Last week I received, among the usual array of unsolicited online communications, something from a researcher from the London-based social communications company, Breakthrough Media. The pro forma email said that BM (my abbreviation, not theirs) was casting a new online TV series and were on the lookout for people aged over 50 (that’s me!) to be in the show…apparently they were particularly interested in folk in that demographic “who love to chat, have a laugh and would like to know how to Email, Skype, Facebook, Online Shop, Online Bank, or use the Internet” (capitalisation all hers!).
The message went on to say that they were “also looking for tech savvy friends, family members, or colleagues, who could team up with the Over 50 candidates to be their teaching buddy, during filming” (in August). What they specifically wanted from me was leads on “great potential candidates” for the program. Now, taken on face value, this all sounded innocent, admirable even, very community minded.
Elizabeth House: BM’s ‘anonymous’ London locationI had never heard of “Breakthrough Media”…just another of the new media start-ups in the ever mushrooming world of social networking I supposed, and usually I ignore such online pitches. But somewhat intrigued I decided to try to find out a bit about them. Their website would be a good place to start, I thought❈. It was however unsurprisingly jargon-laden and disappointingly short on substance…the website’s description of what BM was about, went “we design and build award-winning campaigns that tackle some of the world’s toughest social issues, helping our clients counter misinformation, prevent violent extremism, promote democracy and protect the environment”. Full of jargony generalities such as “our strategic thinking and our creativity are joined-up and informed by real-time audience engagement…(and) inspiring positive social change” (www.breakthroughmedia.org). In its job advertisements the company describes itself thus: “Breakthrough is a communications agency and production company. We specialise in conflict resolution, society building and countering violent extremism”. Again, the message resonates with progressive, international goals and desirable outcomes.
I turned to other, independent, commentators and observers of Breakthrough Media…frankly there wasn’t much on the web about the media company, but one fairly thorough dissection of BM’s role and its background was contained in a 2016 report by The Guardian on Britain’s RICU (the Research Information and Communications Unit) [‘Inside Ricu, the shadowy propaganda unit inspired by the cold war’, The Guardian, 03-May-2016, (Ian Cobain, Alice Ross, Rob Evans & Mona Mahmood)]. RICU was created in 2007 as an arm of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OCST) and funded by the Home Office. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue defines RICU’s function as “coordinating government-wide communication activities to counter the appeal of violent extremism while promoting stronger grass-roots inter-community relations [www.counter-extremism.com]. RICU’s work is a key part of Westminster’s anti-radicalisation program, ‘Prevent’.
The relationship between RICU and Breakthrough Media
Where does BM fit into the picture of RICU and its fight against extreme fundamentalism, terrorism and ISIS? The two have a contractual arrangement: RICU pays BM to produce digital materials, films, Twitter feeds, Facebook profiles, YouTube clips, and the like, which promote the UK government’s anti-terrorism policies. The propaganda, emanating from BM on behalf of the Home Office (BM unsurprisingly prefers the term “strategic communications”) is aimed at Muslim communities, the desired outcome being “a reconciled British Muslim identity”. As The Guardian report revealed, BM’s stratagem is to “influence online conversations by being embedded within target communities via a network of moderate organisations that are supportive of its [sic] goals”.
An uncomfortable and problematic relationship?
BM is well remunerated by OCST for its counter-terrorism work (earning a reported £11.8M during 2012-2016), but its role as a conduit for RICU has some disquieting aspects. BM’s contacts with Islamic communities, either directly or through its PR team Horizon Public Relations, is not transparent. BM represents its work to the public without disclosure of its connection to the British government. At least one former government minister has conceded (to The Guardian) that deception in the dissemination of the messages could damage trust between the government and Muslim citizens. Other outspoken critics of this practice include human rights lawyer Imran Khan and the vice-chair of the Institute of Race Relations Frances Webber who saw it as giving an appearance that Muslim groups had been co-opted to a government agenda [‘Revealed: UK’s covert propaganda bid to stop Muslims joining Isis’, The Guardian, 03-May-2016, (Ian Cobain et al)].
Advocacy groups and critics of the Home Office policy have complained that RICU/OCST uses the Muslim Civil Society Organisations (MCSO) as mouthpieces for their government counter-narratives, irrespective of whether the MSCO are aware of it or not [‘The Home Office is Creating Mistrust within Muslim Civil Society’, (CAGE, 16-May-2016), www.cage.ngo.
The Guardian also showed how RICU (as the paymasters) have an editing role in the finished work of Breakthrough…RICU’s head Richard Chalk is an occasional visitor to BM’s Lambeth office – Chalk can be found at times sitting in the edit suites and monitoring the BM productions. One source of the newspaper indicated whilst Breakthrough projects are not strictly scripted by RICU, they’ll “make it clear that they want a particular form of words to be used at a particular point in a film”⚀.
RICU and BM are also linked in a veil of secrecy in regard to the media, as The Guardian discovered. Neither parties allow their staff to talk to the newspapers about their roles in counter-terrorism. BM cited reasons of ‘confidentiality’ and ‘NFP’ to the The Guardian for its reticence. The paper’s investigative team did unearth the fact that even some of the freelancers employed by Breakthrough to do RICU’s clandestine bidding were unaware of BM’s (covert) connection with the British government.
Given the scale of the threat posed, the majority of Britons would have few qualms about the Home Office using its agencies to engage in “industrial scale propaganda” in a bid to counter ISIS’s propaganda machine and its success in poisoning the minds of some young Muslim Britons [B Hayes & A Qureshi, ‘Going global: the UK’s government’s “CVE” agenda, counter-radicalisation and covert propaganda’, (Open Democracy UK, 04-May-2016), www.opendemocracy.net]. BM have undeniably produced some good work in getting the message across, but where it becomes ethically questionable is when contractors like Breakthrough Media and co-opted NGOs present their counter propaganda whilst in the guise of being “independent, community-based campaigns”, when the reality is that the information they are disseminating to schools, university ‘freshers’ and the like is backed (and guided in most cases) by the government.
❈ a number of the links on the website menu were broken at the time I accessed it…that internet know-how training they were talking about might have come in handy in the BM IT department!
⌖ OCST itself was the successor to IRD (Information Research Department), a top-secret body set up by Britain’s Foreign Office in 1948, during the early dawn of the Cold War, and wound up the same year Elvis died (1977).The Independent has drawn attention to IRD’s questionable record during its existence of disseminating anti-Communist propaganda routinely exaggerating stories of Soviet atrocities and anti-British plots, S Lucas, ‘REAR WINDOW : COLD WAR :The British Ministry of Propaganda’, The Independent, 26-Feb-1995, www.theindependent.co.uk
⚀ The Guardian also disclosed that BM’s founding directors have pre-existing links to the governing Conservative Party
Unfortunately Saunders (left) died in 1953 before he could open the first Foodelectric store. The track records of Piggly Wiggly, Sole Owner Stores and especially Keedoozle were not stellar success stories in the world of retail grocery, the notion of triple-bankruptcy does not connote good business practice or acumen. But Saunders was a visionary thinker outside-the-box, his concepts and novelties in the field were decades ahead of their time…the Memphis grocer is remembered today for pioneering a nascent sales model of self-service which paved the way for the development of the modern supermarket.
The disproportionate toll of African-American enlisted men in the disaster was the result of the Navy assigning them to the most menial, labouring jobs as stevedores, basically “pack mules” loading the munitions. The Navy made casual racist assumptions about their ‘limited’ vocational capacity, despite the fact that at the Navy boot camp the black sailors had each completed specific training for one or other of the naval rating occupations[3].
(Photo: National Park Service)
[Photo: 
e
The ‘sound’ of silent stars
(photo: AP)
Building on this argument, Katz and Voight in the 1980s argued that beer had a dual appeal in antiquity: people enjoyed “the altered state of awareness” that sufficient intake of beer engendered, and at the same time they benefitted from beer’s nutritional superiority to every other food in their diet aside from animal proteins[6]Recent anthropological studies conducted in Mexico support the contention that beer took primacy over bread. Teosinte, the ancestral grass of modern maize common to Meso-America, was much more suited to beer making than for making corn flour for bread or tortillas. Mexican farmers only managed to domesticate the grass into the diet staple maize much later[7].
⬆️ Ancient Egyptian artisan brewing up beer
Faro de Ceuta 
Map of Melilla (note neutral zone encircling city)
(photo: www.fortross.org)
Soon after Russian explorers first sighted the Alaskan shoreline in 1741, Russian hunters and fur traders (the promyshlenniki) began to move into the Aleutian Islands, a preliminary step to further expansion into the Gulf of Alaska. An outpost was established at Unalaska, from here the Russian traders encroached on Alaskan territory in a piecemeal fashion. Using the same strategy employed against the Siberian tribes earlier, the promyshlenniki coerced the indigenous Aleuts into hunting sea otters for them. The missionary zeal of Russian Orhodox priests, who were part of the colonial community in the outposts, played a role in the ‘pacification’ of the Alaskan native populations[3]. Contact with the Russians was also devastating to the health of indigenous Americans: it is estimated that 80% or more of Alaskan peoples were wiped out as a result of infectious diseases brought by the Europeans[4].
Alaska Purchase
🔝 Zagros Mountains
Brian Palmer et al has pointed out the role marketing played in advancing the cause of baseball after the Civil War. The promoters of baseball sensing an opportunity at a formative point in its development, established the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in 1871. This unified the sport as well as professionalising it (refer also to PostScript 2 for more on this), meanwhile cricket stayed regionalised and amateur, a sport of and for gentlemen and their social strata✧. Many top cricket players made the switch to baseball and the fans followed[13]. Cricket historian Tom Melville contends that a secondary element in baseball’s meteoric climb was that whilst many of the top baseballers succeeded in cricket, the opposite was less inclined to be the case[14].
IQ tests continued to be fashionable in the 1950s & beyond: giving ‘scientific’ credence to the stigmatising of those in society labelled as “less intelligent” (Source: The Creativity Post)
Dr Gamble
Nils Roll-Hansen has pointed out that Scandinavian society was quick to reject the excesses and unscientific attitudes of eugenics (eg, in Nazi Germany), whilst not rejecting the basic ideas and beliefs of eugenics. The political structure inherent in the Nordic countries was considered conducive to the success achieved by proponents of eugenics. The dominant labour parties (especially the Swedish Social Democratic Party) elicited effectively co-operation from the labour organisations in implementing social policy (as part of the country’s “social contract”). Roll-Hansen has contended that the region’s liberal-democratic tradition with its stress on the rights of the individual ensured that the eugenic practices that were put in place were moderate only[14]. The unearthing of Roll-Hansen and Broberg’s ‘bombshell’ had a big effect on Scandinavians, especially the Swedes … in 1999 Sweden agreed to compensate victims of forced sterilisations, offering each individual affected up to 175,000 kronors[15].
(source: www.telegraph.co.uk)
PostScript: D H Lawrence and Australia
°
The E tree
Close to the Coast Hospital site the University of NSW maintained a campus for many years. Originally intended for a medical school which was never built, it was used instead for biological sciences research and for solar energy research (Solarch, first building in NSW to generate green power). In 2008 UNSW sold the land to developers and it now contains high-rise apartments [‘Development of ex-UNSW site Little Bay’, LAPEROUSE – Social Change not Climate Change, www.laperouse.info].
The Wright brothers defended their exclusive aircraft patent against all-comers (“copiers and imitators” as they saw everybody else in the game) with a monomaniacal religious zeal that would have befitted their overbearing United Brethren minister father Milton. Orville and Wilbur freely sued and issued writs against anyone who attempted to construct and fly a new aircraft without purchasing a licence from them. As this was the pioneering era of aviation there were a lot of inventors trying to do just this[2]. Accordingly, the Wrights spent a lot of time locked in legal disputes with other manufacturers in America and overseas who were trying to avoid the patent fee. The Wrights staunchly defended their world monopoly over flight in unequivocal terms as a ‘moral’ and a ‘legal’ right, treating all other contemporary inventors in the field as in effect “hobbyists”![3].
Because of the Wrights’ unwavering stance on their patents (after 1912 Orville alone, as Wilbur died that year), resentment towards the brothers was strong, they were accused of being greedy by licensees, eg, by demanding “money first” from prospective buyers BEFORE giving a demonstration of the prototype flyer, or by setting too high a royalty fee (at one point demanding 20% of sales); after a string of fatal air crashes in Wright planes Orville Wright lost sympathy with the public by attributing the accidents solely to “pilot error” (characteristically giving no consideration to the fact that the Wrights might be at fault for not having tried to make improvements to their prototype Flyer’s basic design[7].
The Aboriginal connection
Bare Island: The Russians are coming? … maybe not
(Source: 
Valaparaíso’s “salad days” were in the 19th century, during this period it was a world-class port on the Europe to California shipping route. A combination of the devastating 1906 earthquake and the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 signified the rapid commercial decline of Valparaíso, once known as the “Jewel of the Pacific”. This small city on the eastern edge of the Pacific 11,326km from Sydney might seem an odd place for a turn-of-the-century Australian prime minister to be born◙, but in 1867 one such future PM was born there (also see Postscript). His name at birth was Johann Cristian Tunck. Tunck’s father was Chilean of German stock whilst his mother was born in New Zealand of Irish ancestry. After his Chilean father disappeared early on, his mother remarried, changing the child’s name to John Christian Watson.
Early Federal Australian politics entailed a three-way tussle between Watson’s ALP, the Protectionist Party led by Deakin and the Free Trade Party under Reid. Watson’s ascension to the prime minister-ship in 1904 was a novel occurrence: (the ALP was the) first national, labour-based government in the world; Watson at 37, the youngest-ever Australian PM[3]. The advent of Watson’s “workers'” government was met with cynicism and hostility as it challenged the hitherto standard notion that the working class were capable of assuming the mantle of government and succeeding. It didn’t as it eventuated succeed, surviving not quite four months before Watson found his government’s position untenable and was edged out of power¤ … but this was more to do with the nature of the Watson government, a minority one, than the quality or performance. Basically it couldn’t muster the numbers in parliament to continue governing and the governor-general appointed George Reid to the PM-ship in August 1904[4].
In the 1920s Watson played a leading role in establishing and guiding the NRMA (National Roads and Motorists Association), and in the formation of Yellow Cabs (taxi service), and in the 1930s, AMPOL (Australian Motorists Petrol Company), all of which illustrate the former PM’s interest in motor transport. One of his other interests, cricket, led to him being appointed a trustee of the Sydney Cricket Ground in Australia[9].
In the aftermath of the events in Crimea in 2014, the bitterly learnt lessons of history (the 50 year Soviet occupation of the Baltic States) gave the Lithuanians and the other Balts cause to fear that a new invasion might be on the cards. Since then there has been immediate and tangible evidence of the perceived threat from Russia. Moscow has undertaken a renewed military build-up in Kaliningrad, adding an Air Force detachment and early warning system (Voronezh radar) to the land forces already on the ground[3].
(Source: www.dailymail.co.uk)
(Photo: www.washingtonpost.com)
президент Putin inspects the oblast’s troops (Photo: www.neweasterneurope.eu)
(Photo: www.britannia.com)
Those visitors that didn’t want to do the camel ride (speaking personally, I had sated my taste for camel rides striding high atop a collection of even-toed ungulates in Egypt on an earlier occasion), went for a combined dinner and show. The eating conditions were pretty rudimentary (one tick for authenticity at least!) – we were seated on large sand-filled cushions which were resting on ancient-looking strips of carpet bleached dry of colour by endless exposure to the harsh sun … however I would concede that the meal was quite good (falafel & kebab roll) except for the rather tasteless penne.
The dancer twirled around in circles – in one direction – ever more frenetically. He did this for so long I thought he would surely have to unwind in the opposite direction for the equivalent amount of time before he would be able to regain his balance! … but he was OK. Halfway through his twirling performance his whole outfit lit up like New Year’s Eve … at this point for some reason, randomly, the idea of suicide bombers came into my mind – maybe it was the way he was self-activating the light show (ie, himself) by repeatedly flicking a switch on and off! Fortunately for all the show ended peacefully and we eventually returned to our more comfortable beds in the hotel.
All manner of piscean life can be viewed from the transparent wall – sharks, hammer-heads, stingrays and multifarious smaller fish. We saw scuba divers swimming among the sea creatures, cleaning the gigantic pool with long blue hoses. The neoprene-clad divers were getting unnerving dead-eye stares from the sharks. Hopefully for their sake the human “Creepy-crawleys” do their work AFTER the members of the lamniade family have been fed!
We did the standard thing, paid to go up to the Observation Deck, Level 124. If you want a higher view you can go up to the top viewing deck at Level 148 (out of 163 levels all up) – which will cost you about AED350.
But level 124 was high enough for us, the view from there was like looking at a space age city – vast modern buildings and vast intersecting arterial freeways, surrounded by an ocean of sand – made to look all the more Sci-Fi by a constant haze circling around the periphery. The waterworks of the Dubai Fountain was a spectacular hydro-sight from above. Back on ground level the Burj has an interesting info display on the history of the building’s construction, charting it stage-by-stage and metre-by-metre.
The fort is square-shaped & towered, in the open courtyard are some aged cannons and a summer hut composed of palm fronds (known as an Arish). On display both outside and inside the walls are dhows (traditional boats). The museum provides a good grab of local history amidst all the newness of Dubai.
Willem Janszoon’s venture to the eastern side of Australia (today’s North Queensland) to search out new trading outlets did not yield any success on this count. Moreover Janszoon found the land swampy and the indigenous people inhospitable and threatening³. Although many Dutch explorers visited the West Australian coast in the two centuries after the first Hartog expedition in 1606, there was no real attempt by the Netherlands to establish a colony in New Holland. The Dutch were deterred by the poor prospects (as they saw them) for farming, eg, apparent lack of water and fertile soil. Ultimately though, the crucial factor in dissuading the Dutch from launching into colonising or settling part of New Holland was the (apparent) complete absence of trade in the land⁴.
Never before had a modern games been manipulated for propaganda purposes to the extent that the Germans under Hitler did at Berlin. When the Summer Games were awarded in 1931 Germany was still under the governance of the democratic (but ill-fated) Weimar Republic, but with Hitler coming to power two years later Germany swiftly took on a more unsavoury and increasingly sinister complexion. The Third Reich was soon savagely attacking the liberties of Jews, communists and the Roma (gypsies) … and much worse was to come!
International opposition to the Nazi Olympics remained very vocal in the lead-up to the event. Spain and Barcelona in particular had a vested interest, having lost the bid to hold the 1936 Games to Berlin (the German city won easily, 43 votes to 16)♔. SASI (the international federation of workers’ sports) decided to hold the next instalment of its Workers’ Olympiads (see my previous post) in Barcelona in 1936. The Catalan Committee in Favour of Popular Sport (CCEP), boosted by the election of the leftist Popular Front in Spain in February 1936, worked with SASI to plan and prepare the Barcelona Olympiad♕, scheduled to begin just two weeks before the start of the official (Berlin) Games … clearly timed to steal Nazi Germany’s (and the Führer’s) thunder!
The organising committee for the Peoples’ Olympiad employed an emblem which reinforced the SASI themes of solidarity, brotherhood and world peace … three male athletes standing defiantly side-by-side, one white, one coloured and one (to all appearances) of mixed or Asian ethnicity (no females in the poster to be seen however … inclusiveness apparently hadn’t extended that far by then!)[5].
El Estadio de Montjuic
As it got closer to the event there were questions asked within the Olympic community about whether the Games should go ahead in Berlin. The Nazi regime’s transparent violations of human rights at home, and it’s failure to behave like a good international citizen (eg, pulling out of the League of Nations in 1933, illegally occupying the Rhineland in March 1936, etc), prompted a number of nations to consider boycotting the event.
Politics and sport, the National Socialist way
Plaque honouring site of Macquarie’s Govt House at Windsor
British intelligence about a planned invasion of the Sydney colony has its genesis in the period’s French maritime expeditions in the South Pacifc, particularly that of Nicolas Baudin in 1802 and 1803. Baudin’s scientific expedition visited Port Jackson in 1802 and it was the activities (and subsequent written record) of the expedition’s naturalist, François Péron, which provided the blueprint for supposed French intentions in New Holland. Whilst there, Péron, under the guise of his scientific activities, engaged in a “freelance spying” exercise[3], collecting information on the nature and defence capacity of the colony. Péron wrote down his observations in a secret report (entitled Mémoire sur les établissements anglais à la Nouvelle Hollande).
Monsieur Péron
Isle de France 🇫🇷
Bathurst’s “hush-hush” letter to Macquarie (based on information supplied by agents friendly to Britain) also raised the prospect of a joint naval attack by both France and the United States[8]. The plan was for the combined fleet to assemble at Two Fold Bay (Eden, NSW) and then proceed up the Pacific Coast and launch an attack on Sydney from the north (Hawkesbury River). Napoléon’s disastrous Russian campaign and the reverses suffered by the US early in the War of 1812 meant that the plan was never put into practice[9], but the episode served to underline how strategically important the remote, western Pacific colony was for Britain imperial ambitions.
₪┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅₪
According to the civil rights leader, Julian Bond, Green used his network of contacts in the Postal Workers Union to ascertain where Black visitors would be welcome[3]. Early on, Green visited the locations he would include in his Green Book to check them out personally, but when the book took on a national (and international) focus this became impractical[4]. Aside from hotels and motels, other accommodation options advertised in the Green Book included “tourist homes” (the private residences of African-Americans made available to travellers) and the Harvey House hospitality chain[5].
Dalí practicing his mesmeric pose, with fellow Surrealist, Man Ray, 1934 ⤴
Hybrid Dalí, ‘L’elephant–giraffe’ (1965) ⤴
𝔥𝔱𝔱𝔭://𝔴𝔴𝔴.7𝔡𝔞𝔶𝔞𝔡𝔳𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔢𝔯.𝔠𝔬𝔪/𝔴𝔭-𝔠𝔬𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔫𝔱/𝔲𝔭𝔩𝔬𝔞𝔡𝔰/2016/04/𝔦𝔪𝔞𝔤𝔢-11.𝔧𝔭𝔤” 𝔯𝔢𝔩=”𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱 𝔴𝔭-𝔞𝔱𝔱-5049″&𝔤𝔱; 𝔖𝔥𝔦𝔭𝔴𝔯𝔢𝔠𝔨𝔰 𝔭𝔩𝔞𝔮𝔲𝔢[/𝔠𝔞𝔭𝔱𝔦𝔬[/𝔠𝔞𝔭𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫]
Approaching Bicentennial Park a turnoff on the right takes you on to a zig-zagging boardwalk through the Badu Mangroves, a dense patchwork of grey and olive-coloured mangrove growth which leads to the Bennelong Ponds and the western side of Bicentennial Park. If you choose not to do this diversion continue south to the next crossway and go left opposite the tinny looking Field Studies Centre building. After passing a small bridge and another of those observation towers in the mangroves you soon reach the far-eastern edge of the park and a path which heads north along the water, parallel to Homebush Bay Drive.
Upon his return home Malaspina reported back to the Spanish government that the New South Wales settlement was well established and warned that it posed real dangers to Spain’s Pacific possessions. Malaspina noted that Port Jackson could be used as a base for privateers to cut the colonial lines of communication between Manila and Spanish America, and to launch raids on the Peru and Chile colonies from. He concluded that Spain had no real chance of supplanting the British in Port Jackson [Olcelli 2013].
⇐(Not much of a likeness!) 
The path (usually muddy here) skirts round the back of the Concord Repatriation Hospital, which itself continues the WWII theme. It was built in 1940 as the 113th Australian Army General Hospital, taking in wounded and convalescing servicemen from the War. The ground on which the hospital dominated by the huge “Multi Building” stands passed to the Crown after the death of Dame Eadith Walker, daughter of the second Thomas Walker associated with the area. This Thomas Walker was a Scottish migrant in the 19th century who made it (very) big from property and stock investment and finance in Australia (in his later years he was president of the Bank of NSW). At the time of his death his personal worth was estimated at up to £2,000,000, a staggering amount for 1886!
At its height the adjoining structures included an admin block, separate dining rooms and pavilions for men and women, concert hall and servants’ quarters, with a tennis court for convalescing patients. Staying on the foreshore path we reach the distinctive Dutch bell tower (above) on the water, from where a long stepped pathway leads impressively up to the hospital entrance. In the time it was a working hospital the bell tower was the landing-point for ferries conveying patients from Circular Quay, and it also served in a secondary function as a smoking room – for male patients only!
With such startling figures, leg-spinner or not, the selectors couldn’t ignore Tich forever. He was selected in an MCC ‘A’ tour to New Zealand in which he excelled on NZ pitches, followed by a full test tour to Australia in 1924-25 in which he made his debut at age 36. A combination of good, hard Australian wickets and the fact that Australian batsmen were brought up on a diet of leg spin meant that Freeman made very heavy weather of the series. Thereafter the national selectors choose the leg-spinner very irregularly. He did very well against South Africa and the West Indies, but was not considered for the tests against the Australians on either the 1926 or 1930 tours of the UK, despite getting a six for and a five for in the county games for Kent against the tourists. The selectors demonstrated a remarkable lack of perception in not showing a sustained faith in Freeman’s obvious talent and not backing him in tests, especially in English conditions. As things turned out, his record in tests suggest the magnitude of their error in judgement:
Uncertainty about the Government’s future plans for Callan Park led concerned citizens to form the Friends of Callan Park (FOCP) in 1998. Their concerns were well-founded as the Carr Labor Government in 2001-2002 produced a draft Master Plan for the land which included the sale of significant chunks of the site for residential development and the shift of psychiatric services to Concord – all formulated without having consulted local residents (this followed an earlier clandestine arrangement made by Carr to provide land in the Park gratis for a Catholic retirement village). FOCP and Leichhardt Council mobilised community support against the Government’s plan, resulting in a huge backlash from residents of the municipality.
[http://callanparkyourplan.com.au/]
The Food and Beer tour was probably my favourite (kind of a fast food pub crawl of the Soviet high-water mark of working class proletarian cuisine), going to various interesting little out-of-the-way cafés, fast food parlours and back lane bars. For a small charge (about 20 PLN) we sampled so many different types of piva – lagers, porters, pilsners, kozlaks, ales, American-style, Pekin-style, etc. plus culinary oddities such as the “John-Paul II” pączki (a donut of Papal proportions which I passed on!). One of the non-alcoholic beverage ‘highlights’ was the “wonderfully insipid” Oranzada (this sugary ‘treat’ was the soft drink of choice of the old Communist Party apparently). I enjoyed the visit to Soviet Warsaw’s first American-style milkbar (next door to the home of Poland’s double Noble laureate in Science, Madame Curie). We also got an informative commentary on the story behind the construction of the dynamic Warsaw Uprising monument.
Gedimus, Grand Duke of Lithuania (ca1275–1341). According to the “Iron Wolf” legend, founder of Vilnius
While he’s there, Hulot’s sister tries to match him up with her neighbour, a matrimonial project which is equally doomed to failure. The female neighbour is far too bourgeois in her tastes for Hulot, who is in any case a confirmed bachelor.
▪ • ▪
Tati is a dab hand at noting all of the “modern inconveniences”(sic) of contemporary Western society. Mon Oncle is a sharp commentary on the way “modern life traps humanity within its contrivances” [James Quandt, ‘Scatterbrained Angel: The Films of Jacques Tati’, From the Current – Criterion Collection, 
Although the persona of Hulot is the human thread that runs through Playtime, Tati deliberately does not allow the popular character to dominate proceedings (as tended to be the case in Mr Hulot’s Holiday and Mon Oncle) [Kent Jones,’Playtime’, From the Current – Criterion Collection, 
Another factor in the Argonauts Show passing pretty much right under the radar for me was that it was a late afternoon children’s radio program (we spelt it ‘programme’ in those more formal, longhand days) and post-school afternoon and nights during my youth were incontestably reserved for television, then still a relatively novel phenomena. When it came to the wireless I was an avid morning listener to commercial networks like 2UE and 2UW. Gary O’Callaghan and “Sammy Sparrow” was more my style in the sixties. I can’t be sure if there had been a Sammy Sparrow radio club but as I’ve still got a Sammy Sparrow badge kicking round the house somewhere which probably confirms it.
Inevitably, the popularity of the Argonauts program waned. In the late sixties the segment was cut to just one hour a week at 5pm on Sunday. In 1972 ABC Radio pulled the plug entirely on the show, apparently because a survey found that most of those still listening were over the age of 40! The inexorable encroachment of television into the lives of children also would have been a massively-significant factor in its ultimate demise [Urania, 
George Wallace (above) had an early taste of the stage appearing in children’s pantomime at age three, but it wasn’t until after WWI that his career really took off when he teamed up with fellow vaudevillian Jack Paterson to form a knockabout comedy act called “Dinks and Onkus”. The duo performed their “couple of drunks” routine to packed audiences at the Newtown Bridge Theatre for five years before Wallace outgrew the partnership and joined up with bigger enterprises, first that of Fuller’s Circuit and then the Tivoli Theatre Circuit.
George was smallish in stature and quite chubby in build but despite this, on stage he was exceptionally acrobatic and agile on his feet. As part of his very physical act he became acutely adept at landing on his left ear during a deliberate fall. Wallace wrote witty songs and review sketches to perform in theatre, sometimes he told absurd stories about characters such as Stanley the Bull, the Drongo from the Congo and Sophie the Sort [Stuart Sayers, ‘Wallace, George Stevenson (1895–1960)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 
Wallace’s “working class zero” popularity attracted the attention of local film-makers and in the thirties he appeared in a number of films such as Gone to the Dogs, A Ticket for Tatts, mostly for Ken G Hall, Australia’s foremost (Cinesound) director in the interwar period. In his movies (some of which he co-wrote) Wallace reprised his theatre role as a bumbling, disaster-prone innocent. In his performances on the big screen Wallace demonstrated that he was able to make the transition from stage to cinema. After WWII however, finances dried up and the Australian film industry went into steep decline. Wallace returned to theatre including a return to pantomime and to the new medium of radio performance. In 1949 he began a weekly radio show with the Macquarie Network in Sydney. The one setback to Wallace’s career was his unsuccessful attempt in the early fifties to make it in the English theatre as a comedian, but this could be attributed partially to the English audiences’ unfamiliarity with his Australian accent [ibid.].
Rene had a very distinctive on-stage appearance, striking black-and-white face paint which gave a nod to the influence of minstrelsy, baggy pants and a battered black top hat. In performance he exuded an extroverted and even exhibitionist style – he was the quintessential lair (the self-promoting “show-off”). Often he would robustly insult the audience with a spray of obscenities, both verbal and gestural. In today’s milieu of political correctness Rene’s act would in all likelihood be characterised as sexist and even racist (in its presentation of a Jewish caricature) and it did alienate some viewers in the day. This did not stop Fuller’s from billing him (pre-war) as “Australia’s foremost delineator of Hebrew eccentricities” [Frank Van Straten, ‘Roy Rene 1892-1954’, Live Performance Australia – Hall of Fame (2007), 
After WWII, with variety theatre in recession, Rene made a successful transition to radio. He was able to do this having learned from the lessons of his failed venture into films, because he made sure that his radio shows were presented before a live audience to ensure that his performances had that necessary edge. At Sydney radio station 2GB he found a niche as the bombastic “Professor Mo McCackie” of “McCackie Manor” finding a whole new audience for his unique sense of humour.
The book concerns itself to a large extent with the type of epic film much in vogue in the fifties and sixties, drawn from the history and mythology of antiquity (Greece, Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia). Right up front I’d have to say that I think that the author is inclined to take the genre a bit too seriously. The epic movie, in whatever phase or incarnation it takes, has been something difficult to be especially serious about! By definition the standard form of the epic has tended to be characterised by an indulgence in excess – grandiosity, vulgarity, basically everything 8XL in size! Mention the epic film and people often think of monumental Hollywood flicks like Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and the like. Conspicuous consumption the order of the day, so much so so that it could be suggested that epic films should be primarily seen as a kind of parody of themselves.
In the early 1970s one of the pioneering manifestations of this light-hearted form of imitation was an American book called Shrink Lits: Seventy of the world’s towering classics cut down to size, by Maurice Sagoff. This work took on the task of economising many of the best known classics of fiction such as Don Quixote, Gulliver’s Travels, Dante’s Inferno, Shakespeare and The Hobbit. The gruesome and brutal Old English epic poem Beowulf is rendered thus:
I seem to recall that Anthony Burgess in the Eighties published a list of the best (ie, “AB’s best”) Anglophone novels written since 1939. ‘Clockwork’ Burg provides an appraisal of each selection infused with his characteristic English snobbery and acerbity….the works are by authors of a certain homogeneous nature – a collection not surprisingly top-heavily British and overwhelmingly masculine.
The book comes in a handy, appropriately reduced size, 148mm x 90mm – just right for slipping through recession-shaped holes in coat pockets, losing on the bus, etc. Each verse is decorated with charming illustrations by that effervescent trans-cis Pacific cartoonist, Victoria Roberts. Victoria is really good at giving the countenances of her creations that look of crumbled anxiety, perturbed faces conveying a sense of harassed humanity in the onslaught of a perplexing post-technological age. Not only that, she is extra good at drawing kangaroos and dogs!
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More conventional prison clobber…1st class of course!
So, how plausible is the link between “Middle Earth” of Lord of the Rings and the sleepy, little village of Hogsback? Clearly, as stated above, JRR Holkien had no direct association with Hogsback, having left South Africa at age three. Information on Tolkien’s life however, suggest the existence of an indirect link. One of Tolkien’s sons, whilst in the Royal Air Force during WWII, was stationed at Hogsback and did correspond regular with the author with his reflections on the locale. These correspondences from Tolkien Junior included sketches and descriptions of the Hogsback ambience [Ibid.].
Not long after the news spread about the momentous event at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on 17 December 1903, the significance of what the Wrights’ had done found itself under challenge, especially as time went on from the European aviation community. French newspapers after 1903 described the celebrated American brothers as bluffeurs (bluffers). Doubts were raised about their achievements when the Wrights failed to release the photo of the Wright Flyer in flight at Kitty Hawk until nearly five years after the groundbreaking 1903 flight … newspapers acerbically asked: “Were they fliers or liars?”, Paris edition of the New York Herald (10 Feb 1906); ‘Wright Brothers: European skepticism’, www.spiritus-temporis.com.
As well, in the 30 years preceding Kitty Hawk, there was a host of aviation pioneers experimenting with monoplanes, biplanes, box-kites and gliders including, 1874: Félix du Temple; 1894: Hiram Maxim; 1894: Lawrence Hargrave; 1898: Augustus Moore Herring [B Kampmark, ‘Wright Brothers: Right or Wrong?’, Montréal Review (April 2013]. These flights however were either pre-power ones, or if motorised, they have been largely discredited as having been either unsustained, uncontrolled or as at the least not sufficiently controlled [P Scott, The Shoulders of Giants: A History of Human Flight to 1919].
G A Whitehead was a German migrant (born Gustave Weisskopf) living in Connecticut who started experimenting with gliders (variations on the glider prototype design developed by aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal) in the mid-1890s, at a time when Wilbur and Orville were still making and repairing bicycles in Dayton, Ohio. The case in support of the flight made by Whitehead on 14 August 1901 in what must be noted was an improbable-looking, bat-shaped, engine-propelled glider at Fairfield near Bridgeport, was first taken up in 1935 (in an article in an industry magazine, Popular Aviation, entitled ‘Did Whitehead Precede Wright In World’s First Powered Flight?’)回. Whitehead’s claim lay dormant until the 1960s when army reservist William O’Dwyer, took up the German-American engine-maker’s cause and did his upmost to promote his “flying machine”.
Critics of the Institute believe that the Smithsonian’s indebtedness to the Wrights’ legacy (the fear of losing the historic Flyer to the estate executors) prevents it from recognising the merits of Whitehead’s pioneering achievement irrespective of the weight of evidence put forward [J Liotta, ‘Wright Brothers Flight Legacy Hits New Turbulence’, www.news.nationalgeographic.com]. Clearly this is a powerful disincentive to the Smithsonian objectively assessing the merits and new evidence for any rival claims to the Wrights (not just Whitehead’s) which may be unearthed.
The credence given to the Wright brothers’ claim to be the first successful flyers should perhaps come with an asterisk, signifying it’s need to be heavily qualified – as in David Schneider’s tongue–in–cheek, catch–all description: “First in Sustained, Piloted, Controlled, Powered, Heavier–than–air Flight of Lasting Technological Significance” [ibid].
Did any of the documented early flights per se achieve “sustained and controlled flight”? Human conquest of the sky didn’t happen in one quantum leap, surely it came about in a series of small, measured steps, each building on the one before. It is more meaningful to see the development of viable flying machines as something that happened incrementally, an aerodynamic puzzle put together piece-by-piece. It was an international effort, the culmination of the accumulated efforts of gifted pioneering aeronautical designers such as George Cayley, Octave Chanute, Samuel Langley, Lawrence Hargrave and Otto Lilienthal whose experiments made it possible for the Wrights and others to experiment with flight, coming closer and closer to the realisation of successful manned, powered flight.
Lawrence grappling with the menacing Kangaroo on the veranda of “Wyewurk”. ⍙ ‘The Struggle’ by Garry Shead (Wollongong Art Gallery)
Rugby league test Aust v GB (Photo cr: Queensland State Library)
In 1914 the initiative for a merger appeared to come from the VFL. Elements within the VFL (with some support from the South Australian and West Australian Leagues) led by Charles Brownlow, Geelong Club secretary and delegate to the Australian National Football Council (ANFC), viewed the 1914 All-State National Rules Carnival in Sydney as much of a failure. Interest in the carnival and in Australian football in general was down compared to that in the fledgling sport of rugby league, which was drawing big crowds (especially the Australia-Great Britain tests of that year). A point not lost on the VFL – the 1914 Melbourne Grand Final drew only 30,000 spectators compared to crowds of up to 41,000 for rugby league test matches during the same season! Brownlow (later memorialised eponymously in the Brownlow Medal) was of the opinion that a new combined sport of rugby league and Australian rules could produce a better spectacle, which would add thousands of pounds to the gate takings for games. The NSW Rugby League’s long-time secretary, Horrie Miller, was also favourable to the idea of a merger [‘The Australian and Rugby League Game Combine?’, NSW Football History Society (July 2014), 
(Photo cr: The Mercury (Tas.))
(Photo cr: 
(Photo cr: 
The Victorian football and code of choice
Griffin’s inventive use of windows and fireplaces in Castlecrag won praise from admirers and provided inspiration for later Australian architectural practitioners. Not everyone however had a favourable view of the WBG concept of the model house. Many home-buyers were not attracted to the utilitarian plainness and the restrictive compactness of the standard Griffin house with its flat, odd cubic shape. In addition, the quite puritanical covenants concerning individual property use, whilst implemented to protect the natural environment and for egalitarian purposes, served to turn many would-be Castlecrag residents off.
The sales brochure of the Greater Sydney company (the Griffin’s firm) reads: “Castlecrag architecture has struck a distinct bold note in Australia. In place of the high peaked tile roofs … the handsome landscape style, with the stone walls and flat roofs, has been introduced in harmony with the great amphi-theatre of stone and forest”.
Early Griffin project {Carter House Evanston, Illinois}
We drive out of Puno, I grab my last glimpse of Lago Titikaka and we wind our way up the hills north towards Juliaca. The same recurring features on the sides of the road that I had seen during the last 100km of the journey to Puno reappear. At random intervals, there is the presence of stray dogs on the side of the highway, kilometres from anything or anyone else, as if they had been mysteriously dropped there by some secret canine transit service. The driver tells me that people do occasionally stop and dump scraps of food for the highway for them, that’s why they hang around in the middle of nowhere with the semblance of an expectant look on their faces. 
Commune leader Förster, in heavy debt, facing the spectre of bankruptcy and in despair at the utopian disaster, committed suicide in 1889. Nueva Germania struggled on without its main spearhead, now led by Elizabeth Nietzsche who made an attempt to recruit more members from the Fatherland – with little return for her efforts. However in 1893 Frau Förster-Nietzsche abandoned the Aryan Paraíso and it’s settlers, returning to Germany to take charge of her famous brother’s affairs and care for him (Nietzsche had fallen into a state of insanity probably as a result of contracting syphilis). In the years after the philosopher’s death in 1900 the warped Elizabeth proceeded to convert him into a kind of intellectual “pin-up boy” on behalf of the emerging Fascist and Nazi movements of Italy and Germany. Significant to note that Nietzsche, when still in full control of his faculties, had been on record as expressing his complete disapproval of anti-Semitism and of the Försters’ plans for establishing an Aryan colony. Elizabeth, who later became a wholehearted supporter of Hitler, criminally and comprehensively traduced her brother’s reputation by falsely resurrecting Nietzsche as a prophet of the German “master race” to come. [J. Golumb & RS Wistrich (Eds), Nietzsche, Godfather of Nazism? On the Uses & Abuses of a Philosophy.]
The Association looked initially in Argentina for land to settle, but when this proved fruitless, Lane turned to neighbouring Paraguay where they found a government much more amenable. Lane’s scheme to export Australian workers suited the Paraguayan Government which was desperate to replenish the loss of manpower in the 1860s suffered in a disastrous war against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Paraguay, hopelessly outmatched, by war’s end, lost its territorial access to the sea and somewhere between 60 and 70 per cent of its male population during the war, leaving the country with an estimated total of only 28,000 adult males [Thomas Whigham, “The Paraguayan Rosetta Stone”, Latin American Research Review (1999)].
I was collected at the Casa Andina at 7am by yet another braces-wearing Peruvian guide to drive to the (inland) port. The port was quite close by, but as usual we had to go via umpteen other hotels to pick up the other passengers. When we eventually got to the Titicaca dock we were swarmed upon by a small battalion of lakeside Indian women trying to entice us to buy a bargain-priced hat or two from a broad assortment they were either carrying or wearing.
Left the Sorgente hotel in Puerto Iguazú to get an early start for the bus ride to the falls area. When we arrived there were already a great number of visitors lining up at the entrance – international visitors, nationals (Buenos Aireans and from elsewhere in the country), school groups, and so on.
As 80 per cent of the waterfalls are on the Argentinian side of the river, the best panoramic views tend to be from the Brazilian side or from the river itself. So, I decided on the optional speedboat ride (Macuco Safari Boat Ride) under the waterfalls itself, which was a great thrill. Be forewarned though that YOU WILL get drenched by the falls and from the motion of the boat rapidly swerving from side to side (make note to bring or wear swimmers on the falls tour).
Cusco is of course a tourist mega-magnet, and has much by itself to recommend it, quite apart from its function as a launchpad for embarking on the ritualistic ‘mecca’ to Machu Picchu. It has heaps of interesting things to see, including San Pedro Mercado (where you can buy all manner of exotic and sometimes bizarre produce), the imposing El Catedral, the Inka Museo, and countless restaurants where you can try llama, ceviche and roasted guinea pig, or if you prefer, something slightly less adventurous. There are faux museums too, it must be said. The Chocomuseo and the Pisco (Sour) Museum are respectively, a shop and a bar. Totally transparent, they don’t even attempt to thinly disguise this fact, notwithstanding their names.
Our guide showed us some of the more notable features, such as the Sun Temple and the sculpture known as the “Eyes of Pachamama” (two carved circles in the ground) and the Inyiwatana, a rock pillar with profound astronomical significance for the Incas. He also pointed out the line formed in the mountains that represents the hiking trail that leads to Machu Picchu. I observed countless modern-day Hiram Binghams embarking on two or four day hikes in the footsteps of that famous first trek to this archaeological magnet.
This morning I was scheduled to go on the first part of the Sacred Inca Trail tour. I was collected early at my hostela by someone I would come to call Braces Guide # 1, she took me to my coach for the Inca Trail trip. We stopped on the way out of Cusco and took on more passengers. I had been noticing that all of the passengers on the coach seemed to be Spanish or Spanish speakers, but without actually realising that something was awry.
The road along the Inca Trail was shockingly bad considering that this was a primary tourist route, and there was an amazing amount of rubbish strewn all over it. There were reminders of Australia in the countryside as early 20th century Peruvians had planted countless eucalyptus trees, known for their fast growing quality, on the sides of the Trail. So far my stay in the Cusco area I hadn’t experienced any side effects of the altitude but on the Sacred Trail journey I started to get a touch of the dreaded Cusco belly. I wasn’t dizzy or light-hearted or suffering from a headache but I was feeling drained and weak from a bout of diarrhoea. The Spanish on the tour kept to themselves and didn’t seem to have any English to speak off, fortunately the guide was quite competent in the language.
Given that Cusco is 3,300 metres above sea level I had been forewarned about the risk of soroche (altitude sickness) and was advised to take the coca plant as an antidote, either by chewing the leaves or in tea. At the hotel I decided on the coca de mate (the coca tea method) and started drinking it night and morning. It was not immensely palatable but tolerable none the less because it had a fairly neutral taste. Once you got used to it, it tasted a bit like very weak green tea.
When I got to the airport to catch my flight to the next destination, Puerto Maldonado, I found there were huge queues at the domestic airline check-in, and LAN had one line only open. After 15 minutes in the queue, the line had hardly moved, so I switched to the next line (also LAN) which had only a handful of passengers in it. After some time in this line, a LAN staff person came up and ejected me from the line, because apparently this was for ‘special’ check-ins. I remonstrated loudly with the staff, saying that LAN should have more than one lane open to cope with the overflow of passengers, but they would not budge, so I found myself relegated to the end of a now much longer queue. After three-quarters of an hour and little progress, it was pretty apparent that I would miss my flight. And I would have done so, had not a savvy American traveller I was talking with alerted LAN to my plight. The LAN staff person OK’d me to go straight to the departures gate carting my luggage with me. The sudden spike in passenger numbers at the airport was down to the school holidayers starting their trips, which underlined just how inept LAN was in planning for this annual occurrence. The plane flew first to Cusco for a stopover before going on to the Amazonia region. The Cusco trip turned into a wild salsa party, courtesy of the Latinos on board raucously singing, bumping and grinding their hips to the cabin music most of the way. Even some of the LAN cabin staff were getting into the action, turning up the volume on the music and dancing enthusiastically to the rhythm. I for one was relieved when most of these out-of-control Peruvian 20-somethings danced their way off the plane when it landed at Cusco! On the onward trip to Maldonado, the normal and more subdued in-flight entertainment replaced the passenger-generated entertainment. We were collected by a bus at the less than impressive Puerto Maldonaldo Aeropuerto. The posada lodgers gathering together in the bus were a very mixed group, nationality-wise. I had a nice conversation with two friendly American guys on the bus (not the typical loud, boastful type). On the advice of Lizbeth (our guide) to travel light, we unloaded all of the baggage not needed for the three-day trip to Amazonia in a secure storage holding (at least I was hoping it would be secure). At the river (Rio Tambopata), we took the long boat trip to the resorts (the bus group were going to three different lodges), fortunately ours’ was the closest.
Iguazú Falls are a cis-trans-border phenomenon, encompassing both Brazil and the Argentine, with a third country, Paraguay, on the same river very approximate to the location. My hotel in Puerto Iguazú, La Sorgente, is not old but its not new either, and the room door uses those old cumbersome latchkeys which I always have trouble with, but that aside, it is a quite reasonable lodging (outstanding even if I might extend to hyperbole, if the point of comparison is the dire AH Hotel in Santiago!) After settling into my room, I wander up for a look round the town. Frankly, it is a quite unprepossessing place, old dilapidated buildings, many signs have faded or partially unhinged. The surface pavement(sic) of the roads are a strange and primitive concoction of jagged pieces of broken rock mortared together, the result of which is unfriendly to both car tyres and human feet. The local youths seem to spend all day cruising up and down Avenida Cordoba in their defect-laden, beat-up old cars, their hands manically tooting the horn for no reason. And, as in Chile, the many mangy-looking, roaming dogs are an integral feature of the rundown local ‘picturesque’. Whatever money the Government makes from Iguazú Falls tourism (and I imagine it would be lucrative), by the look of this place it is certainly not being pumped back into the Iguazu infrastructure!
This newfound fascination with Middle East politics was, admittedly, partly motivated by an extrinsic factor: I had a Coptic Egyptian girlfriend at the time, but that aside I definitely had an intrinsic interest in the political dynamics of this crucial and volatile region of the world (and yes, my interest in Middle East politics did outlast my interest in my Middle Eastern girlfriend!). So, wanting to get a handle on the complex, endlessly convoluted politics of the region, I signed up for MEP269. In doing so, I unwittingly became an observer of an engrossing little political (and personal) duel between a brace of antagonistic academics.
The study of Middle East politics in the Department of Political Science at GBU at that time worked like this: two lecturers took turns to run the introductory UG course on a year-to-year basis. In the year that I took the course it was the turn of Dr Noam Menachem-Ryka. Had I taken it the year before or the year after, the Middle East course would have been run by Assoc Professor Dwayne Boemsteenboer. Boemsteenboer and Menachem-Ryka were poles apart in so many aspects of their views and personalities. Each of them were driven by a passionate, some would say partisan, commitment to one particular side of the Middle East debate. From this clash of personalities came a mutually personal and increasingly bitter enmity. Boemsteenboer was a very self-confident, somewhat intimidating mid-west American Arabist with Iraqi Ba’ath Party sympathies, whereas Menachem-Ryka was a liberal Australian Jewish scholar of East European ancestry with an entrenched commitment to the cause of Zionism (albeit from the standpoint of a small ‘z’ Zionist).
The consequence of this pedagogic bifurcation was that if you were taking MEP269 one year you would get Boemsteenboer’s pro-Palestinian slant on the Middle East situation, one heavily critical of his own countrymen’s (America’s) complicity in the imbroglio and sheeting home the blame for a lack of progress toward peace to the intransigent Israeli bullies, buttressed by US superpower, and unwilling to negotiate a just solution. Boemsteenboer’s homeland, the US, would be lambasted for using a non-Arab, alien, Western implant (the state of Israel) for Cold War gains, as a proxy military force to gain a hegemonic advantage over the Soviet Union in the region.
When I came to Gov Bligh University and enrolled in the Politics Department in the first semester, it was not long before I discovered a state of fraught and increasingly icy relations between A/Professor Boemsteenboer and Dr Menachem-Ryka. The personal tensions seemed to have built up over the previous two years, ever since Menachem-Ryka arrived as a fresh-faced lecturer at GBU with his recently minted National University PhD and some ‘intelligence’ work background.
Menachem-Ryka left GBU a couple of years later with his ambitions enlarged to go on to great (vain)glory in the US. No doubt, had Menachem-Ryka been satisfied to stay on the academic treadmill in Australia, he would easily have made professor. In any circumstance he was never one to understate his academic accomplishments, as a memorable interview he gave several years ago to Australian television reinforced. An enthralled female interviewer gushing over the Australian background of the now American power player, referred to him as having once been a lecturer in a modest regional city university, pointedly Menachem-Ryka was super quick to correct her marginally inaccurate remark with the firmly spoken and no doubt self-satisfied words,”Senior lecturer, Jana”.
After a couple of years Menachem-Ryka decided that Gov Bligh and the Australian pond were too small for a fish his size, or at least for the size of his burgeoning aspirations…NMR abruptly upped and left the University to reside permanently in Washington and work for American think tanks and Israeli lobby groups. Within a short period he had done a ‘Rupert Murdoch’, trading his Australian citizenship for a glossy American one. This was a necessary step in the Menachem-Ryka grand plan, opening the door for him to the US State Department and swift promotion to high diplomatic and consular US posts in Israel.
With both Boemsteenboer and Menachem-Ryka back in the US, although based in widely disparate parts of the country (both of them seemingly still “rusted-on” to their opposing ideological standpoints), the corridors of Governor Bligh University must seem a much more mundane and comparatively ho-humdrum milieu these days – especially in the once volatile Department of Political Science.
As we head down Route 68 for the Pacific Coast, massive advertising billboards announcing the upcoming Chilean elections blot the landscape. These unsubtle messages are of course positive reinforcement to the voters of the merits of candidates and their parties. One element of this political advertising that you wouldn’t see in Australia is that the prominent female candidates running for presidential office are identified on the mega-billboards solely by their nombres (first names). Michelle (the former president) and Evelyn (the right-wing challenger), are presumably well enough known politicians to make a connection with the electorate on the basis of presenting to the public as mononymic (one name only). Their parties’ respective spin doctors and marketeers would be only too aware of the advantages of establishing familiarity and therefore trust. Using the first name of the candidate projects a more intimate, friendly connection, they appear more accessible to (and for) the masses (in the Americas context, Evita’s use of a mononymic identity comes immediately to mind). While we are traversing the countryside, Adrian informs the group of Chile’s peculiar “obsessive-compulsive disorder” with the tuber – Chile produces some 3,800 species of potatoes (who’d have thought there was that many or that much point of difference!). Apparently, Chile and Peru vie with each other as potato producers, each asserts that IT produces the most varieties in the world of the humble spud!
That night back in the capital, I have dinner at a Peruvian-style restaurant, of which there are quite a few in Santiago. I order lomo de pollo and taste the popular South American bebidas, Inca Kola, a sickly, gold coloured and vapid tasting concoction. I’ve no understanding as to the reason for this drink’s mass popularity in Latin America. I am amused to observe one of the diners in the restaurant, a Chilean guy, with his family. As they’re about to start tucking into their evening meal, he pulls out his transistor and starts happily playing its noisy music. Interestingly, no one (including the staff) objects to his providing his own musical entertainment, even though its staticky sounds are competing with the restaurant’s background mood music. But I remind myself, this is South America, people take a more relaxed, laissez–faire attitude to such matters.
