Bidengate
“The cover-up is usually worse than the crime.” Richard Nixon was neither involved nor apprised-of the break-in at the Watergate, but in participating in the cover-up, he strayed over the political line into an area of illegality, leading to a threat of impeachment and his resignation. If he had shopped his staff at, for example, the tense and heated press conference on the evening of 26 October 1973 (see main image), he probably would have survived. Now let us consider what may rival the Watergate scandal: what looks more and more like a massive gaslighting operation to convince America, and…
Continue Reading →The Thread
(Directed by Daniel Auteuil, 2024) It was hard for The Varnished Culture to dislike this court-room thriller. After all, it stars the terrific Daniel Auteuil as Jean Monier, a kind of French Rumpole, stepping-in for his overworked barrister wife (ex-wife?) defacto? (Sidse Babett Knudsen), to take over the defence of a befuddled father of five, Nicolas Milik (Grégory Gadebois), charged with the murder of his flakey wife, who tends to go on benders and sleep-it-off at a bench in the heart of their village, but one night turns up dead, throat slashed. Auteuil also directed. The cast is full of…
Continue Reading →Coonardoo (Katharine Susannah Prichard)
(First published 1929; 2013 edition published by Angus & Robertson) In two of the three forewords* to the 2013 A&R Australian Classics edition of “Coonardoo”, we are told that Prichard, in both her own (the third) foreword and the novel that follows, uses terms and makes assumptions that, while widespread in the nineteen-twenties, are not so popular now. Prichard is not criticised for that, nor should she be. Those were the words and the beliefs of the time. Some of them should be readopted by us, even in our woke wisdom. Naturally we should no longer tolerate the genital mutilation…
Continue Reading →Egypt (Part Three): Farewell
24 April to 1 May 2025 The Nile River The Nile Valley has been sustaining life since Paleolithic times and for the last 6,000 years or more, has become Monument Valley to the World. The river stretches the entire length of Egypt (and more), a country crossing of some 1,600 kilometres, providing irrigation, agriculture, transport, settlement and even galvanising civilisation itself, before branching out in the flat alluvial Delta and emptying into the Mediterranean. After an evening at the markets in Aswan, we clambered aboard the M.S. Grand Rose, a venerable Nile cruiser which, while showing its age, was nevertheless…
Continue Reading →Egypt (Part 2)
21 April to 23 April, 2025 Philae Temple We flew to Aswan, on the upper Nile, and took a boat to the Isle of Philae, where the Egyptian authorities moved the Philae Temple, lock stock and barrel (!) to avoid its immersion in Lake Nasser that formed after the building of the Aswan High Dam. From Philae to Agilkia. Dedicated to Isis, Goddess of healing, magic and birth, it was built during the Ptolemaic period… ..and thus has Egyptian, Greek and later-added Roman characteristics. The main motifs however, have Ptolemy XII bashing enemies’ brains out, under the approving gaze of…
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