Tag: politics

To Count or Not to Count

personby Gillian Polack
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I am in a paperwork week and nearly wrote you an analysis of the Australian Census. Not the use of the census material, but how the form is structured. In vast detail and terrifying depth. By this, you know I am in the middle of a great deal of paperwork. When the end of the paperwork is in sight, then I’ll feel less tendency to analyse data and explain archival methods. I say this very firmly, because I was once that person and haven’t been for a while and while I totally enjoyed that work, everyone around me missed the Middle Ages and bad jokes and passing comments about historical foodstuffs.

Our census is, technically, tomorrow week. This is our first mostly-online one and a vast number of people are not waiting for census night. We’ve been told we don’t have to wait so we race and fill everything in and then walk around with an air of conscious virtue. I sometimes suspect that Australians like filling in forms and being counted. We certainly like our compulsory vote, which is another way of filling in forms and being counted. Politics is so different in countries where voting is optional.

We won’t have decent answers to census questions until June next year. Questions people are asking in my vicinity include how many people will write their religion down as “Jedi” and their second language as “Klingon.” Other folks want to know what answers will be given to the question of gender, which is not a simply binary this time around. We will find out how people describe themselves in gender terms and have a better understanding of how much of Australia sees themselves.

One of the most concerning questions the census folk are asking is how many Jews will feel safe enough this year to write our religion down. The Jewish community was given a special briefing on Sunday evening where we could ask some very senior bods how the data is handled. This is how I know it’s a burning question.

In ten months’ time (if I remember) I will share some answers. Until then, I myself will live in unsatiated curiosity. Australia has changed significantly since the last census. Watch this space?

Ranting

personby Gillian Polack
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I wrote a rant on Facebook. I want to copy it here because the cause of it affects so many people and I think it would be good to find it again. Let me explain first, though.

My ethnohistorian self looks at what happens in the world around us as evidence of human lives. I’m always looking for patterns. Right now, finding patterns and interpreting them well is more important than it’s ever been for me, because of the level and nature of antisemitism in Australia. I keep an eye on what our Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is doing, and I find it has its own patterns and, at this point, it doesn’t see the rest of Australia clearly. It only sees what it’s shown, and some of the interpretation is done through the lens of groups who are part of the problem. Cross-questioning should not be up to 66% led by groups that are known for their antisemitism, but on some days it is. That affects the picture we all see. I make my own analyses, then, to keep what the RC does in perspective. I keep my own analysis in perspective using a truckload of tools. I watch some of the top ten shows on TV so that I’m in tune with the stories others see and hear. I keep an eye on social media. I make sure I’m part of events when I can. Last Saturday I was on a stall at Geek Expo. I wore nothing to indicate I’m Jewish (I don’t like tempting fate) but I watched and listened and I talked to many people. I’m beginning to learn the pattern and shape of antisemitism in this country.
What I wrote on FB just now was about one of the trails of hate spread so liberally across social media. I used several search terms to bring up people talking specifically about that topic, and I also looked at the new and at commentaries on the news, on the timelines of people who are known to be Jewish (eg a certain film director), and also with some of the major figures who talk politics in Australia. One thing I didn’t do this time was look at commentary by noted Jewish social media folks, so this doesn’t include the comments on their posts.
As much as anything, today’s post is about how I see the world, which is always as a writer (everything contains stories) and as an historian (everything contains evidence). it’s also an insight into what it’s like being a Jewish Australian at the place where 5 different branches of Australian antisemitism hit, but that’s not something to talk about today.

 

There is a pattern. If it’s Monday evening in east coast Australia, then the new wave of antisemitism hits social media. Sometimes it lasts until the weekend and sometimes it fades in a couple of days. Today’s wave is fairly precise. It’s an old one, revisited, and it riffs on one of last week’s waves.
That wave said, “If Israel was only completely obliterated, there would be no problems in the Middle East.” None of those pushing this line asked what would happen to Jews in Israel, but I asked a couple of people (who do not know to block me yet, obviously) and they explained that, since no-one in the Arab world hates Jews or has ever killed a Jew, they do not know why it’s even a question.
Some of them also say that there’s no antisemitism in Australia. I followed a little thread where someone asked how Bondi fitted into the ‘no antisemitism in Australia’ notion, and the person who asked was blocked, but the ‘no antisemitism’ person took that same thought elsewhere. They know there is antisemitism, but they’re in denial for their own reasons. Others (who I didn’t talk to because… not so safe) said that the world would be better with no Jews. That’s the old thread. It is not simple and it is unkind.
The new one (which is also an old one, but present in so many places this evening) is more polite. The new wave of hate says that Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism. It’s an evil thing that touts supremacy and includes murder. The actual history of Zionism is irrelevant here (though the history of carefully cultivated antisemitism is not) – and if you want to see the range of definitions of Zionism from a snapshot I did a while back, let me know and I’ll share the links again.
The big thing is that I don’t know anyone Jewish who uses this definition. I know a couple of people who might, but they’re not people who talk to me. Those couple of people are both quite far left.
Why is the use by Jews so important? Because the same people who have this curious definition of Zionism also have a potted definition of Judaism. We’re a religion, simply, with no links to the ancient Levant and only modern culture. Excuse me while I take a break to sing Shir Ha’Maalot, which is appropriate at this point for so many reasons.
I’m finished singing.
How do most of these people use those definitions? They find comments made by obvious Jews (especially famous ones) and correct their self descriptions.
It’s very Orwellian. Reshape everyone’s thoughts on a subject by using the same words and phrases and correcting people over and over again. It’s Jewsplaining, but with intent to create 1984.
I am going to strongly suggest that if you don’t know how a Jewish friend sees themselves and describes themselves, you ask them. You’ll get our answers, not a single standard ‘this is the only way of saying it’ except from those of us who like shaping the world with straightforward constructions. This comes down to how a person sees themselves in the world, so that is what you should put ahead of most other things if you want to actually talk to Jews and defend our right to exist as Jews. You don’t have to like any given person’s self-definition. But you do need to accept it as their self-definition ahead of the carefully crafted definitions applied by bigots.
Within Jewish culture, each self-definition plays a part. There are concepts we share, and concepts we craft by creating a complex composition. We’re all voices in a choir. Some choirs walk a little bit to the side and create their own mix, but they’re still part of Am Yisrael.
The thing about Judaism is that it doesn’t force one simple view. We argue and discuss and even have an approved rabbinic method of shelving impossible arguments so that we can move on to possible ones.
Redefinition by someone imbued with Jew hate is not just going to change the public way others see Jews, it’s going to chip at who we are by not letting us be ourselves outside closed communities. The choir is being pelted with rocks for not singing the right song in the right way… and that song and that right way may not have anything to do with what the choir was singing or why the choir was singing or who the choir was singing for.
This is an old trick. It shuts down Jewish voices. Every time someone tells someone else who they are without checking with them first, to find out how they see themselves, they’re saying “Who you are is unimportant. You are a lesser human being than I am.”

An addendum:
Miss Manners needs to intervene. If you’ve been shouting politics, your politics might have made your Jewish friends aware that you are not safe to speak with about certain subjects. Check with them before you ask them questions. They may not want to answer because they may not be as trusting (or as safe) as they were a few years ago.
I understand that everyone’s politics is important, but left wing politics in Australia have led to a lot of Jew hate. Otherwise good people are being treated with caution, even if they don’t know it, because they shouted “Globalise the intifada” but never asked Aussie Jewish friends whether we were OK after Bondi. I dropped many hints about ‘talking to your friends’ in the last 3 years, but most people didn’t. If you didn’t (thought nice thoughts but never called or had a cuppa) then think twice before suddenly invading a friend’s life with “How do you self-define.” Explain why you didn’t talk to them, perhaps, then ask if it’s possible to talk?

Reprint: Nature’s Way To Clean a Reflecting Pool

personby Deborah J. Ross
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When your local reflecting pool or pond turns green with algae, don’t reach for chemicals – nature has better solutions

A National Park Service employee uses a vacuum to clean the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on June 20, 2026.
AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

Eric Palkovacs, University of California, Santa Cruz

When the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool turned green with algae just days after a US$15 million renovation, the U.S. government scrambled for chemicals and expensive technical solutions to fix the iconic landmark.

Trying to kill algae with chemicals is a common response when community ponds or other water features go green. But as a scientist who studies freshwater ecology, I can tell you there are better solutions that cost far less, last longer and carry less risk of harm to pets and wildlife.

Rather than battling against nature, these alternatives work with nature for long-term solutions.

What went wrong on the National Mall

The algal bloom that turned the Reflecting Pool a vibrant green shouldn’t have been a surprise.

The pool is big, more than a third of a mile long and around 165 feet wide. But it’s shallow, meaning it warms up quickly in the sun. When it was repainted “American flag blue” during the renovations in spring 2026, the new color darkened the pool, and darker colors absorb more heat.

On top of those conditions, the pool was refilled with water from the nutrient-rich tidal basin of the Potomac River. The combination of warm water and nutrients created prime conditions for algae to bloom, turning the water pea soup green.

A tube into the Reflecting Pool, with the Jefferson Memorial in the background, puts out white bubbles.
In addition to hydrogen peroxide and vacuums, the government ordered nanobubble ozone technology to break up the algae. The nanobubbler contract was for $1.7 million.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

As the national conversation over the Reflecting Pool shifts to political finger-pointing, an important environmental question deserves careful scrutiny: What is the best approach to maintain water quality in a case like this, whether for a national monument or a community water feature or pond?

Trying to chemically or mechanically remove algae can damage the structure of a water feature and may harm species in the water that could actually help solve the problem.

Importantly, chemical and mechanical solutions are only temporary fixes. When the Reflecting Pool is drained and filled again, there’s a good chance that algae will bloom again.

Natural algae control

Limnologists – scientists like me who study inland water bodies – have spent many decades learning why lakes and ponds turn green and how to clear them up.

Often, nutrient-rich waters fueled by fertilizer runoff from farm fields or sewage from cities are the sources that stimulate algal growth.

However, natural ponds also host grazing zooplankton, which eat algae. For example, a type of zooplankton called Daphnia, known as water fleas because of the way these tiny crustaceans swim, can control algae by consuming it before it becomes a pea soup nuisance. Thus, a thriving Daphnia population can help maintain good water quality in a lake, pond or community water feature, even when nutrient levels spike.

A close-up image of a see-through water creature with eggs inside.
Daphnia are a genus of hundreds of species of tiny, see-through crustaceans that happen to be voracious algae eaters. A female Daphnia magna’s eggs are visible in this magnified image.
Hajime Watanabe, PLoS Genetics, March 2011, CC BY

In addition to being highly effective grazers, Daphnia have another superpower – they can evolve rapidly. Urban waterbodies are often harsh environments with a variety of challenges, including high temperatures, low levels of dissolved oxygen, and pollutants. Daphnia can adapt to tough conditions, making these creatures an ideal source of algae control in many urban ponds.

Rooted aquatic plants are also useful for algae control in ponds because they absorb nutrients. Thus, shallow ponds with thick beds of aquatic plants can often resist algal blooms when nutrient levels rise.

Why draining might not be the best solution

One downside to draining and refilling a pond or urban water feature to try to clean it is that doing so resets the aquatic ecosystem, erasing the signature of any past evolution that has taken place.

Imagine Daphnia in a shallow pond that experiences periodic heat waves throughout the summer. Through repeated exposure to high temperatures, natural selection favors heat-resistant genotypes that can thrive in an urban pond.

Daphnia and other grazing zooplankton can also evolve resistance to some types of cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, which produce compounds that are toxic to people and pets. Daphnia that evolve resistance to those toxins can help control harmful cyanobacterial blooms.

If a Daphnia population that evolved to tolerate warm temperatures, low oxygen levels or cyanotoxins is removed, the new population likely won’t be ready to handle those local challenges. This evolutionarily naive population will perform poorly in its new environment, reducing its effectiveness at controlling algal blooms.

As a result, traditional mechanical and chemical approaches may actually work against the goal of minimizing algae in ponds and other water features.

Nature-based solutions

The use of Daphnia to control algal blooms is just one example of solving environmental challenges with nature-based solutions.

Growing urban forests to provide cooling and improve air quality to help reduce the need for more energy-intensive air conditioning is another example. Maintaining urban wetlands can help reduce flooding, protect property and recharge groundwater more effectively and for less money than building and maintaining levees. Coastal marshes similarly reduce erosion, buffer storm surges and support fisheries.

All these urban ecosystems protect biodiversity and support human health and well-being.

From national landmarks to city parks and backyard ponds, projects of all sizes can take advantage of nature-based solutions. While each specific project is unique, some general principles apply.

Ecosystems are most resilient when they are diverse and connected. So, it is beneficial to use a variety of species and genotypes and provide corridors that support the movement of organisms and their beneficial genes.

Urban climates are changing rapidly, so it helps to use species and genotypes that will thrive under future conditions, including rising temperatures.

Not every solution has to be engineered

The hubbub over the Reflecting Pool holds a mirror up to assumptions about how to solve pressing environmental challenges. The idea of just engineering one’s way out of any environmental crisis has limits.

Understanding ecology and nature’s mechanisms of ecosystem resilience can achieve sustainable solutions that benefit both nature and people.The Conversation

Eric Palkovacs, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue reading “Reprint: Nature’s Way To Clean a Reflecting Pool”…

Australia – again

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I am late! I am late and want to talk about Jewish matters.

The Australian Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has just released the total number of submissions and it’s a lot higher than anyone expected. I predicted 10,000 submissions and everyone around me said that 5,000 would be a lot and would reflect what was happening in our country a lot more. Even 10,000 was considered an overprediction because of the way most people saw antisemitism in Australia, in other words. So what does 20,000 mean? That things matter. That people have things to say.

What the submissions give us is something amazing, especially given that this is a census year and that we can fit those submissions into a snapshot of Australia in 2026 (the last census was in 2021, and you can see what it shows about jewish Australia here: The-Jewish-Population-of-Australia-Report_2021-Census-1.pdf . There are issues with the way data was collected and how unsafe the collection made Jews, and that Judaism was not listed as a religious or cultural option ie people had to write it in manually, but it still gives some indication of who we are in Jewish Australia. We have a surprising number of old people, for instance, and an unsurprisingly high average level of education.

Put these 20,000 submissions into analysis the way that Mass Obersvation Project has done for the UK, and it becomes an enormous data base for research into one aspect of Australian life: how people see Jewish Australia and how Jewish Australia sees itself. What we are. Who we are. How we deal with hate. This will lead to insights into how Australia sees other cultural and religious groups in the country. It has the capacity to change Australia’s self-knowledge.

What’s really interesting is how silent the far left is about the number of submissions. We don’t yet know if those submissions reflect their views as leading or typical. I strongly suspect that their views are bigoted and hateful, but I’m willing to wait and see how the data presents itself. And I want to know what Australia does with all this information about how we think and feel.

Given that the trigger was the Bondi murders and there is a very strong likelihood that those murders were caused by links to certain terrorist groups, we can’t exclude the outside world. But we can take a close look at ourselves and find out who we are and what we want to be.

Australia is in a strange place politically. Everything’s changing. I suspect those 20,000 submissions are part of that change. Who we are and how safe we are and the paths we take are all up for grabs in this very interesting year.

Reprint: Strongmen Doomed to Fail!

personby Deborah J. Ross
schedulePosted on

The ‘warrior ethos’ promises victory — history says it leads to defeat

Hitler and Mussolini salute Nazi troops in 1937.
Bettmann/Getty Images

John Broich, Case Western Reserve University

At Marine Corps Base Quantico in September 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised assembled generals “maximum lethality” and no “stupid rules of engagement.” Under his leadership, the newly rebranded Department of War would “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill.” Troops would be held to the “highest male standard,” he said. “Weak men won’t qualify.”

Hegseth also restricted anonymous whistleblower and discrimination complaints and limited how long past misconduct can be held against a service member, weakening internal rules and oversight processes the military had built over decades.

Months later, with the Iran war underway, he told reporters at a Pentagon briefing that the U.S. was “punching (Iran) while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” He has also said the U.S. will give “no quarter, no mercy” to its enemies, language legal experts say can constitute a war crime under international law.

Hegseth calls his military doctrine the “warrior ethos.”

Historians of fascism have catalogued similar rhetorical patterns — strongman posturing, contempt for constraint — for decades.

I’m a historian of race and nationalism and author of “Blood, Oil and the Axis,” a book about World War II and nationalism in Iraq and Syria. I’ve studied how fascist regimes fight. At its core, fascism is ultranationalism fused with a cult of masculine strength, racial hierarchy, paranoia about socialism and contempt for democracy. It also has a theory of war: Victory belongs to the ruthless and the ideologically pure. Rules are for the weak.

Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Imperial Japan all built their military strategies on some version of this ideology in the run-up to the Second World War. And in each case, the strategy failed, undone by its own contradictions.

The fascist theory of war

Democracies don’t necessarily fight clean wars. During World War II, the Allies firebombed cities, created internment camps and dropped atomic bombs.

What distinguishes fascist powers from democracies is their contempt for rules based on their sense of superiority. In 1933, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels announced that the Nazis would claim the absolute right to override democratic constraints. “This contemptible parliamentarianism … is gone,” he said.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini said it more bluntly in 1936: “We do not argue with those who disagree with us, we destroy them.”

But rules of engagement function as a control system that ties tactical decisions to strategy, law and the risk of escalation. Discarding them tends to produce the atrocities and strategic blowback that lose wars.

Democratic procedure does similar work: Political scientists who studied 197 conflicts from 1816 to 1987 found that democracies won about 76% of their conflicts and non-democracies 46%, in large part because accountable leaders and public access to information force a government to notice when a plan isn’t working.

A fascist regime that treats democratic constraints as obstacles is likely to decide inconvenient information is an obstacle too. Because of this, in fascist governments, loyalists rank higher than experts. Fascist systems don’t remove people for being wrong; they remove them for insufficient loyalty. The man who tells the leader what he wants to hear rises. The man whose report contradicts the leader’s views endangers himself.

Benito Mussolini stands beside Adolf Hitler as they watch a military parade
Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Elena watch a parade held in Hitler’s honor in 1938. Behind them, from left: Joachim von Ribbentrop, Galeazzo Ciano, Joseph Goebbels and Rudolf Hess.
Bettmann/Getty Images
The closed circuit

Consider Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Before becoming Hitler’s foreign minister, he was a wine salesman whose years in Canada became his qualification for understanding America. He attached himself to Hitler and was rewarded with a top seat in his government, where Ribbentrop’s signature contribution was overruling the diplomats who warned that Americans would fight if pushed too far by the Axis.

The Nazi view prevailed: Americans were too racially mixed, too soft, too consumed by money to be dangerous. When Germany declared war on the U.S. four days after Pearl Harbor, it did so partly on that disdain for what Hitler called a “mongrel nation.” Ribbentrop was among the most consequentially wrong foreign ministers in modern history – he’d also misjudged Britain’s willingness to join the war over the invasion of Poland – still, he kept his job.

The ideology that produced Ribbentrop’s overconfidence also produced the Nazi theory of the Eastern Front: that Slavic peoples – fundamentally inferior and tainted by Bolshevism – would collapse within weeks. But the Red Army didn’t collapse. Hitler fired the officers who reported as much and demanded more of the same operations that had already failed. Operation Barbarossa, which was supposed to take weeks, stretched to years.

Attempting to match Hitler’s conquests and assert dominance over the Mediterranean, Mussolini invaded Greece in October 1940 with shorthanded divisions, in mountain terrain and at the start of winter, because he believed Italian spirit would overwhelm Greek resistance in two weeks. His generals had doubts, but many did not express them. The Greeks counterattacked, but Mussolini blamed his generals’ “insufficient will,” the only kind of failure his theory allowed. Germany had to intervene.

What the leader said happened

Connected to the fascist superiority complex is a contempt for feedback, creating a closed information system that can’t register failure, tolerate disagreement or revise a plan. Strategy requires accurate reporting, even when the news is bad, and the willingness to be wrong. Fascist regimes punish the first and refuse the second.

German high command was still reporting a controlled advance in November 1942 when its 6th Army, some 330,000 soldiers, was being encircled at Stalingrad. Hitler had declared the city practically taken; the press never reported the Soviet counteroffensive that surrounded it. When the remnants finally surrendered on Feb. 2, 1943, it was a turning point in the war – Germany’s first catastrophic defeat on the Eastern Front, from which the Wehrmacht never recovered.

Mussolini bragged about his mighty army of 8 million soldiers while 3.5 million – the real number – were being routed on three fronts in as many years.

Imperial Japan fused racial supremacy with a military code that forbade surrender and treated anyone who did as subhuman. Loyalty to the emperor was absolute; questioning his depiction of reality was betrayal.

In that environment, officers had every incentive to lie up the chain of command when reality on the ground did not match what leaders wanted to hear. For example, after the Battle of Midway, a catastrophic defeat for Japan in June 1942, naval headquarters filed reports that bore little resemblance to what happened. Later that year, the Imperial Navy told Tokyo they had sunk twelve American ships near today’s Taiwan when they had merely damaged two.

Two years of retreat later, the kamikaze program – which sent some 3,900 pilots to their deaths in suicidal crashes against Allied ships – was the logical conclusion: Let pilots prove their loyalty by dying.The Conversation

John Broich, Associate Professor of History, Case Western Reserve University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue reading “Reprint: Strongmen Doomed to Fail!”…

Leaving and Staying

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I’ve seen some news lately about people who are deciding to leave the United States. Apparently there is a long waiting list of people living in Europe who want to renounce their U.S. citizenship.

There are always articles on how to move to other countries, assuming you have enough money, focusing on which countries will welcome you and what the bureaucracy is, but while these used to be aimed at people looking to retire someplace where their money goes farther, it now seems more politically based.

After the Supreme Court’s horrible ruling this week gutting the Voting Rights Act, I saw some discussion by Black people on social media suggesting it was time for African Americans to go elsewhere. I can sympathize with that, though I doubt it’s a practical option for most.

As for me, though, I’m not going anywhere.

For one thing, the horrible things being done by the grifter and his minions to the United States are, unfortunately, not confined to the United States. I doubt there’s much of any place in the world you can be truly safe from the ravages of these people.

Also, I don’t want to live somewhere where I don’t have the right to participate in public life — to vote, to advocate, to march in the streets – and ties to other people as neighbors and friends. I’d want to be able to speak the language well enough to fit in and complain to local officials.

I don’t have any right to citizenship in another country except what they might allow through immigration, and I doubt I have enough years left to get that done, get really comfortable in the language, and actually become a full citizen before I’m too old for it to matter.

As I have written before, I am not a person with a deep connection to place. Whenever I visit somewhere else, I always think about what it would be like to live there. I’ve visited some lovely places.

Which is to say, I could probably live somewhere else. It just doesn’t seem like a reasonable course of action at this point in my life. And I don’t think running away would solve anything.

Recently it has been pointed out that anyone with a Canadian great-great grandparent can acquire Canadian citizenship. I don’t fall into that category, but I know others who do. And I know of people whose parents and grandparents came here from other countries who have recently acquired passports for those places.

If I did have the right to citizenship in another country, I would go after it, not for escaping the current regime but for the value of having ties to more than one place. Continue reading “Leaving and Staying”…

This week in Antisemitism: bringing some of the ideas together in lists

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

This last post is very long. It’s also a bit less clear than the earlier ones. I was going to explain the current meanings of Zionism, updating the previous post. Interestingly, so many people have their own views of the definition and want to correct even the groups made from nearly two hundred opinions. Instead of giving you cute names attached to views of the word ‘Zionism’ (I so wanted to include Mountains of Madness Zionism) I’ll begin with a quick revision that allows anyone to slot new thoughts into the three groups.

Anything that prioritises Jewish definitions of a Jewish concept is going to describe Zionism as related to the state of Israel. Alas, this includes those arguing that it should not exist. Why the ‘alas’ – because all arguments about its non-existence either fail to take into account those who want all Jews dead, or actually celebrate all Jews dying. If they would solve antisemitism and violence against Jews before inventing a county where Jews cannot live, I would have more sympathy with them. If they lived in 1938, they would be helping the building of death camps either literally or socially. When I tried to talk with some of these people, they fell into two groups. One believes that Jews have not really been murdered, ever. The other believes that we should all be murdered and that Israel is a good start. Accepting that Zionism refers to Israel existing is not quite the same as Zionism referring to Israel as a Jewish state that should exist. Many of those who support Israel are now explaining that second part (that it has a right to exist, that Jews need it, that there are ancient links to the land) to distinguish themselves from those who try to have their cake and eat it to, by saying that yes, Israel exists, but it should not.

This is actually not as muddy as I made it sound. If all Jews are to be killed, then Israel doesn’t exist. Using ‘Zionism’ in this way is a false claim. I now try to work out from other things a person says if they give Jews equal rights to other people. That helps explain whether their acceptance of Israel as a country is temporary or false.

In some cases, the thoughts can be attached to groups two and three together. Hate seeps into everything once its become part of general conversation. I can’t explain this as well as I should, because every single person I’ve found who uses the second group of definitions of Zionism with the hate and mirroring from the third… blocks me quite quickly. I’ve looked around, and I’m not the only one blocked and the blocking is not restricted to Jews. Iranian Diaspora activists are also blocked, as are general supporters of Jews and Iranians. Those who combine the second and third group of definitions are creating their own echo chamber. This worries me.

As I said last post, there are an increasing number of personal definitions of Zionism. I’m not even going to try to make a complete list. They still mostly fall into the categories I established last post, so the best thing to do is to categorise them and find out what the person explaining Zionism thinks and where they fit politically and on the hate spectrum. Otherwise we argue about minutiae and the problem of hate ferments all by itself in the background. Also, identifying the groups of definitions helps anyone who is subject to the hate to identify it quickly and address it in the best way for them. For many, this means hiding from the bigots, because there is so much violence attached to certain parts of both the second and third groups of definitions. In others, it can be talking things through and finding common ground. How to deal with local hate would be a whole new post, though. I’ve done it all my life (including advising those in politics, the public sector, and in community organisations deal) and am willing to talk about these things, but not here and not today.

So what am I doing today?

I am about to give simple explanations with simple examples of some very complex stuff. This is only a blog post, after all. I could write a book on each of these, and then another explaining how it all holds together and the history behind it. I am not going to write those books. The book still seeking a home (the history one) shows how we are given narratives that support all the things I’m about to talk about. This post, by comparison, is me dipping my big toe in the water, just to show you that there is water. I’ve done it in form of a series of points, because I am running out of time. Other weeks I’ve had hours to spare, this week I have editing and deadlines and possibly will find time to get dressed later today. Possibly.

The series of points

1. Zionism and its related words rely on a fabric of understanding. Not all Zionists are Jewish, but all Zionism is linked to Judaism. It’s one of the words and sets of ideas that connect Jews to the non-Jewish world.

2. We learn about what the world thinks about us from the way groups or individuals use words related to Judaism. I was told just yesterday that I had tikkun olam entirely wrong… and also two thousand years of historical Judaism. This was from the third person in two days who knew a little, but not enough to know what they did not know. Even with the best intentions, telling someone that they don’t know who they are and that everything they know since childhood is wrong… is not kind. There is a lot more to the ‘splaining and erasing Jewish knowledge of ourselves than the unkindness it manifests.

First, as women discover when we are mansplained, that kind of explanation indicates, to the person doing the ‘splaining, that Jews (or women) are secondary. Less important people. Children who have to be told things because we cannot think for ourselves.

With Zionism, this produces a really interesting quandary. As I said earlier (in different words) some people who use the standard definition of Zionism (Israel’s existence) are anti-Zionist for the same reason they ‘splain. In their minds, Jews are not capable of running our own lives or even knowing our own religion and culture. If we lack the capacity of adults, how could there possibly be a Jewish country?

This is an old form of antisemitism, where Jews are considered to be better off subservient. I know its European origins, but the dhimmi system also implies religious immaturity and gives secondary status to Jews. It’s for our own good that we are told things and that there should be no Israel. We’re not mature enough yet. Or are just made to be ruled by others, especially others like the person ‘splaining.

3. Another link is made by those who have not directly experienced antisemitism. In their eyes, others must be exaggerating for attention. This is where the accusations of playing the victim card and pearl clutching enter. The sense that this can’t be right (too dramatic, or “I don’t see these things”) proves the antisemitic trope of Jews being liars. Perceiving Jewish hurt as false cements antisemitism in many peoples’ minds. The best equivalent I can give is the attitude some men have to child-bearing as painless and natural. Lived experience is not considered relevant in either case.

4. ‘Zionism,’ ‘Judaism’ and a bunch of connected terms are also triggers for people to erase others from their lives. Many of us have lost whole social circles in the past two years, simply because of non-existent Jew cooties. I say “I’m Jewish” and some friends say, “You could not tell anyone” and others disown me for being public about it. I’m a “bad Jew” for making those words mean the wrong thing.

5. This leads to Schrödinger’s Jew, where it’s fine to be Jewish or have Jewish ancestors as long as nothing is visible publicly and there is plausible deniability. Jews can march with other pro-Pals as long as no magen davids are worn and they eat bacon and don’t talk about their Jewishness. This relates to the silencing of most Jewish voices, especially those from the Jewish left. Certain Australian writers’ festivals are really good examples of this.

6. Many bigots say, “We’re hurting too.” Other people have suffered awful things. These people of course need our support and help. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the deliberate destabilising of discussion about Jews, Israel, Zionism by changing the subject. This can be gaslighting.

7. More everyday, is when people refuse to learn about Jewish stories or culture and then fill the artificial vacuum with stereotypes and an understanding of Judaism drawn from Jew haters. This is related to whether Secular Judaism/ Jewishness is seen as an ethnicity or simply a name tag. There are secular Jews, but this is not them.

8. Some people use a modified set of terms to indicate some rather big things: Jews as a problem, the West as a problem, settler colonialism as a problem, for instance. The style of terms is “Zionist entity” instead of “Israel” or “So-called Australia” instead of  “Australia.” Sometimes this comes from far-left people and shows hints of Marxism. Sometimes it comes from those who listen to the spokespeople for organisations link to the Muslim Brotherhood. I see this as indicating that some of the far left may be linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. This may be linked to the groups and collectives where there’s not a lot of shared understanding of Judaism, but much support for Hamas. It also can be linked to using language from DEI, Critical Race Theory, and is often shared by BDS folk in my vicinity.

9. Dehumanisation of Jews. An oldie but just as nasty as it ever was. Watch for how haters talk to Jews and about Jews – check that we’re still human in their eyes. An example from X:  Leon Knight @KnightLeon34974 wrote “I don’t want my kids to suffer any kind of religious indoctrination in their education, but especially not from a satanic death cult like Zionism.”

10. Performative stuff, using slogans and banners and marches tends to (because of its nature), play favourites. One of the worst things about this is that the kindness and support for underdog some shouters claim (I suspect this might include Grace Tame in Australia) is an image and not real. I always look for more than the slogans to find out how people reach those slogans. Almost always, in the case of matters relating to Judaism and Israel, they reflect many of the things I’ve just listed.

11. Statements that look obvious, but that are part of a silencing. “Gazan voices are being hidden” is one of the more interesting statements, because it’s partly true. Very few non-Hamas and non terrorist supporter voices from within Gaza are heard – but those voices are not the ones protested about. Randa Abdel-Fattah and Omar Sakr claiming that they themselves are silenced in Australia and that Jews have loud voices are a more useful example.

All of these elements can lead to a lack of context and destroyed narrative. More and more people think they know about a subject and they really, really don’t. This makes hate much worse. There are also rhetorical devices that make hate worse by reinforcing certain thoughts or by spreading them. I don’t have time or energy to give you a complete list and big explanations of these devices. I’ll give another list, I think, just so that some of them are more visible.

When people tell hate stories, these are some of the techniques they use

1. Repeat and repeat and repeat an idea or a word. When you say it often enough, then most of us stop arguing with it. This is why marches include slogans and accusations and chants. It’s also why so many interviews of those marching are hilarious. When a marcher only knows the repetitions, they find it difficult to answer questions about why they march.

Query constant repetition and find out what story it’s telling.

In the case of ‘globalise the intifada’ and ‘from the river to the sea’ those who shout it also say that the meanings are benign. There are two sensible approaches to the claim of benign meaning. The first is to look into historical uses of the terms eg if people were killed when other claims of intifada were made then the use is violent and the claim to benign meaning is false, for instance.

The second is to find out if those who insist on using the terms have used others, with less fraught ancestral use. An Australian example is whether anyone shouting ‘globalise the intifada’ has thought about the relationship of the Bondi shooting or of the death of Malki Roth and whether they have changed their language to not hurt the families of those killed. If they haven’t used other terms that don’t hurt people… then those terms are not benign and they’re using the lie of them being benign to spread hate. The best answers to questions about repeated words and what the users intend, then, is in the use of the words, both historically and currently, and also in whether the users are willing to change things so as not to hurt anyone.

2. I know my favourite tool from Medieval French epic legends. Roland was always ‘the brave’ and Olivier was always ‘the wise.’ If you put a single adjective in front of a noun incessantly for a time, then eventually all the people who see it will include that adjective as part of their understanding of the noun. Trump does this all the time. So do antisemites. “Evil Jews”, “genocidal Israel”: no proof, no argument, just the identification of the word with the thought so that we can’t help thinking about a thing in those terms.

This example of “vile Talmud” from 22 February gives exceptionally good context for why ‘vile’ is a problem. “Ashkenazis are such annoying war mongers who follow the vile Talmud that condones the rape of 3 year old non-jewish children. The problem is that even if you murder another 1 million people you will not feel ‘safe’ as you know your time is linked to US support and you are thieves” 3:37 PM · Feb 22, 2026

3. Claims without evidence are true of many bigots in history – saying something does not make it true, and running away when people ask for evidence is one of the ways of discovering there is no evidence. The most common one in my timeline right now is people talking about Israel’s live-streamed genocide. Not a single person I’ve asked (or others have asked) has proivided any link to the live-streaming. Some duck and run, while others say “It’s so obvious, find it yourself.”

4. This links back to my earlier list because it’s to do with how we see words. Some people cannot or will not explain the words they’re using and then say “You know you know this” are adding to hate by creating fuzzy (and negative) definitions. When I ask and explain that I’m looking into definitions and word use, I often get some really interesting examples of Jew hate. This is something that looks innocuous, but may not be.

I don’t assume that lack of knowledge = hate. I find out if the person can and will explain without falling into hatespeech before I make any decisions on this. In other words, there are people who genuinely don’t know standard definitions and are willing to talk. We may not agree at the end of the conversation, but they are not spreading hate.

5. This has come up before: episodic memory, where brief anecdotes take the place of historical understanding.

And this is the moment where we move beyond rhetorical devices and into knowledge-based issues.

6. Bringing debunked knowledge into play and denying scholarly work on the subject. Khazars, genes, that no modern Jews have ancestry in the pre-Roman Levant, that all Jews are converts, that all Jews are… all kinds of things. The blood libel is one of them and I was blocked by someone claiming the 12th century story as true. Others weren’t blocked for arguing, so I suspect that my PhD in Medieval History was what got me blocked. 

7. Who we believe. I’ve noticed, for example, that Amnesty tends to believe Hamas over the Israeli government. The solution for this is to be a critic and scholar. Look at all the evidence. Don’t trust simple data. Not from Amnesty, not from the Israeli military, not from anyone. Question it. Question it deeply and profoundly and very, very critically.

One of the reasons Hamas does not get questions and their clear statements that they prefer their Jews dead are accepted is because of that mirror I mentioned in the last post. Hate gets reflected onto Jews and therefore the assumption is that all Jews are murderers and Hamas is a resistance movement. This is why we all fatalities in a given day attributed to the Israeli army on social media, while the (non-Israel) observers say “Hamas killed 20 people from a family that opposes it” and those fatalities are still attributed to Israel by most media. We don’t know how many people were killed by whom… hence the need to question.

8. Jews as aliens in all places. This is enhanced by how many stories are framed. eg SBS Australia leaves Jewish food off its food page except for certain select recipes. There are no regular articles or recipes, but there are for other Aussie minorities. (SBS is the multicultural broadcaster, so this goes against one of their core values.) And… this is what the book is about, the one I need to find a publisher for.

9. Jews having ‘hidden motives’ – even the most literal person (that would be me) is told regulatory “You don’t mean what you say. You’re hiding your secret agenda.” This is closely linked to those forcing Jewish culture to be hidden, obviously.

Much hate is being couched in very precise language eg previous post and the differences Zionist/ism can have. Much hate revolves around whether Israel should exist, whether Jews should be allowed to live but hidden under “We support those who are being hurt by evil” ie Gazans/Palestinians. Defining that hate and defining Jewish concepts that help reveal that hate (see previous posts) helps us see whether the conversation hides the hate or whether it’s less or even non-problematic. I have had good conversations with supporters of Gazans where those supporters do not use the 2nd and 3rd groups of definitions of Zionism ie do not bring antisemitism and antizionism into the conversation. Identifying this can be as simply as seeing if Zionist/Zionism/Israel/Jew are used pejoratively.

The three most obvious paths for identifying this are:

1) through the David Duke use of zio and its descendants, such as ziofascist, which I tend to think of as ziomostthings. The hate in the doxxing of Australian creatives in 2024 was really clear, for instance, because they were called the ‘zio600’ by haters. Some of those haters sent death threats. When name-calling stops being passive, then we’re all in trouble;

2) Through the Nazi terminology and evoking Nazi history. Last week I saw “Your grandparents were lampshades and soaps” three times, but more common is “You should be dead.”

3) Through the Protocols and its various descendants.

 

Adam Louis-Klein talks about us entering the antizionist era. His work and the work of those who talk with him and about his work is documenting the changes he observes. I don’t always agree with him, but I’m not going to do a giant summary of either his work or my thoughts on it. I’m not even going to give you a small summary. Instead, I’m going to suggest that he and his circle are lucid and thoughtful and worth looking into and forming your own opinions about. What is important right now, here, is what his work does to words like ‘Zionism.’

Right now, uses of ‘Zionism’ can be generally grouped, but within that group there is total mayhem. We’re moving past this moment of total mayhem (and he is one of the reasons why), and into new definitions that are shared by some and other definitions that are shared by others. Diacultural groups are changing, day by day.

Some of the constructs of hate will adapt to meet Louis-Klein’s work (and that of others – he’s an example, not the only scholar in the field), because they are challenged by them. The second group from the third post (that sounds so strange) will change even more, because Louis-Klein and company are uprooting their work and bringing it into the clear light of day. And some won’t care, won’t look.

The propaganda arm of whoever is propagandising will find other ways of sharing hate for Jews for as long as we’re a handy target. And as long as antisemitism exists, we’re a target. It’s nothing to do with Judaism (as the Zionism definitions show) and everything to do with pushing this society or that in this direction or that. When people decide not to be pushed in that direction, the hate diminishes.

This week, quite a few antisemites preened and gently threatened in my direction. More public Jews (I’m only semi-public) get regular and very nasty direct threats. There is an element of narcissistic show-off in Jew-hate, and that element has led many people into dark places since October 7. It has also caused many people to move gently away from once-friends who happen to be Jewish, lest the Jew cooties infect.

The microcosmos of antisemitism is like a teenage schoolyard in a really bad school, with bullies and mean girls and that boy who jumps off the roof because he wants to show off.

The State of Things

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I’ve seen a lot of pieces about how things are going a year into the grifter’s second occupation of the White House. Apparently most of the people who said “It won’t be that bad” and called the rest of us hysterical don’t have much to say, though they’re still not admitting they were wrong.

I think they’re mostly the kind of people who never admit they were wrong.

Me, I find things absolutely as bad as I thought they would be after I got that very sick feeling on Election Day. About the only thing that surprised me was how fast so many institutions fell apart.

I don’t just mean the law firms and universities that caved early on. And I was already aghast at where big media – newspapers and broadcast – were headed.

I mean I was surprised that the Civil Service and various government agencies weren’t more robust. I’m not blaming government employees for that – this isn’t the case of people caving. In fact, some of them tried hard not to give in.

There turned out to be a lot of loopholes in Civil Service protection, the most obvious one being probationary employees, a system intended to allow removal of people who didn’t work out, not the firing of people wholesale.

The gutting of agencies by the DOGE (pronounced dodgy) minions happened much faster than I thought it could. A lot of it was likely illegal, but it wasn’t something that could be fought quickly.

Our courts have worked reasonably well, despite the embarrassment that is our Supreme Court, but legal action is slow at the best of times and doesn’t do well in handling the move fast and break things crowd, especially when they are trying to break things permanently.

So much of our government has always worked on the assumption that people would stay within the norms.

The last time I remember seeing government destruction on this scale was when Reagan first took office, and there the norms held to a great degree. Reagan did a lot of harm – harm that led to the current grifter – but he didn’t break all the rules wholesale.

I was horrified in November 2016 and even more horrified in November 2024. I learned my lesson about what happens when unqualified and generally awful people end up in the presidency after the 2000 election. I was angry about the Supreme Court handing the job to Junior Bush, but I said, “Oh, well, how much harm can he do in four years? At least we’re not rioting in the streets.”

We should have rioted in the streets.

On the other hand, despite things being not just as bad as I expected, but even worse, I do think the grifter and his fascist crew are losing. Something has given in the last month or so. I’m not the only person who feels that way. Rebecca Solnit has written about it well. (I find her Meditations in an Emergency newsletter well worth reading these days.) Continue reading “The State of Things”…

Golden threads and weirdness and Australia.

personby Gillian Polack
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I haven’t forgotten that I was going to introduce tsedakah last week. Stuff happens. And then more stuff happens. Much of the stuff has links to matters Jewish.

First we had the Bondi murders, and then a major literary conference fell to bits largely because of internal clashes about ethics. These internal clashes became a national mess. And now, Parliament’s back early and we had so many kind words about those lost at Bondi, and a national day of mourning later in the week and I think the whole country is confused. The latest political opinion poll suggests this. A far right party is coming out of the shadows and making one of the two largest parties in the country scared. The far left has most of its old vote, but not all. And our prime minister has lost most of his personal support: if Labor want a safe election next time, they might need to change their leadership. Or not. Labor is stubborn and full of factions.

All this pales compared with what’s happening in the Middle East, in Iran, in the US, and even in the UK. But it’s our mess, and we must handle it. One thing I would like to see us return to is civil society. Discussions and analyses rather than street marches.

Why? The big Sydney Harbour Bridge march last year had a lot of wonderful people doing what they thought was the right thing. Marching alongside them in support of Gazans were the Bondi shooters, and the rather antisemitic writer who upset the applecart in Adelaide and led to one of the most important writers’ festivals in the country being cancelled. Marching alongside this writer was almost everyone I’ve seen who is loudly and opinionatedly antisemitic. Many of these individuals were grouped near a guy holding a picture of Khomeini. I don’t know if it was a photo op, or if all these people actually work together, but the cluster of them in the most famous photo of the march indicates a cluster of problems.

It’s going to be difficult to roll back the performative and to return to the Aussie politics I used to know. I’m not connected in the way I used to be. I was pushed out of the behind-the-scenes stuff through being too Jewish and too ill. Australia admires health. It also has this really stupid habit of sweeping people who belong but should not be heard under the front stairs.

Why am I thinking of front stairs?

I’m back in the Middle Ages this week and ought to be talking about foodways, but have been focused on trying to understand our current very strange politics. What happens when the Middle Ages is there and I try to pretend it isn’t? Literary references happen, most frequently.

The boy under the stairs was Saint Alexis being holy. I’m probably under the stairs, but being sarcastic. The sarcasm means that old friends and new sneak in to join me, and we watch the goings on and are surprised at how people we know to be intelligent get caught up in performance and leave a goodly portion of their intellect behind.

Tsedekah is much nicer, but must wait until life is less exciting.

Just for the record, I could have gone to Parliament House and heard all the sorrowful speeches today. Instead, I watched the second last season of Stranger Things and I did some work and filled in all kinds of questionnaires. I decided it was not wise to hear those who ought to have sorted out the hate when it was straightforward being terribly sorry at all the murders. All those people should still be alive. Synagogues and mosques should not be burning. And all the time we spend trying to find that bolted horse could have been spent in doing so many things that Australia needed.

It will be Purim soon and gifts to two charities are traditional for this festival. I’ve chosen two that are important to me. It’s early, but all this thought led me to think what I could do. One charity gives reading to children. Those children are very rural and living on the land of their ancestors. They do so much better when they have books that concern themselves and are written by people they know in the language they speak. The other is for OzHarvest, which helped me out when I was under the poverty line. It rescues food and makes sure that food reaches people who don’t have the money to buy it.

Maybe around Purim will be an appropriate time to explain why the books are more Jewish as a gift than the food. Not more Jewish. I’m explaining badly. Ranked more highly as a type of gift. You’ll have to wait until March for the explanation.

Tomorrow is research-for-writing. I am interviewing a group of Jewish teenagers for a novel. A rather special novel, and one that I was not expecting to write. It’s not a guaranteed publication, but it’s a guaranteed “I’d love to see this if you’d consider writing it.” It’s the kind of book I’ve been saying we need for the last 20 years, one where Jewish Australia is shown as the driver of a story about Jewish Australians. The US has many YA novels that do just this for Jewish readers, but Australia, far less so.

I’m also finishing a short story where the King of Demons meets a very English vampire in Sydney. I have other fiction happening, including a novel emerging later in the year, but this week everything is Jewish.

The more hate there is, the more I write Jewish stories and Jewish history. Hate has reinforced my Jewishness ever since I was a child. When I was accused of eating baby’s blood in unleavened bread (in primary school), I taught the accusers basic kashruth. These are the type of stories I always tell.

What I don’t always tell is the reason I learned the Grace After Meals (the long one, all in Hebrew). I was so annoyed with several bigots and I decided I would say it every single lunchtime until the haters stopped bugging me. I kept saying it even after they stopped bugging me. Also they would have stopped bugging me anyhow, but I didn’t know this until it happened.

They didn’t stop because I could babble in Hebrew. They stopped because I became the high school student everyone else needed to ask questions of, especially in the lead up to exams. I could teach and I remembered everything teachers’ said and I understood it all. This gave me a place to belong, a role that was so very much mine. After I put the siddur away, someone would sit next to me and ask “Gillian, do you remember the calculus from yesterday?” or, a couple of years later, “Gillian, tell me about this piece of Chaucer.”

What most Jewish Australians have been pushed out of are those places we belong in the wider community. Since Australia is so secular, this is rather more important than it looks. Changing definitions, not listening to our voices, not publishing our books, telling us we have to leave our home country because we’re Jewish, accusing us of all kinds of impossible crimes… this all smudges together and makes an everyday that’s very difficult to handle.

Every single Australian organisation that still accepts me as Gillian (right now, my professional Medieval one, the Tolkien folks, and the Perth science fiction convention) gives me a golden thread to hold and to guide me through this labyrinth. Every single one that cuts off that thread (more than one writers’ organisation), leaves me stumbling. I find my balance within Jewish Australian culture, because that’s the place where my identity is not questioned.

As has been said so many times about Australia, we’re a weird mob. This is just another facet of that weirdness.

A Bit of (Political) Poetry

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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It has come to my attention that this year’s Nebula Awards include one for poetry. This is a new and welcome addition, given the amount of excellent poetry published over the years in science fiction and fantasy magazines, not to mention collections published by Aqueduct Press, among other publishers.

It happens that I had a poem this year in the anthology Alternative Liberties, a book conceived of on election day in 2024 and published on January 20, 2025. The publisher, B Cubed Press, has made a point of publishing anthologies that use speculative fiction and poetry, plus the occasional essay from SF/F writers, to address the political struggles of our time.

In addition to my poem, Alternative Liberties includes stories by such people as Louise Marley, Adam-Troy Castro, Brenda Cooper, and Elwin Cotman. It’s highly recommended reading for our time. By the way, the publisher has put out a call for a sequel, More Alternative Liberties. Submissions must be in by December 20.

I’m reprinting my poem from the anthology here to make it easy for any SFWA members who would like to consider it for the poetry Nebula and also to encourage people to get copies of the whole anthology. You could give copies of it to any friends or relatives who might have voted badly in 2024 and come to regret that, just as a suggestion.

As most people know, i write a senryu to capture my mood each morning. This poem consists of five senryu reworked from among those written in my daily practice.

Not Civilized Yet

The election proved
what I’ve been saying for years:
Not civilized yet.

Grifters, broligarchs,
and extreme Christians in charge.
Not civilized yet.

Cops and presidents
can get away with it all.
Not civilized yet.

Control all women.
Who cares if old people die.
Not civilized yet.

We’re fighting once more
for the rights we thought we’d won.
Not civilized yet.

Continue reading “A Bit of (Political) Poetry”…