April 2007 - 12,087

March  - 6,684

February - 5,372

January -  2800

..........................

* Comment

For most of August 07 when we checked our daily statistics counter it invariably said we had 1, 0, 0, 1 etc "page views" for the preceding day. Yet our monthly total stayed up close to 9,000 views for the month (just under). This is simply impossible. If the daily report was accurate we had only 30 page views for the month but the monthly counter showed no such thing.

Then just as APEC kicked off 2 days ago 1st Sept 07, magically the daily counter seemed to revive and as you can see in the graphic screenshot above it was a decent 145 for the day on an upward trend. One does wonder what the authorities have been  up to with their well known cyber monitoring and one presumes of the media sector as per past decades re the govt broadcaster ABC.

We notice these suggestive reports of vigorous cyber intrusions by the intelligence agencies, which we don't necessarily criticise if it really keeps people safe but we do if they are causing a vandalistic nuisance to our daily counter, that is, legal democratic activity (speaking as a solicitor in NSW):

Concern over how AFP got comments, p7, August 2nd 2007 Sydney Morning Herald (seemingly offline)

and similarly

Wicked pedia: Vatican, CIA edit online entries - web - Technology ...

Security checks on children | The Australian

Secondly we need to clarify that Sydney Alternative Media (SAM) here, as it plays an increasing role in community media, has no legal or commercial or editorial relationship with Alternative Media Group (AMG) who publish the City Hub/Bondi View/Sydney City News, or IMC/SIM (Independent Media Centre/Sydney Independent Media).

Even so in the spirit of capacity building of community media generally we hope and trust these remain viable and effective in a robust and diverse sector.

Lastly, in our piece yesterday about lame duck president George Bush (which it might be noted still has until January 2009 to wield power -  represented by a yellow duck cartoon figure in chalk) we found the old axiom about doing media and promoting democracy to be true: A snot nose News Ltd security guard falsely claimed protection of the Privacy Act in a public street and sincerely offered to punch our editor if he took a picture of him or their building.

At Fairfax on the footpath next to Darling Park precinct the 4 scrambling security guards were far more professional, but also nervy with adrenalin after all the hysterical big brother security hyperbole by the federal and state govt. Never was a stick of kids play chalk so threatening to institutional power it seems. How ironic and magnificent that in the computer age that freedom of speech via stone age scribbling could be so subversive.

As an after thought we started scribbling "Iraq, Iraq, Iraq" much like the quack quack quack you would expect of a duck, and now fiction has resembled fact with GWB making a stopover there for 'a council of war' on the way to Sydney by 10 pm Tuesday 4th Sept 07 tonight Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST).

My gratitude to the NSW Law Society and their membership card for their professional embrace which surely prevented excessive force in both cases ... in defence of democray no less.