Quadrant articles from July 2006

Quadrant archives from July 2006

The new media and the (same) old media.(Editorial)
July 1, 2006... THE MEDIA SCENE continues to develop in fascinating ways. The newspapers, especially the broadsheets, are having a great deal of difficulty in adapting to the development of the internet. Those, like the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, who...

Religious faith and terrorism.(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... SIR: "Moderation and democracy have been regular partners," says Archbishop Pell (May 2006). Only very recently and only at home. European democracies have regularly crushed extra-parliamentary opposition with extreme violence. American and...

Nineteen eighty-four!(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... SIR: I notice that in the articles "The Madness of University Managerialism" by Malcolm Saunders (March 2006), and "Koestler, Orwell, and the Inversion of Logic" by Marta Feher (May 2006), the two authors, who are university academics, refer to...

John Howard and the art of democratic leadership.
July 1, 2006... HOW ARE WE TO UNDERSTAND the significance of the "Howard years" and his place in Australian history? How are we to look beyond parochial concern with the day-to-day workings of politics and attempt to get a sense of the wider significance of...

From a Tourist Journal.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... FROM A TOURIST JOURNAL In a precinct of liver stone, high on its dais, the Taj seems bloc hail. We came to Agra over honking roads being built under us, past baby wheat and undoomed beasts and walking people. ...

Bluelookout Mountain.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... BLUELOOKOUT MOUNTAIN Bluelookout is a tractor climb to where you see the South Pacific. The animals who stay up there don't know to see it. Bluelookout is the colours and smooth texture of forest pigeons ...

At a Loss for Words.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... AT A LOSS FOR WORDS Words do the best they can but they can't cope with happiness; instead they shift from foot to foot and whistle tunelessly like someone waiting for a bus or look discomfited like...

Tribal yearnings: the enemies of the open society today.
July 1, 2006... FUNNY WORD, tribe. Karl Popper used it a lot but in polite circles you don't hear it much today. Around 1960 the feeling arose among progressive thinkers that it was pejorative, and it fell into disuse, probably in relation to developments in...

No Bed.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... NO BED When love is on the wrong side of the sheets romance must give way to expedience and, short of coupling in the public streets, all places serve at love's convenience. Beside stormwater drains; in fields of...

The Lesson.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... THE LESSON Round and round we circled, his hand steadying my bike-interrupted by cockerel cries and a cow bellowing for her calf. He was forty-five, I eleven. We'd done so many circuits I knew the ground...

Epithalamium:.(for Alexia and Jurgen)(Poem)
July 1, 2006... EPITHALAMIUM (for Alexia and Jurgen) The bride travels along village lanes, past gateways of lilac, purple blossoms dropping perfume. Her car advances slowly. She's tilting the hours, raking moments. Her wedding...

Growing up under Hitler: an interview with Hans Faubel.(Interview)
July 1, 2006... HANS FAUBEL emigrated from Germany to Australia with his wife in 1960. He worked as an engineer in the Latrobe Valley for the State Electricity Commission of Victoria, and died in 2005. In an interview with Robert Murray he reflected on the...

The Dreyfus affair: one hundred years on.(Book review)
July 1, 2006... "BRAVO ZOLA", the eighteen-year-old Winston Churchill, then in Paris, wrote to his mother, "I am delighted to witness the complete debacle of this monstrous conspiracy." He was speaking of the re-trial of Alfred Dreyfus and his outburst...

Surviving germ warfare in the colonies.
July 1, 2006... THE GENERAL CONSENSUS seems to be that the average person's ability to withstand the germs of yesteryear is suspect to say the least. With disinfectant around every corner, in the home, workplace and restaurants (understandably) there is a...

One small battle in a big war.
July 1, 2006... COMPARED TO PREVIOUS generations, few Australians have had anything much to do with the military. Yet at the same time, as John Birmingham observed in his 2005 Quarterly Essay, the military have "regained their position as a pre-eminent...

Roman Lizard.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... ROMAN LIZARD The lizard slid into sight from two stones. Its skin shone, dark green with yellow dots. It edged forward, regarded parts of its world. Its throat pulsed. A woman passed and it withdrew...

Another Sea Scene.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... ANOTHER SEA SCENE Yes, the sunlight glitters on the water as it has before, as it will again. Your seeing it this way can hardly matter. You are one of millions, like those azure threads warping and weaving the...

Heaving as Herds Do.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... HEAVING AS HERDS DO Heaving as herds do, slowly, at night, one's aware of the sea in one's sleep.

John Wheeldon: the Quadrant chapter.(Obituary)(Biography)
July 1, 2006... JOHN WHEELDON, then a Labor senator, first aroused Quadrant's enthusiasm in 1979 when he wrote the Report on Human Rights in the Soviet Union for the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. It was one of the best reports that...

Ern Malley's Sister.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... ERN MALLEY'S SISTER She sprang into life Just like her balderdash brother He suitably attired For further inspection She in drab garb But tidy, neat And redolent of honest aspirations. Ern's ghost still...

Elevator.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... ELEVATOR We shudder to a sudden crashing stop; I stare at him as he looks back at me, suspended above the thirty-story drop, as calm in our business suits as calm can be. We talk the market, sports, even our fears, ...

A temperate approach to alcohol abuse.
July 1, 2006... ALCOHOL PLAYS A PART in the deaths of 7000 Australians, and costs the nation more than $A7 billion, every year. It contributes to countless motor vehicle, maritime and workplace accidents and instances of domestic violence and malicious damage....

Anti-Zionism in Australian Academia.
July 1, 2006... THE DOMINANT political culture on Australian university campuses brings to mind a scene from the classic movie Casablanca. A naive young woman approaches the nightclub owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) to enquire about the character of the...

Britain's policing madness.
July 1, 2006... AMERICAN AND BRITISH criminologists have long been puzzled and angered by the fact that Britain seems to have learnt nothing from the experience of New York in successfully reducing crime. The big drop in virtually all types of crime in New...

Cricket Ball.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... CRICKET BALL Forget its shape. What binds two hemispheres? Opponents work a mutual seam.

Circuit.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... CIRCUIT From a buoyed black cloud The kick-start of thunder, Lightning circling around you.

Rattle.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... RATTLE Up a slope, early morning, Roller skates are Shutters up along the street.

Wistful.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... WISTFUL Silver-haired, she's tending The last ruse of summer, A tendril hanging on.

The mystery of HIV/AIDS.(acquired immune deficiency syndrome, human immunodeficiency virus)
July 1, 2006... TENS OF MILLIONS of HIV tests accumulated over twenty years of testing show that HIV is not a sexually transmitted infection. That conclusion is diametrically opposed to "what everyone knows". But the data pointing to the conclusion are in...

Two degrees of separation.(Devine)(grandparenting)
July 1, 2006... Everything happened in the dining room. Seemed a huge, wonderful place to me, like a room in a palace... What do you reckon? Eight or nine metres by six or so?... At least. Did anybody ever go into the front room?... Not the family, anyway....

Sociology one meets Othello.(Education)
July 1, 2006... IN APRIL 2006, the way Shakespeare is taught at SCEGGS, a Sydney based independent girls school, was cited in the Australian as an example of the way the more traditional approach to literature has been subverted. Instead of valuing the play...

Warrant for Zionicide? Sabeel's agenda in Australia.(Foreign Affairs)(Sabeel Institute: The Ecumenical Liberation Centre )
July 1, 2006... THESE DAYS CONTROVERSY seems never too far from the worldwide Anglican community. One example of this is the current rumpus in the Synod of the mother church in England over the policy to disinvest from Israel, to be achieved by withdrawing...

International Dateline: Kiribati, 12/31/93.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... INTERNATIONAL DATELINE Kiribati, 12/31/93 From Fiji, we gently sailed the Trades, off-shore the Marshall coasts and reefs, to Coral Bay, the final night of that final year before they moved the dateline east on New Year's...

Driving on empty.(Defence)(australia's military policy)
July 1, 2006... THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S political strategy of regularly moving from one theme to another, one set of proposed changes and reforms to another, has earned it many dividends. It has kept the initiative, by acting; the Opposition has merely...

Disgruntlements.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... DISGRUNTLEMENTS To hell with humankind! It's enough to make you give up doctoring! I keep telling myself this is the last time I ever want to see anyone-- after all, what's it to me if they want to outdo the...

Moments.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... MOMENTS When haste meets dilation rising from well, soft fontanelle risking headbutt to first light Spineup book on midnight quilt Finisterre click of bedside lamp glutting the room with dry ink ...

Five postcards from Badenweiler.(Travel)
July 1, 2006... 1 IF IT'S TRUE that all the great spa towns, those temples of propriety from Carlsbad to Vichy, are really vantage points for observing Europe as an allegory--this was the whim of the aristocratic memoirist Charles Joseph, Prince de Ligne...

Thalidomide:.(A synthetic drug removed from sale because it caused abnormalities in developing fetuses.)(Poem)
July 1, 2006... THALIDOMIDE (A synthetic drug removed from sale because it caused abnormalities in developing fetuses.) He stands at the bar, just tall enough to lean forward and be able to drink his whiskey through a straw. His arms...

Charm of the old world.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... CHARM OF THE OLD WORLD With a basket in one hand, shopping list in the other he said Sixty years ago they'd write your name in a book and after a month you'd get a little present moving away down the aisle, leaning...

Epic foreplay: the pleasures of preparing to read the Iliad in Greek.(Literature)
July 1, 2006... LIKE THE PLEASURE of setting the dinner table to welcome friends recently returned after many years overseas, polishing the crystal glasses one by one, the pleasures of getting ready to read Homer in Greek are by definition minor ones, soon...

Philosophy.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... PHILOSOPHY I should be deciding whether to put up a fence at the end of the carport to hide the hanging laundry, but I'm reading this introduction to philosophy, not original works, but a primer on issues...

The devil is an Englishman.(John Wilmot beliefs)(Biography)
July 1, 2006... HE IS ONE of the rudest and most debauched poets ever to write in English, and also one of the most privileged. Restoration poet and satirist John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, was a more accomplished writer than Lord Byron or the Marquis...

Thank You Note.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... THANK YOU NOTE Last night in the wee hours during the last Dream cycle, you snuck in the house to speak to me In that jumbled way that those who have to Send messages through dreamwork speak. Who You were or still are...

Near Edenville.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... NEAR EDENVILLE Stone fences ring the fields where cows still graze and cornfields, stubble now, gleaned by the birds. New fences laid by masons show that time and the proper tools can shape a wall precise as...

Fantasia on the classical music repertoire.(Music)
July 1, 2006... THE MOZART INDUSTRY is working overtime in his 250th birthday year. Soon the Austrians may have to outsource the manufacture of those delicious Mozartkugeln to Taiwan or South Korea, causing unemployment in Salzburg and Vienna. But of course...

Jakob Edelstein and the colonel.(Biography)
July 1, 2006... In Memoriam Irenka Kraus, the kind and patient madricha (teacher) who looked after teenage girls in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, barrack L410. In autumn 1944, Irenka's mother was selected for a transport travelling east... The train stood on the...

Salt of the Earth.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... SALT OF THE EARTH That brackish lingering Solway smell when the tide went miles out and left the spiralled excavations of sandworms. Salt-- it was our tribute, a cone of oxide on a Mysore merchant's scales; ...

Those Ruined Photographs.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... THOSE RUINED PHOTOGRAPHS Think of the photographs we called ruined: focused on a scene we meant to capture, sawgrass erect against a gunmetal sky, or the almost vertical mountains circled by switchbacks we couldn't...

Bertrand Tavernier, light and dark.(Film)
July 1, 2006... THANK GOD for SBS and World Movies. With the demise of arthouses, more and more have we come to rely on DVD and above all television to see important European films. I must confess that when I first came across references to French director...

Tobias Smollett in the Var.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... TOBIAS SMOLLETT IN THE VAR Having survived various aubergistes and the chanter of the laddie-weans, the Dignity of Physick came, in person, to Frejus, with its amphitheatre and the distant prospect of Esterelles-- ...

Chanson.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... CHANSON On the one side the Vosges, lip of the Paris basin; on the other the cosy spa towns, the Black Forest's deep exhalations of the German night. I stood in someone's shoes, marvelling at the...

Swan song.(Short story)
July 1, 2006... Sitting on the train to Eastbourne, looking at the seemingly interminable and unintelligible graffiti on the buildings beside the line, he wondered if it had really been a good idea, booking himself into this hotel for Christmas. He'd had an...

A policeman in the house.
July 1, 2006... I recall the occasion when it was required of my mother that a policeman help her with her parcels home. It was winter. It was raining. The policeman had a red nose. He stood in the kitchen. We were all in the kitchen. The kitchen was the...

Kursk.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... KURSK We only have one torch. We are keeping it turned off Most of the time. We are lying on top bunks We have the air in front of us Our backs against the Barents Sea. We have children in Murmansk. ...

Bag Hook.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... BAG HOOK I bought a bag hook for the men who used to use them from a table selling junk spoke-shaves, plumb-bobs and a brass blow-torch. From fist grip handles talons curved between their fingers before...

Athena.
July 1, 2006... She has smooth skin and such soft flesh. I could dip my cupped hands into that softness and bring it to my lips. "I feel nothing there," she tells my hands as they scoop and swim, looking, searching. "Nothing?" I frown back at her. ...

What history teaches the Jews: the vichy syndrome.(Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, by Tony Judt; William Heinemann, 2005, about $60. A listener calls up Armenian Radio with a question: "Is it possible to foretell the future?" Answer: "Yes, no problem. We know exactly what the...

A bit of a Lion, a bit of an ass.(Socialist Champion: Portrait of the Gentleman as Crusader)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Socialist Champion: Portrait of the Gentleman as Crusader, by John Barnes; Arcadia/Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2005, $39.95. "I LIKE THE POOR MAN'S politics and the rich man's dinners," the overly frank pioneer socialist Henry Hyde...

Ethics and action.(Catholic Values and Australian Realities )(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Catholic Values and Australian Realities, by James Franklin; Connor Court Publishing, 2006, $29.95. JAMES FRANKLIN lectures in Mathematics in the University of New South Wales, but is best known to a wider public for his work in...

Moments outside the goldfish bowl.(The Thames and I: A Memoir of Two Years at Oxford)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... The Thames and I: A Memoir of Two Years at Oxford, by Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan; Global Oriental, 2006, about $100. JAPAN'S ROYALS devote themselves to esoteric and inoffensive pursuits. Nothing as controversial as, say, Princess...

At a Dinner Party in Melbourne.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... AT A DINNER PARTY IN MELBOURNE I ducked out the back, and lit up with joy, A Cuban escape from the couples inside: They're happy, they're smiling, they're chatting And touching, they're laughing and planning. The fifth...

A Continuing Bias.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... A CONTINUING BIAS There are some who still refuse to hear That a boy of no renown, From a little country town, Was, in point of fact, Shakespeare.

Too many journalists, not enough news.
July 1, 2006... THE SHARP POINT of a witty sally often wins an argument, even when the other side has the weight of facts and reasoning in its favour. This is probably unfair, because the funny man (or woman) trades shamelessly on our normal impatience and...