Author Archives: residentjudge

If You’re Listening (ABC). Because I am learning Spanish, I take quite an interest in Latin American affairs and events. I just can’t imagine what it would be like to live in a society with 100% inflation. In The decision that saved Australia from Argentina’s 100% inflation nightmare Matt Bevan starts by looking at life in Argentina, where the monthly food bill has increased from $4000-$5000 per month five years ago to $35,000 per month today. Yet restaurants are full, because there is no point saving for anything because the value of the money will decrease so quickly- better to spend it while you have it. In 1951 Australia and Argentina were almost twin economies, and both were facing inflation on account of America’s expenditure on the Korean War. The war caused scarcity of wool, meat etc. – both of which were export staples for both countries- brought large and unexpected wealth to both countries, and both were facing inflation. In Australia, Country Party treasurer Arthur Fadden greatly increased income tax, which people screamed about, but which eventually reduced inflation. In Argentina, on the other hand, the Perons were in power, and they spent the windfall on popular policies like food subsidies, printing money to meet any shortfall. Ever since they were removed in a military coup, the Argentine economy has been like a rollercoaster, with the one constant being a high rate of inflation. The stimulus measures under COVID have triggered another disastrous bout of inflation, leading to the current situation.

Reflecting History Episode 59: The Fall of the Roman Republic Part V-The New Normal The slave rebellion led by Spartacus in 73BCE was put down by the warlords Pompey and Crassus, making Pompey the most powerful man in Rome by 71BCE. He was successful militarily, and like Putin with Prigozhin and the Wagner group today, Pompey resisted disbanding his private army but eventually did so. Crassus was very wealthy, and as for Julius Caesar, he was amiable and saw himself as heir to the populare tradition. Meanwhile, the Senate had its own personalities. Cato was old fashioned, while Cicero was a smart-arse. The Cataline conspiracy in 63BCE was an attempted coup d’etat to overthrow the consuls Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius Hybrida. Cato wanted to execute the conspirators, but Caesar said no, showing that the battlelines that would crystallize during the Civil War were already apparent. Meanwhile, Pompey was trying to get land reforms through, so that his veterans could be rewarded after battle, all leading to a political gridlock. Caesar was in Spain, inciting uprisings so that he could have victories that he could celebrate with a triumph back in Rome. He wanted to stand as Consul again, but that involved him physically being in Rome. In the end, Caesar Pompey and Crassus decided to form what came later to be known as the First Triumvirate as a way of getting things done now that everything had come to a standstill. It wasn’t actually a three-way form of governing: more, it was them just agreeing not to get in each other’s way while they did what they did best (make money, fight, get legislative reform etc). They were not actively looking for the end of the republic, but they did draw on popular anti-establishment feeling. Caesar got his Consulship and he read Pompey’s land reform bill sentence by sentence to the Senate, getting their assent in the particulars, and then arguing that if they agreed with each sentence, then the Senate had to agree with the whole. He then took the bill to the people, thereby by-passing the Senate. One of Caesar’s big mistakes was to not reign in Publius Clodius Pulcher, who managed to gain entry to the female-only Bona Dea religious rites, disguised as a woman, apparently with the intention of seducing Caesar’s wife Pompeia, but was discovered in the course of the evening. Pulcher then renounced his noble status so that he could stand as Tribune of the plebs- all very irregular. In the chaos that followed, Pompey became Dictator in Caesar’s absence. By this time Crassus was dead, and so was the Triumvirate. Caesar wanted yet another Consulship (again, very irregular) and by now Pompey was representing the system. We’re heading for war.

The Documentary (BBC) Heart and Soul: German, soldier, Jew. After what happened during the Holocaust, would Jewish Germans want to join the army? Yes, today there are 300 practising Jewish military personnel, and since 2021 they have had their own chaplain, the first chief rabbi in 90 years. The first Jew to join the post-war army was Michael Fürst who enlisted in 1966. He was criticized by his Jewish friends in the United States for doing so, but his family supported him. He saw himself as German first, then a Jew. However, at this time there were still World War II soldiers in the ranks, and they were very resistant to giving up the ‘hooked cross’ (i.e. swastika) iconography in their uniforms etc. The first Jewish woman enlisted in 2006. She had converted to Judaism as a teenager, and went to a Jewish school. Conscription was still in force in Germany until 2011, but Jews were exempt. Now in the German army, soldiers need no longer follow orders without question: instead they need to follow their own conscience.

Let’s Talk About Sects. Ep. 38 The Brisbane Christian Fellowship sounds so benign, but it’s not. It was the subject of a Four Corners investigation and a book by Morag Schwartz Apostles of Fear: A Church Cult Exposed. All the usual components are here: the powerful leader who creates his own family dynasty of leadership; the shunning; the threats. And all in plain view in Brisbane and Melbourne.

The Daily (NYT). Australians are familiar with bushfire, and watching the footage from Hawaii and Canada looks like a re-run of Black Saturday. But I hadn’t quite registered the horror of wildfire (I’ll go with their term as I’m talking about Hawaii) during a hurricane. How a Paradise Became a Death Trap is gripping listening, as Ydriss Nouara, a resident of Lahaina and the pool and grounds manager of a Hilton property, tells his story. The idea of having to swim amongst the huge waves whipped up by the hurricane in order to escape the fire, and of winds that literally flayed your body is just horrific.

History Hour (BBC) This program compiles episodes of ‘Witness History’ into one longer podcast. Judy Garland’s Legacy and the Benin Bronzes is a bit of a hodge-podge, as you might imagine by the title. There’s a segment on the theft from the Judy Garland Museum of one of four pairs of Dorothy’s slippers from the Wizard of Oz, and then an interview with Rosalyn Wilder who was responsible for getting the ailing and broke Judy Garland on stage during her appearances at the Top of the Town. There’s an interview with Retired police officer Tim Awoyemi, whose chance encounter led to the return of two of the looted Benin Bronzes, ancient artworks which were among thousands stolen from Benin City by the British Army in 1897. Finally, there’s an interview with Matt Berger who discovered the Australopithecus sediba fossil in South Africa as a 9-year old boy, fossicking with his father in 2008. It’s rather sweet to hear his interviews at the time, and then his reflection back on the discovery now.

Faithful Politics. I prepared a session on religious (especially Pentecostal) nationalism for my Unitarian fellowship, and it has taken me to Christian podcasts that I wouldn’t normally (ever) listen to. Seven Mountains Mandate with Katherine Stewart features Katherine Stewart, an investigative reporter who has published The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Fortunately, only the political host Will Wright (former atheist, liberal progressive) was on this episode, because the republican conservative Pastor Josh Burtram was absent. She sees Christian nationalism as a combination of ideology and a political phenomenon that exploits religion as a quest for power. Seven Mountains dominionism is the conviction that hyperconservative Christians should rightfully dominate the main peaks of modern civilization in the United States and, ultimately, the world. It is very much a leadership driven movement, utilizing pastor networks- those same pastors that we saw circling Trump and laying hands on him. She mentions groups like the Family Values Research Centre and the New Apostolic Reformation.

The Philosopher’s Zone Gaslighting was chosen as the Merriam-Webster Word of the Year for 2022. This episode, featuring Paul-Mikhail Catapang Podosky, Lecturer in Philosopher, Macquarie University Sydney, looks at the phenomenon of gaslighting philosophically, pointing out that it is a form of testimonial and epistemic injustice. It is generally inter-personal, between people of differing power relations although he explores whether it can be structural as well- has Trump ‘gaslit’ a nation or is that he has given licence for people to gaslight others at an inter-personal level? But am I gaslighting if I think that the bar for ‘moral gaslighting’ seems very low?

The Explanation (BBC) Unspun World: What’s it like reporting on the war from inside Russia? Not just Russia- the venerable BBC reporter John Simpson speaks with foreign correspondents from Russia, Myanmar where no-one seems to be taking any notice of the civil war, Croatia where tensions are rising again and China about Covid. It seems that the fingers of the Wagner group are all over quite a few of these hotspots.

You’re Dead to Me Al Andalus features Prof Amira Bennison and comedian Fatiha El-Ghorri discussing Al Andalus between 711 and 1492. The Muslims moved in after defeating the Visigoths. Abd al-Rahman escaped to the Iberian peninsula, fleeing the Abbasids, who had overthrown his family in Damascus. He conquered Córdoba, where he proclaimed himself emir in 756, and made it an important centre of culture and learning. One of Cordoba’s most important people was Ziryab, a polymath, musician and ‘influencer’ who led changes in hair, clothing and meal etiquette by introducing the idea of courses. In 929 Abd al Rahman III declared himself Caliph. In the late 900s, there were rebellions and civil war and the Christians began moving down. In 1086 the Almoravid ruler of Morocco, Yusuf ibn Tashfin, was invited by the Muslim princes in Iberia to defend them against Alfonso VI, King of Castile and León, and he managed to hold the line for another 100 years or so. In the ‘nuance window’ section of the podcast, where the historian is given 2 minutes to be serious, Prof Amira Bennison questions the idea that the ‘Golden Age’ was marked by conviviencia, the peaceful co-existence of Muslim, Jewish and Christians within Al Andalus. She argues that this is a 20th century idea, created by General Franco’s opponents. She also highlights the continual movement of people across the strait of Gibraltar over time- it wasn’t necessarily an ‘invasion’.

Reflecting History Episode 58: The Fall of the Roman Republic Part IV-You Win or You Die. By now, violence was normalized, opening the way for Gaius Marius- the outside, new man, who once he had become consul, changed the regulations so that landless men could join the army. He had multiple terms as consul, pretending to still be on the side of the populares in terms of land reform but betraying them at the last minute. Violence and overpopulation were still problems, and there was the increasing anger of the Italian allies which led to the Social War – rather ironically, a war between Rome and its allies to unite themselves (instead of a war over independence). Marius and Sulla turned the tide, but then Rome decided to give the Allies what they wanted anyway- Roman citizenship. Sulla was able to take advantage of the war against King Mithradates to assert himself over Marius. When his troops triumphed over those of Marius, he put himself back in charge and went off to fight the war, without realizing the enormity of what he had done by spilling Roman blood on Roman land. Sulla took power and ruled as dictator, although he would have said that he was returning the republic to what it was before Marius corrupted it. He killed his enemies, proscribed them to that others would kill them, and confiscated their property. But he also introduced reforms like making equestrians part of the Senate, ensuring that tribunes could no longer by consuls, putting time limits on tenure. But when he retired in 79BC, he hadn’t really solved anything.

History This Week History’s Undelivered Speeches features speech-writer Jeff Nussbaum, author of Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History. As speechwriter for Vice-Presidents Biden and Gore, and Senate leader Tom Daschle, he understands the role of the speechwriter, and the fact that politicians sometimes write their own speeches without any assistance. He looks at Richard Nixon’s resignation speech, which Nixon’s own speech writer Ray Price wrote on his own initiative, hoping that Nixon would use it instead of the non-resignation speech that Price also wrote. Interestingly, the two speeches (resignation and non-resignation) used the same arguments to different ends. He then discusses General Eisenhower’s alternative D-day speech in the event that the US troops were overrun and stranded. In writing it, Eisenhower edited out the passive voice, taking responsibility instead for the decisions he made. Apparently General Grant said “‘I’ am a verb”- which is an interesting thought. Finally, he looks at Hillary Clinton’s victory and concession speeches after being defeated by Trump. If she had won, she would have cited her mother’s life and the changes that had been wrought in that time; when she lost, she apologized.

Witness History (BBC) José Mujica Have you heard of this guy? He was the President of Uruguay between 2010 and 2015 when he was known as “the world’s humblest head of state”. I admire him so much. He had been a guerrilla with the Tupamaros (a Marxist-Leninist urban guerilla group) and he was tortured and imprisoned for 14 years during the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. As President, he was an outspoken critic of capitalism, and certainly of the left. He is now retired, and lives in very humble circumstances outside Montevideo. You can see a video about him here.

Reflecting History I really am enjoying this series. I still don’t know who the presenter is, and he relies heavily on the work of other popular historians (in this case, Edward J Watts, whose book Mortal Republic I have purchased; Mike Duncan’s The Story Before the Storm whose podcast I listened to, and whose book I am currently reading; and Tom Holland whose Rubicon I am on the lookout for.) In Episode 57: The Fall of the Roman Republic Part III-The Gracchan Revolution starts by highlighting the tension between amibition and equality which was built into the Roman republic. It focusses on Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. They were born of an aristocratic family, but came to head populist political movements that ended in assassination for both of them. Tiberius came first. When the Senate rejected his peace terms contracted in the Numantine War on the Iberian peninsula, he looked to the people who supported the end of the war- i.e. the ordinary people who would have to fight in them. To maintain their support, he introduced land reforms to break up the big estates that were causing an influx of landless peasants into the cities. Although historians argue over how committed he really was to this land reform, he shut down the government in order to get it passed, using the Tribuneship in a way that it had never been used before. The law passed after an influx of funds from the foreign King Attalus III of Pergamum, but it’s questionable whether the legislation was worth breaking so many norms in order to be passed. He was murdered in a riot instigated by his political enemies. The legislation was picked up by his brother Gaius a few years later, but again the Senate resisted, outbidding Gauis in the legislation without ever intending to introduce it. Gauis was voted out, and killed by decapitation.

History Hit The Creation of the NHS marks the 75th anniversary of the introduction of the NHS in Britain. The first calls for a national health service came in 1909, and were later picked up by the Fabians in 1920s and 30s. By the 1930s there was a web of local government, insurance, private and philanthropic health services. During and after WWII, there was a sense that soldiers and their families deserved better, especially when the limitations of urban health provision were made more visible when city children were evacuated to the country. In 1944, the Conservative Party also proposed a health system, but it fell to Nye Bevan, the outspoken Welsh Labor Party member, to introduce it as Minister for Health and Housing. It involved nationalizing the existing system, rather than building a new system, as there were no new hospitals built until the 1960s. It was based on the principles that it should be free and centralized from Whitehall, and in spite of resistance from doctors and Enoch Powell’s plan to rationalize it in 1961, it has continued. The degree of public love varies from time to time- for example, in the 1980s it really was under threat until people got behind it, and today everyone acknowledges that it is a stressed system.

History Extra Big Questions of the Crimean War: aftermath and legacy. This is the third and final episode in this series featuring Professor Andrew Lambert. The Crimean War (which the Allies won) affected different countries in different ways. Russia realized that it had to undergo great change, leading to the abolition of serfdom, industrialization, the rebuilding of coastal defences – and 20 years later they were back at war again in the Russo-Turkish War. France was full of Second Empire bluster, with Louis-Napoleon embarking on rebuilding Paris and looking to control the whole of Europe. Britain was content to bask in its naval superiority, and indulged in a display of technological mastery afterwards, while the Ottomans kept quiet, with the pressure of nationalism building in the Balkans, which would erupt in WWI. It’s hard to know how many people died in the conflict, especially because the French figures are dodgy. There were a number of firsts: the British used the first factory made standardized rifles, which could be fixed easily. The first submarine was used (although it didn’t do anything), and water mines were deployed. The fighting style was hybrid: in spite of the rifles, they still used tight formations and hand-to-hand fighting. It was hard for the British and French to fight together after the relatively recent Napoleonic Wars. Photography was used as the basis for engraving; telegraph communication was possible but too expensive to use for journalism. What the telegraph did do was make it possible for governments to give orders, far from the battle front, undercutting the generals. Florence Nightingale was the press’s middle-class hero- in fact, she wasn’t very middle class because she was very posh with good connections. She was more into management than nursing (although she did have a good sense of sanitation), and she wasn’t the only woman- the Russian and French also had women on the front. It was Army doctors who solved the problem of disease: her main success was publicity. The “Crimean War” as distinct from ‘The Russian War’ as it was known, was a late Victorian construct, and we need to think of it as a navy war, not a terrestrial one. Parallels with today? Yes. The Russians have under-estimated the Ukrainian army, just as they did the Turkish army in the Crimean War and Britain strangled the Russian economy through controlling its exports in both wars. Putin is a great admirer of Tsar Nicholas, and we need to remember that Russia is a creation of the Mongols, which is still evidence in a huge cultural division between Russia and other European nations.

If You’re Listening (ABC). Oh, good! Matt Bevan is back with his ‘If You’re Listening’ series. Instead of devoting all episodes to one theme, he’s taking a weekly approach with a different topic each week. This is also available as a video on I-View, but I prefer to listen while I’m doing other things. This must be the world of the new ABC. How “General Armageddon” and a bromance almost brought down Vladimir Putin looks at the friendship between Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, and General Sergei Surovikin, overall commander of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. The two men were friends, but when Prigozhin launched his whatever-it-was against Putin, it was Surovikin who was tapped on the shoulder to bring him aback into line. Surovikin hasn’t been seen for a while- he’s ‘resting’. And from today’s news of Prigozhin’s death in an air accident, it’s even more doubtful whether we’ll see Surovikin again.

The Rest is History I’m really enjoying this series, featuring historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. Until I listened to Episode 346 (really!) The Mystery of the Holy Grail the only thing that I knew about it was the Monty Python version. Holland and Sandbrook are obviously familiar with the Monty Python film too. Tom Holland said that he became angrier at this film than at ‘Life of Brian’, although after several viewings, he realized that the film was actually based on deep knowledge (Terry Jones has written books and presented television documentaries on medieval and ancient history.) They point out the links between the legend of the Holy Grail and T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland (can I confess that I’ve never read it?), and make several references to Jessie Weston’s 1920 book From Ritual to Romance which argued for its pagan and fertility elements. A ‘grail’ is actually a serving platter, but after 1180 it was transformed into something holy in Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval where Percival meets the Fisher King and a girl who comes in holding a (a,not the) grail. Robert de Boron introduced a connection with Joseph of Arimathea who owned the grail which had either been the cup used at the Last Supper or alternatively, the cup in which was collected Jesus’ blood when he was hanging on the cross. In other versions, the grail is a stone. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the grail has been seen as a mystery- either through Jung who saw it as the key to all the mythologies, the author Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code, and through Jessie Westron’s work. Tom Holland thinks that de Troyes dreamed the whole thing up, and that the story of the grail reflects 13th century Latin Christendom at its peak. When the Reformation rejected transubstantiation (i.e that the communion wine actually becomes blood), it’s as if we have the hardware of the holy grail, but not the software to know what it means. I found this all fascinating.

History Extra Big Questions of the Crimean War: into the Valley of Death This is Episode 2 of the History Extra series on the Crimean War, or as it was known at the time in Britain ‘The War with Russia’. The war actually began on the Danube in Romania, and spread to Anatolia, the Caucasus, Georgia, the extreme far-east of Russia and the Baltic. Britain and France had learned from Napoleon, and this was a maritime war, with the British never extending beyond one day’s march from the coastline. It was conducted at a time of technological change e.g. steamships rather than sail; rifles rather than muskets. The British horse-breeding program had led to horses capable of mounting the Charge of the Light Brigade. The advantage the Russians had was the willingness to endure huge loses- it is estimated that there were 800,000 Russian casualties. There is a roll-call of battles (i) across the Danube where the Turks attacked the Russians and won; (ii) the Battle of Sinope, a naval battle that the Russians won, and which brought the British and French into the war, immobilizing the Russian fleet. (iii) Orland Island in the Baltic- not widely reported because there were few British casualties (iv) Alma, in the Crimean peninsula, won by the Allies who should have followed up on their victory, but didn’t (v) Balaclava- and the Charge of the Light Brigade which was a stuff-up but wasn’t the defeat that Tennyson depicted. Rather than only 120 coming back, there were 120 who didn’t come back (vi) Inkerman – the Soldiers Battle (vii) Siege of Sebastopol- not technically a siege as such- but it was like the Western Front that was to follow some 60 years later. (viii) Malakoff- considered to be the last battle, but it wasn’t really. So why did it end? It ended, as wars usually do, by negotiations because Russia was bankrupted by British pressure in stopping exports.

Sydney Writers Festival Barry Cassidy & Friends State of the Nation The usual suspects: Amy Remeikis, Niki Savva and Laura Tingle discussing the Voice, the state of the Liberal Party, Scott Morrison etc. You probably know what they’re going to say anyway.

Reflecting History The Emperors of Rome podcast has taken a backward step to look at the fall of the Roman Republic. I’ve been meaning to read Mike Duncan’s book The Storm Before the Storm for ages, so this seemed a good place to stop and draw breath and look at why the Roman republic, which had been successful for centuries, chose one-man rule through an emperor. I found these podcast series which is less event-driven than both ‘Emperors of Rome’ and ‘The History of Rome’ podcasts and, as the name suggests, more reflective. I have no idea who is presenting it, though. Matt someone. He has a four-part series on the Fall of the Roman Republic, and this seemed a good time to listen to it. Episode 55: The Fall of the Roman Republic Part I-Features of the Republic looks at the strengths of the Roman Republic. First there was the ability of the Roman Republic to channel the ambitions of families into the military, maintaining control of the incentives that made personal honour through service a valuable currency. Then there was the Republic’s ability to compromise and evolve. Because the Romans feared one-man rule, there were 2 consuls, the Assembly (include the Tribunes) and the Senate. It was a balanced system, with specific responsibilities for each component. But this was going to change. Episode 56: The Fall of the Roman Republic Part II-The Long Defeat sees the three Punic Wars establishing Rome as the dominant force in the Mediterranean, but also beginning the process of decay in the Roman Republic. Rome was beaten at first, and especially once Hannibal took the fight to Rome’s home territory, the Italian city-states started backing off. But in 205BCE Scipio triumphed over Carthage, which was burnt to the ground in the Third Punic War. Once the wars ended, Rome now controlled huge amounts of territory in Spain, Greece and Africa, but it could not retreat or stand down. It didn’t want to rule directly, and preferred to work through client kings, but eventually it had to. The expansion of territory brought great wealth, forcing small farmers off the land, and contributing to the growth of a wealthy elite that could buy up slaves (goodbye small farmers!) and leverage their wealth into investments and syndicates. The gap between rich and poor kept expanding, making Rome ripe for a populist leader.

Now and Then With all the hype about Barbie, Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman look back at the history of dolls in Barbie, GI Joe and the Gang: Dolls Are Us. They start with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s corn cob doll Susan, and move on to Raggedy Ann, a happy servant girl doll produced in the 1930s as part of a book/song/doll marketing production. During the 1940s research was undertaken which demonstrated the link between marketed toys and how children identify themselves, which in turn fed into the intellectual and political climate that produced Brown v the Board of Education and desegregation. Barbie was invented in 1959 based on a European spoof doll – the sort of hyper-sexualized doll you might give a man in a Kris Kringle at an office party- and right from the start there was a tension between her form as a male fantasy and a feminist “girls can do anything” ethos. Barbie’s depiction in a range of professions followed societal trends, rather than drove them: it was decided to have a Doctor Barbie only when there was a certain number of female doctors in the medical system. Ken was released two years later. In 1964 G. I. Joe hit the market as an ‘action figure’ (not a doll), based on Ernie Pyle, the WWII war correspondent. Released during the early years of the Vietnam War, he was already a nostalgic figure. Over the years he morphed into a Special Ops, adventurer, Kung Fu figure- a more individualistic figure of masculinity. Interesting.