In the previous post, I looked at how Australian history, in the popular imagination and in academic circles, is dominated by narratives that are too often spun out of little but outraged assertion and fanciful interpretation. On the other hand, careful examination of primary sources, many of which are only
It’s commonly assumed that cities are wildernesses for wild animals. In fact, wild animals often thrive in cities: everything from magpies and lorikeets, to bandicoots and possums in Australia, to coyotes and white-tail deer in America – even cougars in suburban Los Angeles (the four-footed kind, to be
Theodore Dalrymple has observed that any nation earning praise from the Economist is a surer sign than any of its imminent demise. By extension, then, damnation from the same publication must stand as a certainty that a nation is doing something very, very right. In this case, it’s El
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As I asked recently, Can NZ join a military pact without having a military to speak of? I was referring, of course, to current talks between the Chris Hipkins and Anthony Albanese, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, with a view to New Zealand
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Over the weekend I was reading an article from Reclaim the Net about the revelations that the Biden White House worked hand in glove with Facebook to demonise and destroy what they described as the “Disinformation Dozen”. It was fascinating: Calling somebody a member of the “Disinformation Dozen” – there’s
Academic historians are an odd bunch. Especially in Australia. They’re all too ready to write up fairy-stories and garbled oral legends as “history”, but not much interested, it seems, in actual, documented, primary sources. For instance, peer-reviewed Australian journals cite the “memories” of an Aboriginal stockman in
In his A Short History of the World, Geoffrey Blainey writes that the ability to make and use fire was “the most useful tool possessed by the human race until recent times”. For all it’s astonishing usefulness, though, fire came to the human toolkit surprisingly late. Humans – or our
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We are very pleased to announce a new service for ALL readers of The BFD. The BFD in partnership with GCo Fuels has created a discounted fuel option. With the government removing the 25c per litre fuel subsidy , and the resulting significant increase in fuel prices from 1 July 2023,
G/O Media, owner of clickbait sites “news” like Gizmodo, Jezebel and The Root recently came up with a unique response to a strike by its writers: it announced mass layoffs and writers to be replaced by AI Chatbots. To which wags responded: “How will we tell the difference?” It’
If you’re an Australian of a certain age, you’ll remember when Queensland was a byword for corruption and police brutality. But the “Moonlight State” has long been left in the shade by Dandrewstan, Victoria. As we saw during the anti-lockdown protests, Victoria Police have got the whole
Imagine if a service station could randomly refuse to refill your car. Welcome to yet another entry in the very lengthy ledger of why EVs are a bit shite. Queensland risks putting the brakes on the transition to electric vehicles if a state-owned energy company is given the power
When Heather du Plessis-Allan laughed in the face of a spoilt-brat “Climate Striker”, she was only saying out loud what we all know: these people are the biggest hypocrites on the face of the planet. It’s impossible, after all, not to notice just how selective the Climate
