In the latest version of confected horror at Anzac exploitation social media has got very upset about Bauer Media’s Zoo magazine’s Anzac  edition featuring a scantily clad model Erin Pash (nudge nudge wink wink).

Now the blog sadly has not heard of the magazine, nor the online controversy about its Anzac edition, but Australia’s pre-eminent issues and crisis management scholar, Dr Tony Jaques, brought it to the blog’s attention. The details can be found at http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/mens-magazine-zoo-weekly-sparks-controversy-with-anzac-commemorative-issue/story-fn907478-1227319442706. Tony , by the way, monitors emerging issues rather than being a Zoo reader. read more

The major problem with making things sacred is that it inevitably leads to both commercialism and hypocrisy.

The pre-eminent example of this in European history was the pre-Counter Revolution Catholic Church. In Australia the pre-eminent example is the Anzac Day commemorations which will take place tomorrow. read more

One of the remarkable omissions from much current economic debate in Australia is the role of technological innovation.

The Abbott Government and business focus on industrial relations, tax, debt, deficits and just about everything other than innovation when they talk about economic growth. When they do talk about research it is more likely to be how to cut funding to not only pure research but also applied research as well. read more

One of the marks of the maturity and health of any area of historical inquiry is the extent to which it is subject to ongoing bouts of revisionism.

British social, political and economic history probably reached this stage when the eruptions about the rise (or fall or stagnation) of the late 16^th century and early 17^th century gentry attracted a bevy of high profile historians including Tawney, Stone and Trevor-Roper. While it is now fashionable to see the controversy as more representative of the eminence of the protagonists than the issue itself, it was about big issues like the emergence of the middle classes, whether economic factors underlay the British Civil Wars, the role of the aristocracy and precursor indicators of 18^th century social change. Revisionism over the British Civil Wars is now almost continuous and the blog expects that one day someone will claim that Charles 1 died of a shaving accident. read more

The US Republicans have a few enduring dreams and one of them is that Hispanics are naturally conservative, because they are predominantly Catholic, and will eventually flock to the Republican cause.

Like many things the Republicans believe there is a lot of faith and very little evidence involved. And like many conservative parties, including in Australia, they are perhaps not looking at the real problem. For instance, at the recent Victorian Liberal Party State Conference party elder, David Kemp, presented a report suggesting that there were communication problems with the outgoing Napthine Government and regretting what looked like a good idea at the time when the Baillieu Government hacked into the very professional public service corporate affairs ranks. Yet while discussing communications problems the Conference also managed to pass resolutions calling for an investigation into ‘electoral fraud’ by Labor for using firefighters, parademics and other unionists in ‘fake uniforms’ in their campaign;  the abolition of the ABC and SBS, repeal of 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act; and ‘reform’ of the Human Rights Commission. read more

Fifty years ago, when the blog was an undergraduate devoting more attention to social action than to study, it was lucky enough to be introduced by Colin Benjamin to the work of the person who was probably the most influential modern social activist thinker and practitioner – Saul Alinsky.

The blog has been thinking a lot about Alinsky and Colin Benjamin in recent days while trying to organise speakers for the October PRIA conference on the current trends in grass roots organisation and engaging in discussions with some of the leading practitioners in the field. The thinking was reinforced by a recent detailed reading of Tony Jaques’ new book Issue and Crisis Management which the blog has mentioned a few times in the past year. read more

One of the best ways to define a consultancy is to see who they won’t work for rather than who they do.

Now that may seem odd in the light of the emphasis PR industry critics place on who the clients of particular consultancies are. But the ethics of working for various clients is sometimes problematic and the judgement is often coloured by the views of the critics more than the inherent issues to do with the client. For instance the blog long worked for the forest products industry and to many environmentalists that was an evil decision. read more

What do Barack Obama and Clive Palmer have in common? Not much you might think but in fact both are – away from their day jobs – published poets. Obama in a 1981 issue of the Occidental College literary magazine and Clive with a 23 poem volume Hopes, Dreams  and Reflections. The latter, of course, a poetry manuscript which preceded the party manifesto. read more

At the Adelaide Writers’ Week last week something happened which should terrify those people who are apologists for Israel whatever the Israeli government does or says.

The Writers’ Week had arranged a session, My Palestine, with two speakers. The first was an elegant and intelligent (she casually used an analogy from quantum physics to make a point) woman, Leila Yusaf Chung, whose family were Palestinian refugees who went to Lebanon where she was born. The second was Antony Lowenstein who appears to be a young version of an old-fashioned leftie but who replaces the windy rhetoric of the old and now old new left with a compelling speaking style focussed on facts and is a bit of a bete noir to some in the Australian Jewish community (see his book My Israel Question which is now in its third edition). read more

Reform is one of those Alice in Wonderland words which mean what the speaker wants them to mean. They are often shorthand for why something or other you believe ought to be done as soon as possible – irrespective of the evidence one way or the other.

Reform has a moderately recent history – a bit like the word progress which once just meant moving forward rather than carrying a more progressive subtext.  In the late 18^th and 19^th centuries it meant political and social reform around voting rights, anti-slavery and a host of other Whiggish and Chartist demands. By the middle of the 19^th century it had been supplanted in some circles by the word revolution, although a quick modern day reading of Marx’s Communist Manifesto demands would probably not frighten many modern liberals even if Maurice Newman, or that former Maoist Keith Windschuttle, might have a problem with some of them. read more