Basin blues Regarding the Murray-Darling Basin and the mess it is in, caused by taking water from food production to run into “gum swamps”, with so many people starving, even in our own country. The Basin authority members are doing what they are told to do by the Greens: “There will be no more dams in Australia”. I don’t think they have any…

Rounded up, hog-tied and dipped in marinade by Sebastian Gunlighter Ambidextrous man has frontal lobotomy; now his left hand doesn’t know what his right hand is doing. Details in the next edition of News Weekly. Rednecks shocked at graffiti vandalism under bridge over Merri River at Dennington in Victoria’s west. Report on a traumatised community in the next edition of News Weekly. Shark…

Two hundred years after his birth, the legacy of Karl Marx is a brutal social experiment under communist rule in the East, and in the West a cultural revolution whose effects are still being worked through today. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. (If you seek his monument, look around.) Karl Marx was born in Trier on the banks of the Moselle…

THE HOUSE OF GOVERNMENT: A Saga of the Russian Revolution by Yuri Slezkine Princeton UP, Princeton Hardcover: 1128 pages Price: AUD$74.98 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb A long time ago I helped escort a group of “Russian youth” who were visiting Australia. They were very curious about life in Australia. Their favourite food was Kentucky Fried Chicken, which they devoured ravenously…

CHARLES BEAN:  Man, Myth, Legacy Edited by Peter Stanley NewSouth, Sydney Paperback: 256 pages Price: AUD$39.99 Reviewed by Anthony Staunton Australia, at the end of World War I, was the only British dominion other than Britain itself to produce a comprehensive official war history. It took more than 20 years before all 15 volumes were published, which included three medical…