As we marched south down Melbourne's Swanston Street, activists filtered back through our ranks and told us to sit down on the road at Flinders St. Such an action effectively blocked the city's busiest intersection right at the evening peak hour, just as workers were trying to get home.

by Simon Morrison

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)

Hardcover: 512 pages and index

RRP: $US29.95

Till scarcely more than a decade ago, Sergei Sergeievich Prokofiev seemed stuck with a reputation as one of those composers about whom almost no-one wants to read. Biographies of him remained frustratingly scarce,...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Turning+realities+of+school+assessment+to+students'+advantage.-a0204039231Most students hope for fair, rational, objective and accurate assessment for every paper they submit. However, to succeed continually in the education system, students need to adopt a more realistic understanding of what happens in it and then take the necessary steps to succeed in the light of this reality. In this extract from The Little Black School Book, Volume 2 (Exams), Dr Mark Lopez...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+problem+of+work-related+tax+deductions.-a0204039230Forty years ago, the majority of Australians completed their tax return forms themselves, with the help of a four-page brochure of instructions. Since the introduction of the "plain English" 100+ page volume of guidelines in the late 1980s, and despite supposedly higher levels of education, increasing numbers have felt themselves incompetent in the face of this annual task, and have turned to...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/B.A.+Santamaria's+contribution+to+Australia's+culture+wars.-a0204039229I propose to comment upon the history of the Movement led by Mr B.A. "Bob" Santamaria (1915-1998) and the leadership it has provided in Australia for nearly seven decades. In doing so, I should like to remind my listeners * that I am not necessarily the most suitably qualified person to perform this function. This is because I arrived in Australia in the second half of the 1970s and,...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/%22Live+free+or+die!%22.-a0204039228My remarks here are titled after the words of General John Stark, New Hampshire's great hero of the Revolutionary War: "Live free or die!" When I first moved to New Hampshire, where this appears on our licence plates, I assumed General Stark had said it before some battle or other--a bit of red meat to rally the boys for the charge; a touch of the old Henry V-at-Agincourt routine. But I soon...]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Asia's+future+and+Australia's+missed+opportunities.-a0204039227Understanding our region

After half a century of concerted Asian studies in this country, little that is factual is yet lodged firmly in the consciousness of the average Australian. As our level of dependence on the region increases dramatically, it is a great irony that we are now slipping back in our understanding.

Reacting unofficially to the Rudd Government's new defence plans, Chinese military strategist Rear Admiral Yang Yi initially called them "stupid", "crazy", and anti-China; but official Chinese reaction has been positive, recognising that Australia's economic and strategic importance within the East Asian region demands that it have...]]>Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Terror%3a+From+Tyrannicide+to+Terrorism.-a0186820478TERROR:

From Tyrannicide to Terrorism

edited by Michael T. Davis and Brett Bowden

(Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2008)

Paperback: 408 pages

Rec. price: $45.00

"Know one's enemy" applies to the war on terror as to everywhere else, and fortunately the basic shape of the history of terrorism has been clear for some time. For example, it is common to...]]>Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Days+in+the+life+of+Alexander+Solzhenitsyn.-a0186820477The last great figure of the 20th century, the Russian novelist and dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, died on August 3rd. He first came to prominence with the publication of his concentration camp novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962. This was part of Khrushchev's post-Stalin thaw. The vast array of Soviet camps, of which Solzhenitsyn himself had been an inmate, had been known...]]>Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Margaret+Thatcher%3a+a+legacy+of+freedom.-a0186820476It is a great pleasure to be back at Hillsdale College, Michigan. It is some 32 years since I first visited the college for a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society. Those few days were an important education in American politics for me. The conference was attended by many people who had just returned from the Republican Convention at which President Ford had narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan. They...]]>Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Sinful+WASPs.-a0186820475My topic for this article is the relevance of secularism for understanding our political situation, which is the one that is now dominant in Canada, the US and much of the Western world. Underlying this investigation are two assumptions about what secularism is or is not. One, it is not clear that secularism in the contemporary West is an entirely post-Christian phenomenon. Although...]]>Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Global+warming--myth%2c+threat+or+opportunity%3f-a0186820474The most critical problem we face is not global warming, or how to make fuel more expensive so we will use less, but providing enough at affordable prices to keep our economy going until alternatives can become reality. The Lucky Country has the choice between disaster and a unique opportunity.

Georgia's military incursion into the effectively autonomous, and unwillingly Georgian, provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where Russian peacekeepers, according to international agreement and the desire of those provinces' people, were stationed, and the subsequent and predictable Russian military incursion to drive out the Georgian Government forces--all this...]]>Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/CSIRO's+political+partisanship.-a0180953776Last year, the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) journal Sexual Health (2007, 4) published an editorial by Jo Wainer entitled "Abortion and the full humanity of women: nearly there". It strongly supported the legalisation of all abortion.

In company with about a million other Australians, the aberrant thought emerged, unbidden, that perhaps I should seek admission to this Gathering of All the Talents (as a latter-day Gilray might...]]>Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Dr+H.V.+Evatt--part+II%3a+the+question+of+loyalty.-a0180953773This article (1) focuses on a question that haunted Evatt's political career during the Cold War--his loyalty to the Labor Party and, above all, his loyalty to Australia and its national security interests. Despite his tactical and opportunistic rejection of selected communist policies, there are indications that he believed a form of communism was inevitable, although he never publicly...]]>Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Australia--a+democracy+or+just+another+ballotocracy%3f-a0180953772Try to imagine Australia if its 1890s colonial founding fathers had incorporated into the federal constitution the following clause: (1)

No Bill passed by both Houses of the Federal Parliament shall be assented to by the Governor-General until after a referendum, if a referendum shall be duly demanded before assent declared. A referendum may be demanded in respect of any Bill passed by...]]>Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/In+this+issue.-a0180953771
The current issue of National Observer is headed by a powerful, scholarly article on the limited nature of Australia's form of democracy, which is not, strictly speaking, democracy at all, but something more accurately described here as a ballotocracy. The ancient popular assemblies in Greece and Rome were direct democracies in which the ordinary people participated in the making...]]>Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Our+culture-killers.-a0180953770The latest evidence from Queensland supports the view that many of the nation's children are being denied adequate knowledge of their centuries-old culture. Culture begins with language. Corrupt language, by malign neglect of grammar, proceeds to remove from the curriculum most of what our adolescents need to know about our predominantly European cultural traditions, especially history and...]]>Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/J.A.+Lyons--the+'Tame+Tasmanian'.-a0197525380
Appeasement and Rearmament in Australia, 1932-39

by David S. Bird

(Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing)

Paperback: 430 pages

Rec. price: $44.95

A number of years ago a banquet was held to celebrate the anniversary of the foundation of the Labor movement. Assembled there were former and current serving Labor members of federal...]]>Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Changing+the+guard+at+Harvard.-a0197525379
In March 2005 the Harvard faculty of arts and sciences did something that was unprecedented. It passed a motion overwhelmingly expressing lack of confidence in Harvard President Lawrence Summers. Although a self-proclaimed Democrat and Jewish liberal, Summers had committed an act so outrageous that female members of his faculty stated they had been on the point of fainting when they...]]>Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/British+Cold+warriors+and+the+War+on+Terror.-a0197525378 If they want to write about the war, the way is clear for them ... They must be, or have been, part of it. --Evelyn Waugh

We all like to think we know how the dead would react to unforeseen situations. A sentiment once expressed by former Australian Prime Minister Sir Earle Page about another former Australian Prime Minister, recently deceased, is widespread: "If Ben Chifley...]]>