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Pearls and Irritations

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A five-minute scroll

Trump seeks a currency commitment from BRICS or 100 percent tariffs will apply. The man feeding up to 3,000 Gazans daily has been targeted and...

latest 10

Pearls and Irritations

Pearls And Irritations

A surprise assault on Syria, but can it last?

The wave of enemy destabilisation ploys jumped from Lebanon to Syria this week, with a swarm of foreign-backed extremists breaking into Aleppo....

latest 10

Pearls and Irritations

Haidar Mustafa

Terminology: The trap that is being carefully set

Terminology, take care. Take care Pearls & Irritations that you don’t fall into the trap – fall into the trap that is being carefully set. What is...

latest 8

Pearls and Irritations

Paul Heywood-Smith

Cartoon commentary

latest 7

Pearls and Irritations

Geoff Pryor

Does Albo even deserve to win?

Not since Alaska has the US won a nation so cheaply. A friend joked to me recently that the best news Labor has had this week was being told that I...

latest 8

Pearls and Irritations

Jack Waterford

‘Dark day for humanity’ as Australia chooses cruelty in Migration Bill changes

Refugee and refugee support groups Australia-wide are deeply concerned about the extremely damaging implications of Australia’s new migration...

latest 8

Pearls and Irritations

Sandy Watson

Summing up

The world and its people are facing serious local and global challenges. Climate change, economic instability, limits to free speech, threats to...

latest 7

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue

AUKUS harming Chinese and Muslim Australians

In electorates with high numbers of Chinese and Muslim voters, it is time for a reckoning with Labor’s AUKUS policy. A 2024 poll sheds light on...

latest 10

Pearls and Irritations

Rita Jabri Markwell

Climate policy is on a collision course with physical reality

There is a chasm in outlook between the global climate policy-making elite with their focus on distant goals, market solutions and non-disruptive...

latest 8

Pearls and Irritations

David Spratt

The holocaust of our time

If the world were watching the livestreamed systematic annihilation of Jews in real time, there would be no debating whether that constituted...

latest 9

Pearls and Irritations

Susan Abulhawa

South Korea pays the price for Ukraine’s fake news on North Korean troops

Some stand to benefit from the deluge of fake news from the war, while others could pay dearly. On Nov. 21, Maria Zakharova, spokesperson of the...

yesterday 20

Pearls and Irritations

Jung E-Gil

Trump’s tariffs are a fool’s game

US President-elect Donald Trump’s protectionist trade policies — marked by high tariffs — have been a major economic setback for the United...

yesterday 10

Pearls and Irritations

Ken Heydon

Pedalling for Israel is peddling genocide

Unfortunately the Australian Friends of Palestine Association’s campaign to ensure that an Israeli team is not registered for any events in the...

yesterday 10

Pearls and Irritations

Margaret Cassar

Subs and secrets: Will Australia choose AUKUS or sovereignty?

Australians have become locked in to US military planning, entrenching our status as a US staging post. In this more dangerous world is a...

yesterday 10

Pearls and Irritations

Quentin Dempster

The prescience of Corporal Hijack

A year ago, Mussa Hijazi, a stone-throwing young teenager of the first Intifada who became a long-serving Canberra lawyer, laid out three options...

yesterday 20

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser

Australians are being corralled to take the side of a genocide

“Our [Western] media’s role is not to be a check on power, it’s to regurgitate their lies.” This system of reporting is “mood music to get...

yesterday 10

Pearls and Irritations

Reb Halabi

Are you better off? If not, why not?: Productivity, income distribution and the cost of living crisis

While lifting the rate of productivity growth is the obvious solution to the cost of living crisis, judging by the experience of most developed...

yesterday 10

Pearls and Irritations

Michael Keating

America’s decline: An Australian-American’s response to the US elections

My friends will have to excuse me for not being sufficiently riled up about the second coming of Trump. To me, he’s a phase in America’s...

previous day 30

Pearls and Irritations

Stefan Moore

Australia at war – again, again and again

Every year or so Australia gets a bulky new book about an Australian war, military action, hero or some other military matter written by what is...

previous day 10

Pearls and Irritations

Noel Turnbull

“A prelude to the end of humanity”

Palestinians are being intentionally massacred, starved, and stripped of everything needed to sustain human life. There are no words that can...

previous day 10

Pearls and Irritations

Tanya Haj Hassan

Environment: Climate protesters blockade Newcastle’s coal port despite government bans

Draconian laws don’t discourage climate protesters. Hydrogen’s rainbow of colours. CCS continues to underperform. Clean energy investments...

previous day 10

Pearls and Irritations

Peter Sainsbury

Feng Yujun on the prospects of Russia-Ukraine war after Trump’s reelection

The leading expert on Russia says Trump’s bold claim to end the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours is highly unlikely to materialise, and only a...

saturday 1

Pearls and Irritations

Zichen Wang

Another unwelcome ICC arrest warrant?

On November 27, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced that he is seeking an arrest warrant against Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the...

saturday 30

Pearls and Irritations

John Whitbeck

Inside out: powerful advocates have judges’ ears

The ACT Supreme Court was the scene of two uniquely powerful demonstrations of advocacy on the one evening last week. Justice Chrissa...

saturday 10

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser

The Future Fund must be a fund for the future

Like all policy instruments, the Future Fund was created to manage the challenges the country was facing at the time. The government has every...

saturday 20

Pearls and Irritations

Xu Yi-Chong

Another nail in the coffin for Australia’s phantom defence needs

The US submarine base was always going to come first, not for the sake of supplying useless boats for Australia’s phantom defence needs, but for...

saturday 10

Pearls and Irritations

Binoy Kampmark

Updates from Jerusalem, then and now

From the Committee to Protect Journalists: “The Israel-Gaza war has taken an unprecedented toll on Gazan journalists since Israel declared...

saturday 10

Pearls and Irritations

Stephanie Dowrick

A ceasefire in Lebanon – Gaza next?

Third party intervention led by the US and France has achieved a ceasefire in Lebanon. The US now needs to push for a settlement in Gaza where the...

saturday 10

Pearls and Irritations

Michael Keating

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