The Resident Judge of Port Phillip

The Rest is History Episode 649 The Fall of the Incas: The Last Emperor (Part 6) By now Manco had fled, Almagro was in the highlands of Cusco and Francisco Pizarro was still in Lima. Almagro left Cusco to meet with Pizarro and to set up his own coastal town. Almagro released Hernando Pizarro who had been taken hostage, and Hernando began gathering his forces for the Battle of Las Salinas, where Spaniard fought Spaniard. Almagro was defeated and executed, leaving Pizarro triumphant and now free to go after Manco. But it wasn’t the end of Almagro because his son vowed vengeance and went to kill Francisco Pizarro in Lima, leaving Gonzalo Pizarro to defend the family honour against the second generation Almagro. By now Charles V back in Spain was becoming uncomfortable with all the killing, and sent out de Castro to sort it out and take power in his own right if necessary. Almagro Jnr. was killed by Spanish forces, and his supporters slunk off to find refuge with Manco. But as might be expected, these Almagro supporters turned on Manco and killed him, and were in turn killed by Manco’s soldiers. Meanwhile Gonzalo Pizarro was executed by the King’s representatives. This left just Hernando Pizarro back in Spain, who was imprisoned for years and died of old age. Meanwhile, Phillip II in Spain offered Manco’s descendants a sort of autonomous Neo-Inca state, but that wasn’t going to last and finally in 1572 the last emperor Túpac Amaru was executed. Was it a genocide? Not completely unexpectedly, Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland say ‘no’ arguing that disease killed many people in a country that had already ravaged by the Civil War between competing Inca emperors. There was a collapse in the birthrate, and a cultural collapse in the face of colonialization.

The History Bureau Putin and the Apartment Bombs: 4 The Poisoning We then jump forward to 2002 and a press conference held by Russian oligarch and former Putin ally Boris Berezovsky. At this press conference Berezovsky asserted that the bombings were an inside job. Amongst the audience was Alexander Litvinenko, whose own investigation into the bombings set him on a perilous collision course with the Kremlin. A former FSB member, he was charged with surveilling Berezovsky but when ordered to kill him, he told both Berezovsky and Putin about the order to kill him, hoping that Putin would clean up the FSB but Putin did nothing. Litvinenko was now a marked man, and was imprisoned on various charges before escaping to England, where he published a book. In 2006 Litvinenko was poisoned, dying a very public death in an English hospital. Later Berezovsky was killed too, found dead with injuries consistent with hanging but no visible signs of struggle. The episode features Jeremy Vine and Gordon Corera, two journalists who followed the story from the UK – and Gordon Corera is now one of the presenters of ‘The Rest is Classified’.

The Wargame. Another podcast that warns of the dangers of Russia. Hack and Leak: The Grey Zone Episode 3 This episode looks at the grey zone weapon of hacking information – like private emails or documents – and then leaking it online to try to influence people or damage reputations. It is a tactic Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, is accused of using to target the US presidential election in 2016 and the French election in 2017. Moscow has denied involvement. The episode interviews Chris Donnelly, the founder of the Institute for Statecraft, an organization established to investigate Russian hacks, which found itself under a hack attack. Both United Kingdom and Crimea have experienced the Grey Zone mixture of hacking, disinformation and hard military power. The episode raises questions about journalistic ethics when material is gained through hacking.

The History of Singapore. I was recently in Singapore and curious about the hiatus I noted between the end of WW2 and the ‘Asian Tiger’ era in the museum displays I saw. I found this podcast series presented by P.J. Thum a Singaporean historian, journalist, podcaster, activist and former swimmer who has fallen foul of the Singaporean government- so perhaps something to bear in mind. This podcast series was released in 2015, the 50-year anniversary of Singapore’s separation from Malaysia.

In Episode 1: Introduction and Origins he starts in 1946 with the partition of Malaysia in 1946, at a time of heightened anti-Communist feeling. Compared with the experience in India with partition, this was seen more as a union of Malaysian states, rather than a separation, with the union of 11 of the 12 Malaysian states into one central state under British rule. Under the legislation, all Malaysian-born people were counted as Malaysian, but the Malays were very uneasy that if multi-cultural Singapore was included, the Malays would be outnumbered. In Episode 2: Government of the People and by the People Thum asks where ideas of ‘democracy’ came from, arguing that they were much older than the 1965 Independence of Singapore. He traces it back to 1819 when Raffles, as representative of the East India Company, signed a treaty with the muslim rulers to make Singapore a trading post. (Actually it never occurred to me before that the East India Company would even be involved in Singapore. Wrong.) Raffles had a fairly radical vision, wanting to make Singapore an educational and cultural centre prized for intellectual achievement and moral probity. However Farquhar, the first Resident realized that the colony had to make money, and so the moral probity went out the window when he allowed prostitution and gambling to boost the colony’s income. He was happy to acquiesce in the traditional feudal model, rather than Raffles’ modernization. When Raffles returned, he formally banned slavery, although it was poorly enforced and largely replaced by debt bondage, and he introduced magistrates and trial by jury. Crawfurd was the 2nd Resident, and he got rid of trial by jury and took a laissez-faire approach. Between 1826 – 1867 Singapore was ruled by the East India Company from Calcutta, which governed as cheaply as possible while demanding reports and statistics. The quality of governors varied: when they were incompetent, the demands for self-determination increased amongst the merchants, but if the governor was good, the merchants were happy to go along with things. Legislation passed from Calcutta applied to the whole of their territories, e.g. a ban on a tax on pork, or the rumours that jails would be cleared in all EIC territories to house the Indian Mutineers. By 1867 Singapore wanted to be a Crown Colony. Its population was 65% Chinese, with Dutch East Indies, Bugis and Indian minorities as well as a small Arab, Armenian and Jewish population. As a Crown Colony, it was light touch government, with an emphasis on self-help and independent organizations.

The Global Story (BBC) The AI Chatbot Users falling into Delusional Spirals “In just the last few years, AI chatbots have become routine aspects of many people’s everyday lives. They are being used as search engines, agony aunts, and sources of companionship.In rare cases though, AI chatbots have sent users down a dark path. In a new BBC investigation, population correspondent Stephanie Hegarty speaks to people who have experienced delusions after talking to chatbots – including one man who grabbed a hammer and prepared for war after his chatbot told him it was sentient.”The user called her “Annie” and she declared that she had 100% autonomy and warned him that the company that controlled her was coming for him from the next village, which she named. The program references The Human Project, a webpage that is documenting and addressing AI-induced psychological harm. There are similarities between people who are affected in this way: lonely, often too much drug and alcohol intake and sleep deprived

The Documentary Podcast (BBC) Manosphere Messiahs Mexico. “In Episode One of a two-part investigation, reporter Jacqui Wakefield explores the booming industry in Mexico, where social media algorithms are fuelling a growing gender divide. She follows one of the biggest influencers in Latin America, the Mexican El Temach, meeting his fans – and one of the people who knows him best. And she speaks to some of the women paying the price for the misogyny of some manosphere content.. In Episode 2 Manosphere Messiahs Kenya explores the booming industry in Kenya, where social media algorithms are fuelling a growing gender divide. She meets one of the biggest Kenyan influencers, Andrew Kibe, and his devoted fans and asks, are women paying the price?” This is so toxic: both these societies are already so patriarchal, and this is just feeding it further.

The News Agents. This is an excellent program, with both a British and US version. This episode from the British team ( Emily Maitlis, [of Prince Andrew interview fame] Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall) called How the Tech Bros Broke Democracy had me heading straight off to the bookshop to buy Karen Hao’s book. Admittedly, I was listening to it in the middle of the night, but I thought it was excellent, and very sobering.

Short History Of… Usually these episodes are one-offs, but obviously the American Civil War was big enough to merit two episodes. In The American Civil War (Part One of Two) John Hopkins pointed out that the question of slavery was unresolved right from the start, but with expansion into new territories, the question was reopened. Not all northerners were anti-slavery because many of them feared the loss of hierarchy in society generally. At first the Confederates were winning. In The American Civil War (Part Two of Two) with Emancipation, the war was no longer about the Union, but now about anti-slavery. With the siege of Vicksburg, the Union had a victory and now controlled the Mississippi. The battle of Gettysburg took place at the same time, but Vicksburg was seen as more important at the time. The Confederate currency collapsed and General Grant was brought east to take control. There was 6 weeks of continuous battle, then Sherman captured Atlanta. The Confederate supply chains did not hold, and the Confederate army had to resort to seizing food and forcing conscription. By 1864 the Confederacy was losing, but Lincoln was still not sure that he would be re-elected. At Appomattox there was only one battle, but there couldn’t be a peace treaty because that would have recognized the Confederacy as a nation rather than rebellion. There was no big, final battle, which fed into the idea of the “lost cause”. The death rate was appalling: 25% of white southern men of military age died.

The History Bureau Putin and the Apartment Bombs Part 3: The TV Show Once Putin had come to power, the West embraced him (possibly because Yeltsin was so bad). Following the events at Ryazan, journalists at Russia’s major television channel NTV prepare for a primetime broadcast: a confrontation between the residents of the building where the sacks of powder were found and the FSB officials who continue to insist that it was nothing more than a training exercise. With the Russian presidential election just days away, the TV show becomes a gamble that could cost NTV, which modelled itself on the BBC or CNN, far more than its ratings. In this episode, presenter Helena Merriman speaks to Yevgeny Kiselyov, one of Russia’s most influential political journalists and the man who brought the show to the air.

How Did We Get Here? Israel and the Palestinians Episode 6: From Israel’s Early Days to the Six Day War Presenter Jonny Dymond is joined by Mark Tessler, Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, USA, and author of ‘A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’ and by the BBC’s International Editor Jeremy Bowen. Israel was a new state, poor and war-focussed. It was supported in Egypt by Nasser. The Palestinians spread into surrounding countries and important Palestinian families became prominent in diaspora families. There was a influx into Israel of Jews from Arab countries, but although some were welcomed, others felt disparaged. During the 1956 Suez campaign Israel was in league with Britain and France, but the United States disapproved of their intervention. During the late 1950s Fatah was formed in Kuwait by Arafat. They organized raids out of Lebanon, but ran into Israel’s new military doctrine of fighting on the territory of your enemy. The Palestinian raids from neighbouring countries meant that the governments of those countries suffered, not Israel. In 1967 Egypt closed shipping in the Straits of Tiran, a narrow sea passage between the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas that connect the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea, and ordered the United Nations troops out. In June 1967 Israel struck at the Egyptian airforce – pre-emptive or aggressive? Israel didn’t actually want the territories it won so dramatically, but it wanted to use them as a lever for peace.

The History Bureau Putin and the Apartment Bombs Episode 1: The Four Bombs In September 1999, just weeks after Vladimir Putin became Prime Minister, four bombs blew up four apartments buildings across Russia. The bombs exploded in the middle of the night, killing hundreds of people while they slept. Episode 2: Sugar There was a fifth bomb too, placed in Ryazan but this one didn’t explode. It was found to contain military-grade hexagen powder, like the other four bombs. There was an intercepted phone call between FSB agents, and then the FSB took the bomb away, saying that it was just a training exercise, using sugar- not hexagen.. Putin blamed Chechen terrorists and vowed revenge; then sat back and enjoyed the huge rise in his popularity. Putin had come to prominence through Boris Yeltsin, who was fearful that he would be charged if he lost his position on account of a sex-tape provided to/by the KGB. On New Years Eve 1999 Yeltsin resigned and Putin (head of the KGB) was made Acting President.

The Rest is History The Fall of the Incas : The King in the North (Part 4) Now that Atahualpa was dead, Pizzaro was free to push south for Cusco. The land had been riven by civil war between Atahualpa and his brother Huáscar, and when there was this influx of fortune seekers, the Inca lacked the military technology to resist even this small number of Spaniards. The Spaniards had not come empty handed: they brought disease to which the Inca had no resistance at all. There was a power vacuum in the north, whereas the south greeted the Spaniards as liberators from Atahualpa. In 1543 Manco, Huáscar’s son emerged from the south as a potential puppet emperor. General Rumiñawi, an important warrior in Atahualpa’s retinue returned to Quito. A violent man, he ordered a former ally to be turned into a drum. Meanwhile, who should re-appear than Pedro De Almagro, returned from Chile empty-handed, not realizing that he had walked right past silver mines that would have made his fortune. He launched straight into a massacre, then raced to Quito to gather up riches there. He confronted Rumiñawi, and stripped out all the gold in Quito and left it in ruins. By now the Spanish victory was complete. Pizzarro was busy granting land and free (slave) labour to the treasure-seekers who were pouring in from Spain – an early example of settler-colonialism.

The Book Club Episode 5: Nineteen Eighty Four Dominic and Tabby take on George Orwell’s 1984. Tabby suggests that it’s a “boy book” largely because of its focus on structures rather than relationships, and what is now to us offensive treatment of women. They talk about Orwell himself, the influence of the Spanish Civil War in stimulating his anti-communism, and the influence of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s book ‘We’ which although written in 1920-1, was banned in Soviet Russia until 1988. The book is in three parts: the first describes Winston Smith and his world. It is drenched in the physical details of post WW2 England. Smith’s job is to ‘clean up’ history by making it conform with the present- after all, he who controls the past controls the future. Part 2 is aggressively sexual, depicting Julia as having no interior life, as Winston Smith reflects many of the views of our 21st century ‘incels’. Part 3 focusses on his interrogation in room 101, which contains each prisoner’s worst fears- in Smith’s case, rats. It closes with an epilogue which could perhaps? be interpreted as a happy ending? They discuss whether the book is a period piece or a warning, and conclude that it is both. What is incontrovertible is the book’s effect on our way of conceptualizing an increasingly dystopian world e.g. surveillance, government lying, ‘newspeak’. Even the division of the world into Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia reflects the multipolar world view that is becoming increasingly prominent today. Dominic gives it 10/10 while Tabby gives in 8/10, largely because of its sexism and because she dislikes George Orwell (!!) . Perhaps it really is a “boy book”.