As we come up to the year 2012 many prognosticators are predicting the end of the world. I suspect that this will not come to pass. But I do think that we are seeing the end of the world as we’ve come to know it during the latter years of the twentieth century and the … [Read more…]
Over the weekend I listened to this moving talk from the Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, where she examines what drives people to dissent. Reflecting on the history of her own party, the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, examines the meaning of opposition and dissident. She … [Read more…]
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde, in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) It has been fascinating to watch the progress of the various revolutions in north Africa and the middle east, in particular the travails of the Libyan people trying to oust the … [Read more…]
A recent disclosure that a Federal public servant has been blogging about matters political in his personal time has come to be referred amongst Australian journalists and bloggers alike as #groggate. There has been much discussion about the rights and wrongs of this unmasking of a pseudonymous blogger who had the temerity to question the … [Read more…]
It has been very interesting (during the 2010 Australian federal election campaign) to watch people advocating freedom of speech on one hand and then getting upset when people with differing views speak out. The intolerance of opposing points of view has really resonated with me. It makes me a bit sad that we are not … [Read more…]
Many people have told me that freedom has a price. While others have told me that freedom has a cost. It got me thinking about the difference between a price and a cost. While pondering about this I recalled the Oscar Wilde quote: “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but … [Read more…]
This news item from Techcrunch – hat tip to @jowyang for the link – makes me conscious of how precious are our freedoms of speech and association. People fought hard in the past to achieve those freedoms for us and we need to protect them. Some bloggers in other countries are risking their lives to … [Read more…]
