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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 29th October 2025 on Monocle Radio. How many times can a ceasefire be breached before it isn't really a ceasefire? Why have Pakistan and Afghanistan fallen quite so sensationally out? And should prime actual ministers be wearing band themed T shirts in public? I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts.
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FOREIGN.
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Welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Lin o' Donnell and Michael Binion will discuss the day's big stories. And our on this Day historical series recalls the day that did not, contrary to popular myth, prompt flocks of stockbrokers to leap from Wall street windows, but which was still pretty bad. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily.
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Foreign.
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This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Lyn o', Donnell, columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, and Michael Binion, foreign affairs specialist for the Times. Hello to you both.
C
Hello.
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We have sort of a northern Britain themed light introductory banter spot this evening. Michael, you have been to Edinburgh, which is a lovely city, but I for one would suggest that this is not perhaps the ideal time of year to go. Isn't it freezing, Col, Cold and dark at lunchtime?
C
Not quite at lunch. It is freezing cold, though it changes if you wait half an hour, it'll be different. And one day was sort of cold, the next day was pouring of rain, next day was brilliant sun. It looked wonderful. But you do. I mean, you work it off because you go up and downhill all the time.
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You do. It is not a city for the lover of flat surfaces.
C
No. But it's a city full of wonderful things, culture, art, history. Gosh. Name it. Yes.
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Yep.
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No.
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Big fan. Lyn, you have been not quite so far north. Yes.
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I went to Leeds for a few days last week to visit with old friends who I know from my days in China. So it was a nostalgic visit and new as well. I toured Bronte country with them.
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Leeds, I think is actually undersold. I think it's. I've been there a couple of times, not for very long, but I think it's a very handsome city.
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Yeah, I liked it. Quite an obvious post industrial development effort going on that I think is being done very sensitively and one of the best military history museums I have ever been to.
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And because we will be returning later in the show to the theme of northern English gloom, you did undertake a pilgrimage to a spot which I suspect is also of interest to fans of the band, which we will be coming.
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To later I would imagine. So I went to visit Sylvia Plath's.
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Grave and what goes on there? Have people left votive offerings?
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Not votive offerings, but there's a lot of abuse of Ted Hughes notes like post it notes and things and other trinkets, bracelets, jewelry, the Turkish evil eye bracelets left there. It was really quite and one of the best tended as well. People have planted lots of plants and flowers on the site.
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Clearly a lot of her readers have picked aside well, we will start in the Middle east. The recent truce in Gaza was always best assumed to have an asterix adjoining the word ceasefire. And so it continues to prove. According to Gazan authorities, at least 104 Palestinians, among them 46 children, were killed in Gaza last night by Israeli airstrikes after, by Israel's account, Hamas launched an attack on Israeli positions near Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip that killed an Israeli soldier. Israel further accused Hamas of not meeting its obligations re returning the bodies of Israeli hostages who have died since being seized by Hamas on October 7, 2020. Michael we will come first of all to the Israeli response to the Hamas actions, but is it clear why Hamas would still be doing anything at all? I mean, as things stand, they have kind of got away with it. They are back in charge of that amount of the Gaza Strip that the Israelis have withdrawn from. Why would they poke the bear as it was in this respect?
C
Well, I think they also are trying to get back at their other Palestinian rivals and enemies, some of whom have been financed by the Israelis. And we've seen these publicly executions in the streets and whether this is in any way connected to that, whether they were having a go at some of the other Palestinian groups who are hoping to seize on the opportunity to take power themselves if Hamas is to step down. But it's a very big if. Otherwise it makes no sense at all because Hamas, I mean they obviously want to show they're still there. They want to show that they're still up leading a kind of noble defense of Gaza. But of course they must have known that retaliation would come. And boy has it come.
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Is there any discernible rhyme reason to that retaliation though, Lyn because obviously Israel has a choice here. They could have decided we won't react in the interests of maintaining the ceasefire and perching on the moral high ground. We will react, but only like a tiny, tiny little bit or we will go big as they have done.
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I think that Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel has proved since October 7th that going big is the way to go. And I think that Hamas also knows this. And we've got to remember that this latest war was started when Hamas breached a ceasefire. Honouring ceasefires is not something that they do. It's a terrorist organisation that is now fighting for its survival. So I don't think we can be surprised, shocked, anything more than dismayed, really, by the reactions of both sides being as predictable as they have turned out to be.
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Because it is the big problem here, Michael. Well, a big problem here that for both Hamas and for Benjamin Netanyahu, it's easy enough to arrive at an analysis which holds that peace doesn't really help either of them very much. Hamas need conflict with Israel to justify their existence. And absent a war, Netanyahu has criminal charges facing him in Israel and an extremely rickety and bad tempered coalition which is likely to unravel and dump him out of power.
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That's exactly the problem. Yes. And people have been saying this for the past year or so, that he is prolonging the war because he doesn't want his coalition to collapse. If there is a ceasefire, or if there was one some time ago, and if there were then elections, he would be out of office straight away. And that he doesn't want, because, as you say, he is facing criminal charges which could indeed lead to, if convicted, lead to prison. And he wouldn't be the first Israeli Prime Minister to go to prison on that. Ehud Barak also went to prison.
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Ehud Olmet.
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Sorry, sorry. Yes, yes, get it right. Yes, thank you, Ehud Olmet. But it's not in the interests of this particular coalition, particularly not of the two hawks, the two right wing members in his cabinet. And they have already said they don't like the present ceasefire. They voted against it, although they didn't bring the government down. Similarly, as you say, hammerhead, they have an interest in showing they're still there, they're still fighting, they are a real force. They've lost the support of Iran, which has been taken out of the picture. Really. They don't. They seem pretty short of weapons, I would think, but they want to make sure that nobody supplants them in Gaza.
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All that being the case, Lyn, and for all that, US President Donald Trump's been very keen to stress that he thinks the ceasefire is not at risk. He does regard it, of course, as a massive feather in his cap and a king key plank of his pitch for next year's Nobel Peace Prize. Is there a real risk that this just does completely unravel?
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I think there's always a risk of that. But what Trump seems to have been able to show is that people will listen and obey. It's happened. You know, nobody really expected the ceasefire that he pulled together a couple of weeks ago to even be pulled together. So, you know, it's a very clumsy way of me trying to say I think he can do it. And I think that Netanyahu, who will listen to him, I think he is being goaded by Hamas. Hamas knows how he will react. But yeah, I think that, you know, this is probably the one that can be pulled off. I do.
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Would it help in that endeavor, Michael, if we did arrive at a point at which we had some idea what is going to happen next in Gaza? Because at the moment, no one's absolutely clear on that, or actually no one's even slightly clear on that. Everyone has kept saying that Hamas will not be invited to participate in the future governance of Gaza. But as things stand and as they are attempting to demonstrate, they are the governance of Gaza still. So what do we do about that? Because we have also heard, as you will doubtless be aware, King Abdullah II of Jordan just saying, yeah, nobody's going to send troops into that mess if they have to enforce a peace rather than merely protect it.
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Well, exactly. And of course, if there's actual fighting going on, all these peacekeeping forces, so called or international control or whatever the phrase is phrase is, are just not going to come. King Abdullah is absolutely right. And they certainly don't want to be in the line of fire. People are shooting at the sort of separation forces and then the so called government that is meant to take over this board of experts and then bringing in some kind of Palestinian representation. Well, neither Hamas nor Netanyahu have any interest in stage two at all. In fact, they want, they're both trying to sabotage it. Netanyahu has made it absolutely clear he does not contemplate or indeed he will not tolerate a Palestinian state, that's the last thing he wants. He certainly doesn't want. A two state solution has been put forward by most international statesmen. And if a renewed bout of violence will block that or stop it or postpone it individually for him, so much the better. Similarly for Hamas, because under the deal, they have to relinquish power, step aside and let somebody else come forward. Well, nobody else is willing to do that if the danger is civil war on the streets.
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Well, now to the Durand line As proper Northwest frontier heads refer to the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is always chaotic and volatile, but has recently been even more so. Earlier this month, Pakistan launched airstrikes at targets across Afghanistan in pursuit of the Pakistani Taliban. The Taliban adjacent Islamists who have been making a nuisance of themselves in Pakistan for nearly 20 years. In response, the Afghan Taliban took pot shots at Pakistan military bases along the border. At least 23 Pakistani soldiers were killed. Talks have subsequently been held in Istanbul attempting to forestall any recurrence of such. But said talks have now broken down and Pakistan's Defence Minister, Khawaja ASI 41 is unimpressed, threatening to drive the Taliban, quote, back into their caves. Lyn, this is very much your former beat. These are two countries, you know. Well, if we refer to, or if we refer back to how this appears to have started, is it clear why Pakistan chose this moment to take a poke at the Pakistani Taliban in Afghanistan? Because there's always been actually an amount of cooperation, has there not, between elements of Pakistan's government and the actual Afghan Taliban.
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The Afghan Taliban are in power in Afghanistan thanks to Pakistan, both the army and the intelligence agency. And you might remember that a long time ago Hillary Clinton said, you can't support snakes and think that they're only going to bite your neighbours. You can't have snakes in your own backyard and think they're only going to bite your neighbours. And Pakistan is now finding that the snakes are biting them. And it's all very well to say, yes, there's just been skirmishes by the Afghan Taliban over the border into those Pashtun tribal areas because they, you know, along with the Afghan Taliban do not recognise the Durand Line as the border. But you know, I've seen stuff on social media from TTP and Afghan Taliban associated social media sites showing photographs taken and video taken of sites in Islamabad. And you mentioned the comments by the Pakistani Foreign minister that Defence Minister, Defence Minister, there will be all out war. The Taliban have also said, you know, we will start targeting Islamabad now. They don't have an air force, they can't send in drones. That's a threat. Threat to launch terrorist attacks on sites in Islamabad. And you know, don't put it, don't count them out on that one because this is a terrorist organization. They are very close to even one could say that the ttp, the Pakistani Taliban, is a branch of the Taliban. And I think that the war that is going on on that border is being sponsored and promoted by the Afghan Taliban as part of their ideological Outreach, if you like, aimed at destroying the Pakistani state.
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There's just one thing I want to pick up on there quickly, Lyn, and it is that relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban. Is it fair to say, though, there's conflict within Pakistani government and Pakistani institutions about this? Because as I've always understood it, the relationship is mostly between the Inter Services Intelligence, the ISI and the Pakistani military military with the Taliban. While Pakistan's actual government, the civilian in inverted commas government, has rather less patience.
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For this outreach, quite possibly, but the country is run by the military. So, you know, does it really matter? To put it bluntly, I think that the Pakistanis have finally come to the realisation that the Taliban in Afghanistan are not going to be brought to heel. They thought that after 20 years, years of supporting efforts to remove the US led coalition, that they were going to have a polite proxy puppet authority that would give them the strategic depth that they so like to refer to and a foil against India. And you know, the Taliban have just done a nice diplomatic deal with the Indians. So they've been, you know, the Pakistanis have been foiled at every turn.
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Michael, these rather bellicose statements by Pakistan's Defense Minister, Khawaja Asif, talking also about obliterating the Taliban, I assume it hasn't escaped his notice that the armed forces of the United States and its allies recently just concluded 20 years of trying and failing to do that. Is it really possible that Pakistan could succeed where they did not?
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No, I think it's a boast, it's a threat. It's an attempt to talk up their power, their potential, frighten the Taliban, who I don't think were in the least surprised because I think Lyn made a very good point. The Indians are fishing in dirty waters and they're catching quite a lot there. They have seen that they can easily use the Taliban to annoy Pakistan, destabil upset, you know, do everything to discombulate the Pakistanis. And the more that the government in Pakistan is, is confused, adrift, angry, upset, the happier the Indians are. And I think the Pakistanis equally realize that and are very, very upset, particularly after the latest clashes they've just had with India over terrorism and over one of the wars that Trump said he'd solved, the Pakistanis are pretty wary. And so they want to make sure that in a way, if they can, they're going to blunt India's edge in Afghanistan.
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Lyn, Pakistan is also talking about or and indeed possibly has closed the land border with Afghanistan. Now, I assume that they've built that up a little bit since the last time I crossed that land border in the late 90s. The fortifications were a literal wooden gate which a terribly helpful Pakistani officer opened for me as I walked through with my backpack.
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Did it creak?
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It literally. But nonetheless, you can't shut that border, can you? I mean, is that going to make any actual difference trade wise? I mean it will doubtless impede the progress of big trucks taking commercial stuff back and forth, but it's not going to stop militants crossing that border, is it?
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Well, the militants cross through the mountain passes. The trucks carrying goods, fruit, grain, coal, all of the stuff that goes both ways across that border have to go through proper border passes. And so there are reportedly trucks backed up and have been backed up for weeks. And the Pakistanis have been expelling so far 2 million Afghan nationals back into Afghanistan as a way of punishing the Taliban. So you know, there's a lot going on but you know, as Michael mentioned, also India, their the destabilization of both Pakistan and Afghanistan is going to play into India's regional ambitions. And also you have at the other side of the border you've got Iran and the Russian satellite states, you've got China. There's an awful lot going on in that part of the world that this border clash is very relevant to.
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Well, to South Korea now where delegates at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation wingding are to be treated not only to a characteristically coherent address by the leader of the free world, but also to a speech by Kim Nam Jo, better known as rm, leader of K pop sensations bts. It is quite the head spinning juxtaposition for APEC delegates between a hilariously out of his depth showbiz celebrity who is usually found emitting scattershot verbiage and capering frantically in front of delirious audiences of glassy eyed supplicants who hang on his every word and shriek at his every Twitch and the 31 year old rapper from Seoul, RM come on, you all saw that coming. RM spoke enthusiastically. It says here here of the virtues of cultural diversity and creative collaboration. Michael. It does, it does on the one hand seem a little bit weird. All jokes aside, but RM is the front person of a gazillion dollar commercial concern which has been a colossal export success for South Korea. There's no earthly reason why he shouldn't have something to say to a gathering such as this, is there?
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No, not at all. And as long as he's brief to say something that sounds vaguely coherent and seems Sort of patriotic. He plays right into the hands of a government that is pretty nervous about all these tariffs that are being imposed all around Asia and the threat that although President Trump is there, you know, he may suddenly do something that really upsets the South Korean economy. So they are keen to promote their alternative export. I mean, in a way, RM is the sort of ABBA of South Korea. And I mean, ABBA earned apparently more for Sweden than Volvo cars did. And it really is very important, particularly brand image stuff. I mean, I actually don't lavishly or even at all follow what K Pop provides, but I'm sure zillions do. And even if President Trump doesn't, he knows that this is something that is quite a factor in Asia.
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The other thought that struck me, Lyn, was I think the other reason, I think this is possibly not as absurd a proposition as it may look, is that the people, the kind of people who attend such beanos as apec, tend to be the kind of people who might undervalue culture and its soft potential. Whereas K Pop and I do share with Michael the fact that I believe myself to be not in its target audience, but it has done absolute wonders for South Korea in the last decade or so in alerting people to the fact that, well, that South Korea exists and creating a positive image of it.
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Well, indeed. And to paraphrase Homer Simpson, celebrities. What don't they know?
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Well, yes, we did want to get to that. Lynne, by and large, do you think celebrities and politicians should be encouraged to mix or not so much?
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I think that soft power is incredibly important and I would be very surprised if the government represented at this meeting were not aware of it. America has had Hollywood and Coca Cola for, as you know, for a century. The French, everybody knows it. So, no, I think the reason that he was there was because. And you know, K Pop is. It pretty much started as a. As an imitation of Japanese pop in the 80s and the 90s. I was a great aficionado when I was going to school in Japan of a girl group called Pink Lady. I used to be able to do their dances in my sailor suit, school.
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Uniform on the radio. Lynn, we could tell people, you're doing it right now and you remember everything and how's this?
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Yeah, exactly.
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They'd be none the wiser. And now Michael's joining in. Oh, my go, Michael. You must have witnessed this more than once, though. Politicians do have a tendency to get a little bit agog around, actually famous people, they do.
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They think it adds to their image. They think it Gives them glamour, it gives them a sort of cool image. It makes them seem in touch. I mean, every British Prime Minister has done the same. And they even pick their football teams, which they think are the ones that are going to earn them Brownie points. But in fact, they sometimes don't know anything about these teams. They don't even know where they are, what they've done. So you've got to actually make your selection quite carefully. And particularly chumming up to some pop star, you never know that some awful scandal might suddenly emerge a few months later, as they usually do.
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Well, moving seamlessly along from that thought to Joy Division, there, of course, who are doubtless now enjoying a surge in streaming in Australia, the late 70s Mancunian mopas find themselves at the centre of a nontroversy after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, returning from the United States, descended the steps of his aircraft wearing a T shirt adorned with the artwork of Peter Savile's famous cover of Joy Division's tremendous debut album, Unknown Pleasures. Australia's opposition leader Susan Lay and angry lunatic on Australian cable news are presently feigning teeth gnashing rage about the fact that Joy Division took their name from Yahel Denur's novella House of Dolls, set in the brothels of the concentration camps he had survived. Michael, first of all, your favorite Joy Division track would be.
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Oh, absolutely. All of them. I like.
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They're wonderful.
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I just play anyone and I'll be out there. I frankly have never heard of them, to be honest.
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Well done. Exactly the answer I was angling for. This is our fellow. Sorry, our shared Prime Minister. Our common prime minister is what I'm grasping for here, Lyn. We are citizens of the nation he leads. Are you aghast to see him wearing a Joy Division T shirt?
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Well, it wasn't like he was doing it any great favour. You know, the dad bod descending from the plane. I mean, he could have put a jacket on. I think that this is just, you know, this is the politics of the pathetic. The people who can't come up with anything to talk about of any substance. But if I was Joy Division, I would kind of not want him to have worn that shirt.
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But the thing is, this is how terribly old we are all getting. Lyn, that album is nearly 50 years old. A man of Anthony Albanese's approximate vintage could very well have bought it more or less when it came out. I don't doubt that he knows the band and likes the record. Is there any reason that a 60 something prime minister should not be wearing the T shirt.
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There's no reason at all. But there is a reason why a 60 or whatever age Prime Minister should be wearing a matching jacket and trousers and a proper shirt, whether the neck is tied or not, to descend. I didn't know anybody would see me. You're the Prime Minister. You know there's eyes on you at all times. Please dress the part.
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Yeah. Michael, if we can agree, and I think we can agree, that the controversy, the flap that people are trying to beat up about the propriety of Joy Division's name is in this context, absolute bollocks, is it perhaps still right and proper that if you are Prime Minister of the actual damn country on official business, you should try to look smart.
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You do. Of course you should. You should try to look smart. You should dress properly. You should expect cameras to greet you coming back from some foreign triumph where you've just asserted the rights of your country and all that. And therefore you should be ready to wave and cheer and dress appropriately. You might maybe come overnight and therefore you look sort of bleary and a bit tired and whatever, but don't come in something that looks as though you've been sleeping in it.
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Should we be at least reassured somewhat? Returning to the Australian domestic political milieu, Lyn, that actually quite a lot of the opposition leaders own colleagues appear to be backing somewhat nervously away from this one. I mean, I think possibly pouring further mortification on the surviving members of Joy Division. We've had more than one fairly middle aged Australian Conservative politician, say, always been a huge fan of New Order, love them.
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Well, he's the same age as all the guys in New Order, so why not? They should be happy there's still some around.
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And Michael, just finally on this, drawing upon your vast experience of the evolution of the media. There've always been people, I'm sure in the media whose job is making fusses out of nothing, conjuring storms in teacups. We just hear more of them than we used to. Do you think the people who are making a thing of this on Australian cable news in particular, do they actually care or are they just putting on a show?
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No, they're putting on a show. I mean, it's absolutely absurd to link this to concentration camps. I mean, this is reaching back into the easy thing. Nazis, Nazi horrors, Nazi atrocities, atrocities, Holocaust, all that. You just flag that up immediately. Oh my God, you know he's a follower of Hitler and I mean, what are they aiming at? It's absolute total as well. Perhaps I won't use the same dude phrase in Australian language, but I would say it's nonsense.
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And on that upbeat note, Michael Binion and Lyn o', Donnell, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, our on this Day historical series recalls the bad day on Wall street by which all other bad days on Wall street are judged. Judged. The Roaring Twenties, they called them, a glorious decade of peace and prosperity, astonishing technological development, exuberant fashion, handsome architecture, sharp witted satire, innovative literature, talking pictures, swinging jazz, annoying dance crazes, women voting, paintings that looked like something other than the thing they were the painting of, and in general, what F. Scott Fitzgerald described as an age of miracles, an age of art, an age of excess. But as Fitzgerald's most famous protagonist spends an entire book agonizing beating on boats against the current and so forth. Nothing lasts forever. Broken, Ain't got a dime. Black Tuesday, as October 29, 1929, would become known, the day Wall Street's Dow Jones index dropped nearly 12%, did not dawn altogether unheralded. Black Tuesday had been preceded the previous week by Black Thursday, when the stock market swooned 11%, and the previous day by Black Monday day, when it tanked nearly 13%. As recently as September 3, 1929, the Dow Jones had exalted at a positively resplendent 381 points. At close of business October 29, it was a frail, whimpering 230, bad though this was and unfathomable though it would have seemed at the time, things were about to get small, so, so much worse. Writing 25 years later, the economist J.K. galbraith reflected what looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering and also to ensure that as few people as possible escape the common misfortune. The only exception was those involved in the composition, record recording, manufacture, distribution and retail of blues records. Hit it blind, Alfred.
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There was once a time when everything was cheap, but now price has almost put some lamb to sleep.
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It was hoped for a while that Black Tuesday would be just one of those rests that markets sometimes take after a long surge, Adam Smith's invisible hand yanking the break to prevent an uncontrollable careen. And it was hardly the first lurch to which the market had subjected American investors. There had been the panic of 1907, the panic of 1901, the panics of 1896, 1893, 1884 and 1873, and a Black Friday in 1869, after President Ulysses Grant flooded the gold market in an attempt to stop archetypal robber barons Jay Gould and James Fisk ramping the gold price to their own advantage. Fisk, incidentally, was shot dead three years later, aged 36, by his business partner Edward Stokes, after the two had fallen out over matters including but not limited to, the affections of Fisk's mistress. You heard it by the job, But Black Tuesday was different. Previous downturns had perhaps been comparable to storms, if we imagine, for the purpose of whimsical metaphor, the American economy as a neighborhood. What had happened before was the kind of squall which might loosen a few tiles from roofs, cause an amount of expense and inconvenience, but not grand scheme of things. Any real world worry, so long as the walls were solid and the foundations sound. Black Tuesday was more akin to the earthquake which reveals that entire cities have been erected on shifting ground with flimsy material and dilatory oversight. America's economy was leveled.
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I just blowed in and I got them Dust bowl blues.
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At the depth of the Great Depression, the American stock market was down 90% from its peak. Unemployment in the United States reached 25. Thousands of banks failed and took millions of savings accounts with them. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes. Several dull novels were written. Matters were not helped by a dunderheaded Republican U.S. senator Reid Smoot, and a lack witted Republican U.S. congressman Willis Hawley, bouncing through an act which raised tariffs on thousands of imports in an inevitably futile bid to protect American industry. Fortunately, it is simply impossible to imagine any American politician today trying something quite so stupid. The events of this day 96 years ago brought an almost chronologically exact end to the 1920s, as they had been enjoyed by the Welsh, wealthy and fortunate. And though the Wall Street Crash and the ensuing Great Depression destroyed any amount of American industries, they did inaugurate at least one new one, that is that of trying to figure out what it all meant. Writing amid the economic carnage, H.L. mencken, wistfully and he surely realized, pointlessly anticipated an equivalent dramatic correction in values as well as price.
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Life in America had become an almost.
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Unanimous effort to keep up with the Joneses.
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And what the Joneses had to offer by way of example was chiefly no more than a puerile ostentation. So many luxuries became necessities that the land separating the one from the other almost vanished. People forgot altogether how to live well and devoted themselves frantically to a living go.
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We can surely all agree that lessons have been learned, etc. And that is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Lyn o' Donnell and Michael Binion. Today's show was produced by Monica Lillis and researched by Joanna Moser. Our sound engineer was David Stevens with editing assistance from Christy o'. Grady. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
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Sam.
Episode Theme:
Today's Monocle Daily delves into the persistent fragility of the Gaza ceasefire and its political undercurrents; the rapidly escalating tension along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border; the growing significance of soft power (including a K-pop star's APEC address); and a lighthearted debate about whether national leaders should wear band t-shirts in public. The episode also features a historical deep-dive into the 1929 Wall Street Crash.
[03:24–10:43]
Israel-Hamas Tensions:
Mutual Hostility & Political Incentives:
International Dynamics:
[10:43–18:30]
Border Violence & Backstory:
Internal Pakistani Divisions:
Regional Entanglements:
[18:30–23:09]
A K-pop Star at APEC:
Politicians & Celebrity Association:
[23:09–27:37]
Australian PM's Joy Division Shirt:
The Panel’s Take:
[28:05–34:40]
This episode blends sharp, often sardonic analysis with a sense of amused world-weariness typical of Monocle’s coverage. The conversation swings easily from deadly serious conflict zones to bizarre political sideshows, poking fun equally at grandstanding politicians and media non-troversies, and winding down with a wry historical reflection.
For listeners looking for concise perspectives on major global flashpoints, as well as thoughtful (and sometimes cheeky) commentary on less weighty but revealing moments in political culture, this episode is an engaging primer.