"The New York Times" defends Internet free speech

It seems the battle for the Internet is hotting up with a San Francisco judge ordering the 'locking' of a website specialising in leaked information.

The New York Times published this deliciously subversive article yesterday.

"The site, Wikileaks.org, invites people to post leaked materials with the goal of discouraging "unethical behavior" by corporations and governments.---
The case in San Francisco was brought by a Cayman Islands bank, Julius Baer Bank and Trust. In court papers, the bank said that "a disgruntled ex-employee who has engaged in a harassment and terror campaign" provided stolen documents to Wikileaks in violation of a confidentiality agreement and banking laws. According to Wikileaks, "the documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion." ---
On Friday, Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco granted a permanent injunction ordering Dynadot, the site's domain name registrar, to disable the Wikileaks.org domain name. The order had the effect of locking the front door to the site — a largely ineffectual action that kept back doors to the site, and several copies of it, available to sophisticated Web users who knew where to look."

Techtree.com also reports the current availability of this site.

Perhaps Senator Conway should take note, and spare Federal Labor the negative perceptions it would attract if his pet plan to censor the Internet by stealth came before Parliament.

The Great Cane Toad Roundup: Sunday 24 February 2008 at Yamba-Angourie

It's that time of year again. The National Parks and Wildlife (NPWS) organised cane toad hunt, to reduce the population of these pests in Yamba and Angourie, has come around again.

See you there....

Day: Sunday 24 February

Time: 6.30pm for free BBQ and cane toad talk

Where: Yamba Golf and Country Club, River Street, Yamba

Bring: Gloves and torch

Wear: Covered shoes or boots

Prizes: for biggest toad and most number of toads caught

Kids: all children taking part in the hunt must be accompanied by an adult

Info: NPWS Grafton on (02) 6641.1500

 

Nine straight victories so far for presidential nominee Barack Obama

The politics of the US presidential race continues to fascinate.

Here is Barack Obama latest email dated 20 February.

Like others in the race, he continues to be something of a policy cipher fixated on raising campaign contributions.

 

"Today, the people of Wisconsin voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new kind of politics.

They rejected an onslaught of negative attacks and attempts to distract them from the common concerns we all have about the direction of our country.

No doubt we'll hear much more of these attacks and distractions in the days to come.

But the noise of these tired, old political games will not drown out the voices of millions calling for change.

Now is the time to join us -- add your voice to our movement by making your first donation right now. By giving through our matching program, your donation will be doubled by a previous donor who has promised to match your gift.

We are very close to reaching our goal of 500,000 people giving to this campaign in 2008. Help push us over the top by making a matched donation right now:

https://donate.barackobama.com/match

We won't know until late tonight the results of today's Hawaii caucus, but we'll let you know how that turns out tomorrow.

If we win in Hawaii, it will be ten straight victories -- a streak no one thought possible, and the best position we can be in when Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont vote on March 4th.

Thank you for making this possible,

Barack"

Turnbull cracks a joke

Malcolm Turnbull turned into the Liberals court jester this week, when he had the hide to complain that the Rudd Government was subverting democracy, because it has decided to roll back the former Howard Government's political donations laws which made it almost impossible for voters to discover where a great deal of party funding was coming from.

"What price democracy?" he asks to howls of laughter from across Australia.

No wonder that some in the Liberal Party can't stand this pretender.

Nationals Chris Gulaptis 4 ever

After his defeat at the 24 November 2007 federal election, the Nationals candidate for Page Chris Gulaptis removed his campaign website from view on the Internet.

Presumably so that it would be unlikely that his words would be quoted back at him in the future.

Which makes the following from the NSW State Library all the more enjoyable.

The Gulaptis website was archived on 23 November 2007.

Chris Gulaptis - Nationals candidate for Page

This title is part of the "2007 Australian federal election campaign - House of Representatives election candidate web sites" collection.

Chris Gulaptis - Nationals candidate for Page was selected for preservation by the State Library of New South Wales. This title is not scheduled for re-archiving. The publisher's site may provide more current information.

Archived 23 Nov 2007 01:11

North Coast website lands two in gaol

Latest example of 'what not to do' on the Internet can be found here.

The website mentioned is now initially unreachable - "No web site is configured at this address"

However, the dynamic Internet wins again, because this is yet another website which can still be reached and read online courtesy of a large search engine's additional features.

Thereby defeating the aim of those who brought the original legal action and only making more people aware of the website's allegations. 

This rather strange and wayward website is now entering a conspiracy theorists Hall of Fame thanks to the court case.

It probably has more site mentions relating to and quoting the allegedly defamatory material than ever before.

It has always been better known on the NSW North Coast for being able to keep one serious allegation concerning a local politician up on Internet for years without being successfully challenged.

Possum Comitatus and Google Trends on Mr. 9% Nelson

The Leader of the Opposition Brendan Nelson just can't take a trick this week.
He was outed as being interviewed by an ABC Four Corners journalist, but refusing to appear on camera. Thereby earning no points for bravery and a few for stupidity, as most will think he heartily concurred with Abbott, Hockey, Downer etc. and none can disagree with that position.
He miserably failed to find any real dirt on the Prime Minister after repeatedly accusing him of irregularities and falsehoods.
Mid-week Nelson had to accept direction from his shadow cabinet to reverse support for retaining AWAs in any new industrial relations legislation.
Can things get any worse? Of course.
Then he found himself with the worst polling results for preferred prime minister in the recent history of polling.

According to Possum Comitatus at Crikey.com.au:
"Brendan Nelson has stormed into the worse Preferred Prime Minister result in the history of Newspoll with an astonishing 9%. Not 29%, not 19% -- there be no typos here, it really says 9%.So just how bad is 9%, I hear you ask?
Think of every left handed person you know in the country, not of voting age, just in the country. You would, on average, know more left handed people than you would know people that preferred Brendan Nelson to be the Prime Minister. This is not so bad that you could actually list the names of Brendan Nelson supporters on a moderately sized pamphlet – but it’s getting awfully close."

Surely the week must get better from now on? Don't bet on it.

Today's Google Trends world-wide search terms comparison results for Kevin Rudd and Brendan Nelson over the last 30 days. Nelson is shown by the red line.