Archives: Letters to the Editor

McKinley brings a refreshing moral perspective to discussion of US & Zionist false narratives on Iran. I always like to read him in P&I. I am 100% pro-Iran. I recommend Prof Mohamed Marandi’s regular analysis on YouTube. He says Iran is ready for another treacherous Israeli/US surprise attack and will obliterate Tel Aviv and Haifa with nonnuclear weapons if it comes. I believe him. This is effective deterrence.

I’ve often wondered where some of the poorest people in the world get their weapons/ammunition from. I constantly see that they seem to get great pleasure from firing into the air rounds from automatic weapons.
Firing 100 to 1000 per min? at $1 to $2 each?
How do they pay for them?
Then I saw the delivery of obsolete Australian tanks to the Ukraine.
Never a shot fired in anger but out of date/obsolete, scrap value to some.
What a great business model! Even better when you’ve got the president of the US spruking for you.

A significant number of us are tired of cruel policies towards asylum-seekers and have been for a very long time. But like much else that is evil – incarceration of Indigenous children, supplying fighter plane parts to Israel, for example – it matters not what we think.
As long as there is money to be made, or “friends” to appease, cruelty will continue. When Mammon is God, you will always get people who worship the Almighty Dollar doing whatever it takes to accumulate wealth for selfish, self-serving purposes.
Call me a cynic if you like, but look around the world and tell me I’m wrong. Sadly, you can’t! Meanwhile, we weep and do what we can. Even if it appears to be merely tokenism, we live in hope of a breakthrough.

In response to David Macilwain. This is interesting to me, as I recently was challenged by someone – a Trump supporter – telling me that the Moroccans had expelled the Jews, so I read up about that. I found that, on the contrary, they had been a valuable part of society, and still are. When Israel was first established many left to go there to be a part of a new exciting country, expecting to be a part of its development in the same way they were used to in Morocco, only to find they were discriminated against, with a strike in 1959 against the Ashkenasi Jews who had not welcomed them at all.

So very disappointing and disheartening to see Stephanie Dowrick supporting the lobbyist’s line of ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’ and both sides-ism-argument.
I reckon her article continues the line of dehumanisation of Hamas and casts a slur on the ONLY immediate protection and resistance available to and ELECTED by Palestine.
She says. . .”Since the blazingly stupid, cruel, terrifying actions of the corrupt Hamas”… etc
This sounds like the initial scene setting post 7th October set by the lies of the IDF, when western journalists fell over themselves to parrot … “do you condemn Hamas” It has allowed the Israelis to slaughter and maim and displace with impunity.

As I read Paddy Gourley’s ever so sensible and explicit advice to Minister Penny Wong, three things occurred to me.

The first is that so many of us admire Penny Wong and puzzle over what seems to us like her semi-paralysis. I, and I am sure many others, would endorse Paddy’s admonition that she seize the hour and get our government to move swiftly in the direction of diplomacy, reduced defence spending and peace-making.

The second is that, in addition to appreciating P&I’s many informed, articulate and passionate article-writers, I am so keen each day to read the Letters section. Thank you to all those fellow-readers who leap in with informed comment, often bringing us thoughts and information that would otherwise not see the light of day.

The third is that our publisher, John Menadue and editor Catriona Jackson are doing fine work that engenders hope as we all try to navigate the murky seas of modern life.

OMG iPhones are all made in China.

The issues with the Tasmanian health system have been festering for many years. It was obvious from the first time I visited more than 30 years ago and it has become increasingly worse.

Even then, retirees were “invading” our southern isle, as those from Sydney and Melbourne were able to buy substantial, well-located property, often for about half the amount they realised on the sale of their previous home, and so it was a “no-brainer” if you wanted to leave big city life, while also improving the state of your liquid assets.

This trend has only continued, resulting in another problem, that of increasing housing costs for young people wanting to enter the market.

At the same time, young people continued to leave for the “north island” accentuating the growing problem.

About 25 years ago, the then ACT Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, said he didn’t want to be in government in 2030, as he didn’t know how the health bill would be paid.

Unless, and until, a new funding model is developed, including self-funded retirees like myself at least paying the Medicare levy, this problem will continue to grow exponentially!

Democracy gives a sense of empowerment. Voters feel free to live as they wish – albeit within reasonable limits. But democratic governments rarely take essential, unpopular steps.

These days the power of the media seems so intense that governments bow to its will. Too many in the media disseminate misinformation to further proprietorial political goals. And barely-controlled lobbying, supported by substantial political donations, enables powerful interests to wield disproportionate influence over critical policy development.

Daniel Andrews achieved some success in avoiding overbearing media influence when he was premier of Victoria, but our federal government, tied to three-year terms, seems forever condemned to easy populism, and rarely stands up to lead public opinion. This brings policies and actions which pander to the needs of vested interests and to the prevailing media-sculpted mood, rather than carefully thought-out, science-based policies which address the critical issues of the moment.

As Julian Cribb observes, “humans cannot survive if they do not understand the threats they face or how to overcome them”. While democratic governments prioritise their own short-term popularity ahead of the existential threats we now face from climate, famine, AI and more, our democracy is sleepwalking to oblivion.

Great article. The first step in solving all the problems is severing the ties between the capitalists and government.
Recognising that the capitalists exist to make a profit/get rich; creating jobs is a by-product, a nuisance.

As long as the parliamentary door is open to lobbyists and political donations, the balance will always be in favour of profit. The deportation of modern-day slaves from the US will be the downfall, one way or the other, of capitalist Trump.

What we need is more regulation and auditing, not less. As long as the capitalists are complaining about government regulation and auditing, we know the government is doing its job.

Once we have overcome that hurdle we will be able to start on proper tax reform and be able to build government-approved infrastructure for the good of society, not overshadowed by scaremongering over debt.

We will then see societal improvements that are viewed in the same fiscal way as defence spending. We will one day have a system where governments are rewarded for their achievements and the opposition contributes, rather than being rewarded for being negative by opposing.

The issues of Australia’s over-reliance on the United States of America are, thanks to this article and similar mentions, becoming more mainstream.

There are two terms which may assist these changing Australia’s perceptions on this issue. The terms are FARMS (Foreign Aid Replacing Military Spending) and Usan (citizens of the United States of America).

FARMS provides a quick way of identifying an area where military spending (commonly misnamed as “defence”) should be redirected. In this way, the “foreign aid — where does it come from” question is answered — and it identifies the greatest evil in the world today. The greed of capitalists could be focused on aid rather than weapons.

Usan is the obvious country identifier of those from the US in the same way that people from Cuba are Cubans, people from Colombia are Colombians, etc. The advantages of insisting on a country-identifier is to separate it from the other 34 countries and many territories in America. This is especially important in highlighting where the (often evil) actions/behaviours of the Usans (presidents, billionaires, ICE agents and many others) originate and separate them from the generally better behaviours of the millions other Americans.

Jocelyn Chey notes that Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said publicly that a strong economic relationship with China, leading to stability and prosperity, is “an investment in our security”.

In that vein, we must congratulate Prime Minister Albanese on his talks with China, particularly with respect to a possible massive bilateral agreement on the development of “green steel”. It is a huge economic opportunity for Australia which is the world’s number one producer of iron ore with over half the global exports.

It is also an exciting — indeed, exhilarating — opportunity to help mitigate climate change because green steel is made from renewable energy. China is the world leader in steel production which accounts for 15% of its emissions. Globally, steel production is responsible for 7%-9% of emissions.

Significantly, Albanese, at his press conference in Shanghai on Monday, was joined by leaders of the Australian iron ore industry: BHP in Australia, Rio Tinto, Fortescue, and Hancock Iron Ore. They had been meeting Chinese steel industry leaders that day about decarbonisation of the steelmaking process.

Let’s hope a bilateral agreement with China on green iron and steel will be on the table soon to consolidate the deal.

It’s easy to feel disheartened by Justice Michael Wigley’s recent federal court decision that the Australian Government has no duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change.

But as Liz Hicks, a lecturer in law at the University of Melbourne, points out: “It is a question of when, rather than if, law will adapt to deal with climate impacts. Much like a rising tide breaking against a seawall, the future impact of climate change on things that law already protects is too extreme for the law to resist.”

Others agree. Dr Riona Moodley, lawyer and researcher at UNSW’s Institute for Climate Risk and Response, noted the judgment left open the possibility of appeal: “If this matter went back to an appeals court, they could revisit the law and decide to change it.” Dr Wesley Morgan, of the Climate Council and a colleague of Moodley’s, echoed this: “When [laws] are challenged repeatedly by those impacted by the deepening climate crisis, legal norms will need to shift to meet that need.” The pressure for the law to catch up with climate reality is building. We can all add to that pressure.

Apart from our politicians and our generals what percentage of Australians hold the US in high regard?

In my lifetime, protest against the US has been a regular thing starting with “overpaid, over-sexed and over here” and rumours of tensions in South Korea and Vietnam etc.

It may be understandable for our politicians coveting a well-paid military lobbying position to top up their parliamentary pension. The same goes for our military who are always keen to be aligned with the US with them having the biggest and best weapons of mass destruction and our generals always wanting the biggest bang no matter how high the buck may be.

I don’t think Australians are the same as Americans and they are not as keen to be going “All the way with LBJ “ as our politicians and media would have us believe. This is demonstrated by Australians who are willing to protest against our involvement in the never-ending US war on humanity.

Henry Kissinger once said, “To be America’s enemy is dangerous. To be its friend is fatal”.

That is one of the most accurate statements ever made about the US. All this increased defence spending is supposedly so that we can all go to sleep at night in fear and trembling of the imminent invasion by China. The question you have to ask is of the US and China, which is more dangerous to other countries?

In the last 40 years, the US has been involved in dozens of armed conflicts with countries around the planet, while China has been involved in none. And we are thinking of joining forces with the one that appears to be in wars all of the time against one who hasn’t been in four decades. Go figure!

To whom we owe a duty of care is first and foremost a moral question. A duty of care represents an ethical obligation to consider the well-being of others and act in ways that avoid causing unnecessary suffering or harm, even in the absence of enforceable laws. It is a universal principle that crops up in the moral code of all peoples in various forms. In Kantian terms, it can be described as a moral imperative.

The post-WWII war crimes were prosecuted applying that moral imperative – the defence that people were only following orders was not accepted. In many instances, people were convicted for crimes that were sanctioned by their laws.

The Federal Court does not rule on questions of morality. In many instances, the laws are only framed after the moral obligation has been settled.

As far as climate change is concerned, Australia has a moral obligation to redress what people can suffer from the consequences of climate change. We have known about climate change for at least a hundred years; the failure of successive governments to act does not absolve us from this obligation. Ideally we should enshrine our obligation in law.

With his usual precision, John identifies the pith and substance of the AUKUS fraud imposed upon us by the second-hand car salesman Scott Morrison. That redundant member of the Dodgy Brothers sought to wedge Labor by vastly indebting the Australian people to a US empire in rapid decline which continues its forlorn but dangerous, feckless and capricious attempts to remain relevant.

He frankly didn’t give a rat’s ***e about the cost to ordinary Australians in lost healthcare, education, housing and public transport that would be needed over the next three decades to fund our satrapy to the US in fruitlessly striving to prevent the rise of China, not as a militarily aggressive hegemon, but one focused upon the values of shared prosperity that the US spouted on every occasion, but did everything in its power to prevent occurring around the world.

These subs have no meaningful role in defending Australia as they are attack submarines designed to project power thousands of kilometres from Australian shores. Aligning ourselves to a declining empire that has betrayed most of its “allies” against the rising power of the 21st century makes no sense whatsoever! John sets that out with his usual clarity!!

Is it anti-Catholic to criticise Italy? Is it anti-Anglican to criticise the UK? Is it anti-Islam to criticise Indonesia? No-one in their right mind would think so.

So why the ridiculous postulate that it’s antisemitic to criticise Israel? We (and journalists please pay attention) need to rigorously question these fences erected to suppress free speech.

It doesn’t take much digging to reveal the money, the power and the land grab at the heart of Israel’s assault on Gaza, and, by extension, the taboo imposed by politicians and the media in openly condemning the war crimes being committed there. Remember the fever of anti-colonialism in our media just a couple of years ago? Remember the outrage? Where are the anti-colonists now when a colonial genocide is happening in real-time?

Les Macdonald rightly observes that in the discussion of antisemitism it is not recognised that Palestinians are the true Semites, and that if we use the term then all Semitic peoples should be included.

But astonishingly he fails to observe that Ashkenazi Jews are not semitic but almost uniformly Slavic in origin. This includes most Israeli leaders past and present, who have been from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.

It also includes Jillian Segal, born in South Africa, from parents of East European origin. In addition, speaking Hebrew does not make someone “Semitic” any more than it can make them ethnically Jewish, as historically Hebrew was only recently revived as the official Jewish and Israeli language.

Jeffery Soar correctly asks “What about the animals?” The answer (omitted for concision) is that in 20-25 years most meat protein will be produced in cell culture – beef, lamb, chicken, pork, fish and even dairy products. The product is real meat – it just never went “moo”. It is very close to economic now.

This will spare the world a vast amount of destructive agriculture, overgrazing, and needless cruelty. It is a 21st century solution to a 21st century problem.

As to whether people will eat it, 70 years ago they never thought they would dress in petroleum – but that’s mostly what we wear nowadays.

And do you really know what’s in a crab stick, a nugget, sausage or meat pie? Do you even want to?

A majority of Americans voted for their nation to be run by criminals, conmen, child rapists, sexual abusers, billionaires, totalitarians, ignoramuses and racists. That’s the kind of US they want.

As Noel Turnbull succinctly shows, most Australians do not share the overt aims of the current US regime. Nor, if we asked them, would they share the values.

Why, therefore, does the Albanese Government (or the LNP for that matter) still want an alliance with such degeneracy?

As things stand, any alliance with the US constitutes a serious threat to Australian decency, fairness and democracy. Any political party that supports it is presumably deeply contaminated and intending to put Australia on a similar path. Or naive to the point of cretinism.

David Shearman is right: if we are to avert dangerous climate change (3 degrees C warming), then we need to move to a no-growth economy.

This will be a hard call in Australia, given growth is the dominant economic paradigm. Try telling it to Jim Chalmers, or most economic editors of the mainstream press! It is sacrilege.

Nevertheless, Julian Cribb (Humanity is risking catastrophe, 16 July) brought to our attention the 2025 Global Risks Report. Of the four environmental risks, it cites “natural resource shortages and biodiversity decline”. This should be enough to indicate that we have reached limits to growth that the Club of Rome warned us about back in 1972. We may be able to capture the sun’s energy and one day have endless energy, but given resources are essentially finite, then we are limited by that particular constraint.

If biodiversity is in decline, it is for a number of reasons, but the major one is habitat loss. Clearly, we have to stop encroaching on other species’ habitats for either human settlement or for growing food. Integral to the no-growth economy, of course, is stabilsation of population. We simply cannot afford another 70 million people every year.

Julian Cribb cites a possible part-solution to the world’s food crisis, namely, “deep ocean aquaculture”. Unlike coastal fish farms, including the contentious Tasmanian salmon farms, aquaculture in the deep ocean allows currents to remove all wastes, which in coastal waters have destroyed wild ecosystems and threatened species such as the Maugean skate in Macquarie Harbour.

Deep ocean aquaculture would allow us to eat salmon without the overwhelming guilt that accompanies eating it now. It would help maintain global protein supplies which are at risk because land-based production of meat is exacerbating climate change through land-clearing and emissions from ruminants.

We rightly say we have to eat lower down the food chain to help mitigate global warming but, for many people, that may entail a loss of vital nutrients that are contained in meat and dairy products. Nearly half the Indian women, for instance, who eat a vegetarian diet are already anaemic. You have to eat an awful lot of spinach to get the necessary iron if you are not eating meat or certain fish. Oysters, mussels, cuttlefish, and octopus are particularly high in iron and could be farmed as part of deep ocean aquaculture.

While I can agree totally with the article on systematic Bias in Western media regarding Palestine and Ukraine, it constantly astonishes me that there are almost no further articles regarding just how pervasive media bias is.

Whether on the “complicated” housing, economic or other crises, the role of industry or even whistleblowers etc the language is also biased. Let’s be honest with ourselves and call all media propaganda. Some are more competent and effective than others; the best is not recognised for what it is.

I shouldn’t need to demonstrate by looking at the treatment of protesters, whether political or environmental. Maybe we should reassess whether a democracy can function with such manipulated media. On the evidence, I am not convinced it can. How many people are truly literate and can test sources of information or be bothered to do so? The farce of our political climate has to question both our representation and interests. And then are we the “good guys”?

Let’s be clear. This antisemitism plan is nothing but importing Israel’s state-sanctioned apartheid and making it law in Australia.

Don’t we have foreign interference laws? How are they supposed to work when the government of the day supports this interference?

And let’s not forget (publicised after this article) about how Segal won’t dictate to her husband, but will dictate to millions of Australians just how incorrect they in their thinking.

A pointless position given to someone who has done nothing but ruthlessly exploit it for the benefit of a foreign government.

But since the Americans write our defence policy, why not let Israel have a go at our social cohesion plans?

One of the biggest hurdles to making the case for an antisemitism bill, such as that proposed by Jillian Segal, is that for almost two years we have all seen, and continue to see daily, clear evidence of horrific and indefensible atrocities perpetrated by the IDF on residents in Gaza.

This is producing an understandable revulsion in Australia, leading to protests in support of the Gazans and against the IDF, and by extension Israel. These protests are not antisemitic, nor are they anti-Jewish. But here I have to add, unless you, Jillian Segal, choose to make them so. Instead of banning the protests, lead them.

Margaret Reynolds makes the point well.

I note she says: “Volumes of unanswered correspondence from civil society — if these have been retained — could detail the efforts of so many Australians to alert the government to its responsibilities during such a devastating humanitarian crisis.”

We know from FOI that as of a fortnight or so ago, as previous letters note, Penny Wong had received more than 52,000 pieces of correspondence on Palestine, and Anthony Albanese more than 65,000. Their FOI people are refusing to make them available, on practicability grounds even down to the detail. (ran a simulation and found that one public servant would need x years…)

Albanese has answered none of it. I have not yet been told about Wong’s replies, if any.

Julian Cribb’s article details the threat that our changing climate poses to global peace. His charts, showing forecast water stress and degraded soils, depict this intensifying crisis with devastating clarity.

The issue underlying this crisis is our ever-growing population. Jenny Goldie has recently outlined this challenge; David Shearman too. Our ever-growing global population will experience increasing desperation to grow food in ever more depleted soils and with insufficient water. This will herald intensified exploitation – plans for future sustainability will be forgotten in the face of immediate needs.

Cribb highlights the potential of renewable foods. Transitioning to these might overcome these issues, but would require major cultural and agricultural changes across the developed world. These would inevitably take time, when the time for change is becoming short, and our population continues to grow. Until that transition is made, too many will continue to degrade our planet, expanding those activities which serve our immediate needs (eg industrial farming) while shrinking, possibly to extinction, the wilds of nature.

Our environment, and humanity, will only become sustainable in the long term if we can balance our population numbers and ways of life within our environmental limits. That way lies peace.

When dealing with the words of the accused war criminal Netanyahu, it is necessary to recognise that nothing he says can be taken at face value. He has for instance argued publicly that the Jews were in the Levant first and that gives them prior rights to the land. He has suggested this is confirmed by scientific research.

The truth, as always with him, is actually the reverse of what he asserts. There are numerous peer reviewed and widely accepted archaeological and genetic studies in recent years that confirm the genetic and cultural continuity of the Palestinian people with the area’s original peoples, stretching back 14,500 years.

The conclusions of that extensive research is that the Palestinians are the indigenous people of those lands that the Zionist fascists insist are the God-given land of the Jews. That reseach reveals no such even remotely similar connection to these lands by the Jews.

Indeed, Judaism did not exist until the second millennium BCE being at least 10,000 years after the Palestinian connections began. Neyanyahu’s approach to his own political survival matches his connection to the truth and to the best interests of the Jewish people.

Letter writer Brian Bycroft has raised a point often ignored when he says: “For better or for worse, people of the Jewish faith have become, for some, almost a proxy for Israel. In these circumstances, people attacking a synagogue may bear no specific hatred of Jews, but see the synagogue as representing Israel.”

Definitely for worse I suggest. That the Star of David, a religious symbol, became the symbol on the national flag of a colonising, self-declared apartheid state, divided by ethnicity/religion, has absolutely muddied the waters.
One would have thought the consequences of this choice to be foreseeable. So why did it happen?