10 April 2025
Federal election: Time to hold MPs accountable for stance on genocide israel-palestine, politics, topfive
Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, and now its seizing of their land is the worst example of genocide since the horrors of the genocides of Darfur in Sudan in 2003 and Rwanda in the 1990s.
10 April 2025
If I was immigration minister, I would develop a population plan
If there is one thing politicians should have learnt in the last three years, it is that Australians expect them to manage long-term net migration and thus our rate of population growth.
10 April 2025
Where is Assad now? And why do the world's worst men get away with it?
Remember Bashar al-Assad? The man who crushed his own people under a mountain of rubble and fear? Who turned peaceful protests into mass graves, dropped barrel bombs on neighbourhoods, and used chemical weapons on children?
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.
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10 April 2025
US tariff policies strengthening China's position in Asia
In geopolitics, there are no permanent friends or enemies, but there are permanent interests. While many countries in Southeast Asia have tried to maintain their economic ties with the US and China, President Donald Trump's economic and tariff plans are inadvertently helping China strengthen its position in Asia.
10 April 2025
Boiling the frog of constitutional reform
The case to sever the constitutional link between Australia and the UK monarchy is self-evident to most. And, to be clear, this link is expressly to the monarch of the UK in that capacity, not to some titularly separate notional monarch of Australia.
10 April 2025
How Australian education was captured by arms dealers
Australian universities, technical institutes and schools are becoming militarised. The power of defence industry money combined with government policy and public underfunding of education have created an avalanche of defence funding and profound influence over our education system and the people who emerge from it.
10 April 2025
Will there be a war between China and the US?
Will there be a war between China and the US? This question suddenly gained popularity in early April 2024, mainly because, in response to Donald Trump’s so-called “reciprocal tariff” policy, China was the first country to impose strict countermeasures.
10 April 2025
Build, baby, build! But that won’t fix it all
Australia is spending billions trying and still failing to get people into decent homes they can afford. Some more radical options could be on the table.
10 April 2025
The mother of all own goals?
Following the White House announcement of the “Liberation Day” tariffs, Andrew Tillett, writing in The Australian Financial Review, argued that, “Trump just gave China a free kick to tilt Asia in its favour”. (paywall) At Foreign Policy, the deputy editor, Amelia Lester, was wondering, at the same time, “Are Tariffs the End of the Australia-US Friendship”.(paywall)
10 April 2025
To Australia’s 'realists': Gnothi seauton (Know yourself)
In international relations, realism is a theory that views world politics as a competition among self-interested states vying for power and security within an anarchic global system, emphasising national interests and the potential for conflict.
9 April 2025
Muslim voters: Don’t let rage cloud strategy
During our extended family gathering for dinner on Eid Day, Monday 31 March, hosted by my niece, Shakeeba Siddiqui, and her husband, Khalique Sajjad, in Edmondson Park, there was a robust discussion about the upcoming federal election with invited guests Nathan Hagarty MP, state member for Leppington and Charishma Kaliyanda MP, state member for Liverpool.
Latest on Palestine and Israel
10 April 2025
Federal election: Time to hold MPs accountable for stance on genocide
Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, and now its seizing of their land is the worst example of genocide since the horrors of the genocides of Darfur in Sudan in 2003 and Rwanda in the 1990s.
9 April 2025
An arresting American Gaza challenge
Recent US commentary backing President Trump’s extraordinary American Gaza takeover project has regularly stressed how critics should come up with a better plan.
6 April 2025
Was Israel complicit in the 7 October 2023 massacre?
The dreadful atrocities by Hamas on 7 October 2023 horrified the world and triggered the destruction of Gaza, the deaths of more than 50,000 Gazan men, women and children and the wounding of tens of thousands more.
5 April 2025
Palestine is the issue to consider when you enter the voting booth
On the day Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the election date, Jews Against the Occupation '48 issued an open statement addressing the current government in the hope that Labor would shift its policies on Israel/Palestine.
3 April 2025
Peter Slezak's speech to the University of Technology Sydney rally on 26 March
Remarks made by UNSW academic Peter Slezak at a rally at UTS on 26 March, have attracted considerable negative coverage in the Murdoch media. [The Australian and The Daily Telegraph] Pearls And Irritations is carrying the full text of the speech so that readers can make up their own minds.
3 April 2025
Israeli practices exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza
The Gaza Strip has witnessed catastrophic humanitarian crises during the genocide committed by the Israeli occupation. The war has caused widespread destruction of infrastructure, leading to the near-total collapse of the healthcare system and essential services.
3 April 2025
The West and inconvenient memory: The destruction of history
“Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past and historians are the people who produce it.” – Eric Hobsbawm
2 April 2025
Australians for Humanity pushes for votes against Israeli genocide
Australians for Humanity is a coalition of interested parties seeking to have Australia and Australians respond to the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians and the declared Israeli intent to ethnically cleanse Palestine and proceed to the annexation of Gaza, the West Bank and parts of Lebanon and Syria.
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10 April 2025
US tariff policies strengthening China's position in Asia china, economy, politics, usa
In geopolitics, there are no permanent friends or enemies, but there are permanent interests. While many countries in Southeast Asia have tried to maintain their economic ties with the US and China, President Donald Trump's economic and tariff plans are inadvertently helping China strengthen its position in Asia.
10 April 2025
Will there be a war between China and the US?
Will there be a war between China and the US? This question suddenly gained popularity in early April 2024, mainly because, in response to Donald Trump’s so-called “reciprocal tariff” policy, China was the first country to impose strict countermeasures.
10 April 2025
The mother of all own goals?
Following the White House announcement of the “Liberation Day” tariffs, Andrew Tillett, writing in The Australian Financial Review, argued that, “Trump just gave China a free kick to tilt Asia in its favour”. (paywall) At Foreign Policy, the deputy editor, Amelia Lester, was wondering, at the same time, “Are Tariffs the End of the Australia-US Friendship”.(paywall)
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