The Daily (NYT) A Plane Crash, 10 Dead People and a Question: Was this Putin’s revenge? For two months, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss of the Wagner militia, seemed to have gotten away with his short-lived mutiny even though he shot down Russian planes and killed Russian soldiers. So why kill him now – if indeed that’s what has happened? In this episode Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The Times, suggests that Putin might now be more confident about seeing off Ukraine’s counter-offensive, and having already crushed the liberal opposition in Russia, he’s now looking to crush the ultra-nationalist opposition (of whom Prigozhin was one). Probably the perception that Putin could arrange this assassination is probably more important than whether he did or not.
Reflecting History. Episode 11: The Social War- When Conversation Fails is part of my back-track to look at the Social War of 91BCE. There were two issues at the time: first, the Allies’ (i.e. the other Italian city-states) demands for citizenship and second, the land displacement which saw small farmers kicked off their land. Marius had introduced reforms that allowed Allies into the army, with the result that loyalty accrued to successful generals who could seize enough land from defeated regions in order to rewards his soldiers later. However, in 95BCE the Senate passed a law expelling non-citizens from Rome, which further fueled the Allies’ discontent. As Tribune of the Plebs, Marcus Livius Drusus was a populare, but in reality he was a stooge for the Senate who disallowed any of the laws he introduced, prompting the Social War. Was the war justified? There was no hard and fast battlelines: they were fighting men of the same religion, the same race, the same language: it was just the matter of citizenship. The first year of the war went badly for the Romans, and Marius brought the dead bodies back to Rome, which prompted the people and the Senate to change their minds about the war. Legislation was introduced to bring the war to a close, by allowing anyone living in Italy could now vote and apply for citizenship. It was not so much that the Italian allies were defeated, because they got what they wanted. Sulla went to mop up the remaining rebels.
History Extra To mark the centenary of the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, this episode Tokyo’s devastating 1923 Earthquake features Dr Christopher Harding. He explains that some commentators saw it as a reality check on the 50 years of modernization that preceded it: conservatives interpreted it as a divine reprimand. It was an unfolding disaster: the shake itself, followed by a fire, massive homelessness and a resultant food and water shortage. The quake elicited anti-Korean feeling, and more than 6000 Koreans were killed in the resulting riots. There were big plans to rebuild Tokyo, but property rights and quibbles got in the way. People looked back to pre-earthquake times as a happier society, and militarization increased after it.
The Ancients (History Hit) Homo Floresiensis: Early Human ‘Hobbit’ It wasn’t exactly a JFK moment for me personally, but amongst many paleoanthropologists, they can remember where they were when they heard about the discovery of a new species of human on Flores Island in the Indonesia archipelago. Dr Adam Brumm from Griffith University worked under Dr Michael Morwood, who discovered the remains of a small female dating from 38,000 to 13,000 years ago in a cave which had been excavated to a depth of four metres under a volcanic layer in 2006. This unleashed a bitter debate amongst paleoanthropologists over whether it was a new species, or just a disabled, small girl. Brumm says that now most accept the remains as those of a separate human species, although no other remains of that type have been found. She had a very small brain, long arms and feet, and hands for climbing. They have found remains of much older hominid-like people (?) and million-year old evidence of stone tools, but they don’t know who or what these older people were. Fragments of a jaw and six teeth suggest Homo Erectus but this is not certain. It is thought that modern humans arrived there 47,000 years ago.
Full Story (The Guardian) Why top execs are leaving the mining company with a ‘green vision’. What on earth is going on at Fortescue Metal? The CEO Fiona Hick left after six months; CFO Christine Morris left after three months, both from the mining division. The CFO of the Energy business, Guy Debelle, left after 17 months. I’m not sure that the podcast answers the question. Certainly Forrest, as executive chairman, has a vision for the green division to rival and overtake in size the mineral division of Fortescue Metal, and he has been forthright that business is responsible for climate change and needs to be held to account. The company is playing hardball with the Yindjibarndi people in a Native Title case in the Pilbara, and it’s not clear yet what the breakup of Forrest’s marriage will mean for the company.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 