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CHRISTIAN POLITICAL PRESSURE OPPOSES FREE SPEECH LEGISLATION IN AUSTRALIA IN DEFIANCE OF UN HUMAN RIGHTS' ARTICLE 19:

MANDATORY INTERNET FILTERS TO BE INTRODUCED IN AUSTRALIA, BLOCKING UP TO 95-99% OF ADULT CONTENT AVAILABLE FREELY THROUGHOUT THE REST OF THE DEMOCRATIC WESTERN WORLD

Opposed only by the newly formed Australian Sex Party, Australia's powerful Christian Lobby representatives are privvy to exclusive secret meetings with Australia's Communications Minister Stephen Conroy (a devout Catholic) over the indtroduction of mandatory ISP level internet filtering in Australia. Formerly calling itself "the clever country", the self-important but internationally insignificant nation refuses to adopt a Constitutional guarantee of free speech in deference to pressure from the Nation's fundamentalist Christian parties - the Christian Democrats (led by veteran Festival of Light campaigner Fred Nile) and Family First (led by arch-censorship advocate Steve Fielding). Recent leadership overhauls now mean that both major political parties in Australia, Liberal & Labour respectively, are headed by devout Christians, unanimously in support of an increasing censorship regime throughout Australia that will heavily restrict adult freedoms.

With current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proudly quoting scripture in Parliament and holding press conferences outside his Church and opposition leader Tony Abbott a fundamentalist Catholic who opposes women's rights over their own bodies, opposes stem cell research and is vehemently anti-abortion, democracy in Australia has been rendered null and void - there is no choice but Christian ideology. This reactionary state of affairs began with the leadership of Methodist Prime Minister John Howard, who legislated to introduce chaplains into every school and unquestioningly supported the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld led invasion of Iraq that many in America now consider the basis for potential war crimes investigation against the so-called War on Terror Bush government.

Considered a dark horse in the upcoming 2010 election, the Australian Sex Party was formed in late 2009 to combat the rising tide of Australian religious conservatism which has led to one of the strictest film and literature censorship regimes in the world, alongside China and Iran, making Australian democracy a hypocrisy that has led the European community to condemn Australia as "the global village idiot", a racist nation of Christian "wowsers".

TO READ MORE ABOUT AUSTRALIAN FILM SEE HERE
TO READ MORE ABOUT CENSORSHIP & RELIGION SEE HERE

James Cameron & Avatar:
Placating the American Populace with Derivative, Comforting Theist Spiritual Gibberish
*January 11th, 2010

It's been 12 years between films for James Cameron, whose lavish Titanic somehow became a "contemporary classic" of Romantic Hollywood cinema.

His latest, Avatar - released in 3D and in Omnimax versions - has now passed the US$1 billion box-office mark. Yet, in its simplistic clash between atheistic military occupationists and indigenous spiritualists it is a derivative reworking of American ideals of Manifest Destiny transplanted into outer space and although admittedly entertaining finally emerges in support of a vaguely New Age informed Theist credo which is comfortingly re-assuring in a way that such recent American films as Knowing, The Invention of Lying and The Box have fought against.

Indeed, in post 9/11 Hollywood a virtual crisis of faith has erupted in populist cinema, making for an ideological battle between the forces of political atheism on the one hand and Christian orthodox Theism on the other. And, sadly, in terms of box-office receipts, re-assuring a troubled post War on Terror America of the validity of Theist mythology is more popular than the rigorous, intellectual questioning of morality, ethics and science that informs the Atheistic cinema revival (though such comedies as Year One suggest a revival in religious satire may be one means to combat the lavish Theist fantasies of such works as The Day the Earth Stood Still, Angels & Demons and Avatar).

Ironically, the Vatican have spoken out against the film for its elevation of nature to a position reserved for a higher power, replacing conventional religion with the worship of nature.

In that, Cameron is rather cleverly, albiet slyly, responding to the ecological crises of the modern era and its newfound spiritualism as advanced by many in the New Age field of self-help and personal development. However, he merely replaces "God" with "Nature" and delivers a mythic story which in its overtones of white Messianicism is inherently racist. This Messianic superiority of the great white hero is trait Hollywood adores, it having infiltrated such as the Western A Man Called Horse (whose plot Cameron shameless lifts for Avatar) on down to the amusic fantasy of 10,000 BC. However, it is hardly a progressive theme, and the enormous success of this essential pandering to racist spiritualism does not bode well for American popular mythology.

FOR A FULL ACCOUNT OF AVATAR AS THEIST MYTH, SEE

FOR A DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE SELF-HELP / NEW AGE DISCIPLINE'S INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN FILM READ MORE HERE

In late 2009, Academy Award winning director Roman Polanski was detained in Switzerland by police authorities at the request of American law enforcement. The arrest, on charges dating back 25 years, outraged the European Film community leading to film festival pressure on authorities to petition for the director's immediate release.

For almost three decades, Polanski had been a fugitive from American justice, fleeing the country to avoid prosecution on statutory rape charges - drugging a minor for the purposes of sexual intercourse. Given sanctuary in Paris, which has a non- extradition treaty with the United States, Polanski carefully co-ordinated his activities and filmmaking career in Europe. When he was awarded the Academy Award for The Pianist, he refused to fly to the US to accept it for fear of arrest and prosecution. Polanski is currently under arrest in Switzerland awaiting extradition proceedings, even though his alleged "victim" has urged the matter be dropped and the European filmmaking community is pressuring the US to abandon the issue.

Yet, Polanski's "crime" occured at perhaps the darkest period in the man's life, shortly following the slaughter of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate by the notorious Manson Family.

It was after this horrific crime - one of the most infamous to emerge in the wake of the so-called "sexual revolution" and the crime which alone is said to have ended the peace and love hippie generation - that Polanski made the bloodiest version of Shakespeare then committed to film, MacBeth, and segued to Europe for the bizaree thriller of psycho-sexual identity dissolution in The Tenant, the last film he made with US backing before fleeing the country to remain in Europe.

The moral / ethical dilemma posed by Polanski's actions and arrest is an unusual one: should he be held accountable for actions which even the "victim" considers unwarranting of the current action and debate, or whether his transgressions may be excused because of the unusual circumstances of the events leading up to them and Polanski's subsequent behaviour (his "crime" was never repeated)? Does a great director's artistic achievements within international film culture excuse him from moral / ethical accountability (to Christian moral codes of sexual propriety over and above the legal definition of statutory rape)? Now in his 70s, Polanski faces possible imprisonment in the USA if convicted. FOR A FULL REVIEW OF THE TENANT, SEE HERE