Letters to the Editor
Cultivated China phobia
October 13, 2025
Colin Mackerras is very civilised in his refusal to comprehensively criticise the cultural failings of Australia with respect to China. His criticisms are restrained but very clear in their noting of the all-embracing nature of those failures. He could have further noted that, despite the decades since the abolition of the White Australia policy, the virulent racism that underlay that policy remains just below the surface of daily life. Our overweening beliefs in the superiority of white cultures over all others has been a clear driver of the willingness of even much of the Left to willingly swallow...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Lack of China capability can only do harm to society: Our current situation is a disgrace
Absurdities and atrocities
October 13, 2025
Voltaire got it right when he wrote that, Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”. The absurdity in this case is to believe that legitimate criticism of Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people constitutes antisemitism. Then you would also have to believe that any criticism of the policies of any country means that you are by definition anti the people of that country. Yet, no reasonable person believes that, as it would make free communication impossible. However, Zionists, unlike any other political group, are entitled to make such a claim about Israel, and the...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,”
Van Jones and the Merchant of Venice
October 13, 2025
One is inclined to think of the duke's lines in the Merchant of Venice when reflecting on the common Western prejudice and racism in the comments of Van Jones. I am sorry for thee: thou art come to answer. A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch. Uncapable of pity, void and empty. From any dram of mercy. Seems to sum up the views of US elites pretty succinctly!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Van Jones and the moral vacancy of American commentary on Gaza
Netanyahu didn't 'do' Gaza. Israel did.
October 13, 2025
It is important to remember that Benjamin Netanyahu did not come from nowhere. He is a born and bred Israeli, a sabra, and is merely the latest in a long line of ethnic cleansers who have been running Palestine since its partition in 1947. The history of Israel is one of continuous dispossession and murder. Something has to change so everything can go on as before. This quote, from Giuseppe di Lampedusa's novel The Leopard, is exactly what this article is warning against. Netanyahu might make an easy target for change. He is proudly visible, unrepentant and boastful....
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: How the West will package the genocide after Netanyahu
Prospect of sea-level rise is terrifying
October 13, 2025
David Spratt notes that the recent National Climate Risk Assessment underestimates projected sea-level rise. It suggests a one-metre rise by the end of the century, but evidence now suggests, because of tipping points, it is likely to be two metres and possibly much more. Just looking at the last Interglacial, for instance, when temperatures were a mere 1°C above pre-industrial levels, sea levels were 5-10 metres above those of today. The State of the Cryosphere report spells out why even 2°C warming is too high. 2°C will result in extensive, potentially rapid, irreversible sea-level rise from Earth’s ice sheets...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: Australia’s climate assessment fails on sea-level rise risks and vulnerable comm
Graffiti is a hate crime, by anybody
October 13, 2025
Simon Tatz refers to the Bali bombings, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse, all terrible things, and all completely irrelevant to this topic. What is not irrelevant, as I mentioned and which he and many others choose to ignore, is the long list of extremely hateful, racist and deplorable statements by members of the Israeli Government, both current and previous. So, confected outrage, double standard or hypocrisy? Maybe all three. He seems to imply I, and others, have no experience of prejudice, racism, etc. and have no right to comment. I have every right, as we all...
Jerry Cartwright from Perth
In response to: Graffiti-is-a-hate-crime-too
Stark contrast
October 13, 2025
Last night (12 October), on SBS World News they showed Prime Minister Netanyahu visiting a refitted facility for the returned hostages after their horrendous ordeal at the hands of the Hamas terrorists. I could not help but note the contrast between that hospital and the bombed and under-supplied, under-staffed sometimes tent hospitals in Gaza seen on the nightly news and wonder how can this ever end. It is only one tit-for-tat atrocity from starting it all again.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: Childhood on hold: Growing up too soon in Gaza and beyond
Singapore does it right
October 10, 2025
Singapore has been getting it right for many decades now, standing up for yourself, not unnecessarily making enemies and dealing with all on an equal basis. If we could only stop learning our lessons on power, diplomacy and geopolitics from the dying empire and get with the rising one!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: A masterclass in agency: What Singapore can teach Australia about China
Security through diplomacy
October 10, 2025
Security for Australia within Asia is really quite simple. Join BRICS and the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. We already have membership in the New Development Bank and the Reserve Contingent Arrangement. This will integrate us into the region which will dominate the world this century. Membership of all these guarantees our security in the region. Then all we have to do is navigate the US covert and criminal efforts, as in 1975 with Gough, to overturn our government and bring us back into being another bitch for the US!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Australia’s next big bet lies East, not West
Shark nets save lives
October 10, 2025
Graeme Stewart is absolutely right on shark nets. My long career as an environmentalist has convinced me that sharks don’t want to eat you. But attacks do happen – with terrifying results. It concerns me that nets are a blunt instrument that catches other sea creatures as well as sharks. But it also concerns me that people are killed by sharks. The current orchestrated campaign against nets claims they don’t work and even that nets attract sharks. Professor Stewart has cut through this debate with an excellent summary of the scientific evidence – which clearly shows that shark nets...
John Dengate from Sydney
In response to: Shark nets do protect human life
Graffiti is a hate crime too
October 10, 2025
Jerry Cartwright thinks pro-terrorist graffiti is a trivial matter. Imagine if, after the Bali bombings, similar messages supporting those who killed many Australians were sprayed around our cities? Perhaps Cartwright would find it confected outrage if messages supporting domestic violence and killing of women were painted near his home, or support for child sexual abuse. Would that elicit confected outrage too? Here's a truth bomb – it's only people who will never experience antisemitism, Islamophobia or racism who dismiss vilification as trivial.
Simon Tatz from Melbourne
In response to: Confected outrage
Evolved thinking needed to solve human problems
October 10, 2025
Militantly begging the authorities to do something about the widespread mess the species finds itself in is as ineffective as scapegoating them or happily acquiescing to the blue-sky tokenism they always offer up as solutions. This mutually convenient dance between the governors and the governed has been with us since the beginnings of our so-called sapience and shows no sign of abating anytime soon. Let us be clear, we will not solve the problems of our world with the same psychology that created them. An evolved and radical adaptation of our thinking is urgently needed, but highly...
Andrew Stretton from Fingal, Tasmania
In response to: Is Greta Thunberg the lone voice for justice in our world?
A not-so-easy Community Independent Senate seat
October 10, 2025
In his article on the possibility of Teals getting Senate seats, Bob McMullan crunches only one of the two lots of vital numbers – votes. He ignores or doesn't appreciate the three-step process of getting an MP elected. First, local people decide they want a better MP than the one they've got. They form a group to discuss what sort of person this might be and what they want of them. Second, they advertise for a candidate and choose whom they think will meet their aspirations. Third, they recruit as many volunteers as they can to get the message...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Could the Teals win Senate seats in an expanded parliament?
Palestine peace plan
October 10, 2025
Sawsan Madina is dubious about the peace plan for Gaza. But at least for now, the daily carnage stops. The interview on ABC’s 7.30 on Thursday 9 October with the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel showed that she cannot see that Israel’s actions over the last 70 years of continuing Nakba might be partly responsible for the rise of Hamas as a group using terror tactics. Haskel simply does not support there being a state of Palestine and criticised all those who do. The UN has been totally sidelined, with Trump able to say recently that it was...
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: A time to redouble our efforts for Palestine
Deceit upon deceit...
October 10, 2025
As they say, history is written by the victors. If it were a Palestinian writing, rather than Stuart Rees, they would have started the story of deceit a couple of years earlier. It gets a bit repetitive because he leaves no stone unturned, but it's still worth reading Peter Shambrook's Policy of Deceit: Britain and Palestine, 1914-1939 which details how Britain promised the Arabs an independent state, including Palestine, after the war, in exchange for an Arab alliance with Britain against the Ottomans in World War I. Remember ... this came before the Balfour Declaration. It's also worth noting...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: A century of deceit: Towards a new understanding of the colonisation of Palestin
Conservatism versus freedom
October 9, 2025
The US loves to lecture the world on the indispensability of its political system which supposedly encapsulates freedom and democracy. That system is deliberately designed to be extraordinarily vulnerable to manipulation by their wealthy elites. Two hundred years of efforts to prevent a high standard of public education, to enable the control of the bewildered herd as those elites describe the people, has rendered the US more susceptible than any other country to irrational fears and created panics. The efforts of the Orange Donald are simply a part of that 200 years of social manipulation. McCarthyism was just...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Shadow of McCarthyism looms over controversial firing of Texas professor who taught about gender identity
Balance, schmalance!
October 9, 2025
An incisive analysis of the fraudulent use of the idea of balance to avoid addressing the herd of elephants in the room. Just as with the Nazis in Warsaw, the current unquestionable genocide in Gaza by Israel is incapable of defence as international law has spoken with clarity and certainty. One would have thought that a journalists association would understand that. Apparently not!!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Cancelling Chris Hedges: What price balance?
Recognition of older women
October 9, 2025
As an older woman, Misha’s story really hit home. The older women facing retirement today with little or no super are the same women who gave up their own lives and careers to raise families, care for others and hold communities together. Women constitute the highest percentage of carers, they always have. Their sacrifices made life easier for everyone else, particularly men. They’re now being left behind. We need workplaces that support younger women with children now, fairer pay and super for all and affordable housing for older women. Most of all, we need to value care —...
Meg Schwarz from Macclesfield
In response to: Australia faces a looming crisis of older women retiring in poverty. Here’s wha
New Delhi: Population exceeding resource limits
October 9, 2025
Julian Cribb mentions a number of megacities, including New Delhi. I visited the city in 1969 and found it a pleasant place in contrast to various poverty-ravaged cities within the country, most notably Calcutta, now Kolkata. There, half a million slept on the streets at night, often with only a dirty newspaper for a pillow. In contrast, New Delhi was free of the chaos that bedevilled other cities in India. Back then, 56 years ago, New Delhi's population was 3,381,000 people, less than a tenth of what it is today, namely, 35 million. It is anticipated to be 39...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: World water in crisis
Confected outrage
October 9, 2025
Someone painted God bless Hamas on a billboard, and all the usual suspects were screaming from the rooftops and tearing their hair out, calling in the federal police (who, I'm sure, have more important things to worry about). If it had said God bless Ben Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich or Netanyahu? All are either under sanction, convicted criminals or wanted for war crimes. Do you think there would have been an outcry as we have seen over this? As happens with all graffiti, paint over it and forget it.
Jerry Cartwright from Perth
In response to: https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/10/october-7-not-to-a-day-to-abuse-protesters/
Wheat from the chaff
October 9, 2025
The best president the US never had, the late Adlai E. Stevenson II, offered one of the best descriptions of journalism: An editor is a someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
Bernard Corden from Spring Hill QLD 4000
In response to: Journos as heroes and villans - 'The Hack' reviewed
Political gutlessness
October 8, 2025
It appears that our political leaders have lost their moral compass – if they ever possessed one. They hide their moral vacuity behind empty posturing around a slogan (antisemitism) that has been so misused by the Zionists they appear to love, that it no longer has any meaning or content. These moral midgets will be remembered by history, but not in the way they hope!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: 7 October not a day to abuse protesters
The memory hole revisited
October 8, 2025
When watching current political cowardice, one is powerfully reminded of George Orwell and his memory hole. This is the place for confining events that are not helpful to those in power as they seek to convince the populace that everything is fine. Current Western leaders have become masters at consigning Israeli depravity to that memory hole to convince themselves that they retain some kind of moral legitimacy. The bulk of us just don't buy it!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: 7 October 2023: Return of the Hannibal Directive and the genocide starts now - Part 2
Democracy in theory, authoritarianism in practice
October 8, 2025
I don't recall in my lifetime — and that is 80 years — another period when our so-called democracies in the West have demonstrated such a disconnect between the people and our alleged leaders. Billions of decent people around the planet have demonstrated unequivocally that they do not believe the rancid criminals in Israel when the latter claim to be supposedly just defending themselves. Yet our Western leaders appear to be utterly unaware of the abhorrence and detestation with which their support for genocide is viewed. They demonstrate, if it were ever necessary to say so, a craven...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Hundreds of thousands flood cities across Europe to demand end to genocide in Gaza
Some Australians are more equal than others
October 8, 2025
Today (7th October 2025), our prime minister stood in parliament and lamented the death of one dual Australian/Israeli citizen who died two years ago at an Israeli music festival. He did not mention, nor it was ever mentioned in the last two years, a genocide that the state of Israel has been committing on the Palestinian people. Nor has the government or our prime minister mentioned the more than 67000 predominantly women and children who were killed in the Israeli-committed genocide (possibly some of them also Australian dual citizens). Finally, Australia is complicit in this genocide, directly and...
Okrad Marconi from Sydney
In response to: Palestinians out by 7 October?
Fair share of tax? I think not
October 8, 2025
Misha Schubert could be writing about me. I’m in my 50s and after two decades as a teacher, I gave up work to look after my parent. Out of necessity I had go on the carers pension. Now on $30,000 a year, I pay $2000 tax. Even on this low wage, I cannot claim a cent to alleviate the tax burden, not the modified shower seat, not the petrol nor the parking tickets for the three weekly hospital visits… nothing. On a carers pension, I pay more tax than a property investor or gas corporation. As a school teacher...
Alyssa Aleksanian from Hazelbrook
In response to: Australia faces a looming crisis of older women retiring in poverty. Here’s what
The plight of older female pensioners
October 7, 2025
Yes, the inadequate aged pension and the shortage of affordable housing affects many older women. A friend in her late 70s is renting an affordable flat from an organisation that informs her that this accommodation is temporary and she will soon be again on the move. She regularly visits the local Housing NSW office, where there is a constant turnover of clearly demoralised staff and many requests for duplicate documentation, especially for copies of her most recent bank statements. When she produces one statement they ask for statements from her other banks, and she has to inform them,...
Janet Grevillea from Lake Macquarie
In response to: Australia faces a looming crisis of older women retiring in poverty. Here’s what
National Press Club dodges questions on Hedges
October 7, 2025
I wrote to the National Press Club chief executive Maurice Reilly to protest his decision to cancel the address scheduled for Chris Hedges to speak on the situation in Gaza for journalists. I read the NPC media statement on the matter published in P&I on 5 October. There I noted Reilly's assertion that the decision to withdraw the invitation was made on the basis that (when) more details of the address were made available we decided to pursue other speakers on the matter”. I contacted Reilly and asked him to explain what that means. He referred me back to...
Kym Davey from Adelaide SA
In response to: chris-hedges-statement-by-the-national-press-club-4-october-2025/?utm_source=Pea
7 October: Prepare for the Zionist assault
October 7, 2025
This won’t appear before we enter the second anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel. We can expect an explosion of anti-Hamas sentiment. We can expect a seismic level of regurgitation of gruesome allegations of Hamas atrocities, some of which will be true but there is a growing body of evidence that much of what is routinely spewed by the plethora of Zionist spokespeople is simply lies. Mussolini would be envious of their success. We need more well-researched, definitive, irrefutable, factual accounts such as Eugene Doyle’s work of what happened in order to base proper judgment....
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: 7 October 2023: What really happened? Part 1
Whom can I believe – the NPC or the journalist?
October 6, 2025
After reading Chris Hedges’ article in Pearls and Irritations, I was angry and disappointed with the National Press Club. Ready to write an angry letter. Then today I read the response from the NPC. I am now angry and disappointed with Hedges for misrepresenting the situation. I feel like Donald Trump. I end up believing the last person who had my ear. If this disagreement exists over the facts of a fairly straightforward situation — and both parties are considered honest and trustworthy — where does that leave me in deciding what to believe about more complicated and more...
Carl Rathus from Brisbane
In response to: Chris Hedges – Statement by the National Press Club ( 4 October 2025)
Civilisation’s collapse not the end of the world
October 6, 2025
Our planet holds far too many people. We are destroying the uniquely stable environment of the past 12,000 years which has enabled civilisations to develop and thrive. We are bringing our civilisation’s collapse through not addressing existential issues now in plain sight. With civilisational collapse, our human population will inevitably shrink. Animal populations must also reduce – since 94% of animals now are domesticated livestock. Some domesticated animals might become feral; predators would thrive; the natural environment would re-establish itself, gradually burying remains of our lost civilisation. Thus life on the planet would rebalance – how much...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: 'Died of a delusion' – the fate of modern civilisation?
Our civilisation’s collapse is not yet inevitable
October 6, 2025
Julian Cribb argues that civilisational collapse will soon become inevitable. This collapse is focused on the human future, but necessarily includes the future for all life on Earth. Humans live in, and depend on, a healthy, rich ecology, but many societies have lived with the religious belief that they are chosen ones – that the world has been created for their benefit, with the implicit assumption that they are entitled to all that it contains. This sense of entitlement has led to the pillaging of natural resources that has characterised the world since colonial times. Colonising countries enriched themselves...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: 'Died of a delusion' – the fate of modern civilisation?
The lessons of history learned by the smart
October 6, 2025
A really interesting and thoughtful article that gives meaning to George Santayana's aphorism that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. China, largely due to its 4000-year civilisational history, is not doing what the West is doing. It is learning from the past and creating a culture that is not repeating the mistakes of the past, at least for the last 40 years. Mind you it has also been extraordinarily successful over thousands of years in avoiding foreign military and colonial involvements and that is serving them extraordinarily well. The vast and continuing expenditures...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Orwell foresees the 21st century
Fact against convenient fiction
October 6, 2025
The debt that Australians, who seek the uncomfortable truth rather than the convenient fiction, owe to John Menadue for his decision to create Pearls and Irritations is immense. The barren mainstream media landscape of Australia, that values fantasy over fact and obedience over questioning of authority, leaves little room for intelligent debate and doubt. This article is a great example of what escapes the boring and stultifying conformance of our media and seeks to provide an outlet for views that try to reflect the complex realities that we face, rather than the soothing inanities of the elites. ...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: South Korea’s anti-China protests
Truth as opposed to propaganda
October 6, 2025
The world owes Eugene Doyle an enormous debt as he finally strips away the tissue of lies, distortions, fabrications and mendacity that the West has surrounded 7 October 2023 with to turn the Israelis from the perpetrators into the victims. Eighty years of bastardization of the Palestinian people by the West, that created their suffering to excuse Western Holocaust guilt, can now be seen for what it is. Every pretence of civilisational and moral superiority is stripped away to reveal the corruption and moral vacuity of a dying Western empire. As Israel is run by European Zionists, it...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: 7 October 2023: What really happened? Part 1
National Press Club is only interested in status quo journalism
October 6, 2025
Does Australia have a fearless independent National Press Club to host challenging thought-provoking speakers like Chris Hedges, a world-renowned award-winning journalist? Or must we rely on an insular group of journalists more interested in status quo journalism that will never be questioned? The NPC's response to criticism of its decision to cancel the Hedges address is alarming because it tries to use that hackneyed “balance argument“ to justify its decision. How could any self-respecting journalist or media organisation provide “balance“ to Israel’s genocide and the murder of more than 67,000 civilians? Further, it is arguable that the NPC...
Margaret Reynolds from Richmond, Tasmania
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
No place for independent journalists to address the NPC
October 6, 2025
I was incredulous to hear that the National Press Club had cancelled the planned address by Chris Hedges. I would have thought that a press club would have been interested to hear from one of the most respected independent journalists with deep knowledge of the Middle East. And I am deeply troubled by the words .. and when more details of the address were made available we decided to pursue other speakers on the matter. in the NPC's media statement. Indeed, I would have thought that given the genocide in Gaza, the killing of over 270 Palestinians journalists...
Sawsan Madina from Sydney
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
National Press Club directors should hang their heads in shame
October 6, 2025
The letter below was forwarded to P&I. To Maurice Reilly and the directors of the National Press Club Your decision to cancel the 20 October address by prize-winning American journalist Chris Hedges is a disgrace and a betrayal of everything the National Press Club is supposed to stand for. Your website claims you are a vigorous champion of media freedom and a home away from home for journalists. Yet you refuse to have a highly-qualified speaker, who has rigorously documented the biggest deliberate slaughter of journalists in history — the murder of at least 278 reporters...
Judith White from Tweed Heads, NSW
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
Chinese EVs are an outcome of global innovation
October 6, 2025
A couple of days ago I tried to interest my 21-year-old daughter in the way many technologies had come together to produce the current offering of Chinese EVs. It is not dissimilar to how we ended up with the iPhone. I am an IT industry veteran who remembers working with individual transistors. It is not what exists now that I was holding out as our climate hope. It is how fast change happens when you reach these technology inflection points. I couldn’t see it when I was in my 20s, working in the mini-computer industry and the PC...
Peter Kendall from Ferny Grove QLD
In response to: We killed our car industry and now we're drafted to fight against Chinese EVs (again?)
An unlikely declaration of unconditional surrender
October 6, 2025
This ludicrous plan, in which Anthony Albanese so enthusiastically promotes his participation, is not only a betrayal of the Palestinians right to justice but also represents an unconditional surrender to the racist and criminal regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv. That Western leaders, who endorse this theft of the identity and human dignity of the Palestinians, can so pompously congratulate themselves on this derisory document could not more clearly demonstrate their racism and moral vacuity. Roll on the multipolar world where real civilisations supplant the poisonous legacy of the West!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: No justice or peace for Palestinians in Trump’s Plan
The farce of the rules-based international order
October 6, 2025
It's Humpty Dumpty again where the West takes that role and changes the meaning of words to suit itself. This article takes the role of Alice where she questions Humpty Dumpty on his propensity to change the meaning of words to suit his specific purpose. Humpty Dumpty ignores her and proceeds to apply his made-up rules to others but not to himself. For the West, Marx was right that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Israel’s interception of the Gaza aid flotilla is a clear violation of internati
Thoughtful article which raises many questions
October 6, 2025
This is a really interesting article that raises a whole range of issues that need to be, and in many instances are being, addressed by the Chinese Government. Sadly, one of the best measures of how societies are coping with these youth mental health issues is trends in the rates of attempted and actual suicide by Chinese youth. Fortunately, the Chinese Government appear to have recognised the stresses that cause this and have implemented measures that have resulted in a continuing decline in the rates over the last decade, in contrast to the US where the rates have been...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China’s youth: Between collectivism and the new individualism
The ICJ and Israel’s occupation of Palestine
October 6, 2025
Donald Rothwell writes: “Israel can certainly exercise control over the 12 nautical mile territorial sea off Gaza’s shores. Its closure of the territorial sea to foreign vessels would be justified under international law as a security measure, as well as to ensure the safety of neutral vessels due to the ongoing war.” I cannot see how that squares with the opinion of the ICJ that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal. Israel continues to deny Palestinians and others access to Palestine’s territorial sea, and has banned the construction of a UN-backed modern port in Palestine for 20 years....
Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)
In response to: Israel’s interception of the aid flotilla is a clear violation of international
Greenhouse gas pollution v climate change
October 6, 2025
Climate change and emissions due to greenhouse gas pollution are referred to numerous times in this article. Yes, they are problematic. However, climate change is only one symptom of GHG pollution and yet it is used as the general name for the variety of adverse impacts due to GHG pollution. Climate change is hence a misnomer. When talking about it, please call it what it is: GHG pollution. Similarly, when using the word, emissions, please call it what it is: GHG pollution. The impacts are – all accept that we cannot live with pollution so it...
Con Karavas from Adelaide, South Australia
In response to: A fresh perspective on climate
The Albanese Government has been captured
October 6, 2025
As we continue to allow the Zionist lobby to dictate the terms of our public discourse on all issues relating to Israel, we can mark our passage down this road with a number of milestones. Or is that gravestones? Human rights, including the rights of women, children and the elderly? Only if they are Jewish. Freedom of the press? Only for Jewish outlets. Protection during a conflict for hospitals and schools? Same-same. The list goes on and on while the YouTube videos proliferate. That the National Press Club would cancel Chris Hedges' talk and consider replacing it with an...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby, cancels talk on our betrayal
Chris Hedges and the National Press Club
October 6, 2025
I, and the political group I belong to, have sent emails to the chief executive of the National Press Club, strongly protesting the cancellation of the proposed talk by Chris Hedges at the NPC. The subject was to be the betrayal of Palestinian journalists by the media. My protest concerned three elements: – given that foreign journalists are forbidden from entering Gaza, this talk represents a once in a lifetime opportunity for them — and us — to hear about the treatment of Palestinian journalists at the hands of Israel. – Chris Hedges is a highly experienced...
Jill Dixon from Melbourne
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC cancels talk on our betrayal of Palestinian journalists
NPC and Chris Hedges
October 6, 2025
When the National Press Club decides that a leading authority on the Palestine question should not be heard by its members, Australians’ immediate question to the NPC is, why not? Having invited and then disinvited Chris Hedges from an event that promised to be booked out, the next question to the NPC is, who brought pressure on the club to do so? If Hedges is replaced by the ambassador of Israel, a former IDF officer, another question arises: who insisted on that choice? The Australian public is entitled to be concerned about the partisan censorship displayed, or...
Alison Broinowski from paddington
In response to: Hedges Report: NPC Australia caves to Israel Lobby
No place for journalism at the National Press Club?
October 6, 2025
Why would the National Press Club decide to withdraw an offer for acclaimed journalist Chris Lyn Hedges to speak about his extensive experience reporting from and about the Middle East, the media’s role in a democracy and specifically how it has contributed to legitimising Israel’s genocide? The decision was made, according to chief executive Maurice Reilly, when more details of the address were made available. This is deeply shocking: a journalist of Hedge’s calibre is cancelled because his message is unpalatable? Balanced truth with the opportunity to lie, creates plausible deniability. This is why many are increasingly seeing...
Mary Kostakidis from Sydney
In response to: https://npc.org.au/chris-hedges-statement-by-the-national-press-club
Generative debunking of climate myths using AI
October 6, 2025
Christian Downie’s forthcoming book, Climate Obstruction, taking a global view, will complement Marian Wilkinson’s The Carbon Club (2020), which exposed the powerful forces shaping Australia’s poor response to climate change. The unrelenting misinformation has been effective. A 2020 University of Canberra study, cited at the current Senate inquiry into Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy, found that Australia ranks third in the world for climate denialism — 8% of the population — behind the US and Sweden. The global average is just 3%. While Downie is right to highlight the role of PR firms spreading climate misinformation...
Ray Peck from Hawthorn
In response to: PR firms are spreading climate misinformation on behalf of fossil fuel companies