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I was reminded of the importance of the uncontrollable by the recent death of Fr John George, a Sydney priest who daily submitted comments on our Eureka Street articles, some of which we published. Though no Hurricane Irma, the literary Fr George, the only one whom we knew, was nevertheless easily seen as terrifying and fascinating. Our efforts to control George reminded us of how limited is our capacity to control and how, as we control, we can turn people into ciphers and threats to be dealt with.
What's he doing in my dream, that cardinal from Ballarat? He's in some sort of seventies presbytery or hardwood hall, shirt-sleeved but with collar on and playing ping-pong like a pro, fully-focused, yet relaxed. Forehand, backhand, lob or smash, nothing is beyond his reach. The other player is unseen but plainly worthy of attack. There's just the click of celluloid foreshadowing the rise to Rome. No ball hit that's not hit back.
Fearful men should not be able to walk suburban streets carrying hidden revolvers. Yet that's the Bizarro universe the US finds itself in. Politicians in the US and Australia take note: if you spend your time creating a climate of anxiety, whipping up hysteria or building walls in order to score political points, the eventual result is going to be children lying dead in your streets or drowned off your shores.
'On this day in 1939: Belgium signed a trade treaty with France, 71 people died in the Black Friday bush fire, and Orwell's chickens laid two eggs.' Orwell's domestic diaries seem trivial, but it is wrong to assume he saw his recording of vegetables, egg laying and other small-holder concerns as dwarfed by the great world.
BBC director general Mark Thompson turned down a proposal to erect a statue of Orwell on the broadcaster's premises because the writer was 'too left-wing'. But political animals of all stripes have long sought to claim Orwell. His political writing transcends both time and ideology.
While interviewing Peter in his office at Georgetown University in Washington in 2009, Jim McDermott SJ made audio recordings of Peter reading a selection of his poems.
In 1981, a few months before actor Peter Davison became the fifth Doctor Who, Professor Peter Davison, the literary scholar, accepted a commission to produce the corrected editions of Orwell's nine books. The project was to be fraught by false dawns and recurring frustrations.
Crowding onto ferries in Istanbul, Turks arrive on the island they call Büyükada early in the morning, Muslim pilgrims en route to a Greek Orthodox church to ask favours of St George. No one is sure when the Muslim practice of venerating St George began, but it is well documented.
Those who expect a portrait of a monster will be disappointed. Stone's Bush is not exactly sympathetic. But he is human. He is even likeable.
George Bush, John Howard and others insist that we are winning the long war against terrorists, and, perhaps by body count they are right. But there is evidence that the way we are fighting the war has massively increased popular sympathy for such people in some parts of the world.
Almost exactly 60 years ago George Orwell published a wonderful essay called, Some Thoughts on the Common Toad... The point of the essay was to insist ‘that the pleasures of spring are available to everybody, and cost nothing’.
The China story, described this week by the ABC’s Director of News Gavin Morris as ‘the story of our times’, defies simplistic renderings, however much a significant part of Australian-based commentary masquerades as such. The rapid revolutions of the modern media cycle do not permit much nuance or lengthy historically informed pieces.
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