Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.
— David McCullough, born in 1933
Russian-born Australian army private and her husband charged with espionage
From his home in Tel Aviv, Sir Frank Lowy cannot reconcile the Australia he knew with the Australia he has read about since October 7. As the nation is blighted by unprecedented levels of anti-Semitism, he reflects on the past 60 years.
Sir Frank Lowy cannot reconcile the Australia he knew with the Australia he has read about since the October 7 attack on Israel triggered the Israel-Hamas war.
From his home in Tel Aviv, Lowy, one of Australia’s most successful immigrants, has watched in despair as the country that once welcomed him with open arms as a Jewish post-war refugee has been blighted by unprecedented levels of anti-Semitism. “I’m very disappointed because Australia is a fair country and Australian people are fair people,” he says sadly. “And that fairness has somehow lost its way.
“How does an evil like anti-Semitism find its way there?
“I have no explanation for it, I have no words for it but I am greatly disappointed. I sincerely hope this is a temporary affair.”
For Lowy, now 93, the issue is closer to his heart than most.
“I am not neutral about this,” he says. “I suffered from anti-Semitism (in the war). I lost my father and my mother lost her family through the cruelty of anti-Semitism. We need to get rid of these poisonous feelings in our society.”
See the 60 most influential people of the past six decades in The Australian’s 60th Anniversary Collector’s Edition magazine, out Saturday.
The rise of anti-Semitism since October 7 is all the more painful for Lowy because he has a deep and abiding love for Australia for giving him the opportunity to move past the horrors of his wartime childhood and build a new life here.
And what a life it turned out to be, creating the $33bn Westfield global shopping empire, transforming Australian soccer into a mainstream sport, setting up the Lowy Institute think tank and giving tens of millions of dollars away to philanthropic endeavours across the country.
Lowy has been named as one of the 60 most influential people of the past six decades in The Australian’s 60th Anniversary Collector’s Edition magazine, to be published on Saturday, in recognition of his multiple achievements and his impact on the nation’s life.
Australia was Lowy’s home for 66 years from 1952 until he moved to Israel in 2018, and he wants to remind all Australians how the country once greeted Jewish refugees like himself.
“I was welcomed immediately,” he says of arriving here at the age of 21. “I never felt like a stranger. I went to work in a factory and they accepted me; they did not ask me who I was or what language I spoke. They just said ‘What’s your name?’ I said ‘Frank’ and I was accepted. It was a very warm feeling.”
It was 1952, and in Lowy’s words, he was already an “old man” having been robbed of his childhood by war and the horrors of the Holocaust.
Czechoslovak Frank Lowy's Lichenstein circa 2008
The Jiggle Is Up: Bosses Bust Workers Who Fake Computer Activity - WSJ via MSN: “It’s getting harder to outsmart the digital minders at work. The rise of remote work and, in turn, employee-monitoring software sparked a boom in mouse and keyboard jigglers and other hacks to help staffers fake computer activity—often so they can step away to do laundry or a school pickup. Now some companies are cracking down on the subterfuge, deploying tools that can better spot the phony busywork. The latest salvo in this productivity-tracking arms race came in a recent regulatory filing from Wells Fargo. In the disclosure, first reported on by Bloomberg News, the bank said it had fired more than a dozen employees in its wealth and investment management unit for allegedly simulating keyboard activity to create the “impression of active work.” Wells Fargo declined to say exactly how it detected the suspicious activity or whether the workers were remote, only that it “does not tolerate unethical behavior.” Across Reddit and other social-media forums, the report sparked angst, and questions. “Anyone else concerned?” wrote one Reddit user. Another, more to the point, asked: “Can IT detect my mouse jiggler?” The answer, increasingly, is yes. The share of companies using some kind of electronic worker-surveillance system surged during the pandemic, reaching nearly 50% in 2023, according to a survey of nearly 300 medium to large employers by research and advisory firm Gartner. These systems, which track how active workers are at their computers, have long been able to detect some installed software or extra hardware. More of these software systems, such as Teramind and Hubstaff, now also use machine-learning tools that can identify repetitive cursor movements or irregular patterns in someone’s computer activity. In addition, some worker-monitoring software can randomly scrape screen images to check whether screen activity is changing as the computer mouse moves…”
