National Observer - Australia and World Affairs articles from December 2002

National Observer - Australia and World Affairs archives from December 2002

The second cold war: reflections on the assassination of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl. (Editorial Comment).
December 22, 2002... The West is engaged in a second cold war against Islamic terrorism. The war has been described by U.S. President George Bush as "The War against Terrorism". However, the declaratory policy is that Islam is not the enemy. Rather, the official...

Patrick Buchanan: "The Death of the West". (Editorial Comment).(Critical Essay)
December 22, 2002... Patrick Buchanan's recent publication The Death of the West (1) presents an unsettling view of the decline of Western civilisation. He shows that this decline is well under way. Demographic changes are contributing largely to this process....

Instead of what?(government programs, taxes, and politicians)
December 22, 2002... Take a topical news item almost at random: "WASHINGTON -- The Department of Housing and Urban Development... said today it would release $264 million over the next two years to help moderate-income families buy housing. The...

Identifying the enemy.(law, culture, and freedom)
December 22, 2002... We are fortunate to live in a society that has existed for only three hundred years or so, a very short time in the annals of the human race. In such a society there is opportunity to change rulers and laws by peaceful means and for people with...

Some important myths about "globalisation".
December 22, 2002... "Globalisation, trade liberalisation, free trade, borderless nations, and economic rationalism"--these are the positive mantras employed by the proponents of a particular trade theory that became the darling of economists and Treasury officials...

World narrowing: notes on Britain's culture-war.(Critical Essay)
December 22, 2002... British Prime Minister Tony Blair, interviewed in Newsweek in 1998, said films like The Full Monty about a group of unemployed men in the dying industrial town of Sheffield who became male strippers reflected a new mood: "Not merely in the...

The pitfalls of anti-terrorism.
December 22, 2002... I have spent much of my life studying the phenomenon of terrorism, but the events of 11 September have provoked a good deal of re-thinking. When I wrote my first published (as distinct from unpublished) book, The Rebels, in 1960, I delivered...

The case for the two-parent family Part II [continued from issue 52].
December 22, 2002... IV. EDUCATIONAL PERFORMANCE How do children from broken, single-parent family homes fare educationally compared to children from intact, two-parent families? A number of studies show that children from mother-only families obtain fewer...

Should Chief Justice Black resign?(Michael Black)(personal opinion, breach of trust, and impropriety)
December 22, 2002... During recent years the Federal Court has become perceived as an inappropriately political body. This perception is that it has allied itself unduly with politically correct (and often left of centre) causes and has departed from requisite...

Mr. Daryl Williams: an inadequate Attorney-General. (Legal Notes).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2002... The recent decision by Mr. Howard's government to ratify the International Criminal Court statute makes it all the more desirable that misleading statements by Mr. Daryl Williams, the Attorney-General, concerning that Court be corrected. ...

Here Today Gone Tomorrow: Recollections of an Errant Politician.
December 22, 2002... by John Nott London: Politico's, 2001. The Falklands War of 1982 competes with the Suez intervention of 1956 for such adjectives as "small-scale", "futile" and "unnecessary". In the event, however, it turned out to be successful, to the...

John Gorton: He Did It His Way.
December 22, 2002... By Ian Hancock Sydney, Hodder, 2002, pp. 406 and index. Between Sir Robert Menzies and Mr. John Howard the Liberal Party produced a series of Prime Ministers who will not be looked back on with pride. Holt, Gorton, McMahon and Fraser proved...

The Unsleeping Eye: A Brief History of Secret Police and Their Victims.
December 22, 2002... By Robert Stove Sydney, Duffy and Snellgrove, 2002, pp. 353 and index. Robert Stove is one of the most brilliant Australian writers today, and his admirers and also those who approach him for the first time will find this book a delight....

Brighter Than the Baghdad Sun.
December 22, 2002... By Shyam Bhatia and Daniel McGrory Washington, Regnery Publishing Inc., 2001, pp. 341. Ever since he became Vice-President of the Baath Party in 1968 through animal cunning, treachery and brutality, Saddam Hussein has been obsessed with...