Letters to the Editor
One of history's great ironies
July 14, 2025
Geraldine Schwarz wrote in Les Amnésiques that her grandparents, along with so many Germans, were “Mitläufer”, those who turned a blind eye to Hitler’s policies, when convenient, particularly when it involved some material advantage, such as taking over a business that Jews were forced to sell on the cheap to “Aryans”. This is what her grandparents did. Her father, however, rejected what his parents had done. He recognised that if people in a culture that produced Bach, Beethoven and Goethe could do such things, or turn a blind eye to it, then anyone can. Schwarz can now add...
Kieran Tapsell from STANWELL PARK
In response to: The greatest irony in our contemporary history
Australia needs the other Albanese
July 14, 2025
Australia needs the other Albanese – Francesca, the special raporteur with the UN, with her superb courage, focus and global leadership. This is in marked contrast to our largely invisible and visionless namesake PM. She gets the attention of Trump's senior diplomat/enforcer Marco Rubio with her plain language accusations related to America's role in the Gaza genocide. Rubio responded with personal threats and sanctions. Albo, by contrast, can't apparently even get a phone call with the top end of Trump's governing circus and he continues to be cowed locally by the Zionist lobby with their ridiculous demands for student...
Donald Clayton from Bittern
In response to: US sanctions UN expert Albanese over criticism of Israeli genocide
Facts as opposed to wishes
July 14, 2025
Just a further note on the suggestion being made that BRICS is on the ropes, I suggest having a look at the detailed report on what was discussed and progress that was made. It paints a far more accurate picture together of the continuing success of the BRICS group in re-shaping the world into a multilateral one as opposed to the US unipolar dictatorship.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: BRICS is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear
Thanks Fred Zhang, along with Pearls & Irritations
July 14, 2025
I back Fred Zhang to the hilt, 100%. I’m 5th generation South Australian. I love China. I hate the US. … and of course, I love Coopers Beer.
James Scammell from Bowden, South Australia
In response to: Fred Zhang … Every day is a bad day to visit China apparentlyJuly 11, 2025
Criticism of the policies of the Israeli state
July 14, 2025
Can a movement that conflates Jewish identity with the policies of the Israeli state — and that brands all criticism of that state as antisemitism — end up becoming antisemitic itself? I strongly concur with this concern. Zionism, in its modern political form, has become entangled with the systemic displacement and disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people. The very idea of a Jewish homeland — which arose from centuries of persecution culminating in the horrors of 1933–1945 — is rooted in a need for safety and dignity. That need is real. But what are we to make of the...
Ivan Hamilton from Münster, Germany — I am Australian temporarily resident in Germany
In response to: The special envoy’s plan is the latest push to weaponise antisemitism in Australia, as a relentless campaign pays off
Hitler, Tojo and Putin – strange bedfellows
July 14, 2025
Gareth Evans’ gratuitously rude reference to “outright military aggression — Hitler, Tojo or Putin-style” — spoils an otherwise admirable essay on how and why Australia should now reposition itself in the China-US strategic equation. Gareth knows better. He has read Sachs and Mearsheimer. He knows how they and many other scholars have demolished the Western propaganda myth that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was unprovoked aggression. He knows Putin was forced into this after eight years of the Kiev Banderist regime’s rejection of Russian peace efforts and its murderous aggression and human rights abuses against Russian Ukrainians since...
Tony Kevin from Canberra
In response to: Abandoning our fears: how Australia should respond to US-China regional confrontation
Military can fight climate crisis
July 14, 2025
In April, just a third of Australians backed higher defence spending. Bravo! Depressingly, global military outlays hit $2,718 billion in 2024 — up 9.4% on 2023 and the sharpest rise since the Cold War, says the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Sadly, NATO aims to push spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. Militaries are massive polluters, responsible for at least 5.5% of global emissions – likely more, given secrecy and the exclusion of wartime emissions. Australia explicitly excluded military emissions from its 2022 climate pledges. However, now that Australia has a Defence Net Zero Strategy launched in 2024,...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Only a third of Australians support increasing defence spending: new research
Ignoring impending risks in natural disasters
July 14, 2025
I write regarding “The Texas flood, Australia and the psychology of evacuation” (Chas Keys, July 12, 2025). Reading Mr Keys’ article reminded me of the catastrophic bushfire which raged through eastern Victoria and descended on Mallacoota in late December 2019-early January 2020. (Few will forget the many out-of-control bushfires that devastated large areas of eastern NSW and Victoria that summer.) Mallacoota is a popular holiday destination, situated on the Lakes Entrance waterways. In December and January, the population swells from between 1000 to 2000 to about 10,000. While there are conflicting reports about the timing and nature of warnings...
Chris Ryan from Kirrawee, NSW
In response to: The Texas flood, Australia and the psychology of evacuation
How about an anti-China envoy?
July 14, 2025
if we were to replace China with Israel in all these conversations it would surely be antisemitic and we would need an envoy. I’m surprised that all this anti-China talk isn’t treason, considering that China is our largest trading partner and in most circumstances everything is framed from an economic point of view. From an Australian perspective, it has taken at least a year and many dollars to get the courts to consider what is antisemitic (not the same as racism) and what reporters can and can’t report under freedom of the press about Israel and the IDF ....
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Every day is a bad day to visit China, apparently
The spread of Americanisation
July 14, 2025
As my local village (one of those Blue Mountains vintage, ye olde world villages) now boosts a garish, three-meter, neon green sign at its highway entrance reading Massage Centre, I slap my forehead in despair that we are becoming Americanised so fast that apathetic acceptance seems the general response. After the PM’s trip to China, and Trump’s penchant for playground-style payback, I wonder if we should just trump Trump’s move and rearrange the AUKUS acronym to USUKA.
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: AUKUS project has worsened Australia’s ties with China
Hypocrites
July 14, 2025
So the Zionists, Jillian Segal and her husband John Roth, massive supporters of the Advance party, spread lies and disinformation about an Aboriginal voice (among other things), and yet demand a Jewish voice. They demand unbiased news, etc. I'm surprised they actually know how to spell the word; obviously, they don't know its meaning. Some things are just wrong, and you can't be unbiased; eg, Nazi gas chambers, My Lai massacre, and purposely starving children while denying them medication. Unless God says it's OK. How about a voice for atheists? Goodbye to SBS, Al Jazeera, TRT news and...
Jerry Cartwright from Perth
In response to: Antisemitism plan sparks fierce debate
Canberra School of Music – Exit stage left
July 14, 2025
I read Peter Tregear's article and I agree with some, though not all, of his summation. What the ANU administration has wrought upon what was on the way to becoming one of the great institutions of learning for musicians — akin to the Julliard School of Music, (at which my father spent most of a year studying the teaching of excellence in musicianship) — is a condemnation of the stupidity and arrogance of university academics as administrators. I have worked at ANU and consulted for a number of years at USyd; with many wonderful academics and truly woeful...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: The ANU School of Music: Requiem for a Dream?
Write the true history of this conflict
July 11, 2025
The nightly news is full of conflicts. Conflicts that have been brewing for generations fuelled by colonial interference, religious conflicts often about like religions verses similar religion. Until we start truly recording the history of these conflicts, we will never put an end to them. The Israelis are writing the narrative of this conflict and, in turn, the Palestinians will write their own history and the conflict will never end. The cost in human and economic terms will continue to escalate. In the meantime, the real world conflict between the climate and capitalism will take second place...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: 'It is not antisemitic to criticise Israel,' says Federal Court judge – and the Executive Council of Jewry agrees!
Explaining the inexplicable
July 11, 2025
This contribution is well and truly up to Binoy's usual excellent standard. It has context and real journalistic analysis.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The fanatic’s gaze: Louis Theroux and the West Bank settlers
Leave Donald Trump out of it, Greg Barns
July 11, 2025
Albanese has special envoys for antisemitism, Islamophobia, and social cohesion, an ideological race commissioner plus a First Nations ambassador. Via endless mass migration, he's doing roughly 75% population replacement. His immigration pacts uniquely favour qualifications and students from Modi's India. In effect, he's engineering an Indian electorates to add to the Chinese electorates that helped to stymie, in turn, Dutton, Morrison, and Shorten. It's true that Donald Trump is targeting recalcitrant universities, but Albanese's free-ranging ethnic and population engineering are very much his own. Memo: so-called culture wars don't just come from the right.
Stephen Saunders from O'Connor
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
Context and memory missing
July 11, 2025
It appears that this article, whilst interesting in terms of being an accurate reflection of the increasingly dystopian US-centred world view in some respects, also reflects pretty clearly the disconnect between that world view and the reality as perceived by the other 85% of the world's population. That can be seen clearly in two areas of the organised forgetting that underlies much of that Western world view. The first is in seeing the overall agreement that was reflected in the uncontroversial meeting of the BRICS in Rio de Janeiro. The article suggests that the lack of excitement evident at...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: BRICS is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear
Rise in antisemitism
July 11, 2025
The Jillian Segal antisemitism report is based on the assumption of a massive increase in antisemitism. No doubt I will be accused of antisemitism for questioning whether this is actually the case. Despite the attempts by the NSW Government to cover up, many of the supposed incidents in NSW were seen by police to be not antisemitic. Many of the other so-called incidences, e.g., the restaurant demonstration in Melbourne, are quite clearly attacks on Israel or Israeli supporters. I’m happy to be corrected, but I suspect even attacking a synagogue is not necessarily antisemitic. For better or for...
Brian Bycroft from Evans Head NSW
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
Segal's proposals make Browning's review illegal
July 11, 2025
Browning's article is one of the most erudite articles written about Western hypocrisy regarding Palestine. It is also ironic that the pro-Zionist, anti-Palestinian, anti-democratic, and autocratic anti-protest report by Jillian Segal was released on the same day. Segal's draconian report will be adopted by our cowardly Labor Government. Her Trumpian proposals will result in Browning's article being banned and any mention of the 60,000 dead Palestinians and the suffering of two million Palestinians of Gaza (some who are Christians) who are being ethnically cleansed, not to mention the apartheid-like condition that oppress and dehumanise the Palestinians of the West...
Anthony James from Warracknabeal
In response to: The story most Israelis are not allowed to hear
US president's tariff threats
July 10, 2025
Sourabh Gupta's article hits the nail on the head. Going further is this from The Guardian of 9 July: The true test will come if the crushing sanctions tabled months ago by the Republican senator Lindsey Graham are finally given the presidential go-ahead. The measures would impose a 500% tariff on imports from any country that purchases Russian uranium, gas or oil, with India and China the worst affected. Trump says his policy includes products onsold through a less tariffed country. Well, some of our petrol comes from Russia after being refined in Singapore, so that is a threat...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Tariff deadline extended as Trump's trade talks falter
Antisemitism plan will only further divide Australia
July 10, 2025
An antisemitism plan, in the guise of a law and order crackdown, will only further divide our country, increasing Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, and ultimately make Jews less safe. While the federal government has moved to adopt the antisemitism plan and the recommendations from the special envoy, Jillian Segal, one must ask... is this plan beneficial for our social cohesion when Israel has been found to be committing genocide? Is Jillian Segal right for this high-profile government role, particularly one as sensitive as an “envoy for antisemitism” when, in fact, she has criticised calls for ceasefire in Gaza and...
Andréa Coney from Port Fairy
In response to: Challenging 'antisemitism'
Only developers benefit from the building that is going on
July 10, 2025
I have never seen so much building going on in our city. So many multistorey apartments, so much urban building and still a shortage of affordable housing. Why? Because like this article, all the talk is driven by those with the most to gain. Multistorey units with a desirable outlook and for those struggling at unattainable price tags. Many are built on blocks that have sat vacant waiting for developers to find a way around the zoning regulations that have made the locations the desirable areas that they are. Million-plus two-bedroom units (one bedroom and a large...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: the-housing-crisis-is-everyones-problem
Repetition does not validate a falsehood
July 9, 2025
Greg Barns' article is, as usual, carefully reasoned and he lays out his argument(s) with scrupulous precision. However, on this occasion, I seek more explanation for the contentious statement that Hamas killed 1200 people in the horrendous 7 October 2023 attack. It has been widely accepted that the death toll in that attack — while due to Hamas's monumental strategic blunder that has profited nobody but Netanyahu and his ultra-Zionist coterie — is in considerable part also a product of IDF complicity. This is not a pedantic issue: the Hamas killed 1200 people mantra appears to have become...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Freedom of speech and chants
Being an 'expert' doesn't mean I don't get my view
July 9, 2025
I take issue with the following statement: ...namely the inability of many to recognise and respect genuine expertise... Expert. There has never been a more over-rated word in our age. It's almost like the author thinks that experts have never been wrong about anything ever in the history of the world. Not to mention the many experts in the health fields who would disagree with various aspects of this article. I reserve my right to question the advice or opinion of any expert because you don't get to decide for me. It's that simple. It's not...
Steve M from Brisbane
In response to: The disastrous consequences of an epidemic of misinformation about the safety of
We need fewer people and renewable food
July 9, 2025
Jenny Goldie hits the nail squarely on the head with her article on human population growth. It is wrecking the planet and is the major driver of our own probable demise as a civilisation and as a species. Fortunately, women worldwide realise this, and are lowering their fertility almost everywhere. To give every woman on the planet access to family planning would cost less than half the price of a single nuclear sub – which makes you realise how dumb men truly are when it comes to survival. Coupled with reducing human numbers to a sustainable level (about...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: For the sake of food security, we must address population numbers
Incitement to criminal law
July 9, 2025
Like Bob Vylan and many Palestinian supporters and opponents of Israel's textbook, Nazi-style Holocaust and death camps, I have also been known to chant Death! Death! To the IDF!!! at a protest or two, but my chant is slightly more contextualised. It goes like this: Death! Death! To the IDF!!! ... as per Israel's Basic Law 5710-1950 the Crime of Genocide, which provides for a mandatory capital sentence for every IDF thug who has, in any way, shape or form, committed genocide, participated in genocide, conspired to commit genocide or incited genocide, whether that offence was committed in Israel...
Rick Pass from Rifle Creek FNQ
In response to: Freedom of speech and chants
Just who does our government represent?
July 9, 2025
Noel Turnbull highlights the lack of confidence in Netanyahu and Israel by a considerable majority of Australians, so just who is it that the Albanese Government is representing? Does it prefer to reflect the views of the US rather than its own electors? Does it actively honour the ALP platform on Palestine? Is it instead representing that part of our security fraternity/sorority with a narrow focus on hardware solutions to security, cavilling sotto voce at our trade relationships, and maybe in bed with Mossad? Consider how much security our government's failure to actively support longstanding international norms over...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Boorloo)
In response to: The One-word Problem for Israel
Distrust of the NACC
July 9, 2025
The NACC is rightly the subject of public mistrust, arising from its own reports, its choices of subjects for investigation and from errors and omissions in its leadership. Now we learn that the NACC is encouraged to think that mistrust is accepable. Funded by a government grant of taxpayer earnings, the Australian Research Council is mapping the positive values of public mistrust. Mystified? Yes, you should be. Mistrust of the NACC has been thoroughly earned. No, it contains no positive values. How has this bunkum been promoted? The researchers are misled by Erik Erikson's theoretical musings that...
Glen Davis from New South Wales
In response to: National Anti-Corruption Commission is two years old – Has it restored integrity to federal government?
The NACC's second birthday
July 8, 2025
The NACC has been a huge disappointment. It continues to attempt to measure its success by the number of investigations, the number of reports and the prosecutions and sentances which might follow. Prof Brown's article contains important facts and an investigator's eye for cases. But it too fails to acknowledge the public's scorn and mistrust for the NACC and its founders. The NACC's leadership has consistently failed to define for its staff and its public what it is there do do. It never did put the right graphs on the wall and it never did measure real progress....
Glen Davis from NSW
In response to: National Anti-Corruption Commission is two years old – Has it restored integrity to federal government?
Capitalism should be the target
July 7, 2025
Richard, great article. In my view the corporations are not the right target, capitalism is. It inevitably generates the problems. Very good that you point to the failure to focus on what has led to Trump, and the fact that he has done us a great service by busting the mold. The Dems were only the alternative capitalist party. You see that the need is for a different vision ... of course, but, sorry, capitalist ideology is so entrenched that I have no doubt no alternative can emerge in time. Sanders is a Karmunist. Nothing good will...
Ted Trainer from Sydney, NSW
In response to: The deep politics behind Trump’s presidency
Facts sadly don't trump fantasy in the US
July 7, 2025
This article is a superb illustration of the divide in the West currently between realism and fantasy. The vast bulk of us are so conditioned by the never-ending propaganda, to which we are subjected by a mainstream media that reflects quite clearly the propensities referred to by Orwell in that unpublished preface to Animal Farm, that we simply don't recognise the reality that faces us all. A diminishing number of us prefer to face reality and dispense with the fantasy. This article is a brilliant summary of that reality!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Iran: The things it won’t do to say
Israeli McCarthyism
July 7, 2025
Jeffrey Loewenstein has highlighted the depths to which the Zionists have sunk in their desperation to make genocide acceptable, so long as it is carried out by Israel. They know that any attempt to argue rationally for what they are doing to Palestinian men women and children would simply lead back to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, as charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. So they choose the infantile but effective (at least in the guilt-ridden Western world) labeling of those who find their actions despicable as antisemites. This differs in no...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: J’accuse (Part 2) – The Israel lobby
Time for rebinding the Good Book
July 7, 2025
Jesus clearly said, I’ve come to show you a new way. A new way, away from blood sacrifice and an eye for an eye. A new way founded on loving your fellow neighbour, turning the other cheek, forgiveness and compassion. A new way: far from the bloodthirsty revenge accounts of the Old Testament. What do balanced Christians truly take from the Old Testament? The Genesis story, as a story to be wary of temptation, and the 10 Commandments. The Psalms are comforters, but that’s about it. Well, Pope Leo and the soon-to- be newly-appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, you’ve...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Five books the Bible could do without
Anti-protest policing is not so benign
July 7, 2025
This article paints an inaccurately benign picture of the policing of protest in Australia in 2025. In recent years, all state governments have enacted legislation which criminalises many protest actions, with possible penalties including lengthy jail sentences and hefty fines. Armed with these new laws, and goaded by reactionary government officials and screaming tabloid headlines, police command has not hesitated to invoke these laws. Climate activists and pro-Palestine protesters, in particular, have been targeted. The “Disrupt Land Forces” protests in Melbourne in September last year marked a particularly low point. Despite many episodes of grossly excessive use of...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: What are police allowed to do at protests and who keeps them in check?
Albo, the minister for missed opportunities
July 7, 2025
While not on the scale of of Scott Morrison in the game of who can hold the most ministerial positions, Anthony Albanese with his portfolios of prime minister and minister for missed opportunities is on the way. While on the path to US-style dubious democracy and kingship in Australia, there are far too many significant decisions outside Parliament, mandate or no mandate. Committing Australian troops to overseas wars should never happen without a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Any expenditure over a billion is another thing should require Parliamentary debate at the very least.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: The magic of the mandate: Now you see it, now you don’t
Mandate furphy
July 7, 2025
Unless each election is turned into the equivalent of of a referendum eg if you vote for us we will build a fast rail from Melbourne to Canberra via Sydney, there is no mandate. Vote for us and we will improve rail services does not qualify as a mandate. Even tax reform doesn’t qualify as a mandate to introduce a GST. It does, however, give the winning party the obligation to introduce a tax reform bill for the Parliament to debate and vote on. Mandates like Opposition are political furphies used to muddy the political waters. By labelling...
Bob Pearcr from Adelaide SAv
In response to: The magic of the mandate: Now you see it, now you don’t
The Australian Greens
July 7, 2025
The most recent federal election results for the Greens, losing the able voices of reason of Adam Bandt and Max Chandler-Mather from the House of Representatives, is a tragedy. The media “dancing on their graves” and claiming their policies are too extreme is a disgrace. The Australian Greens is the only party which has morally supportable policies on Palestine/Israel, (Unequivocal condemnation of genocide and support for international law); Climate change (the greatest moral challenge of our generation); Refugees and asylum-seekers; AUKUS (withdraw from this hugely costly surrender of sovereignty to the US); and...
John Curr from MANLY
In response to: Gunning for the Greens over Gaza - Part 1
Labor is not an environmental party
July 7, 2025
In Peter Sainsbury's very fine article, he noted that only two of the 29 new Labor caucus members saw the environment and climate as a priority for the next three years. Yet, Labor still believes that being better than the other mob is enough, he wrote. No, it isn't enough. Labor needs to be a lot better than the Coalition who, at federal level, have no environmental credentials at all. In the recent past, of course, Matt Kean, now chief executive of the Climate Change Authority, was a beacon of light when it came to climate action within the...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Environment: Ken Henry and Xi Jinping agree nature is critical to productivity
Thank you
July 7, 2025
Just a few words of gratitude for your article about the issues surrounding Israel, Zionism, the Gaza conflict etc. I wish more people could see through what is really happening.
Eve Wilhelm from Adelaide, South Australia
In response to: Hypocrisy and deceit Down Under: Australia is a Zionist stronghold
Embrace positive tipping points to inspire policy
July 7, 2025
As climate warnings grow ever more strident, as carbon pollution intensifies and icecaps melt, a dystopian future seems inevitable. There is so much that governments could do – eg charge higher royalties for fossil fuel companies to contribute to the cost of repairing climate damage; increase regulations on agricultural pollution and run-offs to better protect our oceans and reefs. In tolerating environmental degradation our governments are steadily killing life on our planet. There is much concern for tipping points – those limits which, once breached, make damaging change unstoppable. These represent existential threats now imminent; the absence of any...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Australia, the UN and the future of humanity
International law: Who in Australia cares?
July 4, 2025
The same applies exactly in Australia. My letter to all mainstream media in Australia follows. Only Crikey published it. And so the Australian Government, supine to the US as usual, after deferring, now announces support for the US bombings in Iran, actions clearly contrary to international law. Article 2(4) of the 1945 UN Charter states: “Prohibition of Force: Members must refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the UN’s purposes.” Evidence for Iran developing nuclear weaponry is very weak....
John Queripel from Newcastle
In response to: Iran: The things it won't do to say
Gaza genocide
July 4, 2025
Like Refaat Ibrahim, I am appalled by the way the Western world not only looks away, but enables Israel to commit genocide in Gaza. I have been passionately crusading on behalf of Palestine, my initial interest aroused by a founding member of the Israeli Air Force, a South African-born man, who left Israel in total disgust at the country's behaviour. This was the in the late 1970s to early 1980s. What irks me about Refaat's article is his selectivity about previous genocides. My question is, why only mention what the Germans did in Namibia and Tanzania? Surely the Belgian...
Dieter Barkhoff from Victoria
In response to: Genocide in Gaza: History repeats itself.
Chilling words
July 4, 2025
The headline and last words of Jamal Kanj's piece on the lethal shooting of unarmed, starving Palestinians are chilling. Firing squads and Gaza assassination trap are shocking phrases, as is Haaretz's Killing Field. They're what we need after being numbed by Israel's relentless mantras of the most moral army in the world, we were targeting Hamas militants, and the IDF will investigate. It's a wonder that there are enough personnel to produce the hundreds (or is it thousands?) of reports into deadly incidents involving Israeli forces. One report that we really need is an analysis and exposé of the...
Tom Knowles from Parkville Vic
In response to: Food aid or firing squads?
No mention of lobbyists?
July 4, 2025
How can one write an article criticising full-scale institutional failure inside Australia’s peak cultural agency, Creative Australia, without mentioning the trigger for the turmoil that unfolded? The Zionist lobbyists complained about the selection of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives for the 2026 Venice Biennale. Just like at the ABC, there must have been initial letters of complaint. Julian Leeser, that well-known Liberal Party Zionist, stirred the pot, but who provided the initial complaint?
Glenda Jones from Carlton 3053
In response to: Creative Australia’s backflip on Venice Biennale representatives exposes deep governance failures
Globalisation, AI, nothing changes. Capitalism reigns
July 3, 2025
Unfortunately, the area where governments have been least effective is the one where they are now most needed. The area where they have failed time and time again – regulation. Under globalisation they have let Australia and Australians down. While governments have been snuggling up to their capitalist masters, untaxed profits have been rising and disappearing overseas. Services have been becoming more and more substandard due to a lack of funding and little or no regulation. The few regulators left are ineffectual and constantly under threat from the media and government. Puppets of governments are reliant on capitalist...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: from-globalisation-to-ai-why-history-is-abo
Is it ‘if’, not ‘when’?
July 3, 2025
Fred Zhang, among many of the excellent points made in his article, makes the call that the ABC, as our national broadcaster, has fallen well short of its job to be impartial — displaying obvious bias — and has failed at its job to state the facts of both sides of a conflict. With such obvious failures in the ABC’s journalistic duties and severe self-inflicted damage to its integrity, it would be easy to imagine that our ABC has been bought by Disney; but no, that’s America’s ABC. Are we at the point where nothing will surprise us...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: So... calling for peace isn’t enough, but dropping bombs gets a free
It’s a huge challenge, but we can’t avoid it
July 3, 2025
It’s a long-established truth that, in any situation, if you want resolution and progress you are well-advised to present people with solutions rather than problems. So thanks to Bob Douglas for offering potential solutions for global action to address the existential threats that he and his colleagues in the Council for the Human Future have been alerting us about. Quoting from Julian Cribb’s How to fix a broken planet, he presents 10 initiatives which, if undertaken on a global scale, could pull the world back from its current existential precipice. Cribb is under no illusion about the magnitude...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Australia, the UN and the future of humanity
Warfare post-globalisation
July 3, 2025
Thanks Brian Toohey, great article. As noted, during WW2, Australian industry supplied huge quantities of food, medicine, clothing, ammunition, explosives, rifles, guns, ships and 2000 combat aircraft. We also had a merchant navy, ships owned and crewed by Australians that were key to that effort. Now there are no ships and no crew. The technology is now radically different and changes at a phenomenal pace (evolving on a monthly and weekly basis in Ukraine) but the fundamental problem remains the lack of local manufacture and sustainment. Big bits of kit are vulnerable, not suited to our...
Dave Young from NQ
In response to: How spending more on defence harms the nation
More of the same?
July 3, 2025
Sadly, the second iteration of the Albanese Government seems to be headed in the same spineless, timorous, obsequious, mealy-mouthed direction as the first. If so, would this lead to what could be called a double disillusion?
Alan Wilson from Adelaide
In response to: Courage needs to be shown in politics – Israel is no longer above the law
Our catastrophic superannuation system
July 2, 2025
Australia's compulsory superannuation system, a $4 trillion behemoth, is, in my opinion, a catastrophe. In its essence, it serves to effect massive transfers of wealth from the less well-off to the most well-off. It ensures that your socioeconomic status during your working years will continue inexorably into your retirement years – the antithesis of the Australian fair go. Think, just for a moment, of those who didn't actually work much or at all (in the paid sense) during those years — carers, disabled people, life's battlers — condemned to get by solely on the old age pension – whose...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wages
How about a complete 21st century edit?
July 2, 2025
With today’s knowledge of the physical world and what holds it together psychologically, that the Scriptures have been assembled into a politically focussed holy manual is indisputable. True, the instructions therein underwrote the evolutionary phase at a particular point in the human experiment, but beating ploughshares into swords took time and effort. We can now summon Armageddon at the press of a button. David O’Halloran’s plea to edit the Holy Book with a 21st century perspective, as essential as it is to humanity’s survival, may be falling on deaf ears. Manipulation and subjugation of people of faith has...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: Five books the Bible could do without
'Your winnings, sir'
July 2, 2025
The revelations by Warwick Anderson and Kerry Breen about medical research fraud and the ways in which it is covered up by vested interests are so shocking that I am reminded of the famous exchange in Casablanca when Captain Renault, chief of Police, closes Rick’s café and has to find a pretence for it when Rick asks him why: Captain Renault to Rick: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! Croupier, appearing at his shoulder: Your winnings, sir. Captain Renault:Oh, thank you very much.
Peter Sainsbury from Darling Point
In response to: Research misconduct: Strengthening Australia’s research integrity system
Brian Toohey makes some good points
July 2, 2025
Brian Toohey makes some very good points in his 2 July opinion piece. Australia’s security and defence requirements are not similar to either those of the US or Europe. We are not covered by NATO or any other similar treaty and we do not have Russia on our doorstep. If we did need to spend 3.5% GDP on defence, it would be a coincidence with America’s request. Given our terrible history of joining America in conflicts, no way should we join them in defending Taiwan or agree to linking Taiwan with the use of any nuclear submarines sold to...
David Hind from North Sydney NSW
In response to: How Spending More on defence harms the nation
The vengeful god on full display in Palestine
July 2, 2025
As a long lapsed Christian, whose limited knowledge comes from his teens growing up in a Protestant household, I’ve long been unable to understand the significance of the Old Testament and why the teachings of Christ don’t always trump the teachings in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the foreword setting the scene for what is to come. In Palestine, the foreword has become the text and it is time for Christians to distribute the loaves and fishes, put an end to all the smiting, and stop facilitating the smiting in an attempt to fast-track the second...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Five books the Bible could do without
Kelty and Keating’s lasting legacy
July 1, 2025
This has been one of the most significant social reforms of the past century as it has not only provided far greater security in retirement than the pension system, but has also provided a vast aggregation of capital to enable national investment in public infrastructure outside the vagaries of politics and national budgeting. This alone secures Keating’s place in Australian history.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wagess
Thanks, Paul
July 1, 2025
As a beneficiary and supporter of super, I would like to offer some improvements to the scheme: 1. That the payout be compulsorily taken as a pension. 2. That the scheme give priority to investing in Australian Government/state and national infrastructure projects with the Reserve Bank setting variable interest rates on the loan. 3. That politicians' super be included in the scheme and that the same operational rules apply to all Australians. 4. That ideologically opposed Parliaments be specifically banned from legislation allowing “crisis“ early drawdown schemes. 5. That the balance in super be considered...
Bob Pesrce from Adelaide SA
In response to: the-superannuation-system-matures-at-12-of-
Thank you, Mr Keating
July 1, 2025
I recall when our superannuation system was introduced. Further, I also well recall those days when we were fortunate to have politicians with the kind of intellectual power and vision that delivered this, and now, the extraordinary Australian superannuation assets we have today. I cannot imagine looking at retirement on a government pension, when I have the good fortune, after decades of work, to have membership in a Defined Benefit higher education industry fund. What is disappointing is the variable but overt lack of vision and imagination in subsequent politicians regarding the original dynamic purpose, collective and private...
Robyn Dalziell from Sydney
In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wages
Avoiding the maelstrom of America's death throes
July 1, 2025
Allan Patience is spot on in this article. With the American Government fighting internecine battles against its justice, educational and economic systems, the US is imploding. To avoid being caught up in its death throes we must develop an independent foreign policy. It's time we left the false security of Uncle Sam and lit out on our own.
Albert Turley from Doncaster, VIC
In response to: Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
At least I have a booming voice
July 1, 2025
I agree wholeheartedly with Trish Bolton. In my mid-70s now, with a walking stick and a booming voice, I earn my right to an Age Pension and am proud of my creative, activist life. As an active union member throughout my (paid) working life, I helped fight for better working conditions and equal opportunities for women here and around the world. As a peace activist, I've marched with hundreds of thousands of people fighting against wars and discrimination against so-called minority peoples in a US-led rules-biased global hegemony. Police violence was the norm in the 1960s and we...
Diana Rickard from Tumbling Waters NT
In response to: OK Boomers not so okay
Lower than vermin
July 1, 2025
Way back in 1948 during a speech in Manchester, Nye Bevan declared a deep burning hatred towards the UK Tory party and proclaimed they were lower than vermin and nothing more than organised spivvery. Indeed, substantial evidence indicates the words resonate much more today than they did over seven decades ago.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane QLD
In response to: The contemporary world is run by political dinosaurs facing extinction
Enduring Israeli propaganda myths
July 1, 2025
An excellent review by Jack. A couple of Israeli standard attempts to justify its abominations, however, need to be put to bed clearly and accurately. The first is that Israel has a right to exist. Under international law, no country has the right to exist. There is nothing in international law that says so. What international law does is to give a people a right to exist. Countries just exist at any one time and may not have existed in the past and may not exist in the future as international borders change constantly. Secondly Israel, in the case...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Bunker busters shook us all
I’d rather be a Boomer than a Millennial
June 30, 2025
I can’t quite grasp the overall message of Trish Bolton’s Boomer talk. Yes, we are privileged, and had things so much easier in early adulthood than do millennials these days, but we apparently have to suffer scorn, ridicule and derision from those much younger than us. And we should not be blind to the fact that not all Boomers are financially secure. But aren’t these truisms just facts of life in any non-homogenous group? Neither of my two children in their late thirties/early forties can envisage ever being able to buy their own home albeit they are both in...
Maggie Woodhead from Perth, western Australia
In response to: OK boomers not so OK
Disinformation and extreme weather the greatest risks
June 30, 2025
There are growing calls for Australia to boost defence spending – but is it wise or necessary? As Julian Cribb points out, the “lust for conquest, self-aggrandisement and dominion” from some world leaders is diverting attention and resources from the far greater threat of climate change. In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight — the closest it’s ever been — citing not only the risk of nuclear war but also escalating climate change and the spread of disinformation. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Risks Survey, based on over...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: A distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Taxes, no taxes and no services
June 30, 2025
The divisive nature of politics has led us to this point and under this system there always has to be someone to blame. It has become the norm for the cost of services and government projects to always be reported as a cost, not a benefit eg when was the last time Medicare, PBS, aged care or the NDIS were reported as the benefits provided? It is always the cost to the taxpayer. We hear about the price of upgrading the electrical supply system, NBN, highways etc forgetting that for many years private suppliers have benefitted from the...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: ok-boomers-not-so-okay
Fitness means best-suited, not strongest
June 30, 2025
Julian Cribb says, with some, I hope excusable, editing that, ‘The pathological character of modern political leadership … has diverted us from our own survival, as a civilisation – and maybe as a species, … contributing to a humanity, as Darwin might have described it, “less fit to survive”’. The phrase survival of the fittest is mostly misused these days to imply that individuals and groups who fulfill the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger”, to which one might add smarter, better armed, richer, more ruthless, etc., are very justifiably most likely to succeed in life. Julian, with...
Peter Sainsbury from Sydeny
In response to: A distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Egomaniac
June 30, 2025
Did anyone ask “Do you think Trump is an egomaniac“? What percentage answered yes? A larger percentage in Australia? Did you ever see a picture of a gathering of world leaders where he isn’t front and centre and he takes his ball and goes home if he isn’t? Whatever he does is bigger and better, even if it isn’t. Trump is ungracious in his language about past and present leaders. He isn’t worthy of a Nobel Peace prize (no US president is) but his ego demands he get one. because someone else got one.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: What the world thinks of Trump
Climate action has to be our top priority
June 30, 2025
The title of Julian Cribb's article was very apt: the world is indeed too distracted by war to deal with climate change and is thus marching towards catastrophe. There is no one solution; rather many that have to be implemented in parallel. The most obvious is making the energy transition away from fossil fuels to renewables. The next is a ban on deforestation followed by widespread reafforestation. But we have to address economic growth and not regard it as a wholesale good. Like the curate's egg, it is good in part, namely in those areas that benefit the planet...
Jenny Goldie Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: GA distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Labels, not arguments
June 30, 2025
I acknowledge Sue's pain at the bullying use of labels such as antisemitism to divert community attention from the perpetration of genocide. Many of us have been similarly targeted. but not to the same extent, by the supporters of a regime that closely resembles in its guiding political ideology and its criminal actions the Nazis of mid-last century Europe. That drawing attention to this and highlighting its corrosive affect on our shared humanity can be used as a weapon demonstrates the capacity of such extreme ideologies to distort the perceptions and actions of possibly otherwise normal human beings. ...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Lattouf’s victory, our fight: Standing firm against intimidation
Not just myopia, it is developmental dependency
June 30, 2025
Bruce Dover clearly points out Australia's toxic dependency on Uncle Sam now that Mother England is ageing. He depicts Penny Wong and the prime minister as supine and timid about our international position – even though they have the numbers to be courageous and visionary. Might I suggest it is not myopia, it is an adolescent nation fearing to leave the previous cosy dependence on mum and dad.
Michael Breen from Robertson NSW
In response to: Australia's Media Myopia
China's Uighur treatment praised by world Muslims
June 30, 2025
Taken from this article: Thirty-seven other countries jumped to Beijing’s defence, with their own letter praising China’s human rights record, and dismissing the reported detention of up to two million Muslims in western China’s Xinjiang region. Nearly half of the signatories were Muslim-majority nations, including Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, according to the Chinese Government. “Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalisation measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centres,” the letter said, according to Reuters, which saw a...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China’s partnership with Muslim world is redrawing global landscape
Comptering for the Nobel Prize in perjury
June 30, 2025
The capacity of Bibi to lie, deceive, prevaricate, distort, fabricate, forge and perjure himself publicly and openly exceeds all bounds of decency, humanity and morality. It is not true to say that you can tell when he is lying when his lips are moving. It goes way past that. Every waking moment of his despicable life is a lie. The time is coming when he will have to face his Nuremburg moment. It cannot come too soon for humanity.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Twisting biblical narratives to suit aggression
We downgrade foreign language teaching at our peril
June 30, 2025
Having just read Allan Patience's fine article, I am even more perturbed than before, at Australia's mindless acceptance of the educational philosophy that currently reveres STEM education as the be-all and end-all of education, and the current downgrading of language teaching and the humanities. Yes science, maths etc are very important, but those now downgraded studies are urgently needed. Australians need to tune in to our neighbours in Asia. We're getting all our news not just from Caucasian countries, but worse just from anglophone countries. We keep being told that China is the big threat and all out to...
Noel Wauchope from Melbourne
In response to: Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
Failure to condemn
June 30, 2025
Never before has violence been so encouraged, and disdain for life and liberty been so blatant. A US president who encourages violence against immigrants living and working within his country; a man who encourages the suppression of free speech against journalists and anyone who has a difference of opinion. A president who bullies countries that don’t want to trade in the way he wishes to, and threatens to take over sovereign nations for his own means; a man who bombs countries illegally, and sends the military into a war zone -that he and his cronies created — under the...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Starvation and profiteering in Gaza
Australian media's biggest problem
June 30, 2025
It's all very well decrying Australia’s media myopia, but look who owns it. We've got Murdoch, Zuckerberg and Musk, for whom the US dollar, garnered worldwide, is God. Fairfax persisted until finally capitulating to the Nine Network. Credibility died there when a year's worth of red ink decorated Peter Hartcher's histrionic, fear-mongering, anti-China series. Poor old Aunty is seriously infected by Liberal Party appointments and funding cuts. Its former quality innovation and Australian content has diminished drastically. No wonder our always UK/US focussed mainstream media, now constricted even further by reduced ownership, is now referred to as legacy media....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Australia’s media myopia
War powers
June 30, 2025
Fred Zhang lays out quite clearly the need for balance in reporting on China. In view of Donald Trump’s attitude to China, particularly Taiwan, it is important to note the following from The Guardian on 28 June: “Tim Kaine, a Virginia democrat who sponsored the resolution, also harkened back to the founders’ drafting of the constitution when he spoke to his colleagues on Friday. He spoke about how George Washington was president at the time. “As much as they respected leaders like George Washington, they said war is too big a decision. It’s too big a decision for...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: No time to dye: ABC’s China bias is licensed to kill credibility
Lobbyists, lobbyists everywhere
June 30, 2025
I'm not the slightest bit interested in sport or physical activity. I'd rather read a book. I walk three times weekly for my health only because there's coffee and conversation at the end. Yet even I am sick of gambling ads on TV and in public spaces when I go out. And I'm aware, to my shame, that my monthly pub dinner is cheap because it's subsidised by the gambling losses of people playing pokies across the other side of the bar. So when the government caves to highly visible gambling industry lobbying and refuses to ban gambling advertising...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: How lobbyists are blocking bans on advertising for online gambling – and putting young Australians at risk
Sites to view
June 30, 2025
It would be great if Bruce Dover could suggest a few online English language news services in neighbouring countries that he considers to be good to follow.
Peter Manins from Cairns
In response to: Australia’s media myopia
Airspace usage permits for the attack on Iran?
June 27, 2025
Jeffrey Sachs reveals the extent of the chicanery in the Israel Iran longstanding war. But there is an aspect of the Israeli and US aeroplane attacks on Iran which seems to have sailed under the radar. Israel must have flown through Jordanian or Iraqi (even Syrian) airspace to reach Iran, while the US could have attacked from the Persian Gulf, but also seems to have overflown either Jordan or Iraq, as the B2s reportedly came from the west. My understanding is that Iraq-Iran relations are quite good. So did the Jordanian and Iraqi Governments approve the overflights? ...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Jeffrey Sachs Interview on Breaking Points Podcast: The US-Israel-Iran Ceasefire
Rise to the moment – less of the trite!
June 27, 2025
Senator Wong, I have written on several previous occasions urging your independence, strength and influence inside Cabinet to serve our country’s interest on issues such as the AUKUS disaster, our high-risk reliance on, and hosting of, US defence, and the urgency to improve relationships with our Asian neighbours. Labor’s win in the last election should not be taken as a source of steady as we go comfort. It should be heeded as a call to act as a true Labor Government, guided by the values and courage of leaders such as Curtin, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating. That is...
Sue Booth from Western Australia
In response to: Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
Iran's democracy
June 27, 2025
This might help inform Brian Toohey on Iran's democracy. I recall Iran being prevented from exporting its enriched uranium by the sanctions Trump introduced.
J. Forrest from Rural WA
In response to: Australia should not have endorsed the American bombing of Iran nor the Israeli
Setting wages and salaries
June 26, 2025
Perhaps CEO's wages and bonuses should be linked to the wages of their highest middle management employee and that percentage should be reflected all the way through the chain. Apart from being more equitable and transparent, it would save on strikes and time and money spent in arbitration discussing wages, conditions and bonuses. It could also be applied to Parliamentarians and public servants.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Australian CEOs are still getting their bonuses. Performance doesn’t seem to matter so much
The pachyderm in the papal palace
June 26, 2025
Bruce Duncan’s articles do not mention the pachyderm in Francis’ papal palace: child sexual abuse. To give Francis credit, in 2019 he abolished the pontifical secret over child sexual abuse, thus putting to an end, at least on paper, to the cover-up written into canon law from 1922 to 2019. I say, on paper, because Francis continued what he called “office confidentiality” of canonical proceedings. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended in its 2017 Final Report that the Holy See should publish its disciplinary decisions and their reasons, while accepting that the identity of...
Kieran Tapsell from STANWELL PARK
In response to: The Legacy of Pope Francis Part 2
Don’t you worry about that
June 26, 2025
What a magnificent statement about our strategic and defence situation Jack Waterford’s article is! It highlights the sickness in our democracy. It is not just Americans who don’t want a king, but rather robust public debate and an effective system of checks and balances on executive power, and input, which is listened to, into that power. At the moment we the people have to suffer the Joh Bjelke-Petersen DYWAT style of government: “Don’t you worry about that”, otherwise called the mushroom syndrome.
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Is Albo reverting to compulsive secrecy?
A concerning absence of concern
June 25, 2025
David Spratt makes it clear that we have a whole aria of canaries singing their last in the climate coalmine. Climate scientists see the risk; climate activists encourage effective policy. But nothing will be achieved without committed government action. This crisis is evolving rapidly; time to stem its impact is short. In the absence of government action, government inaction represents an alternative action decision. Theories why Labor’s first government was reluctant to take substantial action on our changing climate include political timidity and political caution; the power of fossil fuel lobbyists and donations were others. Labor’s thumping majority...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Faster than forecast, accelerated warming creates a climate time-bomb for the Al
Meanwhile. back in Australia...
June 25, 2025
I don’t know what the statistics tell us about Australia, but I’m pretty sure Australians don’t want to go marching in lockstep with the US off to yet another illegal war. They don’t want to make our country go broke buying or building submarines that will be obsolete before they arrive and will probably never be delivered. They also don’t want to keep handing more land/bases over to the US for target practice. Australians don’t want to be in the frontline when the elephants fight and our grass is damaged. I’m sure that Australians are disappointed with...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Americans don't want Trump's illegal war on Iran
Eastern seaboard suddenly remembers WA exists
June 25, 2025
I cannot readily recall Mr Eslake advocating for redress of the GST distribution inequities affecting Western Australia prior to the implementation of the No-worse-off guarantee. To contextualise his present commentary, the accompanying table illustrates Western Australia's proportional return from its substantial contributions to federal revenue in the decade prior: | Financial Year | WA | NSW | VIC | | -------------- | ------ | ------ | ------ | | 2009–10 | $0.70 | $0.86 | $0.94 | | 2010–11 | $0.65 | $0.85 | $0.95 | | 2011–12 | $0.60 | $0.84 | $0.96 | | 2012–13 | $0.55...
Chris Picard from Perth
In response to: Is there any hope for a fairer carve-up of GST between the states?
Feeding the chooks
June 25, 2025
Poor thing, Donald. I quite enjoyed him as a candidate. I was often reminded of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's feeding the chooks when describing his news conferences. Never have I watched a greater player of the media than Donald. Then he got elected only to have President Putin call his bluff in Ukraine and President Xi call his bluff on tariffs. Fortunately for Donald, along comes Netanyahu, the Zionist lobby and his own select advisers to explain that this one's easy. We can make you great again. Just bomb Iran. When was the last time that lot got it right?
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: War is the worst thing in the world
Iranians may be guided by Ferdowsi on Fordow
June 24, 2025
I note the article by Tom Hussain on Iran’s options. Will Iranians be guided by their tenth century epic poet Hakim Ferdowsi, who wrote: “چو ایران مباشد تن من مباد بدین بوم و بر زنده یک تن مباد اگر سر به سر تن به کشتن دهیم ازآن به که کشور به دشمن دهیم “If there is no Iran, let my body not be; If only one live body is in this world, let it be me. If we put head to head and body to slaughter, Let it be to protect our...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Iran retaliating against US inevitable as window for diplomacy narrows: analysts
Breach of international law
June 24, 2025
Let’s see if I have got this right: Australia fails to condemn the US attacks on Iran despite them being a clear breach of international law. However, when Iran attacks US bases in response, Australia condemns Iran although, in this instance, it seems to me, that there is a case to be made by Iran under international law for an action in self-defence.
Brian Bycroft from Evans Head NSW
In response to: Bombing Iran a clear breach of international law
Torturing the definition of Liberal Democratic
June 24, 2025
It tortures language beyond its capacity to suggest that the G7 was always a group of like-minded states that promoted liberal democratic values and supported democratic policy actions. Several of the countries involved, not excluding that US, have long since become oligarchies that rarely, if ever, reflect democratic values. Indeed, the US drafters of their Constitution deliberately set out, as they explained themselves, to limit democracy as far as they could. Public opinion poll after public opinion poll reflect what vanishingly small effect public opinion has on public policy. Democracy in the US is generally a performative art...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump’s disruption in Canada leaves the G7 at a crossroads
What is the point of extra taxes?
June 24, 2025
If nothing else, King Trump has proven that tariffs have minimal impact on big business and once again the general population pays the bill. One way or the other, the average person pays, be it as an increase in insurance premiums, property being uninsurable, an increase in taxes/government spending to carry out the disaster repairs/relief, homelessness bought on by their homes being burnt down, flooded or generally unlivable. The further down the food chain one is, the less likely you are to benefit/survive the horsemen of the Apocalypse, let alone the fifth and most dangerous horseman, capitalism, which...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: International survey shows 81% back forcing big oil to pay for climate destruction
The old canard of the 'rules-based order'
June 24, 2025
As always with Greg, this is an exemplar of clear and careful analysis mixed with forthright conclusions. It draws attention again to the nonsense retailed by the West of a rules-based order that has no written and universally shared set of rules outside that which is confected daily to be necessary to provide a cover for the continual breach of the rules that have been established by the world community through international law, by the dying Western empire. Make no mistake, there is no relationship between the fatuous twaddle of the rules-based order and the reality of that international...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Bombing Iran a clear breach of international law
Regime change: who has the right?
June 23, 2025
Andrew Thomas has the gall to tell us how to bring about regime change in Iran and quotes that bastion of moral genocide, Netanyahu, to reinforce his righteousness. Even more wow is that P&I publishes this example of how the Western world, led by a country not at war for just 17 years of its history, considers it has the right to determine who is allowed to rule a country anywhere in the world. Thomas seems unaware that it was British/US meddling — the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 — that gave birth to subsequent regimes, and that...
Dieter Barkhoff from Box Hill North
In response to: Regime change wouldn’t likely bring democracy to Iran. A more threatening force
Restoring diplomacy
June 23, 2025
Halfway through Fred Zhang's apt exposé of the modus operandi of News Corps' agitprop rabble-rousing with regard to China, he rightly asks: Where is the discussion about diplomacy, multilateralism, or economic interdependence as part of national resilience? Good question. But that leads to the question: Where is diplomacy? Bloated, over-reaching major political parties with a trust us outlook won't be too interested in reminding us that state-crafting responsibilities, also for international relations, are inherent in our citizenship. Trust us too often shows itself with appointments to important ambassadorial posts – where are the open statements of policy by these...
Bruce Wearne from BALLARAT CENTRAL
In response to: News Corp’s China obsession: why beating the drum is easier than thinking
Running a country is a full-time job
June 23, 2025
Replying to the press gallery about cancelled meetings with Trump, Anthony Albanese should say: “He has his country to run and I have mine, we are both busy. I look forward to him taking time out of his busy schedule to ring me sometime and I will answer if I am not otherwise engaged running Australia.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Australia’s trade survival depends on beating Trump’s tariff contagion
And then there was Indonesia...
June 23, 2025
There was a time when learning Indonesian was a priority and defence against Indonesia was taught at our military academy and it still should be. With a large population living on an archipelago under the threat of climate crisis and rising seas, the time may well come when the Indonesians are looking for somewhere safe to go and the already crowded North doesn’t appear an option. While male Anglo puppet governments in Australia continue with their US/Murdoch-promoted China fixation, the lemmings march ever onward towards the cliffs.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: News Corp’s China obsession: why beating the drum is easier than thinking
Israel-Iran fuse to World War III must be cut
June 23, 2025
Eugene Doyle raises serious issues in his article, including Chinese access to oil. If we look back 84 years, Pearl Harbour was the result of the US cutting off Japanese oil supplies among other things. (Japan had been behaving badly in China for eight years, but I doubt that was the primary rationale for the embargo). Does the US want to provoke a war with China? Is it aiming to secure control of Iranian oil? It seems that Donald Trump's access to intel on Iranian uranium enrichment is superior to that of US security agencies, well, given Tulsi Gabbard's...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Centrifugal forces have been unleashed in Iran
Let need be the only school funding criterion
June 23, 2025
MAGA USA highlights two problems. To an extent, Australia's under-appreciated electoral system protects us from outcomes caused by the problematic US system. But we're heading down the same fraught educational disparity path, as spelled out by Don and Patricia Edgar. This can only end badly for Australia. The absence of adequate supports and facilities that deter some of our better teachers from working in more challenging environments is obvious. But for some schools it also means additional funding to overcome the accidents of birth that hamper some children's chances of learning, such as poverty and family history of inadequate...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Jason Clare's monumental task in education
Education funding is establishing religion
June 23, 2025
Qualifying for enrolment at religious schools requires a demonstration of commitment. In other words, religion has become a requirement for receiving a well-funded education – a clear breach of Section 116 of the Constitution, that says, The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance.. Any religion or religious observance! The Commonwealth funding of religious schools also works against laws concerning multiculturalism and discrimination. It is currently funding schools that entrench mistrust of other religions, creating biased beliefs that will divide our society for years to come. To make...
Tom Orren from Wamberal
In response to: Jason Clare's monumental task in education
Do funders of Mediazona and BBC determine bias?
June 23, 2025
The question of the funding of media outlets and the impact of funding on bias and credibility is a basic and critical one that can help us discern media bias and war propaganda. It surprises me that it is not one raised by Joseph Camilleri, who writes, According to the thorough and regularly updated analysis conducted by Mediazona in collaboration with BBC News Russian Service… A recent article in The Grayzone (BBC’s ‘independent’ Russian partner begged UK govt for funds”) points out that Mediazona was founded in 2014 by members of Pussy Riot and that leaked documents indicate that...
Susan Dirgham from Melbourne
In response to: A new cold war is sweeping across Europe – with global repercussions
The unreal predictions of climate economists
June 23, 2025
Rarely has the chasm between “economic modelling” and reality been more spectacular than in the prognostications of climate economists. William Nordhaus won a Nobel prize for work which included the assumption that the 85% of economic activity which occurs indoors will be unaffected by climate change. The summary graph in Richard Tol’s recent meta-analysis, presented to us by Peter Sainsbury, is further evidence of the utter failure of climate economic modelling: any secondary school science student knows that at six degrees of global warming, there will be no meaningful economic activity at all – yet Tol’s line of best...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: Environment: Murray-Darling Plan delivers profits, but not environmental improve