"He was a remarkably effective prime minister for a while. The most difficult time was in 1997 and, to give credit to the government, they tightened the supervision over th ...
January 24, 2013
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in ...
November 13, 2012
Each man reaches perfection by doing his own duty; he worships god – from whom all beings come, by whom this universe was stretched forth – by doing his appointed work, with no desire for reward. You must do the work for its own sake and not for anything that it may bring to you. When pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat are the same to you, ...
September 27, 2012
Make we mery quyl we may, and mynne upon joye, For the lur may mon lach when-so mon lykes Make we merry while we may, and think about joy, For a man may have sorrow whenever he likes The Gawain poet Most readers of Blak and Black will be aware that the in March 2008, the then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that Australia would run for a non-permanent ...
September 20, 2012
How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known? Orhan Pamuk, snow Anna Elisabeth Schmieg of Hurden from the old County of Hohenlohe had a bad reputation with her fellow villagers. Anna’s reputation for drinking and brawling in taverns and for ...
September 15, 2012
Before I launch into today’s topic I’d like to offer an apology for my long absence from Blak and Black. I have been helping a friend restore a 19th Century sailing boat. In the process he asked me to paint a mural of Scylla and Charybdis in the main cabin. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Scylla and Charybdis myth, in Greek mythology, Scylla and Charybdis were ...
September 13, 2012
FMG ‘DECLASSIFIED’ THEN DESTROYED YINDJIBARNDI HERITAGE SITES Recent reports that, Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) is pushing ahead with the “low-cost Firetail deposit” at its Solomon Project, while scaling back other operations, have raised fears of a ‘heritage holocaust’ as FMG scrambles for cash flow to weather the freefall in iron ore price. These fears follow confirmation in documents released by the Department of Indigenous Affairs (DIA), under the Freedom ...
August 28, 2012
… What folk is this, which seems by pain so vanquished?” And he to me: “This miserable mode Maintain the melancholy souls of those Who lived withouten infamy or praise. Commingled are they with that caitiff choir Of Angels, who have not rebellious been, Nor faithful were to God, but were for self. The heavens expelled them, not to be less fair; Nor them the nethermore abyss receives, For glory ...
August 22, 2012
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its adversaries but rather by the fact that these adversaries finally die, and a new generation grows up familiar with the new truth. Max Planck In 2003, the U.N. Secretariat surveyed member states to solicit information on the nature of links between terrorism and other forms of crime. Of the 60 responses received, many states indicated that terrorist groups were often ...
August 3, 2012
Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene I hardly paid any attention. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that 18 years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn’t give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to ...
July 30, 2012
It’s become part of the Australian vernacular, these words of the One Nation founder and xenophobe, Pauline Hanson. “Please explain”, the catch cry that irritated an entire parliament and Australian public may have seemed ill founded, but certainly made many a person think. Now, in the words of that infamous personality, I am calling upon Ernst & Young to please explain this: On 9 May 2002, the day after Pat ...
July 19, 2012
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. Milan Kundera One of the first Communist texts I read, following the French edition of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, also known as, The Little Red Book, was Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserables. For those purists among my colleagues who may object to me referring to Les Miserables as a Communist text, I offer the following in ...
July 12, 2012
Dr. Janice Harper has graciously agreed to her paper being republished on Blak and Black, for which we are most grateful. This is the paper referred to in the post To fight the grizzly or run: a comparison of fortunes. More of Dr. Harper’s writing and insights can be found at the Huffington Post, her professional website and her blog The Chocolate Covered Kitchen. Please take the time to read this article and her ...
July 6, 2012
The absence of good and evil characterizes the mind itself (hsin-t i) The presence of good and evil characterizes the movement of intention. The knowledge of good and evil is liang-chih. The doing of good and ridding of evil is the investigation of things. Yang-ming – Conversation at T’ien-ch’uan Those aforementioned principles are today expressed as: The mind in-itself, without good and evil, is human nature. From this is aroused ...
June 29, 2012
So what is the fundamental difference between which one of you, “the bully” or yourself, is out the door? Power. If “the bully” is someone with power or influence over others in the organization, even if not beloved by the workforce, you will be out the door if you solicit support from others. If “the bully” does not have much meaningful power, has displeased someone who does have it, or ...
June 18, 2012
The last week was a big one for women. Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton finally heard the words that brought full circle the events of August 17, 1980. One day past what would have been her daughter Azaria’s 32nd birthday, coroner Elizabeth Morris handed down a final finding that the babe had been taken and killed by a dingo. Marked as ‘Other’ for her Seventh Day Adventist faith, a belief system poorly understood ...
June 17, 2012
We were about eighteen miles east of Guernica when Anton pulled to the side of the road jammed on the brakes and started shouting. He pointed wildly ahead, and my heart shot into my mouth, when I looked. Over the top of some small hills appeared a flock of planes. A dozen or so bombers were flying high. But down much lower, seeming just to skim the treetops were six ...
May 26, 2012
Last week’s discussion of the Jinn combined with this week’s reading about Heraclitus to reinforce my opinion that the treatment of Ms. King and Lucinda McMillan at the hands of the Australian Federal Police are both not only undemocratic, but downright racist and sexist. Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher is credited with the concept that a man cannot step into the same stream twice. He believed that the sun was made ...
March 28, 2012
You can talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be – usually are – on the whole generous and right; but it has no foundation for them; you may tease or tickle it into any, at your pleasure; it thinks by infection, for the most part, catching an opinion like a cold, and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit ...
March 21, 2012
The Samoan Government has announced that Australian Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, will visit the country next week as part of a Pacific tour that also includes Nauru, Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia. Ms Bryce will address Samoa’s parliament and call on Samoa’s head of state, Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi. Her two days in Samoa has also been scheduled for a visit to SENESE, a school for people ...
January 28, 2012
“She said Tony Abbott is over at the coffee shop making statements to press, about closing down the embassy – the aboriginal tent embassy.” Alice Springs based indigenous activist, Barbara Shaw on the events of Australia Day. When Ms Shaw’s revelation first became known, her credibility was unashamedly attacked by the Government. Twenty-four hours later one of Prime Minister Gillard’s media advisors, Tony Hodges resigned after Ms Gillard acknowledged that ...
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