Sedition Stirring

I’m not usually one to soap box stand. Actually that’s a lie. I do it all the time. In fact, this is what my blog is all about. It’s probably why you regular readers keep coming back, why some link to me, why most people never come back and quite possibly why people avoid my eyes in the street and walk away hurriedly.

But there’s much ado going on about Anti Terror and Sedition laws with the major conglomerates of mediocrity that we delight in referring to as The Media taking the issue to task.

Oh, the agony they must feel that they are being stripped of their “right to free speech” and how a free press is the bastion of any free society!

“Oh woe is us!” they all cry from the pits of their laptop keyboards, whittling away the USB mouse plug so that it doubles as a sharp, pokey thing, “we cannot write anything against government because they'll chuck our arse in the slammer for seven years, and in there we'll go insane because of all the faeces on the floor!”

Oh, I do feel for their plight.

I mean, how can they practice writing their novel if they can’t put complete fiction on the front page, and then put an apology the size of pin head on page 49?

It must be terrible.

Equally terrible must be the inability to actually read the proposed Anti Terror laws, in particular section 80.3 in where it outlines that a defense can be formed if the articles are written “in good faith”.

I’m no lawyer, and I’m probably wrong to be delving into issues that are far beyond my uneducated brain, but the way I read it is that if an article is published with the intent to incite change through legal (ie peaceful) avenues then they’re okay.

Equally okay is if the media published what are commonly known as… well… you know… “facts”.

I’m sure the media would argue that they DO publish “facts”. Much in the same way our government “interviewed” terror suspects, how Clinton never had “sexual relations” with that Lewinsky chick, my ex didn’t “cheat” on me and how Jews during the holocaust were sent to Auschwitz “summer camp” for “sunbaking” and “frolicking” in the “pool”.

(Sorry, but the media were the first to start using Nazi metaphors regarding these laws.)

I remember thinking that it’s usually a racist who says something along the lines of “I’m not racist, but… [insert vitriol about immigration issues]”, so I’m wary of saying this… but…

I’m no right wing, government supporting, Howard lover, and I believe that these laws are only on the cards to add fuel to increasing fear that lingers on the nation, but frankly… anything which stirs the pot with the media has my thumbs up.