Graham,

What a surprise, corporations are not prepared to support free speech.
I'd certainly support reader subscriptions as a means of independent income,

New Matilda has apparently survived a similar financial crisis. Good luck.

All very well put.
But what has Bill Muehlenberg got to do with the values and presumed tolerance of the Enlightenment? The point of view that he promotes would, if it gained effective power in the world altogether, take us back to the medieval dogmas and superstitions that ruled the Western world prior to the Enlightenment.
It is a mirror image of the pre-Enlightenment world-view that mis-informs medieval Islamic fundamentalism - two sides of the same regressive toxic coin.

In my opinion his Culture Watch website is one of the most toxic websites in Australia. He also gets to broadcast his point of view quite widely too, including on the Quadrant website and via many book reviews on Amazon.

There is very little tolerance of other points of view or perspectives on any and every topic to be found there. The politics of binary exclusions. Bill and his clones are always right and everyone else who disagrees with his/their binary ideology is by self-definition wrong. They therefore need to be "re-educated" by Bill and his right-thinking comrades.

Dear Graham,
The news is bad: you are being blackmailed.
Wars were fought over this sort thing the two best known might be WW1 and WW2 and although this might not be quite accurate I am appalled to find gross intolerance raising its head once more.
Not being a man of great wisdom nor yet great erudition "On Line Opinion" is a valuable source of information for me, and I hope many more. At 76 years of age I do not wonder that "big end of town" raises its head like this.
"Nil desperandum carburundum".
With good wishes,
Mick Bright

The concept of OLO is a good one. In the hands of the current editorial board, it is rotten.

It gets and publishes lots of good articles - most of them, in my view. However there is apparently no way an article can be bad enough, or the views implicit in it vile enough, for you to reject it.

As I recall your answer to Clive Hamilton was that you aim to publish things written from any point of view. (Really ? Let's see an article explaining why we should believe that the earth is flat). Even if you make it a rule to never reject anything, all you need to do is read the article first, ask the hard questions of the author, and insist they be answered in the published version of the article.

http://www.anz.com/common/forms/default.asp?intID=174

This will take you straight to an ANZ complaint form if you want to protest - you don't have to be a customer.

I got it off Bill Muehlenberg's website. Bill's not happy either.

Strange bedfellows ....

What funny things paradoxia are. I find myself simultaneously agreeing with Jeremy's sentiments whilst rejecting his solution.
I agree with most thing Phillip Adams says too. But on this issue of banning or censoring out variant view points is a nasty one when it is thought of from the viewpoint of watching someone like Mitchell of the OZ censoring out enviro journalism.
I'd probably rofl at a David Irving lecture, but the idea of denying him immigration papers or at least a reply seems to cut at the very substance of civil discourse and rationality. If you can deny Irving you offer ideological opponents later the precedent that allows them to hold out, say, a Hannan Ashrawi.
Let them stand up and let people makeup their own minds. The alternative, sometimes, is to martyr a crank.