
Small policy, big impact policy, politics
It's too early to predict the outcome of the election – notwithstanding the swing back to Labor reported by recent published polls. Anything could happen to change voting intentions in the last weeks of the campaign.

A message from the Editor
Nobel prize-winning economist and former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls the Trump tariffs the biggest trade shock in history. In the immediate aftermath, incredulity and shock was widespread. The size, and wildly different levels, were not expected. And there were clearly some howlers as well. Norfolk Island (population 2188 people) with no known exports to the US, copped 29 per cent. The uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic, got 10 per cent. Angry penguin cartoons sprouted up all over the place.

Uncertainty and pessimism abound. Will fear be enough to push Dutton into office?
Tony Abbott was once unelectable. So were Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

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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7 April 2025
‘Adolescence’, misogyny and the power of television
Rarely does a television series stop you in your tracks, through the heartbreaking power of its content and the creative process employed in its making. Such is the Netflix series from the UK titled Adolescence.

7 April 2025
Labor gains lead in post-budget Newspoll; would be one seat short of majority in YouGov MRP poll
Labor’s regaining of polling momentum has continued into the first week of the formal election campaign.

7 April 2025
Hosting the UN climate summit is far from ‘madness’ – here’s how Australia stands to benefit
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton would withdraw Australia’s bid to co-host next year’s global climate summit if the Coalition wins the federal election.

7 April 2025
Institutionalisation: Vice-chancellors’ cowardly collusion with antisemitism lobby
In response to a Senate inquiry into supposed antisemitism on Australian university campuses, the Group of Eight (Go8) vice-chancellors representing the Australian National University, Sydney, Melbourne, Monash, UWA, UNSW, Queensland and Adelaide have produced a definition of antisemitism which is to be enforced on all their respective students and staff.

7 April 2025
Australia should inform itself as to who the real terrorists are
Australians may smirk at the embarrassment of Donald Trump’s neophyte administration over Signalgate. Particularly those old enough to remember how our allies punished Canberra for past intelligence scandals and pushed us to set up ASIO.

7 April 2025
Where is the 'mature debate' about the health impacts of nuclear power? Informed consent matters
There is a clear disconnect between the claims of the nuclear lobby and the real-world adverse consequences of nuclear energy. Communities, workers and indeed all Australians need accurate information about the health impacts.

7 April 2025
Protecting the Public Estate with a fierce paradigm of care
Privatisation of the Public Estate, and Decimation of the Common Good have been part and parcel of neoliberalism’s metastasising cancer throughout our world for fifty years now. No one has been free from the tentacles of greed weaving their way through and around every aspect of our personal and communal lives.

7 April 2025
Trump’s lying Band of Brothers
We know that Donald Trump is not fit to be sitting in the White House. He is a dangerously disordered president, and we have observed enough aberrant behaviour to fill a psychiatric text book.
Latest on Palestine and Israel

18 September 2024
United Nations General Assembly votes to demand Israel end Palestinian occupation, Australia abstains
The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly voted in favour of a Palestinian resolution demanding Israel end its unlawful presence in Gaza and the occupied West Bank within a year.

7 December 2024
The Melbourne synagogue fire: Antisemitism, political meddling and exceptional victimhood
In his ongoing campaign to pad and shield criticism of Israel in the conduct of its war of gross bloodletting in Gaza, Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rarely misses a beat to attack critics. It has become clear that even mere disagreement from long standing allies suggests wobbliness and tilting in the direction of antisemitism.

5 February 2025
Trump's plan for Gaza heralds an age of naked fascism
I watched Trump's joint press conference with Netanyahu, in utter disbelief. Not that the idea, or indeed the practice, of ethnic cleansing of Palestine is new. But at that press conference the mask has fallen. Recently, fascism has been on the march everywhere, but that press conference seemed to herald an age of naked fascism.

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.

10 May 2024
South Africa asks ICJ to order halt to Rafah massacre as 110,000 Gazans flee advancing Israeli troops
The move comes as Australia, in a significant break from Israeli and US policy, voted yes in the UN General Assembly to upgrading Palestines UN membership status. The resolution passed with 143 countries voting in favour, nine voting against, and 25 abstentions.

18 September 2024
UN vote: Newspaper raises irrelevant questions about an ICJ decision
The exclusive 'US urges Australia over UNs Israel vote, published in Tuesdays The Australian by Ben Packham, demands a response.

20 May 2024
ICC applies for arrest warrants against Netanyahu, Sinwar
The ICC chief prosecutor accused Israeli and Hamas leaders of war crimes while repeating false claims against Hamas and downplaying Israeli violence against Palestinians, writes The Cradle news desk.

4 October 2024
Resilience amongst ruin: 12 months of genocide and resistance in Gaza
Just weeks into Israels current genocide in Gaza, I spoke with my cousin as she watched the violence unfold from her home in Khan Yunis. She declared, We are used to this; it is temporary and will pass.

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DonateLatest on China

How Xi woos world business leaders as Trump intensifies trade war china, economy, politics, world
On the morning of Friday, 28 March, Xi Jinping met representatives of the international business community at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.


China’s spies are here to help Albo: Anti-China Media Watch
The Australian reliably informs as that in Beijing it’s “all the way with Albo for PM”; the latest Chinese ship in the proximity of Australia’s waters is both an act of aggression and proof positive that New Zealand’s scientists are among the most “clueless” creatures on earth; and Confucius Institutes have to go from Australian university campuses.
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