The saying goes that for evil to triumph, it is simply necessary that good men do nothing; or something to that effect.

In recent days I have experienced the power and flexibility of the internet as it is available to us all here on OLO, and on other social networking sites such as Twitter. I have also begun to experience the dark side of this medium, the side we all may expect to see more of if Senator Conroy's proposals for filtering out 'unwanted content' are put into effect.

On GrahamY's topic 'The Polanski Conundrum - when is pedophilia forgivable?', I stumbled upon a Twitter campaign being waged on behalf of two UK citizens, Brian and Kerry Howes, facing extradition without even a hearing, let alone trial, to the US. This post, and the one immediately following, describes how that happened:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3093#73228

I was outraged by what I read.

So, when the Deputy-Prime Minister's October-special 'Personal Epiphany' article 'Driven by indignation at injustice' went up on the main page of OLO ( http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/ ) it was just manna from heaven for Forrest Gumpp. So I became the first poster to the comments thread, and the article appeared upon the index page. Except I didn't realize at the time that it was the lead article of the OLO October-special 'Personal Epiphany' theme.

My post lasted only around an hour.

An OLO user had complained that it was off-topic, and I guess in a way it was: it was probably the last sort of challenge the D-PM expected to run into as a response. In a moderation decision which I now understand, the challenge that was that post was taken down.

I became even more outraged.

I then spat the dummy, on my own topic, 'Power with pride going Belly-up?', here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3050#73310 , and in subsequent posts, all of which, to GrahamY's credit, remain up.

It is what has happened since, from outside of OLO, that should alarm every Australian.

TBC

Continued

November was on my mind as I did my dummy-spit: the dates of the 5th, the 10th, and, most of all the 11th, particularly so. As I spat away, the well known old poem from the First World War, 'In Flanders' Fields', came to mind. It seemed to me that with Remembrance Day coming, what was happening to the Howes' in the UK, and had already happened to Hew Griffiths, an Australian, was the direct antithesis of what those who we remember on that day fought for.

So I wrote the poem 'Ode to McCrae', which can be seen in my dummy-spit thread here, if you don't already have it up:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3050#73526

Needless to say, I had open in a tab as I wrote it a resource that belongs to the entire Australian community, the Australian government web page 'The Red Poppy',

http://www.defence.gov.au/army/traditions/documents/inflandersfield_1.htm

I had just tweeted a tinyURL link to this page to Brian_Howes, who is currently under house arrest in the UK, and who, interestingly, like Hew Griffiths, is into computers. He, when he is not presumably supplying crystal meth precursor chemicals around the world (if we are to believe the Yanks), is a computer engineer. Anyway, I immediately tested the link after posting it, as I am wont to do.

The Red Poppy page was blocked! An 'Error 404' notice now displayed. The page remained unavailable for the remainder of the day and until some time the next morning. Curious that all this had happened just at the time links were being supplied to Brian Howes. Had an Australian government web page dealing with Army history suddenly become 'unwanted content'?

The significance of the blocking may have resided in the deterrent effect of non-working links upon web surfers. The significance of the 'Ode to McCrae' lay in its possible usefulness in satirizing, within the UK, where reporting of the Howes case in the press is restricted by law, the provisions of its one-sided Extradition Act 2003.

Brian Howes claims he has been under electronic surveillance for years.

forrest we all been under survelance scince ww2...when govt made thec outlandish claim to be abble tyo read all the international mail..at the them midway point...in the time it took to refeul

see this ability continued after the war...mauil is now able to be auto read as it goes through the mail system

its no co-incidence that google is mainly owned/controlled by the security agencies...every word we type is read in real time...even our phones transcribe and word search in live time...

the joke about ranson callers getting...not traced...because they hang up quickly...is simply speaking a deception...in reality the exchanges track every call..before its even conected

in short censure is possable
and if its possable then censure we get
freespeech means nothing..its only words..they give lipservice to

its hardly tall poppy..its about control
control our speech...control our thought

we live in the end times...most of what people think to know has been twisted..by spin and buzz...but also censure and popularist media complicity...now they have been gotten round...but net [web?] 2 will soon fix that

i cant download my music for free...[my lps paid for their production..]..vidios take hours to download...the enron system..of short supply..means people are willing to avoid the artificial restriction..for a price..

meaning they get that the rest of the sheeple dont get
many of us dont get it either...but those who censure have a fear..thats what i love about grayham...hes mainly fearless...just publishing this proves it

thats not to asume your eforts...no doudt you thought about this post for a long time..getting it egsactly right...thus cdensure for you means half a day wasted...i just make it up in five minutes..thus dont have much attatchments to my vents

but then if taken down it makes further ventings/forces yet other isues seeking expression to be expressed...

but be warned the phycology of it is well known...simply by forbidding...we yearn to fixate on an aryificial construct..created by the censor...

maybe to get us distracted away from other fixations..but then maybe not...glad you finally were allowed to speak freely..[and fully]

It's not clear what you're saying, FG. Can you summarise?

The point I am making is that an Australian government web page, and a very innocuous one at that, was blocked during real-time electronic surveillance of a Twitter communication between myself and Brian Howes. It happened right before my eyes as I was endeavouring to give him some links that maybe might help him get his message out from under the blanket of censorship that prevents significant press coverage of his situation in the UK.

How come a .gov.au site gets blocked in Australia?

You would think that only the Australian government could effect that. I hardly think the Australian government would have been electronically watching ME. Therefore I do not understand how, with any propriety, this .gov.au site could be so quickly and effectively blocked as an outcome of US and/or UK electronic surveillance of Howes IN THE UK.

What does that say as to the extent of fear of discovery of the probable lack of substance to the US extradition request that might result from Howes merely having access to these innocuous Australian sites?

If there was ever substance to the US allegations, then Australian law enforcement authorities should have long had the evidence that backed the charges shared with them, as the US allege Howes knowingly supplied Australian drug dealers with crystal meth precursor chemicals, the innocent supply of which from the UK (where Howes was based) broke no UK law.

If the AFP had such intelligence shared with it, Australia should be seeking Howes extradition here. Such a request from Australia would trump the US process in Britain, and result in at the least an extradition hearing at which prima facie evidence justifying Howes' extradition could be examined.

It is just this elementary judicial process that Howes is denied with respect to a US request because of the one-sided provisions of the Extradition Act 2003 (UK). A request for extradition to Australia, on the other hand, does not fall under such one-sided provisions, and at least the Howes' would then get a hearing.

Censorship has been attempted while promoting this.

This is the link to Brian Howes' tweet confirming that he has formally requested, at the Australian embassy in the UK, to be extradited, along with his wife, to Australia in connection with the allegation claimedly made in the US information laid against him in the UK, that he has knowingly supplied methamphetamine precursor chemicals to illegal drug dealers in Australia:

http://twitter.com/Brian_Howes/status/4868875208

The significance of the request is that it may become the basis of a test of the integrity of the information laid against the Howes', and of the sincerity of US authorities in laying it.

It is my understanding that drug law enforcement intelligence is routinely and fully shared between the US and Australia. It is therefore to be expected that Australian authorities should have had, from the very first, the drug intel as to the Howes' alleged supplying of precursor chemicals to Australian criminals.

It would seem to me that if the appropriate Australian authorities, which I would assume to be the Australian Federal Police, actually have such shared intelligence, and that some sort of criminal conspiracy involving the Howes' existed, that the AFP could and should be laying the appropriate charges, and Australia be seeking the Howes' extradition.

If, on the other hand, there has been no such drug intel received over the years by the AFP in respect of the Howes, then the sincerity of the relevant US authorities (presumably the USDEA) in discharging their information sharing obligations comes into question. Likewise does the substance of the US extradition request to the UK government, on the basis of which Brian Howes has been held in detention, also come into question.

In matters involving extradition, governments should be expected to behave as model litigants. If there is no intel from the USDEA in the hands of the AFP as to the Howes' involvement in anything that would be criminal in Australia, then the US authorities seeking the Howes' extradition had no business smearing the Howes' with allegations of involvement in supplying drug criminals in Australia with precursor chemicals.