more lese majeste – associate professor giles ji ungpakorn

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…

getup save the net campaign

internet censorship – national protests

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…

no clean feed

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…

Serious Crime (Control) Bill 2007 (SA) – a bill controlling what, exactly?

I just became aware of this piece of legislation, recently introduced into the South Australian Parliament: the Serious Crime (Control) Bill 2007 (SA). You can see the bill here in Rich Text Format or here in…

least reassuring statement ever

FYI:

[W]e have no current plans to accumulate massive armaments on our neighbours’ borders.

- regards, Russian Foreign Ministry.

Thanks for letting us know.  Is it perchance time to stop devoting 100% of our resources to chasing criminally…

I would say, sir, that there were something dreadfully wrong somewhere

You might have seen this: the US military ‘lost’ five or six live nuclear warheads and ended up mistakenly flying them across the country. The mistake was not discovered for three and a half hours, when the B-52…

govt still meeting with extremist Christian group, rabid anti-Islamic ‘thinker’

Repeating the mantra that members of parliament meet with Australian citizens “all the time”, it has emerged that the Government’s links to the extremist Christian sect the Exclusive Brethren remain as strong as ever. As mentioned previously (

a big week for the separation of powers

This week is turning into a big week for the notion of the separation of powers in Australia.  As you (should) know, the separation of power between the judiciary and the parliament/executive is one of the devices included in…

australia: leading the world in spying on its citizens

This article in The Age is superficially positive – the new British PM is having trouble getting extended detention powers in anti-terrorist legislation implemented in Britain due to rational parliamentary opposition.  The reason is a report from the Joint Committee…

an enemy of the open society

This article from The Australian, entitled “Silencing Our Basic Freedom”, is compulsory reading for anyone who cares about the future of democracy in Australia. This blog is frequently critical of that particular newspaper, but on this issue it is fighting…

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:

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