December 11, 2021

Justice denied: the judicial kidnapping of Julian Assange

If Julian Assange is extradited to the US, his life is at stake and, if we remain silent, so is our very humanity, John Pilger writes.

March 25, 2025

We can’t unscramble the AUKUS and ANZUS eggs

Before this election is much older, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are going to have to determine where they stand on all the important issues. There’s a substantial chance that both are wrongly positioned and that each might have to face the other way, or perish politically. It’s not for an argument about which vista is best for Australia, alas. It’s for which is best for which leader, and which party.

March 21, 2025

Misinformation in politics: Anti-China Media Watch

The ABC reveals Chinese social media is again facilitating foreign interference in our elections, Dutton is the true champion of China relations, while Chinese hospitals are overcharging Aussies for lifesaving surgery.

January 27, 2025

Nuclear kills kids

One moment from my work in the USA in the early 1980s stands out in my memory. I’d driven from Chicago to Cleveland at the invitation of the Health and Safety Officer of the US Boilermakers Union to speak to the members meeting held on the night ahead of the recruitment of members for work on the annual ‘clean-up’ of the local Nuclear Power plant.

January 16, 2025

Entering the ‘Pyrocene’: Devastation in California is the harbinger of the apocalypse

Wildfires in California replicate the massive fire storms in the boreal forest in Canada and Siberia, the lungs of the earth. Our addiction to fossil fuel has ignited an age of fire.

January 15, 2025

Climate and security risks? Shhh, says the Albanese Government

The Los Angeles fires have again demonstrated the need for a steely-eyed approach by governments to climate risks, ensuring that the assessment of those risks is up-to-date, considers the plausible worst-case scenarios, and is made widely available so the public understands what we are facing.

January 12, 2025

Francesca Albanese: 'This is what a settler-colonial genocide looks like'

There are few UN positions that provoke as much scrutiny and criticism as the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. It plays an important role: it catalogues Israel’s violation of Palestinian human rights, provides factual information for advocates and activists, and helps to keep Palestine firmly on the agenda at the UN.

January 5, 2025

Between a wall and a hard place

The wall I am talking about here is known as the separation wall, which the Zionist occupiers of our land began building in 2002. Two years later, on 30 July 2004, The International Court of Justice issued a “first advisory opinion”, finding that the construction of a separation wall inside the occupied Palestinian territories had to be halted because it was contrary to International Law. Of course, this opinion was totally ignored, as usual, and the construction continued apace. They went much further than that.

November 9, 2024

Trump: a reality check for Australia

On Tuesday the American people spoke with clarity and determination. They voted for jobs, secure borders and to be able to look to the future in an uncertain world with confidence and optimism. What we know from Trump 1.0 is that he his true to his word.

October 19, 2024

Make aid reach Gaza, but not until children starve to death for another 30 days, says US

For years, the Israeli authorities have restricted food, fuel and essential supplies to the Palestinians in Gaza, turning the deliveries on and off at will. This contributed to the desperate Hamas outbreak on 7 October 2023. Since the beginning of this month, Israel has stopped almost all the deliveries.

February 28, 2024

The Australian Parliament besmirches us all by refusing Gaza ceasefire

It must be regarded as one of the most despicable and morally repugnant actions ever taken by an Australian parliament since 1901 when, in the first week of February this year, it refused by a huge majority to demand a ceasefire in Gaza as Israel prepared for a military assault on Rafah, where they had forcibly massed an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians in what can only be described as a massive concentration camp.

February 5, 2024

A looming China-US collision can dtente come to the rescue?

The call issued by Bob Carr and Gareth Evans for a comprehensive dtente between the US and China is timely and constructive. But as with all things to do with peace and war, the issues are complex and the way forward strewn with difficulties.

November 27, 2023

Facing climate catastrophe, secrecy is the last thing we need

Confronted by the horrors occurring in the Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sudan, Myanmar and now the Middle East, its hard to contemplate that an even more imposing global tragedy is already here climate breakdown.

January 13, 2023

The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, the Bourbons of the Pacific

The Japanese are hanging out for some Quad which has us, the Americans and the Indians in it. I mean, this is the kind of hopeless environment we’re in. China is simply too big and too central to be ostracised.

December 13, 2022

The ANU has sold out to the military industrial complex

Australian universities now self-identify as deeply integrated units within the agencies of the State, the Australian Defence Force, and industry. They have become part of an encompassing strategy of Sinophobia and Australian fantasies of long-range attacks on China.

November 17, 2021

The unspoken lesson from the government's climate modelling

The governments modelling leaves some legitimate concerns unanswered, but it does suggest a more ambitious emissions reduction target for 2030 is viable.

April 3, 2025

Peter Slezak's speech to the University of Technology Sydney rally on 26 March

Remarks made by UNSW academic Peter Slezak at a rally at UTS on 26 March, have attracted considerable negative coverage in the Murdoch media. [ The Australian and The Daily Telegraph]

Pearls And Irritations is carrying the full text of the speech so that readers can make up their own minds.

December 19, 2024

Jeffrey Sachs: The inevitable war with Iran, and Biden’s attempts to sabotage Trump

Jeffrey Sachs speaks to Tucker Carlson on how Joe Biden has been the most destructive president in American history, and how Donald Trump can repair the damage.

October 31, 2024

“Medicide”: the killing fields of Gaza

How much longer are the world’s leaders going to stand by and watch children being shredded to bits, doctors and nurses killed, arrested, detained and tortured, hospitals destroyed and schools bombed, the environment destroyed, humanitarian aid denied and a genocide committed in Gaza?

January 22, 2024

The Western club- with its own morals, rules and rewards

Last week the French government joined the German government in claiming that the Genocide Convention does not apply to Israel. Because the convention was created in response to the Shoah, Israel should have legal immunity for any war crimes it commits, including the genocide which it is currently conducting against Palestinians in Gaza.

November 24, 2023

Australiasthree wars

In a lead article last week in The Sydney Morning Herald the political and international editor Peter Hartcher declared that Australia was connected to three wars, but only one of them would be measured in decades. He was referring to the conflict in Gaza and the war in Ukraine both of which affect Australias security. How this was so was nowhere explained. But it is the third war which was a direct threat to our sovereignty and liberty. Here he was pointing to the Chinese Communist Partys war to dominate the Indo-Pacific and, ultimately, the world. This unconventional war, he declared, had been underway for over a decade already and would continue long into the future.

October 24, 2023

This country has witnessed a counter-revolution against First Nations rights

The turn of events we have seen in the defeat of the Voice referendum is what appears to be a successful counter-revolution in Australia steered by the right wing think-tanks and the Murdoch press. The arguments which were mobilised in opposition to the Voice to Parliament has transported the nation back 60 years to Paul Haslucks era of assimilation. This should be seen as no less shocking than had the Australian people this year voted to re-introduce the discredited White Australia Policy.

October 19, 2022

US Asia Policy seems to be in disarray

The China-bashing broadside delivered by US Vice President Kamala Harris at the end of September in Japan raises questions of who is in charge of China and Asia policy and what it is.

October 2, 2022

A century of humiliation left profound legacies of trauma

Grenville Crosss Britains opium era strategy to deal with China (Pearls and Irritation, 28/09/2022) touched a cord in many Chinese, regardless of where they come from. It explains why many of us described as Overseas Chinese feel the need to explain when we are affronted by unjust comments about China and the Chinese people.

January 22, 2025

Australia must choose between economic prosperity and subservience to the US trade and military agenda

Australian Government cabinet papers from 30 years ago show that Australian leaders suspected that the claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were probably false. However, Australia committed troops because Australia wanted to ingratiate itself with the United States and was prepared to break international law to do so. This sets the standard for Australia’s willingness to co-operate with any Trump-led escalation of efforts to undermine China economy with tariffs and sanctions.

October 14, 2024

Hardman Netanyahu a century out of date, feeding Dutton’s colonial narrative

There was a time when Netanyahu’s tactics would go unquestioned. That time helps explain those who continue to give Israel unqualified and unquestioning support and ties in with the “hard man” image Peter Dutton wants to own, writes Michael Pascoe.

April 2, 2024

Al-Shifa Medical Complex witnesses one of the largest massacres in Palestinian history

The Israeli army carried out a massive, shockingly horrific military operation in Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City over the course of the past two weeks, indiscriminately targeting and attacking Palestinians regardless of their civilian status, professional standing, gender, age, or health condition.

December 21, 2023

Senator Birmingham you are bringing shame to Australia and the Liberal party

In the next federal election, people will not forget the Liberal Partys disgraceful policy of supporting Israels crimes, violation of international laws, and betrayal of Australias values and principles to appease Israel and its extremist lobby, especially in the five marginal seats held by the Liberals - Banks (NSW), Sturt (SA), Deakin (VIC), Menzies (VIC) and Moore (WA) - where Australian Muslims and the Arab community hold the balance of votes.

November 13, 2023

No water, no electricity, no oxygen, no way to stay alive

Doctors, nurses, patients and thousands of internally displaced Palestinians are being bombed, terrorised and held hostage in Al Shifa hospital, one of Gaza biggest hospitals. There is no water, no electricity, no oxygen and 37 pre-term babies are slowly dying due to lack of oxygen.

March 20, 2023

Weve long said no to US. A yes now could be nuclear

Its Parliament House, Canberra, on a Sunday afternoon. There is a meeting of the national security committee of cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, about a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, where the US and China are in air and naval combat. Theres an inflection point when someone a minister or the PM uses the fatal locution: Well, weve got no alternative . . .

November 9, 2022

God save Australia because America will not

Despite the best endeavours of Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, to put the relationship with China on a more even keel, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, seems determined to destabilise it.

January 22, 2022

Sunday environmental round up

Four laws of ecology still relevant 50 years on but obscuring the truth more prevalent. Global warming continues and invasive species threaten Australian wildlife.

March 9, 2022

A ten-point plan for managing floods in Australia

All flood crises are more or less wasted, and the ones we have just experienced in New South Wales and Queensland will probably be no different.

January 15, 2022

Wake up Australia: ASEAN has lost value and purpose

ASEAN is throttled by a policy prohibiting members from interfering in each others affairs. The results are clear in relation to Myanmar.

March 31, 2025

Message from the editor

At the start of the first full week of the federal election campaign, we are working hard to bring you a fuller picture of the key issues as we all consider the choices ahead of us. To that end, we will post more stories more often over the next five weeks.

March 12, 2025

Australian immigration and the federal election

The Albanese Government has done a reasonable job in repairing the immigration train wreck it inherited from the Coalition. However, excessive caution and fear of being wedged has severely limited its achievements. In the forthcoming election, the Dutton Opposition can be expected to be short on policy, but to stoke up fears about border security and foreigners. He will borrow from the nasty Trump playbook when convenient. Australia deserves better immigration policy and administration.

January 19, 2025

Killing for killing's sake in Gaza

Gaza has become a killing field—that is the view of a well-informed Israeli veteran who was an enthusiastic supporter of the initial Israeli response to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. He believes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the mastermind of the all-out retaliatory bombing and ground attack there, is now a contemporary Colonel Kurtz, the psychotic killer of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, the famed Vietnam War movie of 1979 based on Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness.

November 19, 2024

"Disingenuous theatre dressed up as major news": Why the ABC is losing credibility

ABC supporters across the country are dismayed and angry with the national broadcaster. The biggest threat to the ABC today is its craven and distorted performance in television current affairs reporting.

February 16, 2024

The moral world falls at the end game in Rafah

People in the West are Gaza-war weary. You see it in fewer reports, articles and commentary. It is an understandable by-product of the complicity-cum-impotence of Western civilisation in the face of Israeli barbarism.

February 10, 2024

Environment: Humans dont make history we play host

How germs made history. Greenhouse gas emissions keep rising but USA and Europe are still the major causes of global warming.

December 6, 2023

Australians need to know what lies beneath the new era of US-Australia strategic cooperation

Euphemistically, the Prime Minister recently announced that he and President Biden have inaugurated a new era of US-Australia strategic cooperation. Presumably he meant to say hed found new ways to surrender Australias sovereignty.

February 9, 2023

Australia, Penny Wong and the UK: shades of empire?

Foreign Minister Penny Wong invoked the power of shared colonial histories in a speech during her recent visit to the United Kingdom.

January 21, 2023

Environment: Guterres: the ecosystem meltdown is cold, hard scientific fact

Tell it like it is, Antnio: climate disaster, death sentence, insanity, inconsistent with human survival_. Thank goodness for chocolate and birds._

January 17, 2022

Our post-pandemic healthcare system will need massive investment

Understaffed hospitals and care facilities, burgeoning surgery backlogs, insufficient medical graduates, rising mental health problems the list of challenges ahead is formidable.

February 4, 2025

Want more economics students? Drop the obsession with maths

The Reserve Bank is worried. The number of students wanting to study economics has been falling over the years, and it’s worried this will lead to a fall in the electorate’s economic literacy, which could end up worsening government policy.

January 10, 2025

Israel’s total destruction of a whole healthcare system threatens us all

In December 2023, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, warned in relation to the situation in Gaza that “the practice of medicine is under attack” and “we are in the darkest time for the right to health in our lifetimes”. More than a year later, and with the killing by Israel of more than 1000 Palestinian health professionals and near total destruction of a whole healthcare system, that catastrophic reality now casts an even greater shadow over humanity.

November 10, 2024

World teeters on brink as Trump and cronies prepare to flood the zone with shit

Are you OK? It seems an important question as the unhinged and unrestrained president Donald Trump is swept back into power and the world contemplates the implications for the climate, for civil discourse, for women, for minorities, for society as a whole, and for our children and their children.

October 18, 2024

Terms of engagement: Refusing the Zionist narrative

“Our language shouldn’t be designed to appease the oppressor.” Steve Salaita_

February 14, 2024

South Africa seeks ICJ emergency order to halt genocide in Rafah

South Africa has made an urgent request for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue emergency orders to prevent large-scale killing, harm and destruction from Israels imminent assault on Rafah. The ICJ, which is preparing to commence separate hearings on the legal status of Israeli occupation next week, has yet to respond. The world awaits the Hagues response.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal