Rant: Aussies Revolt Against Government

I had to copy and paste the entire article, because the person who wrote it (Nick Farrell) did an absolutely fabulous job of writing it.



THE AUSTRALIANgovernment's plans to set up a Chinese style firewall and censor the web so that it only says good things is facing a backlash from important political activists.

The group which helped free David Hicks and abolish Work Choices scheme, GetUp, has now set its sights on the Government's censorship plans.

GetUp plans to run mainstream ads and offline action that will be as elaborate as its 'Free Hicks' campaign. A petition on its website has attracted over 22,000 signatures in just a day and GetUp said it had received more emails urging them to act on this issue than any other campaign in recent history.

Opposition parties and the Greens this week officially announced their opposition to the internet filtering plan, which critics like GetUp fear will slow the internet to a crawl and open the door to censorship of porn, anti-government views, pro-abortion sites and online gambling.

Obviously this sort of censorship is not the sort of thing Aussies can put up with. The nation which was built from the gene pool of Britain's 19th century underclasses is not one which wants to have those sorts of controls thrust upon them again.

Despite the fact that the move is about as popular as compulsory governmental anal probing, and about as likely to work as a supercomputer running Microsoft ME, the Government is pressing ahead with live filtering trials.

GetUp campaign director Ed Coper said he was certain his organisation's 'Save the Net' campaign would be "really big and ongoing". µ





The original article can be found here: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/11/28/aussies-revolt-government