Politics

Rich's revisionist history presented to the Royal Commission

By Andrew Westerman | 18 May 2026

A critique of Dr David Rich’s testimony to the Royal Commission, arguing that Zionism is selectively framed as defensive nationalism while its colonial dimensions are minimised or obscured through historical revisionism.

By comparing the development of Zionism with the colonial trajectory of South Africa, this article argues that settler-colonial projects do not always begin with explicit genocidal intent or even overt conquest. Rather, they often emerge gradually through settlement, land acquisition, legal restructuring, and the asymmetrical exercise of power. It contends that Rich’s testimony strips away this broader historical context in order to portray anti-colonial critiques of Israel as inherently extremist, while collapsing distinctions between criticism of the Israeli state, opposition to Zionism, antisemitism, and violence against Jews.

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Science

Review: “The Mating Mind – David Buss on Evolution, Desire, and the Dark Side of Human Nature”

For men, on average, it's desire for sexual variety. Something like 70–75% of men who cheat do so because an opportunity presented itself. For women, it's very different. One study shows 79% of women who have affairs become emotionally involved with or fall in love with their affair partner. Women who cheat tend to be very unhappy with their primary relationship. Men who cheat and men who don't cheat show no difference in relationship happiness. So women often cheat for what I call the mate switching function — they're looking to exit a poor relationship or test their mate value. On a reality show analysis, the first thing men ask when confronting a partner is: "Did you sleep with him?" The first thing women ask is: "Are you in love with her?"

By Andrew Westerman 19 May 2026
Politics

Ley's Lies

Australia’s electricity bills are driven mostly by wholesale generation costs and network charges. Rising global gas and coal prices, combined with aging coal plants, have pushed prices up, not the renewable rollout.

By Sarah Ferguson 9 December 2025
World

Framing for war

Laura Tingle’s recent “analysis” on Putin and Europe’s response to the Ukraine conflict leans heavily on emotional language, selective framing and unchallenged political rhetoric. Rather than providing balanced assessment, the piece amplifies fear, marginalises dissenting perspectives within Europe, and omits major realist scholarship that challenges the escalation narrative. The ABC must do better than alarmism dressed up as analysis.

By Andrew Westerman 29 November 2025
Environment

Swallowing the whole pill

Australia’s housing has prioritised resale value and aspiration over climate-appropriate design and community needs. Urban sprawl, weak planning, and speculative property culture have produced an environment where wealth accumulates at the top while renters and first-home buyers struggle. We continue building at pace, but we need far more thoughtful design, policy, and regulation to avoid deepening the crisis.

By Ali 27 November 2025
Health

Why the Epstein files matter

The release of the Epstein Files is not just about embarrassing Trump. It exposes a longstanding “boys’ club” of wealthy, influential men who purchased access to vulnerable girls and relied on Epstein to help them avoid consequences. Beyond the headlines, the files highlight enduring issues around consent, exploitation, and the systemic vulnerability of girls and women in the face of power.

By Andrew Westerman 20 November 2025
Australia

Missing the point and the opportunity

Linton Besser’s recent Media Watch episode successfully dismantled right-wing accusations against the ABC but failed to explain the deeper conceptual differences between doctoring footage, reporting with bias, achieving genuine balance, and avoiding stenography. Without this clarity, audiences risk treating these issues as equivalent when they are anything but.

By Andrew Westerman 18 November 2025
Looking back

Imperial brainwashing

Australia’s first great bloodletting was not a fight for freedom but a misguided imperial invasion of a sovereign nation. Had we understood the real history of the Ottoman world, ANZAC Day might have told a very different story — one where the Turks defended their homeland and the ANZACs died for a British fantasy, not a national cause.

By Andrew Westerman 14 November 2025
Science

Guess what

Xpeng’s new robot walks so smoothly that some viewers insisted a human must be inside. But its lifelike gait isn’t magic — it’s the product of flexible bionic materials, high-degree-of-freedom mechanics, and AI systems that learn the way animals do: through countless refined guesses. As engineers now explore stochastic optimal control — a method that evaluates millions of possibilities in a single sweep — we may be witnessing the beginning of a new engineering paradigm inspired directly by nature.

By Andrew Westerman 13 November 2025
Science

Scissors, Rock, Paper

Scissors–Rock–Paper is more than a child’s game — it is one of the fairest competitive systems ever created. Its non-transitive structure resists manipulation, scales into more complex balanced forms, and even appears in nature as a mechanism that maintains biodiversity.

By Andrew Westerman 11 November 2025
Politics

Nothing like ...

The Zionist lobby relies on a twisted history in an effort to legitimise its genocide.

By Andrew Westerman 9 November 2025
Technology

When a Picture Speaks a Thousand Tokens

As AI systems balloon in size and appetite, it’s time to ask whether words are the problem. A new icon-based approach proposes that meaning could be carried more efficiently through pictographs—compact visual tokens that blend logic, context, and emotion. The result could be smaller, faster, and more human-like models that see meaning rather than read it.

By Andrew Westerman 25 October 2025
Looking back

Could Alexander the Great conquer China?

If Alexander is able to force march his troops from Ferghana valley to Qin border in 1 year, find native allies among Qin western neighbours, there's still a chance to break thru the western pass into Qin heartland.

By Carl Zha 4 August 2025
World

Improving Australia–China Relations: Consul General Urges Dialogue and Cooperation

At the University of Southern Queensland, Chinese Consul General Dr. Ruan Zongze called for steady, step-by-step improvements in Australia–China relations, emphasising dialogue, multilateralism, and cultural exchange. He reiterated Beijing’s positions on trade, Taiwan, and nuclear policy, and encouraged more Australians to visit China, including Xinjiang, to foster mutual understanding.

By Cameron Leckie 4 August 2025
Sport

How tennis got boring

In the 1990s, tennis brimmed with variety, style, and unpredictability. Martina Hingis epitomised the era’s creativity, thrilling fans with every shot in the book. But when organisers slowed court surfaces to prolong rallies — and, perhaps, revenues — the sport lost its distinctive styles.

By Andrew Westerman 3 August 2025
Health

Bringing lingering HIV into the open

Once the virus is out in the open, the ART gets to work and kills it. And because mRNA is a single-use molecule, it gets naturally degraded once it's done its job.

By Dr Cal 19 July 2025
Environment

Guardian promotes a simplistic goodies vs baddies view of emissions

Rather than grapple honestly with a complex global issue, The Guardian has resorted to tired Cold War binaries: us vs. them, democracies vs. autocracies, good vs. evil. The irony is that by clinging to this fiction, they obscure the very transparency and accountability they claim to uphold.

By Andrew Westerman 19 July 2025
Australia

ABC in genocide denial

The ABC’s Cowardly Silence: A Shameful Abdication of Public Service

By Andrew Westerman 18 July 2025
Australia

Narratives of collapse

In a time when war rhetoric is again being normalized and military strikes portrayed as moral clarity, we need more scepticism from our national broadcaster - not less.

By Andrew Westerman 15 July 2025
Economics and Business

Treasury advice a no brainer

If we cut spending, we simply lose services, to the detriment of society as a whole.

By Andrew Westerman 14 July 2025