Pearlcast EP 1

Launching Pearlcasts

The 50th Anniversary of the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government

We kick off with a topic close to our hearts, the 50th anniversary of the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government. We have three of the best sources in the nation taking part: our editor-in-chief John Menadue – the living link to the scandal and the nation’s top public servant at the time; Jenny Hocking, author of The Palace Letters and Australia’s pre-eminent Dismissal historian; and Brian Toohey, the journalist who has dug deepest into the darkest elements of the events.

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Murdoch, the Dismissal and my job in Japan
John Menadue

THE DISMISSAL AT 50

Murdoch, the Dismissal and my job in Japan

Rupert Murdoch played a critical role in the Dismissal. He knew how to bring pressure on Kerr and provided strong support for Malcolm Fraser.

AUKUS and nuclear propulsion proliferation in the Asia-Pacific
John Tilemann

AUKUS and nuclear propulsion proliferation in the Asia-Pacific

President Trump recently announced support for South Korea’s plans to build nuclear-powered submarines.

US-China power shift: a G2 world – Asian Media Report
David Armstrong

US-China power shift: a G2 world – Asian Media Report

In Asian media this week: Trump hints at changing great-power relationship. Plus: Beijing wresting control of the global narrative; Myanmar’s scam centre raids dismissed as a smokescreen; Prabowo considers declaring Soeharto a national hero; US approves South Korean nuclear-powered submarine; China’s modern women need new men.


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Revealed: Secret plans to introduce media censorship in Australia
William Evans

Revealed: Secret plans to introduce media censorship in Australia

Moves to restrict just what journalists can report on defence and intelligence matters are underway – and journalists need to get up to speed fast.

How Zohran Mamdani’s ‘talent for listening’ spurred him to victory in the New York mayoral election
Daniel Hutton Ferris

How Zohran Mamdani’s ‘talent for listening’ spurred him to victory in the New York mayoral election

Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, has been elected as New York City’s mayor. He became the first New York mayoral candidate to win more than a million votes since 1969, and looks set to secure more than 50% of the total vote.

Computer still says no to Queenslanders wearing seatbelts
Gary Moorhead

Computer still says no to Queenslanders wearing seatbelts

The ACT Government has just announced that from 3 November, “ACT traffic cameras will detect and issue infringements for seatbelt offences.

10,000+ Palestinians buried beneath Gaza rubble in ‘world’s largest mass grave’
Brett Wilkins

10,000+ Palestinians buried beneath Gaza rubble in ‘world’s largest mass grave’

“We call on the world to send international teams to recover the bodies of the missing,” said the member of one civil society group. “We call on the world to provide the necessary equipment to recover the bodies.”

Making them pay: Wielding influence in a world with no shame
Jaron Sutton

Making them pay: Wielding influence in a world with no shame

One of the upshots of US support for Israeli criminality over the past two years has been the cowardly position adopted by US supplicant states who feel wedged by realpolitik and morality.

Abandoning net zero: Farce, fantasy and falsehoods
Jeremy Webb

Abandoning net zero: Farce, fantasy and falsehoods

Australian politics is now descending into a theatre of science-denying absurdity. A mainstream party is now embedded in denial of clear scientific evidence that renewables are the lowest cost option for Australia through to 2050.

Australia's AI policy vacuum
Sue Barrett

Australia's AI policy vacuum

Australia abandoned its AI regulation plan. Now citizens are filling the ethical vacuum government created.

The Prince and the Dismissal
John Menadue

THE DISMISSAL AT 50

The Prince and the Dismissal

Anthony Albanese recently told us with bated breath from Balmoral Castle that Charles is someone who is very interested in Australia”. “Interested “would be an understatement.

Latest on Palestine and Israel

10,000+ Palestinians buried beneath Gaza rubble in ‘world’s largest mass grave’
Brett Wilkins

10,000+ Palestinians buried beneath Gaza rubble in ‘world’s largest mass grave’

“We call on the world to send international teams to recover the bodies of the missing,” said the member of one civil society group. “We call on the world to provide the necessary equipment to recover the bodies.”

Making them pay: Wielding influence in a world with no shame
Jaron Sutton

Making them pay: Wielding influence in a world with no shame

One of the upshots of US support for Israeli criminality over the past two years has been the cowardly position adopted by US supplicant states who feel wedged by realpolitik and morality.

OFFICIAL – Israel’s proposed death-penalty law is a war crime
Greg Barns

OFFICIAL – Israel’s proposed death-penalty law is a war crime

Not satisfied it seems with the continued genocide of Palestinians, Israel is now looking to execute Palestinian prisoners by introducing a death penalty law.

Lancet study shows more than 3m years of human life lost in Israeli assault on Gaza
Jessica Corbett

Lancet study shows more than 3m years of human life lost in Israeli assault on Gaza

“To speak of three million years of human life erased is to confront the true scale of this atrocity – generations of children, parents, and families wiped out,” said the head of a US advocacy group.

Palestine’s future: Australians are outraged
Margaret Reynolds,  Stuart Rees

Palestine’s future: Australians are outraged

At an Australia-wide webinar on 31 October, David Spratt paid tribute to the late Ali Kazak, Palestine’s first ambassador to Australia.

Israel, lies and videotape
Alison Broinowski

Israel, lies and videotape

We have heard a lot in the last two years and one month about Jewish Australians feeling unsafe or intimidated.

108 years since the Balfour Declaration – a promise written in ink, fulfilled in blood
Refaat Ibrahim

108 years since the Balfour Declaration – a promise written in ink, fulfilled in blood

On 2 November 1917, Britain wrote with the ink of politics what it had no right to write with the ink of history.

The West’s double game on Gaza
Scott Burchill

The West’s double game on Gaza

In the aftermath of the attacks of 7 October 2023 and for months afterwards, Western governments that have been long-standing supporters of Israel — including the Australian Government — invoked “self-defence” to justify the severity of Israel’s response.


John Menadue's book on Israel's war against Gaza

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

Latest on China

Trump turns the tables on Taiwan
Geoff Raby

Trump turns the tables on Taiwan

china politics usa world

When the razzle dazzle of the prime minister’s first face-to-face meeting with the mercurial US president is forgotten and the huge sigh of relief that nothing went wrong subsides, questions will be asked about what all the puffery achieved.

‘Stabilising’ relations with China while differences widen
Andrew Podger

‘Stabilising’ relations with China while differences widen

The Albanese Government’s stabilised China policy faces the test of deepening ideological and strategic divides.

Understanding Australia-China research mobility
Elena Collinson,  James Laurenceson,  Wanning Sun,  Marina Zhang,  Xunpeng Shi

Understanding Australia-China research mobility

Australia’s research partnership with China is a significant component of its scientific output, particularly in engineering, technology and applied sciences.


John Menadue

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More from Pearls and Irritations


Latest letters to the editor

Murdoch ordure

Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041

Of all the exports Australia has managed over the last 80 years, the most significant and most laudable is one of the biggest ordure farmers on the planet, Rupert Murdoch. The fact that we exported him to the largest faecal farm on the planet is not coincidental. The sheer volume of the excrement that he so copiously distributes across the planet has made a remarkable contribution to the spreading of the accompanying diseases of ignorance, fear and xenophobia that are bringing the Western experiment to an undignified end. We have become so swamped by this excrement that we...
Defence money thrown away again?

Geoff Taylor — Borlu (Perth)

I note that according to the mainstream media, Defence Minister Marles first heard of the plan to build nuclear submarines for Korea in the US through the media. But what is of particular interest today in the submarine space is the news that retiring Rear Admiral Jonathan Mead headed a secret nuclear submarine taskforce from February 2021 onwards, that is seven months before France was blindsided. Presumably, in that seven months, we still had people beavering away with Naval Group on advanced design work and letting contracts for the French non-nuclear boat. The French, for their part, were busy...
Feudal Australia

Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041

Gough Whitlam was a courageous and principled leader, unlike so many of his peers, who wanted Australia to grow up and cut the apron strings from a remnant of Middle Ages feudalism that was, and is, the British Royal family. That family is the most significant reason for the failure of Britain to come into the 20th, let alone the 21st century. As it sinks into well-deserved irrelevance, we should not forget its bastardry in removing an Australian Government elected by the people of Australia.
Organised forgetting

Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041

Greg Barns, as always, forensically dismantles the contrived and deceitful justifications and moral insubstantiality of the odiously fascist, colonialist state of Israel and its many Western co-conspirators. That analysis makes plainly obvious the patent bastardy of the cancerous Israeli infection that has metastasized from the moral void of a dying West. It is hard not to notice that the vast bulk of the crimes against humanity being committed around the planet are being carried out by that West or arise from actions taken by the West to preserve its domination of the world. That suggests the cancer itself...



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