January - February 2011 Volume LV, No. 1-2
How to Choose Better Immigrants
My Life as a Leper
The Decline of Reading in an Age of Ignorance
The Great Salesman
The Priest and the Jester
The Famine that Mao Created
Contents
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I don’t care about the race, colour, religion, ethnicity of a potential immigrant to Australia. My only reason in writing this article is an unwillingness to live next door to people who are unable or unwilling to integrate into our society
April 21, 2024
17 mins
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This is an edited version of the speech Peter Ryan […]
January 1, 2011
8 mins
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History has become a battleground of late, with the debate […]
January 1, 2011
29 mins
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A Journey, by Tony Blair; Hutchinson, 2010, 624 pages, $59.95.
Tony Blair comes close to achieving a remarkable feat in his memoirs. By the close of A Journey it is almost possible to feel sorry for a man who at the age of forty-three became the youngest prime minister of Britain since 1812 before going on to win an unprecedented three consecutive elections for his party. Sorry for the man—self-avowed socialist, naturally—who is today a senior adviser at investment bank JP Morgan, advises the Swiss insurance firm Zurich Financial Services, retains a consulting role with the luxury goods firm LVMH, and charges between £100,000 and £200,000 for a ninety-minute speech. What, exactly, is there for us to pity about Phoney Tony?
At one point in A Journey Blair recalls his first euphoric months as prime minister and remembers thinking how good it would be to retire “just past fifty, still popular, still a friendly face in a friendly country”. Fate took a different turn. By 2007 Gordon Brown had tried everything to shift Blair from office bar backing a removalist van up Downing Street to the front entrance of Number 10. Blair did finally go in June that year and yet his enforced exit involved more than falling victim to his nemesis.
January 1, 2011
12 mins
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That our particular outlook or view of the world is […]
January 1, 2011
23 mins
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Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most […]
January 1, 2011
11 mins
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Cuba Libre To Cuba’s “revolutionary” rum add the “freedom” of […]
January 1, 2011
2 mins
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Michael Wilding, The Prisoner of Mount Warning (Press On, 2010), […]
January 1, 2011
6 mins
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Life Without Me by Daniel Keene played at the Sumner […]
January 1, 2011
11 mins
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The great German sociologist Max Weber, in the closing pages […]
January 1, 2011
16 mins
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The pilot, his head bent back and shoulders pressed against […]
January 1, 2011
18 mins
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The criminal law in Australia holds that the intentional taking […]
January 1, 2011
12 mins
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When we read different genres of nineteenth and twentieth-century novel—neoclassical, […]
December 31, 2010
31 mins
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For many years, the Greens have been treated as a […]
December 31, 2010
30 mins
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The French word for hope as a verb is espérer. […]
December 31, 2010
22 mins
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A couple of years ago, the conventional wisdom held that […]
December 31, 2010
16 mins
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Historically speaking, the commercial or private gallery is a youngster, […]
December 31, 2010
18 mins
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The release of Ben Affleck’s The Town marks the return […]
December 31, 2010
9 mins
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Three dabbling teal startled into flight plunge headlong through the […]
December 31, 2010
2 mins
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(The quote is from Christopher Marlowe) They that love not […]
December 31, 2010
1 mins
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“Suffering is not increased by numbers: one body can contain […]
December 31, 2010
1 mins
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losing count— her world too big for words sunrise snow […]
December 31, 2010
1 mins
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Africa has come to Kings Park the families could have […]
December 31, 2010
1 mins
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autistic child with acute auditory processing disorder in the foetal […]
December 31, 2010
3 mins
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I’ve been slaving and behaving; I’ve been scrimping, I’ve been […]
December 31, 2010
2 mins
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Aruba’s Chickens Aruba is keeper of Derek Walcott Square, which […]
December 31, 2010
3 mins
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1. Chronic Pain Stupid, really, to say it, given the […]
December 31, 2010
1 mins
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The bloody footprints down the hall, The baby bricked into […]
December 31, 2010
2 mins
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Land, or a mountain-shaped cloud sighted by Edward Davis, buccaneer […]
December 31, 2010
2 mins
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(There are over a thousand cricket clubs in France) Le […]
December 31, 2010
1 mins
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Corporal O’Halloran checked his ammunition pouches automatically again. Two clips: […]
December 31, 2010
13 mins
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It was starting to get dark and Isabel had the […]
December 31, 2010
11 mins
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“What’s that you’re listening to?” asked my wife the other […]
December 31, 2010
6 mins
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I first met Rupe when he was fourteen. I was fifteen, tall […]
December 31, 2010
7 mins
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Once upon a time, and not so long ago, there […]
December 31, 2010
12 mins
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The demand for originality in the arts is a strange […]
December 31, 2010
17 mins
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When writers win major awards the pages of the press […]
December 30, 2010
32 mins
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“The Heavens declare the Glory of God, and the Firmament […]
December 30, 2010
26 mins
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In their influence on the English language, only the works […]
December 30, 2010
10 mins
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[Ray Evans gave this speech on October 7 at a […]
December 30, 2010
15 mins
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This year marks the 160th anniversary of the death of […]
December 30, 2010
11 mins
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Mental illness was once an esoteric affliction. Now we’re told […]
December 30, 2010
22 mins
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Saving Drug Users SIR: I write to correct assertions made […]
December 19, 2010
17 mins