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According to a judge in Australia yesterday, a cartoon rendition of two fictional characters who are engaged in a sex act constitutes child pornography if either of the cartoon characters is a 'child'.
WTF?
So now it's clear - child porn laws have nothing whatsoever to do with protection of children (unless you are going to try and pretend that access to porn encourages the viewer to go out and commit acts outlined in the porn itself).
Every now and then the State decloaks itself, and its pronouncement\s come closer to Orwell's masterful exposition (from 1984) of the mind of the State... as O'Brien says as he tortures Winston Smith:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
As I have said before, I would never defend anybody who would do harm to a child - whether it is a kiddie-fiddling priest, or a politician who orders bombs to be dropped on Iraqi children. People who do harm to other people ought to be retaliated against with overwhelming force: I don't believe in 'an eye for an eye' - my credo is 'You had a crack at me, now prepare to die'.
But watching a video of two Simpsons characters 'having sex' harms nobody. In fact I seriously doubt whether the defendant was watching it in order to become aroused - doubtless it was one of those things that is meant to be funny in a stupid/sick kind of way, in the same league as "Jackass" or Tom Green.
What's next? For example, there are episodes of 'South Park' that deal with child molestation: are those to be banned?
There must come a point at which we as a species decide that we have had enough of knee-jerk over-reactions by people whose best use of their time is filling their pockets with our taxes and making stupid rules about cartoons.
What this represents, is an implicit claim by the State regarding its ability to infer thoughtcrime. That is, they have inferred an intent to harm children in the future, as a result of watching simulated pornography where the act takes place between two entities that do not exist (and cannot, therefore, be said to have an 'age'). No harm has come to anybody: nor child, nor adult, nor prince nor pauper... yet the State sticks in its beak and grasps up a citizen in its claw.
There are, it seems, people who are genuinely deviant. Many of them are priests and judges - but deviancy, both sexual and general, is much more prevalent among politicians. Folks who have deviant preferences ought to be prevented from interacting with children - that is absolutely true.
I would advocate giving these people as real a 'virtual experience' as possible - let them spend their every waking moment wanking themselves stupid, using fake porn of fake children: you and I might find that distasteful, but so what? I find it distasteful that anybody would voluntarily have sex with John Winston Howard - but it's not my place to call for a ban (calling for Howard to be hanged for War Crimes is another story... I have the right to do that).
If would help defuse them - the reason they target the vulnerable is because of frustration.
OK - now a far more subtle question.
How do you know if a cartoon character is a 'child'?
Lisa and Maggie and Bart (and Stewie from Family Guy) are clearly meant to be children and are depicted as such. But what about Brian (the dog)?
And consider the 'characters' in this stuff called 'hentai' (cartoon porn - the word 'hentai' can be translated as 'sexually perverted' according to Wikipedia). The 'women' therein are often depicted as being physically mature (i.e., big boobs), but there is little doubt that they are meant to be 'children' or over-developed pre-adolescents.
What of 'real' porn in which women remove all trace of pubic hair - can there be any other motivation for that other than the desire to look prepubescent? If an real actress aged 30 plays a porn character intended to be a child aged 15 or 16, is the resulting film 'child porn'?
Don't get me wrong - I am not asking these questions in order to know what porn subscriptions to cancel... it just strikes me that when we permit politicians and judges (who are political appointees) to judge thoughtcrime, we are opening a door to which the State should never be given the right to enter. Once they start believing that they have the right to decide what we must be thinking, we are in the deepest shit imaginable.
As the famous German folk song goes -
Die Gedanken sind frei, wer kann sie erraten,
sie fliehen vorbei wie nächtliche Schatten.
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, kein Jäger erschießen
mit Pulver und Blei, Die Gedanken sind frei!
The last two lines are
No man can know them, no hunter can shoot themwith powder and lead. Our thoughts are free!
The song can be found in its entirety here, and the sentiment is ancient ('thoughts are free').
The song was banned by the Nazis - so it's good enough for me.
Major Market Indices
The broad market - the All Ordinaries (XAO) - rose 39.6 points (1.12%), finishing at 3573.3 points. The index hit an intraday high of 3583.8 at 3:37 pm, while the low for the day was 3497.6 - set at 10:02 am Sydney time. A 90-point rally off the low - why exactly? No reason - just Hope. Always Hope.
Total volume traded on the ASX was 1.16bn units, 2.2% above its 10-day average of 1.14bn shares.The ASX's daily listing of all stocks included 1012 different 3-letter FPO's which traded (i.e., had non-zero trade volume). Of these, 378 issues rose, with volume in rising issues totalling 597.4m units; there were 382 declining stocks, which traded aggregate declining volume of 371.2m shares.
Of the 488 All Ordinaries components, 205 rose while 173 fell. Volume was tilted in favour of the gainers by a margin of 1.3:1, with 429.25m shares traded in gainers while 329.74m shares traded in the day's losers.
The Index that forms the cash basis for the SPI Futures - the S&P/ASX 200 (XJO) - managed a solid gain, adding 36.4 points (1.01%), closing out the session at 3640.7 points.
| Name | Close | +/-(%) |
|---|---|---|
| All Ordinaries | 3573.30 | 39.60 (1.1%) |
| ASX 20 | 2188.00 | 12.70 (0.6%) |
| ASX 50 | 3681.00 | 26.70 (0.7%) |
| ASX 100 | 3003.10 | 27.00 (0.9%) |
| ASX 200 | 3640.70 | 36.40 (1.0%) |
| ASX 300 | 3618.30 | 35.50 (1.0%) |
| ASX Mid-Cap 50 | 3311.80 | 73.80 (2.3%) |
| ASX Small Ordinaries | 1643.70 | 32.60 (2.0%) |
The "heavy hitters" of the Australian market - the ASX 20 Leaders (XTL) - advanced by under a percent, adding 12.7 points (0.58%), closing out the session at 2188 points.
Among the 20 big guns, the decliners just edged out the gainers - 10 advancing components were only just edged out (in numerical terms) by the decliners. The stocks which make up the index traded a total of 189.61m units; 10 index components rose, with rising volume amounting to 99.34m shares, while the 11 decliners had volume traded totalling 90.27m units. The major percentage gainers within the index were
- Rio Tinto (RIO), +$4.05 (12.14%) to $37.40 on volume of 5.8 million shares;
- BHP Billiton (BHP), +$1.91 (6.71%) to $30.36 on volume of 21.3 million shares;
- Foster's Group (FGL), +$0.24 (4.4%) to $5.70 on volume of 10.2 million shares;
- Woodside Petroleum (WPL), +$1.27 (3.92%) to $33.70 on volume of 2.1 million shares; and
- Westfield Group (WDC), +$0.45 (3.45%) to $13.49 on volume of 6.3 million shares.
On the less salubrious side of the big-cap fence, the following stocks were the worst-performed within the index:
- Westpac Banking Corporation (WBC), -$1.51 (8.45%) to $16.37 on volume of 32.8 million shares;
- Stockland (SGP), -$0.19 (5.01%) to $3.60 on volume of 8.2 million shares;
- Commonwealth Bank Of Australia (CBA), -$1.5 (5%) to $28.50 on volume of 12.4 million shares;
- Brambles (BXB), -$0.19 (2.61%) to $7.08 on volume of 5.3 million shares; and
- Suncorp-Metway. (SUN), -$0.2 (2.44%) to $8.00 on volume of 3.5 million shares.
The ASX Small Ordinaries (XSO) The small end of the market absolutely wiped the floor with its large-cap counterpart. The Small Ords had a bit of a moonshot, stacking on 32.6 points (2.02%), closing out the session at 1643.7 points.
Among the stocks that make up the Small Caps index, 100 index components finished to the upside, and of the rest, 75 closed lower for the session.
The 208 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 236.1m units: volume in the 100 gainers totalling 109.71m shares, with trade totalling 85.28m units in the index's 75 declining components. The major percentage gainers within the index were- Babcock & Brown Power (BBP), +$0.01 (20%) to $0.06 on volume of 5.6 million shares;
- Albidon (ALB), +$0.01 (18.31%) to $0.08 on volume of 1.8 million shares;
- Specialty Fashion Group (SFH), +$0.05 (17.65%) to $0.30 on volume of 242.5 thousand shares;
- IOOF Holdings (IFL), +$0.50 (16.67%) to $3.50 on volume of 73.6 thousand shares; and
- Australian Agricultural Company. (AAC), +$0.19 (15.2%) to $1.44 on volume of 704.5 thousand shares.
In the red-zone of the little-stock index, the following list represents the biggest downers (in terms of percentage decline):
- Mintails (MLI), -$0.06 (64.44%) to $0.03 on volume of 14.6 million shares;
- Rubicon Japan Trust (RJT), -$0 (11.11%) to $0.01 on volume of 1.5 million shares;
- Compass Resources (CMR), -$0.02 (10.26%) to $0.18 on volume of 730.8 thousand shares;
- Rubicon America Trust (RAT), -$0 (10%) to $0.01 on volume of 888.4 thousand shares; and
- Pharmaxis Ltd (PXS), -$0.11 (9.57%) to $1.04 on volume of 225.8 thousand shares.
Index Changes
| Code | Name | Close | +/- | % | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XAO | All Ordinaries | 3573.3 | 39.6 | 1.12 | 910.7m |
| XFL | ASX 50 | 3681 | 26.7 | 0.73 | 372.6m |
| XJO | ASX 200 | 3640.7 | 36.4 | 1.01 | 800.7m |
| XKO | ASX 300 | 3618.3 | 35.5 | 0.99 | 871.4m |
| XMD | ASX Mid-Cap 50 | 3311.8 | 73.8 | 2.28 | 272.8m |
| XSO | ASX Small Ordinaries | 1643.7 | 32.6 | 2.02 | 226m |
| XTL | ASX 20 | 2188 | 12.7 | 0.58 | 181.4m |
| XTO | ASX 100 | 3003.1 | 27 | 0.91 | 645.4m |
Market Breadth
| ASX20 | XTO | XJO | XAO | XSO | Market | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advances | 10 | 56 | 116 | 205 | 100 | 378 |
| Declines | 11 | 37 | 69 | 173 | 75 | 382 |
| Advancing Volume | 99.3m | 316.2m | 406.1m | 429.2m | 109.7m | 597.4m |
| Declining Volume | 90.3m | 237.1m | 286.3m | 329.7m | 85.3m | 371.2m |
GICS Industry Indices
Among the 11 industry indices, 8 registered an advance for the session, the remaining 3 lost ground.
The best performing index was Materials (XMJ), which added 424.9 points (5.27%) to 8480.5 points. The 45 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 174.39m units; 26 index components rose, with rising volume amounting to 77.1m shares, while the 12 decliners had volume traded totalling 65.18m units. The major percentage gainers within the index were
- Fortescue Metals Group Ltd (FMG), +$0.39 (16.67%) to $2.73 on volume of 16.6 million shares;
- Aquarius Platinum (AQP), +$0.37 (12.33%) to $3.37 on volume of 426 thousand shares;
- Murchison Metals Ltd (MMX), +$0.07 (12.26%) to $0.60 on volume of 1.5 million shares;
- RIO Tinto (RIO), +$4.05 (12.14%) to $37.40 on volume of 5.8 million shares; and
- Sino Gold Mining (SGX), +$0.38 (10.89%) to $3.87 on volume of 1.3 million shares.
Second in the index leadership stakes was Utilities (XUJ), which gained 150.7 points (3.65%) to 4273.9 points. The 11 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 54.75m units; 8 index components rose, with rising volume amounting to 50.78m shares, while the 3 decliners had volume traded totalling 3.97m units. The major percentage gainers within the index were
- Babcock & Brown Power (BBP), +$0.01 (20%) to $0.06 on volume of 5.6 million shares;
- Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Group (BBI), +$0.01 (19.72%) to $0.09 on volume of 30.5 million shares;
- Babcock & Brown Wind Partners Group (BBW), +$0.10 (13.01%) to $0.83 on volume of 1.5 million shares;
- Duet Group (DUE), +$0.19 (11.59%) to $1.83 on volume of 2.5 million shares; and
- Energy World Corporation Ltd (EWC), +$0.02 (8.33%) to $0.26 on volume of 5.5 million shares.
The bronze medal for today goes to Energy (XEJ), which climbed 372.8 points (3.19%) to 12074.7 points. The 19 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 37.98m units; 12 index components rose, with rising volume amounting to 29.98m shares, while the 5 decliners had volume traded totalling 6.67m units. The major percentage gainers within the index were
- Felix Resources (FLX), +$1.00 (12.24%) to $9.17 on volume of 827.5 thousand shares;
- OIL Search (OSH), +$0.48 (11.21%) to $4.76 on volume of 6.2 million shares;
- Nexus Energy (NXS), +$0.04 (8.43%) to $0.45 on volume of 2.4 million shares;
- Santos (STO), +$1.00 (7.75%) to $13.90 on volume of 4 million shares; and
- Centennial Coal Company (CEY), +$0.20 (7.38%) to $2.91 on volume of 2.3 million shares.
The worst-performed index for the session was Financials ex Property Trusts (XXJ), which dipped 104.2 points (2.67%) to 3792.4 points. The 27 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 109.35m units; The 8 decliners had volume traded totalling 69.56m units, and 18 index components rose, with rising volume amounting to 38.52m shares, The major percentage decliners within the index were
- Westpac Banking Corporation (WBC), -$1.51 (8.45%) to $16.37 on volume of 32.8 million shares;
- Commonwealth Bank Of Australia (CBA), -$1.5 (5%) to $28.50 on volume of 12.4 million shares;
- Tower Australia Group (TAL), -$0.05 (2.46%) to $1.98 on volume of 894.6 thousand shares;
- Suncorp-Metway. (SUN), -$0.2 (2.44%) to $8.00 on volume of 3.5 million shares; and
- National Australia Bank (NAB), -$0.3 (1.51%) to $19.60 on volume of 8.3 million shares.
Just missing out on the wooden spoon was Consumer Discretionary (XDJ), which slid 14.4 points (1.27%) to 1121.6 points. The 23 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 47.41m units; The 12 decliners had volume traded totalling 26.96m units, and 7 index components rose, with rising volume amounting to 11.08m shares, The major percentage decliners within the index were
- Tabcorp Holdings (TAH), -$0.23 (3.48%) to $6.37 on volume of 3.3 million shares;
- West Australian Newspapers Holdings (WAN), -$0.15 (3.05%) to $4.76 on volume of 647.4 thousand shares;
- Tatts Group (TTS), -$0.08 (2.96%) to $2.62 on volume of 4.2 million shares;
- Harvey Norman Holdings (HVN), -$0.06 (2.54%) to $2.30 on volume of 4.5 million shares; and
- Consolidated Media Holdings (CMJ), -$0.05 (2.37%) to $2.06 on volume of 749.6 thousand shares.
Third-to-last amongst the sector indices was Healthcare (XHJ), which slid 12.3 points (0.15%) to 8384.6 points. The 9 stocks which make up the index traded a total of 9.44m units; The 2 decliners had volume traded totalling 3.51m units, and 6 index components rose, with rising volume amounting to 5.38m shares, The major percentage decliners within the index were
- CSL (CSL), -$0.47 (1.41%) to $32.90 on volume of 2 million shares; and
- Primary Health Care (PRY), -$0.01 (0.21%) to $4.74 on volume of 1.5 million shares.
Sector Indices
| Code | GICS Sector | Close | +/- | % | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XMJ | Materials | 8480.5 | 424.9 | 5.27 | 174m |
| XUJ | Utilities | 4273.9 | 150.7 | 3.65 | 55m |
| XEJ | Energy | 12074.7 | 372.8 | 3.19 | 38m |
| XPJ | Property Trusts | 917 | 20.3 | 2.26 | 198m |
| XIJ | Information Technology | 406 | 6.9 | 1.73 | 2m |
| XTJ | Telecommunications | 1429 | 21.3 | 1.51 | 42m |
| XSJ | Consumer Staples | 6165 | 88.2 | 1.45 | 38m |
| XNJ | Industrials | 3157.6 | 17.3 | 0.55 | 96m |
| XHJ | Healthcare | 8384.6 | -12.3 | -0.15 | 9m |
| XDJ | Consumer Discretionary | 1121.6 | -14.4 | -1.27 | 47m |
| XXJ | Financials ex Property Trusts | 3792.4 | -104.2 | -2.67 | 109m |
All Ordinaries Major Movers
All Ords Volume Leaders
| Code | Name | Close | +/- | % | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DXS | Dexus Property Group | 0.90 | 0.00 | 0 | 48.4m |
| TLS | Telstra Corporation. | 4.27 | 0.06 | 1.43 | 35.2m |
| WBC | Westpac Banking Corporation | 16.37 | -1.51 | -8.45 | 32.8m |
| BBI | Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Group | 0.09 | 0.01 | 19.72 | 30.5m |
| GPT | GPT Group | 0.92 | 0.02 | 2.22 | 23.2m |
All Ords Percentage Gainers
| Code | Name | Close | +/- | % | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPR | Clive Peeters | 0.13 | 0.03 | 23.81 | 530.1k |
| BBP | Babcock & Brown Power | 0.06 | 0.01 | 20 | 5.6m |
| BBI | Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Group | 0.09 | 0.01 | 19.72 | 30.5m |
| MCW | Macquarie Countrywide Trust | 0.22 | 0.04 | 19.44 | 21.8m |
| ALB | Albidon | 0.08 | 0.01 | 18.31 | 1.8m |
All Ords Percentage Losers
| Code | Name | Close | +/- | % | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MLI | Mintails | 0.03 | -0.06 | -64.44 | 14.6m |
| GNM | Gujarat NRE Minerals Ltd | 0.30 | -0.10 | -25 | 7.6k |
| IEF | ING Real Estate Entertainment Fund | 0.18 | -0.05 | -20 | 925.9k |
| SAV | Savcor Group | 0.20 | -0.05 | -20 | 118.2k |
| SXE | Southern Cross Electrical Engineering Ltd | 0.40 | -0.09 | -18.37 | 110k |
