Published 10 November 200810 November 2008 · Main Posts Antony Loewenstein on internet censorship admin Overland presents Antony Loewenstein with Christos Tsiolkas on Wednesday 19 November 2008, 6.30 pm for the launch of Overland 193 and a conversation about oil, war and the responsibility of public intellectuals. More details here. Antony also has a piece in today’s Age on the Rudd government’s attitude to the internet: BEFORE this year’s Beijing Olympic Games, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd chastised the Chinese authorities for blocking full access to the internet for the assembled world media: “My attitude to our friends in China is very simple”, he said. “They should have nothing to fear by open digital links with the rest of the world during this important international celebration of sport.” Although Rudd expressed no concern for the average Chinese web user being unable to view tens of thousands of banned websites, his intervention was nevertheless a welcome call for transparency and greater democracy. But now the Rudd government is working towards implementing an unworkable filtering process in Australia that suggests a misguided understanding of the internet and worrying tendency to censor an inherently anarchic system. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told Radio National’s Media Report recently that the aim of the project is to “protect Australian families and kids from some material that is currently on the net . . . such as child pornography and ultra-violent sites”. Conroy tried to assure a sceptical interviewer that although the idea had been ALP policy for years, “we are committed to work with the industry to see if it is technically feasible”. He further claimed that similar kinds of filtering already exist in UK, Sweden, Norway, France and New Zealand and “there has been no detrimental effect on internet speed or performance”. But Conroy is and ignoring the wider social, moral and political implications of the issue. A number of politicians, including Family First Steve Fielding and independent Nick Xenophon, have advocated blocking online gaming sites and general pornography sites. What next? The full article is available here. admin More by admin Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 25 May 202326 May 2023 · Main Posts The ‘Chinese question’ and colonial capitalism in New Gold Mountain Christy Tan SBS’s New Gold Mountain sets out to recover the history of the Gold Rush from the marginalised perspective of Chinese settlers but instead reinforces the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty. Although celebrated for its multilingual script and diverse representation, the mini-TV series ignores how the settlement of Chinese migrants and their recruitment into colonial capitalism consolidates the ongoing displacement of First Nations peoples. First published in Overland Issue 228 15 February 202322 February 2023 · Main Posts Self-translation and bilingual writing as a transnational writer in the age of machine translation Ouyang Yu To cut a long story short, it all boils down to the need to go as far away from oneself as possible before one realizes another need to come back to reclaim what has been lost in the process while tying the knot of the opposite ends and merging them into a new transformation.
