Wednesday 24th of April 2024

Good morning, I'm incandescent with rage. How are you? ()

I am definitely a liberal in all of the best senses of the word. That's why issues that offend liberalism make me incandescent with rage. Really? Yes. I don't bloody care who is behind Johnhowardlies.com. Think how far this could go. Let's say I set up an anti-Latham site. We all know how easy I could do that. I could have the domain name and some initial material up in about 15 minutes. It'd cost me less than US$15. Would someone say I was once a supporter of the Liberal party and make a big deal of it? Would they threaten me with the asinine law?

This is why the internet will change the world more than we realise now. We heard these dreams 8 years ago......then we went through a phase where people said 'yeah that is crap, it doesn't enable anyone'. Who thinks that now?

What is different about Person X setting up John Howard Lies and a person standing in the Domain in Sydney or Hyde Park in London? When you do an open top double deck tour of London.....what is one of the things that makes you feel so good? It's not St Pauls. It's when they point out Speakers Corner.

The Speakers Corner of our age is the internet. Would someone become under investigation if they said Tony Blair is a liar at Speakers Corner? Of course not. In fact people of all persuasions would feel so very sad if such things WERE NOT being said at Speakers Corner.

I'm not stupid. I know about defamation and I know there are some boundaries.........BUT calling a politician a liar and then having the government investigate you for it is outrageous.

John Howard is a miserable politician and he and his party have to take everything, really everything that is dished up. If it is nonsense, people don't listen. There is definitely a big problem when meddling in political discourse is considered acceptable.

The internet is the modern day soap box. It has and it will continue to enable the people. If the powerful are intent on attacking the enabler, they are going to regret it. The genie is out of the bottle. Attacking it just makes it more powerful.

Thank you publicly-funded Tim Berners Lee for inventing the World Wide Web

Thanks a lot