28 April 2025
'Never again' not only for Jews, but for Palestinians and all humanity israel-palestine, politics
Israel has no right of self-defence against resistance in lands that are illegally occupied.
28 April 2025
Message from the editor
I’ll walk down to the local primary school next Saturday and cast my vote, but I will be in a minority. Most of my kids and both my parents would have already cast their ballots, along with two-thirds of the rest of the community.
28 April 2025
Quite a remarkable election campaign
We still cannot feel confident in predicting the outcome of this 2025 election. But what we can confidently say is that it has been a quite remarkable campaign, shaped by external events in unpredictable ways.
Israel's war against Gaza
Media coverage of the war in Gaza since October 2023 has spread a series of lies propagated by Israel and the United States. This publication presents information, analysis, clarification, views and perspectives largely unavailable in mainstream media in Australia and elsewhere.
Download the PDF
28 April 2025
A minority Labor Government's policy agenda – Part 2
In this second part of this article, discussing the possible policy agenda for a minority Labor Government, the focus is on taxation and how to improve productivity – issues that are most difficult to agree on.
28 April 2025
A hillbilly White House and the wisdom of peasants
In 2016, US Vice-President J.D. Vance published a best-selling memoir titled Hillbilly Elegy. Curiously, he explained on the Fox News network recently that China’s pivotal influence on American consumption was due to the US borrowing “money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture” (YouTube link here). Let’s consider the sort of individuals in question.
28 April 2025
The resilience of Gazan writing: Resisting temporal closure
One particular aspect of Palestinian resilience during Israel’s ongoing besiegement and genocide in the Gaza Strip concerns a prodigious amount of creative writing that, besides bearing witness to circumstance and personal experience, engages cultural resistance.
28 April 2025
A couple of seats that could go against the anti-Dutton grain
“The people have spoken.” “We have a clear mandate.” Really? In many cases, like the landslides of 1975 and 1996, the above quotes are undoubtedly true. But in others, like 1984 and 1998, I’m not so sure.
28 April 2025
Canada’s Asian dream after America First
In the six months since US President Donald Trump’s re-election, the relentless assault on core democratic principles at home and international institutions and norms has turned the world upside down and inside out for the United States, its friends, allies and adversaries.
28 April 2025
What to do with an ex-president?
In an imaginary situation, members of Australia’s political and miliary elite were in court at the same time defending themselves against allegations of an attempted military coup.
28 April 2025
Chinese president rallies neighbours as US tariffs imposed
From 14 to 18 April, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia conveyed a clear message: China’s engagement with Southeast Asia is rooted not merely in trade and infrastructure, but also mutual respect, strategic trust, and a shared vision for regional stability and prosperity.
27 April 2025
If I were defence minister...
On becoming Australia’s new defence minister, I will advise cabinet at its first meeting that our nation is at a perilous, strategic crossroad.
Latest on Palestine and Israel
28 April 2025
'Never again' not only for Jews, but for Palestinians and all humanity
Israel has no right of self-defence against resistance in lands that are illegally occupied.
28 April 2025
The resilience of Gazan writing: Resisting temporal closure
One particular aspect of Palestinian resilience during Israel’s ongoing besiegement and genocide in the Gaza Strip concerns a prodigious amount of creative writing that, besides bearing witness to circumstance and personal experience, engages cultural resistance.
27 April 2025
Vote for humanity: Caring for Palestine
As Australians hear the repetitive, carefully scripted announcements of the two major parties, voters are turning away from the blatant bribery of millions of dollars for marginal electorates and personal promises of tax cuts and cheaper petrol.
26 April 2025
On ‘moral panic’ and the courage to speak: The West’s silence on Gaza
Palestinians do not have the luxury to allow Western moral panic to have its say or impact. Not caving in to this panic is one small, but important, step in building a global Palestine network that is urgently needed.
26 April 2025
If Einstein spoke today, he would be accused of antisemitism
In 1948, as the foundations of the Israeli state were being laid upon the ruins of hundreds of Palestinian villages, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, condemning the growing Zionist militancy within the settler Jewish community.
25 April 2025
Even in sickness, Pope Francis reached out to Gaza's Christians
For months, the pontiff spoke by telephone almost every night with people sheltering in a Catholic church in the battered enclave, a ritual he tried to keep up in the hospital.
24 April 2025
The uniform public utterances of our days
British scholar Leonard Schapiro, writing on Stalinism, observed that “the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade. But to produce a uniform pattern of public utterances in which the first trace of unorthodox thought reveals itself as a jarring dissonance. And it seems that in the current sanctioned discourse, the jarring dissonance is speaking up against a genocide streamed live on our phones.
23 April 2025
Pope Francis dies at 88 after final appeal for Gaza ceasefire
Will the millions who will mourn his death these coming days respect this wish of his? Will they care for Gazans and Palestinians the way he did?
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28 April 2025
A hillbilly White House and the wisdom of peasants china, politics, usa
In 2016, US Vice-President J.D. Vance published a best-selling memoir titled Hillbilly Elegy. Curiously, he explained on the Fox News network recently that China’s pivotal influence on American consumption was due to the US borrowing “money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture” (YouTube link here). Let’s consider the sort of individuals in question.
28 April 2025
Chinese president rallies neighbours as US tariffs imposed
From 14 to 18 April, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia conveyed a clear message: China’s engagement with Southeast Asia is rooted not merely in trade and infrastructure, but also mutual respect, strategic trust, and a shared vision for regional stability and prosperity.
25 April 2025
Election looms, time to ramp up the China scare campaign: Anti-China Media Watch
Hampered by an underwhelming election campaign — where the Labor/LNP “uniparty” faces the harsh reality that the punters don’t think China is about to invade Australia — Murdoch media is going all out to put those commie bastards front and centre. There’s the inconvenient truth that the Australian military is gearing up to hit China with a barrage of US-made missiles; the Chinese Communist Party is meddling in the affairs of the Catholic Church; and a 60 Minutes report tells us Barbie has fallen victim to the Chinese.
More from Pearls and Irritations
27 April 2025
A minority Labor Government's policy agenda – Part 1
26 April 2025
Housing affordability: Which party has better policies?
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Some further funds for schools
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