Archives: Letters to the Editor

Many Australians may agree with Barb Dadd’s views on Syria as they have been pushed by the mainstream media for 14 years. However, that should not be a reason to give them an airing on P&I when John Menadue, P&I’s founder, has made a point of wanting to “tackle the issues swept aside by mainstream media”. He wrote, “Consistently, Pearls and Irritations publishes informed analysis and commentary on issues that matter to Australians…”

If you google “Pearls and Irritations + Syria”, you will find a long list of articles on Syria by analysts such as Dr Jeremy Salt (former Melbourne University academic and author of The Unmaking of the Middle East); Seymour Hersh (veteran investigative journalist); Jeffrey Sachs (Professor of Sustainable Development, Columbia University); Aaron Maté (investigative journalist and author); Chris Ray (journalist who has written for SMH’s Good Weekend on Syria); Rick Sterling (journalist whose interview with Peter Ford, a former UK ambassador to Syria, was recently published by P&I); Kevork Almassian (an Armenian Syrian analyst and podcaster); and Sawsan Madina (former head of SBS Television).

Since December 2022, I have also had articles on Syria published by P&I. I take the task of writing on Syria for P&I very seriously, invariably spending days doing research and checking sources. The editors welcomed references, so I included hyperlinks in my articles.

Does Dadd’s article indicate that P&I is no longer interested in publishing genuine, independent analysis on Syria? I hope not, especially when the people of Syria are now being led by the former head of al-Qaeda in Syria, when Syria is carved up, and when Christians, Alawites, Shia and members of other minorities are being slaughtered by the takfiri groups aligned with the interim president’s regime. Sunni Muslims, who publicly oppose the massacres of civilians, are being killed as well.

These are dangerous times. We desperately need a publication like P&I to offer an alternative to the mainstream media, and so to point out the lies that keep taking our country into catastrophic, illegal wars. Professor Sachs refers to them as “phoney wars”, ones that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu urged America to wage. Will Australia soon follow the US and Israel into a war against Iran — without any substantial opposition — because we are so poorly served by our media?

We desperately need P&I to stay true to John Menadue’s vision.

Most of the social problems we now face in this country have slowly evolved since the rise of neoliberalism. I say slowly evolved because neoliberalism has profited by leaching the fat from government-built projects of the past e.g the PMG, Telstra and the NBN. How many times can one government-built institution be sold off? (I’m told the retrieval of the copper PMG network is still profitable) How many times can these privatised companies come back with their hands out to fix no reception black spots?

In South Australia, the them LNP premier bought a variety of electricity supply companies which were in government hands largely because regional South Australia couldn’t get reliable electricity supplies from small local generators. Then they were sold off and now once again we are talking about how to fund power stations and power distribution, and renewables and nuclear are a smokescreen in the discussion. The real discussion is why the private owners aren’t funding these projects. Under neoliberalism, they should be .

What we have is a hybrid neoliberalism where the government funds infrastructure and the capitalists profit until the inevitable upgrade is required. Then the government has to step in again.

Take a long look at the Whyalla story and its history in South Australia. Who built what, who really profited? We are now in the “it can’t afford to fail” government handout phase .

Then look into the stories around social housing in South Australia, namely the housing trust ,

We don’t have toll roads in South Australia, but across the border I’m told people have apps to avoid the tolls and the $300+ per month tolls. In South Australia, we no longer have a higways department, but we can’t get a road built and, when we do, the talk is all about debt.

Then there is the health/hospital system where the poor line up to be triaged and the better-off get same day service, although that too is becoming a thing of the past. This is a sign that another federal bailout is on the cards, while ambulances ramping is a nightly occurrence.

Neoliberalism may work in other countries (I doubt it), but it is a failure in Australia. This country has a big land mass and a small population. The system of neoliberalism and no taxes has failed miserably.

We need a better system.

Re Wang Wen’s article today. The tariff war has seemingly been more or less staved off for 90 days for most countries except for China, only hours after being activated. In which time, according to Donald Trump, US$2 billion has already been collected.

Why the pause? Well, according to Trump, “[he] thought that people were getting a bit yippy, a little bit afraid.” “It looked pretty glum, I guess they say it was the biggest day in financial history.”

He said: ”I know what the hell I’m doing”. “No other president would have done what I did.” ”World leaders are kissing my ass.”

He said he had thought about it over the last few days, and the pause comes “from the heart”.

China’s continued tariffs are based on the lack of respect China has shown to the world’s markets, according to Trump. Well, then, what about Trump’s actions over the last few days?

After 2½ months of dictatorial power, not the one day he promised, he has scuttled any plans by Congress to intervene in the tariffs.

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, all this erratic behaviour is part of a plan. Really?

Let Trump finish his move to reduce water efficiency, after criticising California for not having enough water to control the LA fires. Seemingly immune to the burnt out suburbs seen this week on the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent, he said, “I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair.”

And the world has got to endure four more years of this. Maybe more, if Bannon has his way.

This article begins with the following unproven allegations: “Remember Bashar al-Assad? The man who crushed his own people under a mountain of rubble and fear? Who turned peaceful protests into mass graves, dropped barrel bombs on neighbourhoods, and used chemical weapons on children?”

Seymour Hersh, among many, many others, including UN investigators, who refused to sign the trumped-up report on the so-called chemical attacks, have proven that the lies about Assad were equal to the charge that Saddam had WMDs.

Why does Pearls and Irritations publish these US claims, crap and propaganda?

No doubt Barb Dadd writes with the best of intentions but linking Bashar al-Assad to some of the world’s worst villains is wide of the mark. Assad was a victim of the United States’ wrong-headed desire for regime change to benefit its national resource exploiters to the detriment of the host country.

To that end it armed rebel Muslim extremist groups and set them to undermine the Assad regime. Russia supported Assad (who headed a secular Christian country).

But with the aid of US weaponry, the Muslim extremists were able to oust Assad, replacing his regime with a Taliban-esque ragtag government of religious zealots who are now killing every Christian (or non-Muslim) they can find, brutally.

Most of the death and destruction attributed to Assad’s forces was caused by the US supported insurrectionists. In the process they produced another Afghanistan. Well done to the US. Again.

I am surprised that John Stace’s article fails to consider informed media commentary about the degree of involvement of the Israeli military in the events immediately following the Hamas breakout and attacks which occurred on 7 October, 2023.

There was no mention of the Israeli military’s Hannibal doctrine or of the role of the military’s helicopter gunships in the violence which occurred after the attacks commenced, or of their impact on Israeli party-goers attending the rave event that had been curiously relocated to the very edge of Gaza and inadequate security offered for the event.

There was no questioning of some of the more extreme Israeli allegations of atrocities against civilians as an integral feature of the breakout, particularly the alleged rape of Israeli women or horrific violence inflicted on babies.

Can I humbly suggest that Stace read some backdated articles from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, or in the online blog, The Grayzone, or pieces by the independent journalist, Aaron Maté, in order to broaden his understanding of what occurred on that fateful day?

Bob Douglas’ article raises the existential threats facing us.

Yet Trump has just boosted coal and is ending any US green plan. His latest statement that [any resulting sea level rise] will increase the amount of waterfront property is just mindblowingly stupid and callous.

In parts of the Pacific, it threatens to sink all property.

I have not seen any confirmation of the veracity of this article in the mainstream media. I have checked Snopes who also cannot trace its veracity.

If it is actually happening, why isn’t it all over the media?

I would really like to know the truth and not some dreamt-up thought bubble analysis.

Editor’s note: Not sure what you consider to be a reliable publication, but you can read a similar story on Bloomberg.

There has been a genocide going on in the Gaza Strip for more than a year, but one does not see coverage of it in the so-called mainstream media.

If I were Anthony Albanese, I would say that Peter Dutton has no policies of his own, that all his policies are copied from Trump and that you only have to look at the US to see what will happen in Australia if Dutton is elected.

If I were running as an independent, I would promise to cut all ties with the US, cancel all contracts and accords, and remain friendly, but not friends.

Before you ask why should Albanese have the same policy, remember this is a  small target election. But I would adopt the independent position at the first opportunity once elected. And with the first tariff increase, all bets would be off.

Now that ANZUS is superseded and presumably AUKUS is as dead as can be, we should be looking for a group of friends who are more naturally connected to Australia.

Geographically – Indonesia, Malaysia,Thailand, Vietnam. Trade – China, and India. British background – South Africa

Perhaps we are more naturally associated with BRICS and now is a good time to open some diplomatic dialogue about Australia joining this organisation. It would presumably take about five years for such work to bear fruit.

BRICS appears to be a very tolerant organisation so we should fit in rather nicely. It might not make Donald Trump happy, but it might be putting ourselves in a more natural position for the year 2050 when the world realises that we have to impose tariffs on the US to force them to cease releasing avoidable carbon dioxide.

“Burn baby burn” is not the action of any friend of Australia.

While we are all seriously concerned about Donald Trump’s tariff war, we need to take even more seriously, his recurrent war against climate change action. His withdrawal for a second time from the global agreement on climate change action, and his interest in the promotion of company profits (including fossil fuel companies), should be deeply concerning to our nation’s leaders.

The world is already suffering deeply, from droughts, floods and fires, that are influenced by fossil fuel emissions. Our two major Australian political parties are divided on climate change action. While one is committed to renewables and batteries, with a little bit of gas, the other is talking about nuclear energy and lots of gas.

While both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have expressed their concerns about the tariff war, neither has yet said anything about the impact that American fossil fuel emissions could have on our own future. We should surely let our US “friends” know what we think about this.

All but three of the countries you cite as being mostly heavily affected by US tariffs, are members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which includes China and Australia. We’ll just have to put more effort into that.

There is also still APEC, but I guess the US’ membership of that is effectively ended by Trump, and Russia’s membership is problematic.

I agree that climate is a major game and sinking archipelagos (Indonesia etc) are a major issue. To paraphrase the leader of the opposition, will they be swimming to a crowded north or empty south?

It’s all very nice to say that in every war game attended, the US lost but there is no mention of how allies (friends) in a bully brawl are the first to suffer. If it came to a nuclear war, the main players will not bomb each others. if they do so it will only be as a last resort.

Australia will be at the head of the nuclear destruction Armageddon with Darwin, Pine Gap, Adelaide and Perth etc long gone, nuked while the Americans are deciding if the stakes are high enough for them to join the main game.

Don’t forget Trump got a majority of the votes.

What is the position on tariffs on the supplies (I presume) Australian businesses sell to the multitude of US bases and embassy in our country on our soil?

I understand their embassy is considered to be on their soil. I think Australia has no jurisdiction over their ships and subs and don’t know about their troops barracked in our bases and Pine Gap.

What they eat there is top secret, though I believe there once was a booming market in US muscle cars coming in via a secret installation near Alice Springs.
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Thank you for Paul Keating’s article. For me, I wonder, can I buy from Australia’s Antarctic Program a robotic penguin made in Heard Island, now subject to
Trump’s new tariff on electrical and mechanical equipment from that place? But seriously, he is quoted saying today in The Guardian that he now expects other nations will come crawling to him. That is not a successful approach to a bully. By the way, has Trump actually formally withdrawn the US from the WTO, which would seem to be a prerequisite to his announcement on tariffs yesterday?

A very recent P and I article by Gareth Evans (Pursuing Australia’s national interests in a might is right world) recommended strengthening political and where
possible military relationships with key regional neighbours. Two he listed are now members of BRICS+, and two others, Thailand and Malaysia, are associate members. He includes BRICS+ member China, but instead wants to concentrate its mind.

Trump has also threatened any country which adopts a BRICS+ currency with 100% tariffs. Nevertheless, BRICS+ now has a development bank, a satellite constellation, and the beginnings of a blockchain international currency, symbolised in a banknote shown in Kazan last year with the flags of 19 nations on it, some a little premature. Nevertheless, it is time we took BRICS+ seriously, with nine members or about to be members ringing the Indian Ocean. Did we have a diplomatic observer at the Kazan summit? Does our ambassador to China visit the BRICS+ HQ in Shanghai from time to time?

Ever since markets have existed — over 5000 years — unscrupulous individuals have known how to rig them. The usual trick is to drive prices up, sell out to promote a crash, then buy in at disaster prices – and get very rich.

Amazingly, America, that cynosure of smart business, does not seem to get the Trump gameplan: it is to crash the US economy so his billionaire mates can swoop in and snap up the best pieces at bargain basement prices.

Stock exchanges usually have strict rules against this behaviour – but there is no law that prevents a president deliberately crashing a country’s economy in order to perpetrate the same scam on a nationwide scale, (mis)using tariffs or any other fiscal instrument.

When Americans ask: “Why is Trump taking down our economy?”, they should instead be asking “Cui bono?” – or “Who stands to gain?”. The answer is: the cashed-up super-rich oligarchy.

Their goal is to buy up the best bits of America on the cheap – and own the country as a private venture.

Paul Keating is right to question thevalidity of any treaty with the US. There’s every indication that America, socially and economically, is now in the grip of a pirate gang of fanatics hellbent on assaulting any order that sits outside their credulous world image and shown they’ll plundering what they can from
whomever they can, even their fellow Americans, in total disregard of the consequences. The evidence is clear.

Scattergun targeted tariffs have overturned the global economic barrow. Internal descent has been punished financially and government functionality dismantled. Trumpian puppeteers have control of social media, and the constitutionally authorised judiciary is disregarded and threatened. Most alarmingly,action on the climate threat has been abandoned.

As fantastical as it sounds, but considering the above, should Trump join Xi and Putin as presidents for life, how far away is America from becoming an autocratic theocracy, and is that what most people living in American want? If not, how can they overthrow the regime?

The most important question of all, is how does what’s left of the free world establish contact to support them before the portcullis comes down on Citadel America?

It won’t come to that? Check your history books.

Peter Slezak writes, “In fact, there has never been any antisemitism at our rallies, at universities or anywhere in Australia in my lifetime.”

Peter knows very well that there is, and was, antisemitism in Australia, but he chooses, not merely to discount it, but to reject it entirely.

If he was speaking at a different rally and had said, “In fact, there has never been any Islamophobia at our rallies, at universities or anywhere in Australia in my lifetime”, people in the Muslim community would be shocked at the ignorance of such a statement.

Perhaps that’s the point. Peter wants to shock people in the Jewish community. But to what end? To display his own ignorance of antisemitism?

Gareth Evans writes ” I totally accept that defence planning always has to be based on worst case assumptions”.

This voter doesn’t accept that. I reject preoccupations with power and weapons. To varying degrees, I fear, loathe and despise them.

I like it that Evans puts his argument in tension with decency and prudence, but he doesn’t include ethics, neutrality or pacifism. Too many Labor pollies have gotten their jollies from guns and being power hungry.

The thing that Labor should have learnt from the US election is to jump ship early, get out before you’re told to go (not that Dutton has the charisma of Trump) , and take the subs with them.

Albanese and Marles should have stood aside for Chalmers and Plibersek straight after the failure of the Voice vote.

Albanese, the loyal workhorse, and Marles, a tin soldier more worried about how his ADF uniform looks than working, neither capable of being dynamic leaders, should have walked all over Dutton, the broken dynamo from the past. But they haven’t! That says a lot about the leadership potential in Australian political ranks.

Albo would make a great ambassador to some middle power (say Sydney, he’s got the house) and Christopher Pyne has a job counting bullets for Marles.

If Labor lose, Peter Malinauskas is predicted to try for the top federal job. Then every state will get two car races, Liv Golf, AFL gather round, Olympic Games, and a roof with solar panels over the whole country, including Tassie, so we can play sport 24/7 and control flooding.

Growing up in the sixties, under the threat of nuclear annihilation, our mantra was “we’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time”. It is our generation, and our offspring, who now govern our planet and its major institutions. We’ve never lost that mantra.

As Julian Cribb shows, in the decades since we have, through our unsustainable consumption and lack of concern for the environment which hosts us, so damaged our environment that it could become virtually uninhabitable. The rapidly shrinking glaciers, which provide so much of the fresh water on which we, and other life forms, depend, epitomise this. Our day of reckoning is now imminent, with a 40% global water shortage forecast just a few years’ hence.

Life on Earth has been the survival of the fittest: humanity is, as we stand now, unlikely to survive. Sadly, in that event. we would take both our descendants and much animal and vegetable life with us.

Cribb calls for an Earth Systems Treaty: what we need is an Earth-wide government with overriding powers. This could only be envisaged in the context of a global existential crisis. The coming water shortages may just be what that needs.

This capitulation by US universities will surely have them plummetting down the global rankings.

This informative story in The Guardian makes one wonder how a spirited tabloid might have headlined it. Perhaps, “Slippery US submarine team collects the loot, then delivers a ‘sorry Bruce’ message to Down Under chumps”.

Have I got a deal for you? I’ve got a vote for the party that dumps the deal.

Peter Briggs presents a strong case for the value and advantage of nuclear submarines over conventional submarines as well as their advantages for an island nation. However the article needs to be read in the context of what is critical to the security of this country and how best to address that.

The greatest immediate threat to our security is the impact of global warming and Australia’s defence resources should be focused on that. Nuclear submarines are not likely to be part of Australia’s naval defence fleet until the 2040s, if ever. Meanwhile, we face extreme weather events which will affect the lives of the human race and we must work with other countries to both reduce carbon emissions and increase resilience to the impacts of these disasters.

The resources committed to procuring nuclear submarines (AUKUS) are a shocking waste given the critical situation we face with climate change, let alone our other needs in health, education and environmental protection. Through our efforts to work with other countries to address the threat of climate change, we will also be using the advantage of diplomacy in maintaining peace on this planet.

A convincing article. I’m convinced, Now convince me why they need to be nuclear.

Where do we store the waste? Why we need to buy them from the US?

Most importantly, why have we waited until the locally made product was so far past its use-by-date that we find ourselves in our current dilemma?

Looks to me like our ADF and politicians have got it very wrong, given a lifecycle of 25 years before major refit. That’s five LNP and three Labor governments and a lot of generals who haven’t done their well-paid jobs.

I particularly like Marcus Rubinstein’s sceptical stance regarding expectations of war, and especially the calls Australia should respond with armaments.

I have read with concern the reports of China’s intentions regarding imminent invasion of Taiwan. I feel pity for those who could be invaded, and living in apprehension, and wonder about the extent of China’s war pose. Could it possibly be as bad as the US? No, says Rubenstein.

I know that only neutrality and pacifism could make me proud to be Australian. Peter Briggs’s argument for AUKUS is laudable for its quiet rationality, but it recreates and affirms the stories of military technocracy. I am appalled that humans spend most resources and materials and energy on weapons. I do not want to be a part of that nation, that species, that life.

Yes indeed, mainstream politics and politicians aren’t working, and we the people might could should withhold payment.

But take it a little further, perhaps? Party politics is largely broken, and Lib and Lab parties have long existed in order to hold power. Hence,  Anthony Albanese said early in this term, “I intend to be in power a long time” and Keir Starmer undermined Jeremy Corbyn and then triumphantly declared, “Labour is not the party of protest”.

Party politics has destroyed democracy all over the world. Party politics is illegitimate and due to be abolished. Vote independent!

The five-minute scroll 105 notes the bombing of Yemen. Some years ago the Christchurch shooter killed 51 Muslim worshippers. His inscriptions in Georgian channeled 400-year-old battles against Muslims in eastern Europe.

At the beginning of this week of 24 March, 53 were killed in Yemen by US air weaponry. US defence secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly has tattoos including one channeling the 1000-year-old Crusader fight against Muslims, and one with the word “kafir”, meaning an unbeliever in Muslim eyes.

In an “accidentally” released Signal message, he was shown to be ordering actions which would inevitably cause similar killings, but here’s one difference: this time it was with F-18 fighter aircraft, part of the stunning arsenal he now controls, subject of course to the US President as c-in-c. And so ancient hatreds seemingly smoulder on.

Thank you to David Spratt for highlighting the issue of Climate Change and National Security. As independent Senator David Pocock has suggested, the government sitting on the Office of National Intelligence’s Climate Risk Assessment report since early 2023 is “recklessly negligent” (“Exclusive: Secret briefings on climate national security risk”, The Saturday Paper, 15/3). The public deserve to be informed and have the ability to hold the government accountable to act on such reports.

Commendably, independent MP Dr Monique Ryan recently hosted what was considered to be the first public forum about Climate Change and Security in Australia. Former Chief of the Defence Force Admiral Chris Barrie and your reporter, Australian climate risk policy expert David Spratt, spoke candidly about the severity of climate risks on our national security. It’s alarming. I am, however, even more concerned about the lack of political engagement. Hard conversations need to be had.

David Lee’s article brings back memories of what could have been from just over 40 years ago. Senator Susan Ryan got a bill through the Senate for land rights in Queensland in 1982-3.

Here in WA we in the Aboriginal Treaty Support Group crafted a land rights act for WA based on Senator Ryan’s bill. Senator Michael Macklin, Australian Democrats, was having it prepared by parliamentary counsel and announced in the Canberra Times in November 1982 so that it would be introduced. The WA Burke government introduced a much watered down bill in the mid-80s, but it failed to pass the Upper House.