Archives: Letters to the Editor

Once again the chimera of a two-state solution is raising its head in Palestine. And as usual, Israeli approval is deemed essential.

The current configuration of the state of Israel has, or so is my understanding, neither a constitution nor declared national boundaries. The lack of a constitution may not be a problem since Israel already has diplomatic relations with many countries.

The lack of declared national boundaries may be another matter. How can a state without boundaries cut away a portion of the land it occupies and claims and declare it a sovereign state belonging to another? And this before the new entity was even recognised as being legally part of the original entity?

This idea will be sent to another committee, whether in the UN or elsewhere. There it will be debated and deferred. The two-state solution is more distraction than solution. It’s a chimera.

Your correspondent has two problems: (i) the IHRA definition which falsely declares criticism of Israel is antisemitic, trashing the memory of the Holocaust (imagine if we couldn’t criticise Germany because it’s anti-Germanic) and (ii) the abundance of evidence of genocide that’s available pretty much in real time.

We see the dead bodies, the razed homes, farms and infrastructure, hear evidence from humanitarian aid workers, hear Israel’s leaders, civilians, settlers urging the continuation of the slaughter. Most recently, aid getting in is negligible, roads to aid stations have been declared combat zones, aid stations have become IDF targets.

Why is Israel criticised so much when pretty horrific things are happening in other parts of the world? Because after the Holocaust “Never again!” became the catch-cry. Yet it is happening again, the perpetrators being descendents of Holocaust victims. The Palestinian “crime” is fighting to maintain homes and land in face of colonisation foisted on them primarily but not only by the British. The genocide is enabled by money and bombs provided by the US, supposed leaders of the “free world” and Australia’s closest ally.

Yes, we protest. And will until it stops.

Oh! Patricia Edgar, how I hope that Mr Albanese has a skerrick of what he learnt as a child still in his brain to help him come to his senses now. He has a son. What on earth are he and his team thinking? That it’s all “too hard” – not like the brave little engine. Thank you.

Further to Andrew Scott’s recent article, the long march of neoliberalism has witnessed greed transform from a vice into a virtue and the accumulation of extraordinary wealth is now considered the pinnacle of human achievement.

Following the global financial crisis, many neoliberal acolytes and disciples of laissez-faire economics admitted their entire intellectual edifice had collapsed. The corporate welfare solution of lucrative bailouts and quantitative easing was like feeding strawberries to a donkey and it merely transformed the protean elements of fascism into a dystopian paradigm of gangster capitalism.

Its trajectory and devastating consequences are evident throughout most advanced democracies with staggering inequality, widespread vagrancy, lawlessness, despair and anomie.

Meanwhile, Australia’s gross debt nudges towards $1 trillion and the global economy is nothing more than a gigantic festering Ponzi scheme and resembles a house of cards precariously constructed across estuarine mudflats.

However, cults never die and the Australian representatives on the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship advisory panel indicates plenty of unflushable turds remain on board the neoliberal gravy train. Indeed, with proselytes like this lurking around, who needs terrorists?

Raising concerns about the weaponisation of antisemitism isn’t the same as denying that antisemitism exists. It’s about questioning how the term is sometimes used to shut down legitimate discussions about human rights and foreign policy. That doesn’t mean all criticism is fair or balanced, but it does mean we should be able to talk about these issues without being accused of discrimination.

It’s also important to recognise that advocacy by Jewish groups, Palestinian groups, or anyone else, plays a role in shaping public debate. Highlighting the influence of lobbying, from any side, isn’t sinister. It’s part of understanding how policy is made. The key is to focus on actions and arguments, not assumptions about entire communities.

On the use of the word “genocide,” I know it’s a very serious term, but it has a legal definition that doesn’t rest on population numbers alone; it includes intent and systematic targeting. Whether that applies here is something international bodies continue to investigate. Dismissing those concerns outright can feel like closing the door on people who are trying to make sense of what they’re witnessing.

Scott Morrison wouldn’t hold a hose while the East Coast burnt. He wasn’t in a hurry to tackle COVID. He subsumed five federal portfolios without telling the ministers or the nation. He was widely despised for his style by his colleagues in the ABC Nemesis program.

He now works for American Global Strategies, a lobbying outfit that promotes the AUKUS defence fiasco.

He successfully launched a bottomless spend for Australi to reset national defence strategy based around a political wedge with the ALP.

Scotty is now working for America’s military industrial complex interests as a fully superannuated ex-prime minister.

Blow me down. Scotty gets an AO for his trouble and for his “leadership”. Can I have one too ? I am a voter who suffered his endless bluster and his pathetic political demise.

“..[Pete] Hegseth was in a fighting mood. ‘America is proud to be back in the Indo-Pacific – and we’re here to stay,’ he stated …”

Hegseth is too young to remember that the US fought an inglorious withdrawal to the 37th parallel in the Korean War, was defeated in the Vietnam War, was humiliated by the Taliban leading to a disastrous retreat from Afghanistan and has interfered in the politics of Iran, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan Taiwan, Korea and now India.

Maybe we will soon hear the cry of the 1950s in the Caribbean – “…Yankee, go home!”

A total of $917 billion was spent on the recent Elbit arms contract with Israel, $800 million (plus) handed over by Richard Marles earlier this year to the US for AUKUS (plus another $12 billion a year until we receive these hypothetical submarines).

But flood victims, you can have a $800 one-off payment to clean out your house, buy new beds, furniture, redo your plumbing and feed yourself: $800 to put you and your family’s life back on track.

We won’t contemplate an inquiry into the many insurance companies that were hoping to charge you a minimum $28,000 a year to insure your house and are the reason you’re not insured this time round.

One step away from homelessness and the $800 payment is all we can offer you.

John Menadue’s platform has become a staging ground for increasingly toxic screeds masquerading as foreign policy critique. Two recent pieces — “Weaponisation of Antisemitism…” and “We Must Confound the Zionist Lobby“— cross the line from criticism into crude conspiracy.

The claim that antisemitism is “weaponised” to silence debate collapses under scrutiny. Israel is one of the most criticised nations on earth – by the UN, media, academics, and NGOs. If there is a Zionist conspiracy to suppress criticism, it’s doing a remarkably poor job.

Every cause has its advocates, but only Jewish advocacy is routinely framed as shadowy or sinister. APAN openly lobbies and campaigns, yet no one questions its legitimacy. Why is Jewish lobbying uniquely suspect?

To call Israeli actions “genocide” while the Gazan population grows and Israel allows humanitarian aid undermines both credibility and the gravity of real genocides.

This is not critique – it is vilification cloaked in moral language. Singling out Zionist Jews as inherently unworthy of advocacy or belonging is not social justice. It is discrimination. And when mainstream platforms enable it, they corrode the very democratic values they claim to defend.

A great article from Ralph Nader, a man who ran four times to be US president himself.

We watch on in utter disbelief as UN Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea votes against a ceasefire in Gaza, knowing that that means more mass murders by Israeli forces, because US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he wants Hamas totally eliminated, so there is “not an ember”.

Firstly, I should say that I agree with Jocelyn about the guidance that Sun Tzu’s The Art of War could give to the West as it already does to China. A very good article that summarises well the issues confronting China and the region.

One area that I think may need further exploration is the progress that China made prior to “opening up”. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that Mao made some massive mistakes, I think it is also important to recognise the successes of that period.

In 1949, China’s life expectancy was 35 years. That put it three years above India when it achieved independence in 1947. By 1978, China’s life expectancy had risen to 67 whilst India’s had risen to 55. Chinese life expectancy grew by 32 years in 29 chronological years. That was the fastest rate of growth ever recorded in a major country.

Also its average economic growth was impressive at 4.9% for the 1950 to 1978 period. After “opening up”, that growth rate skyrocketed to 9.8% in the period from 1978 to 2014. While pre-1978 China had the Mao-imposed mistakes, that does not take away from these achievements.

I could not agree more with this letter. Unfortunately, less than two weeks into the new government, we are finding out why so many people had difficulty deciding whom to vote for and left it until the last minute to choose the best of a bad bunch.

The speed with which the WA gas contract was approved tells a story of how the WA votes were bought. With more to come, unfortunately.

Sadly, the old saying in politics — You can’t make changes if you’re not in government — only applies if you’re prepared to do something once you’re in government. The continued appointment of the minister for defence shows Labor already has one eye on the next election and the prims minister’s other eye is on his back.

Albo may well be lauded for this win, but he will be remembered as the leader who wasted two honeymoon periods.

Twice on AUKUS plus.

The prime minister reportedly said while visiting South Australia, “the truth is that there are more extreme weather events, and they’re more intense now. Science told us that that was the case. The science has been proven, unfortunately, to be playing out. The thing is that climate change is real and we need to respond to it. And we need, I think, to respond to it across the board. That’s why my government has a comprehensive plan to deal with climate change”.

If the government believes this statement, then surely the Australian public are being subjected to gaslighting about the “comprehensive plan”, when the scientific advice is to not open new fossil fuel mines/drilling sites, and to account for the impact of exported fossil fuels burnt overseas which impact the atmosphere around the globe.

The approval of the North West Shelf extension is unbelievable when the science says new drilling is damaging the planet; the PRRT on the corporate owners is minimal; and the environmental damage by climate change and the damage to the health of future generations are massive costs.

Our laws are not fit for purpose and require urgent change.

Every night on our TV news, a disproportionate amount of time is given to the share market.

Nothing could be more inflationary than the trading in shares that increase in worth without actually increasing the value of the company.

That worth is being increased by chief executives and boards in the pursuit of their personal bonuses. There have been many crashes when the value of shares has fallen back more in line with the actual worth of the assets.

Yet another example of where the rich get richer and the poor suffer no matter what as the rich sweep up after each crash and the poor lose their houses.

Ross Gittins lathers in Indigenous outrage over the (highly staged) Woodside decision, correctly noting it’s an absolute free-kick in tax/levy terms.

What he’s still not ready to countenance about this massively corrupt deal, what’s completely beyond Michael Keating’s article the day previous, is the unmentionable that net-zero itself is a historic scam, another glorious happy birthday for Australia’s political classes to have a big lend of hapless voters.

After three sainted decades of UN “climate action”, nearly a decade of their “net zero”, global population, emissions, CO2, temperatures keep rising. What a surprise!

I mean, all they’re saying is human brainiacs can heroically downsize carbon emissions A, upscale carbon captures B, Planet Earth will take on this inspirational geo-engineering no worries, and obligingly equate A minus B to 0. Eight (ten) billions of us, our trashed ecosphere, rescued.

That Earth battles to absorb half our emissions means nothing. Sometime in the 2040s, maybe, it’ll learn how to behave, emissions-charts will bend it like Beckham, there will be environmental rainbows. Now, back to the universal program of endless growth…

Peter Rodgers asked: whether, by repeating the statement that “[Israel] has used starvation as a weapon of war which Anthony Albanese, finally, has condemned as outrageous and completely unacceptable,” will there be any more substance to this fulmination?

As of 4 June, we have seen added to this generalised charge of inhumanity by the Zionist forces in Israel, the shooting of Palestinians at the GHD “distribution post” and a declaration by the IDF that Pa;estinians are not to use “roads” — such as they may be — to access the GHD distribution post.

So, Albo, you have direct evidence that the so-called “Israeli” humanitarian aid is, as in the words of one of the survivors of the GHD site shootings, “a death trap” for those who can traverse the mountains of rubble to which Gaza has been reduced by routes not being roads.

To be blunt: when will you get off your backside and bloody well actually do something to help those being macerated, starved, shot, burned, dying for lack of medical aid, and all the other horrors we can all see?

We are waiting, and we are impatient. Be warned.

I agree with Tess that the restrictions on accurate advertising, which would help potential clients in making wise choices of psychologists, are somewhat arcane and ridiculous. However, as a fellow trauma specialist with a Masters in Counselling and several other accompanying qualifications, when I developed a pamphlet of our services I was contacted by the Australian Psychological Society with an amazing draconian restriction.

They informed me that as I was not qualified as a psychologist I was not permitted to use the term “psychological” anywhere in our pamphlet. To be clear, I was not saying that I or any other workers in our agency were psychologists. Together with a clinical social worker, we replied that if they promised not to use the word “social” then we would promise not to use the word “psychological”!

I know that psychologists try to preserve their field of work at all costs, but frankly, that was ridiculous. We never did hear back from them!

The superannuation changes proposed by Dr Jim Chalmers, if carried, would result in taxation on earnings of superannuation accounts holding over $3 million dollars in assets.

The tax-transfer system in general is based on the household unit. The proposed changes would mean that a household with two superannuation accounts would be subject to a super account tax threshold of $6 million, whereas a household of two sharing one superannuation account would be subject to a threshold of $3 million.

This is not how the welfare system, or the pension system, works. Centrelink is absolutely rigid about enforcing household eligibility to access comparatively meagre social benefits. Why the lack of consistency?

If the objective is to discourage people from passing on their accumulated superannuation as inheritance, the changes proposed will do very little to meet this objective in many cases. Furthermore, it is likely to exacerbate wealth inequality in general, and among retirees in particular.

I am not a rich old man, but a retired one-person household whose super is unlikely to ever reach the $3 million threshold. Nonetheless, I believe good policy should meet the test of equity and social justice. Clearly, what is intended does not.

Julian Cribb is right to frame the provisional approval of the North West Shelf Extension in human rights terms. The project will add another 4.3 billion tonnes of carbon emissions to the atmosphere in the next 45 years, substantially adding to global warming and consequent extreme weather events.

This will have flow-on effects with respect to health and particularly food production, not least through seas flooding the major food producing deltas of the world. These include the Mekong delta in Vietnam which is a mere 84cms above current sea-level. If sea levels rise to between one and two metres by centuries end as anticipated, it will mean the end of all food production on the delta.

The story will be repeated in other deltas like the Nile and Ganges/Brahmaputra. Chaos is likely to ensue as people fight over food and fresh water.

Let’s just hope Environment Minister Murray Watt stops short and blocks final approval of the NW Shelf extension, not just for all the threatened species around Scott Reef where the next lot of mining for gas will take place, but for all humans around the world.

What excellent observations about Richard Marles. Our deputy PM appears to be more interested in the accoutrements of the job than in thinking clearly about issues of international security.

Appearing to be well-dressed is no substitute for respresenting his country. Step in to help him, Albo. He certainly needs it.

Murray Watt’s rapid, if preliminary, North West Shelf decision has apparently prioritised the short-term profits of global gas giants, and the jobs of 330 local employees, over securing the survival of rock art which has survived 60,000 years before Woodside’s arrival, and which was under active consideration for World Heritage listing.

It also overrides the threats posed to climate, and to future generations, by the methane that this project will emit. These, both detrimental to the national interest, suggest undue influence on government decision-making from Woodside.

The 1980s entrepreneur, John Spalvins, had a plaque saying “If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow”. Woodside have apparently secured the hearts and minds of both the federal and West Australian Governments through their lobbying and other influential means.

Waterford argues that it will be in the national interest for Woodside’s relationship with government to be examined by a Royal Commission to throw light on whether and how this undue influence has come about, and what it has delivered. Woodside’s interests do not match those of the nation.

Such a commission would be enlightening, but Woodside’s squirrel grip on both WA and federal policy-making render it unlikely to be called.

This article is true enough, but I cannot accept that the politicians are solely to blame.

They (politicians) are elected and are beholden to the voters, at least in Australia.

Politicians can try and educate the voter and make the best decisions for our future children, but the voters will rebel when they realise they are the ones who have to pay the price for a future that was not of their making with nothing to be gained from it.

A child born today will be able to vote in the year 2043 and will be a taxpayer till he or she is 75 in the year 2100.

We have covered our eyes for too long and continue to do so. History tells us we do nothing until it is forced upon us, so where does that leave us today and tomorrow?

It is hard for normal people to understand how Richard Marles, whose views would fit neatly into the right wing of the Liberal or National Parties, has not only found a home in Labor, but has risen to be our national deputy leader.

This is a Labor Party with very little relationship to that of the Labor greats like Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating. Marles is a profoundly mediocre man masquerading as a leader and a statesman. He is neither of those things as his ardent prostration and servility before a religious bigot and inebriate like Pete Hegseth clearly demonstrates.

Equally his embrace of a contract for nuclear submarines designed by its creator, the odious moral and intellectual midget Scott Morrison, to wedge the Labor Party and which is likely to bankrupt the country should it ever be delivered, suggests a man with limited intellectual and moral assets. Anthony Albanese is vastly diminished by his deputy, as is Australia.

It seems to me that George Browning has gone far beyond a fair criticism of political Zionism (including Christian Zionism), and the violence and racism of the Israeli state and elements of the population, into what I can only call a sneering, generalised theological putdown of Jews, Judaism, and constant salience of Jewish memory of the ancient land across communities for centuries, including in Europe.

There have been constant links across the centuries. And much more care should be taken into making assertions about Jewish belief in exclusivity, particularly in religious terms. It is highly disputed. All this in the context of a political dispute. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The article plays with supercessionist theology on Browning’s own part and implicit antisemitism – the Jews as a people, as a religion, are illegitimate, and his version of Zion is the right one. As far as I can see, he appears to take the same view as the Christian Zionists about Jews: they are to be overcome.

It is much more productive to work with the idea of destructive ethnonationalism as can be seen in other countries (the Balkans, Afrikaners and so one) and stay away from offensive theology and crude historisizing.

“Piketty’s conclusion is that capitalism, if left unchecked, generates a concentration of wealth among a tiny minority and this has manifested itself in America. Piketty further argues that merit or hard work, the standard justification for inequality, has little to do with what has been defined as the ‘new gilded age’. It has more to do with the nature of capitalism itself in which capital precedes labor, and where profit maximisation becomes the rational basis for human interaction and economic relationships. Piketty critiques the very structure and foundation of capitalism itself.”

I’ve just paid $300 to a medical specialist and the receptionist informed me that I will get $68 back from Medicare. Aren’t I lucky to be living under a neoliberal medical system just like the good old US?

“The decisions [to adopt the IHRA definition] were made from above as might be expected in a corporation by the board and the chief executive and just imposed from on high.”

But isn’t this what our universities have become? With government funding cuts — who can forget in particular PM Morrison’s contempt for education? — universities are now corporate-like entities. Free and rigorous thinking and debate are incompatible with reliance on donors who want specific outcomes. In this context, the government is just another donor, wanting to satisfy its lobbyists and donors. The pro-Israel, “Israel can do no wrong”, cohort has shown its power and influence.

The pity of it is, in abusing the memory of the Holocaust, refusing to accept that the nation of Israel ”can” do wrong as we see 24/7, tying all that is good about Jews and Judaism to genocide, makes for a less rather than more safe world for all of us.

If universities want us to believe that they are still rigorous academic institutions, they would do well to speedily revisit their decision to adopt the IHRA definition and stop penalising peaceful pro-Palestine demonstrators – who include many Jewish people.

Thank you Henry for drawing attention to the paradox inherent in the article you wrote.

One of the starkest idiocies inherent in the panicked response of university administrators is the implicit invitation to consider Jewish students who oppose the developing genocide in Gaza as “non-Jews” thereby creatIng the notion that Jewish students demonstrating against the Netanyahu Government’s policy are somehow implicitly converted into “antisemites”!

Reminds me of the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza from Jewish philosopher into pariah “non-Jew”, an interesting footnote being the Israeli rehabilitation of Spinoza as a great Jewish thinker by retrospectively reversing his banishment from his Jewish community.

Does the universities’ desire to protect Jewish students from “antisemitic’ protests mean that Jews who condemn what is happening in Gaza at the moment are now regarded as apostates — like Spinoza — and no longer protected from the antisemitism which would have consigned them to the Nazi definitions which would have consigned them to the death camps too?

I recently attended a performance of the “Armed Man” and for the first time noted the sequence of the music with a background montage of wars that have been fought all in the name of some God or other.

The thing that struck me early in the performance was the Sanctus sanctifying the motive for war, the men sent to war believing in its sanctity and prepared to pay its price of sacrifice.

Towards the end, the Benedictus offered neat rows of pure white crosses as a memorial to stupidity. Why do we persist in it?

My congratulations to Scott Burchill for his incisive and elegant condemnation of the monster that Zionist Israel has become, or has now exposed itself as being all along. There are different views on when Israel became such a nightmare state, and it really is not important now except to historians.

The facts are that Zionist Israel now is the state that Burchill rightly condemns for its moral emptiness. It is unparalleled in modern history for its acts of cruelty, and that Israel has thereby lost its right to a future as a state. Retribution for its unparalleled cruelties awaits the state of Israel and those who act in its name.

My sincere thanks also to P&I for publishing such an important essay and making it their number one selection today. This sends an important message to all Australians of conscience.

Stewart Sweeny’s article should be microchipped and injected into the buttock (left or right) of every federal candidate before the next election. Tough times are coming, and we need to take measures that some will find tough. Eternal tinkering simply wastes national time, money and energy. Policy risks need coherent explanation, but first we must acknowledge their real-world existence, lest public policy debate continue its current path of infantile game playing and party bickering.

TAFE is a prime example. Here we are amidst a world-wide technological/industrial/employment revolution of a magnitude not seen since the first coal-fired boiler began spitting steam. National productivity and innovation will determine our future national living standards. So, what do Australia’s leaders do but chant “Fee-free TAFE’’ and look smug.

TAFE’s structures, learning methodologies and course content date largely from the 1950s. Incremental tinkering will suit the current crop of TAFE managers and federal/state/local bureaucrats, but it will do bugger all for equity, productivity and our future well-being.