Pearlcasts
As we review 2025, the temptation is to look for neat summaries and settled conclusions.
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11 January 2026
The USA today: a derangement threatening the World
The response to events in Venezuela exposes how breaches of international law are absorbed, reframed, and normalised – and what that reveals about power, decadence, and global silence.
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - A masterclass in agency: What Singapore can teach Australia about China
Singapore’s new Prime Minister Lawrence Wong sat down with the ABC on 2 October and offered something rare in Australia’s China debate: clarity, confidence, and a middle-power strategy that doesn’t involve shouting or submission.
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Between two wounds: Gaza confronts Trump's plan to end the war
On a cold morning in central Gaza City, Nevin Al-Barbari, 35, sat in what remained of her family home, watching her two-year-old daughter, Reem, explore the rooms she had only recently come to know.
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - ‘Disaster season’: What is that?
Anika Wells, in announcing a meeting with three telco giants to discuss Optus’s Triple Zero emergency call system catastrophe in September, referred to the need for Australians to have confidence in the system before the coming disaster season. By that she meant summer. Is there really such a season?
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Journos as heroes and villains - 'The Hack' reviewed - Part 1
In films and on the small screen, journalists are portrayed as heroes or villains. In The Hack they are both. Does this reflect the diminished, benighted standing journalists hold in society today or is it a step forward in showing the complexities of the work?
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - 7 October not a day to abuse protesters
When it comes to the domestic political fallout from the Gaza conflict, there are no more reliable and uncritical friends of Israel than Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan and her New South Wales counterpart Chris Minns.
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Inequality and the future of democracy
Rising inequality and declining living standards have posed a threat to democracy in several democracies, but so far not in Australia. However, the increasing inequality of wealth, driven by housing becoming unaffordable without rich parents, is a threat.
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Australia faces a looming crisis of older women retiring in poverty. Here’s what we can do
Australia faces a serious challenge. Despite important progress on gender equality over recent decades, a looming crisis now threatens the economic security of older women. Without urgent and bold action, we risk consigning further generations of women to poverty in retirement.
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - 7 October 2023: What really happened? Part 1
At dawn, on 7 October 2023, Hamas fighters blast over 100 holes in the walls and fences that separate the Gaza Strip from Israel.
10 January 2026
Francesca Albanese and the lonely road of defiance
The UN special rapporteur investigating Gaza is sanctioned, blacklisted and treated as a criminal. The response reveals how power reacts when accountability is applied to the powerful.
10 January 2026
Best of 2025 - No justice or peace for Palestinians in Trump’s Plan
The Trump Plan is designed to reframe the issues in favour of Israel. Palestinians have been betrayed again.
Read our series
Latest on Palestine and Israel
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Between two wounds: Gaza confronts Trump's plan to end the war
On a cold morning in central Gaza City, Nevin Al-Barbari, 35, sat in what remained of her family home, watching her two-year-old daughter, Reem, explore the rooms she had only recently come to know.
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - 7 October not a day to abuse protesters
When it comes to the domestic political fallout from the Gaza conflict, there are no more reliable and uncritical friends of Israel than Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan and her New South Wales counterpart Chris Minns.
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - 7 October 2023: What really happened? Part 1
At dawn, on 7 October 2023, Hamas fighters blast over 100 holes in the walls and fences that separate the Gaza Strip from Israel.
10 January 2026
Francesca Albanese and the lonely road of defiance
The UN special rapporteur investigating Gaza is sanctioned, blacklisted and treated as a criminal. The response reveals how power reacts when accountability is applied to the powerful.
10 January 2026
Best of 2025 - No justice or peace for Palestinians in Trump’s Plan
The Trump Plan is designed to reframe the issues in favour of Israel. Palestinians have been betrayed again.
10 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Israel’s interception of the Gaza aid flotilla is a clear violation of international law
The Israel Defence Force has intercepted a flotilla of humanitarian vessels seeking to deliver aid to Gaza, taking control of multiple vessels and arresting activists, including Greta Thunberg.
10 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Ben Saul on Palestinian recognition and the Trump plan
At the National Press Club this week, Ben Saul argued that Australia is more than a modest middle power and must step up on Palestine.
10 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Chris Sidoti's prescription for action on Palestine
At the National Press Club this week with Ben Saul, Chris Sidoti argues that recognition of Palestine is important, but that Australia must also comply with international law obligations, including acting on arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court.
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
11 January 2026
Best of 2025 - A masterclass in agency: What Singapore can teach Australia about China
Singapore’s new Prime Minister Lawrence Wong sat down with the ABC on 2 October and offered something rare in Australia’s China debate: clarity, confidence, and a middle-power strategy that doesn’t involve shouting or submission.
7 January 2026
Best of 2025 - If we want to win the Pacific, we must first listen – and stop blaming China for everything
A 9 September editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald, titled China and Australia in a high-speed race to win control of the Pacific, offered a vivid picture of the daily contest for influence in the region.
6 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Who’s afraid of big, bad China?
Be afraid, be very afraid. But not of China. To the contrary, the proper management of co-operative relations with China is essential to Australia’s future.
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10 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Trump’s mongrel punt
10 January 2026
Best of 2025 - The Chris Hedges Report: We are all antifa now
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The people and the common good
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