Archives: Letters to the Editor

It’s as though the Labor party thinks it doesn’t need its grassroots anymore.

The Labor party (through the public statements of Penny Wong, Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles) has taken a stance supporting the United States’ hardline Zionists and that has translated into a cruel military support for the occupiers.

I’m not the only previously rusted-on Labor supporter who will never ever vote Labor again. I will find a person of principle in my electorate as opposed to a party.

Collectively, Australia has blood on their hands and it will NEVER wash it off. The Zionists have been allowed to create a new ‘victimhood’ by the Western media.

Interviewees have to pay their respects to the 7 Oct and then get interrupted or silenced when the continued barrage of Zionist perpetrated kidnappings, killings and dispossessions of the Palestinian people are mentioned. They have a new holocaust. . . to maintain the right to special allowances; allowances to defy any humanitarian rules of engagement. . to kill, starve and damage civilians with impunity. . .

So thankful that the many good-hearted and truly religious Jews have reached out to many Palestinians to hopefully form a new unity of peaceful co-existence. . .

Mike Scrafton demonstrates the Faustian bargain that our government is making with their approach to combatting climate change.

Labor focusses on transitioning to become ‘a renewable energy superpower’, and at the same time, and in the face of the urgent demands in the IPCC’s 2023 report, approves new coal, oil and gas projects to boost fossil fuel production. These steps build short-term prosperity, and so underpin the government’s popularity and therefore its re-election prospects, but they keep our carbon emissions far too high. The price to be paid for these, as the planet continues to warm, will be borne by the future well-being of today’s youth and their successors.

As Mike Scrafton notes, this transition cannot be left to private capital. We need strong government to lead and manage this. David Pocock’s Climate Change Amendment (Duty of Care and Intergenerational Equity) Bill would, if enacted, place intergenerational equity at the heart of government decision-making, and specifically ban approval of new fossil fuel projects.

This would create a new paradigm placing robust guardrails on government’s climate policy and practice. We must hope this Bill carries majority support: we urgently need this paradigm shift to free today’s youth from Labor’s Faustian bargain.

While I agree with much of Mike’s article “Climate policy: the widening reality gap” I prefer a more basic approach. Our whole economy is based on neoliberal principles and as such the only way forward is to trash the planet!

Furthermore, we will never rein in greenhouse gas emissions while our population continues to increase, it is inconceivable! In Australia we are running out of water, but we continue to import people to the detriment of our economy, the environment and our well-being.

The US has the diplomatic, military and economic might to stop the Israeli attack, which has now gone well past a proportionate response to the Hamas attack.

To do so is vital for all of Palestine’s citizens including the women and children, and also for Israelis particularly those held hostage, and not just those near Gaza.

Why doesn’t the US do so?

A multinational force to take over to keep the peace, as ex Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has proposed, should follow, preferably set up under the provisions of the UN Charter, but set up anyway, if that route is unworkable.

Geoff Taylor

Originally the establishing of Israel was just a Zionist land grab, and the separation of states by distant powers a result of a racist disdain for the Arab culture.

But it’s now more sinister because the stakes are much higher.

Obviously ethnic cleansing is the way forward for an oil-hungry US and Israel.

So, thanks to the complicity of ABC reporters and journalists and most western Governments, we are following the US/Zionist playbook in order to effect a genocide.

How can people like Sarah Ferguson be gullible and brutish enough to demonise the Palestinians? For heaven’s sake, these are the real victims.  Locked in an open air prison and bombed, starved and deprived of fuel and communications.

It should be abundantly clear who the real bullies are.

How it is possible for the Western press to claim victim-hood for the Zionist oppressors and invaders defies belief.

We didn’t call Nelson Mandela a terrorist.

Surely Hamas should also be seen as freedom-fighters.

Peter Sainsbury notes that the second pillar of the World Resources Institute requires that we “protect remaining natural and semi-natural ecosystems from conversion and degradation. All conversion and degradation of forests, grasslands and forests should stop by 2030 at the latest.”

Yet ACT Planning has given the provisional go-ahead for an unneeded, destructive crematorium complex on the boundary of the Callum Brae Nature Reserve that will destroy critically endangered trees as well as threaten an important wildlife corridor and biodiversity including the swift parrot and the Small Ant-blue Butterfly.

Friends of Callum Brae Nature Reserve, a community group, plan to appeal the development application approval to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal (ACAT).

Writer Jessie Boylan has stuck a chord that stays irrevocably in the mind. 8306 Palestinian deaths so far.

Deaths that used to be 8306 lives. People. Men, women and many, many children who had names and families and hopes and dreams.

By quoting them as numbers, without names or faces they become statistics of war. Collateral damage, that will just crumble in the dust.

And the silence of our leaders is deafening.

I am numb.

Conservative Australian politicians have a debilitating pre-occupation with the ‘objectivity’ of the ABC. Needless to say, what they really cannot stand is when the simple truth about their policy stances produces its own criticism. Far from being pro-left however the ABC is overly cautious not to offend the right. Such caution is particularly evident at times of war.

In 1991, the outcry over the ABC’s reporting of the first Gulf War was such that the Backchat program ran a special edition to help clear the air. The options were that the ABC was reporting objectively or that it was being too critical of the role of Australia and its allies. I wrote in suggesting that the television coverage was pro-war.

My argument was that by running a report every night describing the strategies being employed and the latest technological developments in weaponry, ABC television created a sanitised impression of a desert war that seemed bloodless and normal – little more than a video game. Predictably enough, the program did not mention that it had received any correspondence from this critical viewpoint.
I was reminded of this anaesthetized production value when watching an ABC interview recently with the Nationals MHR Mark Coulton and Labour’s Maria Vamvakinou. The parliamentarians were rational, balanced, compassionate and humane.

The interviewer took pains to assure the interviewees that she needed to ask or had to ask certain questions. While she might have been criticised on the grounds that these preambles were a waste of words – interviewers should just ask their questions – she could not be accused of any bias. She was careful and not even the most extreme right wing observers would be justified in criticising her.
Unfortunately, the producers – or whoever is responsible for such extras – placed a banner across the screen describing the interviewees as ‘Pro-Palestinian MPs’. It is true that both MPs belong to the Friends of Palestine group of parliamentarians. However, their stances on the conflict arose not from a predisposition to favour one side but from the fact that they had visited the region. They were offering insights which colleagues would not necessarily have and were careful to assure the interviewer that they respected other views.

By labelling the parliamentarians ‘Pro-Palestinian’ the broadcaster might have simply been indulging its natural inclination to stereotype. The results however go further. The description of the pair as pro-Palestinian suggests that neutrality is not possible. Further it begins the task of undermining their case. It places them by implication into the anti-Israel camp and exposes them to the criticism of those who want to ignore their arguments.

Perhaps this was just the increasingly bizarre world of television which offers children’s cartoons with canned laughter, plenty of violence, bushfire scenes with no identifying dates and muzak behind everything. It has always amazed me that Four Corners for example has won so many awards given that it employs a ‘drone’ and slow motion to tell the viewer when to be appalled. The program’s success is certainly no recommendation for its competitors. So it might not surprise to find that someone’s national anthem might be added to interviews as background, just to let viewers know where a network stands. That would certainly undermine the search for objectivity.

It would be naive to hope that ABC viewers can or will bother to distinguish between ‘Pro-Palestinian’ and ‘pro-Hamas’. Certainly many will not want to bother. Personally I would prefer it if media abandoned the quest for spurious objectivity and showed a clear anti-war preference. How mad is it when to urge a ceasefire is to be seen to be favouring one side in a conflict? How Newspeak? Understanding media reporting of this conflict requires considerable energy and determination. Let us hope Australians develop these skills in the near future.

Julian Cribb has pulled together several disturbing scientific reports on climate. They should have the world on a war footing but other wars have taken prominence. In 2022 annual global mlitary spending reached US$2.2 trillion. And according to Cribb, US$1 trillion per annum is also spent on government subsidies to fossil fuel companies.

Furthermore, McKinsey claims the world needs to spend another US$3.5 billion per annum on emissions reduction to achieve net zero by 2050.

The spending deficit could be achieved by diverting the military spending and the subsidies to emissions reduction.

But are we smart enough to make this happen?

As Cribb maintains, many in power live in “some hallucinatory world where everything is fine.” This agrees with the late James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and scientist who developed the Gaia theory. After the failure of COP15 in 2009 he said, “The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.”

While the rich and powerful remain protected from climate change, their inertia will continue. The rest of us will challenge them in the courts, in the board rooms and at the ballot box. The war is just beginning.

Since reading the 2017 Indonesian law on elections I have wondered when there would be a challenge to its provision that prevented anyone under the age of 40 to stand for election for President or Vice President. And the outcome of the fourth challenge to the Constitutional Court mentioned by Tim Lindsey and Simon Butt is not so outstanding, except in the way that the decision was made.

I am glad to see Tim Lindsey and Simon Butt acknowledging the integrity of Justice Sadli Isra. It will not bode well if his honest and open statement in his dissenting opinion leads to his dismissal either by DPR in the way of Aswanto, or in a disciplinary action by the court and the Justice Commission. He is an appropriate candidate for the position of Chief. Likewise, it will bode well if Chief Anwar Usman is disciplined for not recusing himself.

However, I see four greater threats to democracy than this court decision: Three of them are not new threats.

1. If the court decision is overturned

After experiencing the hostility of campaigning in 2014 and 2019, I dare not think what might happen if a decision against Anwar leads to a quashing of the decision.

2. Lack of democracy in parties and lack of autonomy of local branches

A threat to democracy has been present since the passing of the law on political parties in 1999, and that is the lack of democracy in the parties themselves. The main threat of this is in the nomination of candidates for regional government. This may be headed for a resounding change in 2024, when all Governors, Regents and Mayor are elected together, and there are major incentives for candidates and party committees to collaborate on preparing electoral platforms.

3. Regional government dynasties

There are still many regional government dynasties that serve elites rather than the rights and needs of the people.

4. Prabowo relapse

Tim Lindsey and Simon Butt state that Prabowo has become a “compliant member of the administration”. I would say, from his own personal statements, he has become a convert, even though we have not heard his confessions.

We recall in his campaign for President in 2014 he was the only candidate who prepared a major declaration of his campaign platform. This included a promise to revert to the previous Constitution, meaning to eliminate the Supreme Audit Institution (BPK), the Constitutional Court, the Judicial Commission, the Senate, and a host of other provisions including provisions on human rights. We wait to hear whether he reverts to this in his campaign which starts in 4 weeks.

Note on the author.

Owen Podger is an Australian permanent resident of Indonesia, and adviser on various reforms in Indonesia over the past 30 years. He is also brother of Andrew Podger, regular contributor to Pearls and Irritations.

Unlike some of the contributing writers to Pearls and Irritations on the Israel/Palestine conflict in general and the current situation of the Hamas attack and the Israeli retaliation in particular, I find Peter Roger’s article ” Netanyahu’s War ” presents some realistic and evenhanded analysis of some negative aspects of Israeli and Hamas policies and the possible worst outcomes for both the long suffering Gazan victims and also the many Israeli victims.

I believe all the pleading and threats by the international agencies, and by hawks and doves from both sides who live outside the disputed land will not change anything. No outcome or solution can be imposed from outside against the wishes of the approximately 8 million Israelis ( including 2 million Palestinian Israeli citizens ) and the approximately 6 million Palestinians to sort out their future which could include peace or even mutual annihilation.

Personally I hope (one day) for the emergence of courageous leaders such as an Anwar Sadat and a Menachem Begin to come together in an endeavor for peace.

However as the character Brad Pitt plays in the film FURY says… ” Ideals are peaceful, History is violent”.

If you paint your enemy as depraved and not even fit to live, then you will be supported in ‘cleaning them up’.

The systematic degradation of the Palestinian population has been brilliantly ‘stage-managed’ by the Zionist state. They have described the Arab peoples as animals and not fit to govern themselves. The Palestinians have endured this barrage of insults and oppression and restrictions over decades and even been branded as ‘not fit to live’.

And now, the western press has the audacity to question their pain. . . and that surely makes them complicit in this contemporary genocide.

The UN Security Council may, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, determine the existence of a threat to the peace and to decide what measures shall be taken to maintain or restore international peace and security.

In recent days, we have been informed that cruise missiles and drones were launched from Yemen in the direction of Israel but were shot down by the US Navy and that Israeli warplanes have struck targets inside Syria after rockets were launched towards northern Israel.

Meanwhile 7,000 people, about a third of whom were children, are said to have been killed inside Gaza and many hundreds of civilians including children have been murdered inside Israel.

This has surely reached a situation of such seriousness that action under Chapter VII must be taken now to prevent this triggering a regional conflict and far greater suffering and loss of life.

Ali Kazak says…

“If Western countries are concerned for peace in the Middle East, then all they have to do is to make Israel accountable, recognise Palestinian people’s inalienable right to return to their homeland, to be equal with Jews and exercise their self-determination.”

I then add “And apologise!!”

Now you have described our First Nations peoples’ plight.

How did the Voice fail, and Australians not see this?

We all need a mirror.

I would like to take issue with what Fr Frank has stated in his article about the Voice.

The statement that “The NO vote is not indicative of a racist or stupid nation” is factually incorrect.

For the past 8 weeks or so, Door knocking, Letterboxing and standing at Pre-polling booths in the Port Stephens electorate it is of general consensus from all who stood beside me that a majority of voters in general were either from mildly angry to those who were objectively hostile.

We received threats of violence, intimidation by big burly tradies towards a 16 year old volunteer. On one occasion one of our female volunteers was bailed up outside the Polling Centre. He would not go away. He ended up in the bank next door waiting to have another go. I stood beside this lady for half an hour until he left. One man got right in my face and said ‘The Uluru Statement of the Heart ‘ was a declaration of war against the colonizers. Started yelling as to why it was so..

I could give another dozen examples.

Frank, It’s Racism, Indifference and Ignorance!!.

Also where were the Churches who destroyed culture. NOT SEEN.

As reported in The Conversation recently, the research, practice and teaching of Australian history is in a parlous state, and getting worse. The 2nd last paragraph ‘Why is this a problem?’ is highly germane to Anderson’s argument, but the whole article partly explains why much of Australia is ignorant of it’s history, and is getting worse.

Ignorance is probably another reason that the lies and misinformation disseminated by ‘No’ proponents apparently were believed and acted upon by many when voting.

Better historical awareness should have made the ‘If you don’t know, vote No’ slogan laughable, as it was for those of us who thought it obvious that ‘If you don’t know’ should have prompted a response along the lines of ‘Then find out!, and do a little research.’

Ignorance is no excuse, but when they don’t know that they don’t know, and they don’t value education and resultant knowledge or understanding, then there is little hope for informed responses to referenda, whatever the question.

Ignorance of The Constitution’s content, and how it works, doesn’t help either.

Thanks to Peter Sainsbury for another excellent piece  “Environment: Oceans to the rescue: 7 watery ways to reduce greenhouse emissions” (22/10).

Given the latest push from the Coalition to introduce nuclear power in Australia, nuclear waste could be added to the list of toxins polluting our oceans. “The first operations involving sea disposal of radioactive wastes took place in 1946 in the Northeast Pacific, about 80 km off the coast of California. During the 48-year history of sea disposal, 13 countries have disposed of approximately 140 PBq (140 x 1015 Bq) of radioactive wastes into the oceans” (International Atomic Energy Agency). Ocean disposal has been banned by international treaties since 1993.

Except that at the nuclear plant in Fukushima, the company decided they had no more room to store the million tonnes-plus of treated waste water on land. Permission to discharge it into the sea was granted this year; the process will take 30 years to complete.

Would the U.S. and others (such as Australia) who are not calling for an immediate ceasefire, end to blockades and a workable and sustainable two-state solution – effectively condoning the forthcoming (continuing) ethnic cleansing / expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza – be willing to accept the million or so displaced from northern Gaza or, indeed, all Gazans who could well eventually be annihilated or left to die?

Given their effective support for Israel’s desire to have Gaza, they should be willing to resettle all Gazans in their own countries.

In the P&I article by Paul Heywood-Smith of 20/10/2023 regarding the hospital bombing in Gaza, it is stated:

“I rather think that a more likely scenario is that a government which believes that it is entitled to steal another people´s land because that land was given to the Jewish people by God, might also be persuaded that God also authorised the occasional white lie if same would assist in the recovery of the land that God had earlier given.”

I don’t have a problem with Israel being criticised, even when I believe it’s over the top, but really, to start explaining the conflict because of Paul’s interpretation of what Judaism stands for is pretty outrageous.

The actions of the state of Israel must not be conflated with Judaism, anymore than the recent actions of Hamas should be conflated with Islam.

Gaza Hospital.
It is interesting to note that US President Biden was far from unequivocal in his remarks in Israel on the attach on the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital.

“Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” he told Netanyahu.

Biden then added: “But there’s a lot of people out there not sure, so we’ve got a lot, we’ve got to overcome a lot of things.”

Since the Hamas attack, a host of US spy satellites, drones and other means would have been on heightened alert, closely monitoring activity in Israel/Palestine. The US administration would know precisely what happened and where the attack originated.

The fact that Biden is equivocal saying “it appears.” speaks volumes. He wanted to support Israel’s claim, but feared being caught out by the truth.

Paul Malone

If the pen really is mightier than the sword, why are we still sickened to our stomachs by the western leaders’ reaction to the wholesale genocide in Gaza?

If articles like this, spelling out the savagery and wickedness of the Israeli attacks on a population, at least half of which, are children, are ignored by Mr Albanese and Ms Wong and their bosses in the USA what does that say about the people who purport to lead us?

Reb Halabi couldn’t be clearer in his condemnation of western world leadership, but who’s listening? Who dares to speak out?

It was pleasing to read that, last year, investments in the global energy transition (US$1.1 trillion) equalled fossil fuel investments.

However, as Peter Sainsbury explains, half of the transition investment was made by China and investment needs to “triple immediately” for the world to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
While Sainsbury is justified in pointing out that Australia is one of twenty “planet wrecking” countries for its “aggressive exporting of CO2 pollution”, it’s important to differentiate Australians from their governments.

Australia leads the world with residential rooftop solar and two Australians, Professor Andrew Blakers and Professor Martin Green, the “fathers of photovoltaics”, are confident solar power will completely decarbonise the world by the early 2040s. They appear to be right.

Bloomberg forecasts that by 2050, global electricity demand will have grown from 1300 Twh today to 38,700 TWh. Using the long-term annual solar power growth rate of 20 per cent, the world will reach the Bloomberg estimate around 2041.

Introducing water and climate triggers into Australia’s pending environment laws will make it harder for Australia’s planet wrecking to continue. All power to the Greens, independents and environmental lawyers working to make this happen.

Peter Sainsbury has again collated a useful update on the current climate trajectory (“Environment: On track for 2 degrees of warming within 20 years” 15/10). Sharing both the ExxonMobil and the Global Climate Tracker trajectories was certainly educational. While ExxonMobil, who famously withheld knowledge about global heating from the general public, 46 years on, still thinks they can continue business as usual by promoting pipe-dream delay tactic non-solutions like carbon capture and storage and biofuels, Climate Tracker puts the world’s continued addiction to fossil fuels on notice. Although conservatives constantly exclaim that addressing Australia’s mere 1.3 per cent of the world’s emissions couldn’t possibly make a difference, the image of our total 1207 MtC02e annual exported fossil fuel emissions, or 5 per cent of the global total, shows Australia’s huge capacity for change. Whether we can prevent 2 degrees of warming or not, we have a moral obligation to try.

When my friend in Aotearoa rang me to say how she despaired for Australia when the Voice was lost, I reminded her to keep her anger not her despair. What has the ‘No’ vote achieved? I stood in the 40 degree heat at the polling booth in my local rural area and was so, so proud of my fellow Voices from the Heart! The ‘No’ campaigners were represented by a majority of ‘old white men’ (as a ‘yes’ voter noted) and they were lost in settler resentment and lies about what the Voice would take from their rights to own their land and do with it as they wanted. Their arguments were based on the American Constitution and its Amendments. Australian politics has become subservient to American politics. Too many Australian politicians share white settler ‘values’ of violent upheaval of First Nation peoples who respect Country and value communal custodianship rather than private ownership.

Australia was never ‘terra nullius’. Its vitality and biodiversity shine. I stand firmly and proudly for ‘Yes’ to the Voice from the Heart. It’s the only wise and mature way forward.

This was only the first of the great US follies that we Australians have so slavishly followed in our frightened, isolated conservatism, leading us into the succession of catastrophies, for the countries and for our own young men, in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Is China to be the next catastrophy?

Meg Hart is so very correct in her assertion that Hollywood has been a great propaganda machine, selling for mindless entertainment (‘circuses’) and obscene profit falsehoods about the ‘goodies’ (always handsome, overconfident and overbearing white males, with a thin sprinkling of exotic females for titillation) and the ‘baddies’, in succession and portrayed in their worst light, the native American Indians in the ‘cowboy and indian’ films on which I was raised, the Mexicans of the Alamo, the Japanese, the Russians, the Muslims, the Palestinians, and now the Chinese.

Despite its great financial wealth, magnificent educational resources and plethora of brilliant minds, the USA population remains largely scientifically illiterate, culturally uncertain, except for a blind belief in anti-socialism and guns, and susceptible to irrationalism, religious authoritarianism and fundamentalism, conspiracy theories, corporate and government-sponsored propaganda, and violence.

Its supine client states such as Australia are succumbing to the same diseases.

Peter Sainsbury’s research this week offers another valuable insight into the forces shaping how our climate is likely to evolve over coming decades. The Exxon-Mobil projections for 2050 demonstrate that this major fossil fuel producer sees sustained, substantial business growth between now and 2050. Climate Tracker confirm that the other major fossil fuel producers, and the countries – including Australia – that host their activities, are planning for that growth too.

These revelations show that the fossil fuel industry is now completely confident that it is leading its host countries’ governments by the nose. They think they can continue to produce fossil fuels for the rest of time. Sadly, for the rest of us, the ‘rest of time’ looks increasingly to be measurable in decades rather than millennia. Those who govern us have fallen captive to those who are bringing about our demise.
We need a complete change of mindset in Canberra, and other global capitals, to break free from this fate. The integrity of government in Australia has for too long been compromised through the malign influences of political donations and lobbying. Our first, urgent step might be to place substantial, comprehensive restrictions on both of these corrupting activities.

De-growth and steady state concepts occur to me as a flattening of the reality of planetary life.
At an ecological and evolutionary and energy viewpoint there is no ‘steady-state’. Things are either flourishing or dying, and when the ecology is at it’s best, there is great redundancy in its flourishing that is invigorated in that which dies. And over time ecological systems alter by all sorts of ‘external’ inputs.

The planet and 8 billion people must flourish to reach ‘steady state’. This does not occur to me as de-growth. It does occur to me as an incredible transformation of human society, and so far, such transformation is linked to massive suffering.

Perhaps we can mitigate the suffering by building living models but so far these are too small to even suggest that they are scalable for even town sized populations let along the planet.

This weekend Australia determines whether we accept the request of our First Nations people for a Voice to parliament, or whether we put the country back “another 50 years” as Indigenous activist Gary Foley claims. Foley should know. He established the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972 and an Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern shortly after.

Should the referendum be unsuccessful, it could well be the last one held. As Samantha Helps points out, the commonality to the challenges facing Australians is “sneaky, pathetic governance”. What could be more pathetic than Peter Dutton and the No case choosing “If you don’t know, vote No” as their slogan. This slogan gives democracy the finger.

Should any Australian still not know how to vote on Saturday and be lured by the cop-out slogan, then please think twice. Voting No out of ignorance is harmful and misrepresents the true community feeling. Voting informal would be more honest.

Australia is better than negative slogans. Peter Dutton and others in the No camp have much to answer for.

It seems that the Australian media is assuming that American reports of Trump’s supposed misuse of sensitive information applied to nuclear submarines to be supplied under AUKUS.

These are Virginia attack class nuclear submarines that are not supposed to carry nuclear weapons. If they do, that would certainly be a big story. It would be a breach of the Treaty of Rarotonga, which we have signed and covers West Australia and the Fremantle submarine port. If Albanese agreed to let them carry nuclear warheads that would be in contradiction of everything he has said, including what he said at the Labor conference.

None of the information about US ballistic missile carrying submarines is classified, despite the excitement about how Trump told the Australian billionaire, Anthony Pratt, who told others about this supposed information.

Everything about how many of these subs the US has (14) how many missiles each carries, how many warheads, what’s their range and so on has long been in the public domain.

The claim that Trump also said exactly how close these submarines supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected doesn’t make a lot of sense. It varies in accordance with the underwater acoustic conditions at any particular location and depth. There are also other variations.

Why Simon Birmingham said he had to carry these “secrets” with him to the grave is a complete mystery.

Hi Pearls and Irritations,

I just read Bob Rogers’ lament on the lack of coverage of the Hangzhou Asian Games in Australian media. “One can only ask oneself the thinking behind this total white wash?” Bob wrote.

Please pass on to Bob that one of the reasons it has not received much coverage, is that — once again — our requests for visas to report on it were not agreed to by the Chinese government. I tried for almost six months to get a visa. I wasn’t allowed one.

Frankly, I’m not surprised your contributors are unaware of this. While Pearls and Irritations has seemingly endless space for pieces complaining about Australian media coverage of China, I’ve never read a word of concern on this website about Beijing’s refusal to issue visas to Australian media correspondents — or, for that matter, a word on the deterioration of working conditions for reporters based in China.

Instead I’ve read Pearls and Irritations’ contributors claim Australian media have chosen not to be in China. That’s complete rubbish. We’re not there because Beijing won’t give us visas. Indian and Canadian media are in the same situation. It’s why presently no media outfit from our three countries has a single correspondent based in China.

Clearly, that’s far from ideal.

Regards,

Will Glasgow
North Asia correspondent, The Australian