Category: France

  • Public gallery under the microscope

    Sickness at the Art Gallery of NSW: an insider’s account … Family First? New Kenyan-born senator is a millionaire … Donald Trump is supporting the election of Mrs May and Ms Le Pen – why? … A night at the Packer Family Logies … Blackpool, city of depression … Great Crashing Bores Public art gallery…

  • The romance of Malcolm and Pauline

    PM Malcolm Turnbull surrenders to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation … Critical moment in French presidential race … Albert Namatjira legacy needs your help … Remembering England’s Shrewsbury pickets … Real news from Afghanistan and Ecuador … Turnbull & Pauline: A love story In the 1990s France’s far right National Front under the leadership of Jean-Marie…

  • Plebiscite ducks the issue

    Cowardly MPs duck decision to legalise gay marriage … “Let the people decide”, but people have already decided, they are in favour!! … More taxpayer subsidies for rugby league louts … Lots of dosh for prisons too … Charting the submarine fiasco … NSW Greens unredacted … Great Bores continued …. MPs duck the issue…

  • State of nuclear secrecy

    South Australia: our first nuclear state … Nuclear-powered submarines to be followed by nuclear waste plant … Local government elections test for Coalition, Labor and Greens … NSW Labor Party unredacted … Henry Kissinger, war criminal … Great Bores continued … SA: State of nuclear secrecy Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Premier Jay Weatherill seem…

  • Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – Guess what? The Martin Place gunman was an ASIO agent

    It is now obvious to everyone except Blind Freddy that the Martin Place siege gunman Man Haron Monis was an ASIO agent from the time he arrived in Australia in 1996. Final proof came this week when the NSW government-ordered inquest was recalled without notice and then banned the press and public from hearing ASIO’s…

  • Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – The road to Hebdo and why I won’t be Charlie

    1. Classical English liberalism was destroyed and buried in the trenches of World War One when British Prime Minister David Lloyd George shrugged off his pacifism and became a Cabinet warmonger. The fledging British Labour Party split over support for the imperialist bloodbath with Arthur Henderson leading the majority faction into a wartime Coalition in…

  • Ms Gillard prepares a legacy for herself

    Prime Minister Julia Gillard has switched her attention from winning the next election to legacy-building. As her re-election hopes grow dimmer, Australia’s first female Prime Minister is concentrated on establishing her place in Labor history. Take the May Budget, the final budget before the government faces the electorate on September 14. It was not a…

  • Never mind Greece, what about France?

    Eurozone finance ministers did a deal earlier this week to make a partial reduction in Greece’s debt and permit an 11th-hour, 34bn euro bailout. But the deal, presented as a win-win for Greece and its creditors, depends on Athens borrowing a further 14bn euros to finance a bond buyback scheme that the Greek finance sector…

  • Nervous days in the Euro zone

    Europe waits nervously for the latest deadline in the Greek crisis. The coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has only days to meet the EU Troika’s draconian $13.5 billion package of cuts, after three months of talks have failed to bring agreement. The stumbling block within the coalition appears to be a newly-imposed demand…

  • From Europe to Asia

    If confirmation were needed that this is the Asian century, a flight from crisis-ridden Athens to dynamic Bangkok would surely provide it. Thailand undoubtedly has its problems, with political conflict and natural disasters following in quick succession in recent years. But in the 20 years since I was here last it has boomed, with a…