Letters to the Editor
Always listen to mother.
October 25, 2024
King Charles’ mother made a hugely influential speech in 2011 at a state banquet in Dublin Castle, starting in Gaelic “A Uachtaráin, agus a chairde — President and friends. Pitjantjatjara is one of the most spoken and studied Aboriginal languages. What an impression the king would have made if he had started his speech at Parliament House with “Nyuku malpa palya, nganana manta milmilpatjara ngaranyi” - “My good friends, we are standing on sacred ground”. Craig Brown Eaglehawk Neck TAS
Craig Brown from EAGLEHAWK NECK
In response to: Thank goodness for Lydia Thorpe
Thank you for Susie
October 25, 2024
Dear John Menadue, We do not know you personally. But we feel we do; for your humanity, your determination to open the eyes and the hearts of your fellow Australians and for your love of truth. May we, therefore, offer you our deepest condolences for the passing of your partner in life and in idealism, Susie. You say that Pearls and Irritations would not have ever been launched and allowed to prosper without her; that she was the pearl and you were the irritation. What a splendid combination you made. And what a loss you must be feeling....
Jafar & Sandra Ramini from Fremantle WA
In response to: Vale Susie Menadue
US armed forces had the power to stop the massacre
October 25, 2024
I can only echo B’Tselem’s call. If we set some sort of crude realpolitik calculus of maximum proportionate response to October 7 of 5000 Palestinian lives, then by late 2023, US forces, and if necessary others, should have been deployed to stop further escalation and prevent Israel implementing the Dahiya doctrine. 42000 lives would have been saved (175000 if the journal Nature estimate is correct), as well as many years of reconstruction, and no spread to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. Sadly, the Biden administration failed to take the lead and act to restore peace, and create...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: The world must stop the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza
Robertson KC suggests a simple solution
October 25, 2024
Take away messages in the article were: “But what if we don’t need a head of state at all?” And again “.... do we really need a head of state at all?” “Rather than sovereignty resting in a monarch – whether elected as a president or inherited as a king – sovereignty should rest with the people through their parliament.” Geoffrey Robertson KC in his article in the SMH, 13 Sept 2022, “Australia has no need for a head of state, royal or not” suggests that without changing how our PM is appointed, he/she becomes our...
Con Karavas from 0418 181 717
In response to: Our vision of a republic must be an all-encompassing one
Politicians and media shunning the truth
October 25, 2024
With political leaders and the media calling Lidia Thorpe's actions before the king disrespectful, I'm pleased someone stood up and stood out to speak truth of Australia's past and present in this setting. The takeover of Australia wasn't respectful to First Nations people - at least she wasn't violent, which is more than could be said for the actions of settlers in the name of the crown. And how far did being polite and gracious (Uluru Statement and the Voice referendum) get Australia's First Nations peoples towards justice? The king and queen are direct beneficiaries of colonisation, exploitation...
K Ma from Australia
In response to: Thorpe unmasks the coloniser who visited genocide on Australia’s First Nations
The horror of being Australian
October 25, 2024
This article puts yet more Murray river salt in the wound of being Australian, of being represented by such abhorrent moral vacuums. It is clear that Albanese and his wise monkeys will not do anything we can be proud of, and instead, here we are again - the bland residents of a great blank embarrassment - nodding in bleary eyed stupidity ... we are indeed, a land of racist losers.
Marguerite Bunce from France
In response to: As US puppets the Australian political class rejects international humanitarian
Shards of hope amongst the horror
October 25, 2024
I have Jewish friends and treasured memories of growing up with unbreakable friendships with wonderful people of Jewish ethnicity. I am daily filled with sadness and anger about the evil that the Netanyahu government, the IDF and the ultra-Zionists are prosecuting against now not just the Palestinians but also Lebanese and Iranian peoples. I have also some Palestinian and many Lebanese friends. Shortly after the first Israeli attacks on Beirut, I rang one of my closest Lebanese mates to ask: 'Did you lose any of your family or someone close?' His reply: 'None of my family, but...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Professor Ilan Pappe talks about Zionism
Time for Albo to move into his $4000000 house
October 25, 2024
Perhaps the purchase of a new home is an indicator that Agreeable Albo has realised his own limitations and realised it’s time to move on. After all the only innovative thing his Labor govt has done is a minor adjustment to stage three tax policy which may well be credited to his Treasurer.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: ACT Labor holds on, but are wheels coming off the Albanese re-election campaign?
Endless war as foreign policy
October 25, 2024
The reality is that USA is after weapons production and sales $, and weapons are only needed when wars are created. It’s not about winning war as much as continued forever war..in Foreign Policy places…far from USA, and resources are also sourced. Just study the war in Vietnam, it exposes how much the war was created and we lost, but it was a “Foreign Policy” war venue for weapons manufacturers and shareholder profits. France had lost its colonial control of Vietnam and wanted it back, USA was after a new war zone. The reds under the bed...
J Hunt from Northern NSW
In response to: China unveiled: how moving East shattered my Western illusions
Fighting for peace
October 25, 2024
It's not silence, but naming Palestinians 'terrorists' that kills, in that it justifies Israel's claims that it faces an existential threat - a postulation without credible underpinning. Yes, Palestinians issue threats. IT'S WHAT PRISONERS AND THE PERSECUTED DO! The opposite is Stockholm Syndrome. If Palestine were any sort of realistic threat, the Nakba wouldn't have happened. Palestinians would never have lost their homes, crops, olive trees. No barbaric soldier doing wheelies in a wheat field would have got away with it. Foreign humanitarian agencies would not have been needed to escort Palestinian children to school safely. Israel couldn't...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: It’s the silence that kills
Australia's climate action should be acknowledged
October 25, 2024
Thanks Julian Cribb for alerting readers to the 2024 State of the Climate Report. The author biography is an impressive read and we should do all we can to publicise and share it with our politicians and their advisers. The report concludes, “Despite six IPCC reports, 28 COP meetings, hundreds of other reports, and tens of thousands of scientific papers, the world has made only very minor headway on climate change, in part because of stiff resistance from those benefiting financially from the current fossil-fuel based system.” While the latter is true of Australia, a petrostate suffering from...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: The deafening silence in the eye of the hurricane
The Thorn and the Carnation may hold the clue
October 25, 2024
I grew up reading Leon Uris’ book Exodus, but what may be a counter narrative has now emerged. The PM has described Yahya al-Sinwar as a terrorist, rather than a freedom fighter. So it would be useful to understand what makes a person, in the PM’s terms, a terrorist. Perhaps a reading of al-Sinwar’s book The Thorn and the Carnation might make that clear.
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: More authoritarian crackdowns on speech that’s critical of Israel
Global climate disaster, COP and Cribb's solutions
October 25, 2024
We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster, (William Ripple et al, 2024 State of the Climate Report). But our federal government continues to approve new coal projects. It is our military who now warn the government that climate is the biggest security risk. Science also states that the next five years of this decade is critical for our and the world's climate-environmental actions. Therefore Peter Dutton's later nuclear idea is inept and useless. Instead, Albanese and others must educate colleagues and voters with climate solutions and develop a mandate for the next government. The...
Barbara Fraser from Burwood, Vic
In response to: The deafening silence in the eye of the hurricane
The storm of climate chaos
October 25, 2024
The article, In the Eye of the Hurricane (19/10/24), captures the dire reality of our climate crisis with chilling accuracy. The world stands at a critical juncture, where political indifference and short-term economic interests are accelerating an irreversible disaster. Despite clear warnings from scientists and security experts, governments, including Australia, continue to prioritise fossil fuel expansion over the survival of their people and ecosystems. Beyond feeling disheartened by the data on mounting climate disasters, I felt deeply betrayed by those in power. Achieving global cooperation feels distant when national governments fail their own people. Without immediate, transformative action, we...
Julia Paxino from BEAUMARIS
In response to: In the Eye of the Hurricane
Sinwar
October 25, 2024
Unsurprising to notice that only by looking on the Al Jazeera website did I learn that Yahya Sinwar was born in a refugee camp in Gaza, as the result of the displacement, dispossession and expulsion from the homelands of his family. The non-contextualised celebration of his elimination in most western media can only seem to anticipate continuation of the atrocities of asymmetric warfare and asymmetric propaganda..
Don Hird from Moonah, Tasmania
In response to: Letters
Sovereignty
October 25, 2024
Duggan's case is an outrage exposed only by Collaery and P&I. The US extradition case against Assange was similarly flawed and was equally subject to court backflips to bow to US unjust influence. Of huge concern to me in these actions is that the good guys are forced onto the defence against unsupported allegations. Collaery is one who well understands, from being victim in personal experience, that it is the rule of law itself which is at stake, that justice is no longer blind in US, UK and Australia. It is ludicrous that Duggan's extradition is now...
Glen Davis from California
In response to: “US influenced Sinophobia”: The incarceration of Australian citizen Daniel Duggan
Another perspective on end-of-life
October 22, 2024
I appreciated recent articles by Ian Chubb and Ken Hillman on end-of-life issues. Ian’s analysis of his wife’ dementia pathway and Ken’s analysis of ‘conveyor belt’ hospital systems were brilliant, but in my humble opinion, failed to address the problem effectively. I believe there are more responsible options. In my late 20s I was given a few months to live after six bouts of hepatitis and trigeminal neuralgia. A friend dragged me off to a naturopath. In desperation I fasted on water only for 13 days, reached natural hunger and have never suffered from either of those diseases again....
Brian Polkinghorne from Gawler, S.A. 5118
In response to: Given the choice, would my wife have chosen to 'let dementia take its course'?
It's the little things ....
October 18, 2024
So much head-nodding in agreement while reading Sawsan Madina's A year of .... (08 Oct.) But why is it the little things that pull you up short? For me ... It was the year when ... ... I bought a kaffiyeh. .... still struggling to wear it nonchalantly. ... I made new Jewish friends at the pro-Palestine weekly rallies. .... or Muslim ones - being invited to help support the giant flag in the procession, asking for translation of chants because my only Arabic is 'As-salam alaykum' and 'Shukran', and talking about the beautiful children, of course....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: A year of erasing a people
The Referendum 12 Months On
October 18, 2024
The Referendum 12 months on may as well be lightyears away. In reality, the Referendum was a top-down neoliberal concept (stunt) that would never have worked, not in a million years! In April 2023 I wrote: Story of Our Age Join the party centre stage To unite and engage Come ‘n’ share your rage It’s the story of our age We’ll vote on the voice The people will have a choice They’ll proceed to vote it down You get what comes around It was an observation of the public in general, of the racism, the bigotry,...
John Bentley from Tongala
In response to: Myths of the Referendum
Shame indeed!
October 18, 2024
Thank you Margaret Reynolds, Alison Broinowski and others for writing what desperately needs to be said to the United Nations and to the world as a whole, on behalf of so many of us who live in Australia and long for a more compassionate and principled government!
Janet Grevillea from New South Wales
In response to: Australia’s shame
Are we mature enough to hear?
October 18, 2024
In 1968 Professor Stanner lamented the 'cult of forgetfulness’ dominating the Australian attitude to the indigenous peoples of this land. The 2023 Referendum has been the latest instance of such forgetfulness. No First Nations voice was considered when the Constitutional conventions of the late 19th century guided the Colonial Governments as they began crafting a Constitution “up” for a Federal Commonwealth. It would have been a sign of our Commonwealth’s subsequent 122 year-old maturity had the referendum been presented to electors by the Federal Parliament as a wholly appropriate response of a matured suggestion from First Nations leaders...
Bruce Wearne from BALLARAT CENTRAL
In response to: What will follow the referendum?
Get the baseball bats out
October 18, 2024
The recently opened Queens Wharf integrated resort development, which is never called a casino by any cabinet ministers is also a millstone around the neck of the ALP. If I may paraphrase the late Wayne Goss, it should come as no surprise that the Queensland electorate will be sitting on their verandas wielding baseball bats come the evening of 26/10/2024.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane
In response to: The forthcoming Queensland state election
Are we inching inexorably towards WWIII?
October 18, 2024
This Scroll contained an excellent speech by Nada Tarbush of Palestine at the UN. I am still in shock from the picture of dead children in Southwest Palestine. In an earlier scroll this week. Department of state spokesperson Miller cut off a reporter who wanted an end to BS, but the US now unashamedly supports Israel whatever it does and has done away with the mask of condemning its tactics and doing anything to stop the fuse of a World War burning further. No matter attacks on expatriates in Lebanon, or on UNIFIL. Joe congratulated Xi on the...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: A five minute scroll
The right or otherwise of Israel to defend itself
October 18, 2024
The default mantra of those supporting the past and current military actions by Israel is that Israel has a right to defend itself. This is sometimes posed as a question but more often as an assertion. I am suggesting that there is a prior and more fundamental question needing to be asked and answered before the above mantra can be considered. Is the current government in historic Palestine a legitimate government?
Hal Duell from ALICE SPRINGS
In response to: Israel does not have a right to defend itself, as our PM keeps saying
Is China our biggest threat?
October 18, 2024
.... the very idea of finding security in Asia is hopelessly naive and made redundant by the authoritarian character and, it is asserted, the expansionist ambitions of China. Really? Is not our fear of China an artificial US construct? Such fear is born out of the US's loss of power and prestige as it fails as a nation while China grows. The US falls back on its usual answer to everything - guns and war. We don't have to be part of that. If Australia is to be afraid of another nation, it's biggest threat is the US...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn
In response to: The unresolved tension at the core of Australia’s strategic policy
Abandon sovereignty!
October 18, 2024
Regular readers of P&I basically know the details and agree with the argument of Vince Scappatura's article Australia’s evolving nuclear posture: avoiding a fait accompli (Part 1 of 2) The problem is, how do we get the misguided and uninformed, the partakers of the MSM or no news at all, to realise the mortal danger we have been placed in by such underwhelming political 'intellectuals' as Morrison, Marles and Albanese? And how do we get that translated into a vote that tells politicians of whatever party or calibre that they will never again be able to hand our sovereignty...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Australia’s evolving nuclear posture: avoiding a fait accompli (Part 1 of 2)
Comfortable middle classes must do more
October 11, 2024
Do the dire predictions of a heated world outlined by David Spratt make any impact on governments? For them it is a cynical choice, as Starmer exemplified, to ignore climate change in favour of their own popularity. No leader of a wealthy nation has the fortitude to do their job, which they constantly tell us is their first priority: keeping us safe. This hasn’t hugely impacted (yet) on their ‘popularity’. In fact, the now-ascendant climate change denying elements of Dutton’s Coalition could be gaining momentum. Such is the power of the far-right, conspiracy-laden, Trumpist ideology in which climate concerns...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Entering an age of social and security consequences
"Is there an honest Australian news source"?
October 11, 2024
Dear Editor, I had entirely given up on Australian newspapers, television, and radio and in recent times and (for the last year) have only listened to, read, or watched Al Jazeera. Today I googled is there an honest Australian news source or words to that effect and was amazed to find Pearls And Irritations; Australian news that I can stand to read. Thank you very very much.
John Twigden from Campsie, 2194
In response to: Pearls & Irritations
Thoughts and prayers
October 11, 2024
As 7th October 2024 draws to a close I reflect on all the outpourings of grief and sympathy for Israel, Israelis and all Jewish people on this anniversary day. I hear the calls for everyone to lay down their arms, for peace. And I think .... oh, the hypocrisy, as useful as US Americans sending thoughts and prayers. I hear Let there be Israel and a new country is set upon Palestinian land with no reference to, consideration of, consultation with or protection for Palestinians. Just Begone! This is our land now. Today, there is no context....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: For those with eyes to see
Why I grieve for our grandchildren’s futures
October 11, 2024
I have had a fortunate life. Born in 1950, in England, my teens coincided with the Beatles-led music revolution. I’ve not had to go to war. I am now 74, and thus unlikely to experience the climate horrors which are brought ever-nearer by the greed and manipulation of the fossil fuel industry, and by populist politicians more concerned with their own political survival than with providing the leadership needed to secure a sustainable environment. Anthony Albanese has become the poster-boy for political timidity. Peter Dutton rages with apparent power, but dances to the fossil fuel industry’s tune. The...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Is Arctic methane stoking the climate crisis?
Ignorance trumps racism - mostly.
October 11, 2024
Some politicians will undoubtedly get an election surprise but will they realise it's on account of their passivity or active support for Israel? If they don't read comments on their social media posts they won't know that, besides the usual ratbags, an increasing tip-of-the-iceberg number of moderate voices are commenting, sadly, “This is wrong or not good enough. You've lost my vote.” “Is it racism that guides these politicians?” Ali Kazak asks. That seems to be true of Peter Dutton and his fellow travellers. The Jewish Council of Australia has emerged to decry Israel's role in Palestine...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn, VIC 3122
In response to: On election day, accountability takes centre stage
ABC - disgraceful partisanship
October 11, 2024
I have turned off coverage by the MSM on these issues. The ABC seems to preface its one-sided coverage with discussion of the brutal Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 with all the subsequent loss of life in Gaza and the conflict growing into Lebanon. Lebanese and Palestinian lives mean nothing to our national broadcaster. Absolutely disgraceful partisanship.
K Ma from Australia
In response to: The context for October 7 is wilfully and deliberately ignored and Lebanese and
‘Provocation’
October 11, 2024
A year ago, Peter Dutton described the Hamas attack on Israel ‘unprovoked’. I assume he has had now had sufficient time to learn about international relations, human nature and Palestine’s sad, painful history that he would avoid using such an inappropriate descriptor again. Unless, of course, it gave him a quick domestic political advantage.
Richard Manderson from Canberra
In response to: The context for October 7 is wilfully and deliberately ignored
RESPONSE TO KELTY ON THE ALP
October 11, 2024
I wouldn't be holding Kelty, one of the architects of the Accord, up as a model of how a Labor pollie or unionist should be. He sets out a centrist agenda but criticises the current centrists for doing it their way. He says We need a Labor Party agenda in which the big issues are confronted. Nice , but the devil is in the detail. No mention of a wages policy except in the context of a bargaining framework that is about training, productivity and fairness. Hmmmm I wonder if that would have broken through the...
Jennifer Haines from Glossodia
In response to: The Labor Party has lost its way
“How high should we jump?” - Canberra
October 11, 2024
Further to Stuart Rees’ article, our Foreign Affairs Minister, instead of calling in the Israeli ambassador to protest at the harrying, and forced displacement from their homes, of thousands of Australian citizens in Lebanon, can only seemingly manage to say: “get on a plane”.
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Lebanese and Palestinian lives mean nothing to western politicians
We must get serious about climate change action
October 11, 2024
Bill Kelty writes, “We need a Labor Party agenda in which the big issues are confronted.” He points to the environment, climate change and indigenous rights as examples. Kelty refreshingly suggests that climate change “is more important than party politics,” but this is easy to say when out of it. The climate wars were fired up again when Dutton went all out for nuclear and proposed to abandon Australia’s 2030 emissions target. The government wants to co-host COP31 with Pacific Island nations but makes them angry with fossil fuel approvals. The least Australia could do is support the thirteen...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: The Labor Party has lost its way
David McBride and the AMC
October 10, 2024
The fact that Australian Army war crimes whistleblower David McBride has been granted a chance to appeal against his five years and eight months sentence at the dreadful Alexander Maconochie Centre federal prison in Canberra is long overdue. It is important to understand that this occurred partly because of the tireless efforts of Professor Ross Fitzgerald and other key supporters who continued to reveal the inhumane conditions that Mr McBride was facing. In a number of articles, Prof Fitzgerald also documented in detail, with first person corroboration, deeply disturbing revelations about the terrible treatment of other prisoners at the...
Andrew William Hopkins from Galston NSW
In response to: David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra
How to survive on an isolated planet
October 4, 2024
We inhabit an isolated planet with finite resources and a robust, but not indestructible, environment. The fact that our environment continues to support life today does not mean that it always will. The Potsdam Institute’s latest Planetary Health Check confirms we are endangering our survival with our disregard for our warming climate, for the mass extinction of animals and plants, for our continued degradation of the natural environment and freshwater cycles, and for the chemical pollution from soil-killing fertilisers and industrial process effluents. Of the nine measures that the Potsdam Institute tracks, only two remain within the ‘safe’ zone:...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: The Earth is sick – and getting sicker
Universities as a place of higher learning? YES
October 4, 2024
As a 72 year old retired I like to think successful Tradie I have had a front row seat of the mess that is our education system has become. I went to a Technical school because I wasn’t smart enough to go to a High school. Then they closed technical schools. Did an apprentice at a specific Trade school, Trade schools were integrated / lost to the TAFE system. I watched as HR employed apprentices base on their academic score not their trade aptitude, the beginning of the shortage of tradies. I listened as my school teacher...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Do we need universities?
"Merely academic"
October 4, 2024
Our gad-fly, Clover Leaf group, had gained audience with the Vice-Chancellor and President of Monash Inc. That was a few months before the merger - Chisholm was not to be amalgamated with Monash; this was to a merger. This was the politically correct term for this flagship initiative of the Dawkins reforms. Once more our hypothesis was confirmed. Within Chisholm IT itself, and before 1982 within Caulfield IT: the economic rationalist ideology that drove the David Syme Business School was driving not only Chisholm but also the merger. We had previously invited to the Head of the Federal Department...
Bruce Wearne from BALLARAT CENTRAL
In response to: Do we need universities?
The mask is off
October 4, 2024
Susan Dirgham brings together a number of opinions very well. We are now in a near regency in the US, with the duumvirate of Blinken and Austin III, with supporting parts from Miller, Hochstein, and Sullivan. Still it was actually Biden who announced active US military support for the Israeli attack on Lebanon which threatens the lives of many people, including thousands of Australians and Americans. And yet at almost the same time it was Blinken saying China couldn't help broker a Ukraine peace deal because it was allegedly arming Russia. So how would the US be any...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: How should Australia respond as Israel provokes war?
Advanced Care Directives and Living Wills
October 4, 2024
Ken Hillman as a long term and esteemed medical practitioner in Intensive Care recognises as many do who work in this area that there is overtreatment of terminally ill persons. States and Territories in Australia now have End of Life legislation that empowers people to express their wishes for end of life care in Advanced Care Directives and Living Wills. Not enough people know about this option and take advantage of it. As an old Intensive Care Nurse of at least 20 years I agree with Ken, but I encourage all people approaching older age to take...
Jennifer Haines from Glossodia
In response to: The conveyor belt for terminally ill older people Ken Hillman
The Albanese Enigma
October 4, 2024
Anthony Albanese won his party leadership not as the victor of an open, contested party election, but through backroom negotiations. He brought to the leadership no sense of being the champion who had best fought for Labor values and won the party’s affection. Albanese seems more negotiator than leader, so he appears as a man without uncompromising commitment to any particular cause. His stance is appropriate for much government business: politics – ‘the art of the possible’ - requires flexibility. But voters have to know that that flexibility does not compromise their leader’s core values for critical causes. A...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Dutton is unacceptable, but Labor under Albanese doesn’t deserve to be re-electe
It's all in the wording
October 4, 2024
This is exactly what needs to be asked. Perhaps I can give one of the reasons why it's been so hard for this question to be asked. Even a more 'reasonable' source of information about what is going on with this 'war' is using biased language. This is a short piece from the Guardian: 'About 60,000 Israelis have fled their homes in northern Israel due to continual fighting between Israel, Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli forces based in Lebanon. On the Lebanese side of the UN-drawn blue line that separates the two countries, tens of thousands of Lebanese have also...
Marguerite Bunce from France
In response to: Letter: Why shouldn't we support Hamas?
The Zionist Lobby Marches Onwards
October 4, 2024
In his article posted in P&I on 27 September, Scott Burchill argues convincingly that it is primarily US policy, not the pro-Zionist lobby, that is driving Australia’s pathetic and shambolic failure to actively support peace in Palestine. I agree completely with his summation that: ‘… the uglier truth is that in Australia the Israel lobby doesn’t need to work very hard to secure its political objectives. For the most part, they are pushing at an open door. ‘ There is a continual tsunami of diatribe, accusations of anti-Semitism, bullying and threats/ legal action against any proposal of just...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale NSW
In response to: US, not Israel lobby, driving Albanese Government’s Gaza policy
AMC Canberra
October 3, 2024
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane
In response to: David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra
'David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Prison in Canberra' should be distributed far and wide
October 3, 2024
Prof Ross Fitzgerald's October 1 exposé David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Prison in Canberra should be distributed far and wide. Most Australians, in fact all good people around the world would be appalled to hear that an honest, military lawyer is being cruelly incarcerated for reporting war crimes. While the people responsible for those crimes walk free. Even more shocking, is the Judge, who proclaimed that McBride’s “duty”, was to the King and not to the Australian people. The Judge declared that there will be no public interest defence allowed in evidence, and no provision for a...
Anthony Charles Wakeham from Redfern, NSW
In response to: David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra
Retributive justice is no justice
October 3, 2024
I am writing in response to the article entitled David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra by Ross Fitzgerald. I believe that you can judge a society on how it treats its most vulnerable - and in turn a government on how it treats its detractors. The appalling conditions in which David McBride is kept say more than enough about the modern Australian government. The Media's lack of interest in the very real plight of a man whose primary crime is taking action in the public interest (regardless of what the government exclaims) says much about modern...
Eamonn O’Hanlon from Sydney
In response to: David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra
David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre
October 2, 2024
Prof Fitzgerald's disturbing revelations about conditions endured by military whistleblower, David McBride & other inmates at the AMC in Canberra ought be taken seriously by governmental authorities and by the Australian media.
Andrew Hopkins from Canberra
In response to: David McBride and the Alexander Maconochie Centre prison in Canberra