Archives: Letters to the Editor

Les MacDonald states that “Virtually nothing has been reported by the media, with the exception of an Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Al Jazeera, about the Israeli military Hannibal Directive, which has been a closely guarded secret of the IDF military for decades.”

The ABC published a very good article on this very subject on 7 September 2024. The article can be accessed here:

It received some acknowledgement on X at the time, but I haven’t seen any reference or follow-up to it in the mainstream media.

Russia will not leave Ukraine a broken state under Western protection (Beebe’s third suggested option). Russia will go on fighting and steadily capturing more territory for as long as Kiev keeps fighting and attempting acts of sabotage, terrorism, or drone or missile attacks into Russia.

Russia will negotiate while it fights, but only when Kiev accepts the realities of Russia’s firm negotiating position: neutral Ukraine pledged never to join NATO, no Western security guarantees, human rights protections for ethnic Russians, Russian speakers and for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Beebe wrongly suggests both sides must concede ground in a negotiation. This is not true in the present case. Russia has a commanding military advantage, high morale at home, and can go on taking more territory for as long as Ukraine and US/ NATO choose to go on shedding blood and treasure. This will end in a negotiated peace on Russia’s terms, out of which will come a smaller Ukraine as a state friendly to both Russia and the West. Russia won’t be provoked into WW3 and Trump will accept such a future for Ukraine.

The article by John H. Howard was of particular interest.

He found that the nation needs a co-ordinated, cohesive and strategic approach to R&D. He cited findings of successive reports in support. His article omitted comment on Australian industry’s structure and ownership. Both remain significant factors.

The 150% tax concession for IR&D was introduced in 1985 to induce industry to raise its performance. The decline in IR&D suggest that it was ineffective. Its detractors predicted this. Nevertheless, the government was persuaded of the need to raise IR&D and exploit the findings of publicly funded basic research, while limiting grants schemes with their inherent challenges of “picking winners”.

Circumstances have changed. Sunlight is now recognised as an essential substitute for hydrocarbons. Australia’s natural endowment affords it competitive advantage and opportunities. The need to exploit this advantage is compelling.

The body that advises/implements policy should have authority across all Australian jurisdictions and work internationally to ensure co-ordination of research efforts and integration of supply and demand. Within Australia, barriers to implementation must be lowered, regulation harmonised, necessary infrastructure provided, and disruptive competitive arguments settled. Here’s hoping our leaders unite and act.

It’s becoming clearer by the day that the much vaunted but sketchily detailed AUKUS submarines are never going to happen, and never were going to happen, that they simply can’t be delivered as indicated.

They’re simply the sugar coating to justify the always real intent and that is to turn Australia into a fully fledged [however, how many, and whenever they like] US/UK military base, with “us” picking up the tab for all necessary infrastructure.

It’s already quietly happening and don’t be surprised if [included in the sweetheart deal] we agree to begin taking all US/UK [and maybe NATO] nuclear waste…. AUKUS is beginning to look like the mother of all smokescreens conjured up by our lapdog spook agency and our excuses for politicians.

US ship building [including subs] is in decline, if not crisis, due to the lack of skilled workers. The Brits’ more recent shipbuilding credentials are highly questionable plus it suffers from the same problem as the US. All the time both China and Russia shipbuilding are creaming it in both quality and quantity….we’re being conned big-time and are too dumb to notice it, ditto for our pathetic media!

With respect, I think Susan Dirgham’s complaint to the ABC, mainly targeting Eric Tlozek’ s reporting, is a little unfair. It is a bit much to expect a reporter on the ground in Syria, reporting on the immediate situation, but limited to less than five-minute slots on the TV news, to provide as detailed a commentary as Ms Dirgham expects.

Her own perspective is longer, derived from her years of living and teaching in Damascus, and she rightly thinks the subject deserves more background and analysis. It’s a job for an hour long Foreign Correspondent or similar, on both TV and Radio National. Where are the ABC’s inspired programmers of yesteryear?

While I have never been able to understand US democracy/politics and certainly don’t understand all things Trump, I fail to understand how he can take up so much space in Australian / world news.

More recently I have come to understand that he is the great Western world diversion .

Nothing to see here! Particularly in Australian politics.

With the uS picking yet another unwinnable fight with China, funding genocide in Gaza and sacrificing the Ukraine etc Trump may just be the leader the US / world needs particularly with his love of all dictators (Putin, Musk and Kim Jon Un etc )

The emperor is wearing no clothes.

Send in the clown.

Following Donald Wilson’s article, I would like two ideas further developed.

1. “Regional tensions with China” – What exactly are these? What are real, based on what China has said and done? What have arisen in response to (a) US verbal threats to and about China? (b) US military activity in the general area? and (c) US military activity in Australia specifically? What are baseless?

2. The desirability of Australia being a truly sovereign state, not tied to any other by unequal agreements of any kind – with reference to our military agreements certainly, but with particular reference to the political situation in the US and what dangers being tied to a country led by the likes of Trump and Musk pose for Australia.

Experts in these fields… please inform us.

I read with interest this article about the attack on USS Liberty by the Israeli Defence Force on 8 June 1967. Included with the article is an interview conducted by Candace Owen with a retired US sailor who was aboard the Liberty at the time of the attack. While the interview includes some revelatory details about the attack, its credibility is marred by Candace Owens’ clear anti-semitism expressed in the second half of the interview.

There is a clear theme of miraculous intervention by a Christian God that pervades the interview. It would have served the veracity of the article if a more reliable news source had been used. In its series “The day Israel attacked America”, Aljazeera’s interviews with a variety of Liberty survivors provides a more evidence-based overview of what happened. It is certainly less marred by conspiracy theories and anti-semitism. Ironically, it is probably Aljazeera’s provenance as a Qatari publication that prevented the US author of this piece from using it.

I would like the US to move their military base out of Darwin because it makes the capital a target.

Darwin has already been built three times and its buildings need to be able to withstand a category 4 cyclone.

Darwin was bombed during WW2 because the US had a military base in the country. Given the US is likely to use its military bases in Australia, during a regional conflict, without our knowledge or agreement, I would prefer they did not use somewhere that is expensive for us to rebuild.

I never buy any media owned by News Limited, nor do I read any of their online news sites.

Foxtel had to be sold because it was losing money.

After the 6 January in the US, the Biden administration asked the UK government to put the boot into Murdoch, which they did by re-opening the News of the World inquiry, due to new information that came to light.

The legal case between Murdoch and his children means that once he is dead, News Limited may actually change.

It is time for Kim Williams to kick the Zionists out of the ABC. Time for SBS to stop accepting free TV programs that are Israeli propaganda.

Breakfast at 6am and flick on the radio. . .RN has the steady monotonous drone of a Boston bloke explaining about the snow/ice in his driveway; switch to ABC Radio News and yet another American accent droning. I gave up and wrote a short text of complaint and continued breakfast in silence.

Kym Davey has explained this phenomena succinctly.

We are a sovereign state and have an ABC chartered right to receive impartial news from our own domain instead of this slavish submersion in the brittle, crumbling culture of USA. America is not our friend

We also do not deserve imported nonsense from Israel skewing the narrative to show genocide and apartheid and torture and melted bodies is sometimes for their own good. . . We do not share the same values as Israel.

Keating, Evans and Carr have done well to warn us about the future perils of Albanese dragging along on the coat tails of America’s foreign policies. . . Morrison’s expensive signing of Australia to join the warmongering and ruthless oligarchs of the US is typically fraught and foolhardy.

Thank you Andrew for your retrospective. It’s helpful to be reminded of the serious failure that arose from our Government’s willing compliance with the US claim that the invasion was a “necessary unilateral action”.

As it happened, such a rationale, two years later, was taken by Fiji’s coupster when the RFMF took power from Laisenia Qarase’s democratically elected government. And then we saw the sad procession of some duly qualified jurists from Australia and New Zealand seeking employment in the illegal regime. And that to this day casts a pretty dark shadow over the jurisprudence that is taught in these former British colonies.

Thanks again, your retrospective as an active “elder” in our midst is very much appreciated.

If we are to keep a public broadcaster like the ABC in this country, it needs public support not constant carping criticism that because ABC TV1 has a number of shows with an obvious tabloid bias, the whole of the ABC is rubbish. This is not true and so wrong!

ABC TV 1 does have a number of shows with a tabloid bias but that is not the whole of the ABC, a big diverse organisation that has to address the needs of our modern multicultural Australia. ABC 24 and ABC Radio have good news services and are fostering a number of up and coming new faces who speak with integrity.

ABC Regional gives good coverage of rural and remote matters. ABC Emergency is vital to people subject to climate events. ABC Classics play the best classical music to be heard in Australia. Clean out the bias, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. We need our ABC. It is still our ABC.

The Federal Government recently announced a new funding package for the ABC for the coming years, some restoration after the savage cuts of the previous Federal Government. Encourage excellence at the ABC.

Joe Biden recently claimed that he was sufficiently in command of his faculties to have contested the 2024 election after all. So it is not unfair to hold him principally responsible for backing, diplomatically militarily and financially, the murder of nearly 50,000 people in Gaza, 40 times those killed by Hamas on 7 October 2023. A large percentage, especially women and children, would not have been Hamas operatives.

By all means the FBI should investigate the New Orleans mass murder, but in a fairer world they would also investigate Joe Biden and his key advisers for their role in the mass murder in Gaza.

In the case of Australia, the great multicultural nation, the views of WMM are reflected in the hierarchy of our immigration, refugee and foreign policy. Migrants from Commonwealth (cricket playing): most desirable by a street, Islanders ( rugby playing ) particularly in QLD and NSW followed by selected Europeans. The rest are cannon fodder for the present leader of the opposition any time he wants to stir up a vote winning racist headline. We won’t even bring home Australian journalists and citizens for fear of upsetting Murdoch.

If only this great piece of journalism by John Menadue could make its way into the homes and eyes of all Australians, there may be enough interest generated to finally get our weak leaders to call for a Royal Commission into the Murdoch media influence in this country.

Paddy Gourley’s contributions are always a source of joy and admiration to me; he brings such gravitas and subtle prodding of both the amusement and the need-to-know neurons.

But I admit to amazement at his description of the (current) ABC as “the most trusted” source of news. I bet he can’t say that without biting his tongue, it must be so far in his cheek. No longer, Amigo…

Kim Williams’ speech to the Press Club was — surely — an audition as a writer for the next “Blackadder” series? More bullshit than a Texas Rodeo paddock.

And as far as Gina is concerned — and let’s be upfront here, she is universally loathed for her ghastly persona, starting with her father, proceeding down through her family into the swirling tsunami of the populace in general — why would she be a spear-carrier against the ABC when it has been so evidently recreated as another arm of the IPA?

Given the Albanese Government’s absolute capitulation to the neoconocracy, the ABC has been neutered into a taxpayer-funded PR unit for the rentiers.

And it appears Kim Williams is their concierge. Time for Phillip Adams Unplugged??

Binoy Kampmark characterises the “Environment Minister” role as being “the fossil fuel industry’s closeted defender in government”, talking environmental conservation while supporting its destruction.

While her environmental reputation hung in shreds after her willingness to grant licences to new and expanding fossil fuel projects, Minister Plibersek seems to have worked in good faith with Sarah Hanson-Young and David Pocock to negotiate amendments to pass the Nature Positive Bill, before the PM intervened.

The PM also pre-empted his minister in Tasmania when he gave his whole-hearted support to the salmon farming industry, which threatens the imminent extinction of the Maugean Skate, and has destroyed vast areas of underwater habitat.

Kampmark believes Plibersek has been put into a “cage of constraint” where her options are “to become a non-entity or a jester”. But there is, perhaps, a third way. If Plibersek truly believes in the over-riding importance of protecting the environment she could demonstrate political integrity by standing up publicly for those beliefs. She could put the cause she has been entrusted with ahead of personal ambition or job security.

In the meantime, she stands for re-election with her environmental credibility under a cloud of ever-growing fossil fuel emissions – an environmental jester.

Bill Uren using Einstein’s phrase “subtle is the Lord” to not so subtly introduce a message retelling the absurd and incoherent claims of Christianity, is not something Einstein would have approved of.

Einstein believed the foundations of faith (Jewish and Christian) were built on myth rather than truth. He dismissed the idea of an anthropomorphic God as well as the Bible, as human creations and strongly rejected the idea of a chosen (Jewish) people.

He was right about the “bending of the rays of a star”. Was he wrong about the Feast of Christmas?

After writing this I will go back to read this article. Let’s get this right: Democracy is a diversion.

Hardly a day goes by when we aren’t bombarded with the virtues of democracy as a diversion from the fact that democracy does not exist. Democracy has replaced religion as the opiate of the masses, an illusion, a diversion from the day-to-day realities of CAPITALISM.

The realities of a greed-driven society who, like casinos, are happy for the odd mug punter to have a spectacular win so all the other mug punters keep betting. Like all greed-driven systems that came before, we are now in a cycle of turmoil because the differential between the haves and the have nots has become too obvious, the greedy have become too obvious and the poor too poor.

Is it going to be a planet-ending climate crisis of a major war that is the reset and gets the masses back under control back in their box?

The capitalists have lost control of their democracy illusion.

Will computers and AI be the benevolent dictator the world needs to get a more balanced harmonist society?

I would like to convey my appreciation to Refaat Ibrahim for the sentiments expressed in the biography attached to his piece published on Christmas morning. At a time when so many “leaders” prefer bombs to diplomacy, his faith in the power of the written word is heartening. Thanks Refaat!

Earth’s health is declining. Its seas are over-fished, and filling with plastic; its forests are shrinking as they are cleared for farming and development. Its soils are dying from the effects of fertilisers and pesticides used to feed more people than the planet can sustain. Its atmosphere is polluted with ever-increasing carbon dioxide and methane, which is heating the planet and destabilising the climate.

Consequently our icecaps are melting, the Gulf Stream is slowing, and our forests’ capacity to absorb carbon is shrinking as forests shrink. As the icecaps melt, arctic permafrost is melting allowing trapped methane to escape. These changes are tipping points: once they become embedded they, and further global heating, become unstoppable.

Our Earth is sick; humanity is the disease. Tipping points will be the antibodies that attack and defeat that disease. The climate will provide the cure. In the fullness of geological time, life on this planet will regain an equilibrium. There will be far fewer people, and those who survive will be far less well provided with industrial infrastructure, so their lives will be simpler. Hopefully, too, they will have learned the lessons from our current extravagant lifestyles, and live thereafter in harmony with their environment.

Einstein used god in a culture-speak manner. He never referred to a higher being as His God.

This article is totally out of order.

I guess that’s what hardline Christians do best. . .manipulate the words from eminent people and grasp at “verbal straws” and inflate them, in order to “prove” a nonsensical claim.

Richard Bean’s article summarises well the bias in the ABC’s presentation of the continuing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing on the West Bank and Golan Heights. In addition, the obliteration of the people of Gaza is no longer as newsworthy as it once was as the mainstream media move on to Syria and Christmas time trivia, again failing to give proper coverage to Israeli bombardment of Lebanon and Syria and the appropriation of Syrian territory.

I no longer watch ABC discussion and news reporting of Palestine as it invariably involves no hard-hitting critique of the slaughter of innocent people.

Furthermore, there is almost no attempt to provide detailed analysis of the origins of the Zionist colonial project and its clear intent over 100 years to make the Palestinian people disappear. I do not expect it to improve with the new editor-in-chief who has little editorial experience and looks set to continue the decline of the ABC as a public interest broadcaster. I hope I am wrong.

What an appalling ramble from Bill Kelty. I’ll mention only four points.

1. “The environment, climate change and Indigenous rights are big issues for the future.”

No. They were issues decades and more ago. If they’re not issues for now, there will be no future.

2. No mention of excess salaries and rapidly rising company profits. These come at the expense of workers. A fair day’s pay comes before excessive executive salaries and dividends. Tax reform is essential. We need to check our greed.

3. AUKUS – what about Australia’s lack of sovereignty? We must examine and recognise the insanity that is the US reality. We are currently “paying” to remain on a sinking ship with the US steering it onto rocks.

4. Kelty’s strong forever support for Israel blinds him to the real problem – imposing a new country on the land of people who already lived there, without consultation or compensation. Always brutality, land theft and death. The current genocide in Palestine did “not” start with Hamas on 7 October.

Yes, Labor is “mired in mediocrity”. But God help us if Kelty’s ramble is meant to indicate a fix. “We’ll all be rooned,” as Hanrahan said.

Three cheers for John Frew!!!

Is there anything in our troubled world that hasn’t got some form of greed at its base?

Why are Gina Rinehart and Rupert Murdoch never satisfied? (How sad are they?!)

You really can’t pay tax on the balance above $3m (or whatever it is) on your super? So someone can eat? How long do you think you’re going to live that you need all that?

You need how many toilets for a family of four?

I could go on and on and on and on and …..

People say the earth is over-populated. Maybe, maybe not. But a lot of us are never satisfied.

We’re over-consuming ourselves to death.

Enough to eat, a roof over our heads, a “little” bit of luxury.

Millions more people could be living that life if the wealthy amongst us could learn to live without an insatiable appetites for a greater share of our common wealth.

More power to John Frew.

Thank you for your words of sanity.

AUKUS at $368 billion (and like all military projects it will probably double) has then an opportunity cost of around one million houses, or 12,000 primary schools or 4000 secondary schools, or 400,000 hospital beds. Puts it into sharp perspective. All for a phantom threat.

Well-regarded independent institutions, which provide medical services and food aid at risk to themselves, have had their reputations trashed and labelled as antisemitic for reporting what they are dealing with.

Anyone with the most basic knowledge of data collection must have some Idea of how one-sided the conflict is and make some comparison to the evil regimes that have been in the past.

Angela Smith’s whys should be necessary reading for every self-respecting journalist. But there is an important why not mentioned in Angela’s article.

Israel’s occupation of much Palestinian territory is illegal under international law. Just look at the many resolutions passed by the UN that have simply been ignored by Israel.

The Israeli argument that it is allowed to defend itself against Palestinian attacks. But in fact this is not the case here. How can a country justify relying on self-defence when it is illegally occupying Palestinian lands? One would think that Palestine is perfectly within its rights to attack its illegal occupiers.

Why then have no Western media who pride themselves on reporting the truth, ever pointed out this to its readers? Are they that smitten by the propaganda of Israel and the US?

Climate change. Just another headline, just another diversionary rant for our politicians, just another look at me moment at some overseas climate convention. When there were still borders in Europe, I was stopped to get my passport stamped and the border guard asked me to turn off my car because of the pollution.

Here we are years later driving bigger petrol guzzling resource wasting monster twin cab/cars than ever, we park by the side of the road with motors running for the air conditioning, texting on our phones. The sale of EVs are at best stagnant, no tax advantage there and the HEV myth determines the price of EVs, while we vote unthinkingly for the capitalist climate deniers. Why? Because we don’t care and the people we elect will provide the illusion of doing something to provide the diversion so we don’t have to care .