It is a very male world.  Women are there to be seen and not heard.  It would be absurd to suggest that any woman should be able to exercise any real power outside the bedroom or kitchen.  (And she may not be safe or alone in one of those.)

The basis of the arrangement follows the feudal pattern, which in turn followed the protection rackets run by Athens and Rome.  ‘I am your man.  I serve you.  You protect me.’  Homage (honour or respect shown to someone publicly) and allegiance (loyalty or commitment to a superior person or cause) – then protection (keeping someone safe from harm). 

There were, at least in theory, mutual obligations, but it is obvious that the whole structure rests on a basis of inequality – something that the French mistakenly thought they had abolished after 1789, until Napoleon set them right with a whiff of grapeshot.

The hierarchy is both unwritten and complicated.  It has evolved over time.  We might fairly describe that evolution as ‘tribal,’ because it comes from and is identified with people who identify as part of a group that is like a sect, clan, or tribe.  Indeed, in our miserable argot, they practise a kind of ‘identity politics’.

At the top of the pyramid sits, or stands, the leader.  (The Italian word is duce; the German is fűhrer.)  It is the custom that he gets there by force or deception, or both.  (It may be said that this system has one thing in common with the common law that underlies our whole constitutional fabric – it all comes from custom, which becomes convention in a governmental or constitutional context.)

The inarticulate premise is that power goes to the strong.  Vae victis.  (In Kenya it is called ‘my turn at the table’.)  Violence and termination are, after all, the final arbiters.

These people are above, or at least outside, the State and its laws.  In fact, it is their rejection by, or of, the State that is their raison d’être.  They want more than the State can offer, and the resulting conflict is therefore both deadly and inevitable.  They are the alternative State.

Not in any order, they are concerned with respect, standing, loyalty – personal loyalty – all subject to the instinct of revenge. 

One problem with the vendetta is that it perpetuates itself.

But the overriding goal of each association, and its leader, is to get and maintain power.  Power brings respect.  Each depends on personal loyalty.  And any act of disloyalty is likely to be met with immediate revenge – that may be as terminal as it is brutal.

Servitude brings groveling and sycophants.  That induces more egoism in the leader, and leads to the corruption that inevitably comes with power. 

The world view in the clan is very different to that outside.  Deception is everywhere, because truth holds no value.  Indeed, the very word ‘value’ is problematic.

In the outside world, this kind of group aspiration – such as in a political party or football club – turns on trust.  But that is not so in these outsiders.  Hardly anybody trusts any one else.  The body is held together by greed and fear.  Indeed, the time to get really nervous is when someone above you expresses gratitude, or even affection.  Sincerity is wholly alien.  (A football coach, Tony Shaw says, knows that he is on the skids when the committee says it has ‘full faith and confidence’ in him.)

If you do some good in their eyes, you may on a good day get some prize.  That is in the discretion of the hierarchy and ultimately the leader.  But woe betide you if you get it wrong.

And don’t even mention due process

The boss may talk of God, but his ego is too big to allow that kind of competition.  God is just a useful tool to help shepherd and shear the flock.  All the big hitters from Caesar to Napoleon and Putin knew that.  You just form a meaningless alliance with God’s representative on earth.  (One thing is certain – God won’t make the women restless.)

Most of the members or followers are nuts or crooks, but they have rejected the world that has rejected them.

So, although this body may look so powerful, it has fragility built into it.  But it can survive in one way or another if the State is not strong enough to contain it. 

And people are attracted to it because it offers them something they cannot get from the State, a body that they regard with contempt, in large part because they think it does not show them respect.  Jealousy is not a force for the good of the community – communion, even.  Not least when you stigmatize those better than you as elites.  Green eyed jealousy is made flesh.

Ultimately, the whole sordid shebang comes back to the egoism of its members.  Communal bodies built on that premise are like fortresses built on sand.

What am I speaking of – the Mafia of Mario Puzo and The Godfather trilogy, or a Trump Cabinet?  Or Putin and his oligarchs?

(Michael Corleone hugged his brother Alfredo before committing the primal sin.  Alfredo was shot in the head, from behind, while saying ‘Hail Mary!’  What better way to go out and join the fishes?)

My favorite actor is Al Pacino.  Perhaps he has the capacity of a dog to command trust, response, and affection.  He can express his meaning just with his facial configuration, especially the eyes and lips.  (The mouths and eyes of dogs are so expressive.)  And he has an innate sense of timing.  The great champions of any craft make it look so natural – so easy.

He started off on the stage, and he would keep on the stage throughout, but he made his fame on the screen.  He has just published his memoire Sonny Boy.  It is a remarkable document that is plainly intended as his personal and artistic last will and testament.  It is not overtly ghost written and does not indulge in name dropping for the sake of it.  (And let’s face it, that’s what a lot of us will buy it for.)  It has about it an aura of candor that compels my intellectual assent.  It is, if you like, a cri de coeur of a singular artist standing on the brink of eternity.

He was born of Italian parents in the Bronx.  His parents separated when he was young and he lived with grandparents.  His mother was attractive, but fragile, and she later killed herself.  He kept contact with his father, but he comes back to his mum on the final page.

Life was a struggle for the kid and his mates, but he got through.  When his three best mates died as heroin addicts, he was up to his neck in Shakespeare and Chekhov.  And he had a sense of vocation for the stage that would match that of a nurse or a novice.  It has driven him throughout his whole life. 

But with that background, success and fame would pose the usual tests for the rising star with the bottle, skirt, drugs, the press, wheelers and dealers, worse egotists, and downright crooks.  He eventually got on top of the grog and drugs, but his marriage – or ‘relationship’- record is at best par.  That is hardly surprising – he played against many of the most beautiful women in the game, and he ended up on close terms with Elizabeth Taylor.  (And, yes, he and Diane Keaton did shack up together for a while.)

The breakthrough came, as if from nowhere, with The Godfather.  Coppola put this unknown against the great Marlon Brando, who sat on the right hand of God in that pantheon, and it is one of the greatest films ever made.  (Along with II and III.  I have the quite heretical view that III is the best of them.  It winds up where it should – in an opera house in Sicily, and the Vatican.  It thunders home with the crushing velocity of Anna Karenin, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, and Turner’s Rain, Train, and Speed.)

There followed Serpico, and so many other films.  And life in the theatre.  I will not name the films – I never saw him on stage – but we were blessed to see him with his friend ‘Bob’ De Niro in Godfather II, Heat, and The Irishman.  There were some duds, but many classic films – such as Scarface. 

My favorite may well be Scent of a Woman – for which he won an Oscar (from, I think, nine nominations).  It has two scenes in which Hollywood justifies its existence.  In one, he dances the tango at an upmarket hotel on Seventh Avenue that looks very familiar to me.  In another he drives a Ferrari full tilt on an avenue in central Manhattan. The problem was that he was playing a blind army officer intent on suicide.  Those scenes alone justify a night out at the movies.

Like many actors, he says he does not read the critics.  They certainly got to him about Richard III, which led him to make a film about playing the part – and to play Shylock on stage and on film.

Al Pacino is as much an artist as any painter, pianist or poet.  He has given freely of his art to millions.  And at one hell of a price at times. 

This extraordinary memoire sounds to me as frank as that of another artist from that part of the world – Joseph Heller.  As if by instinct, he goes back to his childhood and mum to close the book.  We are getting to that time of the year when I can say I cannot think of a better Christmas gift to take to the beach.

They took four days to shoot the tango scene.  No wonder these people hit the skids.

If someone bakes a cake for you, the question of why they baked it is different to the question of how they baked it.  They may have baked it because it was your birthday, or you paid them to bake it.  But you may or may not know the method or the ingredients they used in the baking.

Is there a similar difference in a footy match?  The Lions comfortably beat the Swans.  Is the question why did they win different to the question of how did they win?  Yes.  They won because they played much better footy on the day.  The reasons for that go back far and wide.  Why is different to how?

We do know that before the game, no one knew who would win, and very few were confident in their prediction.  The two sides looked so evenly matched.  It was as close to even money as you can get.  Yet on the day, it was ‘not even close’ – the phrase Mitch McConnell used to describe the result in the 2020 U S election.

The fallacy of history is to succumb to the delusion that because something did happen, it had to happen.  This is not so in live action.  At the start of a game, the players do not know how it will end.  Punters do not know how a race will end.  The players in Hamlet know what’s coming.  The players in the Wallabies v England Test had no idea of who would close out the test at the 84-minute mark, or how they would come to do it – in a spectacle that will live long in memory.

Yet we see this fallacy all the time in games.  A team gets up by a chancy point on the bell, and we get a raft of reasons why they won, blurred with descriptions of how they did it.

The Battle of Gettysburg was a ‘damn’d close run thing’ (to quote Wellington on Waterloo).  The Union prevailed, but it could have gone to the South, if one of the thousands of bullets fired on the second day had deviated by six inches to take out Colonel Joshua Chamberlin, the hero of Little Round Top.

History is made by people – and by chance.

What about elections, then?  Before the event, no one knows who will win.  After the count, everyone knows who did win.  (Putting to one side rogues and lunatics.)  People seeking to predict the outcome of an election are speculating.  Most commentators thought the last U S election was too close to call.  But the last ten years have shown just how speculative is this kind of crystal ball gazing.

But if we inquire after the event, how do we know why so many millions voted how they did?  We know how they voted – both personally and as a supporter of a party or candidate – but we don’t know and we will never know why they voted as they did.  We are back to speculation.

And many inside and outside the US simply cannot fathom how millions can wish to appoint to a position of trust a man proven – proven – to be utterly untrustworthy.

And yet day after day, the pundits trek to the oracle at Delphi to tell us why events unfolded as they did. 

That sort of speculation looks to me to be delusional.

In Ancient Greece there was a practice or rite of casting out someone like a beggar or cripple or criminal in the face of some natural threat or disaster.  There are traces of a far older tradition in Syria when a goat would be invoked in the purification rites for the king’s wedding – a she-goat was driven out into the waste with a silver bell on her neck.  More recently, but before the Greek custom developed, the Old Testament, Leviticus 16:8, said that ‘And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel.’  The goat of the Lord was sacrificed, and the high priest by confession transferred the sins of himself and the people to the goat that was permitted to escape in the wilderness – where its fate would depend on what sort of predators it may have to contend with. 

There was a form of atonement.  The goat that escaped became the ‘scapegoat.’  The traditions or rites might be said to prefigure the role of the Son of God being offered up to redeem mankind by atoning for its sins.  A scapegoat is one who is punished for the sins of others.  This ancient Middle Eastern rite has become a universal custom involving people rather than goats.

But the term has got much wider than that – a scapegoat now is not just one that has to answer for the sins of others; it has to answer for all the problems and failings of what might be called the host people.  So, in the most gruesome example, the Nazis held the Jews responsible for all the lesions on the German people, moral or economic.  The war had been lost only because of the failings of some generals and because Socialists and Communists had stabbed the nation in the back.  Once the German people got released from the hold of these forces of evil, it could realize its potential for the first time, and nothing could stand in its way.  The German character was not just innately good – it was superior; therefore, the reason for any failings had to be found elsewhere.  The notion of scapegoat was vital to the perversion of what passed for thought under Hitler.  It is the natural first base for a weak and insecure person who is a moral coward.  It is also the kind of sloppy thinking that attracts insecure people, edgy commentators and journalists, and weak governments.

Scapegoats played a far smaller role in the French Revolution.  Pitt’s gold – bribes from the British government led by Pitt – came to be a convenient source of all of the discontents of the people, and the aristocracy and church were loathed and attacked.  They had been principal pillars of the ancien regime that had failed and that was being rejected and replaced, and large parts of the aristocracy and of the church were opposed to those seeking to advance the objects of the Revolution.  The émigré royals and nobles were a real and not just imagined threat, or one conjured up for the purposes of propaganda.  The aristocracy was no more of a scapegoat than the clergy.

There were even reasons to fear the capacity of the inmates of prisons to harm the Revolution – the September Massacres in Paris were manic and brutal, but they were not fashioned just out of malice.  The driving force of the massacres was not from on high in the government, but in the mob in the form of the sections of the Commune of Paris.  Even the killers in their panic or blood-lust felt the need to employ some form of trial in a quest to find the real threat to the nation – not just to the Revolution, but to the sovereignty of the nation.  What we find it hard to follow is the relief felt and the welcome given to those who were spared or acquitted.  There were elements of formality and benevolence in the brutal carnage that led David Andress in The Terror to say:

Prompt justice was done, with sound practical considerations in hand.  That is the real horror.  It is easy to come to terms with the idea of irrational carnage carried out by sadistic mobs: such facts fit neatly into the concept of a radically different, almost subhuman crowd, safely distanced from the self-image of the observer.  Far less comfortable is the realization that bloody murder could be committed by upright citizens in the name of the country’s freedom.  If we quite fairly object that the victims of September were not, in fact, the active partisans of a fatal plot gainst Paris, we must also agree that believing them so was a mistake shared almost unanimously everywhere from the Legislative Assembly to street-corner tavern.

If on that occasion the blue-collar crowd, the sans-culottes, showed a need for some kind of procedural check on their enthusiasm, a big problem with what we would now call the political class is that they found it so hard to check that enthusiasm.  They had not had enough experience of what we call party politics and political in-fighting to allow them to tolerate differences in points of view.  You are either for us or against us; you have to decide; and you might lose your head if you decide the wrong way. 

They were not experienced or mature enough to be able to put up with doubt or uncertainty on what they saw as matters of principle that they also saw as having nation-forming consequences.  They were in a way the sad victims of the kind of political absolutism that they believed that they were escaping.  If Flaubert said that inside every revolutionary you will find a policeman, it may because what you first find is an intolerant zealot – a fanatic.  This is one reason that what we call faction fights were so lethal then.  People getting together to oppose those in government were, almost by definition, conspiring against the nation.  Division was bad in itself.

Nor does it make much sense to look for the role of scapegoats in the Russian Revolution.  The convoluted theories of Marx would lead to serious differences of view upon implementation at the best of times.  They were predicated on classes being in a conflict that was terminal, and the theories had an apocalyptic and prophetic air that commanded an adherence that was most devout among those who did not understand the theories – which meant most Communists, let alone Russians.  To that you must had the cold egomania of Lenin, who hardly gave the theories a chance, and the manic paranoia of Stalin, who could not care less, and you see that it hardly helps us in our inquiries to ask if the kulaks may have been seen as scapegoats.  The thinking that determined who might be targeted by regimes led by Lenin or Stalin – or, for that matter, Mr Putin – may be something that just passes our understanding.

A scapegoat may afford a kind of out for a regime, but suspects are at least a potential threat to it, at least ‘suspects’ in the terms that we are about to see.  There is no reason why one person may not fulfil the criteria of more than one category.  An aristocrat may have passed through a journey in time from being an enemy, to a threat, to a suspect, to a scapegoat.  One of the infamies of Hitler was his treatment of the Jews as scapegoats. 

The two most famous operas of Mozart are about cruel, lecherous aristocrats.  The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni came out just before the fall of the Bastille.  Each was therefore tricky.  But the aristocrats laughed their heads off, and then they literally lost them. 

The latter opera is my favourite.  The drama is high and sustained, and embodied in the music, while peppered with great songs.  In a note published in 2015, I said:

Don Giovanni, which was first produced in 1787, is altogether different.  The hero is a serial seducer and abuser of power, a totally amoral person, whose real evil is that he remains a source of fascination even to his victims.  He starts with an attempted rape and a cold-blooded murder, and he never looks back or shows any regret.  He does not repent and he literally goes to blazes before our eyes.  That end was stated in the first chord of the opera, which one learned critic called ‘the most magically evocative chord in the history of music…’.

When Tchaikovsky got his hands on the score of Don Giovanni, he said that he was in the presence of God.  Flaubert said that God had made three things – the sea, Hamlet, and Don Giovanni.  You would have to have balls or a lot of Brownie points to say something like that.  No wonder that poor old Salieri just went crackers.

The Gramophone magazine gave a very good review to a recent production.  I now have it on DVD.  It comes from the Royal Opera at Versailles.  Their title caught my eye.  The last royals at Versailles went out the hard way.  But having now seen and heard the show. I can say I enjoyed it as much as any show I have seen on the stage.

The orchestra and setting are baroque – which is as it should be for this work.  The cast is what may be called ‘ensemble’, but led unerringly by the lead (Robert Gleadow).  He packs a real engine room, and that leering laugh bounces right off the back wall.  The show, and the music, proceed at a tight clip, again as it should, and is worth seeing for the costumes and choreography alone.  It does lag a little in the second act, and the finale , the arrival of the stone guest, is not as crushing as I have seen, but the show as a whole is just stunning.  (The set comes with full sleeve notes and libretto.)

Above all, from go to woe – literally – it is a celebration of the roots of opera in Commedia d’ell arte.  This was the popular theatre that evolved in Europe in the 16^th century.  ‘Strolling players’ put on shows for the people involving stock characters , like Harlequin and Columbine, in masks , with plenty of ad lib.  (Some who are old may compare In Melbourne Tonight, or World of Sport.) 

A well-known theme was that of the oppressed servant – like Leporello, or Figaro.  The comedies of Shakespeare are shot through with references to this art form – and it was as much a form of art as the tragedies of Aeschylus.  And we get it here from the start with costumes, masques, and a prosthetic nose on the Commendatore.  That is the main reason that I found this show so engrossing.

In Figaro, the Countess is a tragic figure.  There is nothing like that here.  Donna Anna takes it all out on poor Don Ottavio (who gets two of the best hits of the show); Donna Elvira is accident prone; and Zerlina chances her arm in her caste role.  Between them, they show the misery of both chastity and celibacy.  (Mozart was a devout Catholic and a devoted Mason.)  Leporello is indispensable as the comic link.  Masetto is a kind of Figaro. 

Some ponder whether this opera is comic.  The answer is that you don’t put genius in boxes.  The greatness of the show is its vivacious mood shifts – like in Casablanca and The Third Man.

But we are left with the same question as we are with Falstaff and Richard III.  What on earth are we laughing at?  Anthony Quayle said Falstaff was ‘frankly vicious’.  Don Giovanni is candidly cruel, a force of evil on the stage that calls to mind the Satanic Rothbart from Swan Lake.  Putting Trump to one side, it is hard to imagine a more repellent villain.  Indeed, by the end, when Don Giovanni holds fast, he resembles Rasputin in this mighty production – and God knows he took some killing.

All this comes with the score of a genius, one that drove Tchaikovsky to God – and Tchaikovsky knew all about making great shows from old art forms.

The French have been up and down since 1789, but when they decide to do a big number, as they did with The Hunchback of Notre Dame at the Bastille opera some years back, they are all style.  For the avoidance of doubt, this is a rave review.  Miss it at your peril.

Some people complain about a First Nations senator raising her voice before the King of Australia.  The irony is that she and the complainants combined to deny her a  constitutional voice in Australia.

It is best to pass over her behaviour in silence.  (She was, after all, presented to us by the Greens.) It then got really comical.  Some suggested that the senator may have violated her oath of allegiance – and that there may be legal consequences. 

I am not aware of any legal sanction for an alleged breach of this oath.  When the oath evolved, God had real clout.  What does the oath entail now – if there is no divine or civil sanction for breach?  That I will do whatever King Charles III commands me to do?  (Putting to one side that down here, he is only King Charles I.)

I had to take an oath of allegiance to be admitted to practise law.  I was curious, if not worried, by its scope.  What if the Queen commanded me to enlist for war in Vietnam?  Mr Justice Smith told me that they were just putting me on notice that you could still be hanged for treason.

That must be so.  Royal proclamations died centuries ago.  The King of Australia can only act in Australia on the advice of his Australian Ministers.  (We may as well offer the gig to the King of Tonga or Siam.) 

And then the government can only go after me according to the laws of Australia.  That is part of the law of England since 1215, and it is of course fundamental to us – the rule of law.

If you want to commit real heresy, say that the loyalty is personal.  Like that procured by Hitler or sought by Donald Trump.

There are troubling undertones here to accusations of disloyalty.  Most Australians regard ‘patriotism’ as at best mawkish.  In the U S, it is a lethal weapon.  It is normally fired by the ‘conservative’ side.

Any form of subservience to a foreign power is worrying in any nation.  There is therefore another real irony in the fact that many of the most fervent supporters of continuing here with a foreign king also subscribe to a faith that calls for loyalty to a foreign prelate under God.  And no sane person wants to cross God.

So, the English put their current model in place in 1689 and after.  The immediate reason was to prevent any Catholic taking the English throne.  Thousands of people had been killed because of the conflict between England and Rome.  The immediate cause of the Glorious Revolution in 1688 was the refusal of the last Stuart king (James II) to see that his allegiance to Rome put him in a hopeless conflict with his duties as King of England.

That exclusion is still fundamental to the constitution of England and therefore Australia.  It is not just that no Methodist, Muslim, Jew or atheist need apply.  Our king must be in communion with the Church of England.  It is an irony that at our constitutional pinnacle, there is a law that violates our laws about religious discrimination.

Never mind.  The framers of the U S Constitution went to great lengths to ensure freedom of religion and that there should be no state religion.  The King of England is head of the Church of England.  Putting to one side reports that more people in England worship in mosques than in Anglican parish churches, this linkage of government and religion would be utterly anathema in America. 

The result?  Religion has next to no impact on English politics.  In America religion is a major part of the current attempted demolition job. 

And that, my friends, is a real irony.  At least the German churches of old put up some resistance to their debasement and destruction – at the hands of either Berlin or Rome.

The PM accepted benefits from Qantas when he was in an office that could confer benefits on Qantas.  He had therefore accepted benefits which might conflict with his duties as minister.  Since his office is one of public trust, he has a case to answer. 

The trouble with politicians accepting gifts from people in business is that it leaves the impression that those making the gift expect something in return.  The general term is ‘bribe’.  And if the directors of a public company say they just gave away company property, how do they justify that to shareholders?  .  (My old law firm used to give  an important officer of the Supreme Court a bottle of Scotch each Christmas until a Chief Justice, Sir John Young, branded the practice as a bribe.) 

The answer of the PM is that he declared all such benefits on the relevant public register.  Is that enough?

As it seems to me, the problem for the PM is that after thirty years in public life, the PM thinks he has discharged his relevant obligations if he has gone through the relevant procedures.  It is the kind of response you would get from a seasoned public servant, such as a copper, or from a flak-catcher for a bank or an insurance company (or from Bridget Mckenzie, for whom the word ‘rort’ could have been invented).

We see this in company directors.  They say they have complied with the letter of the law when the complaint against them is that they have failed to comply with public expectations, or even the law relating to good conscience.  (And you may recall that the Morrison government wanted to legislate to free directors from such overriding equitable obligations.)

Without wishing to offend the memory of Edith Cavell, conforming to procedural rules is not enough.  Issues of judgment are involved, and in the highest political office in the country.

We must distinguish two separate rolls of a PM.  One is the trust imposed by law on the PM as a minister of the Crown.  The other involves obligations owed as leader of a political party – in a nation where the whole system of parliamentary government depends on the responsible behaviour of the two major parties.  This second role calls for different kinds of judgment, based on loyalty to the party and care for its members, particularly MPs who are not safe.  It has little to do with the law – or ministerial guidelines.

It is clear that some MPs and other members of the party are most unhappy and unsettled because the PM has bought a house far beyond the reach of most Australians, and has enjoyed perks of office for himself and his family that are equally outside their grasp.  (And guidelines are just that.)

It does not look good, and it could do real harm to decent MPs.  Long before all this blew up, I was concerned about what the press calls the ‘optics’ of a Labor PM being duchessed in public by the most loathed, divisive, and overpaid businessman in living memory.

And formal disclosure has even less consequence here.  It is an issue not of law or morals , but judgmentof a very different order – political judgment.  It is very worrying that we have a PM who does not see this.  It is what the English philosopher, Sir Gilbert Ryle called a ‘category mistake’.

And the mind-bending hypocrisy of the opposition just makes us all feel so much worse.  And the popular suspicion that they all have their snouts in the trough just gets worse, as does our descent into mediocrity. 

 You may have seen most of his before, but I refer you to the par. beginning ‘Later, I applied….’  A clear all time record for pure bullshit.

In light of the behaviour of Bendigo Bank about scamming, I decided to switch to the Commonwealth Bank – in which I also hold shares.  (You may recall that I had previously written off NAB.)  This led to further, and in some sense, worse unhappiness.  

 I had been a customer of the Commonwealth Bank through the CDIA account of my self-managed superfund for nearly 20 years.  Commsec, which is owned by the bank, operates the shareholdings, and the CDIA account handles the cash. The Commonwealth Bank therefore knows all there is to know about my super – including the pension I receive from it.  It was about to begin to receive  my C’th pension.

When I first went to the Williamstown branch, I took my home Certificate of Title.  There is no mortgage .  I was told they did not need to see my title.  I then and there opened two personal accounts that showed up on my screen with the CDIA account at CBA Netbank.

I expected  two credit cards.  I got two debit cards.  One bounced publicly at the Yarraville restaurant I patronise – no need to blush there, as I was dealing with literate adults.

So, I then spent another hour at Williamstown completing forms with staff and explaining the above.  We settled on a limit of $5000.  The accounts held by the bank showed it held shares for my fund worth forty times that amount – which is less than what I receive each month by my two pensions.

Could the bank seriously say it needed more documentation to allow credit of $5000?

You bet – just wait for the robots to swing into action.  They wanted more documents about the fund they had held from its inception. This of course came in a DO NOT REPLY email – or by referral to my inbox at Netbank – so aping MyGov.  In illiterate gibberish. 

So, back to Willy for another session of an hour or so – trying to explain this madness.  I took in the fund’s most recent tax return.  Later that day I rang the bank in response to another DO NOT REPLY  – and I got referred to my Inbox.

Please upload the following to document to support your credit card application: 1. most latest Self Manage Super Fund Member Statement (please note the document provided was too old)

And so it goes.  Senseless gibberish.  Next will come another DNR suggesting I call them – and endure the endless delay and deceitful palaver -to find out the demands of ‘Cards Verification’ – whose word is command.  Why not just say what is required – and in a way that the customer can respond to? 

Perhaps, the bank might even call the customer!  Just imagine buying a Toyota and getting a DNR from the dealer asking you to ring a crowded switch to ascertain the next mandate from Tokyo.  That deal would be off the table with the speed of light.  And you would be relieved to be relieved from dealing with such people.

I had so far spoken with about eight people at the bank.  None had the wherewithal or authority to complete a simple banking transaction – and a least some felt uneasy about that.  You can bet that the rich don’t get this brush-off.  There is this vice like determination to sustain a regime that does not allow dignity to operatives within – or respect or common decency for customers without.  It is a dreadful part of the war against humanity.

Finally, I got through to a sensible lady in Sydney, and the matter was fixed that day.  When the card arrived, I got a 56-page booklet.  That would state the conditions – including indemnity for scans – of use and I would accept those conditions busing the card.  Is it seriously contended that the average Australian reads, understands and accepts those conditions?

Later I applied online to increase the credit limit to $10,000.)  Silly boy. The robots responded in less than one minute.  ‘After reviewing your application we’re unable to offer you an increase at this time.’  I pointed out that was simply untrue.  And off we go for another round of beating your head against a brick wall.  But wait.  I sent an email to CBA setting this out.  And Boy!  Did the robots retaliate?  Instanter. 

The email sent (details below) had a match with the High Profanity dictionary used in this organisation. The e-mail has not been sent. Please modify the language used before re-sending the message.

According to the press, the CEO of this bank gets paid north of $7M a year.  That is more than ten times what Australians pay the Chief Justice of the High Court.  And for that, the customers, if not the shareholders(including me in each), get a ship that is breaking up and sinking before our eyes.

It is as if the CBA is playing snakes and ladders with our psyche – or sanity.  Those who devise this cruel mode of contact must be bent on removing any humanity from the dealings between the bank and its customers.  Hence the grinding closure of branches and ATMs.  It did not take me long to conclude the CBA was more brutal than the Bendigo Bank.  And it shows on the premises of the branch.  The atmosphere is like that of Centrelink – a war zone – with the same message about not answering back in anger.  And do those who earn – if that’s the word – say forty times what those on the shop floor earn still have the gall to talk about a ‘social licence’?

Federal government members indulge in the conduct described in the extracts from The Age today below.  Mr Whealy made the comments referred to.  The conduct is certainly unedifying for most electors.  Then the usual suspects are lined up.  (And what a grubby lot they are.) Both parties indulge in this courtesan courtship – at federal and state levels.  It is revolting.  It is a symptom of our loss of faith in government – across the board.

According to John Barlett’s Concordance, Shakespeare used the word ‘slut’ three times – only in comedies of course, and in a less than complimentary way.  The Glossary of C T Onions for ‘sluttish’ has ‘of low or lewd character, unchaste.’  (Revised to 1986.)  The Shorter OED has ‘a woman of low or loose character’.  The Macquarie has for the ‘colloquial’ meaning ‘a person who is indiscriminate or voracious in their consumption of a specified commodity’.  (The reference there to ‘commodity’ follows the use of that term by the Bastard in King John – an item of commerce, like, say, Bitcoin.)

In my view the conduct of the federal ministers referred to would be described as that of sluts in the current usage of that term here.  They should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

When I couple that with their cowardice before the gaming lobby, I despair.

Age extract

Leaked emails reveal how much it costs to dine with Albanese and senior MPs

By James Massola

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his ministers are charging businesses tens of thousands of dollars to obtain privileged access to the Labor frontbench, even as the federal government prepares to restrict political donations under long-awaited reforms.

This masthead has obtained copies of 40 invitations sent to members of the Federal Labor Business Forum – one of the party’s key fundraising vehicles – over the past year, which reveal the chance to hobnob with Albanese at a boardroom lunch or dinner typically costs $5000 per person.

The cost of a meal with a member of the ministry ranges from $1500 to $4000, giving businesses access to ministers who oversee key areas of the economy including health, mining and financial services.

A table for eight people plus a VIP guest, typically a minister, can cost up to $18,000, while a table for 10 without a VIP guest costs up to $16,000. Tickets cost $1000-$2000 less for members of Labor’s business forum.

The 40 invitations to various fundraising events were sent out over the year from October 30, 2023, and would be likely to have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the federal ALP on top of the membership fees that organisations pay to the forum.

If those membership fees, which are disclosed on the electoral commission’s website for 2022-23, are added together, it would have taken a minimum of $3.8 million.

Labor’s planned donations reform, which it promised in the wake of the 2022 election, include a cap on the amount a candidate can receive, and a limit on how much a party can spend per electorate.

But the party’s business forum technically does not solicit donations under current electoral law, instead taking in money in exchange for memberships and event tickets. How that will be treated under the planned laws, which have not been released, is unclear.

Former judge Anthony Whealy, KC, said the Centre for Public Integrity he chairs had campaigned for years against political fundraising functions because they paired large sums of money with scant transparency.

“As always, the federal parliament is lagging behind the states in terms of donations reform,” Whealy said. “Just the idea of paying these enormous sums of money to have dinner with politicians is unedifying. It means very wealthy people have access to politicians and ordinary people can’t afford it. It looks bad, it is bad, and it is anti-democratic.”

The details of Labor’s sophisticated business-focused fundraising operations comes as the party prepares to bring much-delayed new laws that will tighten the rules on political donations next month, and as the major parties gear up for a federal election that must be held by May next year.

Membership of the forum has four tiers from $33,000 to $110,000 per year, according to The Australian Financial Review, and entitles the member to tickets to events such as an annual budget dinner and policy briefings with ministers.

Members in 2022-23 number more than 70, including consultancies Deloitte and KPMG, retail and industrial conglomerate Wesfarmers, lobby group the Pharmacy Guild, gambling company Sportsbet and mining giant Fortescue.

There is what is called a ‘war’ in the Middle East.  Israel is one party.  The legal status of its opponents has not been identified to me.  Nor have I seen any ‘rules’ for a war between one nation and people who are identified merely by their occupying a neighbouring territory. 

In fact, the hostility between Jewish people and Muslims in the area in and around what used to be called the Holy Land has been going on for many centuries.  One war last century led to Gaza becoming occupied territory.  I do not know what legal standing it has.

What we do know is that a group known as Hamas, which claims to represent the people of Gaza, launched a brutal attack on Israel, and that Israel, as was both expected and intended by Hamas, responded.  The war is still going more than twelve months on.  There is now another front in Lebanon, and Iran has felt obliged to surface openly in the conflict.

Some, including some high in the government of Israel, say that Israel started a war without knowing how to finish it.  That appears to be mandatory in that part of the world.  And we all know about a ‘war on terror’ or a war on a nation holding ‘weapons of mass destruction.’

Most outsiders would say that Hamas is a ‘terrorist’ group.  But you may wish to draw the line at saying that any people who employ terror to achieve rights on land occupied by others are ‘terrorists’.  That would catch the founders of the United States, the Commonwealth of Australia, and the nation of Israel.  (And of course England for about eight hundred years in Ireland.)  You can make up your own mind about those called the ‘settlers’.

It is certainly the case that Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel.  But it also looks to be the case that Israel has prevented the nation of Palestine being born – with, it must be said, a lot of help from those claiming to represent the people of Palestine.  They may be more fractious than those claiming to stand for the people of Israel.  (And that is a very large statement.)

People in Australia will take sides if they are connected by blood or faith to the combatants in this war overseas.  And their inclination or bias will be quickly apparent, and almost certainly not throw any light or warmth on what is on any view a colossal human tragedy. 

Most of the rest of us just want to keep our mouths shut and do what we can to stay neutral.  What we certainly want to avoid is bringing conflict into Australia that arises from conflict on the other side of the world with which we as a nation have no apparent connection.

I am not sure how the numbers between Jews and Muslims add up here now, but the war in Lebanon will have consequences.  But there is no doubt about the power of the pro-Israel lobby in this country.  And their apparent capacity to influence the local Establishment does not command universal assent.

Prejudiced commentators show bias in deciding how far back we should go in order to understand this war.  Some start at the most recent attack by Hamas.  Some with the birth of Israel.  In truth, this whole area has been a hot spot since the time of Moses.

In my view, the only place to start is with the first books of the bible – that each of the three main faiths gives some heed to. 

Those books stand for the following propositions.  There is only one God.  But there are many tribes or peoples.  Those tribes or peoples are all different and in no way equal.  God has a favourite tribe.  It is therefore in order for some people to be better off than others, just because Providence has raised their tribe above others.  God has promised land to his favourite tribe or people.  And authorised them to kill women and children who get in the way.  One example of that authority is set out below.  People outside of God’s protection – beyond the Pale, if you prefer – could choose between forced labour and death.  Then there is one example of the exercise of that authority.  According to the Bible, with the help of God, the Israelites killed 12,000 men, women and children in one day at the town of Ai – because they had chosen to live on the Promised Land.

Ever since then, that land has seen similar acts of brutality.  They have seen the worst kind of wars – those where each side is convinced, or at least persuaded, that it has God on its side.  Warriors claiming to be Muslims sought conquest by the sword.  So did Crusaders claiming to be Christians.  They got prepared to massacre Muslims by massacring Jews on their way to the Holy Sepulchre.

Many people never know how savage was the blasphemy of the Crusaders because they have not read Gibbon.

A bloody sacrifice was offered by his [Tancred’s] mistaken votaries to the God of the Christians: resistance might provoke, but neither age nor sex could mollify, their implacable rage: they indulged themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre; and the infection of the dead bodies produced an epidemical disease.  After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogue, they could still reserve a multitude of captives whom interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare.….The Holy Sepulchre was now free; and the bloody victors prepared to accomplish their vow.  Bare-headed and bare foot, with contrite hearts and in a humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Saviour of the world; and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption.  This union of the fiercest and most tender passions has been variously considered by two philosophers: by the one, as easy and natural; by the other, as absurd and critical.

Here is another instance of history repeating itself in the desecration of religion in a way that leads people like me never wanting to go near a house of God – any God – again.  Here is Gibbon on the Israelite conquests.

When the posterity of Abraham had multiplied like the sands of the sea, the Deity, from whose mouth they received a system of laws and ceremonies, declared himself the proper and, as it were, the national God of Israel; and with the most jealous care, separated his most favourite people from the rest of mankind.  The conquest of the land of Canaan with so many wonderful and so many bloody circumstances, that the victorious Jews were left in a state of irreconcilable hostility with all their neighbours.  They had been commanded to extirpate some of the most idolatrous tribes, and the execution of the Divine will had seldom been retarded by the weakness of humanity.

The views of Gibbon on Islam were referred to in my book about historians (from which these quotes are taken)

‘How did our brothers and sisters of Asia fare?  Gibbon said that for all his powers of eloquence, Mohammed was an illiterate barbarian, although he says that the ‘base and plebeian origin of Mohammed is an unskilful calumny of the Christians.’  (How did they class the origin of Jesus of Nazareth?)  Gibbon does of course praise Mohammed for dispensing with priests, sacrifices, and monks, but he rejects the doctrine of damnation by which ‘the greater part of mankind has been condemned for their opinions.’  Gibbon was, like most people, fascinated by sex.  He had this comment on Paradise.

Seventy-two Houris, or black-eyed girls, of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite sensibility, will be created for the use of the meanest believer; a moment of pleasure will be prolonged to a thousand years, and his faculties will be increased a hundredfold to render him worthy of the felicity …. This image of carnal paradise has provoked the indignation, perhaps the envy of the monks….’

To complete the levelling up, here is Gibbon on the followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

But the primitive church, whose faith was of a much firmer consistence, delivered over, without hesitation, to eternal torture, the far greater part of the human species.  A charitable hope might perhaps be indulged in favour of Socrates, or some other sages of antiquity, who had consulted the light of reason before that of the Gospel had arisen.  But it was unanimously affirmed that those who, since the birth or the death of Christ, had obstinately persisted in the worship of the daemons, neither deserved nor could expect a pardon from the irritated justice of the Deity.  These rigid sentiments, which had been unknown to the ancient world, appear to have infused a spirit of bitterness into a system of love and harmony.

To return to the present, the current casualty rate in the war is running at about twenty to one.  There are tens of thousands of Australians who have an interest in the conflict on either side.  Anyone claiming that one side is blameless is blind.  Anyone claiming the right to give an objective judgment is deluded.

So, the only course for our government is one of neutrality.  That is, I think, the course followed by the relevant minister, who is so much ahead of her colleagues, it is embarrassing.

But it is not the course followed by the Leader of the Opposition.  He puts votes before principle and the national interest.  He has done this before.  He did it to our First Nations peoples.  It is ironic that he supports the claims on one side in the Middle East that go back a few thousand years, but he wiped off like a dirty bum the claims of peoples here that go back sixty thousand years.

Peter Dutton should be ashamed of himself.  But the sometime copper from Queensland does not know how to say ‘sorry’.  We know that, too.

Texts on the Promised Land

Deuteronomy 20:

¹⁰ When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. ¹¹ If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. ¹² If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. ¹³ When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. ¹⁴ As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. ¹⁵ This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

¹⁶ However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. ¹⁷ Completely destroy^[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. ¹⁸ Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.

Joshua 8

⁸ And it shall be, when ye have taken the city, that ye shall set the city on fire: according to the commandment of the Lord shall ye do. See, I have commanded you.

⁹ Joshua therefore sent them forth: and they went to lie in ambush, and abode between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai: but Joshua lodged that night among the people.

¹⁰ And Joshua rose up early in the morning, and numbered the people, and went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the people to Ai.

¹¹ And all the people, even the people of war that were with him, went up, and drew nigh, and came before the city, and pitched on the north side of Ai: now there was a valley between them and Ai.

¹² And he took about five thousand men, and set them to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city.

¹³ And when they had set the people, even all the host that was on the north of the city, and their liers in wait on the west of the city, Joshua went that night into the midst of the valley.

¹⁴ And it came to pass, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hasted and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at a time appointed, before the plain; but he wist not that there were liers in ambush against him behind the city.

¹⁵ And Joshua and all Israel made as if they were beaten before them, and fled by the way of the wilderness.

¹⁶ And all the people that were in Ai were called together to pursue after them: and they pursued after Joshua, and were drawn away from the city.

¹⁷ And there was not a man left in Ai or Bethel, that went not out after Israel: and they left the city open, and pursued after Israel.

¹⁸ And the Lord said unto Joshua, Stretch out the spear that is in thy hand toward Ai; for I will give it into thine hand. And Joshua stretched out the spear that he had in his hand toward the city.

¹⁹ And the ambush arose quickly out of their place, and they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand: and they entered into the city, and took it, and hasted and set the city on fire.

²⁰ And when the men of Ai looked behind them, they saw, and, behold, the smoke of the city ascended up to heaven, and they had no power to flee this way or that way: and the people that fled to the wilderness turned back upon the pursuers.

²¹ And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.

²² And the other issued out of the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.

²³ And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua.

²⁴ And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.

²⁵ And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.

²⁶ For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.

²⁷ Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the Lord which he commanded Joshua.

²⁸ And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day.