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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

Zucked! How to get your fresh SpecOz updates

Like the rest of the Australian media, our benevolent overlord Mark Zuckerberg has decided to bar us from his platform,…

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

Ensuring a future for the humanities in Australia

Back in 1951, the great conservative institution-builder William F. Buckley Jr. wrote a book about Yale University. However, what he described occurring in New Haven would ultimately apply more…

17 Feb 2021

Can Parliament House become a less ugly workplace?

Federal parliament this week has been rocked by revelations by a former adviser to the now Defence minister, Linda Reynolds,…

17 Feb 2021

Victoria has no ‘hyper-infectious’ covid plague – and no accountable government

So the lockdown has been lifted and the Premier is letting us out. We can go outside without worrying about…

17 Feb 2021

A warning on windpower from deep in the heart of Texas

Were the South Australian blackouts in 2016 precursors to those that have occurred in Texas during the past few days?   …

17 Feb 2021

Meet the new generation of MPs plotting new paths to prosperity

It seems with each passing year strong, principled, and individually held positions on issues economic, social, and political are being usurped by self-interest and…

17 Feb 2021

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Rush Limbaugh was a giant of talk radio

The news of Rush Limbaugh’s death is certainly the end of an era. The voice of conservatism for over three…

18 Feb 2021

Labour’s damning silence on Brexit

The Labour party has updated the old metaphysical question: ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is…

18 Feb 2021

The danger of the work from home revolution

The work-from-home (WFH) revolution has clearly won hearts and minds. According to KPMG and the Financial Services Skills Commission, half…

18 Feb 2021

Consequences for Cuomo?

In a matter of two weeks, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reputation has slid from that of smug Emmy Award winner to…

18 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

War Amulet, 1800s, Persia, Powerhouse Collection

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

Aussie Life

It’s likely that 2021 will see the last walkers freely ascend the summit of Mt Warning in northern New South…

13 Feb 2021

Aussie Language

The word of the past decade (2011-2020) is ‘fake news.’ That, at least, is the opinion of the fine folk…

13 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

On the track of a mysterious recluse: Maxwell’s Demon, by Steven Hall, reviewed

This is not the age of experimental fiction — it’s Franzen’s, not Foster Wallace’s. That shift was on its cusp…

13 Feb 2021

What does ownership of land really mean?

At the end of the last century, Simon Winchester bought 123 acres of wooded mountainside in the hamlet of Wassaic,…

13 Feb 2021

The cannibal feast: Mother for Dinner, by Shalom Auslander, reviewed

Seventh Seltzer is a nice family man, working as a publisher’s reader in New York, who happens to come from…

13 Feb 2021

Who in their right mind would choose to be a forensic psychiatrist?

When police were called to a block of flats in north London at the beginning of 2002, they expected to…

13 Feb 2021

Francis Bacon: king of the self-made myth

In 1953, Francis Bacon’s friends Lucian Freud and Caroline Blackwood were concerned about the painter’s health. His liver was in…

13 Feb 2021

The serious rows at Marvel Comics

In August 1961, two middle-aged Jewish New Yorkers, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, launched a new superhero comic book for…

13 Feb 2021

From cheap sex comedies to gritty brilliance: British culture comes of age

As readers of a certain age will realise, Looking for a New England derives its title from ‘A New England’,…

6 Feb 2021