Letters to the Editor
Why would Walter Silvester lie?
November 20, 2024
Dear John, I have a problem with a story that appeared in P & I on 03/11 by Val Noone entitled Fake news, Melbourne 1966: about Pallottine Priest Father Walter Silvester. My problem is this: my wife's first husband was a former Pallottine Priest and was a close friend of Silvester's. He says Silvester was reluctant to talk about his U-Boat experiences but he did in private conversations tell him the story about them, including his version of saving the Russian sailors. He believes strongly that Silvester would not have lied to him as a close friend and...
Ian Robinson from Australia
In response to: Fake news, Melbourne 1966: migrant German priest was a U-boat commander who defied Hitler
The ABC, death by a Thousand Cuts
November 19, 2024
A very necessary and timely analysis of why the ABC is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the major policy debates within Australia. In pursuit of a small target strategy to avoid further cuts and interference in content production by ultra-sensitive governments it is achieving what those governments wanted: acquiescence and collaboration!!!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: “Disingenuous theatre dressed up as major news”:
Elect them and they will put up taxes manta
November 19, 2024
I often watch foreign movies and marvel at the infrastructure in other countries and marvel at how they can build it and we can’t. How we once did but now can’t. The standard answer is always we are a large country with a small population, we can’t build fast rail but we did build rail to link the capital cities all the way to Perth. We did build Telecommunications infrastructure to link the capital cites and Australia to the world. We did build Roads now a private company builds Toll roads and makes monstrous profits collecting tolls. The...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Detaching Australia from the death grip of the United States
Israel must be right, always
November 19, 2024
Andrew Podger's article proves the overwhelming success of the Israeli PR machine. The MSM offers no balance about the Middle East conflict - all we hear is October 7, October 7, October 7. John Menadue's response says it all really - if you need to know only Israel's side of the conflict (and amazingly that of most West countries including our own) stick with the Israeli hasbara, the ABC, Murdoch and 9. If you want to know what is actually happening stick with P & I.
John Dash from Spence, ACT
In response to: "Fairness and Balance" in P & I reporting on the Middle East
Australia should encourage Taiwan to reunite with China peacefully
November 19, 2024
I would suggest most Australian Chinese consider Taiwan as part of China and that a reunification of Taiwan with China is inevitable. The reunification can be peaceful or forced, but the Chinese will not kill the Chinese (Taiwanese). Australia should encourage Taiwan to reunite with China peacefully instead of provoking Taiwan to declare independence unilaterally. Australians like to consider Asian nations as enemies, first Indonesia, then Japan, and now China. Asian nations are on the rise; they are more powerful and will be more assertive. None of them express any desire to be enemy of Australia....
Stephen Wong from 5 Knight Place, Castlecrag, NSW, 2068
In response to: AUKUS, the China threat and Chinese-Australian communities
The State of Palestine
November 19, 2024
If we can define Palestine as historic Palestine, or all the land south of Lebanon, north of Egypt and between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, then, yes, a State of Palestine is the best idea. This new entity would be based on one adult/one vote, full equality before the law and the right of return granted to all those displaced during and since the original Nakba. Any plan to split, or to keep split, historic Palestine (this bit for me, that bit for you) is as doomed to eventual failure as is the current arraignment.
Hal Duell from ALICE SPRINGS
In response to: Act now: The case for UN membership for Palestine is overwhelming
Many were prepared to arm themselves
November 19, 2024
Admittedly, I'm of the political left and still maintain the rage I felt when Whitlam was illegally removed from governing Australia. I call it The Dismissal, yet have always considered it a coup. Whitlam had faults. After all he was a man. He and his government also made some mistakes that his devotees frowned at BUT Whitlam was a statesman and carried out reforms that were almost revolutionary. He was a threat to the US and UK and he took most things in his gigantic stride. When he made his monumental speech, there were thousands of Australians -...
Diana Rickard from Tumbling Waters NT
In response to: Coups are not electorally disqualifying, just look at the dismissal
They don’t care
November 19, 2024
Geoff Davies reminds us of the contempt with which the fossil fuel industry treats the planet, and its residents. Add the new administration in the USA to those fossil fuel magnates and the full catastrophe is revealed. Trump’s pick for Energy secretary Wright is critical of clean energy “liberal and left wing groups” for their “top down approach”. He happens to have interests in Australia’s Beetaloo Basin. It is hard to see how Wright’s company Liberty Energy, backer of Empire Energy, in partnership with Tamboran, is not the exemplar of a “top down approach”. They received $28.7 million in ‘grants’...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: They spit in our faces
Fairness and Balance
November 19, 2024
Dear Editor, I read the recent article by Andrew Podger, “Fairness and balance in P&I reporting on the Middle East” and John Menadue’s response with keen interest (see: https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/fairness-and-balance-in-pi-reporting-on-the-middle-east/) . It provides a civil but acute exchange, which immediately made me recall Edgar Snow, the remarkable American author of the best-seller, “Red Star Over China”, first published in 1937. Snow was regularly criticized for lack of balance in his reporting on the rise of fascism, which prompted this reported response: “In this international cataclysm brought on by fascists it is no more possible for any people...
Richard Cullen from Hong Kong
In response to: Fairness and balance in P&I reporting on the Middle East
Tomorrow never comes
November 15, 2024
Ask, in Spain, when a job will be done, and you will be told ‘manana’ – meaning tomorrow. Ask again the next day: same answer. Tomorrow never comes. Manana is clearly the mantra for our governments when asked about when they’ll tackle our climate crisis effectively. They might take modest steps to take the heat out of environmental protests, but then they let the issue slip. Grasping the climate nettle might have been pretty straightforward thirty years or more ago, when the crisis now unfolding before our eyes was predicted by so many environmental scientists; but it would have...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Environmental breakdown: We have been warned
Australia must be bold on climate
November 15, 2024
Geoff Davies' basic point is that the big fossil fuel corporations in Australia will do anything to protect and increase shareholder return including murder. His solutions are most interesting, but I'm adding some practical measures. At the current UN COP29 on climate, our Australian team must be bold and strong for ending both our fossil fuel subsidies and exports (via punishing levies and incentives for renewables); plus increasing rich countries' funding for clean energy in poor countries. Back home, during the next few pre-election months, the federal government must then also develop a bold, strong mandate by adding...
Barbara Fraser from Burwood, Vic
In response to: To save the planet: Disable this global consumer-corporate machine
Indexation the killer
November 15, 2024
For context, here is a tweet I wrote on November 3: My 27yo daughter's #HECS debt is now about 20% greater than when she finished her bachelor's degree at UTS, and she has been making payments on it since 2020 — so quite obviously is battling just to keep up, let alone get on top of it. #auspol Damian Coburn's excellent contribution on the government debt load our children carry did not specifically mention the indexation of the debt to CPI rises, but my daughter is adamant that they are the killer. Was indexation always in place?...
John Hampshire from Hurlstone Park
In response to: One cheer for student loan changes
Protecting the powerful
November 15, 2024
We have seen instance after instance of the government protecting the powerful and hand-wringing (if lucky) over the powerless. Can someone explain the latest mind-exploding mystery to me as to why it proposes not to publish the sealed chapter from the Robodebt Royal Commission believed to have referred six public servants for criminal or civil prosecution (essentially quashing any further proceedings against anyone responsible for the unlawful scheme where people had died), yet refused to drop criminal charges against Richard Boyle who was able to reveal government misconduct (thus protecting the government and the public)?
K Ma from Australia
In response to: The Discarded
Just who are the elites?
November 15, 2024
Let’s be clear, the ‘elites’ which the right is in the habit of conjuring up as the root of our problems are exemplified by the plutocrat cabal attending Trump’s after party, including Gina Rinehart, Elon Musk and crypto currency hopefuls. They are the moguls who direct from their boardrooms the trillion dollar global arms market. The fossil fuel barons, such as Elnur Soltanov, Chief Executive of Azerbaijan’s COP29, who hawk their wares even from inside the COP29 energy forum. They are the CEOs of fossil fuel companies whose main job is to protect their interests and keep profits flowing to...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Like Kamala, Albanese doesn’t seem to get it.
The Australian cringe
November 15, 2024
The cultural cringe that forced so many of our artists half a century ago to head to both the UK and the US in order to demonstrate their talent, and have it first accepted by those beyond our shores, is at the heart of the current 'thinking' that drives our defence policy. The mindset that we just aren't good enough is alive and well. There isn't any justifiable reason to continue to hang on to America's apron strings. We are a nation in our own right. Our national security would be far better served if we were to maintain...
Peter Hehir from Rozelle. Sydney
In response to: Australians pierce the foreign policy propaganda of both major political parties
Probing our ignorance
November 15, 2024
Thank you Paul for your perceptive reading of such perceptive polling which requires us now to go deeper to find the right questions to probe how the dissenting sentiment identified by the Herald Resolve poll, for all its virtue, ignores how we are already inked in to the major military dust-up in which we don't want to be involved! IOW: thanks for reiterating this point but now we set ourselves to plumb why our Commonwealth has to deal with our own persistently deep and ongoing political ignorance about our own fearful and precarious place in the South West Pacific....
Bruce Wearne from BALLARAT CENTRAL
In response to: Australians pierce the foreign policy propaganda of both major partiesAre we not
China Relations- Follow the Money
November 15, 2024
In reviewing various countries relation with China in many countries and states there is a clear tension between politicians and the business community. The United States is a prime example. If one believed the pronouncements of government and the mainstream media, relations are so poor that war is just around the corner if not imminent. This is borne out by the record profits of US defence contractors. One might also conclude that the Chinese economy is on the verge of collapse. The reality is very different. Recent trade figures published by CGTN showed trade values in the first ten months...
Barry Trembath from Rozelle, NSW
In response to: Does Australia Really Want to be the Spear Projecting Western Power
It's time to re-read Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
November 8, 2024
Dear editor, I was very surprised by the election result in the US, like everybody else I know. But then it started to make a kind of sense. There are a whole lot of people out there who are angry and resentful. They are angry at the US government, and have had enough very negative dealings with various government agencies to start reiterating Trump's rhetoric about the 'deep state'. They don't see the educated and professional middle classes coming to their aid, so all of Kamala's promises about being a president 'for everybody' would have been met with disbelief...
David Holm from Taipei
In response to: Trumping Australia
Australia must choose a safe climate future
November 8, 2024
I appreciated David O’Halloran’s humour and insights into the deeply disturbing outcome of the US election. In particular, I agree that it is imperative that Australia, a nation ravaged by the impacts of climate change, commits to leading on climate solutions. Our renewable energy superpower potential has long been touted. Perhaps this moment offers a renewed opportunity for us to exemplify ourselves on the global stage and, in so doing, build our own more self-reliant future. It is up to the Australian public to heed the warning the US offers and to elect representatives who will prioritise the...
Amy Hiller from Kew, Victoria
In response to: When life gives you oranges.......
The Discarded
November 8, 2024
Noel what you have said others have been saying the same and for a long time. As an example I recall John Menadue saying much the same on more than one occasion. Neo-liberalism has a lot to answer for and a vile outcome of it can be found in Robo-debt. Here was a government policy aimed at dehumanizing a group of people in order to obtain political advantage. I refer to this group as The Discarded. But The Discarded are the result of neo-liberalism and its advocates just walked away from Robo-debt and left The Discarded to pick up...
Peter Sheehy from Blackheath NSW
In response to: If you think the immediate future under Trump is horrific, just imagine the alte
Manned submarines are the past
November 8, 2024
A perceptive summary by John of the collective delusional propaganda cocoon in which we in Australia and the West more generally continue to live. That cocoon comforts us with the reassuring belief that a technology that is already four hundred years old (submarines) will ensure our dominance into a future of vast and largely unknowable technological change. With the advent of inexpensive unmanned underwater submersibles and the vast leaps being made in underwater detection of increasingly huge manned submarines, by the time we get these subs, assuming we ever do, they will be the aircraft carriers of today. Increasingly...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Does Australia really want to be the “tip of the spear”, projecting Western power
The implosion of a hollowed out regime?
November 8, 2024
In May, before she and Macron met Xi, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said she wanted trade with China that's “fair and not distorted”. Well hello, isn't that the free market in action, if another country can sell goods cheaper than you? Now, Trump wins. Together, these events should have been the anticipated end point of free market, neo-liberal economics and its “survival of the fittest” individualism masked as “freedom”. US law allows millions to be crushed by the wealth of a tiny minority, paid less than living wages by those who get rich at their expense. Little...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Who should be the next emperor of the violent global imperium?
Brian Toohey is right about Rudd
November 8, 2024
Brian Toohey is spot on about Rudd. Rudd has never been a balanced character in almost anything. His bravado about China vastly exceeds his willingness to don the khaki to engage China on the battlefield he imagines.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Recall Rudd
Fossil fuel approvals undermine credibility
November 8, 2024
As Noel Turnbull revealed, the latest Zurich-Mandala Climate Risk Index found that “half of Australia’s tourism sites and airports are currently in the highest three climate risk categories.” However, while tourism is a significant employer, it is not a key industry on which life depends. Food, water and shelter are needed to survive and in its report, Food Fight: Climate change, food crises & regional insecurity, the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group concluded that “Australia is ill-prepared for the security implications of climate-change enhanced global food crises” and recommended that “an urgent review should be undertaken of Australia’s food...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: What the insurance experts say about Queensland’s climate plans
Thanks, Margaret Reynolds
November 8, 2024
Margaret Reynolds' call for Australia to take real action against Israel was a valuable contribution. She shows the power of lucid, well-evidenced, humane and balanced arguments, rather than strident and skewed positioning. Thank you.
Helen Swift from Perth, W.A.
In response to: The Australian Government must impose sanctions on Israel NOW
Democracy in America
November 8, 2024
Dear Editor, Humphrey McQueen's recent article appears rather incongruous with Alexis de Tocqueville's much referenced worldview.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill Brisbane
In response to: What’s this American democracy crap?
"WTF just happened?"
November 8, 2024
Did the beginning of the end of neo-liberalism just happen? One can hope. The US result looks like the ultimate endpoint if the wealth of a commonwealth is not evenly enough distributed. The Democrats can be thankful they were voted out of office. Obscenely wealthy Marie-Antoinette was beheaded! Not that the Republicans are any less to blame. Trump won't help those left-behind but, by voting, the left-behinds look like destroying the system. We can but hope that out of the ruins something better will come. Could it happen in Australia? Once, we had proper essential and social services....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: If you think the immediate future under Trump is horrific, just imagine the alternative
Social Media self-censors Evidence of Genocide
November 6, 2024
The deletion / non-reporting of irrefutable facts of Zionist genocidal activities is not restricted to the MSM. In many MSM publications, X [nee Twitter] is heavily used to carry articles, photographs and videos of events of all descriptions. I think there is a reasonably widespread belief that, despite the absence of any form of 'authentication' (actual or de facto) of sources, the broad scope of reporting would cover the gamut of facts.. Absolutely, it is not so. I have seen now two cases in about the last fortnight of something reported on 'X' (and referred in P&I '5-Minute...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Val;e
In response to: Anomie: Enabled by Western media, Israel’s lies have become a galloping cancer
Susie's contribution to humanity
November 4, 2024
My sincere condolences to you, John, and your family for the passing of Susie. What a force you both have been in the fight for humanity and justice in our troubled world. I trust the support of your family and the readers/contributors of P&I will somehow soften the grief that you must surely be feeling. I think we all wish we could have known Susie.
Reb Halabi from Australia
In response to: Vale Susie Menadue
The persecuted become the persecutors
November 4, 2024
Reb Halabi like many of us is appalled about how white has become black in Palestine. With what is going on in places like Beit Lahiya in north Gaza right now, it seems that the so-called “generals’ plan” formulated by Gadi Eisenkot, and the Dahiya doctrine are operational right now. Mass murder by the day, full scale destruction of buildings and infrastructure, separation of men from women and forced dispossession, depopulation and forced marches. The bitter irony is that Israeli is taking out on the Palestinians what European Jews experienced from the Nazis. Reinhard Heydrich, who headed the Wannsee...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: The alpha and omega of tyranny
Know the difference
November 4, 2024
An excellent article from Cameron Leckie. But for too many people - especially politicians an journalists - the takeaway first base starting point has to be this, in big bold letters... ... the ‘rules-based order’ is a euphemism for empire. Specifically, the imperial-system led by the United States as opposed to the international system centred on the United Nations and International Law. Anyone not knowing and understanding that difference is at very real risk of very poor decision making.
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: At the altar of the rules-based order
Netanyahu is not the problem
November 4, 2024
In his Pearls and Irritations item of 4 November - ‘Netanyahu has been leading the United States into disaster … ‘ - Jeffrey Sachs, has put the boot on entirely the wrong foot. He is not alone, simply joining the like chorus of otherwise knowledgeable commentators who should know better. Seen against a more informed backdrop of American behavior in the Middle East where it has, since the installation of its Shah in Iran in the 1950’s, stirred an egregiously infamous cauldron of death, destruction and dispossession from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, the current behavior of Netanyahu should be...
Howard Debenham from Australia
In response to: Netanyahu has been leading the United States into disaster after disaster after disaster
The remarkable courage and strength of MND patients
November 1, 2024
Since I retired on the mid north coast of NSW, I have been a palliative care volunteer for 10 years. During that time I have sat with three MND patients for many months, all of whom displayed remarkable courage and strength like Susie. My aunt in England took 12 months to die of MND and her distraught doctor husband flew to Australia to assure us it is not heredity. I hope others who have watched love ones die slowly of this disease will find comfort like I do from this knowledge. I have been told since the...
Sherry Stumm from Rainbow Flat, NSW, 2430
In response to: Vale Susie Menadue
We must overcome climate apocalypse scepticism
November 1, 2024
Julian Cribb has highlighted the apocalyptic threats that the world faces, within the present century and possibly within the current decade, from the Arctic ice melt, and from the slowing ‘Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation’ (the ‘Gulf Stream’) as a result of increasing global warming from our ever-growing carbon emissions. These threats are real, and their likelihood increases daily. Why, therefore, is the world doing so little to prevent them? Dorian Lynskey posits, in his book ‘Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell about the End of the World’, that we ignore apocalyptic alarms because we have become enured...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: When the oceans run amok: “We ought not to ignore such clear indicators of an imminent collapse
Native forest logging is ecocide
November 1, 2024
Thank you to Professor David Lindenmayer for multiple strong evidence-based arguments supporting a rapid end to native forest logging in NSW (“The NSW native forest logging industry is unsustainable – a fast transition out is needed now”, 19/10). That any form of logging is occurring in any native forest, anywhere in Australia in 2024 is utterly absurd and should arguably be punishable as ecocide. Trouble is, if Victoria’s situation is anything to go by, even if we did receive a commitment from the NSW government to end native forest logging, rogue logging would continue under other guises. We...
Amy Hiller from Kew, VIC
In response to: The NSW native forest logging industry is unsustainable – a fast transition out is needed now
My deepest condolences
November 1, 2024
Dear John, We have not met, nor Susie. May I offer my deep condolences to you and your family with Susie's death. My wife, Jenny's father, a Sydney surgeon, and my uncle died similarly. And, with my wife having secondary progressive MS, separately, I also understand very well the role of caring you would have undertaken. I do not know how you managed to do both so well. Best wishes as you navigate the future. And all the while benefiting our heritage exposing national and international truths. Warm regards, Philip Gardiner
Philip Gardiner from Moora, Western Australia
In response to: Vale Susie Menadue
Wild Weather Is Already Upon Us
November 1, 2024
I am an 81 yr old semi-retired Trauma Therapist and former Maritime Rescue Worker who was aware twenty five years ago that it would be better to move inland away from the sea. My Cranial Osteopath sent this article to me because while he silently treats me, I sometimes burble on about The Gulf Stream. I cannot help it and have been saying since 2005 that If the melt from Greenland cools the Gulf Stream there will be instant Ice Age in the UK. I'm a positive thinking person yet sometimes I burst out with things...
Maria Polmeer from Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. Australia
In response to: When The Oceans Run Amok
Gong irony
November 1, 2024
While working in Home Affairs, I requested Secretary Pezzullo’s permission to nominate the soon-to-retire Assistant Secretary of the Multicultural Affairs Branch for an Order of Australia award. She had spent some twenty years leading Australian multicultural policy and contributing to community relations, for which she was universally respected. She had her own remarkable migrant and personal journeys, contributed strongly to a local Canberra community organisation, and raised her children (I believe) as a single mother. A person of integrity, high standards and inspiring energy. The Secretary’s response was a surprising ‘no’. He told me that excellent and dedicated public...
Richard Manderson from Canberra
In response to: The bell has tolled for Pezzullo’s gong
Voluntary end-of-life refusal of fluids and food
November 1, 2024
Brian Polkinghorne's suggestion of fasting as a peaceful way to die deserves amplification. Voluntary refusal of fluids and food (VRFF) forms a major part of the late Rodney Syme’s posthumously published book, “A Completed Life” (available through the public library system in South Australia). Syme was a euthanasia advocate who spent many years consulting with and helping people avoid unnecessary suffering at end-of-life. He considered VRFF to be a humane and legal end-of-life strategy in situations where the dying person is ineligible for Voluntary Assisted Dying because they are not mentally competent enough to sign the paperwork or...
Peter Schulz from St Agnes
In response to: Another perspective on end-of-life
Vale Susie Menadue
November 1, 2024
My sincerest condolences to John and his family. Life indeed will not be the same - but although I never had the pleasure of meeting Susie, I think she would have been delighted with the success of P&I and pleased to know how many people benefit from it's articles through knowledge, interest and real (as opposed to fake) reporting in articles. Thank you for helping to develop and produce P&I; rest in peace - and my warmest wishes to Susie's family.
Barbara der Kinderen from Gulmarrad NSW 2463
In response to: Vale Susie menadue
Condolences
November 1, 2024
Ambassador Menadue, My condolences to the passing of Susie Menadue. One’s life partner is irreplaceable. Susie built Pearls and Irritations with you. I believe she would want you John to expand and advance the service in memory of Susie. Sincerely, Warief D. Basorie Depok, Indonesia
Warief Basorie from Depok City, Indonesia
In response to: Vale Susie Menadue
Labor hasn't done it on its own
November 1, 2024
Labor has gone from promising in Opposition to end the swindle to denying it exists in government. A variation on disappointment with Labor on education continues across many areas. And in some cases wouldn't have gone as far as Labor did had it not been for Independents pushing for more and in the end Independents standing up and saying changes still haven't gone far enough. The Independents don't often get credit for any improvements because no one sees them talking to Labor (or Liberal or Greens) MPs on the phone, at meetings, and face-to-face inside the hallowed but...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Labor’s amendments to the Education Act fail to ensure full funding of Public Schools
Livin' in the Land of the Sycophants
November 1, 2024
What with all the media song ‘n’ dance Charlie’s back in the land of the sycophants Thought it would a be a cake walk Until a girl called Lidia spotted her chance She harangued poor Charlie with wrathful critique He with no paddle was way up shit creek All the while under the international media glare The torrent of abuses from colonialists so bleak The continued refusal of moolawa to tell the truth The stolen children, the persecution of our youth The lock ‘em up and throw away the key mentality Murder, rape, genocide crimes of humanity so...
John Bentley from TONGALA
In response to: Lidia, I’m angry, too
Call it what it is
October 25, 2024
Isn't it time we called the situation in Palestine what it really is? It's not only Israel committing genocide, it is ISRAEL AND THE USA who are JOINTLY committing genocide. We would not be seeing what we are seeing now if the USA stopped supplying Israel with arms and funding. The USA is 100% complicit. We should all be calling on the Prime Mister to condemn the actions of both Israel and our master, oops, ally, the USA. Plus, Australia should implement BDS immediately. We did it for South Africa. What is our justification for not...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The world must stop the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza
Always listen to mother.
October 25, 2024
King Charles’ mother made a hugely influential speech in 2011 at a state banquet in Dublin Castle, starting in Gaelic “A Uachtaráin, agus a chairde — President and friends. Pitjantjatjara is one of the most spoken and studied Aboriginal languages. What an impression the king would have made if he had started his speech at Parliament House with “Nyuku malpa palya, nganana manta milmilpatjara ngaranyi” - “My good friends, we are standing on sacred ground”. Craig Brown Eaglehawk Neck TAS
Craig Brown from EAGLEHAWK NECK
In response to: Thank goodness for Lydia Thorpe
Thank you for Susie
October 25, 2024
Dear John Menadue, We do not know you personally. But we feel we do; for your humanity, your determination to open the eyes and the hearts of your fellow Australians and for your love of truth. May we, therefore, offer you our deepest condolences for the passing of your partner in life and in idealism, Susie. You say that Pearls and Irritations would not have ever been launched and allowed to prosper without her; that she was the pearl and you were the irritation. What a splendid combination you made. And what a loss you must be feeling....
Jafar & Sandra Ramini from Fremantle WA
In response to: Vale Susie Menadue
US armed forces had the power to stop the massacre
October 25, 2024
I can only echo B’Tselem’s call. If we set some sort of crude realpolitik calculus of maximum proportionate response to October 7 of 5000 Palestinian lives, then by late 2023, US forces, and if necessary others, should have been deployed to stop further escalation and prevent Israel implementing the Dahiya doctrine. 42000 lives would have been saved (175000 if the journal Nature estimate is correct), as well as many years of reconstruction, and no spread to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. Sadly, the Biden administration failed to take the lead and act to restore peace, and create...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: The world must stop the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza
Robertson KC suggests a simple solution
October 25, 2024
Take away messages in the article were: “But what if we don’t need a head of state at all?” And again “.... do we really need a head of state at all?” “Rather than sovereignty resting in a monarch – whether elected as a president or inherited as a king – sovereignty should rest with the people through their parliament.” Geoffrey Robertson KC in his article in the SMH, 13 Sept 2022, “Australia has no need for a head of state, royal or not” suggests that without changing how our PM is appointed, he/she becomes our...
Con Karavas from 0418 181 717
In response to: Our vision of a republic must be an all-encompassing one
Politicians and media shunning the truth
October 25, 2024
With political leaders and the media calling Lidia Thorpe's actions before the king disrespectful, I'm pleased someone stood up and stood out to speak truth of Australia's past and present in this setting. The takeover of Australia wasn't respectful to First Nations people - at least she wasn't violent, which is more than could be said for the actions of settlers in the name of the crown. And how far did being polite and gracious (Uluru Statement and the Voice referendum) get Australia's First Nations peoples towards justice? The king and queen are direct beneficiaries of colonisation, exploitation...
K Ma from Australia
In response to: Thorpe unmasks the coloniser who visited genocide on Australia’s First Nations
The horror of being Australian
October 25, 2024
This article puts yet more Murray river salt in the wound of being Australian, of being represented by such abhorrent moral vacuums. It is clear that Albanese and his wise monkeys will not do anything we can be proud of, and instead, here we are again - the bland residents of a great blank embarrassment - nodding in bleary eyed stupidity ... we are indeed, a land of racist losers.
Marguerite Bunce from France
In response to: As US puppets the Australian political class rejects international humanitarian
Shards of hope amongst the horror
October 25, 2024
I have Jewish friends and treasured memories of growing up with unbreakable friendships with wonderful people of Jewish ethnicity. I am daily filled with sadness and anger about the evil that the Netanyahu government, the IDF and the ultra-Zionists are prosecuting against now not just the Palestinians but also Lebanese and Iranian peoples. I have also some Palestinian and many Lebanese friends. Shortly after the first Israeli attacks on Beirut, I rang one of my closest Lebanese mates to ask: 'Did you lose any of your family or someone close?' His reply: 'None of my family, but...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Professor Ilan Pappe talks about Zionism
Time for Albo to move into his $4000000 house
October 25, 2024
Perhaps the purchase of a new home is an indicator that Agreeable Albo has realised his own limitations and realised it’s time to move on. After all the only innovative thing his Labor govt has done is a minor adjustment to stage three tax policy which may well be credited to his Treasurer.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: ACT Labor holds on, but are wheels coming off the Albanese re-election campaign?
Endless war as foreign policy
October 25, 2024
The reality is that USA is after weapons production and sales $, and weapons are only needed when wars are created. It’s not about winning war as much as continued forever war..in Foreign Policy places…far from USA, and resources are also sourced. Just study the war in Vietnam, it exposes how much the war was created and we lost, but it was a “Foreign Policy” war venue for weapons manufacturers and shareholder profits. France had lost its colonial control of Vietnam and wanted it back, USA was after a new war zone. The reds under the bed...
J Hunt from Northern NSW
In response to: China unveiled: how moving East shattered my Western illusions
Fighting for peace
October 25, 2024
It's not silence, but naming Palestinians 'terrorists' that kills, in that it justifies Israel's claims that it faces an existential threat - a postulation without credible underpinning. Yes, Palestinians issue threats. IT'S WHAT PRISONERS AND THE PERSECUTED DO! The opposite is Stockholm Syndrome. If Palestine were any sort of realistic threat, the Nakba wouldn't have happened. Palestinians would never have lost their homes, crops, olive trees. No barbaric soldier doing wheelies in a wheat field would have got away with it. Foreign humanitarian agencies would not have been needed to escort Palestinian children to school safely. Israel couldn't...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: It’s the silence that kills
Australia's climate action should be acknowledged
October 25, 2024
Thanks Julian Cribb for alerting readers to the 2024 State of the Climate Report. The author biography is an impressive read and we should do all we can to publicise and share it with our politicians and their advisers. The report concludes, “Despite six IPCC reports, 28 COP meetings, hundreds of other reports, and tens of thousands of scientific papers, the world has made only very minor headway on climate change, in part because of stiff resistance from those benefiting financially from the current fossil-fuel based system.” While the latter is true of Australia, a petrostate suffering from...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: The deafening silence in the eye of the hurricane
The Thorn and the Carnation may hold the clue
October 25, 2024
I grew up reading Leon Uris’ book Exodus, but what may be a counter narrative has now emerged. The PM has described Yahya al-Sinwar as a terrorist, rather than a freedom fighter. So it would be useful to understand what makes a person, in the PM’s terms, a terrorist. Perhaps a reading of al-Sinwar’s book The Thorn and the Carnation might make that clear.
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: More authoritarian crackdowns on speech that’s critical of Israel
Global climate disaster, COP and Cribb's solutions
October 25, 2024
We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster, (William Ripple et al, 2024 State of the Climate Report). But our federal government continues to approve new coal projects. It is our military who now warn the government that climate is the biggest security risk. Science also states that the next five years of this decade is critical for our and the world's climate-environmental actions. Therefore Peter Dutton's later nuclear idea is inept and useless. Instead, Albanese and others must educate colleagues and voters with climate solutions and develop a mandate for the next government. The...
Barbara Fraser from Burwood, Vic
In response to: The deafening silence in the eye of the hurricane
The storm of climate chaos
October 25, 2024
The article, In the Eye of the Hurricane (19/10/24), captures the dire reality of our climate crisis with chilling accuracy. The world stands at a critical juncture, where political indifference and short-term economic interests are accelerating an irreversible disaster. Despite clear warnings from scientists and security experts, governments, including Australia, continue to prioritise fossil fuel expansion over the survival of their people and ecosystems. Beyond feeling disheartened by the data on mounting climate disasters, I felt deeply betrayed by those in power. Achieving global cooperation feels distant when national governments fail their own people. Without immediate, transformative action, we...
Julia Paxino from BEAUMARIS
In response to: In the Eye of the Hurricane
Sinwar
October 25, 2024
Unsurprising to notice that only by looking on the Al Jazeera website did I learn that Yahya Sinwar was born in a refugee camp in Gaza, as the result of the displacement, dispossession and expulsion from the homelands of his family. The non-contextualised celebration of his elimination in most western media can only seem to anticipate continuation of the atrocities of asymmetric warfare and asymmetric propaganda..
Don Hird from Moonah, Tasmania
In response to: Letters
Sovereignty
October 25, 2024
Duggan's case is an outrage exposed only by Collaery and P&I. The US extradition case against Assange was similarly flawed and was equally subject to court backflips to bow to US unjust influence. Of huge concern to me in these actions is that the good guys are forced onto the defence against unsupported allegations. Collaery is one who well understands, from being victim in personal experience, that it is the rule of law itself which is at stake, that justice is no longer blind in US, UK and Australia. It is ludicrous that Duggan's extradition is now...
Glen Davis from California
In response to: “US influenced Sinophobia”: The incarceration of Australian citizen Daniel Duggan
Another perspective on end-of-life
October 22, 2024
I appreciated recent articles by Ian Chubb and Ken Hillman on end-of-life issues. Ian’s analysis of his wife’ dementia pathway and Ken’s analysis of ‘conveyor belt’ hospital systems were brilliant, but in my humble opinion, failed to address the problem effectively. I believe there are more responsible options. In my late 20s I was given a few months to live after six bouts of hepatitis and trigeminal neuralgia. A friend dragged me off to a naturopath. In desperation I fasted on water only for 13 days, reached natural hunger and have never suffered from either of those diseases again....
Brian Polkinghorne from Gawler, S.A. 5118
In response to: Given the choice, would my wife have chosen to 'let dementia take its course'?
It's the little things ....
October 18, 2024
So much head-nodding in agreement while reading Sawsan Madina's A year of .... (08 Oct.) But why is it the little things that pull you up short? For me ... It was the year when ... ... I bought a kaffiyeh. .... still struggling to wear it nonchalantly. ... I made new Jewish friends at the pro-Palestine weekly rallies. .... or Muslim ones - being invited to help support the giant flag in the procession, asking for translation of chants because my only Arabic is 'As-salam alaykum' and 'Shukran', and talking about the beautiful children, of course....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: A year of erasing a people
The Referendum 12 Months On
October 18, 2024
The Referendum 12 months on may as well be lightyears away. In reality, the Referendum was a top-down neoliberal concept (stunt) that would never have worked, not in a million years! In April 2023 I wrote: Story of Our Age Join the party centre stage To unite and engage Come ‘n’ share your rage It’s the story of our age We’ll vote on the voice The people will have a choice They’ll proceed to vote it down You get what comes around It was an observation of the public in general, of the racism, the bigotry,...
John Bentley from Tongala
In response to: Myths of the Referendum
Shame indeed!
October 18, 2024
Thank you Margaret Reynolds, Alison Broinowski and others for writing what desperately needs to be said to the United Nations and to the world as a whole, on behalf of so many of us who live in Australia and long for a more compassionate and principled government!
Janet Grevillea from New South Wales
In response to: Australia’s shame
Are we mature enough to hear?
October 18, 2024
In 1968 Professor Stanner lamented the 'cult of forgetfulness’ dominating the Australian attitude to the indigenous peoples of this land. The 2023 Referendum has been the latest instance of such forgetfulness. No First Nations voice was considered when the Constitutional conventions of the late 19th century guided the Colonial Governments as they began crafting a Constitution “up” for a Federal Commonwealth. It would have been a sign of our Commonwealth’s subsequent 122 year-old maturity had the referendum been presented to electors by the Federal Parliament as a wholly appropriate response of a matured suggestion from First Nations leaders...
Bruce Wearne from BALLARAT CENTRAL
In response to: What will follow the referendum?
Get the baseball bats out
October 18, 2024
The recently opened Queens Wharf integrated resort development, which is never called a casino by any cabinet ministers is also a millstone around the neck of the ALP. If I may paraphrase the late Wayne Goss, it should come as no surprise that the Queensland electorate will be sitting on their verandas wielding baseball bats come the evening of 26/10/2024.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane
In response to: The forthcoming Queensland state election
Are we inching inexorably towards WWIII?
October 18, 2024
This Scroll contained an excellent speech by Nada Tarbush of Palestine at the UN. I am still in shock from the picture of dead children in Southwest Palestine. In an earlier scroll this week. Department of state spokesperson Miller cut off a reporter who wanted an end to BS, but the US now unashamedly supports Israel whatever it does and has done away with the mask of condemning its tactics and doing anything to stop the fuse of a World War burning further. No matter attacks on expatriates in Lebanon, or on UNIFIL. Joe congratulated Xi on the...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: A five minute scroll
The right or otherwise of Israel to defend itself
October 18, 2024
The default mantra of those supporting the past and current military actions by Israel is that Israel has a right to defend itself. This is sometimes posed as a question but more often as an assertion. I am suggesting that there is a prior and more fundamental question needing to be asked and answered before the above mantra can be considered. Is the current government in historic Palestine a legitimate government?
Hal Duell from ALICE SPRINGS
In response to: Israel does not have a right to defend itself, as our PM keeps saying
Is China our biggest threat?
October 18, 2024
.... the very idea of finding security in Asia is hopelessly naive and made redundant by the authoritarian character and, it is asserted, the expansionist ambitions of China. Really? Is not our fear of China an artificial US construct? Such fear is born out of the US's loss of power and prestige as it fails as a nation while China grows. The US falls back on its usual answer to everything - guns and war. We don't have to be part of that. If Australia is to be afraid of another nation, it's biggest threat is the US...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn
In response to: The unresolved tension at the core of Australia’s strategic policy
Abandon sovereignty!
October 18, 2024
Regular readers of P&I basically know the details and agree with the argument of Vince Scappatura's article Australia’s evolving nuclear posture: avoiding a fait accompli (Part 1 of 2) The problem is, how do we get the misguided and uninformed, the partakers of the MSM or no news at all, to realise the mortal danger we have been placed in by such underwhelming political 'intellectuals' as Morrison, Marles and Albanese? And how do we get that translated into a vote that tells politicians of whatever party or calibre that they will never again be able to hand our sovereignty...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Australia’s evolving nuclear posture: avoiding a fait accompli (Part 1 of 2)
Comfortable middle classes must do more
October 11, 2024
Do the dire predictions of a heated world outlined by David Spratt make any impact on governments? For them it is a cynical choice, as Starmer exemplified, to ignore climate change in favour of their own popularity. No leader of a wealthy nation has the fortitude to do their job, which they constantly tell us is their first priority: keeping us safe. This hasn’t hugely impacted (yet) on their ‘popularity’. In fact, the now-ascendant climate change denying elements of Dutton’s Coalition could be gaining momentum. Such is the power of the far-right, conspiracy-laden, Trumpist ideology in which climate concerns...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Entering an age of social and security consequences
"Is there an honest Australian news source"?
October 11, 2024
Dear Editor, I had entirely given up on Australian newspapers, television, and radio and in recent times and (for the last year) have only listened to, read, or watched Al Jazeera. Today I googled is there an honest Australian news source or words to that effect and was amazed to find Pearls And Irritations; Australian news that I can stand to read. Thank you very very much.
John Twigden from Campsie, 2194
In response to: Pearls & Irritations
Thoughts and prayers
October 11, 2024
As 7th October 2024 draws to a close I reflect on all the outpourings of grief and sympathy for Israel, Israelis and all Jewish people on this anniversary day. I hear the calls for everyone to lay down their arms, for peace. And I think .... oh, the hypocrisy, as useful as US Americans sending thoughts and prayers. I hear Let there be Israel and a new country is set upon Palestinian land with no reference to, consideration of, consultation with or protection for Palestinians. Just Begone! This is our land now. Today, there is no context....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: For those with eyes to see
Why I grieve for our grandchildren’s futures
October 11, 2024
I have had a fortunate life. Born in 1950, in England, my teens coincided with the Beatles-led music revolution. I’ve not had to go to war. I am now 74, and thus unlikely to experience the climate horrors which are brought ever-nearer by the greed and manipulation of the fossil fuel industry, and by populist politicians more concerned with their own political survival than with providing the leadership needed to secure a sustainable environment. Anthony Albanese has become the poster-boy for political timidity. Peter Dutton rages with apparent power, but dances to the fossil fuel industry’s tune. The...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Is Arctic methane stoking the climate crisis?
Ignorance trumps racism - mostly.
October 11, 2024
Some politicians will undoubtedly get an election surprise but will they realise it's on account of their passivity or active support for Israel? If they don't read comments on their social media posts they won't know that, besides the usual ratbags, an increasing tip-of-the-iceberg number of moderate voices are commenting, sadly, “This is wrong or not good enough. You've lost my vote.” “Is it racism that guides these politicians?” Ali Kazak asks. That seems to be true of Peter Dutton and his fellow travellers. The Jewish Council of Australia has emerged to decry Israel's role in Palestine...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn, VIC 3122
In response to: On election day, accountability takes centre stage
ABC - disgraceful partisanship
October 11, 2024
I have turned off coverage by the MSM on these issues. The ABC seems to preface its one-sided coverage with discussion of the brutal Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 with all the subsequent loss of life in Gaza and the conflict growing into Lebanon. Lebanese and Palestinian lives mean nothing to our national broadcaster. Absolutely disgraceful partisanship.
K Ma from Australia
In response to: The context for October 7 is wilfully and deliberately ignored and Lebanese and
‘Provocation’
October 11, 2024
A year ago, Peter Dutton described the Hamas attack on Israel ‘unprovoked’. I assume he has had now had sufficient time to learn about international relations, human nature and Palestine’s sad, painful history that he would avoid using such an inappropriate descriptor again. Unless, of course, it gave him a quick domestic political advantage.
Richard Manderson from Canberra
In response to: The context for October 7 is wilfully and deliberately ignored
RESPONSE TO KELTY ON THE ALP
October 11, 2024
I wouldn't be holding Kelty, one of the architects of the Accord, up as a model of how a Labor pollie or unionist should be. He sets out a centrist agenda but criticises the current centrists for doing it their way. He says We need a Labor Party agenda in which the big issues are confronted. Nice , but the devil is in the detail. No mention of a wages policy except in the context of a bargaining framework that is about training, productivity and fairness. Hmmmm I wonder if that would have broken through the...
Jennifer Haines from Glossodia
In response to: The Labor Party has lost its way
“How high should we jump?” - Canberra
October 11, 2024
Further to Stuart Rees’ article, our Foreign Affairs Minister, instead of calling in the Israeli ambassador to protest at the harrying, and forced displacement from their homes, of thousands of Australian citizens in Lebanon, can only seemingly manage to say: “get on a plane”.
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Lebanese and Palestinian lives mean nothing to western politicians
We must get serious about climate change action
October 11, 2024
Bill Kelty writes, “We need a Labor Party agenda in which the big issues are confronted.” He points to the environment, climate change and indigenous rights as examples. Kelty refreshingly suggests that climate change “is more important than party politics,” but this is easy to say when out of it. The climate wars were fired up again when Dutton went all out for nuclear and proposed to abandon Australia’s 2030 emissions target. The government wants to co-host COP31 with Pacific Island nations but makes them angry with fossil fuel approvals. The least Australia could do is support the thirteen...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: The Labor Party has lost its way
David McBride and the AMC
October 10, 2024
The fact that Australian Army war crimes whistleblower David McBride has been granted a chance to appeal against his five years and eight months sentence at the dreadful Alexander Maconochie Centre federal prison in Canberra is long overdue. It is important to understand that this occurred partly because of the tireless efforts of Professor Ross Fitzgerald and other key supporters who continued to reveal the inhumane conditions that Mr McBride was facing. In a number of articles, Prof Fitzgerald also documented in detail, with first person corroboration, deeply disturbing revelations about the terrible treatment of other prisoners at the...
Andrew William Hopkins from Galston NSW
In response to: David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra
How to survive on an isolated planet
October 4, 2024
We inhabit an isolated planet with finite resources and a robust, but not indestructible, environment. The fact that our environment continues to support life today does not mean that it always will. The Potsdam Institute’s latest Planetary Health Check confirms we are endangering our survival with our disregard for our warming climate, for the mass extinction of animals and plants, for our continued degradation of the natural environment and freshwater cycles, and for the chemical pollution from soil-killing fertilisers and industrial process effluents. Of the nine measures that the Potsdam Institute tracks, only two remain within the ‘safe’ zone:...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: The Earth is sick – and getting sicker
Universities as a place of higher learning? YES
October 4, 2024
As a 72 year old retired I like to think successful Tradie I have had a front row seat of the mess that is our education system has become. I went to a Technical school because I wasn’t smart enough to go to a High school. Then they closed technical schools. Did an apprentice at a specific Trade school, Trade schools were integrated / lost to the TAFE system. I watched as HR employed apprentices base on their academic score not their trade aptitude, the beginning of the shortage of tradies. I listened as my school teacher...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Do we need universities?
"Merely academic"
October 4, 2024
Our gad-fly, Clover Leaf group, had gained audience with the Vice-Chancellor and President of Monash Inc. That was a few months before the merger - Chisholm was not to be amalgamated with Monash; this was to a merger. This was the politically correct term for this flagship initiative of the Dawkins reforms. Once more our hypothesis was confirmed. Within Chisholm IT itself, and before 1982 within Caulfield IT: the economic rationalist ideology that drove the David Syme Business School was driving not only Chisholm but also the merger. We had previously invited to the Head of the Federal Department...
Bruce Wearne from BALLARAT CENTRAL
In response to: Do we need universities?
The mask is off
October 4, 2024
Susan Dirgham brings together a number of opinions very well. We are now in a near regency in the US, with the duumvirate of Blinken and Austin III, with supporting parts from Miller, Hochstein, and Sullivan. Still it was actually Biden who announced active US military support for the Israeli attack on Lebanon which threatens the lives of many people, including thousands of Australians and Americans. And yet at almost the same time it was Blinken saying China couldn't help broker a Ukraine peace deal because it was allegedly arming Russia. So how would the US be any...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: How should Australia respond as Israel provokes war?
Advanced Care Directives and Living Wills
October 4, 2024
Ken Hillman as a long term and esteemed medical practitioner in Intensive Care recognises as many do who work in this area that there is overtreatment of terminally ill persons. States and Territories in Australia now have End of Life legislation that empowers people to express their wishes for end of life care in Advanced Care Directives and Living Wills. Not enough people know about this option and take advantage of it. As an old Intensive Care Nurse of at least 20 years I agree with Ken, but I encourage all people approaching older age to take...
Jennifer Haines from Glossodia
In response to: The conveyor belt for terminally ill older people Ken Hillman
The Albanese Enigma
October 4, 2024
Anthony Albanese won his party leadership not as the victor of an open, contested party election, but through backroom negotiations. He brought to the leadership no sense of being the champion who had best fought for Labor values and won the party’s affection. Albanese seems more negotiator than leader, so he appears as a man without uncompromising commitment to any particular cause. His stance is appropriate for much government business: politics – ‘the art of the possible’ - requires flexibility. But voters have to know that that flexibility does not compromise their leader’s core values for critical causes. A...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Dutton is unacceptable, but Labor under Albanese doesn’t deserve to be re-electe
It's all in the wording
October 4, 2024
This is exactly what needs to be asked. Perhaps I can give one of the reasons why it's been so hard for this question to be asked. Even a more 'reasonable' source of information about what is going on with this 'war' is using biased language. This is a short piece from the Guardian: 'About 60,000 Israelis have fled their homes in northern Israel due to continual fighting between Israel, Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli forces based in Lebanon. On the Lebanese side of the UN-drawn blue line that separates the two countries, tens of thousands of Lebanese have also...
Marguerite Bunce from France
In response to: Letter: Why shouldn't we support Hamas?
The Zionist Lobby Marches Onwards
October 4, 2024
In his article posted in P&I on 27 September, Scott Burchill argues convincingly that it is primarily US policy, not the pro-Zionist lobby, that is driving Australia’s pathetic and shambolic failure to actively support peace in Palestine. I agree completely with his summation that: ‘… the uglier truth is that in Australia the Israel lobby doesn’t need to work very hard to secure its political objectives. For the most part, they are pushing at an open door. ‘ There is a continual tsunami of diatribe, accusations of anti-Semitism, bullying and threats/ legal action against any proposal of just...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale NSW
In response to: US, not Israel lobby, driving Albanese Government’s Gaza policy
AMC Canberra
October 3, 2024
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane
In response to: David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra
'David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Prison in Canberra' should be distributed far and wide
October 3, 2024
Prof Ross Fitzgerald's October 1 exposé David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Prison in Canberra should be distributed far and wide. Most Australians, in fact all good people around the world would be appalled to hear that an honest, military lawyer is being cruelly incarcerated for reporting war crimes. While the people responsible for those crimes walk free. Even more shocking, is the Judge, who proclaimed that McBride’s “duty”, was to the King and not to the Australian people. The Judge declared that there will be no public interest defence allowed in evidence, and no provision for a...
Anthony Charles Wakeham from Redfern, NSW
In response to: David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra
Retributive justice is no justice
October 3, 2024
I am writing in response to the article entitled David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra by Ross Fitzgerald. I believe that you can judge a society on how it treats its most vulnerable - and in turn a government on how it treats its detractors. The appalling conditions in which David McBride is kept say more than enough about the modern Australian government. The Media's lack of interest in the very real plight of a man whose primary crime is taking action in the public interest (regardless of what the government exclaims) says much about modern...
Eamonn O’Hanlon from Sydney
In response to: David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra
David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre
October 2, 2024
Prof Fitzgerald's disturbing revelations about conditions endured by military whistleblower, David McBride & other inmates at the AMC in Canberra ought be taken seriously by governmental authorities and by the Australian media.
Andrew Hopkins from Canberra
In response to: David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra
A pathetic picture of Australian justice
October 2, 2024
I am writing in response to Ross Fitzgerald's piece regarding the appalling conditions in the Alexander Maconochie centre and the mistreatment of David McBride. Whilst the reality of prison can not be expected to be pleasant, there are basic standards of human dignity that have been established for good reason, and the idea that a federal facility should not uphold such standards is frankly shocking, shameful, and unacceptable. I have known people who have experienced incarceration in NSW facilities, and while the experiences have differed person to person and institution to institution, the reality is that the opportunity for...
Thom Muir from Canberra
In response to: David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra
Reply to Mark Diesendorf's letter of 20 September
September 26, 2024
Dr Diesendorf: I did not deliberately ignore your critiques, I wasn’t aware of them. I happened to notice the three recent articles that I referred to and saw that they all carried misconceptions about nuclear energy safety. As to your contention that nuclear energy is too dangerous, you need to explain why it will be too dangerous in the future when the record shows that it has been the least dangerous form of energy in the past. It is likely to have at least some role to play in the energy transition. Note for example Microsoft’s decision to get...
Michael Edesess from Funchal
In response to: The mistaken conventional wisdom about nuclear energy
Why shouldn't we support Hamas?
September 23, 2024
... wrongly conflates opposition to Israel’s slaughter with support for Hamas. I am increasingly questioning why we cannot support Hamas. Where is our opposition to Israel’s slaughter if we do not support the only defence force Palestinians have? We take it as a given that we cannot support a terrorist organisation so we designate Palestine's only fighting force as a terrorist force. That leaves Palestinians with what protection? We designate 7 October as terrorism. But what have Israel and its predecessor gangs been doing for a century? Why is the unequal fight for Palestinian survival called terrorism,...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn, 3122
In response to: Invisible Israeli influences tip the balance
Actually doing something to aid Palestine
September 20, 2024
It seems that our objection to the UN General Assembly vote on the resolution proposed by Palestine this week centred on the part that required actions by member countries such as us to enforce it. Nevertheless the resolution was accepted by an overwhelming majority. Although it is not binding, it is still morally incumbent on member states like us to now start those actions.
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: United Nations General Assembly votes to demand Israel ends Palestinian occupati
Nuclear energy
September 20, 2024
Dr Michael Edesess’s article is part of the standard pro-nuclear argument that claims that the anti-nuclear case is “conventional” ignorance and is allegedly based on “irrational” fears of ionising radiation. To the contrary, the case against nuclear energy is based on expert knowledge and is manifold. In a nutshell, nuclear energy is too dangerous, too slow to build to be useful for climate mitigation, too expensive, and too inflexible in operation to be a good partner for wind and solar. The “too dangerous” point has three components: the contribution of nuclear energy to the proliferation of nuclear weapons;...
Mark Diesendorf from Berowra Heights
In response to: The mistaken conventional wisdom about nuclear energy
Coalition reactors coincide with fault lines
September 20, 2024
Thomas Wellock’s warnings, quoted in Fiona Colin’s letter (17/9), about the likelihood of the next major nuclear accident must be heeded. The map showing Australia's active fault lines would surprise most Australians because they are located where most of us live, along the coast. And several of the Coalition’s recently announced nuclear power plants are located on, or near, several of these fault lines. Indeed, in one recent two-week period, one such site, Muswellbrook in NSW, experienced three earthquakes of magnitude 4.5 and above. And Geoscience Australia mapping data shows several significant fault lines in the Latrobe Valley, another...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: The risks of nuclear power
When does it become treason?
September 19, 2024
In reply to Peter Henning, when does shifting us to vassal status become treason?
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Australia a very fine example of the ultimate vassal state