flat white

The woke wars have made it clear: celebrities aren’t philosophers

The latest Hollywood cancellation has raised the usual hackles. But the problem is that a vacuum in virtuous authority is…

19 Feb 2021

A reality check for Kevin Rudd

In the days of Kevin Rudd’s rise, The Australian’s late, great Bill Leak used to draw him as Tin-Tin. No…

19 Feb 2021

The West secedes – from reality

Western Australians go to the polls in just over three weeks tomorrow, and despite the recent lockdown flap, Premier Mark…

19 Feb 2021

Facebook gives our already battered creative industries another belting

In response to the proposed media bargaining laws, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have banned Australian publishers from sharing and viewing…

18 Feb 2021

What’s woke this week?

Woke stories have come in from all parts of the globe this week including Pittsburgh, Auckland and England. Read on to…

18 Feb 2021

Facebook follies: Labor can’t tell their arse from their Albo

Labour communications Michelle Rowland, this morning: Make no mistake, the impact of the decision by Facebook today, which has been…

Why shouldn’t Facebook block news?

Facebook warned us in September that they would block news. Today they have followed through on their word and you…

18 Feb 2021

Immunity passports and the the Leviathan of public health despotism

In his recent book Virus e Leviatano, the veteran Italian journalist Aldo Maria Valli analyses how coronavirus has led to a form of health despotism replacing the rule of…

18 Feb 2021

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Stop the real steal

If you want to get rich, start a religion. L. Ron Hubbard said so and he should know. Failing that, start a…

19 Feb 2021

The EU needs to stop punishing Britain for Brexit

There have always been those on the European side who believe that for the EU project to succeed, Brexit must…

19 Feb 2021

Why are people gloating over Rush Limbaugh’s death?

The gloating over Rush Limbaugh’s death ought to shock the conscience. That’s not a political statement. That’s a cri de coeur about how our basic sense of human decency…

19 Feb 2021

Covid cases have collapsed

Last month, Imperial College’s React study claimed that new cases of Covid were static or even rising slightly. This contradicted…

19 Feb 2021

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The ‘Great Reset’ is a globalist power grab

You think things couldn’t get much worse for so-called free speech than Twitter and the rest of the global censors…

20 Feb 2021

Censoring creativity

When the creator of the ‘wall of sound’ died recently, the BBC declared in its headline ‘Talented but flawed producer…

20 Feb 2021

Business/Robbery, etc.

It’s an unintended consequence that poses a major internal threat to the $70 billion Australian coal exports that are a…

20 Feb 2021

Forestry fudging

Under pressure to adopt an essentially meaningless policy, a promise to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, Scott Morrison’s federal…

20 Feb 2021

Hello, darkness

There’s something deeply disturbing going on in America which should concern freedom-loving people everywhere. It has been decades in the…

20 Feb 2021

Sez WHO?

The joint China-World Health Organisation investigation into the origin of the Covid pandemic was always going to be a farce…

20 Feb 2021

Trump: best days yet to come

Any fair minded, objective juror would agree that Donald Trump was never guilty of the high crime for which he…

20 Feb 2021

Andrews vs the Christians

As long as the federal government is awarding Australia Day honours on the basis of individual sporting prowess then Australian…

13 Feb 2021

The Dig

It was gratifying to see such a quiet and impeccably made film as The Dig make it to independent cinemas…

20 Feb 2021

Powerhouse Museum at Ultimo

Second thoughts are sometimes better thoughts. The NSW government had second thoughts about closing down the Powerhouse Museum at Ultimo…

20 Feb 2021

Das Rheingold

You could hardly ask for a more exorbitant return to mainstage theatre than a production of the first part, the…

13 Feb 2021

Robyn Nevin

The Adelaide Festival program describes her, accurately, as ‘our finest stage performer’. Robyn Nevin is appearing there (2 Feb-14 Mar)…

13 Feb 2021

Aussie Life

The most powerful ad I created for David Cameron’s 2010 election campaign was a billboard featuring a still from a…

20 Feb 2021

Aussie Language

A Speccie reader has asked if it is linguistically permissible to label the tactics of climate catastrophists as ‘brainwashing.’ The…

20 Feb 2021

The lost magic of Palm Beach

Gstaad Good old Helvetia. I’m quitting her for the rainy but pleasant land of England. The cows are beginning to…

20 Feb 2021

How to breathe life back into European rugby

French rugby has always been well stocked with boeuf but now it has added lashings of exceptionally tangy moutarde and…

20 Feb 2021

In the trenches

I can hardly recall a more engaging and uplifting biography than this life of Major-General William Holmes, who was killed…

20 Feb 2021

A Romeo and Juliet-like tragedy in Uttar Pradesh

In the early hours of 28 May 2014 the bodies of two young girls were found hanging from the branches…

20 Feb 2021

Gabriel Matzneff: the paedophile who hid in plain sight

Until this book was published, Gabriel Matzneff was a respectable man. The French author may have written about his affairs…

20 Feb 2021

The stuff of fiction: Elizabeth Bowen exploits her extra-marital affairs

‘Why, Elizabeth, did you not tell me when we first slept together that you were a virgin?’ This is one…

20 Feb 2021

The true diplomat considers the future more than the present

The 17th-century diplomat Sir Henry Wotton said that an ambassador was ‘an honest man sent to lie abroad for his…

20 Feb 2021

CIA spies lose faith

With its grim John le Carré atmosphere, communist Eastern Europe in the late 1980s was a melancholy, out-at-elbow place. The…

20 Feb 2021

A complex creation myth: Alexandria, by Paul Kingsnorth, reviewed

‘Challenging stuff,’ my wife remarked, having alighted on the page of Paul Kingsnorth’s new novel in which a character named…

20 Feb 2021

Reality and online life clash: No One is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood, reviewed

Some writers — Jane Austen, for example — get to funny sideways, using irony and understatement. The American poet and…

20 Feb 2021