OBAMA SAID PEOPLE ARE BITTER!: (and oh yeah, Bush created a torture regime)

Well, it turns out that President Bush knew about and approved of the torture techniques that were used at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. But there's no time for the American media to report on the deliberate rape of the American Constitution when there's an opportunity to give that nerdy Barack Obama a wedgie in public, huh?

In every American news source of note - far more than have cared to even acknowledge the torture story - the following remarks from Obama were given weighty and insanely intense consideration:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Apparently this is what Hillary Clinton is courageously trying to save the Democrats from: a candidate who doesn't speak to the masses and comes across as secretly hating them. Others are going so far as to paint Obama as a godless Marxist for daring to suggest that people only turn to religion in order to ease their pain.

Except he never said anything of the kind of course.

And it does seem that the media elites and conservative elites have misjudged the opinions of the masses on whose behalf they are expressing such outrage. Seems that there are quite a few people who are bitter, and think that Obama has a point when he brings it up. Even USA Today reports that this supposed "gaffe" doesn't seem to be getting a lot of traction among those"rural voters" whose opinion the media elite has bothered to actually ask for.

I do find the Marxist accusation amusing, given that just one month ago this supposed evil secularist was being criticised for being part of a "wacko church". A little consistency in the anti-Obama smears, please?

Anyway, I think the bullshit about "insulting" people by calling them bitter, and how bitterness is an emotion that many rural Americans do as a matter of fact really feel in the wake of the Bush years, has been effectively dealt with by Obama and others. But the lie that Obama said people ONLY turn to guns and religion when economic times are bad is still being pushed by many of his opponents. The linked posts includes the specific lie that "Barack thinks that people would stop "seeking refuge in" and "clinging to" religion, if only they had a government they could "count on."", with bonus red-baiting: "That's what Karl Marx said, too."

Rebuttal? Simple. He never said anything of the kind. Anyone who thinks they can prove that Obama believes this is bullshitting themselves. And Reds under the Bed is sooo early 1950s. There will be people voting in the upcoming Presidential election who were toddlers when the Soviet Union collapsed. The fight is over. America won. Please accept the pain of no longer being able to gloriously give the impression of fighting that evil enemy. The post-Boomer generations thank you in advance.

For a consideration of Obama's remarks that comes from this century rather than last century, let's turn to John Robb, of Global Guerrillas fame. Rather than misleading the public with a bullshit insertion of the word "only" in Obama's comments - "they ONLY cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrationst", which Obama never said - let's admit that rural Americans have always thought that religion is extremely important and have always been avid hunters. I believe this. Obama accepts this. It's only now that things are getting REALLY bad under Bush that these things have gone from "deeply held beliefs" to "things that people cling to", because they've got nothing else. Obama was neither insulting nor dishonest: he accurately saw what has always been important to rural Americans, and accurately saw that they now cling to those things because Bush's incompetence has ensured that hunting and religion is all they have.

John Robb's 21st century explanation for this is that rural Americans are reverting to primary loyalties: when a government is so incompetent and ineffective that it cannot function as a government, people abandon that government and instead place their loyalty with people they know they can always trust: for rural Americans, that's their church congregation and their hunting buddies. Robb focuses on military examples of this phenomenon, particularly its application to places like Iraq and Lebanon, but the non-military aspects fit the current situation of the deprived of America extremely well. No Marxism here, just an honest assessment of the colossal fuckup that the Bush Administration has been for the United States of America.

I don't suppose people already convinced that Obama is Stalin reincarnated will find this convincing, but I do feel that in the wakes of such brazen lies about what Obama believes, I ought to speak up. I do still wish that the simpering adolescents in the American news industry would actually take a slight peek at that "Bush personally authorised torture" story. Please?

Oh yes: and "Bittergate?" The Watergate scandal was one of the biggest and best pieces of investigative journalism in America's history. Please stop trying to apply that magic to petty bullshit like this. You just can't.

Anonymous vs Scientology, Sydney edition

Congratulations to Anonymous for getting their Sydney anti-Scientology protest mentioned in a major Sunday newspaper. The article on page 40 of the Sun Hearld looks impressive, with a big photo of members of Anonymous wearing their Guy Fawkes masks. Some are wearing sunglasses over the masks. A bit odd looking, but also kind of cool. Their various protest signs also feature prominently.

Most of the text of the accompanying article is available here. There is further text in the print edition which follows the final quote from Vicki Dunstan, Scientology trustee, which I'll get to in a second.

But: "Vicki Dunstan, Scientology trustee"? In the Defamer she is called "the Australian head of the Church". NineMSN simply called her a "spokesperson". In the Brisbane Times last year she was called "President of Scientology Australia". Where does "trustee" suddenly come from?

Certainly the Church of Scientology operates some discretionary investment trusts in Australia, and has since 2003: The Church of Scientology ACT Academy Building Fund, The Church of Scientology Adelaide Academy Building Fund, likewise for Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. No Sydney though. So, "Scientology trustee" of which specific Scientology institution?

In any case, the actual corporate position in the CoS structure tends to be less important than the internal management position. I have absolutely no idea what that is, but there's no guarantee that Miss Dunstan holds a high level in it: it's not uncommon for the corporate position of "President of the Church of Scientology" or similar to be held by someone with the internal position of "Head of OSA PR": their basic job is to be a spokesperson. But the represented title of "trustee" does seem odd...

The text not included in the online article is as follows:

Those who attended yesterday's Sydney protest by Anonymous denied they employed violent tactics against the church. One member, who did not wish to be named, said: "We are not a hate group - we just want people to know the truth about Scientology.

"People do not know what they're getting into because they're getting into because Scientology does not tell them the truth.

"Truth is not hate. One of the things about our group is that we came together from the internet. The internet is free and is all about freedom of speech. Scientology is not."

Other supporters said Anonymous' main objection was to what they claim is a policy of destroying families by cutting off followers from anybody who is not a Scientologist.

Hm. If this is still talking about the disconnection policy, then it's inaccurate: disconnection doesn't require cutting off all non-Scientologists, only someone who is a "Suppressive Person". This usually means someone who is vocally opposing the CoS, or else someone who used to be in the Church and has since been kicked out, or "declared SP". The practice of disconnection is obvious in such SP Declares, as they include the lovely phrase "his [or her] only terminal is the International Justice Chief", which in non-Scientology jargon means that the declared SP is prohibited from communicating with any Scientologist in good standing, except the IJC. Here's a typical example. Vick Dunstan did a poor job of trying to spin this in a positive light. A blanket denial of something that is evident in every official SP Declare issued by the Church? Please.

Moving on...

A former member of the church said: "I thhink these protests are just wonderful because they're getting the message out there about what happens in Scientology. I know mothers who have been cut off from their sons and families split up because of the church. It is dreadful."

Anonymous says its membership is growing every month and that more than 8000 people worldwide protested yesterday.

I am rather impressed by Anonymous' work here, all thing considered. But I do think they need to work on the precision of their criticisms.

Pastor John Hagee's anti-gay comments, original source

I like being able to point directly to the source of things. I hadn't found the original source of Pastor John Hagee's statement about how New Orlean's gay pride march was to blame for Hurricane Katrina until now. It's audio only, unfortunately, and I do not currently have time to verify for myself if and where in the 25 minute audio sample the comments occur (will try to get to it as soon as possible). But as thing currently stand, Hagee's comments are allegedly from his interview on the NPR radio show "Hot Air", originally broadcast on the 18th of September, 2006. Audio is available from this page of the NPR website. Hagee's homosexuality comments as reported by, well, pretty much everywhere, are as follows:

HAGEE: All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are -- were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.

Tellingly, in an interview with the New York Times where Hagee tries to wind back his anti-jewish and anti-catholic comments, the best defense he can muster about his anti-gay comments is to stonewall and refuse to discuss the issue entirely: "We’re not going down there. That’s so far off-base it would take us 33 pages to go through that, and it’s not worth going through."

But of course he still inserts the self-righteous "we only hate the sin, not the sinner!" canard: "Our church is not hard against the gay people. Our church teaches what the Bible teaches, that it is not a righteous lifestyle. But of course we must love even sinners."

Even when you've told people that doing so would place them at risk of God wiping out their entire city with a natural disaster, Pastor?

Um, why?

From the coverage of Rudd's overseas adventures in this news article:
"The day before he [Rudd] had met United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, advising him of Australia's plan to seek a permanent seat on the United Nations' Security Council in 2013/14."

We're seeking a what in the where, now?

Oh for fuck's sake

Bush direct quote:

And the reason why it's successful -- important to be successful in Iraq, because, one, we want to help establish a democracy in the heart of the Middle East -- the most volatile region in the world. Two, we want to send a clear message to Iran that they're not going to be able to have their way with nations in the Middle East. Three, that we want to make it clear that we can defeat al Qaeda. Al Qaeda made a stand in Iraq. They're the ones who said, this is the place where the war will take place. And a defeat of al Qaeda will be a major victory in this war against extremists and radicals. Four, we want to show what's possible to people. There are reformers all over the Middle East who want to know whether or not the United States and friends will stand with these young democracies.

One: "Establishing democracy" has been the calling card for failed invasion after failed invasion for the last half century. It DOESN'T FUCKING WORK.

Two: Is Mr Bush not aware that Iran already has significant influence within the current Iraqi government that HE HIMSELF SUPPORTS? Credible commentators are wondering if the Basra crackdown was actually INSTIGATED by Iran since it largely supports their agenda in the country. But of course, America supports good guys (that's how you can tell they're the good guys) and you can tell that the bad guys are supported by Iran by the simple fact that they're the bad guys, right? *sigh* The really sad thing is that a goodly proportion of the US voting public is so provincial that this ludicrous oversimplification actually seems plausible.

Three: this point made my jaw drop in awe at the stupid. It was AL-QAEDA who said "this is the place where the war will take place"? AL-QAEDA WAS NOT IN IRAQ UNTIL YOU GAVE THEM THE OPPORTUNITY TO SET UP SHOP THERE YOU GIBBERING MORON. YOU CHOSE THIS PLACE TO FIGHT. YOU INVITED THEM TO COME. REMEMBER "BRING IT ON!"?

Al-Qaeda's a global organisation, perhaps you've heard. You could have chosen to focus anywhere. Why the FUCK would you choose to "go after Al-Qaeda" by invading a country that creates so many problems and dangers that are COMPLETELY unrelated to anything remotely related to Al-Qaeda's goals? Well, apart from that goal of making America look to the world like an evil tyrant that wants to destroy all Islam and militarily occupy the entire Middle East. How you doing on defeating THAT goal, sir?

Four: I have only this to say in regards to whether people want to know if America will "stand with" democratic reformers in the Middle East:“It’s the kiss of death. The minute you are counted on or backed by the Americans, kiss it goodbye, you will never win.” - Saudi reformer Turki al-Rasheed.

On the plus side, my country's Prime Minister currently stands to gain from the Bush Effect: just by standing near to Bush when he opens his mouth to utter his stupidity, you immediately look more sensible simply by actually being slightly sensible.

Bush and Rudd at a press conference earlier today, plus Iraq

The Whitehouse website helpfully offers a transcript. Allow me to summarise Bush's introductory remarks somewhat:

Kevin Rudd is a straight shooter. I'm from Texas. Texans like people who are straight shooters. Being from Texas, I like straight shooters. So I like Kevin Rudd.

*facepalm* I'm not sure exactly when I started to get really annoyed at Bush's folksy reminders to everyone that he's from Texas and he's what Texans are like. At least the Australian public had the sense to realise last election that the nerdy policy wonk was a better choice as leader than the old guy running on a platform of "I'm just like you, my fellow Australians! PS: Tax cuts!"

Yay human rights and the rule of law. Yay free trade. China and India are the main obstacles to international co-operation on the environment, not us. Technology has cures for what ails the environment, so buy our technologies and don't put up tariffs that will obstruct our buyers. Rudd's fully committed to keeping troops in Afghanistan. Did I mention the importance that Australia and America both put on the commitment fighting in Afghanistan? Afghanistan is very important because we're promoting freedom and democracy there....oh shit, I'm going to have to say something about Iraq, aren't I?

Rudd has a "campaign commitment" about Iraq. He said he'd pull troops out, so let me pull my "I like straight shooters" schtick to show that I'm okay with him doing what he said he'd do. He did ask us nicely first, so don't make it like he's putting his own people's desires above what America says he should be doing, that would make me look bad. The commitment of Afghanistan is not to leave Iraq alone; it's to change mission.

That last sentence is a direct quote. Whatever could it mean?

See how Kevin Rudd helped out Nouri Al-Maliki? He believes in what I'm doing to Iraq, really he does. Ignore the "campaign commitment" to withdraw troops and focus on the money he's giving to teach Iraqis how to do dry-land farming properly. And on a final note: BOO! IRAN

Doing that to Bush's ideological grandstanding makes it so much more bearable.

On a more serious note, there's some good overview in there that clarifies a few policy positions held by Rudd, and even some of those held by Bush. Rudd for instance is fully committed to global trade, and is hoping that the upcoming Doha talks will be a good thing. He's hoping for what he calls a "a psychological injection of some confidence in the arm" to the global economy from a positive outcome there, however "positive outcome" is defined.

I really dislike my ignorance on the matter of global economics, you know? Wish I could elucidate on that comment from Rudd more.

Rudd has also promised to give a $165 million dollar assistance package "a large slice of which will go to how we assist Iraqis train their people better in agriculture and in the wider economy." There at least I have a slightly better understanding of the underlying theory driving Rudd's actions. As mentioned elsewhere, Rudd believes "that it's failing economies" that "cause social and political instability". The idea is a common one on the Left and goes back to Kennedy's time: that social transformation comes about through the economic drivers of building infrastructrure, funding education, reducing unemployment and so forth. The success of such an approach is arguable at best.

I do hope that someone's keeping tabs on that $165 million as well. The last thing we need is to see something similar to the AWB's corruption in the oil-for-food scheme.

As might be expected, the questions from the press mostly focused on the situation on Iraq, particularly the Iraqi government's crackdown on Basra. I don't really buy Bush's line that this is a simple case of the good guys (the Maliki government) cracking down on the bad guys (unspecified "evil-doers", but basically it seems like the main target is Moktada Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army). I do find it interesting that he claimed ignorance about why Maliki did what he did: "And so I'm not exactly sure what triggered the Prime Minister's response. I don't know if it was one phone call. I don't know what -- whether or not the local mayor called up and said, help -- we're sick and tired of dealing with these folks. But nevertheless, he made the decision to move. And we'll help him."

One popular theory is that Maliki cracked down on Basra not at the instigation of Bush, but of Dick Cheney, based on the fact that Cheney visited Iraq not long before this crackdown occurred. A less America-centric version says this is Iran's show, based on Ahmedinejad's recent visit to the region. That last link explores the various theories in more detail.

Iraq is, as usual, confusing. But I feel obligated to try and make sense of it given my belief that it was naivety and ignorance of the Iraq situation that brought me down on the wrong side of the question of the Iraq invasion initially. I try to follow as best I can.

Obama and Wright: thinking out loud

I'm currently going through Obama's speech called A More Perfect Union. It's interesting so far, though not directly relevant to the Australian experience that I can see. My primary interest is in terms of its relationship with the US media controversy over Pastor Jeremiah Wright. There's some deep-seated issues coming up over there.

Around the blogosphere I see people still even now asking of the Obama/Wright situation "how can he keep going to the same church for 20 years if that man is his pastor?". I regret that I have been so far unable to directly hear the controversial statements of "that man" myself. I would point out that Obama has already given an answer to that question in his speech:

Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

Perhaps Obama's asking too much of people to put aside their first impressions? I know from my own experience it's hard to unform a conclusion about something once it's been formed - nobody wants to believe that they have poor judgement. But looking at the statement given, I recognise also a danger inherent in insisting that certain statements from a spiritual leader be "seen in the context of everything else that he's done" - the local example of Sheikh Al-Hilali's disturbing comments about women come to mind. I did not accept that the balance of evidence was in favour of Al-Hilali at that time. Is Obama's answer enough to excuse Wright? I don't know. But I would hope future commentators would at least acknowledge that he's tried to do so. So few of them have even now.

But the controversy isn't supposed to be about Wright, is it? It's supposed to be about Barack Obama, and how he's supposed to remove himself from Pastor Wright's church. Even if I reject the "but look at all the good the pastor's done too!" argument, I can't find a way to believe that Obama should physically reject Reverend Wright. I can and have been perfectly willing to condemn Reverend Jerry Falwell for comments made by Reverend Jerry Falwell, Sheikh Taj Aldin Al-Hilali for comments made by Sheikh Taj Aldin Al-Hilali, Pastor John Hagee for comments made by Pastor John Hagee, and Reverend Jeremiah Wright for comments made by Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Why is it that I must condemn Barack Obama for comments made by Reverend Jeremiah Wright and demand that he distance himself? Does the phrase "individual responsibility" mean nothing to Americans anymore?

I suspect cultural difference between Australian and American views on religion: it seems the claim is that Wright's public statements supposedly demonstrate that Obama has been indoctrinated into being racist and anti-American through the constant bombardment of over twenty years' worth of sermons containing such sentiments at Wright's church. Leaving aside how one can conclude the existence of "constant bombardment over twenty years" from some selected highlights from some selected sermons put up on Youtube, the whole idea that your entire worldview on racial and political issues is shaped by your pastor - in fact, MUST be shaped by your pastor - seems completely alien to me. Yet the American commentators complaining about Obama's association with Wright seem equally unable to comprehend the idea that Obama's worldview on racial and political issues could ever be different from that of his pastor in any way.

Is it because I'm not religious that I don't understand this powerful hold that pastors supposedly have over their flock? I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of people who have pastors with whom they disagree, often strongly. There's nothing in Obama's speech or demeanour that suggests he has any racist sentiment towards white people, or any hatred of America. In fact his pro-American sentiments are part of his appeal to me: he gives me a reason to believe that the ideal to which America aspires still exists behind the weight of the Bush years, and can still come to the fore. And yet now, because of statements said by somebody else and which Obama has repeatedly condemned and denounced, I'm supposed to stop believing in that?

To anyone that can't understand why Obama never walked away from Pastor Wright's church, please answer a question for me, asked in all sincerity: why should he? I genuinely don't understand why he supposedly had to.

Mercy Ministries to applicants: "Have you ever been in any form of same-sex relationships?"

The initial form used to ask if they'd been involved in lesbianism, but apparently the wording changed in 2006.

What looks to be the last of the Herald's articles on the matter was posted today, and details Mercy Ministries' explicit link to the American ex-gay movement. Article available online here.

The claim is that people subjected to Mercy Ministries' treatment are given a video series to watch that was made by prominent American ex-gay Sy Rogers. it's the usual stuff: homosexuality is not God's plan, homosexuals can change (for a certain given value of "change", anyway). Disturbingly, women who have gone to Mercy Ministries for issues completely unrelated to homosexuality claim that they were required to watch these videos as part of their treatment. The focus on teaching about the evils of homosexuality seems to have far more prominence than you'd expect from a place ostensibly intended to help people deal with their own personal problems:

"While I was there, we received much teaching on the evils of gay and lesbian lifestyles," said Naomi Johnson, who spent nine months in the ministry's Sydney house.

Mercy Ministries denies that they are running an ex-gay program. This is technically accurate - their ministry is not an explicitly ex-gay one - but somewhat misleading in my opinion: they still teach that homosexuality is a moral sickness, and teach that it can be "cured".

And finally....

Gloria Jeans CEO steps down.

And with my uni assignment complete, I've run out of excuses to sit at the computer and post incessantly about this. For now, anyway.

Mercy Ministries admits to taking people's Centrelink payments, and more

Mercy Ministries media response

Looks like they're going for the angry denial for the most part - we're Christian, we don't hide anything from anyone, the media is unfairly attacking us, blah blah blah - with one exception. And what an exception it is:

We work closely with Centrelink and where a young woman is eligible for Centrelink benefits, this amount goes a small way towards providing 24 hour care, 7 days a week.

Okay. Boy. Is this "working closely with Centrelink" statement implying that Centrelink knows what's going on and doesn't disapprove?

And once again, Mercy Ministries' own website provides many interesting details. From their Frequently Asked Questions:

6. How much does the program cost?
Mercy Ministries program is provided at no cost to the young women.

For young women who are eligible for a Centrelink payment (eg. Youth Allowance, Newstart, Pension) we ask that they contribute their payment to Mercy Ministries for the duration of their time in the program. From this payment the young women receive an allowance for weekly shopping for incidentals.

Upon entry into the program a deposit of $200 is required from all young women (whether eligible for Centrelink payment or not), to cover the cost of any impending medical expenses.

It will then be necessary to replenish the deposit to take it back to a balance of $200 for any further medical treatment that may be required.

For young women who are not eligible for Centrelink support, Mercy Ministries does require them to have a sponsor to support weekly shopping for incidentals and medical expenses.

As Mercy Ministries is not a medical facility we work with the young women alongside medical professionals who support Mercy Ministries to access excellent and affordable medical care.

Any remaining part of this deposit will be refunded to the resident on departure from the program.

This "free" "psychological program" requires that the residents pay for all their medical costs. The required $200 deposit is also an interesting pyschological hold that Mercy Ministries' angry denials about "voluntary participation" neglects to mention.

Also? People not on Centrelink payments are required to have a sponsor to cover their "incidental and medical expenses"? Why? And perhaps more importantly, who?

Mercy Ministries cont.

The SMH is not letting up on the Gloria Jean's/Hillsong/Mercy Ministries story. More coverage today, with the print edition also featuring a teaser for tomorrow's paper to the effect of "how Mercy Ministries and Hillsong claim they are able to 'cure' homosexuality".

Online articles are available. There is an examination of the ties between the 3 organisations by Ruth Pollard. Pollard also details the Australian Medical Association's concerns about Mercy Ministries' practice of requiring their members' medical visits to be monitored by a Ministries member. Corporations formerly listed as sponsors on the Mercy Ministries homepage - Rebel Sports, Bunnings Warehouse and LG - are denying any connection and their logos have apparently now been quietly removed from that section of the Mercy Ministries website. Other women have been contacting the Herald in the wake of the coverage. And finally, a former member of Hillsong has written an editorial about the issue.

That last one is hair-raising. Consider this:

The teaching when I was at Hillsong included the lesson that women are attached to their offspring eternally. All the miscarriages, terminations and stillbirths a woman has during her life time grow up in heaven, waiting for their mother to join them.

Probably the most serious allegation so far is the claim that women on Centrelink benefits in the program are "encouraged" to sign them over to Mercy Ministries for a period of one year. There's also the claim that women are "encouraged" to go on a disability support pension so that the organisation could claim carer's payments from the government.

Some brief fun with Google: the Darlene Zschech mentioned in the first article has a vanity site: darlenezschech.com. True to Pentecostal form, she's a singer-songwriter who uses her music to praise the Lord and evangelise for Hillsong. The SMH says she and her husband Mark are no longer affiliated with Mercy Ministries. They were both involved in another project called Hope Rwanda in 2006. The who's involved page for that site lists Mark Zschech as, among other things...Chairman of the Mercy Ministries International Board.

Hmmm....the Hope Rwanda page hasn't changes since mid-2007 from what I can see. It might just be out of date.

I'll be interested to see what comes out tomorrow.

Update: how the hell did I miss this right from Mercy Ministries' own site?:

In 2000, Mark and Darlene Zschech launched Mercy Ministries in Australia, a residential program for young women that was founded in America by Nancy Alcorn.

Today as the CEO of Mercy Ministries, Mark leads a team of 27 national staff and through his appointment to Mercy Ministries International Board in December 2004, Mark oversees the expansion and development of Mercy Ministries into the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Asia.

"No longer affiliated", huh?

Gloria Jean's, Mercy Ministries and Hillsong in the news again

In November 2007, local Australian coffee chain Gloria Jean's came under fire for its affiliation with an outfit named "Mercy Ministries", supposedly a sort of Christian live-in psychological counselling program. There was concern among the local gay press in particular about how "overcoming homosexuality" was one of the services it offered. As I recall Mercy Ministries said that they were going to stop treating people who had issues with homosexuality. They still continued their services in addressing other issues, though.

Today, Mercy Ministries made the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. The online coverage is here and here. Far from offering the "professional support from psychologists, dieticians, general practitioners, social workers, career counsellors and daily education from program staff" that is described on their website, Mercy Ministries' actual "treatments" are described by the SMH as consisting merely of prayer readings, Bible study, exorcisms and speaking in tongues.

The SMH reports that Gloria Jean's has not reconsidered its affiliation with Mercy Ministries, and that donation box in Gloria Jean's stores which collects on behalf of Mercy Ministries is apparently going to stay there. Peter Irvine is listed in the SMH coverage as "former managing director, now director of corporate sponsorship" of Mercy Ministries. I think people should know that the original Crikey story from November 2007 linked above also lists him at that time as "executive director of Mercy Ministries" as well as "managing director of Gloria Jean's". Like many of the upper management of Gloria Jean's, he's also a Hillsong member.

I just bought coffee from there this morning, too, since the university's coffee place hadn't opened yet. Goddamn.

Obama, Rev Wright, McCain, Pastor Hagee, politics and religion

Interesting. We have the inflammatory statements of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, religious mentor to Barack Obama appearing in the news. I've been reading commentary on the American political blogs, and people are basically lining up on the sides you'd expect them to.

Curious lead in the linked article: "Barack Obama was forced to distance himself yesterday from his former pastor and religious mentor", with the editorial implication perhaps being that Obama's only publicy disagreeing with Rev Wright's views out of political necessity. Can't say I agree with that interpretation.

The full text of Barack Obama's most recent condemnation of his Reverend's statements is available online. I'm not that thrilled with Reverend Wright's statements, don't particularly think that Obama's demonstrated any kind of sympathy with such statements to date (quite the opposite in fact), but do feel that any statement from Obama on the issue should offer an explanation for how he feels about the Reverend.

Obama's explanation is one I find satisfactory. One sentence in particular I find eminently satisfactory: "he [Reverend Wright] has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor". In fact, I think that sentence goes even deeper than the current issue, and strikes at the core of a severe problem with American politics today: the conflation of religion and politics.

Is it possible to separate spiritual and political statements from a pastor? I believe that is. So, if I accept this statement as a true indicator of his feelings, does Barack Obama. It has pained me to read the comments of so many Americans, inhabitants of the nation that basically invented the laudable notion of separation of Church and State, who are unwilling or unable to make such a distinction between the spiritual and the political.

Yet it is the importance given to that distinction which contrasts, say, the relationship between Obama and Reverend Wright with the relationship between John McCain and Pastor John Hagee. One is, if we accept Obama's comments, a matter of shared religious affiliation that does not intrude into Obama's personal politics, while the other is an explicit political endorsement of a political candidate by a religious figure.

Certainly there are people in America who would disagree that Obama's approach is better. I've read plenty of people who write about "the myth of the separation of Church and State in America". I personally feel that if America does not have such a separation, then it should. I hope that Obama is sincere in his apparent effort to honour that division. I feel no compunction or double standard in applauding Obama for that effort while condemning McCain for his efforts, through seeking the political endorsement of Pastor Hagee, in breaking it down.

Are opponents of homosexuality working against freedom?

Claim: statements made against homosexuality by anti-gay activists sometimes encourage their followers to believe that they themselves will personally suffer for the actions of homosexuals, and for the beliefs of those who have no moral qualm against homosexuality. Such people are therefore compelled by their own sense of self-preservation to deliberately interfere with the actions and beliefs of others by any means necessary. This goes completely against the ideals of self-governance and self-responsibility that characterise a free, open society.

Exhibit A: Pastor John Hagee's statement that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment on everyone in New Orleans, regardless of their personal viewpoint towards homosexuality, because a gay pride march was going to be held there.

Exhibit B: Sally Kern's statements, specifically "Studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted for more than a few decades" and "If you have cancer in your little toe, do you just say that I'm going to forget about it since the rest of you is fine? It spreads! This stuff is deadly and it is spreading. It will destroy our young people and it will destroy this nation."

"Live and let live" means either punishment by God or the complete destruction of the society in which you live? No wonder some people can't leave gay people alone.

The benefits of free speech illustrated: Rep Sally Kern(R)

I'm a strong supporter of freedom of expression. I believe that expressing even the most vile, hateful idea serves an important purpose in allowing the rest of us to see for ourselves just how vile and hateful an idea it is. This puts me at odds with people who support putting restrictions on "hate speech" and "villification".

Much buzz has accompanied the public airing of a tape of Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern saying some truly appalling things about homosexuality and gay people in general. Her subsequent two-pronged defense is interesting in what it reveals about free speech issues.

In the first instance, she insists in an interview with a local Oklahoma news outfit called news9.com that she
is just exercising her right to free speech:"What is wrong with me as an American exercising my free speech rights on a topic that is a very big issue today?" she asks. Absolutely nothing, says I. Everyone should have the opportunity granted by her free speech rights to hear what she has to say if she thinks that it's such an important issue for her to comment upon.

Yet funnily enough, Rep Kern herself doesn't see it that way. In fact she's very unhappy that her statements have been given the wide audience that such a "very big issue" would presumably deserve: "Shame on the person who didn't have the courage to come and say, 'I'm going to tape you and put it out on YouTube,'" she opines.

She wants to speak out on an important issue, but she compains when people actually hear what she says?

The idea of free speech in JS Mill's formulation of the concept is that it is a free people themselves, not their government representatives, that is best suited to judging the merit (or lack thereof) of an idea, through ongoing public discussion amongst each other. Good ideas will tend to rise up, bad ideas will tend to be discarded. It doesn't take too much thought to view something like "homosexuality is more of a threat than terrorism" as a bad idea.

It is very telling that Rep Kern, for all her protestations about free speech, is unhappy with her statements being subject to the scrutiny of that marketplace of ideas. It tells me that she knows her statements won't stand up to that scrutiny. She might view this as evidence of a "homosexual agenda" working against her, but I would say that it is an example Rep Sally Kern rejecting the belief that the benefits of freedom of expression are valid ones: the principle of freedom of expression allows noxious and paranoid ideas like the ones held and promulgated by Rep Kern to be publicly seen for what they are, and publicly rejected. That can't sit well with her.

It is the broad distribution of this speech, not the restriction of it, that has best served the cause of gay rights here. It is a commitment to the principles of freedom of expression through public exposure and condemnation of noxious ideas, not a commitment to the restriction of freedom of expression through banning of "hate speech" and "villifying" speech, that best serves the cause of gay rights in general. Or so I believe.

Examples of Christian "persecution"

Far be it from me to let a list composed in comments go to waste. Forthwith:

A small compendium of four examples of "christians being persecuted for their views on homosexuality" which on closer examination proved to be anything but:

1)In Massachussetts, self-described "pro-family" group MassResistance claimed that "gay activists" had encouraged children to beat up the son of David Parker for Mr Parker's stance on homosexuality. But Mr Parker later admitted to the Boston Globe that "there was no evidence that an adult had directly incited students to bully his son", and everything that the superintendent had said about it being a small scuffle over lunchroom seating, unrelated to Mr Parker's political activities, has never been formally disputed by anyone. This backdown by Parker and Massresistance from their false and hurtful accusations didn't occur until AFTER Superintendent Paul Ash and principal Joni Jay had received hundreds of vitriolic and threatening e-mails and phone calls from "loving" Christians telling them what they really thought of them, by the way.

(2)At Arlington Fair, the anti-gay group PFOX made grandiose claims about being the victim of a "hate crime" (a concept which they completely oppose, by the way). Yet when other people at Arlington Fair asked if events transpired the way PFOX claimed, the answer was unequivocal: It did not happen, according to Vice President of the Arlington County Fair, Jackie Abrams. John Lisle of the Arlington County Police Department have "no records, reports or recollection of any incident at the Arlington County Fair as described by PFOX."

(3) Most telling of all is the incident at the Falls Church Community Center. In this case, all that happened is that a person tried to take a picture of a PFOX activist and this was immediately slammed as "causing an altercation" by the person involved. When the person being threatened by this anti-gay activist merely asked "Do I have to call the police?", the anti-gay activist then said that this amounted to "accosting him".

(4) In New York, Christian protestors were arrested and fined for nothing more than "praying silently", if you believe the anti-gay version of events. A mainstream news report which names the actual charges paints a very different picture: they disobeyed a police order to stop blocking the event, and when they refused, were fined. The horrible, horrible tally of this fine for disobeying a police order and obstructing the stage? $100, plus $95 costs. Gosh, however would the saints of yesteryear cope with the terrible, terrible persecutions suffered by "Christians" (or more accurately, Christianists) today?

Day of Silence, its opposition, and information leakage

The things you find online...

The Day of Silence has an opponent in the US, in Snoqualmie Valley school district to be exact, calling itself the Coalition to Defend Education. Someone's apparently figured out that objecting to the Day on the basis that it's "pro-homosexual" isn't working out. This group bases their opposition to the day on the claims that "it creates unsafe conditions for students, disrupts teaching, and contributes to a biased environment at MSHS[Mount Si High School]."

Since I've yet to see a group that objects to this Day that doesn't have an anti-gay agenda tucked away somewhere, I decided to have a look at what was out there on this group. Besides their love affair with the man who proudly advocates that "God hates effeminate men", Pastor Ken Hutcherson, I haven't found a great deal about them.

Strange what I have found, though:
Here [UPDATE: I have voluntarily removed the actual hyperlink to this page as a gesture of goodwill to the Garding family, after someone complained about me "publishing that family photo on my site"] is a fairly cheesy photo of what may or may not be the members of this CoDE organisation, courtesy of a family website maintained by the Garding family.
Here is a public listing of when CoDE has booked out a Meeting Room at North Bend library on March 12th, from 6pm to 8:30pm.

Nothing particularly useful. But it is kind of personal. I know it's standard among heavy net users to view all information that a person or organisation chooses to make world-readable as fair game for the rest of the world to read, but still..

The whois data comes back with a private registrant called Oneandone private registration. No leads there.

Not much more I can say unfortunately, except I'm impressed that a day intended to highlight the problem of anti-gay harassment is successfully attracting so much public harassment. Kind of proves the point I think.

Does the American Family Association think anti-gay violence is acceptable?

A few weeks back, the ever-insightful Box Turtle Bulletin questioned the supposedly "loving" attitude that anti-gay groups claim to have towards gay people, noting that in the wake of the murder of 15-year old Lawrence King, any suggestion of compassion from these "loving" groups towards a person who was killed for being gay was nowhere to be found, anywhere.

On April 25th, many high school students in the US will be participating in the Day of Silence, a day that seeks to draw attention the dangers that many gay high school students, such as Lawrence King, face.

This really upsets a lot of "loving" Christian organisations. The American Family Association, for instance is urging parents to keep their children home from school on April 25th. It appears that they are unable to conceive that a day intended to oppose anti-gay violence can entail anything other than, as they put it, being "taught that homosexuality is a worthy lifestyle, homosexuality has few or no risks, and individuals are born homosexual and cannot change".

What message does this send? Is there any form of opposition to anti-gay violence that does not somehow "promote the homosexual lifestyle" in their eyes?

If not, can it not reasonably said that an organisation which opposes "promoting the homosexual lifestyle", and which thinks that opposing anti-gay violence is "promoting the homosexual lifestyle", is opposed to the idea of people thinking that anti-gay violence is wrong? In other words, does the American Family Association think anti-gay violence is acceptable?

Some people might think this is hyperbole. I would point them to the fact that the AFA is praising the "bold example" of Pastor Ken Hutcherson in opposing the Day of Silence. Here is what he has had to say on how to treat gay people:

“God hates soft men” and “God hates effeminate men.” Hutcherson went on to say, “If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end.”

Lawrence King was killed because "he began to act in an effeminate way".

Political heresy on terrorism

Just a thought:

The goal of terrorism is to terrorise people and make them afraid. The actual killing of people is the means of achieving this goal. It is not the goal itself.

Most if not all of the wrong-headed thinking on terrorism today stems from viewing deaths caused by terrorism as the goal rather than the means.

Pastor John Hagee, homosexuality and collective punishment

John Hagee, Christianist pastor, whose endorsement John McCain was "very honored" to receive, has stated, among many other things, that in regards to the destruction of New Orleans

there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came.....and I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.

Plenty has been said by others about Hagee's many statements, but I think it's worth highlighting this particular one and how it influences thinking on homosexuality.

Why do some Christianists insist on interfering in consensual sexual practices that don't affect them? The standard answer is that they're doing it out of concern and love for the "poor" homosexual caught up in their "destructive" "lifestyle". Yet if you accept Pastor Hagee's comments as a valid statement of how God works, another answer becomes apparent: they interfere because they fear that the actions of homosexual people will affect them, and in a very bad way.

Believing that God would level an entire city, everyone there regardless of the inhabitants' own individual attitudes towards homosexuality, means accepting that God judges people for actions that they did not themselves perform. It isn't possible for a Christian to believe that this judgement is wrong since the judgement is being made by the entity who Christians believe is the One actually responsible for setting out what is right and what is wrong. So Christians who accept Hagee's comments as valid would view themselves as, for the sake of their own safety from God's wrath, personally responsible for stopping the homosexuality of others.

It's a statement that compels a True Believer to interfere in the personal lives of others. It seems to me also to be an exhortation to behave in a way that is completely at odds with a free society.

I actually can't fault True Believers for doing what they sincerely believe they have to do in order to avoid God's punishment on their lives. I'm not nearly so understanding towards Pastor Hagee, though.

Good site for free speech issues in Australia

Here's a useful resource for censorship issues of all kinds in Australia: libertus.net. At the time of writing, their What's new page is linking to some fairly hefty-looking documentation about continuing steps to implement a mandatory ISP filtering scheme in Australia.

There's no RSS feed for when new links are added, which is a pity because it looks like a page worth checking frequently.

Freedom of speech and the cartoon controversy

In my Media, Information and Law tutorial at uni I managed to get some fairly intense heat directed at me from people on both sides of the Mohammed Danish cartoon controversy. I don't know whether that indicates my independence of thought from all entrenched interests or if it just means I'm an irritating and argumentative bastard who annoys people of any political persuasion.

I did feel extremely defensive at one point when a guy in favour of publication was complaining about what I suggested was an inconsistency in his believing that publishing the cartoons was okay but publishing a phrase like "jews are the new nazis" should be illegal. His response was that talking about Nazis was an order of magnitude worse than mere publishing of caricature.

My response to that was incredibly poor: I thought not rationally, but combatively. My remark in retrospect was incredibly lame as I said something stupid about that being a subjective judgement. It's not. Or I don't think it is. Yet my response was motivated more by a desire not to let the other guy "get one over me" rather than any reasonable attempt to get at the truth.

I'm tempted to let myself believe that I did nothing wrong and that it was the other guy's combative approach that's to blame for me refusing to concede a point. But I don't think I should. And I think that the question of who's to blame for not adopting a reasonable attitude is extremely relevant to the question of the Danish caricature, and it's a question that's completely neglected by most commentators.

I wrote one of my essays last year on freedom of speech in an attempt to challenge my own extremely favourable attitude to free speech and see if there was something wrong with it. I came away from it still being extremely pro-freedom of speech, but I've gained a few insights along the way.

The first one is that in order for freedom of speech to have any meaning at all, there must be an audience for the speech. If a tyrant claims his subjects have freedom of speech because they can say whatever they like in the privacy of their own homes, is that really giving people the benefit of the freedom? Speech that no-one can hear is not really free speech at all.

Accepting that freedom of speech requires an audience immediately shows another way of looking at the cartoon issue: stop looking so much at the opinions and actions of the publishers and start looking at the opinions and actions of the audience.

This is where the dispute really lies when it comes to whether or not to publish the Danish cartoons: on the extreme pro-publication side, it is axiomatic that the members of the audience who feel offended by the cartoons are themselves responsible for "taking it too personally", with no real responsibility for the publisher. On the extreme anti-publication side, it is just as axiomatic that the audience members who feels offended and hurt can justly place the responsibility for that hurt, and for subsequent reactions to that hurt, on the publishers for "deliberately attacking Muslims".

I suspect that most people wouldn't be found on either extreme, and would only lean one way or the other. But I think that's a better starting point for the discussion of the issue: who is responsible for the feeling of harm and/or offense caused by the publication of the cartoons, and why? The answer may not be as straightforward as people think. My own experience above, where I was tempted to think it reasonable to blame my own poor actions on somebody else's speech, makes it harder for me to come down on the pro-publication position of believing the Muslim audience is "taking it too personally" than it otherwise would. I still strongly lean in favour of publication, though.

From uni: thoughts on online activism

At my university tutorial today we managed to get onto the subject of social activism, particularly online activism. I was curious to hear an opinion that online activism was a reason for a reduction in physical, more visible, one might even say "real", activism. I can understand the reasoning: the ability to pop up a "Causes I support" application on Facebook or put an e-mail address onto an online petition is much easier and, in theory, has much less impact than a person actually showing up to a protest or putting their verifiable name and address onto an offline petition. The argument seems to be that such actions aren't an indication of real commitment, but a shallow, insufficient one which gets mistaken as sufficient commitment because, hey, at least we're doing something. Consequently no actual sufficient commitment is made.

I'm not sure I agree. Online activism, as opposed to what one might (inaccurately) call "real" activism, has a much lower barrier to entry in terms of participation. What that means is that while the effect might not be as great per person, there is a much greater chance of getting more people onside. Any offset in people's willingness to actually get away from the computer to do some sort of offline activism has to be weighed against the people who wouldn't otherwise be particularly engaged in any kind of activism but can be persuaded to display your little "Cause" app, sign your petitions, join your mailing list, and from there perhaps even become an offline activist as well as on online one. You might actually gain a body at a physical protest rather than lose one.

There were other reasons put forward for what seems to be a decline in offline activism as well, such as the increased competitiveness of everyday economic life leaving people less time and effort away from the rat-race that they can put towards a non-economic agenda. An opportunity for a less time-consuming form of activism is helpful under such circumstances, if admittedly not as appealing to the especially dedicated.

But overall, I think that the decline in offline activism has mostly been from a perception that it isn't working anymore. The signature example is the Iraq war. The mobilisations against that invasion were some of the most impressive protests that I can remember, but the invasion wasn't stopped. In the wake of the US government's intransigence on the issue, people I think have been forced to working at the most basic level of person to person to try and keep people engaged on the issue. The less imposing, lighter form of activism that is online activism is I think a response to the inability of offline activism to readily effect the social change desired.

It remains to be seen whether this form of activism is definitely abetter or worse at that goal than more traditional forms. But I think that in the context of the current Western social milieu, it is necessarily a better choice.

Gay marriage:The Australian Christian Lobby on Lateline

Lateline last night had some reporting on same sex marriage and civil unions last night as the ACT government once again presses ahead with its plan to introduce civil unions in that Territory. Jim Wallace from the Australian Christian Lobby was on, arguing that gay people did not deserve to be married because their relationships did not compare to heterosexual relationships in the slightest.

As so frequently happens from people opposing homosexuality, he spouted a lot of incredibly precise-sounding statistics, not a single one of which can be readily verified by anyone ("Various studies show that..." was the phrasing he used to avoid anyone noting his dearth of real evidence,if I recall correctly). I have from time to time managed to track down some of these wayward statistics to find that they are distorted, misunderstood, and one occasion outright made up (and yes, I can provide sources for that accusation if asked). Other people have also tried to expose this deceptive practice, but it's hard going. For one, most people are statistically illiterate. For too many people, numbers that sound exact, references that appear voluminous and charts that look professionally created count for far more than statistics that are actually accurate. For another, even when the actual reality is presented, it's all too easy for people to ignore the evidence by discrediting the person presenting the evidence on the basis that they're a homosexual who "has an agenda".

I've tried to track down the sources for Wallace's scientific-seeming numbers, with very little success. I've only found one. It's a statistic that occurs relatively frequently in anti-gay propaganda. Anti-gay activist frequently claim that a study in Holland showed that homosexual relationships only last an average of 18 months. The usual tactic when quoting the study is to then compare this to a study which grotesquely overinflates the average duration of heterosexual marriages (note: not heterosexual relationships, heterosexual marriages. I leave it to the reader to figure out why any such comparison between homosexual relationships and only those heterosexual relationships that are heterosexual marriages is inherently dishonest). Jim Wallace in this case spouted the unsourced statistic that Australian marriages last an average of 33 years. I can't find that one at all, unfortunately.

The "Dutch study" in question, though, is called "The contribution of steady and casual partnerships to the incidence of HIV infection among homosexual men in Amsterdam", and is available online. Jim Wallace of Box Turtle Bulletin has already done a fairly good job of demolishing the idea that this is a representative sample of homosexual couples:

We have a study population that was heavily weighted with HIV/AIDS patients, excluded monogamous participants, was predominantly urban, and under the age of thirty. While this population was good for the purposes of the study, it was in no way representative of Amsterdam’s gay men, let alone gay men anywhere else.

Perversely, Wallace went even further than most anti-gay activists in his denunciation. He didn't just say homosexual relationships only last an average of eighteen months, he said homosexual marriages only last an average of eighteen months. From the Lateline transcript last night

JIM WALLACE: And our experience is, that where homosexuals are given marriage, for instance as in Holland, that the average length or duration of those relationships has been eighteen months between two gay men. Now that's not marriage.

The study he's misrepresenting had absolutely nothing to say about homosexual marriages in the Netherlands whatsoever. Why does he think he can get away with such dishonesty? It appears to me that the depressing answer is: because he can. Anti-gay activists spout too many lies, and it takes too long to explain why they're lies, to ever be able to effectively catch them all.

There are reasonable questions to go into here about not just gay marriage but marriage itself - whether longevity is necessarily the best measure of a relationship's quality, whether marriage has any effect on the longevity of a relationship, whether this kind of collectivist reasoning about "average duration of a relationship" for a part of the population is a valid reason to deny relationship recognition to all members of that part of the population, including those who fall outside the average - but it is impossible to reach those points of argument when the debate is forever being poisoned by so-called Christians who see nothing wrong with basing their entire worldview about homosexual people and homosexual relationships on a foundation of lies.

Obama and the "we" generation

I've been struggling to articulate the question of Barack Obama's alleged lack of policy detail and how this actually makes him more favourable to some people, including myself, but found that Henry Jenkins has already explained it, and more besides.

Jenkin's posts tend to be long (academics, huh?), but I think this one is worth reading in its entirety. Here's the section dealing specifically with how I, and assume many others, view Obama's less than fully-detailed policy plans:

...the fact that the vision is blurry and not yet well defined is a virtue rather than a limitation: it is a virtue if we set up processes which enable us to collaborate to find further solutions. I look on Obama's more vague statements as something like a stub on wikipedia -- an incitement for us to pool our insights and to work through a range of possible solutions together.

After eight years which have sought to revitalize the once discredited notion of an Imperial President, it is refreshing to imagine a more open, participatory, and bottom up process. In such a model, the experience of the leader is less important than the ability to channel all of those voices and the commitment to make sure that everyone is heard. This is like the difference between older notions of expertise (based on monopoly and control of information) and newer notions of collective intelligence (based on creating a self-correcting and inclusive process by which we collect, evaluate, and distribute knowledge.) This may be what commentators are groping towards when they talk about a generational shift or discuss Obama as the candidate of the future.

In which gay marriage opponents appear confused on the issue

I can't be the only person who's noticed this...

In California, the State Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing on whether the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. One of the arguments in favour of the ban is that

the domestic-partner laws [of California] satisfy California's constitutional requirement of equal treatment for gays and lesbians.

That gets argued a lot, that a domestic partnership, civil union or something similar which gives the same legal rights and responsibilities as marriage should be good enough, even if it isn't specifically called marriage. Many supporters of gay rights find it persuasive, even. Who thinks that a "domestic partnership" is different from a "marriage" in anything except name?

Well, as it turns out, gay marriage opponents do - but only if it's heterosexual relationships at issue. In Maryland, US legislators introduced a Bill that

would abolish civil marriage ceremonies now confined to heterosexual unions in the state and replace them with domestic partnerships for all couples.

"Marriage" would be a label applied by religious institutions only. In secular law

The word "marriage" would be replaced with "valid domestic partnership" in the state's family law code.

The opposition's response? Derision.

"What they're talking about is an even more radical departure from traditional marriage than even advocates for gay marriage are talking about," said Del. Christopher B. Shank (R-Washington), the minority whip. "They're creating a situation for one special interest group that basically diminishes the value of marriage for everyone else."

So, an arrangement that for gay people is supposedly so similar to marriage that it makes gay marriage itself unnecessary is for straight people a departure from marriage so "radical" that it's demeaning for straight people to be limited to it.

Conclusion? "Separate but equal" never is.

The weirdness of US politics: Obama and abortion

One of the charges that came out early in the US Democratic Primaries was that Barack Obama was insufficiently pro-choice. The issue just resurfaced on the eve of Super Tuesday. It's based on votes made in the Illinois Senate where Obama took advantage of a voting rule which allows a person to vote "present" rather than "yes" or "no" on something, and voting "present" rather than "no" on several bills put forward in the Senate that were pro-life rather than pro-choice.

As explained in the article linked above, other people have defended this voting record on the basis that it was part of a specific strategy requested by pro-choice advocates in the state. Nevertheless it seems that this still gets brought up as a way of trying to show that Obama is more pro-choice than pro-life.

So it was a bit weird to see people on the other side of US politics trying to tell me that Obama is gung ho in favour of baby killing. And they're doing it based on his voting record in the Illinois senate, too.

Here is the location of one of several almost identical screeds online saying that his opposition to something called the "Induced Infant Liability Act" means "his radical stance on abortion puts him even further left on that issue than even NARAL Pro-Choice America" (what NARAL stands for I have no idea, but I'm guessing that they're like the Gold Standard of pro-choice activism).

I've been entertaining myself chasing down the Senate Bill they're talking about (it was actually called the Induced Birth Infant Liability Act and far be it from me to suggest that someone's making it harder to Google the full text of the Bill) and checking for other factual inaccuracies besides the name. The most obvious one is that the author is conflating this Bill with a federal Bill called (supposedly) the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, and trying to pass off support for one as automatic support for the other. But that's just garden-variety hyperpartisanism.

What really amazes me is that it's possible for one person to find himself attacked by partisans on both sides of the same issue for supposedly being too far in the other side's camp. How does that work?

The promise and problems of OpenID

Playing around with an OpenID provider and something bothers me.

The idea behind OpenID of course is to try and get past the problem of having lots of different accounts on lots of different websites. The existence of a site like Useless Account is testimony to the problem.

OpenID, as I understand it, gets you to sign on to a single OpenID provider site, like My Open ID, which you can then use to sign into other sites rather than having to explicitly create a new user/password combination for each and every site you want to use.

The main obstacle at the moment seems to be a lack of major sites that will authenticate using OpenID. There does appear to be some recent momentum, with web2.0 site aggregator Plaxo and the Blogger.com comment system now being accessible through OpenID authentication. But that's not what's bothering me.

What's bothering me is that I already have a lot of accounts on a lot of sites which aren't tied to my OpenID account, and I don't see any way to tie those accounts to my OpenID account. Worse, plenty of existing sites like LiveJournal also act as OpenID providers: you can sign onto an OpenID-compatible site using your LiveJournal details. As a result I now not only have multiple accounts around the place, but two of those multiple accounts are both OpenID accounts. This doesn't bode well for a system aimed at reducing the number of superfluous user/password combinations I have to keep in mind.

Maybe there's something I missed in the protocol, but to my knowledge there's no way to associate my previously existing accounts with my OpenID accounts. Nor do I know any way to make my existing accounts on disparate OpenID providers aware of each other so that I could easily alternate between them, or even subordinate one to the other.

Perhaps someone could point out whether this is currently possible? If it isn't, then I fear OpenID will go down the road of things like the DVORAK keyboard: a technological improvement that is superior, useful and fails because it desn't take entrenched social realities into account. To succeed, OpenID needs to be able to assimilate existing accounts somehow.

US politics: the Obamaniacs vs the Clintonistas

For the last few weeks I've been scouting about the blogosphere, reading opinions and comments about the US Presidential Primaries, particularly as regards the two Democratic front-runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The last day or two things seem to have gotten really ugly between their online supporters. There was much less disagreement over principle and much more name-calling, mud-slinging and disgust at the alleged negative traits of all the followers of the opposing candidate.

I'm trying not to get sucked in, but I have two observations to make based on the existence of this acrimony, and on the candidates involved:
1. it seems Hillary Clinton is living up to her reputation as a polarising and divisive figure.
2. It seems Barack Obama is not living up to his reputation as a unifying and transcendant one.

Child Wise CEO distances herself from government filtering scheme

Child Wise CEO calls for government re-think on ISP filtering.

Good for her. And it's pleasing also that Ms Mcmenamin seems willing to engage online critics. I wish I had more time to write out my own response to her right now.

I've been meaning to write out some thoughts on Barack Obama's candidacy as well, particularly in the light of some harsh criticisms from John Cole at Balloon Juice. I was hoping to write a lot here over the uni break, but I never seem to make the time. Oh well. Maybe I'll try harder in future

US politics: the Deomcratic candidates and the Press

I think I've come up with a way to figure out how to predict the outcome of the Democratic Primaries: examine what the American press says, and whatever the opposite of what they're saying is, that's what'll happen.

Obaman winning Iowa was a "surprise win". Clinton winning New Hampshire was a "shock comeback". Now the story appears to be that the race will be a tightly-fought contest between the two of them. If the pattern holds, then the Democratic candidate for the Presidency is going to be John Edwards. The media just doesn't seem to think his campaign is worth covering. On that basis, it's probably the one most worth watching.

This isn't just some contrarian tendency on my part. I think there's a significant perception amongst some American voters that the American press is trying to actively determine who should be the next President rather than simply report on the race. At least that's the impression I get from one of Andrew Sullivan's readers who stated:

I think Obama won Iowa because voters resented Hillary's coronation.

I think Hillary won New Hampshire because voters resented Obama's coronation.

Are Americans actively trying to go against the media narratives that are being pushed upon them?

Child Wise statistics - why these ones?

From Child Wise's media releases page, dated 14 August 2006 we have the article "Australians say no to child porn". It cites the same Newspoll study that Bernadine cited in her recent op-ed in The Australian regarding the attitudes of internet users over 18. Newspoll is generally reliable, so I see no particular reason to doubt the statistics presented.

I am curious about two statements from that press release, though. Child Wise is devoted to prevention of child sexual exploitation, so I wonder why the findings "78% believe that ISPs should offer customers the choice of blocking all pornography" and "64% are not confident that home based internet filters are effective" are quoted as if they're somehow relevant to that task. Home-based filters are of course entirely voluntary, and designed to prevent minors from accessing adult content. They are NOT designed for preventing universal access to illegal content such as child porn. So why even mention them?

The curious inclusion of a statistic about what people think about ISPs offering to block (presumably legal) pornography has no relevance to Child Wise's mission either that I can see. There might be a tortured argument in there about how preventing children from accessing adult sexual material might prevent "mental sexual abuse" from the imagery or somesuch, but I don't think that's the reasoning that Child Wise employs. The relevance to Child Wise's mission of the distinction between child pornography and legal pornography seems completely unconsidered here.

The press release here pre-dates Stephen Conroy's "if you don't support our filter plan then you love paedophiles" smear by over a year, so I don't think the conflation is part of any intentional political smear campaign. I suspect that the conflation is unintentional. But I think that only makes it more problematic. It shows a genuine inability to distinguish between filtering illegal content and filtering adult content only. I think that a lot of Australians share this blind spot. And I fear that that's going to make things very hard for people arguing against this censorship proposal.

Stephen Conroy's hawking his filter to News Ltd now

But first, an op-ed on Stephen Conroy from 2004. He was Deputy Senate Opposition leader at the time. It's not a flattering article.

In contemporary news, from today's Australian we have this: Conroy wades into child porn net flood. Now there's an alarmist headline.

Some interesting quotes in it, such as "Senator Conroy will seek to halt access to child pornography, X-rated and violent material for all home users through mandatory filtering by ISPs so children can be protected from net nasties."

Curious, but unsurprising, that The Australian has lumped child pornography, regular pornography and violence all into one. I expect the confusion between "adult content" and actual illegal content is stemming from Senator Conroy's office. I hope less net-ignorant old media outlets can do better than this confused mess, but I'm not optimistic.

The article also explicitly states that "Senator Conroy has been prodded into action by Family First senator Steve Fielding, and the Australian Family Association, which scorned the former government's $85 million free filters for families package as wholly inadequate." No idea if that's true or just editorialising upon the writer's part. It jibes with what people have been speculating to date though, given the make-up of the Senate come July.

Anything else? The Childwise organisation mentioned in the article as a source of statistics has nothing on its homepage that suggests they're actually on board with this government proposal: they want to stop child sexual exploitation, not just hide the evidence of it from the eyes of other children. Might be worth looking into them further, see if they've been misquoted.

Edit: Oh dear. I guess Bernadette McMenamin of Childwise wasn't misquoted in the slightest. Interesting that she's describing the filter as a blanket means of "blocking child pornography and other illegal content" rather than the "child-safe feed with adult opt-out option" that's the supposed proposal on the table, though. Who's been told fibs? Ms McMenamin? Or the Australian public?

Internet censorship: some numbers, some publications, some thoughts

A paper from the Australian Institute (homepage here) published in 2003 outlines a proposal for a mandatory filtering system which looks broadly similar to the one Labor wants to go ahead with, although their proposals went further. I don't know if this is the basis of Labor's policy, but there are some interesting (and from an anti-censorship viewpoint, worrying) statistics on support for censorship among parents of teenagers on pages 22-24 of the paper:

Newspoll was commissioned to survey the attitudes of parents with children aged 12 to 17 (inclusive). The survey was conducted over the weekends of 13-16 and 20-23 February 2003 and the sample size was 377 randomly selected households with at least one child in the specified age group. The margin of error is five per cent or less.

[...]

Seventy eight per cent of these households report having access to the Internet at home, a much higher proportion than the average, which is closer to one third.

On the question of censorship, when these parents were asked "Would you support a system which automatically filtered out Internet pornography going into homes unless adult users asked otherwise?" the result was the following:

Ninety-three percent of parents of teenagers support this proposal while only five per cent oppose it, with three per cent unsure. One might expect that younger parents would be less in favour of these strategies given more sexually liberal views among younger adults. Instead, our survey finds that younger parents, those in the 25-34 age bracket, are 100 per cent in favour (compared to 92 per cent of those aged 35-49 and 93 per cent of those aged 50 and over).

Of course, not all Australian citizens are parents, and not all parents are parents of 12-17 year olds (inclusive), but that's still a pretty hefty voting bloc there with an incredibly unified viewpoint, a statistic which I don't think it's possible to disregard just because of the relatively small sample size.

My initial belief that people support mandatory censorship due to unfamiliarity with the Internet may not hold water given the high uptake of Internet use among this censorous segment of the population. It might be the case that the Internet connection at these households is usually purchased for the benefit of the teenagers rather than the adults, who don't use it. I could see how a combination of parental unfamiliarity with something that's right in their homes, where their children are in reach, could contribute to alarmism.

But that would only be a theory. It could just as easily be the case that these parents have plumbed the depths of what's out there, and don't want to think about even the minutest possibility that their children might come across something untoward. It would also explain the even higher rate of support for mandatory filtering among parents aged 25-34, who I would expect to have some Internet experience as a teenager/young adult under their belt, as well. (Parents as young as 25 with children as old as 17? Or even 12? Something about those statistics at the low end of the parental age bracket is skewed).

As to Labor's policy itself, it probably would've been a good idea to pay more attention to it prior to the election. Their pre-election proposal, "Labor's Plan for Cyber-Safety", is still available for download here.

Apropos of nothing in particular, the insistence on prefixing anything net-related with "cyber-" sets my teeth on edge: "cyber-safety", teaching children to be "responsible cyber-citizens", "cyber-bullying", "cyber-stalking" - it might make sense within the whole "net as cyberspace/virtual reality" paradigm of the 80's and 90's, but I don't think it's accurate or productive to continue treating online material as somehow separate from mundane reality. Today's Internet is a part of everyday reality, not separate from it, and cybertalking in cyberlanguage about cyberactions that supposedly only have cybereffects in cyberspace just doesn't help address the new media issues of today in a realistic manner.

Anyway, here's a curious sentence from Labor's fact sheet on page 5: "Labor’s ISP policy will prevent Australian children from accessing any content that has been identified as prohibited by ACMA, including sites such as those containing child pornography and X-rated material". [emphasis added]

Prominent Australian political blogs like The Bartlett Diaries and the Road to Surfdom have picked up on Senator Conroy's "civil libertarians = kiddyfiddlers" comment, and consider it a baseless political smear. If it is just a cynical smear that Conroy doesn't himself believe, I wonder why his pre-election fact sheet includes this conflation of X-rated material with child pornography, and seems to assume that the issue of child porn online has been adequately dealt with when children have been restricted from accessing it? Perhaps the Senator really is so confused about the issue that he can't tell the difference between the two different Internet boogiemen of children accessing pornography, and anyone accessing and/or distributing child pornography?

I think I'm going to buck the conventional wisdom that the Senator is cynical, and favour the assumption that he's stupid: he genuinely believes that "restricting children's access to online child pornography and X-rated material" is a coherent policy goal. Perhaps he assumes, as too many ignorant people do, that vast tracts of illegal and disgusting material are strewn all across the Internet within easy reach of anyone, and all that can be done about it is to reign in those young people who have not yet succumbed to its alleged allure.

The question I guess, then, is "is the rest of the Australian public also that stupid?". If this was a sane discussion, I'd have faith in Australians to come to the right conclusion, but I fear on the issue of the Internet, fearmongering and alarmism could beat out sanity very easily. In fact judging by the statistics of what Australian parents of teenagers want that I listed above, they've already done so.

Internet censorship rant

"If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree."

So sayeth our new Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy when defending Labor's intention to force ISPs in Australia to filter internet content.

It should be mentioned here that the planned internet filtering is being presented as a means of protecting children from material that is inappropriate for them, with an "unfiltered" option available to adults who want to opt out. In other words, it has NOTHING to do with tackling child pornography - unless of course the Senator is suggesting that anyone who wants an unfiltered feed wants it so they can access child porn. What is Senator Conroy talking about?

(1) The most cynical interpretation is that the good Senator knows damn well that the proposal has nothing to do with child porn and is knowingly trying to confuse the two in the public's mind. If so, it seems to have succeeded in the case of Daily Telegraph writer Galen English. Her column merrily bobbles along saying things like "Besides, what evidence is there that young children using the web are regularly stumbling across child pornography? Sites used by paedophiles are well hidden and frequently relocated to avoid detection", acting for all the world as if child porn is not already illegal to access and possess for both children and adults.

I believe one implication of Senator Conroy deliberately trying to confuse the public by engaging in a smear that he knows to be baseless is this: he has no intention of responding to any protests on this issue, his only intention is to discredit the protesters. Appeals to the government directly will not work. Appeals must be made to the public at large. The effectiveness of that approach will I think depend on how knowledgeable the public is about the Internet these days. I fear that they aren't knowledgeable enough.

(2) Alternatively, Senator Conroy himself might not be knowledgeable enough, and might just be stupid and incredibly ill-informed about his own portfolio. Some research from uni I came across last year suggested that far too many people view the Internet in a way that isn't entirely rational. Rather than a tool or a mere network of computers exchanging data, many people see it as a kind of gateway to the unconscious, a dangerous other place where dark and secret desires that have been stifled by the conscious mind are free to roam. While adults can usually navigate the pathways without too much trouble, children are seen as vulnerable due to their immature judgement, and when porn or violence suddenly leaps out at them they'll end up psychically damaged and end up, say, thinking that suicide and self-harm are wonderful things.

In such a view, much of the content of the Internet seems to exist outside of rational, conscious legal control: all you can do is try to block it out. The confusion between "adult content" and actual illegal content like child pornography would indeed seem blurry if you don't understand that both moral and legal norms do already exist with regard to what is available on the Internet, both in Australia and around the world. They only need to be applied in a sensible way. If Senator Conroy is stupid rather than malicious, it's a failure of both government policy that they're concentrating on blanket censorship rather than working with the Internet community to try and address the existence of morally and legally problematic content. It lacks imagination, ignores the advice of people with actual knowledge of the issue, and shows a terrifying deficiency of technological understanding from a government that's promised us a technologically spurred "education revolution".

****
My uni degree is supposedly teaching me to, among other things, be a more intelligent activist. I don't know how well it's succeeding. But from my less than perfectly worded speculations above, as well as a few other thoughts, I can think of a few suggestions that I would make to anti-censorship activists were I in a position to make some:
First, don't assume that the government is going to listen to your concerns in good faith. Assume that they are out to get you. They may not be, they may be nice, but don't count on it.
Second, reach out to the general public as much as you can. This especially includes off-line activity targeted at people who don't use the Internet. Assume that such people don't understand the Internet. Suggest that the supposed danger of it, particularly to children, has been vastly exaggerated. Seek to explain why. But whatever you do, don't patronise them.
Third, don't take being called child pornography supporters lying down. I would note that some civil libertarians have expressed concerns that anyone who wants to opt out of the ISP censorship regime might get stigmatised in the future. I point out that this is happening right now, and it's coming from the man charged with creating the censorship regime: Stephen Conroy in his comment above has as good as said that anyone who wants uncensored net access wants the freedom to access child porn. Call him on it, if possible. I wish I knew the right question to ask, but "I want to opt out of the ISP regime. Why do you think that means I want access to child pornography?" sets the tone about right I think. It needs to be snappier, though.
Fourth, the Rudd government may be vulnerable to an oblique attack: the promised education revolution, particularly when talking about its promises of making Australia more proficient in IT training, could conceivably become a vector for concerns about internet censorship. This could conceivably overcome attempts by the Rudd government to ignore democratic objection to Conroy's proposal if it's seen as a betrayal of one of Rudd's core election promises, and not just as a side issue. Keywords so far describing the problems with the censorship proposal have been "oppressive" and "expensive". I would like to add another: stupid.

After all, this proposal is stupid. It's been hatched together by people too stupid to understand the Internet, it's attempting to address issues related to the Internet in a stupid way, its defense relies on convincing people that it's alright to be stupid and let the government take care of all their thinking for them, and it's going to destroy the promise of the education revolution that it would make our economy more knowledge-based: nothing discourages intelligence and encourages stupidity like censorship does.

Focus on Australia Foundation/The Exclusive Brethern

John on Vox has expressed interest in finding more information about the Focus on Australia Foundation and its links with the Exclusive Brethren, and possibly the Australian Liberals as well.