Letters to the Editor
Guillotines to guns... that's progress!
September 18, 2025
I don't know what they called it in Marie-Antoinette's day, but in our day it's called neoliberalism and in the US we are seeing its natural endpoint, the implosion of a nation. When the top 1%, or even .1% garner so much of the common wealth unto themselves so that in their wealthy nation people are homeless and starving, then society becomes unstable. The greater the inequality, the greater the instability. And then .... whoosh! .... look what happens! It's not like history hasn't warned us.
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The martyrdom of Charlie Kirk
AUKUS versus sanity
September 18, 2025
An excellent summary by Nick Deane of the cunning, dissimulation and double-dealing encompassed by the scheme dreamed up by the Dodgy brother Scott Morrison to wedge the ALP on national security and the enthusiastic promotion of it by the gormless chicken-hawk Marles. Indeed, so successful is the scheme designed to wedge the ALP by that boneheaded and imbecilic fraudster Morrison that the ALP have allowed itself to be captured by it and have swallowed the bait of an impossible and vastly expensive fraud of an idea, that it will be held responsible for failing to achieve. Can anyone...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: AUKUS anniversary reminder to the prime minister
Doing politics differently
September 18, 2025
Stewart Sweeney wants an Australian version of Jeremy Corbyn's new party. In fact, we've got an almost, not quite version operating now. They are Community Independents – one person representing one constituency, but without a party structure. We just need more of them. We all know party structures render the direct wishes of an electorate null and void, supplanted by party uniformity. Not to mention careerism which leaves constituents with no representation worth the name. Community independents have shown they can pool the resources of their common interests while differing where their electorates share those differences. Every single...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Starmer’s collapse and the rebirth of a movement
Food insecurity one of the greatest climate risks
September 17, 2025
In reporting on the First National Climate Risk Assessment, Julian Cribb highlights a number of threats to Australia from a wild climate that is increasingly out of control. Among them is rising food insecurity which will result from falling crop yields, rising heat stress for livestock, increasing loss of water for irrigation, declining output from forestry and fisheries and biosecurity threats. This goes far beyond the worry that our wine industry will have to relocate to Tasmania as the mainland becomes too hot. It raises the question: Will we even be able to feed ourselves? Right now, we can...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Australia issues ‘terrifying’ climate warning
Confucius institutes
September 17, 2025
I really must respond to this article, as one of the two former academic directors of the Confucius Institute at the University of Melbourne, which we established in partnership with Nanjing University in the early 2000s. Nanjing University, by the way, was and is a highly reputable institution, judged at the time to be a fitting partner for the University of Melbourne. The CI was set up separately from the Chinese program in the Asia Institute, precisely in order to waylay any suggestions of interference. This did not stop some UoM academics from other departments from making unfounded allegations....
David Holm from Taipei
In response to: Confucius Institute decline signals China's soft power shift
Albanese is Billy Hughes and Joe Lyons, not John Curtin
September 17, 2025
Anthony Albanese styles himself as a recycled Curtin, and even as a recycled Whitlam. He is neither. He is more a combination of Billy Hughes and Joe Lyons, prime ministers who used the labour movement as vehicles, but whose ultimate ambitions to secure a place within the conservative Tory establishment, framed by loyalty to British imperial interests, “to King and Empire”, overrode all other considerations. Since 2022, Albanese has made loud and clear his loyalty to the British monarchy, his support for NATO extending its role into the Indo-Pacific, his extraordinary support for AUKUS, his determination to transfer massive...
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: Australia needs to diplomatically disengage from our 'dangerous ally'
America, truly the 'farewell tour'
September 16, 2025
Chris Hedges is one of the most perceptive and concerned observers of US decline. As in his book, America,The Farewell Tour, he makes a compelling case for that decline driven by extremist religious ideologies, rampant individualism and a self-destructive economic ideology. It is a society with a history of widespread resort to inter-personal violence from its very beginning in the genocide of the native peoples and the enslavement of black Africans for personal gain. Hedges has an almost unique capacity to draw all that history together with the current consequences of it, to make sense of an otherwise chaotic...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The martyrdom of Charlie Kirk
A foreign policy based on facts, not fears
September 16, 2025
Geoff's article was a careful diplomat's assessment of how Australia might work more co-operatively with a rising, but peaceful China. It needs to be recognised that the vast increase in China's armed forces capabilities is a direct response to the decades-long encirclement of China by the US. It has no intention of allowing the US to begin another century of humiliation. It is adopting a sensible policy response to that effort by the US, by focusing on defence, not on the distant projection of military power. Its principal focus is the five principles for peaceful co-existence set out first...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China’s giant military parade didn’t surprise just the West
It won’t be a surprise
September 16, 2025
The 2020s will be known as the decade when global leaders, paralysed by weakness and lack of courage, turned their backs on the greatest threat to humanity — impending climate disaster — and instead beat the drums of offshore war, until they actually had a few. Prior to that, they were lining their pockets with dosh from weapons contracts entered into because of those wars. Meanwhile, the population, smelling the deception, and feeling the growing anxiety of millions, sensing impending natural disasters, scarcity, high costs, financial instability and government waste, decided to take to the streets and make clear...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Environment: Earth is getting hotter faster thanks to humans
Integration into US defence force (Department of War)
September 16, 2025
The question in my mind is, have we gone past the tipping point in our integration into the US defence force (Department of War)? I suspect that we have because the type and number of US bases in Australia and the greater importance of the functionality of these bases are to the US. We think that we have the US where we want them. They think the same of Australia. After all, the tail does not wag the dog. We have lost sovereignty to the US (gave it away, all our own work). In a war with China...
Peter Sheehy from Blackheath NSW
In response to: Australia needs to diplomatically disengage from our 'dangerous ally'
The inspirational leaders we need must step forward
September 16, 2025
The World Bank has joined the expert chorus accepting the confronting reality of humanity’s environmental predicament. We are killing the planet which hosts us — polluting the air, poisoning the land, and choking the seas with plastic — all to maintain continuing growth in both our numbers and prosperity. We are destroying our future to enhance our present. Julian Cribb asks: can we save a ‘liveable Earth’? Even at this late stage, we probably can. We have a clear, science-based understanding of our predicament, and of the imminent irreversible tipping points that give this challenge urgency. We have the...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Can we save a 'livable Earth'?
The end of cruelty towards refugees
September 15, 2025
Sophie Singh calls for the end of cruelty towards refugees. Labor has done that in part, having transferred up to 19,000 people from TPVs to permanent residency. But we still have too many of the legacy caseload to process and they have been waiting too long. These are better circumstances for Labor. The fearmongering Peter Dutton is gone. But then we have the vitalisation of Nauru as a refugee colony of Australia if the Nauruans will let it happen. People from all parts of the world are taken to Nauru to start another life. If there are errors on...
Jennifer Haines from Glossodia
In response to: 12 years on, are we not yet tired of cruel policies towards asylum-seekers?
Armenian genocide has no comparison
September 15, 2025
Adrian Lipscomb is wrong to claim “similarities between the Armenian and Gazan genocides”. Anzac PoWs were witnesses and their uncensored accounts were recorded, as the Armenian National Committee of Australia explains: “Shortly after the Gallipoli campaign, Australian soldiers came into contact with the genocides of the Armenian, Greeks and Assyrians. Over 300 ANZACs were held as prisoners of war by the Ottoman forces. These ANZACs recorded their experiences in detailed diaries and memoirs with vivid accounts of the genocide. Many of these accounts are now stored in the archives of the Australian War Memorial.” For reasons only...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: Genocide – Armenia (1915-16) and Gaza (2023-25)
Charlie Hebdo to Charlie Kirk – in a blink
September 15, 2025
Every faltering cause needs a martyr. Charlie Kirk is Trump’s Maga Movement sacrificial goat. The incandescent rage and the irrational response to Kirk’s assassination is not unexpected, but no less disturbing. While stifling public debate on criticism of Kirk’s aggressively expounded and controversial views is another step down the path of authoritarianism in the land of the free, extending visa bans on “foreigners” who may have expressed an adverse opinion to Kirk’s seems ludicrous, paranoiac even. While this shift from the America we grew up with seems relatively recent, in 1986 the controversial rock musician, Frank Zappa, said, during...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: US State Dept 'reviewing' foreigner comment on Kirk killing
A great resource for educators and students
September 15, 2025
The recent article by Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University, and Ray Wills, Professor of Agriculture and Environment at the University of WA, was both timely and uplifting. In a global media climate dominated by crises, their account of humanity’s clean energy transition as “the fastest in human history” offers rare but essential optimism. The inclusion of extensive hyperlinks is a notable strength of online publishing, enhancing the article’s usefulness for educators seeking to engage an increasingly worried student cohort. Such resources may also encourage students to view the energy sector not only as a site...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Climate action can feel slow – but the fastest energy leap in history has begun
The hypocrisy of war
September 15, 2025
When two countries, who are not militarily matched, go to war we end up with a predictable outcome. In the case of Israel and Palestine, I have never seen any Palestinian tanks, jet fighters, bombers or soldiers in uniform. Maybe some Palestinian drones. And I have never heard rumours of the Palestinians having nuclear arms. Something other than just war must be happening. When I hear of hostage/prisoner exchanges, there seem to be a disproportionately high number of Palestinian prisoners released compared to the number of hostages released. And there are reports of prisoners being tortured in jail....
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: The politics of extermination
Absurd irony
September 15, 2025
Sovereign citizens attacking Camp Sovereignty. Can someone remind these sovereign seekers they —uncomfortably — have ideological ground in common? The Zionists standing side by side with white Australia pundits at Bondi Beach. Can someone tell this lot that they are traditional enemies? Your average Nazi sympathiser isn’t traditionally a fan of Jewish anything. I often wonder how Trump will reconcile the moment when the black-shirted skinheads realise they’re sharing the president’s metaphorical bed with the very ones Hitler targeted. There is an absurd irony here if it were so sickening. Can someone also remind Albo that...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: The retreat of social democracy and the rise of the hard right
Key climate mitigation issue overlooked
September 15, 2025
Like Peter Newman and Ray Wills, I’ve been a renewable energy researcher and campaigner for decades. But responsible boosting of renewables must recognise key barriers that Peter and Ray overlook. Growth in renewable energy, rapid though it is, is chasing growth in energy consumption. The result: in 2019, fossil fuels supplied 80% of global total final energy consumption, the same as in 2000. By 2022, renewables had reduced this to 78%. Even at several times their recent growth rate, renewables cannot overtake and replace fossil fuels by 2050. Yet a rapid transition is needed to avoid crossing climate tipping points....
Mark Diesendorf from Sydney, Australia
In response to: Climate action can feel slow – but the fastest energy leap in history has begun
Only you know if we did it
September 15, 2025
The year 2024 was when we exceeded 1.5 degrees, and on land this warming climbed to 1.8 degrees. Our carbon budget will be spent by October 2027. There is not enough suitable land on the planet for the necessary level of afforestation to offset fossil fuel emissions. At home, the Great Barrier Reef has suffered record losses of live coral cover. All this, again, made for difficult reading. All those with the power to make decisions to turn things around will all be gone by the time we genuinely acknowledge what needed to be done in 2025. Sainsbury concluded...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Environment: Earth is getting hotter faster thanks to humans
Truth will out
September 15, 2025
The news on 13 September confirms two extremely important developments in reporting on the genocide being inflicted by the ultra-Zionist government and the IDF on the Palestinian people. It reflects the accuracy of John Menadue’s article of 05/09 discussing the real number of casualties (deaths/injuries) from the Israeli atrocity. In official Israeli statements, the numbers of Palestinian casualties are rarely provided, but there is a continuum of protests that anything other than elimination of HAMAS terrorists is rare and sadly regretted. Unfortunate accidents; oversights, tragic mistakes… As for reports from Palestinian/UN/aid agencies etc. sources, these are discounted as propaganda....
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza
The real threat to the South Pacific
September 12, 2025
Cogent and clear analysis and recipe for appropriate Australian policy in the Pacific. If we truly had the best interests of the Pacific nations at heart, we would encourage appropriate Chinese help to them. By pitting ourselves with the US against China, we encourage inappropriate injections of Chinese money and trinkets like flash SUVs to dubious recipients to buy favour.
Rod Madgwick from Mt Victoria
In response to: Climate change, not China, is the real threat in the South Pacific
Australia backing the wrong horse
September 12, 2025
It is no wonder that successive Australian Governments have been unable to reach an agreement on gambling advertisement reform. We, as a country, have a mug punter mentality, a culture of backing the wrong horse. We march blindly off to wars. Once again we are heading down a very dangerous path, betting our houses in a housing crisis and backing the wrong horse trotters in a steeplechase. We need to stop sticking our noses into the internal affairs of other countries at the behest of waning powers. We need to adopt a policy of friendship to everyone, helping...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Climate change, not China, is the real threat in the South Pacific
Denying Armenian genocide sets the template
September 12, 2025
Jaron Sutton asks if atrocities in Gaza will be “effectively suppressed. If history is a guide, then yes. For more than a century, most nations have been co-opted to effectively suppress the Armenian and Ottoman Christian Genocide (also called Assyrian and Greek Genocide). Between 1913-23, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians and 250,000 to 500,000 Assyrians were slaughtered, along with an estimated 300,000 Pontic and Anatolian Greeks. Denial, including the refusal of mainstream media and policy commentators, reinforces the words of Adolf Hitler, who said on the eve of unleashing the Holocaust: I have placed my death-head formation...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: The suppression of the Arab voice and the genocide in Gaza
Mysteriously superior or mysteriously doomed?
September 11, 2025
Witheringly convincing. Electing a petulant, five-alarm snake oil salesman as President (who has assembled a like-minded governing cult within the White House) is not what has caused the dismal Western trajectory so well analysed in this article – but it has certainly accelerated this development. The US — and its Global West posse — are steadily looking more mysteriously ill-starred (even doomed), rather than mysteriously superior.
Richard Cullen from Middle Park, Victoria, 3206
In response to: Trump: Russia, India are ‘lost to deepest, darkest China’. Guess who did this, Donald?
Your right versus responsibilities
September 11, 2025
I blame the ridiculous oscillation and indecision by our government and medical officers, and the unquestioning gullibility of our media during the pandemic, for the rise of the right-wing sovereign citizens, Australian Zionists and white fundamentalists. If government officials oscillate during life and death moments regarding masks and vaccines, and make a health crisis all about personal rights, it inevitably gives rise to citizens who put themselves at the centre of their own universe. You have rights, yes, but they go hand in hand with responsibilities ie your civic duty towards your fellow citizens. I fear many of...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Courts brace for next wave of 'sovereign citizens'
Devaluing the Australian flag
September 11, 2025
As we saw during the Australia-wide anti-immigration rallies, and more recently during the clash between the Sumud Flotilla supporters and Zionists on Bondi beach, the Australian flag is now being associated with the far right, white Australia pundits and genocide supporters. The words terrorist, terrorism and antisemitism have been devalued beyond recognition. Now our flag is subjected to the same. Are you ready for the future consequences of that, Anthony Albanese?
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: A good captain can stop this Senator’s social cohesion ‘Titanic
Ploy: when in trouble, attack someone else
September 11, 2025
Henry V, Maggie Thatcher and the Indonesian president Sukarno knew that when they were in trouble at home, the thing to do was to attack someone else. So killing others to protect your own skin is nothing new, is it Netanyahu?
John Michael Diehl Breen from Robertson NSW
In response to: Israel leaps over red lines in attack on Qatari capital Doha
A New York minute
September 11, 2025
Qatar is ostensibly a trusted US ally. It hosts the Udeid Air Base, the forward headquarters of US Central Command and headquarters of the USAF Central Command. You would think this gave it some protection when hosting a peace conference, a conference proposed by the US. Clearly this is not so, as the recent attack on Hamas delegates to that peace conference proved. I hope the sycophants in Canberra realise the extent of the Faustian bargain they have made with the twined Zionist regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv. The message from Qatar is crystal clear. Deviate from the...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Israel leaps over red lines in attack on Qatari capital Doha
We can’t stop here, this is bat country
September 11, 2025
It’s clear the geopolitical world is shifting on its axis. It’s equally clear that Australia has some serious decisions to make in the post-American world. The United States, split between the worldly and the godly, has elected a man whom history will judge as unhinged. It’s always been a task to hold half a heaving continent together in thought and purpose, and Donald J. Trump is in no way up to that challenge. So where does it leave Australia? We inhabit an island continent with fewer people than some global mega-cities. Two-thirds of our land is desert or arid...
John Mosig from Kew, Victoria
In response to: Trump and the post-American world
Replace multiculturalism with multiethnicities
September 11, 2025
Raghid Nahhas makes the excellent suggestion that we replace multiculturalism with multiethnicities in which belonging rests not on ancestry, culture or religion, but on adherence to democratic norms, equal rights and the rule of law. Or we could say: anyone is welcome to come here as long as they adhere to our liberal, democratic, egalitarian and humanitarian traditions. Perhaps multiracialism might be a better term, though we don't want people to abandon their cultures completely, only those aspects that are illiberal, undemocratic, unequal or inhumane. This may be difficult for those who come from cultures that are misogynist, where...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: 'Like us': Australia’s uneasy dance with immigration
Policy in silos
September 11, 2025
It seems to me that so much of the debate in this space is focused on the geopolitical and the military aspects rather than as a holistic discussion around the economic, political and military aspects as a whole. It succeeds in raising good arguments around a limited range of domains, but ignores the economic question and its impacts on capabilities. What we know is that the US has a national debt of more than US$37 trillion and a debt falling due for re-financing this year of US$9 trillion. We also know that the US bond market is unable to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Xi’s parade tips the diplomatic balance sheet in Asia
The Indonesia 'uprising'
September 10, 2025
If Duncan Graham was to trace the source(s) of the funding for the Indonesia uprising, he would find it very difficult to dismiss the notion this uprising is a Hong Kong redux. I suggest Duncan and P&I get in touch with Nury Vittachi, who has traced that funding e.g. Trump didn't gut all of the NED's funding. Not forgetting Nury has been published at P&I numerous times before.
David Thompson from CLAYTON
In response to: Xi targets Prabowo and ditches Trump
Is climate action too expensive?
September 10, 2025
A recent Lowy Institute poll shows 51% support to address the “serious and pressing problem” of global warming, even if it involves “significant cost”. However, this slim majority has dropped six points since last year. One-third says the harmful effects will be gradual and we should take steps that are “low in cost”. The case for spending large amounts of money has not been well argued. Higher energy prices are repeatedly and falsely blamed on renewables; China’s emissions are raised as a reason for Australia to do next-to-nothing; and a movement (seemingly orchestrated by far-right interests) is growing in...
Fiona Colin from Melbourne
In response to: Albanese’s sliding doors moment on climate
Open letter to Nobel Peace Prize panel and Donald Trump
September 10, 2025
Please read this article and, if any of it is even remotely true, ask yourselves how could you possibly award a Nobel Peace prize to an American president, any American president? I know you are under pressure to award this president the Peace Prize, but perhaps the way to appease him is to rescind all previous presidential awards. This didn't start yesterday.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: The price of genocide: How US funding sustains an unravelling Israeli economy
The Japanese in China
September 10, 2025
I was pleased to read Paul Malone's criticism of Sarah Ferguson/the ABC regarding her glib statement that it was the Nationlist's Kuomintang, not the Chinese Communist Party forces, that defeated the Japanese. It is a long time (67 years) since I studied a bit of Chinese history as part of my Chinese language study at Sydney University, but my memory is still strong that it was the CCP forces that were most influential. The only text that I recall using is that by John K. Fairbank, The United States and China, first published in 1948. Unfortunately, I have...
Jan Cooper from Terrigal
In response to: The ABC is inventing China's war history
Too many in comfort denying atrocities
September 9, 2025
I share the distress identified by Dennis Altman. “Something is unnerving about seeing people sitting in comfort in Australia denying the evidence of carnage and starvation,” Altman writes in a sentence that is also applicable to Syria, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Mali and a dozen other countries suffering carnage, starvation and war crimes. The ignorance of many people about the Gaza conflict, and the many other ignored humanitarian crises, among comfortable Australians is lamentable. Maybe not for readers of this public policy journal, but in general I’ve been dismayed at the paucity of knowledge about the Middle...
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: The Liberal Party and Israel
Stopping Israel's genocide
September 9, 2025
Refaat Ibrahim’s hope for a popular uprising by starving Palestinians against the rogue state, Israel, is unlikely to succeed without external pressure. So far, the Australian Government is avoiding actions of substance that could include the following: • Ban export of weapons components to Israel and any military co-operation with Israel; • Ban imports from Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law; • Impose sanctions (e.g. asset freezes, travel bans) on all members of the current Israeli Government and military commanders; • Greatly increase humanitarian funding to UN agencies and NGO groups providing food and...
Mark Diesendorf from Sydney
In response to: Seven hundred days of genocide
State terror came first
September 9, 2025
The Académie Française dictionary in 1798 defined terrorism as a system, or regime of terror and terrorist as an agent or partisan of the Terror that arose through the abuse of revolutionary measures (The French Revolution and Early European Revolutionary Terrorism by Michael Rapport) In other words, state terror came first, preceding any other kind, the very first example being the revolutionary regime in France, 1793-1794. Ample examples exist today: the US drone warfare over NW Pakistan 2004-2018; Saddam's mukhabarat; Assad's torturers and Israel's war on Gaza. All these, it might be thought, represent state terrorism – which is...
James Schofield from London
In response to: Who is a terrorist?
Vice-chancellor pay
September 8, 2025
While it is hardly unexpected that accountants would focus upon pay and governance as the source of problems in Australian universities, these are superficial targets which mask determinants. The pay that vice-chancellors receive is a symptom, not a cause. The central causes of what have become little more than state consultancies are that teaching students is now almost completely devalued. This began in the late 1970s-early 1980s and is now rife. Casual contract, part-time teachers are responsible for many first- and second-year undergraduate courses. If senior professors etc appear at lectures for these courses, it is in a Joan...
Scott MacWilliam from Amaroo, ACT
In response to: Reining in vice-chancellor and executive pay
Products of the system
September 8, 2025
The system of education and social conditioning set up by the US, in particular, since early last century and re-enforced throughout the last century has worked superbly well. It has ensured that those who do not give their assent to that conditioning are marginalised from polite society and only accidentally and temporarily occupy positions within the agencies of opinion formulation within our societies. As George Orwell pointed out, those who make it to positions of prominence within the mainstream media actually believe the nonsense they are peddling and are where they are as they can be trusted not to...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The betrayal of Palestinian journalists
Thank you, Teow Loon Ti
September 8, 2025
Thank you, Teow Loon Ti for your clear and well-formed response to the piece by Ju Hyung Kim titled “Asia must learn from SEATO and build its own NATO”. In truth, I read the title of the article mentioned and couldn't read it as it is obviously an Uncle Sam homily. Too bad our media is so saturated with such articles of faith, detached from reality, history and evidence. Teow has spoken to reality, a relief in troubled times.
Mark Bulluss from Dalmeny
In response to: Seeing truth through the fog of war mongering
Bolton, the archetypal chickenhawk, all squark!
September 8, 2025
This is a good summary of the truly insubstantially equipped Bolton. He hasn't seen a war, actual or proposed, that he doesn't like, from a distance of course. His later life bravado was preceded by a careful avoidance in his youth of any likelihood that he would actually serve anywhere near where the killing and the dying were taking place. His enthusiasm for war has been acquired along with an unerring capacity to avoid it in practice. Like many of his ultra-conservative colleagues in Washington, he is more than happy to send other mothers' children to fight and die...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Southeast Asia pragmatic on China's rise
A land of standing corpses
September 8, 2025
As John Menadue correctly points out, the death toll in Gaza is far higher than those killed directly by Israeli bombs and bullets. A conservative multiplier of four indirect deaths to every one direct killing gives a minimum of 300,000. But this overlooks the fundamental point: genocide is not simply about killing. Killing is but one of the depraved ways that Israel is committing genocide. Israel's Zionazi holocaust is about the destruction of the Palestinian People. A Semitic people, no less. To fully gauge that destruction, one needs to look to different research; Guillot et al, Lancet, February...
Rick Pass from Home Hill FNQ
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza, John Menadue
We must defeat the demon of fossil capital
September 8, 2025
Julian Cribb potently describes the latest report, A Climate-First Foreign Policy for Australia, from the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, as a “trailblazing vision of where an enlightened, informed, and caring humanity might go in the face of the brutal escalation in climate impacts”. Cribb would know the soon-to-be-released National Climate Risk Assessment has been evocatively depicted by insiders as “dire,” “diabolical,” and “extremely confronting”. Fittingly, ASLCG calls on government to “mobilise the resources necessary to address this clear and present danger, and to decarbonise our economy to reach net zero emissions as close to 2030 as possible. Climate...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Military experts warn of climate wars
Dump AUKUS
September 8, 2025
If you are not convinced that the Australian government must dump AUKUS by • The fact that the primary utility of the proposed AUKUS submarines is to augment a US attack force aimed at China, our major trading partner; • The obvious ceding of sovereignty to the US empire that this entails; • The questionable logic of acquiring a submarine fleet unsuitable for coastal defence of Australia; • The certainty that the $368 billion budget will blow out, as illustrated by the fact that Australia has already paid a $5 billion instalment of a $47.8 Billion...
John Curr from MANLY
In response to: SSN AUKUS – Heading for a quagmire
I nominate you
September 8, 2025
I nominate Margaret Callinan, Bob Pearce and Les MacDonald to head our new government. They know the arc of our history; they see the repeated pattern of strategic errors successive Australian Governments have made; they each have brave innovative ideas, rooted in social conscience, and can articulate and educate in less than 200 words. Bravo Margaret, Bob and Les. Your voices are so valued.
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza
It couldn’t be simpler
September 8, 2025
It’s not about decisions made by Hitler in 1939. It is no longer about decisions made by Hamas on 7 October. It’s about decisions made today, in this moment, by one's own conscience. It’s about setting aside economic contracts, monetary incentives, lobbyist influences, deals behind closed doors, and harkening to one’s own consciousness of what is right and what is evil. It couldn’t be simpler. Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong, Tony Burke: it couldn’t be simpler.
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Greta Thunberg 'disgusted' by global silence on Gaza genocide
Aussie scepticism
September 8, 2025
The courageous Sarah Dowse may have been born in America, but she has evidently acculturated well into Australia, even to taking on the fabled Aussie bullshit detector. Add to this her insider view on Israel the Jewish State and she has the basic credentials for exposing perspectives avoided by the legacy media in the face of real or perceived pressure by the powerful pro-Israel lobby. I appreciated, in particular, her scepticism about ASIO's role in the Iran affair in which, (and in numerous other national security crises) no evidence ever comes under public scrutiny.
Vince Corbett from Essendon
In response to: Israel, hasbara, antisemitism and Iran
Leaders who have lost their moral compass
September 5, 2025
It is hard, if not impossible, to any longer believe that the vast bulk of our leaders in the West are fit for their leadership positions. When they not only turn away from the grotesque, genocidal activities of the Israeli Government, but participate in, and publicly support them, knowing the truth of what that support enables. The truth about this vast criminal enterprise, and those without the moral courage to condemn it, are a rebuke to the view of Hanna Arendt about the banality of evil. This evil is not banal. It is contemptible and abhorrent. It will...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The real death toll in Gaza