Letters to the Editor
Ending the Banality of Evil--Stand up and Question
November 22, 2024
Many of us have long suspected that opposition to the genocide against the Palestinians is more widespread than reported. But it is encouraging to see evidence of this opposition. Well done P&I. when the banality of evil was expressed in reporting the Adolf Eichmann trial, it was said that the root of this banality was a lack of questioning. Michael Davis PhD
michael davis from Mullumbimby
In response to: The Labor Government is morally moribund and scornful of international law
Indexation not the main game
November 21, 2024
Dear John. Thank you for your kind comments. Indexation has been applied to student loan debts since 1989. Recent high inflation has drawn attention to indexation, both how it is calculated and when it is applied. High indexation has certainly an issue - I hope I didn’t give the impression that I was dismissing it entirely - but in my view it is not the main game, which is the size of the debts to which indexation is applied. Indexation is much less of an issue in more normal inflationary environments; you’re not the first person to...
Damian Coburn from Australia
In response to: Indexation the killer
"Fairness and balance" in reporting genocide?
November 20, 2024
I am shocked by Andrew Podger's invocation of the slogan Fair and Balanced - formerly used by Fox News, to criticise Pearls and Irritations' coverage of Israel's disproportionate response to Hamas' crimes of October 7th, 2023. No surprise of course, that the Press Council, on whose board Mr Podger has sat, and whose standards he recommends, is funded by News Corporation. Israel itself has ensured that reporting from the Middle East is neither fair nor balanced by killing more journalists reporting from Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon since October 7 2023, than have been killed since the...
Gayle Davies from Armidale NSW
In response to: "Fairness and balance" in P&I reporting on the Middle East
Magnificent
November 20, 2024
John, Thank you for your simply magnificent response to Andrew Podger's total misconception of the momentous crimes being committed under Netanyahu's direction, and his fundamental ignorance of the role of an independent editor and commentator. Sincerely - Peter O'Keeffe
Peter O'Keeffe from Australia
In response to: ‘Fairness and balance’ in P&I reporting on the Middle East
How serious is Mr. Podger about the integrity of journalism?
November 20, 2024
I found the recent contribution by Andrew Podger to P & I, Fairness and balance in P & I reporting on the Middle East—putting it as politely as I can—to be curious. Not so politely, I might have used the description ‘paternalistic’ or, worse, the piece as one expressing “mock concern’ from one on high. Podger expresses sympathy for an impoverished electronic outlet’s built-in obstacle when it comes to meeting the standards to which respectable journalists hold themselves. He stresses the need to keep facts separate from opinion and to be fair and balanced, that is, to represent the...
Harry Glasbeek from Canada
In response to: ‘Fairness and balance’ in P&I reporting on the Middle East
Why would Walter Silvester lie?
November 20, 2024
Dear John, I have a problem with a story that appeared in P & I on 03/11 by Val Noone entitled Fake news, Melbourne 1966: about Pallottine Priest Father Walter Silvester. My problem is this: my wife's first husband was a former Pallottine Priest and was a close friend of Silvester's. He says Silvester was reluctant to talk about his U-Boat experiences but he did in private conversations tell him the story about them, including his version of saving the Russian sailors. He believes strongly that Silvester would not have lied to him as a close friend and...
Ian Robinson from Australia
In response to: Fake news, Melbourne 1966: migrant German priest was a U-boat commander who defied Hitler
The ABC, death by a Thousand Cuts
November 19, 2024
A very necessary and timely analysis of why the ABC is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the major policy debates within Australia. In pursuit of a small target strategy to avoid further cuts and interference in content production by ultra-sensitive governments it is achieving what those governments wanted: acquiescence and collaboration!!!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: “Disingenuous theatre dressed up as major news”:
Elect them and they will put up taxes manta
November 19, 2024
I often watch foreign movies and marvel at the infrastructure in other countries and marvel at how they can build it and we can’t. How we once did but now can’t. The standard answer is always we are a large country with a small population, we can’t build fast rail but we did build rail to link the capital cities all the way to Perth. We did build Telecommunications infrastructure to link the capital cites and Australia to the world. We did build Roads now a private company builds Toll roads and makes monstrous profits collecting tolls. The...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Detaching Australia from the death grip of the United States
Israel must be right, always
November 19, 2024
Andrew Podger's article proves the overwhelming success of the Israeli PR machine. The MSM offers no balance about the Middle East conflict - all we hear is October 7, October 7, October 7. John Menadue's response says it all really - if you need to know only Israel's side of the conflict (and amazingly that of most West countries including our own) stick with the Israeli hasbara, the ABC, Murdoch and 9. If you want to know what is actually happening stick with P & I.
John Dash from Spence, ACT
In response to: "Fairness and Balance" in P & I reporting on the Middle East
Australia should encourage Taiwan to reunite with China peacefully
November 19, 2024
I would suggest most Australian Chinese consider Taiwan as part of China and that a reunification of Taiwan with China is inevitable. The reunification can be peaceful or forced, but the Chinese will not kill the Chinese (Taiwanese). Australia should encourage Taiwan to reunite with China peacefully instead of provoking Taiwan to declare independence unilaterally. Australians like to consider Asian nations as enemies, first Indonesia, then Japan, and now China. Asian nations are on the rise; they are more powerful and will be more assertive. None of them express any desire to be enemy of Australia....
Stephen Wong from 5 Knight Place, Castlecrag, NSW, 2068
In response to: AUKUS, the China threat and Chinese-Australian communities
The State of Palestine
November 19, 2024
If we can define Palestine as historic Palestine, or all the land south of Lebanon, north of Egypt and between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, then, yes, a State of Palestine is the best idea. This new entity would be based on one adult/one vote, full equality before the law and the right of return granted to all those displaced during and since the original Nakba. Any plan to split, or to keep split, historic Palestine (this bit for me, that bit for you) is as doomed to eventual failure as is the current arraignment.
Hal Duell from ALICE SPRINGS
In response to: Act now: The case for UN membership for Palestine is overwhelming
Many were prepared to arm themselves
November 19, 2024
Admittedly, I'm of the political left and still maintain the rage I felt when Whitlam was illegally removed from governing Australia. I call it The Dismissal, yet have always considered it a coup. Whitlam had faults. After all he was a man. He and his government also made some mistakes that his devotees frowned at BUT Whitlam was a statesman and carried out reforms that were almost revolutionary. He was a threat to the US and UK and he took most things in his gigantic stride. When he made his monumental speech, there were thousands of Australians -...
Diana Rickard from Tumbling Waters NT
In response to: Coups are not electorally disqualifying, just look at the dismissal
They don’t care
November 19, 2024
Geoff Davies reminds us of the contempt with which the fossil fuel industry treats the planet, and its residents. Add the new administration in the USA to those fossil fuel magnates and the full catastrophe is revealed. Trump’s pick for Energy secretary Wright is critical of clean energy “liberal and left wing groups” for their “top down approach”. He happens to have interests in Australia’s Beetaloo Basin. It is hard to see how Wright’s company Liberty Energy, backer of Empire Energy, in partnership with Tamboran, is not the exemplar of a “top down approach”. They received $28.7 million in ‘grants’...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: They spit in our faces
Fairness and Balance
November 19, 2024
Dear Editor, I read the recent article by Andrew Podger, “Fairness and balance in P&I reporting on the Middle East” and John Menadue’s response with keen interest (see: https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/fairness-and-balance-in-pi-reporting-on-the-middle-east/) . It provides a civil but acute exchange, which immediately made me recall Edgar Snow, the remarkable American author of the best-seller, “Red Star Over China”, first published in 1937. Snow was regularly criticized for lack of balance in his reporting on the rise of fascism, which prompted this reported response: “In this international cataclysm brought on by fascists it is no more possible for any people...
Richard Cullen from Hong Kong
In response to: Fairness and balance in P&I reporting on the Middle East
Tomorrow never comes
November 15, 2024
Ask, in Spain, when a job will be done, and you will be told ‘manana’ – meaning tomorrow. Ask again the next day: same answer. Tomorrow never comes. Manana is clearly the mantra for our governments when asked about when they’ll tackle our climate crisis effectively. They might take modest steps to take the heat out of environmental protests, but then they let the issue slip. Grasping the climate nettle might have been pretty straightforward thirty years or more ago, when the crisis now unfolding before our eyes was predicted by so many environmental scientists; but it would have...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Environmental breakdown: We have been warned
Australia must be bold on climate
November 15, 2024
Geoff Davies' basic point is that the big fossil fuel corporations in Australia will do anything to protect and increase shareholder return including murder. His solutions are most interesting, but I'm adding some practical measures. At the current UN COP29 on climate, our Australian team must be bold and strong for ending both our fossil fuel subsidies and exports (via punishing levies and incentives for renewables); plus increasing rich countries' funding for clean energy in poor countries. Back home, during the next few pre-election months, the federal government must then also develop a bold, strong mandate by adding...
Barbara Fraser from Burwood, Vic
In response to: To save the planet: Disable this global consumer-corporate machine
Indexation the killer
November 15, 2024
For context, here is a tweet I wrote on November 3: My 27yo daughter's #HECS debt is now about 20% greater than when she finished her bachelor's degree at UTS, and she has been making payments on it since 2020 — so quite obviously is battling just to keep up, let alone get on top of it. #auspol Damian Coburn's excellent contribution on the government debt load our children carry did not specifically mention the indexation of the debt to CPI rises, but my daughter is adamant that they are the killer. Was indexation always in place?...
John Hampshire from Hurlstone Park
In response to: One cheer for student loan changes
Protecting the powerful
November 15, 2024
We have seen instance after instance of the government protecting the powerful and hand-wringing (if lucky) over the powerless. Can someone explain the latest mind-exploding mystery to me as to why it proposes not to publish the sealed chapter from the Robodebt Royal Commission believed to have referred six public servants for criminal or civil prosecution (essentially quashing any further proceedings against anyone responsible for the unlawful scheme where people had died), yet refused to drop criminal charges against Richard Boyle who was able to reveal government misconduct (thus protecting the government and the public)?
K Ma from Australia
In response to: The Discarded
Just who are the elites?
November 15, 2024
Let’s be clear, the ‘elites’ which the right is in the habit of conjuring up as the root of our problems are exemplified by the plutocrat cabal attending Trump’s after party, including Gina Rinehart, Elon Musk and crypto currency hopefuls. They are the moguls who direct from their boardrooms the trillion dollar global arms market. The fossil fuel barons, such as Elnur Soltanov, Chief Executive of Azerbaijan’s COP29, who hawk their wares even from inside the COP29 energy forum. They are the CEOs of fossil fuel companies whose main job is to protect their interests and keep profits flowing to...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Like Kamala, Albanese doesn’t seem to get it.
The Australian cringe
November 15, 2024
The cultural cringe that forced so many of our artists half a century ago to head to both the UK and the US in order to demonstrate their talent, and have it first accepted by those beyond our shores, is at the heart of the current 'thinking' that drives our defence policy. The mindset that we just aren't good enough is alive and well. There isn't any justifiable reason to continue to hang on to America's apron strings. We are a nation in our own right. Our national security would be far better served if we were to maintain...
Peter Hehir from Rozelle. Sydney
In response to: Australians pierce the foreign policy propaganda of both major political parties
Probing our ignorance
November 15, 2024
Thank you Paul for your perceptive reading of such perceptive polling which requires us now to go deeper to find the right questions to probe how the dissenting sentiment identified by the Herald Resolve poll, for all its virtue, ignores how we are already inked in to the major military dust-up in which we don't want to be involved! IOW: thanks for reiterating this point but now we set ourselves to plumb why our Commonwealth has to deal with our own persistently deep and ongoing political ignorance about our own fearful and precarious place in the South West Pacific....
Bruce Wearne from BALLARAT CENTRAL
In response to: Australians pierce the foreign policy propaganda of both major partiesAre we not
China Relations- Follow the Money
November 15, 2024
In reviewing various countries relation with China in many countries and states there is a clear tension between politicians and the business community. The United States is a prime example. If one believed the pronouncements of government and the mainstream media, relations are so poor that war is just around the corner if not imminent. This is borne out by the record profits of US defence contractors. One might also conclude that the Chinese economy is on the verge of collapse. The reality is very different. Recent trade figures published by CGTN showed trade values in the first ten months...
Barry Trembath from Rozelle, NSW
In response to: Does Australia Really Want to be the Spear Projecting Western Power
It's time to re-read Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
November 8, 2024
Dear editor, I was very surprised by the election result in the US, like everybody else I know. But then it started to make a kind of sense. There are a whole lot of people out there who are angry and resentful. They are angry at the US government, and have had enough very negative dealings with various government agencies to start reiterating Trump's rhetoric about the 'deep state'. They don't see the educated and professional middle classes coming to their aid, so all of Kamala's promises about being a president 'for everybody' would have been met with disbelief...
David Holm from Taipei
In response to: Trumping Australia
Australia must choose a safe climate future
November 8, 2024
I appreciated David O’Halloran’s humour and insights into the deeply disturbing outcome of the US election. In particular, I agree that it is imperative that Australia, a nation ravaged by the impacts of climate change, commits to leading on climate solutions. Our renewable energy superpower potential has long been touted. Perhaps this moment offers a renewed opportunity for us to exemplify ourselves on the global stage and, in so doing, build our own more self-reliant future. It is up to the Australian public to heed the warning the US offers and to elect representatives who will prioritise the...
Amy Hiller from Kew, Victoria
In response to: When life gives you oranges.......
The Discarded
November 8, 2024
Noel what you have said others have been saying the same and for a long time. As an example I recall John Menadue saying much the same on more than one occasion. Neo-liberalism has a lot to answer for and a vile outcome of it can be found in Robo-debt. Here was a government policy aimed at dehumanizing a group of people in order to obtain political advantage. I refer to this group as The Discarded. But The Discarded are the result of neo-liberalism and its advocates just walked away from Robo-debt and left The Discarded to pick up...
Peter Sheehy from Blackheath NSW
In response to: If you think the immediate future under Trump is horrific, just imagine the alte
Manned submarines are the past
November 8, 2024
A perceptive summary by John of the collective delusional propaganda cocoon in which we in Australia and the West more generally continue to live. That cocoon comforts us with the reassuring belief that a technology that is already four hundred years old (submarines) will ensure our dominance into a future of vast and largely unknowable technological change. With the advent of inexpensive unmanned underwater submersibles and the vast leaps being made in underwater detection of increasingly huge manned submarines, by the time we get these subs, assuming we ever do, they will be the aircraft carriers of today. Increasingly...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Does Australia really want to be the “tip of the spear”, projecting Western power
The implosion of a hollowed out regime?
November 8, 2024
In May, before she and Macron met Xi, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said she wanted trade with China that's “fair and not distorted”. Well hello, isn't that the free market in action, if another country can sell goods cheaper than you? Now, Trump wins. Together, these events should have been the anticipated end point of free market, neo-liberal economics and its “survival of the fittest” individualism masked as “freedom”. US law allows millions to be crushed by the wealth of a tiny minority, paid less than living wages by those who get rich at their expense. Little...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Who should be the next emperor of the violent global imperium?
Brian Toohey is right about Rudd
November 8, 2024
Brian Toohey is spot on about Rudd. Rudd has never been a balanced character in almost anything. His bravado about China vastly exceeds his willingness to don the khaki to engage China on the battlefield he imagines.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Recall Rudd
Fossil fuel approvals undermine credibility
November 8, 2024
As Noel Turnbull revealed, the latest Zurich-Mandala Climate Risk Index found that “half of Australia’s tourism sites and airports are currently in the highest three climate risk categories.” However, while tourism is a significant employer, it is not a key industry on which life depends. Food, water and shelter are needed to survive and in its report, Food Fight: Climate change, food crises & regional insecurity, the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group concluded that “Australia is ill-prepared for the security implications of climate-change enhanced global food crises” and recommended that “an urgent review should be undertaken of Australia’s food...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: What the insurance experts say about Queensland’s climate plans
Thanks, Margaret Reynolds
November 8, 2024
Margaret Reynolds' call for Australia to take real action against Israel was a valuable contribution. She shows the power of lucid, well-evidenced, humane and balanced arguments, rather than strident and skewed positioning. Thank you.
Helen Swift from Perth, W.A.
In response to: The Australian Government must impose sanctions on Israel NOW
Democracy in America
November 8, 2024
Dear Editor, Humphrey McQueen's recent article appears rather incongruous with Alexis de Tocqueville's much referenced worldview.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill Brisbane
In response to: What’s this American democracy crap?
"WTF just happened?"
November 8, 2024
Did the beginning of the end of neo-liberalism just happen? One can hope. The US result looks like the ultimate endpoint if the wealth of a commonwealth is not evenly enough distributed. The Democrats can be thankful they were voted out of office. Obscenely wealthy Marie-Antoinette was beheaded! Not that the Republicans are any less to blame. Trump won't help those left-behind but, by voting, the left-behinds look like destroying the system. We can but hope that out of the ruins something better will come. Could it happen in Australia? Once, we had proper essential and social services....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: If you think the immediate future under Trump is horrific, just imagine the alternative
Social Media self-censors Evidence of Genocide
November 6, 2024
The deletion / non-reporting of irrefutable facts of Zionist genocidal activities is not restricted to the MSM. In many MSM publications, X [nee Twitter] is heavily used to carry articles, photographs and videos of events of all descriptions. I think there is a reasonably widespread belief that, despite the absence of any form of 'authentication' (actual or de facto) of sources, the broad scope of reporting would cover the gamut of facts.. Absolutely, it is not so. I have seen now two cases in about the last fortnight of something reported on 'X' (and referred in P&I '5-Minute...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Val;e
In response to: Anomie: Enabled by Western media, Israel’s lies have become a galloping cancer
Susie's contribution to humanity
November 4, 2024
My sincere condolences to you, John, and your family for the passing of Susie. What a force you both have been in the fight for humanity and justice in our troubled world. I trust the support of your family and the readers/contributors of P&I will somehow soften the grief that you must surely be feeling. I think we all wish we could have known Susie.
Reb Halabi from Australia
In response to: Vale Susie Menadue
The persecuted become the persecutors
November 4, 2024
Reb Halabi like many of us is appalled about how white has become black in Palestine. With what is going on in places like Beit Lahiya in north Gaza right now, it seems that the so-called “generals’ plan” formulated by Gadi Eisenkot, and the Dahiya doctrine are operational right now. Mass murder by the day, full scale destruction of buildings and infrastructure, separation of men from women and forced dispossession, depopulation and forced marches. The bitter irony is that Israeli is taking out on the Palestinians what European Jews experienced from the Nazis. Reinhard Heydrich, who headed the Wannsee...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: The alpha and omega of tyranny
Know the difference
November 4, 2024
An excellent article from Cameron Leckie. But for too many people - especially politicians an journalists - the takeaway first base starting point has to be this, in big bold letters... ... the ‘rules-based order’ is a euphemism for empire. Specifically, the imperial-system led by the United States as opposed to the international system centred on the United Nations and International Law. Anyone not knowing and understanding that difference is at very real risk of very poor decision making.
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: At the altar of the rules-based order
Netanyahu is not the problem
November 4, 2024
In his Pearls and Irritations item of 4 November - ‘Netanyahu has been leading the United States into disaster … ‘ - Jeffrey Sachs, has put the boot on entirely the wrong foot. He is not alone, simply joining the like chorus of otherwise knowledgeable commentators who should know better. Seen against a more informed backdrop of American behavior in the Middle East where it has, since the installation of its Shah in Iran in the 1950’s, stirred an egregiously infamous cauldron of death, destruction and dispossession from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, the current behavior of Netanyahu should be...
Howard Debenham from Australia
In response to: Netanyahu has been leading the United States into disaster after disaster after disaster
The remarkable courage and strength of MND patients
November 1, 2024
Since I retired on the mid north coast of NSW, I have been a palliative care volunteer for 10 years. During that time I have sat with three MND patients for many months, all of whom displayed remarkable courage and strength like Susie. My aunt in England took 12 months to die of MND and her distraught doctor husband flew to Australia to assure us it is not heredity. I hope others who have watched love ones die slowly of this disease will find comfort like I do from this knowledge. I have been told since the...
Sherry Stumm from Rainbow Flat, NSW, 2430
In response to: Vale Susie Menadue
We must overcome climate apocalypse scepticism
November 1, 2024
Julian Cribb has highlighted the apocalyptic threats that the world faces, within the present century and possibly within the current decade, from the Arctic ice melt, and from the slowing ‘Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation’ (the ‘Gulf Stream’) as a result of increasing global warming from our ever-growing carbon emissions. These threats are real, and their likelihood increases daily. Why, therefore, is the world doing so little to prevent them? Dorian Lynskey posits, in his book ‘Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell about the End of the World’, that we ignore apocalyptic alarms because we have become enured...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: When the oceans run amok: “We ought not to ignore such clear indicators of an imminent collapse
Native forest logging is ecocide
November 1, 2024
Thank you to Professor David Lindenmayer for multiple strong evidence-based arguments supporting a rapid end to native forest logging in NSW (“The NSW native forest logging industry is unsustainable – a fast transition out is needed now”, 19/10). That any form of logging is occurring in any native forest, anywhere in Australia in 2024 is utterly absurd and should arguably be punishable as ecocide. Trouble is, if Victoria’s situation is anything to go by, even if we did receive a commitment from the NSW government to end native forest logging, rogue logging would continue under other guises. We...
Amy Hiller from Kew, VIC
In response to: The NSW native forest logging industry is unsustainable – a fast transition out is needed now
My deepest condolences
November 1, 2024
Dear John, We have not met, nor Susie. May I offer my deep condolences to you and your family with Susie's death. My wife, Jenny's father, a Sydney surgeon, and my uncle died similarly. And, with my wife having secondary progressive MS, separately, I also understand very well the role of caring you would have undertaken. I do not know how you managed to do both so well. Best wishes as you navigate the future. And all the while benefiting our heritage exposing national and international truths. Warm regards, Philip Gardiner
Philip Gardiner from Moora, Western Australia
In response to: Vale Susie Menadue
Wild Weather Is Already Upon Us
November 1, 2024
I am an 81 yr old semi-retired Trauma Therapist and former Maritime Rescue Worker who was aware twenty five years ago that it would be better to move inland away from the sea. My Cranial Osteopath sent this article to me because while he silently treats me, I sometimes burble on about The Gulf Stream. I cannot help it and have been saying since 2005 that If the melt from Greenland cools the Gulf Stream there will be instant Ice Age in the UK. I'm a positive thinking person yet sometimes I burst out with things...
Maria Polmeer from Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. Australia
In response to: When The Oceans Run Amok
Gong irony
November 1, 2024
While working in Home Affairs, I requested Secretary Pezzullo’s permission to nominate the soon-to-retire Assistant Secretary of the Multicultural Affairs Branch for an Order of Australia award. She had spent some twenty years leading Australian multicultural policy and contributing to community relations, for which she was universally respected. She had her own remarkable migrant and personal journeys, contributed strongly to a local Canberra community organisation, and raised her children (I believe) as a single mother. A person of integrity, high standards and inspiring energy. The Secretary’s response was a surprising ‘no’. He told me that excellent and dedicated public...
Richard Manderson from Canberra
In response to: The bell has tolled for Pezzullo’s gong
Voluntary end-of-life refusal of fluids and food
November 1, 2024
Brian Polkinghorne's suggestion of fasting as a peaceful way to die deserves amplification. Voluntary refusal of fluids and food (VRFF) forms a major part of the late Rodney Syme’s posthumously published book, “A Completed Life” (available through the public library system in South Australia). Syme was a euthanasia advocate who spent many years consulting with and helping people avoid unnecessary suffering at end-of-life. He considered VRFF to be a humane and legal end-of-life strategy in situations where the dying person is ineligible for Voluntary Assisted Dying because they are not mentally competent enough to sign the paperwork or...
Peter Schulz from St Agnes
In response to: Another perspective on end-of-life
Vale Susie Menadue
November 1, 2024
My sincerest condolences to John and his family. Life indeed will not be the same - but although I never had the pleasure of meeting Susie, I think she would have been delighted with the success of P&I and pleased to know how many people benefit from it's articles through knowledge, interest and real (as opposed to fake) reporting in articles. Thank you for helping to develop and produce P&I; rest in peace - and my warmest wishes to Susie's family.
Barbara der Kinderen from Gulmarrad NSW 2463
In response to: Vale Susie menadue
Condolences
November 1, 2024
Ambassador Menadue, My condolences to the passing of Susie Menadue. One’s life partner is irreplaceable. Susie built Pearls and Irritations with you. I believe she would want you John to expand and advance the service in memory of Susie. Sincerely, Warief D. Basorie Depok, Indonesia
Warief Basorie from Depok City, Indonesia
In response to: Vale Susie Menadue
Labor hasn't done it on its own
November 1, 2024
Labor has gone from promising in Opposition to end the swindle to denying it exists in government. A variation on disappointment with Labor on education continues across many areas. And in some cases wouldn't have gone as far as Labor did had it not been for Independents pushing for more and in the end Independents standing up and saying changes still haven't gone far enough. The Independents don't often get credit for any improvements because no one sees them talking to Labor (or Liberal or Greens) MPs on the phone, at meetings, and face-to-face inside the hallowed but...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Labor’s amendments to the Education Act fail to ensure full funding of Public Schools
Livin' in the Land of the Sycophants
November 1, 2024
What with all the media song ‘n’ dance Charlie’s back in the land of the sycophants Thought it would a be a cake walk Until a girl called Lidia spotted her chance She harangued poor Charlie with wrathful critique He with no paddle was way up shit creek All the while under the international media glare The torrent of abuses from colonialists so bleak The continued refusal of moolawa to tell the truth The stolen children, the persecution of our youth The lock ‘em up and throw away the key mentality Murder, rape, genocide crimes of humanity so...
John Bentley from TONGALA
In response to: Lidia, I’m angry, too
Call it what it is
October 25, 2024
Isn't it time we called the situation in Palestine what it really is? It's not only Israel committing genocide, it is ISRAEL AND THE USA who are JOINTLY committing genocide. We would not be seeing what we are seeing now if the USA stopped supplying Israel with arms and funding. The USA is 100% complicit. We should all be calling on the Prime Mister to condemn the actions of both Israel and our master, oops, ally, the USA. Plus, Australia should implement BDS immediately. We did it for South Africa. What is our justification for not...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The world must stop the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza