America’s gun violence survives on myths, profit and political cowardice
Crispin Hull

America’s gun violence survives on myths, profit and political cowardice

America’s response to gun violence is built on myths about policing, deterrence and constitutional rights, while political leaders continue to avoid the reforms most likely to save lives.

The great credit card surcharge swindle
Murray Milgate

The great credit card surcharge swindle

The new card rules do not stop businesses passing on transaction costs. They simply require the advertised price to be the price customers actually pay.

A year after the ‘ceasefire’, Gaza’s healthcare is still collapsing
Sally Saleh

A year after the ‘ceasefire’, Gaza’s healthcare is still collapsing

A year after the ceasefire was announced, Gaza’s health system remains devastated, medical evacuations are stalled and thousands of patients face preventable death as treatment, equipment and supplies remain out of reach.


The cockroach bites again: India’s protest movement takes on the ballot box
Muhammad Amir

The cockroach bites again: India’s protest movement takes on the ballot box

A protest movement born from anger over examination scandals has widened into a challenge over electoral rolls, institutional accountability and whether ordinary Indians can still trust the systems that shape their rights and opportunities.

Women are still missing from the medical evidence that shapes their care
Komla Tsey

Women are still missing from the medical evidence that shapes their care

Women can be failed by healthcare even when clinicians listen carefully, because bias in research design, participation and data analysis can distort the evidence that guides diagnosis and treatment.

Trump has united America: nine in ten say government corruption is widespread
Noel Turnbull

Trump has united America: nine in ten say government corruption is widespread

Perceptions of government corruption have reached a 20-year high in the United States, with overwhelming majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents saying it is widespread.

If AI saves us time, workers should get some of it back
Reza Dashti 

If AI saves us time, workers should get some of it back

AI could transform productivity, but its greatest social benefit may be the chance to reduce working hours and return more time to people for family, health, recovery and community.


John Menadue

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Pearls and Irritations leads the way in raising and analysing vital issues often neglected in mainstream media. Your contribution supports our independence and quality commentary on matters importance to Australia and our region.

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Serving through conserving
George Browning

Serving through conserving

Political conservatism increasingly trades in grievance and division, while neglecting the environment, equality, democracy, intergenerational responsibility and the social bonds that genuinely deserve conserving.

The migration maths falls apart when you look at bridging visas
Abul Rizvi

The migration maths falls apart when you look at bridging visas

Plans to slash the bridging visa population are central to Coalition and One Nation migration targets, but the backlog is complex and reducing it would deliver far less to net migration than their policies assume.

Not the place for a cathedral of sport
Jack Waterford

Not the place for a cathedral of sport

Canberra needs better health, education, debt management and city planning long before it needs a new stadium, especially on one of the national capital’s most valuable public sites.

Trump misses out on Nobel Prize again and imposes new sanctions on the International Criminal Court
Michelle Burgis-Kasthala

Trump misses out on Nobel Prize again and imposes new sanctions on the International Criminal Court

The latest US sanctions target the International Criminal Court as an institution, raising the stakes for allies that profess support for international justice but may now have to defend it against Washington.

Navi Pillay’s Nobel is a vote of confidence in international law
Frans Viljoen

Navi Pillay’s Nobel is a vote of confidence in international law

Navi Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize recognises a lifetime of work against apartheid, genocide and impunity, while affirming the international legal institutions now facing renewed political attack.

AI and the limits of sovereignty, Part Two: What would actually have to change
Robin Brown, Gregory Andrews

AI and the limits of sovereignty, Part Two: What would actually have to change

Sovereignty has never meant an unlimited right to impose harm beyond national borders. AI and other global risks may require that principle to be extended to new forms of transnational danger.

AI companies are preparing for catastrophe. Governments should be too
Jake Johnson

AI companies are preparing for catastrophe. Governments should be too

Leading AI companies are reportedly preparing for the fallout from a major cyberattack or other catastrophic event, intensifying calls for governments to regulate frontier AI before disaster forces their hand.

What Australia should recover from Paul Keating
James Curran

What Australia should recover from Paul Keating

In this speech, James Curran reflects on Paul Keating’s foreign policy legacy and argues that Australia has lost the strategic confidence and autonomy needed to shape its own future in a changing Asia.

Australia’s International Development Policy three years on
Cameron Hill

Australia’s International Development Policy three years on

Three years after Labor launched its international development policy, Australia is a more reliable donor than many of its peers. But an increasingly ambitious aid program still lacks clarity about its priorities, trade-offs and capacity to deliver.

Climate resilience is missing a critical piece: care
Caren Grown, Kendall Trelegan

Climate resilience is missing a critical piece: care

Climate adaptation plans routinely overlook childcare, aged care and other essential services, leaving families and unpaid carers to absorb the human and economic costs when climate disasters strike.

Trump’s power is fading, but his AI gamble could still reshape the world
Ian Bremmer

Trump’s power is fading, but his AI gamble could still reshape the world

Donald Trump remains globally consequential, but his ability to bend other governments and institutions to his will is diminishing. AI is the major exception, where deregulation could unleash risks that outlast his presidency.

Climate finance must transfer power, not just money
Komla Tsey

Climate finance must transfer power, not just money

Climate finance will not deliver justice if communities receive project funding but remain excluded from decisions, governance and the long-term institutional support needed to sustain change.

Australia is building AI capacity without the ecosystem to use it
John H Howard

Australia is building AI capacity without the ecosystem to use it

AI delivers productivity gains only when firms have the skills, management capability, infrastructure and industrial networks to put it to work. Australia’s weakness lies less in the technology than in the ecosystem around it.

AI and the limits of sovereignty, Part One: Why national rules are not enough
Robin Brown, Gregory Andrews

AI and the limits of sovereignty, Part One: Why national rules are not enough

In the first of two parts, Robin Brown and Gregory Andrews examine why AI, climate change, pandemics and online markets repeatedly outrun national regulation, and what existing arms-control and international regimes can teach us about governing risks that cross borders.

Want affordable housing? Build up, not out
Michael Keating

Want affordable housing? Build up, not out

Home ownership has become increasingly unaffordable because land prices have increased so much under population pressure. The only way to restore affordable housing is to increase urban density.

Be careful – international students are listening
Mukesh Dhamala

Be careful – international students are listening

A South Asian perspective on migration politics, student confidence and the long-term value of Australian international education.

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 letters to the editor

The moronic leading the confused

Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041

Let's get one thing clear from the start. The US, in its very beginning as a colonial enterprise, has since before its creation as a separate nation had a history soaked in the blood of the poor, the marginalised and the 'different'. From a genocide of the Indigenous peoples, to the brutality of the slave trade, and on to the hundreds of years of depraved racism including the Ku Klux Klan, to punish Black people for seeking freedom and justice. It was born in Christian fundamentalist violence and has continued that throughout its bloody and lawless history till today. Hollywood...

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If AI saves us time, workers should get some of it

Jack Arnold — Armidale NSW 2350

I remember as an undergraduate in the mid-1960s, that is 60 years ago, discussing the possibility and benefits of a 20-hour working week. Instead, Australia became a place of worker exploitation, compulsory overtime and even unpaid overtime to enrich the bosses at worker expense. It has always been possible to reduce working hours by increasing productivity; however, too many corporations direct huge profits into executive salaries and perks rather than systems to improve and expand business opportunities. No imaginative thinking outside the square – just keep the bonuses flowing and she'll be right ... for the entrenched executives.
Stadium in Civic

Jack Kershaw — Kambah

Jack Waterford might have forgotten that there's a huge sewer instalĺation just under the surface of North Oval.
Presiding instead of leading

Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041

Keating was not afraid of leading, as he had a vision for an Australia that found its security in Asia, not from it. Since his period in office we have lacked a prime minister with a forward-looking vision rather than a repetition of the past. At a time when leadership has become vastly more important, we are utterly devoid of it. He had a vision of Australia as an independent sovereign nation with its own interests and its own sovereignty. We haven't had one since!
A fantasy supported

Les Macdonald — Balmain NSW 2041

Ian paints an extraordinarily rosy picture of an American president widely regarded around the world as both likely mentally disturbed and mentally inadequate to anything like the occupation of one of the most powerful positions on the planet. He is not 'globally consequential' in any sense other than as an obstacle to rational diplomacy. His significance locally is easily judged by the lowest popularity ratings of any president since such polls were taken, and internationally since the contrast between his claims and his actual record became perfectly clear to any rational observer. That is why he appears desperate to achieve...

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Thank you for telling the secret

Pamela Curr — Brunswick

Thanks to Peter Cronau for exposing the secret doings on Cocos Island. Few Australians have been there or know how strategic it is. I visited this beautiful paradise by accident 10 years ago when our plane from Christmas Island needed repairs. That successive governments have allowed it to be available for the US's next war is sickening. Using it as a staging post to block China's sea trade lanes puts our country at grave risk. Peter Cronau, like the canary down the mine, has raised the alarm. What we do next puts our children's future in our hands.
Inflation and interest rates: blame the government

Harry Audus — Arana Hills Qld

Michael Keating is being far too kind to the ALP government, particularly his meiotic description of Albanese as timid. On interest rates, MK lets the government off the hook, using the same excuse: that it has no control over what the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) does. And on taxation, MK is timid himself in not mentioning the insane levels of non-taxable profits and subsidies that big corporations are allowed to get away with. While it is true that the RBA currently has very limited machinery for dealing with inflation, and maintaining its independence from government is important (to a...

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It's a lousy way to live

Hal Duell — Alice Springs

That Albanese is a disappointment to many in Australia is not in doubt. The question is, why? I offer timidity as the reason. Nationally, in the face of a nationwide housing shortage and a growing uncertainty about immigration, he offers us words without substance. Internationally, he is seen to be doing the bidding of the Anglo-Zionists and the US. Neither enjoys much sympathy among the electorate. On the looming climate changes coming down on us all, China is the world's leader in all things renewable. Hopefully Albanese and Wong are seeking a seat at their table. However, being in thrall...

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