The federal government will press ahead with plans for compulsory censorship of all Australian internet access.

Under the plan, Internet service providers would be required to provide feeds filtered free of pornography and other inappropriate material to houses and schools.

The government has not stated what would be defined as 'inappropriate', but has confirmed that legal material will be censored. Labor has stated that the current list of banned sites, prepared under the Howard government, "does not contain enough sites to protect our children from harmful and inappropriate content."

In a government test of various filters, all filters tested had problems with both under-blocking (allowing access to up to 13% that they should have blocked) and over-blocking (wrongly blocking access to up to 7.8% of websites that should have been let through). The filters also caused a performance drop averaging 40%.

(Source: Electronic Frontiers Australia, nocleanfeed.com)

 

Unscrupulous Sydney landlords are taking advantage of refugees with little or no experience of the city's tight rental market by getting them to sign exploitative rental contracts or evicting them in favour of richer tenants, community service workers say.

Some refugee families are ending up in refuges for the homeless.

Western Sydney migrant workers and tenancy advocates said the refugees were often placed in the market by privately run settlement services, and had little understanding of their rights and responsibilities. Many had become so desperate they were willing to pay almost anything.

Brij Datt, of the Campbelltown-Wollondilly tenant advocacy service said that "landlords are demanding one, two, sometimes even six months' rent, as bond, plus four weeks' rent in advance."

"Invariably when they leave they're not going to get their entire bond back and any little scratch mark or stain is picked up and they're just told, 'You did this, you pay for it'."

He said refugee families often arrived in rental accommodation to discover that they had not been cleaned after the previous tenant.

"They show up and the place is filthy but they're too afraid of reprisals to complain - in some cases with good reason."

"Low-income families reliant on Centrelink payments are provided with eviction notices because landlords want to reclaim properties...in order to raise rents which they think a Centrelink tenant will not be able to pay," the manager of the Fairfield Migrant Resource Centre, Ricci Bartels, wrote in a recent paper, Between A Brick And A Hard Place.

"Rentstart is only available every 12 months which leaves tenants who are evicted [unable to] get adequate, if any, assistance if they are forced to move within 12 months. Services...are faced with clients who present with high levels of anxiety, depression, homelessness and talking of suicide as their only solution."

In Blacktown, home to a number of African refugees, it is not uncommon for refugee families to spend extended periods in refuges for the homeless.

"After they exhaust all options, they get referred to Department of Housing emergency accommodation," the Blacktown Migrant Resource Centre settlement worker, Edward Massimino, said. "But even then there are long waiting lists - it's up to six months - and homeless shelters and crisis accommodation."

Others must squeeze into modest flats with their extended families.

Single mother Reta Dawood, her two children, her two sisters and her mother live together in a two-bedroom flat in Fairfield.

Her two sisters and mother have been unable to find anywhere to live since they arrived about six weeks ago.

The landlord has indicated he may put their flat on the market, leaving the family of Iraqi refugees facing eviction.

"I'm looking for somewhere for my sisters to live, but there is nothing there," Ms Dawood said.

Each fortnight she pays $460 of her $550 Centrelink benefit on rent, relying on the benefits her son receives as a TAFE student.

"Sometimes I'm just waiting for my benefit," she said. "All I can do is hope and pray."

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

The US government is aware that white supremacists are entering the US military in order to prepare for a race war, but have made little effort to stop them.

A recently unclassified FBI report states that "supremacist leaders are encouraging followers who lack documented histories of neo-Nazi activity and overt racist insignia such as tattoos to infiltrate the military as 'ghost skins', in order to recruit and receive training for the benefit of the extremist movement."

Due to the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, the army has had difficulty with recruitment. A Ku Klux Klan member said that "they are so desperate at the moment; they are going to let you in with a small swastika. If you are an obvious racist and shoot niggers and queers you might find it difficult, but generally you are fine."

A poster on the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront stated that he wanted to transfer to Special Forces, saying that "hopefully the training will prepare me for what I hope is to come."

A member of the Blood and Honour group wrote in an email that "there are actually a lot more 'skinheads,' 'nazis,' white supremacists now [in the military] than there has been in a long time...us racists are actually getting into the military a lot now because if we don't every one who already is will take pity on killing sand niggers. Yes I have killed women, yes I have killed children and yes I have killed older people. But the biggest reason I'm so proud of my kills is because by killing a brown many white people will live to see a new dawn."

Army commanders have repeatedly terminated investigations of suspected extremist activity in the military.

For example, a report by the Army's Criminal Investigative Division stated that there was "probable cause" that a soldier had "provided a military technical manual 31-210, Improvised Munitions Handbook, to the leader of a white extremist group in order to assist in the planning and execution of future attacks on various targets." The investigation was called off.

(Source: Southern Poverty Law Centre, www.nazisinthemilitary.com)

 

The Commonwealth Bank has lifted its profit to nearly $5 billion.

Net profit for the year ended June 30 rose to $4.791 billion.

The bank's cash profits, the industry's preferred measure of performance, came in slightly lower with a 5% increase to $4.73 billion. This is just over $100 million more than its 2007 result, which was itself a record.

Westpac, Bendigo, Adelaide Bank and St George have all announced that their 2007-8 earnings would also hit a record.

(Source: The Australian, The Age)

 

Real-estate agents are weeding out "risky" tenants using criteria such as race, according to new research.

The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) has released a report on different risk assessment practices within the private rental sector, including both formal and informal methods.

While a tenant's ability to pay rent and care for a property were identified as important considerations, the report also found personal characteristics and circumstances were used as indicators.

Ethnicity, family size, and the personal appearance of a rental candidate could determine the success of their application.

The report concluded that increased competition among applicants in the private rental market meant low-income tenants were likely to be most disadvantaged.

It said that evidence showed a large proportion of low-cost rental accommodation was occupied by moderate- to high-income households, locking out those who really needed it.

(Source: Brisbane Times)

 

Roy Morgan Research has sacked 56 of its Melbourne-based call centre workers by email, including one who had recently been given a pay rise for good work.

A co-ordinator of interviewing teams at the market research company emailed staff on August 4 to tell them that, due to a shortage of work and poor performance, their employment had ended "effective immediately".

The co-ordinator said staff were sacked because they had not met the company's "high standards". However one worker, 19-year-old Julia de la Cruz, said she had been given a pay rise for good work six weeks previously.

The staff, who were all casual, have no redundancy entitlements and the company is under no obligation to give them notice of termination. Roy Morgan chief executive Michele Levine said email was a common way for the company to communicate with its large workforce.

(Source: The Age)

 

100,000 Australian employees will lose their jobs in the next 12 months, according to the Reserve Bank.

The Bank's quarterly economic review said it expects job creation to slip to its lowest level in seven years.

(Source: news.com.au)

 

One of Australia's biggest hotel groups has threatened to sack employees who talk to government officials, unions or lawyers.

Workers at Starwood's Sheraton Mirage Resort on the Gold Coast have been asked to sign the policy that says only senior executives are authorised to speak to 'the media'.

It goes on to say that "in this policy, the media refers to any third party that is seeking information on the hotel and intends to communicate the information to the general public...The media may include a government official, a union representative, an independent journalist, a film crew, a news network, a radio station or a legal team."

(Source: The Australian)

 

The Fox News network gave a sympathetic interview to a man they described as a free speech activist, but who was a long-time Holocaust denier and admirer of Hitler.

Fox News correspondent Steve Brown interviewed Paul Fromm. Mr Fromm was identified only as a "Free Speech Activist".

Mr Fromm is Canada's most prominent Holocaust denier. He has attended dozens of white supremacist events, including one held to mark the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's death. In 2005 he told an Iranian news agency that the Holocaust was a "religion created by the Jews for non-Jews" which has "allowed the Jews to acquire many billions of dollars".

(Source: Southern Poverty Law Center [US])

 

An immigrant with a Masters degree in Business Studies has never been accepted for a professional job in 15 years in Australia, instead working in jobs including labouring and driving a taxi.

Abdullahi Habib was studying accounting when the civil war in Somalia forced him to leave.

In 2001 he returned to study and three years later completed a bachelor of business in electronic commerce at Victoria University.

On the advice of his lecturers, he upgraded his qualifications by studying for a master of business studies (enterprise resource plan system), which he finished in 2005.

He tried Centrelink, but "they just put me into a job network, but the job network was not helpful. It is a possibility people from African backgrounds are not given a chance."

Mr Habib said he knew "plenty" of Somalis with impressive educational qualifications, which they gained in Australia, who still cannot get work. Some of them are also driving taxis, a job he has returned to.

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

Supervisors on an American farm made a pregnant teenager work in extreme head for nine hours without access to shade or water, until she died of heatstroke.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health fined Merced Farm Labor $262,700 for violating eight workplace safety rules.

State authorities believe 17-year-old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez died in May because her supervisors denied her access to shade and water as she pruned white wine grapevines for more than nine hours in nearly triple-digit (Fahrenheit) heat at a Central Valley vineyard.

Inspectors found that Merced Farm Labor also deliberately neglected to train workers and managers on how to stay safe while working in punishing temperatures. The company also willfully skirted preparing for a medical emergency, the agency said.

Since Vasquez Jimenez's death, three other field laborers have died in incidents the agency is investigating as heat-related.

California implemented the country's first heat-illness standard in 2005. The state requires that farms and contractors give workers water and breaks, have shade available and have emergency plans in place.

However the United Farm Workers and some Sacramento legislators say conditions in the fields have yet to improve substantially.

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

 

New South Wales' liquor store of the year will not lose its title, despite the owner instructing staff to keep groups of Aboriginals out of the shop.

Tim Leonard, the owner of the Old Bar Cellars near Taree wrote a memo to staff in February saying that, due to shoplifting by "the one coloured girl plus friends who has come in with two or three other coloureds", Aboriginals "mixed or otherwise" will not be allowed in the shop, unless they come in individually and consent to being searched on their way out.

One of the shop's four staff refused to sign the memo. His hours were cut back and he later resigned.

Mr Leonard says that he changed his mind after "three or four weeks", and the policy was not enforced.

Old Bar Cellars was named the top regional liquor store and liquor store of the year in last year's NSW Liquor Stores Association awards for excellence.

The association's chief executive, Terry Mott, said it was not considering stripping Old Bar Cellars of its title because the policy was not pursued. Mr Mott said that if the policy had been pursued, "maybe we would have to reconsider it."

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)