Author Archives: residentjudge

Axios – How it Happened More Ukraine. Putins Invasion III: How It Could End. In part three, Axios World editor Dave Lawler examines a difficult reality — that the only clear path to peace in Ukraine is a deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but the red lines drawn by the Russian and Ukrainian leaders do not intersect. This episode features interviews with Zelensky’s chief of staff, a member of Parliament in his party, two close observers of Putin and the Kremlin, and a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine with decades of diplomatic experience in the region. The interviewees point out that Zelensky is very ideological, a good listener, but that you can’t pressure him. They point out that legally, Ukraine’s borders can only be altered via referendum (and the Ukranian people are not likely to vote for that). Putin cannot win, but Zelensky will not accept Putin’s terms. Putin’s best hope is to exhaust Ukraine and the interest of the west. Something, they all agree, will have to change.

History of Rome Podcast Episode 121 Phase Three Complete sees the mop-up before Diocletian comes on the scene. Mike Duncan starts off this episode, reflecting that people who were born during the Severin epoch had only know the chaos of the 3rd century when emperors came and went in regular succession. They didn’t realize that they were just about to turn the corner. We don’t really know much about Carus and his two sons Carinus and Numerian. Carus was about 60 years old, and he had been a Praetorian Prefect. Realizing that he couldn’t spread himself across the empire, he sent his son Carinus to Rome and he headed to Persia to fight the Sassanids with his other son, Numerian. It was a good time to attack Persia because the Persians had just committed most of their troops to invading Afghanistan. Carus died: struck by lightning, they said, as a punishment for straying too far outside of the empire. His son Numerian, spooked perhaps by this theory, withdrew back to the borders, even though they were beating the Persians. His sons had a brief reign until Diocles came on the scene. Apparently he was a real back-room operator. There had been a prophesy that Diocles would only become emperor when he killed a boar, and this came true when he executed the Praetorian Prefect Aper for murdering Carus’ son Numerian. ‘Aper’ means ‘wild boar’, although historians dispute this story as being ridiculous. But hey- lots of things here are ridiculous. Diocles changed his name to the more regal-sounding Diocletian and began bad-mouthing Carinus. He was about to battle Carinus, but Carinus (conveniently) died. Episode 122 Jupiter and Hercules As a back-room political operator, Diocletian had actually thought about the empire, instead of having it thrust upon him. He decided that there would be no Senatorial purges, but he also decided that he would side-line the Senate altogether. He decided that there had to be two Emperors, so he appointed Maximian to rule over the West as co-emperor with Diocletian who would rule the East. Maximian was a soldier, and so not a political threat to Diocletian. However General Carausius, who had been appointed in charge of operations against pirates on the Saxon coast, went rogue, proclaimed himself Augustus and set himself up in Britain. Diocletian came across to the West to bolster Maximian’s troops. To boost their authority, Maximian also took up the title of Augustus, and then Diocletian appealed to the heavens for legitimacy (much as Augustus had done), thus laying the foundation for Divine Right for the next 1500 years. He claimed that he had been appointed by Jupiter himself, and Diocletian assumed the title Iovius, and Maximian assumed the title Herculius.

The History Hour (BBC) usually has a couple of stories on different topics but in this episode Ukranian History Special, they concentrate on events in Ukraine’s history. It is really good. It starts with the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in April 1986 and the tardiness of the government response. It moves on to the Budapest agreement where the international community – including both Russia and the USA – offered security “assurances” to Ukraine in return for giving up its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Then there is a survivor’s account of Ukraine’s great famine in the 1930s, the Holodomor, when several million people died (although she was very young- about 3. I’m not too sure about the fidelity of the memories of a three year old). It moves to the mass killing of Ukrainian Jews by Nazi Germany during World War Two- noting the irony that Putin has used ‘anti-Nazi’ as a justification for invasion. Finally, in an abrupt change of pace, the episode finishes with how Artek, on the shores of the Black Sea in Crimea, became the Soviet Union’s most popular holiday camp. Really worth listening to.

In Our Time (BBC). I thought that In Our Time must have finished, because I couldn’t find it on Stitcher but then I discovered that you can access it through BBC Sounds. Old Melvyn Bragg is sounding older and more slurred. I’ve never read any Walter Benjamin (and in fact, for half the podcast I had him mixed up with Isaiah Berlin). He was an academic, but he styled himself as a critic of what was then the modern media. Born in Germany, from the late 1920s he led a mobile life living in Russia, Italy and France. He was not interested in writing about the past as it was, but seeing it in terms of the questions of the present. Notably, in his Arcades Project, he looked into the past of Paris to understand the modern age and, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, examined how the new media of film and photography enabled art to be politicised, and politics to become a form of art. As a German Jew, he was fearful of the rise of Hitler and was interned in Paris and although, because of his eminence he had an entry visa to America, but he could not get an exit visit. Although in very poor health, he decided to walk from France to Spain but, in very poor health and realizing he wouldn’t make it, he committed suicide on the way. Most of his work was published posthumously and taken up by the 1960s counter culture. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction greatly influenced John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, and is even more apposite given the rise of digital cameras everywhere in galleries and museums and NFTs.

History of Ideas- Talking Politics. I started listening to this ages ago and just stumbled over it again on my ‘Favourites’ list. David Runciman, a professor of politics at Cambridge (and not, as I thought, the Archbishop of Canterbury) goes through the major political works starting with Hobbes. I listened to Hobbes and Wollstonecraft but then skipped a few because I was interested in Marx and Engels on Revolution. This was the best description of Marx and Engels’ ideas that I’ve heard. He points out that where Hobbes saw revolution as the problem, Marx and Engels saw it as the solution. The ideas of revolution in The Communist Manifesto were not taken up at all in 1848 (although they wrote it in a hurry because they hoped that they would be), and their ideas in their death throes during WWI when it turned out that the workers of the world did not unite but instead fought each other. However the Russian Revolution in 1917 vindicated them, and the fortunes of the book have waxed and waned ever since. They point out that the state will always be in crisis, and that in replacing the people who run the state, there will inevitably be violence. Revolution has to be international, and that has not happened (and in current events, is not likely to do so). Runciman considers that the most successful revolutions were in East Germany and Eastern Europe in 1989 and the 90s. He points out that both 1848 and the Arab Spring were short term failures, but they did have an impact on democracy later (I think that the Arab Spring has yet to show results). He questions whether class today is as important as Marx and Engels thought, suggesting that education level (albeit related to class) and age (youth) are more important on voting patterns.

Things Fell Apart (BBC) This is a terrific series about the culture wars, and things that make you scream at the television. One Thousand Dolls is about the beginning of the culture wars over abortion in America. Until the 1970s, anti-abortion was a Roman Catholic thing, but Frank Schaeffer, the son of an influential Christian art historian, talked his father into adding an anti-abortion segment into his art history films. Although poorly received, he decided to make a highly emotive Christian film against abortion, and it came to influence many anti-abortions including James Kopp, who murdered Barnett Slepian, an American physician from Amherst, New York who performed abortions. He has since distanced himself from the anti-abortion movement. Really interesting.

History of Rome Episode 118 The Palmyrene Wars brings Zenobia onto centre stage. How have I gone my whole life without hearing about Zenobia?

She was the widow of Odaenathus of Palmyra and after his assassination she stepped right in. She took Egypt, Syria and part of Anatolia, each time paying lip service to the Roman emperor but really ruling in her own right. At first she minted coins with the emperor on one side and her image (the only images we have of her) on the other but she soon gave up the pretence and minted coins with herself and her son depicted. Aurelian finally decided that he needed to deal with her. Aurelian’s reputation as a hard man preceded him, and most of the Eastern cities recently annexed by Zenobia just capitulated, fearing what was to come. But to everyone’s surprise, because of a dream in which the 1st century philosopher Apollonius begged him not to shed the blood of the innocent, Aurelian did not go round sacking cities. This was a master stroke because it meant that cities did not fear surrendering to him. He regained Syria and Egypt and went on to Palmyra, where Zenobia and her son had fled, seeking assistance. Aurelian’s troops captured her there, but he wanted her for a triumph back in Rome. In Episode 119- Restitutor Orbis, Zenobia might have been captured, but the leading men of Palmyra regretted capitulating so meekly and so they fomented rebellion, forcing Aurelian to return for a second time to quash the insurgency. He was pissed off this time, and while not killing everyone (Apollonius’ advice still stood firm) he levelled the city and shifted the trade route, which is why Palmyra is in ruins today. Aurelian then turned his attention to the Gallic Empire, which he regained after some sort of arrangement with the ‘Gallic Emperor’ Tetricus. Always conscious of the need to keep the soldiers paid, Aurelian increased the number of mints issuing coins, but kept central control. Now that he had both Palmyra and the Gallic Empire under his belt, he finally had his triumph back in Rome, where he was proclaimed Restitutor Orbis (Restorer of the World). Not just the world: he restored Sol Invictus as God too (shades of Elagabalus) hoping to institute one faith across the empire. This was to make it easier when Constantine had the same strategy. Despite his triumph in bringing the empire back together again during his largely successful five-year reign, Aurelian was assassinated by his generals, who immediately regretted it. Episode 120- Interregnum sees neither the army nor the Senate wanting to nominate a successor to Aurelian. After all, emperors seemed to have a short shelf-life and there was a good chance that their sponsors would end up assassinated too. After Aurelian’s death, an old Senator named Marcus Cluadius Tacitus briefly reigned before the throne fell to Probus, who ruled from 276-282. Barbarian invasions continued but he was happy to accept the surrender of German tribes as long as they disarmed and dispersed – a policy that was followed until the Huns came on the scene. There was relative peace during his reign, but this led to unemployment among the soldiers, and so they assassinated him too. He was followed by Carus who reigned from 282 to 283, followed by his sons Carinus and Numerian. Carinus seemed to have been a lecherous tyrant, and Numerian suffered a smelly death. Finally Diocletian took over, and he was to overhaul the Empire completely.

Soul Search There’s an interesting episode in Gods: from Ancient Greece to the Antipodes The first part of the program ties in with the current exhibition Ancient Greeks: Athletes, Warriors and Heroes, an exhibition at the National Museum of Australia. There is a discussion about the role of fate and destiny in the Greek world, where the gods were ever-present and capricious, and the cultural reach of Greek mythology. It’s following by a discussion of Rev. Charles Strong’s Australian Church, which it just happens I spoke about at our Unitarian Fellowship last week.

Ben Franklin’s World I saw a reference recently to Caitlyn Fitz’s book Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions (1775-1825) which looks at the relationship between the newly-independent US and the different countries in Latin America which achieved independence from Spain and Portugal. She is interviewed in a rather muddily-recorded Episode 90 Caitlyn Fitz Age of American Revolutions : surely the sound could be better than this! She points out that Spain and Portugal arrived in Latin America a century before British Settlement in North America, and the Spanish and Portuguese empires lasted longer in a continent that was ten times larger than the Continental States that constituted the United States at that time. When Napoleon was engaged in the Peninsula War, a vacuum in power opened up amongst the Spanish colonies, and made space for revolution. After North Americans emerged after the 1820s war, they looked around and decided that they were quite supportive of the revolutions in Latin America, although this didn’t extend to financial support. Even amongst slave-owning states, there was support for gradual abolition, even though there had been horror at the Haiti revolution. When asked to speculate on what would have happened if the French Revolution hadn’t happened, Fitz suggests that the independence movements probably wouldn’t have arisen, but would have instead been channelled into constitutional reform.

History This Week I recently finished reading Anna Sebba’s book Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy so I was interested to listen to this episode Ethel Rosenberg’s Day in Court. If you’re not likely to read the book, then listen to this instead. It has interviews with Sebba and Ethel Rosenberg’s son Robert Meeropol, who says that despite losing his parents, he is glad that he was not his uncle David Greenglass’ son.

Emperors of Rome. At this stage, the ‘Emperors of Rome’ podcast and the ‘History of Rome’ podcast part ways. Episode CLXIX – Gallus sees Trebonianus Gallus appointed by his troops in June 251 after Decius and his son Herennius Etruscus died during a battle with the Goths. Decius’ son remaining son Hostilianus died of the Cyprian Plague, which was ravaging the Empire. (Kyle Harper has written about this plague in The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of an Empire, which sounds quite interesting). During Gallus’ two year reign, there were uprisings East and West. Aemilian, the governor of Moesia Superior and Pannonia, defeated the Goths and was declared emperor by his troops. Somehow or other Gallus ended up dead, but Aemiliain lasted only 88 days before he was murdered by his own forces. Valerian became emperor and ruled for 15 years, ending a phase of short-lived emperors.

History of Rome. 116- Here Come the Illyrians sees the start of a string of Illyrian emperors. Some people mark this as the end of the ‘real’ Roman Empire, but Mike Duncan asserts that they saved the empire. Claudius Gothicus had no aristocratic links at all. He had been Gallienus’ trusted general. Maybe he wasn’t actually involved in the assassination of Gallienus, but he probably would have known about it. Nonetheless he exiled or executed the ringleaders to ‘prove’ his clean hands. He was worried about the East and the rise of Zenobia, but he had to deal with the Goths first. He oversaw a change in policy of treatment of defeated enemies, which allowed the Goths to settle on land, as long as they provided men for the army. Claudius also defeated uprisings in Germany, and then turned to the Vandals. An emperor’s work is never done. The future Emperor Aurelian was 2nd in charge when Claudius died of the plague in 270 AD. In Episode 117- Aurelian’s Walls, Mike Duncan raises the question: when you say that someone is ‘the greatest’ do you mean that they were the greatest at their peak, or do you look at their whole career? Duncan reckons that Aurelian was ‘peak emperor’ between 270 and 275, when he consolidated power in Italy, then went off to battle the Vandals. He employed the tactic of withdrawing all resources into a village, and then defending that village. When he defeated tribes, he insisted on a quota of soldiers, which eventuated in the Germanization of the Legions.

Despite his victory on the field, when he returned in triumph to Rome, he was faced with riots because people were unnerved by earlier defeats under Aurelian’s leadership; bread prices were high, and there was corruption over the mint. The old tactic of garrisoning the frontiers employed by Augustus and Hadrian no longer worked, because the invasions were bigger and it was the emperor (rather than a general) who was rushing around at the head of the army. Cities were vulnerable and needed their own walls, so Aurelian ordered a big wall around Rome (as the old 4th BCE wall was no longer sufficient. It was constructed rapidly, using existing buildings where possible, and using civilian rather than military labour. Nonetheless, the walls took 5 years to complete.

The Daily (New York Times) Ukraine Puts Putin’s Playbook to the Test (March 24, 2022) features NY Times journalist Carlotta Gall, who covered the Chechen conflict 30 years ago. She believes that there are real similarities between the two, so much so that when she hears Ukranian citizens vowing to remain, she wants to warn them just how dire it will become in the face of Russia’s ruthlessness. However, factors in Ukraine’s favour are: first, that it is much bigger than Chechnya with a population of 40 million as opposed to 1 million; second that it is already an independent country; third that it has Western recognition and finally that there is an adjoining country that fighters can withdraw to when the going gets too tough. But she reckons that if Putin follows the same strategy, it will get tough.

Australia If You’re Listening (ABC) Even though I’m a big Matt Bevan fan, I didn’t really particularly fancy this season about Australia’s politics of climate change. But when the first episode was inserted into the Coronacast podcast, I started listening (which just goes to show how hijacking an episode of a program can work). Episode 1 The legacy of our first decisions on climate change points out that warming of the environment through burning coal was first publicized in 1912. The tenor for Australia’s approach was set by none other than Labor minister Roz Kelly, who promised that Australia would not move faster than any other developed country – and we haven’t. The program looks at a big conference held in 1987 where, for the first time, scientists discussed climate change, then moves onto Kyoto and the significance of the ‘Australian clause’ over land-clearing. Interestingly, Roz Kelly defends Robert Hill, the Lib/NP Minister for the Environment who led Australia’s delegation to Kyoto- lauded by John Howard as a great result for Australia. Humpf.

The Daily (New York Times) I’m doing a fair bit of listening about Ukraine at the moment. In Four Paths Forward in Ukraine (March 17) David Sanger, White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, explores four scenarios: 1. The diplomatic path- Ukraine agrees to Russian demands to give up any claim on Crimea; accepts independence of Donetsk and Luhansk; declarse its neutrality; and promises never to join NATO. Russia would demand that all sanctions be lifted. Scenario 2: A long war of attrition, with Russia ‘winning’ but an ongoing Ukranian insurgency (which Sanger thinks is likely). Third scenario: China helps Russia. Sanger thinks that China will just sit back and watch how things play out for now. They might assist, but from behind the scenes. Scenario 4: Putin decides to expand the conflict beyond Ukraine.

Axios – How it Happened. This series on Ukraine just has two episodes so far. Episode 1 Putin’s Invasion Part I: How We Got Here features Axios’ world editor Dave Lawler talking about how Putin came to power and how he has wielded that power. The podcast also features “our Aussie” Jonathan Swan, speaking about his exclusive Axios on HBO interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump, Zelensky- is there anyone he hasn’t interviewed? Episode 2 Putin’s Invasion Part II: The Consequences discusses President Biden’s decades of political experience with Russia and the sanctions the U.S. and Europe have brought against the country. It also explains why it’s so hard for the West to cut ties with Russia when it comes to energy, and why the Biden administration chose to do so even if it would send gas prices soaring.

History of Rome Podcast. Episode 113- Three Empires. Although the Roman Empire now split into three, Mike Duncan argues that all three empires remained culturally Roman, and that’s what’s important. Following the capture of Valerian in 260 AD, the western provinces broke away to form a separate Empire and the east became controlled by the city of Palmyra where Odaenathus was the last stop on the Silk Road. He defeated the Sassanids, and so he was mollycoddled a bit by the Romans who, deep down, thought he was a bit of a barbarian. Meanwhile Postumus was up on the Danube. At this time, local troops threw their support behind their own commander as Emperor, and when he had a stunning victory, Postumus was acclaimed emperor of Gaul, Germania, Britannia and Hispania in what was known as the Gallic Empire. Meanwhile Gallienus concentrated on the centre of the empire. He hit on the idea of the mobile cavalry as a way of reinforcing his authority, and it was a good psychological connection with the provinces to have the cavalry come by occasionally. In Episode 114 The Nadir of our Fortunes, Mike Duncan reminds us of the mess that the Empire was in, with the Sassanids in the East, the Goths on the Danube, the Alamanni in Italy and the Franks in the West. He then backtracks to Odaenathus over in the East, who was seen as a bit of a saviour when Macrinus and his son were killed, and he took over. Over in the west, Postumus was chosen by his own troops, and he happily embraced Aureolus, Gallienus’ top general, when he defected to Postumus. Gallienus had concentrated his efforts on Rome, but the senators hated him because he turned to military men instead of Senators- so he ended up with a bad rap from the historical sources. He founded four mints near the big military deployments so that the soldiers could be paid on time, but this just caused inflation and debasement of the currency. In the end Gallienus defeated Aureolus in battle, but then he was shot (probably assassinated). Episode 115 Phase Two Complete sees the almost simultaneous deaths of Gallienus, Odenathus and Postumus in the Late 260s. The Goths were coming south and Odenathus was assassinated by his nephew -(why? Personal reasons? or was his wife Zenobia behind it?) Zenobia stepped right in to the role of emperor of the east, assuming that she had the right as Odeanthus’ widow. The Goths sailed down and sacked Athens. When Gallienus left Rome to fight the Goths, his trusted general Aureolus mounted a revolt. Gallienus was assassinated in a conspiracy of his top officers. The troops rallied around Claudius, who demanded the head of Aureolus.

Emily Greene Balch. I prepared a presentation for my Unitarian fellowship on the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and the connection with the Australian Church’s Sisterhood of International Peace. Emily Greene Balch was raised a Unitarian in America (although she later joined the Quakers) and, along with Jane Addams, was a founding member of WILPF. This podcast, from the Internet Archive, is of Kristen E. Gwinn talking about Balch at First Church of Jamaica Plains (which Balch and her family attended). A pretty formidable woman. She was one of the pacifists who was really challenged by the rise of Fascism, and ended up siding with ‘freedom’ over ‘peace’.

Now and Then I’ve been listening to American historian Heather Cox Richardson for quite a while, and she has started a podcast with fellow historian Joanne Freeman called ‘Now and Then’. As you might expect from two American historians, it is VERY American focussed, but in the episode Avatars of Democracy, they express their admiration for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They then look at three other historical leaders who fought for democracy: the French-born Revolutionary War hero Lafayette, the Latin American liberator Simón Bolívar, and South African political prisoner and president Nelson Mandela.

The Coming Storm (BBC) I enjoyed this so much that I binge-listened to the final four episodes. Episode 5 Blowback starts with the US attempts to shore up Boris Yeltsin through the use of rock music (what a weird idea that was). Decades later, British spy Christopher Steele, who was hired to dig up dirt on Donald Trump, claimed that the Russians held ‘pee tapes’ that they would use as blackmail. Half of America believed that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton; the other half believed that the investigations into Russian collusion are a hoax, as a way of unseating a democratically elected president. Q-Anon and General Michael Flynn, took up this second narrative. Episode 6 The Usual Suspects goes to a pro-Trump rally after the 2020 election where Michael Flynn whips up the crowd, urging people to join school boards etc. to refute the big lie and take over the country from the bottom up. (Actually, Heather Cox Richardson said that the Republicans have been using this approach from Phyllis Schlafly onwards). Episode 7 Welcome to the Future takes us back to the first scenes of the series, where he was contemplating the 16th century panic about witches. On attending a Rock the Red event in mid-2021 he wonders if the ‘satanic panic’ of the QAnon conspiracy is a parable for the takeover by a minority elite, or is it an epochal shift? He believes that QAnon is being weaponized, and it is a beginning of something new. Episode 8 Epilogue was an afterthought: the series was supposed to finish at Episode 7 but he returns to ‘The Sovereign Individual’, the book written by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg (father of the MP), a book that responds to our desire to link everything together. It is a favourite of the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley, who think a new version of the web, based on cryptocurrency and blockchain, will bring about the next step in the societal shift driven by the internet. Take, for example, Peter Thiele, the founder of Paypal who is buying up New Zealand, and who has vowed to be back in the game for the 2022 mid-term elections. What does this mean for democracy?

The History Listen (ABC) To celebrate International Women’s Day, Steely Women celebrates the decades-long fight for women to be employed by BHP, and then to receive equal pay. It was Australia’s longest anti-discrimination case.

Deeply Human Accents starts off with an attempt at an Australianism – the increasing rapid repetition of ‘Rise Up Lights’ to end up with ‘Razor Blades’. (Personally, I don’t think it does, really). Apparently the language patterns of the future are already in evidence amongst 15, 16 and 17 year olds (what a depressing thought) with the shifting of vowels. The program then goes on to look at a case in the America courts where the Afro-American accused may have said “You know I committed that crime” or maybe “You know I ain committed that crime.” How much hangs on an “ain”.