NotThatBright
New member
I've had the Australian equiv since 1978 when I attended a protest movie viewing of an anti nuke film, (I think it was called The Morning After or similar - made by the BBC to essay the actual aftermath of a bomb on London. It was quite accurate & so distressing that the UK & Aust Govts canned it as they wanted nukes without opposition - it's available on DVD & Pbay these days), that had been banned by the Federal Govt. We signed in so that ASIO wouldn't have to work too hard to get our details. When I was elected to the executive of our state union I think they upgraded me a little. ASIO weren't & still aren't very clever: they built new premises in the nation's capitol - contracted a Chinese firm to do the work and now haven't moved in because the place, obviously, is bugged every which way.
I'm not allowed to even hum in my house. My wife says I'm so cloth eared I annoy the bees.
I was joking about the Feds... my songs have plenty of gratuitous violence against people who do stuff like drive too slowly in front of me, but I have no real political leanings, so I would imagine I'm not on any "lists". Your story is a surprise to me, though... I had no idea the Aussie government ever pulled shit like that. Banning some freaking anti-nuke video? From how you describe it, I would imagine the video itself is something I'd consider left-wing agitprop and I'd probably spend the whole time watching it talking shit about hippies, commies, etc, but the idea of a government banning something like that is reprehensible. And that they put you on some sort of list is even worse.
The Chinese don't believe in intellectual property, you know, so they might not understand why you would have a problem with the bugs. They believe they have as much right to ANY information as anyone else, regardless of where it comes from. They're good at buying American trucks, Japanese TVs, etc., having a team of engineers strip them apart, learning the technology and mass-producing the exact same product for their population (or even for export, as in the case of TVs). Now THAT's how you run a company... imagine the savings in R&D when you can just steal technology. I can't tell if they're just being good commies or if they're being genius capitalists.