Letters to the Editor
Stopping Israel's genocide
September 9, 2025
Refaat Ibrahim’s hope for a popular uprising by starving Palestinians against the rogue state, Israel, is unlikely to succeed without external pressure. So far, the Australian Government is avoiding actions of substance that could include the following: • Ban export of weapons components to Israel and any military co-operation with Israel; • Ban imports from Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law; • Impose sanctions (e.g. asset freezes, travel bans) on all members of the current Israeli Government and military commanders; • Greatly increase humanitarian funding to UN agencies and NGO groups providing food and...
Mark Diesendorf from Sydney
In response to: Seven hundred days of genocide
State terror came first
September 9, 2025
The Académie Française dictionary in 1798 defined terrorism as a system, or regime of terror and terrorist as an agent or partisan of the Terror that arose through the abuse of revolutionary measures (The French Revolution and Early European Revolutionary Terrorism by Michael Rapport) In other words, state terror came first, preceding any other kind, the very first example being the revolutionary regime in France, 1793-1794. Ample examples exist today: the US drone warfare over NW Pakistan 2004-2018; Saddam's mukhabarat; Assad's torturers and Israel's war on Gaza. All these, it might be thought, represent state terrorism – which is...
James Schofield from London
In response to: Who is a terrorist?
Vice-chancellor pay
September 8, 2025
While it is hardly unexpected that accountants would focus upon pay and governance as the source of problems in Australian universities, these are superficial targets which mask determinants. The pay that vice-chancellors receive is a symptom, not a cause. The central causes of what have become little more than state consultancies are that teaching students is now almost completely devalued. This began in the late 1970s-early 1980s and is now rife. Casual contract, part-time teachers are responsible for many first- and second-year undergraduate courses. If senior professors etc appear at lectures for these courses, it is in a Joan...
Scott MacWilliam from Amaroo, ACT
In response to: Reining in vice-chancellor and executive pay
Products of the system
September 8, 2025
The system of education and social conditioning set up by the US, in particular, since early last century and re-enforced throughout the last century has worked superbly well. It has ensured that those who do not give their assent to that conditioning are marginalised from polite society and only accidentally and temporarily occupy positions within the agencies of opinion formulation within our societies. As George Orwell pointed out, those who make it to positions of prominence within the mainstream media actually believe the nonsense they are peddling and are where they are as they can be trusted not to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The betrayal of Palestinian journalists
Thank you, Teow Loon Ti
September 8, 2025
Thank you, Teow Loon Ti for your clear and well-formed response to the piece by Ju Hyung Kim titled “Asia must learn from SEATO and build its own NATO”. In truth, I read the title of the article mentioned and couldn't read it as it is obviously an Uncle Sam homily. Too bad our media is so saturated with such articles of faith, detached from reality, history and evidence. Teow has spoken to reality, a relief in troubled times.
Mark Bulluss from Dalmeny
In response to: Seeing truth through the fog of war mongering
Bolton, the archetypal chickenhawk, all squark!
September 8, 2025
This is a good summary of the truly insubstantially equipped Bolton. He hasn't seen a war, actual or proposed, that he doesn't like, from a distance of course. His later life bravado was preceded by a careful avoidance in his youth of any likelihood that he would actually serve anywhere near where the killing and the dying were taking place. His enthusiasm for war has been acquired along with an unerring capacity to avoid it in practice. Like many of his ultra-conservative colleagues in Washington, he is more than happy to send other mothers' children to fight and die...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Southeast Asia pragmatic on China's rise
A land of standing corpses
September 8, 2025
As John Menadue correctly points out, the death toll in Gaza is far higher than those killed directly by Israeli bombs and bullets. A conservative multiplier of four indirect deaths to every one direct killing gives a minimum of 300,000. But this overlooks the fundamental point: genocide is not simply about killing. Killing is but one of the depraved ways that Israel is committing genocide. Israel's Zionazi holocaust is about the destruction of the Palestinian People. A Semitic people, no less. To fully gauge that destruction, one needs to look to different research; Guillot et al, Lancet, February...
Rick Pass from Home Hill FNQ
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza, John Menadue
We must defeat the demon of fossil capital
September 8, 2025
Julian Cribb potently describes the latest report, A Climate-First Foreign Policy for Australia, from the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, as a “trailblazing vision of where an enlightened, informed, and caring humanity might go in the face of the brutal escalation in climate impacts”. Cribb would know the soon-to-be-released National Climate Risk Assessment has been evocatively depicted by insiders as “dire,” “diabolical,” and “extremely confronting”. Fittingly, ASLCG calls on government to “mobilise the resources necessary to address this clear and present danger, and to decarbonise our economy to reach net zero emissions as close to 2030 as possible. Climate...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Military experts warn of climate wars
Dump AUKUS
September 8, 2025
If you are not convinced that the Australian government must dump AUKUS by • The fact that the primary utility of the proposed AUKUS submarines is to augment a US attack force aimed at China, our major trading partner; • The obvious ceding of sovereignty to the US empire that this entails; • The questionable logic of acquiring a submarine fleet unsuitable for coastal defence of Australia; • The certainty that the $368 billion budget will blow out, as illustrated by the fact that Australia has already paid a $5 billion instalment of a $47.8 Billion...
John Curr from MANLY
In response to: SSN AUKUS – Heading for a quagmire
I nominate you
September 8, 2025
I nominate Margaret Callinan, Bob Pearce and Les MacDonald to head our new government. They know the arc of our history; they see the repeated pattern of strategic errors successive Australian Governments have made; they each have brave innovative ideas, rooted in social conscience, and can articulate and educate in less than 200 words. Bravo Margaret, Bob and Les. Your voices are so valued.
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza
It couldn’t be simpler
September 8, 2025
It’s not about decisions made by Hitler in 1939. It is no longer about decisions made by Hamas on 7 October. It’s about decisions made today, in this moment, by one's own conscience. It’s about setting aside economic contracts, monetary incentives, lobbyist influences, deals behind closed doors, and harkening to one’s own consciousness of what is right and what is evil. It couldn’t be simpler. Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong, Tony Burke: it couldn’t be simpler.
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Greta Thunberg 'disgusted' by global silence on Gaza genocide
Aussie scepticism
September 8, 2025
The courageous Sarah Dowse may have been born in America, but she has evidently acculturated well into Australia, even to taking on the fabled Aussie bullshit detector. Add to this her insider view on Israel the Jewish State and she has the basic credentials for exposing perspectives avoided by the legacy media in the face of real or perceived pressure by the powerful pro-Israel lobby. I appreciated, in particular, her scepticism about ASIO's role in the Iran affair in which, (and in numerous other national security crises) no evidence ever comes under public scrutiny.
Vince Corbett from Essendon
In response to: Israel, hasbara, antisemitism and Iran
Leaders who have lost their moral compass
September 5, 2025
It is hard, if not impossible, to any longer believe that the vast bulk of our leaders in the West are fit for their leadership positions. When they not only turn away from the grotesque, genocidal activities of the Israeli Government, but participate in, and publicly support them, knowing the truth of what that support enables. The truth about this vast criminal enterprise, and those without the moral courage to condemn it, are a rebuke to the view of Hanna Arendt about the banality of evil. This evil is not banal. It is contemptible and abhorrent. It will...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza
MSM under-count indigenous deaths in US wars
September 5, 2025
This is an extremely important article by John Menadue demanding total trade sanctions against Israel because of hundreds of thousands of Gaza deaths. Dr Zeina Jamaluddine and colleagues estimated that 64,260 Gazans died violently by day 269 of the Gaza massacre (30 June 2024) (The Lancet) and hence 136,000 Gazans died violently by day 569 (25 April 2025) with a “conservatively estimated” four times that number (544,000) dying from imposed deprivation for a shocking total of 680,000 deaths from violence and deprivation by 25 April 2025. That is 28% of the pre-war Gaza population of 2.4 million, and 11...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza
Labor’s de-democratisation of Australian politics
September 5, 2025
Gregory Clark writes well on the Palestine issue. As a result of FOI applications, I now know that up till about six weeks ago, Albo had had about 65,000 pieces of correspondence on Palestine since the Israel-Palestine war broke out, and had answered none. Penny Wong had had about 52,500, and had answered about 17% of them. It is clear that governments of both persuasions largely believe that foreign affairs is not a suitable policy area for democratic control resulting from widely encouraged public debate. It has taken more than 22 months of weekly marches just to get Labor...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Canberra and Gaza
Urgent action required to stave off collapse
September 5, 2025
The latest report by the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group warns that climate change may lead to widespread food insecurity, economic destabilisation, large-scale people displacement, war, failed states and social collapse. If ever there were a better collection of people to make the connections between climate and security, it is the ASLCG led by Retired Admiral Chris Barrie. We must heed their warnings and pull out all stops to mitigate climate change. Possibly the most worrying, apart from widespread food insecurity, is large-scale people displacement. Some suggest a billion displaced by 2050. How on earth will the world cope...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Military experts warn of climate wars
Climate criminal Australia's huge CO2 emissions
September 4, 2025
Important and revealing article by Peter Sprivulis. I have been a career biochemist for the last 50 years and researched energy transduction in plants that over hundreds of millions of years generated huge fossil fuel resources. The atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs; notably CO2, CH4, and N2O) from unrestrained fossil fuel and other exploitation are at record highs, are increasing at record rates (notwithstanding “we are tackling climate change” political rhetoric), and existentially threaten humanity and the diosphere (see Gideon Polya, “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions”, 843 pages, 2020). Yet the Australian Government’s “Australian Energy Statistics...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: Sprinting to stand still: Still no progress in Australia’s energy transition
The fog of espionage
September 4, 2025
The fog of war plays a distant second to the fog of espionage. We are witnessing this writ large in the unfolding drama being played out over the alleged Iranian involvement in the recent terrorist attacks against Jewish targets here in Australia. When considering the pros and cons of the arguments being presented, it is important to keep in mind one crucial truth. The various Zionist/Israeli lobbying groups, voicing their opinions and attempting to influence both public opinion and state policy, have a long and proven record of framing the narrative. Saying something first, and loud enough and often...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Messiness in spookdom: Australia's Iran Contra deal
Labor sets sail in the same policy boat
September 4, 2025
Thank you, Annabel Hennessy, for calling out the persistent policy cruelty of our political “leadership” and its impact upon many stateless refugee neighbours in our midst. The legislation referred to, as background to the Nauru deportation proposal, presents us with the same lethargic compliance we have endured from Liberal-National Coalition hard-heartedness. Are we to allow Australia to take the same new normal path pioneered by the Trump administration to “win” by withholding justice from Kilmar Abrego Garcia? How long will it be before the Labor Party (and its equally lethargic Parliamentary opponents) realise that a healthy Australian democracy has...
Bruce Wearne from Ballarat Central
In response to: Australia should halt plan to deport refugees, migrants to Nauru
Subs deal
September 4, 2025
Noel Turnbull certainly sets out a valid alternative, but I would have thought the whole submarine saga is going to be undermined by drones in any case as the Navy is already developing long-range underwater drones! They will certainly be fully developed well before we ever see the mythical AUKUS subs, or at least my grandchildren see them!
Max Bourke AM from Campbell ACT
In response to: If you really want some subs – try this
When is it time for the climate rebellion?
September 4, 2025
I am so grateful to the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group for their complete commitment to our ongoing well-being and their respect for our intelligence and capacity to deal with the terrifying truth. Both this commitment and respect appear to be somewhat half-hearted from our government. The latest evidence of disregard for our climate occurred on 28 August. That day, the Albanese Government quietly granted approval for Glencore to expand its Ulan thermal coal mine near Mudgee in NSW. Meanwhile, the government steadfastly refuses to share the contents of two apparently terrifying documents detailing the security threat posed...
Lesley Walker from Northcote
In response to: Climate-first foreign policy essential for Australia and regional security
Thanks
September 4, 2025
What a privilege to read such an insightful article by someone with such a pedigree of both experience and principle, not to mention a global citizen's lifestyle. Thank you.
Bede Doherty from Melbourne
In response to: What goes around, comes around
'Turn back the boats' – tell them they're joking
September 3, 2025
The recent protest marches in Australian capital cities shows the ignorance of the protesters in basing their protests on the colour of people's skin and their religion. They should have instead protested about the climate, because rising sea levels alone in our vicinity will affect tens of thousands (17,000 in Indonesia). Many thousands of Pacific Islanders will lose their island homes and many million Indonesians will look South due to inundation of low-lying coastal areas. At present, the UK is trying to stop the refugee trickle across the Channel which will be nothing compared to the flood...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Climate-first foreign policy essential for Australia and regional security – top security leaders
Discernment and nuance: Victims of AI
September 3, 2025
Many are under the illusion that AI chatbots like ChatGPT are objective sources of information, having collected data across multiple sources. But they are not. AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, are designed to sycophantly agree with the user. This means that whatever you ask, these AI chatbots are designed to encourage, and agree with, your bias. This was demonstrated when a teenager contemplating suicide, was actively encouraged to do so by ChatGPT. That these AI platforms are designed to sycophantly agree with the user, makes them, due to our human nature, highly addictive. What human being doesn’t want someone...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: I'd rather a bloodied shark than AI
St Albo of the lost cause
September 3, 2025
Let’s get real about greenhouse gas emissions; they are a damper on productivity. They are instrumental in the function of the global ecosystem. As things stand today, the taxpayer is picking up the cost of the destruction, caused by an unstable environment, as well as the toxic pollution from the forever chemicals that actually present a bigger threat to life on our planet than rising temperatures and sea levels. From lost lives, homes and livelihoods to inflated prices and insurance premiums, they shell out while the corporations creating them are laughing all the way to the bank. Then there’s...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: The one big reform not discussed at Labor's roundtable
Common sense versus fear of uninformed criticism
September 3, 2025
This is a common sense and intelligent approach towards attendance at these important celebrations. It is unlike the federal government which continues to pander to how they think the US and Rupert Murdoch will feel about such attendance. Hopefully Bob Carr's attendance will keep those important diplomatic channels open until our governments regonise the reality of the new power dynamics at work geopolitically!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Beijing invited me to their special celebration. Here's why I'm happy to go
Bob Carr’s rational approach
September 3, 2025
Congratulations to Bob Carr for attending the 80th anniversary celebration by China of the end of World War II. And it’s hardly surprising that Vladimir Putin is attending. Without the Soviet Union, China, we (and the people of Germany, Italy and Japan) might have lost the battle against German, Italian, and Japanese fascism. The Spanish and the Portuguese had to wait well beyond World War II for an end to fascism. Carr quite rightly reminds Andrew Hastie that only weeks ago Vladimir Putin was in the United States. If you want to solve problems between nations you have...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Beijing invited me to their special celebration. Here's why I'm happy to go
Swearing in schools and community
September 3, 2025
While I agree with Samantha Helps that teachers punishing children for swearing puts the teacher in a different space to the community from which the children come, what she seems to miss is that there are multiple levels of swearing. One is when the swearing is aimed at the teacher or another pupil. This is where the teacher has a responsibility to stop this behaviour. It is clear that swearing is now endemic in our communication to add emphasis or to express emotions such as when you hit your thumb with a hammer. Such swearing is now on TV...
Richard Swinton from NSW Northern Rivers
In response to: For the sins of the father
Wanning Sun correct re over-interpreting attendance
September 3, 2025
Wanning Sun is correct in pointing out that it would be unwise to read too much into what countries have been invited and the relative seniority of those representatives. There is clearly some guidance that can be obtained from it, but there are a host of factors that shapes such attendance that are specific to the individual nations concerned. It would also be unwise to use that attendance list to draw conclusions about the relationship between China and the vast bulk of the global South. More telling are the substantive actions of that South in their enthusiasm to enter...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: A tale of two lists: How geopolitics shaped the attendance of China’s parade
Labor should, and could, introduce a price on carbon
September 3, 2025
Thanks to Ross Gittins, economics editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, for so clearly outlining Rod Sims’ five reasons why a carbon price is both “necessary and urgent”. Sims, now chair of Ross Garnaut’s Superpower Institute, argues that Australia needs a carbon price “so effective climate action can be taken, so our targets can be met, and so we can more than fully compensate households for the price effects” while also strengthening public budgets. These outcomes would be well received by Australians and should give the Albanese Government courage in its second term. There is also international precedent....
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: The one big reform not discussed at Labor's roundtable
You don't find truth or the full story in the mainstream media
September 3, 2025
The mainstream media has had years of practice ignoring reality in Palestine, not only since 2023. But if you want to argue the toss about prior to 2023, the MSM have had undeniable decades of practice reporting on climate change. Whenever it suits them, the liars, the deluded and the vested interests denying truth and science must be given equal space to spread their falsehoods. Why does anyone pay for legacy media anymore? The sooner it finally dies out, the better. We already have quality alternatives.
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The media’s Israeli atrocity treadmill
Chinese, Bengali and Gaza holocausts
September 2, 2025
Important article by Professor Jocelyn Chey. In the 1937-1945 Chinese holocaust 35-40 million Chinese died from violence and deprivation under Japanese occupation (15% of the pre-war population). Australian attorney-general Robert “Pig Iron Bob” Menzies made Australia complicit by permitting iron exports to Japan. Michael Portillo included me in a 2008 BBC program Bengal Famine that included comments from Dr Sanjoy Bhattacharya (Welcome Institute, London): “That six to seven million [World War II Bengal famine deaths] figure includes the deaths that happened in let’s say the provinces of Bihar, Orissa and Assam”, economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen (Cambridge, Harvard): “Famines...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: Marking September 2: Lest we forget
It is the (capitalist) system that is the problem
September 2, 2025
I like, and usually agree with, much of what Caitlin Johnstone has to say about world affairs. However, in her latest piece — on the demerits of Western civilisation — she is wrong to ascribe to all Westerners responsibility for the grave wrongs that have been carried out in effect by small concentrations of government and corporate power in the capitalist societies of the West. To conflate the sins of this small, grasping, self-interested minority with Western civilisation and with what most Westerners believe is a mistake. Indeed, it might be said that Caitlin has fallen victim to...
Peter Blunt from Siem Reap
In response to: Western civilisation is not worth saving
How to create fear in the Australian Jewish community
September 2, 2025
Jack Waterford's article fails to mention one pertinent aspect of the bombing of the Melbourne synagogue. That aspect is crucial, namely that the Adass branch of Jewish Orthodoxy is anti-Zionist and anti-Israel. The Israel lobby feasts on this lack of transparency and uses it to further its attempt to make Australia focus on so-called antisemitism, instead of the real issue, which is Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. In other words, if, as ASIO blandly declares, Iran is responsible for the attacks, then ASIO implies that Iranian Government officials are as uneducated and stupid as Australians who don't know...
Dieter Barkhoff from Melbourne
In response to: When spying is subcontracted to gangsters
Western civilisation is not worth saving
September 2, 2025
I agree with Caitlin Johnstone that Western civilisation has come to a very bad pass, especially in terms of politics and colonial thinking. However, I'd like to defend another aspect of Western civilisation, namely the music, art and literature it has produced. I would regard it as a crime to throw away the music of Mozart or Bach. I even think some of the Enlightenment values that originated in Western civilisation, even though they are not necessarily part of it, are worth preserving. It's right to attack values of people like Trump and others we associate today with...
Colin Mackerras from Capalaba, Queensland
In response to: https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/09/western-civilisation-is-not-worth-saving/?u
Consultant culture at universities
September 2, 2025
It's not only at universities, our politicians have also outsourced their resposibilities. What government services are left are controlled by mostly large overseas corperations. When the roundtable discussion about regulation took place, they never mentioned that they are happy and instrumental in writing those regulations so as to exclude small to medium Australian bussiness from the honey pot.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Reining in the consultant culture in Australia’s public universities
Two world health threats
September 2, 2025
Julian Cribb's professional and prescient article shows we have two serious problems. There is the well-founded threat of lethal pathogens and also the threat from the militant, irrational groups opposed to immunisation and masks. Lately we have seen the power and rage of a resentful minority, seriously uninformed, igniting the fuse of fear and pushing an aggressive barrow. It is to be hoped there is sufficient potent research into these groups to enable myth and terror management, rather than attacking them head-on and empowering the work of the fearmongers thus granting them more potency as they will claim to...
Michael Breen from Robertson NSW
In response to: The next pandemic is 'an epidemiological certainty'
Overcrowding and overpopulation a health issue
September 1, 2025
Julian Cribb cites overpopulation and overcrowding as the two major causes of a pandemic. Thus, cruise ships and high-rise buildings must be regarded as giant petri-dishes, facilitating the growth of micro-organisms that cause disease. This is a problem because, while populations grow, we do need to densify our cities. We have to stop urban sprawl, that is, the encroachment of cities onto natural bush or farmland, the latter needed to feed people. The only solution is to stop further growth of human numbers. Cities can't go out without destroying other species' habitats or our food base, and they...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: The next pandemic is ‘an epidemiological certainty’
The circle of death
September 1, 2025
The story of what John Darby saw didn't end there. Eighty-plus years on, some of the victims of the Holocaust, some children of Holocaust survivors and some grandchildren of Holocaust victims are seeking revenge using the Holocaust to justify any and all actions. In 100 years, will the great-grandchildren of the Holocaust still be at war with the Palastinian survivors of the genocide and their offspring? Will the Palistinians be using the genocide as a justification for any and all retribution? Some of them will. The arms industry will continue to benefit from it.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide Są
In response to: The gates of Gaza
Submarines, nuclear or otherwise, are obsolete
September 1, 2025
Expensive manned submarines are a relic of past world (meaning European) wars! Just like aircraft carriers, infantry wars and manned aircraft. If the special military operation in Ukraine and the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank have taught our military leaders anything — and that is questionable — it is that the fundamental nature of war has changed. UAVs, accurately guided missiles and bombs, along with accurate detection of underwater threats and use of underwater unmanned drones using AI and quantum computing, have dramatically cheapened the fighting of wars and have increased its lethality substantially. That...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Ditch AUKUS Pillar One. It involves Australia too much in US strategy
Never again – but for whom?
September 1, 2025
I commend George Browning, former Anglican Bishop, for his valiant fight for the rights of Palestinians and for Jewish, Armenia, Rwanda, and Gaza holocausts to be remembered and not repeated. However, there appears to be an unconscious disremembering, as shown by the absence of even a cursory mention by Browning of the horrors suffered by people in the Far East (a somewhat pejorative Anglo-Saxon term). Across East and Southeast Asia, tens of millions suffered untold brutalities under World War II Japanese imperialism. Notably, the horrific Nanking Massacres and Unit 731 (Imperial Japanese Army chemical and biological warfare research unit,...
Jeffrey Chew from Melbourne
In response to: https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/08/never-again-so-the-world-pledged/
The Holocaust industry
September 1, 2025
I agree with George Browning's article; however, the horrific things perpetrated by Hitler's consort on European Jews, not to mention millions of others, do not mean Judaism has a claim on the word holocaust. Up to 10 million Congolese died under Belgian rule, Shashi Tahoor claims 120 million Indians died under British rule, and there have been countless other massive numbers of victims of European colonisation. Norman Finkelstein wrote the book The Holocaust Industry after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel began refining its River to the Sea Crusade, all the while hiding its atrocities behind the Holocaust cloak....
Dieter Barkhoff from Melbourne
In response to: Never again – so the world pledged
Iran, or Israel false flag operation?
September 1, 2025
Michelle Grattan should be far more critical in her approach to Mike Burgess and the Iran affair. There has not been a shred of evidence presented to prove Iranian sponsorship of terror acts in Australia. Suggesting that Iran's motive is to cause disharmony is asinine to say the least. Clearly and logically, the only country that would gain from these terror acts is Israel. These gains include: shifting public opinion away from a free Palestine, the Palestine Resistance and its allies; emboldening the Zionist lobby in Australia at a time it is increasingly becoming isolated; elevating Iran to the...
Fergus Robinson from Melbourne
In response to: Grattan on Friday: Mike Burgess, the spycatcher who gives ASIO a very public face
Reviewing poll findings on US alliance
September 1, 2025
One striking aspect of year-to-year changes in Lowy Institute polling figures, covering the popularity among Australians of Australia-US relations reported on by Jaron Sutton, can perhaps be explained by a differing interpretation of the response to one particular question in the poll. Sutton reports that in the polls between March, 2024 and 2025, Australians' trust in the US to act responsibly in the world had plummetted from 64% to 44%, yet despite this, a whopping 80% of Australians felt the US alliance was very or fairly important for our security, down just three points from 83% in 2024. ...
Bruce Foskey from Blackwood, Vic
In response to: Time to dial back the Australia-US alliance
Australia is one trade deal away from backing authoritarians
September 1, 2025
I understand that Taiwan feels threatened by China. However, the arguments in the article I feel are not substantiated. China now has the expertise and capability of surpassing Western chip capabilities, perhaps not as yet achieved, but in development. I feel this is shown in part by the speed that China developed AI capability in such a short time. The West appears under the misapprehension that China needs chips from Western manufacturers, but I feel the reality is that China will use Western technology when it is cost-effective and available. The idiocy of forcing Dutch manufacturers to stop...
Doug Foskey from Tregeagle
In response to: Australia is one trade deal away from backing authoritarians, says Taiwan
Will the Albanese Government listen?
September 1, 2025
I commend Usman Khawaja for his principled stand on Gaza. Given his elevated position in the Australian sporting firmament, he managed to gain an audience with senior members of our current government. To his great credit, he did not waste this chance. Will the Albanese Government listen? The short answer is no. Thinking in Canberra has been captured by the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council. This is a great shame, especially as better advice is readily available from the Jewish Council of Australia, an organisation founded in February 2024 specifically to represent non-Zionist Australian Jews and to counter, or at...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Usman Khawaja urges Albanese to sanction Israel over Gaza genocide
Blurring the line between sport and politics
September 1, 2025
Usman Khawaja is claimed to have blurred the line between sport and politics, but what concerns me is that Australians don't have the same access to the prime minister as lobbyists and high-profile sportspeople. Even after the resounding victory in the federal election and a series of marches around the country, the government and, in particular, the Opposition require high-profile lobbying to see what is obvious to a large portion of the population. No matter what your nationality, religious affiliations or sporting obsession, it has become obvious that what is happening in not just Gaza and the Ukraine...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Usman Khawaja urges Albanese to sanction Israel over Gaza genocide
Unmasking propaganda
September 1, 2025
Thank you, Jeffrey Sachs. “Russians invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was thoroughly provoked by the West.” I have long held this view. The Western media’s propaganda was never enough for me to swallow Russia as the enemy. Russia lost 27 million people during World War II. The Allies wouldn’t have defeated Hitler without Russia’s staggering sacrifice. As Sachs makes clear, every war Russia has been involved in the past two centuries has been defensive. The Western narrative does not acknowledge these facts. Just as Western leaders and media have skewed their propaganda in defence of Israel’s horrific crimes, so...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: A new foreign policy for Europe
Genocide denial and Spanish Jewish organisations
September 1, 2025
In 1985, an Auschwitz survivor sued a prominent Holocaust denier in the Spanish courts for libel – and won. The result of that victory and public demand was that the Spanish penal code was amended to make genocide denial a criminal offence. An article in Spain's El Pais by Federico Zukierman Merlin, a member of JCall Spain-Another Jewish Voice, points out that the secretary-general of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, has effectively denied that genocide is taking place in Palestine. Its board of directors did not dissociate itself from his statement. It is quite possible that...
Kieran Tapsell from Stanwell Park
In response to: Never again – so the world pledged
Led by the nose, again
August 29, 2025
Based on nothing more than unsubstantiated claims presumedly made by someone with their own agenda, Australia has sent the Iranians home. This was a mistake with possible long-lasting consequences. While it was easy to send the Iranians packing, it might prove more difficult to get them back, providing they would even want to return. The idea that Iran, with troubles aplenty on its home front, would bother to send saboteurs all the way to Australia to set fire to a couple of synagogues doesn't make sense. Iran would gain nothing from such a foolish move, even if they did...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Gaslighting the electorate, virtue signalling to our ‘partners’
Coincidence? I think not
August 29, 2025
It beggars belief that the Australian Government has just expelled the Iranian ambassador based on intelligence provided by the Israeli intelligence services. Unbelievable. This expulsion happened at the same time that Defence Minister Richard Marles flew to the US for the meeting that was not a meeting, then suddenly validated as a meeting by US gaslighters, by a photo opportunity, posted on our government’s social media. Coincidence anyone?
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Gaslighting the electorate, virtue signalling to our ‘partners'
Ambassador's expulsion
August 29, 2025
I have to object to the thrust and tone of Cameron Leckie’s opinion piece “Gaslighting the electorate, virtue signalling to our partners”. Nothing happens in a vacuum. However there is credible evidence that Iran has paid criminal gangs to attack property in Australia. This requires a diplomatic response. It would be inappropriate to banish an ambassador for what another country is doing to its neighbours outside Australia, terrible though it is. We have not banished the Russian ambassador for its invasion of Ukraine, terrible though it is. I participated in the Sydney Harbour bridge walk, along with...
David Hind from North Sydney
In response to: Gaslighting the electorate, virtue signalling to our ‘partners’
Ambassador's expulsion warranted
August 29, 2025
I understand the public outrage at the government of Israel, but Cameron Leckie — who presumes Israel provided the intelligence without seeing it, or revealing any direct knowledge of the ASIO secret briefing to the government and Opposition — takes this one step further by conflating the war in Gaza with attacks on Australia’s Jewish community. Just because someone is of the Jewish religion, it doesn’t make them responsible or even associated with the actions of the Israeli Government. Yet Leckie, without access to classified intelligence briefings, reduces a firebombing of a synagogue to, “No one killed. No...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: Gaslighting the electorate, virtue signalling to our ‘partners’
Our defence capability could be in better hands
August 29, 2025
There are few among us who could consider themselves even within shouting distance of the knowledge of Australia's defence policy background that John Menadue embodies – and I certainly am not among those. However, even a far lower-tier observer such as I could find great resonance with John's comment that: We would also get better value for our defence dollars if Anthony Albanese could find a pretext to shift Richard Marles to a new job that matched his abilities. As a probable win-win solution to this enigma, I believe that we could do well — particularly in the...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: For 35 years after Vietnam, we had a self-reliant defence policy. We need it again
For many, NDIS is a disaster
August 29, 2025
Bravo to Richard Bruggemann for saying the unacceptable – backed by his many years of experience and advocacy. It was entirely predictable that a privatised disability insurance scheme would be a disaster, with unsatisfactory services for many participants and massive exploitation by unscrupulous service providers. Those who created the scheme were, of course, well motivated. And there are undoubtedly many participants who have benefitted from it – in particular, those with significant physical disabilities, but both normal intellectual capacity and a degree of bureaucratic sophistication. But for many others and/or their loved ones, it is a bureaucratic and...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: Why the NDIS inevitably went pear-shaped!
Failure of education policy
August 29, 2025
Whitlam created a rod for Labor with the decision to introduce state aid for private schools. At the time it secured the Catholic vote and reassured many Coalition supporters that Labor was not such a big threat. This has not fundamentally changed – Labor realises that any dimunition of funding to the private sector will be a threat to its re-election prospects. Even Albanese's substantial majority does not make the government immune. The challenge for the government is to find a way to support parental choice without exacerbating educational inequity.
John Tons from SA
In response to: How the ALP built the market that is destroying public schools
Mainstream media presents narrow, biased news
August 29, 2025
It reflects badly on what remains of Australia's mainstream media that more concern is shown for journalists in alternative media such as P&I. In the days of Peter Greste's imprisonment in Egypt, the MSM gave his plight regular coverage. There's nothing comparable about foreign journalists barred from Palestine nor the record number of native journalists deliberately killed by the IDF. Instead, our news comes with zero credibility from Israel, and the US whose complicity cannot be denied, nor its reports believed. Several thoughts come to mind: – Thankfulness for Australia's alternative media and remaining Palestinian journalists and...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The murder of journalists as an act of censorship
What democracy?
August 28, 2025
For every example of a succesful democracy, there are marginal/unsucessful so-called democracies. The latest and least dependable is the US, the democracy that has been proven to have interfered more times to undermine the democratic process of its own and other countries, including our own. The behaviour of the latest questionably democratically elected US president shows little regard for democracy and the civil liberties of US citizens. In our own country, those civil liberties are under threat from the state premiers (mostly Labor) in particular, who have been passing Trump-like laws. I doubt if those who...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Managing a mature Australia-China relationship
The tyranny of the rules-based international order
August 28, 2025
This article is a good summary of what could be a sane and balanced approach to China that does not pay homage to the absurd propaganda put out continuously by the US deep state that China is some existential threat to the democratic world. But to sensibly deal with China, we need to dispense with our fatuous dedication to a rules-based international order that appears to only exist in the minds of that US deep state and to those who have, as Gareth says, drunk the Kool-Aid of that deep state. If we are referring to international law...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Managing a mature Australia-China relationship
Rees correctly demands blunt honesty in language
August 28, 2025
Eminent and wonderfully resolute humanitarian Professor Stuart Rees correctly demands blunt honesty in language, for example: “At long last, an influential leader spoke truth to power. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia described the actions in Gaza of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his regime as inhumane and beyond the bounds of sanity. ‘I have never seen read or heard in recent times people as cruel as this. Netanyahu and his ilk are truly deranged.’ Reality shown. No politeness. Nothing abstract. Language honest, appealing, humane.” The core ethos of humanity is kindness and truth, but this is grossly and...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: Death or displacement, ‘Please no more polite language about the Netanyahu evil’
Australian kids don’t have to be nuclear targets
August 28, 2025
Excellent analysis by John Menadue, echoing the international law-cognisant and Australia-first wisdom of former prime ministers Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating. Indeed in the must-read The Big Fix: Rebuilding Australia’s National Security, Albert Palazzo argues that Australia should adopt a science-informed strategic defensive position as a truly sovereign nation to defend island continent Australia, rather than its traditional strategic offensive position since World War II as a minor partner in all US-Asian wars, paying an “insurance premium” in blood in the hope that the US will defend Australia from long-feared invasions by Asians. The racist and jingoistic Coalition blindly...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: For 35 years after Vietnam, we had a self-reliant defence policy. We need it aga
Assessment of the planet known as Earth
August 28, 2025
The Earth is sick. It is losing species to extinction at an accelerating rate. Its forests and grasslands are shrinking daily. Its environment exceeds safe limits in six of its nine key planetary boundaries. Irreversible tipping points are gaining strength – icecaps and permafrost melting, forests shrinking, coral reefs dying, ocean currents changing. This sickness has its roots in the planet’s dominant life-form – intelligent bipeds who have learned to exploit the planet’s natural resources. These beings have thrived over the last 12,000 years of exceptional climate stability, but in recent decades this life-form’s demands have grown to a...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: The great dying
Impartiality and human values
August 28, 2025
In the dying days of the age of reason, we seem to cling to our belief that reason, disconnected from other human values such as ethics, common sense, intuition, humanism and a moral sense, is a sufficient guide to how we should act. Reason might, for instance, be said to dictate that both sides of any argument should be permitted expression and that to do so reflects impartiality. This implies that impartiality is a value that should predominate over others such as morality, law and humanity. The assumption underlying this approach is that both sides of any argument have...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The ABC's public comment guidelines: A 'crackdown' on management, not workers
Common sense in an incoherent land of fear
August 28, 2025
When reading John's articles, I often find myself admiring their pith and substance, but naggingly wondering whether that is because he so frequently accords with my own views. I comfort myself with the thought that common sense can be a relatively common antidote to ideological incoherence. China has, since 1978, consistently acted upon a foreign policy guided by their five principles of peaceful co-existence. They are mutual respect for each others' sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each others internal affairs, equality and co-operation for mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence. More than any other country...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: For 35 years after Vietnam, we had a self-reliant defence policy. We need it aga
Do these times suit Albanese’s leadership style?
August 26, 2025
While this is an excellent opinion piece, it seems to assume that time is available to continue with “business as usual”. Unfortunately, science and physics do not appear to have been consulted in arriving at this assumption. Both are now abundantly clear that not only is “business as usual’ no longer sustainable, but that the actions now required to maintain a future for Homo sapiens and all other life forms on this planet are nothing short of revolutionary. Significant changes that have advanced the species, such as abolition of slavery, female franchise etc, were not achieved by continuing...
Peter Keightley from Mount Martha Victoria
In response to: Kate McGeorge’s Albanese's politics of patience: Democracy needs mature leade
Yes I can, yes I can, said the Little Red Engine
August 26, 2025
As usual, Julian Cribb presents us with a truly vivid picture of the mess we’ve made of our short tenure on Planet Earth. Gifted the twin miracles of perception and self-expression, a garden of abundance and clean air and water to breathe and drink, we’ve allowed our basest nature to prevail. It gives meaning to the ethics of the early Christians who featured the seven deadly sins in their theology. I suspect they adopted them, as they read like a universal roadmap for any organised society. Nevertheless, it makes you wonder where we’d be if we’d stopped to think...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: The great dying
Contraction of the human enterprise must start now
August 26, 2025
In Julian Cribb's article, water scientist Peter Gleick is quoted as saying: “The size of the world’s population, the nature of our consumption and economies and our use of energy and water resources have combined to threaten our very existence. This basically sums up why we humans find ourselves in a state of overshoot. Our impact on the Earth is simply too great, thus contraction of our population and economies must start happening now. This is not to say that all aspects of our economies have to contract. Technological developments that lead to decarbonisation must be encouraged, not least...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: The great dying
Renewable food
August 26, 2025
The planet is “now dominated by two species, cows and humans”. That is Julian Cribb's stark illustration of the consequences of planet-wide over-consumption. The Potsdam Institute’s latest report describes how this gross explosion in animal life “has come at the price of massive degradation of plant life”. What is to be done? In his article “Why the world needs renewable food (14/7), Cribbs set out the three pillars of a renewable world food supply: regenerative farming, urban food (sustainably using water and other resources with in urban environments) and deep ocean aquaculture. Some Australian farmers have adopted regenerative...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: The great dying
Chopping the logging myths
August 26, 2025
Thanks to David Lindenmayer for his excellent piece destroying the conveniently contrived myths which offer the justification for logging Australia's native forests. The article's message to words ratio is powerful. Yes, David, there is no rational justification for the ongoing logging of these forests, now almost all woefully miserable echoes of what they once were. The state of the forests is repeated in the numbers and health of the species native to this habitat. David has produced a brief yet concise piece that should be overwhelmingly persuasive to clear-minded people. It deserves to be mass-copied and dropped in...
Bruce Foskey from Blackwood, Vic
In response to: Cutting through the spin - Ten logging myths in the new ABARES report
Really? Will Australia act against Netanyahu?
August 26, 2025
Jack Waterford says in connection with ICC warrants out for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would, for example, be arrested if he came to Australia. Really? Is Waterford that confident? I can't be the only one who isn't at all confident that would be the case. Given Australia's failure to take any concrete action to halt the genocide in Palestine, preferring instead to serve up word salads including, in this context, its belated plan to recognise Palestine, I can see that Australia's strongest action should Netanyahu land here would be to turn him back. Bravery has...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Peace in Gaza needs a full accounting by both sides
Trust, a commodity in short supply
August 26, 2025
A good article by James. He attributes to Michael Steele the most optimistic statement about trust that could possibly be made without prompting guffaws. Steele said: The core of our alliance for the last 80 years has been trust, and [Trump] has broken that trust. A more perceptive observation of US foreign policy goals and processes is attributable to Henry Kissinger when he said to be America's enemy is dangerous, to be its friend is fatal. He also said that America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests. To say that we have ever trusted the US...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Australia and Taiwan caught between Trump and Xi’s great-man fantasies
Active forest management makes fire risk worse
August 26, 2025
Peter Sainsbury notes that while the world’s forests still act as a net carbon sink, their capacity to do so has fallen by 75% in just two decades. Some, such as the Bolivian Amazon and Canadian boreal forests, are now even net sources of carbon. The main cause of deforestation in North America and Asia is wildfire, while in Latin America and Southeast Asia it is permanent agriculture. In Australia, deforestation continues through land clearing for cattle and sheep grazing. In 2024, the Australian Conservation Foundation exposed 50 cases in one week, including the bulldozing of “20 rugby fields’...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Environment: Humanity’s big success: turning forests from saviours to spoilers
Labor and Coalition ignore anti-racist Jewish views
August 26, 2025
Excellent and timely article by eminent Indigenous Australian Gregory Andrews. Sir Isaac Isaacs (Australia’s first Jewish and first Australian-born governor general) carefully and expertly demolished racist Zionism in the brilliant, 61-page booklet entitled “PALESTINE: Peace and Prosperity or War and Destruction? POLITICAL ZIONISM: Undemocratic, Unjust, Dangerous” (January 1946). For details of this and other eminent anti-racist Jewish opinion Google “Jews against racist Zionism” from which one discovers the wisdom of numerous anti-racist Jewish writers from Hannah Arendt to Howard Zinn and including numerous anti-racist Jewish Australians (most notably today the humane and anti-racist Jewish Council of Australia). Sir...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: Australia's first Jewish governor-general would have stood with Gaza
Never underestimate the power of the mining lobby
August 25, 2025
Once again, we blame China for our own inadequacies. Sinophobia never gets its fair share of headlines. Just because they were smart enough to see this coming, we get upset China is only doing what is common for the mining companies in particular, and global bussiness in general: manipulating the market to maximise profit to their advantage What market forces you may ask. OPEC etc? In the case of China, they have ensured their own supply needs with a profit thrown in, while sucessive Australian Governments give our wealth away for some election funding and a few...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: China’s critical minerals chokehold sparks Quad action
Isaac Isaacs' legacy
August 25, 2025
Gregory Andrews outlines Sir Isaac Isaac’s opposition to political Zionism, a stance that has divided the Jewish community over many years. Writing shortly after World War II, Isaacs foresaw the ongoing conflict: “any attempt to establish Jewish dominance [in Palestine] would inevitably lead to bloodshed.” Isaacs was a staunch defender to Britain. “[A Jewish state would] threaten not merely the prestige but the integrity of the Empire,” he wrote, also noting that the region experienced a “marvellous transformation” under the British mandate. Historians would likely disagree at just how marvellous the British were after defeating the Ottomans, seizing the...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: Australia's first Jewish governor-general would have stood with Gaza
Start by calling Trump what he is: a dictator
August 25, 2025
The best way Australia can defend the International Criminal Court is by complying with its decisions. Another way is to face some reality. Calling Donald Trump the worst president America has ever had is akin to calling Adolf Hitler Germany’s worst ever chancellor. True, both were elected by popular and fair vote, but once in power, all semblance of democratic process was demolished and what those in power wanted, those in power got. Moreover, they are not alone. Israel and Iran are nations divided, while poor old Russia, North Korea and China are countries under authoritarian regimes that...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: Australia must defend international criminal court
Sir Isaac Isaacs
August 25, 2025
Gregory Andrews may not be aware that at the time Sir Isaac Isaacs opposed a Jewish state, the political background was that Palestine was under the British Mandate and so supporting the creation of a Jewish state meant being disloyal to the mother country. His civic conviction was part of a political debate within the Jewish community that pitched British loyalists against those who supported the establishment of a Jewish state. That debate largely died once the British Mandate ended and Israel was created.
Harold Zwier from Melbourne
In response to: Australia's first Jewish governor-general would have stood with Gaza
Full text of Trump’s February diktat about the ICC
August 25, 2025
Greg Barns makes a clear call. It is worth viewing Donald Trump’s February diktat against members of the ICC. A total of 125 nations are ratified parties to the ICC, while the US, Russia, China, Libya, Iraq, Qatar, Yemen and Israel are among those who are not. As the ICJ has also delivered advisory opinions on the war in Palestine, Australia must stand up for both the ICC and the ICJ, action their decisions, and protect their judges and staff and their families from actions of the US, especially as our own Hilary Charlesworth is a judge on...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Australia must defend the International Criminal Court
Exemplifying intelligent progress
August 25, 2025
An excellent article, setting out a lot of facts about China's progress in clean energy that Western mainstream media never mentions, except when it can be attacked using some perversion of logic and common sense. What is little known is that China has in recent years planted in excess of 13 billion trees on nearly five million hectares of previously degraded land and has a goal of planting 70 billion by 2030. It is also re-claiming deserts as productive lands and leads the world in solar and wind power as well as electric vehicles. It makes sound common...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Shared vision, greener together: China and Australia unlock opportunities in eco
Aggression and unintended consequences
August 25, 2025
And just think how stupidity and determination to be the boss caused all this. China was, and is, more than happy to continue to supply any country with the rare earths that they refine, so long as they refrain from breaching China's five principles of peaceful co-existence. They are mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and co-operation for mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence. These are the last commitments the West are prepared to make after 500 years of ignoring them around the world in pursuit of...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China’s critical minerals chokehold sparks Quad action
Gaza's civilian toll deliberate?
August 25, 2025
The overwhelmingly obvious question regarding these appalling statistics is whether it is deliberate or collateral damage as the Israelis claim. The best comparison is with the civilian death toll in the USSR in World War II, which was an intentional act to create lebensraum in the East for the German people. In total, 27 million people were killed in the USSR by Germany; of those nine million were military casualties and 18 million were civilians. That means two-thirds of those killed were civilians from a deliberate campaign of genocide against civilians. The Nazi war machine was an elaborately constructed...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Israeli data shows 83% of Gaza war dead are civilians: Report
I hope you die before you get old
August 25, 2025
I've been rewriting this song since I've reached a mature age and been taunted by the derogatory word boomer. Still fiercely against injustice in the world, I'm in a choir of mostly women over 65. We sing a lot of raunchy songs, many protesting against injustice. I've rearranged a few words to enjoy my present rage and I've changed the iconic I hope I die before I get old to I hope you die before you get old for those who blame others for their own inadequacies.
Diana Rickard from Tumbling Waters NT
In response to: Still talkin’ ’bout My Generation
Albanese's politics of patience
August 25, 2025
Thanks for a more considered assessment of the current leadership, Albanese style. If only more politicians could behave accordingly. Might I offer an observation of a failure here and a solution? Rushing, even on the evening of his election, Albanese promised committed action on the Voice for Indigenous Australians. Unfortunately, he used a political, a numbers based, binary process which divided the nation. Had he chosen a process of dialogue and consideration as another nation,Ireland, did, he could have achieved much more;but he thought like a numbers man, a politician. Ireland on the other hand, changed two matters...
Michael Breen from Robertson NSW
In response to: Albanese's politics of patience: Democracy needs mature leadership
Gaza crisis and the Australian Catholic Church
August 25, 2025
It is hardly surprising that the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference is silent on the genocide in Palestine. Why should the ACBC speak up for those half a world away when it failed to do so for Australia's Indigenous population? Support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, Yes; support the Voice to Parliament referendum, No. The Catholic Church has some wonderful moral leaders. A handful are ordained, most are not. Many who identify as Catholic, with the best of that tradition, no longer practise the Catholicism of the members of the ACBC. What remains of ACBC moral leadership is negligible...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The Gaza crisis and the Australian Church
Is Leunig's cartoon antisemitic?
August 25, 2025
Harold Zwier's piece quotes a comment by Dvir Ambramovich, deriding the idea that the Jewish community would take aggressive, retributive action against those who criticise Israel. Abramovich was wrong then and he is still. Its assault alone on art galleries, writers festivals, universities, media outlets — the list is endless — is proof enough that the mainstream Jewish lobby employs its outsized reach to intimidate and suppress, quite effectively, any dissenting view of the behaviour of Israelis.
Daniel Saks from Daylesford, Vic
In response to: Leunig cartoon: Antisemitism or valid political comment?
Bush Summit baloney
August 25, 2025
Murdoch media/Gina Rinehart’s Bush Summit is part of stage II of a Big Tobacco-style disinformation campaign. The prime minister should not dignify the campaign or lend it credibility by his attendance. Murdoch/Rinehart et.al. won stage I of the campaign by delaying responsible climate action for 40 years despite losing their factual argument (“Climate change isn’t real, see, it was cold last week”) to actual science. (Big Tobacco) Stage II, “we can’t afford to address climate change” and “renewables don’t work” and “windmills are ugly” (Uglier than coal mines?) has been running for a few years now. I wonder...
John Curr from MANLY
In response to: 'Who will look after the elderly?' Bush Summit is back, and so is Gina Rinehart’
Tax reform – what about resources taxes?
August 25, 2025
I have not closely followed the discussions of tax reform so maybe I missed it, but Michael Keating’s article presented itself as somewhat comprehensively covering the possible areas of reform. While I consider myself to be well short of his economic knowledge, I was surprised to find no reference to taxing the resource sector for its ability to extract huge resource-generated profits at minimal benefit to our national budgetary position. Having been in Norway last year and observed them gloating about the benefits of their sovereign fund, I despaired again about our failure to emulate such an approach....
Stan Rosenthal from CARNEGIE
In response to: The economic reform roundtable and taxation
Leunig's intention with his cartoon
August 25, 2025
In his critique of Leunig’s 2012 cartoon, Zwier refers to it as a parody — satirising or mocking — of Niemöller’s 1946 poem. For me, the 2025 immediacy and personal nature of Leunig‘s words was palpable – not a parody, but rather an adaptation true to the original intent of Niemöller’s poem. It spoke to me about the progressive… how can I say it, moral shrinkage that occurs, the lack of courage, sense of being overwhelmed and the impotence in us, preventing us from speaking up for truth. Leunig’s very personal observation is evident in his choice of pronouns...
Susan Germein from Sydney
In response to: Leunig cartoon: Antisemitism or valid political comment?
Same old, same old
August 25, 2025
I took the trouble to look up who was at the roundtable and noticed it was the same well-paid people who either have benifitted from the mess we are in or those who want to benefit from the mess. Not one without media training„ Nice to be with you Sarah„ No-one to point a finger. Let's say education, housing, health etc are in this mess because of a failed experiment of commercialising them. Health is on the brink because of the profit before care model and private hospitals for those who can pay extra and ramping for the...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Well-being, health and the Productivity Roundtable
Israel claiming 'democracy' is moral blasphemy
August 25, 2025
No quibble at all with everything that Raghid Nahhas wrote – but I think he understated the heinous appropriation of a term generally approbative of a regime by the Zionist + IDF cabal to deflect criticism of their genocidal rampage. The definition of democracy has no reference to the actions of a state in regard to any other state. By claiming Israel's democratic status — which I assume is valid under the strict definition — Benjamin Netanyahu is employing a very limited political definition as a shroud to cover the iniquitous activity of the pack of inglorious bastards of...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Israel, the 'only democracy in the Middle East' – How to win elections and erase people
Our only Jewish governor-general?
August 25, 2025
While Isaac Isaacs was the first Jewish governor-general, during my lifetime we had Zelman Cowan. This fact does not change the intent or importance of the article, but is a glaring error that should have been picked up before publication.
Peter Grayson-Weeks from Beauty Point, Tasmania
In response to: Australia’s only Jewish governor-general would have stood with Gaza
High time we told the US to get lost
August 22, 2025
Bravo to Fred Zhang for a brilliant article which is very much to the point. It is high time we told the US to get lost. This is a nation that parrots itself as the world's greatest democracy but, in reality, does not give a rat's about democracy and never has. It didn't care about it when it put the 3/5ths compromise in its constitution, it didn't care about it when, along with the UK, it destroyed Iranian democracy in 1953 for oil, or indeed, in 1956 when it egged on the Hungarians for months. They amazingly overthrew...
Wes Mason from Gisborne
In response to: Pay up, shut up, speak up against China, or we won't get the subs (some wise Ame
Russell’s authorship
August 22, 2025
In all likelihood, the statement on the Middle East dated 31 January 1970 was indeed drafted by Bertrand Russell. It has his characteristic clarity including typically succinct formulations such as ‘The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that the country was “given” by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state, and What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. Russell personally signed a copy of the statement, which is now held at the Bertrand Russell Archives,...
Tony Simpson from Cornwall
In response to: Fifty-five years on, Bertrand Russell’s words are worth returning to
Leunig cartoon: antisemitism or valid political comment?
August 22, 2025
I am no particular fan of Leunig, but I found Harold Zwier's assessment of Leunig's four-frame cartoon self-serving and symptomatic of the sad conflict within global Jewry related to the genocide in Palestine. As a non-Jew, I took it that Leunig spoke for all of us (aside from Bibi, his war criminal associates and and his youthful conscripted footsoldiers.) Zwier's self-indulgent intellectual doodle and its perceived antisemitism is a another crutch for his guilt-avoidant mates. It is a pathetic distraction from the mass murder for its two million victims and it shows no sympathy for them. Not...
Donald Clayton from Bittern 3918
In response to: https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/08/leunig-cartoon-antisemitism-or-valid-political-comment/
10-fold MSM undercounting of 680,000 Gaza deaths
August 21, 2025
Ralph Nader’s reportage on the undercounting of Gaza deaths is now on the US Congressional Record. From data reported in the leading medical journal The Lancet and elsewhere by a succession of expert epidemiologists (Dr Zeina Jamaluddine et al., Dr Rasha Khatib et al., Professor Devi Sridhar) 64,260 Gazans died violently by Day 269 of the Gaza Massacre (30 June 2024) and hence 136,000 Gazans died violently by Day 569 (25 April 2025) with a “conservatively estimated” four times that number (544,000) dying from imposed deprivation for a shocking total of 680,000 deaths from violence and deprivation by 25 April...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: Open letter to journalists on the vast undercount of deaths and serious injuries
The politics of profligacy
August 21, 2025
Humanity’s greed for material comfort seems unbounded, for the most part, by any sense of a need for boundaries. Our population grows ever larger, and those alive want a sense of comfort and provision that is as good as, or better than, that they grew up with. Understandable, at the individual scale, but unsustainable and a poisoned chalice for those who follow. Julian Cribb paints a compelling picture of how humanity is hell-bent on self-destruction. Much attention has been given to the climate threat because this is both existential and imminent, but — as Cribb reminds us — we...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: The great waste
Federal taxes do not fund federal spending
August 21, 2025
... My starting point is that Australia needs to raise more tax revenue. ... budget will continue to be in deficit ... by an average of 1.2% of GDP. This is a structural deficit which is a major risk to economic sustainability... This deficit needs to be corrected and sooner rather than later. Either taxation has to rise or expenditures need to be cut... Such advice is provably incorrect; the recommendation is the very essence of socially destructive neoliberalist austerity. There was a time when the statements above were true, but not now. In gold-pegged days (pre-1971) an...
John Bloomfield from Roselands NSW
In response to: The economic reform roundtable and taxation
Shining for me, but not for thee
August 21, 2025
To act with impunity as if the voices and needs of the other don't matter, or don't matter as much, seems to me to be at the heart of the mess we in the West now find ourselves in. Two examples spring to mind, these being NATO's eastward expansion and Israel's absorption of Palestine. Both relied on the notion of exceptionalism to justify unilateral action. In neither case were the opinions of the other given equal weight. That light on the hill would seem to be shining for me, but not for thee. To remove oneself from the...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: The city on a hill
TAFE and the commercialisation of education
August 21, 2025
Neil, thank you for your welcome piece written from within the deterioration of educational integrity of an important post-secondary sector! Thank you. Such insider insight tracing educational decline in TAFE is helpful to sharpen our vision of the related spectacular decline within the sector of what are now called universities! To investigate how TAFE was demeaned in public policy will mean revisiting the question of why Institutes of Technology and Colleges of Advanced Education were reformed by amalgamation with, and hence required by legislation to take on the labels of, universities? Are we to make the sad conclusion that...
Bruce Wearne from Ballarat Central
In response to: The quest for 21st century australian productivity [and] TAFE
And yet...
August 21, 2025
Well written! Thank you, Patricia, for adding to our perception of a political reality which is also our own. And yet our ambassador and foreign minister attended the inauguration on our behalf! Ever since coming to the conclusion that they shouldn't have done so, I've wondered how we Australians should justify such a signal of non-compliance with the Trump 2 delusionary insurrection. The best I can come up with is to say we have too much respect for the US under its own constitution — which assumes the rule of law and proscribes insurrection — for us to indulge...
Bruce Wearne from BALLARAT CENTRAL
In response to: Understanding Donald J. Trump