January 2, 2024

China is not a threat: debunking the US narrative

In this series, I explore how US narratives on the China threat have become entrenched in Western security communities and how a China threat narrative has been constructed by Republicans and Democrats in the United States in an attempt to create a rally round the flag effect designed to internally unite a deeply divided America.

October 25, 2022

The party decides: review of the CCP National Congress

More of the same. Thats the outcome of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which concluded at the weekend. The implication for Australia is that we had better get used to it.

October 5, 2022

US ring-fencing of Russia weakened those prepared to give liberal democratic principles a go

When the Russians surrendered their empire in 1990, wouldnt it have been better to have Russia as part of an enlightened framework of intelligent co-existence, to invite their people, battered by the twentieth century, into the comity and wealth of nations?

October 3, 2020

COVID-19 and Poverty

That health and illness are close associates of wealth and poverty is well known. This dictum applies to covid-19 both within and among nations.

January 28, 2025

Mainstream media fails to mention positive Labor policies

The new year in Australian politics, an all-important election year, began on a high with a host of initiatives taking effect from January 1, 2025.

January 25, 2025

Donald Trump’s return: gloves off reset

Donald Trump’s return to power for a second term has sent ripples across the globe. On his first day in office, he wielded executive authority with vigour, signing many executive orders, including withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement for the second time. This move reversed the country’s climate commitments yet again, signalling Trump’s prioritisation of energy dominance and domestic interests.

December 17, 2024

American supported Israeli settlers erode what is left of Palestine

Israel continues to destroy what is left of Gaza with American bombs, slaughtering 50 or more souls daily as they try to survive in flimsy tents on a starvation diet of bread and water, if they are lucky. A genocide is happening now with media silence. After invading Lebanon and killing and maiming thousands of innocent civilians, an emboldened Israel has bombed another sovereign country, Syria.

November 7, 2024

The China Threat has now become the Chussia Anxiety

The West need not fear a Chussia aligned against it. It instead needs to develop geopolitical strategies to deal with China as the dominant power in Eurasia. For like the United States at the end of the nineteenth century when it consolidated its borders and established hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, China has consolidated its security in Eurasia and is now free to project power globally.

February 23, 2024

Misrepresenting the ICJ and muzzling our press - the Empire strikes back

On 26 January, the World spoke to Israel and its supporters on the issue of Gaza. The World spoke through the International Court of Justice (ICJ). There can be no doubt about that. A number of provisional orders were made. Israel, and its primary accomplice, the United States hereinafter the Empire did not like what the World said. The Empire has struck back. Let us consider what it has done.

November 7, 2023

Xi meets with Albanese in Beijing, calling PM visit opening future

“Your visit can be described as carrying on the past and opening up the future,” Chinese President Xi Jinping told visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Beijing on Monday afternoon, citing the fact that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the trip made by Gough Whitlam, the first Australian leader to visit China.

November 22, 2022

Badly injured developing nations promised palliative care at COP27

At COP27, oil and gas lobbyists triumphed, while badly injured developing nations were condemned to die with the promise of palliative care.

January 24, 2022

The Australian's non-exclusive 'exclusive' first published by P&I

When is an exclusive not an exclusive? When it runs in_The Australian._ Pearls and Irritations had the real Paul Keating exclusive over the weekend.

January 2, 2025

450 days of genocide: Israeli occupation burns hospitals, cold ravages the displaced

The Israeli occupation continues the genocide in Gaza in a frenzied manner, with the pace of assaults increasing daily. For 450 days, the occupation has persisted in killing civilians, displacing them, and attacking hospitals and civilian institutions protected by all international laws and regulations. Every new day in this genocide brings with it pain and brutality equal to all the previous days combined. Every moment in this inferno in Gaza is a stain on the false humanity that never acts when Israel is the aggressor.

February 18, 2024

Critical week: Torture, US jail, awaits Julian Assange - act now

In terms of significant dates and milestones in the long running pursuit by the US of publisher and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, this coming week ranks highly. On Tuesday and Wednesday this week a hearing before two judges in the UKs High Court will hear Assanges final bid to appeal against extradition to the United States.

October 26, 2023

Hallucinatory world: Governments blind as multiple catastrophes besiege human civilisation

Life on Earth is under siege. A chain of tipping points with catastrophic consequences for everyone are being unleashed. Yet governments worldwide remain indifferent to the danger. Indeed, many continue avidly to stoke the very furnaces that will consume our civilisation.

October 15, 2023

The failed referendum is a political disaster

October 14, 2023 will be remembered by many as the day reconciliation died.

March 9, 2023

Unbalanced and unwise: Labor and the politics of warmongering

Where does Albanese stand when it comes to the latest attempts by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald to manufacture a new wave of anti-China hysteria in Australia? Is he amenable to the beating of the drums of war? Or does he have the intelligence to resist this dangerous nonsense? The omens are not good.

February 22, 2023

Australia condemns brazen US blockade of Cuba in UNGA vote

Australia should be proud of its vote in the General Assembly in November last year to condemn the ongoing US blockade of Cuba.

February 14, 2025

How would Peter Dutton cut public service numbers?

Peter Dutton says he wants to increase government efficiency, but beyond wanting to cut public service numbers, he won’t tell us how until after the election.

January 30, 2025

An open letter to Israelis: Where to from here?

Return to the hell of conflict or forward to peace and security?

December 22, 2024

Environment: Warming, thawing Arctic presents problems for everyone

The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe and the effects are global. Bacteria responsible for escalating methane emissions. The false binary of system change or individual behaviour change.

December 10, 2024

Endless onslaught: Would Israel’s Mordechai be attacked as ‘antisemitic’ in Australia?

Haaretz, Israel’s oldest and most widely known newspaper, has just published a long, roughly 8,000 word feature article, about the work of Lee Mordechai, the Associate Professor of History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has compiled on line a massive report entitled “Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War.”

November 12, 2024

America first, Earth last: Australia’s security now needs a climate focus

There’s a new, stark reality we must face: Donald Trump’s victory will push the Earth system further down a perilous path towards three degrees Celsius of global warming or more, with catastrophic consequences for human civilisation and the environment.

March 4, 2024

A loss is a loss is a loss

A loss is a loss is a loss. The ever-astute Niki Savva bluntly summed up the significance of the Liberal Partys loss in the Dunkley by-election despite the denial and delusion of the partys reaction to it. Back in the real world, the Labor Party will be relieved and quietly pleased with an outcome that saw its candidate and the new member for Dunkley, Jodie Belyea, increase its primary vote something no pundits predicted - securing 52.7 per cent of the two party preferred (2pp) vote with a 3.6 per cent 2pp swing against.

February 20, 2024

The future of tax reform

There are recurrent calls for tax reform, but it is typically too difficult to achieve a consensus. However, the necessary action to reduce carbon emissions by introducing a tax on carbon emissions could result in most people being better off and thus achieve broad support.

December 19, 2023

How to stop a Gaza apocalypse

Why Gaza urgently needs a plan B.

October 22, 2023

China and the apocalypse: How the West reinvents the end of history

After China entered the period of reform and openness in the 1980s, Western liberalism, embracing a form of apocalyptic modernity, adhered to the fantasy that China would become like us. What it meant in fact was that China would become like us but be subservient to us. If China was not going to become like us [and be subservient to us] it had to be put in its place. It is time to call this out.

March 11, 2023

Environment: Labor safeguards our fossil fuel climate wreckers

Australias Safeguard Mechanism gets a government greenwash while international efforts to control Scope 3 emissions increase. Pygmy chameleons and eagle-owls are fighting for survival in different ways. Please stop eating shark and Tassie farmed salmon.

January 7, 2022

It's not only us, Mr Morrison:the government must also play a part in fighting Covid

The pandemic has weaponised the argument that individual responsibility for one’s health is best free from government edicts. This is pathetic. _

November 25, 2024

The North Atlantic allies are killing democracy

Historically, many of its members have waged and/or supported wars in the name of democracy.

October 25, 2024

The world must stop the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza

The magnitude of the crimes Israel is currently committing in the northern Gaza Strip in its campaign to empty it of however many residents are left is impossible to describe, not just because hundreds of thousands of people enduring starvation, disease without access to medical care and incessant bombardments and gunfire defies comprehension, but because Israel has cut them off from the world.

October 20, 2024

The ghosts of 1982

The ghosts of 1982 are hovering over Beirut.

October 6, 2024

Lebanese and Palestinian lives mean nothing to Western politicians

The deaths of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians killed by Israel can be ignored, so too the misery of millions. Small wonder that protesters want to register disgust and despair.

January 4, 2024

John Menadue on Rupert Murdoch, the Last Mogul

We have a major problem with the damage that Rupert Murdoch has done to newspapers in Australia, and any self-respecting government should take steps to correct that as soon as possible.

October 9, 2023

Palestinians will not surrender to occupation and apartheid

Every drop of Palestinian and Jewish blood shed is on the hands of the United States, Australian and Western countries politicians who closed their eyes to the aggression, occupation, ethnic cleansing, and violation of international laws and resolutions carried out by Israel against the Palestinian people for more than seventy-five years.

December 2, 2021

Relax Mr Dutton, China is not an invading power (like US and us)

The defence minister fails to acknowledge the superpowers efforts to calm tensions, or that the US has jumped in to claim some of our former markets.

November 24, 2021

Australia's bare-minimum emissions plan rates zero all-round

Australias net zero plan is a techno-optimist thought-bubble: it has an inappropriate objective, no clear priorities, and no realistic costing.

March 5, 2025

Albanese is as misinformed on the US alliance as live-fire drills

The petulant demand of tribute to the Trump empire and his transactional ethos surely now challenges the agreed balance sheet between Australia and America.

February 28, 2025

The Chinese invasion begins: Anti-China Media Watch

Is a flotilla of Chinese ships on a reconnaissance mission for a future invasion of Australia or, as the Australian Defence Force admits, is China doing to us what we’ve been doing to them for decades?

March 25, 2024

China steals a march on a distracted world

For China these days it doesnt get much easier to pursue it geostrategic objectives. With the US distracted on two fronts in Europe and the Middle East, and Russia mired in its intractable invasion of Ukraine, among the great powers, China is largely free to advance its interests on an increasingly global scale. Sabre rattling over Taiwan only further serves to distract the US from Chinas much larger game.

March 22, 2024

Health professions urged to speak up on AUKUS and its threats to health and safety

At first sight there might not seem to be much connection between health and the AUKUS military alliance. But the threats posed by AUKUS to health are multiple and strong, at local, national, regional and global levels. A serious examination of those threats should form an important part of preventive healthcare.

February 12, 2024

The Australian Parliament fails to uphold international law preventing genocide in Gaza

The Australian Parliament failed to recognise its responsibilities last week when Greens Leader Adam Bandt, responding to the International Court of Justice interim ruling to prevent genocide, initiated a vote for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

November 8, 2023

Enemy twins: Israel and Hamas unite to massacre innocents

Hamass refusal to recognise Israel as a state is as absurd as Israels belief that the current massacre of Palestinians will destroy Hamas. If all this were mere stupidity it would be bad enough, but the consequent violence against innocent people is extreme and it is accelerating.

November 8, 2022

US National Defence Strategy reveals Australia's nuclear deterrence role

The obvious problem with Australias defence policy is the confusion between defence of Australia and fighting wars far from Australia. The argument for pursuing the former is incontestable; this is a key obligation government has towards taxpaying citizens. The latter is of questionable justification.

October 9, 2022

Bali Bombings: The blasts that blew neighbours apart

The Bali bombings of two decades ago, remembered with anger and sadness, did much more than kill 202 partygoers, wound 209 and scar families for years. The blasts also ripped apart an Indonesia-Australia relationship that has now slumped into indifference.

February 16, 2022

Remembering Darwin ... and Timor, February 1942

While 150 Australians died in the Timor campaign, 40,000 Timorese paid the real price. Has Australia made good the price in blood that they paid? We owe Timor a debt.

January 28, 2022

Why the Department of Health has proven tragically inept

The Health Department’s Covid response was filled with missteps due to its indifferent minister, structural deficiencies and reliance on consultants._

January 21, 2022

Aged care again bears the tragic brunt of a COVID-19 wave: why?

The sector that includes some of our most vulnerable citizens was unprepared for the end of lockdowns: the Commonwealth is overwhelmingly to blame.

November 10, 2021

Royal fingerprints on the dismissal of Gough Whitlam and our history

It’s time for the National Archives to release all letters between the Queen and our governors-general as we move towards becoming a republic.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal