Shock, horror.
Kudos to Kelvin Thompson, federal Labor MP, for having the courage to stand up to the “eternal growth” fools who currently dictate economic and development policies in the western world and point out that excessive population growth is the root cause of most of our serious problems.
It is time for governments and policy makers [...]

You may have heard of Google Chrome, Google’s attempt to take on Internet Explorer and Firefox by releasing a stand alone web browser (no doubt part of Google’s secret plan to gradually take over the world).  As with most Google services, it looks interesting and well designed.
However, as this article suggests, as is also the [...]

There is a lot of discussion at the moment about the question of whether Australia is moving towards a tort of ‘invasion of privacy’ as a result of the publication of compromising pictures supposedly of Pauline Hanson. There is a useful note on recent UK developments in the Max Mosley case and some speculation [...]

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 members of a royal family are more important that principles of free speech or basic human rights.

I really wanted to believe that this was fake when it was first emailed to me – but no, there it is on the Catch the Fire Ministries website: Pastor Danny Nalliah, leader of that esteemed fundamentalist Christian group, tells us that the horrendous bushfires in Victoria in the past week which have so far [...]

Further to the post about Harry Nicolaides, I thought I would add a link to the case of Associate Professor Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a Thai academic who is seemingly about to be charged under the same antiquated and anti-democratic laws.
His crime?  Trying to better the lot of Thais by conducting open dialogue (by way of [...]

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 “lese majeste” laws, which make insulting the royals an offence punishable by 3-15 years prison.  As this website [...]

Australia continues its proud tradition of protecting the practice and expression of (Christian) religious beliefs, but failing to do the same in respect of atheism: article.  Sigh. There are buses rolling around Adelaide with Christian messages on them as we speak.
And it’s the best form of discrimination too – the kind by private citizens and [...]

Further to the previous post, there are national protests on 13 December 2008 in relation to Labor’s mandatory Internet filtering scheme. Details here. Attend, if you don’t want the federal government to decide what you can and cannot see on the net.

No doubt stung by the fact that no-one in the electorate actually pays them any attention at all (or maybe just because they don’t have to pal up to right wingnuts like Steve Fielding any more), the Liberal Party appear to have had some sort of cathartic experience about the role government should play in [...]

This is probably the most significant issue for Australian democracy since the amendments to the ASIO Act by the Howard government: link.
More on it later.  If you already know about it, get a move on and write to your state’s senators.

A Canadian court has recently handed down what seems like an eminently sensible judgment concerning defamation on the Internet: story/judgment.  In essence, the decision means that (for Canadian purposes) linking to a defamatory web page does not itself amount to defamation.  The Supreme Court of British Columbia drew an analogy between hyperlinks and footnotes, which [...]

This is fantastic: ads on London buses advocating atheism.
I wonder how hard this would be to fund in Australia, and whether it would somehow offend our anti-discrimination/hate speech laws, which (like our constitution, according to the High Court) seem to protect every belief system except atheism.

This kind of thing makes grim but not at all surprising reading. Just as they did in the 1950s and 1960s, the powers that be are making it their business to infiltrate groups of citizens attempting to exercise their legitimate democratic rights. Not surprisingly, the targets seem to be progressive and human rights [...]

The Australian runs a ridiculous front page story which describes a poll showing an electoral disaster for the Government as “HOWARD CHECKS RUDD’S MARCH!!!!1!!!11!!” (NB: there may have been fewer ‘!!1!’s).
Independent (and very excellent) political analysis site criticises blatant pro-Government bias in The Australian.
The Australian contacts the author and advises that the newspaper is going [...]