Letters to the Editor
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
How about a complete 21st century edit?
July 2, 2025
With today’s knowledge of the physical world and what holds it together psychologically, that the Scriptures have been assembled into a politically focussed holy manual is indisputable. True, the instructions therein underwrote the evolutionary phase at a particular point in the human experiment, but beating ploughshares into swords took time and effort. We can now summon Armageddon at the press of a button. David O’Halloran’s plea to edit the Holy Book with a 21st century perspective, as essential as it is to humanity’s survival, may be falling on deaf ears. Manipulation and subjugation of people of faith has...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: Five books the Bible could do without
'Your winnings, sir'
July 2, 2025
The revelations by Warwick Anderson and Kerry Breen about medical research fraud and the ways in which it is covered up by vested interests are so shocking that I am reminded of the famous exchange in Casablanca when Captain Renault, chief of Police, closes Rick’s café and has to find a pretence for it when Rick asks him why: Captain Renault to Rick: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! Croupier, appearing at his shoulder: Your winnings, sir. Captain Renault:Oh, thank you very much.
Peter Sainsbury from Darling Point
In response to: Research misconduct: Strengthening Australia’s research integrity system
Brian Toohey makes some good points
July 2, 2025
Brian Toohey makes some very good points in his 2 July opinion piece. Australia’s security and defence requirements are not similar to either those of the US or Europe. We are not covered by NATO or any other similar treaty and we do not have Russia on our doorstep. If we did need to spend 3.5% GDP on defence, it would be a coincidence with America’s request. Given our terrible history of joining America in conflicts, no way should we join them in defending Taiwan or agree to linking Taiwan with the use of any nuclear submarines sold to...
David Hind from North Sydney NSW
In response to: How Spending More on defence harms the nation
The vengeful god on full display in Palestine
July 2, 2025
As a long lapsed Christian, whose limited knowledge comes from his teens growing up in a Protestant household, I’ve long been unable to understand the significance of the Old Testament and why the teachings of Christ don’t always trump the teachings in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the foreword setting the scene for what is to come. In Palestine, the foreword has become the text and it is time for Christians to distribute the loaves and fishes, put an end to all the smiting, and stop facilitating the smiting in an attempt to fast-track the second...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Five books the Bible could do without
Kelty and Keating’s lasting legacy
July 1, 2025
This has been one of the most significant social reforms of the past century as it has not only provided far greater security in retirement than the pension system, but has also provided a vast aggregation of capital to enable national investment in public infrastructure outside the vagaries of politics and national budgeting. This alone secures Keating’s place in Australian history.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wagess
Thanks, Paul
July 1, 2025
As a beneficiary and supporter of super, I would like to offer some improvements to the scheme: 1. That the payout be compulsorily taken as a pension. 2. That the scheme give priority to investing in Australian Government/state and national infrastructure projects with the Reserve Bank setting variable interest rates on the loan. 3. That politicians' super be included in the scheme and that the same operational rules apply to all Australians. 4. That ideologically opposed Parliaments be specifically banned from legislation allowing “crisis“ early drawdown schemes. 5. That the balance in super be considered...
Bob Pesrce from Adelaide SA
In response to: the-superannuation-system-matures-at-12-of-
Thank you, Mr Keating
July 1, 2025
I recall when our superannuation system was introduced. Further, I also well recall those days when we were fortunate to have politicians with the kind of intellectual power and vision that delivered this, and now, the extraordinary Australian superannuation assets we have today. I cannot imagine looking at retirement on a government pension, when I have the good fortune, after decades of work, to have membership in a Defined Benefit higher education industry fund. What is disappointing is the variable but overt lack of vision and imagination in subsequent politicians regarding the original dynamic purpose, collective and private...
Robyn Dalziell from Sydney
In response to: The superannuation system matures at 12% of wages
Avoiding the maelstrom of America's death throes
July 1, 2025
Allan Patience is spot on in this article. With the American Government fighting internecine battles against its justice, educational and economic systems, the US is imploding. To avoid being caught up in its death throes we must develop an independent foreign policy. It's time we left the false security of Uncle Sam and lit out on our own.
Albert Turley from Doncaster, VIC
In response to: Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
At least I have a booming voice
July 1, 2025
I agree wholeheartedly with Trish Bolton. In my mid-70s now, with a walking stick and a booming voice, I earn my right to an Age Pension and am proud of my creative, activist life. As an active union member throughout my (paid) working life, I helped fight for better working conditions and equal opportunities for women here and around the world. As a peace activist, I've marched with hundreds of thousands of people fighting against wars and discrimination against so-called minority peoples in a US-led rules-biased global hegemony. Police violence was the norm in the 1960s and we...
Diana Rickard from Tumbling Waters NT
In response to: OK Boomers not so okay
Lower than vermin
July 1, 2025
Way back in 1948 during a speech in Manchester, Nye Bevan declared a deep burning hatred towards the UK Tory party and proclaimed they were lower than vermin and nothing more than organised spivvery. Indeed, substantial evidence indicates the words resonate much more today than they did over seven decades ago.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill, Brisbane QLD
In response to: The contemporary world is run by political dinosaurs facing extinction
Enduring Israeli propaganda myths
July 1, 2025
An excellent review by Jack. A couple of Israeli standard attempts to justify its abominations, however, need to be put to bed clearly and accurately. The first is that Israel has a right to exist. Under international law, no country has the right to exist. There is nothing in international law that says so. What international law does is to give a people a right to exist. Countries just exist at any one time and may not have existed in the past and may not exist in the future as international borders change constantly. Secondly Israel, in the case...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Bunker busters shook us all
I’d rather be a Boomer than a Millennial
June 30, 2025
I can’t quite grasp the overall message of Trish Bolton’s Boomer talk. Yes, we are privileged, and had things so much easier in early adulthood than do millennials these days, but we apparently have to suffer scorn, ridicule and derision from those much younger than us. And we should not be blind to the fact that not all Boomers are financially secure. But aren’t these truisms just facts of life in any non-homogenous group? Neither of my two children in their late thirties/early forties can envisage ever being able to buy their own home albeit they are both in...
Maggie Woodhead from Perth, western Australia
In response to: OK boomers not so OK
Disinformation and extreme weather the greatest risks
June 30, 2025
There are growing calls for Australia to boost defence spending – but is it wise or necessary? As Julian Cribb points out, the “lust for conquest, self-aggrandisement and dominion” from some world leaders is diverting attention and resources from the far greater threat of climate change. In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight — the closest it’s ever been — citing not only the risk of nuclear war but also escalating climate change and the spread of disinformation. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Risks Survey, based on over...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: A distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Taxes, no taxes and no services
June 30, 2025
The divisive nature of politics has led us to this point and under this system there always has to be someone to blame. It has become the norm for the cost of services and government projects to always be reported as a cost, not a benefit eg when was the last time Medicare, PBS, aged care or the NDIS were reported as the benefits provided? It is always the cost to the taxpayer. We hear about the price of upgrading the electrical supply system, NBN, highways etc forgetting that for many years private suppliers have benefitted from the...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: ok-boomers-not-so-okay
Fitness means best-suited, not strongest
June 30, 2025
Julian Cribb says, with some, I hope excusable, editing that, ‘The pathological character of modern political leadership … has diverted us from our own survival, as a civilisation – and maybe as a species, … contributing to a humanity, as Darwin might have described it, “less fit to survive”’. The phrase survival of the fittest is mostly misused these days to imply that individuals and groups who fulfill the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger”, to which one might add smarter, better armed, richer, more ruthless, etc., are very justifiably most likely to succeed in life. Julian, with...
Peter Sainsbury from Sydeny
In response to: A distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Egomaniac
June 30, 2025
Did anyone ask “Do you think Trump is an egomaniac“? What percentage answered yes? A larger percentage in Australia? Did you ever see a picture of a gathering of world leaders where he isn’t front and centre and he takes his ball and goes home if he isn’t? Whatever he does is bigger and better, even if it isn’t. Trump is ungracious in his language about past and present leaders. He isn’t worthy of a Nobel Peace prize (no US president is) but his ego demands he get one. because someone else got one.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: What the world thinks of Trump
Climate action has to be our top priority
June 30, 2025
The title of Julian Cribb's article was very apt: the world is indeed too distracted by war to deal with climate change and is thus marching towards catastrophe. There is no one solution; rather many that have to be implemented in parallel. The most obvious is making the energy transition away from fossil fuels to renewables. The next is a ban on deforestation followed by widespread reafforestation. But we have to address economic growth and not regard it as a wholesale good. Like the curate's egg, it is good in part, namely in those areas that benefit the planet...
Jenny Goldie Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: GA distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe
Labels, not arguments
June 30, 2025
I acknowledge Sue's pain at the bullying use of labels such as antisemitism to divert community attention from the perpetration of genocide. Many of us have been similarly targeted. but not to the same extent, by the supporters of a regime that closely resembles in its guiding political ideology and its criminal actions the Nazis of mid-last century Europe. That drawing attention to this and highlighting its corrosive affect on our shared humanity can be used as a weapon demonstrates the capacity of such extreme ideologies to distort the perceptions and actions of possibly otherwise normal human beings. ...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Lattouf’s victory, our fight: Standing firm against intimidation
Not just myopia, it is developmental dependency
June 30, 2025
Bruce Dover clearly points out Australia's toxic dependency on Uncle Sam now that Mother England is ageing. He depicts Penny Wong and the prime minister as supine and timid about our international position – even though they have the numbers to be courageous and visionary. Might I suggest it is not myopia, it is an adolescent nation fearing to leave the previous cosy dependence on mum and dad.
Michael Breen from Robertson NSW
In response to: Australia's Media Myopia
China's Uighur treatment praised by world Muslims
June 30, 2025
Taken from this article: Thirty-seven other countries jumped to Beijing’s defence, with their own letter praising China’s human rights record, and dismissing the reported detention of up to two million Muslims in western China’s Xinjiang region. Nearly half of the signatories were Muslim-majority nations, including Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, according to the Chinese Government. “Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalisation measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centres,” the letter said, according to Reuters, which saw a...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China’s partnership with Muslim world is redrawing global landscape
Comptering for the Nobel Prize in perjury
June 30, 2025
The capacity of Bibi to lie, deceive, prevaricate, distort, fabricate, forge and perjure himself publicly and openly exceeds all bounds of decency, humanity and morality. It is not true to say that you can tell when he is lying when his lips are moving. It goes way past that. Every waking moment of his despicable life is a lie. The time is coming when he will have to face his Nuremburg moment. It cannot come too soon for humanity.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Twisting biblical narratives to suit aggression
We downgrade foreign language teaching at our peril
June 30, 2025
Having just read Allan Patience's fine article, I am even more perturbed than before, at Australia's mindless acceptance of the educational philosophy that currently reveres STEM education as the be-all and end-all of education, and the current downgrading of language teaching and the humanities. Yes science, maths etc are very important, but those now downgraded studies are urgently needed. Australians need to tune in to our neighbours in Asia. We're getting all our news not just from Caucasian countries, but worse just from anglophone countries. We keep being told that China is the big threat and all out to...
Noel Wauchope from Melbourne
In response to: Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
Failure to condemn
June 30, 2025
Never before has violence been so encouraged, and disdain for life and liberty been so blatant. A US president who encourages violence against immigrants living and working within his country; a man who encourages the suppression of free speech against journalists and anyone who has a difference of opinion. A president who bullies countries that don’t want to trade in the way he wishes to, and threatens to take over sovereign nations for his own means; a man who bombs countries illegally, and sends the military into a war zone -that he and his cronies created — under the...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Starvation and profiteering in Gaza
Australian media's biggest problem
June 30, 2025
It's all very well decrying Australia’s media myopia, but look who owns it. We've got Murdoch, Zuckerberg and Musk, for whom the US dollar, garnered worldwide, is God. Fairfax persisted until finally capitulating to the Nine Network. Credibility died there when a year's worth of red ink decorated Peter Hartcher's histrionic, fear-mongering, anti-China series. Poor old Aunty is seriously infected by Liberal Party appointments and funding cuts. Its former quality innovation and Australian content has diminished drastically. No wonder our always UK/US focussed mainstream media, now constricted even further by reduced ownership, is now referred to as legacy media....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Australia’s media myopia
War powers
June 30, 2025
Fred Zhang lays out quite clearly the need for balance in reporting on China. In view of Donald Trump’s attitude to China, particularly Taiwan, it is important to note the following from The Guardian on 28 June: “Tim Kaine, a Virginia democrat who sponsored the resolution, also harkened back to the founders’ drafting of the constitution when he spoke to his colleagues on Friday. He spoke about how George Washington was president at the time. “As much as they respected leaders like George Washington, they said war is too big a decision. It’s too big a decision for...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: No time to dye: ABC’s China bias is licensed to kill credibility
Lobbyists, lobbyists everywhere
June 30, 2025
I'm not the slightest bit interested in sport or physical activity. I'd rather read a book. I walk three times weekly for my health only because there's coffee and conversation at the end. Yet even I am sick of gambling ads on TV and in public spaces when I go out. And I'm aware, to my shame, that my monthly pub dinner is cheap because it's subsidised by the gambling losses of people playing pokies across the other side of the bar. So when the government caves to highly visible gambling industry lobbying and refuses to ban gambling advertising...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: How lobbyists are blocking bans on advertising for online gambling – and putting young Australians at risk
Sites to view
June 30, 2025
It would be great if Bruce Dover could suggest a few online English language news services in neighbouring countries that he considers to be good to follow.
Peter Manins from Cairns
In response to: Australia’s media myopia
Airspace usage permits for the attack on Iran?
June 27, 2025
Jeffrey Sachs reveals the extent of the chicanery in the Israel Iran longstanding war. But there is an aspect of the Israeli and US aeroplane attacks on Iran which seems to have sailed under the radar. Israel must have flown through Jordanian or Iraqi (even Syrian) airspace to reach Iran, while the US could have attacked from the Persian Gulf, but also seems to have overflown either Jordan or Iraq, as the B2s reportedly came from the west. My understanding is that Iraq-Iran relations are quite good. So did the Jordanian and Iraqi Governments approve the overflights? ...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Jeffrey Sachs Interview on Breaking Points Podcast: The US-Israel-Iran Ceasefire
Rise to the moment – less of the trite!
June 27, 2025
Senator Wong, I have written on several previous occasions urging your independence, strength and influence inside Cabinet to serve our country’s interest on issues such as the AUKUS disaster, our high-risk reliance on, and hosting of, US defence, and the urgency to improve relationships with our Asian neighbours. Labor’s win in the last election should not be taken as a source of steady as we go comfort. It should be heeded as a call to act as a true Labor Government, guided by the values and courage of leaders such as Curtin, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating. That is...
Sue Booth from Western Australia
In response to: Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
Iran's democracy
June 27, 2025
This might help inform Brian Toohey on Iran's democracy. I recall Iran being prevented from exporting its enriched uranium by the sanctions Trump introduced.
J. Forrest from Rural WA
In response to: Australia should not have endorsed the American bombing of Iran nor the Israeli
Setting wages and salaries
June 26, 2025
Perhaps CEO's wages and bonuses should be linked to the wages of their highest middle management employee and that percentage should be reflected all the way through the chain. Apart from being more equitable and transparent, it would save on strikes and time and money spent in arbitration discussing wages, conditions and bonuses. It could also be applied to Parliamentarians and public servants.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Australian CEOs are still getting their bonuses. Performance doesn’t seem to matter so much
The pachyderm in the papal palace
June 26, 2025
Bruce Duncan’s articles do not mention the pachyderm in Francis’ papal palace: child sexual abuse. To give Francis credit, in 2019 he abolished the pontifical secret over child sexual abuse, thus putting to an end, at least on paper, to the cover-up written into canon law from 1922 to 2019. I say, on paper, because Francis continued what he called “office confidentiality” of canonical proceedings. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended in its 2017 Final Report that the Holy See should publish its disciplinary decisions and their reasons, while accepting that the identity of...
Kieran Tapsell from STANWELL PARK
In response to: The Legacy of Pope Francis Part 2
Don’t you worry about that
June 26, 2025
What a magnificent statement about our strategic and defence situation Jack Waterford’s article is! It highlights the sickness in our democracy. It is not just Americans who don’t want a king, but rather robust public debate and an effective system of checks and balances on executive power, and input, which is listened to, into that power. At the moment we the people have to suffer the Joh Bjelke-Petersen DYWAT style of government: “Don’t you worry about that”, otherwise called the mushroom syndrome.
Geoff Taylor from Borlu
In response to: Is Albo reverting to compulsive secrecy?
A concerning absence of concern
June 25, 2025
David Spratt makes it clear that we have a whole aria of canaries singing their last in the climate coalmine. Climate scientists see the risk; climate activists encourage effective policy. But nothing will be achieved without committed government action. This crisis is evolving rapidly; time to stem its impact is short. In the absence of government action, government inaction represents an alternative action decision. Theories why Labor’s first government was reluctant to take substantial action on our changing climate include political timidity and political caution; the power of fossil fuel lobbyists and donations were others. Labor’s thumping majority...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Faster than forecast, accelerated warming creates a climate time-bomb for the Al
Meanwhile. back in Australia...
June 25, 2025
I don’t know what the statistics tell us about Australia, but I’m pretty sure Australians don’t want to go marching in lockstep with the US off to yet another illegal war. They don’t want to make our country go broke buying or building submarines that will be obsolete before they arrive and will probably never be delivered. They also don’t want to keep handing more land/bases over to the US for target practice. Australians don’t want to be in the frontline when the elephants fight and our grass is damaged. I’m sure that Australians are disappointed with...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Americans don't want Trump's illegal war on Iran
Eastern seaboard suddenly remembers WA exists
June 25, 2025
I cannot readily recall Mr Eslake advocating for redress of the GST distribution inequities affecting Western Australia prior to the implementation of the No-worse-off guarantee. To contextualise his present commentary, the accompanying table illustrates Western Australia's proportional return from its substantial contributions to federal revenue in the decade prior: | Financial Year | WA | NSW | VIC | | -------------- | ------ | ------ | ------ | | 2009–10 | $0.70 | $0.86 | $0.94 | | 2010–11 | $0.65 | $0.85 | $0.95 | | 2011–12 | $0.60 | $0.84 | $0.96 | | 2012–13 | $0.55...
Chris Picard from Perth
In response to: Is there any hope for a fairer carve-up of GST between the states?
Feeding the chooks
June 25, 2025
Poor thing, Donald. I quite enjoyed him as a candidate. I was often reminded of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's feeding the chooks when describing his news conferences. Never have I watched a greater player of the media than Donald. Then he got elected only to have President Putin call his bluff in Ukraine and President Xi call his bluff on tariffs. Fortunately for Donald, along comes Netanyahu, the Zionist lobby and his own select advisers to explain that this one's easy. We can make you great again. Just bomb Iran. When was the last time that lot got it right?
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: War is the worst thing in the world
Iranians may be guided by Ferdowsi on Fordow
June 24, 2025
I note the article by Tom Hussain on Iran’s options. Will Iranians be guided by their tenth century epic poet Hakim Ferdowsi, who wrote: “چو ایران مباشد تن من مباد بدین بوم و بر زنده یک تن مباد اگر سر به سر تن به کشتن دهیم ازآن به که کشور به دشمن دهیم “If there is no Iran, let my body not be; If only one live body is in this world, let it be me. If we put head to head and body to slaughter, Let it be to protect our...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Iran retaliating against US inevitable as window for diplomacy narrows: analysts
Breach of international law
June 24, 2025
Let’s see if I have got this right: Australia fails to condemn the US attacks on Iran despite them being a clear breach of international law. However, when Iran attacks US bases in response, Australia condemns Iran although, in this instance, it seems to me, that there is a case to be made by Iran under international law for an action in self-defence.
Brian Bycroft from Evans Head NSW
In response to: Bombing Iran a clear breach of international law
Torturing the definition of Liberal Democratic
June 24, 2025
It tortures language beyond its capacity to suggest that the G7 was always a group of like-minded states that promoted liberal democratic values and supported democratic policy actions. Several of the countries involved, not excluding that US, have long since become oligarchies that rarely, if ever, reflect democratic values. Indeed, the US drafters of their Constitution deliberately set out, as they explained themselves, to limit democracy as far as they could. Public opinion poll after public opinion poll reflect what vanishingly small effect public opinion has on public policy. Democracy in the US is generally a performative art...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Trump’s disruption in Canada leaves the G7 at a crossroads
What is the point of extra taxes?
June 24, 2025
If nothing else, King Trump has proven that tariffs have minimal impact on big business and once again the general population pays the bill. One way or the other, the average person pays, be it as an increase in insurance premiums, property being uninsurable, an increase in taxes/government spending to carry out the disaster repairs/relief, homelessness bought on by their homes being burnt down, flooded or generally unlivable. The further down the food chain one is, the less likely you are to benefit/survive the horsemen of the Apocalypse, let alone the fifth and most dangerous horseman, capitalism, which...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: International survey shows 81% back forcing big oil to pay for climate destruction
The old canard of the 'rules-based order'
June 24, 2025
As always with Greg, this is an exemplar of clear and careful analysis mixed with forthright conclusions. It draws attention again to the nonsense retailed by the West of a rules-based order that has no written and universally shared set of rules outside that which is confected daily to be necessary to provide a cover for the continual breach of the rules that have been established by the world community through international law, by the dying Western empire. Make no mistake, there is no relationship between the fatuous twaddle of the rules-based order and the reality of that international...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Bombing Iran a clear breach of international law
Regime change: who has the right?
June 23, 2025
Andrew Thomas has the gall to tell us how to bring about regime change in Iran and quotes that bastion of moral genocide, Netanyahu, to reinforce his righteousness. Even more wow is that P&I publishes this example of how the Western world, led by a country not at war for just 17 years of its history, considers it has the right to determine who is allowed to rule a country anywhere in the world. Thomas seems unaware that it was British/US meddling — the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 — that gave birth to subsequent regimes, and that...
Dieter Barkhoff from Box Hill North
In response to: Regime change wouldn’t likely bring democracy to Iran. A more threatening force