What follows is a link to my talk given on 24 April at the Canberra gathering of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War.

A repost from 5 May 2025

It was the eve of Anzac Day. We were just a short distance away from the Australian War Memorial, now bastardised by the acceptance of funds from weapons manufacturers (as revealed on a recent episode of Four Corners on ABC TV). The gathering had an urgency and weight few of us have felt in our lifetimes.

Membership in MAPW is open to all who care about “preventing” war – and ceasing to normalise both “war” and grotesque levels of spending on “defence”: arguably, war readiness and even warmongering. In the talk, I discuss those “spendings”. And they remain shocking if not surprising. What I am even more concerned with, though, is the degree to which we are persuaded by all political leaders and certainly all mainstream media that war is inevitable, that war is “normal”, that preparing for war is a way to secure peace.

At the........

© Pearls and Irritations