June 4, 2016

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Jun42016

BOOK REVIEW Great reformer or great dictator?

MUSIC CINEMA & BOOKS, UncategorizedJune 4, 2016

DENG XIAOPING: A revolutionary life by Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine Oxford University Press, New York, 2015 Hardcover: 640 pagesPrice: AUD$41.95 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb A long time ago, before I studied history at university, I was having a discussion with a friend over what constituted a great man. By what standards should he be judged? Take Deng Xiaoping, the subject of this excellent biography, for example. As an economic reformer, Deng is unmatched in world history by any objective criteria. His policies lifted hundreds of millions of people – almost the entire population of…

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Jun42016

EDITORIAL Obama rewards Vietnam: a particularly nasty regime

UncategorizedJune 4, 2016

On his recent three-day visit to Vietnam, U.S. President Barack Obama unilaterally lifted the 30-year trade embargo on Vietnam, maintained because of the communist regime’s long history of political and religious repression, which continues down to the present day. According to the President of Vietnam, Tran Dai Quang, the lifting of the arms embargo signified…

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Jun42016

ENVIRONMENT Land sinkage, not rising sea levels, the real threat

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTJune 4, 2016

Over recent years, alarming stories about rising sea levels have been widely reported as “proof” of the imminent risk of global warming, when the main cause of any rise is land subsidence. “I know what I said. Now I’m saying ‘climate disruption’.” Bodies such as the Climate Council have taken a leading role in blaming coastal flooding on global warming. A 2014 report, Counting the Costs: Climate Change and Coastal Flooding, co-authored by Professors Will Steffen and Lesley Hughes, said: “Sea level has already risen and continues to rise due to climate change. Climate change exacerbates coastal flooding from a…

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Jun42016

LIFE ISSUES Who am I? Baby’s first memoir

LIFE MARRIAGE & FAMILYJune 4, 2016

As News Weekly went to press, Rachel Carling-Jenkins’ Infant Viability Bill was due to be debated in the Victorian Parliament. Leon Voesenek offers a glimpse at who it is all about. My life began in Mum’s Fallopian tube. Here Dad’s sperm and Mum’s egg met and fused resulting in a one-celled being called zygote, with the 46 chromosomes typical of each cell of the human body. There I was, a unique new individual, having received 23 chromosomes from Mum and 23 from Dad. My human makeup was completed at fertilisation. I already was a boy and had all my genetic…

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