According to Wired News the US State of Virginia has indicted two spammers for breaking its newly proclaimed anti-spam legislation. One of the two, Jeremy Jaynes, “is number 8 on the top 10 worldwide spammer list”.
Virginia is a particularly significant state as more than 50% of all Internet […] Continue Reading…

The public has a Pygmalion impulse to try to mould public leaders in their own desired image and when they succeed they loathe and then despise them, muttering about “poll-driven politics”.
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On Line Opinion prides itself on being the only journal in the country to base its political coverage on letting Australians talk for themselves about the issues. Our latest poll was on Mark Latham.
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This morning I got a bellhop tip about the internet boom. I’m used to receiving emails from slightly louche soon to be ex-dignitaries in places like Nigeria
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Whatever you think of John Pilger, he consistently does what an investigative journalist should do – dig up and report on hidden or ignored facts. His piece recently aired on SBS on the so-called War on Terror (as if you can wage war on an emotion) indicated just how […] Continue Reading…

There is a new spirit in the ALP. I’m not sure this is due so much to Latham’s ascendancy as a perception that the deadly days of saying and doing as little as possible under Beazley are gone.
And I’m hoping the change in the leadership will generate party activism […] Continue Reading…

So, if the US really wants to provide a model of democracy in the Middle East, perhaps they should make music not war.
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Apparently Senator Natasha Stott Despoja has made some comments about the Bartlett affair. Anonymous sources are quoted in The Australian today saying she claimed that the principal issue was “violence against women – which is neither negotiable nor excusable”.
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I alluded in an ealier blog entry to the fact that far too few academics participate in public discourse. One problem is that such activity is either actively discouraged or at best only half-heartedly supported by their institutions and colleagues (I recall an American professor I knew saying that […] Continue Reading…

It’s a pity that our film industry appears to be constructed around our losers rather than our winners, and that it’s so parochial it can’t see that its future lies as part of the larger English language culture, not some provincial creek.
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