What did Australians do to deserve this dullard as Communications Minister?

Please God, have a word in Mr Rudd’s ear when he’s next at prayer beseeching you for success in illegal overseas wars or whatever else he prays for. Tell him to find someone competent to do that crucial job. Surely someone in the Federal Labor caucus is up to it?

Having said that, Andrew Bolt really gave the game away for the pro-censorship position, when he asked his rhetorical question “Should people be allowed to publish anything they like?” and gave ‘Jihadist sites’ as an example. As usual, it was left to someone in the audience to point this admission, on Bolt’s part, that he has political censorship in mind.

I think it would have been a better show if the folk in the audience had a televized hour-long discussion and the panel listened, for once.

It would be very uncomfortable for the Senator, I am sure. Having your every response being dissected by the tweezers of ridicule would not be nice – however deserved.

O’Brian doesn’t seem to have any qualms about calling politicians on their guff – he’s one of the few journalists who asks intelligent questions and is happy to tell off a politician for not answering them. Most journalist are such softballs for politicians it’s just embarrassing.

As for Conroy on Q & A, I don’t see him being any more receptive to reality there than anywhere else.

It is nothing of the sort. The format of Radio National’s Australia Talks is more amenable to the posing of ‘inconvenient questions’ – as long as callers are economical with the truth when the minder inquires what their call is about. In Q & A, there’s precious little chance of any questions being put that aren’t vetted and pre-approved.

Having said that, this should be an interesting show. Nice to see Conroy out of his bunker. A shame the ABC didn’t see fit to put a prominent anti-censorship advocate on the program.

I think insight will have better discussion.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/astrologicalmusings/2009/03/pluto-in-capricorn-am-is-banne.html

Tuesday March 24, 2009

Perhaps one of my Australian readers can enlighten me! The ACMA Secret Censoring blacklist has included my post on Astrology and the False Identity, according to the website wikileaks.org. I’m listed right there along with babesf*%&k and brutalsexpics.

Has Astrological Musings become a victim of Pluto in Capricorn’s desire for more and more Big Brother-type control? Wikileaks seems to think so:

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Fortunately, only the one page of this blog is banned. But it does bring up some interesting questions about government censorship and the scope to which the power (Pluto) of government (Capricorn) will be stretched during this period of economic and social reorganization.

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Bob’s comment. No doubt astrology is a form of sorcery and sorcery is something the government wishes to clamp down on.

… addendum: “False Identity” no doubt triggered the site onto the blacklist. This hadn’t occurred to me previously.

Bob

There’s this post http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/filter_gone_to_the_dogs but I recall one earlier as well.

Has Bolt spoken against the filter in the past?

Either way, it’s on TV, so I would not expect it to be what we want. All we can do is submit reasonable questions in the hope that they are asked and record Conroy’s responses for later critique.

On a slightly different tack, I don’t like Andrew Bolt (at all), but if he can make Conroy loose his temper on air I’ll by him a beer.