Hi Mike I read your earlier posting on this subject. Its scary when you know they are monitoring you. I mean, we all hear that it can happen, but when it is happening before your eyes. Personally I am immune to the charms of CNN. Have you tried the Indy Media sites? There is one in Sydney, but I don;t much like it. Still, they do try... http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/lets-influence-american-election-sign-here That is gives you a link to the AVAAZ site, where they are organising a petition to the last remaining candidates for the US Presidential elections. Seeing as they rule the world, it seems the least Aussies can do is act like Mosquitoes and buzz around their ears at midnight, and annoy them. After all, for Aussies it is painful seeing so many Americans who do not bother, (or refuse to ) vote. When we who are so heavily influenced by the choices made over there, cannot vote.

Hey Denis - I'm not sure I'd call it monitoring in the classical sense. Nobody is watching; it's all automatic. This is something that anybody could do. I've got the tools right here on my disk. You find the IP address and look it up in a master database to figure out what service provider owns it, which will tell you approximately where the visitor is coming from on the planet. From there you can show whatever you think appropriate for that location.

I've thought about doing this to automatically set the timezone.  US visitors see tomorrow's date if I use Aussie time, or Sydney visitors see yesterday if I use California time as the website default. It's easy enough to set this after they login and specify what zone to use, but this way I can do the right thing before they even login.

But a savvy programmer can literally do anything armed with that knowledge, as we've found from Google in China; where 'Tiananmen Square' brings up nothing but articles with pictures of flowers and words of bliss. 

In terms of news, I'm really warming to the BBC. All news is tainted, but they do a pretty good job of reasonably impartial global coverage. I'll have a look at indymedia  as well. 

I also am a big fan of BBC news. They do a reasonable job of covering worldwide stories, not just local. And the world is becoming a smaller place. We can't ignore what's happening other places like we used to.

They also did a stellar job covering the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. From Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka, BBC reporters were often the first outsiders to enter the devastated areas. Some of the most poignant reporting I've ever seen, including after September 11, 2001, was from the BBC following the tsunami. I've been a fan ever since.