Sunday, January 09, 2005

ALARM-BELLS FOR AUSTRALIAN BLOGGERS!

Some academics from the peacenik end of the Australian church community were recently commissioned by the Australian Federal government to do a report on "Multi-faith" (translation: Islam-promoting) activities in Australia. Summary here. The full report (PDF) is mostly a combination of mush and political correctness but one of its recommendations is downright hilarious: It recommends that public use of the cross be discontinued and a "composite symbol" be developed to replace it. My mind it quietly boggling at what a composite of the Christian cross and the Muslim crescent might look like! Pretty confusing, I guess.

Another recommendation is not so hilarious, however. Under "Websites and Web Links" it says (p. 115): "The monitoring of Australian-based religious websites by religious leaders themselves and by government authorities charged with administering legislative acts concerning racial and religious discrimination has become a priority". And in their final recommendations under the heading "Constructing a Multi-Faith Australia" (p.125), it says this about websites: "The study uncovered legitimate concerns about the material of several websites of faith communities, particularly their links to racist websites offshore. At this stage, it is appropriate that a process of self-regulation remain in place but the issue needs to be monitored by the Council for Multicultural Australia. Accordingly, it is recommended that: All faith communities be encouraged to put in place mechanisms for a continual monitoring of their websites for materials or links whose content might damage the harmony of Australia's multi-faith society." (Translation: Criticism of Islam on the net must be censored).

So they think the government should censor websites that are critical of Islam but are being all moderate at the moment and are recommending self-censorship only. But the whole idea of political censorship of the net is of course obnoxious. So Australian readers should talk to whomever they can to make sure that this bit of Fascism goes no further. It WOULD of course be the Leftists who want political censorship. Hiding inconvenient information is essential to the Left and they are pretty good at it. How many people know, for instance, that Marx and Engels were antisemitic German nationalists long before Hitler thought of it? But for the web, I doubt that anybody reading this would know that. See MarxWords.

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