Three targeted Americans: a career government intelligence official, a filmmaker and a hacker. None of these US citizens was charged with a crime, but they have been tracked, surveilled, detained - sometimes at gunpoint - and interrogated, with no access to a lawyer. Each remains resolute in standing up to the increasing government crackdown on dissent. 

In August 2009 James Murdoch delivered the MacTaggart Lecture. It is the keynote address at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, and the annual corroboree of the leading players in Britain's television world.

James Murdoch was at the top of his game. He was News Corp's chairman and chief executive in Europe and Asia, in charge of the company's British newspapers and its interests in the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

He arrived on the platform to thunderous applause and delivered a speech scathing of the industry regulator Ofcom, ''unaccountable institutions'' like the BBC and the ''authoritarianism'' of government media agencies.

from Crikey …..

Ex-Victorian premier: FOI 'has been allowed to wilt'

from Crikey …..

Letter to Business Council chief Jennifer Westacott: why we're disappointed

Peter Slipper has taken a swipe at Tony Abbott on Twitter, saying he delivered him the key vote needed to become Leader of the Opposition.

Almost every political observer recognises that unless something altogether unexpected happens, by late 2013 Australia will have an Abbott government. The more contentious question is what has gone wrong for Labor. This piece is offered as a contribution to a necessary debate.

Last week, the order came down from the Vatican. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an organization that represents 80% of the nuns in the US, was chastised for "focusing its work too much on poverty and economic injustice, while keeping ‘silent' on abortion and same-sex marriage." The LCWR is having none of it. In a statement Saturday, the LCWR said, 

Preferential treatment of judges under the Baillieu government's plans for an anti-corruption commission has come under attack from Victoria's powerful police union and a key integrity group.

illustrated presentation doing the email rounds...

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Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand, commemorated by both countries on 25 April every year to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

When the Foreign Office urges British motor racing fans to stay away from Bahrain, this ain't no sporting event, folks, it's a political one. The Bahraini authorities prove it by welcoming sports reporters but refusing visas to other correspondents who want to tell the world what's going on in this minority-run, Saudi-dominated kingdom.