Sometimes, the power of Google Earth is staggering: German scientists using satellite images posted online by the Google Earth software program have observed something that has escaped the notice of farmers, herders and hunters for thousands of years: Cattle grazing or at rest tend to orient their bodies in a north-south direction just like a…
Showing all posts in June 2019
How web rights are coming
My new book, The Blogging Revolution, is officially released on September 1. Over the coming weeks and months there will be extensive coverage and discussion both here in Australia and internationally (all of it covered on this site and the book’s website). As a great start, here’s a post from Harvard University’s Berkman Centre for…
As worthless as trash
A Whitehall counter-terrorism unit is targeting the BBC and other media organisations as part of a new global propaganda push designed to “taint the al-Qaida brand”, according to a secret Home Office paper seen by the Guardian. The document also shows that Whitehall counter-terrorism experts intend to exploit new media websites and outlets with a…
1984 24/7
George Orwell, my favourite author, has had his diaries placed on a blog. According to Jean Seaton, a professor at the University of Westminster in London who administers the Orwell writing prize and thought up the idea of the blog, “I think he would have been a blogger.”
Spreading freedom and democracy ain’t easy
Looking for a job to spread the “message and themes” of the US Defence Department? So much noble work, so little time.
Let’s torture the Arab
What part of this shocking news makes Zionists proud of their state? Investigation conducted by Israeli Bar finds prison wardens regularly subject inmates to inhumane conditions including unleashing of dogs, debasement. Prisoners also complain of delay in medical treatment to point of death. Wardens who set dogs on inmates, an inmate being held under administrative…
The web will not be the saviour
The co-editor of Global Voices, Ethan Zuckerman, is interviewed about his thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of the internet (clue: we have a long way to go to truly integrate a worldwide population into the technology): I think one of the things that’s most exciting about the Internet revolution is this idea that we…
Surely time to shun official sources
Two different speakers at this week’s Edinburgh International Television Conference revealed the paucity of imagination and guts in so much of the mainstream media’s coverage of the “war on terror”. Al-Jazeera director general Wadah Khanfar: Less and less field work is being done. More official sources are being taken as uncollaborated fact. Less and less…
Wall-E
Wall-E is the wonderful new film from Pixar Studios. Tonight I was lucky enough in Sydney to see a sneak preview with the director and voice of the main characters. It tells the story of two robots who fall in love in a world far into the future. If this sounds like an unlikely premise…
Speaking for the silent
The Baha’i faith is mercilessly persecuted in Iran. Since the 1979 Revolution, the mullahs have attempted to destroy the religion, without success (I recently met a Baha’i woman here in Sydney who had just returned from a pilgrimage from Haifa, Israel, the true home of their religion.) The following is taken from the acclaimed film,…