January-February 2023 Volume Volume LXVII, Number 1-2, No. 593
The Rise and Rise of Charedi Judaism
Rudolf Allers: Seeing Through Freud’s Errors
Idle Thoughts from Bob Dylan
The Meaning of the Quest for the Holy Grail
1977 and All That
Thursday Island and the Quetta Survivors
Contents
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Many observers would have assumed that Charedi Jews were a relic of pre-modern culture, and the few survivors would inevitably disappear through assimilation within a few decades. Instead, what the world has witnessed. is growth so rapid that demographers expect their numbers to double every 16 yearsFebruary 18, 2024
11 mins
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It is extraordinary that Freud’s derivative and scientifically wrong ideas permeated entire halls of academe and indeed societies, and it will take some psychoanalysis to explain how this pervaded and prevailed for nearly a century. How do intellectual cultures, societies and civilisations become enthralled by such erroneous views, which go against the observations of common sense? For highlighting that question we owe Rudolf Allers a great debtFebruary 6, 2024
17 mins
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You will find no coherent objective or connective philosophy in this collection of “essays” about Dylan’s favourite songs. It as if he chose cut-and-paste rambles from a pointy hat while blindfolded at Michel Foucault’s Halloween party. One critic called it 'a lazy, half-written dog’s dinner'. Personally, I’d be a lot kinder to my dogJanuary 20, 2024
13 mins
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In this age of destructive iconoclasm, when our civilisation's traditions are demeaned at the altar of pseudo-historical and crypto-mythological accounts of the past, it is vital to explore and re-assert the brilliant and unsurpassed intellectual, cultural and spiritual resources of the West's besmirched heritage. This article is an attempt to do this by exploring the Grail archetype as one example of these multi-faceted richesApril 9, 2023
40 mins
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Delving into Quadrant's online archive, across the years from 1956 to the present, the enthusiasm founding editor James McAuley etched into his very first edition is manifest: 'In spite of all that can be said against our age, what a moment it is to be alive! What an epoch for a magazine to emerge!' A resource and wealth of reading for subscribers, it is also a reminder of how necessary it is to continue the combat he commencedFebruary 27, 2023
13 mins
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Thursday Island is the setting for a story of courage and survival, of coming of age, of sadness and loss and renewal, of identity formation and reformation. It was my Great-Gran’s story. I’ve been hearing about it in family circles all my life, so now, indirectly, it is mineFebruary 22, 2023
13 mins
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Here's why the post-Christian proponents of the West’s new woke religion push their agenda with the full fiery force of Abrahamic fervour. No Ayatollah or Salafi Imam ever laid down the law with more self-righteousness than the Woollahra Municipal Council. God speaks directly to them, as surely as He speaks to GretaFebruary 18, 2023
8 mins
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We are days away from the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, which hasn't gone as Vladimir Putin would have wished. What that failure to achieve a rapid and total victory signalled was the emergence for all the world so see of killers and brutes garbed in the uniforms of soldiersFebruary 17, 2023
21 mins
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Lords-phobia is most easily understood by two tendencies. One is a simple hatred for all things old and traditional, which must be uprooted and destroyed. The other is a lack of understanding of how the House of Lords works and what role it plays in the exercise of political power in the United KingdomFebruary 16, 2023
8 mins
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Prior to the ill-advised action against the Marquess of Queensbury, the sentence for sodomy could be as much as life imprisonment -- a penalty so harsh prosecutions were rarely pursued. Henry Labouchère MP suggested and achieved a pragmatic reduction to seven years, and it was this change that snared and ruined WildeFebruary 13, 2023
16 mins
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Why did the bishops veto the clergy’s and laity’s affirmation of marriage as a union between a biological male and a biological female, with 40 per cent of General Synod regarding same-sex unions as a moral good? The reason is that many High and Broad Church bishops confuse what might be described as churchmanship with faithFebruary 12, 2023
19 mins
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Ted Turner offered $100,000 for proof the Tasmanian Tiger lives and, 16 years later, The Bulletin upped the ante to $1.25 million, while a tour operator subsequently put up $1.75 million. None of these efforts has produced anything close to a verified sighting. All we have is a myth, a movie and a light wash of political correctnessFebruary 11, 2023
12 mins
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Upper Heights and Lower Depths is a supremely good book. Lovers of poetry would want to have it on their shelf to read and to own. It invites immersion. It invites the distinctive pleasure of returning to it and entering into what the four Tasmania poets have discovered and expressed. It exemplifies excellenceFebruary 8, 2023
11 mins
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Unhappy that Cook declined to wreak vengeance on the Maori who ate ten of his crewmen, the disaffected sailors are said to have tried, convicted, executed and eaten a native dog as a cheeky criticism of their captain. It's a great story but not a word of it could possibly be trueFebruary 6, 2023
16 mins
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Yoram Hazony's new book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery,, focuses on the US and UK but it will challenge Australian conservatives to recall Menzies' establishment of the Liberal Party's 'broad church' -- and also to wonder how and when conservatism's useful electoral alliance with liberalism ended and a disastrous assimilation beganFebruary 3, 2023
7 mins
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During the past few years, much of Australia somehow forgot about the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven in a court of law. In the case of Bruce Lehrmann, the young man who was accused of raping Brittany Higgins, many of us, including Scott Morrison, entirely forgot to do this. The same applies to prominent media clowns and any number of Twitter social justice warriorsFebruary 1, 2023
8 mins
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We’re blest to have The Fortunate to remind us of all that has accrued -- in politics and philosophy, in industry and in our economy -- for our good. The wealth and liberties didn’t just happen; they aren’t an accident of history. They came through the careful work and thought of generations of robust, enterprising people.January 31, 2023
14 mins
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Many of the assertions being made by individuals who proclaim their Aboriginality are accepted without challenge, the questioning of those claims condemned as racist. A history built on dishonesty is worthless and, as Franklin D. Roosevelt observed, repetition does not transform a lie into a truthJanuary 30, 2023
9 mins
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When activists glue themselves to paintings to save the planet, it is unfortunate that much commentary can be found in praise of their idealism. What you won't hear is any defence of the civilisation that produced those works of art. Indeed, to make such a case invites the scathing rejoinder that you seek to protect trivialities as the world burns. In philistinism these days there is the facsimile of kindnessJanuary 28, 2023
8 mins
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Those few tentative suggestions about how progressive policies and messaging might have gone too far, which began sporadically to appear as anxiety proliferated on the left ahead of the US midterm elections, will now all be swiftly forgotten. With no costs imposed for their behavior, and so no incentive to change course, the revolutionaries’ self-confident zeal will only redoubleJanuary 25, 2023
11 mins
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'We are in the grip of idiocy; you encounter it everywhere, from the ravings of climate lunatics about the world getting uninhabitably hot to the denials of biological reality by gender cranks, to the manufactured lies that pass as education, to the delusion that a senile President is some sort of leader. No government or individual has the capacity to suffocate this nonsense'January 20, 2023
16 mins
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The 'dangerous ideas' tag is, on one reading, intended as ironic, in the sense that the ideas served up are 'dangerous' only because they are expected to disrupt what participants imagine to be the blinkered thinking of the conservative element. Thus does Simon Longstaff's carnival for the like-minded roll on, year after unchallenging yearJanuary 19, 2023
35 mins
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The Aboriginal industry began as a homegrown concern but as it acquired greater funding it branched out and secured a foothold in the United Nations. From there, cloaked in foreign concepts and terminology -- do notice the current popularity of the imported term 'first nations' -- and the wholesale distortion of history began in earnest, The Voice threatens to deliver the final blowJanuary 10, 2023
8 mins
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Biden’s grand strategy—yes, surprisingly, he has one—is to align US interests with woke ideology. Consider, for example, his strategy to promote democracy around the world and the money earmarked to achieve that end. It turns out that such support will be going to programs for 'women and girls', 'empowering the LGBTQI community' and to 'worker organisations'January 9, 2023
9 mins
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The sense of war was omnipresent in those years, the city a sea of variegated uniforms and badges: US and Australian nurses, Australian soldiers, seamen and airmen, Women’s Auxiliary Service, US airmen, soldiers, sailors and marines, occasionally English officers, and Indian soldiers of the Dutch East Indian Army were all representedJanuary 5, 2023
15 mins
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As befits an honest reviewer, I shall try to be fair by noting there is one piece in her new book, Talking About a Revolution, with a bit of utopian spark, and it even had me cheering her on. It begins with great promise: 'I fantasise about giving up my Australian passport.'January 1, 2023
9 mins
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Warnie September 13, 1969, Melbourne March 4, 2022, Ko Samui […]December 30, 2022
1 mins
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Australian Icon Grown men weep on cue to camera when […]
December 30, 2022
1 mins
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To those born after a plague year That you were […]
December 30, 2022
1 mins
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Impeached it was a case of high crimes and misdemeanors […]
December 30, 2022
1 mins
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Time “Never had a thought in his life.” And this […]
December 30, 2022
7 mins
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Background Music What was it that determined no event, no […]
December 30, 2022
2 mins
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The Dancer Her vulnerability mesmerises like a potion. She wears […]
December 30, 2022
1 mins
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Double Bay Beach – 17 October 2020 Out there the […]
December 30, 2022
1 mins
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For Michael Dransfield I’m not into revision. If you don’t […]
December 30, 2022
2 mins
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Words Belly expansions and contractions, turning our attention to sensations, […]
December 30, 2022
2 mins
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Scimitar It is always there, unseen until you spot it […]
December 30, 2022
2 mins
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Prinsengracht 263 With a dream of being a famous writer […]
December 30, 2022
2 mins
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Oscar’s Song The Apartment has a hallway lined with photos […]
December 30, 2022
2 mins
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Kind of Blue Kind of Blue: your favorite jazz album. […]
December 30, 2022
1 mins
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The Pregnant Father You pushed your way into my world […]
December 30, 2022
2 mins
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The young woman stepped towards Millsy as he headed for […]
December 30, 2022
16 mins
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It’s a strange business to be looking at some of […]
December 30, 2022
30 mins
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This is an edited version of the book-launch speech by […]
December 30, 2022
8 mins
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Let us say plainly: the unredeemed state of the world […]
December 29, 2022
27 mins
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Currently, political correctness is a force with enormous momentum and […]
December 29, 2022
15 mins
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The “great common” of pandemics, as far back as the […]
December 29, 2022
11 mins
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Even if we consider a figure of 100,000 [Aborigines killed […]
December 29, 2022
19 mins
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Sir: It takes a foreign-born academic, an outsider writer, to […]
December 29, 2022
11 mins
