QUAD COUNTERQUAD

Quadrant Online has an article attacking Karl Marx and all he ever stood for. (See link below.) . I put a comment onto it (since flagged as 'awaiting approval', then deleted.) For the benefit of the Quadrant readership, I post it below, along with some additional notes of my own. . • Ian MacKenzie – 14th January 2022 To be fair, Marx didn’t anticipate the eventual outcomes that flowed from Das Capital and the Manifesto, in fact just the opposite. Like many before him he imagined a utopia where all would be better off, rather than tossed in a shallow grave in the tundra or jungle. The essential problem with Marx’s thesis was that it was wrong. The predicted inevitable empowerment of the proletariat through revolution simply didn’t happen. Anywhere. The first “solution” to this was Leninism, whereby a small revolutionary vanguard elite, the Bolsheviks, “guided” the revolution in 1917. It was assumed that the revolution would then spread beyond Russia, however the defeat of all t...

I have a modest proposal for a modest amendment to the Australian Constitution, which in its present form I broadly support in the belief that it has served us well over the 120 years of its operation. Please make no mistake. I repeat: it has served us well. In the international constitutional stakes, it is a front-runner, and the Americans would do well by studying it. But there are problems. These I believe are highlighted by the way we appoint two important categories of decision-makers: jurors and politicians. . Jurors are appointed by random (off an electoral roll) selection. But arguably, they have the greater responsibility; literally a life-and-death one until not so long ago in Australia. . For very good reasons, jurors cannot self-nominate. Anyone who hung around court houses buttonholing passing court officials , judges and lawyers, offering their services as a juror and extolling their manifest fitness to ‘serve’ in the manner of campaigning politicians would probably be ar...

In the Southeastern corner of the Quadrangle at the University of Sydney, there once grew a large jacaranda tree; a glory to behold when in full bloom and covered with its sky-blue flowers. It has since been replaced by a sapling of the same species. Jacarandas, though native to Central America and not Australia, are widely grown as an ornamental tree the world over.   The university’s philosophy department and its lecture theatre used to be located in that same corner. Also close by was the office occupied from late 1927 to the early 1960s by the legendary Professor John Anderson, and central to Anderson’s philosophy was emphasis on unceasing enquiry and criticism. This was no better exemplified than in the trial and death of the Athenian philosopher Socrates, the story of which is related by Plato in his Apology of 399 BCE. That in turn was Anderson’s introductory text to freshers in Philosophy, and expounded upon and discussed at length by him for a full term. Robert Hugh...

A SPACE VEHICLE FOR BOTH MANNED AND UNMANNED SPACE TRAVEL Ian MacDougall A possible future for space exploration and journeys. I assume here that there will be future scientific and economic reasons for travel to become routine between the Earth and the Moon and International Space Station; perhaps also to Mars, hardly likely at all to Venus and Mercury, and very little by comparison to the outer planets, though their moons may be a different story. Travel beyond the solar system for crewed space vehicles is highly improbable IMHO, and even within the solar system would appear to present enormous logistical, support and supply problems. Ever since Yuri Gagarin’s first 1961 manned spaceflight, the only way to access space anyone appears to have considered has been via expensive, multi-stage, powerful and single-use rockets. What is proposed below is...

 Dr Karl says: The myth that an ostrich will stick its head in the sand, in an effort to hide, may have begun with that great Roman thinker, Pliny the Elder (23-79AD). His real name was Gaius Plinius Secundus. Pliny was a man of intense curiosity about the world around him. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote about him, “He began to work long before daybreak. He read nothing without making extracts; he used even to say that there was no book so bad as not to contain something of value. In the country it was only the time when he was actually in his bath that was exempted from study. When travelling, as though freed from every other care, he devoted himself to study alone. In short, he deemed all time wasted that was not employed in study.” https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2006/11/02/1777947.htm  'If I can't see the approaching lion, it follows that he won't be able to see me. Worth a try, surely.'  I wonder how many ostriches had to learn the folly of that; the ...

  In my view, it is highly likely that we as the modern Australian human population, of whatever ancestry, European, Aboriginal, post World-War 2 migrant or whatever, stand today at one of those watershed points in history at which decisions which may seem trivial at the time turn out to have massive and largely unforeseen consequences. I refer to the likely fate of Australia’s population of macropods; our kangaroos and wallabies.   I use the possessive pronoun ‘our’ because they are part of the Australian landscape and ecology, every square morsel of which is under ownership claim or sovereignty or notional control of somebody. There is a massive purge of the macropod population underway, largely and deliberately kept away from public attention as a matter of government policy and media compliance.   Added to that, the only people in favour of the massive ‘cull’ presently in progress are those with some sort of financial stake in it, and who stand to make short-term ...

  QUOTING the intellectual giants at Quadrant Online (and probably Quadrant offline as well): "… No matter how much you might resent it, you have to admit the scaremongering has been absolutely first-class, judging by the results. Many of us have been reduced to whimpering sadomasochists, grateful for the beatings administered to our livelihoods, our relationships, our hopes and dreams, our self-reliance and self-respect, and quick to spank those with a different outlook on life. "We’re in a Fifty Shades of Grey scenario, or perhaps a Tarantino film: state premiers have us handcuffed to a chair and are repeatedly punching us in the face with one hand, then applying a soothing balm with the other, saying 'Look what you’ve made us do'. "'Half the population are now imprisoned in their homes, not because of the tiny number of Covid cases, but because of the brutal overreach by the moronic authorities who can conceive of no other way of dealing with them …...