Yesterday I had the unusual experience of actually feeling empathy for Australian Parliamentarians.

After years of watching their antics from afar with increasing disgust, outraged iter alia at what they do and don’t do to preserve the civil liberties, free speech and internet access of ordinary Australians -  it dawned on me these people are actually treated like bigger idiots than we are.

It must be bad for the morale of Senators and MPs – and probably reduces their IQ. I know if I ever lack access to an unrestricted internet connection for any length of time, I find myself feeling more stupid – as it leaves me unable to double-check disinformation churned out by so-called journalists working for the bought-and-paid-for mass media.

Here’s what happened. I was in the process of hassling some members of Parliament via Twitter and email on a foreign policy issue. I do this from time to time. While it rarely (if ever) achieves any noticable results – it’s a form of therapy for me – and moral insurance. At least I’ll be able to look any grandchildren in the eye and tell them I did try to stop the world going to hell in a hand-basket.

On this occasion, one of them actually communicated back – and mentioned my website (this website) isn’t viewable in Parliament House. I decided to find out why.

I phoned the Parliamentary Webmaster, who in turn referred me to David Kenny, Acting Secretary of the Department of Parliamentary Services. I sent him an email. The resulting correspondence is brief and self-explanatory, so I’ll reproduce it here:

1 Syd Walker to David Kenny

Dear Mr Kenny
Acting Parliamentary Secretary
Department of Parliamentary Services

I live in far north Queensland, a long distance from the major political hubs of Australia, so when I contact Federal politicians it’s almost always via the internet. Occasionally I link to pages on my website which saves me the trouble of repeating already published material in my correspondence.

Today, for the second time, I’ve been informed that my website isn’t visible via a Parliament House computer. When this was first mentioned some time ago I assumed it must be a temporary glitch. However, having received the same advice I decided to call the Parliamentary Webmanager.

She was helpful, although rather surprised by my inquiry. She assured me that while Parliament staff use “filtered” computers, there’s no such block/filter on the computers of Parliamentarians, who should therefore be able to view any website. I then provided her with the URL of my site – www.sydwalker.info. This seemed to trigger her memory and she informed me that ALL websites with a .info suffix are blocked. She thought it was a spam prevention measure.

She was unable to answer further questions and referred me to you. Could you please let me know:

1/ Is there indeed a block within the Parliament House computer system on all domains with a .info suffix?

2/ If so…
(a) how long has it been in place?
(b) what is its rationale?
(c) Have Parliamentarians and/or the public been nformed about the block?
(d) are there steps underway to ensure that bona fide sites such as my own are removed from the block? (my own website content is mainly poltical; the site contains no pornography and I do not use the domain to send spam emails)
(e) when can I anticipate the block will be removed?

3/ If not, what is the explanation for my website being blocked and can I in any event be assured the block will be lifted promptly?

4/ Apart from .info suffix websites, are there blocks on other websites, or classes of website, that limit Australia’s Federal Parliamentarians’ ability to view material via the internet?

Incidentally, while I appreciate filtering of websites elsewhere is not within your purview, I’ve been told in the past that my website isn’t available from within the offices of at least one state bureaucracy in Australia. Are government IT managers in this country filter-happy?

I’m copying this email to a few internet-savvy Parliamentarians in the major parties represented in Parliament House, in case they are currently unaware of the existence of a Parliament House block and wish to take up the matter with you directly

Regards

Syd Walker

2/ David Kenny to Syd Walker

Syd

Generally, access to .info sites from the parliamentary computing network (PCN) is blocked.  This is done for security reasons.  Access to a specific .info site is enabled upon request, on a case by case basis.

Access to your sydwalker site from the PCN has now been enabled.

David Kenny

3/ Syd Walker to David Kenny

Dear Mr Kenny

Many thanks for your prompt respnse and for re-enabling access to my website from within Parliament House.

I take it that other .INFO websites shall remain blocked? How long has this block been in place? Have all MPs/Senators been informed?

It seems to me a very clumsy way of reducing spam – rather like blocking all telephone calls to and from the UK because some of them are of a criminal nature.

Do you block Parliamentarians’ access to other broad categories of websites in similar fashion?

I do think Parlimantarians should be informed if they are denied access to large numbers of websites (or any websites, for that matter). Does that happen? Or is it left to a chance discovery such as this before black-listed websites are unblocked?

As these topics are of some public and Parliamentary interest I look forward to a more complete response.

Regards

Syd Walker

4/ David Kenny to Syd Walker (2)

Syd

IT sites are blocked for security reasons – including related to threats other than spam.

Requests for access are responded to on a case by case basis.

I do not propose to go into further details about operational IT security matters.

David Kenny

_____________________________________

So there we have it. I may be thick-skinned, but I can tell when a bureaucrat is (politely) telling me to piss off and mind my own business.

It’s true concerns have been expressed over the years about the amount of spam generated from some .INFO websites. Tech guru Chris Pirillo opined years ago that .INFO domains are “dead” – although as you’ll see from comments below his article, that view isn’t shared by many. Spain.info, for example, is used by the Spanish Tourist Board. Then there’s Sieve.info – used to promote a computer language used for filtering e-mail messages…

But no – in Australia’s Parliament House – Big Brother knows best. He filters – and if a pesky little nation like Spain wants to complain, it can apply (as I did) for a special exemption…

Is anything else (apart from .INFO websites) being filtered in Parliament House? Who knows? That information, apparently, is an “operational security matter”. Start telling the riff-raff what’s currently blocked and who knows – we might find a way of smuggling nano-terrorists into the portals of power, disguised as innocent electrons.

I advise everyone who has a website to email Mr Kenny and ask if your site is currently blocked in Parliament House. You’ll never know until you ask. His email address is david.kenny@aph.gov.au (but PLEASE – don’t send him SPAM!)

Oh – and if you want a busy desk job in Australia’s public service, I suggest applying to the Department of Parliamentary Services. Something tells me they’ll be taking on plenty of new staff – rather soon

_____________________________

UPDATE: 2nd Feb 2012

Since publishing this article a few hours ago, a couple of relevant pieces of information have been brought to my attention.

First, according to a IT expert whom I respect, there is absolutely no need to block viewing access to a website in order to block emails sent from that domain. The blocking process is separate. Hence for IT managers to block viewing access to websites. claiming it’s done for spam prevention. suggests they’re grossly incompetent – not telling the truth – or both.

Second, the article above may not make it clear that – as far as I can tell – most MPs and Senators are simply unaware their web access in Parliament House is “filtered”. There’s no evidence know of that any of them are told that some websites are blocked – or informed which sites are blocked and why. I’d thought that was implicit in what I’d written, but perhaps it needs to be spelled out more clearly.

I urge Australians to write to their own MPs/Senators and bring this subject to their attention. Please feel free to post comments to this article so we can share information about who knows what – and what, if anything, our Parliamentarians are doing to restore their own civil liberties!

Speculations on a Sustainable Political Economy from a Human Ecology Perspective

I wrote a short (20,000 word) thesis to complete a B Litt degree in Human Ecology (in the Dept of Geography) at the Australian National University in the early 1990s. After many delays it was written and submitted, as best I can recall, in 1992.

The title of the thesis is Speculations on a Sustainable Political Economy from a Human Ecology Perspective

One of the examiners at the time suggested it could be re-worked for more general publication – but my life moved rapidly in a different direction and I never attempted to do so.

To be suitable for publication now it would need considerable editing and updating. Nevertheless I believe the basic ideas I articulated then have stood the test of time. I haven’t substantially changed my mind about them. The document may be of some interest to others so I’m now making it available online.

It was the product of a younger man trying to understand – and change – the world.

The Abstract, written at the time, summarises the basic argument of my 1992 thesis:

This generation is confronted by a social and ecological crisis of unprecedented dimensions. Modem humanity’s chronically unsustainable way of life jeopardises the future well-being – possibly the survival- of our species, and the health of our planetary environment. Unprecedented changes are needed to resolve this crisis, including active management of humanity’s global economy to facilitate maximisation of human welfare constrained by ecological guidelines designed to maximise prospects for long-term sustainablility. This in tum necessitates conscious transformation of the political framework within which we manage our affairs, including the formation of a supreme, democratic global polity.

I now appreciate much better forces that might resist such changes and the extent to which they go to pursue an alternative agenda.

In the early 1990s, I thought it likely the main opposition to instituting democratic globalism would come from nationalists determined to cling onto the past – as well, perhaps, as transnational companies seeking to continue to perpetuate the unfair advantages they gain from trading within the anarchic conditions of inadequately administered inter-national relations.

I now believe there’s a greater threat of which at the time I was largely unaware. I refer to the (hypothesised) attempt by a cryptocratic plutocracy to impose its own, autocratic and highly undemocratic form of globalism on the world.

In Anglo-Australian culture two decades ago “globalism” was regarded mainly as an idealistic curiosity. Today the view then held by only a few – that globalism is actually an evil plot – now seems much more common and plausible.

There’s a reason it seems more plausible. Some form of malevolent cryprocracy clearly exists – and has been pushing with ever-increasing tempo, over the last two decades, to re-fashion western civilisation into a rapacious, militarised and duplicitous enforcer of its own partisan agenda.

After 9/11, this has been ever more impossible for honest, courageous and engaged intellects to deny. There truly IS a powerful push to develop a global polity – but from what we can glean, the intentions and modus operandi of those behind it are malevolent, immoral and utterly unacceptable to humanity as a whole.

Should we conclude that establishing global political union has become undesirable – as well as not feasible or premature (the common refrains 20 years ago)?

I think not. The need to establish a global political movement that can bring to fruition what Phillip Allott describes as ‘Eunomia’ is ever-more pressing.

What’s very exciting and offers grounds for optimism is the extraordinarily rapid progress made over the last two decades in information technology and telecommunications. We now have the technology to complement the ideal. We can make our human world more intelligent – quickly and in an ecologically affordable way.

The key goal now is to also make it healthy (whole) and wise.

_________________

Note: The document (my old thesis) has recently been digitised from printed copy prepared at the time.

I haven’t tidied up the PDF document generated automatically via the use of optical charatcer recognition software (OCR) – so it does contain typos over and above any perfections in the original.

To make ot easier for readers to find what may interest them in the document, I’ve reproduced below the List of Contents page with original page numbers:

LIST OF CONTENTS

LIST OF DIAGRAMS – p.6
ABSTRACT – p.7
INTRODUCTION – p.8
CHAPTER 1 …… THE MODERN CRISIS FROM A HUMAN ECOLOGY PERSPECTIVE – p.11
Cultural Adaptation to the ‘Modem Crisis’ – p.12
The New Environmentalism – p.14
CHAPTER 2 …… THE IDEA OF SUSTAINABILITY – p.19
Sustainability – p.19
From Stockholm to WCED – p.21
Eco!ogy’s Radica! Currents – p.23
CHAPTER 3 …… RE-UNITING ECOS – p.28
The Growth of Environmental Economics -p.28
Towards Eco-Development… – p.33
CHAPTER 4 …… SPECULATIONS ON A SUSTAINABLE POLITICAL ECONOMY – p.39
The Implications of the WCED – p.40
Economic Globalisation – p.41
Building a Global Community – p.45
CONCLUSION – p.51
APPENDIX A The ‘BiohistoricaI’ Conceptual Framework – p.52
APPENDIX B The Terms ‘Polity’, ‘Economy’ and ‘Political Economy’ – p.58
BIBLIOGRAPHY – p.60

There’s nothing like a live mic at a summit to get the facts out!

In this case, Silvio whispers sweet somethings to Sarko the Sayan

Angela titters as Silvio "Bunga-Bunga" Berlusconi pricks the Eurozone's largest ego

I’ve seen the best minds of my generation destroyed and corrupted, sleek with suborned reality,
dragging themselves through zionist halls of power hooked on illusory security
angelheaded hipsters who’ve grown into fat, visionless pimps divorced from ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo and earth
who cashed up and well-tailored and blood-shot eyed sat up snorting in the surreal smugness of luxury apartments floating across the tops of cities, slavering over greedy more
who bared their brains to Hell under the ADL and saw Mohammedan demons improbably collapse three skyscrapers illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating market-based solutions for all but banks and never mentioning perpetual wars for Israel
who were raised up by the academies for their conformist and grovelling odes to surreptitiously acknowledged plutocracy
who cowered in hotel rooms in underwear, burning their money in casinos and parroting the Terror on their flatscreens,
who got busted in their former indiscretions and turned? (closer into the fold of smug elite privilege)
who ate shit to follow illicit orders and scribbled lies for cryptocrats and prostituted their souls day after day
with cash, with ‘power’, with waking nightmares, alcohol and sleaze and endless balls-ups,
incomparable blind alleys of stultifying conformism and no excitement in the mind about a free and undivided world without contrived hatreds and wars
Youthful illuminations a mere memory, green visions now derided, lording it over the powerless with pisshead arrogant neon might-is-right, oblivious to the sun and moon and tree vibrations in a spring they now can only fake, ranting “no tin foil hats”; genuine intelligence long-departed from their minds…

A partial update of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, for the generation that came next…