Full disclosure: I'd like us to adopt a 'minimalist model' republic and, in the meantime, to endure much less of the hyperbolic twaddle that has become the ARM crew's stock in trade since Peter Simon took over as its leader and mouthpiece -- the emphasis being on 'mouth'
US academic John Greenway first visited Australia in 1955, finding himself enthralled by the country in general and Aborigines in particular. Gloriously opinionated, enthusiastic and entirely admirable, his often grim truths have seen him 'disremembered' for being far too honest
Arrested for unpaid fines, the Aboriginal woman's death prompted a coroner's rebuke and, inevitably, accusations of racist indifference directed at Western Australia police and medical staffers. If only such outrage had focused on her life before she was taken into custody
If Obama had delivered Donald Trump's inaugural address it would have been hailed for its eloquence, nobility and resolve. But it was not merely a Republican at the lectern, it was a maverick Republican, so the consensus insists the entire known world is in mortal peril
If reports are to be believed, one can now get sick with reckless impunity, as a swelling surplus of GPs stands ever ready to provide that sympathetic ear and appropriate prescription. Well that's what the newspapers say, even though your GP's answering machine begs to differ
Allowing people to decide what to do with their own money and to strive after the station they wish to attain has proved a far more effective system of running human affairs. Far from protecting the powerful, capitalism actually makes them vulnerable
Last weekend's Paris 'summit', which endorsed the hoary myth that the fabled 'two-state solution' is possible even as Hamas and Fatah remain at each other's throats, was a parting ‘gift’ to Israel by Barack Obama. Once again, purported friends of the Jews' betray them
Seething at Barry Spurr’s ousting from Sydney University, I declared that parents who sought a proper education for their children should spurn universities. Barry would have none of it. Despite it all, he never lost faith in his persecutors’ potential for redemption
How can we waste our compassion on someone who is responsible for her own misfortune? Are there not enough people in the world who are victims of misfortune, injustice and cruelty for us not to bother with those whose misery is self-inflicted?
For the past decade legions of the gullible have been signalling their eco-virtue by candles' glow, turning off the lights for 60 minutes as an offering to poor, overheated Gaia. It makes little sense, but promoters are delighted the faithful can still write cheques in the gloom
Other than empty cliches and angry slogans, what a pact between white and black Australia might achieve is never explained by its loudest and most insistent advocates. Before proceeding down this path, what about addressing alcoholism, abuse and dysfunction?
If you believe the Age, SMH and our national broadcaster, FBI Director James Comey is in a whole lot of trouble for nobbling Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House. Actually, the cited document suggests it is the failed candidate and her cronies who are in the hottest water
They Marched in March -- the usual suspects in all their serried shades of anger and incoherence -- because, well, it would have made even less sense to bemoan the fact that Tony Abbott and the Coalition won an election last September by April-ing in April. Zeg is fearful of such antics' impact on the easily impressed.
At the University of Wollongong there is so much diversity to honour, especially when Christians are demanding all the attention with their mangers and tinsel, that staff have been sent a chirpy reminder that Christmas is about much more than the Messiah
Climate change is torching Australia, according to the likes of Tim Flannery and his fellow warmists at the Bureau of Meteorology. If only the money now spent on computer projections and big-ticket fire fighting gear could go toward fuel reduction
A New Zealand court has rejected the argument that one can claim asylum from the alleged ravages of climate change. For the plaintiff, it is back to teeming Kiribati, where the real problem is a booming population
A cash-strapped America no longer has the resources to continue as the world’s policeman, as its craven capitulation to Tehran makes clear. For Australia the message is chilling
The cognitive dissonance require to assert that poverty, not religious ardour, is the root of Islamist terror constitutes something far worse and more dangerous than a comforting delusion. It hobbles the West's response before it can take effective shape
Global temperatures' refusal to rise has obliged warmism's comfortably settled scientists to once again fiddle the data, something they do always with aplomb and no coherent explanation. Ah, but not so fast! One of the fulcrums on which they spin their latest legerdemain is absolutely worthless
Even if you subscribe to the careerist encyclicals of warmism's priesthood, only rank gullibility or the pointed blindness favoured by professional politicians could prompt the conclusion that the answer is solar and wind. They aren't -- unless the real goal is to pauper growth and prosperity
Espionage story, family story, incredible story -- that's the essence of Victor and Frances Metianen's journey from the cricket-club social scene of suburban Sydney in the 1930s to the dark world of what they believed in their fervent innocence to be Stalin's workers' paradise
Trump's alleged kinky escapade in a Moscow hotel never passed the sniff test, despite the whiff of uric acid his detractors claimed to discern in that improbable briefing paper. Nevertheless, in emptying a chamber pot of suspicion on the incoming president, it served its purpose
When Peter Minter banned Quadrant's poets from his magazine's pages on the grounds that they had published in what he likened to a Nazi journal, the curious might have wondered just what sort of verse he actually favours. Here's a hint
Readers can form their own judgement as to whether this first-person account would count in Andrew Bolt’s challenge to Robert Manne to “name ten” Aborigines stolen purely for racial reasons
PM Stephen Harper has three election victories under his belt and, from a conservative point of view, not much to show for them. Being nice to political enemies is all very well and good, but it leaves your supporters less than impressed
If "Indigenous culture" is to be recognised in Australia's Constitution it is vital to understand what the term means. Rap songs and break dancing, perhaps?
If a slick video and the IPCC's latest inaccurate and untruthful arguments are the best it can do to demonstrate a dangerous warming problem, its advice should be ignored and funding withdrawn
Nature abhors a vacuum and, once upon a time, journalism did too. Alas no longer, or so one gathers from the way an event that unfolded late of a Canberra evening a little over a month ago has been allowed to slide quietly down the memory hole.
Perhaps your memory is sharper than authorities might wish and you can still recall the incident, which made front pages from Cronulla to Cottesloe: a car loaded with gas cylinders rammed the headquarters of the Australian Christian Lobby and exploded when the driver struck a match. We we must assume it was a match, as details of his ignition system, like so many other still-veiled aspects of the case, have been withheld from public consumption by authorities honouring the public's right to know mostly in the breach.
Who is this midnight bomber? We don't know because the ACT police refuse to release his name and details.
How did the grievously burned bomber stroll unnoticed 5kms through the national capital when its streets were abuzz with police cars and emergency vehicles, all dashing about in response to the explosion? A badly burned man in tattered, smoking rags attracted no attention? How could this be?
And most intriguing -- although not, apparently, to the editors of the Canberra Times, or any other mainstream news organ for that matter -- what was the bomber's motive?
Some weeks ago now, Quadrant Online placed a call to the ACT wallopers in search of a few basic facts. The conversation with Canberra's Finest, which isn't saying much, went more or less like this:
QoL: Hi, I want some info on the ACL bomber.
Plod: What do want to know?
QoL: His name would be good.
Plod: That's not being released.
QoL: Hang on, a lunatic, or maybe a fanatic, ignites a huge bomb in the heart of the national capital, destroys the office of a conservative political organisation and you're telling me the public doesn't need to know the who and why! You're joking right?
Plod: No, I'm not. We don't release names until the individual is interviewed and charged. He's fighting for his life in hospital so we can't interview him.
QoL: But you have interviewed him. The very next morning your mob said he had been quizzed and a firm determination made that the incident had nothing to do with terrorism.
Plod: But that wasn't a formal interview. Only formal interviews can lead to charges being laid and names released.
QoL: Surely you realise the mystery surrounding this case is spawning fresh speculation, especially on the internet.
Plod: So?
QoL: Well some are saying he's a an over-enthusiastic gay activist, others that his name is Mohammad...
Plod: So what if he's called Mohammad, why would that matter?
The conversation ended soon after, before the officer could volunteer his name. In view of his final comment it is safe to assume he goes by something other than 'Sherlock'.
QoL, a small news organisation, lacks the journalistic resources to keep digging, especially as the bomber has since been transferrred to the burns unit at Sydney's Concord Hospital, which is on the SMH home turf (if you accept that its reporters sometimes venture further from the CBD than Newtown).
Why hasn't the SMH Chief of Staff instructed a reporter to buy a bunch of flowers and wander the hospital corridors, posing as a lost visitor and trying, gently, to see what he or she can learn?
Why hasn't a reporter hung out with nurses in the smokers-only area outside and done likewise?
Why haven't contacts been tapped in the Health Department and minister's office, the motivation being that it is unconscionable for police to draw their blackout curtains about the identity and motivation of a man who has been -- and there can be no disguising this -- a lethal threat to life and the cause of immense damage to property?
One can speculate about the reasons a police force might be at pains to conceal such details -- indeed one can do no more than speculate due to the pointed absence of official guidance. It could be, for example, entirely self-serving: departmental brass might not wish to acknowledge that inadequate tabs were kept on a known peril to public safety. If so, while reprehensible, the bureaucratic instinct to protect turf, budget and careers would be entirely understandable.
But there can be no understanding why the Fourth Estate has turned a blind eye to the events of that shattered Thursday night before Christmas. Actually, that's wrong, for while there can be no excuse, there is an explanation: our mainstream media organisations are craven, spineless, incurious, easily cowed and, worst of all, infected with a cur's yearning to roll over before authority, rather than bite it and bite it hard.
At the link below, a Miranda Devine column from several weeks go that poses many of the same questions. Her curiosity has not been satisfied; no one's has. What a disgrace.
-- roger franklin
Peter O'Brien writes: Have you heard of Saba Vasefi? That's her (above) at the Woman Scream Festival with the Greens' Lee Rhianon, and there was more in the Sunday Telegraph, which profiled her in an Australia Day lift-out beneath the following headline:
Ambassador of hope --This citizen of the world calls Australia her home
It seems Ms Vasefi fled Iran in 2010 after being sacked from her university post because she opposes capital punishment. She arrived in Australia with her daughter, a suitcase and not much else. But now, according to the Tele, she has ‘firmly established herself as a valued member of society. So much so, she has been named as an Australia Day ambassador’.
A multicultural success story? Yes, but only so far, as Ms Vasefi has a few reservations about the country that took her in, which is perhaps to be expected of someone described as a feminist film maker, academic, poet and PhD student in Feminist Cinema Studies and documentary film at Macquarie University. Once, in a less enlightened age, new arrivals on our shores built useful things like, you know, the Snowy Mountains Scheme, but that was then. As she told the Telegraph of her Australia Day ambassadorship (emphasis added):
I was totally surprised when they asked me to do it because so much of the conversation in Australian society vilifies refugees.
And it’s obvious that what I have to say will be uncomfortable for many to hear and will challenge the views held by many. But I was so honoured to be named an Australia Day ambassador.
But a part of her still feels restless:
While I do identify with Australia I have a sense of belonging in several places such as the community of displaced and friends who support love, peace, equality and justice. So I identify myself as a citizen of the world.
If Saba had been here a little longer, or perhaps if she looked beyond the grievance-industrial complex of universities and advocacy groups, she might have grasped that the vast majority of Australians welcome genuine refugees and have done so since the end of World War Two. Her own life here might also have provided a clue. Australia has been very kind to her, although she seems not to be entirely aware of her good fortune. In March last year she said:
After five years living in Australia as a refugee, I still feel I don't belong here somehow.
My continuing search made me reach out to asylum seekers living in detention and drove me to work for the powerless women and children incarcerated there.
There are dozens of these Australia Day ambassadors. The idea is that they go out and celebrate Australia Day with local communities. Saba will be heading to Tamworth, where she will no doubt be able to provide the locals with a more nuanced view of what it is to be an Aussie.
As to her own experience of the ‘vilification of refugees’, the following excerpts are revealing:
In 2014, I was accepted to study at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. I was determined to pursue filmmaking, but it was clear the curriculum lacked cultural awareness, particularly regarding students from refugee or non-English speaking backgrounds. A lot of work needs to be done to encourage diversity at all levels of education in Australia and teaching methods desperately need to be revised to promote a more sophisticated multicultural vision.
I had access to generous funding on the condition I produced a documentary film about a landmark event from Australian history. I had no knowledge of Australian history and I wanted to find a story that resonated with my own narrative. After spending years campaigning against capital punishment in Iran, I hoped I might find Australian women dedicated to the same cause. This is what led me to Edith Cowan.
Edith Cowan, Australia's first female parliamentarian, does have a link of sorts to capital punishment: her father was hanged in 1876 for shooting her stepmother. Ms Vasefi's daughter, Minerva, would be aware of that, as she attends a very good school, Tara in Sydney’s west, on a full academic and musical scholarship.
So, "generous funding" to make a film, honoured by the Australia Day crowd and a full scholarship for her daughter.
Yep, it's a tough life for poor Ms Vasefi. Those Tamworth rednecks must be just itching to have Australia's shortcomings brought to their attention.
For 2017's Australian of the Year finalists, follow the link below.
What do women want?
To impede the smooth flow of traffic, if one is to go by the globe-girdling agitation of ladies who don't much approve of the latest US President or, for that matter, the result of elections that fail to produce the result they anticipated.
Yesterday in Melbourne, where outpourings of local feminist sentiment can be murkier than the Yarra, the crusader in blue took her male along to join in the fun. No doubt he enjoyed the outing, especially the heavy lifting of those weighty issues on his half of two signs extolling the correct positions on a number of fashionable topics. The photo also perhaps explains why it can sometimes be rather hard to stay on top of the latest trends in feminist discourse.
Surprisingly, if women are to be free, it seems capping CO2 emissions is a vital first step; likewise, all who aspire to enlightenment must scoff at any link between Islam and frequent outbreaks of mass murder -- a conclusion only those silly enough to favour an afternoon at the beach over marching and chanting would ever be likely to entertain. They are the same people, just by the way, who might well regard the veiling of women, child marriage, arranged marriage, consanguineous marriage, genital mutilation and the scripturally ordained second-rate status of women as symptoms of a true patriarchy. Feminists, of course, know better.
And don't forget that sexuality is not a choice -- handy advice if troubled by a sudden interest in bicycle seats or, for that matter, an eagerness to parade as 50% of what many might regard as a humiliating public exercise in cognitive dissonance. "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored," proclaims Madam's placard, complete with an erudite attribution to Aldous Huxley, who penned that thought in A Note on Dogma. To be fair, she could not have squeezed too many more words on that single sheet of cardboard and must therefore be granted the benefit of the doubt for not sampling another relevant quote. It is in Huxley's letter of congratulation to George Orwell upon the publication of 1984.
... I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.
Infant conditioning? Narco-hypnosis? Why, it brings to mind Ritalin time with Matron after a Safe Schools class!
For more on the International Day of Female Fury in Comfy Shoes, follow the link below, where another strange discordance is in evidence. When Donald Trump is surreptitiously recorded saying something vulgar in private, he is to be roundly condemned. But it's entirely different when feminist heroine Madonna speaks of yearning to blow up the White House and urges her new president to go suck a .... well, just follow the link. At Quadrant Online we leave such language to the ladies.
-- roger franklin
In Anzac and Its Enemies, Mervyn Bendle explores the origins of the Anzac Legend and dissects the long campaign against it by leftist politicians, intellectuals, and sections of the media, and argues why their case is seriously flawed.
From the second decade of his twenty years as literary editor of Quadrant, Les Murray here presents a selection of the best verse he published between 2001 and 2010.
