April 30 this year marks the 30th anniversary of communist North Vietnam’s conquest of South Vietnam, symbolised by the image of a Soviet-built T-54 tank smashing through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon. But, as Quynh Dao argues, many influential Western public figures and media commentators to this day persist in misunderstanding what…
The Japanese appear to have rejected the idea of negotiating a trade agreement with us for what are most interesting and, in some respects, worrying reasons, writes Colin Teese. As far as Australia is concerned, the phenomenon of bilateral trade agreements seems, if anything, to be gathering strength. We already have a number of such…
A society of hoons? In response to the steady rise of disorder in Melbourne streets, and what is as much a psychological as a logistical crisis on the roads, Victoria’s State Opposition put up a scheme to deal with at least one aspect of a much wider social pathology, viz., to deal with illegal drag-racing,…
Norman Steward, formerly of the UK Meteorological Office, takes us through the "hypothetical conjecture" contained in the Kyoto Protocol, based, he writes, on a concept that is unproven. Earth’s atmosphere is a gas that is set in motion by heating from the sun, but strongly influenced by the Earth’s gravity and rotation. We can, as…