D B Valentine wrote, "The filter can be circumvented easily anyway by anybody who is technically competent ..."

Whilst this may be true, I believe the over-emphasis on this argument actually serves to diminish the threat that filtering poses to free speech and democracy. It diverts our attention from the fact that large numbers of ordinary users will NOT be able to circumvent the filters.

When filtering inevitably comes to be used used to censor sites that the government considers a threat, most people will not have the means to discover facts contrary to the lies of the corporate mass media (e.g. WMD's, 9/11, union-bashing, privatisation, etc.).

On a two-party preferred basis, many of us are truly caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea.

It is absolutely vital that third parties opposed to filtering gain achieve a massive vote at the next elections.

If only the Greens would show real leadership, instead of confining themselves to manoeuvring and wheeling and dealing in a Senate that seems almost certainly stacked with an overwhelming majority that does not have our best interests at heart, they could easily be assured of winning at least one Senate seat in each state (or at least two in a double dissolution full Senate election) and picking up a number of lower houses as well.

As I wrote earlier, as Gillard is openly talking of putting her Government's proposed health reforms (whatever their merit or lack of may be) what possible reason could the Greens have not to try to make Mandatory Internet Filtering to a referendum?

My apologies. The conclusion of my last post should have been:

... what possible reason could the Greens have to not try to make Mandatory Internet Filtering a referendum issue?