Letters to the Editor
ASIO mistakes
August 11, 2025
Paddy Gourley makes some excellent points in his analysis of ASIO chief, Mike Burgess’ annual Hawke Lecture. But he is too kind in his assessment of Burgess’ account of ASIO’s historic performance. Burgess’ account of the Combe/Ivanov Affair is at best misleading. Burgess quotes then prime minister, Bob Hawke, saying after the event: There was no question in my mind that we had to be tough, decisive and immediate in our reaction. Any pussy footing around… could have been seen as… soft on the threat of Soviet espionage… I knew it was a sort of make-or-break situation. And...
Paul Malone from Ocean Grove
In response to: Mike Burgess on the ASIO soapbox again
It never was a secret plan
August 11, 2025
It was always a plan to occupy Gaza since day one of the Six-Day war. Are Jeruselem and the Christians safe from the next phasę of the Israeli plan? This plan was written around the 13 century BCE.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide. SA
In response to: Israeli military plans to occupy Gaza City in major escalation of war
Trump's cuts to science are philistine acts
August 11, 2025
The quote “Truth is therefore the aim of science; science is the search for truth from Karl Popper encapsulates the scientific method which he believed would protect future generations from assaults on the truth. Unfortunately, neither Donald Trump nor Robert Kennedy Jr have any notion of the principles underlying science and, consequently, have done irreparable harm to the American people. The cancellation of US$600 million in funding to the company Moderna for development of an mRNA vaccine against bird flu, and then another US$500 million for 22 more projects developing mRNA vaccines, are philistine acts. All because Kennedy thinks...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Trump and Kennedy are destroying global science. Even Einstein questioned facts
Head in the sand politics
August 11, 2025
When politicians of all persuasions spend all their time and our money passing laws to stop the general voting public telling them how they feel (protesting), this is what you get and it's not democracy. I think it's nothing to see here, look over there: politics.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: From Hiroshima to Gaza: Eighty years of failing to contain violence
Fantasy in Tel Aviv and reality in Gaza
August 11, 2025
What is being deliberately spread by complicit Western mainstream media as the truth is the output of a well-oiled and US-funded Israeli PR campaign designed to keep the ugly truth from us. But even within Israel, alternative voices are telling the truth. That truth is that Israel faces an existential crisis, both within its military and its economy. The IDF has suffered vastly more casualties than the Israeli and world public are being told. A figure of 10,000 dead is widely agreed by external military analysts. over 100,000 reservists have failed to turn up when called up and hundreds...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Israeli military plans to occupy Gaza City in major escalation of war
The Jewish resistance
August 11, 2025
Millions of decent Jews around the world have struggled with the conflict between their belief in the state of Israel and the daily atrocities that state is committing against the Palestinian people. Like billions of other people around the planet they are repulsed and nauseated by what is being done in their names. That demonstrates unequivocally the vacuity of the use of the valid problem of antisemitism to cloak these crimes against humanity in the garb of self-defence. I thank these doctors for joining the world community in abhorring these crimes and seeking their immediate cessation.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: How we at Physicians for Human Rights Israel decided that the Gaza war is a geno
We're there: The shame of leaving it too late
August 11, 2025
The genocide continues and still all we get from our government is words, words totally ignored by the Israeli Government and its supporters. No action. No BDS. No recognition of Palestine. But our PM says recognition of Palestine is only a matter of time. What a meaningless comment. It's not time, but what happens in time that is important. What is Anthony Albanese waiting for, what has to happen, in that unspecified length of time, for him and his government to formally recognise Palestine and its people? Is he waiting for the genocide to be complete? Or is he...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: As Netanyahu moves toward full takeover of Gaza, Israel faces a crisis of international credibility
People who live in glass houses...
August 11, 2025
Australians are often quick to condemn the human rights record of other countries. I suggest before doing that, they should first read the 30 July, 2025 letter of the Northern Territory Paediatricians to the chief Minister of the Northern Territory as one example of the inhumane treatment of fellow Australians, in this case the incarceration of Aboriginal children, detailing their poor physical and mental state when the first come to the notice of our justice system. On reading that letter, it's not hard to justify calling Australia a country with an entrenched and systematic racism problem. To those who...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Call for national action to prevent 'torture' or death of incarcerated First Nat
Who is reviled by whom?
August 11, 2025
An extremely well-argued article, but just one small caveat. The reference in the sentence Putin’s Government is perhaps second only to Benjamin Netanyahu’s as the world’s most reviled litigant, depends very closely on the definition of the world that is adopted. Make no mistake if we are genuinely talking about the whole world, rather than just the 15% segment that is the West, then the most reviled litigants are easily the US as number one, followed by its satrap Israel. Russia, for the other 85% of humanity, doesn't score anywhere near the top as is demonstrated by that...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The Russians’ lost plot: will they find serenity or are they dreaming?
Australia must be excluded from any say on Palestine
August 11, 2025
Two main points. First, it is well past time that Australian media commentary about 7 October 2023 take into account what the Israeli media itself noted in 2024, that the so-called “Hannibal Directive” was issued to Israeli forces, resulting in hundreds of cannon shells and missiles fired from gunships and tanks, making it impossible to determine how many Israeli casualties on that day were inflicted by their own forces. Second, it is important that the Australian Government be held accountable for its many-stranded elements of complicity in genocide, and be excluded completely from having any say or playing...
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: Justice for Palestine: Why Hamas must be involved
Our future is waiting in the wings
August 11, 2025
For the last 2000 years, advancements in warfare have altered the state of war and without much pushback. Nuclear is just another progressive armament. As destructive as nuclear has been demonstrated to be, its effectiveness is limited. A technology that has greater power and effectiveness is the digital world. Nah. Nuclear is the least of our problems. We have much greater threats to our future staring us in the face.
Aale Hanse from nsw
In response to: Eighty years with the bomb: How long can our luck continue?
No need to increase the GST
August 11, 2025
Despite all the rhetoric, there is no need to increase the GST. Indeed, there is no need to panic about improving our tax system, overall. However, there is one area of taxation that could do with a massive shake-up, and doing so could solve a lot of problems. Foreign companies — especially mining companies — must be forced to pay their fair share for the right to use our nation's people, resources and infrastructure to make a profit. Despite making huge profits, many such companies have paid no Australian tax for decades – and we know how they do...
Tom Orren from Wamberal
In response to: The GST — past, present, future — and always tense
Taking care of the amputated children of Gaza
August 11, 2025
Most of us are feeling helpless to reach out to the Palestinian children and their families. I would love to donate to help the children who suffered amputations and require prosthetics. I am aware that we would not be able to deliver and provide the prosthetists to Gaza, but we can start to organise financially now so we can act on it as soon as we get an opportunity. I would appreciate if you could bring that up with John Menadue and people following Pearls and Irritations who are feeling helpless to help.
Selma Terzioglu from Melbourne Bonbeach Victoria
In response to: The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always Netanyahu’s intention
Medibank was radical, Medicare is its reincarnation
August 11, 2025
John Deeble is one of my heroes. He and Whitlam did a radical thing in introducing Medibank. So I was disappointed with the use of Medicare throughout this article. I remember clearly after only a few years of Medibank, Malcolm Fraser's Government gleefully destroyed it, for ideological reasons and following the wishes of the AMA. They changed it to Medibank Private, just another health insurance company. A good, essential thing was cruelly snatched away. If you couldn't afford private health insurance, tough. You paid for healthcare, or went without. It was devastating for many Australians. I remember clearly...
Deanne Perry from ACT
In response to: Vale John Deeble - an architect of Medicare
Understanding the 'war' in Gaza
August 11, 2025
1. Why does Hamas not surrender unconditionally and return all hostages? 2. Is there still any actual armed or other resistance by Hamas militants? (if so, where do they get the ammunition?) Why is a “ceasefire” needed if there are no armed, fighting Palestinians? 3. Has any evidence been given by IDF for (repeated): • murdering food/aid seekers • bombing of civilians. 4. How much opposition is there in Israel (by Israelis) to genocide, as opposed to just return of hostages? 5. How much opposition is there within Israel to West Bank attacks by settlers and...
Bede Doherty from Naarm/Melbourne
In response to: The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always Netanyahu’s intention
The Indian Ocean Zone of Peace
August 11, 2025
Let’s look back after Gareth Evans’ article, at the Indian Ocean Zone of Peace proposal by Sri Lanka in 1964 which was endorsed by the UN. I recently found a 1984 letter to me by then aviation minister, Kim Beazley. The letter puts the Forces Posture Agreement with US and UK nuclear armed submarines operating from Rockingham in a new light. Beazley said the then federal government was committed to an IOZP. He was involved in lobbying in Washington for continued US participation in the UN Ad-Hoc Committee on Indian Ocean Arms limitation. Warship visits, under the IOZP, he...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Eighty years with the bomb: How long can our luck continue?
Perpetrators posing as victims
August 11, 2025
War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not colour his crime with the pretext of justice: Voltaire John nails it again. I, too, was a lifelong member of the ALP but can no longer be a member of a party without a conscience!
les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always Netanyahu’s intention
Towards a one-state solution
August 11, 2025
I commend Kym Davey for making the case that Hamas should participate in future negotiations for a Palestine state, but what has been entirely absent from the discussion is, what state, where? Since 1948, the amount of land that Palestinians occupy has shrunk from 45% to less than 15% today, and Israel is determined to occupy and annex the rest. As Craig Mokhiber, the former New York director for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has said: “The mantra of the ‘two-state solution’ has become an open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter...
Stefan Moore from Sydney
In response to: Justice for Palestine: Why Hamas must be involved
Obliteration was always, and remains, the aim
August 11, 2025
Everything John Menadue writes of the genocide in Gaza is true. I would add only a couple of things. First, as 7 October 2023 didn't come out of nowhere, neither did the Nakba. In 1948, Israel grew out of several terrorist organisations and its early prime ministers came from within those organisations, ie they were terrorists. I couldn't find a quote I remembered from Moshe Dayan on a TV show to the effect Israel was taken at the end of a gun and will be kept the same way but, in searching, found three others from him showing...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always Netanyahu’s intention
Long live the alternative media, especially P&I
August 11, 2025
Re John Menadue's criticism of the media in his article on the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza... Since 1999 I wrote letters to and was regularly published in The Age. Those letters included some about Israel going back over the years. That changed on 7 October 2023. Initially, letters on the nascent days of Israel's genocide went unpublished. All reporting was biased in favour of Israel and actively against Palestine. As time has gone on, it became impossible to ignore what was happening and reports filtered through and letters appeared. As an avid reader and writer of...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always Netanyahu’s intention
It's not only the ABC
August 11, 2025
By all means, criticise the ABC for its low-quality journalism. There are exceptions, but it's never been the same since the Liberals got their hands on the ABC board. However, we have to remember that our traditional, legacy media are no better. And not only on China. They all take their news with an American bias, and sometimes a UK bias. It is also US and Euro-centric. Our knowledge of countries outside those blocks is all but non-existent if we haven't been dragged into a war there. Alternative and new media does so much better. But the problem...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Australia needs better China coverage. This ABC story just gave us less
Who's got Dibbs on the paranoia?
August 8, 2025
Some of our more devoted Anglophiles have made substantial careers in Australia out of taking the British Empire's view of the rest of the world as threatening to the empire. That view was adopted by the new American empire which succeeded the collapse of the British in the early part of the last century. Most of these Anglophiles were attracted to the Conservative and often racist side of Australian politics. Paul Dibb fitted comfortably into this 18th century mould when associated with Beazley, who, even though in the ALP, shared the attachment to much of the US and...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Layered perversion of Australia's defence policy
Choctaws and Samaritans
August 8, 2025
Re Paul Heywood-Smith’s article: US House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson has just visited Northwest Palestine and declared that it should be called Judea and Samaria. If we follow the current state of Israel's logic based on ancient history, then Samaria belongs to the Samaritans, not to the Jewish state of Israel. Judaism stems from when Eli in the 11th century BC led a split in the people of the man Israel aka Jacob, leaving the Samaritans in Samaria. The Samaritans were not deported to Babylon by the Assyrians, unlike the Jewish people. What would be Johnson’s reaction...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Palestine recognised
Anti-racist Jews threatened by Zionist McCarthyism
August 8, 2025
Excellent article by Professor Henry Reynolds. Australians are subject to massive “antisemitism hysteria”. Antisemitism occurs in two equally repugnant forms, anti-Jewish antisemitism and anti-Arab antisemitism (including Islamophobia) but these three key terms (and indeed about 80 pertinent terms) were not mentioned in the recently released “Special Envoy’s plan to combat antisemitism”. Data published by expert epidemiologists in the leading medical journal The Lancet indicates that 136,000 Gazans died violently by 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. However, in Australia (as...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: The Segal report and the universities
Democracy or police state?
August 8, 2025
What the court system did was not legalise the march but słow the steady march towards a police state. Any attempt by the NSW premier to change that, by giving the police even more power, will bring us one step closer to a Trump-style dictatorship.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Watermelons in the rain
If AI reduces the working week, fine
August 8, 2025
I can't think of anything better than a reduction in the working week and an associated Universal Basic Income. People are working much too hard and there are too few people left to care for children, the elderly and the ill. It would be nice to have a world where children are brought up largely by their parents (doesn't have to be just the mother beyond the breast-feeding stage) and not shoved into before school care at 7.30m and collected at 6pm and then out-of-school-hours care for the entire school holidays. It would be nice to have elderly parents...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: The end of jobs?
Thank you for your voices
August 7, 2025
To all signatories to the open letter to Mr Albanese, thank you. Perhaps the combined weight of your importance and words will put an end to this country’s unforgivable reluctance to do the right and just thing. As an average Australian citizen I have also written to our prime minister and foreign minister advocating the return of the hostages, the recognition of Palestine, the cessation of all war/weapons-related trade with Israel to no avail. To see Australia’s politicians hand wringing, waiting for when the moment is right is not only disgusting, it is ethically and morally wrong. Palestinians...
Lesley Armstrong from Bathurst NSW
In response to: Open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese MP from Australian former diplomats
China's different road
August 7, 2025
At its most fundamental, the US problem with China is that it has chosen a different road to economic security which the US has finally realised is working better than their model. The US model is untrammelled capitalism with vast expenditures on the military to retain hegemony over the world. The Chinese system is socialism with Chinese characteristics. In the last 40 years, the wage of the average industrial worker in China has risen 130 times (not 130%). In that same period, the wage of the average US industrial worker has risen about 4 times. China has...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Is the ‘China threat’ real or trumped up?
Power without purpose
August 7, 2025
Governments in a West declining in importance in an emerging multipolar world seem to see, at some basic level, that their time in the sun is now ending. The problem is they have no idea of how to respond to that reality. So they are reduced to gesture politics and to acting as though nothing has changed at a geo-political level. Australian Governments of the past couple of decades are a good illustration of that, actually dealing with the clearly identified problems that we face at political, economic and geo-political levels with gestures that will meet with daily media...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Roundtable will fix nothing unless we can all park our self-interest
Diplomacy and civilisation
August 7, 2025
It is encouraging for all Australians who truly value whatever remains of our civilisational values, after decades of pathetic abasement of those values before the otiose criminality of the US, to see a group of eminent retired diplomats show their despair at the failure of our leaders to actually honour those values. I admire their desire to speak out against failure to confront Zionist pressure to support genocide!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese MP from Australian former diploma
Spooks and the need for fear
August 7, 2025
Paddy demonstrates a realistic view of the self-promotion of spooks. They are the least accountable public organisations as they cover their activities with a cloak of national security more often than not to prevent the public from seeing the vast waste of public funds involved. Burgess deals in generalisations and vaguely worded, but titillating, assertions without ever being required to produce for the public paying for this any substantive evidence. It is the position many public servants envy. Much public money and no accountability for its use or misuse. The estimates of savings that he suggests ASIO achieves...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Mike Burgess on the ASIO soapbox, again
A joyous and solemn occasion
August 7, 2025
A really heartwarming celebration by Alison of the solidarity demonstrated on Sunday by a massive and truly heterogeneous multicultural event. It represents civilisation at its best, compassionate, concerned, prepared to stand up for the values our leaders so often promote, but so much less frequently demonstrate. Minns demonstrated those leadership failures pretty clearly in his opposition to the expression of the people's will. His position on the genocide occurring in Gaza has brought shame on the political party whose membership simply doesn't share his timidity and lack of moral leadership. Thank you Alison for a wonderful summary of...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Watermelons in the rain
We have the knowledge, we lack the will
August 7, 2025
Irene Watson quotes Aime Cesaire: A civilisation that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilisation to introduce her study of South Australia’s algal bloom. The causes she cites are of pollution: carbon building in the atmosphere bringing increased water temperatures, and nutrient-laden run-offs in the water feeding algal growth. Enabled through weak environmental legislation which, as she says, is always subservient to economic interests, the over-exploitation of our natural environment foretells its continuing decline: floods, droughts, heatwaves, famines, fish kills, extinctions, and more. The problems we face in South Australia are just the...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Algal bloom: first peoples ngamath-sea country
Palestinian statehood
August 7, 2025
It is interesting that most Australian anti-genocide commentators, who have recently written about the shift in Western countries such as France, Canada and the UK to recognise Palestine, and urge Australia to follow suit, do not seem to consider the views expressed by non-Western commentators located on the ground in the Middle East, who discuss such issues in depth in publications such as The Cradle, Middle East Eye, Palestine Chronicle and Mondoweiss, for example. These commentators, who have in-depth experience and detailed knowledge of regional affairs, are very wary of the fine print in the proposals of Macron, and...
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: Palestine recognised
Competitive Neutrality – the obstacle
August 7, 2025
Has the author, Stewart Sweeney, not heard of Competitive Neutrality? It is a policy adopted by all levels of Australian Governments — in the late 1990s — that prohibits us using such competitive advantages as we — through our governments — may possess in competition with the private sector; it would be unfair. I believe that it was the adoption of this policy — backed by I know not what — that caused local authorities to stop providing social housing and today explains the convoluted finances of the Housing Australia Future Fund and the National Restoration Fund. We...
Colin Cook from Henley Beach
In response to: Bringing government back - but not all the way
We must act on Northern Territory outrage
August 7, 2025
The Northern Territory, like the past to which it belongs, is indeed another country. The barbarity with which children are treated there — incarcerated in large numbers from as young as 10 years old, tortured with spit-hoods and solitary confinement — shames us all. The Gooda/White Royal Commission called for the closure of the Don Dale youth detention centre by 2018 – yet it remains open to this day. The abominations simply continue. It is a waste of time for do-gooders from the South to importune the Territory authorities. I have previously written to all doctor and nurse federal...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: Is the NT Government knowingly endangering First Nations children?
Deficits don't threaten future generations
August 7, 2025
The article Tax, productivity growth and equality is based on the false premises that taxes directly pay for federal government spending and that federal government deficits have to be repaid. Modern Monetary Theory informs us that all federal government spending is new spending and that federal taxation merely takes money out of the economy. There is no debt to be paid back by anyone to any other party in respect of the federal government deficit. The federal government deficit is simply the currency that the Australian Government has spent into the economy that hasn't yet been taxed out...
Gregory Olsen from Bundanoon, NSW
In response to: Tax, productivity growth and equality
The ethics of war: What happens at the end of wars?
August 6, 2025
Eighty years ago, the American bomber the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Why? The aerial bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. During World War II, Allied air forces dropped approximately 2.7 million tons of bombs on Germany, much of the intense bombing towards the end of the war, when the Allies already knew they had won the war. Cities like Dresden and Hamburg were flattened, most of those killed were civilians. Why? War is a...
Jennifer Haines from Glossodia
In response to: Palestine recognised
Correcting Richard Llewellyn's letter
August 6, 2025
I'm happy to correct Richard on the points he raised. The US Navy describes the Catalina flying boat as an antique in a wartime newsreel; The life of the Catalina was deemed over at the outbreak of WWII. Veteran Philip Dulhunty and others described it to me as doomed to the scrapyard before it was saved. For colour, which you criticise, I refer you to RAAF Catalina gunner Cyril Payne's hilarious description of his friend Lenny on an early flight using the wrong shute to poo down with the result spraying all over the interior. This...
Robert Cockburn from Sydney
In response to: Flying Boat vs Atom Bomb
Endloesung?
August 6, 2025
I have admired the many pieces Paul Heywood-Smith has written on Palestine. And also the contributions of many others. I have hoped that John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations wasn’t just an echo chamber, but that its powerful facts and writings were influencing general public opinion. But, alas, now I think we are watching Benjamin Netanyahu and the government of Israel preparing for the Endloesung (final solution) for Gaza and the West Bank. Some say the world won’t allow it. Well, it has allowed the 60,000 deaths of the last 20 or so months in Palestine to occur with no...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Palestine recognised
Aussie economists aren’t realistic about carbon
August 6, 2025
Felicity Deane’s article repeats the familiar daydream of economic experts” – carbon-pricing best tackles climate change. Case by case, it’s true carbon-pricing schemes can “reduce emissions” or at least reduce the “growth rate”. Back at macro level, so what? Sure, the US has genuinely reduced emissions – largely via coal-to-gas switching. The EU has had an ETS since 2005, but it doesn’t even cover half their emissions. Their emissions-reduction factors are coal-to-gas and more renewables. The power of the ETS itself is debatable. Meanwhile, China gets an indulgent UN pass to burn far more coal than the rest...
Stephen Saunders from O'Connor
In response to: Economists want a carbon price comeback – but does Australia have the political courage?
Conditional recognition of Palestine mere words
August 6, 2025
Reports of 60,000 Gaza violent deaths ignore (a) those blown to bits, (b) those buried under rubble, and (c) the hundreds of thousands dying from imposed deprivation and disease but uncounted because barely surviving, ill, exhausted and traumatised relatives did not risk being killed or injured and carry the dead bodies tens of kilometres in the heat to physically register their deaths with authorities. However, expert epidemiologists published in the leading medical journal The Lancet expertly assessed 64,260 violent deaths after nine months, and by 25 April 2025 about 136,000 violent deaths, this indicative of 544,000 deaths from deprivation...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: Palestine recognised
Who is leading whom?
August 6, 2025
The danger that comes with activating cells of influence that have hitherto remained in the background is that those cells now have to reveal themselves. Zionism worldwide, but seemingly especially within Europe and the Anglosphere, is facing this problem. To counter growing outrage over Israeli actions in Palestine, a small minority has had to reveal just how much lobbying power it has within most, if not all, branches of government. They have forgotten that leading from behind is only possible by remaining behind, and by maintaining an at least deniable, if not invisible, existence. By stepping forward, they take...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Israel activates its cells – the Kostakidis case
A pivotal moment for change
August 6, 2025
Australia should immediately commit to recognise Palestine as a sovereign and independent state on pre-1967 lines, as almost 150 of the 193 UN countries have already done. Recognition of a Palestinian state is solely a bilateral issue between Australia and Palestine. Israel itself does not declare its own borders; indeed, it claims the territory of other states. As Francesca Albanese reminds us, the international community stands atop a precipice. The status quo since 1967 has been disastrous. For the last 668 days, we have watched a live-streamed settler-colonial genocide. Nothing will change unless we heed the clarion call...
James Schofield from London
In response to: Palestine Recognised
Catalina were Australia's long-range bombers
August 5, 2025
Robert Cockburn is quite correct about the role of the Catalina flying boat as Australia's long-range bombers in the Pacific. However, and with respect, some of his descriptions are rather more colourful than factual. They were not saved from the scrapyard, nor were they antiques. Their wings were not canvas - only the control surfaces (ailerons and flaps) were bagged, the rest was conventional aluminium construction. But their exploits he has well covered and I recommend strongly Sir Richard Kingsland's autobiography Into the Midst of Things for much more authentic information. Sir Richard flew the very first...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Hiroshima anniversary – RAAF flying boat vs atom bomb
Please reintroduce readers' comments on P&I
August 5, 2025
Please reintroduce readers' comments to your invaluable articles. I gather you treat such an initiative as a pain in the butt, because, as a longstanding consumer of P&I, I've noted this feature has come and gone at various stages in the growth of P&I. In my humble opinion it adds significantly to the strength of an article. You only have to look at any edition of The New York Times — where there can be many thousands of comments on an article — to see how it adds to the story, both in terms of reader engagement and often...
Paul Montgomery from Mansfield
In response to: The US is a very foreign country
We must be vigilant against both traditional and unconventional threats
August 4, 2025
I’m writing to respond to the discussions surrounding Australia’s defense strategy, especially in light of Angus Houston’s comments in the Defence Strategic Review. While some argue that Australia faces minimal risk of a land invasion, we must consider historical lessons, particularly from World War II. Japan’s decision not to invade Australia was a significant strategic error. Their resources were stretched, and focusing on Australia would have jeopardised their campaigns in Southeast Asia. Today, Australia’s enhanced military capabilities and strong alliances, particularly with the US, create formidable deterrents against potential aggressors. However, we should contemplate unconventional threats, such as...
Lawrence Lyons from Rockhampton
In response to: Does China really want to invade Australia?
The evil of antisemitism and other equal evils
August 4, 2025
Yes, yes, antisemitism is an evil and must be eradicated. It has no place in a civil society. But at the same time it is not any greater evil than any other prejudice that besmirches our society. For Jillian Segal to elevate antisemitism above all other evils like racism, Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination, which only those who have experienced can comprehend their widespread harm, is unbecoming. In particular, it is unbecoming to associate antisemitism with criticism of the genocide perpetrated by the Netanyahu Government. What is incomprehensible to most people is, knowing what the Jewish...
Jon Jovanovic from hobart
In response to: Humanitarian propaganda conceals the real famine in Gaza
Courage and Albanese?
August 4, 2025
All sentient, compassionate and justice-loving people can only hope that our prime minister will finally provide the same honour to the name Albanese as Francesca Albanese has done at enormous costs to herself and her family. Courage can be infectious!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: ALP members demand more from PM on Palestine
AUKUS and Gilbert and Sullivan
August 4, 2025
Fowler indeed did a wonderful job, as I have said in these pages in the past, but he also succeeds in evoking images of infantile cupidity and stupidity as so beautifully portrayed in the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. He is rather dunder-headed. Still distinctly, he's a duck. The Gondoliers. A perfect summary of the Dodgy Brothers character played by Scott Morrison.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Nuked: The submarine fiasco that sank Australia’s sovereignty
Confucian commitment and the dam
August 4, 2025
This is a very informative and carefully thought-out article. The question of Chinese intentions is raised with respect to potential concerns of India and Bangladesh. Those concerns can and will be dealt with by China as it deals with all such issues, by good-faith negotiations and through the five principles of peaceful co-existence that China has adopted in the Sino-Indian Agreement of 1954. These underlie China's foreign policy generally.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. China...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China is building the world’s biggest hydropower dam. Why is India worried?
Speaking the unspeakable
August 4, 2025
Leonie has admirably summarised the facts that the Western media has been burying for the last 80 years. Memory, as far as the persecution of the Palestinian people is concerned, is a very dangerous thing to possess. The Zionist cabal have spent that entire time erasing the memory of what they have been doing to the Palestinian people for that entire time. But truth in the end will out. as George Santayana so memorably wrote, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In this case, the people who have been condemned to repeat their...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Palestinians have a history of oppression long before 7 October, 2023
P&I lets us down with Al Jazeera article on Syria
August 4, 2025
I feel sure that most Pearls and Irritations readers are anti-war. P&I can make us more alert to insidious war propaganda and so better able to take a stand for peace and humankind’s survival. Yet, P&I posted an article by Al-Jazeera's Mat Nashed that dealt with the recent fighting in Suwayda, Syria, and the Israeli response. When it comes to Syria, Al-Jazeera is basically a mouthpiece for the foreign policy of Qatar, whose royal family provided billions of dollars toward the phony war in Syria, as it’s described by Jeffrey Sachs. Qatar is known for its links...
Susan Dirgham from Melbourne
In response to: Sectarian tension, Israeli intervention: What led to the violence in Syria?
When the chips are down, the people unite
August 4, 2025
It is difficult to disagree with Cynthia in her summary of the poison informing those who equate criticism of Israel with that much abused word, antisemitism. It is difficult for ordinary citizens of the world to grasp the depth and extent of the daily atrocities being carried out by the members of the most moral army in the world. It is as difficult for them to comprehend the active participation in this daily barbarity by the mainstream media and their servile journalists and editors. In countries around the world, people have finally had enough and are massing in their...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Jewish safety and the weaponisation of antisemitism
Time to move on
August 4, 2025
Thank you, Hiba Farra. The Israeli Government warns against “rewarding Hamas”. What about “rewarding the perpetrators of 70 years of attempted ethnic cleansing”? Rather than continue with the barbarism of ancient Middle Eastern religious disputes with their “chosen people” idiocies and holy texts that call for women to be killed for burning incense and fathers being told to kill their kiddies to prove their blind obedience to a jealous, homophobic God with anger management problems, it’s time to adopt the social values that are accepted around the world many thousands of years later. Is it possible for the...
Neil Hauxwell from Moe Victoria
In response to: Australia speaks of normalising Israel, My family is living through genocide
The Australian Government's choice
August 4, 2025
In the conclusion of his profoundly significant article, Hiba Farra, noted that The Australian Government has a choice: stand with justice, or stand in the way. The Albanese Government has never been interested in matters of justice on any matters, domestic or external. Its focus is entirely on policy and associated funding which serves its careerist interests, nothing else. It has long since made a choice. It now seeks to protect that choice in its own interests by all means available in relation to evading accountability for complicity in genocide.
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: Australia speaks of normalising Israel. My family is living through its genocide
The real antisemitism
August 4, 2025
I am so tired of the Zionists claiming antisemitism where if they really looked at the term would realise what they are committing is antisemitic. It usually refers to the peoples of the Levant and includes Palestinians, as well as the ancestors of Noah. Semitic people or Semites is a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia.
Melody Kemp from Balmoral Brisbane
In response to: Australian journalist in court accused of ‘antisemitism’
Show some leadership, Albo and Penny
August 3, 2025
Trump's real estate dealmaker mate Witkoff completed his GHF-curated no famine here tour of Gaza last week, while NSW's Chris Minns whinged about the the sheer inconvenience of Sunday's pro-Palestine demo on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Meanwhile, Albo and Penny Wong are guardedly preparing to recognise Palestinian statehood, given the state is one of appalling human horror, rubble and expended American supplied ordinance. Hiba Farra eloquently and heart breakingly makes the point from the perspective of his own family's experience. Come on Albo, show us something resembling visibilty, courage and leadership on Palestine. By the same token, Penny...
Donald Clayton from Bittern 3918 Victoria
In response to: Australia speaks of normalising Israel. My family is living through its genocide
Is the tide really turning ?
August 3, 2025
Is the tide turning or is this yet another example of political opportunism... wedge the other party? We need to ask ourselves this question before we vote in a system where PR election promises are deliberately vague to limit criticism when they are not delivered.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: US Senate Dems vote to block arms sales to Israel – the tide is turning, says Bernie Sanders
Why two?
August 3, 2025
My question has always been “why two bombs?” Even if the bomb had been the clincher, surely the evidence from one city should have been enough for the Japanese high command? Was it because some in the US wanted to try both a uranium and a plutonium bomb, and here was the opportunity?
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Did the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945 end the war?
No-one is OK and some will never forget
August 3, 2025
When you consider the number of Holocaust survivors still alive, what comes to mind is the feelings the Holocaust generates amongst those who didn’t directly experience the genocide and what actions the Holocaust generate and justifies. Now add the time long ago when God promised a “homeland. Consider how many years of retaliation by Palestinian victims and survivors the world will suffer once the boot is on the other foot. Even if Netanyahu’s grand plans succeeds, as history has shown, there are sufficient non-resident Palestinians scattered across the globe for these atrocities never to end. Is...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: No-one is okay
Author swallows BRI debt-trap canard
August 3, 2025
Some interesting material here, but spoiled by the author swallowing the canard about China's Belt and Road initiative being better described as a debt trap for countries taking part. This suits the anti-China agenda of the US and others in the West, but is at odds with reality. Any AI search will show how BRI has helped low-income nations in Africa, Southeast Asia and Central Asia build or upgrade roads, ports, rail links and power stations, helping accelerate economic activity, trade and connectivity. Yes, there have been challenges, with for example some countries risking default, which critics...
John Wallace from CARLTON NORTH
In response to: No Indonesian high-speed rail wizardry for Oz
Endless growth is reckless
August 3, 2025
Mark Diesendorf’s article The principal barrier to a rapid energy transition makes for sobering reading. With clear calculations, he shows that unless we significantly curb the growth of global energy consumption, renewables won’t replace fossil fuels fast enough to counter climate change. His solution? A steady-state economy based on reduced energy demand and planned degrowth. The IEA says global energy intensity — energy used per unit of GDP — must fall 4% annually to reach net zero, double the 2010–2019 rate. But how do we get there? In Pearls and Irritations (May), Diesendorf outlined five steps: demote GDP...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: The principal barrier to a rapid energy transition
Again, the Prince of Wales?
August 1, 2025
Rather ironic for the British to send HMS Prince of Wales to project power into the South China Sea. That has been tried before in the 1940s, not too successfully.
John Queripel from Newcastle
In response to: Britain’s back, China’s the target. We’ll likely pay the price again
Climate crisis
August 1, 2025
Chris Young has helpfully reminded us of the splendid analysis of our climate crisis, Too Hot to Handle: The Scorching Reality of Australia's Climate-Security Failure, published 15 months ago by the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group. Presumably that analysis was too acute and its ramifications too compelling for the government to acknowledge publicly and respond to with a coherent set of policies. But this sobering dose of reality is what the nation needs as panic sets in about the cost of shifting from fossil-fuel power generation to the transmission of clean energy. There's no doubt that cost is daunting...
Tom Knowles from Parkville Vic 3052
In response to: Time for a moonshot?
Innovation and vision
August 1, 2025
While the US war machine yet again loses more wars from afar, its tech industries continue to conquer the world, surreptitiously invade particularly the English-speaking world with their internet, movies, fads, maps and language etc. The tech industries' prime concern is that each advancement is built on those that went before and dare I say that there is another country that has been very good at that and continues to take the lead. This is one area where, for a relatively low cost (hackers do it all the time) with constant innovation, even the smallest of countries/people can be...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: How Trump’s vision of a single-minded China containment has failed
Genocide?
August 1, 2025
I have been waiting in vain for something like a Four Corners investigative analysis of whether Israel is committing genocide in the Middle East. No doubt the message has gone out from management, don’t ask such embarrassing questions – there are some things we don’t want to know.
Brian Bycroft from Evans Head NSW
In response to: 'Our media refuse to call out genocide in Gaza'
Time for a moonshot
July 31, 2025
Jennifer Goldie has highlighted one of the major security risks that we and other countries face from the consequences of our changing climate, bringing an immediacy to last year’s call from the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group. This risk of mass movement of people is also recognised in the UN’s 2025 Global Risks Report. Currently, there are some 123,200,000 forcibly displaced people worldwide. This means 1 person in every 67 is displaced as the result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and more. Floods, droughts and rising sea levels are expected to increase the number of displaced people...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: How will the Earth cope with a billion refugees?
AI: Embrace or ban it
July 31, 2025
“These evolving technologies have unprecedented capabilities to rapidly analyse huge volumes of information, often identifying unique new patterns.” Why then are they not used to stop hackers and scammers attacking our everyday lives? Why then aren’t they used to stop our children watching inappropriate material on the internet instead of passing ineffectual laws that will only serve to make lawyers rich and the courts full? Are governments so scared of AI that they won’t use it for the good of society? What is the real story? What do they know? What aren't they telling us? Has...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: It’s time to talk about AI and national security
Australia is playing a cynical game re Palestine
July 30, 2025
Bob Carr in his article suggests that Australia should follow the French in their stated plan to recognise Palestine in September. This ignores the reality that for Macron this is a combination of theatre and self-protection, not a serious proposal at all. More than 140 nations already recognise Palestine, representing the vast majority of UN member states. The fact that Macron has consulted closely with Mahmoud Abbas, the aged leader of the Palestinian Authority, an organisation which works closely with Israeli military forces against Palestinians in the West Bank, and an organisation which has no credibility among Palestinians...
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: Mass Palestinian starvation as a weapon of war
You don’t need a bulldust detector, Ross...
July 30, 2025
You don’t need a bulldust detector, Ross; a reality check would give the same result. Any economic modelling that doesn’t factor the impact of climate change is delusional. The almost seasonal floods and coral bleaching across tropical Queensland threaten the economic viability of that region’s tourism, agriculture, aquaculture and horticulture industries. The South Australian algal bloom, now in its sixth month, has destroyed the commercial and recreational fisheries, along with the marine aquaculture industry of that state. Tasmanian salmon farms, along with the rest of the aquaculture sector is struggling with increasing water acidification and temperatures. On land, droughts...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria, 3101
In response to: Roundtable warning: When they say ‘modelling’ grab your bulldust detector
$30b is chicken feed if it is for Defence
July 30, 2025
“The last quote was $30 billion for fast rail between Newcastle and Sydney. This is cheap for a rail link that would be used regularly and could be expanded, when you consider the cost of submarines and the fact that past Defence white elephants have never fired a shot in defence of Australia. That is, if they are ever delivered. This figure would be cheap even if we don’t buy the latest from China for fear of them spying on our kangaroos and cows in the bush.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: No Indonesian high-speed rail wizardry for Oz
Tide turning on government climate accountability
July 29, 2025
In 2013, Dutch environmental group Urgenda and 900 citizens sued their government to force stronger climate action. In 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled the government had a legal duty to cut emissions by at least 25% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels. Since then, similar attempts in Australia — by eight children and two Torres Strait Elders — have failed. In both cases, judges said it was for governments, not courts, to act. But the legal tide may be turning. The International Court of Justice recently issued only its fifth-ever unanimous advisory opinion, declaring that all nations...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: 'New era of climate accountability': ICJ says nations have legal duty to combat
It’s not about getting re-elected
July 29, 2025
The one point missing from this article is that Sussan Ley is a woman. A woman surrounded by old, white, male dinosaurs. As we saw when Julia Gillard was leader of the Labor Party, there was a lack of support for her, none of the old Union “one out, all out“ mentality. Long after the unions had abandoned their “once they're married, they should stay home and look after the kids“ position of the 1950s, the party allowed Tony Abbott to ambush her without the support they would have given even a prime minister from a different faction. Even...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Ley must be saved from drowning over net zero
A job in the humanities
July 29, 2025
Gareth Evans, as usual, touches a nerve. Universities often claim they are cancelling humanities courses to focus on programs that lead directly to employment. But this is misleading. Humanities enrich every kind of work. In some professions, they are not just relevant – they are essential. One such profession is that of the civil celebrant. Celebrants must be skilled in public speaking and creative writing and possess a deep understanding of human nature. Their work draws on music, literature, poetry, story creation, storytelling, choreography, and symbolism – all core components of the humanities. Ceremonies are fundamental to...
Dally Messenger from DOCKLANDS
In response to: Evans gobsmacked by change in ANU plan
Ley must be saved from drowning under Waterford
July 29, 2025
Matt Kean’s UN climate-guru Simon Stiell is swanning around Australia again. Claiming his “blueprint” can unleash “colossal” rewards to “protect” workers. They and Jack Waterford badger Sussan Ley. Embrace the “science” of “net zero” or else. Yet all the graphs confirm that population, GDP, consumption, emissions, CO2 levels, and land/sea temperatures are all growing. That the emissions of this perpetual-growth can miraculously “net” to zero is vanity not science – no friend of workers or equality. No brake on Australia's perpetual war-on-the-environment. Despite easily-protected borders and untold energy-riches, Australia delivers extreme population pressures, very high energy prices, and...
Stephen Saunders from O'Connor
In response to: Ley must be saved from drowning over net zero
The same law for everyone?
July 29, 2025
Australian citizens who go to Israel, serve with the IDF and then return home should be treated exactly the same as those Australian citizens who went to support Islamic State in Syria then returned home. We are all equal before the law. Aren't we?
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Australia urged to investigate Australians in Israeli forces for Gaza war crimes
Our PM is beyond contempt
July 29, 2025
Anthony Albanese has been thoroughly bought by the pro-Israel lobby and aligns us with genocide by sticking with our good ally the US. The murders would have stopped long ago, but for the steady supply of US bombs. As for the hostages ... when has Albanese ever mentioned the thousands of Palestinians held without charge for years in Israeli prisons? Why hasn't Albanese noticed that, of released hostages, Israelis are far better cared for? What of Hamas, once promoted by Netanyahu? Hasn't Albanese looked at the alternative media that we are looking at? What possible threat could come from...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Israeli Knesset hosts conference on plan to 'Occupy Gaza' and 'Relocate Gazans'
It started with the Nakba
July 28, 2025
Pearls and Irritations continues its good work in presenting humanitarian voices objecting to Israeli actions in Gaza. An even more through examination of current opposition sentiment in Israel itself can be found in a weekly round-up at Conflicts Forum. However, all these articles miss one crucial point. None of them anchor their interpretation of the current situation in Gaza in the Nakba. Israel came into being on the stolen land and destroyed the lives of the occupants of Palestine, the Palestinian people. They were evicted, killed when they objected, and the survivors were herded into enclaves, Gaza being the...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Message from the Editor
To counter the albatross of Gaza
July 28, 2025
The use of severe restrictions governing the release of medicine, food and water to the traumatised residents of Gaza continues unabated. Public reaction swings from horror in much of the world to seeming indifference in much of the West to outright glee in Israel. On Israel's northeast, it now controls all of the Golan Heights. This opens the road into Syria, and secures for Israel both water and, through Afek Oil and Gas, oil and gas deposits. These energy reserves are similar to the coveted undersea deposits located off Gaza. Israel seems to be set on expansion through...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: On Jillian Segal’s report into combating antisemitism
Less taxes and less service
July 28, 2025
Recently the new leader of the Liberals was quoted as saying: “I’ve never met an Australian that wanted to pay more tax “ She might have said she has never: met a mine owner who would not take more for her/or his ore; met an employer who wanted to pay more wages; met an employee who didn’t want a pay rise; met a hospital that didn’t need mor funding; met an ambulance patient who liked ramping; met a bushfire/victim who didn’t want a quicker response from the government; or met a general/dmiral...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: BREAKING: Albo doesn’t yell at Xi — (part of) nation panics
The cat is out of the bag
July 28, 2025
Humans are enslaved due to the failure to recognise the fundamental role of the government and the private sector. The private sector has taken control of the government sector and can only be trusted to make a profit. Along the way the private sector has developed the ability to convince the voting public, and in turn our elected representatives, what we want, what we need and what can’t be done. By giving control of our telecommunications to the private sector, we lost control of all communications. By the continual controlled criticism of all things China and its undemocratic...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: When technology enslaves humans
Economic Reform Roundtable must listen to Henry
July 28, 2025
Thank you for publishing Ken Henry’s address to the National Press Club. It was a privilege to read it. Henry’s ability to explain how productivity and a sound economy depends on a healthy natural environment and a safe climate is unsurpassed. One sentence summed it up nicely: “Independent reviews confirm that the environmental impact assessment systems embedded in the [nature] laws are not fit-for-purpose. Of particular concern, they are incapable of supporting an economy in transition to net zero and they are undermining productivity.” It is pleasing to see that Henry has been invited to the Economic Reform Roundtable...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Our last, best chance – national environment laws that protect nature and power
All of a sudden…
July 28, 2025
It’s interesting what it takes politicians and the mainstream media to act. They don’t mind civilians trapped, suffocating in the rubble, they don’t mind limbs torn off by bombs, they don’t mind amputations performed without anaesthetic, they don’t mind cancer hospitals bombed and medical staff abducted, raped and tortured, but a child, skinny and starving, suddenly offends their sensibilities. Or for politicians, it is more like the mid term elections are coming up, their constituents are bristling or they’re now realising they have to cover their own complicity. For the mainstream media, it is more like Murdoch has...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: The disgrace of deliberate starvation: Israel's war of hunger in Gaza
How will the Earth cope with a billion refugees?
July 28, 2025
Richard Heinberg cites Tim Lenton's book Future of the human climate niche that warns that 2 degrees C warming may result in a billion refugees. Later, Heinberg refers to the simple, though stark, reality that humanity faces climate change and resource depletion, and that living space is likely to become more constricted. We may reach 2 degrees warming by 2035. That is 10 years away. How on Earth are we to cope with a billion displaced humans in the next decade? Where will they all go? Surely, this is emerging as one of the great moral crises of our...
Jennifer Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Let's (not) choose sides and fight
Clarifying what the word Semitic means
July 28, 2025
Robert, Palestinians are generally considered Semitic peoples. The term Semitic refers to a language family and a cultural group that includes various ancient and modern populations, including those who speak Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Palestinians primarily speak Arabic, which is a Semitic language, and their lineage is traced back to the region of the Levant, where many Semitic peoples have historically resided. While the term Semitic is primarily linguistic and cultural, it has also been used in racial and ethnic contexts. In this broader sense, Palestinians are also considered Semitic due to their historical and cultural connections to the...
Melody Kemp from Balmoral Brisbane
In response to: On Jillian Segal’s report into combating antisemitism
Francesca Albanese
July 28, 2025
Yes, the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize should go to Francesca Albanese. On 24 July this year, The World Beyond War movement awarded her the individual 2025 War Abolisher Award. At the award event, Hanieh Jodat began with these words: Today we come together not simply to present an award – but to bear witness: to courage, to truth, and to a voice that has never trembled, even when the world has demanded silence. and ended with: Francesca has become a map, a mirror, and a megaphone for the dispossessed and displaced. Francesca, your words have become lifelines....
Janet Grevillea from Lake Macquarie
In response to: Francesca Albanese’s bravery merits the Nobel prize
Genocide and Western values
July 28, 2025
No sentient moral and ethical being could rationally dissent from the view that the Israeli state is worse in its savagery than the Nazis, as it triumphantly flaunts its barbarity and arrogant criminality openly before the world as God's chosen people. That is widely recognised by the vast bulk of humanity. What is even more distressing is the active participation in, and evident support for, this vast atrocity by the overwhelming bulk of the leadership of the civilieed West. It has become a truly nonfunctional and iniquitous civilisation that deserves the contempt and detestation of that vast bulk of...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The disgrace of deliberate starvation: Israel's war of hunger in Gaza
A REAL nomination for the Nobel-Kishore Mahubhani
July 25, 2025
Great quote in this article from a man I greatly admire for his integrity, intelligence, compassion and geo-political understanding. Mahubhani represents the best aspects of a universalism and inclusivity that is entirely absent from those who pose as the foreign policy elites of the dying west. Whilst we promote our western values ceaselessly around the planet, we fail almost universally to actually live up to those supposed values. We only apply them to the often fabricated atrocities attributed to the behaviour of those we look down upon as lesser civilisations, whilst blithely ignoring our far greater capacity and willingness to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Defenders of rules-based order: not who you thought
Neo-cons know their world is dying
July 25, 2025
The western neo-cons shouting into the void reflect their futility and anger at the dying of their largely white Anglo-Saxon hegemony over the world. Intellectually unequipped to deal with the newly emerging multi-polar world that rightly sees them as infantile examples of humanity senselessly throwing their toys out of their cots, they fulminate furiously their prevarications and delusional mendacities. The problem for them is that the world has moved on past their conventional wisdoms, spread as they overwhelmingly are in the dying legacy media space that they thought would enable them to control the public mind on a permanent basis....
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: BREAKING: Albo doesn’t yell at Xi — (part of) nation panics
Antisemitism should apply to 400 million Semites
July 25, 2025
This is up to Robert's usual high standard, but even it never mentions the other 400 million semites and their rights. The cleverly constructed identification of antisemitism with only antijewism for over one hundred years enables us all to sympathise with only a tiny proportion of Semites, who are daily slaughtering many of the other Semites. This is no small matter as those other Semites, all 400 million of them, are the principal targets of the Jewish state. We in the West are prone to adopt simplistic notions that suit our prejudices and often use them to shape our view...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: On Jillian Segal’s report into combating antisemitism
A better use of our taxes
July 25, 2025
As far as the United Nations is concerned I have come to the conclusion that it is a very expensive retirement home for politicians and public servants - a reward for services rendered - and when it really counts ineffective. Sound a bit like parliaments in general. There have been too many examples of vetos by the major players based on other left/right alliances, unarmed UN peacekeeping forces standing helplessly by and climate inaction and ineffectiveness . The League of Nations reached its use-by date between the wars and the UN is long past its use-by date. The new body...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: defenders-of-rules-based-order-not-who-you-
What’s new about that
July 25, 2025
10+ years ago a report (Choice I think ) into supermarket pricing found that supermarket prices for the big two varied due to the affluence of the area in which they were located. While advertised specials (bait) were the same, general prices varied and not as you would expect - dog food, potato chips and soft drinks etc were dearer and more plentiful in the less affluent areas but overall the more affluent areas were the cheapest
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: the-new-pricing-scam-how-surveillance-prici
ANU change proposals
July 25, 2025
Is the ANU angling to become Canberra's best vocational training institution?
K M from Canberra
In response to: Change proposals risk relegating ANU to middle-ranking regional un
Imperilling ourselves in Service to the US
July 23, 2025
Every war-game the US has undertaken regarding their desire to invade China has resulted in US defeat. Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio have both acknowledged that on several occasions. Making these never-never Subs subject to US control whenever they might just arrive won't affect that outcome in any way at all. The obvious observation that never appears to occur to our strategically illiterate politicians, is that we are talking about the invasion of the second largest population on the planet. Their technological competence vastly outmatches the US, Japan and Australia combined and would be defending their homeland. Whilst we would...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Australia and Japan cannot accept America’s war on China
Seeds of hope
July 23, 2025
Further to Eugene Doyle's recent article regarding French Resistance in WWII, and the heroes who oppose genocide, there are seeds of hope with several legal precedents in the United Kingdom. Back in 1996, the Ploughshare Four were found not guilty of criminal damage to a Hawk warplane bound for East Timor at the Warton aerodrome in Lancashire. Their actions were considered reasonable under the Genocide Act 1969 More recently in January 2017, the Reverend Dan Woodhouse, a Methodist minister in Leeds and Sam Walton, a Quaker, were arrested at the same site attempting to disarm warplanes bound for...
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane
In response to: Vive la resistance! The heroes who oppose genocide
A life largely unmourned
July 23, 2025
Stone was one of the last utterly committed Neo-Liberals to occupy the head of Treasury position. Maybe it was his interest in physics that taught him to think in binary terms and without any civilisational sense. Sufficient to say his intellectual arrogance, and conviction that only he perceived reality, were sufficient to make his rejection of a modern, relevant economics a hallmark of Treasury during his leadership. His Senatorial role simply re-enforced that intellectually reactionary persona.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: From ‘Stone Age’ treasury boss to National Party Senator: John Stone 1929–2025
The Dodgy Brothers and AUKUS
July 23, 2025
Pithy and succinct is the best description of the article from Geoff. In admirably few words he summarises the geo-strategic infantilism of this dodgy-brothers deal, set up by the devious, imbecilic rodent Scott Morrison. Were this to proceed, which seems increasingly unlikely, the US seems intent on proving the accuracy of Kissinger's aphorism that being a friend of the US can be fatal. To continue with a deal with a disintegrating empire that has, for more than a century, shown itself as having no permanent friends or enemies, only interests, as Kissinger also said, reeks of political cowardice and strategic...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: AUKUS – an American problem
Is a BBC/ABC documentary on Iran war propaganda?
July 23, 2025
Beyond Vietnam, Martin Luther King’s strident anti-war address, is as relevant today as it was in 1967 because most of us are as disinclined to protest against government policy and conventional thinking as Americans were then. As King said: “Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in a time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world.” Beyond Vietnam revealed the history of America’s...
Susan Dirgham from Melbourne
In response to: Spare more than a thought for Iran’s protesters
Negotiate with Trump - you’ve got to be kidding
July 22, 2025
Apart from the worst Prime Minister we have ever had (and that’s saying something when T. Abbott had the job and A. Taylor wants the job) can anybody possibly think that negotiating anything with with D. Trump is a good idea?
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: aukus-an-american-problem