July 8, 2024

News Corp is ailing. How long will the Murdochs prop it up?

Job cuts continue across the empire as the business model dies a slow death.

June 2, 2024

“Forever Learning”: the Hoc Mai medical exchange program, 1998-2024

During the 1990’s Associate Professor Phillip Yuile of Sydney University visited Vietnam many times, helping hospitals to establish Radiotherapy there. In 1998 he met with Professor Ton That Bach the Dean of Hanoi Medical University (HMU) who subsequently invited me to visit Hanoi with a view to establishing a connection with postgraduate medical education in Australia, specifically Sydney Medical School, as Vietnam’s links had previously been with France.

July 18, 2023

Presidential candidate Ganjar Pranowo promises a strong lean toward China

The prior political experience of 2024 Indonesian presidential election candidate Ganjar Pranowo illustrates a strong pro-China lean for Indonesia if he is elected. Leading the largest party, his chances of success are considerable.

July 12, 2023

Sinking Billions - Revolving Doors - Part 2

The Australian Defence Departments new Frigates project is a jobs merry-go-round for former military officers, bureaucrats, and weapons makers.

August 8, 2024

Myanmar junta on back foot with loss of key town

Myanmar’s civil war, underway since the 2021 coup, may have reached a tipping point. The battle for the strategic northern garrison town of Lashio appears to have ended with victory for an alliance of anti-junta forces. Rebel claims of taking the town have been verified by a number of local sources.

August 2, 2024

The great reversal: Britain and China

Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London. He recently spoke about his important new book, “The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400 Year Contest for Power” (Yale University Press, 2024) with Richard Cullen. A fundamental reality, which this stimulating book stresses, is how significant British interaction with China pre-dates the British takeover of Hong Kong Island, in 1842, by around 250 years. The British colonisation of Hong Kong was an important turning-point during the 400-year contest captured in the title – but not more than that.

June 4, 2024

Raising the bar

John Menadue recently asked Pearls and Irritations (P&I) readers to suggest how to go about raising the bar in relation to content and relevance.

May 28, 2024

Global tribunal issues 'Historic' ruling for oceans and small island nations

“Protecting the global commons of the oceans and atmosphere is a matter of life and death,” said one expert who praised the decision.

April 9, 2024

The Lehrmann defamation case, journalist values and the MEAA Code of Ethics

During the early 1990s, I once asked an experienced media adviser with whom I worked and admired what his thoughts were on the Australian Journalists Association (now the MEAA) Code of Ethics. His answer was that the code amounts to a point of departure in the way that journalists practise.

July 14, 2023

Worldwide, workers rights are taking a battering - Weekly Roundup

The Public service grapples with Commissioner Holmes Robodebt report; Capitalism is at war with democracy; and why are our hospitals overstressed? Read on for the Weekly Roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.

July 2, 2023

Put peoples rights first in Syria sanctions

US, UK, EU should amend humanitarian exemptions to facilitate aid.

June 5, 2023

The Sudanese conflict: The mistake the West can't afford to make again

Diplomatic initiatives led by Western actors have counter-productively entrenched the anti-democratic forces now fighting for control in Sudan. To drive real change, the West needs to empower Sudans democratic movement and undermine the power of armed factions.

May 8, 2024

ASPI caught spreading misinformation about open-source software

It’s not often that you find someone writing about open source software and not bothering to make mention of the licences being used. But that’s precisely what Albert Zhang of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a lobby group for big tech and foreign agencies, has done.

May 7, 2024

Three Indians held in Canada over murder of Sikh activist Nijjar

The stars do not exactly seem to be aligning for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he bids for a third term in office with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police charging three Indians living in Edmonton with the assassination of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June last year.

May 9, 2023

The Ukraine war and the Hitler analogy

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters what could be its most decisive phase, the award-winning American journalist, Stephen Kinzer, has announced a Society for Abolishing World War II Analogies.

April 19, 2023

Its armageddon, but not as we know it

Why are tens of millions of Christians supporting the expansion of Israel and the oppression of the Palestinians? Its an important question because the answer has serious consequences for the stability of the Middle East.

April 18, 2023

Safe travels in no-go zones

The countries where its not safe for Australians to travel have multiplied, but not because of COVID. They include the places where we fought the war on terror.

April 13, 2023

Depleted Ukrainians

Fighting in Ukraine continues, sometimes fiercely, sometimes spasmodically. So do the unending appeals from Vladimir Zelensky for more and better weapons from the West. He is now to get from Britain anti-tank shells made from depleted uranium, which will increase radiation and chemical pollution where they are used.

September 7, 2021

Dungeons and dragons: The China threat fiction

China is an increasingly authoritarian state, actively asserting its will regionally and within its own borders giving rise to a dangerous fiction.

July 17, 2024

Fiji fights for brain gain amid wave of emigration

The Fijian Government has increased the retirement age from 60 to 62 years to counteract a ’labour exodus’ to Australia and New Zealand. Over 50,000 Fijians emigrated between July 2022 and December 2023, mainly due to better education and employment opportunities abroad. The government has made several policy changes to mitigate the impact on the local labour market and encourage investment including bringing in more foreign workers, removing visa barriers for former citizens and adjusting tax rules.

August 19, 2023

Australias yellow peril fear is rooted in history

Edmund Barton, an early Australian leader said: the doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman.

April 21, 2023

Medicare needs a re-design: is the government up to it? Weekly Roundup

The case for boosting JobSeeker payments; Medicare needs a re-design: is the government up to it?; and how to cripple a country. Read on for the Weekly Roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.

June 16, 2024

Merchants of death prolong slaughter in Ukraine, Gaza

Last week activists in Brisbane CBD took their voices and violin to the doorstop of giant American weapons and aircraft company Boeing. To denounce Boeing, along with other US, Australian and UK based ammunition and weapons manufacturers for prolonging the wars in Gaza and the Ukraine in order to make huge profits from civilian suffering and dying.

May 26, 2024

The ugly truth of the native forest logging wars

Despite industry and political spin, our Australian native forests continue to be destroyed. The many mythologies put forward in defence of continued logging are contradicted in detail by the facts and evidence.

April 16, 2024

Shielding the dollar by bashing China

Ian Bremner argues convincingly that the American Dollar remains embedded as the global reserve currency since: “you can’t replace something with nothing”. Nevertheless, intensifying US misuse and abuse of the dollar’s standing has expanded the worldwide search for one or more “alternative somethings”. Now an intriguing argument has been advanced that a central reason Western scolding of China remains so incessant is to help protect the vulnerable dollar.

July 17, 2023

When does criticism of Zionism and Israel lapse into antisemitism?

An exchange between Larry Stillman, Harold Zwier and Chandra Muzaffar on the question: When does criticism of Zionism and Israel lapse into antisemitism?

June 20, 2023

Jeju Islands peace message - truth and reconciliation in Korea

Following the award of the Korean Jeju 4:3 Peace Prize to former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, it is good to note that Pearls and Irritations has taken up cudgels on the long-neglected question of the Jeju Island massacre of 1948 (articles by Heo Ho-joon and Alison Broinowski). And it is good to see Evans taking the opportunity of being awarded the Prize to call on the government of the US to cooperate in revealing and addressing its responsibility for the tragic events of 1948.

May 26, 2023

Spain runs entirely on green energy for 9 hours for first time, in harbinger of green future

Spain, the worlds 15th largest economy and the fourth-largest in Europe, recently ran for 9 hours entirely on wind, solar and hydro. It is not the first time the renewables supplied all of the countrys domestic electricity needs on the peninsula, but it is the first time they did so for so many hours in a row, on a weekday when demand is heavier than on the weekends, and when three of the countrys nuclear power plants were shut down for various reasons. So reports Ignacio Fariza at El Pais.

April 27, 2023

The Persecution of Truth

The war on whistleblowers, WikiLeaks and truth will be examined at a conference called The Persecution of Truth at the State Library of Queensland on Sunday April 30th.

September 14, 2024

The cursed stone resists return

In an age of logic and evidence-based reasoning, modern research has revealed a thousand-year curse. It could be stopping the superstitious and spiritually-conscious Javanese from vigorously striving to return a thieved “emblem of Indonesian cultural heritage".

September 11, 2024

Remembering Pete Steedman

Legendary student agitator, Oz-era editor, Hawke-era Parliamentarian, union official, music industry executive and all-purpose provocateur, Pete Steedman died aged 82 on 10 July 2024 after a long battle with cancer. This is one of a number of speeches given at a memorial celebration of his life at the Melbourne Trades Hall on 7 September 2024.

September 3, 2024

Achieving net-zero: is nuclear the answer?

Those most responsible for creating the problems [of climate change] will see it to it that they profit from the solution that they propose. - Arundhati Roy, 2019, quoted in ‘Nuclear is Not the Solution’ MV Ramana (Verso)

August 6, 2024

Evan Gershkovitch and Krasikov is bad policy

The trading of Russian FSB assassin Vadim Krasikov for various Russian political prisoners, including US citizen Evan Gershkovitch and a number of Russian dissidents, illustrates the incompetence of US and German leaderships in foreign policy – and reflects the reason that Russia is winning the war in Ukraine!

July 13, 2024

Security: when even the good give up

I’m a great admirer of George Monbiot. As one of the The Guardian’s most prominent and influential columnists he has long been a trenchant critic of neoliberalism, and an informed and persuasive commentator on key issues surrounding the environment and economic inequality in particular. This is what makes his most recent column on geopolitics and security such a surprising and rather depressing read.

May 18, 2024

The heroes of Australia’s international story, from Eritrea to Indonesia

When the taxi driver in Eritrea’s capital city, Asmara, realised I was Australian, he would not accept payment, and instead, spent the duration of the trip telling me of Eritrea’s national debt to Fred Hollows.

May 13, 2024

Who will win the US Presidential Election? Professor Lichtman may hold the key

The Guardian newspaper reports that history professor Allan Lichtman is known as the Nostradamus of US presidential elections since he has correctly predicted the results of nine of the past ten ballots.

April 26, 2021

Open letter from John Keane about 'foreign interference' at Sydney University.

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Many of you will have spotted recent media reports that our University, the University of Sydney, contracted the chartered accountancy firm McGrathNicol Advisory, to provide an external audit of the patterns of foreign interference in the workings of our institution.

June 17, 2024

A Republic needs a new Constitution

The Australian Republic Movement has been silent on the need for major constitution renewal.

April 12, 2024

Flawed democracies: Modi, Trump, and a dilemma

Is democracy spawning elected autocracies? In 2024, a tale of two much-vaunted yet internationally ranked “flawed democracies” is unfolding. The outcomes of their national elections—India in June and the US in November—will test the mettle of the democratic institutions that underpin their governance systems.

August 30, 2023

Autonomy: An answer to the Ukraine war

As the Ukraine war moves to its inevitable climax, with either foreign physical intervention and/or use of tactical nuclear weapons seen as the only answers, maybe it is time to look for another answer.

May 14, 2023

The Army we dont see: The private soldiers who fight in Americas name

The way mercenary leaderYevgeny Prigozhinand his private army have been waging a significant part of Vladimir Putins war in Ukraine has been well covered in the American media, not least of all because his firm, the Wagner Group, drawsmostof its men from Russias prison system. Wagner offers freedom from Putins labor camps only to send those released convicts to the front lines of the conflict, often on brutalsuicide missions.

May 11, 2023

A worst case scenario for the South China Sea

The increasing militarisation of the South China Sea disputes sets the stage for the worst case scenariofrequent and widespread conflict that eventually results in a military confrontation between China and the US.To avoid this scenario, the reality is that China, its rival claimants and the U.S. have to compromise.

July 23, 2024

Martyrdom transforms Trump

Anyone watching the Australian diplomats at the Republican national convention would have quickly seen the backslapping, the warm handshakes with the republican tree people and the Australian understanding that, more likely than not, Donald Trump will be elected president in November. Our diplomats, and those with whom they have intercourse, can read the signs as well as, if not better than anyone else. Australia doesn’t have a vote at the election, and must get on, as best as it can, with the person and the players chosen by the American electoral system.

June 18, 2024

Nero’s guests: Israel has been poisoned by the psychosis of permanent war

Israel has been poisoned by the psychosis of permanent war. It has been morally bankrupted by the sanctification of victimhood, which it uses to justify an occupation that is even more savage than that of apartheid South Africa. Its ‘democracy’ — which was always exclusively for Jews — has been hijacked by extremists who are pushing the country towards fascism.

April 11, 2024

Putin says he follows Israel's Gaza example in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin has in the past justified brutal Russian military actions – such as in Ukraine and Syria — by saying they are the same as the Israeli actions we now see in Gaza.

August 23, 2023

A refusal to see: Blindness to the global order

The accepted norm of Western dominance of the global order is now over. The difficult matter for those in the West to accept is that the mantle of leadership is not being passed from one Anglo-Western power to another of the same ilk, but rather one neither Anglo, nor Western, and dare I say it, not caucasian.

August 3, 2023

The other war: Struggle and suffering in Sudan

Its been devastating, even if no ones paying attention.

July 21, 2023

Enough carrots. It's time for the U.S. to use sticks to change Israeli Policy

Its hard to know whether to cry or laugh reading the highlights of the hour-long conversation Joe Biden had with the New York Times Thomas Friedman on Tuesday, after meeting President Isaac Herzog.

May 3, 2023

Can India remain Democracys poster child?

The reality is emerging that Indias democracy is not only deeply flawed, it has regressed into what the V-Dem Institute calls “one of the worst autocratisers in the last 10 years”.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal