Quadrant articles from December 2003

Quadrant archives from December 2003

The coming inter-generational struggle.(Editorial)
December 1, 2003... THERE HAS BEEN a continuing barrage of propaganda in favour of Australia aiming for a higher population figure than that which current demographic trends suggest will be the case. Will there be 25 or 30 million Australians in 2030? Should we...

"Australian Jesus".(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... SIR: Last April I made my first visit to the National Museum in Canberra. As I entered the building, one of the staff handed me an introductory brochure to the museum. I thanked her, unfolded the glossy pamphlet and was immediately and quite...

Powers and laws.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... SIR: In my review of George Molnar's fine book Powers (September 2003) I spoke of the tired rhetoric that followers of Hume direct against the old metaphysics of powers, now revived by Molnar and many other distinguished philosophers. I did not...

The massacre question.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... SIR: In Keith Windschuttle's riposte (October 2003) to Robert Manne (ed.), Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History, there is a deafening silence about massacres. This is odd, because Windschuttle made his recent...

President versus Prime Minister.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... SIR: Professor Winterton responded (Letters, September 2003) to my statement, in "President versus Prime Minister" (June 2003), that the nine constitutional monarchies in the Caribbean had never had problems with their governors-general. He...

The Rockefellers and money.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... SIR: Generally I enjoy articles by Frank Devine, but in the September issue he has relied too much on his memory rather than on the printed page when referring to Laurance Rockefeller's involvement with the Reader's Digest: ...

Reason and laughter.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... SIR: B.J. Coman's "Laughter and Misfortune--A Paradox" (October 2003) touches not only the transition from early Australian humour to the more sophisticated modern form that deals rather with the human tendency to see something funny in another...

The real Camus.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... SIR: I applaud the intent of Russell Blackford's article (October 2003), that the ideas of Albert Camus are both "attractive and liberating", and still provide a "challenge for more traditional worldviews"; but I feel the reason Camus's ideas...

War and morality.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... SIR: Bishop Tom Frame wrote on "Ideology, Morality and the War in Iraq" (September 2003). Appeals to morality are not new. As a student, I was told that "morality is not the law", but thankfully, I gain increasing respect for laws that have...

Three new social laws.(Society)
December 1, 2003... THE FIRST LAW: Social problems will increase to the extent that social workers control social policy. THE NUMBER of social workers has grown enormously. The common assumption is that they are needed because social problems have become more...

The Cisco Kid's Farewell.
December 1, 2003... THE CISCO KID'S FAREWELL Pancho, something has eaten the perfect brim of my hat. My fancy shirt has bitten the dust. And I last saw your sombrero sailing down the Rio Grande. I thought you were under it, ...

A book the greens don't want you to read.(The Environment)
December 1, 2003... Those who try to condemn or embarrass you by the company you keep will usually be found to be in very poor company themselves; in any case they are, as I was once taught to say, tackling the man, and not the ball. --Christopher Hitchens,...

Building the total university.(Universities)
December 1, 2003... WHEN SAMUEL BECKETT was asked why he made the two tramps Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot sound as if they had earned PhDs, he replied: "How do you know they hadn't?" There are universities everywhere in Australia, yet nowhere do...

Yregami.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... YREGAMI A warm stocking caught among limbs evokes a country road and abandoned poodles growing out on the paddocks sway like charred trunks. Sliced whitefish bony with wind and very high up recall an autumn...

Reformations old and new.(Religion)
December 1, 2003... THE VISIT TO AUSTRALIA of Bishop John Shelby Spong, a man of high integrity, is a challenge to those churches that announce the proclamation of "the Bible for today's world". Scarcely any other contemporary Christian thinker confronts the...

Still Life, Other Life.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... STILL LIFE, OTHER LIFE Pears on a white cloth, a jonquil in a glass, the blue and white tea-cup and the jug of milk quietly speak of order, calm, and the sanctuary of home, where floors are swept, the...

Pears.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... PEARS are so voluptuous lolling in the bowl Their rounded haunches make me think of Colette's courtesans Even their names are suggestive Madame Doyenne du Comice Mademoiselle Beurre Bosc and Mrs...

Is America "one nation under God"?
December 1, 2003... The Anglo-Saxons--lacking grace To win the love of any race; Hated by myriads dispossessed Of rights--the Indies East and West. These pirates of the sphere! Grave looters--Grave, canting, Mammonite freebooters, ...

Labor's other Jack Ferguson.(Politics)
December 1, 2003... THERE ARE TWO Jack Fergusons who have been important in modern Australian Labor politics. One of them is now enrolled in Labor's pantheon of heroes and the other is not but, as is the Labor way, this has nothing to do with intrinsic merit or...

The minister, the ambassador, and the prize.(Culture ... a film about Australian aboriginal rites is honoured )
December 1, 2003... FUNNY THINGS happen in Canberra. But the happening staged by Mr W.C. Wentworth and the Italian Ambassador thirty-five years ago was not just funny, it was to have peculiar and fateful consequences. On Thursday November 28, 1968, at the News and...

Nowhere in the world.(Fictional Work)
December 1, 2003... NOWHERE IN THE WORLD Driving toward Broken Hill on the Menindee Road, you round a bend, and the poppet heads of North Mine, rising like protective totems, are silhouetted in a sudden, dark outcrop of strength and permanence, like a...

The pursuit of truth and the survival of freedom.(The Media)
December 1, 2003... THE OCTOBER issue of Quadrant properly heralded on its cover that this was the 400th number. Apart from that simple statement the editor exercised admirable restraint--too admirable, I believe--in not elaborating on the extraordinary...

Autumn Cornflowers.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... AUTUMN CONRFLOWERS A friend rings to tell me he's writing my name, Turner, on all the old thermal underwear he can find and is going to hang the lot on a fence on the West Coast. I can't think why except that it's his way of...

What the Provo Said to Me.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... WHAT THE PROVO SAID TO ME Easter 2003 It was a true Republican I met that Easter day, One who knew his history And was not afraid to say That the time for war was over, That the end had come, That, short of hitting London...

Lament for a Town.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... LAMENT FOR A TOWN Once its wide streets were herring-boned with utes and Holdens and Fords parked in the pepper-tree shade. Not now. Traffic's more likely to be a boy on a bike and a dog. Furniture's stored in the cinema, the...

On the cattle track.(History)
December 1, 2003... The AUSTRALIAN Aboriginal story is about not just the original culture, dispossession and government policies, but also a gradual accommodation to the Western way of life. This is one of the strands in Mary Anne Jebb's Blood, Sweat and Welfare:...

Mr Justice Wombat.
December 1, 2003... MR JUSTICE WOMBAT One I crept on--to watch how he might fetch the wind-- falter under a post and rail-- halt deaf, dumb, almost blind. He is an old warty boot thrown out in the rain, that the sun glosses...

Still a fateful conflict: the Korean War fifty years on.
December 1, 2003... FIFTY YEARS AGO the Korean War came to an end. The forces involved negotiated an armistice signed on July 27, 1953, though no permanent peace agreement ensued. The temporary nature of the settlement no less than the effects the war had upon the...

The Afghan thread.(Tin Mosques and Ghantowns: A History of Cameldrivers in Australia)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... AFTER A CONFRONTATION with Turkish soldiers in Palestine during the First World War, an Australian soldier lay wounded on the ground awaiting his inevitable capture, if not death, at the hands of the enemy. He had already taken one bullet, and...

Notice.
December 1, 2003... NOTICE Ronni dies on Bondi beach. He dies because he's out of reach. Four lawmen found his craze too much their pistols kept them out of touch. The local youth gangs run the Mall the papers tell us, after all....

The Stolen Book of Kells.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... THE STOLEN BOOK OF KELLS That Gospel was found after twenty nights and two months with its gold stolen from it, buried in the ground --Chronicles of the Annals of Ulster 1006-7 A book without a cover...

Rescuing the castaway: the case of William Cowper.(Literature)
December 1, 2003... WHEN SOMEONE remarks that variety is the spice of life or claims to be monarch of all they survey; when they joke about tobacco being a pernicious weed or cry drunkenly, "England, with all thy faults, I love thee still", before moving on to...

Salination.
December 1, 2003... SALINATION Have a heart; salted land is caused by human tears.

The Book.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... THE BOOK The big book is like a piece of old rugged wood, For it shaves away to reveal its beautiful story.

The siege of reality.(Russian authors have sought to define national identity)
December 1, 2003... "Bad men have no songs "--How is it that the Russians have songs? --Nietzsche THE TITLE (Natasha's Dance) of Orlando Figes' brilliant panorama of Russian culture, in eight thematic chapters from Pushkin to Stravinsky, derives from a...

Veronica's Veil.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... VERONICA'S VEIL Blessed are you who serve the homeless, who embrace the desperate and draw them back, calm their distress with love that murmurs underneath all you do. Pause and contemplate that woman who, when...

The glory that was Denis.
December 1, 2003... THE PARODY of Sir Denis Thatcher with his golf clubs, a snort of rotgut in one hand and maybe a cigarette in the other, and Margaret looming in the background, won the hearts of the British. It all appeared in the cult satirical magazine...

Mustafa Aziz in the Underworld.
December 1, 2003... MUSTAFA AZIZ IN THE UNDERWORLD And as I have told you, Omar Khayyam, my guide and mentor, spirited me to this cruel place where blessed Allah casts down flawed souls, And I saw such hideous wonders of suffering, ...

British and French noir: Inspector Morse, Rififi and Le Cercle Rouge.(Film)
December 1, 2003... INSPECTOR MORSE film noir? What about all those Oxford locations photographed in spring and summer, and the love affair the series had with the British countryside? Film noir--literally black fill or cinema--was a term coined by postwar French...

The White Shirt.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... THE WHITE START I bought a white shirt in John's Menswear today, A sign that my youth is passing away-- A colour I once was unwilling to wear When I had no belly and twice as much hair. My reds and my yellows now...

Before the Word "Fuck" Came to Common Use.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... BEFORE THE WORD "FUCK" CAME TO COMMON USE Before the word "fuck" came to common use (Even toddlers going to play school know it now), Before the lid was raised on child abuse, We said that we were innocent. But how? ...

For when you write about the important things.
December 1, 2003... They started at the front door. Her dad swept and her mum washed, or maybe it was the other way round. The floor was a checkerboard of black and white lino tiles. The black ones had skid marks, of grey and white, like bird shit running through...

The Mission Magazines.
December 1, 2003... THE MISSION MAGAZINES They're in decline, the Africa, Mission Outlook, The Far East, The divine word is dying With its nuns and priests. This testament to piety, These little acts of hope With pictures of...

Those Smorgasbord Catholics.(Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia, by James Franklin; Macleay Press, 2003, $59.95. JAMES FRANKLIN, the author of this indispensable guide to Australian philosophy, is a hard man to pin down. He is a mathematician...

More Liberal than thou (I).
December 1, 2003... What's Wrong with the Liberal Party? by Greg Barns; Cambridge University Press, 2003, $29.95. "When I use a word, "' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less." "The...

More Lliberal than thou (II).
December 1, 2003... ALL POLITICAL STAFFERS are prone to fantasy. Most just see themselves in their bosses' shoes. I like to think I'm walking down that beach with Robert Kennedy and Freckles the dog, helping him carry the weight of the world on his shoulders just...

The shelter of each other.(Island: Collected Stories by Alistair MacLeod)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Island." Collected Stories, by Alistair MacLeod; Vintage, 2002, $24.95. LIKE THE ELF-QUEEN Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings, the Highland Scots can surely say, "Through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat." The first...

Translating Ungaretti.(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Selected Poems, by Giuseppe Ungaretti, translated by Andrew Frisardi; Carcanet, 2003, about $50. THE TASK of a translator is a thankless one; the best that one can hope for is that the criticism will be counterbalanced by an equal measure...

The meeting of the discrepancies.(The Meeting of the Waters: the Hindmarsh Island Affair)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... The Meeting of the Waters: The Hindmarsh Island Affair, by Margaret Simons; Hodder Headline, 2003, $45. IN The Meeting of the Waters Margaret Simons attempts to resurrect the "women's business" at Hindmarsh Island. This "women's business"...

Nice old Gaia!(2007: A True Story, Waiting to Happen)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... 2007: A True Story, Waiting to Happen, by Robyn Williams; Hodder Headline, 2003, $29.95. ROBYN WILLIAMS, head of ABC radio's Science Unit, President of the Australian Museum, Foundation Commissioner for the Future and holder of many other...

Ode to Edinburgh, without Irony.(Poem)
December 1, 2003... Ode to Edinburgh, without Irony The not too distant hills are white with a snow-covering silence, water seizes up on the footpaths, and crackles, foxing under every toe. The Scots could be stopped by it but...

Third thoughts on James Burnham.(Ryan)
December 1, 2003... JAMES WHO? Does he ring any bell in your mind? If he does, you are probably about eighty years old, and blessed with a good memory. Last week I tried Burnham's name out on three former academic political scientists of riper years: "Y-e-e-rrs....