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.
Listen to Episode 1 Listen to Episode 2
10 November 2025
‘Mr Whitlam’s style’ – Part I
“I had no contemporary political heroes. I preferred Labor values to Liberal ones. I believed in a mixed economy. I disliked the people who’d got us into the Vietnam war. I was grateful to those who’d got us out. I admired Gough Whitlam, but not as much as he did.”
10 November 2025
Message from the editor
It has been a real pleasure to watch so many Americans enjoy what might just be a pivotal moment in American politics, with the victory of Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim and South Asian to win the office of mayor of New York.
10 November 2025
How the Dismissal ripples reached Beijing: Some personal recollections
Life in Beijing in 1975 was not easy and the events leading up to the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government in November piled on the pressure.
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10 November 2025
‘Hawkish’ interpretations rise as US-China discourse gets lost in translation
In an echo of the Cold War, mistranslations are testing already strained nerves in Washington and Beijing.
10 November 2025
Venezuela’s oil, US-led regime change and America’s gangster politics
The flimsy moral pretext today is the fight against narcotics, yet the real objective is to overthrow a sovereign government and the collateral damage is the suffering of the Venezuelan people. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
10 November 2025
Young people are increasingly being killed or injured on e-bikes. It’s time for governments to act
In the span of just a few days, two children were killed in separate e-bike crashes in Queensland – one on the Sunshine Coast and another on the Gold Coast.
10 November 2025
The defence myth
When opponents of the military build-up and critics of the genocide in Palestine went to protest outside the Indo-Pacific Maritime Exposition in Sydney, they were confronted by a huge force of New South Wales police.
10 November 2025
China planning ahead with 15th five-year plan
In business, the five Ps are often referenced: Poor preparation prevents proper performance. That extends to planning a national economy.
10 November 2025
The Jury of Conscience finding on Gaza
On 26 October 2025, after three days of often harrowing evidence and testimony (23 to 25 October), the members of the Jury of Conscience at the Final Session of the Gaza Tribunal, in Istanbul, presented their Statement of Findings and Moral Judgment.
10 November 2025
Arms industry infiltrates National Press Club
More than a quarter of the National Press Club’s sponsors are part of the global arms industry or working on its behalf.
9 November 2025
The Dismissal, the role of the CIA, MI6 and Austral Americans
I was familiar with many of the events leading to the Dismissal on 11 November 1975. That knowledge was greatly increased by Professor Jenny Hocking with her long and successful campaign to have the Palace letters released.
Latest on Palestine and Israel
8 November 2025
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.”
8 November 2025
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.
7 November 2025
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.
6 November 2025
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.
6 November 2025
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.
6 November 2025
Israel, lies and videotape
We have heard a lot in the last two years and one month about Jewish Australians feeling unsafe or intimidated.
5 November 2025
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.
4 November 2025
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.
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 PDFLatest on China
10 November 2025
‘Hawkish’ interpretations rise as US-China discourse gets lost in translation
In an echo of the Cold War, mistranslations are testing already strained nerves in Washington and Beijing.
10 November 2025
China planning ahead with 15th five-year plan
In business, the five Ps are often referenced: Poor preparation prevents proper performance. That extends to planning a national economy.
6 November 2025
Trump turns the tables on Taiwan
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.
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8 November 2025
Murdoch, the Dismissal and my job in Japan
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Making them pay: Wielding influence in a world with no shame
Latest letters to the editor
Murdoch ordure
Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041
Defence money thrown away again?
Geoff Taylor — Borlu (Perth)
Feudal Australia
Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041
Organised forgetting
Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041