CYBER GENERALS

What skills make a cyber-general?

Not this. 

St Patrick's Day

with the Irish Guards

I entered the words, "Steve Day Army" into Google search, and this picture of the Irish Guards on St Patrick's Day jumped back at me.

Perhaps it is worth knowing something about cyber issues after all, as this article for the Canberra Times last Saturday suggested . . . 

WAR, AGAIN . . .

The urging is specific, immediate and urgent.

Unless we intervene in Iraq now, they say, something terrible will happen.

The Islamic State at work

What, worse than this?

I'd enjoy reading the intelligence assessment that says the deployment of 12, 18 or even 24 Super hornets with ancillary supports will make any difference to what's happening on the ground, as I wrote in today's Canberra Times . . .

SOME ADVICE

I often provide advice. It's not always taken.

Tony Abbott needs to listen

Nevertheless, I keep trying and today I used my soapbox on the Canberra Times to offer a bit of helpful advice to the PM . . .

STILL DOING THE HOCKEY POKEY

Hockey's absolutely right, but for the wrong reason.

Hockey wins the prize

courtesy News Ltd

At least a fuel tax, like any consumption tax, forces people to pay. Deductions for negative gearing and investing allow them to escape paying tax on income while halving the rate of tax on capital gains is just a lurk. 

This column for the Canberra Times attempts some analysis . . . 

PIERRE RYCKMANS

I don't normally write obituaries, but I don't normally meet someone like Pierre Ryckmans. 

Pierre Ryckmans in Canberra

Courtesy of The Australian

Because of lack of space I was unable to highlight so many of the remarkable aspects of this brilliant, acute analyst in this piece written for the Canberra Times . . . 

WAR'S CHANGING

The pictures are terrible. No one can argue about that.

Refugees in Iraq

So what to do? Wring our hands? Deploy force?

The point of this column for the Canberra Times is simply to suggest that war has changed and the old idea of sending in bombers is as irrelevant today as the idea of sending in a gunboat to over-awe the natives . . . 

HOCKEY'S THE PROBLEM

And not the solution.

The brilliant photo that caught 

the Treasurer

Enjoy a cigar by all means - but make certain you've done the work first.

Hockey hasn't - as this column for the Canberra Times made clear . . .

CHINA & CANBERRA

We've got to understand China - any way we can.

The cover of 

Steve Lewis & Chris Ulhmann's book 

And doing so sometimes requires desperate measures . . . like reading fiction. 

This column in today's Canberra Times is a shameless plug for my friends' book . . . 

THE LIBERAL SOUL

The real problem Tony Abbott's having is that this isn't a truly liberal government.

There's no underlying, unifying philosophy knitting his policies together.

Puzzled? Yes. 

Is it all a bit too much for him? Probably. 

This column for the Canberra Times examines the grab bag of policies that was the budget . . . and why it doesn't compute.