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I have done a lot of work on my oral, and now I am confident it has 3 main arguments, a rebuttal and a conclusion. Any advice would be great 
Freedom of speech is a right we should all share, which is that one can express his opinions without fear of being prosecuted. However, Australia’s recent history has shown the right to our freedom of expression has been impeded, both by government and businesses. Two recent events in Australian history, the Occupy Melbourne act and the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement legislation represent two very different platforms on which people can express their rights. Both have shown the corrupting power of government and businesses and how they twist and bend the rules in their favour to restrict our freedoms and rights. The role of these organisations should never impede the right to freedom of speech, and this is something we cannot accept.
Freedom of Speech should never be taken for granted. When we think of other places such as Egypt or Libya where freedom of expression is heavily restricted, we should feel blessed to live in such a wonderful country. Middle East Director of Human rights watch in Egypt Joe stork stated ‘The past year had seen a disturbing assault on freedom of expression. Only last December in Egypt a protester was sentenced to a year’s jail for handing out a leaflet. The difference in our culture is that freedom of speech is protected under our laws. The United Nations General Assembly act formed in 1948 states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This includes freedom to hold opinions without interference.
The Occupy Melbourne movement, still currently persisting, is part of a global movement protesting against the corrupting effects of money in politics and unfair social standards. This movement has seen many protests in Melbourne.
By the Australian government’s own hands, activists have constantly been given deadlines and have been removed by force if the rally had gone on past its due date, even though they have a right to protest. This is simply unacceptable.
The Melbourne City Council is trying everything to abuse bylaws to harass protesters. Such an example was a notice issued on the 4th of November of last year by the City of Melbourne Local Law council, which ordered protesters to move from their position as they did not have consent for advertising material. If political material constitutes advertising material, does that mean it is an offence to have a political protest with any kind of signage without a permit? The government seems to think so. Another outrageous act of suppression was on December of last year, when police approached a female demonstrator who was wearing a small tent. Upon refusal to take it off, the policeman used considerable force to remove it despite her refusal. She was left in her underwear in public view. Professor Spencer Zifcak president of Liberty Victoria, one of Australia’s leading civil liberties organisation, said this was in ‘clear violation of the right to freedom of speech and assembly’ and yet no one was punished for this heinous crime.
As well as restricting our freedoms on the streets of Melbourne, our own government wants to censor the largest platform on which we express ourselves; the internet. The Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is an initiative being pushed through parliament by support of mega corporations that many countries, including Australia, have endorsed. The legislation aims to combat global proliferation of counterfeiting and piracy over the internet. It aims to support corporations which have intellectual material they wish to preserve under copyright. The dilemma arises with the words intellectual property. The term is not clearly defined within the legislation, so it could mean trademarks, or any idea which later could be copyrighted. If you share copyrighted material, you will be fined and even convicted. This of course means that normal copyrighted material cannot be distributed, but it goes further than that. This also means sharing an mp3 with your friend, uploading a video of a party with copyrighted music in the background, or even quoting a copyrighted newspaper article in an email can see you imprisoned.
Also, your internet provider must monitor your communication, and everything that goes in and out of your computer will be censored. ‘ACTA’ is currently under protest and many petitions have formed against it. The legislation is completely unjustified and will endanger the rights of millions of people. Ridiculous figures are being used to enforce this horrible legislation. The International Trade Commission reported ridiculous losses of 250 billion dollars in the US alone, which has no way to be proven and this statement was later questioned by the US government itself. The Recording Industry Association of America estimated lime wire, an illegal file sharing site, cost companies 75 trillion dollars. How could a company be robbed of more money than the entire world combined?
Multi-billion dollar corporations such as GoDaddy.com, Universal Music Group and Sony are trying to censor what is on the internet for their own profit.
Some may argue that information should be censored to protect others and regulate our society, but how do we award this right to anyone? To whom do we give the right to censor our material and who has the judgement to censor what is deemed inappropriate? It is not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen and to hear. Freedom of speech is meaningless unless it means the freedom of the person who thinks differently and criticises those who would normally not be criticised.
We have a right to freedom of speech and expression in this country. Let’s stand up against the abuse of our rights from the government and businesses and show them that we deserve to be heard and listened to.
 
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please call it oration and not "oral".. seeing "ive done a lot of work on my oral" sounds like a porn star line..
I agree with you, protestors who have freedom to protest shouldnt have time limit, otherwise its not truly freedom to protest. Also, Ive always felt that if there really is something dreadfully wrong, 1+ million people refusing to go to work until it is solved would basically "hold the state hostage" until they get what they want, since the state loses money if the private sector loses money.
people just need to be willing to protest for months on end if its something they truly bwelieve in.
Some may argue that information should be censored to protect others and regulate our society,
thats a chinese party line. you should definitely correlate oppressive government with that.
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There is no such thing as "rights" they are not real, they are ideals, cute ideas. What you have, and what we all have are privileges, limited privileges. The difference between "rights" and limited privileges is that privileges can be taken away at any given moment. and "rights" are not "rights" if they can be taken away.
They should just give us one of these 2 things, we should either have unlimited rights, or have no rights at all. And personally I want unlimited rights. For example, if someone is saying stuffs like "i have the right to my opinion" and I just happened to not like that opinion, then I would say "well ya? i have the right to my opinion too, and my opinion is that you have no right to your opinion" and then shoot the fucker and walk away. Where do you find more fair system than that? eh?
in memory of George Carlin.
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On February 14 2012 06:26 rei wrote:
There is no such thing as "rights" they are not real, they are ideals, cute ideas. What you have, and what we all have are privileges, limited privileges. The difference between "rights" and limited privileges is that privileges can be taken away at any given moment. and "rights" are not "rights" if they can be taken away.
They should just give us one of these 2 things, we should either have unlimited rights, or have no rights at all. And personally I want unlimited rights. For example, if someone is saying stuffs like "i have the right to my opinion" and I just happened to not like that opinion, then I would say "well ya? i have the right to my opinion too, and my opinion is that you have no right to your opinion" and then shoot the fucker and walk away. Where do you find more fair system than that? eh?
in memory of George Carlin.
you're right, but it's my goal in life to keep fighting for them, against those who wish to have more power and suppress and dominate others. one should use reason instead of just allowing unlimited rights like shooting someone because you don't agree with them. that kind of thinking belongs in the stone age.
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No, violence belongs to human, we are the specie that kills for pleasure. As a society, the United States is new, 200 or so odd years in the making. Yet we have 20 major wars. Think about that, it averages a war in every 10 years. We get a lot of practice at violence, and we are good at it. Iraq think they have the right to develop their nuclear weapon. We think they have no right to their opinion, and we drop tons of bombs on them for 10 years. This is an example of what is happening in our world. The fact is you can't do shit without having the means to achieve whatever goal you wanted.
The idea of using reason and logic to create limited privileges is what we have right now, and the reality speaks differently, our reason, logic and justice is another society's injustice. There is no clear line of right and wrong, good and evil, people are going to do whatever they can in their power to make the world a better place for themselves. There is nothing wrong with that, it's a fair deal, if someone wants something, they have to gain the power to do it. Without the mean to do it, no amount of whining and protesting is ganna do anything in the long run.
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you interchange freedom of speech assembly and protest a few times and thats not what your overall argument was. you bring up the story of some woman who was wearing a tent instead of clothes like a normal person which is kinda odd when you are trying to get credibility.
basically I think you lack the connection (in your argument) between why people on the streets being arrested is a violation of free speech. I think this is a very large missed opertunity when you can do something that can stir up a feeling in a person by pertaining that people being arrested in protests limited by the law affects them in any way.
I think it would be better if you could clarify who this is being spoken too? you would get a rousing response to the civil liberties crowd but if its a button up classroom affair I think you assume to much on the viewpoint of whos receiving the argument.
so basically I think your argument is based on the right to protest which isn't freedom of speech. Justification of a movement cannot justify its actions.
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On February 14 2012 06:47 rei wrote:
No, violence belongs to human, we are the specie that kills for pleasure. As a society, the United States is new, 200 or so odd years in the making. Yet we have 20 major wars. Think about that, it averages a war in every 10 years. We get a lot of practice at violence, and we are good at it. Iraq think they have the right to develop their nuclear weapon. We think they have no right to their opinion, and we drop tons of bombs on them for 10 years. This is an example of what is happening in our world. The fact is you can't do shit without having the means to achieve whatever goal you wanted.
The idea of using reason and logic to create limited privileges is what we have right now, and the reality speaks differently, our reason, logic and justice is another society's injustice. There is no clear line of right and wrong, good and evil, people are going to do whatever they can in their power to make the world a better place for themselves. There is nothing wrong with that, it's a fair deal, if someone wants something, they have to gain the power to do it. Without the mean to do it, no amount of whining and protesting is ganna do anything in the long run.
this is such a horribly done post. its Iran that wants to develop a nuke. having thermonuclear weapons is not an opinion. being good at something doesn't mean that its a bad thing. I would argue that the world is a lot better place for a lot of the wars that we have waged in the world. There have been a lot of mistakes and war is always bad but the destruction of a euro centrism world and the creation of non military based powers like japan and Germany are extremely good things that america has done.
your second paragraph confuses me in so many ways. I'm wondering weather you think that logic is an injustice which is very odd and reason and justice being injustice makes no sense. after that it teters off into something very werid.
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On February 14 2012 06:16 Spieltor wrote:
please call it oration and not "oral".. seeing "ive done a lot of work on my oral" sounds like a porn star line..
it sounds normal to me
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On February 14 2012 07:02 sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2012 06:47 rei wrote:
No, violence belongs to human, we are the specie that kills for pleasure. As a society, the United States is new, 200 or so odd years in the making. Yet we have 20 major wars. Think about that, it averages a war in every 10 years. We get a lot of practice at violence, and we are good at it. Iraq think they have the right to develop their nuclear weapon. We think they have no right to their opinion, and we drop tons of bombs on them for 10 years. This is an example of what is happening in our world. The fact is you can't do shit without having the means to achieve whatever goal you wanted.
The idea of using reason and logic to create limited privileges is what we have right now, and the reality speaks differently, our reason, logic and justice is another society's injustice. There is no clear line of right and wrong, good and evil, people are going to do whatever they can in their power to make the world a better place for themselves. There is nothing wrong with that, it's a fair deal, if someone wants something, they have to gain the power to do it. Without the mean to do it, no amount of whining and protesting is ganna do anything in the long run. this is such a horribly done post. its Iran that wants to develop a nuke. having thermonuclear weapons is not an opinion. being good at something doesn't mean that its a bad thing. I would argue that the world is a lot better place for a lot of the wars that we have waged in the world. There have been a lot of mistakes and war is always bad but the destruction of a euro centrism world and the creation of non military based powers like japan and Germany are extremely good things that america has done. your second paragraph confuses me in so many ways. I'm wondering weather you think that logic is an injustice which is very odd and reason and justice being injustice makes no sense. after that it teters off into something very werid.
I didn't mention Iran, i said Iraq, which turned out has NO weapon of Mass destruction. and I agree with you that the world is a lot better and safer place for us, but surely not for the ppl we bombed to the stone ages, countless have lost families and their home. Let me help you comprehend my second paragraph with this example. To us, bombing the shit out of the brown people is justice because they fucked our twin towers, to the brown people in Iraq it is injustice because they for one didn't bomb the twin tower, and second didn't have weapon of mass destruction. Can you understand why there is no absolute justice, there is no such thing as good and evil, black and white in the world? everything is just a touch of grey, depend on which point of view you are seeing through these events, and where your opinion stands.
and we are getting side tracked and off topic discussing this, my whole point basically is trying to get the OP understand that without the means to get things done, whining and protesting will not do much good at all. It is naive to think those in power is going to give in and not abuse their power just because ppl who couldn't do anything about it are whining. If one really truly wants to change things, you have to do something to makes those in power lose their power, or have a threat in place that if they abuse that power they are going to lose a lot more than they would gain by abusing. There are many way to accomplish this goal, and all of them involve having a lot of money.
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EPT
