Mark Tarrant grew up in Hong Kong and practices as a lawyer in Sydney. He also represents pro bono (i.e., for free) Drew Pavlou, a student at the University of Queensland who has been expelled for his public criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, in his case against China’s Consul-General in Brisbane. He was interviewed by Massimo Introvigne […]
Standing in the Irish Parliament on Wednesday morning, Minister for Arts and Culture, Josepha Madigan, led one minute’s silence to show, “our abhorrence of and rejection of,” all forms of racism. Nothing wrong with that, you might say, except Josepha Madigan is on record for aggressively and successfully forcing through a campaign to block the […]
Ó Néill (1585 – 6 November 1649) was a Gaelic Irish soldier and one of the most famous of the O’Neill dynasty of Ulster in Ireland. O’Neill left Ireland at a young age and began the formal continental military career serving in the Spanish army. He was a brilliant military strategist and tactician. With the […]
A study published by prestigious peer-reviewed journal, the Lancet, which claimed that the use of hydroxychloroquine was dangerous and led to more deaths has been retracted after it was found that the data used in the study could not be verified. The retraction is a huge embarrassment for the scientific journal, and raises questions as […]
Over the last few years one of the economic and social talking points has been the inter-generational divide, especially between millennials and their parents’ generation. There is often a sense of resentment among the younger generation that their job prospects are worse than the generations that went before, that the opportunities to buy an affordable […]
Is there really a scientific consensus about wearing masks in the Covid-19 pandemic? How much of a help are masks in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic? Absolutely essential, it seems, to New Yorkers. A woman who failed to sport a mask sparked hysteria in a Staten Island supermarket. Other shoppers started shrieking at the modern leper to […]
Utilitarianism medical ethics has come under heavy fire in recent months. Many commentators have, for example, criticised utilitarian ICU rationing frameworks that discriminate against older people and people with disabilities. Others have condemned the veiled introduction of herd immunity strategies that involve allowing coronavirus to spread through the community to create population-level resistance to COVID-19. These […]
On Saturday, May 30, American astronauts flew into orbit on an American-made space vehicle for the first time since 2011. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket carried Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, both veterans of the old Space Shuttle program, inside the Dragon capsule, and once the capsule separated safely, the first stage returned automatically to earth […]
Technology has been invaluable to keep us all connected during the Covid-19 pandemic, but could it also be separating us from those we love most? Smartphones keep us informed and provide a constant stream of news and entertainment. I gifted my husband some wireless headphones because he loves to listen to podcasts. With them, he […]
A bid by the Democratic Unionist Party in the north to outlaw abortions on the grounds of disability has gained support and put pressure on Sinn Féin to support a change in the law to protect some people with disabilities. Abortion legislation, imposed on the region by the British Parliament in Westminster has remained enormously controversial ever since […]
The tiny but fiercely distinctive and geo-politically strategic nation of Armenia is facing a demographic crisis. Its population is about 2.9 million, its fertility rate is about 1.6, far below replacement level, and the population is slowly shrinking. The government is alarmed and launched some initiatives in March to reverse the trend — including testing the […]
About a hundred babies born to surrogate mothers in Ukraine are separated from the parents who commissioned them. The parents can’t visit and the babies can’t leave. In the meantime, the children are being cared for by their surrogate mothers or the agency which recruited them. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, it has been […]