It seems to have something to do with customs (the second dog has apparently detected something smelly), but the connection is fuzzy… much like Aussie customs.Over three years ago, I wrote an article entitled Rambo caught with his pants down [display] on the subject of zealous customs officers in Australia. I still laugh whenever I think of my friend Geoff getting all his precious cans and jars of foie-gras confiscated. "Jeez mate, you don't realize what you're doing: the possible harm you could have caused. French shit like that could kill our local farmers and poison the Australian food and agriculture industries."
Back in 2006, when I last visited my native land, I took my MacBook with me, which enabled me to remain in contact with my French family through emails. (I didn't start my Antipodes blog until a few months later.) Today, in the unlikely event of my deciding to revisit Australia, I would be wary of entering the country with my portable computer, because the nation seems to have gone all wowserish in a "Big Brother" fascist fashion. The customs people would be capable of finding undesirable stuff on my hard disk: I don't know what (since I don't collect child porn), but I wouldn't trust them. Maybe they would find rude references to Stephen Conroy, or shit of that kind. In other words, they could easily decide to "do a Goossens" on me.
Click the banner to read an article on this subject in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald. Prying into a visitor's computer is a shocking example of the abuse of civil liberties, which I find intolerable. Every nation ends up with the kind of society it deserves. But I wouldn't wish to live in such a degenerate society.
Bill, I wonder if you might find some interest in these, about an internet censorship panel at the Sydney Writers Festival yesterday and a talk about blogging at my local library last night:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,1944/day,20/month,05/task,view_detail/year,2010/
http://www.mosman.nsw.gov.au/events/2025/inspiration-content-and-connection/
http://www.r17m.com/read-the-blog/
http://www.r17m.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Mosman-Library-Talk.pdf
http://geniaus.blogspot.com/
Best,
Ron.
Ron: Unfortunately, those links don't throw much light upon the terrifying Aussie situation highlighted in my blog. This new state of affairs is grim, and it must be resisted urgently, to preserve traditional Australian values of personal freedom.
ReplyDeleteAmong your links, only the writer's festival was vaguely pertinent, but we don't know who was there nor what they said. The Mosman talk was trivial stuff that every blogger knows, and has nothing to do with censorship, etc. As for the genealogical blog, I've known about it for ages, but find it uninteresting. Sorry to be so negative!