Archives: Letters to the Editor

It would be great if Bruce Dover could suggest a few online English language news services in neighbouring countries that he considers to be good to follow.

Jeffrey Sachs reveals the extent of the chicanery in the Israel Iran longstanding war. But there is an aspect of the Israeli and US aeroplane attacks on Iran which seems to have sailed under the radar.

Israel must have flown through Jordanian or Iraqi (even Syrian) airspace to reach Iran, while the US could have attacked from the Persian Gulf, but also seems to have overflown either Jordan or Iraq, as the B2s reportedly came from the west.

My understanding is that Iraq-Iran relations are quite good. So did the Jordanian and Iraqi Governments approve the overflights?

I have asked both ambassadors here but have not yet had a reply.

Senator Wong,

I have written on several previous occasions urging your independence, strength and influence inside Cabinet to serve our country’s interest on issues such as the AUKUS disaster, our high-risk reliance on, and hosting of, US defence, and the urgency to improve relationships with our Asian neighbours.

Labor’s win in the last election should not be taken as a source of “steady as we go” comfort. It should be heeded as a call to act as a “true Labor” Government, guided by the values and courage of leaders such as Curtin, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating. That is not happening! Instead, the public’s great gift is being squandered and the limp reputation of the first Albanese term continues.

Given the precarious state of world peace and sustainability, reference emerging to “dithering” leadership should remind the prime minister, the minister for defence and yourself (the minister so many of us have invested as a source of hope, grounded values and skilled diplomacy) of the calibre of international representation the public expected with its votes.

For heaven’s sake, overcome the politics that continue to inspire trite, “mealymouthed” vacuity; seize the moment, rise to its terrible challenges.

This might help inform Brian Toohey on Iran’s democracy.

I recall Iran being prevented from exporting its enriched uranium by the sanctions Trump introduced.

Perhaps CEO’s wages and bonuses should be linked to the wages of their highest middle management employee and that percentage should be reflected all the way through the chain.

Apart from being more equitable and transparent, it would save on strikes and time and money spent in arbitration discussing wages, conditions and bonuses. It could also be applied to Parliamentarians and public servants.

Bruce Duncan’s articles do not mention the pachyderm in Francis’ papal palace: child sexual abuse. To give Francis credit, in 2019 he abolished the pontifical secret over child sexual abuse, thus putting to an end, at least on paper, to the cover-up written into canon law from 1922 to 2019. I say, on paper, because Francis continued what he called “office confidentiality” of canonical proceedings.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended in its 2017 Final Report that the Holy See should publish its disciplinary decisions and their reasons, while accepting that the identity of the victims should remain confidential.

The response of the Holy See in 2020 was that the abolition of the pontifical secret allowed publication of such decisions and this would be decided on a case-by-case basis. The Holy See also said that it had an obligation to protect the reputations of all persons involved in canonical proceedings. “All persons” includes the perpetrators.

And that is exactly what its “case by case” basis has meant. The Holy See only publishes its disciplinary decisions, when the proverbial has already hit the press fan. The cover-up continues under another name.

What a magnificent statement about our strategic and defence situation Jack Waterford’s article is! It highlights the sickness in our democracy. It is not just Americans who don’t want a king, but rather robust public debate and an effective system of checks and balances on executive power, and input, which is listened to, into that power.

At the moment we the people have to suffer the Joh Bjelke-Petersen DYWAT style of government: “Don’t you worry about that”, otherwise called the mushroom syndrome.

David Spratt makes it clear that we have a whole aria of canaries singing their last in the climate coalmine. Climate scientists see the risk; climate activists encourage effective policy. But nothing will be achieved without committed government action.

This crisis is evolving rapidly; time to stem its impact is short. In the absence of government action, government inaction represents an alternative action decision.

Theories why Labor’s first government was reluctant to take substantial action on our changing climate include political timidity and political caution; the power of fossil fuel lobbyists and donations were others. Labor’s thumping majority in their second term should remove their need for timidity or caution, though the fossil fuel industry’s influence will remain. Perhaps there is a further factor which could contribute to Labor’s continuing underwhelming climate response: an absence of real concern.

To arrest our climate and environmental decline, we need scientifically defensible environmental protection laws, no more oil and gas projects — new projects or extensions — and policies which support and deliver environmental outcomes as close as we can now get to our Paris commitments and to UNIPCC requirements. And we need, above all, a government concerned enough to make these happen.

I don’t know what the statistics tell us about Australia, but I’m pretty sure Australians don’t want to go marching in lockstep with the US off to yet another illegal war.

They don’t want to make our country go broke buying or building submarines that will be obsolete before they arrive and will probably never be delivered.

They also don’t want to keep handing more land/bases over to the US for target practice.

Australians don’t want to be in the frontline when the elephants fight and our grass is damaged. I’m sure that Australians are disappointed with the performance of a government with a large majority that once again caves in to the media and an almost non-existent Opposition and failed to loudly condemn Israel and the US over the Gazan genocide and their Illegal strikes in Iran.

It is time for Anthony Albanese to speak up, nay shout out, for Australia and consign Richard Marles, his Stars and Stripes underwear and his “make America great again” hat to the backbench with his golf clubs, the submarines and defence spending.

Make Australia multicultural again. Trade with China, don’t fight for America.

I cannot readily recall Mr Eslake advocating for redress of the GST distribution inequities affecting Western Australia prior to the implementation of the No-worse-off guarantee. To contextualise his present commentary, the accompanying table illustrates Western Australia’s proportional return from its substantial contributions to federal revenue in the decade prior:

| Financial Year | WA | NSW | VIC |
| ————– | —— | —— | —— |
| 2009–10 | $0.70 | $0.86 | $0.94 |
| 2010–11 | $0.65 | $0.85 | $0.95 |
| 2011–12 | $0.60 | $0.84 | $0.96 |
| 2012–13 | $0.55 | $0.83 | $0.97 |
| 2013–14 | $0.50 | $0.82 | $0.98 |
| 2014–15 | $0.38 | $0.81 | $0.99 |
| 2015–16 | $0.30 | $0.80 | $1.00 |
| 2016–17 | $0.30 | $0.79 | $1.01 |
| 2017–18 | $0.34 | $0.88 | $1.07 |
| 2018–19 | $0.47 | $0.86 | $0.97 |

The disparity becomes particularly egregious given that the NSW Government appears incapable of delivering any infrastructure project larger than erecting a STOP sign without attendant allegations of corruption or ineptitude.

Poor thing, Donald. I quite enjoyed him as a candidate. I was often reminded of Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s “feeding the chooks” when describing his news conferences. Never have I watched a greater player of the media than Donald.

Then he got elected only to have President Putin call his bluff in Ukraine and President Xi call his bluff on tariffs. Fortunately for Donald, along comes Netanyahu, the Zionist lobby and his own select advisers to explain that this one’s easy. We can make you great again. Just bomb Iran.

When was the last time that lot got it right?

I note the article by Tom Hussain on Iran’s options. Will Iranians be guided by their tenth century epic poet Hakim Ferdowsi, who wrote:

“چو ایران مباشد تن من مباد

بدین بوم و بر زنده یک تن مباد

اگر سر به سر تن به کشتن دهیم

ازآن به که کشور به دشمن دهیم

“If there is no Iran, let my body not be;

If only one live body is in this world, let it be me.

If we put head to head and body to slaughter,

Let it be to protect our homeland from the enemy.”

Let us hope it doesn’t come to that, despite our national government, the Opposition, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and a highly trained lawyer like Sir Keir Starmer consigning international law and the UN Charter to the dustbin of history.

As an aside, Penny Wong has had nearly 52,500 letters or emails on Gaza, an FOI request reveals.

[Ferdowsi’s poem courtesy of profarsi.com]

Let’s see if I have got this right: Australia fails to condemn the US attacks on Iran despite them being a clear breach of international law.

However, when Iran attacks US bases in response, Australia condemns Iran although, in this instance, it seems to me, that there is a case to be made by Iran under international law for an action in self-defence.

It tortures language beyond its capacity to suggest that the G7 “was always a group of like-minded states that promoted liberal democratic values and supported democratic policy actions”.

Several of the countries involved, not excluding that US, have long since become oligarchies that rarely, if ever, reflect democratic values. Indeed, the US drafters of their Constitution deliberately set out, as they explained themselves, to limit democracy as far as they could.

Public opinion poll after public opinion poll reflect what vanishingly small effect public opinion has on public policy. Democracy in the US is generally a performative art designed to control the “bewildered herd”.

If nothing else, King Trump has proven that tariffs have minimal impact on big business and once again the general population pays the bill.

One way or the other, the average person pays, be it as an increase in insurance premiums, property being uninsurable, an increase in taxes/government spending to carry out the disaster repairs/relief, homelessness bought on by their homes being burnt down, flooded or generally unlivable.

The further down the food chain one is, the less likely you are to benefit/survive the horsemen of the Apocalypse, let alone the fifth and most dangerous horseman, capitalism, which was unknown during Biblical times, but ever present now.

As always with Greg, this is an exemplar of clear and careful analysis mixed with forthright conclusions. It draws attention again to the nonsense retailed by the West of a “rules-based order” that has no written and universally shared set of rules outside that which is confected daily to be necessary to provide a cover for the continual breach of the rules that have been established by the world community through international law, by the dying Western empire.

Make no mistake, there is no relationship between the fatuous twaddle of the “rules-based order” and the reality of that international law. We are rapidly reaching a point where the 85% of humanity that do not get a say in making the rules in this “rules-based order” are openly identifying the self-interest of the West in making the rules and they are refusing to be bound by them!

Andrew Thomas has the gall to tell us how to bring about regime change in Iran and quotes that bastion of moral genocide, Netanyahu, to reinforce his righteousness.

Even more “wow” is that P&I publishes this example of how the Western world, led by a country not at war for just 17 years of its history, considers it has the right to determine who is allowed to rule a country anywhere in the world.

Thomas seems unaware that it was British/US meddling — the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 — that gave birth to subsequent regimes, and that implicit in his article is the assumption that Israel and the US have a God-given right to determine who rules Iran. He also seems to have amnesia about the most salient fact, that Israel has been making war on Palestinians – Deir Yassin and the other 530 villages wiped out in 1948, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iran since then.

Oh, I know, Israel rules from the river to the sea, ask Thomas’s hero, Netanyahu, but let us forget about that, let’s change the rulers of Iran to please him. And, please, don’t mention the bastion of sanity – Trump.

Halfway through Fred Zhang’s apt exposé of the modus operandi of News Corps’ agitprop rabble-rousing with regard to China, he rightly asks: “Where is the discussion about diplomacy, multilateralism, or economic interdependence as part of national resilience?” Good question.

But that leads to the question: “Where is diplomacy?” Bloated, over-reaching major political parties with a “trust us” outlook won’t be too interested in reminding us that state-crafting responsibilities, also for international relations, are inherent in our citizenship. “Trust us” too often shows itself with appointments to important ambassadorial posts – where are the open statements of policy by these privileged parties about how they will shape diplomatic service and remain accountable to electors for so doing? Or are we to assume that diplomacy is “merely politics”?

Former prominent parliamentarians may sometimes be best fitted for posts but why does it so often seem like a sinecure – a job for a senior party member who has had to be induced to “move sideways”? How then should training for a reformed diplomatic service proceed? Thanks for raising this, Fred.

Replying to the press gallery about cancelled meetings with Trump, Anthony Albanese should say: “He has his country to run and I have mine, we are both busy.

“I look forward to him taking time out of his busy schedule to ring me sometime and I will answer if I am not otherwise engaged running Australia.”

There was a time when learning Indonesian was a priority and defence against Indonesia was taught at our military academy and it still should be.

With a large population living on an archipelago under the threat of climate crisis and rising seas, the time may well come when the Indonesians are looking for somewhere safe to go and the already crowded North doesn’t appear an option.

While male Anglo puppet governments in Australia continue with their US/Murdoch-promoted China fixation, the lemmings march ever onward towards the cliffs.

Eugene Doyle raises serious issues in his article, including Chinese access to oil. If we look back 84 years, Pearl Harbour was the result of the US cutting off Japanese oil supplies among other things. (Japan had been behaving badly in China for eight years, but I doubt that was the primary rationale for the embargo).

Does the US want to provoke a war with China? Is it aiming to secure control of Iranian oil? It seems that Donald Trump’s access to intel on Iranian uranium enrichment is superior to that of US security agencies, well, given Tulsi Gabbard’s current recantation. This volte-face has quite rightly stirred Caitlin Johnstone to fury. In this context John Mearsheimer’s interview with Judge Napolitano recalls the deceptions practised on us by our politicians in 2002-3.

The current crop of leaders must not be allowed to deceive us again and lead us into a wider war involving the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

MAGA USA highlights two problems. To an extent, Australia’s under-appreciated electoral system protects us from outcomes caused by the problematic US system. But we’re heading down the same fraught educational disparity path, as spelled out by Don and Patricia Edgar. This can only end badly for Australia.

The absence of adequate supports and facilities that deter some of our better teachers from working in more challenging environments is obvious. But for some schools it also means additional funding to overcome the accidents of birth that hamper some children’s chances of learning, such as poverty and family history of inadequate formal education. As a minimum, *all* children should leave school being literate, numerate and able to think clearly and critically.

So, bring on tax reform, from a less flat personal income tax structure, to multinationals paying fair tax in Australia, to reducing, even stopping, subsidies for those who don’t need them.

Additionally, to hugely wealthy philanthropists I say… thank you for what you do, but please consider education beyond your old school tie. Your name on a currently impoverished primary school could have far more impact on future generations than your much appreciated support for the arts, hospitals and medical research.

Qualifying for enrolment at religious schools requires a demonstration of commitment. In other words, religion has become a requirement for receiving a well-funded education – a clear breach of Section 116 of the Constitution, that says, “The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance.. ” Any religion or religious observance!

The Commonwealth funding of religious schools also works against laws concerning multiculturalism and discrimination. It is currently funding schools that entrench mistrust of other religions, creating biased beliefs that will divide our society for years to come.

To make matters worse, it has created an inefficient education system that prohibits proper planning and resource allocation – not to mention a costly transport problem, whereby children have to be subsidised to travel to distant schools, with all the extra traffic congestion and carbon pollution that creates. In a word, it is insanity.

The question of the funding of media outlets and the impact of funding on bias and credibility is a basic and critical one that can help us discern media bias and war propaganda. It surprises me that it is not one raised by Joseph Camilleri, who writes, “According to the thorough and regularly updated analysis conducted by Mediazona in collaboration with BBC News Russian Service…”

A recent article in The Grayzone  (“BBC’s ‘independent’ Russian partner begged UK govt for funds”) points out that Mediazona was founded in 2014 by members of Pussy Riot and that “leaked documents indicate that between 2020 and 2023, Mediazona was in line for vast, secret grants for anti-Kremlin agitation from the British Foreign Office”.

On Ukrainian vs Russian military casualties, the P&I article presents Mediazona, the BBC, and Ukrainian war correspondent Yuri Butusov’ as credible sources, failing to mention that Butusov is a member of the Ukrainian National Guard.

A genuinely anti-war commentator is former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, who estimates that “Ukraine’s casualties exceed Russia’s by a factor of 10”.

What is the truth? For peace, we must search hard for it whenever the discourse steers us towards accepting perpetual proxy wars.

Rarely has the chasm between “economic modelling” and reality been more spectacular than in the prognostications of climate economists. William Nordhaus won a Nobel prize for work which included the assumption that the 85% of economic activity which occurs indoors will be unaffected by climate change.

The summary graph in Richard Tol’s recent meta-analysis, presented to us by Peter Sainsbury, is further evidence of the utter failure of climate economic modelling: any secondary school science student knows that at six degrees of global warming, there will be no meaningful economic activity at all – yet Tol’s line of best fit suggests a mere 7% reduction in living standards at that unliveable level. No mention of tipping points. No mention of the cumulative impact of change over time.

This would be risible if it were not so serious. Policymakers are rarely scientists, so they have depended upon the work of climate economists (rather than scientific experts) to guide the urgency and scope of our climate responses. Which, not surprisingly, have been and remain grossly inadequate.

I find it quite astonishing that Andrew Thomas, a lecturer in Middle East Studies, repeats one of the most mendacious and persistent claims about Iran — that it has a nuclear weapons program — at this most dangerous of moments when the US and Israel have launched an unprovoked and totally illegal attack on several of Iran’s nuclear installations.

Not only does he repeat this false claim, thereby sharing responsibility for the escalating war, but he builds a story and case around “regime change” and the “removal” of Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, as if such a discussion were reasonable and legitimate – with this case supported by the equally false claims that Iranians don’t support their government.

My distaste at Thomas’ article is tempered considerably by the article from Greg Barns, to whom he might refer for some advice – not only is “pre-emptive bombing” against international law, but so is assassination and regime change. We might notice also that there is now overwhelming evidence that former president Raisi and foreign minister Abdollahian were the first of Israel’s victims when their helicopter crashed unexpectedly a year ago, triggering and facilitating everything that followed.

Oil Change International is right – with our vast coal and gas exports, Australia is a petro-state. Our hypocrisy in pretending to be a climate leader via a bid to host COP31 in 2026 is disappointing.

But the bigger frustration is that we could be an electro-state, and we’re squandering that opportunity because our leaders keep pandering to the fossil fuel lobby.

Until environment ministers stop approving new coal and gas projects, our credibility with Pacific nations and other global climate leaders will remain weak.

A provocative title. But one with an undeniable truth at its core.

Whilst almost all Zionists are Jews, the converse is most definitely not the case. Given the inhumane, racist and genocidal actions of the imposed Jewish settler state since 1948, being a Zionist isn’t something about which an empathetic and decent human being can be proud.

Indeed, the Zionists are quick to brand any critic of Israel’s actions as antisemitic. This ensures that the messenger is shot before the message is read. Such criticism is then immediately dismissed as antisemitism, inherently racist, and so of no value.

This rebranding is an established marketing ploy. Take a negative and the product’s spin doctor will simply lie and turn it into a positive. Raghid’s article clearly demonstrates this. Zionists will tell you that history only began 2025 years ago, conveniently forgetting that the antecedents of the Palestinian population resided in what was Palestine some 3500 years ago, long before the occupation and dispossession in 1948.

So why not refocus the debate and call out the Zionists by labeling them as the true antisemites?

The words from the Universities Australia definition of antisemitism: “For most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity” fail to acknowledge that many who define themselves as Zionist are horrified at what Israel has done to Palestinians.

Instead, those words will be used to imply that they all support anything Netanyahu might decide to do.

I have read many posts and articles by Jewish Australians that say they are Zionist because they support the existence of Israel, not because they support the slaughter of Palestinians.

We should also remember the Christian Zionists who have a range of specific beliefs, but can be openly antisemitic. Some would like to force Jewish people to migrate to Israel to trigger the Rapture.

Christian Zionists are numerous and very powerful in the US and a critical reason why US politicians are very cautious about criticising Israel.

Regardless of the efficacy of Albanese’s stated positions at the NPC, I agree with John Menadue. But Patrick Gourley noted something in his article about the weasel words and waffle that has now become a staple of political oratory on both sides of politics. While Dutton’s speech and delivery was completely boring and moribund, the PM’s speech was laced with this rubbish.

I’m sick of hearing politicians and others talk about “actively responding” or “actively listening”. Sorry, but what the hell does that mean? Is it assuring the targeted audience that they are not “inertly listening” or “inactively” doing something? It’s as ludicrous as the statement “lived experience”. Show me someone who has “dead experience” and I’ll accept the former as valid.

Equally worthy of the BS label are the usual; “reach out”, use of the word “cohort” repeatedly, calling everything a “space” (attention: NASA, “how’s things in the ‘space space’”), businesses being “shuttered” (what the hell was wrong with “shut” or “closed”?).

My late dad, who was well-read, theorised that it was just a way of weak management, setting themselves apart as some sort of club, to intimidate or confuse. Being a bonafide leader, he never used that crap.