You can wake up one morning in Fiji and feel like you’re living in a totally different country.
Overnight we have lost two of our three Deputy Prime Ministers — by many accounts these were the two who were perhaps among the most influential and pivotal in the running of this government.|
For days news of Biman’s impending arrest was being posted about in advance — clearly leaked by people inside Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC). So it did not come as a total surprise.
But reading the reactions on social media — what has surprised, unnerved and confused many — especially government supporters, is how and why does a government charge their own when many in the previous government they wanted to be held accountable continue to walk free?
Why did charges against the two DPM’s take priority?
Is that a sign of how divided they are — or how upright and full of integrity they are?
Charges seem small
The charges brought against the two DPM’s seem small when compared to the significant impact of their removal from cabinet. PM Sitiveni Rabuka, when he was SODELPA leader in 2018, was charged with more or less the similar offence DPM Biman is being charged with — inaccurate declaration of assets and liabilities under the Political Parties Act.
Rabuka was acquitted on the eve of the 2018 election.
Many thought then the whole charge was nothing more than the former Bainimarama government trying to take out its main competitor ahead of the 2018 elections. There was a strong anti-FICAC sentiment then by those now in power.
The main gripe of the coalition parties coming in was that FICAC was being used by those in power for their political agenda — and needed to be disbanded and come under the Police Force.
Rabuka said as much to me in a 2022 interview.
Inevitably, many are now openly wondering if the same thing FijiFirst was accused of doing is happening here, and if this is a machiavellian political strategy for power. To take out a potential internal challenger and clear out a coalition partner so PAP can fight the next elections on its own and focus on winning it outright.
With the support of some former FijiFirst MP’s — PAP has more than enough numbers — and not as reliant on NFP and SODELPA any more.
Coalition has been great
The coalition has been great — but it has been a headache keeping everyone together and managing everyone’s competing interests.
However, the PM has grounds to argue that he is just following the process and maintaining the integrity of FICAC’s fight against corruption — that was severely compromised with the appointment of Barbara Malimali as per the Commission of Inquiry report.
That all he is practising are the principles of transparency, accountability and good governance. Nothing more, nothing less.
That matter is being heard in court with the ruling to be delivered by 23 January 2026 — three months away.
Rabuka has stated that “no one is above the law” and seems confident of weathering any political storm.
But the dark political clouds are forming. Expect more thunder and lightning strikes as more influential people in key positions are expected to be arrested, putting the political and judicial landscape in turmoil.
Forecast is uncertain.
Many storms before
Rabuka has been through many storms like this before. He says he continues to have the support of everyone on his side, including the two DPM’s recently charged.
For now he remains firmly in charge.
But what was once just whispers of internal dissent and division that many of us once dismissed as rumours is starting to grow, as politicians weigh their options.
Whether it turns into a split or full on rebellion, or everyone realise they have no choice but to fall in line, we shall wait and see.
Could we see a repeat of 1994 when Rabuka’s government was brought down from within but he managed to win enough in the elections and form a coalition with the GVP to remain in power?
As of now many in politics are trying to work out which way the wind will blow.
Stanley Simpson is director of Mai TV, general secretary of the Fiji Media Association (FMA) and a media commentator. This is an independent commentary first published on his Facebook page and republished with permission.
On October 17, I received a brief email from a former Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) vice-president: “Can’t wait for your blog covering the reception of Simeon Brown at conference yesterday!!”
The context was the aggressive address of Minister of Health Simeon Brown to the ASMS annual conference.
As reported by Radio New Zealand’s Ruth Hill (October 16), Brown accused senior doctors of crossing an “ethical line” by taking strike action involving non-acute care.
Health Minister Simeon Brown . . . his ‘unethical’ accusation against doctors. Image: RNZ screenshot APR
His accusation was made in the lead up to the “mega strike” of around 100,000 senior doctors, nurses, teachers and public servants on October 23.
It included misleadingly Brown claiming that patients were paying the price for the strike action and that ASMS had walked “away from negotiations”.
Further, he added, “Patients should never be collateral damage in disputes between management and unions.” He urged ASMS to call off the strike action and return to negotiations (conveniently ignoring that it never left them).
Clicking my heels – but how? As the ASMS executive director until 31 December 2019, what could I do but click my heels and obey the former vice-president. But this left me with a problem of what to focus on in a short blog.
The Health Minister had raised several options.
Attack dog Judith Collins published a strident and inaccurate open letter. Image: otaihangasecondopinion.wordpress.com
One was the fact that his address, reinforced by Public Services Minister Judith Collins’ stridently inaccurate “attack dog open letter” attack on the health and education unions (October 19) is the most aggressive and hardline government approach towards health unions, at least, since I first became involved with the newly formed ASMS in 1989.
Another was the deliberate use of misleading claims such as Brown accusing ASMS of not being prepared to negotiate while, at the same time, Health New Zealand was refusing to meet ASMS to discuss negotiations. Also deliberately misleading was his false claim about senior doctors’ average salaries.
Eventually I landed on the accusation that triggered much of the media interest and most of the criticisms from ASMS conference delegates — Brown’s claim that senior doctors were crossing an ethical line.
Understanding medical ethics As Ruth Hill reported there were “audible cries of disbelief” from the delegates. Also see Stuff journalist Bridie Witton’s coverage (October 16).
Let’s get back to basics. Ethics is the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity.
Following on, medical ethics is the disciplined study of morality in medicine and concerns the obligations of doctors and healthcare organisations to patients as well as the obligations of patients.
Hippocrates developed the oath that formed the original basis of medical ethics. Image: otaihangasecondopinion
Medical ethics starts with the Hippocratic Oath beginning with its first principle of ‘first do no harm’.
As part of an earlier post on the ancient Oath and this principle (5 February 2022) I argued that not only were they still relevant today, but that they should be applied to the whole of our health system, including its leadership.
Who really crossed the ethical line?
Dr Elizabeth Fenton is a lecturer in bioethics at Otago University. On October 22 she had an article published in The Conversation that shone a penetrating analytical light on Simeon Brown’s ethical line crossing claim.
Her observations included:
Bioethics lecturer Dr Elizabeth Fenton gets to the core of whether striking senior doctors are crossing an ethical line. Image: otaihangasecondopinion
“Striking is an option of last resort. In healthcare, it causes disruption and inconvenience for patients, whānau and the health system – but it is ethically justified.
“Arguably, it is ethically required when poor working conditions associated with staff shortages, inadequate infrastructure and underfunding threaten the wellbeing of patients and the long-term sustainability of public health services.
” . . . The real ethical issue is successive governments’ failure to address these conditions and their impact on patient care.”
In response to the health minister’s implication that striking doctors are failing to meet their ethical obligations to provide healthcare, she noted that:
“These are the same doctors who, alongside nurses, carers and allied health professionals, kept New Zealand’s health system functioning during the COVID pandemic in the face of heightened personal risk, often inadequate protections and substantial additional burdens.
“While the duty of care is of primary ethical importance, codes of ethics also recognise doctors’ duties to all patients, and responsibilities to advocate for adequate resourcing in the health system. These duties may justify compromising care to individual patients under the circumstances in which industrial action is considered.”
Further, doctors:
“. . . are striking because their ability to meet these obligations [to provide high quality care] is routinely compromised by working conditions that contribute to burnout and moral injury – the impact of having to work under circumstances that violate core moral values.
“A key goal of the industrial action is to demand better conditions for clinical care, such as safe staffing levels, that will benefit patients and staff and improve the health system for everyone.”
The penultimate final word In the context of Dr Fenton’s incisive analysis, as reported by Ruth Hill in her above-mentioned RNZ item it is appropriate to leave the penultimate final word to the response of senior doctors at the ASMS annual conference to Simeon Brown’s ethical line crossing accusation. These comments were made in among their boos and groans.
Dr Katie Ben . . . operating lists routinely being cancelled. Image: The Press
ASMS president and Nelson Hospital anaesthetist Dr Katie Ben said:
“We have now taken to putting the number of times the patient has been cancelled on the operating list to ensure the patient doesn’t get cancelled for the fourth, fifth or sixth time. Non-clinical managers were cancelling planned care because they could not fill rosters.”
Waikato Hospital rheumatologist Dr Alan Doube said many people (with crippling chronic conditions) did not even get a first specialist appointment (FSA).
“In Waikato, we decline regularly 50 percent of our FSA so we can provide some kind of sensible ongoing care.”
Emergency medicine specialist Dr Tom Morton at Nelson Hospital added:
“Our ED waiting time have blown out with more than doubling of patients leaving without being seen, which I think is a significant marker of unmet need that’s not being recorded or reported on officially.”
The ultimate final word: nailing who crossed an ethical line In a subsequent RNZ item (October 17), the Health Minister threatened a law change to remove senior doctors’ right to strike: Right to strike threatened.
Patient advocate Malcolm Mulholland . . . nailing who crossed an ethical line. Image: otaihangasecondopinion
The reported response of leading patient advocate Malcolm Mulholland nailed who was crossing the ethical line. Describing Simeon Brown’s threat as “pathetic”, he added:
“I think the reason why our doctors and our nurses are striking is because there’s just simply not enough staff. I don’t know how many times they have to tell him until they are blue in the face.
“You know, all this talk about crossing an ethical line, I would say, ‘take a look in the mirror, minister’.”
Indeed Health Minister — look in the mirror! It is the striking doctors who are acting in accordance with the Hippocratic Oath and adhering to the principle of “first do no harm”. It is the Health Minister who is not.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
A fresh survey this week suggested Labour has plummeted to fourth place in voter intentions, behind not just the Conservatives and Reform UK, but potentially even the Greens.
Starmer: turbocharging Labour’s demise
Keir Starmer isn’t just floundering, he is actively accelerating the death of the Labour Party, turning what was once a party of workers and social justice into a pale imitation of the Tories with a hint of Reform, all while watching his poll numbers crater and his own MPs eye the exit doors.
For Starmer, falling behind the Greens isn’t just bad, it’s utterly humiliating for a party that won a massive landslide victory a little over a year ago.
This calamitous collapse is a direct result of Starmer’s refusal to fight for bold socialist policies. Instead of tackling rising inequality head-on with targeted wealth taxes, genuine public ownership, or real wage protections, the bought-and-paid-for asset of the terrorist pariah state doubled down on austerity-lite measures that savagely punch down on the working class while unashamedly cosying up to big business.
It’s a classic Blairite triangulation. Shamelessly go searching for the votes of the centre-right, rather than advocate the policies of the left. Completely alienate your traditional voter base. Sit back and watch helplessly while the Greens siphon off progressive voters who are justifiably furious about Labour’s shift to the right.
But this time, there are two huge differences to the Greens of two decades ago.
Meet the new Greens
One, Zack Polanski. He is the most polished, believable Green Party politician in my lifetime. He gets it.
If you’re left-wing and fed up, Polanski — greener, meaner (to the establishment), and a dab hand at brilliantly dismantling the system — is a serious upgrade on the beleaguered anti-socialist prime minister.
Starmer is the emperor, foolishly pretending he is dressed for revolution. Polanski is the comedian, roasting the emperor’s new clothes with very little effort.
Is Polanski perfect? No.
Are you?
We on the left have been absolutely drubbing Starmer since his 2024 landslide win turned into a masterclass in disappointment, with policies that feel like Thatcherism in a red tie, such as keeping the two-child benefit cap and welcoming donors over workers.
Zack Polanski is the right person, in the right place, at the right time, to take this fight to the establishment.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m beginning to think Zack Polanski’s new Green Party is looking a whole lot like I would expect the Labour Party to look.
And secondly, a fractured left has pushed thousands of socialists towards the Greens because they really cannot be arsed with these factional divisions that keep us further away from power than ever before.
If I, once laughably described by Buzzfeed as “the woman that leads Corbyn’s Twitter army” can see it, so can anyone else that is looking for a hope train to hop on board during these dark days of poor-hating, refugee-baiting and *checks notes*… roundabout painting.
The left has been screaming out for a figurehead for five years. You can hardly blame them for getting behind a fantastic communicator with a clear vision, such as Mr Polanski.
Meanwhile, in Wales…
Caerphilly — M4 Junction 32, and the cradle of socialist icons like Aneurin Bevan and birthplace of the NHS — has been a Labour stronghold for over 100 years.
The Caerphilly Senedd by-election wasn’t just a win for Plaid Cymru, it was a thunderous repudiation of the stale, out-of-touch status quo that is dogmatically peddled by both Labour and Reform UK.
Farage had already strutted into Caerphilly like some sort of conquering hero. Pass me the fucking sick bucket. The loathsome, wretched skid mark threw everything at a seat where they had scraped just 495 votes in 2021.
Hilariously, Reform limped to second place with just over a third over the vote. This slap-down reveals their apparent insurgent momentum as little more than brittle protest fluff that can be easily dismantled by a grounded progressive campaign that addresses the concerns of the many, and not the few.
Reform boasted of toppling “100 years of Labour rule” and got their arses handed to them on left-wing plate by a 72-year-old local stalwart who has contested THIRTEEN elections since 1983.
Reform’s 2025 gains could well be anti-Labour spasms, not durable ideology, and we have seen how they can be defeated by alliances that emphasise hope over hate and a local ground campaign that gets out the vote.
Labour got a seismic warning in Wales
I’ve no doubt Mr Farage makes fantastic meme material, but governing the UK? Don’t bet on it just yet, because Plaid Cymru and the people of Caerphilly have shown us that nothing in politics is inevitable.
For Labour, Caerphilly wasn’t just a minor blip, it is a seismic warning that Starmer’s austerity-lite, Westminster first Labour is in a whole world of shit, across the entire country.
Just for one moment, imagine being a Labour politician. Yikes.
Now try telling an ordinary person in Caerphilly about the need for fiscal restraint and difficult decisions after fourteen dreadful years of Tory austerity while not-so-subtly sending billions of their pounds to a country with a rampant neo-Nazi problem.
It’s okay. You can stop imagining now, pick yourself up off the floor, pinch the bridge of your nose to stem the flow of blood, and join a genuinely progressive force for good.
Well done to the people of Caerphilly for coming together to stop Reform ringmaster Farage and his Tory-reject clowns — in the words of another famous son of Caerphilly, Tommy Cooper — “just like that”.
The central hall in the Dolphin in Darlington wasn’t just a venue on Friday evening, it was an anomaly.
In this tiny, post-industrial town in the north, the population has been lost for a long time, reeling from the fall of the ‘Red Wall,’ and desperate for change. Years of lack of funding, being ignored by the vast majority of political parties, has meant that the populist far-right have found a home in the crumbling streets of the town, where Reform UK are expected to surge in the polls.
Yet it was here, in the last bastion of community in Darlington, that the Green Party hosted a sold-out public meeting. Three hundred and fifty people packed into the hall, a huge number for a town of this size, every eye shimmering with excitement and hope as they jostled for seats.
Zack Polanski, the new Green Partyleader, took to the stage, and fucking hell, he did not mince his words.
Opening with a winning smile, he greeted the crowd in a way that I haven’t seen in years. His openness, humour, and caring demeanor seemed to saturate his every word, showing that the purpose of the meeting was not to dwell on the fact that “the county’s future is on the edge,” but to light a fire of hope. The night was a beautiful demonstration that a politics of hope is the answer to the creeping national despair:
The engine of hope, powered by local people
Zack Polanski’s approach, a brilliant mixture of charisma and enthusiasm, immediately set the tone, one that contrasted sharply with the caution of the mainstream. Emphasising that, under his leadership, the massive increase in membership was not a cult of personality, but a genuine grassroots phenomenon.
With open arms, he declared:
Hope is not about a charismatic leader on a stage, hope is about a movement.
At that point, I felt a prickle of hope in the pit of my stomach.
The powerful message seemed to ripple through the audience, reminding us all that we are not passive consumers of politics, but the engine that we powered to facilitate change. Not since Jeremy Corbyn had I felt this prickle, with Polanski’s leadership style embracing the messiness of real democracy. He seems unafraid to acknowledge the rifts that haunt the left, recognising that a healthy party needs a broad church of members.
Our unified struggle and reframing the blame
The commitment to internal democracy in the Green Party shone through in the words “parties should have disagreements,” and assured people that it would be the members who would be deciding the future of the party.
The most compelling part of the evening was how Zack Polanski dismantled the divide-and-rule tactics of the establishment. For the leader of the Greens, although he openly stated the environment remains a primary issue, he highlighted how social and racist injustices are not a separate issue. You cannot tackle one without tackling them all.
This philosophy led him to confront the politics of hate and division. Polanski himself is proudly gay and Jewish, clearly showing that the Green Party would stand for all minoritised people, and he highlighted this by talking about the plight of the trans community and the relentless attacks they are facing as the media tries to mask the real issues society faces.
Polanski did not shy away from calling the rise of far-right figures exactly what it is: fascism, which he proudly and loudly called Nigel Farage, to the smiling approval of the crowd:
The real politics of hope from Zack Polanski and the Greens
Yet Zack Polanski immediately pivoted, drowning the politics of fear with his own politics of hope.
His strategy to win hearts in tiny towns like Darlington was powerful and made me pause and think.
Stating that the people running into the open arms of far-right organisations are “not racist, they are scared,” and face exactly the same fears as we do. They cannot afford their homes, their bills, and cannot feed their kids. We are one and the same, but these lost people just need to realise that, rather than punching downwards and attacking the vulnerable, they need to turn their eyes upwards towards the true enemy.
The Green Party’s role, he argued, is that our struggles are the same and the only enemy we share is the system of orchestrated inequality.
That prickle of hope became a little flame, as I realised what he said was true, and it dawned on me I had to change my ways as well and open myself up to speaking to these people, not just shout at them. It is time to open those dialogues and embrace those who suffer like we do, but have not quite realised the real reasons why.
“We don’t have to stop the small boats, we have to stop the yachts”
That little flame of hope flickering in my stomach suddenly became a furnace with what Zack Polanski then went on to say. He unapologetically laid out the economic blueprint for hope, emphasising that wealth redistribution was the key to going forward and that the means of production should be squarely in the control of the workers.
Honestly, I could have cried.
Who was this man standing before us, smiling at the crowd and speaking the most sense I’d heard since the Corbyn years?
Going on to announce a wealth tax, a policy supported by 75% of the population, was met with ear-shattering applause, as he unapologetically and confidently smashed an issue that every single other leader didn’t have the balls to address. With that winning smile, he promised the revenue it would raise would balance the country’s battered books and would fund the essential services austerity had destroyed.
A £15 minimum wage was also met with rippling excitement from the crowd, a momentum I didn’t think could be beaten until the mention of a MAXIMUM WAGE left Polanski’s lips. Ensuring the crowd that bosses would “no longer be able to take the piss,” the people in the room met this with cacophonous cheers, the promise to shatter the current status quo giving us all the hope we have been missing for so long.
Pledge after pledge from Zack Polanski
Our crumbling NHS, he stated, would no longer incorporate private healthcare, declaring it was run by nothing but leeches. Connecting the health crisis directly to immigration, he highlighted the over 150,000 vacancies within our healthcare system, with the anti-immigration rhetoric of the right pushing away essential workers that we need to keep the nation healthy.
Oh, and social housing? Don’t worry, Zack Polanski has it covered. With over 1.2 million people on the waiting list, he pledged to build social housing, safe from the predatory ownership of career landlords.
Putting the nail in the coffin for the Reform UK party, Polanski smashed the key issue that the entire crowd’s beliefs echoed: The migration issue isn’t one of scarcity, but of greed. The Greens were going after those who truly drained our wrecked country’s resources.
The Rich.
And I almost lost my shit when he said:
We don’t have to stop the small boats, we have to stop the yachts.
A final, hope-filled pledge
The Green Party’s strategy has already been bearing fruit in Darlington, where six Green councillors have been championing local people’s issues. They have tirelessly worked for their community, fighting incredibly hard against the Skerningham Development and working with local Fix-It Cafes.
Zack Polanski promised to turn the current momentum of the party into a force capable of winning 30 to 40 seats in the next government.
He drew a very rare line in the sand as well, which shocked me. I have seen Polanski speak with Zarah Sultana previously, and all he ever did was offer his hand and ways to work together. But this red line was spot on. He refused to ever consider a coalition with Labour, citing the original pledges Starmer had pissed on to get into power, Polanski saying that he “could not be trusted.”
The meeting ended not with a policy debate, but with a massively overwhelming feeling of hope.
A hope none of us have felt for years.
A hope that we, as the trodden-down working class, need to bring to those who are lost and scared:
The Green Party has another new member – thanks to Zack Polanski
The entire evening was a testament to the fact that, even in a little run-down town like Darlington, which is deemed ‘jaded,’ people are hungry for the politics of change. They need a politics that speaks to their needs and offers a genuine alternative to community, that will fight the rising tide of fascism and bring the real power of politics to the people. We need a politics run by us, not politicians in the hands of their corporate masters and shareholders.
For me, sitting in that crowd and feeling the shared conviction in Zack Polanski’s voice and the cheers of those around me, the furnace of hope burning in my chest, I came to a realisation.
It was time I stopped watching from the sideline and actually became part of the change.
That night, I decided to join the Greens.
Featured image and additional images via the Canary
King Charles may already be longing for the good old days of merely dealing with the alleged crimes of his creepy sweatless brother, as he has now attracted the ire of an even more unscrupulous pack of ne’er-do-wells – grumpy Orangemen. The monarch’s crime is to try and put an end to 500 years of sectarian strife in Europe by becoming the first leader of the Church of England to pray with the Pope.
You’d think it might be a positive thing to step away from a period that has brought us such highlights as The Thirty Years’ War (1618 – 1648, 8 million dead, including half of Germany); the French Wars of Religion (1562 – 1598, 4 million dead); and several hundred years of conflict in Ireland (including Britain’s genocidal starvation policies that left over 1 million dead), but the Independent Loyal Orange Institution (ILOI) has a different take. The offshoot of the Orange Order apparently want to keep this excellent run going for a few more centuries, and have used the trendy medium of obscure theological rhetoric to do so.
Gonna party like it’s 1517
Ever with the times, the sash-sporting sectarians have come up with a series of anti-papist gibberish likely to confuse even their own members, King Charles, the Pope, the person that wrote it, and probably God himself. Leo is a fairly conventionally bigoted leader of the Catholic church, but the wild diatribe – which sounds like an unused excerpt from the street preachers scene in Life of Brian – makes him sound closer to the antichrist:
The Pope falsely claims to be the Vicar of Christ on earth and the Church over which he presides clearly preaches a false Gospel which is not in keeping with the Inerrant Word of God.
When examined in the light of Scripture, the erroneous and dangerous doctrines and practices of the Church of Rome are found to be unscriptural and completely without biblical warrant.
The Ballymoney lads go on to prove they’re down with the kids by letting us know that the:
Romish doctrine of Purgatory is repugnant to the Word of God along with the worshipping of images and relics’. Furthermore, the same Articles of Faith over which the King governs reaffirm that ‘the Church of Rome hath erred on matters of Faith and that the false doctrine of Transubstantiation cannot be proved in scripture for the Mass is a blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit which have given occasion to superstition.
The Canary tried running the above through Google Translate to see what this shit means but the Deranged Orange Sectarian Lunacy feature is still in beta so we’ll put it down as “something not very nice about the Pope” for now.
Full-fat Orangeism, carbonara and Holy War
The ILOI pledge on their website (a form of witchcraft btw) to “look forward to the future [and]…learn from the past”, which is an interesting take given they likely believe the world is 6,000 years old, fixate on stuff 2,000 years old, pledge their allegiance to a creed 500 years old, and revel constantly in the ‘glory’ of a battle that’s 300 years old.
The solemnity of their letter clearly indicates they’re still stuck in a past where Britain’s benefit-scrounger-in-chief (i.e. King), enjoyed real power rather than just slightly too much power for an unelected figurehead. Naughty Charlie is told off for failing to uphold his Coronation Oath in which someone who actually listens to this stuff noticed that he pledged to be a “faithful Protestant”. Apparently that means “there can be No Peace with Rome, until Rome makes Peace with God” so with any luck hopefully while in Italy Charles can say something disparaging about a carbonara and kick off a world-shattering Holy War before he gets the 19:15 flight home to London Stansted.
In these fast-changing times, where some unionists seem to be moving towards your more fashionable forms of bigotry, such as hatred of immigrants and trans people, it’s almost nostalgic to see the old hands keeping the proud tradition of anti-Catholic animosity going.
Returning to Aotearoa after half a year in the occupied West Bank, Cole Martin says a peace deal that fails to address the root causes — and ignores the brutal reality of life for Palestinians — is no peace deal at all.
COMMENTARY:By Cole Martin
A ceasefire in Gaza last week brought scenes reminiscent of January’s brief pause — tears, relief, exhaustion and devastation as families reunited after months, years and even decades in captivity.
Others were exiled or discovered their entire family had been killed; thousands returned to their homes in northern Gaza, others to rubble – but just like last time, it didn’t last.
An Israeli checkpoint near Al-Khalil, Hebron . . . Palestinians stand in a crowded, fenced corridor with metal bars, waiting to pass through a turnstile gate. Image: Cole Martin
The prevention of food, water, aid and critical infrastructure continues; the borders remain closed; and across the rest of Palestine, Israel’s brutal system of domination, apartheid and displacement continues.
It’s impossible to ignore two critical elements that this deal omitted: a failure to address the root causes and a jarring lack of international accountability.
I returned to Aotearoa this week after six months documenting and reporting from the occupied West Bank, where Israel continues its campaign of violent displacement and colonial expansion. Almost everyone I know has tasted the terror of Israeli domination.
Broke into bedroom
My Arabic tutor described how soldiers broke into her bedroom at night to interrogate her family about a man they didn’t even know. My climbing partner warned you can be shot for climbing in the wrong place, with most of their crags now inaccessible.
I visited Jerusalem with a friend who scored a one-day permit. He lives in Bethlehem, just a half-hour away, but they’re barred from visiting and must return by midnight; a process involving biometric scanners and intrusive searches.
And I was based in Aida refugee camp, one of dozens across the land where thousands of families have lived since their violent displacement in 1948 — the ethnic cleansing which saw 750,000 expelled, 15,000 killed and 530 villages destroyed.
Refused the right to return, their homes are now dormant ruins in “nature reserves” or inhabited by Israeli families. Israel was built on the land, farms, businesses and stolen wealth of these families — and countless more who remain as “present absentees” within the state of Israel.
Left: Palestinian climbers enjoy one of their last accessible crags, the others too dangerous to access because of settler violence. Right: Yacoub Odeh, 84, walks the ruins of his childhood village Lifta, denied his right to return to live, despite living just 10 minutes away. Images: Cole Martin
I visited the Ofer military courts and witnessed a corrupt system designed to funnel Palestinians to prison based on extortion, plea bargains and “secret evidence” which the detainee and lawyer aren’t allowed to see. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers receive full legal rights in Israeli civil courts; two vastly different legal systems based on race — if the settler is arrested at all.
Almost everyone I met has experienced detention firsthand or through a close family member — involving beatings, humiliation, starvation and threats. A nurse my age humorously asked why I wasn’t married yet; when I asked the same, he explained he’d only recently left years of Israeli captivity.
His killer was free within five days, back harassing the family, and has established an illegal settlement in the middle of their village — destroying homes, olive groves, water and electrical infrastructure with no repercussions.
Tariq Hathaleen stares at the bloodstained courtyard where his cousin and best friend Awdah was shot. Tariq was detained for several days following Awdah’s death. Image: Cole Martin
I visited countless communities across the West Bank who face daily harassment, violence and incursions from Israeli settlers, police and military. Settlements continue to expand, preventing Palestinians from reaching their land.
All of this continues, none of it is halted by the “ceasefire”; and most of it will escalate as soldiers leave Gaza and look to exert their dominance elsewhere.
I’m truly fearful for my friends in the West Bank, particularly as Israel openly threatens annexation. A peace deal that ignores these realities is no peace deal.
Resilience and courage
But I also witnessed resilience and courageous persistence. Palestinian civil society and individuals have spent decades committed to creative non-violence in the face of these atrocities — from court battles to academia, education, art, demonstrations, general strikes, hīkoi (marches), sit-ins, civil disobedience.
These are the overlooked stories that don’t make catchy headlines, but their success depends on the international community to provide accountability. Without global support, Palestinians have been refused their right to self-defence, resistance and self-determination.
If we really care about peace, we need to support justice. To talk about peace without liberation is to suggest submission to a system of displacement, imprisonment, violence and erasure.
This is not the time to turn away, this is the time to ensure that international law is upheld, that Palestinians are given their dignity, self-determination, right to return and reparations for the horror they’ve faced.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist who has been based in the occupied West Bank for six months and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by the The Spinoff and is republished with the author’s permission.
Jeremy Corbyn has written to Lisa Nandy to condemn her outrageous – and frankly antisemitic – comments. Namely, Nandy claimed that Corbyn and the left don’t care about the safety of Jewish people because they object to allowing a bunch of racist Maccabi Tel Aviv thugs masquerading as football fans to rampage through the streets of Birmingham chanting about rape and murder and looking for Muslims to beat up.
Conflating all Jewish people with a hate mob is antisemitic – yet that’s what Nandy did when she answered Corbyn’s parliamentary question by telling him that, as Corbyn notes in his letter:
the people he now associates with … do not share the view that everybody must be safe to walk the streets of this country.
Of course, Corbyn being Corbyn – and an MP – has used more moderate language. But, his disgust at Nandy and her boss Keir Starmer’s determination to conflate Jewish people and violent thugs is perfectly clear nonetheless. The letter is reproduced below and the text is provided after it for those using screen readers:
I have written to Lisa Nandy, following her grossly misleading comments over the Maccabi Tel Aviv ban.
This is about a group of fans with a history of racism and violence. It is not about banning Jewish people – and any attempt to conflate the two is shameful. pic.twitter.com/B2MsaaZBGq
I am writing to express my deep disappointment in your response to my question during
yesterday’s Urgent Question; on the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C. fans from the fixture
against Aston Villa.
As I said in the chamber, this decision was about the risk to public safety, not about “banning
Jewish people from going to the match or going to Birmingham.”
I requested that we must avoid the dangerous conflation of the behaviour of a group of football
fans from “the wider question of how everybody-whether Jewish, Muslim or anything else must
be safe to walk the streets of this country.”
In your response, you stated that “the people he now associates with … ” do not share the view
that everybody must be safe to walk the streets of this country. Your comment is a shameful
misrepresentation of my colleagues’ views. As you will know, the Safety Advisory Group’s
decision to prohibit away supporters from attending the match was taken to “help mitigate risks
to public safety” after West Midlands Police classified the fixture as “high-risk”. Making this
assessment through the lens of public safety is what most people would hope and expect – and
explains why this decision has public support.
Contrary to your claim that “it is unprecedented in recent times that an entire group of away
supporters have been entirely banned from a game”, Legia Warsaw fans were banned from a
game against Aston Villa in 2023. West Midlands Police took this decision due to “safety fears.”
This is about a group of football fans with a history of racism and violence. This is not about
banning Jewish people -and you know full well that none of us would support such a ban. Any
attempt to conflate these two issues is not just grossly misleading; it is irresponsible and
represents a shameful attempt to exploit the fears and anxieties of Jewish people.
Please can you return to the House of Commons to retract your comments. My independent
colleagues in parliament -Ayoub, Zarah, Iqbal, Shockat and Adnan -work diligently to serve
people of all faiths and others in their communities. We will continue to speak up in parliament
for all of them in the name of equality, justice and peace.
Israel-funded Zionist Nandy is even less likely to do that than she is to be seen at the front of the next march for Palestine, which her boss and his minions want to ban, when the UK Israel lobby has mounted a mass campaign to overturn the safety-driven Maccabi ban, even inventing a ‘Jewish supporters’ organisation to shore up its propaganda.
Israel and the West pretend they want a real peace in Israel-Palestine yet the Israelis have beaten unconscious the man most likely to help realise a sustainable end to the conflict: Marwan Barghouti.
The ethnocentrism of Western culture is such that 20 Israeli hostages received vastly more coverage than thousands of Palestinian hostages, nearly 2000 of whom were released as part of the recent exchange.
These prisoners, physically emaciated, most emotionally shattered, many children, most having never been charged, some held for decades, emerged from the Dantesque Inferno of the Israeli prison system. Most had some kind of disease, commonly scabies, due to the infested and infected conditions of the gulag.
Five Palestinian detainees released and exiled to Egypt brought with them terrible news: the great Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti — the person most likely to lead a free Palestine — had recently been beaten unconscious by his captors.
According to the Times of Israel, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who oversees the Israeli Prison System says he is “proud that Barghouti’s conditions have changed drastically”.
What Nelson Mandela would say about the beating of Marwan Marwan Barghouti — Palestine’s most loved and revered leader, a living symbol of the resistance — was beaten unconscious by 8 Israeli guards, according to the testimony of fellow prisoners on arrival in Cairo. The attack left the 66-year-old with broken ribs and head injuries.
When called on to demand his protection, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other Western leaders yawned and looked the other way. That response defined the depths that the Western world has reached in its permissiveness of violence towards Palestinian prisoners.
Marwan Barghouti is commonly referred to as the Palestinian Mandela, a man who has the attributes to not only unite the many Palestinian factions but also negotiate a lasting peace, if given the opportunity.
Mandela couldn’t have been “Mandela” without him surviving and being released — which is a tribute to the ANC and other fighters for freedom, as well as to the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns that finally convinced the regime to negotiate.
The same was true of the Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland which saw the release of prisoners that one side considered terrorists. The British also came to accept that negotiation with leaders like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness of the IRA was essential precisely because they had the street credibility to deliver peace.
It is worth pointing out that Mandela said he was not personally beaten during his 27 years of captivity by the racist South African apartheid regime.
Barghouti, who has spent the last 23 years in prisons has had at least four beatings by the Israelis in the past three years alone. The Israelis have shown nothing but contempt for the Geneva Conventions, the laws of war, Red Cross requests, or any benchmark of human decency.
They are our “friends and allies” with whom we share values.
‘He has been in a struggle for 50 years’. Video: TRT News
Rules on prisoner treatment
After leaving Robben Island to eventually become South Africa’s first black President, the convicted terrorist and revolutionary Prisoner 46664 helped author the Nelson Mandela Rules on prisoner treatment, adopted by the United Nations in 2015. He had seen the mistreatment of many of his comrades by racist white South Africa, a close ally of most of our governments.
The scale of what is being done by Israel in its mass torture centres would be beyond anything Mandela could have imagined. Unlike morally repellent leaders like New Zealand’s Luxon, UK’s Starmer, France’s Macron or Germany’s Merz, he would never have failed to act.
A central tenet of the Mandela Rules is that people behind bars are not beyond human rights. Countries — and, yes, that includes Israel — must adhere to minimum standards such as, “No prisoner shall be subjected to, and all prisoners shall be protected from, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, for which no circumstances whatsoever may be invoked as a justification.”
Recently released Palestinians, most in shocking physical condition, talked of having to drink toilet water, beatings, being denied medical treatment, constant humiliations, including sexual violence, committed by the Israelis.
This kind of behaviour has long been documented by international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — and largely ignored by the mainstream media.
The Israelis, never forget, are our close friends, with whom we share “values”.
I have written a number of articles about Marwan and, to avoid repetition, I recommend those unfamiliar with his astonishing story to read them. My last article, Saving Marwan Barghouti is our duty, in August, was part of a global push to prevent Marwan facing further mistreatment. I was shocked at the time to see the video that Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir posted to show the power he personally had over Marwan whose physical condition had obviously deteriorated to a terrible extent. Now he has been beaten, for the fourth time.
“It is a clear declaration that they are threatening my father’s life,” his son Arab Barghouti said this week.
Prisons are ‘Israeli sadism in a nutshell’ One person who watched the release of the prisoners last week was veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass, correspondent on the Occupied Palestinian Territories for Israel’s leading newspaper Haaretz.
“It was a kind of parade of skeletons,” Hass said. “These last two years, it’s like the Israeli prisons have become Israeli sadism in a nutshell,” she told Democracy Now!.
“The way that prisoners were treated during these two years is unprecedented in Israel. They didn’t only come out emaciated; they came out ill, sick. Some of them have lost limbs. It’s indescribable.”
Hass’s own parents were Holocaust survivors, her mother surviving nine months in the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Now, along with all of us, she is witness to genocide.
She makes the fine observation that people aren’t born cruel; they become so. I would add: we in the West helped the Israelis become so depraved by ignoring their abuses for so long. Former human rights lawyer Keir Starmer is a case in point.
“Can I ask the Prime Minister what recent representation his government has made in the last few days to secure the immediate release of Mr Barghouti, given his widespread popularity as a unifying voice for Palestinian rights, dignity and freedom, and therefore his potential crucial role in securing a meaningful and lasting peace in the region?”
Starmer is an avatar for the West: complicit in genocide and disturbingly detached from the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Starmer is an avatar for the West . . . complicit in genocide and disturbingly detached from the suffering of the Palestinian people. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
Starmer, who has less human decency in his entire being than Nelson Mandela had in one nostril hair, refused to even mention Barghouti by name. His lawyerly reply:
“Thank you for raising the individual case. We offer to provide such further information as we can, as soon as we can, in relation to that particular case.”
Western leaders, including in my own country, have refused to even reply to requests that petitions/insistences be made to the Israelis to save the great Palestinian leader. They have shown more empathy for the remains of deceased Israeli hostages crushed under the rubble of buildings bombed by the Israelis, hypocritically blaming Hamas for not releasing the remains fast enough!
Such is the moral calibre of our leaders.
None of them, it should be pointed out, had anything to say when footage appeared of Israeli soldiers committing gang rape at Sde Temein Prison last year. Not only were the men not punished but by week’s end they had been blessed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s spiritual mentor Rabbi Meir Mazuz who assured one of the rapists that he had done “no wrong” and “In another country they would have given him an award”.
Never forget, the Israelis are our close friends and allies with whom, our leaders tell us, we share values.
‘Israel doesn’t want peace – they want ethnic cleansing’ Such is Marwan Barghouti’s standing that he is respected by all Palestinian factions and acknowledged as a unifying figure, a peacemaker and someone who should be leading Palestine not getting his head punched by Israeli thugs.
“That’s why they see him as a danger,” says his son, Arab Barghouti. “Because he wants to bring stability, he wants to end the cycle of violence.
“He wants a unifying Palestinian vision that is accepted by everyone, and the international community as well. But they’re [Israelis] not interested in any political settlement; they’re only interested in ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people.”
True words, those — and they demolish the fake narrative peddled by Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders that there was “no partner for peace” on the Palestinian side.
The Israelis have killed so many Palestinian negotiators, so many Palestinians leaders that the opposite is now clear: the Israelis and the West are the true enemies of peace.
I’ll give the last word to another Palestinian. I dedicate it to Keir Starmer, Christopher Luxon, Anthony Albanese and all those other leaders who stand deaf, dumb and blind to Marwan Barghouti and the thousands of Palestinian souls still suffering in Israeli captivity:
“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’
– Matthew 25, King James Bible
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and he contributes to Asia Pacific Report. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.
The irrelevance of Keir Starmer was highlighted in the most brutally awkward fashion, this past week in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, where world leaders gathered for a hastily organised signing ceremony endorsing Donald Trump’s Gaza ‘peace plan’.
After a couple of weeks of painfully dragging myself through party conference speeches, a running nose and aching bones, this ultimate cringe of 2025 was exactly what the doctor ordered.
The ‘historic’ signing event was supposed to project global unity, but it quickly devolved into a viral moment of delicious diplomatic discomfort that humiliated a beleaguered flop of a British prime minister.
Even more glorious was the fact Keir Starmer had hyped himself up into the big leagues, and in the blink of an eye he realised he was no more than the intern fetching a coffee for his boss.
Starmer shuffled up to the lectern like he was about to unveil the cure for the common cold and left moments later looking like a lightweight boxer in a heavyweight bout.
After watching the slow motion car crash of egos clip for a fourth, possibly fifth time, was I the only person thinking to myself, “Please god, don’t let me be British any longer”?
As if the dentally-challenged far-rights painted roundabouts and upside down Temu flags didn’t already leave you wanting to denounce your Britishness every time you popped to Asda, then along comes wooden Keir, with a grin like cracked porcelain to finish the job off.
So what happened to the ironclad “special relationship”?
Starmer: where’s the special relationship?
There was Trump, name-dropping and praising his allies like Italy’s Meloni, while Starmer got the equivalent of a LinkedIn “thanks for your interest” email. There was no “Keir, my man” bromance, no shared spotlight, just a pat on the head and a dismissal that screamed of utter irrelevance.
Of course, the snub wasn’t random. Starmer was named last because of the simmering tensions over Britain’s role in the peace process. Trump, seeking revenge for Starmer’s half-hearted recognition of a Palestinian state, gave a brutal demonstration of our diminished clout on the global stage.
Starmer, desperately trying to play the serious statesman with his lawyerly gravitas and zero stage presence, made an absolute fool of himself on the greatest stage of them all, and I, for one, absolutely loved it.
Starmer’s post-snub spin? “It helped get the ceasefire”. This is delusional nonsense from a man who peaked as a human upright Dyson.
In reality, it wasn’t just a snub. It was a vivisection of Starmer’s fragile ego, exposing the hollow core of a damaged prime minister who thought groveling at Donald Trump’s flakey feet would earn him a seat at the grown-ups’ table.
I absolutely detest Keir Starmer at the best of times, be in absolutely no doubt of that, but I am absolutely convinced that the tangerine tantrum hates the toolmaker’s son, even more than me.
Trump views Starmer as a woke liability with Obama-esque policies. It’s easy for us to laugh at the “woke” accusation, but when you’re Donald Trump even Genghis Khan comes across as a tofu-eating tree hugger.
Meanwhile…
I dared to delve into the world of football thuggery this past week, inspired by the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from travelling to Birmingham to watch their football team face Aston Villa.
Keir Starmer, desperate to please his disappointed Zionist backers, immediately denounced the safety advisory group’s decision (because he obviously knows better), and went straight in with the antisemitism smear.
I can’t pretend to know the ins and outs of the Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters’ well-documented football-related violence, and I thought the Football Lads Alliance was some sort of boyband that was thrown together on the X Factor. But to pretend a group of football hooligans are being singled out for being Jewish is entirely disingenuous and utterly deplorable.
The last I heard, the Labour government were working “at pace” to get the sensible decision overturned. Perhaps they should keep their fucking noses out, unless Starmer, Streeting, Reeves, and the rest of the Israel fanatics want to put on a hi-viz jacket and steward the match themselves.
Who knows? By the time you read this it wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility for Benjamin Netanyahu to be given a VIP seat at Aston Villa for the big match, with free tea and biscuits at half time.
Bald bait
I must admit, I did put a little bit of bald bait on my X timeline to see what fishy fash I could reel in, and my goodness they did not disappoint:
Stick to cooking. U obviously know nothing about football
You’ve not seen my cooking, Simon Bunchanumbers.
You know fuck all about football you nazi cunt
@lads_alliance we have another one here to visit
Ive got her address
Thank you Jason the patriot. Could you ask them to cut my front bush, please?
Shut up you lefty cunt
Cheers Arnie, my love. I hope your next shit is a hedgehog.
I say to you lovers of ‘the beautiful game’, there is nothing beautiful about repeatedly turning European football into a battleground for violent extremism. Not that Starmer seems to have noticed that.
While millions waited in hopes that the Global Sumud Flotilla would win this year’s Nobel peace prize for its epic solidarity with Palestine, the Norwegian committee charged with granting the award gave it to Maria Corina Machado instead, veteran CIA coup plotter in Venezuela. As the late Gore Vidal aptly advised, “Never underestimate the Scandinavian sense of humor.”
A day later in Gaza, the Israeli army destroyed the children’s hospital Al Rantisi with dynamite charges exponentially more powerful than those conceived by their inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), creator of the prize that carries his name. With the victims’ bodies barely cold in the rubble where the hospital previously stood, Machado praised the Holy State as a “genuine ally of liberty” while sending compliments to the “long-suffering Venezuelan people” as well as President Trump: “I accept this award in your honor, because you really deserve it.”
Congratulations poured in, among them, from Barack Obama, who won the peace prize in 2009 on his way to authorizing seven wars in Muslim countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria). Also from Guatemalan president Bernardo Arevalo, who called Machado a “world class Venezuelan,” an appraisal that would have shamed his father (Juan Jose Arevalo), the first democratically elected president of the Central American republic and author of The Shark and the Sardines, a strong anti-imperialist essay whose title alone captures the historic power dynamic between Washington and Latin America.
Machado, a pseudo-Venezuelan “sardine” eager to sell-out her country to the “shark” in Washington, was received in the White House in 2005 by George W. Bush in recognition of the quality of her aspirations, and twenty years later she is still at it, imploring Trump to invade Venezuela in the name of liberty, democracy, and the struggle against narco-terrorism. Of course this has nothing to do with Venezuelan’s proven oil reserves of 303.8 billion barrels, the most of any country in the world. Perish the thought.
Dr. Nobel, an arms manufacturer who got the idea for awarding a peace prize from his secretary Bertha Felicie Sophie, who was a pacifist and feminist, as well as the author of Lay Down Your Arms (1889). In his will, Nobel stated that the profits from his considerable fortune were to reward “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Since its creation (1901) the prize has been accompanied by pious Eurocentrism and conditioned by Great Power geopolitics that have more to do with tweaking the conditions of permanent war than they do with establishing peace. This was never more evident than in the case of Woodrow Wilson, who won the prize in 1919.
Elected on a peace platform, Wilson immediately plunged the U.S. into the bloodiest war in world history (at the time) — World War I — transforming an expensive battlefield stalemate into a lopsided victory for the Allies, who promptly imposed a bitter and humiliating “peace” on starving Germany, which began to take growing note of the German-supremacist denunciations of an obscure Austrian corporal. Forgotten was Wilson’s Fourteen Points declaration he had boomed across the Atlantic on the pretext it contained the secret to human happiness and permanent world peace. Once his complete lack of strategic sense was revealed at Versailles, Europe’s veteran imperialists ignored his pious nostrum about establishing a “machinery of friendship” in favor of perpetuating European colonialism, leaving Wilson unable to convince even his own country to join his crowning glory — the League of Nations.
Other “great” Americans who won a Nobel peace prize include Nordic-supremacist Teddy Roosevelt, for whom war was a greater thrill than life itself, and whose popular book series, The Winning of the West, was worthy of Himmler. He estimated that “nine out of every ten” Indians were better dead than alive, deemed “coloreds” degenerate by nature, and looked on Latin peoples (“damned dagoes”) as little more than children. He applauded U.S. civilian massacres in the Philippines, which killed hundreds of thousands.
However, the most genocidal U.S. winner of the peace prize would have to be the late Henry Kissinger, who befriended apartheid South Africa, ushered General Pinochet into power in Chile, gave the green light to Indonesia’s mass extermination of East Timor’s mountain people, and killed millions of Indochinese with saturation bombings. His comment about the Cambodian phase of the latter attacks, which paved the way for Pol Pot’s rise to power, make an ideal epitaph for the career of the clueless foreign policy expert: “I may have a lack of imagination, but I fail to see a moral issue involved.”
With the Scandinavian sense of humor continuing to enrich our political folklore, there’s no reason for Donald Trump to lose hope.
Content warning: discussions of suicidal thinking and ideation
Every year as ADHD Awareness Month rolls around, we see the same tired social media posts from politicians, corporations, and charities talking about how we should be supported, and everyone should be more aware.
The issue is, most of them are plenty aware of ADHD, and are using their power to oppress ADHDers further instead. This October, one of the forms this takes is Wes Streeting announcing a new review into ‘overdiagnosis’ of mental health and neurodivergence – something we know is a complete and utter fallacy, used to deny benefits and strip our healthcare.
Just one example of ADHD care from the wrong angle
I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2021, after I learnt about it myself. It was six years after I received my autism diagnosis in a psychiatric unit, and it should have been obvious that they came as a pair when I talked constantly about having six thoughts and two songs rattling around my head at once. This, and my constant inattentiveness, were put down to ‘autism-associated anxiety’.
As grateful as I was – and am, to this day – to have received any diagnosis at all, the years spent with one diagnosis and not the other meant my understanding and the ways I tried to support myself were completely misaligned with my reality.
This included, more seriously, the fact that I couldn’t get a hold on my suicidal thoughts. I experience passive suicidality most of the time: this refers to suicidal thinking that has no plan in place, rather is made up of more feeling. But often, it would suddenly flare and become dangerous in a way that didn’t make sense to anyone around me. Therapy didn’t seem to change it coming up, nor my medication.
In reality, these sudden flares were emotional dysregulation, experienced as part of my ADHD and causing extremely intense feelings, impulsivity, and what others may term ‘mood swings’. When my brain sees no other way out, or thinks it would be easier not to exist, that’s where it goes — normally in relation to criticism, rejection, or something that is just entirely too overwhelming. The former elements can be attributed to Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, an intense feeling felt in ADHDers.
Maybe it isn’t overdiagnosis, maybe it’s not understanding our root needs
When I finally learnt that these suicidal thoughts were not depression, I started to handle them differently. We worked on strategies that would calm me down and get me through those patches, and planned for them with those around me.
When I thought it was depression causing this, I couldn’t manage it. I felt entirely confused about the timing and the on-off again nature. I felt like a failure for the fact that medication and therapy couldn’t seem to even begin to change it.
Perhaps, when we look at neurodivergent people, we shouldn’t think about it as overdiagnosis, but instead, understand our traits in the right light, and professionals not wasting time being unable to help us because our care is coming from the wrong angle?
Suicidality in autism & ADHD has to be taken seriously
My story is not to say that autistic and ADHD people cannot have depression that causes suicidal thinking – that isn’t the case at all. In fact, we are more likely to experience depression and suicidal thinking than our peers.
However, I do think it is critical to understand that suicidality can have different roots in brains that are not built for this world. Health professionals and those assessing or caring for us need to have a basic understanding of different manifestations of these needs. They need to understand how to support us with them, from how simply we talk about it to how we make support plans and stop seeing it as something that needs fixing.
The overdiagnosis review is wasting time and resources
It’s clear that the overdiagnosis review is only to back up the benefit cuts. Last week, when the review was announced, Keir Starmer told Radio 4:
would we not be better putting our money in the resources and support that is needed for mental health than simply saying, it’s to be provided in benefits?
If this is genuinely the case, where are all these resources? Where is the care and the clearing of the waiting lists? He’s right – benefits should not be the only answer. But they cannot be taken and replaced with nothing.
The review is to be vice-chaired by controversial doctor, Sir Simon Wessely. He is the same man who said Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) had a psychological root, and the chances are high that it will lean into the rhetoric that neurodivergence and mental health conditions are over diagnosed.
There are endless reasons why autism, ADHD and others are being diagnosed more, including higher awareness and changes in diagnostic understanding. To spend time, money and energy on trying to prove otherwise rather than funding broken systems, the government is doing the exact opposite of what Keir Starmer is arguing.
The issue is not overdiagnosis. It’s every other problem we can see: earlier misdiagnosis, lack of understanding, lack of resources — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
President Trump’s hostility toward Venezuela has grown more explicit and reckless in recent days, making indifference on this issue from top Democrats and center-left media all the more conspicuous.
The New York Times reports that Trump has instructed the CIA to “take action” in Venezuela as the White House pushes for regime change that would, according to the Times, involve a “broad campaign that would escalate military pressure to try to force out” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The Trump White House claims to have blown up six boats from Venezuela in the Caribbean, killing 27 people thus far with no legal or moral authority to do so (leading to the abrupt resignation Thursday of the military commander overseeing the Pentagon’s boat attacks, Adm. Alvin Holsey). The CIA authorization, according to the Miami Herald, “coincides with a broader US military buildup in the region. The Pentagon has deployed more than 4,500 troops, most of them based in Puerto Rico, along with a contingent of Marines aboard amphibious assault ships. The U.S. Navy has positioned eight warships and a submarine in the Caribbean as part of the expanded presence.”
It’s been a fast and unprecedented escalation, putting the US on the brink of a disastrous, illegal, and immoral invasion of the sovereign country with the world’s 50th largest military. All of which makes the lackluster, largely indifferent response from the liberal establishment all the more troubling.
Let us begin by looking at the two top Democrats in the country, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—the people most in charge of leading the resistance to Trump. Neither Jeffries nor Schumer have issued any formal statement whatsoever on Trump’s potential attack on Venezuela, or even commented, much less condemned, Trump’s illegal murder of Venezuelan citizens in the Caribbean. The closest either have come to chiming in was when they were asked directly about it at a presser Thursday, to which Schumer responded by leveling a vague process criticism about Trump “going it alone,” then quickly pivoting to healthcare. In the past year, neither Schumer nor Jeffries have mentioned Venezuela once in any of their social media posts or press releases.
The New York Times editorial board hasn’t mentioned Trump’s escalation toward Venezuela either (though it did support his previous attempts at a regime change in 2019). The Washington Post editorial board, while handwringing about the potential for Trump’s threats to “spiral into war,” lent Trump’s regime change efforts support with a wink and a nod. After praising pro-Trump Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado (who openly supports a military invasion of Venezuela and Trump’s extrajudicial killings at sea), the Post tells its readers that Machado’s “economic vision” “could triple the country’s gross domestic product over 15 years by tapping its vast resources” and would “better serve” “U.S. economic interests” than the current Maduro government. The Jeff Bezos-owned paper then ended its editorial hoping Machado “someday got to lead the country she is so courageously fighting to save.” Through what mechanism it’s unclear but, given the current context and ramp up to a direct US attack, one is left to fill in the blanks.
Once again, like with Gaza protesters, it seems elements within party leadership are playing with fire, sitting back and letting Trump take out their mutual enemies.
To be clear, there has been some pushback, but it is sporadic, anonymous, or from Democrats lower down the food chain. The Democrats’ House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), posted on social media Oct. 7, “Trump and Rubio are pushing for regime change in Venezuela. The American people don’t want another war—and Congress can’t let any president start one illegally or unilaterally. That’s not how the Constitution works.” But the statement wasn’t attributed to anyone in particular and has been their sole comment on the potential military attack. Senators Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) are seeking a congressional resolution to prevent Trump from using military force against Venezuela, but it has gone nowhere and, in typical Kainian form, is expressed as a process criticism, outraged entirely over jurisdiction not the substance of the invasion.
Just as weak, liberal cable outlets like MSNBC have mostly limitedtheir criticism of Trump on Venezuela to the illegality of the boat strikes. Better than nothing of course, but they’re missing the much bigger issue—which is the strikes are about provoking a pretense for a direct invasion and regime change war. It’s mostly been a nonissue in liberal circles.
In fairness, Trump’s firehose of attacks on Medicare, immigrant communities, the administrative state, environmental regulations, the Voting Rights Act, civil rights, Palestine solidarity protestors, and our entire education system make focusing on any one topic very difficult, and much of the silence around Venezuela no doubt comes from bandwidth issues. But it’s also something more deliberate: Journalist Aída Chávez reported on Sept. 29 that, according to a congressional source, “a senior Dem staffer is discouraging Democrats from coming out against regime change in Venezuela.” Once again, like with Gaza protesters, it seems elements within party leadership are playing with fire, sitting back and letting Trump take out their mutual enemies—in this case a government that has been under siege from both U.S. parties since it came to power in 1999, surviving a previous US-backed coup in 2002 that was only overturned after masses of Venezuela’s poor took to the streets the streets demanding the return of Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez. Despite the fact that the 2002 coup was completely externally manufactured and undemocratic by any objective metric, it was supported at the time by the editorial boards of the New York Times and Washington Post. Both outlets did so by lying about Chavez loyalists firing on protesters, a claim later debunked by the Times itself.
One can debate the democratic integrity of Venezuela’s latest election but it’s a non sequitur given it has nothing to do with why Trump is gearing up for an attack. “We would have taken [Venezuela] over; we would have gotten to all that oil,” Trump said in 2023, lamenting his previous failed coup. It’s clear Trump—who is gutting democracy in the US and showers praise on dictators throughout the world—could not possibly care less about these concerns, and would just as likely replace Maduro with a pro-Trump dictator, whomever it may be. Likely aware of this, the White House is using the pretense of taking out “narcoterrorists” as the moral basis for their escalatory attacks, insisting that every boat they blow up “saves 25,000 American lives,” somehow managing to find the only pretense less credible than Trump wanting to “restore democracy” in South America.
Meanwhile, Democratic leadership, either because they support it or don’t really care either way, continue to sleepwalk as Trump explicitly targets yet another Latin American country for US intervention. By directly attacking their citizens, Trump has already declared war on Venezuela, without any legal or ethical basis to do so. At some point, leadership of the nominal opposition party ought to take notice and at least register a formal opinion on whether Trump’s brazen illegality and dangerous escalation is something they support or not, rather than ignoring it out of cowardice or, worse yet, hoping Trump, once again, does their dirty work.
Being a baby boomer who protested against the Vietnam debacle, what the Trump regime is now doing is disgusting. All this week we see Republican Congressional minions and members of the Trump gang standing in front of cameras calling those who peacefully protest as Terrorists. Webster’s dictionary defines a terrorist as ” A person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” The sad irony is that it was the mob on January 6th, 2021 at the Capitol building who acted like terrorists, especially when they invaded the legislative chambers using their violence and intimidation against the Congress people (civilians). That day alone added up to the need for the Department of Justice to indict Trump once he was no longer president. A more recent irony is how many of the ICE agents, hiding their faces, have used terrorist acts against civilians? I ask any decent and law abiding American ‘ How can they make these types of people into ICE agents?’ Storm trooper would be a better term for them.
So, this Saturday there are plans nationwide, and even worldwide, for peaceful protests encompassing millions upon millions, once again declaring ‘ No Kings’. Imagine the utter audacity of this president, led by his inner circle, to consider using the Insurrection Act of 1807. The few times in our recent past that it was used was when Presidents Eisenhower and JFK used it to enforce desegregation laws in certain Southern states when violent mobs of whites were threatening black citizens. It was used after Hurricane Hugo in 1989 when looting was excessively prevalent, and in Los Angeles in 1992 during the violent riots after the Rodney King case set free the LAPD cops who savaged him, after being caught on video.
When the group I had organized in 2004 to protest the illegal ( and immoral) invasion and occupation of Iraq, we stood peacefully on the same street corner each Tuesday at rush hour. One week, we had visits from more than one police officer as we found our spots on that corner. First they informed us incorrectly that we ‘ Had to keep moving our picket line’. They went away when told that this was not a strike, rather a demonstration. Then a supervisor drove up and told us that ‘ We got a call that you folks are going out into the road and hassling the motorists.’ A lie and he then disappeared. I immediately called our city’s mayor ( a diehard libertarian) and complained to him. He said ‘ Phil, you folks have been out there peacefully for weeks. You have every right to protest and I’m going to call the police chief and smash this nonsense.’ And he did.
Perhaps it’s time for all those so called Republican libertarians and civil liberty backers to get off their asses and let Trump and company know how they feel, before this goes way too far.
Many millions on the streets this Saturday all over the country loudly proclaiming: No Kings! Yes to Democracy!–followed on November 4th by victories for Mamdani in NYC, Sherrill in NJ, Spanberger in Virginia, redistricting in California, and more–could this be truly “world changing?”
On one level, no. This is not a Presidential election year or a Congressional election year. It’s an off-year electorally.
But it’s not an off-year politically. The battle is fully joined between the forces of democracy and the forces of authoritarianism, between the resistance and blind Trumpism. And because of this, what happens over the next three weeks could be a decisive turning point, victories for the significant majority of US Americans who are saddened and outraged by the lying, divisive, destructive and dangerous Trump federal government and its billionaire co-conspirators.
Think about it: potentially the biggest mass demonstration ever in the USA, in every single state and literally thousands of localities, organized by a broadly-based progressive/liberal/independent coalition of hundreds of organizations that is not going away. That alone is a huge thing at this challenging time for the US and the world.
A Zohran Mamdani victory in itself will be a huge deal, a non-sectarian, democratic socialist becoming the Mayor of the country’s largest city, the financial capitol, a melting pot of diverse peoples and nationalities and which often leads the country as far as political shifts.
Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger winning the Governor races in their states will not be the same thing. Neither are consistently progressive, definitely not socialists, but there’s no question that many people to their left support them over the Trump-supporting Republican opponents. Combined with October 18 and a Mamdani victory and continued progressive organizing at the grassroots, that will make a difference in how they govern.
If California comes through and neutralizes Texas’ brazen, Trump-pushed, Congressional redistricting plan to try to gain 5 more Republican House seats from Texas next November, that will be important both practically and politically.
There’s something else, less visible and obvious but critical, that must be said about why we are at this point, why the popular resistance movement for democracy, justice and our threatened ecosystems is at this historic moment: we have learned how to unite.
It’s not unity based on following one great individual, usually a man. It’s not unity concerned very little with the internal culture, the health, of the organizations that make it up–just the opposite, in general. A critical mass of us of all ages, nationalities, genders and classes have internalized positive values and ways of working together which are making a huge difference in how we have responded, and will keep responding, to the efforts to impose a form of 21st century fascism in the USA.
The Trumpists are in trouble, and they know it. That’s why, one week before No Kings! Day, House leader Mike Johnson and others began publicly attacking it, lying about who we are and what we are about, trying to scare people away from coming out that day.
It’s not going to happen! There ain’t no power like the power of the people, united and organized, and when we are, nothing and no one can defeat us. Si, se puede!
United States President Donald Trump had the time of his life on Monday at the Israeli Knesset, where he was welcomed as “the president of peace”. His captive audience showered him with applause, laughs and too many standing ovations to count.
Two protesting lawmakers undertook a brief outburst in support of “Palestinian sovereignty” but were swiftly bundled out, earning the president more laughs and applause for his remark: “That was very efficient.”
It was a typical stream-of-consciousness Trump speech although he mercifully refrained from rambling about escalators and teleprompters this time.
I had initially hoped the fact that the US head of state was promptly due at a Gaza summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, might have kept the tangents to a minimum. Such hopes were dashed, but Trump did manage to devote a good bit of time to speculating about whether his summit counterparts might have already departed Egypt by the time he arrived.
Trump’s Knesset appearance was occasioned by the ostensible end — for the moment — to the US-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has over the past two years officially killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Some scholars have suggested that the real death toll may be in the vicinity of 680,000.
Obviously, the Palestinian genocide victims were of scant concern at the Knesset spectacle, which was essentially an exercise of mutual flattery between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a celebration of Israel’s excellence in mass slaughter.
To that end, Trump informed Israel that “you’ve won” and congratulated Netanyahu on a “great job”.
‘Best weapons’
As if that weren’t an obscene enough tribute to genocide, enforced starvation and terror in Gaza, Trump boasted that “we make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.”
There were also various references to what he has previously called on social media the “3,000 YEAR CATASTROPHE”, which he fancies himself as having now resolved. This on top of the “seven wars” he claims to have ended in seven months, another figure that seems to have materialised out of thin air.
But, hey, when you’re a “great president”, you don’t have to explain yourself.
In addition to self-adulation, Trump had plenty of praise for other members of his entourage, including US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — who merited a lengthy digression on the subject of Russian President Vladimir Putin — and Trump’s “genius” son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was also in attendance despite having no official role in the current administration.
During Trump’s first term as president, Kushner served as a senior White House adviser and a key player in the Abraham Accords, the normalisation deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, which essentially sidelined the Palestinian issue in the Arab political arena.
Trump’s Knesset performance included numerous sales pitches for the Abraham Accords, which he noted he preferred to pronounce “Avraham” because it was “so much sort of nicer”. Emphasising how good the normalisation deals have been for business, Trump declared that the four existing signatories have already “made a lot of money being members”.
To be sure, any expansion of the Abraham Accords in the present context would function to legitimise genocide and accelerate Palestinian dispossession. As it stands, the surviving inhabitants of Gaza have been condemned to a colonial overlordship, euphemised as a “Board of Peace” — which Trump has hailed as a “beautiful name” and which will be presided over by the US President himself.
‘Path of terror’
This, apparently, is what the Palestinians need to “turn from the path of terror and violence”, as Trump put it — and never mind that the Palestinians aren’t the ones who have been waging a genocide for the past two years.
Preceding Trump at the podium was Netanyahu, adding another level of psychological torture for anyone who was forced to watch the two leaders back to back. Thanking the US president for his “pivotal leadership” in supposedly ending a war that, mind you, Netanyahu didn’t even want to end, the Israeli prime minister pronounced him the “greatest friend that the State of Israel has ever had in the White House”.
Netanyahu furthermore put up Trump as the first non-Israeli nominee for the Israel Prize and assured him he’d get his Nobel, too, soon enough.
I didn’t time Trump’s own speech although I’d calculate that it was several aneurysms long. At one point in the middle of his discussion of some topic entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand, I wondered if my anguished cries at having to listen to him speak might elicit the concern of my neighbours.
When Trump at long last decided to wrap things up, his final lines included the proclamation: “I love Israel. I’m with you all the way.”
And while US affection for a genocidal state should come as no surprise to anyone, it’s also a good indication that “peace” is not really what’s happening at all.
Belén Fernández is the author of The Darién Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas (Rutgers UP, 2025), Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Detention Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), and other books and has written widely for global news media. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
United States President Donald Trump had the time of his life on Monday at the Israeli Knesset, where he was welcomed as “the president of peace”. His captive audience showered him with applause, laughs and too many standing ovations to count.
Two protesting lawmakers undertook a brief outburst in support of “Palestinian sovereignty” but were swiftly bundled out, earning the president more laughs and applause for his remark: “That was very efficient.”
It was a typical stream-of-consciousness Trump speech although he mercifully refrained from rambling about escalators and teleprompters this time.
I had initially hoped the fact that the US head of state was promptly due at a Gaza summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, might have kept the tangents to a minimum. Such hopes were dashed, but Trump did manage to devote a good bit of time to speculating about whether his summit counterparts might have already departed Egypt by the time he arrived.
Trump’s Knesset appearance was occasioned by the ostensible end — for the moment — to the US-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has over the past two years officially killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Some scholars have suggested that the real death toll may be in the vicinity of 680,000.
Obviously, the Palestinian genocide victims were of scant concern at the Knesset spectacle, which was essentially an exercise of mutual flattery between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a celebration of Israel’s excellence in mass slaughter.
To that end, Trump informed Israel that “you’ve won” and congratulated Netanyahu on a “great job”.
‘Best weapons’
As if that weren’t an obscene enough tribute to genocide, enforced starvation and terror in Gaza, Trump boasted that “we make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.”
There were also various references to what he has previously called on social media the “3,000 YEAR CATASTROPHE”, which he fancies himself as having now resolved. This on top of the “seven wars” he claims to have ended in seven months, another figure that seems to have materialised out of thin air.
But, hey, when you’re a “great president”, you don’t have to explain yourself.
In addition to self-adulation, Trump had plenty of praise for other members of his entourage, including US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — who merited a lengthy digression on the subject of Russian President Vladimir Putin — and Trump’s “genius” son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was also in attendance despite having no official role in the current administration.
During Trump’s first term as president, Kushner served as a senior White House adviser and a key player in the Abraham Accords, the normalisation deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, which essentially sidelined the Palestinian issue in the Arab political arena.
Trump’s Knesset performance included numerous sales pitches for the Abraham Accords, which he noted he preferred to pronounce “Avraham” because it was “so much sort of nicer”. Emphasising how good the normalisation deals have been for business, Trump declared that the four existing signatories have already “made a lot of money being members”.
To be sure, any expansion of the Abraham Accords in the present context would function to legitimise genocide and accelerate Palestinian dispossession. As it stands, the surviving inhabitants of Gaza have been condemned to a colonial overlordship, euphemised as a “Board of Peace” — which Trump has hailed as a “beautiful name” and which will be presided over by the US President himself.
‘Path of terror’
This, apparently, is what the Palestinians need to “turn from the path of terror and violence”, as Trump put it — and never mind that the Palestinians aren’t the ones who have been waging a genocide for the past two years.
Preceding Trump at the podium was Netanyahu, adding another level of psychological torture for anyone who was forced to watch the two leaders back to back. Thanking the US president for his “pivotal leadership” in supposedly ending a war that, mind you, Netanyahu didn’t even want to end, the Israeli prime minister pronounced him the “greatest friend that the State of Israel has ever had in the White House”.
Netanyahu furthermore put up Trump as the first non-Israeli nominee for the Israel Prize and assured him he’d get his Nobel, too, soon enough.
I didn’t time Trump’s own speech although I’d calculate that it was several aneurysms long. At one point in the middle of his discussion of some topic entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand, I wondered if my anguished cries at having to listen to him speak might elicit the concern of my neighbours.
When Trump at long last decided to wrap things up, his final lines included the proclamation: “I love Israel. I’m with you all the way.”
And while US affection for a genocidal state should come as no surprise to anyone, it’s also a good indication that “peace” is not really what’s happening at all.
Belén Fernández is the author of The Darién Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas (Rutgers UP, 2025), Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Detention Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), and other books and has written widely for global news media. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
For two full years, Israel waged one of the fiercest wars in modern history, a war described as a ‘slow-burn genocide.’ It used all kinds of prohibited weapons and relied on international intelligence agencies, yet failed to achieve its primary goal: recovering its prisoners from Gaza.
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed his war on Gaza as a battle for “existence and security,” using the liberation of the prisoners as a pretext. However, after 735 days of continuous bombardment, Israel dropped more than 200,000 tons of explosives—the equivalent of approximately 13 Hiroshima bombs—over an area no larger than 365 square kilometres, turning Gaza into a scorched, lifeless wasteland.
The result, as revealed by the facts, was horrific: more than 67,000 martyrs and missing, 170,000 wounded, and the near-total collapse of civilian infrastructure.
Israel’s genocide
The Israeli failure here is multifaceted. First, it was a military failure in converting firepower into tangible political results. Second, it was an intelligence failure in locating the prisoners or securing routes leading to their recovery. Third, it was a moral and political failure, as this process produced bloodshed and destruction, perpetrated by a government that relied on war as the only solution to internal and political pressure.
On the other hand, what happened reflects the resistance’s tactical and organisational superiority: its ability to withstand a besieged structure, its ability to manage a sensitive issue such as the prisoners, and its ability to intelligently use information as a tool of pressure and dignity. The issue here is not just that the prisoners survived; rather, the resistance was able, in a single hour, to transform years of bombardment into a spectacle announcing the enemy’s failure to achieve its central goal.
In a moment that seemed to sum up the futility of two years of genocide, the Qassam Brigades announced the handover of living prisoners during the first phase of the ceasefire agreement—a move that effectively ended the war that force had failed to end.
Israel’s twisted actions
While Israel needed two years of bombing to fail to free a single prisoner, the resistance was able to hand over the living prisoners within just one hour, in a scene that observers considered:
a symbolic end to a futile war waged by Netanyahu in the name of electoral deception and political survival.
This was not merely a symbolic event; it was a stark reflection of the shifting balance of power. The resistance, besieged and cut off from electricity, water, and medicine, maintained its organisational, military, and intelligence capabilities until the very last moment.
Israeli military analyst Yaron Avraham bitterly remarked on Channel 12:
They had maps of Israeli army bases, so what’s so strange about them having the family numbers of soldiers?
This statement reads like an implicit admission of the failure of the Israeli military and intelligence establishment, which had spent two years searching in the dark. While Israel utilised satellites, aircraft, and artificial intelligence, the resistance was able to hide prisoners in a small, besieged territory completely exposed to the world.
How did Israel have the backing of the world and still fail?
As the tanks withdrew from the rubble, the most important question within Israel returned: How could a state with its entire military and technological arsenal fail, while the besieged resistance succeeded in preserving its prisoners and managing their situation intelligently and professionally?
Thus, the short communication from Gaza became something of a final statement of the war. Israel did not win with weapons, but was defeated by sound—a sound coming from under the rubble, carrying messages that did not require missiles to hit their targets.
Israel wanted to recover its prisoners to prove its strength, but its war ended to prove the opposite: that force does not provide security, that annihilation does not produce victory, and that Gaza, despite the ashes, is still capable of redefining the meaning of survival.
The conclusion is harsh: bombs do not restore spirit or build confidence. Massive firepower may destroy cities, but it does not guarantee political or intelligence results. More importantly, it does not deter a people built from its ashes with the capacity to endure and manage critical issues. Thus, after two years of annihilation, which Israel intended as a final resolution, the war did not empty its adversary; rather, it revealed that victory in the age of media and intelligence is not measured by destruction, but by the ability to protect people, narrate their stories, and capture them—a capacity the resistance succeeded in preserving when the state machinery failed.
I have noticed supposed left organizations considering the Epstein files their secret weapon and naively pouring energy into advocating release. It is a doomed strategy.
Is it insightful that Trump has not already released the Epstein Files? Of course it is, partially because it indicates the state is probably hiding something, but more so because it means the state can get away with hiding things regardless of the obvious public interest. Does this mean the answer is to demand release of the files and focus on that as a way to discredit Trump? No, that will get you nowhere because the state is extremely experienced in hiding records even when they hand some to the public, and the Epstein files would not stop Trump even if they did prove he is a sexual predator (which everyone who lives in reality already knows). Believing the Epstein files are Trump’s Achilles heel or some silver bullet to stop him is a delusional fantasy and the mother of all distractions.
I filed probably well over a hundred public records requests to state entities between 2022 and 2024. The state routinely used a myriad of evasion strategies, some of which were impressively dirty, such that I can hardly remember any responses that appeared to be legally compliant. Moreover, there was nothing I could do about it unless I was willing to sue the state at personal expense as I explain here, and that promised me no proportional benefits. Violating public records laws was the rule, not the exception, which was already undermining transparency, legal cases, and journalists’ jobs, helping ensure that the public was vastly under-informed about the widespread corruption that I believe is an essential prerequisite for fascism. Poynter, a journalism and media literacy nonprofit, covers the problem of the normalization of lack of transparency. The Press Freedom Tracker, Propublica, Nieman Reports and surely many others talk about records suppression too.
Journalistic outlets all over the country, unable to cover the actual scandals anymore, developed public records denial reporting over the last several years. So, civil society and journalists, as in all authoritarian countries, carefully and indirectly imply a scandal by the lack of transparency rather than reporting the details of the scandal with the documents they could not obtain from the state. This is the kind of hard for the general public to interpret, desperate last vestige of public accountability you see in authoritarian regimes where journalists have to creatively report misconduct. It reflects the normalization of transparency law violations by the state and impunity for the state such that it cannot be compelled to follow the law and chooses not to regularly. Body cameras are a great example of a supposed accountability solution that never lived up to promises and is now not even pretending to, meanwhile there are attempts brewing to criminalize videotaping ICE.
In spite of the state’s long-standing record of transparency law violations and playbook for accomplishing them, organizations like Indivisible waste their efforts and resources calling for release of the Epstein files. This is a gift to Trump because it will tell us nothing we do not already know, sway no one who is not already on our side, and keep everyone focused on a symbolic demand the state can easily undermine the value of while it consolidates power in far more dangerous ways. Do they really think the state is above fraud, fabrication, “losing” and disappearing evidence, and editing documents? Look at examples like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, as I explain here, to see what the state can do when it comes to documents and evidence.
All people are doing by demanding the Epstein files is setting themselves up for disappointment, either in the form of getting nothing or getting a performative false release the state will spin as proof of its innocence and transparency. Look, here is conservative propaganda casting the release of Epstein files that are no doubt harmless to Trump as proof of transparency exactly as I anticipated. You know that quote, “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land amongst the stars”? Well, idiots shoot for the moon by demanding the Epstein files to somehow magically get Trump, and their “landing amongst the stars” is successfully incriminating other Epstein associates like the Clintons instead. Careful what you wish for. Any files released that included Trump would only amount to implying association not demonstrating guilt, which we do not need because everyone knows who Epstein’s friends were without the files. The survivor testimony is far better than any guest list, and those survivors are saying the files have been redacted to protect Trump. We know what we need to know, and there is still nothing we can do about it.
People who are still relying on U.S. democratic institutions (which are essentially destroyed, and now exist as a facade, a conclusion I came to two years ago and Ted Starmer echoes in this video at minute 4:00), are using obsolete institutional or legal mechanisms and getting rewarded with meaningless breadcrumbs. Examples: Canceling Kimmel before reinstating him to make people feel like they won, the passport provision removed from H.R. 5300 when the state does not need it to accomplish the same thing, stopping alligator Alcatraz only to have it approved again with even more funding, etc. Corrupt actors manipulate the public on purpose, and I have seen it many times. They make people feel good by giving out cheap tokens and image candy, while still doing the same dirty things in a more covert way, or they simply wait until public attention shifts to do something much, much worse.
Focusing naively on the Epstein files while the U.S. government transforms into a dictatorship is about as ridiculous as focusing gleefully on Trump’s escalator trouble while Trump prepares to dismantle the United Nations. While the mainstream media is celebrating and exaggerating fake victories, entertaining us with a distracting p.r. campaign wrestling match with Gavin Newsom, stoking wishful thinking about divisions and infighting, and pumping out propaganda falsely casting Trump as being in a weak position or quaking in his boots, Trump is taking over the military. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism maintains an excellent Project 2025 tracker, and Project 2025 is being implemented even faster than expected.
The lack of Epstein file transparency did not stand in Trump’s way before, and there is nothing suggesting it will now. Everything Trump is getting away with should tell you that evidence of sexual crimes would do nothing to him. As he said in 2016, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Blatant acts of authoritarian oppression such as we now see daily, including official narratives fully representative of that, are not evidence of fear but the total lack thereof. I will probably get accused of being a “doomer” for denouncing the delusional belief in Epstein file kryptonite, but there is no silver bullet for American fascism and people need to stop looking for one. Believing in fake silver bullets only ensures real monsters advance unperturbed, and we are doomed if we are left defenseless when they arrive.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
As we’ve reported, the Gaza ceasefire deal is in effect. Phase one of the US.-backed 20-point plan is underway. Hamas has released all 20 living captives. Israel has released almost 2000 Palestinians in Ramallah and now in Khan Younis in Gaza.
Yesterday, President Trump addressed the Israeli Knesset and then co-chaired a so-called peace summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not among the 20 or more world leaders who attend. He was invited but said he was not going.
For more, we’re joined by the Israeli historian, author and professor Ilan Pappé, professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter and the chair of the Nakba Memorial Foundation. Among his books, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, almost 20 years ago, and Gaza in Crisis, which he co-wrote with Noam Chomsky. His new book, Israel on the Brink: And the Eight Revolutions That Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence.
We thank you so much for being with us. Professor Pappé, if you could start off by responding to what has happened? We’re watching, in Khan Younis, prisoners being released, Palestinian prisoners, up to 2000, and in the occupied West Bank, though there families were told if they dare celebrate the release of their loved ones, they might be arrested.
And we saw the release of the 20 Israeli hostages as they returned to Israel. Hamas says they’re returning the dead hostages, the remains, over the next few days. Israel has not said they will return the dead prisoners, of which it’s believed there are nearly 200 in Israeli prisons.
Your response overall, and now to the summit in Egypt?
ILAN PAPPÉ: Yes. First of all, there is some joy in knowing that the bombing of the people in Gaza has stopped for a while. And there is joy knowing that Palestinian political prisoners have been reunited with their families, and, similarly, that Israeli hostages were reunited with their families.
But except from that, I don’t think we are in such an historical moment as President Trump claimed in his speech in the Knesset and beforehand. We are not at the end of the terrible chapter that we have been in for the last two years.
And that chapter is an Israeli attempt by a particularly fanatic, extremely rightwing Israeli government to try and use ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza to downsize the number of Palestinians in Palestine and impose Israel’s will in a way that they hope would be at least endorsed by some Arab governments and the world.
So far, they have an alliance of Trump and some extreme rightwing parties in Europe.
And now I hope that the world will not be misled that Israel is now ready to open a different kind of page in its relationship with the Palestinians. And what you told us about the way that the celebrations were dealt with in the West Bank and the incineration of the sanitation center shows you that nothing has changed in the dehumanisation and the attitude of this particular Israeli government and its belief that it has the power to wipe out Palestine as a nation, as a people and as a country.
I hope the world will not stand by, because up to now it did stand by when the genocide occurred in Palestine.
AMY GOODMAN: We have just heard President Trump’s address to the Israeli Knesset. He followed the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu. I’m not sure, but in listening to Netanyahu, I don’t think he used the word “Palestinian.” President Trump has just called on the Israeli president to pardon Netanyahu.
Your thoughts on this, and also the possibility of why Netanyahu has not joined this summit that President Trump is co-chairing? Many are speculating for different reasons — didn’t want to anger the right, that’s further right than him. Others are saying the possibility of his arrest, not on corruption charges, but on crimes against humanity, the whole case before the International Criminal Court.
ILAN PAPPÉ: It could be a mixture of all of it, but I think at the center of it is the nature of the Israeli government that was elected in November 2022, this alliance between a very opportunistic politician, who’s only interested in surviving and keeping his position as a prime minister, alongside messianic, neo-Zionist politicians who really believe that God has given them the opportunity to create the Greater Israel, maybe even beyond the borders of Palestine, and, in the process, eliminate Palestinians.
I think that his consideration should all — are always about his chances of survival. So, whatever went in his mind, he came to the conclusion that going to Cairo is not going to help his chances of being reelected.
My great worry is not that he didn’t go to Cairo. My greatest worry is that he does believe that his only chance of being reelected is still to have a war going on, either in Gaza or in the West Bank or against Iran or in the north with Lebanon.
We are dealing here with a reckless, irresponsible politician, who is even willing to drown his own state in the process of saving his skin and his neck. And the victims will always be, from this adventurous policy, the Palestinians.
I hope the world understands that, really, the urgent need of — and I’m talking about world leaders rather than societies. You already discussed what is the level of solidarity among civil societies. But I do hope that political elites will understand — especially in the West — their role now is not to mediate between Israelis and Palestinians.
Their role now is to protect the Palestinians from destruction, elimination, genocide and ethnic cleansing. And nothing of that duty, especially of Europe, that is complicit with what happened, and the United States, that are complicit with what happened in the last two years — nothing that we heard in the speeches so far in the — in preparation for the summit in Egypt, and I have a feeling that we won’t hear anything about it also later on.
There is a different way in which our civil societies refer to Palestine as a place that has to be saved and protected, and still this irrelevant conversation among our political elites about a peace deal, a two-state solution, all of that, that has nothing to do with what we are experiencing in the way that the Israeli government thinks it has an historical moment to totally de-Arabise Palestine and eliminate and expunge the Palestinians from history and the area.
AMY GOODMAN: Ilan Pappé, I want to thank you for being with us, Israeli historian, professor of history, director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter, chair of the Nakba Memorial Foundation. His new book, Israel on the Brink: And the Eight Revolutions That Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence.
AMY GOODMAN:Israel’s government has approved the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, that includes a pause in Israeli attacks and the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons — 20 living hostages were freed today coinciding with President Trump’s visit to Israel and Egypt.
According to the deal, 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and another 1700 people from Gaza detained in the last two years — and described as “forcibly disappeared” by the UN — would be released.
Hamas has demanded the release of prominent Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti, but his name was reportedly secretly removed from the prisoner exchange list by Israel.
Meanwhile, the US is sending about 200 troops to Israel to monitor the ceasefire deal.
The Israeli military on Friday confirmed the ceasefire had come into effect as soldiers retreated from parts of Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, including families that had been forced to the south, began their trek back to northern Gaza after news that Israeli forces were withdrawing.
Returning Gaza City residents made their way through mounds of rubble and destroyed neighborhoods, searching for any sign of their homes and belongings. Among them, Fidaa Haraz.
FIDAA HARAZ: [translated] I came since the morning, when they said there was a withdrawal, to find my home. I’m walking in the street, but I do not know where to go, due to the extent of the destruction.
I swear I don’t know where the crossroads is or where my home is. I know that my home was leveled, but where is it? Where is it? I cannot find it.
What is this? What do we do with our lives? Where should we live? Where should we stay? A house of multiple floors, but nothing was left?
AMY GOODMAN: Al Jazeera reports Israel’s army said it would allow 600 humanitarian aid trucks carrying food, medical supplies, fuel and other necessities daily into Gaza, through coordination with the United Nations and other international groups.
On Thursday, the exiled Hamas Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya declared an end to the war.
KHALIL AL-HAYYA: [translated] Today, we announced that we have reached an agreement to end the war and aggression against our people and to begin implementing a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of the occupation forces, the entry of aid, the opening of the Rafah crossing in both directions and the exchange of prisoners.
AMY GOODMAN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke today in Israel.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Today, we mark one of the greatest achievements in the war of revival: the return of all of our hostages, the living and the dead as one. …
This way, we grapple Hamas. We grapple it all around, ahead of the next stages of the plan, in which Hamas is disarmed and Gaza is demilitarised.
If this can be achieved the easy way, very well. If not, it will be achieved the hard way.
AMY GOODMAN: In the United States, President Trump hailed his administration’s ceasefire plan during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday as concerns mount regarding potential US and foreign intervention in the rebuilding of Gaza.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Gaza is going to be slowly redone. You have tremendous wealth in that part of the world by certain countries, and just a small part of that, what they — what they make, will do wonders for — for Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests. Diana Buttu, Palestinian human rights attorney and a former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). She has just recently written a piece for The Guardian. It is headlined “A ‘magic pill’ made Israeli violence invisible. We need to stop swallowing it.” And Amjad Iraqi is a senior Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, joining us from London.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Diana Buttu, let’s begin with you. First, your response to the ceasefire-hostage deal that’s just been approved by the Israeli government and Hamas?
DIANA BUTTU: Well, first, Amy, it’s really quite repulsive that Palestinians have had to negotiate an end to their genocide. It should have been that the world put sanctions on Israel to stop the genocide, rather than forcing Palestinians to negotiate an end to it. At the same time, we’re also negotiating an end to the famine, a famine that Israel, again, created.
Who are we negotiating with? The very people who created that famine. And so, it’s really repugnant that this is the position that Palestinians have been forced to be in.
And so, while people here are elated, happy that the bombs have stopped, we’re also at the same time worried, because we’ve seen that the international community, time and again, has abandoned us.
Everybody is happy that the Israelis are going home, but nobody’s talking about the more than 11,000 Palestinians who are currently languishing in Israeli prisons, being starved, being tortured, being raped. Many of them are hostages picked up after October 2023, being held without charge, without trial, and nobody at all is talking about them.
So, while people are happy that the bombs have stopped, we know that Israel’s control has not at all stopped. And Israel has made it clear that it’s going to continue to control every morsel of food that comes into Gaza. It’s going to control every single construction item that comes into Gaza.
And it’s going to continue to maintain a military occupation over Gaza.
This is not a peace agreement. This is not an end to the occupation. And I think it’s so important for us that we keep our eyes on Gaza and start demanding that Israel be held to account, not only for the genocide, but for all of these decades of occupation that led to this in the first place.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the exchange of hostages, Israeli hostages, dead and alive, and Palestinian prisoners? According to the Hamas Gaza chief, I believe they’re saying all women and children, Palestinian women and children, picked up over these last two years — or is it beyond? — are going to be released. And then, of course, there are the well over 1000 prisoners who are going to be released.
DIANA BUTTU: No, not quite. So, there are 250 who are political prisoners who are going to be released, and that list just came out about a little over an hour ago.
But there are also 1700 Palestinians, solely from Gaza, who are going to be released. And these were people — these are doctors, these are nurses, these are journalists and so on, who were — who Israel picked up after 7 October, 2023, and has been holding as hostages.
These are the people that are going to be released. There are still thousands more, Amy, that are from the West Bank, that we do not know what is going to happen to them.
And so, while the focus is just on the people in Gaza — and again, there is no path for freeing all of those thousands of Palestinians who are languishing in Israeli prisons, being starved, being tortured, being raped.
What’s going to happen to them? Who’s going to be focusing on them? I don’t think that it’s going to be this US administration.
AMY GOODMAN:I want to talk about the West Bank in a minute. More than a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank just over the last two years. But I first want to get Amjad Iraqi’s response to this deal that has now been signed off on.
I mean, watching the images of tens of thousands, this sea of humanity, of Palestinians going south to north, to see what they can find of their homes in places like Gaza City, not to mention who’s trapped in the rubble. We say something — well over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, but we don’t know the real number. It could be hundreds of thousands?
AMJAD IRAQI: Indeed, Amy. And to kind of continue off of Diana’s points, this is a deal that really should have been made long, long time ago. We’ve known that the parameters of this truce have been on the table for well over a year, if not since the very beginning of the war, what they used to define as an all-for-all deal, the idea that Hamas would release all hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire.
And the reasons for the constant foiling of it are quite evident. And it’s important to recognise this not for the sake of just lamenting the lives, the many lives, that have been lost and the massive destruction that could have been averted, but it needs to really inform the next steps going forward.
The biggest takeaway of what’s happening right now is that in order for a ceasefire to be sustained, in order for Gaza to be saved from further military assault, you need massive political pressure.
And we’ve seen this really build up in the past weeks and months. You saw this, for example, from European governments, which, even through the symbolic recognition of Palestinian statehood, was very much venting their frustration with the Israeli conduct in the war, the fact that the EU was actually starting to contemplate more punitive measures against Israel, such as partial trade suspensions, potential sanctions against Israel.
We saw this building up over the past few weeks. Arab states have started to use much of their leverage, especially after Israel’s strike on Doha or on Hamas’s offices in Doha. We started seeing Gulf and other Arab and Muslim states come forward to President Trump at the UN saying that Israel aggression cannot continue like this.
And most crucially is, of course, President Trump himself and Washington finally saying that it needs to put its foot down to stop this war, which we’ve heard repeatedly from Trump himself.
But this is really the first time since the January ceasefire agreement where Trump has really insisted that this come to an end.
Now, this — now there’s much to be sort of debated about the Trump plan itself, but this aspect of the truce cannot continue, and certainly cannot save Palestinian lives, unless that pressure is maintained.
The concern now is that that pressure will recede or alleviate, because there’s now a deal that’s signed. But, actually, in order to enforce it, that pressure really needs to be maintained.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think was the turning point, Amjad? The bombing of Qatar?
Now, I mean, The New York Times had an exposé that Trump knew before, not just in the midst of the bombing, that Israel was bombing their ally to try to kill the Hamas leadership. But do you think that was the turning point?
AMJAD IRAQI: It certainly might have expedited, I think, a lot of factors that were already building up. As I said, pressure had been mounting against Israel for quite a while.
There was really outrage, not just at the continuance of the military assaults, but the policy of starvation, which was very evident on the ground, and Israel’s complete refusal to let in aid, its failed project with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
So, this had all been building, but I do think the strike on Doha really pushed Arab states to say that enough is enough. To see them really meet all together with President Trump and create a bit more of a united position to insist that this really couldn’t go on, I think, has really signalled that Israel really crossed a certain line geopolitically.
Now, of course, that line should have been recognised as being crossed well before because of the facts on the ground in Gaza, but I do think that this has helped to kind of push things over the edge a bit more assertively.
There are also speculations about Trump, of course, trying to have his name in for the Nobel Peace Prize, and potentially other factors. But I do think that the timing of this, again, regardless of what ended up pushing it over the line, it is unfortunate that it has really taken this long.
And it’s really up to global powers and foreign governments to recognise that in order to make sure that this stays, that they really need to keep that pressure up.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Amjad Iraqi, the core demand of the ceasefire is that Hamas disarm and end its rule. What security guarantees is Hamas seeking for its own members to lay down their arms and not face a wave of arrests or assassinations?
How is this going to work? And talk about who you see running Gaza.
AMJAD IRAQI: So, these things are still a bit unclear. So, throughout the ceasefire talks, Hamas has kept insisting about the idea of US guarantees that Israel will not end the war.
But there’s never really any clear, concrete way to prove this. And as we’ve seen before, like in the January ceasefire deal and in much of the ceasefire talks, even if President Trump expresses his desire to see an end to the war, oftentimes he would still hand the steering wheel to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
And if Netanyahu decided that he wanted to thwart the ceasefire talks, if he wanted to relaunch military assaults, and the Israeli military and the government would back it, then Trump and Washington would fall into line and amplify those calls, and even President Trump himself would sort of cheer on the military assaults.
And so, this factor has certainly weighed a lot on Hamas, but I do think there’s a culmination of pressure, the fact that Arab states have insisted on Hamas to try to show, at least signal, certain flexibility, even though many of its demands have been quite consistent throughout the war.
But the fact that I think Hamas is now feeling that there’s also a bit more pressure on Israel to actually ensure that they at least try to take the gamble that they will not return to war.
And in regards to decommissioning and disarmament, publicly Hamas has placed a red line around this right to bear arms. But historically, and even recently, they do say that they are willing to have conversations about decommissioning, as long as it’s tied to a political framework, especially one that’s tied to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Now, one can really debate how much this process is actually quite feasible, and obviously the Israeli government and much of the Israeli public is quite adamant in its opposition against Palestinian statehood, but Hamas may at least offer some space for those conversations to be had.
There are discussions about it potentially giving up what it might describe as its larger or more offensive weaponry, like rockets or anti-tank missiles. And there’s bigger questions around firearms.
But I think it’s important to put this question not as a black-and-white issue, as something that has to come first in the political process, as Israel is demanding, but one that requires trust building and confidence building in the rubric of a process of Palestinian self-determination.
This is important not just in the case of Palestine, but across many conflicts around the world where the question of decommissioning, about establishing one rule, one gun, one government for a society, requires that kind of process. So, it shouldn’t just be a policy of destroying and military assaults and so on. You do need to engage in these questions in good faith.
AMY GOODMAN: There are so many questions, Diana Buttu, in this first stage of the ceasefire-hostage deal, is really the only one that Netanyahu addressed in his speech.
You’re usually in Ramallah. You spend a lot of time in the West Bank. Where does this leave the Palestinian Authority? I don’t think the West Bank is talked about in this deal.
And what about the fact that we’re looking at pictures of Netanyahu surrounded by Steve Witkoff on one side and Jared Kushner, who has talked about — as we know — famously referred to Gaza as “very valuable” waterfront property?
DIANA BUTTU: Well, I think that this plan was really an Israeli plan, and it was repackaged and branded as a Trump plan. And you can see just in the text of it and the way that all of the guarantees were given to the Israelis, and none given to the Palestinians, it’s really an Israeli plan.
But beyond that, it’s important to keep in mind that when Trump was going around and talking about this plan, that he consulted with everybody but Palestinians. He didn’t talk to Mahmoud Abbas. He didn’t even let Mahmoud Abbas go to the UN to deliver his speech before the UN.
I’m pretty certain he didn’t speak to the UN representative, Palestine’s representative to the UN. And so, this is — once again, we’ve got a plan in which people are talking about Palestinians, but never talking to Palestinians. So, again, this is very much an Israeli plan repackaged as a Trump plan and branded as a Trump plan.
In terms of them looking at Gaza as being prime real estate, this is not at all different from the way that they’ve done it in the past, and this is not at all the way that Israel has looked at Palestine.
And this is because this is the way that colonisers look at land that isn’t theirs. They ignore the history of the place.
Gaza has an old history. It has some of the oldest churches, I think the second-oldest church in the world. It has some of the oldest mosques. It has an old civilization.
We want Gaza to be Gaza. We don’t want it to be Dubai or any other place. We want it to be Gaza. And so, the idea of somehow turning it into prime real estate, this is the mentality of somebody who’s coming from outside.
This is the way that colonisers think. This isn’t the way that the Indigenous think. And so, you can see in this plan that it’s not only the idea of the outside coming in, but they certainly didn’t consult Palestinians at all.
As for what’s going to happen to the Palestinian Authority, it’s clear that they don’t want the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, and it’s clear that they do want to have a foreign authority in the Gaza Strip.
But once again, Amy, when is it that Palestinians get to decide our own future? Are we really going back to the era of colonialism, when other people get to decide our future? And that’s what this plan is really all about.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to be continuing to cover this story. President Trump is going to be there for the signing of the ceasefire in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt on Monday, and the hostages and prisoners are expected to be released on Monday or Tuesday.
Diana Buttu, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and Amjad Iraqi, Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group.
Within hours of being named the Nobel Peace laureate for 2025, María Corina Machado called on President Trump to step up his military and economic campaign against her own country — Venezuela.
The curriculum vitae of the opposition leader hardly lines up with what one would typically associate with a Peace Maker. Nor would those who nominated her, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and recent US national security advisor Mike Waltz, both drivers of violent policies towards Venezuela.
“The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace, to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness,” said the Nobel Committee statement.
Let’s see if María Corina Machado passes that litmus test and is worthy to stand alongside last year’s winners, Nihon Hidankyo, representing the Japanese hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “honoured for their decades-long commitment to nuclear disarmament and their tireless witness against the horrors of nuclear war”.
Machado supports Israel, would move embassy Machado is a passionate Zionist and supporter of both the State of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu personally. She has not been silent on the genocide; indeed she has actively called for Israel to press ahead, saying Hamas “must be defeated at all costs, whatever form it takes”.
>If Machado achieves power in Venezuela, among her first long-promised acts will be the ending of Venezuela’s support for Palestine and the transfer of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The smiling face of Washington regime change The Council on American-Islamic Relations, US’s largest Muslim civil rights organisation, called Machado a supporter of anti-Muslim fascism and decried the award as “insulting and unacceptable”.
2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado . . . “It is really a disaster. It’s laying the groundwork and justifying greater military escalation,” warns a history professor. Image: Cristian Hernandez/ Anadolu Agency
Venezuelan activist Michelle Ellner wrote in the US progressive outlet Code Pink:
“She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatisation, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.
“Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help ‘liberate’ Venezuela with bombs under the banner of ‘freedom.’
She has demanded sanctions, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations.”
Legitimising US escalation against Venezuela Ellner said she almost laughed at the absurdity of the choice, which I must admit was my own reaction. Yale professor of history Greg Grandin was similarly shocked.
“It is really a disaster. It’s laying the groundwork and justifying greater military escalation.”
What Grandin is referring to is the prize being used by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration to legitimise escalating violence against Venezuela — an odd outcome for a peace prize.
Grandin, author of America, América: A New History of the New World says Machado “has consistently represented a more hardline in terms of economics, in terms of US relations. That intransigence has led her to rely on outside powers, notably the United States.
“They didn’t give it to Donald Trump, but they have given it to the next best thing as far as Marco Rubio is concerned — if he needs justification to escalate military operations against Venezuela.”
The Iron Lady wins a peace prize? Rubio has repeatedly referred to Machado as the “Venezuelan Iron Lady” — fair enough, as she bears greater resemblance to Margaret Thatcher than she does to Mother Teresa.
This illogicality brought back graffiti I read on a wall in the 1970s: “Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity”. Yet someone at the Nobel Committee had a brain explosion (fitting as Alfred Nobel invented dynamite) when they settled on Machado as the embodiment of Alfred Nobel’s ideal recipient — “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Machado, a recipient of generous US State Department funding and grants, including from the National Endowment for Democracy (the US’s prime soft power instrument of regime change) is praised for her courage in opposing the Maduro government, and in calling out a slide towards authoritarianism.
Conservatives could run a sound argument in terms of Machado as an anti-regime figure but it is ludicrous to suggest her hard-ball politics and close alliances with Trump would in any way qualify her for the peace prize. Others see her as an agent of the CIA, an agent of the Monroe Doctrine, and as a mouthpiece for a corrupt elite that wants to drive a violent antidemocratic regime change.
She has promised the US that she would privatise the country’s oil industry and open the door to US business.
“We’re grateful for what Trump is doing for peace,” the Nobel winner told the BBC. Trump’s recent actions include bombing boatloads of Venezuelans and Colombians — a violation of international law — as part of a pressure campaign on the Maduro government.
Machado says she told Trump “how grateful the Venezuelan people are for what he’s doing, not only in the Americas, but around the world for peace, for freedom, for democracy”. The dead and starving of Gaza bear witness to a counter narrative.
Rigged elections or rigged narratives? Peacemakers aren’t normally associated with coup d’etats but Machado most certainly was in 2002 when democratically elected President Hugo Chavez was briefly overthrown. Machado was banned from running for President in 2024 because of her calls for US intervention in overthrowing the government.
Central to both Machado’s prize and the US government’s regime change operation is the argument that the Maduro government won a “rigged election” in 2024 and is running a narco-trafficking government; charges accepted as virtually gospel in the mainstream media and dismissed as rubbish by some scholars and experts on the country.
Alfred de Zayas, a law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy who served as a UN Independent Expert on International Order, cautions against the standard Western narrative that the Venezuelan elections “were rigged”.
The reality is that the Maduro government, like the Chavez government before it, enjoys popularity with the poor majority of the country. Delegitimising any elected government opposed to Washington is standard operating procedure by the great power.
Professor Zayas led a UN mission to Venezuela in 2017 and has visited the country a number of times since. He has spoken with NGOs, such as Fundalatin, Grupo Sures, Red Nacional de Derechos Humanos, as well as people from all walks of life, including professors, church leaders and election officials.
“I gradually understood that the media mood in the West was only aiming for regime change and was deliberately distorting the situation in the country,” he said in an article in 2024.
I provide those thoughts not as proof definitive of the legitimacy of the elections but as stimulant to look beyond our tightly curated mainstream media. María Machado is Washington’s “guy” and that alone should set off alarm bells.
Michelle Ellner: “Anyone who knows what she stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics.”
“Beati pacifici quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God”. Matthew 5:9.
Amen to that.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
A few, instantly forgettable days in the city of Manchester has confirmed the Conservative Party is unable to provide a credible opposition to a widely discredited, scandal-ridden Labour government.
I am in absolutely no doubt whatsoever; the Conservative Party is dead.
The 2024 general election didn’t just eject them from power — it was a massacre that would make a Hammer Horror movie blush.
Reduced to 121 MPs, their lowest tally since the 1830s, they lost seats to everyone from independent socialists calling out their Gaza genocide complicity to Farage’s grifting circus, Reform UK.
Just over a year later, under the leadership of Kemi Badenoch, the Tories find themselves trailing in the polls to the worst Labour government in living memory.
Even their own members are jumping ship. Half of them say Badenoch’s unfit to lead them into the next election, and Robert Jenrick — who believes the UK should have the Star of David at every entry point into the country — keeps popping up as the consolation prize that nobody asked for,
Admittedly, a number of the Tories want Jenrick, a man so bland he makes fence panels look rebellious, but the rest of the Brexit nostalgists are ready to sell their darkened souls to Farage’s fascist fan club to make themselves feel a little bit better.
The Tories aren’t just dead, they’re decomposing into the compost heap of history.
The Conservative Party is dead
Years of gutting the NHS, cheering on the body count of austerity, and shilling for fossil fuel barons and shady foreign donors have left them with nothing but culture war dogwhistles and the memory of an iceberg lettuce outliving Liz Truss’ credibility.
The Tories spent fourteen years building a Britain where NHS nurses queue at food banks and sleep in cars while their hedge fund associates dodge taxes in their mansions. That is the Tory brand, and it is more toxic than a skunk’s armpit at a garlic-eating contest.
Badenoch’s speech was a desperate, reheated casserole of right-wing buzzwords. The promise to “restore a strong economy, secure our borders, and rebuild Britain’s strength” is pure delusion.
It was supposed to be a rallying cry for the restless Tory masses but it felt so much more like a requiem for a party that is out of touch and out of ideas.
It will be a miracle if Badenoch is still the leader of the Conservative Party at the next general election because that speech was like a resignation letter in policy form.
The big reveal, which absolutely nobody was waiting for, was to announce the abolition of stamp duty under the next Conservative government.
Because what Britain really needs is another tax loophole for oligarchs and Airbnb millionaires, while millennials live in their parents’ basements, right?
There will not be a next Conservative government.
And what if there was? The Tories torched social housing, jacked up rents to dystopian levels and turned rough sleeping into a national sport. This is a legacy that cannot be undone.
Zack Polanski: inspiring hope
One political leader that inspires genuine hope is Zack Polanski. I must admit, he is growing on me quicker than a pair of hypnotised breasts.
While Jezza and Zarah’s ‘Your Party’ spent the summer months squabbling and threatening legal action, Polanski went about his business quietly and effectively, putting in place the foundations of a genuine socialist movement.
Some people on the left are quick to say Polanski is simply putting a green slant on Corbynite policies as if it’s a bad thing.
Eco socialism is a solution to the crises of today, not the problem.
Other critics (particularly on the right) are keen to point out that Mr Polanski was born with a different name, as if it is some sort of “gotcha” hypocrisy moment.
Polanski changed his name at the age of 18 to reclaim his family’s original Jewish surname, which had been anglicised to Paulden generations earlier as a shield against rampant antisemitism in early 20th-century Britain.
Polanski’s name change was transparent, legally documented, and tied to his heritage.
The same critics are fine with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon calling himself Tommy Robinson, which is a pseudonym layered over convictions for fraud and contempt, but they get particularly angry about a Jewish lad honouring his roots?
Remind me again, why did the Polanski family feel it necessary to change their surname, some generations earlier?
Fixating on birth certificates distracts from substance. If Polanski’s policies land or flop, it’ll have absolutely nothing to do with what his mum called him at birth.
There is space for two left parties
Don’t get me wrong here folks, Your Party has every chance of being a huge success, even more so if they can effectively live stream a rally…
It is entirely possible for Your Party and the Greens to work together, both now and in the future.
The Independent Alliance (Your Party’s precursor) has informally coordinated with Greens in Parliament since 2024.
They’ve jointly tabled amendments to the King’s Speech, voted together on issues like Gaza and social justice, and shared resources for campaigns.
And at this week’s Your Party big rally in Liverpool, Corbyn and Sultana discussed an “optimistic socialist alternative” alongside “working with Polanski’s Greens.”
There is plenty of space on the left for two political parties. Millions of disillusioned Labour voters are politically homeless. Your Party and Polanski’s Greens must now point the way to a better, fairer Britain for all.
Last month, I started releasing exclusive stories from my upcoming book, The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney and the Crisis of British Democracy.
The results were immediate.
In the first week, Paul Ovenden, Number 10’s director of strategy, resigned after I revealed his role in problematic chat messages, conducted via his Labour Party messaging system, about Diane Abbott.
The Fraud: explosive exposé tells the real story of Labour Together and Morgan McSweeney
The following week, I put out documents and stories that led to calls for the re-opening of investigations into Labour Together related to its failure to report donations totalling close to £740,000 to the Electoral Commission. Between mid-2017 and early 2020, Labour Together was the vehicle through which Morgan McSweeney, now chief of staff to the Prime Minister, waged a covert campaign to destroy the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. This was done as a precursor to hand-picking a successor more to the liking of McSweeney’s right-wing faction: Sir Keir Starmer.
Not long after, I revealed that, starting in November 2023, Labour Together had hired a reputation management firm to investigate me, my family, and my colleagues. Labour Together hired the firm, and even reported me to the UK’s security services, after it became public that I was investigating McSweeney, Labour Together, its undisclosed donations – and what they were used for.
Campaigns to destroy the Canary and Inside Croydon
This week, I’ve released stories from The Fraud that expose how McSweeney and his close ally, Imran Ahmed, used their dodgy astroturf project, Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN), to launch a pan-Atlantic war on free speech in the US and UK while also intervening in the 2019 European Elections.
Part of this story, now told in full and without caveat in my book, involved SFFN launching a genuinely despicable campaign to demonetise the Canary, behind the veil of anonymity, because the Canary posed a threat to McSweeney’s political ambitions.
But the Canary was not the only outlet targeted by the people who now occupy major positions of power in the Labour government. Also targeted was an indefatigable local news outlet called Inside Croydon and its editor Steven Downes.
Inside Croydonreported on the politics of the borough of Croydon, the stomping ground of Steve Reed MP. It reported critically, but I believe accurately, on Reed and his local political allies, as well the Labour-led Croydon Council. Croydon Council declared effective bankruptcy in 2020 while under the control of the very same people Inside Croydon was reporting on.
Reed, as my book shows, was one of McSweeney’s closest collaborators, in addition to serving as a director of Labour Together for seven years between 2016 and 2023.
Using journalism to speak truth to power
The stories of the targeting of both Inside Croydon and the Canary are genuinely shocking. I believe they speak believe to a disturbing hostility towards independent media outlets, and independent journalists, conducting public-interest investigative journalism.
In the spirit of restorative justice, I have decided to release exclusive extracts from my book to the Canary and Inside Croydon. They are the first and only outlets I have granted the right to reproduce material from my book. I feel it is important that the Canary and Inside Croydon both get to relay their full stories, on their own sites, without any paywall, free for the public to read.
Personally, I can think of no better way for the Canary and Inside Croydon to finally get a modicum of much-delayed justice: by using journalism to speak truth to power.
The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney and the Crisis of British Democracy is available to purchase directly from www.orbooks.com from Monday 13 October. E-books will be instantly available to buy. Hard-copies bought via OR Books will be delivered directly from its warehouses and arrive shortly.
I’m guessing you know what friend-zoned means. Or clickbait. When we lack a word that succinctly describes a concept we can’t quite describe, it’s called hypocognition. When we find that new word or phrase something clicks. It helps us express our thoughts. There is power in naming something.
I would like to coin the phrase ‘fake crusader’. The fake crusader is someone who shouts angrily at an injustice for just long enough to get attention and feel self-righteous. Despite having no track record of actually doing anything about it.
Far-right ‘fake crusaders’ don’t actually give a sh*t about women and children
“We’re shouting at this hotel to protect our women and children” is classic fake crusader behaviour. On one level it makes sense. All decent folk are appalled by sex crimes. Presumably these crusaders will now also stop listening to the radio, given how many former radio presenters are convicted sex criminals.
If you’re so keen on calling out sex offenders, why did you not protest outside cathedrals when Justin Welby resigned last year? The Church of England covered up brutal sexual, physical, and mental abuse against more than 120 boys and young men. If you only call out Black and brown sex offenders and remain silent about white ones, protecting women and children isn’t your cause. Racism is.
There’s a psychological process known as projection. A defence mechanism where a person unconsciously attributes their own unacceptable feelings, thoughts, or behaviours to others. It is well documented that 41% of far-right rioters were reported to the police for domestic violence against women and children.
So yes, do condemn grooming gangs from minoritised populations. But don’t claim they do it because they are minoritised. I mean, come on, you can’t get more British than an Archbishop of Canterbury whose mother was Winston Churchill’s secretary. Except perhaps for Prince Andrew.
Any large group of people will contain saints and sinners. It seems humans are human, regardless of ethnicity or creed.
The ‘fake crusaders’ in parliament
You see fake crusaders on other issues too. Labour MPs and mayors courting headlines about how awful child poverty is. The same MPs that then voted to keep the two-child benefit cap once they were in power. Or those who performatively labelled lifelong anti-racists as antisemitic for calling out the Nakba, despite never having lifted a finger to stop the far-right when they were denying the Shoah.
Social media is replete with posts saying, “Why are we helping foreigners when we have homeless people here?” from angry people who have never donated a penny to homeless charities. It’s much easier to shout at other people than to muster the moral courage to fix the problem.
That applies to governments too. Terrorism is heinous. But if you change the law so you can arrest peaceful protesters as terrorists, while you supply arms to war criminals, you are a fake crusader.
Smokescreen for the real culprits
Some fake crusaders are at another level of denial. I was asked on social media, “would you house a refugee?” by someone thinking it was a killer argument. My answer was, no, I wouldn’t. Nor do I plan to run into a burning building and carry people out. I leave it to trained professionals with the correct equipment, and I pay my taxes so they can do it on my behalf. That’s how the division of labour works.
The genuine crusaders are the professionals and volunteers rolling up their sleeves and feeding, healing and housing those in need. Running the foodbanks, the rape crisis centres, the rehabilitation centres. They’re underpaid, undervalued and underappreciated by successive austerity governments. The fake crusaders are a smokescreen hiding the real culprits – the mega rich skimming off everyone else’s hard work. If they want to do something good, stop shouting at people worse off than you are, and donate £20 to your local charity.
The bombs have indeed stopped, but our suffering continues. Our reality has not changed. We are still under siege.
Israel still has full control over our air, land and sea; it is still blocking sick and injured Palestinians from leaving and journalists, war crimes investigators and activists from going in.
It is still controlling what food, what medicine, and essential supplies enter.
The siege has lasted more than 18 years, shaping every moment of our lives. I have lived under this blockade since I was just three years old. What kind of peace is this, if it will continue to deny us the freedoms that everyone else has?
‘Deal’ overshadowed flotilla kidnap
The news of the ceasefire deal and “the peace plan” overshadowed another, much more important development.
Israel raided another freedom flotilla in international waters loaded with humanitarian aid for Gaza, kidnapping 145 people on board — a crime under international law. This came just days after Israel attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla, detaining more than 450 people who were trying to reach Gaza.
These flotillas carried more than just humanitarian aid. They carried the hope of freedom for the Palestinian people. They carried a vision of true peace — one where Palestinians are no longer besieged, occupied and dispossessed.
Many have criticised the freedom flotillas, arguing that they cannot make a difference since they are doomed to be intercepted.
I myself did not pay much attention to the movement. I was deeply disappointed, having lost hope in seeing an end to this war.
But that changed when Brazilian journalist Giovanna Vial interviewed me. Giovanna wrote an article about my story before setting sail with the Sumud Flotilla. She then made a post on social media saying: “for Sara, we sail”. Her words and her courage stirred something in me.
Afterwards, I kept my eyes on the flotilla news, following every update with hope. I told my relatives about it, shared it with my friends, and reminded anyone who would listen how extraordinary this movement was.
‘She became the light’
I kept wondering — how is it possible that, in a world so heavy with injustice, there are still people willing to abandon everything and put their lives in danger for people they had never met, for a place, most of them had never visited.
I stayed in touch with Giovanna.
“Until my last breath, I will never leave you alone,” she wrote to me while sailing towards Gaza. In the midst of so much darkness, she became the light.
This was the first time in two years I felt like we were heard. We were seen.
The Sumud Flotilla was by far the biggest in the movement’s history, but it was not about how many boats there were or how many people were on board or how much humanitarian aid they carried. It was about putting a spotlight on Gaza — about making sure the world could no longer look away.
“All Eyes on Gaza,” read one post on the official Instagram account of the flotilla. It stayed with me, I read it on a very heavy night when the deafening sound of bombs in Gaza City was relentless. It was just before I had to flee my home due to the brutal Israeli onslaught.
Israel stopped flotillas, aid
Israel stopped the flotillas. They abused and deported the participants. They seized the aid. They may have prevented them from reaching our shores, but they failed to erase the message they carried.
A message of peace. A message of freedom. A message we had been waiting to hear for two long, brutal years. The boats were captured, but the solidarity reached us.
I carry so much gratitude in my heart for every single human being who took part in the freedom flotillas. I wish I could reach each of them personally — to tell them how much their courage, their presence, and their solidarity meant to me, and to all of us in Gaza.
We will never forget them. We will carry their names, their faces, their voices in our hearts forever.
To those who sailed toward us: thank you. You reminded us that we are not alone.
And to the world: we are clinging to hope. We are still waiting — still needing — more flotillas to come. Come to us. Help us break free from this prison.
The bombing has stopped now, and I can only hope that this time it does not resume in a few weeks. But we still do not have peace.
Governments have failed us. But the people have not.
One day, I know, the freedom flotilla boats will reach the shore of Gaza and we will be free.
Sara Awad is an English literature student, writer, and storyteller based in Gaza. Passionate about capturing human experiences and social issues, Sara uses her words to shed light on stories often unheard. Her work explores themes of resilience, identity, and hope amid war. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
Of 42 referendums, 17 voted to retain Māori Wards in Aotearoa New Zealand’s local elections yesterday, which suggests something about where we are at as a nation — but you already knew that right?
We all know that it’s only recently that we’ve been attempting to teach New Zealand history in our schools.
As a consequence few people understand it — and even less understand Te Tiriti, and our obligations to it — and things like “active protection” not being based on race, but being based on a constitutional foundation which protects the interests of our indigenous.
They are not just the same as some other minority.
There’s a special status to this and we would like to think we can independently maintain it in a so called “liberal democracy” but, as you know, the guardrails are shaky and under neoliberal attack.
We know Education Minister Erica Stanford is working with Atlas plants and one-eyed folk to dilute that effort, and we know history and social sciences are under attack under this government.
They pull the funding for the humanities. That’s the fact.
Not always equitable
While the electoral system may be formally equal (one person, one vote), it does not always lead to equitable outcomes for groups with distinct cultural, historical, and political status — such as Māori.
You try to talk fairness to your average rightwing, under-educated Act voter and they will tell you about fairness based on their own victimhood and “equality” not “equity”.
While Māori are guaranteed representation through the Māori electoral roll at the national level — Māori seats in Parliament — Māori wards are the local government equivalent to me.
Without Māori wards, Māori communities often lack meaningful say in local decisions affecting their lands, resources, and wellbeing, especially given the legacy of colonisation and ongoing disparities.
Nobody at Hobson’s Pledge cares much about that because it does not effect them. Self interest is their bottom line.
Without dedicated representation, Māori voices are often sidelined or overruled as we all have seen, many times and here we go again — as Code Brown is rife in Auckland and celebrations begin with no real mandate after such a low turnout.
Code Brown will tell you otherwise that these results are all about the public voting for “doing a good job” and not “just a pretty face” but in reality it’s about disconnection and the cost of living crisis and double digit rates increases in 18 councils, and who bothers to vote?
Many new mayors
In 18 councils which gave ratepayers a double digit rate increase, 13 elected new mayors — just like that!
Overall, out of 66 mayoral races, 31 councils elected a new mayor
Māori wards ensure there are elected representatives directly accountable to Māori constituents, strengthening democracy, but we’ve seen the erosion of it under this government.
We have all seen how they are pushing all things Māori backwards in a dedicated ideological push to clear the way for foreign investment — and that’s the battle.
Act picked up 10 candidates — but much of that is about who votes, and rather than a swing to the right it’s about rates and low turnout.
Ratepayers tend to get out and vote more than renters, according to Code Brown as we stare at voter turnout in 2025 which appears significantly down compared to 2022 in major cities.
Auckland dropped from about 35.5 percent to about 23 percent. Wellington dropped from 45 percent to around 36 percent. Christchurch also dropped, though somewhat less sharply — and while that’s preliminary, it’s a statement.
Nationwide turnout drops
Overall, the nationwide turnout is looking lower — around 36 percent preliminary results for the 2025 local elections, and offical counts will be known on Friday, October 17.
So in the end, we need to vote out the central government which gave us upward pressure on rates with unaffordable water infrastructure reform — while trying to blame councils — attacked Māori on many fronts; and eroded progress towards a proper constitutional transformation .
After a recent byelection and now this result — there’s a message to people who do not vote . . . and it’s about the outcomes. You either vote or you get screwed.
I’m sure you already can see the need as some suggest voting should be compulsory like in Australia – and we all saw the gerrymandering by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith about enrolment dates.
Gerard Otto is a digital creator and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. Republished with permission.
Nigel Farage’s comment about tampons and the reactions to it have shown us how much stigma still exists around periods.
Farage may be attempting to distract us from that thing he doesn’t want us to know about (ahem, Nige knew about the Russian bribes). Instead, though, he has highlighted two very real problems. One – far too many people in this country cannot afford period products. And two, there is still a massive stigma around menstruation.
Period poverty: and vegan tampons are the problem?
According to ActionAid, period poverty has risen dramatically in recent years. Period poverty is when someone is unable to access period products, hygienic facilities, or education due to either the cost associated with doing so or stigma. In 2023 alone, period poverty rose from 12% to 21%. Since then, the cost-of-living crisis has only intensified.
Access to sanitary products is a fundamental human right. Yet in the UK, 40% of girls have had to use toilet roll in place of period products at some point, because they cannot afford proper sanitary products.
As if that isn’t bad enough, 14% of girls did not know what was happening when they got their first period. An additional 26% did not know what to do.
The real issues here are a lack of education and poverty. Not ‘vegan tampons in men’s toilets’.
So, aside from the fact that the National Trust put tampons in men’s toilets for any trans men who may have their period, anyone using the bathroom who has friends or family who cannot afford period products can take some. And what about the single Dads who can’t afford period products? Or the women experiencing homelessness who have male friends who can grab them a few extra pads? Or the person with endometriosis who is bent over the toilet in agony, who texts her partner to grab her a tampon?
I think we all know how Farage would react if all these people decided to free bleed. He’d be disgusted – as would the majority of men.
But once again, we have a rich white man making comments about an issue he has never personally dealt with.
Gynaecological health conditions add more pressure
Around 10% of women and girls have endometriosis, and up to 20% have adenomyosis. Both are agonising and debilitating conditions, which cause extremely heavy bleeding – often for far more than the two to seven days of a standard period. Some people bleed for weeks or months at a time.
This means that the cost of sanitary products can be enormous for people with these conditions. Added to the cost of having to take time off work, medications to control pain, fatigue and all the other symptoms – it’s safe to say that a male friend being able to grab you a few extra tampons or pads would make a massive difference.
From the end of 2018 until 2020, I was homeless. I relied on free period products, from public toilets, from charities, and from the kindness of strangers and friends – of all genders. And as a woman who had both endometriosis and adenomyosis at the time, I got through them fast.
I had a hysterectomy at the end of 2023, at the age of 28. Aside from not being in debilitating pain every single day and being able to live a relatively normal life now, I also must have saved thousands of pounds from not having to buy sanitary products.
Stigma still exists – as Farage just showed
Half of the population menstruates, yet so many people – yes, mainly men – are disgusted by them.
Society teaches girls from a young age not to talk about periods. Women walk around terrified of wearing white clothing or leaking during their period because it’s embarrassing or shameful. But why? Do we laugh at toddlers who wet themselves, people who have had surgery, or men who spill a coffee on their crotch during a meeting? No, we don’t.
Why? Probably because, of course, women are just sexual objects. How dare they bleed from their vaginas?
And if period blood upsets you – that says a hell of a lot more about how society has taught you to see women’s bodies, than about the blood itself. Oh, and you might want to sit down before I tell you where you came from.
Not to mention innuendos like ‘that time of the month’, ‘shark week’, or hearing ‘she must be on her period’ because a woman dares to show an ounce of emotion. All these euphemisms do is add stigma – they emphasise that periods are something to hide. They lead to more embarrassment, young girls being afraid to ask for help, and reinforce that periods are disgusting and not to be talked about. Do we have the same euphemisms for digestion? Or breathing? Both, like menstruation, are normal bodily functions. Stop beating around the bush and call it what it is.
The fact that Farage is married to a woman astounds me – because he has clearly never listened to one.
This is yet another example of how Farage and Reform’s “protect women and girls” mantra is complete bullshit. If he really cared about women and girls, he’d be supporting access to period products.
Spoiler alert – it already has. This is not a glib answer but a comment on the nature of the conflict. The US mission to wrench Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution out from its roots has a quarter-century pedigree. Stick around to the end of the article for an assessment of the likelihood of an overt military attack inside Venezuela. But first a little historical context.
Regime change has failed…so far
In 2002, a US-backed military coup temporarily ousted Hugo Chávez. A mere 47 hours later, the people of Venezuela spontaneously arose and returned their rightfully elected president.
Washington has persistently interfered in the internal affairs of Venezuela, pouring millions of dollars to rig elections. Yet, the perpetually divided and unpopular US-fostered opposition is more isolated and discredited than ever.
Undeterred by its 2002 failed coup, the US has repeatedly sponsored attempts to achieve by violence what they could not do by interfering in Venezuelan elections. In 2020, the so-called “Operation Gideon” was designed to kidnap President Maduro. Derisively dubbed the “Bay of Piglets,” this coup attempt along with numerous others failed. Local fisher folk apprehended the mercenaries.
Among the many diplomatic efforts at regime change by Washington, the Lima Group was cobbled together in 2017. The cabal of 11 rightwing Latin American states and Canada aspired to facilitate “a peaceful exit” to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. By 2021, nearly half of the Lima Group countries had elected progressive governments and that diplomatic offensive fizzled.
Meanwhile in 2019, the US anointed unknown 35-year-old Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela. On December 21, 2022, his own opposition found the puppet so toxic and corrupt that they gave him the boot.
Previously in 2015, Barack Obama certified that Venezuela was an “extraordinary threat” to US national security. He imposed unilateral coercive measures designed to destroy the Venezuelan economy. Euphemistically called “sanctions,” this form of collective punishment is illegal under international law. Regardless, each subsequent US president has continued and to varying degrees augmented the economic warfare.
Combined with oil commodity prices cratering – the source of almost all of its foreign earnings – Venezuela experienced the largest peacetime economic contraction in recent world history. Inflation reached 2,000,000% and the days of the Bolivian Revolution appeared to be numbered. However by 2023, in a heroic effort under the resolute political leadership of President Maduro, Venezuela reversed the economic freefall and recorded a 5% GDP growth rate, which has continued in a positive direction.
US trapped in its imperial imperative
Without further detailing the multitude of illegal US regime-change machinations, it is sufficient to say that the very successes of the Venezuelans have forced Uncle Sam to escalate the conflict. Forced because, as an imperial power, the United States is structurally driven by its inherent pursuit of hegemony – rule over all potential challengers. This compulsion is codified in its official security doctrine of “full-spectrum dominance.”
Venezuela has indeed been a challenge. Even before Hugo Chávez was elected in 1998, former President Carlos Andrés Pérez nationalized the country’s oil reserves – the largest in the world – in 1976. Chávez increased state control over the oil industry and expropriated international oil company assets.
Chávez’s precedent of using the country’s natural resources – including Venezuela’s substantial reserves of natural gas, iron ore, bauxite, gold, coal, and diamonds – to fund social programs, rather than handing them over for private profit, is anathema to the US. Not only does the imperium lust over the oil for its own corporations, but control of such strategic resources are geopolitically critical for maintaining global dominance.
Venezuela has also been a leader in promoting regional unity that is independent of the US, forging alliances such as CELCA and ALBA. It is a close ally with Nicaragua and Cuba, also on the US enemies list. Through OPEC, Friends in Defense of the UN Charter, and other initiatives, Venezuela has encouraged Latin American unity with Africa and Asia. Venezuela has “strategic partnerships” with China and Russia and is close to Iran. A champion of Palestine, it broke relations with Israel in 2009. Venezuela also supports an emerging multilateral international community.
For all these “offenses,” the Bolivarian Revolution’s existence is insufferable to the Yankee hegemon…to be crushed.
The guard rails are down
Trump is operating with virtually zero institutional constraints. A mere five congressional Democrats recently awoke from their slumber to send a letter meekly suggesting that presidential “powers are not limitless.” But the Senate just voted against a war powers resolution to constrain attacks on Venezuela.
Democrat representatives on the House Foreign Affairs Committee posted on X: “Trump and Rubio are pushing for regime change in Venezuela. The American people don’t want another war.” However, their colleagues in the Senate provided a unanimous mandate to the very same Republicans who ran on a “Maduro must go” platform. They rushed to do so, without debate, in the very first hours of the new administration.
Within the bipartisan consensus for regime change in Venezuela, the differences are cosmetic. The Democrats would prefer to overthrow the sovereign state “legally.” Truthoutreports that some senior Democrats warned “fellow members against opposing Trump’s war, saying that it would be tantamount to throwing their support behind Maduro.” If the Republicans precipitate an attack, the Democrats at best will agree with the ends but not the means.
The follow-the-flag press prepares public opinion for a strike
On September 26, NBC News reported “from the White House” that the US is planning strikes inside Venezuela. The one-minute video is actually of a guy standing in the street outside the White House, claiming that he had chatted with four unidentified “sources.” Subsequently, this unsubstantiated scoop went viral, picked up by almost every major corporate press outlet.
The New York Timeseditorialized: “Mr. Trump has grown frustrated with Mr. Maduro’s failure to accede to American demands to give up power voluntarily and the continued insistence by Venezuelan officials that they have no part in drug trafficking.” What doesn’t occur to these Pentagon scribes, is that neither has Mr. Trump shown any enthusiasm for giving up power voluntarily or even admitting to the documented conclusion by the US in drug trafficking.
In one of its typical propaganda pieces trying to pass as a news story, the Times tells us “what we know” about Washington’s offensive against Venezuela: “the endgame remains opaque.” Apparently, they don’t know jack, because the endgame is regime change. In remarks aimed at Venezuela, Mr. Trump threatened: “We will blow you out of existence.”
All the elements are in place for a strike inside Venezuela
Diplomatic relations with Venezuela have been broken since 2019.
In 2020, the US indicted President Maduro for narco-terrorism, placing a $15 million bounty on him, subsequently raised to $25m and now $50m.
On January 20, Trump took office. Executive Order 14157 declared a “national emergency” and designated international drug-trafficking groups as “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs) and “specially designated global terrorists,” citing authority under the Alien Enemies Act.
By February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that FTOs posed an “existential threat” and laid the groundwork for treating cartels allegedly linked to President Maduro as enemy combatants.
In May, the administration opened the path to use military force against FTOs.
Then in July, a “secret directive” authorized military operations against FTOs at sea and on foreign soil.
By August, the US launched a massive naval deployment off the coast of Venezuela. By October, troop deployment reportedly reached 10,000.
On September 2, the US blew up the first of four or five alleged drug boats in international waters off of Venezuela, resulting in extrajudicial murders of the crews.
By mid-September, the Pentagon notified Congress under the War Powers Resolution that US forces were engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.
This was followed on October 1 by the Defense Department’s “confidential memo” and more congressional briefings that the US was engaged in armed conflict.
Trump then terminated the last back-channel diplomatic contacts with Venezuela.
If the “international community” can’t halt the ongoing US/zionist genocide in Palestine, the Yankee juggernaut faces little effective resistance in the Caribbean. A US attack inside Venezuela is imminent!
This brutal war on Palestinians has not just unleashed Israel’s demons. It has unmasked our own regimes, as they crack down on humanitarian activism. Jonathan Cook reflects on Israel’s war on Gaza as the fragile ceasefire takes hold.
ANALYSIS:By Jonathan Cook
Anniversaries are often a cause for celebration. But who could have imagined back in October 2023 that we would now be marking the two-year anniversary of a genocide, documented in the minutest detail on our phones every day for 24 months? A genocide that could have been stopped at any point, had the US and its allies made the call.
This is an anniversary so shameful that no one in power wants it remembered. Rather, they are actively encouraging us to forget the genocide is happening, even at its very height.
Israel’s relentless crimes against the people of Gaza barely register in our news any longer.
There is a horrifying lesson here, one that applies equally to Israel and its Western patrons. A genocide takes place — and is permitted to take place — only when a profound sickness has entered the collective soul of the perpetrators.
For the past 80 years, Western societies have grappled with — or, at least, thought they did — the roots of that sickness.
They wondered how a Holocaust could have taken place in their midst, in a Germany that was central to the modern, supposedly “civilised”, Western world.
They imagined — or pretended to — that their wickedness had been extirpated, their guilt cleansed, through the sponsorship of a “Jewish state”. That state, violently established in 1948 in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, served as a European protectorate on the ruins of the Palestinian people’s homeland.
Desperate to control
The Middle East, let us note, just happened to be a region that the West was desperate to keep controlling, despite growing Arab demands to end more than a century of brutal Western colonialism.
Why? Because the region had recently emerged as the world’s oil spigot.
Israel’s very purpose — enshrined in the ideology of Zionism, or Jewish supremacism in the Middle East — was to act as a proxy for Western colonialism. It was a client state planted there to keep order on the West’s behalf, while the West pretended to withdraw from the region.
This big picture — the one Western politicians and media refuse to acknowledge — has been the context for events there ever since, including Israel’s current, genocidal endgame in Gaza.
Two years in, what should have been obvious from the start is becoming ever-harder to ignore: the genocide had nothing to do with Hamas’s one-day attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. The genocide was never about “self-defence”. It was preordained by the ideological imperatives of Zionism.
Hamas’s break-out from Gaza — a prison camp into which Palestinians had been herded decades earlier, after their expulsion from their homeland — provided the pretext. It all too readily unleashed demons long lurking in the soul of the Israeli body politic.
And more importantly, it released similar demons — though better concealed — in the Western ruling class, as well as parts of their societies heavily conditioned to believe that the interests of the ruling class coincide with their own.
“History repeats itself,” as the saying goes, “first as tragedy, then as farce.”
The same could be said of “peace processes”. Thirty years ago, the West force-fed Palestinians the Oslo Accords with the promise of eventual statehood.
Oslo was the tragedy. It led to an ideological rupture in the Palestinian national movement; to a deepening geographic split between an imprisoned population in the occupied West Bank and an even more harshly imprisoned population in Gaza; to Israel’s increasing use of new technologies to confine, surveil and oppress both sets of Palestinians; and finally, to Hamas’s brief break-out from the Gaza prison camp, and Israel’s genocidal “response”.
Now, President Trump’s 20-point “peace plan” offers the farce: unapologetic gangsterism masquerading as a “solution” to the Gaza genocide. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair — a war criminal who, alongside his US counterpart George W Bush, destroyed Iraq more than two decades ago — will issue diktats to the people of Gaza on Israel’s behalf.
Gaza, not just Hamas, faced an ultimatum: “Take the deal, or we will put you in concrete boots and sink you in the Mediterranean.”
Surrender document
Barely veiled by the threat was the likelihood that, even if Hamas felt compelled to sign up to this surrender document, Gaza’s people would end up in concrete boots all the same.
Gaza’s population has been so desperate for a respite from the slaughter that it would accept almost anything. But it is pure delusion for the rest of us to believe a state that has spent two years carrying out a genocide can be trusted either to respect a ceasefire or to honour the terms of a peace plan, even one so heavily skewed in its favour.
The farce of Trump’s peace plan — his “deal of the millennium” — was evident from the first of its 20 points: “Gaza will be a deradicalised terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbours.”
The document’s authors no more wonder what might have “radicalised” Gaza than Western capitals did when Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist group in the UK and other countries, broke out of the prison enclave with great violence on 7 October 2023.
Were the people of Gaza simply born radical, or did events turn them radical? Were they “radicalised” when Israel ethnically cleansed them from their original lands, in what is now the self-declared “Jewish state” of Israel, and dumped them in the tiny holding pen of Gaza?
Were they “radicalised” by being surveilled and oppressed in a dystopian, open-air prison, decade upon decade? Was it the experience of living for 17 years under an Israeli land, sea and air blockade that denied them the right to travel or trade, and forced their children on to a diet that left them malnourished?
Or maybe they were radicalised by the silence from Israel’s Western patrons, who supplied the weaponry and lapped up the rewards: the latest confinement technologies, field-tested by Israel on the people of Gaza.
Gaza most extreme
The truth ignored in the opening point of Trump’s “peace plan” is that it is entirely normal to be “radicalised” when you live in an extreme situation. And there are no places on the planet more extreme than Gaza.
It is not Gaza that needs “deradicalising”. It is the West and its Israeli client state.
The case for deradicalising Israel should hardly need stating. Poll after poll has shown Israelis are not just in favour of the annihilation their state is carrying out in Gaza; they believe their government needs to be even more aggressive, even more genocidal.
This past May, as Palestinian babies were shrivelling into dry husks from Israel’s blockade on food and aid, 64 percent of Israelis said they believed “there are no innocents” in Gaza, a place where around half of the population of two million people are children.
The figure would be even higher were it reporting only the views of Israeli Jews. The survey included the fifth of the Israeli population who are Palestinians — survivors of mass expulsions in 1948 during Israel’s Western-sponsored creation. This much-oppressed minority has been utterly ignored throughout these past two years.
Another survey conducted earlier this year found that 82 percent of Israeli Jews favoured the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. More than half, 56 percent, also supported the forced expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel — even though that minority has kept its head bowed throughout the genocide, for fear of reaping a whirlwind should it speak up.
In addition, 47 percent of Israeli Jews approved of killing all the inhabitants of Gaza, even its children.
Netanyahu’s crimes
The crimes overseen by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is so often held up by outsiders as some kind of aberration, are entirely representative of wider public sentiment in Israel.
The genocidal fervour in Israeli society is an open secret. Soldiers flood social media platforms with videos celebrating their war crimes. Teenage Israelis make funny videos on TikTok endorsing the starvation of babies in Gaza. Israeli state TV broadcasts a child choir evangelising for Gaza’s annihilation.
Such views are not simply a response to the horrors that unfolded inside Israel on 7 October 2023. As polls have consistently shown, deep-seated racism towards Palestinians is decades old.
It is not former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant who started the trend of calling Palestinians “human animals”. Politicians and religious leaders have been depicting them as “cockroaches”, “dogs”, “snakes” and “donkeys” since Israel’s creation. It is this long process of dehumanisation that made the genocide possible.
In response to the outpouring of support in Israel for the extermination in Gaza, Orly Noy, a veteran Israeli journalist and activist, reached a painful conclusion last month on the +972 website: “What we are witnessing is the final stage in the nazification of Israeli society.”
And she noted that this problem derives from an ideology with a reach far beyond Israel itself: “The Gaza holocaust was made possible by the embrace of the ethno-supremacist logic inherent to Zionism. Therefore it must be said clearly: Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end.”
As the genocide has unfolded week after week, month after month — ever-more divorced from any link to 7 October 2023 — and Western leaders have carried on justifying their inaction, a much deeper realisation is dawning.
Demon in the West
This is not just about a demon unleashed among Israelis. It is about a demon in the soul of the West. It is us — the power bloc that established Israel, arms Israel, funds Israel, indulges Israel, excuses Israel — that really needs deradicalising.
Germany underwent a process of “denazification” following the end of the Second World War — a process, it is now clear from the German state’s feverish repression of any public opposition to the genocide in Gaza, that was never completed.
A far deeper campaign of deradicalisation than the one Nazi Germany was subjected to, is now required in the West — one where normalising the murder of tens of thousands of children, live-streamed to our phones, can never be allowed to happen again.
A deradicalisation that would make it impossible to conceive of our own citizens travelling to Israel to help take part in the Gaza genocide, and then be welcomed back to their home countries with open arms.
A deradicalisation that would mean our governments could not contemplate silently abandoning their own citizens — citizens who joined an aid flotilla to try to break Israel’s illegal starvation-siege of Gaza — to the goons of Israel’s fascist police minister.
A deradicalisation that would make it inconceivable for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, or other Western leaders, to host Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, who at the outset of the slaughter in Gaza offered the central rationale for the genocide, arguing that no one there — not even its one million children — were innocent.
A deradicalisation that would make it self-evident to Western governments that they must uphold the World Court’s ruling last year, not ignore it: that Israel must be forced to immediately end its decades-long illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, and that they must carry out the arrest of Netanyahu on suspicion of crimes against humanity, as specified by the International Criminal Court.
A deradicalisation that would make it preposterous for Shabana Mahmood, Britain’s Home Secretary, to call demonstrations against a two-year genocide “fundamentally un-British” — or to propose ending the long-held right to protest, but only when the injustice is so glaring, the crime so unconscionable, that it leads people to repeatedly protest.
Eroding right to protest
Mahmood justifies this near-death-knell erosion of the right to protest on the grounds that regular protests have a “cumulative impact”. She is right. They do: by exposing as a sham our government’s claim to stand for human rights, and to represent anything more than naked, might-is-right politics.
A deradicalisation is long overdue — and not just to halt the West’s crimes against the people of Gaza and the wider Middle East region.
Already, as our leaders normalise their crimes abroad, they are normalising related crimes at home. The first signs are in the designation of opposition to genocide as “hate”, and of practical efforts to stop the genocide as “terrorism”.
The intensifying campaign of demonisation will grow, as will the crackdown on fundamental and long-cherished rights.
Israel has declared war on the Palestinian people. And our leaders are slowly declaring war on us, whether it be those protesting the Gaza genocide, or those opposed to a consumption-driven West’s genocide of the planet.
We are being isolated, smeared and threatened. Now is the time to stand together before it is too late. Now is the time to find your voice.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.
