The accusations hanging over the heads of several Rugby League and AFL players of serious misconduct highlight the problem we have currently with providing role models for our young males. This problem occurs in the midst of something of a crisis of male identity, illustrated by the high levels of anti-social behaviour, violence, drinking, drug […]

John Howard’s announcement of an extra $400 million for the Oz intelligence services is another sign that the tiny international terrorist movement is winning its war with western civilisation. That is $400 million that won’t be going to fix the crisis in hospitals or to improve our declining school system or to deal with salinity. […]

Rugby league today is in crisis, no matter how much its national and club administrators continue to pretend otherwise. It is a crisis of confidence, the real consequences of which won’t be felt for some years when mums and dads, and school sports teachers, make decisions about what code of football (if any) boys will take up.

My prediction made earlier in this blog that all three major leaders of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ – George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard – would lose office by the end of this year is looking good. I did not predict Spain’s Aznar’s fall (because I didn’t think about him), but he is […]

Yesterday’s decision by the newly elected Spanish Socialist government to withdraw its troops from Iraq might decrease the chances of another Al Qaeda (assuming it was Al Qaeda) attack on Spanish soil for the short term, but it has to increase the chances of an attack on other countries in that same period. Al Qaeda […]

Over the weekend I watched a trio of war movies on TV. “The Battle of Britain” was about perhaps the most important battle of WWII, “Thirteen Days” was about how we avoided nuclear war in 1962, and “The war of the Worlds” was about a fictional war with invaders from Mars. There is a trajectory […]

Today’s Spanish election result where the Socialist Party beat the right wing Popular Party will resonate in Australian politics. It is said that the result of the election turned on the government’s reaction to the terrorist bombing, and that therefore Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar paid the price for joining the “Coalition of the Willing” […]

This post was sent to me be one of our most frequent readers: “THE day after Peter Beattie named the date for the recent Queensland State Election I told my clients in a written brief I expected he would be returned to office with about 60 seats, and that Opposition gains would be minor. One […]

Liberal MHR for Ryan, Michael Johnson won an easy victory today by 328 votes to 68 over his only rival, Stephen Huang. This doesn’t really say much about Johnson. Stephen Huang was not the candidate to beat Johnson who won originally three years ago by stacking the preselection council with Chinese (some of them not […]

To continue my theme about the end of old politics and the rise of corporatised mass culture as the new driver of western and increasingly global civilisation, the latest talking point is the new eco-catastrophe movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. The $100 billion Roland Emmerich (yes, the same boy who made ‘Independence Day’ and ‘Godzilla’) […]