anyone who has vaguest the clue about such things knows, it's nigh on impossible to successfully re-establish an industry once disrupted; skills, infrastructure, contacts, educational institution support etc are gone. All's lost permanently.
To make matters worse, successive Australian Governments have entered into international treaties--free trade, copyright and intellectual property agreements etc. but they've not done so on a level playing field. For fear of offending anyone--especially the US--they have given away our bargaining chips to the point where Australia has been screwed into the ground. Essentially, it's treason committed by Australian governments against the Australian people. Once they used to shoot people for actions like that.
3. A quick example from mining, Australia has about 40% of the world's known reserves of uranium yet we do no pre or post [ex-reactor] processing of the element. This timid little non-entity of a county, like the reluctant virgin, doesn’t want it get its hands dirty with that "nasty nuclear stuff", yet the hypocrisy stenches to high heaven as we're prepared to and do sell the stuff for filthy lucre. Even worse, we're thinking of selling uranium to India and India hasn't signed the non-proliferation treaty. …One's simply lost for words.
All up, together with the failure in our education system over the past 40 or so years, as a triage case, Australia falls into the 'don't bother with' category.
If, however, you were to talk to the Australian Government then you'd find that nothing could be rosier. To do so however might be difficult, be prepared to first extract heads from the sand.
"...a growing tendency in some legislatures to regard nudity – particularly nudity of children – as sexual and therefore, by definition, pornographic, irrespective of the content of the picture"
That really says more about the warped and twisted minds of the legislators than the arbitrarily-labelled "criminals" this sort of thing is meant to catch.
It's the old responsibility issue again. I think (I hope) it's true that most people don't find pictures of naked children sexually interesting. Therefore in themselves they aren't pornographic unless they specifically intend to be. But because a minority of people do get aroused by pictures of children, the knee jerk reaction is to ban all or it, porn, art, scientific, all of it. So that means we have to ban all alcohol because a minority can't control themselves when drunk. All guns because some people use them to kill people (duh!) all drugs, even prescription, because some people use them to get stoned. How about all cars because some people can't drive safely? Marriage because some people can't handle it? Doesn't work, does it? You can't ask the whole population to take responsibility for the actions of a tiny minority.
I agree with many of the comments about the NSW government and the hysterical over-reaction from the Australian media and pollies to anything that even hints of child pornography, but that's still no excuse for sloppy reporting. If you look at the ABC news coverage (e.g. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/10/2788942.htm) you will read:
"Attorney-General John Hatzistergos says courts will still take artistic merit into account where relevant. Under the new laws, artistic merit would remain as one of several factors taken into account in deciding whether material is offensive in the first place. But once it is has been established the material is unlawfully pornographic, artistic intention would not be considered relevant."
This is precisely the approach described, with some hint of approval, at the end of the El Reg piece. You might think it is a distinction without a difference, but the practical effect should be that fewer unjustified cases come to trial in the first place, while for those that do, there is still the defence that the prosecutors have erred in establishing that the material is unlawfully pornographic.
It is sadly the case that evidence of real, sickening child abuse exists in the form of child pornography (I don't have much time for those who consider cartoons to be worthy of prosecution). Those who perpetrate the abuse and those who foster it by producing and consuming the images need to be pursued. This requires a legal framework (not a vigilante mob) and the one on offer here seems no worse (and no better) than most.
Don't forget this. NSW Judge can't tell the difference between real people and Simpsons cartoon characters.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/08/2441023.htm
Which is quite odd really as I was watching a episode of South Park the other night on SBS. Fatt Butt and Pancake Head, In which Cartman gives Ben Affleck a hand job. How is this not considered child porn after this idiot judge's ruling?
How can you *not* make money on that?
Not to mention assorted other stategic minerals and enough desert to put enough solar thermal generating capacity to power the globe.
Sadly it sounds like the only thing this inbreed bunch would manage to do would be to rent it out as global above ground nuclear testing range (Nevada used to be popular for this sort of thing but I suspect the Las Vegas Tourist Board has a *lot* more clout than they did back in the old days).
You know, they scoot off to study some previously undiscovered tribe in the disputed jungly bits of Africa, or deepest Indonesia or Peru, everyone from babies to grandparents are mooching around in the buff with but an interestingly designed pendant for cover...
There's an awful lot of such documentaries about. Footage from one of them was on the news a few nights back illustrating some point or other on a different subject (malaria or whatever). Lots of kiddies running around ... what now for those docs? Are we going to airdrop a lifetime's supply of shorts for them all to don immediately to prevent all this shocking unnaturalness?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
