harry nicolaides to be pardoned

An update on Harry Nicolaides – he’s set to receive a royal pardon.  Which is great for Harry, but just goes to show that the current Thai legal regime is one in which arbitrary decisions of…

the strange case of harry nicolaides

This is disgraceful: a Melbourne man, Harry Nicolaides, has been jailed in Thailand for three years for insulting the Thai royal family in a novel he has apparently written.  The conviction is a result of Thailand’s anachronistic…

cat-related news roundup

Thanks to Sam, our roving feline news correspondent and long-suffering cat owner/victim:

1. Bush family cat dies (possibly of shame); Bush’s nickname for cat is “Kitty”.
2. Cats commence takeover of worldwide news media with German putsch; weatherman demonstrates excellent comprehension

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just another afternoon in sunny Adelaide

This just happened in one of the busiest locations in the Adelaide CBD in the middle of a weekday afternoon: link. It sounds like two groups of Sudanese youths had a very serious fight with knives. This is…

in soviet russia

…water boils you! : link. Featuring headline of the week, and quote of the week from “an official at the Military Medical Academy hospital in St Petersburg”:

She parked her car, left it, and immediately found herself

…

how to undo 61 years of progress

This is a heartwarming little story – the process put in place to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay lacks some of the essential elements of fairness that were afforded even to the senior Nazis tried at Nuremberg. That is according…

stuff you should know about: America’s (not so) secret war in Africa

The US has established “Africa Command” on the Horn of Africa – a military group with a mission including fighting Islamist militants and, it seems, getting involved in local conflicts in the process.

Some relevant details:

• the

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are we, or the media really this stupid?

This is the headline this afternoon from the ABC news website:

The headline is a reference to the proposal that Australia implement a carbon trading scheme to (finally) start doing something about our greenhouse…

our bureaucrats don’t even have to resign

It seems China has a slightly more extreme approach to countering government corruption than Australia.  I wonder what they’d do to someone who allowed millions of dollars in bribes to be sent to a country they were at…

with your hands on your head or on the trigger of a gun

The latest shooting spree in the US is invariably going to turn into a debate about guns (it must be gun week on this blog), so here are some relevant statistics to assist in wading through the emotional and political…

but I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers

Two people are detained in a war zone. Both are alleged by the military force which detains them to have been somewhere they shouldn’t have. Both are held captive, without proper charges or any prospect of genuine legal process. Both…

Canadian MPs actually show some backbone on terror

Canada’s parliament has just voted to repeal an anti-terrorism law passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Even more impressive, they did it in the face of a scare campaign from their government which…

band reunion-a-thon continues

Hot on the heels of this comes the (alleged) news (well, a story in The Sun so the term ‘news’ is used loosely) that Led Zeppelin is looking at reforming to tour the United States.

As if…

european courts offer victims avenue to expose ‘extraordinary rendition’ kidnappings

It appears that the courts in Europe are prepared to ignore what are undoubtedly massive political considerations and are giving the victims of the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ (i.e., the warrantless, state-sponsored kidnapping and extraction to third world countries where…