by cameron | Feb 28, 2007 | Australian politics, censorship
That quote is from the press release put out by Dr Philip Nitschke and Dr Fiona Stewart regarding the banning of their book, “The Peaceful Pill Handbook”, by the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification. The release also states:
“Ten years ago the Australian government took away the world’s first Voluntary Euthanasia law. Last year they banned Australians from using the telephone, fax, email and Internet to seek information about end of life issues. Now they have taken to banning and burning books.â€
And today police arrested and charged with murder a 74-year-old and a 58-year-old in Sydney relating to the death of a 71-year-old man (the husband of the 58 year old) who died from a drug overdose. They couple were refused bail.
(via Club Troppo)
When I start my political party (The Terra Party), one of the platforms will be free speech. It drives me insane that a country like Australia just sits by while our Government (that I voted for, several times) takes away one of the most basic of human rights. Can I even get arrested for just mentioning the book? Who knows?
I’m going to create a technorati tag for this issue and see how many people we get to throw in their support. Just write a blog post about “The Peaceful Pill Handbook” and tag it:
Technorati Tags:Peaceful Pill
by cameron | Jan 23, 2007 | censorship, Podcast, science vs religion
Today my guest is John Allsopp – a software engineer, speaker, writer, educator and surf lifesaver, with a long standing interest in CSS, web design and development. He is also one of the founders and organizers of the web design and development conferences “Web Directions“.
We discuss “Web 2.0”, what it means, and why it is goodness. We also discuss the Web Directions conference that John is involved in running and Western Civilisation, the software business that he and his business partner Maxine run.
Then we venture in John’s views on religion and touch on Qantas’ decision to prevent a passenger from boarding a plane due to his t-shirt.
All this and more (well… not much more actually) on today’s episode!
Don’t forget – if you want to win yourself a $50 Amazon voucher, then enter the G’Day World promotion. All you need to do is send more referrals to this gdayworld.com than any other registered referrer in the month of January. So far there are only a couple of people registered and they should be EASY to beat. Please try to avoid gimmicks like “See Britney Spears Naked”. The objective here is to get people to listen to the show, not get to the site and be annoyed at being mislead. Molly.
Details of the promotion here.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed.
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Jan 22, 2007 | censorship, Melbourne, US politics
Here’s a sign of where we might be headed as a country – just days after our Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock was trying to get a book banned for mentioning euthenasia options, today we’ve got reports that Qantas refused a passenger, Allen Jasson, permission to board a plane in Melbourne because he was wearing a t-shirt calling George Bush a terrorist.
Qantas treats the T-shirt as a security risk or clothing that could upset passengers and had banned Mr Jasson from wearing it when he flew to Australia in December.
(link)
A “security risk”?? What are they concerned about? That it will explode? That it will cause a riot?
So what’s next? If I fly on a Qantas plane and say George Bush is a terrorist, will I get arrested? Will they read my blog before they let me fly? Will I have to sign a form agreeing not to speak negatively about Bush, Blair or Howard before I can fly Qantas? When did Qantas feel themselves responsible to curbing free speech on their flights?
