Monthly Archives: June 2018

Reds Under the Beds

By Posted in Books, Family, friendship, Life, Opinion, Reviews, Work by Others, writing Tagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Michael Benjamin Komesaroff was a conspicuous proletarian classmate of mine during our later years at Scopus (1963). He had a lived political ideology, like other Komesaroffs before him, an indivisible loyalty to Jewishness and to his country of citizenship. I recall his vernacular speech deafening us classmates in his espousal of Labor politics. We called him Kommo; he was a social democrat before most of us knew the term. Those same politics marked the generation of his immediate ancestors, and brought them to the attention of ASIO. At the time Lenin was preaching international revolution, a doctrine that unsettled Australia’s conservatives. Here were the Komesaroffs, newly arrived from that revolutionary hotbed. Where did their loyalties lie? ASIO became very interested in them, and now their descendant, with a career in international journalism behind him, investigates the investigators in a new book. “Reds Under the Beds” is the result.

“Reds Under the Beds” describes the abiding interest of Australia’s intelligence community in a family who had immigrated in the early decades of the Twentieth Century.  The author’s love and respect for those ancestors match his feelings for Australia. His meticulous research informs this account of a group whose hallmark was loyalty. The Komesaroffs were loyal Jews who became loyal citizens of Australia. Jewish loyalty mandated their love of Zion and their opposition to fascism, while loyalty to the country of adoption saw them acknowledged as exemplary citizens. Somehow ASIO became all too interested in the Jewish concerns of the Komesaroffs and quite blind to their lives as citizens.

Michael Komesaroff writes his family’s story dispassionately, in clear and clean prose. His analysis of the political tides and times is  revelation, as is his understanding of the contest for middle Australia between Social Democrats and Conservatives. With a calm that is unusual he identifies prevailing anti-semitic attitudes without inflating it beyond its true dimensions. Most topically, Komesaroff shows us how Australians of the most ordinary loyalty can come under pervading suspicion and investigation by Intelligence organisations. In our times, when mistrust of the citizenry is translated into something of a growth industry, a poised and intelligent balance is needed between the community’s needs of security and of community. In the case of these ‘Reds under the Beds’, ASIO emerges, showing limited intelligence.

“Reds Under the Beds” is published by Hybrid Publishers and is available from most booksellers and Amazon. Further details of the book are contained on the Amazon website (here).

As outlined in the flyer, I have the pleasure of launching the book at 4:00 pm on Sunday 15 July at Glen Huntly Park Function Room, Glen Huntly Park, corner of Neerim and Booran Roads.

Ecclesiastes, 12, 1

By Posted in Childhood, friendship, Life, Love Tagged , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

A letter arrived inviting me to join a panel of former students addressing a bunch of peers from my old school. Panelists were to discuss a number of questions which all boiled down to If you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently?

The questions made me think about my schooldays. I loved school. I felt happy. I thought the brutality of our teachers was somehow just the way of things, neither wrong nor right, simply conduct that lay beyond judgement. I didn’t like it – in fact when I witnessed it I’d whinny with the ugly mirth of the unpunished; when I received it I felt I might vomit. But then I didn’t like winter either. Winter and corporal punishment were both unpleasant and both lay beyond lawmaking.

As I reviewed our jungle behaviour my older self felt sad and ashamed. I wished we had been kinder. An instinct revealed to us whoever was the most vulnerable. Arriving as a new boy in mid-term I was conspicuously vulnerable and the hounds duly bayed and pursued me. Being new was a temporary condition; others suffered perpetually. In my turn I identified one or two of these and I teased them with relish.

In time I saw how that fat child, this gay person, that person whose father belted her every day, attracted the crows, and I declined to join in the pecking. In time two of these three were to die by their own hand; the third tried and failed.

I wasn’t fat, or gay. My father didn’t beat me. My schooldays were happy. Inspiring teachers inspired me; loving mentors nurtured me. I suppose I blossomed.

Half a century and more have passed since I lived in that arena of mind-nurture and bloodsport. My eyes, clouded now with cataract, my knees grating, my hearing dimmed, my balance wonky, my farting – ever a reckless delight – now hazardous, what advice would I offer today’s schoolchild? Should I say Rejoice in the days of your youth before the evil days come when you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”?

I watch those tender green shoots anxiously as they don school garb and they venture into their jungles. I hold my breath and hope. Will she make her way? Will she find a friend? What wise words might I proffer?

Instead of speaking words I hope I might hold my peace and let her be, and let her become.

Faith and the Flu Vaccine

By Posted in Faith, Family, Life, Medical, Opinion Tagged , , , , , , , , 13 Comments

Some trust in God, some trust in nature, others trust in nothing and no-one.

The roots of these feelings lie deep, too deep generally for the light to penetrate.

These feelings are almost religious: they express some faith or, occasionally, a fear of all faith.

If you try to debate feelings of this nature you’ll find them impervious to argument. They are held sacred and well away from the light of enquiry.

If you believed I held a particular faith you might consider my belief absurd. But because of your good manners you’d probably keep that view of my quaint beliefs private. You’d realise argument would not budge me and, out of kindness you’d refrain from locking horns with me.

Circumcision evokes a great example of quasi-religious positions. Whenever you hear the subject discussed you’ll recognise the intensity with which a person expresses a position. Here we find conviction, not opinion. Convictions are guarded fiercely, they are immune to fresh evidence: conviction is the opposite of scientific openness of mind. I have noticed how lay people, doctors and nurses alike defend their positions on the foreskin with religious intensity. I do not argue with the foreskin zealot.

Winter has come to Australia with promise of our regular influenza epidemic. With winter comes a rise in religious sentiment on the matter of immunisation against the flu. The government preaches immunisation, we doctors echo with our own hosannahs, the trusters in nature shriek back. We all talk at each other. We find it hard to listen when our faiths collide. Doctors trust in herd immunity. On Facebook my daughter tells ‘friends’ she trusts her doctor father. One respondent trusts in nature (“I‘ve been vegan for seven years, and I’ve never had the flu during all that time.”). Another respondent trusts no-one and nothing (“ It’s a conspiracy. Big pharma in cahoots with government.”)

I looked up some facts about influenza and vaccination. I found plenty of facts but these will change few minds. (Two thousand proven influenza deaths. Lots of people become unwell in the two weeks following vaccination. Not everyone who is vaccinated with be immunised. Not a single proven death from the vaccine.)

I had been doctor for two weeks when I saw my first influenza death. The patient caught the flu late in pregnancy. She deteriorated rapidly, developed pneumonia and was soon brain-dead. Her baby was delivered by emergency caesarean section and lived. That baby never knew her mother. Mother was twenty-four years of age. That was my own age at the time.

Last week I vaccinated my children and my grandchildren against the flu. I had the vaccine myself. I offer the same vaccines to all my patients. I answer their questions, I provide information, but I don’t enter into religious disputation.