A special Bushfire-Kangaroo Island Special. In this special episode, Christopher tours the fire affected areas of Kangaroo Island in South Australia. An Area recently deviated by massive catastrophic bush fires. He records in the field and also interviews the Islander Newspaper journalist Stan Gorton.

Political Thinker Podcast

Political Thinker: Episode 17 - Kangaroo Island Special (With Stan Gorton)

This week Christopher speaks again with Associate Professor Felix Patrikeeff. This time about the concept of "Cold War 2".

Political Thinker: Episode 16 - Felix Patrikeeff (Part 2)

This week Christopher talks with Labor Politician Chris Picton. They discuss a number of topics from Chris's life before politics to his key achievements as a minister.

Political Thinker: Episode 15 - Chris Picton

This week Christopher discusses Spacer Law with Associate Professor Matthew Stubbs from the University of Adelaide Law School.

Political Thinker: Episode 14 - Matthew Stubbs

This week Christopher talks again with Barrister Tom Cadd. They discuss the Banking Royal Commission, Venezuela and other political topics from the day.

Political Thinker: Episode 13 - Tom Cadd Part 3

This week Christopher talks with Libby Ellis OAM. Libby is President of the South Australian Branch of The Royal Commonwealth Society, She has a degree in Geography and International Studies. Libby is a qualified Archivist and worked at the State Library of South Australia in a number of capacities including Map Librarian, Newspaper Librarian and Acting Reference Librarian for a number of years before being seconded to the State Department of Local Government where she co-ordinated Local Government involvement in the State’s Sesquicentenary celebrations.

Political Thinker: Episode 12 - Libby Ellis OAM

For the episode this week, Christopher has a special with a “Best Of” from the last episodes. It includes parts from Dale Stephens CSM, Amer El Hamra, Mobo Gao, Wayne Errington, Felix Patrikeeff, Tom Cadd. Next week the Political Thinker Podcast will be back to normal.

Political Thinker: Episode 11 - Special

This week Christopher is once again joined by Professor Dale Stephens CSM. This time Professor Stephens talks about his experience as a Royal Australian Navy Captain, as a Criminal Lawyer, as an Academic and as one of the drafters of the Woomera Manual. We hope you enjoy the first episode of 2019.

Political Thinker: Episode 10 - Dale Stephens CSM (2)

This week, due to popular demand, Christopher reads another of his papers from 2017. A paper entitled: Was the Cultural Revolution Mao's personal power struggle? All about Moa's power struggle to retain his reign over the People's Republic of China. Please note that this was written as an academic exercise, and is entirely based on fact, there is no opinion included in this podcast or paper. Bibliography Baum, Richard. Burying Mao: Chinese politics in the age of Deng Xiaoping. Princeton University Press, 1996. Bridgham, Philip. "Mao's Cultural Revolution in 1967: the struggle to seize power." Intelligence Report, CIA, 24 may 1968 Chan, Anita. Children of Mao: Personality development and political activism in the Red Guard generation. Springer, 1985. Chan, Anita, Stanley Rosen, and Jonathan Unger, Students and class warfare: the social roots of the Red Guard conflict in Guangzhou (Canton), China Quarterly (1980): 397-446. Clark, Paul, Youth culture in China: From red guards to netizens, Cambridge University Press, 2012. Cohen, Paul A. "Remembering and forgetting national humiliation in twentieth-century China." Twentieth-Century China 27.2, 2002,1-39. Deng, Zhong, and Donald J. Treiman. "The impact of the cultural revolution on trends in educational attainment in the people's republic of china 1." American journal of sociology 103.2 (1997): 391-428. Domes, Jürgen, and Marie-Luise Näth. China After the Cultural Revolution: Politics Between Two Party Congresses. Univ of California Press, 1977. Gao, Mobo CF. Gao village: a portrait of rural life in modern China. University of Hawaii Press, 1999. Gao, Mobo. The battle for China's past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution. Pluto press, 2008. Jian, Guo, Yongyi Song, and Yuan Zhou. Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Jiang, Ji-li. Red scarf girl. HarperCollins World, 1999. Kleinman, Arthur, and Joan Kleinman. "How bodies remember: Social memory and bodily experience of criticism, resistance, and delegitimation following China's cultural revolution." New Literary History 25.3 (1994): 707-723. Lifton, Robert Jay. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of" brainwashing" in China. UNC Press Books, 1989. Lu, Xing. Rhetoric of the Chinese cultural revolution: The impact on Chinese thought, culture, and communication. Univ of South Carolina Press, 2004. MacFarquhar, Roderick, and Michael Schoenhals. Mao's last revolution. Harvard University Press, 2009. Mao, Tsetung, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1976 Mao, Zedong, Six Essays on Military Affairs, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1972 Ning, Zhang. "The political origins of death penalty exceptionalism Mao Zedong and the practice of capital punishment in contemporary China." Punishment & Society 10.2 (2008): 117-136. Schoenhals, Michael, and Roderick MacFarquhar. "Mao's Last Revolution." (2006). Schram, Stuart Reynolds, Mao Zedong, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998 Spence, Jonathan. The Search for Modern China. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999. p575 Walder, Andrew G., and Yang Su. "The cultural revolution in the countryside: Scope, timing and human impact." The China Quarterly 173 (2003): 74-99. White III, Lynn T. Policies of chaos: the organizational causes of violence in China's Cultural Revolution. Princeton University Press, 2014. Zhou, Xueguang, and Liren Hou. "Children of the Cultural Revolution: The state and the life course in the People's Republic of China." American Sociological Review (1999): 12-36.

Political Thinker: Episode 9 - Was the Cultural Revolution Mao's personal power struggle?

This week, Christopher speaks with Professor Dale Stephens CSM on international humanitarian law (IHL) or the law of armed conflict. Professor Dale Stephens CSM is a Captain in the Royal Australian Navy Reserve who spent over 20 years as a permanent officer in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) before taking up his appointment at Adelaide Law School. He has occupied numerous staff officer appointments throughout his career in the Australian Defence Force (ADF), including Fleet Legal Officer, Command Legal Officer (Naval Training Command), Chief Legal Officer Strategic Operations Command, Director of Operational and International Law, Deputy Director of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Military Law, Director Navy Legal and Director of the Military Law Centre. He has deployed twice to East Timor (INTERFET & UNTAET) and twice to Iraq (Baghdad) in senior legal officer positions and has provided extensive advice to Government at the strategic level. During his time in the ADF, Dr Stephens was involved in providing legal advice regarding numerous operational, disciplinary and administrative law issues, including fisheries, customs and immigration matters within Australia's maritime zones, combined operations with other military forces, UN Peace Operations, drafting Rules of Engagement, implementation of international treaties including the International Criminal Court Convention as well as numerous weapons reviews. In the early 2000's Professor Stephens was part of the Australian delegation to UNESCO negotiating the Underwater Cultural Heritage Convention. In the mid 2000's he taught at the U.S. Naval War College located in Newport, Rhode Island as a faculty member of the International Law Department. In 2010 was seconded to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet as a senior advisor on Afghanistan. In more recent years he has taught National Security Law as well as a number of military law subjects at the ANU College of Law. Dr Stephens is Director of The University of Adelaide Research Unit on Military Law and Ethics (RUMLAE) and co-editor of the RUMLAE eJournal. He is currently Head of the combined SA/NT Navy Legal Reserve Panel. He is Director of the Adelaide Military Law Program and a member of the Ploughshares/McGill University/George Washington University 'Space Security Index' Consortium. He was awarded his Doctorate from Harvard Law School in 2014.

Political Thinker: Episode 8 - Dale Stephens CSM

This week, there is no guest. Rather, Christopher reads a paper he wrote in 2017 on the history of the Great Leap Forward. Please note that this paper contains lot of details about death. Also please note that this paper was written as an academic exercise and is based on fact, and is not based on opinion. References: Ball, Joseph. "Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?." Monthly Review (2006). Bachman, David. Bureaucracy, economy, and leadership in China: The institutional origins of the Great Leap Forward. Cambridge University Press, 2006. Becker, Jasper. Hungry ghosts: Chinas secret famine, 1996 Bremner-Macdonald, Christopher, Machiavelli and More, Macquarie University, 2015 Brooks, Jeffrey. Thank you, comrade Stalin!: Soviet public culture from revolution to Cold War. Princeton University Press, 2000 (CIA) The Economic Situation in Communist China, Special National Intelligence Estimate, Number 13-61, Central Intelligence Agency, 1961 Chang, Jung, and Jon Halliday. Mao: the unknown story. Random House, 2007. Kung, James Kai-sing, and Justin Yifu Lin. "The causes of China’s great leap famine, 1959–1961." Economic Development and Cultural Change 52.1 (2003): 51-73. Li, Wei, and Dennis Tao Yang. "The Great Leap Forward: Anatomy of a central planning disaster." Journal of Political Economy 113.4 (2005): 840-877. MacFarquhar, Roderick, The origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 3: The Great Leap Forward, Oxford 1983, Oxford University Press, 1997. Manning, Kimberley Ens. "Making a Great Leap Forward? The politics of women's liberation in Maoist China." Gender & History 18.3 (2006): 574-593. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. "The communist manifesto (1848)." Trans. Samuel Moore. London: Penguin (1967). More, Thomas, Utopia, Book II, 1551 More, Sir Thomas. "Utopia. 1551." Trans. Raphe Robynson. Utopia with the'Dialogue of Comfort." Everyman's Library. London: Dutton (1910). Peng, Xizhe. "Demographic consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's provinces." Population and development review (1987): 639-670. Song, Shige. "Does famine have a long-term effect on cohort mortality? Evidence from the 1959–1961 Great Leap Forward Famine in China." Journal of biosocial science 41.04 (2009): 469-491. Song, Shige. "Does famine influence sex ratio at birth? Evidence from the 1959–1961 Great Leap Forward Famine in China." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences (2012) Song, Shige. "Mortality consequences of the 1959–1961 Great Leap Forward famine in China: Debilitation, selection, and mortality crossovers." Social science & medicine 71.3 (2010): 551-558. Song, Shige, Wei Wang, and Peifeng Hu. "Famine, death, and madness: schizophrenia in early adulthood after prenatal exposure to the Chinese Great Leap Forward Famine." Social science & medicine 68.7 (2009): 1315-1321. Spence, Jonathan, The Search for Modern China. Second Edition, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999, pages 548-553 Sylvester, Richard S. "SI HYTHLODAEO CREDIMUS": Vision and Revision in Thomas More's" Utopia." Soundings 51.3 (1968) Teiwes, Frederick C., and Warren Sun. China's road to disaster: Mao, central politicians, and provincial leaders in the unfolding of the Great Leap Forward, 1955-1959. No. 24. ME Sharpe, 1999. Vogel, Ezra F. Deng Xiaoping and the transformation of China. Vol. 10. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. Zagarell, Allen, et al. "Trade, women, class, and society in ancient Western Asia [and comments and reply]." Current Anthropology 27.5 (1986): 415-430. News Paper Sources Akbar, Arifa, Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years', Independent UK, Friday 17 September 2010 Website Resources 58年農村人民公社化運動 Rural People's Commune Movement in 1958 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAVYb_TM7ew&feature=youtu.be

Political Thinker: Episode 7 - The Great Leap Forward

This week Christopher talks again with International Lawyer Tom Cadd. Rather than discussing a particular political issue, Tom talks about his own experiences as an international lawyer.

Political Thinker: Episode 6 - Tom Cadd (Part 2)

This week Christopher speaks to Amer El Hamra, a graduate of the University of Adelaide and who has just completed his Bachelor of Laws. They discuss Israel and Palestine, the proposed moving of the Australian Embassy and Amer's experience as an immigrant in Australia.

Political Thinker: Episode 5 - Amer El Hamra

This week Christopher talks about China with Professor Mobo Gao. His latest book, Constructing China, Clashing Views of the People's Republic. Professor Mobo Gao was born and brought up in a small Chinese village where there was no electricity until after he left the village. Gao did all kinds of farm work in the village, such as collecting night soil, cleaning pigsty and pushing a wheelbarrow. Gao did not leave the village until he went to Xiamen University to study English. He then went to the UK and had studied at Wales and Westminster universities before he completed his Master and doctorate degrees at Essex. Professor Gao has working experience at various universities in China, UK and Australia and has been visiting fellow at some of the world's leading universities, including Oxford and Harvard. Professor Gao teaches Chinese language as well as Asian studies courses. Professor Gao's charismatic style of lecturing was considered "legendary" at the University of Tasmania where he had worked before he was appointed the Director of the Confucius Institute at Adelaide in 2008. Professor Gao's research interest includes studies of rural China, contemporary Chinese politics & culture, Chinese migration to Australia and the mass media. Professor Gao's publications include four books and numerous articles.

Political Thinker: Episode 4 - Mobo Gao

This week Christopher talks to Associate Professor Wayne Errington, about his views of the current Australian political climate. Wayne Errington received his undergraduate degree and PhD from the University of Western Australia. He is the author, with Peter van Onselen, of the bestselling John Winston Howard: The Definitive Biography. Wayne has also published feature articles and opinion pieces in all the major national newspapers. His current research and teaching interests are in Australian parties and elections, as well as leadership and communication.

Political Thinker: Episode 3 - Wayne Errington

A political science podcast, with chats about current, past and future events.