December 23, 2022

Christmas: war and peace

As we end 2022, we seem besotted with rumours of war. In contrast, the central message of Christmas is Gods gift in Christ of peace, justice, humility and joy.

November 18, 2022

Marles pushes China threat, advocates ability to attack Chinese territory

Defence minister Richard Marles has a dangerous habit of relying on unfounded assertions to decide that Australia must not only increase military spending on a vast scale but have the ability to attack China from close to its home land.

October 28, 2022

AUKUS: A US Trojan Horse undermining Australias sovereignty

We have been shocked, angered, and disturbed about what we learnt from The Washington Post about the secret insertion of senior US defence officials and Admirals into the Australian defence establishment. At least one served in a very senior decision-making role within The Australian Department of Defence as an American citizen.

October 15, 2022

Ukraine military instructor decision echoes the lead up to Australias deployment in Vietnam

It would be no great surprise if Australians were to join British military instructors in training Ukrainians to fight. Defence Minister Richard Marles hinted at that when he visited the UK in September. The Australian personnel would join others from New Zealand, Sweden, the Netherlands and elsewhere who have been supporting Ukraines side in the war as trainers of civilians in using weapons, patrolling, and first aid.

February 28, 2022

Scare-mongering on China is a threat to our democracy and responsible media must guard against it

_There is a great deal more at stake than national security in Scott Morrisons hyper-partisan and grossly dishonest accusation that Anthony Albanese and his deputy, Richard Marles, are carrying the hopes of the Chinese regime at the forthcoming election.

March 28, 2025

Why voting in a fact-checking void should worry you

Australian voters heading to the polls need to be aware there’s little standing between them and potential manipulation of information by vested interests.

December 31, 2024

White Man’s Media: The Washington consensus and legacy media frames and conditions our thinking and actions

In Gaza we have witnessed a litany of lies by Israel and America peddled by our media day after day.The lives of white Jews and Christians are clearly more valuable than the lives of brown Muslims.

December 11, 2024

Trump's economic delusions

Trump’s economic strategy is based on a series of delusions that will result in higher inflation, a bigger trade deficit and a loss in the value of the American dollar. How can that Make America Great Again?

November 17, 2024

Environment: Carbon capture and storage – what’s the real goal?

Carbon capture and storage fails to deliver carbon but succeeds for governments and industry. The pros and cons of reducing your personal carbon footprint. How best to tackle Australia’s land clearing loopholes.

February 1, 2024

Australia must not join the US in goading China to war

There is clear evidence that US efforts to build a coalition of allies in our region is directed at containing Chinese power and developing the capability to eventually confront the Chinese military. That scenario is a nightmare for Australia. We now find certain elements of a Labor government flirting with containment and confrontation with China - instead of openly seeking to secure peace and prosperity through dialogue and diplomacy. It would be a major mistake for Labor to join the Coalition in goading and provoking our greatest trading partner and the primary source of our prosperity. That is why we have joined with former Labor Foreign Ministers Bob Carr and Gareth Evans in drafting the Dtente Statement.

December 26, 2023

Time for Australia to admit its a petrostate

The first step in fixing any problem is acknowledging it. And for Australia on climate change, that means admitting we are a petrostate.

October 27, 2023

What good comes from Israel silencing criticism?

Born in 1938, two days after Kristallnacht, I grew up during a period of rabid American antisemitism. In response, two relatives helped found the Anti-Defamation League. Learning of the atrocities Hamas committed in southern Israel, I was aghast like everyone. But I was not surprised. Israel has been hoisted on its own propaganda, regardless of the consequences. It has almost succeeded in silencing its critics, even - maybe especially - its Jewish ones, of whom there are many.

March 10, 2023

A desperate race to avoid locking in the pathway to human extinction

We are in a desperate race to avoid locking in a pathway to human extinction. This requires brutal honesty on the threats we face. Climate change, not China, Russia or the US, is the greatest threat the world faces; it will only be overcome with unprecedented global co-operation.

December 1, 2022

Whitlam was elected fifty years ago today: Medibank/Medicare was conceived five years before that

_On a bleak Melbourne midwinter night in 1967, Medicare was conceived. The election of the Whitlam Government on December 2 ,1972 gave impetus to what was to come. Medicare was finally launched in 1975.

October 30, 2022

The link between immigration and recessions

If Australia experiences a major economic slowdown in 2023-24 and a weaker labour market, what would happen to migration and recently arrived migrants?

October 3, 2022

Who profits from Pipeline Terror?

The War of Economic Corridors has entered incandescent, uncharted territory: Pipeline Terror. A sophisticated military operation that required exhaustive planning, possibly involving several actors blew up four separate sections of the Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) gas pipelines this week in the shallow waters of the Danish straits, in the Baltic Sea, near the island of Bornholm.

March 26, 2022

Environment: Pollution destroys lives, the ozone layer and bushland

Profits trump health in sacrifice zones, and pollution from the 2019/20 bushfires may increase Australias skin cancer rate. Dogs destroying bushland.

March 7, 2022

Not one inch Eastward

_Nothing can excuse Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its bombing of residential suburbs and social infrastructure. It is nothing short of a war crime. But how did it come to this?

March 14, 2024

Australias middle power self-image is undermining the countrys security

Australian governments routinely assert that the country is respected as a middle power in regional and global forums. Meanwhile scholars increasingly agree that the middle power concept is more fantasy than reality. In Australias case, the uncritical assumption of the middle power self-image, by many politicians and commentators, is undermining the countrys security.

February 25, 2024

Heatwaves and blackouts: Australia's climate crisis is now

As Western Australia endures another extreme heatwave, with temperatures soaring up to 47 degrees Celsius in the Pilbara, the reality of the impacts of climate change is becoming impossible for Australia to ignore. Escalating and unprecedented heat is harming our communities, ecosystems, and economy. Last week Victoria was battered by fires and storms that destroyed homes and infrastructure, leaving half a million people without power. These are stark reminders of the climate crisis’s immediacy and the urgent need for action.

January 24, 2024

Western media bias, Israeli apologetics, and ongoing genocide

I found it shocking that the New York Times published on January 17th no less than three opinion pieces by Jewish authors, unbalanced by a single Palestinian or principled critical voice.

December 3, 2023

Courage and conscience: Its time for independence in media reporting on China

_For the sake of Australias national interest, and for journalistic integrity that will be judged by history, can mainstream media maintain independence from short-term, vulgar political and geopolitical influence and interference, especially with regard to reporting about China?

October 19, 2023

Israels culture of deceit

Israel, which always seeks to blame Palestinians for the atrocities it carries out, is the least trustworthy source about the bombing of the hospital in Gaza.

November 18, 2021

Myanmar nightmare: Junta squeezes civic space and disrupts civil aid

The humanitarian and development crisis in Myanmar requires a new approach to traditional donor accountability if the global community is to avert a major catastrophe in the country.

December 30, 2024

2024 – a dire year for Human Survival

In 2024, humanity - as a whole - took a purposeful stride towards engineering the collapse of modern civilisation.

November 12, 2024

A five-minute scroll

Owen Jones reveals media manipulation regarding the soccer in Amsterdam. Palestine, the most well-documented genocide in history, Gideon Levy speaks of the Apartheid state while Andrey reveals the destruction of Bedouin communities. In South Lebanon, attacks on cities intensify while reports Israel has killed more than 200 paramedics are ignored by the press. At home, Jim Chalmers praised for being an articulate on the pulse Treasurer while Media Watch uncovers the truth of media attention for the victims of death at the hands of their partner.

October 8, 2023

Support the strong, suppress the weak: West betrays Christian traditions

What is playing out on the border of Gaza and Israel is awful. Loss of civilian life is inexcusable and must be condemned. Unsurprisingly, and understandably, Biden, Albanese, Trudeau and other Western leaders have condemned the Hamas attack in the strongest possible terms. But is that all they are going to do double down behind Israel in responding to Palestinians as vicious terrorists who need to be taught a lesson, or worse, eliminated?

January 13, 2022

Dear politicians in Canberra and Sydney: caring for us means you need to tell us the truth

We dont want spin and false promises. Even if the system is in good shape, many of the people in that system are not feeling the same.

February 28, 2019

STEPHEN de WEGER. Clerical sexual abuse of adults. Another blind spot.

In 2013, after working as a research assistant project into clergy sexual abuse of children, I decided to undertake an exploratory study into clergy sexual misconduct against adults. During this study I came across what I believe should be a strategic document regarding the understanding of the clergy sexual abuse crisis we are witnessing right now - Sipes 11-point thesis. (The late Dr Richard Sipe was a note US psychotherapist and acknowledged expert in the psychosexuality of Catholic clerics).

November 11, 2024

“Be prepared”: The US of Trump 02 is a foreign country

We must recognise that over 50% of US voters have now elected Trump. The almost cult-like MAGA can no longer be regarded as an aberration. Countries like Australia now have to recognise just how this new US increasingly is becoming a “foreign” country.

October 30, 2024

To Jews and Christians of faith: you can’t sit out a genocide

This week I read an article in Al Jazeera describing the killing in one day of hundreds of Palestinian civilians. The same day I read a piece in CNN, “Israeli soldiers returning from war struggle with trauma and suicide”. The article tried to elicit sympathy for soldiers who were traumatised from bulldozing Palestinians.

October 21, 2024

It’s the silence that kills

“Do you agree that Israel has the right to defend itself?” This question, so often and repeatedly put by journalists, is irritatingly banal. Invariably, it’s pitched as a kind of provocation, as if to infer that the person being quizzed has never considered the matter, or worse, is a closet antisemitic.

March 24, 2024

The urgency of Diplomacy

Now is the time for talks that will bring us closer to peace and away from a deadly and destructive war with no end in sight.

March 17, 2024

The Holocaust Cloak

In Australia, the Anzac Cloak is appropriated, proselytised, prostituted and promoted far too often for perfidious reasons: to lend some dubious activity gravitas and shield it from criticism.

January 27, 2024

Environment: Canadians and Sydney-siders destroying their trees

Canadians are destroying their boreal forests. Kelp forests need help worldwide. Advice for Australian company directors on preparing for climate change. New uses for old wind turbine blades.

December 5, 2023

The Paris Agreement is dead. Australia must change its strategic priorities

As COP28 flounders, the Paris Agreement is dead, and the imperative for emergency action has never been greater. This demands a fundamental change to Australias strategic priorities.

November 6, 2023

Massacre of the Innocents

The UN is calling the Israel-Hamas war a ‘graveyard of children’. an adult conflict, in which the young are suffering most. What we see on our TV screens every night is impossible to watch. Did Netanyahu see the young lad who had just carried the decapitated body of his friend from the rubble. If so, what did he think? He almost certainly thought the same as Natali Bennet the former Israeli prime minister who said to a reporter on Sky News: Are you seriously asking me about Palestinian civilians? What is wrong with you? Were fighting Nazis.

December 8, 2022

AUSMIN and Australias further militarisation within the US imperium

The Ausmin joint statement does little to dissuade the idea that Australia is moving, inexorably, towards a satellite, garrison state to be disposed of and used by the US imperium.

December 5, 2022

Last week, a NSW court jailed me for 15 months for a peaceful climate protest. Hear my story

If you are reading this, then I have been sentenced to prison for peaceful environmental protest. I do not want to break the law. But when regular political procedure has proven incapable of enacting justice, it falls to ordinary people taking a stand to bring about change.

November 11, 2022

Australia must make its own decision on Nuclear Weapons Treaty

US Embassy officials in Canberra havewarnedAustralia against signing and ratifying the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, saying it would be inconsistent with Australias policy of nuclear deterrence.

January 21, 2025

Netanyahu intends to attack Gaza as soon as hostages are released

Expressions of delight at the ceasefire – which was preceded by an 11th hour Israeli onslaught in Gaza, killing at least 80 – are premature. Netanyahu has repeatedly said attacks against Hamas will resume after Israel gets some hostages back.

January 2, 2025

The US sees China through the dark mirror of its own unbridled aggression

As China grows and prospers many in the US want us to believe that China will follow the same path that the US itself pursued - global military aggression, the overthrow of numerous governments around the world and persecution of minorities at home. (A repost from February 2023.)

December 14, 2024

How the US and Israel destroyed Syria and called it peace

American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s far-right Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal.

April 1, 2022

Environment: nobody wants to pay for climate action

_The Commonwealth government continues to ignore climate action, while developing countries resist bearing the burden of the renewable energy transition. Scientists say no to solar geoengineering.

January 29, 2022

Sunday environmental round up.

To limit global warming we must stop producing and burning fossil fuels. But nations and companies plans dont match their grand pledges and rhetoric. Nor with deforestation.

April 4, 2025

‘It's back to the (fossil fuel) future for Peter Dutton’

It’s only the first week – and if you thought Peter Dutton’s election campaign looks chaotic, dishevelled, and thin on policy substance, you’re right.

February 8, 2025

Thailand pulls the plug on cross-border scams – Asian Media Report

In Asian media this week: Xi thanks Bangkok for strong action against online rackets. Plus: Myanmar civil war is world’s third-worst conflict; Confirmation bias behind markets’ DeepSeek shock; China advances its military technology; Allies must adapt to ‘fundamental’ US changes; Cambodia confirms it is free press desert.

February 6, 2025

Strong leaders versus inspiring leaders: Australia's current dilemma

It’s said that what the world needs today are strong leaders whom social media and associated propagandists insist are the only ones who can bring order back into a dangerously chaotic world. Their strengths, it is claimed, outweigh their shortcomings. In Australia, attention is turning to Peter Dutton, who according to his supporters, is the epitome of a strong leader.

November 20, 2024

America, We are out of your China fight

Australia must leave the China debacle, constructively. In withdrawing from America’s aggression against China, we should offer our diplomacy as a patient bridge between China and the US. That will take time. America will become even more extreme before it considers peaceful coexistence with China. Meanwhile our action will be a moderating influence, as we pick up our own distracted security priorities.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal