Slashdot Mirror

I have some bad news for you. At least here the government has to follow a process prior to confiscating your property, but they never need to charge you with a crime and you're the one who has to prove your property's innocence.

Not only that but he recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel!
ONLY HITLER WOULD DO THAT! TRUMP IS LITERALLY HITLER!

I don't have to be specifically worried for the Jews to be worried about Trump. Enough of his policies and attitudes are Naziesque to be chilling. That makes sense, because his daddy was a racist and maybe a Klansman. Ironically, his grandfather was deported for illegal immigration. Trump is a shining example of exactly the kind of person he wants to keep out of America: he's a rapist, no less. Wasn't rape one of the things he was worried about illegal immigration bringing to our country? I guess he'd know.

This has the smell of something the Macron campaign released to blame on LePen. Someone wanting to help LePen would have released it earlier and given people a chance to examine the documents.

You have an *exceptionally bad* sense of "smell" and clearly no idea how a smear campaign is done. The document release was deliberately done *one hour* before a French law that imposes a media blackout on election discussions, preventing Macron from refuting the legitimacy of the documents in the document dump. Macron was way ahead in the polls--it makes ZERO sense for Macron to poison his own lead. The document dump has all the hallmarks of Russian election tampering that has happened both in the US and in multiple European elections.

Civil forfeiture in most places in Australia only applies to crimes with a commercial aspect or profit motive. This sometimes doesn't mean what people think it means, but nonetheless, in this case, there are no ill-gotten gains to forfeit.

It's not uneducated parents that are the problem. It's a lot of middle-class mothers who are totally convinced by the pseudo-science and rubbish that's peddled on the internet and by "Wellness" gurus. Australia seems to be infested with them.

Someone has just been hammered for this.

The Paleo Diet is alive and well here, pushed by a chef who somehow has become a dietary-science expert and made a mint from pushing books that contain dangerous pseudo-diets.

We also seem to be very susceptible to charlatans spruiking special-cancer treatments that do nothing but give false hope, drain someone's bank account and leaves them dead quicker.

First off, I completely agree about your point with so-called "wellness" gurus and other charlatans like David "avocado" Wolfe. These people are doing more to increase sickness and disease than most wars in the last 50 years.

However the Paleo diet has some science behind it, a high protein, low carbohydrate diet has been shown to be beneficial for weight loss and muscle gain. Older Australians like myself knew it as the CSIRO diet before it got hipstered into "paleo". its a diet designed for weight management.

It's not uneducated parents that are the problem. It's a lot of middle-class mothers who are totally convinced by the pseudo-science and rubbish that's peddled on the internet and by "Wellness" gurus. Australia seems to be infested with them.

Someone has just been hammered for this.

The Paleo Diet is alive and well here, pushed by a chef who somehow has become a dietary-science expert and made a mint from pushing books that contain dangerous pseudo-diets.

We also seem to be very susceptible to charlatans spruiking special-cancer treatments that do nothing but give false hope, drain someone's bank account and leaves them dead quicker.

Ghostbusters (2016) disproved this.

Well that's because the trump supporters, misogynists, racists, bigots, homophobes, sexists, gamergators, alt-right, nazi-kkkers were all raging against it don't ya know. Don't take my word for it, take it from the directors, actors and some more stuff and movie/review/news sites mouths--among others. That it's all their fault that it was a failure.

Or...it could be that it was just a shitty movie, and the entire marketing idea was to release shitty trailers, attack your audience, then double down. I'm sure that's a winning strategy, it worked against Trump, and for Brexit right? It sure looks like it's a winning strategy in the NL and DE elections coming up too.

The First Amendment in the United States Constitution is very clear on the role of the press as a named protected profession.
The Pentagon Papers did test the mil/gov printing issue.
Other nations like the UK, Australia have different views on material or book chapters.
"NSA files: why the Guardian in London destroyed hard drives of leaked files" (21 August 2013)
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
Sledgehammer Politics (23 Aug 2013)
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/art...
Other nations "freedoms" are very different and limited when their fully democratic mil/gov's get interested in the media.
The change in the ability to find a site or link to a site, comment, publish, promote, sell or participate could get very chilling. Even the most "free" Western nations could subvert any US protected freedoms of speech online to a global mix of other nations legal systems, NGO's, mil, gov and SJW interests.

I loved that they picked up Trailer Park Boys, and I really wish they'd pick up Danger 5 as well.

If they fixed the loopholes Google might say this: http://www.sbs.com.au/comedy/a...

I had a quick search to fact check your post, and it doesn't really seem accurate. It seems 12.9% of oil comes from Persian Gulf countries (i.e. the Middle Eastern nations where war is a problem), whilst 14% of European oil comes from the same place, so there's little in it:

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/...

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/art...

The gulf is bigger for Africa (US 5%, EU 21%) but apart from a temporary foray into Libya for a few months the nations in question aren't nations where there has been any Western intervention for a long time.

Which isn't to say EU's energy purchases aren't a problem, as the whole Ukraine crisis has shown the EU needs to cut dependence on Russian gas and oil.

But ultimately your claim that the EU should be stabilising the middle east because it uses more oil is basically false, given there's a mere 1.1% gap in purchases between the EU and US from the major problem areas in middle east where American blood keeps getting spilled.

Your argument is irrelevant however, it's a distraction, an attempted play on technicalities to avoid the real reason it's always the Americas that end up the middle east- it's not about oil consumption, it's about oil control. America doesn't keep meddling in the middle east because it consumes their oil, it meddles in the middle east because it wants it's companies to profit from production of that oil, and to control who gets to consume that oil.

The EU isn't engaging in the middle east as much as the US is because EU foreign policy hasn't been so focussed on controlling the flow of oil and building it's economy on the basis of taking control as much of the global oil and gas market as possible.

You mention China also, which is a similar case, you talk of lack of power projection, but that's not true- China's power projection just isn't military, it's economic. But whilst the US spent the last decade bombing Iraq and Afghanistan China spent the same decade courting under-developed African nations to build up their infrastructure and to exploit their resources- whilst America went to war to control the oil already being pumped, China invested in just pumping new oil in as yet untapped markets by funding production of wells, road, telecomms infrastructure and so on and so forth. It's been pretty busy:

http://www.businessinsider.com...

It's also interesting if you look at some of the widely available pre-2010 maps- you'll see there's barely a section of Africa that hasn't been touched to the tune of billions of dollars by the Chinese in the last 10 - 15 years.

So your misdirection was a nice try at excusing America from the problem, but it misses the very reason America isn't excused from the problem - America isn't there because it's the good guy doing the EU, China and Japan a favour. It's there out of choice because it has created and intertwined itself in the problem because it views that as a key part of it's global power projection priorities. It realises that messy military agreements and dealings with the Saudis may not net it much oil because it doesn't need it from them, but it does mean that US companies can rake in billions from helping exploit those resources whilst also providing it's military companies with lucrative defence contracts to defend those investments.

It's the very nature of the fact that America's power projection is military that's the reason it's always engaged in wars unlike China with it's economic power.

This is also in part why Saudi Arabia is more than happy to help keep oil prices low at a time when fellow OPEC members like Venezuela could be pushed to the brink of collapse by low oil prices- partly because Saudi gains in seeing a competing major oil producer crippled for a

Thinking of actual gold-colored blood, I was expecting a human/arachnid hybrid. A spider-man, if you will.

Odd, I just thought they were Swiss.

Oh, and let's not pretend it's only white people doing it to each other. Here is the Rwanda'n genocide, with machetes from yesterday, early 90's: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/sit...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

and similar things apply to Japanese human experiments during WWII, the way Koreans eat live octopus today, how the Papuan were the last major cannibals on Earth, how the Inca's and Aztec's lives were permeated with bloodthirsty religious human sacrifices, something that shows even today when they reenact the crucifixion of Christ by literally nailing themselves to a cross and going on a procession, etc. All races of people got issues.

I'm over my 25 posts per 24 hrs, so I'm posting as anonymous coward.

Yours truly, &c,
slashdot user: sillybilly

Given that what the GP said is true, that there is no evidence that praying makes any difference whatsoever, it would make more sense to instead spend the time doing something that does make a difference. If all the hours wasted in the world praying, and going to church were instead spent helping fix an elderly neighbours fence, doing a charity run, or learning about medicine to become a doctor, the world would be a whole lot better place.

It seems fitting to point this out: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/art...

Some one give the AC a mod point for the headline.

History is is the fastest way to understanding Science (with a capital 'S') and one of the best "executive summaries" I've read (and watched) is The ascent of man.

Most of the pre-1900 polymaths that gave us the enlightenment were either nobility or one social step down from it. The simple fact of the matter is that they were the only people who could afford the "leisure time" to purse their intellectual curiosity. It was not unusual for these people to pay someone like Galileo (the orphaned son of a prostitute) to do the actual grunt work required to satisfy their curiosity. However Galileo was more of an exception than a rule, the vast majority of commoners could not even read and write until public education was introduced in the mid-1800's.

Edison gets a lot of flack on /. from elephant huggers and Telsa fans, but the fact remains that Menlo Park was the world's first modern laboratory. Modern research is almost without exception, based on Edison's model - ie: find an interesting observation in nature such as, electricity can make a filament glow red, then through trial and error work towards a practical goal such as, the light bulb (which is why a picture of a light bulb is synonymous with "an idea")

Contrast Edison's approach to that of Newton. The story is that when his friend Mr Haley told him about his idea of a recurring comet and asked for advice on how to work out the orbital period from observations, Newton said he had written down some "mathematical principles" that may help and started looking through his (extensive) papers for "something I wrote a while ago". He failed to find it but assured his friend he would try and recreate the document. Two years later he gave his friend a copy of his "Principa" - Arguably the most useful scientific document ever written, it's often credited as the birth certificate of the enlightenment and the point in history where science threw away it's religious crutches to stand or fall on it's own philosophical foundations.

Disclaimer: I was educated in 1960's Oz, all I remember 40yrs later is the political message I was supposed to learn - "this country was built on the sheep's back". it's a shame because Australia actually has the world's oldest culture, a culture that has managed a continent as an "estate" for at least 40,000 years under "The law" (which like the old testament wraps everyday practicalities within religious stories), they invented maps, invented grindstones, carved a massive "cathedral" from sandstone that is 20,000 years older than stone henge and the artwork that's left in the half that is still standing is maintained by the ancestors who are alive today (pics or it didn't happen are somewhere in here). I still consider myself ignorant about history, not from lack of interest but because of the sheer scale of the subject. The best way I've found to absorb some of the more interesting bits is by reading biographies of historical figures that intrigue me for whatever reason.

I'm Australian and the last thing we need right now is to piss off the Indonesians further. I kinda wish these documents were kept under wraps forever to be honest.

I'm Australian and I kinda wished that the Aussie spooks wouldn't be so damned interested about Indonesian shrimp trade.: call me stupid, but I believe knowing this is not making Australia more secure.

"Intelligence is judged like in sport, two boxers fighting in the ring. They punch and they counter-punch... They attack and they defend themselves, but it is in the ring — the ring of intelligence. If the officials, in this case politicians, interfere in the case, that is wrong. That is very wrong."

Now that it is in the political arena, the politicians have overreacted, he said. ....

"I hope that both our leaders, SBY as well as Tony Abbott should not be too emotional... Please do not deteriorate [the relationship] because of a very small thing. This is a very technical thing."

Translation "spooks to govt: Give us your money and keep your dirty noses out of our game: it's none of your business, you see... it's too technical for you to even understand something".
The only thing that wasn't explicitly said is "... or else".

And this should function as a justification for what NSA is doing? Is it meant to offer me (a citizen which pays taxes these damn'd spooks live on) assurances of a responsible behavior consistent with respect of human rights and liberties?
Pray tell, exactly how the info about the Indonesian shrimp and clove cigarettes trade is something that justifies the violation of lawyer-client confidentiality?

2. Assuming this is not this, how can a country maintain military intelligence without doing this?

Shachar

Oh, yes. That's un-possible. Poor US Army, what it could do if missing the critical information about the Indonesian trade of shrimp and cloves cigarettes?

The law firm was advising Indonesia in relation to trade disputes with the US over the export of shrimp and clove cigarettes. In the latter case the World Trade Organization ruled the United States had violated international trade laws.

According to the classified document, Australian intelligence agents covertly monitored talks between Indonesian officials and the law firm, and offered to share the information obtained with America’s National Security Agency (NSA).

Foreign Minister Natalegawa admitted on Monday that he was perplexed by the claims, the latest in a string of damming revelations about the extent of Australia’s espionage activities in the region.

"I find that a bit mind-boggling and a bit difficult how I can connect or reconcile discussion about shrimps and how it impacts on Australia’s security,” Natalegawa told reporters at a joint press conference with US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is on a two-day visit to Jakarta.

This is different from my understanding. Australian immigration easily tops 100,000 annually, and the humanitarian intake is separate, not linked. It was 13,000 for years, Gillard increased it to 20,000,

Yep, pathetically, it could easily be less than 40 000, you are right. In fact, Australia's refugee intake is astoundingly low.

However just 3441 asylum seekers were given refuge in Australia last year, roughly one per cent of the total migration to Australia during 2009. From http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2011/01/05/glance-who-takes-most-asylum-claims

The point is, the refugee intake is limited by our participation in a mutual resettlement program. We have the luxury of being able to resettle most of the refugee's who seek asylum in other countries. We are able to limit our own refugee intake by that means - and that means alone. Whether it is ethical to set a limit remains an open question - certainly the low refugee intake, along with the generally cruel and inhumane manner in which refugees are treated by our supposedly egalitarian and fair country is of concern to many, if not most, Australians.

Participation in that resettlement program depends on remaining under the auspices of the UNHCR and the Convention.

Rudd hinted at increasing it to appease the left when he introduced his PNG plan. I assume it's still 20,000 with the new government.

He should have increased it, and so should the present government. The majority of refugees arriving are still from Iraq and Afghanistan - people that we made refugees, through our participation in the failed military adventures of the US from the last decade.

The last time a circumstance like this occurred was after the Vietnam war, which numbered in the 100's of thousands of refugees. There were some problems. But 30 years on, I doubt there is a single Australian who would change what we did then, who would prefer that the Vietnamese community of Australians were not here. Like many people I have never heard anyone clearly elucidate why this present circumstance should be managed differently.

What is linked, is onshore (boat/plane arrivals) and offshore (the 'queue' in refugee camps) humanitarian arrivals. This link was created by the Howard government and, while possibly fair enough, turns onshore arrivals into 'queue jumpers'.

Incorrect

I'm sorry, but you've been lied to. The homicide rates [aic.gov.au] in Australia did not decline after their gun ban. Or rather, they declined (averaged), but at the same rate they were declining before. In fact, that brief spike that you see on the graph is right after the ban.

Australian here. Well *I'm* sorry, but you're being deceptive, or simply cannot interpret information intelligently. I assume you're referring to graphs like this on that page. Yes, gun homicide was in decline, but certainly would have reached a level average at some point if the buybacks of 96 and 03 didn't occur. Who knows, they may have gone up. Nobody knows, because that did not happen. What *did* happen, after the buybacks, was that gun crime *plummeted*.

So it had the desired effect, and you just can't get your little mind around that. You don't want to think about it, or present a balanced argument, because it doesn't suit your bias. Intentionally misrepresenting information to make a point is just sad.

You may want (or not) to look at the graph on this page. Per 100,000 population, the gun homicide rate in the U.S. is ~3.6. In Australia it's ~0.1. U.K & Norway are the only two lower countries.

If you support gun ownership, you support gun crime, simple as that. Gun are NOT knives. Guns have only ONE purpose. They are not made to cut your steak, or butter your bread. They are made to maim and kill people. Supporting guns is supporting what guns are for. Or can't you get your head around that either?

Yet in Australia, the most corrupt and inequitable country in the English-speaking world, the courts ruled that the BRCA1 patent owners can screw 'we the people' for all they are worth, all the while their porcine politicians snorted and squealed in delight.

Gene patenting: Australian court rules BRCA1 patent is legal http://theconversation.com/gene-patenting-australian-court-rules-brca1-patent-is-legal-12240

This is nothing new. When asked to rule if Australians had free speech the Australian courts wouldn't even grant them that: http://www.findlaw.com.au/articles/4529/do-we-have-the-right-to-freedom-of-speech-in-austr.aspx http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1741850/QA-What-are-the-limits-to-free-speech http://www.ask.com/question/what-countries-don-t-have-freedom-of-speech

Well, nice to see America putting Australia to shame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implications_of_US_gene_patent_invalidation_on_Australia

I travel a lot in the Asia-Pacific region, and though I keep trying, I cannot watch CNN for more than a couple of minutes at a time. The other news channels don't even get a look in. It's the BBC World Service, Al Jazeera, or nothing, I'm sorry to say.

SBS is also pretty good (and unlike the ABC, they don't block heaps of their content or their smartphone apps outside Australia).

It really doesn't help your case when the leader of your own country has named your actions as criminal before your day in court. However, if that does happen you can always sue for defamation.

Assange's best bet right now is for Gillard to be dumped by the ALP or voted out in 2013.

What power does the President have to actually enact any tax related policy they have on their platform? Surely for the most part they a legislative rather than executive issues?

The American system seems very weird. Well, on paper it seems reasonable but in practice it seems to operate in a way that ensures nothing 'difficult' gets done and that everybody has someone else to blame for the inaction.

Meanwhile.......

>Finally, I just love how you left out this part.
>> We do not censor the media and may criticise the government without fear of arrest.
>Which is key to what is being discussed here.

Where are you getting your information from? Don't read it off another government web site. Ask a journalist instead. The government doesn't need to censor the media because it self-censors. Journalists are very restricted in what they can report: If they publish or posses a leaked government document they can be arrested and jailed. A lot of information is withheld from them: The Attorney-General blacked out 90% of that web snooping report. If they report something that later turns out not to be true they can end up sued for defamation even if they did every check they could and even if they honestly believed it were true. You can never be sure what someone else tells you is 100% true, so they can't take the chance, and so don't report on it. Journalists are surrounded by lawyers who will not take even a remote risk of breaking Australia's defamation laws, so you the public don't get to find this stuff out. Australia is not like the US. Reality is more complicated than the rosy picture you have been painted.
This was a good series but is no longer available online: http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/554/Law-and-Disorder

This was kind of inevitable once we turned it into a national memorial. Then we had to coddle the rich guys who owned the building instead of seizing it from them under eminent domain, which slowed things down for a long time.

However, the building is much more complex than the Empire State Building. Not only is it taller, and more secure due to better construction techniques, but it also will have much more usable interior volume due to its design, which has no interior columns. It also will be LEED Gold certified.

Anyway, China is great for building buildings but they also have problems like ghost cities. In a communist nation, stuff gets done when those in power want them done, but there are literally entire cities that remain empty because the powers that be ordered them built but there was no demand to fill them. It's also notable that AVIC is one of the largest real estate developers in China even though it makes airplanes. That's because it has the rare power to own land and build buildings so that's what it does to make money.

Also, there aren't that many mixed-use buildings in China. That's because you can't own land, so you have to lease the land. The maximum terms of land leases vary for residential and commercial uses, so buildings are either one or the other. LOL. What's going to happen when the leases expire and the land goes back to the government? We'll find out.

Unlike Europeans who lock their children in a basement and rape them repeatedly or other Europeans who run around shooting people.

That's how racism works, you take an anecdote and apply it to the whole population.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Josef_Fritzl

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1578285/norway-gunman-revisits-scene-of-rampage

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10219655

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1392211/Garrett-stands-by-school-funding
has the stats,
.."two-thirds of the education budget to private schools that educate one-third of the students, ...
has funding capped for students in government schools at $1000 per student, yet funding for students in private schools goes up to $7000 per student".
Australia has always been interested in new tech toys. The sad thing is we just use them as offered vs anything creative.
Will a tablet help kids, maybe , does it make the parents smile, yes.

Re professional trolling "hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering"
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/03/report-recruit/
Julian Assange did talk about the issue of informants.
""REPORTER: Do you lie awake at night wondering if you have found all those?
JULIAN ASSANGE: They have a particular code within the reports. It wasn't too hard. That said, it is possible, there may be a stray report here or stray report there. The choice, again, we are forced to make hard choices and those hard choices are do we do best effort to minimise harm, which we have done with the understanding that this is an extraordinary body of material capable of producing extraordinary reforms. It belongs in the hands of the Afghan people. Give it to them. If the material is of a diplomatic, political, ethical and historical significance and has not been published..."" from SBS (Australian TV)
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/transcript/id/600647/n/Inside-WikiLeaks

MAYBE you should read the frigging NEWS before accusing somebody of not knowing their stuff, eh?

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/big-brother-wants-all-your-bits-and-bytes-20100611-y3p3.html

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/blogs/the-geek/internet-freedom-in-2010-looks-like-1984/20100618-ykr9.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/govt-wants-isps-to-record-browsing-history-339303785.htm?omnRef=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webspy.com.au%2Fblogs%2Findex.php%2Fgovernment-sanctioned-isp-filtering-and-monitoring%2F

http://www.webspy.com.au/blogs/index.php/government-sanctioned-isp-filtering-and-monitoring/

http://www.itwire.com/it-policy-news/government-tech-policy/39742-australian-government-to-monitor-all-internet-usage

http://www.smh.com.au/national/government-plans-to-monitor-without-court-authorisation-20100611-y3lq.html

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1276537/Government-web-monitoring-slammed

WHO said it had anything to do specifically with the NBN? You still end up with a trade... unless you can bash some sense into your representatives. Who, from the recent evidence, seem to have an even lower IQ than the idiots in the U.S. Congress.

While it was returned 15 minutes later

Man, they are brutal down in Melbourne. And from the original article linked at TG Daily:

The Age has been told that Assange's passport is classified "normal" on the immigration database, meaning the Wikileaks director can travel freely on it.

They really know how to shake people up and intimidate you. Sounds almost as bad as my trip through United States customs coming back from vacation. They abducted me for three hours as I was forced to stand in line awaiting inspection and approval. They called it standard processing but I tell you what--it was more of a death march.

Australia would have to be insane to do something like that to Assange. He would trot that out in front of the media for weeks if that was what happened. What a claim to legitimacy. And for that reason I'm guessing this is likely a natural passport process turned into a PR stunt.

Assange mentioned it in an SBS Dateline interview.

So basically Australia said, "We need to renew your overly used passport and the authorities are looking into how you got a hold of a blacklist from our government." <sarcasm>The poor man! When will the persecution stop?! The only way you can only mitigate his suffering by making a tiny donation to Wikileaks.org.</sarcasm>

In Australia we also have "Theft by finding" laws which have recently and very publicly undone a Melbourne couple. Many people don't realise that these laws exist and can have quite serious consequences to their lives if they don't make an attempt to get the property back its owners.

Here in Oz, SBS broadcast this series. Basically it was a live autopsy with the body hung in an upright posture by wires (facing away from the camera and live audience). The "can't-look-away horror" part for me was when he removed the brain, spinal cord and siatic nerve all in one piece.

Good quality? No ads? Reasonable price? Uncut? Where do I sign?

I just can't see the Beeb redistributing imports like the excellent Spiral, the English title for Engrenages. Most of this stuff ends up on DVD (I bought Spiral on DVD from Australia, complete with SBS's Aussie subtitles), but not always.

...laura

The article is about AFACT - the copyright mob in Australia - trying to stop the caps. Not the ISPs (they have their own issues with bandwidth that are not at all related to copyright). In Australia, I think we're actually better off than, say, people in the USA - because our limits are clearly defined and well published. Unlike in the US where you have these 'unlimited' plans getting advertised and then you get randomly cut off when you use too much data.

AFACT trying to limit our downloads is, imo, worse than the ISPs trying to cut it off. What business does AFACT have to tell anyone about how much they should be downloading? I routinely leave large downloads and uploads going overnight so it doesn't tie up my connection during the day, and it's sure as shit not anything AFACT need to worry about - backing up my data, photos, my legitimately purchased digital content, downloading Linux ISOs (actual, real ones, not the airquote ones that people use to ever-so-subtly refer to pirating shit).

AFACT and ISPs have butted heads regularly in the past. They're a bunch of complete dicks that are pushing the same retarded line the RIAA/MPAA do, just in a different way. There was a great roundtable on an Australian TV show about it last year which you can watch online (possibly only if you are in .au, depending on how fucked their licensing is, I guess).

Antiviral drug saves UK swine flu victim

You're a fucking creep, do you know that? Move in with some Christian Scientists and die a slow painful death away from places where you can continue to give bad advice.

http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/59#watchonline

The hour long show which had the minister and various opinions on the filter.

"Which is a crying shame considering how much uranium and easy disposal options we have. Fear trumps reason again. Cue: 30 year outdated arguments.."

The point is mute because as others have pointed out TFA claims that AGL will use renewables, however I have to object to your implied conclusion that Australia should build reactors.

Australia has both huge uranium reserves AND huge renewable potential (enough to power most of SE Asia), why not sell the uranium and disposal services to other nations that don't have such an embarrasing wealth and under-utilisation of renewables? Personally I think the shame I cry over the most is how we consitently sell taxpayer funded IP for pennies, as in the case of The Sun King. IMHO we should be selling uranium and keeping ideas, not the other way around.

The meat from the link:
"The new technology Dr Shi helped develop has now been put into commercial production at this factory near Leipzig, in Germany. But it is protected by patent - he might have helped develop it but the Sun King can't use it. Indeed the failure by Pacific Solar to commercialise the technology so disheartened Dr Shi at the time that he considered giving away research altogether and starting a restaurant or a supermarket in Sydney...[snip: but he went back home to China]...Six years later Dr Shi and his wife have transformed $6 million in seed capital into a $6 billion company. Oh, not only did we sell his invention, we even built the factory for the Germans who are now pumping about a gigawatt of EXCESS back into the grid from rooftop PV - quite an achivement considering "sunshine" is not the first thing that comes to one's mind when they think about German weather.

And while we are at it, why do we ship ore to China to smelt with coal, why not refine the metal where it is dug up using solar thermal and "value add" to our product? Even the small quantity we smelt is done with horrendous inefficiency and still makes a profit, eg: Aluminium in the south using a purpose built coal plant but the ore is dug up under the sweltering sun in the north. To get the ore from north to south there's all this infrastructure of railraods, ports and ships. If we can automate the world's largest diamond mine to operate with a dozen staff why can't we build intergrated mine/refine/power stations that take maybe 100 people to run? Plonk it on the ore deposit and away you go.

If I had my tinfoil hat on I might think that a lot of the insanity in the economy is nothing more than a "full employment" scheme for western society.

Politics: The Greens have two problems, first their nuclear dogma directly contradicts their platform of "science based policy". Second their leader is as boring as dogshit. I'm an old fart who was an adult during the Franklin thing and I admire Brown for what he did back then, I also admire him for standing up for the rule of law in the Hicks case even though Howard neutered him by branding him a "Hick's supporter". I really DO want to hear what he has to say but his voice and his predictable dogma are like auditory valium, two sentances and I'm asleep. The last time I remember him doing anything effective was the time he got the Greens locked out of parliment while the Chineese were visting, and when I say effective I mean he was effective in convincing the nation that he's a wack-job. (Not that different to how McCain has "lost his way", once that happens your credibility is dead to the casual observer and the one-eyed dogmatists are drawn to you like flies are drawn to a turd.)

FTFA:
"Aren't they supposed to be held in the spirit of freedom and openness?
Not in China."
yeah, blame china... The IOC doesn't have a track record for sending takedown notices / sueing to people displaying anything remotely Olympic branded:
http://news.sbs.com.au/worldnewsaustralia/ioc_sues_website_using_olympics_logos_552593
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-7217512_ITM
the IOC are just as bad as the MAFIIA, but they've got a perfect scapegoat to trial DRM this time around because the West aren't big fans of china as it is, so the IOC spin doctors say "we didn't want drm" publicly, while privately supporting the concept. /rant

FTFA:
"Arenâ(TM)t they supposed to be held in the spirit of freedom and openness?
Not in China."

yeah, blame china... The IOC doesn't have a track record for sending takedown notices / sueing to people displaying anything remotely Olympic branded:
http://news.sbs.com.au/worldnewsaustralia/ioc_sues_website_using_olympics_logos_552593
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-7217512_ITM
the IOC are just as bad as the MAFIIA, but they've got a perfect scapegoat to trial DRM this time around because the West aren't big fans of china as it is, so the IOC spin doctors say "we didn't want drm" publicly, while privately supporting the concept. /rant

In the USA you still only have to do the math on the 'number' and 'quality' of roving witetaps.
The use of public or released data to see what police forces are doing is interesting.
In India you have to count the number of dead.
"The records show that Durgiyana Mandir ground was one of three cremation sites in Amritsar
illegally used by the police.
It takes about 300kg of wood to burn a single body and each wood purchase is written in a register.
The police subverted the system, by burning more than one body on each pyre.

http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/india__who_killed_the_sikhs_130052 [sbs.com.au]

SBS World News and George Negus' Dateline are available online, and make all other news shows pale in comparison.

SBS World News and George Negus' Dateline are available online, and make all other news shows pale in comparison.

I agree! As an Aussie, I cannot think of a single news/current affairs show currently on Australian commercial TV that does not make you feel dumber for having watched it. However I would rank our government stations up there with the best on the planet, go figure!

ABC news is here, and the GP forgot to mention SBS news, which is our other government station and IMHO has better global coverage.

"While he doesn't sound like someone I'd invite over dinner."

For sure but (as I am sure you are aware), that's not the point. His father has become a sort of folk hero over here, from the very start he has asked that people do not misjudge his son and demanded a fair and speedy trial, he has personally confronted the PM and the AG on several occasions.

If you are interested in more go to http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/ and search for "hicks on trial" (can't figure out how to link the result??). The show was a debate type format with the military prosecutor and defender the main protaganists, they are on a video link to a live audience of "interested parties". The AG is in the audience and gets a verbal hammering from some eloquent speakers.

This was on TV recently in Australia, seems the guy who played a large part in the discovery got extremely disheartened by the univerties apathy towards commercialization. He decided to start making panels himself in China and is now that countries richest man, his "Suntech" company is worth $6B. Ironically he is not able to use the discovery he made because it is patented.

The transcript in the link makes for interesting reading but they fail to mention who paid for the research? Was it the taxpayer or did Origin cough up the $25M?

Cardenas remains in custody for allegedly resisting arrest during the scuffle and for a felony warrant for receiving stolen goods, according to Bratton.

Myth debunked.

Why is ONE CO2 molecule from India evil, yet 20 from the US OK? Industrialised countries (including my own) are to blame for global warming, because we contributed the vast bulk of the extra C02 present in the atmosphere. It's absurd to suggest that yet again developing countries should pay for our lifestyle.

India has ratified the Kyoto protocol - the US has not. China has ratified the protocol.The only standouts not intending to ratify are the US and Australia. And, despite the reticence of our government 80% of Australians want to ratify the protocol. Why? Because it is in our interests to do so. It is in our interest to act now, rather than paying later.

Come back with a set of Kyoto Accords that bans the CO2 emissions no matter what country they come from. Until they, it's all politics and not even worth consideration.

Why don't you come back when you have an argument to present to us that is worth our consideration? These tired, anachronistic, factually incorrect spiels about the evils of other countries are boring and hint at racism.

Ever since the last bastion of balanced journalism in the US collapsed (NPR in the late nineties), I've been searching for a good English-language news source. I can't find one.

Try this one: http://www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/

Tonight on SBS news they showed his wife getting on a plane back down under, she had the kids with her.