Archives: Letters to the Editor

I commend Usman Khawaja for his principled stand on Gaza. Given his elevated position in the Australian sporting firmament, he managed to gain an audience with senior members of our current government. To his great credit, he did not waste this chance.

Will the Albanese Government listen? The short answer is no. Thinking in Canberra has been captured by the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council. This is a great shame, especially as better advice is readily available from the Jewish Council of Australia, an organisation founded in February 2024 specifically to represent non-Zionist Australian Jews and to counter, or at least offer an alternative to, the influence of AIJAC.

Will the Albanese Government realise that the advice they are receiving from AIJAC will render them complicit in genocide, complicit in documented and undeniable crimes against humanity? Please listen to the alterative voice, Mr. Albanese, before you, and by extension all Australians, get painted into an indefensible and criminal corner.

Usman Khawaja is claimed to have “blurred the line between sport and politics”, but what concerns me is that Australians don’t have the same access to the prime minister as lobbyists and high-profile sportspeople.

Even after the resounding victory in the federal election and a series of marches around the country, the government and, in particular, the Opposition require high-profile lobbying to see what is obvious to a large portion of the population.

No matter what your nationality, religious affiliations or sporting obsession, it has become obvious that what is happening in not just Gaza and the Ukraine need appropriate action. From recent developments, it seems the UN and Donald Trump are incapable of getting the job done.

The marchers, both here and around the world, would probably agree that the best way to solve the refugee and illegal migrant issue is to stop them arriving which would also help national debt.

Perhaps we need a high-profile sportsperson to lobby the UN or free lifetime golf lesson for the next Nobel Peace Prize winner to do the trick.

Thank you, Jeffrey Sachs. “Russians invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was thoroughly provoked by the West.” I have long held this view. The Western media’s propaganda was never enough for me to swallow “Russia as the enemy”.
Russia lost 27 million people during World War II. The Allies wouldn’t have defeated Hitler without Russia’s staggering sacrifice.

As Sachs makes clear, every war Russia has been involved in the past two centuries has been defensive. The Western narrative does not acknowledge these facts. Just as Western leaders and media have skewed their propaganda in defence of Israel’s horrific crimes, so has the same propaganda been directed against Russia.
Thank you Jeffrey for sticking your head above the parapet. With the unmasking of Israel, may the unmasking of the US and NATO follow.

In 1985, an Auschwitz survivor sued a prominent Holocaust denier in the Spanish courts for libel – and won. The result of that victory and public demand was that the Spanish penal code was amended to make genocide denial a criminal offence.

An article in Spain’s El Pais by Federico Zukierman Merlin, a member of JCall Spain-Another Jewish Voice, points out that the secretary-general of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, has effectively denied that genocide is taking place in Palestine.

Its board of directors did not dissociate itself from his statement. It is quite possible that some Jewish leaders in Spain will end up being prosecuted under the same law that they so strongly promoted. The ironies of history never cease to amaze.

Based on nothing more than unsubstantiated claims presumedly made by someone with their own agenda, Australia has sent the Iranians home. This was a mistake with possible long-lasting consequences. While it was easy to send the Iranians packing, it might prove more difficult to get them back, providing they would even want to return.

The idea that Iran, with troubles aplenty on its home front, would bother to send saboteurs all the way to Australia to set fire to a couple of synagogues doesn’t make sense. Iran would gain nothing from such a foolish move, even if they did do it and managed to remain undetected.

Aside from pleasing those foreign friends with whom we are joined at the hip, there is no good reason for Australia and the Islamic Republic of Iran not to have full diplomatic relations. I fear Albanese has been led by the nose, again.

It beggars belief that the Australian Government has just expelled the Iranian ambassador based on intelligence provided by the Israeli intelligence services. Unbelievable.

This expulsion happened at the same time that Defence Minister Richard Marles flew to the US for the meeting that was “not a meeting”, then suddenly validated as “a meeting” by US gaslighters, by a photo opportunity, posted on our government’s social media. Coincidence anyone?

I have to object to the thrust and tone of Cameron Leckie’s opinion piece “Gaslighting the electorate, virtue signalling to our partners”.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. However there is credible evidence that Iran has paid criminal gangs to attack property in Australia. This requires a diplomatic response.

It would be inappropriate to banish an ambassador for what another country is doing to its neighbours outside Australia, terrible though it is. We have not banished the Russian ambassador for its invasion of Ukraine, terrible though it is.

I participated in the Sydney Harbour bridge walk, along with at least 90,000 other Australians. Our aim was, and is, to support justice for Palestinians and recognition of the state of Palestine. Almost all the placarding and chanting and vibe was explicitly pro Palestine.

Our government is focusing on Palestine and Palestinians and is vehemently opposed to what is now happening and intended to happen in Palestine. Israel and America are vehemently opposed to what we are saying and doing.

Russia has invaded Ukraine. There is historical cause but no just cause for invasion. There is no “war against Russia”. It should negotiate and pause and is refusing to do either.

I understand the public outrage at the government of Israel, but Cameron Leckie — who presumes Israel provided the intelligence without seeing it, or revealing any direct knowledge of the ASIO secret briefing to the government and Opposition — takes this one step further by conflating the war in Gaza with attacks on Australia’s Jewish community.

Just because someone is of the Jewish religion, it doesn’t make them responsible or even associated with the actions of the Israeli Government.

Yet Leckie, without access to classified intelligence briefings, reduces a firebombing of a synagogue to, “No one killed. No one hurt. Relatively minor property damage.”

It wasn’t “minor property damage” either – the building was gutted and sacred religious material destroyed, as happened in Germany in the 1930s when synagogues were targeted.

What action Australia takes regarding Israel is irrelevant to a foreign government instigating terrorist acts in Australia.

It is a false and spurious argument to link the horror in Gaza with the expulsion of Iran’s ambassador.

Leckie claims that acting against the funding of terror by the Iranian theocracy “is prima facie illogical and irrational”.

Should Australia wait for people to be killed?

There are few among us who could consider themselves even within shouting distance of the knowledge of Australia’s defence policy background that John Menadue embodies – and I certainly am not among those.

However, even a far lower-tier observer such as I could find great resonance with John’s comment that: “We would also get better value for our defence dollars if Anthony Albanese could find a pretext to shift Richard Marles to a new job that matched his abilities.”

As a probable win-win solution to this enigma, I believe that we could do well — particularly in the circumstances of a Trump-imposed punishing tariff — if Marles were shifted to the (for far too long overlooked) representation at ministerial level of Macquarie Island.

It’s a big ask, but Marles is, in my opinion, up to it.

Bravo to Richard Bruggemann for saying the unacceptable – backed by his many years of experience and advocacy. It was entirely predictable that a privatised disability insurance scheme would be a disaster, with unsatisfactory services for many participants and massive exploitation by unscrupulous service providers.

Those who created the scheme were, of course, well motivated. And there are undoubtedly many participants who have benefitted from it – in particular, those with significant physical disabilities, but both normal intellectual capacity and a degree of bureaucratic sophistication.

But for many others and/or their loved ones, it is a bureaucratic and logistic nightmare. As Bruggemann indicates, the concept of people with profound and multiple disabilities, particularly intellectual disability, “choosing” their services from a smorgasbord of options is fundamentally senseless.

The nexus between childhood autism and the NDIS has proven particularly problematic: perverse incentives for children to be assessed as more disabled than they are; perverse incentives for children to not improve; a mass movement of professionals from the public system to the private system; withdrawal of services previously provided at state level (most importantly by schools).

It is hard now to see how the NDIS can be repaired.

Whitlam created a rod for Labor with the decision to introduce state aid for private schools. At the time it secured the Catholic vote and reassured many Coalition supporters that Labor was not such a big threat.

This has not fundamentally changed – Labor realises that any dimunition of funding to the private sector will be a threat to its re-election prospects.

Even Albanese’s substantial majority does not make the government immune. The challenge for the government is to find a way to support parental choice without exacerbating educational inequity.

It reflects badly on what remains of Australia’s mainstream media that more concern is shown for journalists in alternative media such as P&I.

In the days of Peter Greste’s imprisonment in Egypt, the MSM gave his plight regular coverage. There’s nothing comparable about foreign journalists barred from Palestine nor the record number of native journalists deliberately killed by the IDF. Instead, our news comes with zero credibility from Israel, and the US whose complicity cannot be denied, nor its reports believed.

Several thoughts come to mind:

– Thankfulness for Australia’s alternative media and remaining Palestinian journalists and visiting health and other aid workers who keep us informed.

– Anger at our government’s lack of action – words are not enough.

– Anger that we’re still tied to the failing US that will take years to recover from the damage caused by Trump and his sycophants at all levels of government and society, including enabling genocide.

And I think, how true the title of Omar El Akkad’s book, One day, everyone will have always been against this is. He holds a mirror to the West that sometimes makes even supporters of Palestine cringe in shame. Read its 187 pages!

For every example of a succesful democracy, there are marginal/unsucessful so-called democracies.

The latest and least dependable is the US, the democracy that has been proven to have interfered more times to undermine the democratic process of its own and other countries, including our own.

The behaviour of the latest questionably democratically elected US president shows little regard for democracy and the civil liberties of US citizens.

In our own country, those civil liberties are under threat from the state premiers (mostly Labor) in particular, who have been passing Trump-like laws.

I doubt if those who protested against the Vietnam and Iraqi wars etc would be allowed to protest today. Not that the police were always squeaky clean then.

There are sufficently suspect numbers of “democracies” around the world to again raise questions as to whether democracy is the best system.

If China and the Chinese are living in harmony, improving the living standard of the population, perhaps we, who live in democratic glass houses, should stop throwing stones and learn, selecting the good, disgarding the bad and benefit from trading with each other.

This article is a good summary of what could be a sane and balanced approach to China that does not pay homage to the absurd propaganda put out continuously by the US deep state that China is some existential threat to the “democratic” world.

But to sensibly deal with China, we need to dispense with our fatuous dedication to a “rules-based international order” that appears to only exist in the minds of that US deep state and to those who have, as Gareth says, drunk the Kool-Aid of that deep state.

If we are referring to international law as established under the UN, then let us say that. But we are so often not referring to international law, but to a scrambled dogs breakfast of rules made up almost daily by the US and applied to others but never to itself. Those rules are generally not written down and change on the whim of the US and on the need to attack other countries for particular acts they might have committed that the US doesn’t like.
I guess international law is pretty inconvenient if it restricts the freedom to do what you want if you are the world hegemon.

Eminent and wonderfully resolute humanitarian Professor Stuart Rees correctly demands blunt honesty in language, for example: “At long last, an influential leader spoke truth to power. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia described the actions in Gaza of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his regime as inhumane and beyond the bounds of sanity. ‘I have never seen read or heard in recent times people as cruel as this. Netanyahu and his ilk are truly deranged.’ Reality shown. No politeness. Nothing abstract. Language honest, appealing, humane.”

The core ethos of humanity is kindness and truth, but this is grossly and endlessly violated by politically correct racist (PC racist) and egregiously mendacious mainstream Australian journalists, politicians, academics and commentariat presstitutes in the US- and Zionist-perverted Murdochracy, corporatocracy and lobbyocracy Australia.

Thus Aunty ABC (a) prohibits the use of the words “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe the Palestinian Genocide by apartheid Israel, (b) ignores 680,000 Gaza Genocide “deaths from violence and deprivation” (Google the phrase) by 25 April 2025, and (c) ignores that Occupied Palestinian Subjects of apartheid Israel are denied all 30 UDHR-specified Human Rights and the right to vote for the government ruling them. Silence is complicity. Inaction is complicity.

Excellent analysis by John Menadue, echoing the international law-cognisant and Australia-first wisdom of former prime ministers Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating. Indeed in the must-read The Big Fix: Rebuilding Australia’s National Security, Albert Palazzo argues that Australia should adopt a science-informed strategic defensive position as a truly sovereign nation to defend island continent Australia, rather than its traditional strategic offensive position since World War II as a minor partner in all US-Asian wars, paying an “insurance premium” in blood in the hope that the US will defend Australia from long-feared invasions by Asians.

The racist and jingoistic Coalition blindly supported, all US Asian wars from 1950 onwards, atrocities associated with 40 million Asian “deaths from violence and deprivation” (Google this phrase and see Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”).

Labor supported all these wars except for the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. The world is existentially threatened by nuclear weapons and climate change (Stephen Hawking) but under Labor, Australia is a key base for US intelligence, soldiers and nuclear weapons-capable submarines and bombers, and is among world leaders in climate criminality through its huge CO2-generating exports. Australians don’t have to be nuclear targets, war criminals or climate criminals.

The Earth is sick. It is losing species to extinction at an accelerating rate. Its forests and grasslands are shrinking daily. Its environment exceeds safe limits in six of its nine key planetary boundaries. Irreversible tipping points are gaining strength – icecaps and permafrost melting, forests shrinking, coral reefs dying, ocean currents changing.

This sickness has its roots in the planet’s dominant life-form – intelligent bipeds who have learned to exploit the planet’s natural resources. These beings have thrived over the last 12,000 years of exceptional climate stability, but in recent decades this life-form’s demands have grown to a parasitic level, sucking the resources it requires to satisfy its own growing needs well beyond what their planet’s ecosystems can sustain. Growing pollution chokes atmosphere and seas. Our expectation must be that their planet’s ecosystems will largely collapse beneath their ruthless pillaging of its resources.

In time — expect geological time — this planet’s ecology could recover, and vegetable and animal life revive, as it has done five times before. Whether this will eradicate the parasitic bipeds seems unlikely, but we hope that their numbers in future will be much reduced such that a healthy environment can be sustained for all life.

In the dying days of the age of reason, we seem to cling to our belief that reason, disconnected from other human values such as ethics, common sense, intuition, humanism and a moral sense, is a sufficient guide to how we should act.

Reason might, for instance, be said to dictate that both sides of any argument should be permitted expression and that to do so reflects impartiality. This implies that impartiality is a value that should predominate over others such as morality, law and humanity. The assumption underlying this approach is that both sides of any argument have equal value, regardless of whether they fundamentally conflict with those other vital human values.

When this assumption is made, it leaves open the need to give equal time to arguments that are in direct conflict with law, ethics, morality and common sense. It also leads to allowing proponents of pedophilia, bestiality and murder have equal time and opportunity to promote their patently illegal and immoral activities. That clearly doesn’t happen, so the “impartiality” criteria already has cracks. That being so why should those committing war crimes and crimes against humanity be given equal time in the name of impartiality?

When reading John’s articles, I often find myself admiring their pith and substance, but naggingly wondering whether that is because he so frequently accords with my own views. I comfort myself with the thought that common sense can be a relatively common antidote to ideological incoherence.

China has, since 1978, consistently acted upon a foreign policy guided by their five principles of peaceful co-existence. They are mutual respect for each others’ sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each others internal affairs, equality and co-operation for mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence.

More than any other country on the planet, the Chinese have been consistent in their adherence to these principles over at least the last 40 years. At the same time, the US, by contrast, has been breaching every one of these principles continuously over the same period.

The inherent racism that is a part of colonialist countries like the US and Australia has shaped our ideas about the “lesser races” and their place in a hierarchy that supports those racist prejudices. China cannot possibly be smarter than us, despite the vast accumulation of facts that they are. Our only responses are fear and aggression!

While this is an excellent opinion piece, it seems to assume that time is available to continue with “business as usual”.

Unfortunately, science and physics do not appear to have been consulted in arriving at this assumption. Both are now abundantly clear that not only is “business as usual’ no longer sustainable, but that the actions now required to maintain a future for Homo sapiens and all other life forms on this planet are nothing short of revolutionary.

Significant changes that have advanced the species, such as abolition of slavery, female franchise etc, were not achieved by continuing within the same paradigm. They were achieved through both violence and significant social upheaval. Therein lies the issue of leadership.

Such major changes were only achieved when leaders stood up and brought the people along – not merely waiting for a suitable time when such changes would be acceptable without much social dislocation.

While the Albanese style of leadership may succeed in times of “business as usual”, one needs to consider John Howard’s claim that the times suited his style of government.

Science and physics suggest these times are not suited to Albanese’s leadership style.

As usual, Julian Cribb presents us with a truly vivid picture of the mess we’ve made of our short tenure on Planet Earth. Gifted the twin miracles of perception and self-expression, a garden of abundance and clean air and water to breathe and drink, we’ve allowed our basest nature to prevail.

It gives meaning to the ethics of the early Christians who featured the seven deadly sins in their theology. I suspect they adopted them, as they read like a universal roadmap for any organised society. Nevertheless, it makes you wonder where we’d be if we’d stopped to think where sanctioning pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth and wrath would lead us. All seven, in one way or another, can be seen as catalysts for the climate calamity Cribb describes.

The question now is, how do we fix an atrophying environment? Or even, is it humanly possible? The answer, of course, is written in the wind, but you can bet your bottom bitcoin that humility, kindness, temperance, charity, chastity, diligence and patience will all, in some way, play their part in any successful future for humanity.

In Julian Cribb’s article, water scientist Peter Gleick is quoted as saying: “The size of the world’s population, the nature of our consumption and economies and our use of energy and water resources have combined to threaten our very existence.” This basically sums up why we humans find ourselves in a state of “overshoot”. Our impact on the Earth is simply too great, thus contraction of our population and economies must start happening now.

This is not to say that all aspects of our economies have to contract. Technological developments that lead to decarbonisation must be encouraged, not least in the areas of energy and transport. We have to be mindful of Jevon’s Paradox, however, which occurs when technological advancements make a resource more efficient to use but, as the cost of using the resource drops, may result in overall demand increasing, causing total resource consumption to rise.

As Cribb notes, “merely feeding humanity now absorbs 40% of the world’s land area” and is, in itself, “the biggest driver of extinction of other plants and animals…” Thus, reducing the number of mouths to feed through voluntary family planning must be integral to reducing our impact on the Earth.

The planet is “now dominated by two species, cows and humans”. That is Julian Cribb’s stark illustration of the consequences of planet-wide over-consumption. The Potsdam Institute’s latest report describes how this gross explosion in animal life “has come at the price of massive degradation of plant life”.

What is to be done? In his article “Why the world needs renewable food (14/7), Cribbs set out the three pillars of a renewable world food supply: regenerative farming, urban food (sustainably using water and other resources with in urban environments) and deep ocean aquaculture.

Some Australian farmers have adopted regenerative practices, increasing biodiversity, and conserving water – building resilience in the face of increasing temperatures and drought. These efforts seem a drop in the ocean, given the damage humans have already caused to large expanses of the planet: “the local (safe) boundary is currently transgressed on 60% of the global land area, with 38% already at high risk of degradation”…”Those areas can no longer support the life they once did – and life includes human life.”

We could avert the “sixth mass extinction”, if only we were more intelligent and genuinely realised we cannot eat money.

Thanks to David Lindenmayer for his excellent piece destroying the conveniently contrived myths which offer the justification for logging Australia’s native forests. The article’s “message to words ratio” is powerful.

Yes, David, there is no rational justification for the ongoing logging of these forests, now almost all woefully miserable echoes of what they once were. The state of the forests is repeated in the numbers and health of the species native to this habitat.

David has produced a brief yet concise piece that should be overwhelmingly persuasive to clear-minded people. It deserves to be mass-copied and dropped in every Australian letter-box and reproduced in newspaper advertorials. Others would be better placed to advise on social media applications.

Jack Waterford says in connection with ICC warrants out for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “he would, for example, be arrested if he came to Australia”.

Really? Is Waterford that confident? I can’t be the only one who isn’t at all confident that would be the case. Given Australia’s failure to take any concrete action to halt the genocide in Palestine, preferring instead to serve up word salads including, in this context, its belated plan to recognise Palestine, I can see that Australia’s strongest action should Netanyahu land here would be to turn him back.

Bravery has not been a hallmark of our current prime minister. To expect him to hand over to the ICC the head of another country, one we still call a friend and ally, one which has disproportionate influence in this country, strikes me as an impossibly challenging first step on the road to courage.

A good article by James. He attributes to Michael Steele the most optimistic statement about trust that could possibly be made without prompting guffaws. Steele said: “The core of our alliance for the last 80 years has been trust, and [Trump] has broken that trust.”

A more perceptive observation of US foreign policy goals and processes is attributable to Henry Kissinger when he said “to be America’s enemy is dangerous, to be its friend is fatal”. He also said that “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”.

To say that we have ever trusted the US is far too optimistic a view. It would be far more accurate to say we have hoped that they might stick with their word. A hope that has failed to be satisfied as many times as it has been met!

Peter Sainsbury notes that while the world’s forests still act as a net carbon sink, their capacity to do so has fallen by 75% in just two decades. Some, such as the Bolivian Amazon and Canadian boreal forests, are now even net sources of carbon.

The main cause of deforestation in North America and Asia is wildfire, while in Latin America and Southeast Asia it is permanent agriculture. In Australia, deforestation continues through land clearing for cattle and sheep grazing. In 2024, the Australian Conservation Foundation exposed 50 cases in one week, including the bulldozing of “20 rugby fields’ worth of tropical rainforest” on a Queensland beef property.

Sainsbury rightly calls for an end to native forest logging, but his support for prescribed burning and thinning conflicts with recent science. Research by Professor David Lindenmayer and Dr Phil Zylstra, recently noted in Pearls and Irritations, shows such “active management” opens and dries forests, actually increasing fire risk. As they conclude, true forest stewardship means working with nature’s own resilience, not against it.

Excellent and timely article by eminent Indigenous Australian Gregory Andrews. Sir Isaac Isaacs (Australia’s first Jewish and first Australian-born governor general) carefully and expertly demolished racist Zionism in the brilliant, 61-page booklet entitled “PALESTINE: Peace and Prosperity or War and Destruction? POLITICAL ZIONISM: Undemocratic, Unjust, Dangerous” (January 1946).

For details of this and other eminent anti-racist Jewish opinion Google “Jews against racist Zionism” from which one discovers the wisdom of numerous anti-racist Jewish writers from Hannah Arendt to Howard Zinn and including numerous anti-racist Jewish Australians (most notably today the humane and anti-racist Jewish Council of Australia).

Sir Isaac Isaacs’ 1946 excoriation of Zionism was the more remarkable because his humanity and legal clarity overcame any tribal loyalties and his loyalty to the British Empire, and came about 18 years after the 1928 Coniston Massacre of Indigenous Australians in Central Australia and 21 years before the 1967 Referendum that recognised citizenship of Indigenous Australians.

It is an utter disgrace that cowardly and US-beholden Labor, the unspeakably primitive and anti-science Coalition, and mendacious mainstream Australian presstitutes resolutely ignore such eminent anti-racist Jewish opinion and instead cravenly kowtow to rabidly racist Zionists with a fervent allegiance to Australia-violating Apartheid Israel.

Once again, we blame China for our own inadequacies. Sinophobia never gets its fair share of headlines.

Just because they were smart enough to see this coming, we get upset China is only doing what is common for the mining companies in particular, and global bussiness in general: manipulating the market to maximise profit to their advantage

What market forces you may ask. OPEC etc?

In the case of China, they have ensured their own supply needs with a profit thrown in, while sucessive Australian Governments give our wealth away for some election funding and a few rubbery votes.

Gregory Andrews outlines Sir Isaac Isaac’s opposition to “political Zionism”, a stance that has divided the Jewish community over many years. Writing shortly after World War II, Isaacs foresaw the ongoing conflict: “any attempt to establish Jewish dominance [in Palestine] would inevitably lead to bloodshed.”

Isaacs was a staunch defender to Britain. “[A Jewish state would] threaten not merely the prestige but the integrity of the Empire,” he wrote, also noting that the region experienced a “marvellous transformation” under the British mandate. Historians would likely disagree at just how marvellous the British were after defeating the Ottomans, seizing the region, then abandoning it to decades of conflict.

Andrews claim that Isaacs would “invoke the enduring ideals he believed in: democracy, justice, equality and peaceful coexistence” is questionable. Isaacs, as Andrews acknowledges, was a racist; he also opposed Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi rule being allowed into Australia, saying we shouldn’t “procure the immigration of these unfortunates into Australia”.

Andrews could also have pointed out that Isaacs warned against either side (Palestinian Arab and Jewish) submitting to dominance by the other. Attempts to eliminate the state of Israel in 1948, 1967, 1983 and 2023, and Netanyahu’s indefensible policy of occupying Gaza, would confirm this.