Saturday salon 7/6

voltaire_230

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

8 thoughts on “Saturday salon 7/6”

  1. At least four notable happenings this week.

    1. June 4 was the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

    2. June 6 was the 70th anniversary of D-Day, when the troups stormed ashore in Normandy to liberate Europe.

    3. On Wednesday night, under questioning from opposition and crossbench senators, Senator Brandis repeatedly refused to say whether East Jerusalem was ”occupied” by Israel.

    4. From Ireland

    Death records suggest 796 children, from newborns to eight-year-olds, were dumped in a septic tank near a Catholic-run home for unmarried mothers, turning it into in a mass grave. The deaths occurred during the 35 years the home operated from 1925 to 1961.

  2. Brian,
    I got the impression that Brandis went further and stated categorically that the Abbott Government did not consider East Jerusalem occupied and nor did it consider the Occupied Territories occupied.

    On a more trivial note, I am currently binge-watching series one of Orphan Black. Quite a gripping thriller.
    Have begun reading Richard J. Evans’s The Coming of the Third Reich, , which is excellent. Have the second and third books of the series on order, I’m so impressed.

  3. Paul I think Brandis did go further. There was an item on PM on Thursday, but RN is a week behind in putting up the archives of this program.

    Xenephon said that 47 years of bipartisanship on policy in this area had been cast aside and Australia is now a outlier, separating itself from Europe and the US.

    He said that if there is to be a solution it will be a two-state solution and such a solution is impossible without recognising and dealing with “occupation”.

  4. Brandis’ holding to the “official(??)” line on Palestine has done wonders for every anti-Jewish conspiracy theorist in the country …. “See! I told you so! I told you so!” …. and no amount of pro-Israel imported Republican Party extremist propaganda can now repair the damage they have inflicted on their own cause.
    I wonder if this issue might lead to a complete split between the Australian extreme Right and the American extreme Right …. and if that does happen, there could be some interesting changes ahead on the fringes of Australian politics.

  5. World Mens Health Week started today ( not that you’d know from the ABC web site, disappointing ) so think about it Lads.
    We’ve got some ground to make up to reduce the inequity.

    A boy born in Australia in 2010 has a life expectancy of 78.0 years while a baby girl born at the same time could expect to live to 82.3 years old. Right from the start, boys suffer more illness, more accidents and die earlier than their female counterparts.

    Men take their own lives at four times the rate of women (that’s five men a day, on average). Accidents, cancer and heart disease all account for the majority of male deaths:

    We can’t ignore this men.

  6. Have finished Richard J. Evans’s The Coming of the Third Reich. Over the years I’ve read quite a lot on Nazi Germany and this is one of the best books on the topic I’ve read. Most disturbingly. and I wasn’t looking for them, in the sections on the collapse of the Weimar Republic I found really unnerving paralells with Australian politics right now.

    Have started reading Justin Marozzi’s Baghdad. City of Peace, City of Blood. Its early days yet, but its okay.

  7. Paul, hopefully we don’t have the equivalent of Der Führer to deal with!

    jumpy @ 5, not many moons ago I think the gender gap was 6 years, so at 4.3 progress is being made.

    I recall that when my wife and I got married back in the 1970’s I calculated she could look forward to 12 years, sans me and I’m 6 years older than her. Back then I think it was 74 as against 80.

  8. Brian @ 7: “Paul, hopefully we don’t have the equivalent of Der Führer to deal with!” …. Yet!

    Just wait until the effects of the crack-down on unemployed under-30s kicks in and see who comes out of the shadows to give all those people hope and give them a focus for their indignation and their well-justified hatreds.

    Then again, maybe Der neue Fuehrer is here already …. former Melbourne Catholic lad and now Islamic firebrand, Musa Cerantonio who was featured on tonight’s 7:30 Report on ABC-TV 1.

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