If we don’t pull our heads in, we’re doomed. If we do, the future is bright. WHEN I WAS TEACHING in Japan 20 years ago, one of my students introduced me to The Three Great Humiliations of Man [sic] in an essay I’d assigned. I was so impressed by her powerful choice of plagiarism, that I passed it with flying colours. Incidentally, I stopped using the…

It is common to refer to the Aboriginal presence on the Australian continent as the ‘oldest civilization’ on Earth. This is well-meaning, but an unnecessary exaggeration. The word ‘civilization’ comes from the word ‘civil’, or ‘civic’, meaning ‘city’. Relations between Aborigines and Anglo Celts have been tumultuous, to say the…

Five days to Election Day, the top issues reveal something about the state of the nation. Polls and Surveys A cross-section of media polling and surveys paint a picture of Australian voters concerned about climate change, cost of living and the economy in that order ( ABC Vote Compass, The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald). Integrity and health/aged care are close runner-ups. These results are weighted across party lines and…

Let the impulsive make the first mistakes. The Chinese will learn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, just as they have from the USSR’s collapse. Vladimir Putin has gotten over-confident and impatient. …

Rationale It might be said that if justice were free, everyone would be in the courts litigating. But in Australia, for example, essential medical attention is free (we call it Medicare) and it hasn’t turned everyone into hypochondriacs. …

A brief history of 20th Century Germany. What was going on in Rudolf Hess’ mind in his final years? Was he haunted? He committed suicide aged 93 in 1987 in Spandau Prison in West Berlin. TV documentaries about the Nazis and their atrocities are peculiarly commonplace and popular even today. These documentaries understandably demonize the inhumanity of…

But forget about the environment… The Age and Sydney Morning Herald news outlets have published a report and survey showing ‘ Voters worry about falling wages, back lower migrant intake ‘. In a nutshell, evidence is emerging since the pandemic that voters are beginning to join the dots on high immigration and its impact on…

I could see this coming decades ago, so I feel compelled to write about it. When NATO and the EU were expanding east, it disregarded the provocative effect on a Russia smarting from the collapse of it’s Soviet Empire. …