#johnmenadue — Public Fediverse posts

#Reading #ThingsYouLearnAlongTheWay #JohnMenadue
#ToiletTalk #Straya

“Long-drop toilets away from the house were common, with their cut newspaper and lime bucket. A new pit was dug before each summer. Usually it was quite a walk and, at Ardrossan, we were swooped by magpies in the season. Laurie got out his rifle and shot them. The toilet was often near the woodheap and under a pepper tree or a dollacus creeper, with a blue-mauve flower growing over it. Back lanes for toilet bucket removal were more common in the newer country towns. We enjoyed the fun of the night-soil truck running out of control at Naracoorte, down the hill from the Presbyterian church and into the Lutheran minister’s house at the bottom of the hill. We always thought that Presbyterians believed they were better than the rest of us—even their night-soil. Years later, when Gough Whitlam spoke about the ‘effluent society’ and the need to sewer the outer suburbs in the big cities, I knew exactly what he meant.”

#Reading #ThingsYouLearnAlongTheWay #JohnMenadue
#ToiletTalk #Straya

“Long-drop toilets away from the house were common, with their cut newspaper and lime bucket. A new pit was dug before each summer. Usually it was quite a walk and, at Ardrossan, we were swooped by magpies in the season. Laurie got out his rifle and shot them. The toilet was often near the woodheap and under a pepper tree or a dollacus creeper, with a blue-mauve flower growing over it. Back lanes for toilet bucket removal were more common in the newer country towns. We enjoyed the fun of the night-soil truck running out of control at Naracoorte, down the hill from the Presbyterian church and into the Lutheran minister’s house at the bottom of the hill. We always thought that Presbyterians believed they were better than the rest of us—even their night-soil. Years later, when Gough Whitlam spoke about the ‘effluent society’ and the need to sewer the outer suburbs in the big cities, I knew exactly what he meant.”

#Reading #ThingsYouLearnAlongTheWay #JohnMenadue
#ToiletTalk #Straya

“Long-drop toilets away from the house were common, with their cut newspaper and lime bucket. A new pit was dug before each summer. Usually it was quite a walk and, at Ardrossan, we were swooped by magpies in the season. Laurie got out his rifle and shot them. The toilet was often near the woodheap and under a pepper tree or a dollacus creeper, with a blue-mauve flower growing over it. Back lanes for toilet bucket removal were more common in the newer country towns. We enjoyed the fun of the night-soil truck running out of control at Naracoorte, down the hill from the Presbyterian church and into the Lutheran minister’s house at the bottom of the hill. We always thought that Presbyterians believed they were better than the rest of us—even their night-soil. Years later, when Gough Whitlam spoke about the ‘effluent society’ and the need to sewer the outer suburbs in the big cities, I knew exactly what he meant.”

#Reading #ThingsYouLearnAlongTheWay #JohnMenadue
#ToiletTalk #Straya

“Long-drop toilets away from the house were common, with their cut newspaper and lime bucket. A new pit was dug before each summer. Usually it was quite a walk and, at Ardrossan, we were swooped by magpies in the season. Laurie got out his rifle and shot them. The toilet was often near the woodheap and under a pepper tree or a dollacus creeper, with a blue-mauve flower growing over it. Back lanes for toilet bucket removal were more common in the newer country towns. We enjoyed the fun of the night-soil truck running out of control at Naracoorte, down the hill from the Presbyterian church and into the Lutheran minister’s house at the bottom of the hill. We always thought that Presbyterians believed they were better than the rest of us—even their night-soil. Years later, when Gough Whitlam spoke about the ‘effluent society’ and the need to sewer the outer suburbs in the big cities, I knew exactly what he meant.”

#Reading #ThingsYouLearnAlongTheWay #JohnMenadue
#ToiletTalk #Straya

“Long-drop toilets away from the house were common, with their cut newspaper and lime bucket. A new pit was dug before each summer. Usually it was quite a walk and, at Ardrossan, we were swooped by magpies in the season. Laurie got out his rifle and shot them. The toilet was often near the woodheap and under a pepper tree or a dollacus creeper, with a blue-mauve flower growing over it. Back lanes for toilet bucket removal were more common in the newer country towns. We enjoyed the fun of the night-soil truck running out of control at Naracoorte, down the hill from the Presbyterian church and into the Lutheran minister’s house at the bottom of the hill. We always thought that Presbyterians believed they were better than the rest of us—even their night-soil. Years later, when Gough Whitlam spoke about the ‘effluent society’ and the need to sewer the outer suburbs in the big cities, I knew exactly what he meant.”

Auspol #GoughWhitlam #JohnMenadue #TheDismissal
#Zionism #TheLoansAffair #PinceKingCharles #PineGap
#ForeignInvestments #Power #TheLoansAffair

What would Whitlam think of the Albanese Government?
an interesting conversation between John Menadue and Bart Shteinman about whitlam’s style, compared to that of albanese
—-a mid length but rewarding read covering a range of topics

“John Menadue: On the American relationship, it would be very, very different. Whitlam showed his colours about a month after his election by criticising the American bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. The Americans were terribly upset with that, because we were supposed to be a locked-in ally. People around the White House with Nixon were calling us — or at least the Australian Government, the prime minister — “North Vietnamese collaborators”. And there were some rude words that Nixon said about Whitlam – that they were “peaceniks” or worse!”

and
“Whitlam was the first person who explained to me the difference between Judaism and Zionism. As a young man I hadn’t appreciated the difference. He explained it to me, and it was quite a revelation.”
———
an interjection from maude:

incidentally, 🤔 iirc, israel in the 60s & 70s had the west’s sympathy (“remember the holocaust”, and Leon Uris books)… the reaction in 1978 after the oscars where Vanessa Redgrave spoke in favour of Palestine was huge

anyway, back to the article discussing whitlam and albanese
————-

“John Menadue: Most people would agree the politics of the Connor fundraising left a lot to be desired. It was messy, very difficult. Gough expressed a lack of confidence in Treasury and Treasury paid it back in spades, leaking a lot of information about the loan raising. So it was politically very damaging.
But what drove Rex Connor and was supported in the Labor Party generally was lost sight of in the whole “loans affair”. It was an attempt by the government to address the problem of foreign ownership of our resources. Now, around 80% of our resource industries are owned offshore: BHP, Rio Tinto, and so on, and Rex Connor was trying to head that off. Instead of selling off our companies, we would borrow but retain ownership in Australia. That would have been difficult to achieve, but that’s what drove Rex Connor, and most Australians would applaud that now.”

and
“We often hear Lord Acton: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but it was Robert Caro who made the point that power reveals what people are really like…”

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11/what-would-whitlam-think-of-the-albanese-government/

@feather1952

Explainer for USians. #TradeDeficit #profligateconsumption

You have been living beyond your means. Don’t blame the rest of the world, tax the billionaires.

“A country’s trade deficit (or more precisely, its current account deficit) does not indicate unfair trade practices by the surplus countries. It indicates something completely different. A current account deficit signifies that the deficit country is spending more than it is producing. Equivalently, it is saving less than it is investing.

“America’s trade deficit is a measure of the profligacy of America’s corporate ruling class, more specifically the result of chronically large budget deficits resulting from tax cuts for the rich combined with trillions of dollars wasted on useless wars. The deficits are not the perfidy of Canada, Mexico, and other countries that sell more to the US than the US sells to them.”

#USTrade #TradeImbalance #USA #Tariffs #TrumpTariffs
#USPol #JohnMenadue #IndependentMedia