In which the pond does history with Polonius, teaching with the Angelic One, and Gerard of The Times discovers a hard-headed practitioner of realpolitik ...

 

Is there a survivor in the house? Did anyone survive yesterday's Everest climb? Or did everybody end up buried in the snow high up in that dire pond Everest climb, starved of oxygen and meaning?

For the scattered few that did make it to the top - or out to pursue a useful weekend - the pond decided to take it easy for its Sunday meditation, not so many 'toons, and prattling Polonius to lull the reader into a little more shut eye ...

Polonius is most soporific when he does history, and this outing promised slumber, John Curtin was good, but not that good, Prime Minister, John Curtin was by no means a false god. But nor was he the one-true God when it came to politics.
The caption: Anthony Albanese is a fan of former Labor prime minister John Curtin. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian

Compared to yesterday's marathon, Polonius was just a humble four minute read, and he went personal ... (sssh, don't mention the tykes)

My father, Norman, was a long-time member of the Australian Labor Party – until he was expelled by/resigned from the ALP at the time of the Labor split in Victoria in 1955. There was a not-unrelated Labor split in Queensland two years later.
Norman became a member of the breakaway Democratic Labor Party which gave its preferences to the Coalition ahead of Labor. This certainly saved Robert Menzies and John Gorton from defeat in the 1961 and 1969 elections respectively, and effectively kept the ALP out of office between 1955 and the end of 1972.
Despite the fact that Norman was a DLP voter, for the past two decades of his life he remained a fan of John Curtin (who was prime minister of Australia from October 1941 until his death in office in July 1945) and Ben Chifley (prime minister from July 1945 until December 1949, who died in 1951).
So, I can well understand why Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said what he said about Australia’s wartime prime minister when delivering the John Curtin Oration last Saturday in Sydney. Put simply, Curtin is a hero to most Labor supporters and a (secular) saint to some. Yet, like all of us, he was not without fault – including during wartime.
Albanese told the John Curtin Research Centre that no Australian achieved more in war and in peace than Curtin. He added: “Throughout 124 years of our Federation and 31 prime ministers of Australia, John Curtin stands apart.”
Yet, Curtin’s contribution to Australia’s security deserves examination. He was a strong opponent of conscription for overseas service during World War I. Indeed, he was jailed briefly in Melbourne for defying wartime regulations.

Oh dear, did Polonius just go the white feather?

He did, he did ...

There were many who opposed conscription, which was voted down in the plebiscites of 1916 and 1917 – an issue that led Labor to split in 1916. But that was another matter. What initially was called the Great War was not an occasion of Australia fighting other people’s wars, as the left-wing interpretation of Australian history states. After all, Imperial Germany had possessions in the Pacific, and a victory by Kaiser Wilhelm II would have adversely affected Australia in a dramatic way.

If only the pond's grandfather had been sensible enough to take a white feather, instead of seeking glory in the mud of the Somme and returning home sans glory as a drunkard.

Maintaining the tendency to history, the reptiles dragged out a snap from the archive featuring the croweater "playmander" man, Former SA premier Thomas Playford with former prime minister John Curtin at Adelaide Railway Station in 1948.

Polonius was determined to walk down family memory lane ...

My maternal uncle, Alan Dargavel, who came from a Labor voting family, died in November 1917 in Belgium during the Third Battle of Ypres. Like all his comrades, Alan was a volunteer. His life in the trenches was harsher than Curtin’s uncomfortable incarceration in the 19th century-built Melbourne prison at around the same time.
Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating is wont to declare that the likes of Joe Lyons and Robert Menzies – United Australia Party prime ministers between January 1932 and August 1941 (Lyons died in office in 1939) – were appeasers of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany from 1933 until the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.
And, so they were. And so was Curtin. The talented historian John Edwards is something of a Curtin fan-boy. Yet a reading of volume one of his John Curtin’s War reveals that, in the 1930s, Curtin opposed every proposal by Lyons or Menzies to increase Australia’s defence expenditure.
Moreover, on May 9, 1939, Curtin delivered a speech in the House of Representatives in which he declared that to Germans (but not Australians) “democratic systems do not necessarily mean work and food and decent living standards”. He added Germans believed “the form of political system that they have accepted yields to them a more satisfactory internal social standing than does the democratic system”. This was Hitler’s Germany.

To be fair, Curtin wasn't nearly as on board as was Ming ...who copped considerable abuse for his fellow travelling...

Compare Curtin's rather cryptic words to Ming launching into "History will label Hitler as one of the really great men of the century ...", which inevitably started a hullabaloo ...

Never mind, pedantry is the Polonial main game and he came up with a ripper...

In the event, Menzies declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. Albanese put it this way: “Where Menzies had said that because Britain was at war with Germany, as a result Australia was at war – under Labor Curtin said Australia was at war”. The reference was to Australia entering the Pacific War after Japan’s attack on the United States at Pearl Harbour in December 1941.
But Menzies was correct. In 1939, Australia had not adopted the Statute of Westminster and was dependent on Britain with respect to foreign policy. Australia’s position vis a vis Japan in December 1941 was different.

Um, how was it different? 

The Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942 was given royal assent on 9th October 1942. 

Sure it was made retroactive to the start of the war, but even in the Polonial universe, 1941 shouldn't be confused with 1942 ... 

It wouldn't be Polonius without a howler or three, as the reptiles interrupted with another snap from the archive, General Douglas MacArthur with Curtin (left) and Lord Gowrie (right) in 1944.

Polonius is always big on essential points...

The essential point is that Menzies committed the Second Australian Imperial Force to the northern hemisphere in September 1939. The Curtin-led Labor opposition opposed the commitment. The Second AIF left Australia in March 1940. It ended up engaged in battle with Germany and Italy in north Africa. With considerable success – as is documented in Tom Gilling’s recently released Start Digging You Bastards! on the Battle of El Alamein. Curtin had wanted Australian forces to remain in Australia.
As documented in Anne Henderson’s Menzies At War, the senior defence public servant Frederick Shedden wrote that without the contribution of Lyons and Menzies to Australia’s defence between 1931 and 1941 “the legacy of the Curtin government in 1941 would have been very poor indeed”.

Say what? Luckily Polonius doesn't dwell on the fall of Singapore, when the British empire shit really hit the local fan, but what about the notion that things were spiffing in the 1930s thanks to Ming and his minions?

As late as 1938, the AMF had only four obsolete 3-inch anti-aircraft guns, zero 2-pounder anti-tank guns, and 36 Bren guns throughout Australia.  (AWM)

Ya gotta laugh, and so to another fit of pedantry ...

Sure, Curtin was a fine domestic political leader in the early 1940s as is evident by Labor’s landslide victory at the 1943 election. And he made the correct decision in insisting that the Second AIF forces return from the northern theatre to Australia in early 1942.
In this, Curtin overrode British prime minister Winston Churchill’s insistence that the AIF be sent to Burma. However, Curtin effectively handed over responsibility for Australia’s commitment in the Pacific War to General Douglas McArthur, the Commander of US Army Forces in the Far East. This was not the best wartime leadership.
Without question, as Albanese declared, Curtin did much to foster Australia’s relationship with the US. Yet he was not alone. Lyons developed a strong relationship with Roosevelt and appeared on the cover of Time magazine on July 8, 1935. Menzies continued in this vein and Curtin added to the Australia-US relationship.
But, contrary to Albanese’s claim, Curtin was not “the founder of Australia’s alliance with the United States”. That was born in September 1951 when Percy Spender was the Liberal Party external affairs minister and Menzies prime minister.

In a technical pedantic sense, in terms of an actual treaty, the ANZUS treaty wasn't signed until 1951.

But it's possible to argue that an alliance was first forged back in WWI during the July 1918 Battle of Hamel.

And it was an actual alliance, if not a treaty, when the United States entered the second world war, and Curtin wisely turned to them.

After that, Australia did what it's done with most American wars, by immediately getting involved in the Korean war alongside the Americans, beginning in September 1950.

In that sense, Spender was merely dotting the i's of established practice ... of an alliance that had already seen plenty of action.

And so to conclude with a typical piece of Polonial supercilious sneering ... 

Curtin was by no means a false god. But nor was he the one-true God when it came to politics. This I came to learn, despite my father’s teachings.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Here, have a relieving cartoon, a reward for making it to the end, featuring more gods in the making ...

And now before turning to the Angelic one for a bonus, the pond would like to make some notes on the Segal affair...

The pond will ignore the way that Jillian Segal has skin in the game, and would like to note a few stories in Crikey, including ...

Antisemitism envoy praises Elon Musk’s X for using AI to ‘root out hate’
Australia’s antisemitism envoy has praised how platforms like Elon Musk’s X are using AI to fight hate — days after X’s AI bot Grok was taken offline for antisemitic posts. (*archive link)

The joke in that one is obvious from the header, but there was also the keen Keane...

So, will News Corp, Seven and other platforms for neo-Nazis and promoters of antisemitic theories be censored?
Jillian Segal’s extraordinary proposal to personally censor media outlets would mean Australia’s most right-wing broadcasters and magazines would be ‘assisted’ to avoid antisemitism. (*archive link)

News Corp, the Seven Network and The Spectator all face the possibility of censorship and content control under antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal’s extraordinary proposal to personally regulate Australian media.
Segal, an Israel apologist who oversaw systemic misconduct by NAB while a director of that bank from 2004-16, yesterday issued a report urging the government to give her unprecedented powers. These include drafting legislation; “guiding” police, prosecutors, the judiciary and regulatory authorities; dictating school curricula; promoting “trusted voices” on social media; assessing and cutting funding from tertiary institutions and individual academics; cracking down on online speech; and creating mechanisms to cut funding from the ABC, SBS and cultural institutions.
News Corp, the Seven Network and The Spectator all face the possibility of censorship and content control under antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal’s extraordinary proposal to personally regulate Australian media.
Segal, an Israel apologist who oversaw systemic misconduct by NAB while a director of that bank from 2004-16, yesterday issued a report urging the government to give her unprecedented powers. These include drafting legislation; “guiding” police, prosecutors, the judiciary and regulatory authorities; dictating school curricula; promoting “trusted voices” on social media; assessing and cutting funding from tertiary institutions and individual academics; cracking down on online speech; and creating mechanisms to cut funding from the ABC, SBS and cultural institutions.
But Segal has also demanded that she be given the power to intervene in the operations of media outlets. She recommends:
The envoy will monitor media organisations to encourage accurate, fair and responsible reporting and assist them to meet their editorial standards and commitment to impartiality and balance and to avoid accepting false or distorted narratives.
“Monitoring” is straightforward, but exactly how Segal proposes to deliver such “assistance” to media companies is not explained in the report.
Under Australia’s media regulatory framework, broadcasters operate under a licence-based “co-regulatory” scheme based on registered industry codes of practice and a hierarchical complaints system that can refer complainants to the media regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority. However, there is no such regime for non-broadcast media, which is not licensed. Print media has a self-regulatory scheme of dubious credibility, but there is no clear power for the federal government to impose any “assistance” on newspapers and magazines.
While Sky News is revelling in the prospect of Segal abolishing the ABC — a longstanding far-right fantasy — in fact it is News Corp, the Seven Network and other right-wing media that face the most immediate threat from Segal’s proposed power to “assist” media to “avoid accepting false or distorted narratives”.
While Sky News after dark may be nothing but false or distorted narratives, the immediate problem is that the outlet has platformed neo-Nazis. Sky is notorious for giving airtime to neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell, who according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry has said “there should be a portrait of Hitler on display in every classroom and that Hitler’s rantings in Mein Kampf should be presented to every student”.
Australia’s other right-wing television network, the Seven Network, also gave Cottrell a platform for his hateful views.
Sky News after dark also had a long association with far-right blogger Lauren Southern, who later became a regular contributor to Sky. Southern, in 2017, promoted the so-called “Great Replacement Theory”, denounced as antisemitic by the world’s highest-profile opponent of antisemitism, the US Anti-Defamation League.
It’s not merely far-right broadcasters. The Australian edition of The Spectator, a low-rent local version of the respected British publication, has an even worse record than Sky or Seven. In 2023, Crikey revealed The Spectator was publishing writers with a history of supportive interactions with neo-Nazis, or writers who have actively promoted antisemitism online, praised Hitler and said there was “nothing wrong” with the Holocaust.
In the curious double standards of the antisemitism “debate” in Australia, the ABC publishing the views of people who have praised Hitler, denied the Holocaust or promoted antisemitic theories would lead to a sustained campaign from News Corp demanding sackings, funding cuts and abolition. The frequent appearance of antisemites and neo-Nazis in rightwing media outlets seems to fall under the rubric of “free speech” and is otherwise ignored.
In any event, Segal’s proposal would almost certainly see her “assisting” Sky News, Seven and The Spectator “to avoid accepting false or distorted narratives” by giving a voice to such blatant antisemites — and the government under pressure to give similar powers to an “Islamophobia envoy“.
One can only assume an angry campaign in support of free speech and against “cancel culture” is in the offing

Ben Eltham was also out and about, under the header ...

Segal’s antisemitism plan would be the deepest intervention in Australian universities since Federation
‘It’s hard to escape the authoritarian implications of this extraordinary proposal. The similarities to the actions of the Trump administration are all too clear.’(*archive link)

...Perhaps detail is not the point in a report with vaulting ambitions to monitor the media, vet visa applicants, censor arts organisations and regulate artificial intelligence, but it does seem strange that Segal has not given any serious thought to exactly how the Albanese government might plausibly carry out such a deep and invasive intervention.

Nor has any thought been given to what would actually happen if, for instance, the education minister were to withhold a year’s worth of funding to a public university. In many cases, the answer is immediate insolvency.

For mid-tier universities like Griffith, Newcastle or La Trobe, Commonwealth funding accounts for around three-fifths of their annual budget. No institution could easily survive the subtraction of so much income. While universities have some cash reserves and a lot of valuable land they could eventually sell, the withholding of even a portion of their public funding would quickly push most to the edge.

Closing down a university to combat antisemitism would not be a great result for its students — including its Jewish students. The economic impact would also be significant. In cities like Newcastle, Wollongong and Ballarat, universities are some of the largest employers.

Obviously, such an existential threat would make university vice-chancellors and boards pay the closest attention to the “report card” that Segal wants to produce in coming months — and this, surely, is the point. But even the distant threat of such draconian intervention will be deeply destabilising for a sector already shedding jobs.

Among the most amusing aspects of this farrago of wishful thinking is the touching faith Segal reserves for the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), the sector’s largely ineffectual regulator. TEQSA has done little to stop systemic wage theft from university teachers, arrest dramatic slides in teaching quality or address an epidemic of sexual assault on campuses. Yet somehow Segal believes the agency can “ensure that systemic action is taken to reverse a dangerous trajectory of normalised antisemitism in many university courses and campuses”.

This is the sort of thing someone might write if they knew very little about the way Australian higher education is actually regulated.

It’s hard to escape the authoritarian implications of this extraordinary proposal. The similarities to the actions of the Trump administration in the US are all too clear. In America, Donald Trump’s government has used vague and unsubstantiated allegations of antisemitism to withhold billions of dollars of funding from institutions like Harvard and Columbia. The impacts on US higher education have been profound.

And there was this as part of a survey of the report in the Graudian ...

What concerns have been raised?
The prominent barrister Greg Barns SC, of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, was concerned that threatening funding of academic or arts bodies could lead institutions to censor members, or set stronger internal rules, which he warned could impinge on freedom of speech or expression. He noted the government had strengthened hate crime laws only in February, specifically to better protect places of worship, and urged more time be allowed for existing laws to be enforced.
“We’re concerned universities and cultural institutions will feel compelled to impose regulations that severely curtail those rights, with draconian penalties attached to them,” Barns said.
Attacks in Melbourne have struck fear into the Jewish community, and do nothing to bring about peace
Read more
“It’s the wrong approach, you can’t legislate a problem out of existence. The best way forward is prevention, using the existing suite of laws to enforce the law, and prevention through education – engagement with community groups, police, to ensure protests etc are within the law.”
Doug Cameron, a former leftwing Labor senator who quit parliament in 2019, called on his former colleagues to “find their voice, examine the implications of adopting the Segal report and ensure that there are no restrictions to opposing Israeli genocide in Gaza”.
“Recognise Palestine, condemn the slaughter of innocents and antisemitism will decline,” he wrote on X.
The Jewish Council of Australia claimed Segal’s plan risked “undermining Australia’s democratic freedoms” and “inflaming community divisions”. The group said the plan would “risk censoring criticism of Israel” and not address the root causes of antisemitism.

Sheesh, she even lost the JCA? 

And then there was Louise Adler in The Graudian, with The special envoy's plan is the latest push to weaponise antisemitism, as a relentless campaign pays off.

What were comrade Albo and his minions thinking?

How weird is it getting? 

Why there's the Chris Minns special ...

A man has been charged under recently introduced laws banning the display of Nazi symbols over a shopfront poster depicting Coalition politicians and Australian billionaires as German World War II soldiers. 

The display, a series of posters depicting then-opposition leader Peter Dutton, former deputy prime minister Michael McCormack, and miners Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer dressed as Nazis, appeared in a Wagga Wagga shop window during the March federal Election campaign.

On March 31, police were alerted to the business storefront display on the city's main street.

At the time, police told the ABC that it had sought legal advice, and it was determined the display did not break the Australian Criminal Code.

On Tuesday July 8 "following further inquiries", police charged the 69-year-old with knowingly displaying Nazi symbols without an excuse.

NSW hate crime laws were passed in February this year in response to an increase in hate speech and a string of anti-Semitic incidents in the state.

The shop owner was served a court attendance notice to appear on August 20.

Hey NSW plods, is it too late to charge the Terror? You know, full front page, circulated to thousands upon thousands ...

Bear with the pond, all that has something to do with the Angelic one's outing this weekend ...

The opaque header: Dump ideology, bring history back into the classroom, Teenagers should be taken to the Holocaust memorials but, even more important, they must learn about what was happening in the world in these relatively modern times.
The caption: Above, part of an exhibition at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum. ‘In my teaching days I had direct experience of a whole class of 15-year-olds knowing absolutely nothing about the Holocaust.’ Picture: supplied

It's a deeply weird notion, that ideology can be separated from history and kept out of the classroom. 

The pond remembers its leaving certificate history book as having a cover with assorted figures from the 20th century who were deeply ideological (any notion that Gandhi didn't have ideology in mind is patently absurd).

Never mind, on with the Angelic one ...

It was reported this week that federal Education Minister Jason Clare wants to introduce anti-Semitism into the school curriculum, although how this is to be done is a mystery.
It seems to be a kneejerk response to something that recently has become a problem, spurred by the war in the Middle East and manifest, first, in serious criminal activity and, second, less seriously, in mouthing slogans at demonstrations. Perhaps in the latter case the underlying cause is pure ignorance.
In my teaching days I had direct experience of a whole class of 15-year-olds knowing absolutely nothing about the Holocaust.
I first encountered this back in the 1980s. I had a simple solution. I showed them the Genocide episode from The World at War series narrated by Laurence Olivier to enlighten them. Today it probably would be against the law to show them some of that footage without some sort of warning.
I have never had a class quieten down so quickly. They were gobsmacked. However, what really appalled me, other than the fact they had no idea that this had happened, was the sort of questions they asked me afterwards.

The most disturbing aspect of this gobbet? Hapless young students were exposed to the Angelic one as a teacher ... Another exhibit the Melbourne Holocaust Museum. Picture: supplied

Miss Angelic one was severe, though from personal experience, the pond can say that it's possible to grow up in Tamworth only knowing about three vegies, a chop or, if you were lucky, a couple of bangers to go with the mashed spuds...

“Miss, why didn’t Americans do something?” Eh? Of course, I had to point out that these all-rescuing Americans (like Private Ryan) were fighting a great big war in Europe. You know, World War II? No. They didn’t.
At this point, rather than trying to introduce some form of divisive and possibly ideological stuff, it might be a good idea if adolescents simply had to do history. If they all had to study the rise of Nazism and even briefly World War II, then perhaps I would have been spared their profound ignorance.
Some kids today still study history – as an elective. It is rarely compulsory. If it were, the Australian population would not be so ignorant as to be letting anti-Semitism and a lot of other antis flourish too.
However, there is a great danger that if specific anti-Semitism education is introduced, it simply will be yet more ideological stuff being crammed into an already overcrowded curriculum and, kids being kids, a contrary, immature lot, it would be ignored or encourage even more classroom division.

Cue an AV distraction, Education Minister Jason Clare is hinting at reforming the school curriculum so children are taught about antisemitism. The Labor government believes teachers have a role to play in educating young Australians about attitudes towards Jewish people. The government is expected to provide funding to expand social cohesion programs for kids and establish a national holocaust centre in Canberra.

Then the Angelic one confused the pond ...

By all means, teenagers should be taken to the Holocaust memorials but, even more important, they must learn about what was happening in the world in these relatively modern times.

So we should bring history back into the classroom, toss any mention of ideology, and then forget all that and do current affairs, without of course any mention that the hive mind is littered with fundamentalist ideological extremism...

They must learn how and why it was that one of the most civilised nations in Europe, the nation that could produce some of the greatest writers, philosophers, musicians and scientists in the world, was overtaken by an ideology that perpetrated such a barbarity as the Holocaust.

Um, so it might not be so much history as philosophy and religion and existential contemplation of the evils lurking in humanity?And it's all the fault of the Germans, and nothing to do with the cruelties and barbarities of the British empire, or all the other contending European empires, who came together to contend as to who might own the world in the first world war?

Perhaps then they might also learn, in the way that those bullied frequently turn into bullies, that Israel is currently intent on mass starvation, ethnic cleansing and the erection of a huge ghetto/concentration camp along the lines of that one in Theresienstadt, no doubt with propaganda footage showing happy Palestinians enjoying the orchestra and hospital in their gulag ...

The reptiles supplied a different snap ...A Polish monument of the wartime Jedwabne massacre of Jews by their Polish neighbours with the new installed plaques claiming that the crime was committed by a German pacification unit. Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, on July 10 denounced the plaques as ‘a desecration of historical truth’. Picture: AFP

The nightmare involved in thinking about the Angelic one in charge of hapless students returned...

As a teacher of history, I can understand why some kids questioned the relevance of the Peloponnesian wars, but if they had to study any history kids might have to look more deeply into the reasons for many current world conflicts and problems, not just the war in the Middle East.
If they understood the origins of World War I and the tensions that ensued after that terrible conflict, they might be more discerning about the war in Ukraine as not just a fight between the “goodies” personified by Volodymyr Zelensky and the “baddies” personified by Vladimir Putin. Unfortunately, I have realised from experience that many kids now don’t even know about the break-up of the Soviet empire, let alone the Hapsburg one.
An example closer to home is Anthony Albanese’s John Curtin Oration last weekend. It has been greeted with some criticism from various commentators, not only because of what the Prime Minister said about Curtin’s decision to look to the Americans for our defence in World War II but also because of what he was saying about our relationship with the US now, particularly as we tread a fine line in the Pacific with China.

Sorry, been there, done that with Polonius, though the Angelic one had a nice archive snap, Wartime prime minister John Curtin. Picture: National Library of Australia

The Angelic one was just asking questions ...

But ask any young person, even a 30-year-old, if they know any historical facts about that time, the war, the alliance or even who Curtin was, and it would be a fair bet that they don’t.
I once had a student at a class I was taking at a university who didn’t know there were two world wars. As for Australia after the war, unless you grew up in Bathurst, NSW, you wouldn’t know who Joseph Benedict Chifley was either.
So where does this leave trying to quell the outburst of anti-Semitism? First, trying to counter this, the government must look at its origins. Is it really a huge Australia-wide social problem? Is it any worse than the antipathy many people feel towards Middle Eastern non-Jews, especially Muslims?

The reptiles interrupted with a provocative snap, Activists from the US-based Avaaz organisation protest against the Gaza war outside the Reichstag, seat of the German parliament, with a quote from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that reads: ‘I admit I don't understand what the Israeli army is now doing in the Gaza Strip and to what end.’ Picture: Getty Images

And so the wrap up ...

Judging from comments on my previous columns, it isn’t. However, the worst thing about the latest outrages, especially with the attacks on synagogues, restaurants and car torching, is that they have been perpetrated deliber­ately by professional agitators who have online networks spread all over the world.
All the campus demonstrations from New York to Melbourne appear to have been co-ordinated by agitators, the main reason the University of Melbourne intervened in the campus demonstrations.
However, much of the street protests and the vehemently anti-Israeli feeling at demonstrations is not necessarily antipathy towards Jews. The young especially are prompted by idealism, empathy and understandable horror at the suffering of the people of Gaza.
However, with virtually nil understanding or knowledge about the Middle East, particularly the origins of the state of Israel, it is easy to see how opposition to Israeli policy in Gaza can lead to anger against the Jewish state and be extrapolated to Jews in general. That is anti-Semitism born of plain historical ignorance.
So instead of having morality shoved down their throats and being told their opinions are wrong and worthless, we would do better for young people to point out the salient facts of history, even if you don’t like Israel’s policies, which, in a democracy you have every right to oppose.

Ah yes, history, it's a wonderful thing ...

And so to a bonus, and here the pond had to go back a day to Gerard of The Times ...

The header: Trump’s pragmatism puts MAGA in a panic, President is alarming his base by abandoning core promises, from bombing Iran to debunking the Epstein conspiracy.
The caption: We need seriously to consider the possibility that America’s most instinctual, unpredictable president is shaping up to be a hard-headed practitioner of realpolitik.

Gerard of The Times immediately won over the pond with his suggestion that the mango Mussolini is becoming a hard-headed practitioner of realpolitik.

A veritable Bismarck, a new Kissinger for the ages ... a man deeply read in The Art of War and Machiavelli's The Prince ...

This is the sort of make-over that's even better than having mango blush in your kit ...

Is Donald Trump a pragmatist? If I told you the US president was the kind of leader who weighed the evidence before reaching big decisions, carefully calculating the costs and benefits of his actions, and then proceeded to make policy on the basis of what was most likely to achieve the best outcome irrespective of his rhetorical priors, you would conclude - rightly - that I was a candidate for institutionalisation.
There are many adjectives typically used to describe Trump’s approach to office: “impulsive”, “capricious”, “irrational” are among the more polite ones. But pragmatic? Pragmatism represents the triumph of practical truth. It stems from the recognition that, however much you may want the world to reflect your beliefs, bend to your ideas, yield to your ambitions, there is, in the end, an inescapable reality that cannot be manipulated or denied.
Does that sound like the man who said “Canada was meant to be the 51st state because we subsidise Canada by $200 billion a year"?
And yet, halfway through the first year of his second term, we need seriously to consider the possibility that America’s most instinctual, unpredictable president is shaping up to be a hard-headed practitioner of realpolitik at home and abroad.
If you don’t believe me, listen to the growing complaints from sections of the Maga base who have watched with alarm as their president has abandoned them on issue after promised issue, slaughtering sacred cows that he himself had sanctified: bombing Iran, making nice with Nato, siding with Volodymyr Zelensky against Russia, agreeing to let millions of illegal immigrants stay in the country after all because they do necessary jobs.

The reptiles slipped in a snap of the Nobel prize contender, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky shakes hands with US President Donald Trump during their meeting on the sideline of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizationsummit in The Hague. Picture: Handout/Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/AFP

Magisterial, presidential, and yet ...

And so on ...

And now this week, the latest betrayal: Trump’s top legal officer announced that there was no conspiracy surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein.
Trivial though it may seem, Trump’s abandonment of the Epstein conspiracy is a telling moment. The fate of the former financier and sex offender is a central article of faith in the Maga canon: that the man found dead in a New York jail cell was murdered to silence him before he could come to trial and finally reveal all about his intimacy with powerful people, including, in no particular order, the Clintons, Israel, Wall Street, Hollywood and the British royal family. It is a faith fed repeatedly by claims from the president himself about Epstein (which sat awkwardly at times with the fact that Trump was a one-time associate of the man).
And yet, the Epstein case is a signal example of simple Trumpian pragmatism. Trump - through Pam Bondi, the attorney general - reviewed the evidence, excised the hype and fantasy and came to a rather dull conclusion: that Epstein, facing the prospect of the rest of his life languishing in the worst of America’s jails, hanged himself with a prison sheet while his guards were sleeping along the corridor.
The wailing from Trump supporters was loud. “I just really need the Trump administration to succeed and to save this country ... And then for them to do something like this just tears my guts out,” Alex Jones, uber-conspiracist, posted on X.

The reptiles had another snap, The wailing from Trump supporters, like US far-right radio show host Alex Jones, was loud. Picture: Olivier Douliery/AFP

Here's the thing. The dullard dopes actually believed their conspiracist in chief, talking up Bill Clinton on the island ...

Who wouldn't have a beef if all you ended up with was a lousy T-shirt?

Somehow from all these follies, too many to recount here, Gerard of The Times sees a cunning statesman in action ...

Where Epstein is symbolic, Trump’s other Maga apostasies are substantive. As I argued in this column a few weeks ago, the decision to bomb Iran went against the non-interventionist, “restrainer” strand of Trumpian thinking. It was a move driven by opportunism and expediency: a softened-up target presenting a chance to achieve a core goal of US foreign policy.
The rapprochement with Nato at the summit in the Hague last month was at odds with the Maga crowd’s denunciation of European fecklessness and the perils of American entanglement in a far-flung alliance. But it marked the practical recognition that Trump’s pressure over the past six months had achieved a desired outcome: more balanced defence spending.
Trump has moved further away from Vladimir Putin and towards President Zelensky in the war in Ukraine. Looking beyond his odd affection for the Russia leader, and the repugnant spectacle of the humiliation of the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office earlier this year, it’s always been clear that it was Trump’s ambition to get a deal to end the war.

It's his ambition to get a Nobel peace prize, much like the dunce of the class yearning for an all A report card ... Donald and Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein, anGhislaine Maxwell (sic) pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, in February 2000. Picture: Davidoff Studios/Getty Images; Ghislaine Maxwell watches as Jeffrey Epstein and US President Bill Clinton shake hands. Picture: William J. Clinton Presidential Library

He's not just a naughty boy, he's a chenius who knows how to pivot ...

Having tried to bully Ukraine into accepting a ceasefire, he now seems to have firmly pivoted. 

Or has he? Doesn't he do business like Melbourne does weather, four seasons in one day?

This week he not only distanced himself from a curious Pentagon decision to briefly suspend already approved arms transfers to Kyiv, he seemed to be moving towards actually approving the supply of the first new munitions to Ukraine since he took office.

Seemed to be? 

Now that's wise, because until he actually delivers, he might seem to be moving in any of a hundred decisions and revisions, depending on who he last talked to...

...In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
               So how should I presume?

...I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
My face shall be a mango gold ...

Shall I part my lavish hair plants behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the Melania mermaids singing, each to each.

And so to a last burst of normalising a grifter, con artist and snake oil salesman, almost worthy of a position in the both siderist NY Times...

On illegal immigrants, after heavy lobbying from business leaders and warnings that the nation’s supply of food and minimum-wage restaurant staff was at risk, Trump has agreed to exempt undocumented workers in agriculture and hospitality from his mass deportation programme.
What about his big, favourite thing, you say: tariffs? Isn’t he now doubling down on a policy almost all agree is driven not by practical considerations but by blind faith in the great moral virtue of import duties? But even here there is pragmatism at work. Trump paused the initial “liberation day” tariffs almost immediately when economic reality set in. This week he extended the pause to August 1, but even if he goes ahead with the duties, it will reflect the growing evidence that the tariffs imposed so far have done no obvious harm to the US economy.
None of this should come as a surprise. The causes of Trump’s political success are rooted in popular dissatisfaction with failed conventional politics in the US - reflected in similar populist anger in much of the West. Yet the man himself was never a real radical, but always focused on what he could gain in practice, as his former friends Bill and Hillary Clinton could doubtless attest from their many shared conversations at Jeffrey Epstein’s parties a few years back.
The Times

So release the list, unveil the documentation. 

Who cares if slick Willy gets taken down? Who cares if King Donald is involved?

Oh wait, that's a bridge too far for some ...

Better stick with the Kissinger, the master Machiavellian routine.

And so to wrap up with a couple of celebrations of great government at work, the doings, deeds and outcomes of hard-headed practitioners of realpolitik ...

For some reason all that talk of anti-Semitism made the pond think of Shostakovich and Babi Yar. Maybe there'll be similarly compelling works for the Gaza killing fields.

Here's one outdoor version, too long to watch on a computer, but maybe on another device ...

 

Alternatively enjoy yet more examples of the fine work of hard-headed practitioners of realpolitik. The long absent lord alone knows what MAGAts would make of the world if they stepped outside the conspiracy theories to discover a government dedicated to authoritarianism ...