The Free Speech Debate in Australia

Senator George Brandis, Australia's Attorney-General

The anti-bourgeois bohemian Left in Australia is determined to tribalise our nation in order to play the role of Chief of All Tribes. But freedom-loving Aussies are fighting back. Read, for instance, Brendan O'Neill's interview with Australia's Attorney-General in Spiked!    

Just click the following link:

http://www.spiked-online.com/freespeechnow/fsn_article/the-state-should-never-be-the-arbiter-of-what-people-can-think#.U1HFLuaSxbt

The Decline of Freedom in Erdogan's Turkey

Here is an interesting report in The Independent newspaper, by Ozan Ozavci, on growing authoritarianism in Turkey.

To read the article, click this link:

 http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/erdogans-twitter-ban-is-just-the-latest-in-a-series-of-restrictive-measures-9210838.html

Obama's 'All Thumbs' Syria Policy

   

On August 21, 2013, as many as 1,400 Syrians died after the use of chemical weapons in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta. The perpetrator of this crime against humanity, according to the Obama Administration, was none other than the Syrian government. The Assad regime had crossed Obama’s “red line” by using sarin gas to eradicate targeted neighbourhoods of opposition forces. The New York Times, along with all the MSM outlets, saw no reason to question the White House’s contention that evidence indisputably linked the Syrian regime with the sarin attacks. Obama was soon readying the United States Armed Forces for a massive knockout blow that would have deprived Assad of virtually all his military assets. The Syrian rebels were already at the gates and Obama’s own version of "shock and awe”, scheduled for Monday morning, September 2, 2013, would guarantee them victory.

To keep reading the article, click this link:

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2014/04/obamas-thumbs-syria-policy/

The Crushing of Eastern Europe

Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56 challenges the revisionist notion that the Sovietisation of Eastern Europe was a response to American belligerency. Roosevelt and then Truman, according Applebaum, were essentially bystanders during the process. Iron Curtain convincingly demonstrates that Soviet-style communism, operating in the vacuum created by the collapse of the Nazi Empire, obeyed a totalitarian logic all of its own.

Left-Fascism Tries to Silence Ayaan Hirsi Ali

This is an abridged version of the speech Ayaan Hirsi Ali would have delivered to the students of Brandeis University if the "progressives" (also known as Left-Fascists) had not revoked her invitation.

Freedom Fighter: A Review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Memoir

Few have experienced a more precipitous learning curve than Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Somalia’s most famous (or notorious depending on your perspective) emigrant has completed a second autobiography, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash Of Civilizations (2010) at the relatively young age of forty. If her life continues to be as eventful as it has been until now – and her round-the-clock security regime does its job properly – we may see many more memoirs penned by the brave and articulate Hirsi Ali.

A Photographic Essay: China 1979

This is dedicated to Wei Jingshen and "The Fifth Modernisation"

To see the photographic essay, click this link:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2012/04/china-1979-a-photographic-essay

First Person - Democracy Wall 1979

Photograph: Daryl McCann 1979

In October 1979 I found myself, through no feat of my own, living the high life in a provincial city in the People's Republic of China. I was twenty-two years old and had just completed an honours degree in Politics at the University of Adelaide, the title of my thesis being “Micro-Computer Technology and Contemporary Capitalism”. It almost goes without saying that the conclusion to my dissertation anticipated the imminent demise of Late Capitalism. It absolutely goes without saying that I was a Marxist.

The article can be read in full at the following link:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2012/4/democracy-wall-beijing-1979

Britain's Muzzled Press

In the midst of the current debate about the future of free speech in Australia, an article by Myles Harris, Editor of the Salisbury Review, makes an interesting read. First published in the July-August edition of the American Spectator.

To read "Britain's Muzzled Press" by Myles Harris, click the following link:

http://www.salisburyreview.com/Americanspec.pdf