Peter Haig
Dr Peter Haig a lecturer in Economics at three universities in the UK. Prior to this, he served as a military medic and teacher in Kenya, Oman and the Middle East. He is the author of Byzantine Warrior: War in the East, African adventures and the Italian debacle.
One of the three central protagonists of Neil Chenoweth’s book, Graham Richardson, famously titled his autobiography Whatever It Takes (1994). Despite the title’s hints at candour, Richardson’s book eluded all but the most passing references to Kerry Packer. As Chenoweth points out in his alarming new book, this, from the man John Button had dubbed the Minister for Kerry Packer, represented ... (read more)
According to Aristotle, rhetoric is ‘the ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion’. In today’s parlance, the term is often used pejoratively, connoting an obfuscation of truth. This would come as no surprise to Aristotle, whose treatise on the topic, Rhetorica, demonstrated an acute awareness of the dangers posed by the adroit manipulation of the means of pe ... (read more)
Conservative columnist Mark Steyn has mocked modern progressives for having no enemies, just friends whose grievances are yet to be accommodated. The decision as to whether grievances are best accommodated or confronted is one safely made only if informed by a deep understanding of the particular discontent. Brendon O’Connor (Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and Public Policy at Gri ... (read more)
Of the many damning revelations contained in this book, the fact that Allan Dulles, the CIA’s longest serving director (1953–61), would assess the merits of intelligence briefings by their weight is among the most startling. Coming in at 700 pages, Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA is sufficiently hefty to have commanded Dulles’s attention. Were he alive today to read th ... (read more)
As the full extent of the American misadventure in Iraq becomes increasingly clear, liberal hawks, neo-conservatives and others who lent their voices to the initial call to arms have had cause to reconsider their positions. The rush to recant, however, has not exactly been a stampede. For the majority of its proponents, the decision to invade Iraq was so tied to an entrenched philosophy or ideolog ... (read more)