Vote carefully, vote wisely
Nuclear: a powerful future
As a Merchant Navy navigator, I knew the range and durability of my ship were intrinsically limited to the fuel…
The spirit of conservative vision
One of the principal election strategies employed by Scott Morrison is the argument that Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party…
TweedleScomo and TweedleAlbo
As we watch our present Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and the man who seeks to replace him, Anthony Albanese, crisscross…
Fifty shades of Covid
[Calm down, it’s satire.] She slowly slipped her mask down and removed her gloves. Then lowered her second mask. That…
To 'crush and colonise'
The Russians may well love their children too, but many of their views about their war on Ukraine span a…
Will the ripples from Roe v. Wade reach Australia?
An American journalist, Caroline Reilly, re-tweeted a New York Times report of the firebombing of a Wisconsin anti-abortion headquarters, together with…
Courage, fantasy, and the arc of autocracy
Andriy Melnyk is the Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin. In early May he demanded the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, respond to…
Leadership delegated is leadership lost
Is anyone else old enough to remember when any corporate, political, or education leader, said something memorable? Something that left…
Hong Kong is now a police state
No one now denies that Hong Kong is a fiefdom of Beijing. Its democratic leaders have been packed off to…
Trump is still king in West Virginia
Bipartisanship is a word used too frequently, and seldom ever found in the swamps of Washington, D.C. On Tuesday, Congressman…
Has inflation peaked?
First, the good news: US inflation is down. Now the bad news: US inflation isn’t down by as much as…
Top US pollster: don't ditch Boris
To the CPS, the think-tank home of Thatcherite free-thinking. On today’s agenda: a sermon from Frank Luntz, the onetime populist Republican…
Kiwi crime capers
It looked like a scene from a Hollywood heist movie. Three expensive, late-model cars (stolen, of course) race through a…
New Zealand's Maori language obsession is baffling Kiwis
New Zealand’s borders have finally reopened after a two-year Covid shutdown. But those who travel down under are in for…
New Zealand in turmoil
Political corruption may always be endemic, but moves by our powerful, now immensely wealthy neo-tribal corporations have become so blatantly…
A Covid retrospective
Two years ago, I and a small group of multi-disciplinary New Zealand-based academics published our Covid Plan B. The plan…
Net Zero nightmare
When I stated the obvious to the ABC recently, I didn’t think there would be much reaction. It had been…
Jim’s How to Vote card
When readers cast their eyes on this column the election will be a week or so away. To fend off…
Election special
The opinion polls that for the second election in a row again predict doom for a Morrison coalition government also…
Assume the brace position
If you read the mainstream press a lot – not that I’m recommending that – you might believe that Labor…
The seeds of our own destruction
When it comes to our freedoms, former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, got it right. He believed that people don’t appreciate…
Kiwi crime capers
It looked like a scene from a Hollywood heist movie. Three expensive, late-model cars (stolen, of course) race through a…
When fact becomes faith
You may have missed the news that at the end of April the US Department of Homeland Security announced the…
Women behaving badly
Harry and Meghan, actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, Kimberley Kitching vs Labor’s Mean Girls – women’s toxic behaviour is…
A dramatic dream of Australia
1922 is the wonder year of twentieth century literature, the so-called annus mirabilis: T.S. Eliot published The Waste Land, James…
Life from both sides now
It’s a strange thing the way we keep interpreting and re-interpreting the different aspects of our culture that have become…
Anatomy of a forgettable scandal
An evening of shorts, courtesy of Flickerfest, even at a lustrous cinema like the Kino in the Sofitel complex off…
A peculiar backwards mutation
It’s not hard to sympathise with Christopher Allen’s recent column in the Review section of the Australian decrying the juxtaposition…
Atomic reading
So you think you know the story of Britain’s notorious atomic tests in Australia? In that respect, the name of…
Light and shade in the Holy Land – a century in spectacular images
Roger Hardy is a romantic. That much I deduce from the language he uses to describe how photographers were drawn…
A botched coup: the desperate Cato Street conspiracy
Almost half of the terrorists hadn’t even turned up. Still, on the night of 23 February 1820, 25 men, including…
Fresh air and fascism in the Bavarian Alps
The village of Oberstdorf lies in the Bavarian Alps, geographically remote but, as this gripping book demonstrates, deeply etched by…
Did postmodernism pave the way for Donald Trump?
David Shields is an American author who has decided to collate many of the questions he’s been asked in interviews…
Snafu at Slough House: Bad Actors, by Mick Herron, reviewed
Reviewers who make fancy claims for genre novels tend to sound like needy show-offs or hard-of-thinking dolts. So be it:…
A meditation on exile and the meaning of home
What does home mean? Where your dead are buried, as Zulus believe? Or where you left your heart, as a…
Has liberalism destroyed itself?
According to Vladimir Putin, liberalism is an ‘obsolete’ doctrine, a worn-out political philosophy no longer fit for purpose. In this…
