Archives: Letters to the Editor

It appears that this article, whilst interesting in terms of being an accurate reflection of the increasingly dystopian US-centred world view in some respects, also reflects pretty clearly the disconnect between that world view and the reality as perceived by the other 85% of the world’s population. That can be seen clearly in two areas of the organised forgetting that underlies much of that Western world view.

The first is in seeing the overall agreement that was reflected in the uncontroversial meeting of the BRICS in Rio de Janeiro. The article suggests that the lack of excitement evident at the meeting reflected a growing irrelevance, rather than reflecting an evident display of agreement and seriously working through the matters that are on its agenda. The dollar continues its evident slide into irrelevance and work continues assiduously on a new international financial architecture.

Secondly the attempt to suggest double standards with respect to Ukraine and Israel tries to achieve its purpose by simply ignoring context – the Western way when confronted with complex reality. That caters to the infantile Western desire to fit reality into the “good guy” (West} and” bad guy” ( the enemy du jour) mindset.

The Jillian Segal antisemitism report is based on the assumption of a massive increase in antisemitism. No doubt I will be accused of antisemitism for questioning whether this is actually the case.

Despite the attempts by the NSW Government to cover up, many of the supposed incidents in NSW were seen by police to be not antisemitic. Many of the other so-called incidences, e.g., the restaurant demonstration in Melbourne, are quite clearly attacks on Israel or Israeli supporters.

I’m happy to be corrected, but I suspect even attacking a synagogue is not necessarily antisemitic. 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.

Browning’s article is one of the most erudite articles written about Western hypocrisy regarding Palestine. It is also ironic that the pro-Zionist, anti-Palestinian, anti-democratic, and autocratic anti-protest report by Jillian Segal was released on the same day.

Segal’s draconian report will be adopted by our cowardly Labor Government. Her Trumpian proposals will result in Browning’s article being banned and any mention of the 60,000 dead Palestinians and the suffering of two million Palestinians of Gaza (some who are Christians) who are being ethnically cleansed, not to mention the apartheid-like condition that oppress and dehumanise the Palestinians of the West Bank, will be classified as antisemitic hate speech!

It will just be a short step, under Segal’s proposals, for the government to then equate comparison of the Israeli genocide with the genocide committed by the Nazis as antisemitic or equating Gaza to the British concentration camps that collectively punished the Boers as antisemitic or to label the Palestinians as oppressed by an European colonial-settler movement called Zionism to be antisemitic and the author will be vilified and slandered as an antisemite. Welcome to Orwell’s 21st century Australia.

Sourabh Gupta’s article hits the nail on the head. Going further is this from The Guardian of 9 July: “The true test will come if the crushing sanctions tabled months ago by the Republican senator Lindsey Graham are finally given the presidential go-ahead. The measures would impose a 500% tariff on imports from any country that purchases Russian uranium, gas or oil, with India and China the worst affected.”

Trump says his policy includes products onsold through a less tariffed country. Well, some of our petrol comes from Russia after being refined in Singapore, so that is a threat to us. This is also hard on the heels of the Quad meeting which included India, so does one end of the Republican party know what the other end is doing? Or is this quantum politics where two opposing states of policy can exist simultaneously?

An antisemitism plan, in the guise of a law and order crackdown, will only further divide our country, increasing Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, and ultimately make Jews less safe.

While the federal government has moved to adopt the antisemitism plan and the recommendations from the special envoy, Jillian Segal, one must ask… is this plan beneficial for our social cohesion when Israel has been found to be committing genocide? Is Jillian Segal right for this high-profile government role, particularly one as sensitive as an “envoy for antisemitism” when, in fact, she has criticised calls for ceasefire in Gaza and defended the campaign of bombing hospitals?

Segal’s opposition to the call for a ceasefire and her insistence there can be no legitimate criticism of Israel’s bombing campaign surely makes her position as the holder of any government appointment untenable. As a past president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, her allegiance is to those who are lobbying the government to crack down on protesters.

Segal is also a longstanding chair of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, one of this country’s most prestigious big business lobbies and she remains cozy with Israeli bosses and weapons contractors.

I have never seen so much building going on in our city. So many multistorey apartments, so much urban building and still a shortage of affordable housing.

Why?

Because like this article, all the talk is driven by those with the most to gain. Multistorey units with a desirable outlook and for those struggling at unattainable price tags. Many are built on blocks that have sat vacant waiting for developers to find a way around the zoning regulations that have made the locations the desirable areas that they are.

Million-plus two-bedroom units (one bedroom and a large cupboard) in desirable inner suburbs are not solving the problem for young people trying to get into the market. If what is shown on TV is any indication, building multistorey units, soon to be slums, will only benefit the developer and leave the social problem for government and councils to fix later.

Then there is development on prime farming land and floodplains that’s been a real success. We need more considered regulation not less.

Greg Barns’ article is, as usual, carefully reasoned and he lays out his argument(s) with scrupulous precision.

However, on this occasion, I seek more explanation for the contentious statement that “Hamas killed 1200 people” in the horrendous 7 October 2023 attack. It has been widely accepted that the death toll in that attack — while due to Hamas’s monumental strategic blunder that has profited nobody but Netanyahu and his ultra-Zionist coterie — is in considerable part also a product of IDF complicity.

This is not a pedantic issue: the “Hamas killed 1200 people” mantra appears to have become something of a prophylactic against Zionist lobby action. Even The Guardian, that holds “facts are sacred”, has been adding a. almost identical stock phrase to virtually every article on the Gaza catastrophe for months now.

If this highly unreliable “fact” becomes entrenched in lore as the bedrock upon which all actions of the current Israeli Government and IDF are justified, it will become a barricade against inspection of the actions and motives of what is considered as genocide and war criminality by an overwhelming majority of the world’s population.

For Israel to have a future, it needs the spotlight of truth.

I take issue with the following statement:

“…namely the inability of many to recognise and respect genuine expertise…”

Expert. There has never been a more over-rated word in our age.

It’s almost like the author thinks that experts have never been wrong about anything ever in the history of the world. Not to mention the many experts in the health fields who would disagree with various aspects of this article.

I reserve my right to question the advice or opinion of any expert because you don’t get to decide for me. It’s that simple. It’s not a matter of who knows more about a topic, it’s the simple case that I get to decide what I think.

There is wisdom in the old adage of “question everything” and, yes, that includes experts too.

Jenny Goldie hits the nail squarely on the head with her article on human population growth. It is wrecking the planet and is the major driver of our own probable demise as a civilisation and as a species.

Fortunately, women worldwide realise this, and are lowering their fertility almost everywhere. To give every woman on the planet access to family planning would cost less than half the price of a single nuclear sub – which makes you realise how dumb men truly are when it comes to survival.

Coupled with reducing human numbers to a sustainable level (about 2.5 billion or where it was in 1950) we also need to develop a food system that doesn’t destroy the Earth’s ability to support us. (Look for this in my next piece in Pearls)

Both are do-able, affordable and need no new technologies. What’s the big delay?

Like Bob Vylan and many Palestinian supporters and opponents of Israel’s textbook, Nazi-style Holocaust and death camps, I have also been known to chant “Death! Death! To the IDF!!!” at a protest or two, but my chant is slightly more contextualised. It goes like this:

“Death! Death! To the IDF!!! … as per Israel’s Basic Law 5710-1950 the Crime of Genocide, which provides for a mandatory capital sentence for every IDF thug who has, in any way, shape or form, committed genocide, participated in genocide, conspired to commit genocide or incited genocide, whether that offence was committed in Israel or abroad.”

I know it’s not as catchy, but I reckon even in the current insane climate where radical pacifists — Palestine Acfion — become proscribed terrorists, Israel’s Basic Law and my support for its intense application doesn’t cross enough lines to warrant arrest or prosecution.

If I’m wrong… hey Greg, mate, any chance of a bit of pro bono work? It’s for a good cause.

Noel Turnbull highlights the lack of confidence in Netanyahu and Israel by a considerable majority of Australians, so just who is it that the Albanese Government is representing?

Does it prefer to reflect the views of the US rather than its own electors? Does it actively honour the ALP platform on Palestine? Is it instead representing that part of our security fraternity/sorority with a narrow focus on hardware solutions to security, cavilling sotto voce at our trade relationships, and maybe in bed with Mossad?

Consider how much security our government’s failure to actively support longstanding international norms over Palestine has brought Australia’s Jewish people. Or our Muslim neighbours. Norms forged in Nuremberg and Tokyo, in the UN and in Geneva.

Security for us involves comprehensive healthcare and affordable medicine, and trading with China and Asia, top biosecurity, and low or no tariffs, all of which the US is attacking. It involves climate security, also under attack by the US. The US Big Ugly Act will undermine Australians’ economic security with its deficit and the likely quantitative easing which will push inflation worldwide. To return to the question – who does our current government (and, for that matter, Opposition) represent?

The NACC is rightly the subject of public mistrust, arising from its own reports, its choices of subjects for investigation and from errors and omissions in its leadership.

Now we learn that the NACC is encouraged to think that mistrust is accepable. Funded by a government grant of taxpayer earnings, the Australian Research Council is mapping the positive values of public mistrust.

Mystified? Yes, you should be. Mistrust of the NACC has been thoroughly earned. No, it contains no positive values.

How has this bunkum been promoted? The researchers are misled by Erik Erikson’s theoretical musings that a healthy amount of mistrust can lead to positive outomes, such as enhanced self-protection, improved decision-making, and a more realistic assessment of situations. Mistrust is also said to foster vigilance, boundary-setting, and a more nuanced understanding of relationships.

Wrong. Vigilance, self-protection and heightened alert result from the observation of dangers. Mistrust is not the cause of this alert focus, Mistrust is the judgment that vigilance is required.

The NACC has been hypocritically shaped to create an illusion that something is being done to avert corruption. And now, that our mistrust of the NACC is positive.

The NACC has been a huge disappointment. It continues to attempt to measure its success by the number of investigations, the number of reports and the prosecutions and sentances which might follow.

Prof Brown’s article contains important facts and an investigator’s eye for cases. But it too fails to acknowledge the public’s scorn and mistrust for the NACC and its founders.

The NACC’s leadership has consistently failed to define for its staff and its public what it is there do do. It never did put the right graphs on the wall and it never did measure real progress.

The NACC will succeed if corruption declines and it will gain trust only when it is earned. That success cannot be measured by inputs. This is not work that can be judged by an investigator, an ombudsman or an auditor.

The NACC is making no progress because it has not found the right mountains to climb. It is true that insightful corruption reports, thorough investigations, findings and prosections produce a deterrent effect and that deterrent effect may be helpful in reducing corruption. But even that deterrent effect, not measured by the NACC, its critics or its observers, is only an input.

The NACC still does not know its job.

Richard, great article. In my view the corporations are not the right target, capitalism is. It inevitably generates the problems.

Very good that you point to the failure to focus on what has led to Trump, and the fact that he has done us a great service by busting the mold. The Dems were only the alternative capitalist party.

You see that the need is for a different vision … of course, but, sorry, capitalist ideology is so entrenched that I have no doubt no alternative can emerge in time. Sanders is a Karmunist.

Nothing good will come out of this accelerating festering mess. I cannot see how a catastrophic collapse can be avoided, triggered by the financial/debt house of cards. That could be the end of us all, but it might force enough people to turn to local co-operative sufficiency etc. to be the beginnings of a sane path.

This article is a superb illustration of the divide in the West currently between realism and fantasy. The vast bulk of us are so conditioned by the never-ending propaganda, to which we are subjected by a mainstream media that reflects quite clearly the propensities referred to by Orwell in that unpublished preface to Animal Farm, that we simply don’t recognise the reality that faces us all.

A diminishing number of us prefer to face reality and dispense with the fantasy. This article is a brilliant summary of that reality!

Jeffrey Loewenstein has highlighted the depths to which the Zionists have sunk in their desperation to make genocide acceptable, so long as it is carried out by Israel. They know that any attempt to argue rationally for what they are doing to Palestinian men women and children would simply lead back to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, as charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

So they choose the infantile but effective (at least in the guilt-ridden Western world) labeling of those who find their actions despicable as antisemites. This differs in no significant respect from the gutter tactics of the inebriate racist Joseph McCarthy in labeling anyone he didn’t like as (another label) communist and therefore not really deserving of humanity.

As a person with Jewish heritage, of which I was once extremely proud, I know that many Jews around the world who I admire greatly are as repelled as I by the genocidal actions of a cancerous political ideology called Zionism which has metastasized throughout Israeli society and is increasingly rendering it potentially terminal. These perpetrators and their supporters must be made accountable for their utter lack of humanity!

Jesus clearly said, “I’ve come to show you a new way.” A new way, away from blood sacrifice and an eye for an eye. A new way founded on loving your fellow neighbour, turning the other cheek, forgiveness and compassion. A new way: far from the bloodthirsty revenge accounts of the Old Testament.

What do balanced Christians truly take from the Old Testament? The Genesis story, as a story to be wary of temptation, and the 10 Commandments. The Psalms are comforters, but that’s about it.

Well, Pope Leo and the soon-to- be newly-appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, you’ve got an opportunity to rebind the Good Book. Do we really need to include the murdering retribution of Joshua, the book on which Zionists base their extermination of the Palestinian people? Does the IDF need justification to gang-rape Palestinian prisoners?

Get rid of the book of Judges. When scripture is used to justify the extermination of a people, it’s time for a rethink. When scripture is used for hate, people turn away from that scripture. And the true Christian teachings of Jesus — love and compassion — are thrown out along with the rest. Time for a rebinding, lads.

This article paints an inaccurately benign picture of the policing of protest in Australia in 2025.

In recent years, all state governments have enacted legislation which criminalises many protest actions, with possible penalties including lengthy jail sentences and hefty fines. Armed with these new laws, and goaded by reactionary government officials and screaming tabloid headlines, police command has not hesitated to invoke these laws. Climate activists and pro-Palestine protesters, in particular, have been targeted.

The “Disrupt Land Forces” protests in Melbourne in September last year marked a particularly low point. Despite many episodes of grossly excessive use of force by police, who appeared primed for confrontation rather than de-escalation, it is protesters who have been pursued relentlessly by the policing and judicial systems. No action has been taken against any police officers involved.

My own complaint of being assaulted, without provocation, by police has so far received no response from the VicPol internal investigations unit; even a FoI request for details of its progress will take “an average 35 weeks” for a response. So much for the “different ways police can be held accountable”.

In 2025, Bob Brown’s successful Franklin River blockade would be policed and jailed to a standstill.

While not on the scale of of Scott Morrison in the game of who can hold the most ministerial positions, Anthony Albanese with his portfolios of prime minister and minister for missed opportunities is on the way.

While on the path to US-style dubious democracy and kingship in Australia, there are far too many significant decisions outside Parliament, mandate or no mandate. Committing Australian troops to overseas wars should never happen without a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Any expenditure over a billion is another thing should require Parliamentary debate at the very least.

Unless each election is turned into the equivalent of of a referendum eg if you vote for us we will build a fast rail from Melbourne to Canberra via Sydney, there is no mandate. Vote for us and we will improve rail services does not qualify as a mandate.

Even tax reform doesn’t qualify as a mandate to introduce a GST. It does, however, give the winning party the obligation to introduce a tax reform bill for the Parliament to debate and vote on.

Mandates like Opposition are political furphies used to muddy the political waters. By labelling up to half of the non-government parliamentarians as the Opposition, we, in effect, devalue each individual’s vote in non-government winning electorates.

I agree that every decision from the toilet paper up needs to be debated in the Parliament but committing Australian troops to overseas wars and extreme spending must be debated and should not be covered by the term mandate.

Each elected member is entitled to put through the views of their electorate

Then there are the party and question time rules.

The most recent federal election results for the Greens, losing the able voices of reason of Adam Bandt and Max Chandler-Mather from the House of Representatives, is a tragedy.

The media “dancing on their graves” and claiming their policies are too extreme is a disgrace.

The Australian Greens is the only party which has morally supportable policies on

• Palestine/Israel, (Unequivocal condemnation of genocide and support for international law);
• Climate change (the greatest moral challenge of our generation);
• Refugees and asylum-seekers;
• AUKUS (withdraw from this hugely costly surrender of sovereignty to the US); and
• an independent (from the US) foreign policy (particularly on China, our major trading partner).

In Peter Sainsbury’s very fine article, he noted that only two of the 29 new Labor caucus members saw the environment and climate as a priority for the next three years. Yet, “Labor still believes that being better than the other mob is enough”, he wrote.

No, it isn’t enough. Labor needs to be a lot better than the Coalition who, at federal level, have no environmental credentials at all. In the recent past, of course, Matt Kean, now chief executive of the Climate Change Authority, was a beacon of light when it came to climate action within the NSW Parliament. We have not seen his likes again in either major party, although we have within the Greens, Teals and Independents people like Senators Helen Haines and David Pocock.

With the approval of the North West Shelf extension by Environment Minister Murray Watt, Labor extinguished most of its claims to environmental credibility. Energy Minister Chris Bowen isn’t doing too badly in his portfolio in terms of reducing domestic emissions, but all his good work is countered by the continued opening of fossil fuel mines and the export of their products. Let’s hope the crossbench will hold Labor more to account.

Just a few words of gratitude for your article about the issues surrounding Israel, Zionism, the Gaza conflict etc. I wish more people could see through what is really happening.

As climate warnings grow ever more strident, as carbon pollution intensifies and icecaps melt, a dystopian future seems inevitable. There is so much that governments could do – eg charge higher royalties for fossil fuel companies to contribute to the cost of repairing climate damage; increase regulations on agricultural pollution and run-offs to better protect our oceans and reefs. In tolerating environmental degradation our governments are steadily killing life on our planet.

There is much concern for tipping points – those limits which, once breached, make damaging change unstoppable. These represent existential threats now imminent; the absence of any will, from our own and other governments, to genuinely reverse the damage which brings these points closer leads to resignation to the inevitability of climate disaster.

This is why the notion of positive tipping points is so valuable: building changes in societal attitudes and behaviours (eg EV take-up, solar power) which help restore healthy environment, and can foster the adoption of new social norms and expectations. These changes to norms and expectations can in turn lead to more fundamental changes in government policy.

Targeting positive tipping points as common climate goals could help pull humanity forward towards a sustainable future.

The same applies exactly in Australia. My letter to all mainstream media in Australia follows. Only Crikey published it.

And so the Australian Government, supine to the US as usual, after deferring, now announces support for the US bombings in Iran, actions clearly contrary to international law.

Article 2(4) of the 1945 UN Charter states: “Prohibition of Force: Members must refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the UN’s purposes.”

Evidence for Iran developing nuclear weaponry is very weak. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been making the charge that such development is imminent since 1992. Iran has declared no intention of it developing such, and indeed has placed a fatwa on their possession. The recent IAEA inspection was a long way short of saying that they were doing so. The only nuclear weaponry held in the Middle East is that held illegally, therefore not subject to IAEA inspections, by Israel.

Australia — from Vietnam to Iraq and now to Iran — in supporting the actions of the US, has consistently abrogated its responsibility.

Like Refaat Ibrahim, I am appalled by the way the “Western world” not only looks away, but enables Israel to commit genocide in Gaza. I have been passionately crusading on behalf of Palestine, my initial interest aroused by a founding member of the Israeli Air Force, a South African-born man, who left Israel in total disgust at the country’s behaviour. This was the in the late 1970s to early 1980s.

What irks me about Refaat’s article is his selectivity about previous genocides. My question is, why only mention what the Germans did in Namibia and Tanzania? Surely the Belgian genocide in Congo, the death toll of India under British rule — 120 million according to Shashi Tharoor — the genocide of Indigenous Australians, Northern Americans, France in Algeria, the Dutch in Indonesia may at least have been mentioned.

In other words, it reduces the notion of “genocide” to one foul nation, the Germans, as though European colonialism was not in effect one large escapade of genocide, a notion perpetuated in 1948 when European countries, to appease their guilt at their centuries of pogroms, created another European colonial outpost, at the expense of people who had lived in peace with Jews for centuries.

The headline and last words of Jamal Kanj’s piece on the lethal shooting of unarmed, starving Palestinians are chilling. “Firing squads” and “Gaza assassination trap” are shocking phrases, as is Haaretz’s “Killing Field”. They’re what we need after being numbed by Israel’s relentless mantras of “the most moral army in the world”, “we were targeting Hamas militants”, and “the IDF will investigate”.

It’s a wonder that there are enough personnel to produce the hundreds (or is it thousands?) of reports into deadly incidents involving Israeli forces. One report that we really need is an analysis and exposé of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Who are its investors? Who are the power-brokers? Who are the profit-takers? They need to be stripped of their anonymity and put to shame.

How can one write an article criticising full-scale institutional failure inside Australia’s peak cultural agency, Creative Australia, without mentioning the trigger for the turmoil that unfolded?

The Zionist lobbyists complained about the selection of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives for the 2026 Venice Biennale.

Just like at the ABC, there must have been initial letters of complaint.

Julian Leeser, that well-known Liberal Party Zionist, stirred the pot, but who provided the initial complaint?

Unfortunately, the area where governments have been least effective is the one where they are now most needed. The area where they have failed time and time again – regulation.

Under globalisation they have let Australia and Australians down. While governments have been snuggling up to their capitalist masters, untaxed profits have been rising and disappearing overseas. Services have been becoming more and more substandard due to a lack of funding and little or no regulation.

The few regulators left are ineffectual and constantly under threat from the media and government. Puppets of governments are reliant on capitalist funding to get re-elected, playing the nothing to see here game.

The nightly news is full of Trump, Ukraine, Gaza etc nothing to fix here. Well, there is!

Fred Zhang, among many of the excellent points made in his article, makes the call that the ABC, as our national broadcaster, has fallen well short of its job to be impartial — displaying obvious bias — and has failed at its job to state the facts of both sides of a conflict.

With such obvious failures in the ABC’s journalistic duties and severe self-inflicted damage to its integrity, it would be easy to imagine that our ABC has been bought by Disney; but no, that’s America’s ABC.

Are we at the point where nothing will surprise us regarding the hypersonic dive of journalistic standards in this country, that we find ourselves reconciling that it’s not “if”, but “when”?