The anti-Terrorism laws (original proposal) do seem to rather overreach, though the actual Bill put to Parliament was not as extensive (pdf) as the original proposal (but there is more to follow later). But perhaps the problem in getting folk bothered about it is that, progressivists having spent eight years of Howard’s Premiership SHOUTING AT THE ( Read more... )

About Australia’s foreign policy: The Keating model is an Australian manifestation of the tendency of elites in western democracies to want people to be something other than what they are - in this case that Australians should be Asian. and If the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, Australia is more so, with the highest proportion of foreign-born ( Read more... )

According to the AES, in various election years the proportion of voters who thought levels of immigration had gone too far or much too far was ( Read more... )

I have ambivalent feelings about the current Commonwealth government ad campaign about violence against women. I am not all that keen on compulsorily taking people’s money to preach at them. I am also sceptical about whenever such campaigns have useful effects. A few years ago, the EU ran an anti-racism campaign. The follow-up surveys indicated ( Read more... )

Between August 1939 (the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact) and June 22 1941 (the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union), the Stalinist and fellow-travelling left opposed the war against Hitler. After all, the anti-Hitler forces were led by that strike-breaking, right-wing imperialist Winston Churchill. You get exactly the same split now - those on the ( Read more... )

Inspired by this post from patchworkkid I was struck by an little-remarked similarity between the Iraq and Vietnam Wars.

Things are complicated because Vietnam has become a mythic, iconic thing rather than an actual event. Let us call that Vietnam™.

But not everyone looks at it in those terms. Wonderblogger Michael J Totten discusses all the ways in ( Read more... )