(Australian) Government orders spoof site shut

A spoof John Howard website that featured a soul searching "apology" speech for the Iraq war has been shut down under orders from the Australian Government.

Richard Neville, an Australian futurist and social commentator was "mystified" to discover his satirical website johnhowardpm.org had been blocked on Tuesday with no explanation from either his web hosting company, Yahoo or the domain name registrar, Melbourne IT.

He said that after two days of silence, a customer service representative from Melbourne IT today informed him by telephone that the site had "been closed on the advice from the Australian Government".

Mr Neville's satirical "apology" speech ran on a mocked-up version of a spoof website that resembled Mr Howard's own, and after going live on Monday, received 10,500 visits within 24 hours.