Are the Dane’s running a set play here? Just as the furore over the Mohammed cartoons has probably peaked comes a delicately third-party intervention by the Danish head of state.
Queen Margethe is quoted by her biographer as saying in an official biography released yesterday:
“We are being challenged by Islam […] Continue Reading…
February 09, 2006 | Graham
Mary’s mother-in-law on Mohammedanism
Posted by Graham at 3:24 pm |
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February 08, 2006 | Graham
Mohammed Cartoons: by Jove I’ve got it!
This article by Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times is the most insightful and iconoclastic that I have seen so far in the debate about the Jyllands-Posten cartoons.
A couple of pars gives its flavour:
But there are precedents going all the way back to the Bible for virulent reactions […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 10:31 pm |
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February 07, 2006 | Graham
Three-cornered contests won’t be an election issue
With the exception of one Queensland state election – that in 1995 – three-cornered contests have been an issue for the National and Liberal Parties in Queensland as long as I can remember. They needn’t have been, and if the Coalition parties want to win the next State election, […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 9:42 am |
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February 06, 2006 | Jeff Wall
Sir Reginald Swartz…perhaps the last link with the Menzies Liberal era
The Honourable Sir Reginald William Colin Swartz, who died last week at the grand age of 94 was perhaps the last link with the Liberal Ministers of the Menzies Government – 1949 to 1966.
I knew Sir Reginald Swartz from my first year of high school. He was our […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Jeff Wall at 5:03 pm |
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February 02, 2006 | Graham
Premier Beattie “takes charge” of health
We’ll know how badly Peter Beattie is doing over the health issue shortly because we are conducting an online poll into his handling of it. That said, the signs are not good for him.
This morning’s Courier Mail carries the headline “Beattie fights revolt”. It then goes on to how […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 9:15 am |
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January 31, 2006 | Graham
How Greenpeace should have responded
I’ve been given a guided tour of fascism, or at least how fascism works, by responses to my OLO article Why it matters that Greenpeace lied and the press doesn’t seem to care. Despite clear video evidence that the Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise rammed the Japanese Nisshin Maru, any number […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 10:25 pm |
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January 31, 2006 | Graham
AWB – Think East India Company
One of my heroes is Edmund Burke. He is claimed by the conservative tradition, but is persuasively portrayed as a liberal by Connor Cruise O’Connor in his The Great Melody. He spent his last 12 years in parliament working to impeach Warren Hastings. I can’t quite work out the […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 8:38 pm |
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January 30, 2006 | Jeff Wall
The Nationals more distant than ever from the Liberals
One of the reasons given by Senator Julian McGauren for his decision to switch to the Liberal Party is that the National and Liberal Parties are virtually indistinguishable does not measure up with a state-by-state comparison of party relations.
Indeed, at the state level, it has been a long time […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Jeff Wall at 9:35 am |
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January 23, 2006 | Graham
Things get harder for Howard in Senate
The defection to the Liberal Party of Victorian Nationals Senator Julian McGauran makes things harder for John Howard in the Senate. McGauran’s defection is unconscionable. Senators are elected on a party vote. Hardly any one votes for them in their own right. Therefore, as Nationals Leader Mark Vaile says […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 10:42 pm |
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January 19, 2006 | Graham
Those who do not understand the present are bound to misinterpret the past
In his 2004 Massey Lecture (rebroadcast on Australian radio this summer by the ABC) historian Ronald Wright argues that because we can understand what went wrong in past civilisations we can learn their lessons and not repeat them in the present.
In the excerpt I heard he was particularly glowing […] Continue Reading…
Posted by Graham at 10:38 pm |
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