Quadrant back issues from June 2007:
Global warming and scepticism.(Editorial)
Jun 01, 2007 ... IS GLOBAL WARMING a real phenomenon? If so, is it the result of human activity? If so, what can we do about it? If it is beyond human control, what should we be doing? And how urgent is it to take action? These are the central issues in what has become an increasingly important controversy ...
The Sydney Anglicans.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
Jun 01, 2007; ... SIR: You have published three letters so far about my article "The Puritan Anglicans of Sydney" (March 2007). The first from Tony Payne in April alleged "errors, distortions, historical anachronisms, and tendentious value judgments" so generally as to preclude a serious reply. ...
Humility.(Letter to the editor)
Jun 01, 2007; ... SIR: Tom Frame tackled a potentially ungrateful subject (humility) in the April issue. Despite his efforts, the term remains for me a lofty tenor for simpler taunts like self-effacing, unassuming and gracious. Given his extensive treatment, I wonder if Mr Frame found an irony in his ...
Richard Atkins.(Letter to the editor)
Jun 01, 2007; ... SIR: One of the striking aspects of Keith Windschuttle's scholarship is its boldness and ambition. His recent interesting piece, "Abolition of the Slave Trade: The Australian Connection" (April 2007), is a case in point. However, he does me an injustice in the way he refers to my treatment ...
Barzun's influence.(Letter to the editor)
Jun 01, 2007; ... SIR: While Rafe Champion (April 2007) can reasonably argue that Jacques Barzun's work on higher education seems to have been "in vain so far as our academics and intellectuals are concerned", his name is not altogether "missing from the debates". George Shipp, regional secretary of the NSW ...
Christian socialism?(Letter to the editor)
Jun 01, 2007; ... SIR: Chris Lewis's assessment (April 2007) of how different a Labor government might be in its approach to economic and workplace policies provides much food for thought, but I think the prognosis for the country under Labor is worse than he would have us believe. There are ...
Dawkins and the bible.(Letter to the editor)
Jun 01, 2007; ... SIR. David Hodgson's conclusion (May 2007), in the form of a mischievously mixed metaphor, that Richard Dawkins should be seen to be "on the side of the angels in the quest for a more peaceful world", came as a relief. I must confess that reading his article there were moments when I ...
The secret republic.(Letter to the editor)
Jun 01, 2007; ... SIR: I am interested in but undecided about an Australian republic. I am aware of what monarchists support and their reasons. Recently, at www.aussiecrown.org, I found eight questions, the answers to which would have assisted me to decide to support or oppose a republic. ...
Confronting the closed circle: reflections on the war in Iraq.(Defence)
Jun 01, 2007; ... IN 1989 THE BRITISH WRITER and war correspondent David Pryce-Jones wrote a celebrated study of the Middle East entitled The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs. In this book, Pryce-Jones demonstrated how the Arab world had chosen to reject the open-society model of social and ...
A Fence of Photos.(Poem)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> A FENCE OF PHOTOS Kingston Foreshore A fence of photos, pressed in metal,gestures briefly at the past,these workers in their 1920s,grateful for a job at last; hats and waistcoats, smiling mostly,the foreman maybe with a pipe;the Molonglo with ...
Picnickers at Pirates Bay.(Poem)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> PICNICKERS AT PIRATES BAY (Tasmanian photograph, 1910) Protected like their lamingtonsfrom sun and blowing sand ... Our captioneer then swaps to proseas if from sea to land. The poem that he started thoughshould still somehow be heard. ...
The young Heinz Arndt from the Kaiser to Hitler.(History)(World War I to World War II)(Excerpt)(Biography)
Jun 01, 2007; ... THE YEAR 1915 was not a good time for a German boy to be born. As soon as he became aware of the world, he would know that his country had been defeated in a great war, that the Emperor had abdicated and a Republic had been proclaimed amid putsches, revolutions, assassinations, ...
Just So.(Poem)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> JUST SO I woke up--my head turned just sotowards the bedroom door. Anguished. Because I had dreamt I had lost all my teeth.I had dreamt I had nothing left in my mouth. Nothing to bite on, nothing to bite with.A hollow woman with a sunken face. ...
Bert Cremean and the birth of the movement.(anticommunism)
Jun 01, 2007; ... ANY ACCOUNT of the origins of Bob Santamaria's long involvement in Australian politics, if it is to be at all enlightening, needs to shift the spotlight away from Santamaria himself. The focus instead should be more on the factional warlord--then as now a stock figure in Australian ...
Remembering the war generation.(Australia)(World War II)
Jun 01, 2007; ... THERE IS A SCENE in one of those remarkable Damien Parer documentaries of the Second World War that sticks in my mind. Some young Australian soldiers are descending, in single file, a muddy jungle track, somewhere in New Guinea. As they swing past the camera, most do not look up, but one ...
North wind nightmares.(Poem)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> North wind nightmares I'm trapped in a closet of camel-hair coatswith a hair-dryer jammed on "high" I'm chained to the mouth of a fan-forced ovenwearing a beanie I can't take off I'm sewn inside a hessian sleeping-bagleft ...
Time Being.(Poem)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> TIME BEING I watched the old soldier down the streetstop to suck a cigaretteand shuffle to the letter-box.Out. Back.It took him half an hourlugging damaged lungsto cross and re-crossthe tiny square of lawn,wanting a letter from his ...
O Tannenbaum!(Poem)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> O TANNENBAUM! I apologise to Mr Jones, the man from the shopwho donated the streamers, gifts, lollies and cordial.He didn't donate the tree, which was natural, sort of.I apologise to Sister Mary James and Judewho spent a lot of time apologising to Mr Jones ....
Ignoring signposts on the road: da'wa: jihad with a velvet glove.(Religion)
Jun 01, 2007; ... AUSTRALIAN MEDIA preoccupation with the Muhammad Dawood aka David Hicks case-along with the September 11 atrocities, the Bali, London and Madrid bombings and the Iraqi war--has assured Islamist terrorists like the Taliban, Usama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida and militant Pakistani, Indonesian, ...
Love for the Nearly Dead.(Poem)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> LOVE FOR THE NEARLY DEAD If only we had asked herwhere she fought in the history wars,before it was too late. If only I had listenedthat winter night she tried to speakabout her mother's life. I wonder where she hidher secret book with ...
Song of the Crestfallen Pigeon.(Poem)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> SONG OF THE CRESTFALLEN PIGEON The pigeon on my window-silladores a bird of woodthat gazes from this other sideas if she understood. Brought here from America,she wears a perky crestand feathers grey with olive tingeadorn her lovely ...
Jeevesville, USA.(Devine)(P.G. Wodehouse's character Jeeves in his Blanding Castle novels)(Critical essay)
Jun 01, 2007; ... UNABLE ALWAYS TO SUPPRESS the smartarse which lurks within me, I experienced a sense triumph recently when I became convinced at I had discovered the true source of P.G. Wodehouse's inspiration. Is this a matter of consequence to the intellectual life of the twenty-first ...
Pain, postmodernism and Popper.(Science)(Karl Popper)
Jun 01, 2007; ... I COME BEFORE YOU TODAY in some ways in awe and in trepidation. * I say awe because, as I have started to look into the literature on pain, I have been impressed by the sheer intellectual excitement of your work. I can think of few other fields that have so many fascinating aspects--from ...
The decline and fall of the West.(Education)(Essay)
Jun 01, 2007; ... THERE HAVE BEEN many complaints in recent times about the failures of the educational system. Professor James Allan of the University of Queensland wrote an article in the Australian on April 11 in which he bemoaned the inability of undergraduates to write English sentences. In this ...
Section 98.(Poem)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> SECTION 98 No firing squads at dawnfor cowardice or desertion ...alone among its allies, Australia muddled through:An act passed down in Melbourne(Section 98) held off the higher brass,their need for "stern examples","encourager ...
The Guantanamo detainees and the Military Commissions Act.(Law)
Jun 01, 2007; ... IN "THE IMPLICATIONS of Hamdan's Case" (Quadrant, March) we considered the decision of the US Supreme Court in Hamdan's case, which struck down the military commissions set up to try Guantanamo detainees. Following that decision, Congress had the opportunity to draft fresh ...
Look Where the Lake's Gone.(Poem)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> LOOK WHERE THE LAKE'S GONE Look where the Lake's gone--round Marks Point and out to seathrough dimpled green hollows.It's left flats of crumpling cocoawhere creatures of the Shallowget on with the afternoon's work,making patterns, plucking,...
Writing and reading the canons.(Literature)
Jun 01, 2007; ... CANONS DON'T suddenly appear. They evolve. Their evolution influences how we write and read them. There's a chicken-and-egg scenario here. What comes first, a canonical text or its ideology and aesthetic? If we believe in divinity and inspiration, we can say the shape of a canon, and what ...
Fascism on the screen.(Film)(Critical essay)
Jun 01, 2007; ... BACK IN THE MID-1970s when Leni Riefenstahl was reinventing herself as a "documentary photographer", that very public New York intellectual Susan Sontag wrote an article titled "Fascinating Fascism". Among other things she attacked the evasions in Riefenstahl's self-descriptions in her two ...
Refugees.(Poem)(Brief article)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> REFUGEES The parents are showing to the children the picturesof their home before it was burned down and they are showing the pictures of relatives who were killedwith the gesture of wiping off the fresh blood from the edges. But the kids are silent as if ...
Love is not Love.(Poem)(Brief article)
Jun 01, 2007; ... <Pre> LOVE IS NOT LOVE 1. It was never love. Not love. It waswhat the Italians call the thunderbolt. We stared. We exchanged eyes. Itwas easy. Not what we might have wanted. Not what we had planned.Many things were snatched away like ...
The Fruits of our labours.(Story)(Short story)
Jun 01, 2007; ... Three days after his daughter disappeared, Harry Driscoll phoned the police. "Cuddle Creek Police." "Ah, I'd like to report a missing person." The receptionist gave an assenting grunt. The line buzzed noisily. There was a second of silence and then a loud ...
The SS version.(Books)(Schutzstaffel, a large security and military organization of the Nazi Party in Germany)(Les Bienveillantes)(Critical essay)
Jun 01, 2007; ... Les Bienveillantes, by Jonathan Littell; Editions Gallimard, 2006, 25 [euro]. IT IS HIGHLY DISTURBING to see the fall of the Reich and the Holocaust through the eyes of an unrepentant SS officer. We are used to Primo Levi and Imre Kertesz taking us down that terrible path and to ...
What were we thinking?(Books)(Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud)(Critical essay)
Jun 01, 2007; ... Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud, by Peter Watson; Orion, 2006, $45. IDEAS, as Peter Watson admits in the introduction to his ambitious guide to how we understand our understanding of the world, do not have an especially long history. If philosophy traditionally began in ...
The danger of speaking out.(Books)(Infidel)(Critical essay)
Jun 01, 2007; ... Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Free Press, 2007, $34.95. THIS IS A DISTURBING BOOK about the clash of civilisations. It begins with a frightening introduction telling how its author became the subject of headlines around the world. On a morning in November 2004, Theo van Gogh, a ...
Rudd is a dud.(Ryan)(Kevin Rudd)(Column)
Jun 01, 2007; ... IN THIS COLUMN three years ago (June 2004) I wrote about two topics not at first sight very closely related. The first was Anzac Day; the second was Mark Latham, that bright Lucifer who so briefly lit up the Labor Party. In June 2004, as today, the summer lightning of a federal election ...