THE NATION REVIEWED

“As Abbott and an emboldened carbon lobby paint Gillard’s plan as economic Armageddon, environmentalists are cheering as if the clean energy revolution has begun … The banners proclaim: ‘Say yes to cutting carbon pollution’ and ‘Unlock clean energy’. One GetUp! video affirms: ‘get rid of our reliance on fossil fuel’. It’s implied that Gillard’s plan will achieve these things. But will it?”

In the Monthly Comment, Guy Pearse puzzles over all the cheering going on for Gillard’s climate plan. He analyses what the carbon price in its current form will achieve – highlighting its deficiencies in tackling Australia’s fossil fuel addiction – and argues that we are far from paving the way to a clean energy future.  

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Plus, in “Riding High”, Don Watson tries to share the road with some of “Australia’s toughest tradies”; in “Order is Everything”, Robyn Annear finds treasure in the hidden corridors of the State Library of Victoria; and, in “Triple Zero’s Emergency”, Christine Kenneally considers the technological challenges facing the emergency services.

THE MONTHLY ESSAYS

"Social norms need to be wrested back from the pornographers, as many contributors to Big Porn Inc are attempting to do, and returned to something more closely aligned with the idea of half the population enjoying as much respect and recognition of their full humanity as the other ... Pornland world-order, in which women exist to titillate men, does not belong in everyday life."

In "The Porn Ultimatum", Cordelia Fine investigates pornography's dehumanising effects and highlights its insidious spill into mainstream culture. With a surprisingly light touch, Fine boots up her computer to confront the frequently shocking world of porn, examines the work of prominent researchers and activists in the field, and challenges the place an increasingly violent and degrading industry has in contemporary society.

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“At the Todd Tavern down the road it’s just after midday and the place is jumping … Blackened windows create a kind of false night for its drinkers, who chuck their empties into wheelie bins dotted around the room. A lone white man runs the bar.
      ‘They’re comfortable in there,’ numerous people say to me when I ask about the low-slung ceiling that makes you hunch and the permanent night. ‘No one forces them to drink there.’”

In “Booze Territory”, Anna Krien visits Alice Springs to investigate the troubling discrepancy between the consumption of alcohol in the Northern Territory and that of the rest of Australia. Acknowledging that the annual cost of alcohol-related harm in the Territory sits at about $4000 per adult, Krien journeys to a range of pubs and remote communities, absorbing wide-ranging perspectives on how best to navigate a path towards change.

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"Michael Kirby, who first met Geoffrey Robertson in the '60s, says he was always courageous, always ahead of his time. 'He saw issues of White Australia, of Aboriginal neglect, the need for engagement with Asia and the rights of women before many people and was a very good communicator from the beginning.'"

In "Knight in Shining Armani", Paola Totaro interviews Geoffrey Robertson QC – Master of the Middle Temple, recorder (a part-time judge), visiting professor at Queen Mary College, University of London and a man at the pinnacle of an international legal career. Totaro discusses the human rights triumphs, the famous style of delivery in court and the sustaining passion for writing.

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“The story of how Afghanistan and the war were lost is a grim saga of political and military overreach, strategic myopia and a wilful refusal to learn from history or acknowledge realities on the ground. For Afghanistan, it is truly heartbreaking.”

And, in “How We Lost the War”, Sally Neighbour takes in the eight years of conflict that have passed since former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared victory in Afghanistan. Neighbour discusses the lack of preparedness and considered decision-making that have thwarted the attempts of the allies to destroy the Taliban, and laments the tragic situation the nation and its people now find themselves in.

ARTS & LETTERS

“There were intensities lurking in Alex Dimitriades that nobody had known how to draw on. I thought he had a tragic depth. Was it in his ancient genes? Or was it in his black, black eyes? Like everyone else I was dazzled.”

In “The Kid Grows Up”, Peter Robb reunites with Alex Dimitriades, a decade on from writing a screenplay for the actor that was doomed to fall into a “deep, deep hole”, and 18 years after first encountering Australia's 'heartbreak kid'. Robb discovers in him a spirit that has lost none of its intensity despite a career that seems not to have always satisfied Dimitriades.

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“Who of us would know when to flee? In stories of war and revolution there is a mysterious divide between those who know to go and those who stay and die. Foresight is not enough, nor is having the guts to abandon everything and head for the border. Choosing the time, the moment, is a matter of instinct and of wonder.”

And, in “The Magic of Exile”, David Marr reviews Anna Funder’s second book, All That I Am. Marr revels in the clarity of Funder’s prose and her deft evocation of character, and ponders what may be lost by the author’s choice to “lock us out of” the minds of various characters.

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Plus, in “Shakespeare in Australia”, Peter Conrad scrutinises Fred Schepisi’s film The Eye of the Storm with Patrick White’s iconic original novel in mind; and, in “Republic of Art”, Sebastian Smee reflects on the tendency of curators and tastemakers to overlook German art of the Weimar Republic as he walks through The Mad Square at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.