Writer
Henry Reynolds
Henry Reynolds is an eminent Australian historian.
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Australia’s brutal “Rules-Based International Order” is on full display in Gaza
America’s seamless support for Israel’s pitiless onslaught on Gaza has both astounded and angered the world. War crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide have accumulated as the destruction and death have continued. The hypocrisy of the West as a whole is publicly on display on a daily basis. The Western media has performed as poorly Continue reading »
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Australia’s three wars
In a lead article last week in The Sydney Morning Herald the political and international editor Peter Hartcher declared that Australia was ’connected to three wars’, but only one of them would be measured in decades. He was referring to the conflict in Gaza and the war in Ukraine both of which ‘affect Australia’s security’. Continue reading »
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Racism: The unstated Australian agenda?
In the wake of the failed Voice referendum several topics are still attracting contentious debate. How significant was racism for the no case? Does the decisive defeat suggest that Australia remains chained to its heritage of White Australia? Many people think so. Continue reading »
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What happened to Indigenous Rights? The world will judge Australia harshly
The prolonged debate about the Voice to Parliament was dominated by the question about what rights should be accorded to our First Nations communities. It was, without doubt, the most potent argument advanced by proponents of the no case. By enshrining the Voice in the constitution, it was said, Aborigines and Islanders were to be Continue reading »
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This country has witnessed a counter-revolution against First Nations rights
The turn of events we have seen in the defeat of the Voice referendum is what appears to be a successful counter-revolution in Australia steered by the right wing think-tanks and the Murdoch press. The arguments which were mobilised in opposition to the Voice to Parliament has transported the nation back 60 years to Paul Continue reading »
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Pearls and Irritations: A dissident challenge to the West’s narrative control
Pearls and Irritations has been a source of enlightenment since its foundation in 2013. It has progressively increased in importance. Continue reading »
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Will a “shocking hurdle” defeat the Yes vote?
In a lead article published on the front page of The Saturday Paper on the 30th of September Rick Morton discussed the people who were planning to vote against the Voice. He remarked that focus groups conducted late last year revealed what he called ‘a shocking hurdle’ blocking the path of the yes vote. Almost Continue reading »
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Assimilation re-emerges
In her recent address to the National Press Club, Jacinta Price resuscitated the seventy years old policy of assimilation constructed by Minister for Territories Paul Hasluck. Continue reading »
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America’s “unique” relationship with Australia? Few countries are as gullible
Last week the Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet released a brief press release about Mr. Albanese’s forthcoming trip to Washington from the 23rd to the 26th of October which will be his first such visit since becoming Prime Minister. The enthusiasm of the members of Albanese’s staff seems to have run away with them. Continue reading »
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Pearls and Irritations: A dissident challenge to the West’s narrative control
Pearls and Irritations has been a source of enlightenment since its foundation in 2013. It has progressively increased in importance. Continue reading »
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The Rights of Indigenous People
The 13th of September 2007 was an important day in the history of Australian diplomacy although few people have heard of it. That was the occasion when veteran Aboriginal activist Les Malezer addressed the U.N’s General Assembly as the Chair of the Global Indigenous Caucus and introduced the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People. Continue reading »
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The Voice: walking with the Australian people for a better future
“For me, indigenous recognition won’t be changing our constitution so much as completing it.” – Tony Abbot, 2015. Continue reading »
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The Voice and the problem of race
Defeat for the Voice referendum will reverberate internationally. Surviving suspicions about our racist past will be refreshed. It will come at the same time as our renewed embrace of our ‘forever friends’ in Britain and the United States and our growing enthusiasm for closer ties with NATO. Continue reading »
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Australia’s real test
A few days after coming to power in 1972 Gough Whitlam declared that ‘Australia’s real test as far as the rest of the world is concerned is the role we create for our own Aborigines’. More than foreign aid programmes, more than any role the country plays in agreements or alliances, treatment of the Aborigines Continue reading »
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NATO and Australia: vital partners in a new world war?
Two recent news stories say it all. On the 4th of April the Sydney Morning Herald carried a report of an interview with Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, in which he claimed that Australia was a vital partner in the organisation’s campaign to confront the security challenges posed by China and in particular Continue reading »
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Penny Wong’s faltering foreign policy
Little that was distinctive about Penny Wong’s foreign policy has survived the signing of the AUKUS agreement. Continue reading »
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Australia’s future in Asia: bridge or spear?
The perceptive Singaporian diplomat Kishore Mahbubani remarked recently that: ‘Australia’s strategic dilemma in the twenty-first century is simple: it can choose to be a bridge between East and West in the Asian Century—or the tip of the spear projecting Western power into Asia.’ He clearly believed that it was a matter of deliberate choice, a Continue reading »
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Australia Day: The contention is inescapable
Contemporary Australia is not the wayward step-child of Britain. It was created in our own country. Is it time to establish an Australia Day freed from the dark shadows cast by the now discredited British Empire? Continue reading »
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Australia is addicted to fighting other people’s wars
How do we explain that half the Australian community thinks we should go to war with China? After twenty years of conflict in the Middle East, will our addiction to war and our insouciance about its consequences finally catch up with us in an American war over Taiwan? Continue reading »
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AUKUS is breathing new life into our oldest relationships – Marles
It will come as no surprise to readers of Pearls and Irritations that AUKUS continues to arouse contention while organised public opposition mobilises. Continue reading »
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War Memorial pressured into recognition of Frontier Wars
A watershed moment for Australia as the War Memorial, caught in a confluence of events, is pressured to announce its plans for recognition of Australia’s brutal Frontier Wars. Continue reading »
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The Defence Strategic Review: What suffering will we accept to keep America in first place?
Do we want to risk incalculable suffering to prevent America from slipping to ‘second place’ among the nations of the world? Without serious assessment of what cost we are willing to pay in the Defence Strategic Review – how much death and destruction we can tolerate – planning for war is little more than a Continue reading »
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Geography or history in determining our defence and foreign policies
I was living in London and had been referred to an eye specialist in Wimpole Street. In conversation he remarked that the problem with Australia was that it had too much geography and not enough history. This observation came back to me when I was thinking about the evolution of Australian defence and foreign policy Continue reading »
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The West is white
When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991 Gorbachev’s vision of a ‘common European homeland from the Atlantic to the Urals’ did not prevail. Rather than retract ,NATO expanded. Russia was too weak to halt the process but was useful as a potential adversary. Suggestions that it could actually join the alliance were peremptorily dismissed. NATO Continue reading »
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Why we need a new Mabo case
The Sunday Age on June 5th carried an article by Justin McManus who had been on Murray, or Mer Island, to witness the celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the High Court’s Mabo judgement. Discussions conducted during ‘yarning circles’ concentrated on finding a way forward from the 1992 decision. McManus reported that both Malcolm Mabo, Continue reading »
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Peter Dutton urging war with China
Last week Defence Minister Peter Dutton announced that, what he called a Chinese spy ship, had been discovered off the Western Australian coast farther south than any similar vessel had ever previously been seen. He didn’t inform his public that it had been observed 250 kilometres offshore and therefore 50 kilometres outside Australia’s Exclusive Economic Continue reading »
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Competing sovereignties and the voice to Parliament
Policy towards the First Nations has attracted very little attention during the current election campaign. The Labor party has given a commitment to holding a referendum to enshrine the voice to parliament in the constitution as proposed by the Uluru Statement of 2017. Continue reading »
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ANZAC’s contested legacy
The evidence suggests that the Federal government sees Anzac as an attractive tool to open a new front in the culture wars and one where the Labor party might well be wedged. Continue reading »
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At war with the autocrats
‘ I think we are in a contest’ President Biden declared in June last year, ’not with China per se but with autocrats, autocratic governments around the world ,whether or not democracies can compete with them in this rapidly changing 21st century.’ Continue reading »
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The Americans are coming! ASIO looks away as hate groups gain foothold
What does our security agency have to say about an insurgency linked to local fanatics who take their cues from Trump and the Republican right? Continue reading »