Towards the end of August, The New Atlantis, a respected journal of science and ethics, published the report, “Sexuality and Gender”. The 143-page report examines some 200 peer-reviewed studies on sexual orientation and gender identity and concludes that science has by no means provided any substantive foundation for many of the assertions that are…
The first comments former South Vietnam army colonel Vo Dai Ton uttered at a meeting in Perth was to praise National Civic Council founder, Bob Santamaria. Seeing Santamaria’s photo on the wall of the National Civic Council offices in Belmont, Western Australia, the retired Colonel, who now lives in Sydney, said: “His name is…
1966: The Year the Decade Exploded by Jon Savage Faber & Faber, London Hardcover: 620 pagesPrice: AUD$49.99 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb Exactly 50 years on, what can we say about 1966? The so-called “Swinging Sixties” were a time of almost unimaginable prosperity, spread uniformly across the Western world. Economists would argue that we are far more prosperous now, but many people have been left behind by economic growth, trying to make ends meet on contract and part-time work, enough to make them “employed” in the statistician’s eyes. Prosperity in the Sixties was uniform. Women were making their…
B.A. SANTAMARIA: Running the Show. Selected Documents, 1939–1996 Edited by Patrick Morgan Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton, 2008 Paperback: 604 pagesPrice: AUD$59.95 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb My grandmother, Lillian Abrahams, grew her own vegetables and raised chickens, mainly for eggs, but we would eat a chicken now and then. She had fruit trees and gooseberry bushes. In the evening, I would walk down the hill to the dairy, a family-owned farm, and get a billyful of fresh milk. There is no greater pleasure than drinking rich, unadulterated, creamy fresh milk. My Grandmother bottled her own fruit. I remember with…
SECONDHAND TIME: The last of the Soviets, An Oral History by Svetlana AlexievichTranslated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2016 Paperback: 520 pagesPrice: AUD$37.95 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb Russia has a great tradition of literary creation. Russians are said to read more books than any other nation. Writers are the “engineers of the human soul”. Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich writes in Russian. She is not, however, from Russia. She is from Belarus, formerly known as Byelorussia, which can be literally translated as “White Russia”. Alexander Lukashenko has been president of Belarus since 1994. Belarus is Europe’s…
Despite claims by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews that the long-running conflict between the state Labor Government and volunteer firefighters over the direction of the Country Fire Authority (CFA) had “no impact” on the federal election, Labor numbers men know that the dispute helped the Liberals hold almost all their Victorian seats and win one from…
