Archives: Letters to the Editor

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. We have been bombarded with the statement that Hamas, in the 7 October attack, “killed 1200 people”.

It may well be correct that 1200 people died as a result of the Hamas attack – but evidence is mounting that a significant proportion of the deaths were the result of IDF acting under the “Hannibal Directive” to sacrifice its own people for propaganda advantage.

Truth in reporting is its own objective – but the repetition of this “Hamas killed 1200” has been adopted as a talisman by the media to protect it from lawfare from the Zionist industry.

This perversion must stop.

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 important issues? How should I spend my energy? How should I vote? Where should I send my meagre donations and contributions?

And where does that leave the working population, who can barely keep their heads above water, much less try to get to the bottom of every news story before jumping on a particular bandwagon, or deciding no bandwagon is better than the wrong bandwagon?

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 life, and what balance, would depend on how far our environmental degradation progressed before the collapse, and what tipping points had breached bringing unstoppable environmental change. The period of change would be tumultuous.

But once the tumult has settled, there will, we hope, still be life on Earth. Many species may have died; new species may develop that would thrive in the new environment that evolved. A new balance will be reached.

Peace could return to the planet. Perhaps that peace will include some humans – hopefully chastened by the knowledge of what they had lost. We can only hope.

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 and developed unsustainable lifestyles; their colonies were mostly left in poverty in debased homelands. Today’s colonisers are global corporations.

The interlinked crisis triggers that Cribb identifies centre on our changing climate, our ever-growing population, AI, and deliberate misinformation – all developed and driven by ourselves. As Arnold Toynbee observed, “civilisations die by suicide, not by murder”.

Concerted, urgent global action can still avoid this dystopian fate, but achieving that will require governments and peoples around the world to embrace the common good at an uncommon level. Civilisation might yet be saved from collapse – but our chances don’t look good.

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 by the West on military hardware and expeditions have consumed the wealth of their countries. This has prevented them from undertaking the extraordinary infrastructure expenditures of China, both at home and abroad, that have dragged more than a billion people around the world out of poverty. At the same time, the West has hollowed out their middle classes and driven substantial proportions of their populations back into poverty.

The West is a clear lesson to the rest of humanity that Santayana was right. The West are doomed to repeat their failures of the past by convenient losses of memory!!

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.

I feel intellectually enlivened and grateful for the water of knowledge in a desert of lies!

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 can be seen that they are simply the instruments of a West determined to control a Middle East rich in other people’s oil and gas resources regardless of any rights of those native to the region. Western collapse cannot come soon enough for the safety and well-being of the other 88% of humanity.

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 itself practises what it preaches in choosing international speakers because in recent years it relies on ‘’trusted allies“ like ambassadors for the US, Ukraine and Israel. No doubt while ambassadors from many nations are based only a short drive from the NPC, it seems we must wait a long time to hear “balance“ from these representatives, who could contribute many insights into the current state of global relations and defiance of international law.

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 and media workers by Israel since the start of the genocide, and the silence and distortions of mainstream media, the NPC would have been particularly interested to hear from independent journalists who are eminently qualified to speak on the current events in the Middle East.

I would have expected them to do their utmost to secure the appearances of journalists like Jonathan Cook, Amira Hass, Aaron Maté, Ali Abunimah, Gideon Levy, Max Blumenthal… to name a few.

An address by Hedges would have been not only the obvious thing to do but a feather in the NPC’s cap. Cancelling it has tarnished the NPC’s reputation. I am afraid Hedges’ words, “But please, have the decency to remove the word press from your club”, will haunt the NPC for years to come.

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 in Palestine, by the Israeli Defence Force. You claim that the decision is “in the interests of balancing out our program”.

Balancing with what? Propaganda for genocide? Justification for the assassination of journalists?

In the 62 years of the NPC’s existence, no greater shame has ever been brought on the organisation.

Reinstate Chris Hedges – or resign, all of you. You have no place in the ranks of those who stand for press freedom.

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 arrived. Only five years later it was all over for mini-computers. In 2014, Elon Musk personally delivered a Tesla Model S to Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi. In 2024, the Xiaomi SU 7 was released, one was imported and driven in the US by Jim Farley, chief executive of Ford.

Understanding the convergence of technology is easiest when watching videos. If readers of P&I want to see where EVs are at today, listen to interviews with American car industry experts like Farley and Sandy Munro. We could be easily left behind in Australia if we only listen to American politicians.

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!

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!

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 rising rapidly over the same period, as is the case in many European countries.

Measures adopted include national health plans, crisis hotlines, regulating online content and school interventions.

But more needs to be done and China appears to recognise that and is developing community-based actions to continue that decline. Beijing also needs to look at the other issues raised in this article to reduce societal and parental stress on youth. The situation should remain an important issue for national policymakers.

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.

The leadership of our country continues to use the “far away” excuse in which Palestine is apparently further away than Ukraine, to whom we provide troop support (albeit in Britain) and armaments. Spain, with 45 Sumud crew, and Italy both sent naval escorts to watch over the Sumud flotilla, although what they did to try to stop the illegal interceptions on the high seas is not clear. Our government and Britain’s were asked to send air cover for the flotilla, but did nothing to protect the six Australian and 13 UK citizens aboard. Do our citizens rank lower than Ukrainians?

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 quietens those who debate/deny climate change and emissions to help prolong the use of fossil fuels.

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 address by an Israeli diplomat/military veteran is no longer surprising. The Zionists continue to flood the news space with noise and excuses and references to an antiquated and disputed to say the least exclusive compact with a purportedly universal God.

And they attempt to portray us as complicit with spurious references to a Judeo/Christian ethos.

We refuse to listen to authentic voices from the epicentre of Israeli shame, Gaza. We trade with and support Israel while insulting and breaking off relations with Iran. The Albanese Government has been captured. The thoroughness of that capture should be of concern to every Australian.

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 journalist, having reported from Gaza for seven years, and worked as foreign correspondent for The New York Times for 15 years, during which he was Middle East Bureau chief. A statement on the NPC website claims that it will “pursue other speakers on the matter”. I challenge them to find another speaker on this matter who has anything like Hedges’ experience.

– no reason has been given by the NPC as to why the talk was cancelled, save for a mention that it happened “when more details of the address were given”. I believe the reason can be inferred from this.

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 not resisted, by the NPC.

The resulting publicity is likely to attract more interest in Hedges’ prolific and authoritative output.

But the working media members of the NPC will not be able to hear him speak about the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.

Not will they be able to raise Israel’s arrest of those aboard the Sumud aid flotilla, including six Australians, who Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir says are terrorists, let alone ask why the ambassador should not be expelled.

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 the mainstream media as enablers of genocide.

My three decades in public broadcasting showed me exactly how this arises. Our role needs to be examined – first and foremost by us. The Press Club ought to be the most democratic space to have such a discussion.

Our Western bias, which we regard as neutral and impartial, has prevented us from interrogating our role in supporting and enabling the destruction of nations and displacement of many millions of people. None has spawned the live coverage of atrocities coming out of Gaza. If this crisis won’t shock us into questioning our role, nothing will.

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 for fossil fuel clients, the Stockholm Resilience Centre warns that generative AI could create a “perfect storm” of climate falsehoods.

Yet AI might also be part of the solution: researchers at the University of Melbourne are successfully training large language models that take a climate myth as input and generate a debunking using the fact-myth-fallacy-fact (“truth sandwich”) structure. In the battle against climate misinformation, this kind of innovation could prove vital – using the same powerful technology that spreads falsehoods to instead reinforce scientific truth.

What blindness, stupidity, or both roams the halls of global Western governments that not only assents, but applauds a “peace plan” concocted by a wanted war criminal coloniser and an megalomaniac narcissist, that has openly enabled the bombing of Gaza equivalent to six Hiroshimas?

What Australian press institution dares to call itself a “vigorous champion of press freedom” and then cancels the appearance of Chris Hedges, a journalist with vast experience on the ground in Gaza, to allegedly replace him with the Israeli ambassador?

The global tide has turned. And we, led by the Australian Government, are riding the very wrong wave, straight for the equivalent of a sewage ocean outfall.

Simon Tatz comments that “Gaza shares a border with Egypt. It’s not clear why they refuse to assist Palestinians”.

I seek clarification of what he means. Does he mean Egypt should assist Israel in its ethnic cleansing of Gaza by taking more Palestinians than it already has?

Or does he mean it should break the blockade imposed by Israel to assist Palestinians in Gaza?

Or does he mean Cairo should take more than the medical evacuees it already assists?

Or that it should provide more support to the Arab League and other entities to bring a fair and equitable end to Israeli barbarism?

Or pull out of its resource plundering deals with Israel?

As we slide deeper and deeper into the vortex of the 21st century, we’re farewelling more and more of the people who, through their intellect and character, have shaped the way we view the world in which we live. Jane Goodall joins Curie, Fleming, Gandhi and Einstein in that honoured pantheon.

Through her work among our nearest cousins in their natural state, she confirmed we are risen apes, not the fallen angels our egotistical backstory would have us as. Whether this revelation is going to help us with the problem of living with each other and stabilising the climate upon which we depend is yet to be seen.

Goodall noted that the most successful chimpanzee troop leaders were gentle and caring, but that didn’t prevent the dominance of murderous war parties and the genocide of neighbouring troops. Fearfully, right now it’s looking like we’re still battling with that dilemma.

I totally understand Amy’s concern but I think it is based upon an assumption that doesn’t accord with historical fact.

The truth is, the framers of the US Constitution were not creating a democracy. They were very clear that they were creating a republic. They deliberately wrote that constitution to prevent democracy, but to create an image that could be sold as democracy.

All that has really happened under the Orange Donald is that any pretence of democracy has now been utterly eliminated.

The UN convention on the law of the sea (which is international law), in force since 1994, has been entered into by 170 state parties and covers such matters as freedom of navigation.

Under Article 19 of the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, a warship can sail within the 12 nautical-mile territorial sea of another nation’s coastline “so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State”.

The US has refused to sign on to the convention but uses it constantly against China, which has signed on to it, when sailing their warships along China’s coast and in surrounding international waters.

Yet it suspends any consideration of that law when the country breaching it is Israel, particularly in relation to the acts of piracy being committed by Israel against the Freedom Flotilla heading for Gaza in international waters. Now there is a surprise!

So much for the “rules-based international order” they constantly rabbit on about!

Recently, a friend shared with me this quote, “When you put a clown in a castle he doesn’t become a king, but the castle becomes a circus.”

I have, for some time, been concerned how news about the US/Trump is dominating our local news, invading our news sovereignty if you like.

I have imposed my own silence by tuning out local news which may work to the advantage of our local politics but I do miss the sports results.

Your correspondent suggests that the early removal of shark nets in March this year could not have contributed to the fatal attack reported at Dee Why on September 6 because it occurred at the adjacent un-netted Long Reef Beach.

In fact, Dee Why and Long Reef comprise a single stretch of sand pierced in the middle by a narrow lagoon opening close to which the shark net is placed.

The shared Dee Why/Long Reef net is the same as for a single net for Curl Curl and North Curl Curl beaches and for Palm Beach and North Palm Beach.

This year, 2025, is the first year the Dee Why/Long Reef shark net was out of the water for five months.

An excellent analysis by Sawsan Madina of the so-called Trump-Netanyahu “peace plan” for Gaza. She notes: “We have seen this movie before: the Camp David Accord and Oslo Accords that brought neither justice nor peace.”

Evidence suggests the “peace plan” charade is just the latest update of a series of models to transform Gaza into a US-Israeli corporatized resort complex and economic hub.

In March 2024, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner regarded Gaza as “very valuable waterfront property” which could “be cleaned up” by removing Palestinians, a vision of ethnic cleansing updated by Trump in February 2025 into the “Riviera” edition.

A detailed 38-page development plan for implementation of the “Riviera” resort emerged in July, reportedly involving input from the Tony Blair Institute and the Boston Consulting Group, which was involved in the establishment of the grotesque Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

The latest iteration places executive control of the future of Palestinians under Trump-Kushner-Blair-Netanyahu decision-making. Australia, Canada, the UK and France have all signed on, demonstrating that their “recognition” of Palestine just last week had absolutely no relationship to Palestinian “self-determination”.

Chris Sidoti should study comparative genocide. His claim that Rwandans and Jews could somehow escape genocide is historically incorrect. Australia, the US and other Western nations restricted Jewish immigration from Europe. The US infamously turned back the St Louis ship carrying German Jews. Many of its passengers were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps.

As for Rwanda, I recommend Sidoti reads Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire. Sidoti might want to explain to where these people fled, and what happened to them.

Gaza shares a border with Egypt. It’s not clear why they refuse to assist Palestinians.