Two things that have particularly interested me are words and numbers. I guess this is understandable given how much our society is obsessed with the same things. However, I’ve always been fascinated by the ambiguity of such things, and how they can be used to give a completely different interpretation depending on who is using them.
For example, I recently saw a sign saying “NO DOGS PLEASE”, and my immediate thought was that some of them do. Mine does when he sits quietly with his head on my lap, but doesn’t when runs around madly knocking things over. No, in the latter case he doesn’t please but in the former he does, so the sign is inaccurate from that point of view.
Of course, I do know what the sign actually meant and I’m being deliberately obtuse by interpreting it any other way. Just like many people are when they chose to portray certain politicians or other public figures in a totally misleading way.
While I’m being obtuse, I can’t help but point out the ambiguity of one of the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism. It reads:
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
I can’t help but ask if this means that anyone who says that there is no equivalence to what the Nazis did and Israel’s current actions is guilty of anti-Semitism?
Of course not. But clearly someone who says that is drawing a comparison and under the IHRA definition, that’s not allowed.
But that’s the whole thing about rules and guidelines: they need to be clear and unambiguous if they’re to avoid the sort of fiasco with the arrest of the Venezuelan leader. I’m not saying that the guy wasn’t a nasty dictator or defending him in any way. I don’t know enough about the situation to make any valid judgement.
However, I do know that we can’t base an international system of law on the basis that one country says that the leader of another country can be arrested because they assert that he or she has broken the laws of their country. And I know that I can’t argue that the laws of assault don’t apply to me because the guy I punched was Mark Latham and we all agree that he deserves a good slapping.
The charge about possession of a machine gun struck me as particularly ironic, given the USA’s stance on guns, but even without that, it does seem rather strange that they should apply such a law to a foreign country. I guess they could argue that it was a bigger find in the search for WMDs than they managed in Iraq, and Trump can claim that it was “biggest find, a great find, better than all the other presidents”.
Still they’ve arrested Maduro and I presume they’ve read him his Miranda rights, because it would be a shame if the charges were dismissed over a technicality like that. Or even a technicality such as US law doesn’t apply in other countries.
Speaking of technicalities, I can’t help but wonder whether all the calls for a Royal Commission have the same idea about what should be in the terms of reference. The actual Bondi shooters would be off-limits because one of them still has to face trial. Looking into anti-Semitism generally would probably find that it exists and not enough is being done to reduce it. So exactly what is it going to look into? After all, if you ask why it seems to have grown over the past two years, I suspect that certain people will have a very strong opinion as to why but I’m not sure that those calling for the Royal Commission will want them to be heard.
At the risk of sounding silly, I can’t help wonder why keep getting updates on which groups are calling for a RC on the nightly news… I mean, half a million people signed a petition calling for a RC into the Murdoch media and we never heard a thing about that on the news but I suspect the reason for that is the same reason that people wanted one…
Strangely, we haven’t heard from cafe owners yet and for a few years, they were being asked about everything. I guess that means they’re not in favour of one. Although using that logic, one would have to infer that the fact that only 70 sportspeople called for one, the several thousand who didn’t call for one must think that the current investigation by Dennis RIchardson and the RC by NSW will be enough.
Like I said: how people use the ambiguity of numbers is something that’s always fascinated me.
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we should have a royal commission into the bondi shootings because then the jewish lobby groups that are dictating to the government will have to be exposed same with the secretive lawyers for israel that are hiding their identity they will also have to be exposed then.
Is there a term for RC mass hysteria? An RC into the price of a cup of coffee would be more salient.
for goodness sake, doesn’t anyone understand how much these things COST ??????
Well done, Rossleigh, couldn’t agree more.
Does anyone calling for a Royal Commission on the basis that it will examine the resentment in Australia towards Israel’s actions in Gaza, or how the actions of the extremist pro-Israelis in Australia may have inflamed antisemitism really think that Anthony Albanese will create terms of reference that will expose these things after just copping a hiding on the ridiculous claim that Albanese had ignored the pro-Israel lobby and had done nothing to address antisemitism, from the pro-Israel media and pro-Israel lobby?
While we’re talking about obtuse statements, as has been pointed out many times before, antisemitism is an obtuse expression as Semites include Arabs and so Israel’s claim that Arabs are animals and hate them is antisemitic in itself – it becomes its own circular argument.
What we should have is a Royal Commission into Australia’s complicity in genocide.
Keitha, the taxpayer foots the bill, so everyone is happy.
Both Kafkaesque and Orwellian definition, while on any RC media and related campaigners are mute or confusing on potential terms of reference; point is to deflect and confuse the public?
Yet the priority of this ‘project’ is not Israeli citizens &/or Jewish diaspora, but in the eyes of the public to denigrate Palestine/Islam, universities and liberals/left, by the right…..as always with compliant media and minority of right wing Jewish; plus to protect Netanyahu from the law.
Project Esther reported by US media May 2025 inc NYT, missed locally (even though local journos mostly follow US media), but in plain sight, missed by all….
See Koch Heritage website under (anti) ‘Progressivism, Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism
https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/project-esther-national-strategy-combat-antisemitism
The same Heritage has been in the headlines two weeks ago Reuters
‘US Heritage Foundation thinktank staff quit amid antisemitism controversy’
Heritage is also partnered with Fox Board Abbott’s Budapest workplace the Danube Institute.
The NSW Government has committed to a state-based inquiry into the Bondi Junction attack, which is expected to be a Royal Commission, but it is still in the process of being established and does not have an officially named commissioner or finalised terms of reference. In parallel, the Federal Government is conducting an independent review led by Dennis Richardson.
As there has been no formal progress on the NSW Royal Commission and with all the yelling for a national commission, Albanese should just coordinate with Minns and create the RC as a federal enquiry: it will give the reach of the yet to be appointed Commissioner greater scope, beyond the jurisdictional limitations of NSW.
Just get on with it!
Somehow the assassination of fifteen (15) Jewish persons in one afternoon pales into insignificance when compared to the 70,000+ Palestinian Indigenous landowners, men, women and children in Gaza and the West Bank subjected to a planned Knesset authorised Operation Hannibal attack on a music festival over the past three years.
Given the tactics used by the amoral IDF are similar to those used in 1943 at the Warsaw Ghetto by the then German Army, why is there any difference??
Anybody for a deliberate Israeli policy of forced evacuation during the destruction of public infrastructure especially hospitals & schools plus starvation to satisfy a couple of nutter Zionist rabbis protecting an allegedly corrupt Israeli Prime Minister??
Judaism has been deliberately entangled with the 19th century European theology of Zionism as a propaganda strategy for the theft of Palestinian lands.
See also: Confronting Genocide with Civil Disobedience: The Pine Gap Protests and Gaza 6 January 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark AIM Extra
Rossleigh has raised an interesting point with his ”KNOW DOGS PLEAS”, obviously a call for a better understanding of ”dog language” in a crowded metropolitan human world.
In regional areas this is relatively easy because any working dog worth his daily feed generally knows more about what is going on than their handler. So the onus is upon the handler to interpret to dog’s pleas to ”get away back where you belong and allow me to enjoy mustering the mob”.
Fortunately dogs of my acquaintance have little interest in politics now that the local council has designated a leash free area allbeit in a difficult to access part of town.
But if dogs were interested in politics, then they would wonder why their handlers accepted a standard of behaviour from their political representatives that they would never consider from their working dogs.