May 2020 Volume LXIV, Number 5, No. 566
Two Judges v. the Baying Mob
Emperor Xi Has No Clothes
The Jaundiced Pursuit of Agents of Foreign Influence
That Sinking Feeling: The Continuing Submarine Fiasco
When Modernist Britain Fell Down
Why Bruce Pascoe’s ‘Truer History’ is Mere Mythology
Contents
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Victoria should join New South Wales in allowing high-profile criminal […]April 29, 2020
10 mins
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It is hard to un-imagine the People’s Republic of China and its deleterious effect on our world. My wish – which might turn out to be as unlikely as the Russiagate fantasies of the mainstream media—is that one day the city of Wuhan will be associated with not only COVID-19 but also with the end of the communist dynasty in ChinaMay 2, 2020
16 mins
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Even as faceless bureaucrats saw no problem with Australian universities' pandering to China they were demanding Tony Abbott register as a foreign agent. This effrontery, apart from demonstrating the Attorney-General has no control over his department, is a further example of lawfare being used against conservatives -- and only conservativesMay 29, 2020
19 mins
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It is almost impossible to find a credible analyst or writer willing to laud the unlamented Turnbull government’s decision to splash unknown billions on a mythical French submarine. In fact it is impossible to find anyone outside the Canberra bubble or not on the submarine-building payroll who praises this farce, although potential enemies must be very well pleased indeedMay 13, 2020
11 mins
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The aspiration of government planners and their architects for the bleak, shoddy towers they erected in post-war Britain was to refashion those at the bottom into pleasant and compliant drones. Those ambitions would collapse, literally in the case of London's Ronan Point housing estate, even as they prompted the dystopian urban novel, 'A Clockwork Orange' not least of allMay 15, 2020
38 mins
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History, like science, is about discriminating between myths and realities, not choosing a beguiling alternative myth as a 'different way of seeing'. The latter is the driving conceit behind the best-selling author's fauxboriginal revisionism, now being taught in schools near youMay 14, 2020
13 mins
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Sir: Your learned correspondent John P. Bryson (April 2020), commenting […]
April 29, 2020
12 mins
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Let me fuse two tales of resurrection -- the PM's medical ordeal and his party's return from death's door -- into a single narrative in which the hero, an outcast Tory rebel, ends up as a Prime Minister who dominates British politics more completely than anyone since Margaret Thatcher. Better still, the voting public come to realise just how much they like himMay 4, 2020
9 mins
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When the Wuhan virus has come and gone, will it have improved our character, as once cold showers were said to do? Shall we bear in mind the fragility of things, be less wasteful, less inclined to take everything for granted? If I know humanity, the answer is “No”. 'Millions may die' will remain a thrilling headline so long as one does not expect to be among those millionsMay 6, 2020
8 mins
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This is supposed to be a New York letter, but […]
April 29, 2020
10 mins
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The landscapes of the past are dotted with lazarettos, pesthouses, plague houses and plague pits for the rapid disposal of victims. As millions have languished in home quarantine, this century's fever sheds, it is just possible we are shedding the fever of modernism that left us so unexpectedly vulnerable to the return of historyMay 18, 2020
18 mins
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Australians who dream of relief from the uncomfortable China connection by closer ties with the “world’s biggest democracy”, of profitable access to a market of 1.3 billion consumers and of a free-market partner in world trade, had better re-assess their expectationsMay 5, 2020
17 mins
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Of course not, says Jean-Marie Bouissou in Les Leçons du […]
April 29, 2020
31 mins
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As successful as it has been, capitalism doesn’t come with a guarantee of permanency. It has been overthrown in parts of the world in the past. Socialists cum Marxists are forever lurking, feeding off the wishful thinking, naivety and short-term memories of the young, who grasp not at all the consequences certain to arise from their aggrieved innocenceMay 27, 2020
15 mins
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The rural crisis lingers, but what we hear from the government is the plight of small business in country towns, hard hit because the farmers the Country Party once cared for don’t have money to spend. Tellingly, the $17 billion fiscal package announced in March doesn’t mention the rural sectorMay 11, 2020
9 mins
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Evan Pederick, the subject of Imre Salusinszky's new book, is an Anglican priest, but in 1978 he was the Ananda Marga cultist who atomised four innocent men outside the Sydney Hilton. Phillip Adams deems the killer 'brave'. Brave? Brave are those who suffered, not the reformed butcher the account of whose youth suggests an absurdist anti-hero and outsider
April 29, 2020
12 mins
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It is the West's destiny to die, yet this does not have to be a disaster if its principal actors are precisely aware of the changes taking place. Destroying the economies of nations, the minds and lives of children, and the power of art to heal and nurture can be of no help at allMay 20, 2020
14 mins
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Nowadays, anthropocentrism is barely preached and practised less. From recognition of animal 'rights', to a reverence for the 'rights' of forests and even rivers, to the current calls for ending our vital energy source in order to reduce our carbon footprint, the biocentrists are effectively demanding humanity wipe itself outMay 21, 2020
24 mins
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What the long historical perspective shared by both Hitler and Stalin directly implied was the utter unimportance of the individual. People were simply the products of their race or class, and their deaths, even in great numbers, were simply an inevitable part of larger historical forcesMay 25, 2020
8 mins
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The cakes in the oven were actually loaves on a fire, the old woman was a young wife, and the incident almost certainly never happened. No matter, Alfred's people loved him so much they flocked to his side and swept him to victory over the heathen VikingsMay 16, 2020
3 mins
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In his incisive biography of C.S. Lewis (sometime Professor of […]
April 30, 2020
13 mins
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Michael Portillo's 'Great Australian Railway Journeys', which sees him retrace George Bradshaw’s nineteenth-century journey through an emerging nation, is a delight, even for those who don't share the peculiar passion in this age of jetliners for getting there by trainJune 6, 2020
16 mins
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On one of fifty-nine scraps of paper and part of […]
April 30, 2020
8 mins
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The reason for Giorgio de Chirico’s partial eclipse -- we hear much less of him than of that human loudspeaker Picasso -- is obvious. As one of the first and most notable of the avant-garde to advocate the craftsmanship of painting, he was derided for the sin of re-embracing the most important Classical and Baroque traditionsMay 31, 2020
16 mins
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At various times as a full-time critic, I have wandered the storerooms of state and national galleries. If the public which pays for the art collected in its name could see even a fraction of the ephemeral rubbish it has effectively paid for, there would perhaps be cause for at least some form of cultural revolutionMay 9, 2020
10 mins
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When his boss telephoned him with a job to do, […]
April 30, 2020
12 mins
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However readers and their families have dealt with lockdown and quarantine, I hope at least some have found moments of happiness. Like my grandfather, who fondly recalled his weeks of sheltering with mates from a polio epidemic, everybody should enjoy it while they can. The next few years may prove especially challengingMay 23, 2020
8 mins
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Get Off Stage An opera’s final act often presents A […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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I Love the Way You Stand I love the way […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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Dylan’s Dad Dylan Thomas’ learned but distant Dad, was an […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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Too Many Birthday There was nothing the Chinese specialist could […]
April 30, 2020
2 mins
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Christening Parties hit $50,000 Old Baptism was as much an […]
April 30, 2020
2 mins
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Dubai Landing Drawn in from a cold dark height, and […]
April 30, 2020
2 mins
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Rambling Possession Illumination is the light, illuminating lamp is your […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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Whale Watchers They walk up steep hillsides backwards scanning horizon’s […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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Where is My Virtual Father? (i.m. DHW) My dead father’s […]
April 30, 2020
2 mins
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In the Piazza della Signoria Salutations Benvenuto, Never mind your […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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A Hint of Eden At the coastal edge south of […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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Royal Night Out Under Augustan protection, of absolute darkness, bare-arsed […]
April 30, 2020
2 mins
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Reading “Japanese Maple” by Clive James, West Basin, 28 November […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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The Wait is Over He says he is waiting to […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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Mum and Mary Before mum died, I introduced her to […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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The Hospital System Sitting huddled in her chair, Hair a […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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Blue On a grey Thursday morning, fourth consecutive concrete sky […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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Little Ode To My Plain Mighty mulberries, once delimiting the […]
April 30, 2020
2 mins
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In the Manner of C.P.E. Bach Not in the style […]
April 30, 2020
1 mins
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Being You There are not many constants in this anarchic […]
April 30, 2020
2 mins
