Letters to the Editor
Less taxes and less service
July 28, 2025
Recently the new leader of the Liberals was quoted as saying: “I’ve never met an Australian that wanted to pay more tax “ She might have said she has never: met a mine owner who would not take more for her/or his ore; met an employer who wanted to pay more wages; met an employee who didn’t want a pay rise; met a hospital that didn’t need mor funding; met an ambulance patient who liked ramping; met a bushfire/victim who didn’t want a quicker response from the government; or met a general/dmiral...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: BREAKING: Albo doesn’t yell at Xi — (part of) nation panics
The cat is out of the bag
July 28, 2025
Humans are enslaved due to the failure to recognise the fundamental role of the government and the private sector. The private sector has taken control of the government sector and can only be trusted to make a profit. Along the way the private sector has developed the ability to convince the voting public, and in turn our elected representatives, what we want, what we need and what can’t be done. By giving control of our telecommunications to the private sector, we lost control of all communications. By the continual controlled criticism of all things China and its undemocratic...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: When technology enslaves humans
Economic Reform Roundtable must listen to Henry
July 28, 2025
Thank you for publishing Ken Henry’s address to the National Press Club. It was a privilege to read it. Henry’s ability to explain how productivity and a sound economy depends on a healthy natural environment and a safe climate is unsurpassed. One sentence summed it up nicely: “Independent reviews confirm that the environmental impact assessment systems embedded in the [nature] laws are not fit-for-purpose. Of particular concern, they are incapable of supporting an economy in transition to net zero and they are undermining productivity.” It is pleasing to see that Henry has been invited to the Economic Reform Roundtable...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Our last, best chance – national environment laws that protect nature and power
All of a sudden…
July 28, 2025
It’s interesting what it takes politicians and the mainstream media to act. They don’t mind civilians trapped, suffocating in the rubble, they don’t mind limbs torn off by bombs, they don’t mind amputations performed without anaesthetic, they don’t mind cancer hospitals bombed and medical staff abducted, raped and tortured, but a child, skinny and starving, suddenly offends their sensibilities. Or for politicians, it is more like the mid term elections are coming up, their constituents are bristling or they’re now realising they have to cover their own complicity. For the mainstream media, it is more like Murdoch has...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: The disgrace of deliberate starvation: Israel's war of hunger in Gaza
How will the Earth cope with a billion refugees?
July 28, 2025
Richard Heinberg cites Tim Lenton's book Future of the human climate niche that warns that 2 degrees C warming may result in a billion refugees. Later, Heinberg refers to the simple, though stark, reality that humanity faces climate change and resource depletion, and that living space is likely to become more constricted. We may reach 2 degrees warming by 2035. That is 10 years away. How on Earth are we to cope with a billion displaced humans in the next decade? Where will they all go? Surely, this is emerging as one of the great moral crises of our...
Jennifer Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Let's (not) choose sides and fight
Clarifying what the word Semitic means
July 28, 2025
Robert, Palestinians are generally considered Semitic peoples. The term Semitic refers to a language family and a cultural group that includes various ancient and modern populations, including those who speak Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Palestinians primarily speak Arabic, which is a Semitic language, and their lineage is traced back to the region of the Levant, where many Semitic peoples have historically resided. While the term Semitic is primarily linguistic and cultural, it has also been used in racial and ethnic contexts. In this broader sense, Palestinians are also considered Semitic due to their historical and cultural connections to the...
Melody Kemp from Balmoral Brisbane
In response to: On Jillian Segal’s report into combating antisemitism
Francesca Albanese
July 28, 2025
Yes, the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize should go to Francesca Albanese. On 24 July this year, The World Beyond War movement awarded her the individual 2025 War Abolisher Award. At the award event, Hanieh Jodat began with these words: Today we come together not simply to present an award – but to bear witness: to courage, to truth, and to a voice that has never trembled, even when the world has demanded silence. and ended with: Francesca has become a map, a mirror, and a megaphone for the dispossessed and displaced. Francesca, your words have become lifelines....
Janet Grevillea from Lake Macquarie
In response to: Francesca Albanese’s bravery merits the Nobel prize
Genocide and Western values
July 28, 2025
No sentient moral and ethical being could rationally dissent from the view that the Israeli state is worse in its savagery than the Nazis, as it triumphantly flaunts its barbarity and arrogant criminality openly before the world as God's chosen people. That is widely recognised by the vast bulk of humanity. What is even more distressing is the active participation in, and evident support for, this vast atrocity by the overwhelming bulk of the leadership of the civilieed West. It has become a truly nonfunctional and iniquitous civilisation that deserves the contempt and detestation of that vast bulk of...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The disgrace of deliberate starvation: Israel's war of hunger in Gaza
A REAL nomination for the Nobel-Kishore Mahubhani
July 25, 2025
Great quote in this article from a man I greatly admire for his integrity, intelligence, compassion and geo-political understanding. Mahubhani represents the best aspects of a universalism and inclusivity that is entirely absent from those who pose as the foreign policy elites of the dying west. Whilst we promote our western values ceaselessly around the planet, we fail almost universally to actually live up to those supposed values. We only apply them to the often fabricated atrocities attributed to the behaviour of those we look down upon as lesser civilisations, whilst blithely ignoring our far greater capacity and willingness to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Defenders of rules-based order: not who you thought
Neo-cons know their world is dying
July 25, 2025
The western neo-cons shouting into the void reflect their futility and anger at the dying of their largely white Anglo-Saxon hegemony over the world. Intellectually unequipped to deal with the newly emerging multi-polar world that rightly sees them as infantile examples of humanity senselessly throwing their toys out of their cots, they fulminate furiously their prevarications and delusional mendacities. The problem for them is that the world has moved on past their conventional wisdoms, spread as they overwhelmingly are in the dying legacy media space that they thought would enable them to control the public mind on a permanent basis....
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: BREAKING: Albo doesn’t yell at Xi — (part of) nation panics
Antisemitism should apply to 400 million Semites
July 25, 2025
This is up to Robert's usual high standard, but even it never mentions the other 400 million semites and their rights. The cleverly constructed identification of antisemitism with only antijewism for over one hundred years enables us all to sympathise with only a tiny proportion of Semites, who are daily slaughtering many of the other Semites. This is no small matter as those other Semites, all 400 million of them, are the principal targets of the Jewish state. We in the West are prone to adopt simplistic notions that suit our prejudices and often use them to shape our view...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: On Jillian Segal’s report into combating antisemitism
A better use of our taxes
July 25, 2025
As far as the United Nations is concerned I have come to the conclusion that it is a very expensive retirement home for politicians and public servants - a reward for services rendered - and when it really counts ineffective. Sound a bit like parliaments in general. There have been too many examples of vetos by the major players based on other left/right alliances, unarmed UN peacekeeping forces standing helplessly by and climate inaction and ineffectiveness . The League of Nations reached its use-by date between the wars and the UN is long past its use-by date. The new body...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: defenders-of-rules-based-order-not-who-you-
What’s new about that
July 25, 2025
10+ years ago a report (Choice I think ) into supermarket pricing found that supermarket prices for the big two varied due to the affluence of the area in which they were located. While advertised specials (bait) were the same, general prices varied and not as you would expect - dog food, potato chips and soft drinks etc were dearer and more plentiful in the less affluent areas but overall the more affluent areas were the cheapest
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: the-new-pricing-scam-how-surveillance-prici
ANU change proposals
July 25, 2025
Is the ANU angling to become Canberra's best vocational training institution?
K M from Canberra
In response to: Change proposals risk relegating ANU to middle-ranking regional un
Imperilling ourselves in Service to the US
July 23, 2025
Every war-game the US has undertaken regarding their desire to invade China has resulted in US defeat. Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio have both acknowledged that on several occasions. Making these never-never Subs subject to US control whenever they might just arrive won't affect that outcome in any way at all. The obvious observation that never appears to occur to our strategically illiterate politicians, is that we are talking about the invasion of the second largest population on the planet. Their technological competence vastly outmatches the US, Japan and Australia combined and would be defending their homeland. Whilst we would...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Australia and Japan cannot accept America’s war on China
Seeds of hope
July 23, 2025
Further to Eugene Doyle's recent article regarding French Resistance in WWII, and the heroes who oppose genocide, there are seeds of hope with several legal precedents in the United Kingdom. Back in 1996, the Ploughshare Four were found not guilty of criminal damage to a Hawk warplane bound for East Timor at the Warton aerodrome in Lancashire. Their actions were considered reasonable under the Genocide Act 1969 More recently in January 2017, the Reverend Dan Woodhouse, a Methodist minister in Leeds and Sam Walton, a Quaker, were arrested at the same site attempting to disarm warplanes bound for...
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane
In response to: Vive la resistance! The heroes who oppose genocide
A life largely unmourned
July 23, 2025
Stone was one of the last utterly committed Neo-Liberals to occupy the head of Treasury position. Maybe it was his interest in physics that taught him to think in binary terms and without any civilisational sense. Sufficient to say his intellectual arrogance, and conviction that only he perceived reality, were sufficient to make his rejection of a modern, relevant economics a hallmark of Treasury during his leadership. His Senatorial role simply re-enforced that intellectually reactionary persona.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: From ‘Stone Age’ treasury boss to National Party Senator: John Stone 1929–2025
The Dodgy Brothers and AUKUS
July 23, 2025
Pithy and succinct is the best description of the article from Geoff. In admirably few words he summarises the geo-strategic infantilism of this dodgy-brothers deal, set up by the devious, imbecilic rodent Scott Morrison. Were this to proceed, which seems increasingly unlikely, the US seems intent on proving the accuracy of Kissinger's aphorism that being a friend of the US can be fatal. To continue with a deal with a disintegrating empire that has, for more than a century, shown itself as having no permanent friends or enemies, only interests, as Kissinger also said, reeks of political cowardice and strategic...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: AUKUS – an American problem
Is a BBC/ABC documentary on Iran war propaganda?
July 23, 2025
Beyond Vietnam, Martin Luther King’s strident anti-war address, is as relevant today as it was in 1967 because most of us are as disinclined to protest against government policy and conventional thinking as Americans were then. As King said: “Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in a time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world.” Beyond Vietnam revealed the history of America’s...
Susan Dirgham from Melbourne
In response to: Spare more than a thought for Iran’s protesters
Negotiate with Trump - you’ve got to be kidding
July 22, 2025
Apart from the worst Prime Minister we have ever had (and that’s saying something when T. Abbott had the job and A. Taylor wants the job) can anybody possibly think that negotiating anything with with D. Trump is a good idea?
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: aukus-an-american-problem
Higher echelon loyalty to Australia not the US
July 22, 2025
Congratulations to Jack Waterford for some very plain talk about the relationship with the Trump US. I quote: ” Indeed, if Australia did blab, there would be any number of Australian officials, regarding themselves as having a loyalty to the alliance over and above their loyalty to Australia, who would leak about it.” Can we read “US” for “alliance”? And if so, and if Jack’s assertion is true, don’t words like “undue foreign influence” or even in a few possible cases, “treason” come to mind? Do we need an oath of allegiance?
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Trump’s negotiation position diminishes as Albo sits him out
Local responses to climate impacts misplaced
July 22, 2025
A focus on the marine crisis in South Australia as a matter of state versus national politics, wildly misconstrues the context and misapprehends the looming danger. Like the drought impacting Southeastern South Australia and the western half of Victoria, the dystopian-like conditions these events are characterised by are entirely consistent with all of the predictions for the extreme impacts of climate change. In Australia, the droughts and flooding rains of the past were, for all their harshness, part of a cycle our biological systems had long adapted to. These new extremities are unable to be responded to so, as we...
Patrick Hockey from Clunes, Vic
In response to: Environment: Forget 1.5 degrees C, even 2 degrees C, while forests and peat disa
Trump Governs by ventriloquist dummy
July 22, 2025
While I was disappointed that Albo didn’t cancel the AUKUS/5 ministers Morrison pact in the first weeks of his first team I have to admit that I’ve been impressed with his steady as she goes treatment of all things Trump. If he can keep a lid on any further US instalments, keeps playing the long game, perhaps buys some conventional subs from Japan, or France, or even China, as part of Trumps demands for increased defence spending, he could well out-last Trump or even the (not so) United States. As always with all politicians the polls rule. I’ve no doubt...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: trumps-negotiation-position-diminishes-as-a
Memo Wong: first, resurrect integrity
July 21, 2025
If Australia's “diplomatic, economic, strategic and military capabilities are all going in the same direction, should they be if one or more of those elements is deliberately going in the wrong direction? Marles has only ever shown the delight of the incompetent in being allowed to play with his superiors, going along with whatever they say. Hence our increasing military absorption into the US warmonger machine. Marles should be dumped. His replacement by someone even halfway more competent would be a definite improvement. Wong, on the other hand, is smart but seems to have left her integrity at...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Time for Foreign Minister Wong to put her foot down
Less Security Dependence
July 21, 2025
Good article by Paddy Gourley in the July 19 P&I. With luck America will force Australia to finally adopt a more independent security posture and capability. They have voted for Trump, twice and the world is different even if many remain in denial. Surely we must avoid being dragged into another fruitless conflict following our Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq mark 2 experiences. We have to believe we can do it as do most other countries around the world. And the Europeans are now doing as NATO is being unilaterally changed. To achieve similar national security to what we now believe...
David Hind from North Sydney NSW 2060
In response to: Time for Foreign Minister Wong to put her foot down
It's time to become truly independent
July 21, 2025
John Menadue's excellent article sums it up very well. I'd just add that the US likes to parrot its commitment to democracy. Fact is it doesn't give a rats about democracy and never has. Not only with the numerous 'regime changes' Mr Menadue refers to but some specifics would include destroying Iranian democracy in 1953 by overthrowing their government (with the UK) for oil, egging on the Hungarians endlessly in 1956, promising them the world when they overthrew the Soviet puppet government, letting them rot. Numerous incursions into the affairs of South American countries and even in their own country,...
Wes Mason from Gisborne
In response to: Donald Trump and his minions may yet do us a favour by ending AUKUS
Michael McKinley’s moral perspective
July 21, 2025
McKinley brings a refreshing moral perspective to discussion of US & Zionist false narratives on Iran. I always like to read him in P&I. I am 100% pro-Iran. I recommend Prof Mohamed Marandi's regular analysis on YouTube. He says Iran is ready for another treacherous Israeli/US surprise attack and will obliterate Tel Aviv and Haifa with nonnuclear weapons if it comes. I believe him. This is effective deterrence.
Tony Kevin from Canberra
In response to: Military operations seen through Gauguin etc
Where do all the obsolete weapons go?
July 21, 2025
I’ve often wondered where some of the poorest people in the world get their weapons/ammunition from. I constantly see that they seem to get great pleasure from firing into the air rounds from automatic weapons. Firing 100 to 1000 per min? at $1 to $2 each? How do they pay for them? Then I saw the delivery of obsolete Australian tanks to the Ukraine. Never a shot fired in anger but out of date/obsolete, scrap value to some. What a great business model! Even better when you’ve got the president of the US spruking for you.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: trump-wants-us-to-spend-a-bomb-on-defence-w
Defiant hope in the face of evil
July 21, 2025
A significant number of us are tired of cruel policies towards asylum-seekers and have been for a very long time. But like much else that is evil - incarceration of Indigenous children, supplying fighter plane parts to Israel, for example - it matters not what we think. As long as there is money to be made, or friends to appease, cruelty will continue. When Mammon is God, you will always get people who worship the Almighty Dollar doing whatever it takes to accumulate wealth for selfish, self-serving purposes. Call me a cynic if you like, but look around the world...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: 12 years on, are we not yet tired of cruel policies towards asylum-seekers?
More on the anti-semitism debate
July 21, 2025
In response to David Macilwain. This is interesting to me, as I recently was challenged by someone - a Trump supporter - telling me that the Moroccans had expelled the Jews, so I read up about that. I found that, on the contrary, they had been a valuable part of society, and still are. When Israel was first established many left to go there to be a part of a new exciting country, expecting to be a part of its development in the same way they were used to in Morocco, only to find they were discriminated against, with a...
Jo Kinnane from Waurn Ponds
In response to: A key point missing in the anti-semitism debate
Hamas are the brave Palestinian Resistance Force.
July 21, 2025
So very disappointing and disheartening to see Stephanie Dowrick supporting the lobbyist's line of 'Israel has the right to defend itself' and both sides-ism-argument. I reckon her article continues the line of dehumanisation of Hamas and casts a slur on the ONLY immediate protection and resistance available to and ELECTED by Palestine. She says. . .Since the blazingly stupid, cruel, terrifying actions of the corrupt Hamas... etc This sounds like the initial scene setting post 7th October set by the lies of the IDF, when western journalists fell over themselves to parrot ... do you condemn Hamas It has allowed...
Glenda Jones from Carlton 3053
In response to: Let’s combat antisemitism, not use it to dehumanise others - Part 1
Thank you to our letter-writers
July 21, 2025
As I read Paddy Gourley's ever so sensible and explicit advice to Minister Penny Wong, three things occurred to me. The first is that so many of us admire Penny Wong and puzzle over what seems to us like her semi-paralysis. I, and I am sure many others, would endorse Paddy's admonition that she seize the hour and get our government to move swiftly in the direction of diplomacy, reduced defence spending and peace-making. The second is that, in addition to appreciating P&I's many informed, articulate and passionate article-writers, I am so keen each day to read the...
Janet Grevillea from Lake Macquarie
In response to: Time for Foreign Minister Wong to put her foot down
The Omission
July 21, 2025
OMG iPhones are all made in China.
Con Karavas from South Australia
In response to: Round up the usual Chinese suspects
Tassie's health problem has been building a long time
July 18, 2025
The issues with the Tasmanian health system have been festering for many years. It was obvious from the first time I visited more than 30 years ago and it has become increasingly worse. Even then, retirees were invading our southern isle, as those from Sydney and Melbourne were able to buy substantial, well-located property, often for about half the amount they realised on the sale of their previous home, and so it was a no-brainer if you wanted to leave big city life, while also improving the state of your liquid assets. This trend has only continued, resulting...
Ian Ian De Landelles from Murrays Beach
In response to: The Tasmanian election on 19 July won’t fix the mess
Our democracy – taking the easy road to oblivion
July 18, 2025
Democracy gives a sense of empowerment. Voters feel free to live as they wish – albeit within reasonable limits. But democratic governments rarely take essential, unpopular steps. These days the power of the media seems so intense that governments bow to its will. Too many in the media disseminate misinformation to further proprietorial political goals. And barely-controlled lobbying, supported by substantial political donations, enables powerful interests to wield disproportionate influence over critical policy development. Daniel Andrews achieved some success in avoiding overbearing media influence when he was premier of Victoria, but our federal government, tied to three-year terms,...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Humanity is ‘risking catastrophe’: UN
Get capitalism under control first
July 18, 2025
Great article. The first step in solving all the problems is severing the ties between the capitalists and government. Recognising that the capitalists exist to make a profit/get rich; creating jobs is a by-product, a nuisance. As long as the parliamentary door is open to lobbyists and political donations, the balance will always be in favour of profit. The deportation of modern-day slaves from the US will be the downfall, one way or the other, of capitalist Trump. What we need is more regulation and auditing, not less. As long as the capitalists are complaining about government regulation...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Even Ken Henry’s best ideas can’t fix a system addicted to growth
FARMS and Usans
July 18, 2025
The issues of Australia’s over-reliance on the United States of America are, thanks to this article and similar mentions, becoming more mainstream. There are two terms which may assist these changing Australia’s perceptions on this issue. The terms are FARMS (Foreign Aid Replacing Military Spending) and Usan (citizens of the United States of America). FARMS provides a quick way of identifying an area where military spending (commonly misnamed as defence) should be redirected. In this way, the foreign aid — where does it come from” question is answered — and it identifies the greatest evil in the world...
Ian Daniels from Brisbane
In response to: Trump wants us to spend a bomb on defence. We should think twice
Trade with China is an investment in our security
July 18, 2025
Jocelyn Chey notes that Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said publicly that a strong economic relationship with China, leading to stability and prosperity, is “an investment in our security”. In that vein, we must congratulate Prime Minister Albanese on his talks with China, particularly with respect to a possible massive bilateral agreement on the development of green steel. It is a huge economic opportunity for Australia which is the world’s number one producer of iron ore with over half the global exports. It is also an exciting — indeed, exhilarating — opportunity to help mitigate climate change because...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Headline news: Australia and China
Australia's law must catch up with climate reality
July 18, 2025
It’s easy to feel disheartened by Justice Michael Wigley’s recent federal court decision that the Australian Government has no duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change. But as Liz Hicks, a lecturer in law at the University of Melbourne, points out: “It is a question of when, rather than if, law will adapt to deal with climate impacts. Much like a rising tide breaking against a seawall, the future impact of climate change on things that law already protects is too extreme for the law to resist.” Others agree. Dr Riona Moodley, lawyer and...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Federal Court rules Australian Government doesn’t have a duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change
Which Australians have held the US in high regard?
July 18, 2025
Apart from our politicians and our generals what percentage of Australians hold the US in high regard? In my lifetime, protest against the US has been a regular thing starting with “overpaid, over-sexed and over here and rumours of tensions in South Korea and Vietnam etc. It may be understandable for our politicians coveting a well-paid military lobbying position to top up their parliamentary pension. The same goes for our military who are always keen to be aligned with the US with them having the biggest and best weapons of mass destruction and our generals always wanting the...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: What Australians think of Trump and the US
Let's think at least three times instead!
July 17, 2025
Henry Kissinger once said, To be America's enemy is dangerous. To be its friend is fatal. That is one of the most accurate statements ever made about the US. All this increased defence spending is supposedly so that we can all go to sleep at night in fear and trembling of the imminent invasion by China. The question you have to ask is of the US and China, which is more dangerous to other countries? In the last 40 years, the US has been involved in dozens of armed conflicts with countries around the planet, while China has...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump wants us to spend a bomb on defence. We should think twice
A duty of care to Torres Strait Islanders
July 17, 2025
To whom we owe a duty of care is first and foremost a moral question. A duty of care represents an ethical obligation to consider the well-being of others and act in ways that avoid causing unnecessary suffering or harm, even in the absence of enforceable laws. It is a universal principle that crops up in the moral code of all peoples in various forms. In Kantian terms, it can be described as a moral imperative. The post-WWII war crimes were prosecuted applying that moral imperative – the defence that people were only following orders was not accepted. In...
John Tons from flinders university
In response to: Federal Court rules Australian Government doesn’t have a duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change
Australia is subsidising the dying US empire
July 17, 2025
With his usual precision, John identifies the pith and substance of the AUKUS fraud imposed upon us by the second-hand car salesman Scott Morrison. That redundant member of the Dodgy Brothers sought to wedge Labor by vastly indebting the Australian people to a US empire in rapid decline which continues its forlorn but dangerous, feckless and capricious attempts to remain relevant. He frankly didn't give a rat's ***e about the cost to ordinary Australians in lost healthcare, education, housing and public transport that would be needed over the next three decades to fund our satrapy to the US in...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Donald Trump and his minions may yet do us a favour in ending AUKUS
Follow the money
July 17, 2025
Is it anti-Catholic to criticise Italy? Is it anti-Anglican to criticise the UK? Is it anti-Islam to criticise Indonesia? No-one in their right mind would think so. So why the ridiculous postulate that it’s antisemitic to criticise Israel? We (and journalists please pay attention) need to rigorously question these fences erected to suppress free speech. It doesn’t take much digging to reveal the money, the power and the land grab at the heart of Israel’s assault on Gaza, and, by extension, the taboo imposed by politicians and the media in openly condemning the war crimes being committed there....
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Systematic bias: how Western media reproduces the Israeli narrative
A key point missing in the antisemitism debate
July 17, 2025
Les Macdonald rightly observes that in the discussion of antisemitism it is not recognised that Palestinians are the true Semites, and that if we use the term then all Semitic peoples should be included. But astonishingly he fails to observe that Ashkenazi Jews are not semitic but almost uniformly Slavic in origin. This includes most Israeli leaders past and present, who have been from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. It also includes Jillian Segal, born in South Africa, from parents of East European origin. In addition, speaking Hebrew does not make someone Semitic any more than it can make...
David Macilwain from Sandy Creek, NE Victoria
In response to: Antisemitism and abuse of power
Renewable meat
July 16, 2025
Jeffery Soar correctly asks What about the animals? The answer (omitted for concision) is that in 20-25 years most meat protein will be produced in cell culture – beef, lamb, chicken, pork, fish and even dairy products. The product is real meat – it just never went moo. It is very close to economic now. This will spare the world a vast amount of destructive agriculture, overgrazing, and needless cruelty. It is a 21st century solution to a 21st century problem. As to whether people will eat it, 70 years ago they never thought they would dress in...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: What about the animals?
Australia's criminal alliance
July 16, 2025
A majority of Americans voted for their nation to be run by criminals, conmen, child rapists, sexual abusers, billionaires, totalitarians, ignoramuses and racists. That's the kind of US they want. As Noel Turnbull succinctly shows, most Australians do not share the overt aims of the current US regime. Nor, if we asked them, would they share the values. Why, therefore, does the Albanese Government (or the LNP for that matter) still want an alliance with such degeneracy? As things stand, any alliance with the US constitutes a serious threat to Australian decency, fairness and democracy. Any political...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: What Australians think of Trump and the US
Yes, we need to move to a no-growth economy
July 16, 2025
David Shearman is right: if we are to avert dangerous climate change (3 degrees C warming), then we need to move to a no-growth economy. This will be a hard call in Australia, given growth is the dominant economic paradigm. Try telling it to Jim Chalmers, or most economic editors of the mainstream press! It is sacrilege. Nevertheless, Julian Cribb (Humanity is risking catastrophe, 16 July) brought to our attention the 2025 Global Risks Report. Of the four environmental risks, it cites natural resource shortages and biodiversity decline. This should be enough to indicate that we have reached...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Australia cannot survive unless it switches to a no-growth economy
Let's hear more on deep ocean aquaculture
July 16, 2025
Julian Cribb cites a possible part-solution to the world's food crisis, namely, deep ocean aquaculture. Unlike coastal fish farms, including the contentious Tasmanian salmon farms, aquaculture in the deep ocean allows currents to remove all wastes, which in coastal waters have destroyed wild ecosystems and threatened species such as the Maugean skate in Macquarie Harbour. Deep ocean aquaculture would allow us to eat salmon without the overwhelming guilt that accompanies eating it now. It would help maintain global protein supplies which are at risk because land-based production of meat is exacerbating climate change through land-clearing and emissions from ruminants....
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Why the world needs renewable food