Letters to the Editor
We need a song
October 23, 2025
John Schumann is frustrated because the church doesn’t articulate a case against Trump. Fair enough, though he may be surprised at how many parish pulpits are careful to apply the gospel to Trump and all his works. My frustration is that the song writers have not given us some protest songs. We are so grateful to musicians who did so much to unite opposition to the Vietnam War. But where are the songs of protest against Trump and Trumpiness? John, please help.
Stephen Williams from Newcastle NSW
In response to: Muted response to Trump's appropriation of Christianity
Climate change: It's time to panic
October 22, 2025
Chas Keys was remarkably sanguine in addressing climate denialism. Along with the biodiversity crisis, climate change is the greatest threat the planet faces. Those who deny the massive evidence surrounding climate change, deserve public condemnation and ridicule because they threaten the quality of the future of our children and grandchildren, indeed their very existence. What Trump has done in the US in removing even the mention of climate change in some government departments, in abandoning the Paris Agreement, and bolstering the fossil fuel industries while throwing a spanner in the works of the renewable energy transition, is profoundly irresponsible....
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: The problem of climate change denialism
Desperation is the driving force
October 22, 2025
Requiem for Gaza could just as easily be reimagined as Requiem for the Rules-based International Order. Desperation is the driving force. Here in the West we are beset by desperation on so many levels. There is the desperation of climate change, a looming development we do our best to ignore. There is the desperation of a debt-driven financial collapse, another looming development we are also doing our best to ignore. And there is the desperation of military inadequacy which the wars in Palestine and Ukraine have shown. In Israel, the desperation is fuelled by the above compounded by the...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Chris Hedges' Edward Said memorial lecture: ‘Requiem for Gaza’
Climate change is real alright, and it’s us causing it
October 22, 2025
Chas Keys poses an interesting question. If it’s not human activity causing the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we’re in more trouble than we realise. Not that we aren’t already facing enormous difficulties. The climate data being collected makes it abundantly clear the planet is entering the feedback climate loop peer-reviewed science has warned of since the 1970s. We’ve had half a century to validate we’ve fully evolved as thinking hominids. That we haven’t is confirmed by the depth of climate denialism across the world. Whether it’s compelled by greed, ideology or ignorance is immaterial, the outcome’s...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: The problem of climate change denialism
Heath Robinson and Humpty Dumpty
October 22, 2025
I love Peter's reference to Heath Robinson in this article. I have always looked, after over 50 years involved with governments in Australia, at the similarity of much government policy formulation and implementation as an excellent simile with the wonderfully complicated structures that he was an expert in. Trump's plan — and it is a great exaggeration to call it such — not only has the imagination of Heath Robinson in its gratuitous complexity, but also encompasses Humpty Dumpty's propensity to invent new meanings for words.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: At best, a respite for Gazans
Palestinian dispossession
October 22, 2025
While the devastated landscapes may look similar, the difference between a post-nuclear Japan and Palestine could not be greater apart from the fact that US bases are still located on Japanese soil. The issue in Gaza is where to relocate the Palestinians because the Israelis don't want them on their “God-given” (including Jerusalem) land and the religious right need the return of the the Jews so they can benefit.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: It's too early to discuss 'what next' for Gaza
Bastardry on steroids
October 22, 2025
This article is a brilliant catalogue of the continuation of the centuries-long history of the atrocities committed by the allegedly Christian US in spreading the exact opposite of what it claims to stand for. Democracy doesn't get a guernsey anywhere in this history of invasion, subversion, theft and mass murder. But as the US empire deservedly crumbles, the rest of the world, excluding the European and Australian satraps, begin to resist. Russia, Iran and China look like helping the Venezuelan people to guarantee that this attempt at overthrowing an elected government will not succeed. More power to their...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump CIA intervention in Venezuela risks another US war of choice, experts warn
Science and stupefaction
October 22, 2025
At its base, the anti-climate change idiocy of Trump and those who share his scientific philistinism is inherently illogical, uninformed and plainly stupid. To say, as he often does, that the work of tens of thousands of highly qualified climate scientists is simply not believable carries some far greater implications, either about his purchase by the oil, coal and gas corporations or his utter incapacity for logical thought. The scientific method is now understood and supported by the vast bulk of humanity. That scientific method is common across literally all areas of human knowledge, with the notable exception of...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump is pushing allies to buy US gas. It’s bad economics – and a catastrophe for the climate
Lies, damned lies and statistics
October 21, 2025
This is the phrase that sprang to mind on reading Michael Keating's article on migration in Australia. While not really accusing him of lying, I would suggest he is cherry-picking data to support his case, which is basically to maintain high levels of population growth in Australia. According to the latest figures from ABS, population growth was 1.6% in the year to March this year, an increase of 423,400 people, of which net overseas migration was 315,900 or about three quarters. Yes, 1.6% is a lot better than the Third World rates of 2.5% we saw in 2023, but...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: The migration debate in Australia
It's too early to discuss 'what next' for Gaza
October 20, 2025
It is far too early to even begin to contemplate what next for Gaza, which is now the theme of much well-intentioned commentary. There is barely a ceasefire, with Israel killing dozens of Palestinians over the past few days, and looking for every Hamas did it pretext to kill more. People are still starving to death, with the arrival of only limited food supplies. There are no functional hospitals. There are no foreign press to witness the carnage. And it is utterly unclear what the Trump plan now envisages. Now more than ever we should be applying all...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: As Gaza starts to rebuild, what lessons can be learned from Nagasaki in 1945?
Beyond delusional
October 20, 2025
Are we still entertaining the delusion that the suffering of the Palestinian people is over? Are we still believing that a ceasefire is intact when, as I write, Israel has just dropped scores of bombs on the Gaza Strip in violation of the barely two-week-old agreement? Are we still deluded that Trump and Netanyahu’s plan to create a new Miami in Gaza has changed into an altruistic endeavour? It is sheer denial to now write about reconstruction and rebuilding when Palestine is still being bombarded, innocent Palestinians are being torn apart by tank and drone fire and mothers are...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: As Gaza starts to rebuild, what lessons can be learned from Nagasaki in 1945?
A step in the right direction
October 20, 2025
I think Michael McKinley's idea has merit. This doesn't mean the politicians will buy into it... how after all, could anyone question their decision-making capability? They are the government after all. The article reflects the lack of independent strategic thinking at government level, which the government, on first reflex at least, will be likely to deny or ignore, but which, in my view is the case. Michael's idea may not be the final version of what is required, or of what may possibly evolve... but it is a step in the right direction.
Peter Kent from Melbourne
In response to: An immodest proposal for an ideal source of strategic policy advice
Another brick in the wall
October 20, 2025
John Frew's recent fine polemic reiterates much of the frustration described by the late Sir Ken Robinson. What gets measured gets manipulated and learning has degenerated into indoctrination. Even our red brick universities have degenerated into ideological battlegrounds and inculcated graduands are just another brick in the wall.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane QLD 4000
In response to: Counting what doesn’t count:
Delusional world
October 20, 2025
As proven by today's headlines, anyone who thought that Israel could be trusted to abide by a lasting peace is as delusional as the president who thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for organising it. Israel won't stop until they alone own the land that “God” gave them, including Jerusalem.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Gaza has a ceasefire, now Palestine needs self-determination
Climate tipping points
October 20, 2025
It seems our governments lack the moral courage to do what the sciences, both physical and economic, demand to stave off Julian Cribb’s spine-chilling list of imminent climate tipping points. So, we, the people, must force the issue. If we can activate some social tipping points, people pressure might still help us rapidly spread the technologies, behaviours, social norms and structural reorganisation we need to delay the physical tipping points. If enough people start to demand, among other things, the removal of fossil fuel subsidies and divest from assets linked to fossil fuels, we may still move...
Lesley Walker from Naarm (Northcote)
In response to: Tipping, tipping, tipping... the dominoes fall
The Apocalypse is coming
October 20, 2025
According to the Global Tipping Points Report 2025: “Already warm-water coral reefs are crossing their thermal tipping point and experiencing unprecedented dieback... This is sickening news, not just because so much beauty and biodiversity is being lost, but also the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people who depend on coral reefs. The world is likely to hit 2°C warming between 2034 and 2052. According to New Scientist (28 May), the world could experience a year above 2°C of warming as early as 2029. The chances are slim, but it's only four years away. What happens at 2°C?...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Tipping, tipping, tipping... the dominoes fall
Israel and the ICJ
October 20, 2025
To add to the argument of Paul Heywood-Smith, the prophet Jonah was sent to preach repentance to the people of the city of Nineveh (Mosul). The people did repent, a response cited by Jesus as exemplary. Nineveh was a long, long way beyond even the Euphrates River, which the blasphemous political readings of Judaism might fancifully assert is part of a God-given Israel. (And by the way, how does God caring so much for the non Jewish people of Nineveh square with the political chosen people interpretation of Jewish fundamentalists? Or with the numerous prophetic references in the Old...
David Moloney from Seaford
In response to: Israel’s response to the International Court of Justice
Popular action can overcome existential despair
October 20, 2025
Julian Cribb has, in recent articles, summarised with authority the dangers we now face with our oceans , with our forests , and with our water. His summary of imminent tipping points encapsulates the urgency of our predicament. David Spratt has highlighted the shortcomings of the National Climate Risk Assessment. Cribb details the risks of misinformation. Our future looks grim, but policymakers — disproportionately influenced by vested interests — seem reluctant to explain this clearly to the electorate. Popular scepticism continues to hamper effective environmental protection. Despair reflects the sense of an individual’s incapacity to generate change in...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Tipping, tipping, tipping... the dominoes fall
Speak up, Australia
October 17, 2025
Appreciation to Wayne McMillan who, in praising Greta Thunberg, calls for Australians to “write to their politicians and wake them up from their moral and ethical slumber of inaction”. We may live in a democratic country but most of our politicians are captured by gambling, fossil fuel and other lobbying groups. We can’t sit back and allow these industries to pursue profit at all cost. Speak up Australia.
Amy Hiller from Kew, Melbourne
In response to: Is Greta Thunberg the lone voice for justice in our world?”
Killing with chooks
October 17, 2025
Mark Macdonald is perfectly correct that antibiotic resistance (ABR) is a major threat to the human future. Unfortunately, even with the generous allocation of word space in Pearls & Irritations, it is not possible to enumerate every case of purblind, human stupidity. Some have to be taken as read! That said, ABR is sure to kill an awful lot of people come the mid-century, especially if we continue to use antibiotics just to create heavier chooks and fatter pigs, while carefully nurturing the zoonotic pestilences of the future. Indeed, we could regard ABR as a byproduct of...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: Global collapse
Nothing to see here
October 17, 2025
Some Australian ministers are now saying the Palestine war is over, nothing to see there. So we can still ship weapons parts to Israel even though the IDF is supporting settlers attacking Palestinian farms in northeast Palestine. We can ignore the slow Hiroshima carried out by the US and Israel over two years. I see too that the RAAF had a surveillance plane in the Ukraine, which our government seemingly believes to be closer than Palestine, at a time when the government was asked to provide aerial assistance to Australians and others in the Sumud aid flotilla. Oh,...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Denial and amnesia: Is the global community ready to welcome Israel back?
No 'just peace' without due diligence
October 16, 2025
Peter Slezak demands sincere attention and a fair, just and strong response from our flaccid government leaders, Albanese and Wong. It has taken — what? — little more than 48 hours from the signing of the Trump Peace Plan (TPP) for the Netanyahu Government and the IDF to resume killing Palestinians with the same gratuitously offensive excuses that have been such a predominant feature of their entire genocidal campaign. We wait for Albanese and Wong to change from calling on Hamas to abide by the terms of the TPP and apply the same pressure on the Zionists' genocidal...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Time for a 'just peace' for all peoples in Palestine
Will we out Advance?
October 15, 2025
We are indebted to investigative writers like John Queripel, Anthony Klan and Michael West Media, to name a few, who provide forensic exposes of elite-funded Advance. As in the US, the funders of Advance are far from household names but are nevertheless deeply invested in policy areas, especially climate action. They, and members of the Coalition, claim they are fighting a “woke elite”. They attempt — sometimes successfully — to divide and distract by igniting spot fires around which bathroom to use or what books children should or shouldn’t read. Donor Gina Rinehart claimed earlier this year that...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Who are ‘Advance’ and what are they doing to our politics?
No more killing in Palestine
October 15, 2025
I note Ramzy Baroud’s article. I hope our faith in the ability of the Palestinian people to govern wisely is not dimmed by more reports of extrajudicial killings in Gaza, channelling Donald Trump in the Caribbean.
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: From Gaza, Palestinians have reasserted their agency on the world stage
The big con from a lame government
October 15, 2025
Take the backdown on super after the approval of NW Shelf gas drilling out to 2070, throw in tightening of FOI for good measure, and community Independents have been handed a gift to mobilise for 2028. The only, but major, problem they'll have is disabusing aspirants that they will ever have $3 million, let alone $10 million in super. It will also be an uphill battle getting them to realise that, without tax reform, they will forever be stuck with crumbling public health, education, transport and privatised child and aged care where costs go up as quality goes down....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Keating welcomes changes to taxation of super
FOI a problem for Labor
October 15, 2025
It is a truism of so-called Australian politics that accurate information for the public constrains political skullduggery. It is interesting to see that Labor, who have campaigned over the decades on ensuring an informed public, tend to change their tune when in government. My own experience is revelatory. In a recent role running a state charity, a consultant employed by the Department of Health engaged with that Department in an underhanded and possibly illegal conspiracy to take over that charitable body and used public funds to further that design. FOI was crucial in enabling that body to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: A deserved defeat for Albanese on freedom of information
Extremism and fanaticism of every kind
October 14, 2025
I hope that Amelie has an enriching experience at the UN and strongly support the intent of her work to eliminate extremism and fanaticism of every kind on social media. The most serious kind is that promoted by various regimes around the world, not the least of which are Israel and the US. The algorithms that allow this state-sponsored extremism are far and away the most dangerous. That is because the wealth and influence of these state sponsors vastly outweighs that of the many invaded and occupied communities and cultures around the world marginalised by the Western-created algorithms...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Disarming extremism in the algorithmic age
The abiding consequences of criminality
October 14, 2025
This is a careful and comprehensive analysis of why those invaded and bastardised by the West in the apocryphal name of spreading democracy remain unconvinced by the fraud!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The half-life of humiliation and the hunger for revenge
Neoclassical pseudo-science
October 14, 2025
Further to Evan Jones’ sensible defence of the political economy versus neoclassical economics, he quotes neoclassicist Warren Hogan Jr implying the positive role of the scientific method for the latter. I spent four decades as an actual scientist (studying the Earth) and more time digging into the horrors of mainstream economics. Hogan’s claim is laughable. Neoclassical economics is built on flagrantly unrealistic assumptions, such as that we can all predict accurate probabilities of all future possibilities, that we are selfish competitors and there are no social interactions (in fact, humans are highly social), and that there are no economies...
Geoff Davies from Braidwood NSW
In response to: Fifty years of political economics at Sydney University – what has it meant for
Eugene Doyle: Magisterial analyst
October 14, 2025
May I compliment you for your superior analysis of 7 October 2023? I have not read of movements of Hamas in Israeli territory before. Hamas killed Israeli soldiers while overwhelming military bases, and some were also killed when kibbutzim and Nova Rave were attacked. Yet, if the more than 3000 Hamas insurgents could overwhelm the IDF bases so comprehensively, so quickly, and if murder was their intention, surely many more Israeli deaths could have resulted. Similarly, the unknown thousands (?) of Palestinians also did not murder. They were all very inefficient killers. Likely, Hamas came to capture Israelis...
Keith Mitchelson from brisbane
In response to: 7 October 2023: What really happened? Part 1
Will Katz or Trump prevail?
October 13, 2025
Ziyad Motala deserves congratulation on his article, as a key piece of American commentary right now is from Donald Trump: “The war is over. But, sad to say, then we have Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz just now in a tweet: “Israel’s great challenge after the phase of returning the hostages will be the destruction of all of Hamas’s terror tunnels in Gaza, directly by the IDF and through the international mechanism to be established under the leadership and supervision of the United States. This is the primary significance of implementing the agreed-upon principle of demilitarising Gaza and...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: The moral vacancy of American commentary on Gaza
Trump should never get the Nobel Peace Prize
October 13, 2025
Jeff McMullen eloquently presents the case that Donald Trump runs a violent country and is strongly inclined to violence himself. Thus, it is abhorrent that he should even be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize, whatever his involvement in the Israeli/Hamas peace deal. By all means, give credit where credit is due — and some is probably warranted in this case — but a Nobel Peace Prize recipient should be a person of peace, not a warmonger. The fact that Trump renamed the Department of Defence as the Department of War says it all. McMullen spells it out....
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: These are fighting words
Global collapse
October 13, 2025
The Julian Cribb article made for an interesting read. I think there is one more factor he has left out. This is the potential loss of antibiotics in the future. This will mean a natural increase in the death rate unless alternatives are found. Everyday common diseases and surgery will become increasingly dangerous. If the world can get over the population peak later this century without major collapse, then there is still hope.
Mark Mcdonald from drysdale
In response to: Died of a delusion' – the fate of modern civilisation?
The Lord of the Flies revisited
October 13, 2025
The sheer racial infantilism of the Anglo-Saxon elites and their security service underlings put me in mind of Golding's Lord of the Flies. Maybe there is a beast… Maybe it's only us!, seems to summarise the childish brutishness of our so-called security services. They seem to spend their entire lives projecting their own vacuous and depraved predispositions onto racially less worthy opponents, that they have confected in their fevered imaginings. Their lives seem to reflect the barbarity of the playground as they look all around them and see themselves reflected back to them in all their childish fantasising. ...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: How anti-China witch hunts in Canada and the UK ruin lives
Subtlety and nuance versus arrogant stupidity
October 13, 2025
A very well put together and thought out article. The problem for the Yanks is that they have, over the last 30 years at least, lost the arts of subtlety and nuance entirely from their diplomacy. Asia, by contrast because of its need to appease the Western beast, has developed these arts to a fine degree. South Korea is an excellent example as are Singapore, Malaysia and China.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: South Korea's caution on US Iran aims
Deforestation a climate and biodiversity calamity
October 13, 2025
When it comes to deforestation, it's hard to decide which is the worse consequence: climate change or biodiversity loss. As Julian Cribb notes, the Earth’s depleted forests are becoming a major contributor to Hothouse Earth. Deforestation is driving climate change. Yet forests are the habitat for countless species. All too often, to lose the forest is to lose the species that depend on it. According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, deforestation is a key threat to 60% of Australia’s listed threatened species. At least 1100 native vertebrate animals are forest-dependent. Species threatened by deforestation include the koala, swift parrot,...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: The Earth uncloaked – A catastrophe in slow motion
Retire our unfair superannuation system
October 13, 2025
Misha Schubert's essay should resonate with anyone who cares about equity and justice. As she so eloquently reminds us, care is predominantly provided by women. Its value is inadequately recognised: to a huge degree it is hidden and unpaid; when it is paid, the pay and conditions are poor. This is an important reason — but far from the only reason — for the alarming rate of poverty among older women. Changes to the nation's superannuation system will not, however, achieve more than minor improvements. Our much-lauded super system is in effect a revers Robin Hood scheme: it...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: Australia faces a looming crisis of older women retiring in poverty
Cultivated China phobia
October 13, 2025
Colin Mackerras is very civilised in his refusal to comprehensively criticise the cultural failings of Australia with respect to China. His criticisms are restrained but very clear in their noting of the all-embracing nature of those failures. He could have further noted that, despite the decades since the abolition of the White Australia policy, the virulent racism that underlay that policy remains just below the surface of daily life. Our overweening beliefs in the superiority of white cultures over all others has been a clear driver of the willingness of even much of the Left to willingly swallow...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Lack of China capability can only do harm to society: Our current situation is a disgrace
Absurdities and atrocities
October 13, 2025
Voltaire got it right when he wrote that, Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”. The absurdity in this case is to believe that legitimate criticism of Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people constitutes antisemitism. Then you would also have to believe that any criticism of the policies of any country means that you are by definition anti the people of that country. Yet, no reasonable person believes that, as it would make free communication impossible. However, Zionists, unlike any other political group, are entitled to make such a claim about Israel, and the...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,”
Van Jones and the Merchant of Venice
October 13, 2025
One is inclined to think of the duke's lines in the Merchant of Venice when reflecting on the common Western prejudice and racism in the comments of Van Jones. I am sorry for thee: thou art come to answer. A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch. Uncapable of pity, void and empty. From any dram of mercy. Seems to sum up the views of US elites pretty succinctly!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Van Jones and the moral vacancy of American commentary on Gaza
Netanyahu didn't 'do' Gaza. Israel did.
October 13, 2025
It is important to remember that Benjamin Netanyahu did not come from nowhere. He is a born and bred Israeli, a sabra, and is merely the latest in a long line of ethnic cleansers who have been running Palestine since its partition in 1947. The history of Israel is one of continuous dispossession and murder. Something has to change so everything can go on as before. This quote, from Giuseppe di Lampedusa's novel The Leopard, is exactly what this article is warning against. Netanyahu might make an easy target for change. He is proudly visible, unrepentant and boastful....
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: How the West will package the genocide after Netanyahu
Prospect of sea-level rise is terrifying
October 13, 2025
David Spratt notes that the recent National Climate Risk Assessment underestimates projected sea-level rise. It suggests a one-metre rise by the end of the century, but evidence now suggests, because of tipping points, it is likely to be two metres and possibly much more. Just looking at the last Interglacial, for instance, when temperatures were a mere 1°C above pre-industrial levels, sea levels were 5-10 metres above those of today. The State of the Cryosphere report spells out why even 2°C warming is too high. 2°C will result in extensive, potentially rapid, irreversible sea-level rise from Earth’s ice sheets...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Australia’s climate assessment fails on sea-level rise risks and vulnerable comm
Graffiti is a hate crime, by anybody
October 13, 2025
Simon Tatz refers to the Bali bombings, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse, all terrible things, and all completely irrelevant to this topic. What is not irrelevant, as I mentioned and which he and many others choose to ignore, is the long list of extremely hateful, racist and deplorable statements by members of the Israeli Government, both current and previous. So, confected outrage, double standard or hypocrisy? Maybe all three. He seems to imply I, and others, have no experience of prejudice, racism, etc. and have no right to comment. I have every right, as we all...
Jerry Cartwright from Perth
In response to: Graffiti-is-a-hate-crime-too
Stark contrast
October 13, 2025
Last night (12 October), on SBS World News they showed Prime Minister Netanyahu visiting a refitted facility for the returned hostages after their horrendous ordeal at the hands of the Hamas terrorists. I could not help but note the contrast between that hospital and the bombed and under-supplied, under-staffed sometimes tent hospitals in Gaza seen on the nightly news and wonder how can this ever end. It is only one tit-for-tat atrocity from starting it all again.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Childhood on hold: Growing up too soon in Gaza and beyond
Singapore does it right
October 10, 2025
Singapore has been getting it right for many decades now, standing up for yourself, not unnecessarily making enemies and dealing with all on an equal basis. If we could only stop learning our lessons on power, diplomacy and geopolitics from the dying empire and get with the rising one!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: A masterclass in agency: What Singapore can teach Australia about China
Security through diplomacy
October 10, 2025
Security for Australia within Asia is really quite simple. Join BRICS and the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. We already have membership in the New Development Bank and the Reserve Contingent Arrangement. This will integrate us into the region which will dominate the world this century. Membership of all these guarantees our security in the region. Then all we have to do is navigate the US covert and criminal efforts, as in 1975 with Gough, to overturn our government and bring us back into being another bitch for the US!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Australia’s next big bet lies East, not West
Shark nets save lives
October 10, 2025
Graeme Stewart is absolutely right on shark nets. My long career as an environmentalist has convinced me that sharks don’t want to eat you. But attacks do happen – with terrifying results. It concerns me that nets are a blunt instrument that catches other sea creatures as well as sharks. But it also concerns me that people are killed by sharks. The current orchestrated campaign against nets claims they don’t work and even that nets attract sharks. Professor Stewart has cut through this debate with an excellent summary of the scientific evidence – which clearly shows that shark nets...
John Dengate from Sydney
In response to: Shark nets do protect human life
Graffiti is a hate crime too
October 10, 2025
Jerry Cartwright thinks pro-terrorist graffiti is a trivial matter. Imagine if, after the Bali bombings, similar messages supporting those who killed many Australians were sprayed around our cities? Perhaps Cartwright would find it confected outrage if messages supporting domestic violence and killing of women were painted near his home, or support for child sexual abuse. Would that elicit confected outrage too? Here's a truth bomb – it's only people who will never experience antisemitism, Islamophobia or racism who dismiss vilification as trivial.
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: Confected outrage
Evolved thinking needed to solve human problems
October 10, 2025
Militantly begging the authorities to do something about the widespread mess the species finds itself in is as ineffective as scapegoating them or happily acquiescing to the blue-sky tokenism they always offer up as solutions. This mutually convenient dance between the governors and the governed has been with us since the beginnings of our so-called sapience and shows no sign of abating anytime soon. Let us be clear, we will not solve the problems of our world with the same psychology that created them. An evolved and radical adaptation of our thinking is urgently needed, but highly...
Andrew Stretton from Fingal, Tasmania
In response to: Is Greta Thunberg the lone voice for justice in our world?
A not-so-easy Community Independent Senate seat
October 10, 2025
In his article on the possibility of Teals getting Senate seats, Bob McMullan crunches only one of the two lots of vital numbers – votes. He ignores or doesn't appreciate the three-step process of getting an MP elected. First, local people decide they want a better MP than the one they've got. They form a group to discuss what sort of person this might be and what they want of them. Second, they advertise for a candidate and choose whom they think will meet their aspirations. Third, they recruit as many volunteers as they can to get the message...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Could the Teals win Senate seats in an expanded parliament?
Palestine peace plan
October 10, 2025
Sawsan Madina is dubious about the peace plan for Gaza. But at least for now, the daily carnage stops. The interview on ABC’s 7.30 on Thursday 9 October with the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel showed that she cannot see that Israel’s actions over the last 70 years of continuing Nakba might be partly responsible for the rise of Hamas as a group using terror tactics. Haskel simply does not support there being a state of Palestine and criticised all those who do. The UN has been totally sidelined, with Trump able to say recently that it was...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: A time to redouble our efforts for Palestine
Deceit upon deceit...
October 10, 2025
As they say, history is written by the victors. If it were a Palestinian writing, rather than Stuart Rees, they would have started the story of deceit a couple of years earlier. It gets a bit repetitive because he leaves no stone unturned, but it's still worth reading Peter Shambrook's Policy of Deceit: Britain and Palestine, 1914-1939 which details how Britain promised the Arabs an independent state, including Palestine, after the war, in exchange for an Arab alliance with Britain against the Ottomans in World War I. Remember ... this came before the Balfour Declaration. It's also worth noting...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: A century of deceit: Towards a new understanding of the colonisation of Palestin
Conservatism versus freedom
October 9, 2025
The US loves to lecture the world on the indispensability of its political system which supposedly encapsulates freedom and democracy. That system is deliberately designed to be extraordinarily vulnerable to manipulation by their wealthy elites. Two hundred years of efforts to prevent a high standard of public education, to enable the control of the bewildered herd as those elites describe the people, has rendered the US more susceptible than any other country to irrational fears and created panics. The efforts of the Orange Donald are simply a part of that 200 years of social manipulation. McCarthyism was just...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Shadow of McCarthyism looms over controversial firing of Texas professor who taught about gender identity
Balance, schmalance!
October 9, 2025
An incisive analysis of the fraudulent use of the idea of balance to avoid addressing the herd of elephants in the room. Just as with the Nazis in Warsaw, the current unquestionable genocide in Gaza by Israel is incapable of defence as international law has spoken with clarity and certainty. One would have thought that a journalists association would understand that. Apparently not!!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Cancelling Chris Hedges: What price balance?
Recognition of older women
October 9, 2025
As an older woman, Misha’s story really hit home. The older women facing retirement today with little or no super are the same women who gave up their own lives and careers to raise families, care for others and hold communities together. Women constitute the highest percentage of carers, they always have. Their sacrifices made life easier for everyone else, particularly men. They’re now being left behind. We need workplaces that support younger women with children now, fairer pay and super for all and affordable housing for older women. Most of all, we need to value care —...
Meg Schwarz from Macclesfield
In response to: Australia faces a looming crisis of older women retiring in poverty. Here’s wha
New Delhi: Population exceeding resource limits
October 9, 2025
Julian Cribb mentions a number of megacities, including New Delhi. I visited the city in 1969 and found it a pleasant place in contrast to various poverty-ravaged cities within the country, most notably Calcutta, now Kolkata. There, half a million slept on the streets at night, often with only a dirty newspaper for a pillow. In contrast, New Delhi was free of the chaos that bedevilled other cities in India. Back then, 56 years ago, New Delhi's population was 3,381,000 people, less than a tenth of what it is today, namely, 35 million. It is anticipated to be 39...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: World water in crisis
Confected outrage
October 9, 2025
Someone painted God bless Hamas on a billboard, and all the usual suspects were screaming from the rooftops and tearing their hair out, calling in the federal police (who, I'm sure, have more important things to worry about). If it had said God bless Ben Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich or Netanyahu? All are either under sanction, convicted criminals or wanted for war crimes. Do you think there would have been an outcry as we have seen over this? As happens with all graffiti, paint over it and forget it.
Jerry Cartwright from Perth
In response to: https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/10/october-7-not-to-a-day-to-abuse-protesters/
Wheat from the chaff
October 9, 2025
The best president the US never had, the late Adlai E. Stevenson II, offered one of the best descriptions of journalism: An editor is a someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill QLD 4000
In response to: Journos as heroes and villans - 'The Hack' reviewed
Political gutlessness
October 8, 2025
It appears that our political leaders have lost their moral compass – if they ever possessed one. They hide their moral vacuity behind empty posturing around a slogan (antisemitism) that has been so misused by the Zionists they appear to love, that it no longer has any meaning or content. These moral midgets will be remembered by history, but not in the way they hope!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: 7 October not a day to abuse protesters
The memory hole revisited
October 8, 2025
When watching current political cowardice, one is powerfully reminded of George Orwell and his memory hole. This is the place for confining events that are not helpful to those in power as they seek to convince the populace that everything is fine. Current Western leaders have become masters at consigning Israeli depravity to that memory hole to convince themselves that they retain some kind of moral legitimacy. The bulk of us just don't buy it!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: 7 October 2023: Return of the Hannibal Directive and the genocide starts now - Part 2
Democracy in theory, authoritarianism in practice
October 8, 2025
I don't recall in my lifetime — and that is 80 years — another period when our so-called democracies in the West have demonstrated such a disconnect between the people and our alleged leaders. Billions of decent people around the planet have demonstrated unequivocally that they do not believe the rancid criminals in Israel when the latter claim to be supposedly just defending themselves. Yet our Western leaders appear to be utterly unaware of the abhorrence and detestation with which their support for genocide is viewed. They demonstrate, if it were ever necessary to say so, a craven...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Hundreds of thousands flood cities across Europe to demand end to genocide in Gaza
Some Australians are more equal than others
October 8, 2025
Today (7th October 2025), our prime minister stood in parliament and lamented the death of one dual Australian/Israeli citizen who died two years ago at an Israeli music festival. He did not mention, nor it was ever mentioned in the last two years, a genocide that the state of Israel has been committing on the Palestinian people. Nor has the government or our prime minister mentioned the more than 67000 predominantly women and children who were killed in the Israeli-committed genocide (possibly some of them also Australian dual citizens). Finally, Australia is complicit in this genocide, directly and...
Okrad Marconi from Sydney
In response to: Palestinians out by 7 October?
Fair share of tax? I think not
October 8, 2025
Misha Schubert could be writing about me. I’m in my 50s and after two decades as a teacher, I gave up work to look after my parent. Out of necessity I had go on the carers pension. Now on $30,000 a year, I pay $2000 tax. Even on this low wage, I cannot claim a cent to alleviate the tax burden, not the modified shower seat, not the petrol nor the parking tickets for the three weekly hospital visits… nothing. On a carers pension, I pay more tax than a property investor or gas corporation. As a school teacher...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Australia faces a looming crisis of older women retiring in poverty. Here’s what
The plight of older female pensioners
October 7, 2025
Yes, the inadequate aged pension and the shortage of affordable housing affects many older women. A friend in her late 70s is renting an affordable flat from an organisation that informs her that this accommodation is temporary and she will soon be again on the move. She regularly visits the local Housing NSW office, where there is a constant turnover of clearly demoralised staff and many requests for duplicate documentation, especially for copies of her most recent bank statements. When she produces one statement they ask for statements from her other banks, and she has to inform them,...
Janet Grevillea from Lake Macquarie
In response to: Australia faces a looming crisis of older women retiring in poverty. Here’s what
National Press Club dodges questions on Hedges
October 7, 2025
I wrote to the National Press Club chief executive Maurice Reilly to protest his decision to cancel the address scheduled for Chris Hedges to speak on the situation in Gaza for journalists. I read the NPC media statement on the matter published in P&I on 5 October. There I noted Reilly's assertion that the decision to withdraw the invitation was made on the basis that (when) more details of the address were made available we decided to pursue other speakers on the matter”. I contacted Reilly and asked him to explain what that means. He referred me back to...
Kym Davey from Adelaide SA
In response to: chris-hedges-statement-by-the-national-press-club-4-october-2025/?utm_source=Pea
7 October: Prepare for the Zionist assault
October 7, 2025
This won’t appear before we enter the second anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel. We can expect an explosion of anti-Hamas sentiment. We can expect a seismic level of regurgitation of gruesome allegations of Hamas atrocities, some of which will be true but there is a growing body of evidence that much of what is routinely spewed by the plethora of Zionist spokespeople is simply lies. Mussolini would be envious of their success. We need more well-researched, definitive, irrefutable, factual accounts such as Eugene Doyle’s work of what happened in order to base proper judgment....
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: 7 October 2023: What really happened? Part 1
Whom can I believe – the NPC or the journalist?
October 6, 2025
After reading Chris Hedges’ article in Pearls and Irritations, I was angry and disappointed with the National Press Club. Ready to write an angry letter. Then today I read the response from the NPC. I am now angry and disappointed with Hedges for misrepresenting the situation. I feel like Donald Trump. I end up believing the last person who had my ear. If this disagreement exists over the facts of a fairly straightforward situation — and both parties are considered honest and trustworthy — where does that leave me in deciding what to believe about more complicated and more...
Carl Rathus from Brisbane
In response to: Chris Hedges – Statement by the National Press Club ( 4 October 2025)
Civilisation’s collapse not the end of the world
October 6, 2025
Our planet holds far too many people. We are destroying the uniquely stable environment of the past 12,000 years which has enabled civilisations to develop and thrive. We are bringing our civilisation’s collapse through not addressing existential issues now in plain sight. With civilisational collapse, our human population will inevitably shrink. Animal populations must also reduce – since 94% of animals now are domesticated livestock. Some domesticated animals might become feral; predators would thrive; the natural environment would re-establish itself, gradually burying remains of our lost civilisation. Thus life on the planet would rebalance – how much...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: 'Died of a delusion' – the fate of modern civilisation?
Our civilisation’s collapse is not yet inevitable
October 6, 2025
Julian Cribb argues that civilisational collapse will soon become inevitable. This collapse is focused on the human future, but necessarily includes the future for all life on Earth. Humans live in, and depend on, a healthy, rich ecology, but many societies have lived with the religious belief that they are chosen ones – that the world has been created for their benefit, with the implicit assumption that they are entitled to all that it contains. This sense of entitlement has led to the pillaging of natural resources that has characterised the world since colonial times. Colonising countries enriched themselves...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: 'Died of a delusion' – the fate of modern civilisation?
The lessons of history learned by the smart
October 6, 2025
A really interesting and thoughtful article that gives meaning to George Santayana's aphorism that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. China, largely due to its 4000-year civilisational history, is not doing what the West is doing. It is learning from the past and creating a culture that is not repeating the mistakes of the past, at least for the last 40 years. Mind you it has also been extraordinarily successful over thousands of years in avoiding foreign military and colonial involvements and that is serving them extraordinarily well. The vast and continuing expenditures...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Orwell foresees the 21st century
Fact against convenient fiction
October 6, 2025
The debt that Australians, who seek the uncomfortable truth rather than the convenient fiction, owe to John Menadue for his decision to create Pearls and Irritations is immense. The barren mainstream media landscape of Australia, that values fantasy over fact and obedience over questioning of authority, leaves little room for intelligent debate and doubt. This article is a great example of what escapes the boring and stultifying conformance of our media and seeks to provide an outlet for views that try to reflect the complex realities that we face, rather than the soothing inanities of the elites. ...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: South Korea’s anti-China protests
Truth as opposed to propaganda
October 6, 2025
The world owes Eugene Doyle an enormous debt as he finally strips away the tissue of lies, distortions, fabrications and mendacity that the West has surrounded 7 October 2023 with to turn the Israelis from the perpetrators into the victims. Eighty years of bastardization of the Palestinian people by the West, that created their suffering to excuse Western Holocaust guilt, can now be seen for what it is. Every pretence of civilisational and moral superiority is stripped away to reveal the corruption and moral vacuity of a dying Western empire. As Israel is run by European Zionists, it...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: 7 October 2023: What really happened? Part 1
National Press Club is only interested in status quo journalism
October 6, 2025
Does Australia have a fearless independent National Press Club to host challenging thought-provoking speakers like Chris Hedges, a world-renowned award-winning journalist? Or must we rely on an insular group of journalists more interested in status quo journalism that will never be questioned? The NPC's response to criticism of its decision to cancel the Hedges address is alarming because it tries to use that hackneyed “balance argument“ to justify its decision. How could any self-respecting journalist or media organisation provide “balance“ to Israel’s genocide and the murder of more than 67,000 civilians? Further, it is arguable that the NPC...
Margaret Reynolds from Richmond, Tasmania
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
No place for independent journalists to address the NPC
October 6, 2025
I was incredulous to hear that the National Press Club had cancelled the planned address by Chris Hedges. I would have thought that a press club would have been interested to hear from one of the most respected independent journalists with deep knowledge of the Middle East. And I am deeply troubled by the words .. and when more details of the address were made available we decided to pursue other speakers on the matter. in the NPC's media statement. Indeed, I would have thought that given the genocide in Gaza, the killing of over 270 Palestinians journalists...
Sawsan Madina from Sydney
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
National Press Club directors should hang their heads in shame
October 6, 2025
The letter below was forwarded to P&I. To Maurice Reilly and the directors of the National Press Club Your decision to cancel the 20 October address by prize-winning American journalist Chris Hedges is a disgrace and a betrayal of everything the National Press Club is supposed to stand for. Your website claims you are a vigorous champion of media freedom and a home away from home for journalists. Yet you refuse to have a highly-qualified speaker, who has rigorously documented the biggest deliberate slaughter of journalists in history — the murder of at least 278 reporters...
Judith White from Tweed Heads, NSW
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
Chinese EVs are an outcome of global innovation
October 6, 2025
A couple of days ago I tried to interest my 21-year-old daughter in the way many technologies had come together to produce the current offering of Chinese EVs. It is not dissimilar to how we ended up with the iPhone. I am an IT industry veteran who remembers working with individual transistors. It is not what exists now that I was holding out as our climate hope. It is how fast change happens when you reach these technology inflection points. I couldn’t see it when I was in my 20s, working in the mini-computer industry and the PC...
Peter Kendall from Ferny Grove QLD
In response to: We killed our car industry and now we're drafted to fight against Chinese EVs (again?)
An unlikely declaration of unconditional surrender
October 6, 2025
This ludicrous plan, in which Anthony Albanese so enthusiastically promotes his participation, is not only a betrayal of the Palestinians right to justice but also represents an unconditional surrender to the racist and criminal regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv. That Western leaders, who endorse this theft of the identity and human dignity of the Palestinians, can so pompously congratulate themselves on this derisory document could not more clearly demonstrate their racism and moral vacuity. Roll on the multipolar world where real civilisations supplant the poisonous legacy of the West!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: No justice or peace for Palestinians in Trump’s Plan
The farce of the rules-based international order
October 6, 2025
It's Humpty Dumpty again where the West takes that role and changes the meaning of words to suit itself. This article takes the role of Alice where she questions Humpty Dumpty on his propensity to change the meaning of words to suit his specific purpose. Humpty Dumpty ignores her and proceeds to apply his made-up rules to others but not to himself. For the West, Marx was right that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Israel’s interception of the Gaza aid flotilla is a clear violation of internati
Thoughtful article which raises many questions
October 6, 2025
This is a really interesting article that raises a whole range of issues that need to be, and in many instances are being, addressed by the Chinese Government. Sadly, one of the best measures of how societies are coping with these youth mental health issues is trends in the rates of attempted and actual suicide by Chinese youth. Fortunately, the Chinese Government appear to have recognised the stresses that cause this and have implemented measures that have resulted in a continuing decline in the rates over the last decade, in contrast to the US where the rates have been...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China’s youth: Between collectivism and the new individualism
The ICJ and Israel’s occupation of Palestine
October 6, 2025
Donald Rothwell writes: “Israel can certainly exercise control over the 12 nautical mile territorial sea off Gaza’s shores. Its closure of the territorial sea to foreign vessels would be justified under international law as a security measure, as well as to ensure the safety of neutral vessels due to the ongoing war.” I cannot see how that squares with the opinion of the ICJ that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal. Israel continues to deny Palestinians and others access to Palestine’s territorial sea, and has banned the construction of a UN-backed modern port in Palestine for 20 years....
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Israel’s interception of the aid flotilla is a clear violation of international
Greenhouse gas pollution v climate change
October 6, 2025
Climate change and emissions due to greenhouse gas pollution are referred to numerous times in this article. Yes, they are problematic. However, climate change is only one symptom of GHG pollution and yet it is used as the general name for the variety of adverse impacts due to GHG pollution. Climate change is hence a misnomer. When talking about it, please call it what it is: GHG pollution. Similarly, when using the word, emissions, please call it what it is: GHG pollution. The impacts are – all accept that we cannot live with pollution so it...
Con Karavas from Adelaide, South Australia
In response to: A fresh perspective on climate
The Albanese Government has been captured
October 6, 2025
As we continue to allow the Zionist lobby to dictate the terms of our public discourse on all issues relating to Israel, we can mark our passage down this road with a number of milestones. Or is that gravestones? Human rights, including the rights of women, children and the elderly? Only if they are Jewish. Freedom of the press? Only for Jewish outlets. Protection during a conflict for hospitals and schools? Same-same. The list goes on and on while the YouTube videos proliferate. That the National Press Club would cancel Chris Hedges' talk and consider replacing it with an...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal
Chris Hedges and the National Press Club
October 6, 2025
I, and the political group I belong to, have sent emails to the chief executive of the National Press Club, strongly protesting the cancellation of the proposed talk by Chris Hedges at the NPC. The subject was to be the betrayal of Palestinian journalists by the media. My protest concerned three elements: – given that foreign journalists are forbidden from entering Gaza, this talk represents a once in a lifetime opportunity for them — and us — to hear about the treatment of Palestinian journalists at the hands of Israel. – Chris Hedges is a highly experienced...
Jill Dixon from Melbourne
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
NPC and Chris Hedges
October 6, 2025
When the National Press Club decides that a leading authority on the Palestine question should not be heard by its members, Australians’ immediate question to the NPC is, why not? Having invited and then disinvited Chris Hedges from an event that promised to be booked out, the next question to the NPC is, who brought pressure on the club to do so? If Hedges is replaced by the ambassador of Israel, a former IDF officer, another question arises: who insisted on that choice? The Australian public is entitled to be concerned about the partisan censorship displayed, or...
Alison Broinowski from paddington
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby
No place for journalism at the National Press Club?
October 6, 2025
Why would the National Press Club decide to withdraw an offer for acclaimed journalist Chris Lyn Hedges to speak about his extensive experience reporting from and about the Middle East, the media’s role in a democracy and specifically how it has contributed to legitimising Israel’s genocide? The decision was made, according to chief executive Maurice Reilly, when more details of the address were made available. This is deeply shocking: a journalist of Hedge’s calibre is cancelled because his message is unpalatable? Balanced truth with the opportunity to lie, creates plausible deniability. This is why many are increasingly seeing...
Mary Kostakidis from Sydney
In response to: https://npc.org.au/chris-hedges-statement-by-the-national-press-club
Generative debunking of climate myths using AI
October 6, 2025
Christian Downie’s forthcoming book, Climate Obstruction, taking a global view, will complement Marian Wilkinson’s The Carbon Club (2020), which exposed the powerful forces shaping Australia’s poor response to climate change. The unrelenting misinformation has been effective. A 2020 University of Canberra study, cited at the current Senate inquiry into Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy, found that Australia ranks third in the world for climate denialism — 8% of the population — behind the US and Sweden. The global average is just 3%. While Downie is right to highlight the role of PR firms spreading climate misinformation...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: PR firms are spreading climate misinformation on behalf of fossil fuel companies
Acceptance of 'peace plan' beggars belief
October 6, 2025
What blindness, stupidity, or both roams the halls of global Western governments that not only assents, but applauds a peace plan concocted by a wanted war criminal coloniser and an megalomaniac narcissist, that has openly enabled the bombing of Gaza equivalent to six Hiroshimas? What Australian press institution dares to call itself a vigorous champion of press freedom and then cancels the appearance of Chris Hedges, a journalist with vast experience on the ground in Gaza, to allegedly replace him with the Israeli ambassador? The global tide has turned. And we, led by the Australian Government, are riding...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: No justice or peace for Palestinians in Trump’s Plan
Egypt and Gaza
October 6, 2025
Simon Tatz comments that Gaza shares a border with Egypt. It’s not clear why they refuse to assist Palestinians. I seek clarification of what he means. Does he mean Egypt should assist Israel in its ethnic cleansing of Gaza by taking more Palestinians than it already has? Or does he mean it should break the blockade imposed by Israel to assist Palestinians in Gaza? Or does he mean Cairo should take more than the medical evacuees it already assists? Or that it should provide more support to the Arab League and other entities to bring a...
Bob Pokrant from Fremantle
In response to: Sidoti needs to study comparative genocide
Another 20th century giant has left the building
October 3, 2025
As we slide deeper and deeper into the vortex of the 21st century, we’re farewelling more and more of the people who, through their intellect and character, have shaped the way we view the world in which we live. Jane Goodall joins Curie, Fleming, Gandhi and Einstein in that honoured pantheon. Through her work among our nearest cousins in their natural state, she confirmed we are risen apes, not the fallen angels our egotistical backstory would have us as. Whether this revelation is going to help us with the problem of living with each other and stabilising the climate...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: Jane Goodall, the gentle disrupter whose research on chimpanzees redefined what
How can something that has never existed end?
October 3, 2025
I totally understand Amy's concern but I think it is based upon an assumption that doesn't accord with historical fact. The truth is, the framers of the US Constitution were not creating a democracy. They were very clear that they were creating a republic. They deliberately wrote that constitution to prevent democracy, but to create an image that could be sold as democracy. All that has really happened under the Orange Donald is that any pretence of democracy has now been utterly eliminated.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Is this the beginning of the end for US democracy?
Western application of law of the sea
October 3, 2025
The UN convention on the law of the sea (which is international law), in force since 1994, has been entered into by 170 state parties and covers such matters as freedom of navigation. Under Article 19 of the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, a warship can sail within the 12 nautical-mile territorial sea of another nation's coastline “so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State. The US has refused to sign on to the convention but uses it constantly against China, which has signed on to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Israel intercepts Gaza Sumud Flotilla vessels: What we know so far
Silence is golden
October 3, 2025
Recently, a friend shared with me this quote, “When you put a clown in a castle he doesn’t become a king, but the castle becomes a circus. I have, for some time, been concerned how news about the US/Trump is dominating our local news, invading our news sovereignty if you like. I have imposed my own silence by tuning out local news which may work to the advantage of our local politics but I do miss the sports results.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Quantico’s verdict: The silence that stripped Trump bare
Mistake on shark nets
October 3, 2025
Your correspondent suggests that the early removal of shark nets in March this year could not have contributed to the fatal attack reported at Dee Why on September 6 because it occurred at the adjacent un-netted Long Reef Beach. In fact, Dee Why and Long Reef comprise a single stretch of sand pierced in the middle by a narrow lagoon opening close to which the shark net is placed. The shared Dee Why/Long Reef net is the same as for a single net for Curl Curl and North Curl Curl beaches and for Palm Beach and North Palm...
Graeme Stewart from Avalon Beach
In response to: Netted confusion
We have seen this movie before
October 3, 2025
An excellent analysis by Sawsan Madina of the so-called Trump-Netanyahu “peace plan” for Gaza. She notes: “We have seen this movie before: the Camp David Accord and Oslo Accords that brought neither justice nor peace. Evidence suggests the “peace plan” charade is just the latest update of a series of models to transform Gaza into a US-Israeli corporatized resort complex and economic hub. In March 2024, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner regarded Gaza as “very valuable waterfront property” which could “be cleaned up” by removing Palestinians, a vision of ethnic cleansing updated by Trump in February 2025 into the...
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: Peace without justice
Sidoti needs to study comparative genocide
October 2, 2025
Chris Sidoti should study comparative genocide. His claim that Rwandans and Jews could somehow escape genocide is historically incorrect. Australia, the US and other Western nations restricted Jewish immigration from Europe. The US infamously turned back the St Louis ship carrying German Jews. Many of its passengers were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps. As for Rwanda, I recommend Sidoti reads Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire. Sidoti might want to explain to where these people fled, and what happened to them. Gaza shares a border with Egypt. It's not...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: Sidoti and Saul on what we can and must do to stop the killing
The war criminal and the faux mathematician
October 2, 2025
Let’s have a recap shall we? A wanted war criminal enacting a genocide, and a president who is arresting and disappearing his own citizens, come up with a 20-point peace plan that involves no Palestinian input. A reminder that this is a war criminal, whose population at latest poll, showed 95% believed that not enough force or sufficient force had been used in Gaza, and a president who thinks that a 400% discount on eggs means you’re getting them at a discount. And we think these people are sufficient to create a peace plan? The coloniser and...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelb
In response to: Trump’s mongrel punt
The beginning of the end of the propaganda state
October 2, 2025
The US business and political elites set out over 100 years ago to eliminate any real democracy that might have emerged in the US. That was brilliantly illustrated by Alex Carey in his revelatory book Taking the Risk out of Democracy. Since the early part of last century, trillions have been spent by those elites on the most extensive and brilliant propaganda campaign to eliminate any possibility of democracy in the US. During that same period, billions have been spent by US and other Zionists to create a fantasy narrative of god-given Jewish rights to the land of Palestine....
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: ‘Stunning reversal’: New York Times poll finds US support for Israel has plummet
Heads I win, tails you lose!
October 2, 2025
You would think that we would have come to an understanding of the sheer mental and moral vacuity of the orange Donald. But apparently not! That the vast bulk of Western punditry and political leadership could not treat this dog's breakfast of a proposal with anything but derision indicates the extent to which Western civilisation has declined into fatuity and ineptitude. Only the mentally incapable could see it as anywhere near dealing with the substantive moral issues involved. But I guess that is most of us!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump’s mongrel punt
Agree truth is not hate, but...
October 2, 2025
Lama Qasem tells a powerful story and provides an insight into the most important perspective to look at when considering the experiences of Palestinian children. There is no question that treating people, and children particularly, in the horrible ways described will only perpetuate the cycle of hatred and violence that has cursed Palestine and Israel for 80 years. However I've read the prime minister's speech to the UN and I don't see anywhere that he says children are taught to hate. The word hate doesn't appear anywhere. It's a shame if the article's important message that truth is...
Rod Bower from Melbourne
In response to: Don’t mistake truth for hate, prime minister
Perpetual growth is indeed delusional
October 1, 2025
Julian Cribb is right to assert that the idea of perpetual growth on a finite planet is delusional. His estimate of a maximum sustainable global population of about two billion is also about right, though even that may be too high should climate change render much of the planet uninhabitable. Maps of the world at three degrees warming, that show regions that have become uninhabitable, are profoundly alarming. They include all of India and Pakistan, for example. And what if the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation shuts off? It means the end of agriculture in much of Britain and Ireland...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: ‘Died of a delusion’ – the fate of modern civilisation?