The History Listen Section 71: The Hindmarsh Island Bridge Affair (Part 1) is part of a series where they look at important High Court decisions in Australia’s history. I was listening to this while driving the car, and I became so enraged that I nearly drove off the road. What a lack of respect, bad faith, and arrogance was shown by conservative politicians as this matter became a harbinger of the culture wars that have paralyzed our politics since. And it has given me a new respect for Robert Tickner. I’ve been looking for Margaret Simons’ book The Meeting of the Waters, but I can’t find it anywhere. I’m looking forward to hearing Part II.
Three Million (BBC) This five-part series by the BBC looks at the Bengal famine. Episode 1 War contextualizes the Bengal famine within World War II. India (which at this time had not been divided into India and Pakistan) was still the jewel of the British Empire and to be defended at all costs. Fear of Japanese invasion prompted a policy of ‘denial’ whereby the British government took over increased control of food, transport etc in Bengal. They confiscated not only food for the Imperial troops, but also confiscated the boats, for fear that if the Japanese invaded, they would use them. In this way, the British Government provoked artificial scarcity. The British Government kept a tight grip on India, and they had as many men policing Bengali society as they did actually fighting the Japanese. On 16 October 1942 a cyclone destroyed the crops. Governor-General and Viceroy in India, Victor Hope the 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow raised the alarm in Whitehall but was ignored. By 1943 the dead bodies were mounting up in Calcutta.
The Rest is History Titanic: The Iceberg Strikes Episode 4 First and second class were not full because of cancellations, and even third class was not full. It contained British and Irish immigrants, and a group Scandinavian migrants who would end up in Fargo, and in Willa Cather novels. There were few Jews, because White Star discouraged them. There were also Croats on board because there had been Ottoman pogroms against Maronite Christians. Even third class, with its 2- and 4-berth cabins was far better than other ships. The ship was equipped with a Marconi radio which was a novel feature at the time, and they were very busy as people amused themselves sending messages. As a result, the over-worked radio officers did receive messages from other ships warning them of ice, but the messages were received piecemeal. It was established procedure not to reduce speed in ice fields. There was a flat sea, so there were no troughs in the wave from which an iceberg could be glimpsed. It was also a very clear night, and the iceberg was black. When they did hit the iceberg, they though that they had just scraped it.
Emperors of Rome. Yes, I’m still listening to this podcast because there are many episodes that I had missed. Chapter CVIII A Lesson in Latin II. If I weren’t already trying to explode my brain learning both Spanish and Khmer at the same time, I’d think about learning Latin. In this episode, Dr Rhiannon Evans talks about Latin and answers questions that had been sent in about the language. She notes that there were other Italian languages but Latin became the most dominant when the Romans began conquering the country. Latin absorbed influences from Greek, which was already a written language, and other vocabulary too including Italian, Carthaginian and Etruscan words. Because it wasn’t written down, we’re not sure what the Latin spoken in the streets was like, and we don’t know how literate people were. We can look at graffiti, which displays a fairly phonetic approach, and also poetry which gives a hint of how things were pronounced in maintaining rhyme and rhythm.
Global Roaming (ABC). In this episode A Palestinian State. Now? Hamish Macdonald and Geraldine Doogue sit down with Tirana Hassan, the recently appointed Australian head of Human Rights Watch. The title of the episode is rather misleading, because she doesn’t just talk about Palestine, but human rights law more generally. She is very cut-and-dried about human rights law, and I feel rather naively dismissive of political considerations. While it is good to see such moral clarity, it is rather unrealistic in today’s messy world.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 