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Modest Expectations – Aryamann Tandon

This maybe my last reference to the woman who has been background activity throughout my life. I have not watched any episodes of The Crown. To me, it is difficult to have lived a life without her intruding upon it, and I don’t need another’s interpretation. Hence the views contained in this blog.

I am an information omnivore with a photographic memory for trivial facts; I was at lunch yesterday and at it there was a bloke with whom I had been friendly at school. He recalled that I could recite every book of the Old Testament. Today, we agreed we would be hard pressed to go beyond the Book of Ruth.

Yet here was a person, under the cover of the “Royalty Tag”, who had structured her movements by the use of her handbag and her political opinion by the brooches she wore. These non-verbal communications may be the tip of huge tumulus of royal communications known to very few but enabling the Queen, even in death, to move seamlessly without having to give voice to any political opinions. Her brooches and other adornments could identify likes and dislikes. This was a life so scripted that even “times of spontaneity” were inked into the daily routine. The detailed code has not been published – as yet.

Nevertheless, if the leaking pen is any indication, non-verbal communication may not survive under King Charles III.

As a corollary of our mutual recollections on the pavement outside the lunching venue, I reminded him of the time he was driving home with his wife. I was in the back seat with my then wife. She had warned me that my friend was drunk, but with myself having a haze of alcohol casting a generous interpretation on his condition, we all got into the car.

Less than a kilometre on, we had just topped the hill, and there was a tram coming up the other side, its lights blazing, and the driver urgently ringing his bell. It did not seem to affect my erstwhile friend until the last second when he tried to avoid the tram, but to no avail. The tram struck us.

We were fortunate. We were struck almost at the terminus and as a result the tram was slowing down. Otherwise, who knows. Miraculously we were all uninjured; the driver’s wife gave him a dressing down – and up as well.

We did not stick around. There was a taxi passing which fortunately was empty. I remember looking up the newspaper the next day. There was nothing reported, and as we did not see them again, the question of accepting another lift never occurred.

Her Last Hurrah

The British do funerals extraordinarily well, and probably her funeral was the last and most telling of Queen Elizabeth’s non-verbal communication. The reasonable assumption is that she involved herself in the overall planning of this – even that, given the length of her reign, funeral arrangements would have to be updated regularly, especially with such a huge group of actors. The turnover of naval ratings drawing the gun carriage must have been just one example.

The fact that it was so meticulous, a “professionalism” showed when compared to that of her father’s and grandfather’s, confirms that this woman had a keen eye for detail.

Her father’s and grandfather’s coffins were taken to Windsor from Paddington by train, and the railway station is about a four-minute walk from Windsor Castle. Elizabeth preferred the motor hearse. Following the hearse along the Long Walk is a five kilometre forty minutes walk. Added to the three kilometres they had to walk behind the catafalque in London, she ensured that her children and grandchildren had a pleasant Monday walk of about eight kilometres; stiff armed with small steps which, in spite of the solemnity of the occasion, it was very reminiscent of a group of toy soldiers. Both Andrew and Harry had to walk the walk in mufti.

Her funeral had a distinctly Scottish flavour, with her Scottish bodyguard – the Royal Company of Archers – being very prominent. Scanning the two previous funerals, I could not detect them, at least not in a prominent place.

And the funeral procession itself dispensed with the gaggle of European royals and heads of State, who were ensconced in the Abbey without the obligation to walk.

At the funeral for George V and VI, there was only one service and that was at St George Chapel at Windsor Castle. In fact, the last time prior to Elizabeth II that Westminster Abbey was used for a Royal funeral was George II in 1760. This recent production thus provided a prime television venue at the Abbey, and then the smaller service at Windsor. In part this enabled the Heads of State to go straight to the Abbey and not provide a distraction, which would have occurred if they had marched. It was a two-part tableau.

At her father’s funeral, Elizabeth travelled in a carriage while the Dukes of Edinburgh, Gloucester, Windsor and Kent walked behind the gun carriage. The Queen had travelled with her mother and sister and the Princess Royal, cloaked in black with black veils covering their faces and heads. Looking at these shapeless figures, it is no wonder the Queen determined that when she died, the female royals would be clearly visible and not subjected to wearing “widders weeds”.

Yes, four billion people participated in this last great complex example of the late Queen’s non-verbal communication.

St Paul

I named my first son Paul. I am not a Biblical scholar, but St Paul always appealed to me because of his forthright personality. The King James version of the Bible demonstrates his eloquence in exhorting the early Christian Church to stay strong and true to a religion founded on the death and ascension of Jesus Christ about 25 years before. In fact I have read the letters he wrote to all and sundry.

Paul recognised that he had a limited time on this planet too. After all, his eloquent farewell in his second letter to Timothy attested to this: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” The rest of the letter is telling his followers what they had to do in regard to his unfinished business.

At the Queen’s funeral was Paul’s defiance in writing to the Corinthians – “O death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?” (I unapologetically use the King James’ version.)

Yet his most famous exhortation was also in his writing to the Corinthians:

When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

It was not on the Queen’s list of favourite Pauline aphorisms, perhaps by his use of “man” rather than “adult”. St Paul was undoubtedly authoritarian in the way he ordered all and sundry to do the right thing. St Paul was big on obedience, and hence the accusation of misogyny is understandable; given his view of women, St Paul seemed at times to be a “pain in the arse”, and yet he was a brave, resolute person, just what the early Church needed.

After all, as its text the anthem at the funeral took an excerpt of Paul’s letter to the Romans which advocates an indissoluble bond between the believer and “the love of Christ.”

Prime Minister Truss, in the second reading, also quoted from Paul’s letter to the Romans:

“None of us lives for himself, and no one dies for himself: for if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. And so in life and in death we belong to the Lord. For this is why Christ died and came back to life, that he might reign over the dead and the living.

Like everything this meticulous woman did, the Queen inserted St Paul’s views strategically throughout her funeral service. To have the Prime Minister read these words shows how far the Pauline instruction has drifted from the actual way Prime Ministers conduct their lives. The Queen could have anticipated Boris uttering and choking on these words.

Further, perhaps the Queen felt that St Paul very much reflected her husband’s forceful independent streak. Perhaps not; but we shall never know. She would not have left any note. That was not her way.

Komedy Korner?

I repeat this report in the Washington Post, without comment except to say I hope America can identify madness early enough as Germany did not. More prosaically, if it does not work don’t do it again. Ergo, consign Trump to the political dustbin of history.

Former president Donald Trump has set up his office on the second floor of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida as part replica of the Oval Office and part homage to his time in the real White House.

On the wall during a visit last year were six favourite photographs, including ones with Queen Elizabeth II and Kim Jong Un. On display were Challenge coins, a plaque commemorating his border wall, and a portrait of the former president fashioned out of bullet casings, a present from Jair Bolsonaro, the so-called Trump of Brazil.

This has become Trump’s fortress in exile and his war room, the headquarters for the wide-ranging and rapidly escalating conflict with investigators that has come to consume his post presidency. It is a multifront war, with battlefields in New York, Georgia, and the nation’s capital, featuring a shifting roster of lawyers and a blizzard of allegations of wrongdoing that are hard to keep straight.

Look! Well? Feel! Well?

It is time to examine the evidence behind the medicines flogged on television by the entrepots, which specialise in the modern equivalent of snake oil.

Perhaps I do snake oil a disservice. Made from the oil of the Chinese water snake, which is rich in the omega-3 acids that help reduce inflammation, snake oil in its original form is alleged to have been effective, especially when used to treat arthritis and bursitis. The workers would rub the oil on their joints after a long hard day at work. The story goes that the Chinese workers began sharing the oil with some American counterparts, who marvelled at its effects.

From then the descent into chicanery commenced and one American, Clark Stanley, for no scientific reason substituted rattlesnake (the water snake being unavailable). Rattlesnake oil anecdotally was far less effective, and then in a further descent, Stanley’s Snake Oil was shown not to contain any snake oil at all. It was found that it primarily contained mineral oil, a fatty oil believed to be beef fat, red pepper and turpentine.

At least the American investigators as far back as the turn of the 20^th century had charted a pathway, and the judgement printed below is salutary reading.

Not that for one moment am I suggesting that the tonic and tinctures being flogged by these modern drug entrepots are all derived from heirs of the Oil of Water snake.

What is remarkable about these advertisements however is that first everybody pictured in these advertisements seems so very healthy. Yet we have the spectacle of basically young people with occasionally the obligatory child waltzing along a line of drugs with a shopping basket for God’s sake. How many pills, tablets or capsules are those depicted taking daily? In other areas of public policy, governments rail against the overuse and misuse of drugs. And yet here is its flagrant advocacy.

It is the very essence of the polypharmacy drug culture uplifted out of the gutter into some ambrosia-filled suburb of tree-lined streets. The people in these advertisement images are the last people who need any dietary supplements.

Now what are these spruikers, who seem to be bright, healthy and blonde women telling us to buy. There are the vitamins. In our society, there are more than enough vitamins in a normal diet not to need any supplementation. Having said that, I have developed a habit of taking vitamin D daily. This was due to a controversial measurement which tended to underestimate the level of vitamin D in the body. It has become a habit. As the Lancet opined “For those who ‘believe’, the lack of benefit found in most trials completed thus far can be attributed to issues including inadequate supplementation, testing of a population not sufficiently vitamin D deficient at baseline, incorrect formulation, underpowering, or insufficient follow-up.

However, the spruikers do not say what vitamins actually do, apart from inane slogans; or for that matter, what the next lines of placebos – the magnesiums, the zincs, the seleniums and other inorganic compounds. Obviously iron supplements are part of the treatment for anaemia, but not to be consumed as a spruiked lolly known as a “chew”.

Then there are the organic compounds – as they say, herbs, and spruikers are active here too. I must admit when a well-regarded doctor told me to take krill oil some time in mid 2013, when I had been progressively feeling something was wrong, I did; nothing changed. I just got worse.

In the end, I was diagnosed and placed on prescription drugs, which worked. I do not object to people taking anything which has been classified as herbal, as long it is not toxic. Herbs included in food are different from those sold as medicine. For instance, I do use two remedies – ginger tea for an ageing genito-urinary system and honey for a persistent cough. Each has some evidence of efficacy. Yet I like honey on my toast, and pickled ginger is a necessary condiment for sashimi.

Pharmacy has always built walls to protect its monopoly, which has also demonstrated the power of the pharmacy profession. I well remember when pharmacies were the only place one could purchase toothpaste – Ipana. However, it did not stop pharmacies from retailing not only the range of medicines which quacked but other goods. For instance, body hygiene and the “hypo-allergenic remedies” was equivalent to perfumes and cosmetics. It was only about 20 years ago, that some pharmacies still stocked tobacco products.

The drug warehouse is just an extension of using the screen of the pharmacist monopoly provisions to peddle all sorts of claims for their remedies, often with no or little evidence of their collective efficacy.

The Review into Pharmacy Regulation and Remuneration in 2018 stated the following, which was broadly supported by the Federal Government.

Community pharmacists are encouraged to: a) display complementary medicines for sale in a separate area where customers can easily access a pharmacist for appropriate advice on their selection and use; and b) provide appropriate information to consumers on the extent of, or limitations to, the evidence of efficacy of complementary medicines. This could be achieved through the provision of appropriate signage within the pharmacy (in the area in which these products are sold), directing consumers to ‘ask the pharmacist for advice’ if required.

Judging by the way these products are being marketed, the above recommendation arising from the school of personal responsibility or lack of same, broadly falls within the rubric of “laissez-faire”.

The problem with the Therapeutic Drug Administration (TGA) is to know what does it do; and more to the point why is whatever it does done so slowly. How can such a government authority watch such blatantly dubious advertising as is occurring on media outlets and allow it to go unchecked. Since the above recommendation by the Review ignores any suggestion of it being a TGA responsibility to ensure its implementation being policed, why not just yawn, roll over and go back to sleep.

Arryn Siposs

Now hands up if you have heard of Arryn Siposs. Well, he played 28 games with St Kilda, being delisted in 2015. However, as he was a prodigious kick, he decided to go off to America and try his hand (or rather his foot) at American football. He went through the College football grind at Auburn University in Alabama. He then had a difficulty, not unsurprisingly, in getting a place in the AFL or NFL, being on the fringe for a number of years before nesting with the Philadelphia Eagles. Even then he is the guy who holds the ball for the kicker.

Then, the other day, his time came, playing against the Minnesota Vikings. He was holding the ball when the kicker kicked the ball into the opposing team, and it rebounded. Immediately one of the Vikings corner backs raced away and picked up the ball for an apparently certain touchdown against the play.

Siposs, who had to give the corner back more than a few metres, ran him down and saved that touchdown embarrassment. His speed in picking up the player and tackling him, when one of his fellow Eagles failed and given he grabbed the ball carrier in less than 20 yards drew the attention of all the networks.

Siposs is very much one of the lesser lights, being on a contract of about $US850.000 for this year.

His remuneration very much fades when compared with two of his compatriot kickers, Mitch Wisnowsky (San Francisco 49ers) and Michael Dickson (Seattle Seahawks). Wishnowsky is reported to have signed a four-year extension recently worth $US13 million ($A19.3m) while Dickson is in the second year of a four-year extension of his own, worth about $US14.7m ($A22m).

Dickson is reportedly the highest paid punter in the league, while Wishnowsky’s new deal sees him move to seventh or eighth ranked and inside the top five highest paid Aussie players of all-time. Wishnowsky from Perth and Dickson from Sydney both played Australian Rules but at a far lower level than Siposs achieved. They went through the Melbourne-based Prokick program before being affiliated with colleges in Utah and Texas. Their careers, which commenced about the same time as that of Siposs, have been of a totally different trajectory.

Yet Siposs still has his Australian accent.

Mouse Whisper

So much written recently about the Cats – that Geelong Australian Rules football team which won the 2022 Australian Football League Premiership. On and on… I am just sick of all this adulation for a group of muscular leather chasers dressed up in blue and white. One former Cat once even changed his name to “Whiskas” for a week.

I tried to find out if any sporting team called themselves The Mice. A good robust name implying speed and resilience. But unfortunately not; not even the Rats. Elsewhere the Shrews are the nickname for Shrewsbury Town, a third tier League Club in England; but Shrews are insectivores; different tribe.

Modest expectations: Then off to Sydney

What would happen if we ended up as the only country, apart from the United Kingdom, to remain a constitutional monarchy owing fealty to William V with a potential George VII as the Prince of Wales next in line? Maybe it will not be that long to wait. Maybe climate will beat us all.

We can keep kicking this prospect down the road because every potential solution depends on a level of trust but within the parliaments of Australia festered by the Murdoch Press, there is too much venom for there to be cross-party agreement at present.

Albanese is tainted by being on the left; a nominal Republican, not a member of the Establishment yet trying to compensate with his apparent obsequies; but Prime Ministers do not seem to last for that long a time. In any event, Albanese has chosen to become immersed in the web of Aboriginal politics, which has the very uncertain hand of Linda Burney to guide it.

The danger for Australia is that we become an anachronism – a legislative curiosity. A country which once prided itself on its youth, until the Aboriginal agenda kept banging on about being the oldest civilisation on Earth, with the least material evidence of its longevity, but with the dangerous heresy of consigning Cook and us Anglo-Celtics to some monarchist Hell. The anachronism being the last constitutional monarchy owing fealty to a sovereign who never comes, who never barracks for Australia and ours being the last country to have the Union Jack incorporated into its flag.

Thus, for the purpose of this thesis let’s create our own Head of State called a President, with a fixed term of five years with no extension. Precedents for a casual vacancy abound in every relevant legislation.

I suspect that one of the biggest hurdles in appointing a Head of State called a President, apart from timing, is to determine the people who would choose such a Head of State. One suggestion; not that original – since Australia is a Federation – we would either choose 12 or 16, assuming the panel to be gender neutral and thus two selected from each State and Territory.

I believe that a jury system would be the best, and thus no more than 16 electors chosen at random from among those entitled to vote would be an appropriate Committee; the jury system has stood the test since mediaeval times. The Committee lottery would be run by the Electoral Commission. The only conditions I would recommend are that:

(a) everyone chosen has the opportunity to refuse,

(b) only expenses would be paid,

(d) the process takes one month from closure of applications (if they are allowed).

For instance, there are always moneyed someones intent on manipulating campaigns for potential applicants. It then becomes a popularity contest; or just a quasi-Presidential campaign with political overtones.

The above sentence encapsulates the impossibility of the task, unless rules are made such as there is limited time to agree a course of action.

The KIS principle can be quickly compromised; think how simple nominating the next Governor-General is: one person makes the recommendation for the next incumbent. However, that recommendation – in the context of a transition to a Republic – is made to the very person who Australia is trying to remove. So how do you remove that person from the process?

I’m glad that I won’t be asked to devise the process; thankless, thankless task, as inevitably you are always wrong in making any such decisions.

Nevertheless, there must someone courageous enough to make the decision. After all, the Governor-General is recommended by the Prime Minister. In my lifetime, since we gave away titled British men in the role, there have only been two complete duds, and one of those lasted barely a year. Geoffrey Robertson, in this opinion on the future of a transition from Governor-General to President, questions whether we need one anyway – and he cites the stumbling General Hurley, whose recent actions, on the surface, seem completely reprehensible.

One final thing. I hope Australia will not be the last to abandon the Union Jack, and in so doing change Australia Day from January 26. However, given the cultural cringe from which this country has never divested itself, I would not bet on it.

When you are Young

I thought this reflection appropriate for this time when I was one of a group who met the then Philippines President, Ramon Magsaysay. At nearly six feet tall, Magsaysay was tall for a Filipino; I remember him as a person who embodied the concept of “charisma”.

It was a few days after my seventeenth birthday, and the invitation came as somewhat of a surprise. It was the first time I had met someone who had been a genuine war hero. He had stayed behind in the Philippines to fight the Japanese, whereas McArthur was evacuated to Australia. Yet for our visit there were no photographs, no autograph, no memorabilia. It had been an impromptu visit, but where some business was obviously transacted under cover of a cup of coffee.

Magsaysay’s life was cut short; he was killed in a plane crash in March 1957 near Cebu. Sabotage was suspected. The Communist insurgents, the Huks, were high on the list of suspects. Nothing was ever proved. President Eisenhower expressed his condolences. Magsaysay was to be his guest in Washington.

This following excerpt is contained in my memoir about that momentous year 1956, titled “Scars of ‘56”.

A couple of days before we were to leave, there was a sudden invitation to meet the President. There was some unexplained link between the Da Silvas and the new President, Ramon Magsaysay. His name meant little to me, except that I knew he was supposed to be charismatic.

Charisma – what a great word? Charisma has no greyness. It could inspire you to be either good or evil, depending on which path the charismatic leader took you down. Later, in the Presidential Palace staring at Magsaysay, I knew I had found the meaning of the word and, for a time, he was my model of charisma.

This time, cars came to pick us up. There were enough vehicles for Gay and me to sit together in the back seat. My father seemed to make that decision and assured her family that he would ride with us, but in the end he took a lift with the Da Silvas and Gay and I had the car to ourselves. We were all dressed up. I noticed that Gay was wearing gloves. We sat apart – her gloved hands on her lap. I sat on my hands.

The Presidential Palace was really only a fine house; it was not palatial. Magsaysay had been careful not to be extravagant. He was very much a man for his people! He had been a war hero, staying behind in the Philippines and then continuing to fight the Japanese. It was a point emphasised by the Da Silvas.

The President was a man with keen smiling eyes who strode down the line of those being introduced, looking intently at each face. What do you say to someone who makes you feel good for a fleeting moment but then before you can say anything he has passed to the next person?

Nothing of moment as it turned out, but as I waited to be introduced it prompted me to wonder about what important people said to their subjects.

I had once seen our Queen talk to one of the soldiers in the line. What did she say? It intrigued me. I pondered whether the soldier was asked about what he was interested in, and whether the response could be so interesting that the whole itinerary would stop while he explained the complexities of how unique he was in his pursuit of collecting football cards and that he had only number 54 to get.

Normally the Queen would be ushered up and down the line of soldiers standing at attention, with the normal pomp and circumstance. But what would happen to the pomp and circumstance if she suddenly engaged in an animated conversation with one soldier?

My mind flashed back again to that bloody awful experience on Anzac Day the previous year, when I was standing either “at attention” or “at ease” for hours. No Queen here; just the butt of a lot of comments from the passing parade of men in ill-fitting suits. At least the Queen would be courteous. I assumed that was the same as being regal.

Then, at last, it was my turn to be face to face with the President. It was my first experience of being noticed by somebody important.

However, all the great man did say when he met me was; “you look like a fine Australian young man, pleased you could come. Hope you enjoy your stay.” And that was all! At least he avoided “boy”.

There was no condescension. His gestures were all so fluent, and the smile was one of momentary engagement that made the recipient feel good; and then he had moved on.

My response was thus lost on the shoulder of the next person, whose hand was clasped, and for whom he had the same sort of a greeting, although in this instance it was Gay.

He did spend a few more moments with her than he had done with me, and on reflection the handshake was more raising her hand towards his lips, and then dropping it softly. I continued to watch him – the first politician I had seen at close range. He seemed to know the Da Silva family quite well, and he drew the father off through a door that led into the garden. He had such an easy way of moving between people, of communicating.

My observation was interrupted. “Coffee or tea, sir?” I said “Coffee, please”. After all, black coffee was always the drink you had in smart company after a meal, with a slice of lemon.

All the time, while I sipped my coffee, I kept staring at the President. The only person remotely as engaging – as charismatic (that word would be over-used in my vocabulary for a time) – was my headmaster, who used his large build to reinforce the power he wielded. Ramon Magsaysay was a man who did not use power as a blunt instrument. This man had finesse. You knew that you were in the presence of a man (and it was that kind of world then, when “man” was synonymous with “person”) who knew he had power. It was just the difference in the ease with which they responded.

We finished our afternoon visit and were driven back to the ship. It was all done with white gloves and gaiters; there was that tinge of the military, all politeness and efficiency in moving the guests across a city where the traffic was chaotic and the world less than polite. The Presidential car just sliced through. I thought it impressive; any kid would. However, that was the prize for power I thought. To do what you liked. But in this man, authority was not the same as arrogance.

The Ngarrindjeri

The Naturalization Act 1903 explicitly prohibited naturalisation of anyone with ancestry from Africa, Asia, or Oceania (except New Zealand). Indigenous Australians who did not already have their names placed on a state electoral roll on the date of federation in 1901 were prohibited from enrolling to vote until 1962.

Being an Aboriginal person in South Australia at the time of Federation meant you were entitled to Australian citizenship. As the then Governor of South Australia, Sir Eric Neal, proudly informed a group of us once, the South Australian Aboriginal had the advantage over others of being able to vote in Federal elections as a result of universal suffrage legislation passed in 1858, which stated that all born South Australians including Aboriginals were granted citizenship.

The Ngarrindjeri were the Aboriginal nation at the mouth of the Murray River, extending down the Coorong and yet with links with Port Pearce, a tiny settlement on the Yorke Peninsula, on the fringe of the copper towns.

Their settlement on the Murray River, Raukkan, or its Anglicised name of Point McLeay, had begun as a mission for the Ngarrindjeri.

I mentioned Raukkan in a previous blog about bark canoes, which is indicative of how resourceful these people are.

They built more or less permanent shelters. Some say they used logs, evoking the concept of the log cabin. On the contrary, the early illustrations still emphasise the structural bower nature, just a more complex gunyah. There are illustrations of some of these shelters, which included whale bones as struts. Despite living in a fertile part of Australia, as described by the early white settlers (to which I referred in an earlier blog), there was always enough food without having to cultivate crops.

When we visited Raukkan, there were a number of stone buildings one of which, the Church, is illustrated on the Australian $50 note. In the forefront from a late 19th century photograph are shown two Aboriginal elders, Milerum “Clarence” Long and Polly Beck, dressed in whitefella (grinkari) clothes.

Yet the Ngarrindjeri had their own clothes – an Aboriginal clothed neck to ankles in a toga of possum skins, a woven dilly bag slung over his shoulder, carrying a nulla in one hand and a shield in the other cuts an impressive figure. Other early illustrations show people with woven seaweed cloaks. These were skilful sophisticated hunter/gatherers.

Of course, the man on the $50 note is David Unaipon, a Ngarrindgeri man, who has been characterised as being the Aboriginal “Leonardo Da Vinci”. I visited his grave overlooking Lake Alexandrina with Henty Rankin, one of the elders. The fact that images of Unaipon are freely available is unremarkable since lining the walls of the Ngarrindjeri offices are portraits of past elders as one would find in grinkari boardrooms.

George Taplin is the most prominent whitefella or grinkari associated with the development of Raukkan as a mission. He came there as a zealous teacher in 1853, became ordained as a Congregationalist Minister and immersed himself in the culture and became fluent in the language which he transcribed. He lived the rest of his life among the Ngarrindjeri.

Uncle Henry Rankin gave us a copy of the book “Conquest of the Ngarrindjeri” during a visit just before Christmas in 2000. He had been significant in maintaining the integrity of the community – a community whose members are spread far and wide and who are prominent members of the South Australian community. This edition was an update of the original work written by a University of South Australia academic, Graham Jenkin. Originally published in 1979, it won the Wilke Literary Award for non-fiction; the second edition was published by Raukkan itself in 1995.

There is no doubt that the Ngarrindjeri were nearly destroyed by the mission system, despite people like Taplin. That mixture of disdain and paternalism, the removal of children, the dispossession of land, were encouraged by the mission system. The introduction of measles, TB and smallpox, amid a litany of diseases, increased the destruction.

Yet despite all this, the Ngarrindjeri nation have not only survived but been significant contributors to the whole Australian nation.

The Angel Falls if it ever existed outside Venezuela.

This action indicates that Trump has spawned a legion of nasty smart-arses, soul-destroyed individuals who enjoy the sadism of the initiation rites abundant wherever there are male tribal gangs; among other processes, the time-honoured desensitising process inter alia spawned the Leaders of The Universe – that is, until Women have said “enough”. But not all and not quite enough.

Below is a distillation of the Boston Globe and Washington Post reports – get angry!

Venezuelan migrants filtered in and out of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on Martha’s Vineyard Thursday morning (last week) after arriving Wednesday on planes dispatched by Florida Governor, DeSantis.

The migrants believed they were headed for Boston.

Eduardo, a 25-year-old undocumented migrant from Barquisimeto, Venezuela, said he set out almost three months ago and eventually reached San Antonio. He stayed in a shelter for a week and a half, but authorities were going to expel them, until, he said, he received word that he could go to Boston.

“At first they said it was to Boston,” he said. But “during the trip, the captain of the plane said the name [of] here — of the island. And well, most of us, we were all surprised because, as they had said Boston, and they threw us here on the island.”

What kind of guy would put a bunch of vulnerable people on a plane under false pretences and dump them on some island off the coast of Massachusetts?

The next Republican nominee for President, that’s who.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who’s been itching to supplant Donald Trump as the GOP’s standard-bearer, made Trump’s border wall stunt look like child’s play by putting about 50 undocumented Venezuelan migrants on charter flights and depositing them on Martha’s Vineyard, summer playground of the liberal elite.

The migrants were told by the flight’s organizers they were going to Boston. They were told they would receive work papers.

It’s an outrageous ploy, an episode of “House of Cards” written for Fox News. Instead of Kevin Spacey pushing someone in front of a train on a fictional TV show, DeSantis lured a bunch of poor people onto a plane in real life.

To right-wingers, the Vineyard is Sodom and Gomorrah with lobster rolls and soft serve.

Hell, the Obamas own a mansion there. What could be better?

Maybe Nantucket, but then there’s a lot of Republicans who own second, third, and fourth homes on that island, and DeSantis held a fund-raiser there last month, so maybe not.

The Vineyard, where the Birkenstock-wearing lefties have shunned Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz because even though he’s a liberal he’s defended Trump, checked every box.

You’ve got to give DeSantis credit. The only way his fellow immigration huckster Governor Greg Abbott of Texas can one-up him at this point would be to parachute a bunch of undocumented Hondurans onto Harvard Yard.

As right-wing political theatre, the DeSantis move is a hit, a blockbuster, pure conservative gold. As his spokesman told state media, aka Fox News, Florida gladly picked up the tab to fly the migrants to the Vineyard because Massachusetts is a sanctuary state.

Fox ran a story crowing about dumping the migrants on “ritzy” Martha’s Vineyard.

Oak Bluffs is ritzy? Who knew?

According to DeSantis, liberals in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts talk a good game, sticking up for undocumented immigrants with virtue-signalling rhetoric, while red states like his bear the cost and burden of taking care of them. Kind of like how every state, including Massachusetts, regularly picks up the tab to repair Florida when it gets wrecked by a hurricane.

Cynical? You bet. And it plays well with the crowd. At least to those who get their information from right-wing outlets that scare the hell out of their viewers by claiming the southern border is a free-for-all that has gotten out of control since Joe Biden was elected.

This was literally political theatre: a videographer who just happened to be there when the migrants arrived on the Vineyard shot video that appeared almost immediately on Fox News.

If you think it’s in poor taste, or even morally reprehensible, to use desperate people to score political points and make a propaganda film, then you haven’t been paying attention.

This is all about owning the libs. Scoring points is the point. Using vulnerable people is, for craven politicians like DeSantis, just a case of the ends justifying the means. While most people will see this as shameless and shameful, the DeSantis crowd considers it a justifiable exercise that showcases liberal hypocrisy.

Unfortunately for DeSantis, the good people on the Vineyard messed up his script. They pulled out all the stops to welcome, feed, and accommodate their unexpected visitors. Their compassion was as spontaneous and generous as DeSantis’ act was calculated and cruel.

State Representative Dylan Fernandes and State Senator Julian Cyr, who represent the Vineyard, were as proud of their constituents as they were disgusted by the political game that forced them into humanitarian mode.

“What better rebuke to this shameless political stunt than a community actually rallying to help people and recognizing and appreciating their humanity and dignity,” Cyr said.

Dignity? You won’t find any in the corner office of the shady state of sunny Florida.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s humane response forms a “work-in-progress” epilogue for the DeSantis “dog” act. The Florida Governor may have committed a felony by this act.

Note: Governor Charlie Baker is Republican. There are thus humane Republicans

The roughly 50 Venezuelan migrants flown unannounced to Martha’s Vineyard Wednesday in what critics derided as a cruel political stunt by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are now being offered temporary shelter at Joint Base Cape Cod, the Baker administration announced Friday.

The state will offer the migrants transportation to a temporary shelter on the base, which is located in Bourne. The move will be voluntary, the administration said in a statement. Governor Charlie Baker is prepared to mobilize up to 125 members of the Massachusetts National Guard as part of the relief effort.

Mouse Whisper

I thought it appropriate to reprint the final paragraph of a eulogy to one Arnold Mouse of Brooklyn from the New Yorker.

Though he favoured family-size bags of chips, Mousey leaves behind no rodent relatives, as he was the only mouse that’s ever lived in my apartment. Rest in peace, Mousey. You won’t be missed, but whenever I hear a scratching sound in my wall like the one I’m hearing right now, I’ll think of you.

Modest Expectations – Brentwood

I am bemused to see Peter Dutton setting a confrontational course against China. He is charting a no-win situation. Whether the Chinese mainland invades Taiwan or not is an exercise in the pointless for our foreign policy. If we were to send any troops, which seems to be our knee-jerk reflex whenever the Americans call their allies to arms, you would just wonder why.

One of the many Chinese artefacts in Taiwan

Are the Chinese prepared to destroy a sophisticated industrial machine and repository of a large part of Chinese heritage in order to prove a point? Maybe they will, because if you take the long view, the Chinese may believe it to be a cleansing tonic. I always wondered whether they would be prepared to destroy all the priceless artefacts that were taken from China after the defeat of the Nationalists in 1949. My Chinese expert shrugged – he said he doubted whether they would care. The main game is to suppress a democratic Taiwan.

Chinese expansionism not for first time was into Tibet. Its system of repressive feudal theocracy which the Chinese overwhelmed has been sugar-coated by the long-lived effervescent Dalai Lama, who however has moved down from a Nobel prize winner eminence to a lamasery relic that nobody influential cares about. The price of living too long – “if you aspire to holiness, die young” is an aphorism which the Nazarene Christ showed.

It was easy for the Chinese to supplant Portuguese rule in Macau, which was coming to an end in the Far East as Macau had become a decadent gambling joint, sheltering criminals. Then there has been Hong Kong. I suspect the Chinese had never forgotten their humiliation by the British and the French in sacking the Imperial Palace.

The Chinese are there for the long haul. They have long memories. So they abided all the British pageantry, and then when they were ready, they tossed the 50 year agreement into the diplomatic rubbish bin, and took over Hong Kong lock, stock and barrel with the customary charmless brutality.

But I remember the fuss in the 1950s over Quemoy (or more commonly called Kinman now) and the Matsu Islands, which are within spitting distance of the Chinese mainland. Now 70 years later they still remain in the hands of Taiwan, despite in the intervening period the Chinese having taken over a number of disputed islands in the South China Sea and extended its commonweal to include both the Paracel and the Spratley islands between China and the Philippines. Having said this, after the savage confrontation in the 1950s, the intervening cordial relations between these islands and the Mainland have soured with the advent of Xi Jinping. For instance, the ferry service between Quemoy and the mainland no longer runs.

The Chinese have constructed missile arsenals, aircraft hangars, radar systems and other military facilities in the Spratley Islands on Mischief Reef, Subi Reef and Fiery Cross. It remains to be seen if China will pursue the construction of military infrastructure on other coral atolls in the South China Sea.

America has no claims itself but has deployed navy ships and aircraft for decades to patrol and promote free navigation in international waterway and airspace. Other countries – the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei – claim all or part of the sea, through which approximately $5 trillion worth of goods are shipped every year.

China routinely objects.

Hainan is almost the same size as Taiwan, but is a specific Chinese Economic Zone famed for its coconuts and tourism. It lies about 1,000 kilometres to the south of Taiwan, hugging the coast. There is no question of it not being part of China.

But this irritant Taiwan! Thousands of years before ethnic Chinese settled on Taiwan, aboriginal tribes were hunting and farming the land. They probably came from the Philippines and today constitute two per cent of the population. China held the Island until the Japanese acquired it as a result of the First Sino-Japanese War. From 1895 it was a very model of a community where the native Chinese and Japanese lived and worked together harmoniously.

Then, after the fall of Japan in 1945, the status of Taiwan became ambiguous, paralleling the ambiguity of the continued recognition of Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China (R.O.C.) as the True China, despite the fact that he had been roundly defeated in 1948/49. He and the remnants of his army, together with a considerable amount of looted treasure, fled to Taiwan. In fact, he was just leading yet another invading force of Taiwan. He then set up a virtual dictatorship which, at the time being the Cold War, the Americans supported. Called the White Terror period, even though Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, the military rule extended to 1987.

I peripherally experienced this conflict in 1956 when I was on the crew manifest of the S.S. Taiping; well, for a time I occupied the assistant wireless officer’s cabin at least. I remember it well, the ship being “buzzed” by American Starfighters on the South China Sea, with the Matsu islands providing a background on the horizon. Let me say, they came in twice at funnel height – quite a performance.

Over the years, Mainland China took the permanent seat on the United Nations and reduced the number of countries maintaining diplomatic relations to 14 plus the Vatican State. Most of countries are in Central and South America plus the Caribbean; also a few of the Pacific microstates and in Africa, Eswatini.

Now all that remains is the independence of Taiwan – an enclave within the Chinese diaspora. If Taiwan had been maintained strictly as a Fortress for the R.O.C, with its own Potala Palace to remind the world of its oligarchic past – in one case theocracy, in the other a military junta – then Taiwan would be solely dependent on being propped up by the Americans as an anachronism. Taiwan is far from that – being a modern democratic industrialised country – anathema to China and yet lodged in an artificial enclave constructed by China.

The Chinese nightmare is for Taiwan to declare independence, and call the Chinese bluff. That is an important card in its hand. The only matter of importance is that war does not extend to Australia, with the Chinese community taking up cudgels for one or other of the sides.

The Chinese must look at the terrain of Taiwan and shudder, but as the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, in his speech implied, they have 1.4 billion people to lose (assuming that his assumption is that all 1.4 billion Chinese think as he does about Master Xi Jinping and his infallibility) and the Taiwanese only 22 million in any conflict, which could yet just go on year after year; and in the meantime the planet burns. Nature does not take sides. We all die.

John Knight

I started off with a mention of Dutton, elected as Leader of the Opposition, who has continued to behave as if he was still a Queensland copper. Yet he had been elected unopposed as Leader of the Liberal Party.

Whereas when Billy Snedden was elected by a margin of one vote to the position of the Leader of the Opposition after five ballots in 1972, it indicated that there was a solid group who voted against him. Among them, it was generally believed that he was a nice enough fellow but a policy boofhead.

After all he had been the Treasurer in the failed McMahon government, and McMahon had become an embarrassment propped up by the NSW Division of the Liberal Party. A familiar theme?

However, if you looked overall at the standard of Snedden’s office, the concept of “boofhead” did not quite gel, as he was considered to have recruited some smart individuals. At one time just after his first group of advisers had assembled, an office straw poll was held of those who voted for the McMahon Government in 1972 election, and the answer was no-one.

One of those recruited was John Knight, who was working in the Department of Foreign Affairs before Snedden appointed him as his senior Private Secretary. When John Knight had been originally recruited to the Department of Foreign Affairs there had been 400 applicants for 15 jobs. From the start he was potentially a high calibre diplomat and already had had one posting as a third secretary in the High Commission in New Delhi.

As he showed many times, his certain adroitness, his ability to grasp and magnify the positive elements of the conversation showed he had learnt well. Snedden asked him to see if he could organise a trip to China for Snedden. Since Whitlam was going later that year, it provided the opportunity to develop a bipartisan approach to China.

The initial spokesman for Foreign Affairs was Nigel Bowen, whose head was now in another space after his defeat as Leader given the exhausting exhaustive ballot. In 1973, Bowen retired from politics and was appointed as Chief Judge in Equity in the Supreme Court of New South Wales. He was appointed first Chief Judge (later Chief Justice) of the Federal Court of Australia in 1976 and held this until his retirement in 1990.

This in effect meant John Knight had very much free rein, which he exerted with discretion, but secured an invitation for Snedden to visit Beijing. John got on very well with Andrew Peacock, their progressive views matched. By the time Snedden went to China, Peacock had replaced the outgoing Bowen as Foreign Affairs spokesman.

There have been mixed reports about his visit, because it was not the play sheet that Whitlam wanted, given that he had already appointed his former adviser, Stephen Fitzgerald as the Australian Ambassador to China. Snedden visited, and while he did not meet Mao Tse-Tung, whom Whitlam did, his approach was in marked contrast from the previous Coalition government. When we were there, Fitzgerald could not have been more helpful, and in fact let us in on some interesting snippets he overheard pass between our Chinese hosts. After all, it was not the most stable time in China with the Gang of Four rampant.

However, a report of the visit is another story. As I wrote earlier, Snedden was convinced that the Liberal Party should recognise the P.R.C. governing China rather than the R.O.C. holed up in Taiwan, as Whitlam had formally done on behalf of Australia at the end of 1972 with ambassadors being exchanged between Australia and China in 1973.

John Knight provided the advice in relation to China. Watching Dutton stridently asserting an aggressive policy makes one wonder where he is getting his advice. Despite being still under thirty, John Knight provided shrewd progressive advice, as he did in facilitating Snedden’s visit to China. I still have a diary of that visit.

By August 1973, Snedden had been to China, met senior government figures and returned. It is agreeable to have a friendly ally, as I found out when the Taiwan Government sponsored my visit some years ago when I was involved with an international society concerned with the quality of health care. But in the end, the Taiwan trip was a junket. But does Dutton only want to be left with a bowl of whey as his China policy as I write this blog in August 2022?

Visiting China made me feel that I was a participant in a major change and, as a result of Snedden’s visit, the Opposition reversed its position and reconciled itself to a new order – a new order which had been precipitated in 1971 by the Government of China assuming its rightful place in the United Nations.

John Knight later went on to become the first Liberal Party Senator for the ACT in 1975; he was re-elected in 1977 but died of a heart attack while water skiing in 1981 at the age of 37. His memorial is a park in Belconnen, a 12 hectare area located on the eastern foreshores of Lake Ginninderra. He died way too young.

Malevich – a Ukrainian pathfinder

The effect of Malevich’s exposure to the new art was electrifying. In the three years between 1909 and1912 he went from being an unremarkable provincial painter to producing some of the major works of art of this century. In that time he assimilated the modern corpus, mastering it entirely, and he began to take his own direction in full consciousness of his powers. – Charlotte Douglas

Last week I related our pilgrimage to the Magritte Centennial Exhibition.

About eight years ago, there was an exhibition of Malevich’s work at the Tate Gallery in London. I well remember the trip down the Thames to the Tate Modern.

I came away with a memento.

I look at this figurine – a wooden model drawn from the quartet of multi-coloured figures in the Malevich painting entitled The Athletes, probably painted in 1931 and hanging in The Russian Museum.

The rendering of the human form as faceless, multi-coloured athletes was supposed to evoke how Russian saints are depicted in iconography. In particular, the shape and placement of the feet along a solid black line imitates the stance in the icons.

Kazimir Malevich was born in 1879 and died at the age of 56 in 1935. He was Ukrainian born in Kiev of ethnic Polish parents. He has become one of the most influential abstract artists whose work confronts the concrete concept of objectivity – the tools of the natural world.

Malevich went through an early phase of experimentation, often using peasants as subject matter, the yeoman stock of his Mother country. Then he entered a phase of cubism painting, before his signature Supremacist phase. Here he reduced his depiction of the human condition to geometric forms, one being a black square on a white background which seems to have mesmerised a whole generation of art critics. This time coincided with the Russian Revolution.

He is remembered through his painting conceptualising Suprematism “to access the supremacy of pure feeling” as he put it. His Supremacist painting is what makes Malevich standout. Essentially an exercise in decomposition he reduces the natural world into multicoloured images arranged in weightless space. Once you thus attempt to explain Suprematicism, you invoke visions of space where images are precisely organised into geometric forms; in many case it seems more reductionist than entering so supreme form – personally I do not understand why these paintings are associated with the Fourth dimension, which I always think about as the image of a man, holding an image of himself, infinitely repeated (see old Weeties packets).

Yet trying to intellectualise Supremacism does not detract from the brilliance of his painted work, without having to get into his mind and all its entanglements for an explanation.

Following the death of Lenin with the rise of Stalin, Malevich modified his paintings to show identifiable figures, while maintaining his basic supremacist analysis. The Athletes is part of this period. After his death, much of his work was destroyed by Stalin’s regime, but enough has survived, notably in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Perversely much of Malevich works are also held now in Russia; enough said.

Mal-a-Prop

When will it end? Below is an opinion piece by Alyssa Rosenberg in The Washington Post. Alyssa Rosenberg writes about the intersection of culture and politics for The Post’s Opinions section. Rosenberg holds an Arts degree in humanities from Yale University. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times and many other publications.

This is one of an increasing number of articles where Trump is no longer perceived as a politician, but as the leader of a quasi-religious cult. Whether Trump is inciting a Jonestown scenario or not, you can be sure that he would not be present if Trumpland faced a Jonestown type Apocalypse.

Last week, a man whom authorities have identified as Ricky Shiffer was shot and killed in a stand-off with police officers after he allegedly tried to break into a FBI office in Cincinnati. Reports suggest that he may have been motivated by a strong devotion to former president Donald Trump and by anger at the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

On Thursday evening, The Post reported that according to sources, the search at Mar-a-Lago was aimed in part at recovering “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons.” Trump’s response? A post on Truth Social, the platform he founded, declaring, “Nuclear weapons issue is a Hoax,” and a false suggestion that “Barack Hussein Obama” had done something similar.

But whatever we may learn about Shiffer’s motivations and the results of the FBI search, one thing is clear: The number of people who have died seemingly in service of an idol as unworthy as Donald Trump is tragic.

It’s one thing for Trump to relieve his followers of their money for dubious causes. The former president has raked in millions of dollars ostensibly dedicated to political work, when in reality what money has been spent has gone to Trump’s personal expenses.

But it’s different when people start dying.

Four of Trump’s supporters died at the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol: Ashli Babbit, who was shot while trying to climb through a broken window; Kevin Greeson, who suffered a fatal heart attack; Benjamin Philips, who succumbed to a stroke; and Rosanne Boyland, whose official cause of death was “acute amphetamine intoxication,” but who was caught up in a crush of bodies on the Capitol grounds. Christopher Stanton Georgia died by suicide later that month after he was arrested on unlawful entry charges stemming from Jan. 6; he pleaded not guilty before his death.

Now comes the death of Shiffer, who was also apparently at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Some might be tempted to create distance from these tragedies through mockery, or by treating Trump’s devotees as oddities.

That impulse — to disparage or dismiss the weird and extreme — seems to undergird a 2020 New York Times profile of a widowed farmer in India who adopted Trump as a personal deity, then collapsed and died after taking to his room and refusing to eat when Trump tested positive for covid-19. It’s also the sentiment behind so much snide social-media chatter. For instance: “some dude woke up today and decided to commit suicide by cop because the former host of celebrity apprentice wasn’t allowed to keep the top secret documents he stole from the White House.”

It’s easy to scoff. But this sort of commentary ignores the sadness running through so many of these stories.

Ashli Babbitt was looking for meaning because her military career had stalled out, and her pool company was failing. The QAnon conspiracy theory — which presents Trump as a bulwark against a secret cabal of powerful paedophiles — gave Rosanne Boyland purpose and a framework for understanding the world as she struggled with addiction.

The absurdity and maliciousness (sic) of the cause for which these people have died only compounds the horror of their deaths. How is it that no one, no institution, could offer something more substantive than the manifest hollowness of Trump and Trumpism?

An essential part of Trump’s malign magic is its impermeability. Suggest that his followers deserve better — whether that is an actual infrastructure package or a leader who appeals to their best qualities rather than their basest — and you’re accused of exhibiting the very contempt that made Trump attractive in the first place. Suggest Trump is scamming his followers, and you’re a tool of the deep state. According to Trump and his many enablers, there is no evidence that isn’t planted or manufactured, no moral act that is disqualifying, no act for which Trump himself can be held responsible.

Even the people who seek to martyr themselves in Trump’s defence can be redefined and reinterpreted through this corrupt logic: On social media, Trump fans aren’t celebrating Shiffer as a Trumpist patriot. They’re dismissing him as a false flag planted to paint the FBI in a flattering light.

Those of us who live outside the boundaries of this mad realm may be tempted to count ourselves lucky. Still, we should be concerned for the residents of Trumpland for their own safety. And if that’s not enough, we should care because the people who die for Donald Trump may someday take others with them.

Mouse Whisper

As I sat under the breakfast table, I heard him ask, “what had Brendan Murphy as Head of the Department of Health known about the Morrisonian hi-jinks. It would appear inconceivable that he did not know about the arrangements, if his Minister Hunt knew. He should be asked as to what he knew, because this serious breach of conventions at the very least affects ministerial responsibility and that of the Head of Department. I shudder to think what would have happened if Morrison had been re-elected, given his recent statements. Would he have sought the Governor-General to also appoint God to the Ministry?”

He also wondered about the mental acuity of the Governor-General. “This guy after all headed the Australian Defence Forces. Did he show the same level of judgement when he was boss there as he showed with this secret collaboration?”

Well, I think that is what he said, reporting from my mouse pad.

The Health Minister with the Minister for Health

Modest Expectations – Nadia von Leiningen

I have learnt a great deal over the past fortnight about this infernal virus.

This whole incident started after we had driven from Sydney for a dinner in Broken Hill. On our way home we intended to stay with my wife’s mother, who at 96 still lives at home in Albury. As I reported in my blog two weeks ago, we all contracted COVID and we all took anti-viral drugs, despite some difficulty in accessing them. In all cases, the disease was mild, although mine has lingered with a post-viral cough.

On reflection, given how successful the antiviral treatment seemed to be especially with my 96 year old mother-in-law, I wonder why there appear to be limitations on access to these drugs.

For instance, President Biden, who is 79, received the antiviral drug, Paxlovid. In clinical trials, Paxlovid is said to reduce the risk of severe illness by 90 per cent. He has experienced a mild infection that he attributes to vaccination.

By contrast, when Trump contracted COVID in 202I, eight drugs, from aspirin to the antiviral Remdesivir, were given to Trump in what observers at the time called a “kitchen-sink” approach. Most of those drugs were probably ineffective. Trump’s infection was certainly not mild. He was lucky. Biden’s outcome is predictable, uneventful recovery. One problem is that Biden seems to have undervalued the effect of the antivirals.

When the two cases are compared there is no comment about whether there should be any restrictions on access.

Thus, why can’t the whole Australian community have access? Or is it the same case as it was with the vaccine availability, incompetent supply chain decisions covered up by a military uniform? Not enough being ordered by government is a familiar refrain. Is it another Department of Health stuff-up? Open government, Minister Butler.

We certainly had difficulty in obtaining the drug in Albury, where there were limited supplies. But this appears to be a common problem, even in capital cities. In the discussions, there seems to be a surprising degree of passivity in the community about the restriction in access without any objective clinical explanation, although that may reflect actual knowledge in the community of the existence of antiviral drugs.

Now, seeing both how our whole family benefited and how his doctors did not muck about with President Biden, who was immediately prescribed anti-viral drugs, why the restrictions on usage? On form, incompetence by the bureaucracy would appear to be the number one reason. But maybe I am too bleak. So please, what the hell is going on?

The second comment was that when the whole family has the virus, and you are away from home, how do you actually get the anti-viral drugs. You need a doctor’s prescription, and because of the current conditions for that prescription, you need to get your own doctor to prescribe. In both our cases, the practice was contacted, the doctor was busy but rang back and sent the prescription immediately by email or text. The difficulty then is getting the prescription not only filled but in our case, to also locate a pharmacy that had the drugs.

Nevertheless, the key response was that of our doctors – suburban Sydney and Albury. They promptly rang back. I have heard of the contrary situation occurring. In this case, the general practitioner did not return the call, not that day, not the next, when the prescription of an antiviral drug was essential. How often does that occur – a general practitioner forgetting the Hippocratic Oath? And nothing is done about it. How many people have died because the doctor did not ring back? One is enough!

On the Cheapside

It was a slow Saturday afternoon, and my wife was looking over a series of ship manifests seeking information about some of her relatives’ arrival in South Australia. She came across a series of ship manifests including one from the 621 ton barque Cheapside which left Plymouth Hoe on sixth July 1849 and berthed at Port Adelaide three months later on the tenth October 1849. The Cheapside was the nineteenth emigrant ship from England to arrive in the South Australian colony in 1849; it was reported in the three months voyage six babies were born and ten persons died.

On board was my grandfather John Egan, then aged five years, together with his younger brother Michael, then three and sister Mary aged one. My great grandparents were Michael and Bridget, specified as such on the manifest. Michael is described as a labourer originally from Co Clare. Bridget – nothing added – just the spouse of Michael. I knew she had been born Bridget Corcoran in Cappoquin in Co Waterford.

Strangely, I remember once standing on Plymouth Hoe and looking out to sea and trying to feel what it must have been like sailing from these shores, knowing that you would never to see them again. But then again, they had already trekked across Ireland to Plymouth. Their embarkation had been from Plymouth not from Ireland, where Queenstown (now Cobh) in Cork was the common embarkation point for emigrants. But to America not Australia!

The Egan family was numbered among the 242 emigrants in steerage. To give a flavour to the “passengers” on the other hand there were a Mr. Clisby and his daughter, Mr. Farmer, Mr, Hodgkin, Revd. Mr. Wood, his wife and five children and Mr. J. Ayre, late surgeon-superintendent of the Tasman are described as being “in the cabin”, 12 in all.

As has been described, for the “emigrants”, they were lodged below the main deck in steerage quarters converted from cargo spaces. This area would have been dark, crowded and close to the water line – when seas were rough passengers were often shut in with poor ventilation.

Added to this were probably the captain and 20 crew; so life was crowded.

On disembarkation, the Egans made their way to Kapunda, where the first commercial mine had been opened in 1842. It’s copper ore was some of the highest quality.

The township of Kapunda lies 80 kilometres north-east of Adelaide, just beyond the furthest reaches of the Barossa Valley, where a landscape of grassland and peppermint scrub here is gently undulating. That was the scene that confronted Michael Egan and his family – wife and two children – when they alighted from the bullock dray. It was early summer.

Michael had been attracted to Kapunda because he knew there were Claremen working in this newly-opened open cut mine.

Michael had always been restless. He had worked as a steward on an estate in Clare owned by the Blood family. He was still in his twenties when he left Clare and obtained work near Ross in Co Wexford, but 20 miles from Co Waterford. Here he met Bridget who was the daughter of a local farmer from Cappoquin, who had been forced into service.

They had married in the years before potato blight took hold and devastated the potato harvest across Ireland. Potatoes were an essential nutrient. As a result, the famine devastated Ireland, the first wave commencing in 1845 and by 1849 those who survived were fleeing The Emerald Isle.

And in the South Australian heat, here he was with his wife and children in November 1849.

But this was a mining community, unfamiliar territory where extraction and smelting of the ore was a task Michael had never encountered. He was rubbing shoulders with seasoned Cornish miners.

Yes, I have been to Kapunda and walked the perimeter of the overgrown mine which has been fenced off. Strewn around the site there remains clear evidence that this was once a copper mine. The tell-tale pale green cupric ore with tawny iron stains abound in the rock fragments. I souvenir a few pieces and turn away and go back to the car. The first chapter of Michael and Bridget Egan’s Adventures had begun.

For Michael was 35 at the time; he was to die 53 years later, a distinguished and wealthy Melburnian.

Taking a Taxi to Bethlehem

This is a story about my good friend, Chris Brook, who died suddenly in May. Chris was a complex person, where many facets of his personality flashed, often the light from one cancelling the other out. Yet nestling under the carapace of arch comments and disdain was a compassionate person.

He and I had gone to Jerusalem in 1995 to attend a conference where Chris was then the President-elect of the International Society of Quality Assurance (ISQua). The Conference organiser was a courtly Israeli, a long term member of the Society executive going back to when I had been President of the same institution six years before. He said very little, but I found out that he had been a veteran of the 1948 war. The veterans of this War split in two Israeli factions – Likud and Labour.

Yitzhak Rabin had been a brilliant soldier and strategist, and even though he was a hard man, he was a reasonable man. A member of the Labour Party, in 1995 he was in his second term as Prime Minister. Just over a year before he had negotiated the Oslo accords with Yasser Arafat, which introduced a period of comparative tranquility into the relationship between Israel and Palestine. For this he and Arafat had jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

We were lucky to go to Jerusalem during this period of peace. One morning, Chris and a colleague, Heather Buchan, decided to go with me to Bethlehem. It was a ten minute drive by taxi; negotiating the border was quick, unlike the time it had taken to enter Israel, being quizzed endlessly by unsmiling Junior Mossadista.

Bethlehem by and large is a nondescript town of little shade and rows of ugly yellow stucco buildings. Yet the taxi was weaving its way unerringly to the Church of the Nativity said to have been situated on the site of Christ’s birthplace. There is a photograph of us all in the Manger Square in front of the Church. On the edge of the photograph of us was a smiling lean young Palestinian, a rifle slung over his shoulder.

Like many Palestinians living in Bethlehem he was a Christian, but unbeknown to me at the time Chris struck up a conversation with him. Chris said very little about him, but after we returned home Chris corresponded with him, and whether he sent money or whether he was prepared to help him migrate to Australia I am not sure. They continued to correspond. Then one day, he mentioned to me he had not heard from this young man. The silence persisted; Chris tried to find out what had happened. As far as he knew the young man had been killed in some street altercation with Israeli troops; but where, when or how, Chris never disclosed that information. Although he must have been affected, Chris never showed grief.

We had gone to Jerusalem when a calmness prevailed. We were freely able to visit Jewish, Christian and Muslim shrines. I particularly remember walking along the Wailing Wall amid the black robes and nodding heads. There was a cave at the end of the wall, where many of these Orthodox Jews were clustered. I had entered it, even though I was obviously a tourist. Nobody seemed to mind. One of these Orthodox Jews I clearly remember was one who lifted his beard to reveal a tracheostomy hole. It did not stop him launching into a crazy tirade. I listened to the invective – vicious invective primarily directed at Yitzhak Rabin for what he had done. I excused myself. When I walked out into the sun I felt I needed a shower.

Four months later, Rabin was assassinated by a right wing extremist, Yigal Amir, on 4 November 1995 in the Kings of Israel Square.

The Accidental Nobel Laureate

Due to their recent discovery and relative inertness, there have not been many clear establishments for the applications of fullerenes. However, there are predicted applications that are presently being tested – May 22, 2022

Dr Robert Curl died last week. Dr Curl shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

As recalled in his obituary in the NYT, in 1985, Dr Curl, a Texan, along with Richard E. Smalley, a Rice colleague, and Harold W. Kroto, a scientist visiting from the University of Sussex in England, showed a new configuration: 60 carbon atoms bonded into a molecule that resembled a soccer ball. They also found a larger version made of 70 carbons.

The finding was serendipitous because the scientists had been looking for something else. The chemists named the molecules buckminsterfullerenes after the architect Buckminster Fuller and his geodesic domes. The name was later shortened to fullerenes or buckyballs.

What a great name to enliven an esoteric area – the concept of kicking buckyballs around the molecular framework. The problem is that no matter how enticing the name and how cute the carbon atomic configuration; they were unable to find a commercial use.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Oslo in 1996, Dr Curl said inter alia

At the outset, none of us had ever imagined these carbon cage molecules. When we looked at carbon, the single astounding carbon sixty peak in the mass spectrum and the circumstances under which it came to prominence admitted no other explanation than the totally symmetric spherical structure, and suddenly a door opened into a new world.

The fullerenes have caused chemists to realize the amazing variety of structures elemental carbon can form from the well-known three-dimensional network that is diamond and the equally well-known flat sheets of hexagonal rings that are graphite to the newer discoveries of the three-dimensional cages that are fullerenes. We have learned that the cages can be extended into perfect nanoscale tubules which offer the promise of electrically conducting cables many times stronger than steel. Or the cages can nestle one inside the other like Russian dolls. Now that we have become more aware of the marvellous flexibility of carbon as a building block chemists may ultimately learn how to place five- and seven-membered rings precisely into a network of hexagonal rings so as to create nano structures of ordered three-dimensional complexity like the interconnecting girders in a steel-frame building.

The statement at the head of the blog was published in March this year.

Ergo, a Nobel Prize awarded for a discovery they were not looking for with a cute name but still in search of a function in the nanoworld of the molecules, let alone the ongoing search for their commercial application.

No Place for the Shamus?

I receive a great amount of stuff from the Lincoln Project, an extreme group of former republicans dedicated to destroying Trump and his acolytes. I receive regular communication because I purchased a print from them of a portrait of Abraham Lincoln with a tear in his eye. It is a powerful image. Those behind the Project are no saints; they are men who have been at the heart of the US government, insiders well versed in the “dirty trick campaign” and seemingly unafraid of using the same tactics.

The critical decision for the reader to make is to whether, if you read on, are you reading fact or “alternative facts”. It is important to factor in your own bias, if you have no idea of what is actually occurring. Yet the last sentence limply reinforces a paean which unexpectedly appears four paragraphs before about the Secret service being essential and valiant; a tincture of an apologia methinks! Rick Wilson the author of this below is what, in the terms of Cain and Chandler, may have been described as “hard bitten and cynical”. But then that is my bias!

Here’s why it matters that tens of thousands of you raised your hands and demanded answers about those deleted January 6th Secret Service texts:

If reports are to be believed, the Secret Service handed over exactly one – ONE! – message. That’s like writing “FU” on a blank cover sheet, crumpling it up, and throwing it in the general direction of Capitol Hill.

To get this straight: the Secret Service let the dog eat all their text messages during, wait for it, and this coincidence will SHOCK you, the two days surrounding the most calamitous threat to our democracy. Literally every possible agency with investigatory power has a duty to figure out just what the hell happened.

It matters that a Federal agency given sweeping powers of action and discretion has quite clearly engaged in a coverup to protect Trump and his coup plot. Stay with me here, because my mind is wandering…

1) The long-rumoured and discussed cadre of Trump Praetorians in the USSS needs to get aired the hell out. This just reeks.

2) The leadership and every single person on the detail and Uniformed Division that day needs to have their personal and work devices of every kind subpoenaed and examined. They must also be deposed.

3) I hope you’ll let the 1/6 Committee know you’ll tune in for “The Long Hot Summer” series. They absolutely should add this to the docket and make it so hot even the DOJ can’t ignore it. They can skip vacation “juuust” this once and crack some skulls.

4) I’ve noticed many Republicans get very livid lately when this whole scandal gumbo is compared to Watergate.

The Secret Service is a vital agency. Their unchallenged bravery at being the last line of defense between violence and assassination of U.S. Presidents and protectees is storied and written at times in blood. It is a brave and honorable duty. The core of their reputation wasn’t just a fearsome readiness to defend the President. It was also a cool, detached professionalism that served the office, not simply the political whims of the man who held it.

For months, Mike Pence’s refusal to enter the VP limo has pinged the edges of my radar. I couldn’t quite sort out his reluctance. He’s not a physically brave man, to my knowledge, so what was it? What else did he know or sense? If you ask me, I think Pence knew parts of the Service were compromised and put Trump’s politics over duty.

To go deeper down the rabbit hole: I’m no Presidential staff historian, but Trump’s elevation of hyper-loyalist Tony Ornato from the Secret Service into a political role at the White House (who later planned the photo op with the Bible, and the tear gas attack on peaceful protestors in Lafayette Square…) might have been a tell. I suspect he’s rather a key element here. We also know that when President Biden took office, he felt compelled to change out pro-Trump detail members. Putting all that together leads us to some unpleasant potential conclusions, to say the least.

This is not a matter where all of us – not the Committee, not the DOJ, not every American who cares about the rule of law and the vital role of the Secret Service – can sit back and be satisfied with one lousy text message. We have to pull at these threads and connect these dots.

The danger the Secret Service faces every day in the line of duty is real. Their sworn duty is an honourable one. But it’s starting to look like the MAGA rot runs deep here. Who knows how big of a role all of this played in the January 6th insurrection?

Yes, who knows. Jason Bourne is across it, and he was supposed to be flight from reality.

Mouse Whisper

If that human crowd have not had enough pandemic, Splendour in the Mud in Byron Bay may just be a catalyst for another, especially as it is not an uncommon event as exemplified in this British report:

Unusual transmissions of gastrointestinal diseases have also occurred during large scale open air festivals. An outbreak of Escherichia coli was reported during the Glastonbury music festival in England and was linked to mud contaminated by infected cattle. Heavy rain had turned the site into a quagmire, and attendees had high levels of contaminated mud on their hands and faces.

Also, those coming back from Splendour in the Mud last weekend should become acquainted with the one word “leptospira”. These nasty bacteria, the bane of sewage workers, are associated with my dirty cousin rats – in their urine which they sprinkle over sugar cane and banana plantations and which is washed away when the rains come and into the mud that forms around these bacteria.

Welcome to the disease world of the unprotected youth, acquiring a disease to remember where splendour is in the eye of the beholder as they cavort to the sounds of those masters of the music world. So, as you raise your glass with the muddy hand, do I hear you cry “Here’s Mud in Your Eye”?

No, that is a toast from another era well before Woodstock, in fact it’s biblical.

Modest Expectations – Leyland Sprinter

Near the end of last year, we decided to decamp to Tasmania for February because we reckoned then that February was the worst time to be in Sydney – always so humid and oppressive. Hopefully we would be climate-wise. Little did we think what would eventuate.

I have jokingly said that having a place in Tasmania is an insurance against climate change. Macquarie Harbour is on the West Coast and is six times the size of Sydney Harbour. Unlike Sydney Harbour, the number of people living in the rim of the Harbour is minuscular – there being one permanent settlement, that of Strahan, which is home to both a fishing and a tourist industry. Salmon farms dot the Harbour.

In my blog I have written twice about my view as a lover of Tasmania. In a blog I wrote about a year ago, inter alia, I mocked the pitiful amount being allocated to bushfire control. The West Coast of Tasmania has been thought immunised against bushfires, because it rains on average every second day of even the driest month, February, and thus having about 160cm rain annually has been some insurance. Bushfires have ravaged the area, but mostly in the mining area around Zeehan to the north where fire erupts from the Savage River iron ore mines.

This was the case in 1982 when a fire was sufficiently worrying for there to be some evacuation of Strahan. The fire had apparently been started by some mutton birders trying to smoke the bird nests in the Ocean Beach dunes, as a preventative measure against any tiger snakes that might be in the burrows. Somewhat exciting if you put your hand into a burrow and you grasp a tiger snake rather than a mutton bird. Anyway, the resultant fire spread through the scrub and nearly burnt the township down.

Nevertheless, while we have been here, there has been a small bushfire near Tullah, which I mentioned earlier in my blog – and another in a more remote area, threatening the Truchanas Huon Pine Forest reserve; a fire in that area would have been equally as devastating as if the bushfire in NSW in the summer of 2019-20 had not been halted before it reached the Wollemi Pine habitat in the Blue Mountains.

The latest news on this bushfire in the south-west is that “as a result of concentrated ground works and co-ordinated water bombing, the fire had downgraded from Going to Under Control with aerial firefighting resources and remote area fire crews continuing to work their way around the boundary edge identifying and extinguishing hotspots with continued aerial support.” That report was a week ago, and there is no evidence that local circumstances have changed.

But worldwide, circumstances have changed. Climate change is now an entity which governments are freely blaming for the conditions which have caused the extreme flooding events that have occurred in both New South Wales and Queensland recently. Terms like “one in a thousand years” calamity is meaningless when it is clear that there has been a change in the environment in which we are living.

The solution to repeated fire and flood is to provide the defence, especially when in this neoliberal world designed to value exploitation rather than conservation, building on flood plains or in the areas liable to engulfed in by bushfire seems to have been acceptable.

Clearing our own property is one thing, but when your land is hemmed in by plots of land that are neglected, with local government unwilling or unable to enforce the clearance presents a problem, as we do, then we do have a problem. The owners of the neglected plots are lost in the fog of the titles office; so we have cleared most of an adjacent plot, taking out eucalypts which threatened to fall or were already leaning over our house, which the previous owners had built close to the boundary of the property. To complicate matters two of the blocks of land now don’t have any access to a road, since the road which exists on the town plan has not nor will ever be built.

We have probably dodged the bullet as we go into autumn, but in fire prevention there is still much to do, irrespective of how complicated the situation is.

Governments have spent money to ensure that most parts of urban Australia have clean water – this is already a matter which we take for granted, but it spares a flooded community from cholera or other waterborne diseases which are endemic in less fortunate communities.

I remember those stories, apocryphal or not, of unscrupulous developers who used to subdivide land which only was visible at low tide; but in regard to flood plains, the lack of scruples is only a matter of degree. The cry of “caveat emptor” applies even when the information is symmetric, which is not the case in this world of hustlers and grifters, some of whom graduate into government, as we have seen. Australia has yet another big clean up job ahead of us, because the stinking mud is not only on the streets of Atlantis, which used to be called Brisbane, but all across this land so strikingly described by Dorothea Mackellar.

Vera Putina’s little boy

“Greetings to Ukraine. Once upon a time Finland too fought the Russian Army with everything we had and was able to hold on to our freedom and independence. That’s what we wish for you as well. The whole Europe stands with you.” – A message from a Finn who fought against the Soviet Union in the 1939-41 War who is still alive at 98.

In one way, the number of options for the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian War are diminishing. They all revolve around Putin’s mental state, now that it has been determined that the Ukrainians are not a pushover. Even in those areas where it would be expected that the people would be little different from the Crimeans, there seems to be vicious fighting. The Ukrainians are not rolling over.”Those Neville Chamberlains” in the US State Department who offered Zelensky asylum did not appreciate his strength. If Zelensky had accepted, that would have been the end; but Zelensky has ditched appeasement in the face of the appeasers.

For Putin, this is very inconvenient. Everybody talks about his unpredictability; but I believe he has the predictability of the tyrant. Thus, it was not long before he sent in his thugs to assassinate Zelensky. How many times he will try to repeat it, who knows! Yet when people become unhinged, as he apparently has, then do we observers put everything down to unpredictability?

While he is using the usual modern warfare device of bombarding the civilians by missiles and bombing, he must break Ukrainian morale to have any chance of winning. The Russians must husband their very finite resources. They are not endless, a very important variable now that the Ukrainians are putting up such resistance. The cost of Putin’s war should be soon, if not already, affecting the Russian population, given the sanctions and the strength of the opposition. The Russians have tried to compensate with mastery of the cyberworld, which did not have a major “combatant role” in their attempted conquest of Afghanistan. I suggest that with NATO and others supplying both military hardware and essential food and other commodities, the war will be won once the USA can reliably control cyberspace. It would be interesting to know what is the cyber surrender equivalent of the white flag.

If Putin did not have a nuclear arsenal, then life for NATO would be less complicated. NATO will just continue to use Ukraine as a surrogate to do the fighting – and eventually exhaust Russia. Obviously, a mad Putin could make good on turning his nuclear preparedness into an all or nothing nuclear winter – at least in the Northern Hemisphere. What the Chinese decide to do will ultimately decide the length of the War.

The fact that the world is experiencing climate change is one good reason why the Russians should dispose of Putin, but he has learnt the tactics of previous Russian despots, where Russia has not only survived but thrived. The only hiccough occurred in the late 1980s when Russia had a rational leader in Gorbachev.

One clue to future action is how the Russians deal with the Ukrainian nuclear reactors. They could continue the boneheaded initial bombardment or think that by doing so the World will watch a new phenomenon, namely the deliberate destruction of nuclear reactors with all the consequences that will entail. Maybe there is a playbook for such an occurrence, learnt from the Chernobyl disaster (when there was once peaceful co-operation). If the nuclear reactors were to be seriously damaged that would be an excuse for any sane person to seek an armistice, I would think.

Anyway, it would give the Orators of Davos something to think about as, having hurriedly packed their Louis Vuitton luggage and checked the time on their diamond encrusted Rolexes, they headed out into the nuclear cloud in their luxury Gulfstreams.

“A stray orange hair to be flicked off the nation’s sleeve.”

I first became acquainted with George Will through the New York Review of Books as a very astute and perceptive critic. I have never met him, but he is of the same vintage as myself. An Oakeshott conservative, but with an insight not dulled by ideology. He has been a Republican, but now writes regularly for the more Democratically aligned Washington Post.

In many ways Will serves as a policy digestif, enabling the unpalatable to be analysed rather than immediately disposed of.

Presuming that as a senior member of the media and as also a student of history, he can make links that may not be immediately apparent. He has depth of experience able to fathom what have the been the quotient of all his senses over his 80 years. Thus, George Will has both literary subtlety and savagery.

This piece below should help you assess whether this veteran has more than a fine use of words or a sentence that Trump should indeed experience at some stage, when his “sin taxes” become too much to accommodate and a “prigioni lifestyle” threatens.

Floundering in his attempts to wield political power while lacking a political office, Donald Trump looks increasingly like a stray orange hair to be flicked off the nation’s sleeve. His residual power, which he must use or lose, is to influence his party’s selection of candidates for state and federal offices. This is, however, perilous because he has the power of influence only if he is perceived to have it. That perception will dissipate if his interventions in Republican primaries continue to be unimpressive.

So, Trump must try to emulate the protagonist of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”. In Mark Twain’s novel, a 19th-century American is transported back in time to Britain in the year 528. He gets in trouble, is condemned to death, but remembers that a solar eclipse occurred on the date of his scheduled execution. He saves himself by vowing to extinguish the sun but promising to let it shine again if his demands are met.

Trump is faltering at the business of commanding outcomes that are, like Twain’s eclipse, independent of his interventions. Consider the dilemma of David Perdue. He is a former Republican senator because Trump, harping on the cosmic injustice of his November loss in 2020, confused and demoralized Georgia Republicans enough to cause Perdue’s defeat by 1.2 percentage points in the January 2021 runoff. Nevertheless, Trump talked Perdue into running in this year’s gubernatorial primary against Georgia’s Republican incumbent, Brian Kemp, whom Trump loathes.

In a February poll, Kemp led Perdue by 10 points. Trump failed in his attempt to boost his preferred Senate candidate in North Carolina, Rep. Ted Budd, by pressuring a rival out of the race. As of mid-January, Budd was trailing in the polls. Trump reportedly might endorse a second Senate candidate in Alabama, his first endorsement, of Rep. Mo Brooks, having been less than earthshaking. Trump has endorsed Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin in the gubernatorial primary against Gov. Brad Little. A poll published in January: Little 59 percent, McGeachin 18 percent. During Trump’s presidency, a majority of Republicans said they were more supporters of Trump than of the GOP. That has now reversed.

Trump is an open book who has been reading himself to the nation for 40 years. In that time, he has changed just one important word in his torrent of talk: He has replaced “Japan” with “China” in assigning blame for our nation’s supposed anaemia. He is an entertainer whose repertoire is stale.

A European war is unhelpful for Trump because it reminds voters that Longfellow was right: Life is real, life is earnest. Trump’s strut through presidential politics was made possible by an American reverie; war in Europe has reminded people that politics is serious.

From Capitol Hill to city halls, Democrats have presided over surges of debt, inflation, crime, pandemic authoritarianism and educational intolerance. Public schools, a point of friction between citizens and government, are hostages of Democratic-aligned teachers unions that have positioned K-12 education in an increasingly adversarial relationship with parents. The most lethal threat to Democrats, however, is the message Americans are hearing from the party’s media-magnified progressive minority: You should be ashamed of your country.

Trump’s message is similar. He says this country is saturated with corruption, from the top, where dimwits represent the evidently dimwitted voters who elected them, down to municipalities that conduct rigged elections. Progressives say the nation’s past is squalid and not really past; Trump says the nation’s present is a disgrace.

Speaking of embarrassments: We are the sum of our choices, and Vladimir Putin has provoked some Trump poodles to make illuminating ones. Their limitless capacity for canine loyalty now encompasses the Kremlin war criminal. For example, the vaudevillian-as-journalist Tucker Carlson, who never lapses into logic, speaks like an arrested-development adolescent: Putin has never called me a racist, so there.

Forgotten Ohio Ukrainians rallying against Putin’s war

One Ohio aspirant, grovelling for Trump’s benediction two weeks ago said: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” Apparently upon discovering that Ohio has 43,000 Ukrainian Americans, this man Vance underwent a conviction transplant, saying, “Russia’s assault on Ukraine is unquestionably a tragedy,” and emitting clouds of idolatry for Trump’s supposedly Metternichian diplomacy regarding Putin.

For Trump, the suppurating wound on American life, and for those who share his curdled venom, war is a hellacious distraction from their self-absorption. Fortunately, their ability to be major distractions is waning.

Albored Part IV – No Longer Unready?

I have admitted that Albanese is probably not unready, but he is unsteady. He strikes me as a guy who has grown up in the kindergarten of factional politics, but really does not communicate well outside that factional circle.

He is fortunate to have some bloody good women who have shown the guts to stand the incompetents up, and hopefully, on a change of government if that occurs, they will team with some of the aspirants running for ostensibly safe Liberal seats as successful candidates.

I was worried by the absence of Penny Wong and the short statement that she has been ill has been left at that after she turned up on the Insiders program. The problem with presenting the Albanese foreign affairs approach is to work out what it is. Wong’s comment on Insiders:

Working with partners in the region to build our collective security, to diversify our export markets, secure supply chains, provide renewable energy and climate solutions, avert coercion, and respond to natural disasters. By investing financially and intellectually in the security and stability of our region – because defence capability on its own won’t achieve this. We share with ASEAN states an abiding interest in averting hegemony by any single power – so this is where our energy must be applied.

In responsibility terms does the distribution of Ministerial Portfolios need to be reviewed – Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, Defence, Environment Protection? In Government, the responsibility for legislation, both future and existing, needs to be clearly defined; and yet the intrinsic danger of having exclusive enclaves centred around such legislative responsibility makes talk of co-operative government nothing more than meaningless waffle. The question is whether Albanese will have the innate skills, intelligence and authority to assure his Ministers work together.

The obvious question is if you, Albanese, get into office, what do you do on day one, because if you dissect this paragraph above, it is an overwhelming agenda – so large it leads to policy paralysis. The policy drought is evident with so much discussion on nuclear submarines, which are of no immediate relevance – and given the lead time, how relevant ever, except to continue to create for the huge hole in the Budget. If Albanese stepped back and thought that nuclear submarines are the panacea, then he is as blinkered as our supremely unintelligent Prime Minister.

I believe that the defence of Australia, as is the case everywhere, is yet to move from a traditional discussion of muskets and cannon balls. As Putin is demonstrating, it is all about killing more civilians of the “Away Team” than the “Home Team”. The Russian armed forces are seeing the people as the real target. Just look at the Ukraine. It is the war which confirms that the most vulnerable are this target. Children and mothers are the prime target, with the latest atrocity being the bombing of a children’s hospital, irrespective of what the propaganda says to the contrary. Putin may claim that everyone has been evacuated; but tell that to the mothers in labour inside the hospital as the bombs fell.

Unlike the countries which have constituted the battlefield over the past 20 years, Ukraine does have a network of underground bunkers, formerly called train stations (which were an important bulwark in the bombing of Britain 80 years ago). The lessons of the Ukraine War are and will continue to be relevant, rather than government solely succumbing to the blandishments of the armaments manufacturers for more and more lethal toys, which if used will destroy us all.

In one way, just the vastness of a very dry continent with a dispersed population, yet with areas that are intensely populated, provides a defence for Australia, the strength of which needs to be exploited in any future conflict. Albanese seems to have succumbed to the one scenario of invasion, given how much sinophobia has framed the foreign and defence policy of the current government.

Just one simple question? How quickly could our underground accommodate our population, how many of them and how strong would our underground need to be to withstand a missile assault?

The other critical area is cybersecurity – far more important than a few pieces of military or naval hardware. Is the arrangement of the current capacity, in all its diverse acronyms, the right way to conduct our national security? I well remember the Hope Inquiry which Whitlam instituted in 1974. It did not help prevent his dismissal the next year.

While much has changed, Hope’s biographer, Peter Edwards, has written that the principles Hope outlined then remain fundamentally important today: effectiveness must be matched by accountability; intelligence assessment must be separated from policymaking. Intelligence and law enforcement should also be kept separate. Most importantly, both intelligence assessment and national security policymaking must be whole-of-government processes, based in the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio, with no single department or minister to have undue influence.

The first decision on day one is more pragmatic. What do they do with Mr Pezzullo, given the number of strings that he has pulled under the Coalition? Presumably Albanese believes it is essential that he is removed and neutralised in his ability to have any influence.

The next decision on day one of a new Government is to review the head of the Australian Federal Police, Reece Kershaw. The danger of authoritarian governments is that they crave a secret police to enact their vengeance; and unfortunately signs are that that is occurring in a complacent Australia.

The problem is this drive towards a police state, whether it is called plutocracy, oligarchy or just plain dictatorship, is muddied with cyber security. I have not seen this matter explicitly addressed by Albanese. As someone who studied Georges Sorel, I am well aware that a secret police is the result of the authoritarian mind, whether extreme right or left wing. Australia should not underestimate this scenario, given the example of Witness K and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, who were not allowed to release information about our underhand dealings over oil with Timor-Leste. The Guardian did not hold back in a report of the matter where Howard and Downer were described as “shills for the corporations”. Albanese has not disclosed his position, because the whole conduct of the Australian Government in this case reeks of secret police.

Maeslant storm surge barrier near Rotterdam

Climate change is the other enemy, against which it has been shown that Australia has almost no defence. Flood mitigation by the Dutch has been going on since the 13^th century. The Netherlands, built on a series of sandy outcrops primarily that of the Rhine, had suffered from the ravages of the North Sea well before “climate change” came into the lexicon. The flooding of the Netherlands in 1953 was the biggest wake-up call. As one writer put it:

The greatest lesson to be learned from the Dutch is perhaps less about engineering and more about mindset and culture. “It’s easy just to talk about technological and engineering solutions, but a lot of the problems surrounding sea-level rise are legal and political. The Dutch have a legal and political system that is united around dealing with water issues; they’ve been doing it for a thousand years.”

As a result, their technology provides an avenue for combating floods, which has been used in attempting to waterproof New Orleans. Yet here, the only discussion about flood mitigation seems to be around raising walls of dams.

Bushfires present the problem of occurring in isolated forested areas under a hot sun and strong north winds, lit by a lightning strikes. In this country, the approach to bushfires should be inculcated from childhood; bushfire prevention and the community response to fire should be part of the school curriculum. As we age, so increases our responsibility and skill at dealing with probably the greatest enemy of all – fire – particularly when lightning is man made such as by a missile attack. Not sure how this has been discussed by Albanese in his quest to be Number One.

It is a curse that when war flares, conservation of the planet in the long term is replaced by survival in the short term. All the fossil fuel villains of peace time are now life savers. That is the Putin legacy, trying to maintain an order different from that which only exists in the mind of a madman.

That is one lesson of history at this time, for Albanese – John Curtin.

I may not have said that several weeks ago, but just how much times change has been shown by the events of the past two weeks. Remember the instability of the previous United Australia Party leadership in the events leading up to the entry of Japan in WWII; the touching of the forelock to a useless ally before Curtin won Prime Ministership. Would any of our current leaders have stood up to Churchill and brought our troops back from North Africa as Curtin did in 1942? (Remember Menzies had previously committed Australian troops to the ill-fated Crete campaign under the thrall of Churchill.)

Since Curtin, there is no Australian Prime Minister except Whitlam who has put Australian policy in the world first and refused to send our young men and women as cannon fodder as an excuse to defend freedom. Will Albanese be the next?

Rupert’s Quote of the Geek

The alleged comment of the Australian General, explaining the delayed deployment of the Army to the NSW floods because it was initially too dangerous.

Try Ukraine, Buster!

The Armed Forces are said to spend $40 million annually on advertising, which seems to suggest the war preparation is a succession of jolly japes, with imagery reminiscent of Coke ads in camouflage. Even Sportsbet has joined in trivialising military imagery to sell gambling. Often in such imagery there is a grain of truth.

Mouse Whisper

There is a photograph under spotlight of eight Russian soldiers in an elevator – all looking as they were escapees from a KAL cartoon – well allegedly these heroes of the Putin special operations decided to take an elevator up to the roof of a Ukrainian building, and the Ukrainians just turned off the power to the lift.

Could the Russian soldiers be that stupid? But whether true or not, the lift occupants do look a little bewildered apart from the one with his balaclava drawn over his head where only the eyes can be seen – it has that black humour which accompanies tragedy.