Part Two of a Special Report on the arcane art of China Watching, through a three-part feature written by my father Jack Spackman on the mysterious disappearance of Francis James, who was imprisoned in China […]
In November 1969 an Australian named Francis James disappeared without trace. He was travelling by train from the southern China city of Canton, now called Guangzhou, to Hong Kong. He was last seen by his […]
Australia’s rush to embrace sweeping powers to access the digital footprints of its citizenry has raised the existential age-old question: What is a journalist? The development of the government’s data retention bill and its implications […]
Like many children I had no real idea of what my parents did for a living so the last thing I expected on a visit to Sydney in 1973 was to hear my dad Jack […]
In a scene straight out of childhood, I was sitting at the breakfast table with my father Jack Spackman, both of us with noses buried in the morning newspaper. It was one of the last times […]
It was a bleak day for Democracy in Queensland on Saturday, 31 January 2015. As voters went to the polls, something didn’t smell right. An important element was missing. And its absence was to cost […]
Any faint hope that a new year would shine a light in the growing darkness enveloping our planet was quickly shattered with the slaughter of a bunch of cartoonists working for an obscure publication in […]
Copyright: Maria Spackman
