Letters to the Editor
Whom can I believe – the NPC or the journalist?
October 6, 2025
After reading Chris Hedges’ article in Pearls and Irritations, I was angry and disappointed with the National Press Club. Ready to write an angry letter. Then today I read the response from the NPC. I am now angry and disappointed with Hedges for misrepresenting the situation. I feel like Donald Trump. I end up believing the last person who had my ear. If this disagreement exists over the facts of a fairly straightforward situation — and both parties are considered honest and trustworthy — where does that leave me in deciding what to believe about more complicated and more...
Carl Rathus from Brisbane
In response to: Chris Hedges – Statement by the National Press Club ( 4 October 2025)
Civilisation’s collapse not the end of the world
October 6, 2025
Our planet holds far too many people. We are destroying the uniquely stable environment of the past 12,000 years which has enabled civilisations to develop and thrive. We are bringing our civilisation’s collapse through not addressing existential issues now in plain sight. With civilisational collapse, our human population will inevitably shrink. Animal populations must also reduce – since 94% of animals now are domesticated livestock. Some domesticated animals might become feral; predators would thrive; the natural environment would re-establish itself, gradually burying remains of our lost civilisation. Thus life on the planet would rebalance – how much...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: 'Died of a delusion' – the fate of modern civilisation?
Our civilisation’s collapse is not yet inevitable
October 6, 2025
Julian Cribb argues that civilisational collapse will soon become inevitable. This collapse is focused on the human future, but necessarily includes the future for all life on Earth. Humans live in, and depend on, a healthy, rich ecology, but many societies have lived with the religious belief that they are chosen ones – that the world has been created for their benefit, with the implicit assumption that they are entitled to all that it contains. This sense of entitlement has led to the pillaging of natural resources that has characterised the world since colonial times. Colonising countries enriched themselves...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: 'Died of a delusion' – the fate of modern civilisation?
The lessons of history learned by the smart
October 6, 2025
A really interesting and thoughtful article that gives meaning to George Santayana's aphorism that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. China, largely due to its 4000-year civilisational history, is not doing what the West is doing. It is learning from the past and creating a culture that is not repeating the mistakes of the past, at least for the last 40 years. Mind you it has also been extraordinarily successful over thousands of years in avoiding foreign military and colonial involvements and that is serving them extraordinarily well. The vast and continuing expenditures...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Orwell foresees the 21st century
Fact against convenient fiction
October 6, 2025
The debt that Australians, who seek the uncomfortable truth rather than the convenient fiction, owe to John Menadue for his decision to create Pearls and Irritations is immense. The barren mainstream media landscape of Australia, that values fantasy over fact and obedience over questioning of authority, leaves little room for intelligent debate and doubt. This article is a great example of what escapes the boring and stultifying conformance of our media and seeks to provide an outlet for views that try to reflect the complex realities that we face, rather than the soothing inanities of the elites. ...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: South Korea’s anti-China protests
Truth as opposed to propaganda
October 6, 2025
The world owes Eugene Doyle an enormous debt as he finally strips away the tissue of lies, distortions, fabrications and mendacity that the West has surrounded 7 October 2023 with to turn the Israelis from the perpetrators into the victims. Eighty years of bastardization of the Palestinian people by the West, that created their suffering to excuse Western Holocaust guilt, can now be seen for what it is. Every pretence of civilisational and moral superiority is stripped away to reveal the corruption and moral vacuity of a dying Western empire. As Israel is run by European Zionists, it...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: 7 October 2023: What really happened? Part 1
National Press Club is only interested in status quo journalism
October 6, 2025
Does Australia have a fearless independent National Press Club to host challenging thought-provoking speakers like Chris Hedges, a world-renowned award-winning journalist? Or must we rely on an insular group of journalists more interested in status quo journalism that will never be questioned? The NPC's response to criticism of its decision to cancel the Hedges address is alarming because it tries to use that hackneyed “balance argument“ to justify its decision. How could any self-respecting journalist or media organisation provide “balance“ to Israel’s genocide and the murder of more than 67,000 civilians? Further, it is arguable that the NPC...
Margaret Reynolds from Richmond, Tasmania
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
No place for independent journalists to address the NPC
October 6, 2025
It was incredulous to hear that the National Press Club had cancelled the planned address by Chris Hedges. I would have thought that a press club would have been interested to hear from one of the most respected independent journalists with deep knowledge of the Middle East. And I am deeply troubled by the words .. and when more details of the address were made available we decided to pursue other speakers on the matter. in the NPC's media statement. Indeed, I would have thought that given the genocide in Gaza, the killing of over 270 Palestinians journalists...
Sawsan Madina from Sydney
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
National Press Club directors should hang their heads in shame
October 6, 2025
The letter below was forwarded to P&I. To Maurice Reilly and the directors of the National Press Club Your decision to cancel the 20 October address by prize-winning American journalist Chris Hedges is a disgrace and a betrayal of everything the National Press Club is supposed to stand for. Your website claims you are a vigorous champion of media freedom and a home away from home for journalists. Yet you refuse to have a highly-qualified speaker, who has rigorously documented the biggest deliberate slaughter of journalists in history — the murder of at least 278 reporters...
Judith White from Tweed Heads, NSW
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
Chinese EVs are an outcome of global innovation
October 6, 2025
A couple of days ago I tried to interest my 21-year-old daughter in the way many technologies had come together to produce the current offering of Chinese EVs. It is not dissimilar to how we ended up with the iPhone. I am an IT industry veteran who remembers working with individual transistors. It is not what exists now that I was holding out as our climate hope. It is how fast change happens when you reach these technology inflection points. I couldn’t see it when I was in my 20s, working in the mini-computer industry and the PC...
Peter Kendall from Ferny Grove QLD
In response to: We killed our car industry and now we're drafted to fight against Chinese EVs (again?)
An unlikely declaration of unconditional surrender
October 6, 2025
This ludicrous plan, in which Anthony Albanese so enthusiastically promotes his participation, is not only a betrayal of the Palestinians right to justice but also represents an unconditional surrender to the racist and criminal regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv. That Western leaders, who endorse this theft of the identity and human dignity of the Palestinians, can so pompously congratulate themselves on this derisory document could not more clearly demonstrate their racism and moral vacuity. Roll on the multipolar world where real civilisations supplant the poisonous legacy of the West!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: No justice or peace for Palestinians in Trump’s Plan
The farce of the rules-based international order
October 6, 2025
It's Humpty Dumpty again where the West takes that role and changes the meaning of words to suit itself. This article takes the role of Alice where she questions Humpty Dumpty on his propensity to change the meaning of words to suit his specific purpose. Humpty Dumpty ignores her and proceeds to apply his made-up rules to others but not to himself. For the West, Marx was right that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Israel’s interception of the Gaza aid flotilla is a clear violation of internati
Thoughtful article which raises many questions
October 6, 2025
This is a really interesting article that raises a whole range of issues that need to be, and in many instances are being, addressed by the Chinese Government. Sadly, one of the best measures of how societies are coping with these youth mental health issues is trends in the rates of attempted and actual suicide by Chinese youth. Fortunately, the Chinese Government appear to have recognised the stresses that cause this and have implemented measures that have resulted in a continuing decline in the rates over the last decade, in contrast to the US where the rates have been...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China’s youth: Between collectivism and the new individualism
The ICJ and Israel’s occupation of Palestine
October 6, 2025
Donald Rothwell writes: “Israel can certainly exercise control over the 12 nautical mile territorial sea off Gaza’s shores. Its closure of the territorial sea to foreign vessels would be justified under international law as a security measure, as well as to ensure the safety of neutral vessels due to the ongoing war.” I cannot see how that squares with the opinion of the ICJ that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal. Israel continues to deny Palestinians and others access to Palestine’s territorial sea, and has banned the construction of a UN-backed modern port in Palestine for 20 years....
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Israel’s interception of the aid flotilla is a clear violation of international
Greenhouse gas pollution v climate change
October 6, 2025
Climate change and emissions due to greenhouse gas pollution are referred to numerous times in this article. Yes, they are problematic. However, climate change is only one symptom of GHG pollution and yet it is used as the general name for the variety of adverse impacts due to GHG pollution. Climate change is hence a misnomer. When talking about it, please call it what it is: GHG pollution. Similarly, when using the word, emissions, please call it what it is: GHG pollution. The impacts are – all accept that we cannot live with pollution so it...
Con Karavas from Adelaide, South Australia
In response to: A fresh perspective on climate
The Albanese Government has been captured
October 6, 2025
As we continue to allow the Zionist lobby to dictate the terms of our public discourse on all issues relating to Israel, we can mark our passage down this road with a number of milestones. Or is that gravestones? Human rights, including the rights of women, children and the elderly? Only if they are Jewish. Freedom of the press? Only for Jewish outlets. Protection during a conflict for hospitals and schools? Same-same. The list goes on and on while the YouTube videos proliferate. That the National Press Club would cancel Chris Hedges' talk and consider replacing it with an...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal
Chris Hedges and the National Press Club
October 6, 2025
I, and the political group I belong to, have sent emails to the chief executive of the National Press Club, strongly protesting the cancellation of the proposed talk by Chris Hedges at the NPC. The subject was to be the betrayal of Palestinian journalists by the media. My protest concerned three elements: – given that foreign journalists are forbidden from entering Gaza, this talk represents a once in a lifetime opportunity for them — and us — to hear about the treatment of Palestinian journalists at the hands of Israel. – Chris Hedges is a highly experienced...
Jill Dixon from Melbourne
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
NPC and Chris Hedges
October 6, 2025
When the National Press Club decides that a leading authority on the Palestine question should not be heard by its members, Australians’ immediate question to the NPC is, why not? Having invited and then disinvited Chris Hedges from an event that promised to be booked out, the next question to the NPC is, who brought pressure on the club to do so? If Hedges is replaced by the ambassador of Israel, a former IDF officer, another question arises: who insisted on that choice? The Australian public is entitled to be concerned about the partisan censorship displayed, or...
Alison Broinowski from paddington
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby
No place for journalism at the National Press Club?
October 6, 2025
Why would the National Press Club decide to withdraw an offer for acclaimed journalist Chris Lyn Hedges to speak about his extensive experience reporting from and about the Middle East, the media’s role in a democracy and specifically how it has contributed to legitimising Israel’s genocide? The decision was made, according to chief executive Maurice Reilly, when more details of the address were made available. This is deeply shocking: a journalist of Hedge’s calibre is cancelled because his message is unpalatable? Balanced truth with the opportunity to lie, creates plausible deniability. This is why many are increasingly seeing...
Mary Kostakidis from Sydney
In response to: https://npc.org.au/chris-hedges-statement-by-the-national-press-club
Generative debunking of climate myths using AI
October 6, 2025
Christian Downie’s forthcoming book, Climate Obstruction, taking a global view, will complement Marian Wilkinson’s The Carbon Club (2020), which exposed the powerful forces shaping Australia’s poor response to climate change. The unrelenting misinformation has been effective. A 2020 University of Canberra study, cited at the current Senate inquiry into Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy, found that Australia ranks third in the world for climate denialism — 8% of the population — behind the US and Sweden. The global average is just 3%. While Downie is right to highlight the role of PR firms spreading climate misinformation...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: PR firms are spreading climate misinformation on behalf of fossil fuel companies
Acceptance of 'peace plan' beggars belief
October 6, 2025
What blindness, stupidity, or both roams the halls of global Western governments that not only assents, but applauds a peace plan concocted by a wanted war criminal coloniser and an megalomaniac narcissist, that has openly enabled the bombing of Gaza equivalent to six Hiroshimas? What Australian press institution dares to call itself a vigorous champion of press freedom and then cancels the appearance of Chris Hedges, a journalist with vast experience on the ground in Gaza, to allegedly replace him with the Israeli ambassador? The global tide has turned. And we, led by the Australian Government, are riding...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: No justice or peace for Palestinians in Trump’s Plan
Egypt and Gaza
October 6, 2025
Simon Tatz comments that Gaza shares a border with Egypt. It’s not clear why they refuse to assist Palestinians. I seek clarification of what he means. Does he mean Egypt should assist Israel in its ethnic cleansing of Gaza by taking more Palestinians than it already has? Or does he mean it should break the blockade imposed by Israel to assist Palestinians in Gaza? Or does he mean Cairo should take more than the medical evacuees it already assists? Or that it should provide more support to the Arab League and other entities to bring a...
Bob Pokrant from Fremantle
In response to: Sidoti needs to study comparative genocide
Another 20th century giant has left the building
October 3, 2025
As we slide deeper and deeper into the vortex of the 21st century, we’re farewelling more and more of the people who, through their intellect and character, have shaped the way we view the world in which we live. Jane Goodall joins Curie, Fleming, Gandhi and Einstein in that honoured pantheon. Through her work among our nearest cousins in their natural state, she confirmed we are risen apes, not the fallen angels our egotistical backstory would have us as. Whether this revelation is going to help us with the problem of living with each other and stabilising the climate...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: Jane Goodall, the gentle disrupter whose research on chimpanzees redefined what
How can something that has never existed end?
October 3, 2025
I totally understand Amy's concern but I think it is based upon an assumption that doesn't accord with historical fact. The truth is, the framers of the US Constitution were not creating a democracy. They were very clear that they were creating a republic. They deliberately wrote that constitution to prevent democracy, but to create an image that could be sold as democracy. All that has really happened under the Orange Donald is that any pretence of democracy has now been utterly eliminated.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Is this the beginning of the end for US democracy?
Western application of law of the sea
October 3, 2025
The UN convention on the law of the sea (which is international law), in force since 1994, has been entered into by 170 state parties and covers such matters as freedom of navigation. Under Article 19 of the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, a warship can sail within the 12 nautical-mile territorial sea of another nation's coastline “so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State. The US has refused to sign on to the convention but uses it constantly against China, which has signed on to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Israel intercepts Gaza Sumud Flotilla vessels: What we know so far
Silence is golden
October 3, 2025
Recently, a friend shared with me this quote, “When you put a clown in a castle he doesn’t become a king, but the castle becomes a circus. I have, for some time, been concerned how news about the US/Trump is dominating our local news, invading our news sovereignty if you like. I have imposed my own silence by tuning out local news which may work to the advantage of our local politics but I do miss the sports results.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Quantico’s verdict: The silence that stripped Trump bare
Mistake on shark nets
October 3, 2025
Your correspondent suggests that the early removal of shark nets in March this year could not have contributed to the fatal attack reported at Dee Why on September 6 because it occurred at the adjacent un-netted Long Reef Beach. In fact, Dee Why and Long Reef comprise a single stretch of sand pierced in the middle by a narrow lagoon opening close to which the shark net is placed. The shared Dee Why/Long Reef net is the same as for a single net for Curl Curl and North Curl Curl beaches and for Palm Beach and North Palm...
Graeme Stewart from Avalon Beach
In response to: Netted confusion
We have seen this movie before
October 3, 2025
An excellent analysis by Sawsan Madina of the so-called Trump-Netanyahu “peace plan” for Gaza. She notes: “We have seen this movie before: the Camp David Accord and Oslo Accords that brought neither justice nor peace. Evidence suggests the “peace plan” charade is just the latest update of a series of models to transform Gaza into a US-Israeli corporatized resort complex and economic hub. In March 2024, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner regarded Gaza as “very valuable waterfront property” which could “be cleaned up” by removing Palestinians, a vision of ethnic cleansing updated by Trump in February 2025 into the...
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: Peace without justice
Sidoti needs to study comparative genocide
October 2, 2025
Chris Sidoti should study comparative genocide. His claim that Rwandans and Jews could somehow escape genocide is historically incorrect. Australia, the US and other Western nations restricted Jewish immigration from Europe. The US infamously turned back the St Louis ship carrying German Jews. Many of its passengers were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps. As for Rwanda, I recommend Sidoti reads Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire. Sidoti might want to explain to where these people fled, and what happened to them. Gaza shares a border with Egypt. It's not...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: Sidoti and Saul on what we can and must do to stop the killing
The war criminal and the faux mathematician
October 2, 2025
Let’s have a recap shall we? A wanted war criminal enacting a genocide, and a president who is arresting and disappearing his own citizens, come up with a 20-point peace plan that involves no Palestinian input. A reminder that this is a war criminal, whose population at latest poll, showed 95% believed that not enough force or sufficient force had been used in Gaza, and a president who thinks that a 400% discount on eggs means you’re getting them at a discount. And we think these people are sufficient to create a peace plan? The coloniser and...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelb
In response to: Trump’s mongrel punt
The beginning of the end of the propaganda state
October 2, 2025
The US business and political elites set out over 100 years ago to eliminate any real democracy that might have emerged in the US. That was brilliantly illustrated by Alex Carey in his revelatory book Taking the Risk out of Democracy. Since the early part of last century, trillions have been spent by those elites on the most extensive and brilliant propaganda campaign to eliminate any possibility of democracy in the US. During that same period, billions have been spent by US and other Zionists to create a fantasy narrative of god-given Jewish rights to the land of Palestine....
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: ‘Stunning reversal’: New York Times poll finds US support for Israel has plummet
Heads I win, tails you lose!
October 2, 2025
You would think that we would have come to an understanding of the sheer mental and moral vacuity of the orange Donald. But apparently not! That the vast bulk of Western punditry and political leadership could not treat this dog's breakfast of a proposal with anything but derision indicates the extent to which Western civilisation has declined into fatuity and ineptitude. Only the mentally incapable could see it as anywhere near dealing with the substantive moral issues involved. But I guess that is most of us!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump’s mongrel punt
Agree truth is not hate, but...
October 2, 2025
Lama Qasem tells a powerful story and provides an insight into the most important perspective to look at when considering the experiences of Palestinian children. There is no question that treating people, and children particularly, in the horrible ways described will only perpetuate the cycle of hatred and violence that has cursed Palestine and Israel for 80 years. However I've read the prime minister's speech to the UN and I don't see anywhere that he says children are taught to hate. The word hate doesn't appear anywhere. It's a shame if the article's important message that truth is...
Rod Bower from Melbourne
In response to: Don’t mistake truth for hate, prime minister
Perpetual growth is indeed delusional
October 1, 2025
Julian Cribb is right to assert that the idea of perpetual growth on a finite planet is delusional. His estimate of a maximum sustainable global population of about two billion is also about right, though even that may be too high should climate change render much of the planet uninhabitable. Maps of the world at three degrees warming, that show regions that have become uninhabitable, are profoundly alarming. They include all of India and Pakistan, for example. And what if the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation shuts off? It means the end of agriculture in much of Britain and Ireland...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: ‘Died of a delusion’ – the fate of modern civilisation?
Decolonisation demands courage and vision
October 1, 2025
Henry Reynolds’ essay “Australia’s decolonisation runs aground” is a timely reminder of how far we remain from completing the work of decolonisation. He is right to note that our retreat from the republic, from structural recognition of First Nations, and even from re-examining our national symbols reflects not just public hesitation but a lack of political courage. What Australia needs most is leadership with vision. Our future cannot be shaped by leaders content with small steps or short-term calculations. We need politicians and other civic leaders willing to lift the national conversation, to imagine a republic, to embrace genuine...
Michael Cavanagh from Nambucca Heads
In response to: Australia's decolonisation runs aground
Lyons misreads the room
October 1, 2025
Lyons argues the absence of Arab leaders in the White House for the announcement of the Trump Plan “says everything”. Does it really? Arab leaders have publicly supported the plan. But they in no way represent the sentiment of the Arab public, so why make their support central? What about a Palestinian presence in the room? Does the Palestinian voice not count? Non-Palestinian Arab leaders have no greater right to determine Palestine’s future than Israel or the US. Lyons' use of the word “outmanoeuvred” is also problematic. It suggests an intellectual chess battle between Netanyahu and Trump, with Trump...
Jaron Sutton from Melbourne
In response to: Trump's peace plan shows Netanyahu has outmanoeuvred another American president
Possible over-generalisation
October 1, 2025
An excellent summary by Julian Cribb of the cancers eating away at the heart of the West, but it may be an exaggeration to apply it to all current civilisations. Much of what Julian alleges against civilisations is easily identifiable in the dying West, but is nowhere near as identifiable in some others. China is making huge and long planned strides in dealing with many of these threats and is willingly sharing those strides with the Global South. I share Julian's concerns, but am perhaps more optimistic given that other cultures have recognised the heedless rush of the...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: 'Died of a delusion' – the fate of modern civilisation?
We must expect more from our leadership
October 1, 2025
To say Albanese’s UN speeches were a disappointment would be an understatement. No one could miss the sycophantic pandering to the US within the first few minutes of the National Statement: “… international rules-based order owes much to the post-war leadership of the United States of America.” Does it? Should I mention the words weapons of mass destruction, Iraq and the illegal war waged by the coalition of the willing? Should I mention the last eight months? I, like Lama Qasem, was stunned when I heard, during the Palestinian Statehood address, Albanese say the children of Gaza...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Don’t mistake truth for hate, prime minister
Trump's plan for Palestine confounds belief
October 1, 2025
Trump's plan for Gaza is possibly the most overtly unfair, morally corrupt, ethically vacant, horrendous, hideous, self-centred, vacuous, vicious, pile of steaming Augean stable sweepings we have seen created in almost any of our lifetimes. There is a remote chance that a few people born before the Treaty of Versailles was penned still exist. Even the most cursory glance screams that the plan provides more avenues for the Israeli Zionist conquest to be resumed while Palestinians have any minuscule bargaining chips left to them. They are left naked, blindfolded, and nailed to the firing squad wall by this outrageous...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Here’s the full text of Trump’s 20-point plan to end Israel’s war on Gaza
Liar, liar, pants on fire
October 1, 2025
Notwithstanding the 32,000 proven and documented lies by Trump, the quite bizarre fact the world and the mainstream Western media are treating this plan as having any credibility at all suggests a level of self-deception bordering on insanity. The two people involved, one a compulsive liar and the other a treacherous, vicious and utterly morally vacuous genocider, surely must give pause to even the most naive and credulous observer. But apparently not!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Critics sceptical that Trump-Netanyahu peace plan will work as outlined
Courage absent!
October 1, 2025
Anthony Albanese is the personification of power without purpose. His place in Labor mythology will be that of the long-serving but achievement-less leader.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: https://johnmenadue.com/authors/henry-reynolds/
Admirable truth from John Lyons
October 1, 2025
With this single article , John Lyons again proves his integrity and professionalism as a journalist. We don’t see an analysis as hard-hitting as this of how Netanyahu has triumphed over Trump anywhere in the Western mainstream media landscape. Netanyahu — who is a truly evil man — will probably succeed because the Gazans have been reduced to desperation. Zionist Israel will pay in the long run – a rightly discredited and despised nation. Trump is a weak appeaser of Israeli fascism. He could not even protect his benefactor Charlie Kirk. Russia and China are right not to...
Tony Kevin from Canberra
In response to: Trump’s peace plan shows that Netanyahu has outmanoeuvred yet another POTUS
Preventing more Western-inspired destruction
September 30, 2025
Or alternatively this assistance to Iran could simply be a continuation of China's long game in assisting the creation of a world that can no longer be subjected to Western violence and control. Similar assistance is being provided by China to a number of countries that are again threatened by US attempts to destabilise, destroy or loot their patrimony. Just a thought!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China’s long game in Iran’s short war
Republic of privilege versus democracy
September 30, 2025
This is by far the best expose I have ever read of the fraud that the US is, or has ever been, a democracy. The intentions of participants in the Constitutional conventions were very clear. They overwhelmingly believed that those who own the country should govern it. They ensured that by reducing democracy into a theatre performance. Great article!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: What's wrong with America's democracy? There has never been one
Continued decline
September 30, 2025
An excellent, forensic disquisition by Jack on the manifold problems of an Opposition that thinks focusing on the past and trying to bring back the glorious 1950s, is a recipe for electoral success in a fundamentally changed world. It really reflects the desire of conservatives across the Western world to secure the future by returning to the certainties of a past age that has no chance, thank God, of returning. Currently, Labor offers no significant alternative in many policy areas and also seems to have a similar, if less urgent, fixation. In a sense, they are all desperately trying...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Will Hastie face his manifest destiny?
A sense of despair or one of opportunity?
September 30, 2025
Does Andrew Hastie have, as Jack Waterford wonders, “a sense of despair over the Liberals’ lack of direction and current failure to project anything much in the way of ideas or values”, or does Hastie see this failure as an opportunity? September poll results are in line with the May federal election, and yet there is a volatility in some quarters, perhaps most worryingly in the energy transition space, where Hastie has grabbed the anti-renewables baton from Peter Dutton and is running (with team Sky/Murdoch) to put spanners in the works. The gaining of social licence for renewables...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Will Hastie face his manifest destiny?
A tired and increasingly failing CIA strategy
September 30, 2025
The truth that all of us US vassal states continue to give every effort to avoid is that the Philippines, with the US assisted emergence again of the Marcos crime family, is just another US proxy funded, armed and trained by the US to prevent the emergence of a challenger to US world domination. Ukraine was one, as is Israel, the new government of Moldova, the Philippines, Nepal, Armenia and many others. Most have failed dismally to achieve their purpose. On the bright side for the US, it saves them having to send US soldiers to die in foreign...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Scarborough collision triggers Beijing’s strategic hardening
Democracy in Australia?
September 30, 2025
This article makes us ask, what about here? Anthony Albanese has just declared unilaterally at Balmoral that Australians are to have no referendum on a republic. Yet, within a day he was at the UK Labour Party conference lauding democracy. His government intends to bring down swingeing changes to freedom of information laws. His government has also relentlessly pursued two whistleblowers who ought to have been protected by any decent whistleblower law. Important elements of the surrender of sovereignty under AUKUS continue to be withheld from the Australian public. And the promised NACC had turned into a dead dog....
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: What’ wrong with America’s democracy? There has never been one
Changes in China
September 30, 2025
Thanks for your two China visit pieces. It's a while since I've been in China, so I imagine I would be even more startled by the advances since then, let alone your two years. I was particularly pleased because there is a startling absence — and I think a decline — in civil society contact with China. You know some of the reasons, probably much better than me. Universities/research organisations — now increasingly problematic on a number of dimensions — are one aspect. But also civil society groups like peace groups I am familiar with are either reluctant...
Richard Tanter from Berkeley, California
In response to: Message from the editor