Quadrant articles from September 2003

Quadrant archives from September 2003

Foreign policy in theory and practice.(Editorial)
September 1, 2003... THERE IS a great tension between the policy makers and the academics concerned with foreign policy in Australia. While the former have to deal with actual issues of national security and our place in a dangerous world, the latter are obsessed...

Solving the head-of-state problem.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... SIR: The Hon. Mr Justice Handley (June 2003) is to be congratulated on his astute and careful assessment of recent constitutional problems arising from the head-of-state issue in Trinidad and elsewhere. He rightly points out the latent weakness...

Phillip Knightley's credentials.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... SIR: In the July-August Quadrant Nell McDonald takes one Phillip Knightley as an authority for the allegation that the Pentagon murdered journalists in the recent Gulf War. Mr McDonald claims: Phillip Knightley has concluded that:...

Correct title.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... SIR: I refer to former visiting Professor Dalrymple's article "With Diplomatic Zeal" (June 2003). There is much with which I could take issue in this article and although I have been encouraged to do so by a number of colleagues, who...

Religion, science and social order.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... SIR: The essays by Archbishop Pell, Michael Casey and John Russell in the July-August issue call for a response both individually and taken as a set of reflections on Catholicism in contemporary society. John Russell's piece stands in the...

The witch hunters.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... SIR: Binoy, Kampmark (July-August 2003), writing on the Hollingworth case, does admirably to emphasise individual contributions such as the informed reasonableness of I.C.F. Spry's discussion, in contrast to the unjust assumptions of...

Frontier history.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... SIR: Robert Murray's review (July-August 2003) of my Goodbye Bussamarai: The Mandadanji Land War, Southern Queensland 1842-1852 is fair and reasonable. I do not agree with some of his comments but that is as it should be. By pointing out...

Papua New Guinea before independence.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... SIR: By chance, I had been re-reading some of the ABC's Papua New Guinea news bulletins I had written nearly fifty years ago when I picked up the May 2003 issue, with Graeme Dobell's perceptive critique of Australia's Pacific foreign policy....

The left's power of facing.(Politics)(Critical Essay)
September 1, 2003... IN "WHY I WRITE", published in 1946, George Orwell wrote of his early youth: I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts." In Orwell's Victory, Iris recent book on Orwell, Christopher Hitchens pauses to...

Is the Howard government conservative?(Politics)
September 1, 2003... JOHN HOWARD's detractors have taken to calling him the most conservative prime minister in Australia's history. No doubt they mean this as an insult. If only it were true. Howard has, in fact, continued the Labor-initiated process of...

Australia's place in the world.(Politics)
September 1, 2003... EDMUND BURKE once described society as a partnership between those who are alive today, those who have gone before us, and those yet to come. This means that what we have, and what we are, are not so much the result of our own efforts. We owe...

Ideology, morality and the war in Iraq.(Defence)
September 1, 2003... A WAR AGAINST IRAQ would be aggressive, destructive, unnecessary, protracted, illegal, and evil. These wore some of the public assessments made early in 2003 about the proposed multinational campaign to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass...

Anti-American chic.(Foreign Affairs)
September 1, 2003... THE MANICHAEAN clarity of the Cold War has been sufficiently obscured by the rise of anti-Americanism to make it virtually impossible to assume that all the then anticommunists are now staunch supporters of the United States, or to imagine that...

New constitutions--Japan and Iraq.(Foreign Affairs)
September 1, 2003... WHEN THE LAST shots have been fired and the neighbourhood vigilante groups in Baghdad and Basra put their guns back in the cupboards, a new Iraqi leadership--to be guided by an American proconsul--will consider a new form of constitutional...

The King and I.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... THE KING AND I When the Great King Ahasuerus Goosed me daily on the terrace, I grew terribly embarrassed And, indeed, bereft, Bending, tending my syringas, Ambushed by bejewelled fingers Lingering with...

The strange virtue of people-smuggling.(Society)
September 1, 2003... And although Herr Schindler's merit is well documented, it is a feature of his ambiguity that he worked within or, at least, on the strength of, a corrupt and savage scheme; one which filled Europe with camps of varying but consistent...

A plea to Quadrant readers.(Editorial)
September 1, 2003... Dear Reader, Machiavelli warned the Prince that what "'physicians say about a disease is applicable here: that at a beginning a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose; but as time passes, not having been recognised or treated at...

Days at the Digest.(Devine)
September 1, 2003... IN AN IMPROBABLY long and implausibly varied career in journalism, I suppose I count my coverage of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow as the high point. Tchaikovsky turned my despatches into a long-running musical and Tolstoy borrowed...

The Last Anzac.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... THE LAST ANZAC He has gone out now further than the little beach that dreamed his death. At 103 the years had not condemned--but wearied him he no longer believed being 16 mattered. He never...

On His Father Going to the Wars: after a newspaper photograph.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... ON HIS FATHER GOING TO THE WARS after a newspaper photograph At five he is young enough to wear his father's airforce cap at a rakish angle like a new recruit but old enough to understand the sad flag fall in his...

Sanctuary from the monsoons: the artistic life of Mary Alice Evatt.(Art)
September 1, 2003... HAVE YOU NOTICED a subtle change that has come over the Australian political scene? Not so long ago the spouses and partners of our political leaders lived entirely private lives. They might turn up at a few political functions. They might...

The art of Mary Alice Evatt.(Art)(Critical Essay)
September 1, 2003... IT IS FASCINATING to think about the inter-relationships of art and politics. In England it was not unusual for politicians to have some knowledge and love of art. In the late twenties, when Anthony Eden entered the House of Commons he not only...

At Hartland Point.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... AT HARTLAND POINT Lying open, one page of your life--pure dazzle, as we breasted the ridge to where the brimming sea blocked out everything with a seethe of light riding molten in its smelt-house of salt and air. ...

The Oakeshott upshot.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... THE OAKESHOTT UPSHOT An Austrian chap in the Balkans, a prudent And sensible Archduke, got shot by a This Serbian student called Gavrilo Princip. Shot him and his wife And it led to more strife, All...

Writing the country: the continuing exploration of the interior.(History)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... IT WAS ONLY in the first half of the twentieth century that the more remote regions of Central Australia became a significant object of interest to the littoral-hugging public. It is astonishing, when considering the current growth in...

Music, opera and film.(Film)(Critical Essay)
September 1, 2003... A FEW WEEKS AGO I attended one of those postmodernist concerts, where Mozart's Requiem was interwoven with modern pieces by the likes of John Tavener on similar themes. The rationale was supposedly explained in an elaborate program note...

The Call of the Wicketkeeper.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... THE CALL OF THE WICKETKEEPER The scowling bowler sends down a fast ball which pitches on the line of middle stump. The wicketkeeper half-chokes on a call which sounds like a scavenging gull, for all its force--a...

Seized by the gods.(Film)(Spirited Away)(Movie Review)
September 1, 2003... WITHIN FIVE MONTHS of its opening in Japan in July 2001, Miyazaki Hayao's film Spirited Away, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and has recently won an Academy Award, had been seen by nearly 25 million people. The number so...

None of That.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... NONE OF THAT No sleep for the wicked No star for the chosen No clothes for the naked No warmth for the frozen No hope for the morbid No cure for the poison No shave for the bearded On any occasion ...

The Kitchen Grammars.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... THE KITCHEN GRAMMARS The verb in a Sanscrit or Farsi or Latin or Japanese sentence most frequently comes last as if the ingredients and spices only after collection, measure and even preservation might got...

Portrait of My Brothers as an Endurance runner.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... PORTRAIT OF MY BROTHER AS AN ENDURANCE RUNNER Now that I know the secrets of the Tarahumara tribe famous for their long-distance races, I urge my brother not to eat Mother's fatty meals. Instead I feed him...

Portrait of my brother as huitzilopochtli.(Poetry)(Short Story)
September 1, 2003... PORTRAIT OF MY BROTHER AS HUITZILOPOCHTLI He was her Sun Bird, the war god who talked to her even in her womb, promised to defend her against me. My brother--always springing fully-formed from Mother's...

Cabin fever.(Film)(Short Story)
September 1, 2003... Most of the buildings in the quartier Belfort are old and crumbling at the edges. Outside, the plaster mouldings from their balconies and windowsills drop fragments into the street, and inside they are badly insulated and draughty and heated...

Bath.(Stories)(Short Story)
September 1, 2003... When Melanie comes in from collecting the eggs, Alison tells her Mum wants to talk to her. "You'd better hurry up," she says. She's in the bathroom waiting." "The bathroom?" Melanie puts down the basket of eggs on the kitchen table and...

A Traveller's Tale.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... A TRAVELLER'S TALE for Anne Stevenson After the dusty nightmare drive through the mountains where roadside shrines leaned with their little doors sagging open, and rusted cars were breaking out of time on the...

Lessons.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... LESSONS In elementary science Miss Monro placed a nail in a tumbler of water. We were to observe it rust. In botany Mrs Marshall cut a cabbage in half and told us all to draw it. In algebra...

George's Molnar's powers.(Powers: A Study in Metaphysics)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Powers: A Study in Metaphysics, by George Molnar, edited by Stephen Mumford; Oxford University Press, 2003, $110. SYDNEY HAS KNOWN two George Molnars. The elder George Molnar was a Professor of Architecture, a painter and for many years...

Poor Australia?(Poverty in Australia: Beyond the Rhetoric)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Poverty in Australia: Beyond the Rhetoric, by Peter Saunders and Kayoko Tsumori; Centre for Independent Studies, 2002, $19.95. POOR AUSTRALIA? Poor, poor Australia? Take a look around you. If you happen to be in a supermarket or on a street...

Headmistress's indiscretions.(The Suffragette's Daughter: Betty Archdale: Her Life of Feminism, Cricket, War and Education)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... The Suffragette's Daughter: Betty Archdale: Her Life of Feminism, Cricket, War and Education, by Deirdre Macpherson; Rosenberg, 2002, $45. "DIDN' YOU USE to be someone in the sixties?" It is a classic question. Betty Archdale, headmistress...

One size fits all?(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Human Nature and the Limits of Science, by John Duple; Oxford, 2001, about $50. Who Rules in Science?, by James Robert Brown; Harvard, 2001, about $60. ONCE FRANCIS BACON had smashed the idols and Rene Descartes devised the new basic...

A Leaf Falling.(Poetry)(Poem)
September 1, 2003... A LEAF FALLING The stem snaps off, brittle as a wafer--another sycamore half-star on its way to collapse its yellow ribs on the ground. Not yet: as it slaloms the air it calls the whole valley to...

Special deliveries.(Ryan)
September 1, 2003... ON THE TABLE before me as I write lies an old used envelope. It measures about 140 centimetres wide by 100 centimetres high--not, I think, dimensions which would be accepted today as "post office preferred". (Just love that sub-fascist purr in...