Reviews
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Martin Flanagan’s ‘The Empty Honour Board’ draws us in to an unnatural world
The boarding students were far from home and the variable consolations of family life. They were shackled with priestly companions, pledged to lives of celibacy, who also had been removed from their families in their early teens and isolated from society in religious institutions from which they were then turned out, with scant proper preparation, Continue reading »
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Fred Smith: The Sparrows of Kabul
During the crush at the evacuation of Kabul airport in 2021, a little girl became separated from her mother and was inconsolable and could not be moved. Fred left her for a moment, during which CS gas caused a stampede of marines. When he looked for the girl, she had disappeared. Continue reading »
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Book review: The Next Civil War: dispatches from the American future
The United States is going through a profound transition to which there are only difficult and costly choices. In this latest book on America’s political chaos, we are taken deep into the future of an unacceptable but perhaps unavoidable breakup of the union. Continue reading »
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Carefully throwing stones
The human dynamic of subcultures was one of Anne Coombs’ preoccupations. She turned it into a skill that guided her activism and philanthropy. Both GetUp! and Rural Australians for Refugees, two of the causes for which she will be best remembered, relied for their success on mobilising people with shared values and beliefs. These movements Continue reading »
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Searching for Elsewhere: Born into a cult. How to survive?
Graeme Johanson’s Searching for Elsewhere (Ginninderra Press, 2023) provides a compelling answer. His memoire, a gripping story from beginning to end, deals with the dangerous manipulation of young lives brought up in an extremely controlling sect with bizarre rules, destroyed families and strict separation from the World. Continue reading »
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“A narcissist always searching for a new niche?” Brendan Nelson’s autobiography: Part 1
Nelson has been described as a bullshit artist, a narcissist, a charlatan, oleaginous, and having a glass jaw. Each descriptor is incomplete, some even unfair. Yet, throughout his career he has been popular across the political spectrum. Why? Continue reading »
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Will prospects for long-term human survival improve in 2023?
What can we expect in 2023 about future human prospects? Will current threats to long-term human survival, continue to increase or will they begin to diminish as a consequence of responses to current threats?” Continue reading »
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Terry Irving, The fatal lure of Politics: the life and thought of Vere Gordon Childe
Certainly the best biography I read in 2022 and possibly the best non-fiction book in any genre, is Terry Irving’s comprehensive and incisive examination of the varied and controversial life of archaeologist, political theorist and leftist practitioner Vere Gordon Childe. Continue reading »
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Why Labor can’t be trusted with Australia’s security. It started with US Marines in Darwin
Basing nuclear capable B52 bombers at the Tindal airbase is an abrupt, unambiguous sign that our government believes it is Australia’s interest for China to feel threatened with American nuclear strike from our soil. At America’s pleasure. Continue reading »
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Dismantling global white privilege: Book by Chandran Nair-Equity for a post-western world
One of the few uplifting political trends of the past decade has been the growing strength of movements for gender equality and, even more surprisingly, the demand for racial justice. But a higher-level structure of discrimination governs both racism and sexism: The global dominance of a white power elite in virtually every arena of human Continue reading »
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Infrastructure Australia should be abolished
A review of Infrastructure Australia risks putting the cart in front of the horse. It should consider whether the organisation should exist. Continue reading »
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Nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference in historical context
The Tenth Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is underway at the UN in New York. The record of the treaty is not perfect but it is the major persisting arms control agreement. If peace means a continuing negotiating process with the other, as President Kennedy asserted, we need more of this. Continue reading »
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Defence reviews; what are they good for?
It is essential that the new Defence review not degenerate into the usual ritualistic orthodoxy. In these perilous times it cannot be allowed to become a narrow, jargon-laden, orthodox military consideration but must situate Australia’s strategy and military posture in the context of the important foreign policy issues. Continue reading »
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Remarks on the Australia-China divide at the AsiaLink launch of Happy Together, by David Walker and Li Yao.
The juxtaposition and interweaving of life stories from Australia and China make for endlessly fascinating reading. Continue reading »
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Keeping them honest: A book review
This book Keeping Them Honest: the case for a genuine national integrity commission and other vital democratic reforms puts solidly the case for a Commonwealth Integrity Commission known in the trade I’m told as a CIC. Continue reading »
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“South Flows the Pearl” Book launch speech about Chinese Australian voices
Chinese people have been in this country almost as long as the British. …Unfortunately, from the 1980s on, following an increase in immigration from Hong Kong, South-East Asia and mainland China, there have been new waves of racism, so that even today the Chinese community still feels marginalised. Continue reading »
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Crossword clues and bullying: the almighty power of the Australian pro-Israel lobby
The influence of Colin Rubenstein and his lobby group does not just limit what mainstream media outlets dare publish, it forces self-censorship on editors and journalists alike, writes John Lyons in his latest book. Continue reading »
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Review: The shock, horror and rage of Mark Willacy’s Rogue Forces
Respected journalist Mark Willacy’s Rogue Forces is imperative reading for its detonating exposé of Australian SAS war crimes in Afghanistan and the systematic cover-ups at varying levels of the Australian Defence Force operations. Continue reading »
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Answers to Trump questions about attacking China and Iran
The question of who would tell Trump the truth when needed and who would stop him if he tried to go to war with anyone became increasingly urgent as his presidency unfolded. On the matter of war, we now know the answer. Continue reading »
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Misreading Dark Emu
Criticisms of the book Dark Emu and its author, Bruce Pascoe, continue to appear, and to become more puzzling. It is as if the overwhelming popularity of Pascoe and his message have disturbed comfortable convictions about Australian history shared across a wide segment of Australian society. Continue reading »
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Review: ‘Human Kind’ by Rutger Bregman
What a marvellous book! A powerful refutation of one of the most deeply entrenched and mistaken assumptions built into our taken-for-granted world view that human nature is nasty. Continue reading »
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Bringing ‘the Doc’ to the masses – review of Gideon Haigh’s new book
H. V. Evatt could be a massively polarising figure and that is more than unfortunate. It has closed many minds to what we should be celebrating and promulgating as true Australian values. Those values – not merely espoused, but judicially declared and enacted by and because of Evatt – are in evidence throughout Gideon Haigh’s Continue reading »
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Ships in the Night: A Vietnam war story, by Greg Dodds
Greg Dodds’ career began as a professional Australian soldier who served as an intelligence officer with the Australian Task Force in Vietnam in the late 1960s. In this racy 200-page monograph, Dodds disposes with scholarly requirements – no footnotes, no glossary, no reading list or sources. To appreciate its full context, the reader should have Continue reading »
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A review of ‘The Dance of Folly: or how theatrics have tarnished the rule of law in Hong Kong
A series of acute points are made by Henry Litton in his new book, The Dance of Folly. These typically pivot on his observations of how judges, across various courts in Hong Kong, have been drawn away – by lawyers – from what he argues is the essence of well-grounded, common law reasoning towards playing Continue reading »
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The Mountbattens: the British Establishment at its most privileged and eccentric.
“There are four kinds of officers: hard-working and intelligent, lazy and intelligent, lazy and stupid and hard-working and stupid. The first are fit for top staff appointments, the second are fit for the highest commands, the third can be tolerated, but the fourth type could prove dangerous and should be instantly removed.” Continue reading »
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Unsettled – seeing First Nations histories represented in the Australian Museum
Museums, libraries and archives are traditionally not culturally safe spaces for First Nations peoples. As state institutions, they have supported the colonial process and they have privileged certain histories over others. The collections that they hold often position Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as objects or specimens of scientific and anthropological study. The historically Continue reading »
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China Panic: Australia’s alternative to paranoia and pandering by David Brophy
This is a truly excellent account of the “panic” surrounding Australia-China relations over the last few years, especially since 2017. It is well-researched, analytical, nuanced and very well written in a highly accessible style that is both scholarly and colloquial. One of the book’s strong features is a whole chapter covering the role China assumes Continue reading »
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Everyman as soldier: how men in suits in drawing rooms conned the people – and their families – into fighting on in WW1.
David Stephens reviews Douglas Newton’s Private Ryan and the Lost Peace: A Defiant Soldier and the Struggle against the Great War. Continue reading »
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Douglas Newton’s Private Ryan and how peace efforts were sabotaged in WW1
Every now and then a historian produces a book that gives a rational and compassionate insight into the war of 1914-18 and the origins of the Anzac legend. Douglas Newton has given Australia such a work in his story of Private Ryan set against the backdrop of war aims and peace movements. Continue reading »
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‘Mr Sin’ aka Abe Saffron had a little mate at ASIO headquarters
Abe Saffron, the king of Sydney’s vice rackets, had a long friendship with Dudley Doherty, a top spy with the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Continue reading »
