Letters to the Editor
ADF active on Israel’s side against Palestine
March 19, 2025
I refer to Les MacDonald’s article which notes the much-proclaimed IRBO, now in serious doubt in the US after Trump defied Judge Boasberg. Now our ADF as leader of Combined Task Force 153 is involved in Operation Hydranth to degrade the capabilities of the effective government of Yemen, the only country which is standing up to the mass murder and enforced starvation and infrastructure degradation in Southwest Palestine by the US and Israel. So we are now actively supporting Israel militarily by trying to ensure materiel reaches Israel via the Red Sea. Does CTF 153 command the USS aircraft...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: The West’s ‘international community’ and the other 85% of humanity
Labor, hypocrisy and appeasement of genocide
March 19, 2025
Why do we have to keep on beating this drum? Today, (18 March) the reports are in of Israel's resumption of unrestrained blitzkrieg upon the Palestinian people. At least 200 have been blown to fragments. This is now such commonplace news that it doesn't even rank as headlines in the media. Just another article towards the front of the on-line opening page. Up there alongside a report of one (not recent) murder in Australia – a sad event certainly, but can we please have some sense of proportion? Penny Wong urges all parties' to respect the ceasefire. Only...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Murder of Rachel Corrie
Not even Hollywood could write this script
March 19, 2025
There’s no doubting Trumpian America is an unstable democracy and an untrustworthy ally. Students of history would have by now picked up the similarities between other people who have come to power via democratic process and taken their nation down a disastrous path. Probably the most studied being Adolf Hitler. The division of Ukraine and the mooted annexation of Canada and Greenland ring warnings for their similarity to Stalin and Hitler dividing Poland, and Germany’s invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia. The number of further parallels is eery. Often overlooked was that Germany’s industrial and commercial elite assumed they...
John Mosig from Kew, Melbourne 3101
In response to: The Manichean moment is over
Liebler and Mossad
March 19, 2025
Concerning Susan Rutland’s attempt to diminish Isi Leibler’s role as an Israeli agent of influence that her biography of the late Australian Zionist leader documents: at p. 219 she writes concerning the late Australian Prime Minister, “…..Fraser knew he would always find him at home and would visit him on a Friday evening. They would review the situation in the course of drinks until late into the night, and, on occasion, Fraser would ask Isi to 'convey confidential information to Mossad'.” In her response to Manne, Rutland seems to deny this evidence of Liebler's actual relationship to Mossad.
Martin Munz from MURWILLUMBAH
In response to: Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s Isi Leibler was a ‘covert agent of Israe
The real murderers in Southwest Palestine
March 19, 2025
I note Stuart Rees' account of the meeting in Glebe. The MSM seem unable to say it today, but the US, which brokered the ceasefire in Southwest Palestine, is clearly an accessory to the renewed mass murder of civilians yesterday, despite no breach of the ceasefire terms by the government of Southwest Palestine. We shouldn’t be, sadly, surprised. Trump promised this renewed attack very recently and is fully backed by Hegseth and presumably Rubio.
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Anatomy of a public meeting: genocide a key election issue
ANZUS and NATO kaput: Australia keeps blinkers on
March 18, 2025
I almost agree with everything Jack Waterford says. My disagreement is with his view of America. The US hasn't changed. Trump has merely removed its thick veneer of caring about the rest of the world. When, as Waterford reminds us, in the one true test of ANZUS commitments — Indonesia’s invasion of Irian Jaya in 1963 — the US told Australia bluntly that it stood by Indonesia we chose to keep wearing blinkers rather than recognise the truth. As we still do. Yes, our friends and allies will wake up before our political leaders summon up their courage. They are...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: ANZUS and NATO are kaput and Trump doesn’t care
What are the consequences of not acting on climate?
March 18, 2025
I don't know if my MP was one of those who was briefed on the contents of the Office of National Intelligence assessment of climate-related security risks and I won't ask, tempting her to break a confidence. But take a wild guess! On 19 February 2025, Kooyong MP Dr Monique Ryan held a Town Hall meeting, Climate change and Australian security: a conversation with Admiral Chris Barrie. The person in conversation with the retired admiral was the author of the article to which this letter is a response, David Spratt. To say it was eye-opening would be an understatement....
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Government refuses to articulate ‘frankly terrifying’ security risks
Moving beyond the ONI report towards adaptation
March 18, 2025
Thank you for David Spratt’s article. Eight days ago the French government, recognising the seeming inevitability of temperature rise, published a plan for adaptation, firstly to 2.7 degree C rise, then to 4 degree C. Here our government, supposedly committed to open government, doesn’t even publish the ONI risk analysis.
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Government refuses to articulate frankly terrifying security risks
Democracy isn't just for when we like the outcome
March 18, 2025
Many thanks to Eugene Doyle for bringing the political events in Romania to my attention. I was unaware. And also for his accurate analysis of the problems of not just what's been happening there but the silence that has accompanied it across Europe and beyond. If we believe in democracy and the election was fair, we can't dump the results just because we don't like the outcome. Trump's actions before and after the 2020 election have emboldened others to reject election outcomes and bystanders to keep quiet. What happens to community members when they become parliamentarians? And even...
Peter Sainsbury from Sydney NSW
In response to: EU welcomes its first dictatorship
Welcome, Catriona
March 18, 2025
Welcome, Catriona and congratulations on your appointment. We, the loyal servants and readers of Pearls and Irritations, look forward to your strong, insightful and committed leadership of this invaluable journal. Especially one that re-arms us with the moral courage required if we are to tackle existential threats. Best of luck.
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: A message from the new editor, Catriona Jackson
Handling a BRICS Indonesia and Trumpery
March 18, 2025
In Five-Minute Scroll 105, Adam Bandt talks sensibly of withdrawing from AUKUS. In China Daily, this is what Fajar Hirawan has to say about Indonesia, which straddles many of our sealanes, joining BRICS: “Maritime co-operation is another strategic dimension of Indonesia's BRICS membership. Indonesia's Global Maritime Fulcrum vision aligns with BRICS' interests in securing critical sea routes, enhancing trade efficiency and improving maritime security. Co-ordinated efforts between BRICS countries can enhance regional security in the 'Indo-Pacific' region, particularly in areas such as the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait, which are crucial to global trade.” That, taken...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: A five minute scroll
Uninformed or uninterested ?
March 17, 2025
Why is our TV news made up of 25% US politics, 25% China bashing, 10% share prices, 15% sport, 10% prediction of the timing of the next election and a little bit of news? Increasingly I hear that people get their news from YouTube and other freedom of speech nutters. TV and news articles such as this showing the innovation and adaption by China are few and far between. China may not be a democracy, but show me a country that is. Australia isn’t and the US certainly isn’t a democracy. If the first weeks of the new...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: smart-appliances-smarter-economy-reviving-chinas-growth-
Time to make polluters pay
March 17, 2025
Has anyone heard from Richard Hill? He last wrote after Cyclone Alfred rattled his windows, believing we’re in an escalating apocalyptic scenario. He’s not wrong – past greenhouse gas emissions linger for decades, global emissions keep rising, and land, air, and ocean temperatures hit record highs. Meanwhile, Trump emboldens conservative climate sceptics like Peter Dutton and Barnaby Joyce, who oppose emissions targets and deny human-induced climate change. Simultaneously, Chris Uhlmann, Peter Ridd, and Matt Canavan dismissed Alfred as just another cyclone. Ridd even claimed there’s no need to worry since houses are now better built. Deniers like these must...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: Give us a break, Alfred
AUKUS, Trump and independence
March 17, 2025
Senator David Shoebridge of the Greens shows in this essay that he is one of the few clear thinking federal parliamentarians brave enough to express their views on sensitive alliance matters . Together with John McCarthy recently, and Cameron Leckie and Jack Waterford elsewhere, Australia has resources now for a timely root and branch review of our strategic options. A within-government White Paper would be useless, the official system is too indoctrinated to the subservient ally status quo. We need independent expert outside thinking now. There has never been a better time, straight after our federal election.
Tony Kevin from Canberra
In response to: AUKUS Trump and independence
Hear, hear, Jack Waterford
March 17, 2025
Jack Waterford gets it absolutely right (again) in his perspicacious observations about Australia and the US alliance. It is very concerning to me that Waterford's analyses are accessible to only a fraction of mainstream Australians compared with those who regularly receive their so-called information from Murdoch and his ilk. Well said, Jack, and thank you to Pearls and Irritations for regularly disseminating his work.
Neil Dwyer from Wanniassa, A.C.T.
In response to: Are America’s values our values anymore?
Australia needs to be transactional too
March 17, 2025
Who will answer the question, What are the benefits to Australia of hosting US military bases? I especially enjoyed the conciseness of the last paragraph of Michael Sullivan's article.
Peter Gillam from Turramurra
In response to: Imagine a secure Australia post-ANZUS and AUKUS
Facts are important in this debate
March 17, 2025
Michelle Berkon writes that to criticise and refute Zionism in terms that accurately reflect its nature as a settler colonial, supremacist, apartheid, genocidal project is simply fact. Criticism may contain facts, but criticism is not of itself fact. If the fact being referred to is the nature of Zionism, then it should be clear that it is an expressed opinion – not fact. Indeed, it's an opinion that paints any Zionist as inherently evil. As Berkon states further on, I unequivocally call for Zionism to be officially declared a racist ideology, for Zionist speech to be outlawed as hate...
Harold Zwier from Melbourne
In response to: Why is Israel such a big deal?
Thanks, Damien
March 17, 2025
I’m the first to admit that my most-used descriptors for Trump — such as Entitled Egomaniacal Arsehole — lack much in the way of academic usefulness, so thank you, Damien, for clearing so much of the linguistic fog around commentary on the one- man threat to the to the US, the planet and its people. So few words from you to bring so much additional clarity to in such a vital public debate.
Neil Hauxwell from Moe Vic
In response to: Sultanistic or neo-fascist? President Trump and 21st century ideology
Ignoring the real issues
March 17, 2025
Attempting to classify the brand of lunacy or megalomania that besets Donald Trump may be great fun for academics and will undoubtedly yield several neologisms and a flood of learned articles. But it will not save humanity from the universal emergency now approaching at dreadful speed. A business-as-usual hothouse Earth combined with a toxic, collapsing environment, deepening scarcities of water, soil and food, fresh pandemics, overpopulation and the assault on civil society by the billionaire tech bro fraternity, are coming together to ensure civilisational collapse before 2050. Maybe worse. Against this, all Trump's antics, however bizarre are but...
Julian Cribb from Canberra, ACT
In response to: Sultanistic or neo-fascist? President Trump and 21st century ideologyhttps://j
Nonsense
March 14, 2025
All the China bashing is nonsense. Why would China want to invade anywhere for the resources when it is so much cheaper and efficient to send bulk carriers and legitimately buy the material?
Philip Rice from Rivervale
In response to: Any old Chinese port in a storm: Anti-China Media Watch
Trump will not help the cause of peace
March 14, 2025
i thought this was generally an excellent article. However, I can't see Trump increasing peace in the world, as the author claimed. Trump stated that he intends to remove the Palestinian people from Gaza. Also, at the press conference after his meeting with Netanyahu,he responded to Netanyahu saying I will end the war by winning the war by promising to give Netanyahu billions of dollars worth of powerful bombs capable of massive destruction that even Biden had latterly refused to give him. To give Israel the means to annihilate the Palestinian people in Gaza is hardly conducive to...
Beverley Dight from Canberra
In response to: Who's who in the war business
Industrial research
March 14, 2025
This article demonstrates why R&D and industrial innovation have done so poorly in Australia, with investment in building the case for developing a dynamic innovatin system, economy and society – in which greater investment in R&D would make sense as the best we can come up with as a proposal for a way forward. It is not difficult to see where the problem lies. When I started my career as an engineer in the US, industrial research was synonymous with Bell Labs, IBM, Xerox, Dupont, Corning, Hewlett-Packard, Westinghouse, GE, and so on; the great inventions and innovations took place...
Erik Aslaksen from Allambie Heights
In response to: A poor start to the strategic examination of R&D
A case for AI control
March 14, 2025
AI: Will taking the emotion from the equation explain why prices rise but the comparative value remains the same? Why can some people regularly afford a new Rolls Royce why other people can only ever afford a second-hand Toyota? I doubt AI will have the compassion to fix it .
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: maybe-the-inflation-surge-didnt-happen-the-way-weve-been
Geoff Watson blasts the surface
March 14, 2025
Geoff Watson's totally magnificent summation of the whole Nelson/armament manufacturers relationship in the ABC 4 Corners presentation on 10 March, was for me the quintessential moment of the whole program. I refer those who have not read it to do so: Dr. Nelson is, for sure his greatest asset. But the whole issue of the Australian War Memorial accepting and acknowledging donations from armament manufacturers is a truly rotten cancer on our society. What do the armament manufacturers gain from these substantial sums of money? Don't for a moment think there is no benefit they seek in so...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: On Brendan Nelson
Woldring, do more homework. Teals aren't a party
March 13, 2025
Teals started as random strangers across Australia who saw Indi's success and dared to imagine a more engaged and effective MP representing them. Community independents weren't looking for a career in politics. But Liberal disdain for women encouraged, not thwarted, them. While current community independents are mostly women, they have so many male supporters that gender balance will likely arrive eventually. It's insulting to suggest community independents and their supporters think primarily only of their own area. Major drivers are climate change, integrity in government and a better deal for women. Hardly local. Kooyong supporters proudly say their...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Minority government – a problem of the current electoral system
Chinese naval codes
March 13, 2025
Peter Cronau raises the key question: Why wouldn’t Defence have been monitoring transmissions from the ships from when they were first off Queensland? Of course, the warning to aircraft would have been in plain language. But if you think of the cracking of the German Enigma code and of the Nazi high command code during WWII, how good is Defence at reading encrypted codes from other navies? After all, right now Russia, Iran and China are conducting joint naval exercises in the northwest Indian Ocean (yes, that’s the one that touches Australia for thousands of kilometres), according to Al...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Australia’s defence: Navigating US-China tensions
Satire detection monitor has been disabled
March 13, 2025
May I suggest your satire detection equipment is not functioning? In compelling scorn and condemnation from the galleries of gullibility, this (Mr. Doyle's original) clinical exercise in tongue-in-cheek sarcasm renders a simultaneous take-down of Facebook as anything reliable for fact-based journalism. Whither scepticism – already a crime?
Peter Warner from California, USA
In response to: Psychobabble is just that!
A game of pin the tail on the donkey
March 13, 2025
I cast my mind back over all those war movies that I have had the misfortune to have watched over my 73 years and I’m thinking of a remake of Hogans Heroes. From our present group of federal members, I have no hesitation in picking one for the role of Colonel Klink. Who is most suited for the uniform? What’s yours? I will leave you to think on Gomer Pyle and McHale's Navy.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: no-apologies-over-fabricated-terror-plot-from-pollies-or
The dangerous bliss of ignorance
March 13, 2025
Building knowledge and understanding, first and foremost of nature and ecology, has been a critical element in humanity’s development of farming, and of the villages, towns and cities — and ultimately civilisations — that subsequently evolved during the past 11,700 years of favourable, stable climate. Another factor in the spread of civilisation has been mankind’s innate aggression, and desire to control and conquer. This factor, as personified by Donald Trump, is now threatening to destroy a lot of the knowledge that we hold, and are building, about the environmental health of our planetary home, and about what we must...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Noicide: advent of a new Dark Age
In order to save democracy...
March 13, 2025
To paraphrase Peter Arnett's ...unnamed American major... after the battle of Bến Tre 1968 – It became necessary to destroy democracy to save it. Brute force in Romania and Georgia negated the popular will. In the EU, la Macaroon's outsmarting himself paralysed parliament in France. In Ireland, FF/FG, played musical chairs for the last six years and continue doing so after last year's election, preventing the party with a majority of voters from forming government. In the Netherlands, since 2023 the usual suspects have played the same game to keep out Geert Wilders. In February, Germany...
Allan Kessing from SYDNEY
In response to: Is Romania’s stolen election what’s in store for ‘democracy’ in the West?
Why are we surprised about reporting on the caravan fiasco?
March 13, 2025
One would have thought, or expected, exactly what we got – that our mainstream media would report exactly as it did upon discovery of that caravan in Dural. It's a bit hard to break the habit of a century. When did anyone last read a positive article about any Arab, Middle-Eastern or otherwise, Muslim or otherwise, in the MSM? We still get scant reporting on how bad it is for the oppressed of Palestine. What P&I reader has learned more about the genocide in Palestine from the MSM than from P&I itself, Bisan on Instagram, Al Jazeera and the...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: No apologies over fabricated terror plot from pollies or lobby groups
Only the names and faces have been changed
March 12, 2025
Everything old is new again. It may be true that “you can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time“ works well until you stop teaching history in schools and you control what little history is taught. The books are burning but ex-prime ministers live forever.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/the-forgotten-fascists/
Whoosh??
March 12, 2025
Whoosh?? On the other hand, Dr Patience's response to Eugene Doyle is so totally deadpan that I can't completely discount the possibility that I, and no doubt many others, have been counter-whooshed. Hyperwhooshed, if you prefer. If so, well played, sir! But next time, could you give us just a slight clue, so that the more astute among us can pick it up? Unless, of course, there was one, but I was insufficiently astute to detect it. In which case, colour me embarrassed.
Alan Wilson from Adelaide
In response to: Psychobabble is just that!
Who abandoned whom?
March 12, 2025
It’s not Australia that should be afraid by abandonment, it is Britain and the US. When push comes to shove, Australia has always been there for both countries, whereas they have never been there for Australia. Read the history of the fall of Singapore and the Burma rail and even The Rats of Tobruk. Australia was a convenient hiding place (overpaid, over-sexed, and over here) for the US until their war machine got going. Even when it came to building the bomb, Australia was there for both of them with design and testing. We have shown before what...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SAV
In response to: australias-china-diplomacy-is-it-ready-for-a-world-witho
Psychobabble is just that!
March 12, 2025
This article is highly contentious. Apart from the dubious claim that it draws from a leaked account of some in-depth exploration of the leaders' personalities; the account which it offers is reflective of an old-fashioned and simplistic Freudianism, long discredited. Were Starmer and Macron subjected to interviews by a range of relevant experts? Most likely not. We should be extremely cautious about these kinds of sensationalised exposes.
Allan Patience from Newport 3015
In response to: Keir Starmer's psychiatric report leaked
Lest we forget
March 12, 2025
The Balkan wars of the 1990s should have been a salutory reminder of the extent to which the failure to screen post-war migrants has undermined our social cohesion. Croats and Serbs had kept the WWII atrocities alive to the point where a new generation displays the same hostility to fellow Australians. Right-wing politics in Australia continues to be infected with a strong undercurrent of racism. When conservative politics relies on these fascist tropes, we all lose. In an uncertain world, we need our political parties to draw on the very best of their origins. There is some evidence that...
John Tons from adelaide
In response to: The Forgotten Fascists
An anatomical election
March 12, 2025
What a choice we have facing us, folks! Spineless/gutless versus brainless/heartless. I'd add soulless to the latter, except that it's not anatomical, strictly speaking. Does it getter any better than that? Let's hope that electable Plan Bs are on the menu in most electorates.
Alan Wilson from Adelaide
In response to: Discombobulating the media election campaign coverage
Kidding ourselves: Were America's values ever ours?
March 12, 2025
No one stole American jobs. Neoliberal big business magnates sent them offshore where they paid even less for labour than they did to the US working poor. All for greater profit. Thus the dire straits of US jobs and manufacturing in 2025. As for Australia having no levers to pull: Pine Gap, Tindall, Darwin, Exmouth .... But those values. We must acknowledge the US as one of the most violent countries on earth. Internally the NRA and the death it wreaks. Externally we participated in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan for no gain, only loss to us and the countries...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Are America’s values our values anymore
Referendum granted citizenship to all Indigenous people
March 11, 2025
Under the Nationality Act of 1920 (Cth), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders born after 1 January 1921 were deemed to be British subjects. This only applied to the then future Indigenous people, not the then existing population. Under the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 (Cth), those Indigenous people who were British subjects were automatically deemed to be Australian citizens, along with the non-indigenous population. In the 1967 Referendum, Australian citizenship was granted to all Indigenous people, regardless of date of birth. The issue of voting is more complex. Prior to Federation, some of the Australian colonies permitted their indigenous...
Malcolm Chalmers from Cleveland QLD
In response to: Is it the US electoral sytem that is at fault
Criticising politicians
March 11, 2025
Any suggestion that it is un-Australian to criticise Australian politicians for their actions or inactions would probably be met with actions ranging from the rolling of eyes to shrieks of derisive laughter. The media and available books suggest that similar criticisms of American politicians are not un-American and the same philosophies or freedoms seem to be applicable in Britain. Then, those are apparently democratic countries, or hold themselves out to be. Why are criticisms of Israeli politicians regarded as un-Israeli, other than that those politicians have invented and weaponised a special word for un-Israelianism? If mere objective criticism is...
Adrian Potter from Adelaide
In response to: Challenging ‘antisemitism’
Political and media lies are poisoning society
March 11, 2025
The political and mass media crusade to sanctify the genocide being perpetrated by the Zionist Netanyahu government of Israel is too slowly being peeled back, exposing the unconscionable power of the Zionist industry in Australian society. We passed over the extremely suspect arson of the Adass synagogue with far too little serious examination of the circumstances and background of Zionist activity (especially Mossad's known history of false flag operations). Now we have — at last — some irrefutable evidence that antisemitism is being weaponised in defence of the Zionist genocidal abomination with the AFP announcement that the Dural...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Challenging ‘antisemitism’
Dodgy fishy business
March 11, 2025
Thank you to Peter Sainsbury for highlighting the serious and multifaceted environmental problems that result from salmon farming in Tasmania. The industry is a revolting demonstration of corporate and political greed. According to the Australia Institute, the three multinational corporations behind industrial salmon farming pay no company tax (despite selling more than $4 billion worth of fish since 2019) to literally leave their crap in Tasmania’s beautiful waters. And Anthony Albanese has just promised $37 million to support this industry. Disturbingly, both major political parties have demonstrated that they are beholden to the salmon industry, even though it...
Amy Hiller from Kew, VIC
In response to: Environment: Albanese sacrifices the marine environment for Tasmanian votes
Trump's denial won't change climate reality
March 11, 2025
The Roman Inquisition silenced Galileo because his realisation that the Earth orbited the Sun was contrary to the church’s interpretation of biblical texts. Now Donald Trump is slashing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, and ordering the removal from the internet of all research relating to climate change, because he believes climate change is a hoax. The Roman Inquisition did not change the movements of the planets by silencing Galileo. President Trump will likewise not change climate science by simply denying that the problem exists. Silencing Galileo did not harm our solar system at all, it simply slowed...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Downsizing of NOAA: consequences for the planet
Defining hate speech
March 10, 2025
Very pleased to see someone suggest that public attacks on Jewish Australians who express concerns about Israel's killing of Palestinians might be considered antisemitism – especially when it is made clear they are being attacked specifically because they are Jewish. At the very least some of the language quoted should meet the official threshold for hate speech. The same loud members of the Israel lobby continue to try to erase the word Palestine from Australian usage. A previous P+I article entitled Crossword clues and bullying refers to a demand for an apology when Palestine was the answer to...
Alexander Donald from Cairns
In response to: Challenging ‘antisemitism’
Keep the ADF out of strategic thinking
March 10, 2025
When you have a health problem with your back, you go to a chiropractor. If it's a muscular issue, you go to a physiotherapist. If your teeth are playing up, then you visit a dentist. A surgeon is always a last resort, unless you like knives. In the US with its gun laws, if you’ve got a gun you need to shoot things. With defence from the top to the bottom, from Marles down, they are always looking for an excuse to put their uniform on to play with their toys, blow things up and shoot people. ...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: aukus-the-central-point-of-strategic-failure/
Same old, same old
March 10, 2025
Unfortunately, there isn't much good to be said about the current state of the US and certainly not AUKUS. So what is the answer to this? According to this letter? Go back to the mother country! As if Europe, let alone Britain, has anything to offer for Australia's defence. After their clear deceit of the Russians following the Minsk accords, the Europeans in their paranoia can't seem to bring themselves to try and make peace with Russia, but to prepare for another war. I would say they are in no position to offer others advice on defence. Like...
Hans Rijsdijk from Albion Park Rail
In response to: Waking up to a new world order: How America’s casual betrayals threaten AUKUS
Any election reform must include fixed terms
March 10, 2025
The commentary on the upcoming date of the next election has become a major diversion from the real work of the Parliament and has given more advantage to the major parties. The PM and the leader of the Opposition have been campaigning at taxpayers' expense for the past 12 months. They should be forced to donate their frequent flyer points (I suspect they get plenty) to those suffering most due to the cost of living crisis. Given the opportunity to program a natural disaster in Queensland, NSW Labor would have jumped at the chance to limit Dutton's trips...
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: this-undemocratic-law-should-be-overturned/
The 1967 referendum was not quite what some think
March 10, 2025
“Yes won in the 1967 referendum, which gave Indigenous Australians citizenship and the right to be counted in the census. Not quite. Firstly, it certainly did not give Indigenous Australians citizenship. That had happened for all Australians with the Citizenship Act of 1949. Secondly, Indigenous people were counted but were not included in the census figures used to determine federal electoral boundaries, because they mostly did not have the right to vote. However by the time of the 1967 referendum, all Indigenous people had the right to vote and the anomaly had to be removed. To do...
Michael Rogers from New South Wales
In response to: Is it the US electoral system that is at fault?
Rubio’s Christianity badge and mass murder
March 10, 2025
A video in Five Minute scroll 100 shows US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wearing the Ash Wednesday badge of Christianity on his forehead, a cross of ash, while threatening to annihilate thousands more people in Southwest Palestine. His price for not doing this? Release the remaining hostages without moving to Phase 2 of the US brokered and “guaranteed” ceasefire agreement. Even though he knows that Donald Trump publicly and very recently in Washington gave Benjamin Netanyahu carte blanche to recommence taking Southwest Palestine. That means restarting the genocide, which Netanyahu would do the moment the last hostage...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: A five minute scroll