Letters to the Editor
One of history's great ironies
July 14, 2025
Geraldine Schwarz wrote in Les Amnésiques that her grandparents, along with so many Germans, were “Mitläufer”, those who turned a blind eye to Hitler’s policies, when convenient, particularly when it involved some material advantage, such as taking over a business that Jews were forced to sell on the cheap to “Aryans”. This is what her grandparents did. Her father, however, rejected what his parents had done. He recognised that if people in a culture that produced Bach, Beethoven and Goethe could do such things, or turn a blind eye to it, then anyone can. Schwarz can now add...
Kieran Tapsell from STANWELL PARK
In response to: The greatest irony in our contemporary history
Australia needs the other Albanese
July 14, 2025
Australia needs the other Albanese – Francesca, the special raporteur with the UN, with her superb courage, focus and global leadership. This is in marked contrast to our largely invisible and visionless namesake PM. She gets the attention of Trump's senior diplomat/enforcer Marco Rubio with her plain language accusations related to America's role in the Gaza genocide. Rubio responded with personal threats and sanctions. Albo, by contrast, can't apparently even get a phone call with the top end of Trump's governing circus and he continues to be cowed locally by the Zionist lobby with their ridiculous demands for student...
Donald Clayton from Bittern
In response to: US sanctions UN expert Albanese over criticism of Israeli genocide
Facts as opposed to wishes
July 14, 2025
Just a further note on the suggestion being made that BRICS is on the ropes, I suggest having a look at the detailed report on what was discussed and progress that was made. It paints a far more accurate picture together of the continuing success of the BRICS group in re-shaping the world into a multilateral one as opposed to the US unipolar dictatorship.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: BRICS is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear
Thanks Fred Zhang, along with Pearls & Irritations
July 14, 2025
I back Fred Zhang to the hilt, 100%. I’m 5th generation South Australian. I love China. I hate the US. … and of course, I love Coopers Beer.
James Scammell from Bowden, South Australia
In response to: Fred Zhang … Every day is a bad day to visit China apparentlyJuly 11, 2025
Criticism of the policies of the Israeli state
July 14, 2025
Can a movement that conflates Jewish identity with the policies of the Israeli state — and that brands all criticism of that state as antisemitism — end up becoming antisemitic itself? I strongly concur with this concern. Zionism, in its modern political form, has become entangled with the systemic displacement and disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people. The very idea of a Jewish homeland — which arose from centuries of persecution culminating in the horrors of 1933–1945 — is rooted in a need for safety and dignity. That need is real. But what are we to make of the...
Ivan Hamilton from Münster, Germany — I am Australian temporarily resident in Germany
In response to: The special envoy’s plan is the latest push to weaponise antisemitism in Australia, as a relentless campaign pays off
Hitler, Tojo and Putin – strange bedfellows
July 14, 2025
Gareth Evans’ gratuitously rude reference to “outright military aggression — Hitler, Tojo or Putin-style” — spoils an otherwise admirable essay on how and why Australia should now reposition itself in the China-US strategic equation. Gareth knows better. He has read Sachs and Mearsheimer. He knows how they and many other scholars have demolished the Western propaganda myth that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was unprovoked aggression. He knows Putin was forced into this after eight years of the Kiev Banderist regime’s rejection of Russian peace efforts and its murderous aggression and human rights abuses against Russian Ukrainians since...
Tony Kevin from Canberra
In response to: Abandoning our fears: how Australia should respond to US-China regional confrontation
Military can fight climate crisis
July 14, 2025
In April, just a third of Australians backed higher defence spending. Bravo! Depressingly, global military outlays hit $2,718 billion in 2024 — up 9.4% on 2023 and the sharpest rise since the Cold War, says the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Sadly, NATO aims to push spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. Militaries are massive polluters, responsible for at least 5.5% of global emissions – likely more, given secrecy and the exclusion of wartime emissions. Australia explicitly excluded military emissions from its 2022 climate pledges. However, now that Australia has a Defence Net Zero Strategy launched in 2024,...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Only a third of Australians support increasing defence spending: new research
Ignoring impending risks in natural disasters
July 14, 2025
I write regarding “The Texas flood, Australia and the psychology of evacuation” (Chas Keys, July 12, 2025). Reading Mr Keys’ article reminded me of the catastrophic bushfire which raged through eastern Victoria and descended on Mallacoota in late December 2019-early January 2020. (Few will forget the many out-of-control bushfires that devastated large areas of eastern NSW and Victoria that summer.) Mallacoota is a popular holiday destination, situated on the Lakes Entrance waterways. In December and January, the population swells from between 1000 to 2000 to about 10,000. While there are conflicting reports about the timing and nature of warnings...
Chris Ryan from Kirrawee, NSW
In response to: The Texas flood, Australia and the psychology of evacuation
How about an anti-China envoy?
July 14, 2025
if we were to replace China with Israel in all these conversations it would surely be antisemitic and we would need an envoy. I’m surprised that all this anti-China talk isn’t treason, considering that China is our largest trading partner and in most circumstances everything is framed from an economic point of view. From an Australian perspective, it has taken at least a year and many dollars to get the courts to consider what is antisemitic (not the same as racism) and what reporters can and can’t report under freedom of the press about Israel and the IDF ....
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Every day is a bad day to visit China, apparently
The spread of Americanisation
July 14, 2025
As my local village (one of those Blue Mountains vintage, ye olde world villages) now boosts a garish, three-meter, neon green sign at its highway entrance reading Massage Centre, I slap my forehead in despair that we are becoming Americanised so fast that apathetic acceptance seems the general response. After the PM’s trip to China, and Trump’s penchant for playground-style payback, I wonder if we should just trump Trump’s move and rearrange the AUKUS acronym to USUKA.
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: AUKUS project has worsened Australia’s ties with China
Hypocrites
July 14, 2025
So the Zionists, Jillian Segal and her husband John Roth, massive supporters of the Advance party, spread lies and disinformation about an Aboriginal voice (among other things), and yet demand a Jewish voice. They demand unbiased news, etc. I'm surprised they actually know how to spell the word; obviously, they don't know its meaning. Some things are just wrong, and you can't be unbiased; eg, Nazi gas chambers, My Lai massacre, and purposely starving children while denying them medication. Unless God says it's OK. How about a voice for atheists? Goodbye to SBS, Al Jazeera, TRT news and...
Jerry Cartwright from Perth
In response to: Antisemitism plan sparks fierce debate
Canberra School of Music – Exit stage left
July 14, 2025
I read Peter Tregear's article and I agree with some, though not all, of his summation. What the ANU administration has wrought upon what was on the way to becoming one of the great institutions of learning for musicians — akin to the Julliard School of Music, (at which my father spent most of a year studying the teaching of excellence in musicianship) — is a condemnation of the stupidity and arrogance of university academics as administrators. I have worked at ANU and consulted for a number of years at USyd; with many wonderful academics and truly woeful...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: The ANU School of Music: Requiem for a Dream?
Write the true history of this conflict
July 11, 2025
The nightly news is full of conflicts. Conflicts that have been brewing for generations fuelled by colonial interference, religious conflicts often about like religions verses similar religion. Until we start truly recording the history of these conflicts, we will never put an end to them. The Israelis are writing the narrative of this conflict and, in turn, the Palestinians will write their own history and the conflict will never end. The cost in human and economic terms will continue to escalate. In the meantime, the real world conflict between the climate and capitalism will take second place...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: 'It is not antisemitic to criticise Israel,' says Federal Court judge – and the Executive Council of Jewry agrees!
Explaining the inexplicable
July 11, 2025
This contribution is well and truly up to Binoy's usual excellent standard. It has context and real journalistic analysis.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The fanatic’s gaze: Louis Theroux and the West Bank settlers
Leave Donald Trump out of it, Greg Barns
July 11, 2025
Albanese has special envoys for antisemitism, Islamophobia, and social cohesion, an ideological race commissioner plus a First Nations ambassador. Via endless mass migration, he's doing roughly 75% population replacement. His immigration pacts uniquely favour qualifications and students from Modi's India. In effect, he's engineering an Indian electorates to add to the Chinese electorates that helped to stymie, in turn, Dutton, Morrison, and Shorten. It's true that Donald Trump is targeting recalcitrant universities, but Albanese's free-ranging ethnic and population engineering are very much his own. Memo: so-called culture wars don't just come from the right.
Stephen Saunders from O'Connor
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
Context and memory missing
July 11, 2025
It appears that this article, whilst interesting in terms of being an accurate reflection of the increasingly dystopian US-centred world view in some respects, also reflects pretty clearly the disconnect between that world view and the reality as perceived by the other 85% of the world's population. That can be seen clearly in two areas of the organised forgetting that underlies much of that Western world view. The first is in seeing the overall agreement that was reflected in the uncontroversial meeting of the BRICS in Rio de Janeiro. The article suggests that the lack of excitement evident at...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: BRICS is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear
Rise in antisemitism
July 11, 2025
The Jillian Segal antisemitism report is based on the assumption of a massive increase in antisemitism. No doubt I will be accused of antisemitism for questioning whether this is actually the case. Despite the attempts by the NSW Government to cover up, many of the supposed incidents in NSW were seen by police to be not antisemitic. Many of the other so-called incidences, e.g., the restaurant demonstration in Melbourne, are quite clearly attacks on Israel or Israeli supporters. I’m happy to be corrected, but I suspect even attacking a synagogue is not necessarily antisemitic. For better or for...
Brian Bycroft from Evans Head NSW
In response to: Antisemitism envoy's report 'Trumpian'
Segal's proposals make Browning's review illegal
July 11, 2025
Browning's article is one of the most erudite articles written about Western hypocrisy regarding Palestine. It is also ironic that the pro-Zionist, anti-Palestinian, anti-democratic, and autocratic anti-protest report by Jillian Segal was released on the same day. Segal's draconian report will be adopted by our cowardly Labor Government. Her Trumpian proposals will result in Browning's article being banned and any mention of the 60,000 dead Palestinians and the suffering of two million Palestinians of Gaza (some who are Christians) who are being ethnically cleansed, not to mention the apartheid-like condition that oppress and dehumanise the Palestinians of the West...
Anthony James from Warracknabeal
In response to: The story most Israelis are not allowed to hear
US president's tariff threats
July 10, 2025
Sourabh Gupta's article hits the nail on the head. Going further is this from The Guardian of 9 July: The true test will come if the crushing sanctions tabled months ago by the Republican senator Lindsey Graham are finally given the presidential go-ahead. The measures would impose a 500% tariff on imports from any country that purchases Russian uranium, gas or oil, with India and China the worst affected. Trump says his policy includes products onsold through a less tariffed country. Well, some of our petrol comes from Russia after being refined in Singapore, so that is a threat...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Tariff deadline extended as Trump's trade talks falter
Antisemitism plan will only further divide Australia
July 10, 2025
An antisemitism plan, in the guise of a law and order crackdown, will only further divide our country, increasing Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, and ultimately make Jews less safe. While the federal government has moved to adopt the antisemitism plan and the recommendations from the special envoy, Jillian Segal, one must ask... is this plan beneficial for our social cohesion when Israel has been found to be committing genocide? Is Jillian Segal right for this high-profile government role, particularly one as sensitive as an “envoy for antisemitism” when, in fact, she has criticised calls for ceasefire in Gaza and...
Andréa Coney from Port Fairy
In response to: Challenging 'antisemitism'
Only developers benefit from the building that is going on
July 10, 2025
I have never seen so much building going on in our city. So many multistorey apartments, so much urban building and still a shortage of affordable housing. Why? Because like this article, all the talk is driven by those with the most to gain. Multistorey units with a desirable outlook and for those struggling at unattainable price tags. Many are built on blocks that have sat vacant waiting for developers to find a way around the zoning regulations that have made the locations the desirable areas that they are. Million-plus two-bedroom units (one bedroom and a large...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: the-housing-crisis-is-everyones-problem
Repetition does not validate a falsehood
July 9, 2025
Greg Barns' article is, as usual, carefully reasoned and he lays out his argument(s) with scrupulous precision. However, on this occasion, I seek more explanation for the contentious statement that Hamas killed 1200 people in the horrendous 7 October 2023 attack. It has been widely accepted that the death toll in that attack — while due to Hamas's monumental strategic blunder that has profited nobody but Netanyahu and his ultra-Zionist coterie — is in considerable part also a product of IDF complicity. This is not a pedantic issue: the Hamas killed 1200 people mantra appears to have become...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Freedom of speech and chants
Being an 'expert' doesn't mean I don't get my view
July 9, 2025
I take issue with the following statement: ...namely the inability of many to recognise and respect genuine expertise... Expert. There has never been a more over-rated word in our age. It's almost like the author thinks that experts have never been wrong about anything ever in the history of the world. Not to mention the many experts in the health fields who would disagree with various aspects of this article. I reserve my right to question the advice or opinion of any expert because you don't get to decide for me. It's that simple. It's not...
Steve M from Brisbane
In response to: The disastrous consequences of an epidemic of misinformation about the safety of
We need fewer people and renewable food
July 9, 2025
Jenny Goldie hits the nail squarely on the head with her article on human population growth. It is wrecking the planet and is the major driver of our own probable demise as a civilisation and as a species. Fortunately, women worldwide realise this, and are lowering their fertility almost everywhere. To give every woman on the planet access to family planning would cost less than half the price of a single nuclear sub – which makes you realise how dumb men truly are when it comes to survival. Coupled with reducing human numbers to a sustainable level (about...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: For the sake of food security, we must address population numbers
Incitement to criminal law
July 9, 2025
Like Bob Vylan and many Palestinian supporters and opponents of Israel's textbook, Nazi-style Holocaust and death camps, I have also been known to chant Death! Death! To the IDF!!! at a protest or two, but my chant is slightly more contextualised. It goes like this: Death! Death! To the IDF!!! ... as per Israel's Basic Law 5710-1950 the Crime of Genocide, which provides for a mandatory capital sentence for every IDF thug who has, in any way, shape or form, committed genocide, participated in genocide, conspired to commit genocide or incited genocide, whether that offence was committed in Israel...
Rick Pass from Rifle Creek FNQ
In response to: Freedom of speech and chants
Just who does our government represent?
July 9, 2025
Noel Turnbull highlights the lack of confidence in Netanyahu and Israel by a considerable majority of Australians, so just who is it that the Albanese Government is representing? Does it prefer to reflect the views of the US rather than its own electors? Does it actively honour the ALP platform on Palestine? Is it instead representing that part of our security fraternity/sorority with a narrow focus on hardware solutions to security, cavilling sotto voce at our trade relationships, and maybe in bed with Mossad? Consider how much security our government's failure to actively support longstanding international norms over...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Boorloo)
In response to: The One-word Problem for Israel
Distrust of the NACC
July 9, 2025
The NACC is rightly the subject of public mistrust, arising from its own reports, its choices of subjects for investigation and from errors and omissions in its leadership. Now we learn that the NACC is encouraged to think that mistrust is accepable. Funded by a government grant of taxpayer earnings, the Australian Research Council is mapping the positive values of public mistrust. Mystified? Yes, you should be. Mistrust of the NACC has been thoroughly earned. No, it contains no positive values. How has this bunkum been promoted? The researchers are misled by Erik Erikson's theoretical musings that...
Glen Davis from New South Wales
In response to: National Anti-Corruption Commission is two years old – Has it restored integrity to federal government?
The NACC's second birthday
July 8, 2025
The NACC has been a huge disappointment. It continues to attempt to measure its success by the number of investigations, the number of reports and the prosecutions and sentances which might follow. Prof Brown's article contains important facts and an investigator's eye for cases. But it too fails to acknowledge the public's scorn and mistrust for the NACC and its founders. The NACC's leadership has consistently failed to define for its staff and its public what it is there do do. It never did put the right graphs on the wall and it never did measure real progress....
Glen Davis from NSW
In response to: National Anti-Corruption Commission is two years old – Has it restored integrity to federal government?
Capitalism should be the target
July 7, 2025
Richard, great article. In my view the corporations are not the right target, capitalism is. It inevitably generates the problems. Very good that you point to the failure to focus on what has led to Trump, and the fact that he has done us a great service by busting the mold. The Dems were only the alternative capitalist party. You see that the need is for a different vision ... of course, but, sorry, capitalist ideology is so entrenched that I have no doubt no alternative can emerge in time. Sanders is a Karmunist. Nothing good will...
Ted Trainer from Sydney, NSW
In response to: The deep politics behind Trump’s presidency
Facts sadly don't trump fantasy in the US
July 7, 2025
This article is a superb illustration of the divide in the West currently between realism and fantasy. The vast bulk of us are so conditioned by the never-ending propaganda, to which we are subjected by a mainstream media that reflects quite clearly the propensities referred to by Orwell in that unpublished preface to Animal Farm, that we simply don't recognise the reality that faces us all. A diminishing number of us prefer to face reality and dispense with the fantasy. This article is a brilliant summary of that reality!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Iran: The things it won’t do to say
Israeli McCarthyism
July 7, 2025
Jeffrey Loewenstein has highlighted the depths to which the Zionists have sunk in their desperation to make genocide acceptable, so long as it is carried out by Israel. They know that any attempt to argue rationally for what they are doing to Palestinian men women and children would simply lead back to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, as charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. So they choose the infantile but effective (at least in the guilt-ridden Western world) labeling of those who find their actions despicable as antisemites. This differs in no...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: J’accuse (Part 2) – The Israel lobby
Time for rebinding the Good Book
July 7, 2025
Jesus clearly said, I’ve come to show you a new way. A new way, away from blood sacrifice and an eye for an eye. A new way founded on loving your fellow neighbour, turning the other cheek, forgiveness and compassion. A new way: far from the bloodthirsty revenge accounts of the Old Testament. What do balanced Christians truly take from the Old Testament? The Genesis story, as a story to be wary of temptation, and the 10 Commandments. The Psalms are comforters, but that’s about it. Well, Pope Leo and the soon-to- be newly-appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, you’ve...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Five books the Bible could do without
Anti-protest policing is not so benign
July 7, 2025
This article paints an inaccurately benign picture of the policing of protest in Australia in 2025. In recent years, all state governments have enacted legislation which criminalises many protest actions, with possible penalties including lengthy jail sentences and hefty fines. Armed with these new laws, and goaded by reactionary government officials and screaming tabloid headlines, police command has not hesitated to invoke these laws. Climate activists and pro-Palestine protesters, in particular, have been targeted. The “Disrupt Land Forces” protests in Melbourne in September last year marked a particularly low point. Despite many episodes of grossly excessive use of...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: What are police allowed to do at protests and who keeps them in check?
Albo, the minister for missed opportunities
July 7, 2025
While not on the scale of of Scott Morrison in the game of who can hold the most ministerial positions, Anthony Albanese with his portfolios of prime minister and minister for missed opportunities is on the way. While on the path to US-style dubious democracy and kingship in Australia, there are far too many significant decisions outside Parliament, mandate or no mandate. Committing Australian troops to overseas wars should never happen without a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Any expenditure over a billion is another thing should require Parliamentary debate at the very least.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: The magic of the mandate: Now you see it, now you don’t
Mandate furphy
July 7, 2025
Unless each election is turned into the equivalent of of a referendum eg if you vote for us we will build a fast rail from Melbourne to Canberra via Sydney, there is no mandate. Vote for us and we will improve rail services does not qualify as a mandate. Even tax reform doesn’t qualify as a mandate to introduce a GST. It does, however, give the winning party the obligation to introduce a tax reform bill for the Parliament to debate and vote on. Mandates like Opposition are political furphies used to muddy the political waters. By labelling...
Bob Pearcr from Adelaide SAv
In response to: The magic of the mandate: Now you see it, now you don’t
The Australian Greens
July 7, 2025
The most recent federal election results for the Greens, losing the able voices of reason of Adam Bandt and Max Chandler-Mather from the House of Representatives, is a tragedy. The media “dancing on their graves” and claiming their policies are too extreme is a disgrace. The Australian Greens is the only party which has morally supportable policies on Palestine/Israel, (Unequivocal condemnation of genocide and support for international law); Climate change (the greatest moral challenge of our generation); Refugees and asylum-seekers; AUKUS (withdraw from this hugely costly surrender of sovereignty to the US); and...
John Curr from MANLY
In response to: Gunning for the Greens over Gaza - Part 1
Labor is not an environmental party
July 7, 2025
In Peter Sainsbury's very fine article, he noted that only two of the 29 new Labor caucus members saw the environment and climate as a priority for the next three years. Yet, Labor still believes that being better than the other mob is enough, he wrote. No, it isn't enough. Labor needs to be a lot better than the Coalition who, at federal level, have no environmental credentials at all. In the recent past, of course, Matt Kean, now chief executive of the Climate Change Authority, was a beacon of light when it came to climate action within the...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Environment: Ken Henry and Xi Jinping agree nature is critical to productivity
Thank you
July 7, 2025
Just a few words of gratitude for your article about the issues surrounding Israel, Zionism, the Gaza conflict etc. I wish more people could see through what is really happening.
Eve Wilhelm from Adelaide, South Australia
In response to: Hypocrisy and deceit Down Under: Australia is a Zionist stronghold
Embrace positive tipping points to inspire policy
July 7, 2025
As climate warnings grow ever more strident, as carbon pollution intensifies and icecaps melt, a dystopian future seems inevitable. There is so much that governments could do – eg charge higher royalties for fossil fuel companies to contribute to the cost of repairing climate damage; increase regulations on agricultural pollution and run-offs to better protect our oceans and reefs. In tolerating environmental degradation our governments are steadily killing life on our planet. There is much concern for tipping points – those limits which, once breached, make damaging change unstoppable. These represent existential threats now imminent; the absence of any...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Australia, the UN and the future of humanity
International law: Who in Australia cares?
July 4, 2025
The same applies exactly in Australia. My letter to all mainstream media in Australia follows. Only Crikey published it. And so the Australian Government, supine to the US as usual, after deferring, now announces support for the US bombings in Iran, actions clearly contrary to international law. Article 2(4) of the 1945 UN Charter states: “Prohibition of Force: Members must refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the UN’s purposes.” Evidence for Iran developing nuclear weaponry is very weak....
John Queripel from Newcastle
In response to: Iran: The things it won't do to say
Gaza genocide
July 4, 2025
Like Refaat Ibrahim, I am appalled by the way the Western world not only looks away, but enables Israel to commit genocide in Gaza. I have been passionately crusading on behalf of Palestine, my initial interest aroused by a founding member of the Israeli Air Force, a South African-born man, who left Israel in total disgust at the country's behaviour. This was the in the late 1970s to early 1980s. What irks me about Refaat's article is his selectivity about previous genocides. My question is, why only mention what the Germans did in Namibia and Tanzania? Surely the Belgian...
Dieter Barkhoff from Victoria
In response to: Genocide in Gaza: History repeats itself.
Chilling words
July 4, 2025
The headline and last words of Jamal Kanj's piece on the lethal shooting of unarmed, starving Palestinians are chilling. Firing squads and Gaza assassination trap are shocking phrases, as is Haaretz's Killing Field. They're what we need after being numbed by Israel's relentless mantras of the most moral army in the world, we were targeting Hamas militants, and the IDF will investigate. It's a wonder that there are enough personnel to produce the hundreds (or is it thousands?) of reports into deadly incidents involving Israeli forces. One report that we really need is an analysis and exposé of the...
Tom Knowles from Parkville Vic
In response to: Food aid or firing squads?
No mention of lobbyists?
July 4, 2025
How can one write an article criticising full-scale institutional failure inside Australia’s peak cultural agency, Creative Australia, without mentioning the trigger for the turmoil that unfolded? The Zionist lobbyists complained about the selection of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives for the 2026 Venice Biennale. Just like at the ABC, there must have been initial letters of complaint. Julian Leeser, that well-known Liberal Party Zionist, stirred the pot, but who provided the initial complaint?
Glenda Jones from Carlton 3053
In response to: Creative Australia’s backflip on Venice Biennale representatives exposes deep governance failures
Globalisation, AI, nothing changes. Capitalism reigns
July 3, 2025
Unfortunately, the area where governments have been least effective is the one where they are now most needed. The area where they have failed time and time again – regulation. Under globalisation they have let Australia and Australians down. While governments have been snuggling up to their capitalist masters, untaxed profits have been rising and disappearing overseas. Services have been becoming more and more substandard due to a lack of funding and little or no regulation. The few regulators left are ineffectual and constantly under threat from the media and government. Puppets of governments are reliant on capitalist...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: from-globalisation-to-ai-why-history-is-abo
Is it ‘if’, not ‘when’?
July 3, 2025
Fred Zhang, among many of the excellent points made in his article, makes the call that the ABC, as our national broadcaster, has fallen well short of its job to be impartial — displaying obvious bias — and has failed at its job to state the facts of both sides of a conflict. With such obvious failures in the ABC’s journalistic duties and severe self-inflicted damage to its integrity, it would be easy to imagine that our ABC has been bought by Disney; but no, that’s America’s ABC. Are we at the point where nothing will surprise us...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: So... calling for peace isn’t enough, but dropping bombs gets a free
It’s a huge challenge, but we can’t avoid it
July 3, 2025
It’s a long-established truth that, in any situation, if you want resolution and progress you are well-advised to present people with solutions rather than problems. So thanks to Bob Douglas for offering potential solutions for global action to address the existential threats that he and his colleagues in the Council for the Human Future have been alerting us about. Quoting from Julian Cribb’s How to fix a broken planet, he presents 10 initiatives which, if undertaken on a global scale, could pull the world back from its current existential precipice. Cribb is under no illusion about the magnitude...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Australia, the UN and the future of humanity
Warfare post-globalisation
July 3, 2025
Thanks Brian Toohey, great article. As noted, during WW2, Australian industry supplied huge quantities of food, medicine, clothing, ammunition, explosives, rifles, guns, ships and 2000 combat aircraft. We also had a merchant navy, ships owned and crewed by Australians that were key to that effort. Now there are no ships and no crew. The technology is now radically different and changes at a phenomenal pace (evolving on a monthly and weekly basis in Ukraine) but the fundamental problem remains the lack of local manufacture and sustainment. Big bits of kit are vulnerable, not suited to our...
Dave Young from NQ
In response to: How spending more on defence harms the nation
More of the same?
July 3, 2025
Sadly, the second iteration of the Albanese Government seems to be headed in the same spineless, timorous, obsequious, mealy-mouthed direction as the first. If so, would this lead to what could be called a double disillusion?
Alan Wilson from Adelaide
In response to: Courage needs to be shown in politics – Israel is no longer above the law
Our catastrophic superannuation system
July 2, 2025
Australia's compulsory superannuation system, a $4 trillion behemoth, is, in my opinion, a catastrophe. In its essence, it serves to effect massive transfers of wealth from the less well-off to the most well-off. It ensures that your socioeconomic status during your working years will continue inexorably into your retirement years – the antithesis of the Australian fair go. Think, just for a moment, of those who didn't actually work much or at all (in the paid sense) during those years — carers, disabled people, life's battlers — condemned to get by solely on the old age pension – whose...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wages