Australia has an express provision in its constitution granting Federal Parliament power to introduce legislation on the topic of marriage and correlating issues. In light of such provision, an amendment to the federal Marriage Act (the Defence of Marriage Act) was enacted in 2004, which defines marriage as the union between one man and one…
Feelings that there is something very weird going on in the armed forces of the Western World have been reinforced by the news that the Obama-dominated U.S. Navy plans to name a warship after homosexual activist Harvey Milk. Apart from serving on the San Francisco City Council until he was shot dead by another city…
Part 2 of a two-part series Tsai Ing-wen, President of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, took office on May 20, 2016, promising to be a new kind of leader. She took office with great expectations for a “new deal” for the people of Taiwan. What can we say about President Tsai’s first 100 days? So far, despite some unexpected challenges and a few minor wobbles, she’s doing fine. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen For the first time since the ROC was established in 1912, a woman holds its highest executive office. What’s more, an unmarried woman. And concurrently, a…
Can there be such a thing as the music industry? We are forever being told, both by governments and commercial players, that the “industry” must be “protected”, “supported”, “funded” or whatever. Yet when it comes to actually paying the producers of the product, the musicians, a strange ambivalence emerges. The musicians, it seems, are not necessarily worth paying because, well, they “do it for the love” or, if they are good enough and single minded enough, they will eventually have a career: that is, they will finally be able to charge for their work. Oddly, the only people who do…
