paulcanning

Monday, March 9

Commonwealth Day = Dispossession Day

Only four members of the UN voted against the Declaration on Indigenous Rights in 2007: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. Three are members of the Commonwealth.
Of the 53 countries which now make up the Commonwealth, only two of the smallest (Dominica and Fiji) have ratified the 1989 international law recognising indigenous and tribal peoples' rights.

The Commonwealth - and Britain's wealth - was partly built on the dispossession of indigenous peoples but the UK refuses to sign, in part explaining that this is because there are no indigenous peoples in the UK. That has not stopped countries such as the Netherlands from signing. The UK also does not recognise 'collective human rights' despite recognising that countries such as Canada and Australia are right to recognise them!

One hundred and fifty-eight members of the UK parliament have rejected the government's argument and asked it to sign the law.

The point of the declaration, says the UN, is that it does "represent the dynamic development of international legal norms and it reflects the commitment of the UN's member states to move in certain directions ... an important standard for the treatment of indigenous peoples that will undoubtedly be a significant tool towards eliminating human rights violations against the planet's 370 million indigenous people and assisting them in combating discrimination and marginalisation."

This is obviously not what the UK, representing commercial interests and not human rights, wants.

Sunday, March 8

Best marketing ever?

If you hadn't heard, one of the islands on Queensland, Australia's Great Barrier Reef has been running a search for a job online. Only they've made it sooper-viral, by making it youtube and the job itself is, well, brilliant:

An Australian state has launched a global search for candidates for "the best job in the world" -- earning a top salary for lazing around a beautiful tropical island for six months.

The job pays 150,000 Australian dollars (105,000 US dollars) and includes free airfares from the successful applicant's home country to Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland's state government announced on Tuesday.

In return, the "island caretaker" will be expected to stroll the white sands, soak up the sun, snorkel the reef, "maybe clean the pool" -- and report to a global audience via weekly blogs, photo diaries and video updates.

To my mind, this is the best job applicant of the bunch:

Why is this the best marketing ever?

The campaign was part of a drive to protect the state's 18 billion Australian dollar a year tourism industry during the tough economic climate caused by the global financial meltdown.

While the campaign has elements of some reality television shows, a candidate's looks will not be a prime requirement, Tourism Queensland chief executive Anthony Hayes told AFP.

"No, I don't think beautiful is what we want, I think charismatic is what we want," he said. "The reality is we are looking for a fantastic communicator.

"What we want this person to do is travel throughout the Great Barrier Reef and just try every experience, every adventure they can find and report back via blogs and video to tell the world why Queensland is a great place to come for a holiday."

Potential Great Barrier Reef tourists are definitely online. Smart. Plus, here I am doing their marketing for them :#

Cute animals: Chester The Incredible Peeing Dog

Brown opposes Prop. 8, refuses to act on homophobic Home Office

Gordon Brown on his return from Washington:

"I was in America yesterday and I know you will be sorry I didn't bring Barack Obama back. He is coming soon. But what I saw in America told me what we have to do. This Proposition 8 [which banned gay marriage in California], this attempt to undo the good that has been done. This attempt to create divorces among 18,000 people who were perfectly legally brought together in partnerships, this is unacceptable and shows me why we always have to be vigilant, why we have always got to fight homophobic behaviour and any form of discrimination."

Speech by Peter Tatchell at Amnesty International headquarters on Friday 16 May 2008:

“Since 1999, the Labour government has repealed most of Britain’s anti-gay laws and introduced new legislation to recognise same-sex partnerships and protect gay people against discrimination.

“These positive gay rights measures are being undermined by Labour’s failure to tackle the homophobic and transphobic bias of the asylum system.

“We need urgent government action to implement five key policy changes to ensure a fair hearing for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) asylum applicants:

“First, all asylum staff and adjudicators should receive sexual orientation and transgender awareness training. They currently receive race and gender training but no training at all on sexual orientation and gender identity issues. As a result, they often make stereotyped assumptions: that a feminine woman can’t be a lesbian or that a masculine man cannot be gay. They sometimes rule that someone who has been married must be faking their homosexuality.

”Second, the government should issue explicit instructions to all immigration and asylum staff, and to all asylum judges, that homophobic and transphobic persecution are legitimate grounds for granting asylum. The government has never done this, which signals to asylum staff and judges that claims by LGBT people are not as worthy as those based on persecution because of a person’s ethnicity, gender, politics or faith.

”Third, the official Home Office country information reports - on which judges often rely when ruling on asylum applications - must be upgraded and expanded to reflect the true scale of anti-LGBT persecution. At the moment, the government’s documentation of anti-gay and anti-transgender persecution in individual countries is often partial, inaccurate and misleading. It consistently downplays the severity of victimisation suffered by LGBT people in violently homophobic countries like Pakistan, Uganda, Egypt, Nigeria, Iran, Cameroon, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Palestine and Saudi Arabia.

”Fourth, legal aid funding for asylum claims needs to be substantially increased. Existing funding levels are woefully inadequate. This means that most asylum applicants - gay and straight - are unable to prepare an adequate submission at their asylum hearing. Their solicitors don’t get paid enough to procure the necessary witness statements, medical reports and other vital corroborative evidence.

“Fifth, the Home Office needs to issue official instructions to asylum detention centre staff that they have a duty to stamp out anti-gay and anti-trans abuse, threats and violence. Many LGBT detainees report suffering homophobic victimisation, and say they fail to receive adequate protection and support from detention centre staff. These shortcomings need to be remedied by LGBT awareness training to ensure that detention centre staff take action against homophobic and transphobic perpetrators, and that they are committed to protect LGBT detainees who are being victimised.

“Labour’s claim to be a LGBT-friendly government rings hollow when it continues to fail genuine LGBT refugees. We must insist on an asylum system that is fair, just and compassionate – for LGBT refugees and for all refugees,” said Mr Tatchell.

Sample case histories of how the asylum system fails genuine LGBT refugees:

* Two years ago, Thando Dube embarked on a 33-day hunger strike in protest at being held in detention for six months. She was not a political dissident held by a brutal regime. She was a regular civilian who was incarcerated in a British asylum detention centre. Her crime? Thando is a lesbian who fled to the UK to escape the well-known persecution of LGBT people in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

* At least two gay Iranian asylum seekers have committed suicide in UK in the last five years, after being ordered by the Home Office to return to Iran. Israfil Shiri, aged 29, burned himself alive. Hussein Nasseri shot himself in the head. Both chose suicide rather than suffer deportation and probable execution by Iran’s ayatollahs.

* The Home Office insists that Jamaica is a “safe” country. Many LGBT Jamaican asylum applications are rejected, despite evidence from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that anti-gay attacks are widespread. In the Home Office’s view, gay Jamaicans can seek police protection. But the reality is, according to Amnesty, that “protection is often denied by the police, who in many cases appear to tacitly or actively support such violence.”

* Isaac K, aged 17, fled to Britain from Uganda after he was caught with his boyfriend. A mob, which included local officials, tried to kill him. According to the Home Office, what happened to Isaac does not constitute persecution and therefore he does not qualify for asylum.

* The Home Office likewise denies the abuse of gay men in Algeria. RK was jailed for homosexuality. In prison, he was raped and beaten by inmates and guards. His teeth were knocked out and he suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. The Home Office insists that it is safe for RK to return to Algeria.

* Many LGBT victims are forcibly - even violently - deported back to their homophobic home countries. This happened to gay Jamaican, EB. He alleges violent beatings by Home Office-contracted security guards who forced him onto the plane. When he arrived in Kingston, his family say that he could barely walk.

These abuses are happening under a Labour government - a government that claims to support LGBT human rights.

I will add to Peter's proposals that LGBT asylum and immigration groups should be used, as the Canadian immigration minister has proposed, to help filter out false claims.

Ashamed to know these people are my fellow Brits

Binyam Muhammed, the returned Guantanamo Bay detainee, has given his story to the Daily Mail. Although the Mail has taken, like the Conservatives in general, a line against torture 'in our name', their readers feel differently.

I have rarely felt so depressed reading comments on the Daily Mail's website than this.

Do these people not know what Churchill thought of torture? How our forebears refused to use it when fighting for this country's survival against the Nazis? Because they knew it DID NOT WORK! Here's the tireless campaigner against torture, the conservative Andrew Sullivan:

He opposed it in all circumstances. He was no liberal. In World War II, the Japanese added "amendments" to the Geneva Conventions for the specific war with America. Sound familiar? Money quote from my friend Niall Ferguson:
[E]ven if you don't see any resemblance between Bush's "administrative regulations" and Imperial Japan's "necessary amendments" of the Geneva Convention, consider this purely practical argument: As Winston Churchill insisted throughout the war, treating POWs well is wise, if only to increase the chances that your own men will be well treated if they too are captured. Even in World War II, there was in fact a high degree of reciprocity. The British treated Germans POWs well and were well treated by the Germans in return; the Germans treated Russian POWs abysmally and got their bloody deserts when the tables were turned.

Few, if any, American soldiers currently find themselves in enemy hands. But in the long war on which Bush has embarked, that may not always be the case. The bottom line about mistreating captive foes is simple: It is that what goes around comes around. And you don't have to be a closet liberal to understand that.

Churchill:

"The great principle of habeas corpus and trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the British people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgement by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments... It is only when extreme danger to the state can be pleaded that this power may be temporarily assumed by the executive, and even so its working must be interpreted with the utmost vigilance by a free parliament... Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy. This is really the test of civilisation."

Rarely would you find me lining up and willing on the David Davis' of this world - against part of their own base it would seem. The Mail today makes me truly ashamed to share space with some Brits. People who would have us behave as the Khmer Rouge and - yes - the Nazis behaved.

They are being enabled by those in our government who permitted this to happen in our name and are still covering up our role. We all know it happened and until that is dealt with we will all have to live with the stain on our democracy.

Saturday, March 7

Sydney Mardi Gras

These two vids give you some idea of what Sydney LGBTI Mardi Gras is like. This one is from a float:

This one's filming the same group from the pavement:

I wrote about my experience of Mardi Gras on its 30th anniversary last year. It's really hard to convey much by video of the real all-inclusive energy - and scale, 10,000 participants - of it.

This vid gives some idea

More video (and possibly better, there's not a lot about the anticipatory warm-up, which was always my favourite bit, uploaded yet) here.

Thursday, March 5

Spotify vs last.fm

N'kay. I have been somewhat, er, bruised today by my younger colleagues concerning my affiliation to last.fm vs this new fangled thang (Spotify).

Well I am listening right now to a new listener maybe 'friend' of mine and seeing just why the social aspect of music twitches my bones. He's (?) giving me F+++++g great shit after F+++++g great shit.

A German has similar music taste to mine and through him I discover new stuff. That's how last.fm works. And it's brilliant.

I don't have stacks of 'friends' on last.fm. Just the 28. But they always show me new stuff I'll like when I try their 'stations'. That's how last.fm works. The more you put in the more you get out. And this 'station' of 'lakritza' I'm hearing hits my spot.

I steeeeetch, within my musical comfort zone. Shit, this German also likes something called 'Cowboy Junkies' (?) alongside Marvin Gaye. N'kay. S'alright.

And I add shit to my own library. And because I's a old queen, I get 2hear some fabulous retreads. Jigga jigga. Sweeeeeet. Sa-weat.

And that's a problem?

Spotify is just iTunes, better biz model.

Swish.

Tuesday, March 3

Paul Canning, guitar hero

I am actually in a band (as well as being a union activist in New England and a South African surfing champion).

Finally we've put out an album. Loving the artwork! Have heard that some think our name's a tad, owh, pretentious ...

Here's your route to Top Of The Pops:

1 - Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

HT: Paul

Monday, March 2

Web censorship and 'collateral damage'

Attended the Cambridge programme of the Convention on Modern Liberties at the weekend, particularly as an Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) spokesperson was at a forum on internet censorship.

The session was videoed.

Turned out that the IWF woman had little to contribute but heard some interesting stuff from Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon, from Birkbeck.

She works with sex offenders and said that there is evidence of harm resulting from viewing extreme material. She also pointed out the obvious - that the existence of the web has facilitated pedophiles in two ways: finding each other and grooming children.

This led her to believe that internet regulation should not be entirely dismissed. But she also pointed to the cost of exagerrating the threat to children.

She slammed the government's approach, saying that we end up with law that achieves nothing largely because of reactions to moral panics created by the press and a lack of consultation. It did not help that because funding is being withdrawn from research into the behaviour of sexual predators, she claimed, 'evidence-based' regulation is made harder. She also said that politicisation of the police had a role, as they are pushing MPs into viewing the worst images to which they predictably react with 'something must be done!'.

There are vested interests and there is official incompetence, she said.

Her answer was to have independent, open regulation, staffed by people who are "fit to do the job". And to not diminish the role of parents.

I contributed at the forum about the role of commercial filters. From when I submitted evidence to the Australian Senate in 1999 to now their role and their development has stayed the same: they are a commercial form of censorship sold to assuage parental and commercial fear. 'You must buy this otherwise you'll be sued', 'buy this or workers will waste time', 'buy our software to protect children'.

Yet as in 1999, there are groups of children who suffer as a result of their implementation.

For example, a 12 year old girl who has been raped may find access to online information blocked: at school, in the library and at home.

LGBT youth continually report this:

Well I tried to do some research today, and my searches for gay rights, lgbt rights, homophobic bullying, and similar were all blocked.

Even websites like Pink News were all blocked. I find this ridiculous, after all how can a student try to find help and support online, or do research, when these sites are blocked.

I have also seen PinkNews blocked by a local council's filter.

Although websites can be unblocked, what are the chances of a teenager struggling with isolation actually asking for this?

Dr Brooks-Gordon, following my contribution, said that one of impacts of the government's kneejerk and badly designed regulation of so-called 'extreme pornography' could be that a teenage transsexual could not see images of sex-change surgery, even with parental supervision.

This sort of un-thought-through 'collateral damage' or 'over-blocking' is one of the reasons why national-level filtering was just blocked in the Australian Senate. A right-wing anti-abortion Senator voted against it because it would mean the blocking of images of aborted fetuses.

In their promotion of filters the IWF describes such blocking of rape or gay youth sites as "an acceptable level of success".

Ofcom fail to mention over blocking in their promotion of filters, although the Byron report to its credit does. Ofcom is proposing a 'Kitemark' scheme for filters. I would certainly like to see this take into account over-aggressive marketing.

The solution I came up with in that 1999 report was a 'whitelist'. This would ensure that no products sold in the UK blocked sites like www.queeryouth.org.uk and most importantly kids using public resources (schools and libraries) would have access to online resources of educational and personal value and not randomly see them blocked.

This is also the solution taken up by the Australian State of New South Wales (NSW), where all filtering is done 'in-house'. And because it is done by a government body, the Department of Education, it is more open to lobbying and how it operates is more accessible to change.

Their attitude is summed up by their chief information officer, Stephen Wilson, facing criticism on blocking of web 2.0 tools:

"We want to make it pleasant and we don't want someone surfing the internet and getting a lot of blocks for the wrong reasons. We want them to be blocked for the right reasons."

The NSW operation isn't perfect - they block Google Docs because it's "in direct competition to MS Office" - but it's a damn sight easier to influence and more accountable than a US-based corporation.