January-February 2022 Volume Volume LXVI, Number 1-2, No. 583
Hating Your Own Country
The Dispensable Mrs Merkel
The Forgiveness of Uncle Tom
The Unseemliness of Incontinent Emotions
China’s Sway over Australian Universities
The Common Cause of China and Islam
Contents
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As soon as the Gillard government published its national school […]December 29, 2021
8 mins
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After what seemed an eternity of farewells, Merkel finally left office on the last day of November 2021 to a chorus of acclaim from those relative few who rate non-nuclear Germany's dependence on Russian gas nothing worth worrying about. And then there is her other great legacy -- a million refugeesJanuary 10, 2022
8 mins
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When that judgment day comes, Harriet Beecher Stowe will certainly pass the test. So will Uncle Tom, Martin Luther King, and—yes—probably Malcolm X. As for today’s race-baiters and Twitter scolds, well ... Tom will forgive them, just as he forgave the slave-owner Legree. The rest of us may not be so kind
December 30, 2021
8 mins
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Negative emotions, insofar as they are easier to stoke, last much longer than positive emotions — joy is rarely more than fleeting, after all — and are usually more intense. In the long run, they also tend to be more rewarding, especially when, as in the present day, the locus of people’s moral concern is political rather than personal. Maintaining the rage isn't difficult at allJanuary 27, 2022
8 mins
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Australian university's co-dependent research relationships with China create strong incentives to make the preservation of Beijing's goodwill a chief and abiding concern. Beyond that, as the Dalai lama might testify in light of his visit to Sydney University, there is a distressingly eager concern to make sure the feelings of the regime never be ruffled
December 29, 2021
34 mins
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In July 2019, twenty-two infidel democracies, most of them Western, denounced China’s crimes against Muslims in a letter to the High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights Council. The following day sixteen Muslim powers -- among them Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Pakistan, the UAE and Nigeria -- responded by staunchly defending China’s treatment of their Uyghur brothersFebruary 17, 2022
22 mins
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Universities must nurture 'open inquiry and robust challenge', writes Newcastle's Vice-Chancellor Alex Zelinsky, miffed after Quadrant's Michael Connor exposed the slipshod scholarship and plagiarism of the Massacre Map project. We can only assume that news of renowned scholars hounded from their university positions has not yet reached his particular cloud cuckoo landJanuary 1, 2022
12 mins
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Washington’s commitment to the Quad alliance and AUKUS is an obvious if belated response to the ambitions of China in the Indo-Pacific region. Other than that, Joe Biden’s charting of US foreign policy has so far encompassed no more than a jumbled and contradictory permutation of Obama-style appeasement and Trumanesque containmentFebruary 2, 2022
17 mins
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Why has there been no state or federal investigation into the VicPol’s “Operation Tethering”, which quite deliberately set out to solicit complaints against a prince of the Church? Surely the public interest would be served by knowing whether personal animosities, political grudges, corruption, or all of the above were involved in an otherwise inexplicable fishing expeditionJanuary 28, 2022
10 mins
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The painting Nero’s Torches, by Henryk Siemiradzki (above), now hanging […]
December 29, 2021
9 mins
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In the UN's Manhattan tower there is a small unit concerned with family issues where the belief prevails that the stability of what has always been every societies' most fundamental unit simply doesn’t matter. It is 'a luxury belief' beloved of elites who remain steadfastly oblivious to the harms inflicted on those who do not enjoy their same status and privilegeFebruary 19, 2022
22 mins
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We were young and snared in the spirit of the moment, 'the rapture' of love a guiding light as we concurred with the Beatles that 'love is all you need'. Need it be said that we grew up, raised families, paid mortgages and came to recognise Rupert Brooke's wisdom in observing that the love and passion of a long-term marriage surely and simply 'turns to kindliness'January 16, 2022
13 mins
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Men and women who don’t have the vocation of marriage -- those who are psychologically immature and lacking the needed skills -- but who get married anyway will find their lives very difficult and divorce frequent. They and their children pay the price of conditioning by a culture that doesn’t value careful discernment, traditional virtues and, above all, prudenceFebruary 20, 2022
9 mins
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There is a regrettable tendency in much Australian historical writing for authors to make judgments about the past that are really formulated out of their concern to advance a particular political agenda in the present. Such writers have fallen into the trap of depicting the past in the way they would prefer it to have been, rather than how it actually wasJanuary 18, 2022
7 mins
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What is being discovered on Göbekli hill contributes to a fundamental rethinking of the Neolithic era and the emergence of the first civilisations. Was the catalyst collective safety, food production, religion or perhaps even the lure of grains to make beer? Whatever the answer, as the American archaeologist Ian Hodder concludes, the site 'changes everything'February 3, 2022
27 mins
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Sir: It so boosts my morale that you published William […]
December 29, 2021
7 mins
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I have written two articles on the plagiarisms, inaccuracies, misquotation and failures of the Massacre Map, with every breach of the Australian Responsible Research Code clearly illustrated with supporting evidence. The University's response: Despite being the whistleblower, I am not an 'interested party' and, therefore, no further correspondence will be entered intoJanuary 6, 2022
12 mins
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Anyone who has existed within academia knows that to portray it as a world of innocents is a sick joke. Historians, like other academics, often go in hard. Their preference is to do their dirty work in secret -- and in this regard, unlike his shallow and doctrinaire appraisals of Australia's past, the Marxist professor was a leader in the fieldJanuary 21, 2022
25 mins
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There is no doubt the Aboriginal population of Australia declined after European settlement, but the key question remains: Why? It was most definitely not the product of deliberate slaughter and mass murder -- that is, of the 'genocide' the Australian Museum and others would us believe was a deliberate and murderous campaign of extinction. The truth is both more elusive and far more complicated
February 8, 2022
17 mins
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The journal 'Current Oncology' reports that in jurisdictions where euthanasia is legal, it soon changed from a last resort to a first choice, with patients being denied the option of palliative care. Undue pressure and coercion are compounded on the sick and disabled, who are often given subtle, systemic messages that they are burdens and shouldn’t be aliveFebruary 9, 2022
7 mins
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We live in an age where facts are 'scientific' if they serve the current hegemonic narrative and unscientific if they do not. Many scientists, to their shame and the detriment of their disciplines, reinforce this delusion because it bankrolls research and drives public policies of which they personally approve. One manifestation: the movement against recording sex on birth certificatesJanuary 15, 2022
21 mins
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Each day, before saying Morning Prayer, I log on to […]
December 30, 2021
21 mins
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Younger readers might be at a loss to recognise the names and reputations of Manning Clark and Peter Ryan. But an older demographic might enjoy my take on what was, in the mid-1990s, Ryan’s hugely public attack on the much lauded Clark’s character and workJanuary 25, 2022
10 mins
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It is only the individual—and no political edict—that can determine whether one should change one’s own character and personality. This is a matter of freedom of conscience and entirely within the purview of the religious individual, not the state, which has no moral right to judge the validity of belief and dictate if he or she is in need of 'repair'January 30, 2022
30 mins
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'The Saboteurs' is a beautifully filmed period piece that focuses on one of the most crucial, but little known, missions of the Second World War, the destruction of the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant. To the Allies and resistance fighters who scuttled Hitler's bid for an atomic bomb, the physics were as mysterious as the danger and difficulty of the raid were obviousFebruary 26, 2022
13 mins
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As one of Warhol’s boyfriends put it, 'He couldn’t understand why people were taking things so seriously', by which he also meant himself and his output. Serious indeed! Thirty-five years after his death, his garishly parodic portrait of Marilyn Monroe is going on the block with expectations it will be knocked down for $200 million or more. It's quite the sum for 'the lowest form of popular culture'March 23, 2022
26 mins
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There’s music in the sighing of a reed; There’s music […]
December 31, 2021
24 mins
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The Russian couple arrived in 1923. Sergei Konenkov—a sculptor highly […]
December 31, 2021
12 mins
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Sculpture is not normally the stuff from which acrimonious public […]
December 31, 2021
17 mins
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It was a time of religious upheaval. Newspapers and social […]
December 31, 2021
18 mins
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To most, he is the silent type, and on this […]
December 31, 2021
9 mins
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In earlier times, literary types might have stepped in to condemn the perverse abuse of simple communication. But in 2022, they are on the same team as our tech titan overlords, who appear to be labouring under the misconception that making a mint out of the dot-squiggle-cyber stuff entitles them to determine which words must be banished from the languageFebruary 12, 2022
8 mins
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A Gift from a Friend Still-life planned: White watercolour paper. […]
December 31, 2021
1 mins
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Haibunation January morning dreams of not leaving the bed— upside-down […]
December 31, 2021
1 mins
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Of A Beast That Stood And Now Has Fallen They […]
December 31, 2021
1 mins
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Lex III “Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem …” […]
December 31, 2021
2 mins
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I used to be afraid of hell but now it’s […]
December 31, 2021
2 mins
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I’ve long felt a bit inferior to plumbers and tradesmen […]
December 31, 2021
1 mins
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Nasho 1957, Sergeant Tiny Herbert addresses the Platoon “Right. Now […]
December 31, 2021
5 mins
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Night Petals, Shirakawa Canal Gion, Kyoto, Japan An oblong of […]
December 31, 2021
2 mins
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Everyman’s Dream I want a job that doesn’t own me […]
December 31, 2021
1 mins
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Soma Teaching in a state school after ten years away […]
December 31, 2021
1 mins
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Lockdown Protests The men in blue grouped into jobs to […]
December 31, 2021
1 mins
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No Atonement He wondered why atonement didn’t work. He logged […]
December 31, 2021
1 mins
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New Zealand Letter (Revised in memory of Anne Stevenson, 1933–2020) […]
December 31, 2021
5 mins
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Cavafy Bath He has been indulgent too much wine too […]
December 31, 2021
1 mins
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Drifting Cat It is winter; as nightly predator you wait […]
December 31, 2021
1 mins
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Alana Lentin’s 'Why Race Still Matters' is relentlessly dreary, as Western Sydney University's associate professor of cultural and social analysis brings to the topic a heavy reliance on academic twaddle. For this we should be grateful. Noxious piffle is best served when none but the author can endure the ordeal of absorbing itFebruary 16, 2022
12 mins
