The Populate Or Perish furphy is back, this time in a full page newpaper ad and a website, play2upnow.com.au.

The play2upnow site is published by Gary Johnston, the Managing Director of Jaycar Electronics. Johnston wants Aussie women to push out puppies to replace the 102,000 ANZACs lost in WWI. However, with Australia’s current population of over 20 million, you’d think we’d have done reasonably well in the last 87 years.

No small racist undertone is conveyed by the ‘play2upnow’ website in noting that home-grown, presumably white, Christian progeny are preferable to population growth through migration:

If immigration dominated over domestic population growth in 50 years – living memory – the national character of the country would change in ways we just cannot imagine.

What’s so unimaginable? Too many brown, non-Christian people migrating to Australia?

To be fair, Johnston disavows any affiliation with right-to-life groups and claims not to think that women seeking pregnancy terminations should be persuaded to give birth for the benefit of the nation.

However, the entire notion of nationalism is getting rather long in the tooth. National borders have been superfluous since the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The democratisation of information and communications via the internet was the final nail in the coffin for nationalism. It’s harder for a government to persuade a population to fear and loathe other groups when those people are easily contactable, as most of us now do several times a day with emails.

Multiculturalism is not just a policy, it’s the way of the world. World migration will continue to increase as the barriers to communication and understanding fall.

-weez

Neil’s been busy in the garage again.

A hundred voices and a ‘power trio’ belted out Young’s new “metal folk protest” album, said to be the Fahrenheit 911 of rock, in just two weeks.

Amusingly but not surprisingly, Faux News derides Young for being born in Canada yet protesting the policies of the Shrubya administration. However, Young has lived in the USA for around 40 years, which is a damn sight longer than many of the empty talking heads on the Murdoch division of the GOP have been alive.

Young has always been disappointed with the amount of time it takes to get a record out to the public:

When four student protesters were shot dead at Kent State University in 1970, he wrote “Ohio,” recorded it with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and released it two and a half weeks later by sending acetates (preliminary pressings) to radio stations. … “Now we have the Internet,” he said. “It doesn’t sound as good, but it’s much faster, and it gets around the world. That’s huge, that’s as big as we get.”

Young has made the entire Living With War album available for free streaming download. Pay particular attention to ‘After The Garden‘ and ‘Let’s Impeach The President.’

-weez

Nuff said.

-weez

(hat tip to Suki & Barista)

From The Age:

Morgan rates dual citizens as ‘bipolar’

By Adam Morton
April 27, 2006

BUSINESS leader Hugh Morgan has called for dual citizenship to be outlawed, comparing it to having a mental illness.

In a speech at Deakin University last night, the prominent Liberal Party supporter and former Business Council chairman said a person with dual citizenship had “at least the beginning of a bipolar disorder”.

Mr Morgan said citizenship was one of the most important elements of personal identity and would have a bearing on Australia’s survival as a nation.

“I am convinced that if we took Australian citizenship seriously, we would not tolerate this bipolarity. If you are an Australian then that should be the end of the matter,” he said.

“If your loyalties are to another country and Australian citizenship is merely a convenience, then you should hand in your Australian passport and feel content that your loyalties and your passport are in accord one with the other.”

It takes a genuine psychopath- who really doesn’t know the difference between his ass and a hole in the ground- to claim that dual nationality is akin to a mental illness.

Speaking of holes in the ground, Morgan is the same rich twat with many financial interests in mining, who opposes Australia’s participation in the Kyoto Protocol. Fatcat Morgan unsurprisingly thinks global warming is a furphy. Some measure of sociopathy or psychopathy is required to reckon that mining profits trump the destruction of the global environment.

I’m a dual national- a citizen of both the USA and Australia. I vote in both countries and of course can travel freely between them and work in either. Never have I had conflict of interest as a result of being a dual citizen- and I’ve had around 10 years to think about it.

When America finally declares war on Australia, I suppose I’ll have some choices to make, but probably not before.

-weez

Howard has approved ‘smart cards‘ for access to government services like Medicare, pension benefits, etc. Howard claims that the new ID cards will not be mandatory, yet he also says some services will be unavailable without the electronic card. Sounds like “compulsory,” once the sound bite is translated out of Howard doublespeak.

I’m with Terry O’Gorman, who says the new ‘smart card’ is simply a de-facto Australia card. The combination of various data represents a very real privacy risk to users. Build an information system- and someone will find a way to break into it.

The present arrangement has your details spread out over several information systems, causing information theft to be much more difficult as several systems must be broken to obtain all your details. Moreover, the card user cannot be assured of what data actually resides on the card nor how that information is used. With a paper based system as used with the present Medicare card, a record trail is established which could be accessed with Freedom of Information requests.

I’m a disabled pensioner. I have a Medicare card and a pension card. My wallet will get 1.6 grams lighter if I only have to carry one card. Yippee. That’ll sort out the excess stress on my knees. I can’t think of any other valid purpose for the new ID cards. What’s wrong with the present system?

The most disappointing part is that it will be those who can least afford to protest the new ID card system- pensioners, single mums and the unemployed- who will be compulsorily obligated to use it.

In actual fact, the ‘smart card’ itself probably won’t contain much data, likely only a number which a database will use to pull up your records.

If you’re curious about what data is on a ‘smart card’ and are handy with a soldering iron, you can construct this interface circuit to connect the ‘smart card’ to your PC. You can then use common terminal emulation software to see the card’s contents.

Or, if you’re so inclined, you can fry the actual chip within a ‘smart card’ by connecting a 12v DC source (i.e. car battery) to the contact pads as shown. A couple of 5 second bursts in a microwave oven would have a similar effect. Either method would disable the chip whilst leaving the card cosmetically undamaged. (edit: microwaving an old SIM card did kill it, but also melted the plastic surface of the card… not the best method to kill your smart card…)

The card itself isn’t the problem. It’s database in which your information is concentrated where the real privacy risk exists. Blowing up the card is fairly symbolic, though.

Down with Big Bother!

-weez

Pink is trashing the fluffy blindness of modern pop singers with her new song Dear Mr. President:

Dear Mr. President
Come take a walk with me
Let’s pretend we’re just two people and
You’re not better than me
I’d like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly

What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep
What do you feel when you look in the mirror
Are you proud

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye
How do you walk with your head held high
Can you even look me in the eye
And tell me why

Dear Mr. President
Were you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
How can you say
No child is left behind
We’re not dumb and we’re not blind
They’re all sitting in your cells
While you pave the road to hell

(more…)

Says the WaPo:

Lawyer: Rice Allegedly Leaked Defense Info
By MATTHEW BARAKAT
The Associated Press
Friday, April 21, 2006; 9:37 PM

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked national defense information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in the same manner that landed a lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence, the lobbyist’s lawyer said Friday.

When the Prez can expose CIA agents for his own political gain and do so with total impunity, the rest of Washington has a license to leak.

Shrubya’s standing order to fire leakers simply never held any water.

-weez

The Australia Card is back.

Any single ID card which represents a number of pieces of data is in itself a security risk, most notably for identity theft.

Unless the beggar is bulletproof, it goes in the junk drawer, right next to John Howard’s terrorism fridge magnets.

The upside is that the government won’t have to do its military recruiting via SMS spams.

-weez

Former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Tom Delay quit politics last week as a result of corruption indictments arising from the Abramoff scandal.

Today, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan resigned.

Karl Rove has been relegated to a secondary advisory position, but not nearly as secondary as necessary to rescue the shredded reputation of the Shubya administration.

Will the president resident of the United States manage to serve out the remainder of his second stolen term without being called to answer to Congress? As long as the Shrubya administration keeps publicly shooting its own messengers, he just might. But just how many messengers are there left to shoot?

It’s time for the responsible party to do the responsible thing- resign now and face the music for war crimes and for lying to the American people.

-weez

UPDATE: Don’t miss Jon Fox’s country-swing pisstake of McClellan – “Scotty The Duck!” (MP3, 4.9Mb)

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16 year old Amber Oswald works for a Pulp Juice kiosk in Warriewood. Last week, she was paid at penalty rates for working weekends and public holidays. This week, she’s been ‘made redundant’ and then ‘rehired’ under an AWA– with no penalty rates.

Her boss told the Sydney Morning Herald:

“If they don’t want to sign, they can leave,” he said. “It’s not about what’s fair, it’s [about] what’s right – right for the company.”

So what are Amber’s choices? Clearly, she doesn’t have any- but we sure do.

Boycott Pulp Juice bars.

If Pulp Juice managment thought paying workers at a fair rate was expensive, I wonder how expensive a total lack of clientele will be?

Heard any other stories of workers being screwed by NoWorkChoices? Post them here in the comments area.

-weez