John Menadue
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
John's recent articles
24 February 2022
Raymond Tint Way and Paul A. Komesaroff. Australia and the international community must respond to the brutality of Myanmar's Junta
Over the last year the world has watched in horror as the Myanmar army, after its attempted coup on February 1st 2021, has carried out brutal massacres, torture, rape and arbitrary arrest of the democratically elected government and civilian population
23 February 2022
Richard Bardon: Red scare red herring torches Aus-China university collaboration
Australian universities are curtailing collaboration with scientists from or linked to China, on pain of having their grant funding rescinded under the Morrison governments Australias Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Act 2020.
19 February 2022
Julie Hollar.This is US economic coercion with hunger and death everywhere in Afghanistan
US media ignores Biden stealing billions from the Afghan people. Our White Man's Media only tells about Chinese coercion.
19 February 2022
Eve Ottenberg. Bigotry Unbound: the US media's anti-China propaganda blitz
Hate crimes against Asian Americans mushroomed over the past two years. According to the Guardian, they jumped 567 percent in San Francisco since 2021, and you dont have to look far to find out why. The main reason is, quite simply, incessant China-bashing in the mainstream media. The anti-China hysteria has spread like measles.
17 February 2022
RICHARD MOORE AND MELISSA CONLEY TYLER. How do we get Australia to be a strategically coherent actor?
The prize of strategic coherence is to have Australia's overarching policies, programs and key agencies pulling broadly in the same direction in pursuing its international policy.
14 February 2022
DAVID CLUNE. Rookie leaders take comfort from NSW byelections
The Coalition must be relieved that the swings were not as high as some of the recent punishing rebukes administered to long-term governments.
12 February 2022
Changes at Pearls & Irritations
From Tuesday 15 February Michael West Media and Pearls & Irritations will be going separate ways.
12 February 2022
Why doesnt the West care? World remains silent over crisis in Ethiopia
As thousands die and millions suffer, an Australian nurse is desperate to shine a light on a humanitarian crisis in Africa.
12 February 2022
Dave Lindorff. How can Blinken and the US accuse any nation of violating the 'Rules Based International Order'?
Rules-based order? What the F**k is Blinken talking about? The US makes its own rules.
6 February 2022
Russian Congress of Intellectuals..An Open Letter to the Russian Leadership.February 4, 2022
Our position is simple: Russia does not need a war with Ukraine and the West. Such a war is devoid of legitimacy and has no moral basis.
23 January 2022
Society has to create the framework in which business works not the other way around
Business leaders and the politicians that enable them must be put on notice that they must serve society, not the other way around.
22 January 2022
XI JINPING: Path for humanity is peaceful development and co-operation
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday delivered a special address to the 2022 World Economic Forum virtual session. Following is the full text of the address.
18 January 2022
Big Media's diet of deceit and diversions
A small group of elites determines what ordinary people do not see or hear.
12 January 2022
CLUB OF ROME: Rigor and care with language matters in examining separatist movements in Xinjiang.
Much of the debate concerning Xinjiang is packed to the brim with information that lacks institutional verification and credibility. Indeed, the Islamic world itself has largely not supported these charges.
7 January 2022
What a shambles: a tangled net for Scott Morrison and Novak Djokovic
The debacle surrounding the tennis ace is good media fodder. Chiefly, it shows that Morrison's right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.
2 January 2022
Lobbyland: The scourge of powerful special interests and lobbyists
Lobbyists have exceptional access to our Parliament and politicians, and they're not acting in the public interest.
29 December 2021
The United States empire is almost always at war
The US empire is addicted to a belief in its exceptionalism, grounded in aggression both at home and abroad, and finding it hard to admit mistakes.
21 December 2021
Through US base at Pine Gap, Australia is complicit in US war crimes
As Australia locks itself into the US military machine, we increase the risks of retaliatory attacks on Pine Gap in the Northern Territory.
20 December 2021
Arrogant US resents China for resisting its 'right' to interfere
What the US most resents about China is that it is successful in delivering results for its own people and resists US interference.
28 November 2021
Andrew Podger- Public servant Angie McKenzie as FOI act delegate has no right to anonymity from Senator Rex Patrick
Senator Rex Patrick may have gone too far in personalising his criticism of Angie McKenziebut, as the delegate making the decision regarding his request for documents under the FOI Act, she has no right to anonymity.
20 November 2021
White Man's Media propaganda multiplier; the three global news agencies
Legacy media in the US, UK and Europe frames and conditions our thinking and actions. They frame and condition the stenographers in the Australian media.
19 November 2021
Wang Huning, the Chinese Communist who understands America
But does anybody in Washington DC understand China like Wang Huning understands America?
16 November 2021
Our White Man's Media again hides important Australian news about China
China has just signed two major LNG contracts with US companies at the expense of Australia. There has been little mention of it in any Australian media.
14 November 2021
Housing should be for use value, not exchange value
Housing policies should reflect the sort of society we want to live in, not the quest for wealth accumulation.A home is not a commodity.
11 November 2021
Paul Keating's speech is a teaching moment in a fraught relationship with China
Former prime minister Paul Keating's National Press Club address showed just how badly awry Australia's policies on Asia have gone.
6 November 2021
China/US sign a mega LNG deal at Australia's expense.
What a relief to know that the US has our back in our trade dispute with China! First it was agricultural products, Now LNG. Our great mate is stealing our lunch again. The Chinese and Americans must be both laughing at us.
5 November 2021
America's never-ending war on the world
Driven by its military-industrial complex the United States depends on continual war. As the War on Terrorism peters out a new enemy is invented China.
29 October 2021
What is going on in China?
How China made 'common prosperity' a major political issue for Xi Jinping and his government.
23 October 2021
The Australian retreat from Asia is becoming a rout.
Nine years ago I gave the speech below. I was then pessimistic about our understanding of Asia. The situation has got markedly worse since then, writ large in the unremitting attacks on China stemming from ignorance and parochialism, particularly in our White Man's Media.
15 October 2021
Scott Morrison shames Australia with abdication to the National Party
Scott Morrison has abdicated any pretence of leadership on climate change, allowing the National Party which has turned its back on farmers to hold Australia to ransom.
15 October 2021
A new home for Saturday's good reading and listening guide
Ian McAuley's guide to good reading and listening for the weekend has moved.
11 October 2021
A note to our generous supporters
We've been encouraged by the response to our callout last week for donations.
11 October 2021
Even renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky reads Pearls and Irritations
As Pearls and Irritations continues to grow, our articles are being noticed far and wide, including by linguist Noam Chomsky in a recent lecture.
9 October 2021
The new magazine publishing the best podcast interviews in print
Introducing The Podcast Reader, a new magazine for the intellectually curious that features select transcripts from the worlds best long-form podcasts.
8 October 2021
We need independents to hold the balance of power after the next election
The major parties are not serving Australia well, and voters know it. If independents held the balance of power in the House of Representatives, it would be a good thing for our democracy.
29 September 2021
John Menadue: From deputy sheriff to the 51st state of the Union
Paul Keating put it succinctly yesterday in The Sydney Morning Herald that we are selling our country to another power. Or, as former ambassador John McCarthy put it, we are moving from being a country with the self-respect of true independence.
22 September 2021
What does the ALP stand for?
Apart from Paul Keating and a few others I do not know what the Australian Labor Party (ALP) now stands for on key issues.
1 September 2021
Blessed are the rich in securing vaccines
Australia is among the rich, western countries siding with Big Pharma to thwart the widespread manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines.
22 August 2021
White Man's Media or the Western Media Hegemony: a series commencing next week
Fearful of our region, Australia has clung to remote imperial powers, first the UK and now the US. Similarly our derivative main stream media clings to the legacy media of the UK and the US. We have a White Man's Media in which the hegemony of the UK and particularly the US is entrenched. This hinders our task of equipping ourselves for our future in Asia.
21 August 2021
Afghanistan: the graveyard of empires and the opium poppy (Repost from May 9, 2018)
They have all failed to conquer Afghanistan the Greeks, Indians and more recently, the British in the mid 19th Century and the Soviets in the late 20thCentury. And now the US empire is failing to subdue the tribes of Afghanistan despite enormous cost of people and treasure. What has not received much attention is that the Taliban depends very heavily on the opium trade which finds its market in the US and other developed countries. That opium trade determines what happens in Afghanistan and not military intervention.
7 August 2021
The gold medal for anti-Beijing hysteria goes to the NYT for its unhinged attack on Chinas Olympic success
Not even Chinas sporting excellence can pass without comment in the United States, as a highly critical article in the New York Times on Thursday demonstrated. Its typical of the hysteria culture thats now rife in America.
3 August 2021
Privatise for efficiency, or not at all
Privatising assets without allowing for competition or regulation creates private monopolies that raise prices, reduce efficiency and harm the economy.
3 August 2021
Australia and the White Mans Media. A repost from 2015
I have said many times that a person from Mars who read and listened to Australian media would conclude that we are an island parked off London or New York with little relationship to Asia. Our news and media coverage is so derivative, relying heavily on the BBC, CNN and other news and entertainment houses in the UK and the US. We are recyclers. Tony Abbott delights in our being part of this Anglosphere with its British monarchy, Sirs and Dames.
26 July 2021
Human rights in Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel to be examined.
President of Human Rights Council appoints Members of Commission of Inquiry
24 July 2021
Biden promised diplomacy, but hes overseeing military buildup against China
Shortly after Joe Biden took office, the president delivered a speech at the U.S. Department of State, declaring, I want the world to hear today: America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy. By leading with diplomacy, we must also mean engaging our adversaries and our competitors diplomatically, where its in our interest, and advance the security of the American people. Instead of de-escalation with China, we are witnessing an enormous U.S. military buildup through massive military exercises in the Pacific.
22 July 2021
Gareth Evans versus the Surveillance State: application of the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme
See below a letter exchange between Assistant Secretary, Integrity and Security Division Attorney-Generals Department and ANU Professor Gareth Evans and former Foreign Minister regarding the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme. Gareth Evans did not give his response to the media but did copy his reply to a number of former Cabinet, diplomatic and ANU colleagues, from which it found its way into yesterdays The Australian. Some of the story being out, he has now agreed to put the full exchange on the public record. His colleagues enthusiastically welcomed his robust response.Several have offered to visit him in prison.
22 July 2021
Pegasus-Indias Watergate moment
A journalist hacked by Pegasus says he will survive, but Indian democracy may not.
17 July 2021
The CCPs greatest strength is Self-Reinvention
An advocate for China argues the party's capacity for renewal has kept it at the vanguard of the nation's youth.
17 July 2021
Russias vaccine curse
The Sputnik V vaccine was an incredible achievement for Russian science. The measure of success, however, will depend on the ability to vaccinate a majority of the Russian population in order to reach herd immunity.