Hacking the undernet : libertarian limits, commercial containment

In this article, we explare a recent incident involving aprolonged and severe denial of service attack directed at the Undemet Intemet Relay Chat network. It put the future viabifity of Undernet in doubt; it took some months for service quality to be restored. The circumstances of the attack and the responses, both technical and social, within Undemet are enlightening in themselves, as we discuss. But they also allow us to explore, contrast, and match up the limits of the libertarianism that seems embedded in the socio-technics of the Intemet and the possible and actual containment of 'free' services in a 'free' market, through the operation of commercial transactions.

Salvation in heaven?

The aim of this paper is to examine the difficulties that belief in a paradisiacal afterlife creates for orthodox theists. In particular, we consider the difficulties that arise when one asks whether there is freedom in Heaven, i.e., whether the denizens of Heaven have libertarian freedom of action. Our main contention is that this 'Problem of Heaven' makes serious difficulties for proponents of free will theodicies and for proponents of free will defences against arguments from evil.

On the alleged failure of free will theodicies : a reply to Tierno

In a recent issue ofSophia Joel Tierno contends that free will theodicies are fundamentally flawed insofar as they claim to provide an adequate explanation for God’s permission of moral evil. Free will, according to Tierno, only accounts for our ability to make certain choices that issue in evil, but fails to account for the fact that we often do make such choices. However, the argument developed by Tierno, despite its initial appeal, embodies an important misunderstanding of the nature of free will theodicies and in particular the libertarian conception of human freedom customarily employed by these theodicies.

Does hard determinism render the problem of evil even harder?

Hard determinism, in theological dress, holds that there is no human free will since God is the sufficient active cause of everything that happens in creation. It is surprising that, in the ever-growing literature on the problem of evil, very little attention has been paid to theodicies that adopt a hard determinist outlook. It is commonly assumed that without free will the theodical project is a non-starter. I challenge this long-held assumption by, firstly, developing a cumulative-style theodicy from within a hard determinist framework, and secondly, comparing the merits of such a theodicy with two libertarian rivals, specifically, Molinism and open theism. The hard determinist model of divine providence is, I argue, in no worse shape than the principal models developed by libertarians.

Marxists in the age of Palmer: a genealogy of ‘anti-politics’

The decline of trust in Australian political institutions and the rise of anti-political sentiment, most dramatically represented by the phenomenon of Clive Palmer, has been largely perplexing to the Australian left whether in its labourist, green or revolutionary varieties. In recent years support for Labor and the Greens has fallen, union membership has continued to stagnate and the revolutionary left has failed to break out of its campus enclaves despite a global crisis of capitalism. This article provides a critical examination of a minority trend within the Australian left that seen the rise of ‘anti-politics’ as a positive development. Leading figures in this have been Tad Tietze, Elizabeth Humphrys, Marc Newmann and anonymous blogger The Piping Shriek. Their work has been critical of attempts to revive traditional institutions of the left and has argued that the organised left has become committed to a project of state management of individual behaviour. This line of argument represents a distinctive critique of politics that echoes themes espoused by John Anderson and Sydney libertarianism. This article applies Michel Foucault’s genealogical approach to explain the revival of libertarian themes on the left and their particular resonance within Sydney political culture.