Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
The Fall of Jerusalem
As the Israel-Hamas war threatens to escalate with the intervention of Iranian-backed Hezbollah, it seems that the Jewish people are facing the greatest threat to their existence since the catastrophic Roman siege of Jerusalem nearly two millennia ago. Consequently, it is well worth recalling that epoch-defining tragedy in all its world-historical significance.
Powder Keg The Roman Governor of Judaea, Gessius Florus, had just made a huge mistake. He knew he was sitting on a powder keg; he just didn’t know how explosive it would be, sending him running for his life, and ultimately consuming the entire country. Florus owed his appointment two years earlier in AD64 AD to his wife’s friendship with Poppaea, the ill-fated wife of the Emperor Nero, rather than to any diplomatic skills. He gravitated to the pagan Greco-Roman elite of Jerusalem and soon found himself in conflict with the very pious monotheistic Jewish people.
Division However, despite their shared monotheism, the Jews…
You can imagine my surprise when I recently became aware, courtesy of my cousin Paul, of the letter below, addressed to Mr J.A, Farquar, Commissioner of the South Australian Railways.
Aug 31 2024
2 mins
The history of the Jewish state, just like that of the Holocaust, is undoubtedly unknown to these deniers of Israel’s legitimacy. They are but the latest iteration of the five Arab states’ war in 1948-49, by which they expected to destroy the fledgling Jewish state. They lost, but have since used the motley collection of Circassian, Turkish, Jordanian, Syrian and Lebanese Arabs, renamed Palestinians in 1967, to ceaselessly prosecute the original war of rejection.
Aug 29 2024
8 mins
Some have argued that Auden was a victim of his own naivety regarding the prospect of impending war. A few days before its declaration and while on a Greyhound bus at the end of that 1939 “honeymoon” with Kallman, he had written home to England: “There is a radio on this coach, so that every hour or so, one has a violent pain in one’s stomach as the news comes on. By the time you get this, I suppose, we shall know one way or the other.”
Aug 29 2024
15 mins
