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Category: Opinion

  • Jacinda Ardern: Why NZ’s tiny group of hysterical haters can’t face the facts

    COMMENTARY: By Gerard Otto

    As you know, there’s a tiny group of Dame Jacinda Ardern haters in New Zealand who are easily triggered by facts and the ongoing success of the former prime minister on the world stage.

    The tiny eeny weeny group is made to look bigger online by an automated army of fake profile bots who all say the same five or six things and all leave a space before a comma.

    This automation is imported into New Zealand so many of the profiles are in other countries and simply are not real humans.

    Naturally this illusion of “flooding the zone” programmatically on social media causes the non-critical minded to assume they are a majority when they have no such real evidence to support that delusion.

    Yet here’s some context and food for thought.

    None of the haters have run a public hospital, been a director-general of health during a pandemic, been an epidemiologist or even a GP and many struggle to spell their own name properly let alone read anything accurately.

    None of them have read all the Health Advice offered to the government during the covid-19 pandemic. They don’t know it at all.

    Know a lot more
    Yet they typically feel they do know a lot more than any of those people when it comes to a global pandemic unfolding in real time.

    None of the haters can recite all 39 recommendations from the first Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid-19, less than three of them have read the entire first report, none have any memory of National voting for the wage subsidy and business support payments when they accuse the Labour government of destroying the economy.

    Most cannot off the top of their heads tell us how the Reserve Bank is independent of government when it raises the OCR and many think Jacinda did this but look you may be challenged to a boxing match if you try to learn them.

    The exact macro economic state of our economy in terms of GDP growth, the size of the economy, unemployment and declining inflation forecasts escape their memory when Jacinda resigned, not that they care when they say she destroyed the economy.

    They make these claims without facts and figures and they pass on the opinions of others that they listened to and swallowed.

    It’s only a tiny group, the rest are bots.

    The bots think making horse jokes about Jacinda is amusing, creative and unique and it’s their only joke now for three years — every single day they marvel at their own humour. In ten years they will still be repeating that one insult they call their own.

    Bots on Nuremberg
    The bots have also been programmed to say things about Nuremberg, being put into jail, bullets, and other violent suggestions which speaks to a kind of mental illness.

    The sources of these sorts of sentiments were imported and fanned by groups set up to whip up resentment and few realise how they have been manipulated and captured by this programme.

    The pillars of truth to the haters rest on being ignorant about how a democracy necessarily temporarily looks like a dictatorship in a public health emergency in order to save lives.

    We agreed these matters as a democracy, it was not Jacinda taking over. We agreed to special adaptations of democracy and freedom to save lives temporarily.

    The population of the earth has not all died from covid vaccines yet.

    There is always some harm with vaccines, but it is overstated by Jacinda haters and misunderstood by those ranting about Medsafe, that is simply not the actual number of vaccine deaths and harm that has been verified — rather it is what was reported somewhat subject to conjecture.

    The tinfoil hats and company threatened Jacinda’s life on the lawn outside Parliament and burnt down a playground and trees and then stamp their feet that she did not face a lynch mob.

    No doors kicked in
    Nobody’s door was kicked in by police during covid 19.

    Nobody was forced to take a jab. No they chose to leave their jobs because they had a choice provided to them. The science was what the Government acted upon, not the need to control anyone.

    Mandates were temporary and went on a few weeks too long.

    Some people endured the hardship of not being present when their loved ones died and that was very unfortunate but again it was about medical advice.

    Then Director-General of Health Sir Ashly Bloomfield said the government acted on about 90 percent of the Public Health advice it was given. Jacinda haters never mention that fact.

    Jacinda haters say she ran away, but to be fair she endured 50 times more abuse than any other politician, and her daughter was threatened by randoms in a café, plus Jacinda was mentally exhausted after covid and all the other events that most prime ministers never have to endure, and she thought somebody else could give it more energy.

    We were in good hands with Chris Hipkins so there was no abandoning as haters can’t make up their minds if they want her here or gone — but they do know they want to hate.

    Lost a few bucks
    The tiny group of haters include some people who lost a few bucks, a business, an opportunity and people who wanted to travel when there was a global pandemic happening.

    Bad things happen in pandemics and every country experienced increased levels of debt, wage subsidies, job losses, tragic problems with a loss of income, school absenteeism, increased crime, and other effects like inflation and a cost of living crisis.

    Haters just blame Jacinda because they don’t get that international context and the second Royal Commission of Inquiry was a political stunt, not about being more prepared for future pandemics but more about feeding the haters.

    All the information it needed was provided by Jacinda, Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins but right wing media whipped up the show trial despite appearances before a demented mob of haters being thought a necessary theatre for the right wing.

    A right wing who signed up to covid lockdowns and emergency laws and then later manipulated short term memories for political gain.

    You will never convince a hater not to hate with facts and context and persuasion, even now they are thinking how to rebut these matters rather than being open minded.

    Pandemics suck and we did pretty well in the last one but there were consequences for some — for whom I have sympathy, sorry for your loss, I also know people who died . . .  I also know people who lost money, I also know people who could not be there at a funeral . . .  but I am not a hater.

    Valuing wanting to learn
    Instead, I value how science wants to learn and know what mistakes were made and to adapt for the next pandemic. I value how we were once a team of five million acting together with great kotahitanga.

    I value Jacinda saying let there be a place for kindness in the world, despite the way doing the best for the common good may seem unkind to some at times.

    The effects of the pandemic in country by country reports show the same patterns everywhere — lockdowns, inflation, cost of living increases, crime increase, education impacts, groceries cost more, petrol prices are too high, supply chains disrupted.

    When a hater simplistically blames Jacinda for “destroying the economy and running away” it is literally an admission of their ignorance.

    It’s like putting your hand up and screaming, ‘look at me, I am dumb’.

    The vast majority get it and want Jacinda back if she wants to come back and live in peace — but if not . . .  that is fine too.

    Sad, ignorant minority
    A small sad and ignorant minority will never let it go and every day they hate and hate and hate because they are full of hate and that is who they really are, unable to move on and process matters, blamers, simple, under informed and grossly self pitying.

    I get the fact your body is your temple and you want medical sovereignty, I also get medical science and immunity.

    It’s been nearly three years now, is it time to be a little less hysterical and to actually put away the violent abuse and lame blaming? Will you carry on sulking like a child for another three years?

    It’s okay to disagree with me, but before you do, and I know you will, without taking onboard anything I write, just remember what Jacinda said.

    In a global pandemic with people’s lives at stake, she would rather be accused of doing too much than doing too little.

    Gerard Otto is a digital creator, satirist and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. This article is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Samoa Observer: The PM’s wish and our promise

    EDITORIAL: By the Samoa Observer

    They say the march toward authoritarian rule begins with one simple act: taking control of the narrative and silencing the independent press. Yesterday, Samoa witnessed a step in that direction.

    Prime Minister Laaulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt, elected by the people to serve them, has already moved to weaken one of democracy’s most essential pillars.

    With barely seven full days in office, he directed his power at the Samoa Observer, the very institution tasked with holding leaders like him to account.

    Samoa Observer
    SAMOA OBSERVER

    The Prime Minister accused this newspaper of misleading and inaccurate reporting, of disrespect and of having “no boundaries.” He went further by invoking the name of Sano Malifa, founder and owner of the Samoa Observer, suggesting that the paper had strayed from its mission, a statement he’s made countless times.

    So let us clear the air.

    Does the Prime Minister remember Sano Malifa’s reporting when, as Deputy Speaker, he gave a second hand car from his dealership to then Speaker of the House, Tolofuaivalelei Falemoe Leiʻataua, without cabinet approval?

    It was Sano Malifa who wrote extensively about the matter and helped ensure the vehicle was returned when questions were raised about improper dealings.

    Does he remember the concrete wall fence he attempted to build stretching toward Parliament, a plan never sanctioned by cabinet?

    Does he remember calling the Samoa Observer before the 2021 general elections seeking permission to erect FAST party tents outside its offices and being refused, because this newspaper does not trade favours for political convenience?

    Does he forget that Sano Malifa stood alone to question the one party rule of the HRPP, a party he joined and one his father served in, while most of the country remained silent because they felt they could not speak?

    Does he forget that the Sano Malifa he now quotes would never permit any leader to run the country unchecked?

    Let this be understood. Sano Malifa’s vision remains fully intact. It demands scrutiny of whoever occupies the Prime Minister’s chair, even if that chair is fake. It demands accountability, regardless of who holds power.

    It is intact in the way this newspaper was the only media organisation to question the Prime Minister’s meetings with foreign leaders while he sat on his famous chair, despite the warnings of his own advisers.

    It is intact in ensuring the public knew their new leader had been quietly flown out on a private plane for medical treatment, while sick patients in an overcrowded and underfunded hospital struggled without food because of unpaid wages for kitchen staff, even as its minister announced plans for a new hospital.

    It is intact in the story of a father whose pleas for justice went unanswered after his son was badly beaten and fell into a coma, until the Samoa Observer published his account and police were finally forced to act.

    It is intact in the simple reporting of rubbish piling up near homes, which was cleared by the government the very next morning.

    It is intact even when Sano Malifa’s own village and family appeared on the front page during a dispute, because he believed in accountability for all, including himself.

    So why would the Prime Minister believe he is entitled to special treatment?

    As the elected Prime Minister, whose salary, car and expenses are paid for by the public through their hard earned taxes, he should know that the media’s fundamental role is to keep him honest.

    If the Prime Minister is truly concerned about the vision of journalists, he need only look at those closest to him. A JAWS executive, Angie Kronfield, publicly declared she wished the Observer editor’s face had been disfigured during the assault carried out by the Prime Minister’s own security guards.

    Better still, her husband, Apulu Lance Pulu, a long-time journalist and owner of Talamua Media, was charged alongside the Prime Minister and later convicted of fraud in a 2020 court case. Yet he now seems to enjoy the Prime Minister’s favour as a preferred media voice. Let that sink in.

    So if the Prime Minister wants proof of a failed vision, he need not search far.

    Lastly, the Prime Minister’s other claim that an outsider writes for this newspaper is a fiction of his own making.

    The Samoa Observer remains under the same ownership, grounded in nearly 50 years of service to the public. And since he has made his wish clear that this newspaper is no longer welcome at his press conferences or those of his ministers, let us state this without hesitation. The same people stand behind this newspaper, and our promise to our readers has never wavered.

    The Samoa Observer editorial published on 18 November 2025.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The fall of the ‘Red Wall’ was a lie. Politicians never gave a shit about the North in the first place.

    A few years ago, the term ‘Red Wall’ was coined to describe the Labour Party’s former heartlands in the North and the Midlands, but the term in itself is a lie used by the political class to hide the real story. The term describes a sprawling collection of constituencies, from Bishop Auckland to Bolsover, and crucially encompasses my own battered heartlands in Teesside.

    For over a century, these were the beating heart of the Labour Party, this ‘Red Wall’ built on the foundations of coal, steel, manufacturing, and the collective working-class solidarity. But following the 2019 collapse, the phrase was bastardised. It became a neat soundbite, distracting from the decades of state-sponsored economic violence that preceded it.

    The narrative is a vile lie. That the decent, working-class people of the North suddenly abandoned socialism for flag-shagging, Brexit and a culture war.

    The ‘Red Wall’ didn’t turn its back on socialism over ‘wokeness’ at all.

    We were betrayed by a political class that didn’t give a single, solitary fuck about us. The nation and those who lead it forgot who built this country, whose blood, sweat, and tears lie in the steel that holds up the UK’s infrastructure. They abandoned the principles of economic struggle long before we did.

    We didn’t stop voting for Labour because we lack patriotism… We stopped voting for a party that, for generations, failed to give us any genuine, fighting alternative to the slow decline of our communities. The problem was never a lack of love for our country; it was a lack of socialism. It was a crushing realisation that the party we helped to build to defend us against the elite had become the elite itself. It was going to manage our decline and not reverse it.

    Economic annihilation and decades of deliberate neglect across the Red Wall

    The true betrayal of the wall started long before 2019. In 2010, the Tories and mainstream media teamed up and successfully rebranded austerity as a necessary evil instead of what it actually was.

    A disgustingly apparent, class-driven theft of wealth from the poor North to the rich South. This wasn’t innocent oversight; it was a scorched-earth policy created to weaken the institutional power of the working class permanently. And the stats remain hard evidence of betrayal, proving beyond a doubt that the North East was deliberately punished.

    The public sector was the last bastion for many in the North East after deindustrialisation. During the 2010 cuts, London saw a public sector job reduction of around 10%, which in itself is a shocking statistic, but compared to the 19% the North of England lost, it’s nothing. This reduction didn’t just ruin local employment, it gutted the capacity of local government to deal with the avalanche of social issues we suffered through poverty, housing and addiction.

    Waging war on our children

    They wage war on our children. Since austerity began, the North saw a massive increase of over 200,000 children living in relative poverty, a devastating 22% spike. Today in the North East, it is predicted that 38% of our kids live in poverty, but if you look closer at constituencies such as Middlesbrough, the rate is estimated to be over 52%. That is over fucking half. This is not a political realignment; this is a social crime carried out by policy choices in Westminster.

    And what’s worse is the cost in human lives. The chronic underfunding of health and social care has utterly decimated our basic security. Healthy life expectancy in the North East is now the lowest in the UK at a disgusting 59.1 years, which shows precisely what happens when the state pulls the plug on services. When welfare is replaced by hostility, people die younger, and it’s a clear trade-off.

    Private profit at the expense of public life.

    The human cost of decay, despair, and silence

    When a town like Middlesbrough, which had been Labour for decades, switched paths, it wasn’t cultural. It was a silent scream for help from people who have watched their high streets hollow, their neighbours grow sick, and their children fail for years. We have watched politicians we don’t even know, who we have no common ground with, come in with the promise of a new future, only to fuck off. They leave nothing but dust in the place of promises.

    In Boro, the town with one of the highest drug death rates in the country, the Diamorphine Assisted Treatment programme, a beautiful socialist solution, was allowed to fold. This initiative was making headway, saving lives and helping the public, but was ripped from the town as the Tories argued over billions for ridiculous vanity projects in the South. Billions of pounds for London, and the establishment couldn’t even stump up a few hundred thousand to save the lives of vulnerable people in one of the country’s most deprived areas.

    This is the definition of political neglect.

    Council funding has been systematically cut; they are on their knees and forced to choose between adult social care and the safety nets for children. This lack of political empathy is rooted in material decay. We feel disposable, that we are a burden on the nation’s finances, yet so many of us are aware of the billions the rich dodge in taxes.

    When people are scared, unrepresented, and their cries are brushed aside, they rarely look to the centre-ground establishment for answers. We fucking rebel. We will look for someone, fucking anyone, who sounds like they care about us and our crumbling lives.

    Scapegoating the victim

    This ruinous economic trauma creates a massive vacuum. The establishment and its media attack dogs understand this perfectly. They need to distract from the reality that the average weekly wage in the North East is nearly £50 below the national average (£472.30 vs £520.70)

    So, enter the ‘Culture Wars’ narrative.

    The rise of racist rhetoric and the shift towards right-wing parties in the North is not a cause; it’s a symptom. The term ‘reap what you sow’ is never more evident than it is here. It is the bitter harvest of a political elite that weaponises division to protect itself and its money. The establishment points their jewelled fingers at immigrants, ‘the woke,’ and the ‘lazy lout on benefits,’ because it stops people from asking the questions they truly fear: Where the hell did all the money go, and why did those who lead us let it happen?

    By feeding the working class’s anger with a cheap narrative scapegoat instead of economic opportunity, they have managed to turn us on our neighbours rather than those who rule. The true purpose of the ‘Red Wall’ label was to allow Labour to talk about identity rather than economic power. It allowed them to dodge the radical platform needed to fix the North.

    How to rebuild the Red Wall from the ashes using socialism and a Green Path

    The crisis which haunts the North isn’t one of identity; it is one of investment, ownership and control.

    The solution must be profound; it requires a comprehensive outcome that rejects neoliberalism and the consensus held by most major parties.

    To genuinely bring the North East and the wider ‘Red Wall’ region back to even a glimmer of its former glory, we need a political project built on two radical principles: Wealth redistribution and deep local empowerment.

    Labour’s failure is rooted in being piss-wet cowardly on wealth and ownership. The only way to get the billions we need to fix the North’s shattered infrastructure and social beliefs is to make the rich pay their fucking way.

    This is where the radical platforms of both the Green Party and Your Party offer a much-needed path.

    Public Ownership and the Wealth Tax

    The Greens have already taken the UK by storm, with their membership soaring on the promises they’re making to rebalance the books. The suggestion of an annual wealth tax on individual assets above a high threshold is precisely what we fucked need. This isn’t just a revenue generator, it’s a moral declaration that the ultra-rich are finally going to pay their way.

    Public ownership of water, central rail, and energy companies excites me. Immediately, we could stop the extraction of billions in private profit from essential services, using that money to insulate homes, upgrade grids, deliver clean, affordable energy, and create jobs in coastal and post-industrial areas. The North could be and should be a hub for genuine, publicly-owned green manufacturing and offshore wind, making the thousands of jobs the area desperately needs.

    The Greens want to abolish the hostility created by the DWP. Polanski has stood against the cruel two-child benefit cap and mandatory sanctions, which keep the people in the North in perpetual poverty. Policies like Universal Basic Income and a guaranteed minimum wage of £15 an hour would not just lift people out of in-work poverty. Still, it will also restore dignity and community stability to the area.

    Building wealth in the community and reversing the flow of capital

    Time and time again, Westminster and Whitehall have proven they cannot, and will not, fix the North. The key to breathing life back into the ‘Red Wall’ is Community Wealth Building – a modern revival of socialism.

    This model has been implemented in places like Preston and focuses not on attracting international capitalism, but on keeping local wealth local. In Teesside, this means things such as anchor institutions in which we will harness the spending power of local hospitals, universities and councils to shift contracts to local, worker-owned co-operatives and small businesses. This breaks the extractive supply chains that bleed local money dry (see Michelle Mone as a prime example).

    We must actively establish community land trusts and nurture local co-operatives. Instead of profits from new, green businesses flowing to London shareholders, they should be democratically controlled by the workers and the community that generates them. This helps restore the sense of ownership and collective stake that Thatcherism decimated and Labour never restored.

    And lastly, we need to prioritise local public services. Dedicating the new wealth tax revenue directly to local budgets (as the Greens propose an additional £5 billion a year) allows councils to adequately fund public health, social care, youth services and more importantly, re-establish local, non-privatised and high-quality children’s services to address the regional crisis of children in care directly.

    The Red Wall is not left behind – we’ve been dragged down

    We people of the North East are not ‘left behind’ culturally. We have been dragged down by years of a cowboy Westminster stealing our money and giving it to their pals.

    The people of the Red Wall deserve a political force that not only acknowledges our abandonment but also offers a revolutionary plan for economic repair. We need a fusion of socialist principles and the Greens’ vision of sustainable, high-quality jobs.

    These are the only bricks that can rebuild the Red Wall.

    Anything else is a fucking lie.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Antifabot

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • MAGA revolt: Trump supporters seen burning their own hats

    As we’ve reported, Trump has haemorrhaged support from his base recently, and for more than one reason. In response to all that, MAGA supporters are supposedly burning their red MAGA hats:

    Is there really a wave of hat burnings, though? Or is it all just hot air?

    MAGA hats off

    People are reporting that MAGA has turned on the president since he attacked former Trump loyalist Marjorie Taylor-Greene:


    We should note that not every image appears to be new or real. The cover image we used, for instance, came from this post:

    As people discovered, some of these are old images:

    Some aren’t burning their hat, but they are speaking out, and again they’re highlighting support for Israel as a dividing issue:

    Many of these people are also repeating what’s becoming the new ‘Make America Great Again’, which is:

    Regardless of whether or not people are burning their hats, it’s certainly the case that many of his once-loyal supporters are now burning with anger.

    MAGA is burning

    The three key issues for Trump right now are:

    Regarding Trump’s support for Israel, there is some variation in how the right are approaching the issue. Some are making a similar point to the left, and saying America shouldn’t be offering unconditional support to a rogue nation which has committed a genocide; others are just straight-up antisemitic.

    As an example of the latter, the man burning his hat in the video at the top said:

    Alright, so this is a Trump 2020 hat. And if you’re just going to be owned by the Jews, and go against everybody that actually is America First, and cover for pedophiles… then you can fuck off, Trump.

    The man’s comments are very much in line with the ‘groyper’ wing of the US right, of which Nick Fuentes is the figurehead:


    While America ceasing its unconditional support for Israel would certainly be a positive development, we can’t pretend there aren’t opportunists like Fuentes looking to capitalise on the situation.

    People warned it will happen

    The rise of antisemitism on the right is something that people warned would happen if Zionists kept arguing criticism of Israel was itself antisemitic (and by ‘Zionists’, we mean supporters of Israel existing as an expansionist Jewish apartheid state in which non-Jews don’t have rights). People warned it would happen because the situation gave the impression that the genocide and preceding repression of the Palestinians was a Jewish phenomenon rather than an Israeli phenomenon.

    Take the comments from the man above; while it’s obviously an antisemitic trope to say ‘Jews own politicians’, Trump has been happy to take money from billionaires like Larry Ellison and Miriam Adelson who are big backers of Israel:

    When you have a situation in which Israel is committing a genocide and your leader is surrounded by donors who support it, of course it’s going to be easy to convince people who want simple answers that the ‘Jews are secretly running America’.

    The reality is that Jewish people aren’t collectively controlling Trump; it’s a handful of selfish billionaires who think they can influence world events as if the world was a chess board. In fact, some of these Israel-backing donors aren’t even Jewish, including Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.

    Rightward travel

    Reactionary politics are always a response to the current moment. What this means is that politicians, commentators, and influencers constantly need to push things further to rile up the base.

    The direction of travel in recent years has been towards a mono culture which is white, straight, and Christian. And as a result, right-wing figures who fall outside this bracket are finding themselves squeezed out:


    Trump himself promised ‘America First’, and yet clearly he’s running a ‘Billionaires First’ administration. MAGA aren’t ready to accept that the oligarchy is the problem, though, so they’re instead doubling down on blaming minorities and sub-groups.

    It’s scary to think the Republicans could descend further after Trump, but at the same time they may obliterate any chance they have of creating an electoral coalition, because they keep freezing out more and more voters:

    Featured image via Twitter

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Thames Water accused of ‘retaliation’ against MP critic

    The much-criticised Thames Water has been accused of ‘retaliating’ against a politician who sought to hold them to account:

    It all comes down to how you take barristers saying they want to “deter” future legal action against the company.

    Thames Water—’Retaliation’

    Thames Water has embroiled itself in many, many, many scandals over the years. In its most recent, the company tried to make an MP pay for its legal costs. Liberal Democrat Charlie Maynard was the man representing the British public in court, and he described the company’s move as “retaliation”.

    Whether the move was retaliatory or not, it was unsuccessful. If Maynard lost, he would have been on the hook for £1,400-an-hour legal fees. This is steep, right? It’s also a waste of money, because we’re happy to provide Thames Water with the following legal advice for free:

    • Stop polluting.
    • Stop paying shareholders dividends while your network goes to shit.

    As the Guardian notes, Thames Water has accrued £17bn worth of debt, and it wants “15 years of leniency from environmental fines” to get back on track. This may be a dated reference, but the situation reminds us of the biopic Chopper in which an Australian criminal is given free reign to do unlimited crimes by the authorities. Would you believe that things turned out poorly in that story?

    Given their litigiousness, we should state we’re not suggesting said company are ‘criminals’, although they are certified ‘rule breakers’:

    It’s worth remembering that the company polluted badly enough to earn a £123m fine even with restrictions in place—so imagine what they’ll do once we take the safety wheels off.

    Back to the latest case, the barristers representing Thames Water said Maynard should pay up to “deter” future litigation. Maynard responded:

    I find it completely extraordinary. What is the largest water company in the country doing trying to run an MP off the road, and saying they want to deter me and others from taking such actions?

    What is the government doing letting a bunch of people run the largest water utility in the country and behave this way?

    The company defended what-some-might-call-Mafia-like behaviour as follows:

    In light of the application’s lack of merit, the court is invited to infer that Mr Maynard made his application to try and disrupt the implementation of the plan and the subsequent restructuring in pursuit of his and his party’s political aim that Thames Water should be placed in special administration. This kind of conduct should be deterred.

    Given how unpopular privatised water is in the UK, it does make sense that utility companies might want to criminalise criticising them:

    graph showing most people support the nationalisation of utilities and other key industries

    Thames Water also said:

    Mr Maynard was able to make submissions at both the high court and court of appeal without any liability for costs” and that all parties had to pay their own costs.

    Excellent, people should be able to hold large/failing companies accountable without needing to bankrupt themselves.

    The company added:

    we remain focused on putting Thames Water on to a more stable financial foundation as we seek a long-term solution to our financial resilience

    Despite this, the Guardian reports that Thames Water is “spending of up to £15m a month on an army of lawyers, bankers, consultants and public relations advisers”. That’s funny, because we’re spending nothing a month screaming ‘NATIONALISE THIS SHIT!‘

    Other recent criticisms of Thames Water include the following:

    Good luck to all those who are standing against this colossal waste of money.

    Featured image via Parliament

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israeli torture, abuse of Palestinian prisoners, death penalty law – yet NZ remains silent

    COMMENTARY: By Gerard Otto

    Israeli prison guards punish the prisoners “by breaking their thumbs” said a released detainee as lawyers speak out about torture, abuse, rape, starving and killings in a notorious underground Israeli prison facility where detainees are held without sunlight, brutalised.

    And nobody in New Zealand says a word.

    Scores of detainees from Gaza have also been held in a notorious Israeli military detention camp known as Sde Teiman, where reports of killings, torture and sexual violence, including rape, have been rife since the Gaza war began in October 2023.

    There’s about 9200 Palestinians being held in detention by Israel but there’s no word from Prime Minister Christopher Luxon about them like there was over 20 Israeli hostages.

    And Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has not said anything about a new law that Israel just voted for that would impose the death penalty for so-called “terrorism” offences based on “racist” motives against Israelis.

    That’s a law exclusively aimed at Palestinians while Israeli settlers are exempt.

    Go ahead, terrorise the people living there.

    Winston Peters is silent on behalf of you and me. He’s representing us on the world stage.

    We not only do not condemn this, we don’t even mention it. New Zealand doesn’t care.

    They are not us, they are not “we”.

    Gerard Otto is a digital creator, satirist and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. This article is an excerpt from a G News commentary and republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Saige England: if we want to save the planet we need a massive game change

    COMMENTARY: By Saige England

    I sat in a cafe listening to one man telling another how to get more out of his workers — “his team”, kind of the way people talked about workhorses until some of us read Black Beauty and learned that sentient creatures have feelings, both animals and people.

    I hope that people will wake up to the need to unite, to pull together. The best decluttering is decolonising.

    Maybe Zohran Mamdani’s win is a sign that will herald a new era, an era when socialists can beat “the money men”. Maybe it’s time when we will all wake up to a different possibility. Maybe other values will be recognised.

    Virtues do not come from wealth. Capital, capitalism (the key is in the word) is a system of exploitation. It was designed by merchants to make some rich and keep others poor. That’s the system.

    Maybe you were not taught that? Of course you were not taught that. Think about it.

    I listened to William Dalrymple being interviewed by Jack Tame last Sunday and I thought Jack — who I used to respect a lot before he failed to tackle genocide with Israel’s representative for genocide here in Aotearoa — I thought he, Jack, looked like a possum in the headlights when Dalrymple said that Donald Trump had a precursor in Benjamin Netanyahu and called genocide a genocide.

    I like to think Jack and others like him (because I have been like them too) will learn to learn about the history of all people and not view history as an inevitable story of winners and losers.

    Winners are exploiters
    The winners are exploiters and if we want to save the planet we need a massive game change.


    The legacy of colonisation.      Video: TVNZ Q&A

    Look at the stats of the land that was taken for expansion and how that expansion was used to justify the extermination of one people to prop another people up. The stats, the real statistics show who was there before, show people lived on the land with the land and the waters.

    Capitalism is a system of expansion and exploitation. It flourished for a while on slavery and it flourished for a while on settler colonialism, and it flourished for a while on keeping workers believing the story that they were working for greater glory when their take home pay did not equal the value of their labour.

    And there is a difference between guilt and remorse. We can learn from the latter. The former, guilt, stagnates, it leads to defence and offence.

    We need to recognise that we don’t need to prop up a dying system that flourishes on making some weak and others stronger.

    We need to learn to change — those of us who were wrong can admit it and go forward differently. We can realise that they system was designed to make us fail to see the threads that connect all people. We can wake up now and smell the manure among the roses.

    Good shit helps things grow, bad shit is toxic contaminated waste that turns things inwards, makes them gnarly.

    Monsters are connected
    Unfortunately, those who behave like monsters are connected not just to some of us but all of us.

    We need to open our minds and our hearts to a different our value system. We need to decolonise our senses.

    If you defend a bad system because right now you are one of the few on a decent pay scale then you are part of the problem. You are the problem. You have been conned. A system is only fair if it is fair for all people.

    Learning history gives us a map said Dalrymple (author of The Golden Road which tells the story of how great India was BEFORE it was stolen by Britain — how that country gave the world numbers and so much more) and we need to learn how the map was drawn.

    As someone who reads history to write history, I encourage us all to read widely and deeply and to research so that we do not stop thinking and analysing, and so we can tell wrong from right.

    Do not be neutral about wrongs as some historians would suggest. It is more than OK to call a wrong a wrong. In fact it is vital. Take a new lens into viewing history, not the one the masters have given you.

    We miss seeing the world if we look fail to think about who drew the map, how it was drawn up by men who carved up the world for the Empires intent on creating a golden age by enslaving most of the people to prop up those at the top.

    World map’s curling edges
    We need to look under the curling edges of the world map drawn up by the exploiter. We need to find find the stories of those who were exploited and who had been part of the creation story of this planet before they were exploited.

    Those of us who are descendants of colonisers also — many of us — descend from those who were exploited.

    The stories of British workhouses, of the system of exile via banishment, of the theft of women’s rights, of the extreme brutal forms of punishment, the stories of the way the top class pushed down and down on the people of the fields and forests and forced them to serve and serve, these real stories are less well known than the myths.

    Myths like the story of King Arthur are better known.

    Some myths have been created as a form of propaganda. We need to unpick the stories that were told to keep us stupid, to keep us ignorant.

    It is time to stop following the trail of crumbs to Buckingham Palace, or at least to see where the trail really leads — to pedophiles who preyed on others, to predators — not just one but many, to people brilliant at reconstructing themselves — creating some fall guys and some good guys and making some people villains.

    That story is a lie that protects and processes dysfunction.

    Acting on the truth
    Blaming one part of the system prevents us from realising and acting on the truth that the whole system is one of exploitation.

    This was always a horror story disguised as a fairy story. One crown could save so many poor. The monarchy is not a family that produced one disfunctional person it is the disfunction.

    It promotes the lie that one group of people deserve wealth because they are better than another. What a sick joke.

    So let’s back away from societies made by men who want to profit from others and get back to nature.

    Let’s look on nature as a sister or mother — a sister or mother you love.

    Let’s look at the so called natural disasters like climate change. Look at how they have been created by “noble men” and “noble women” and ignoble ones as well. Disasters that can be averted, prevented.

    Who suffers the most in a natural disaster? Not the rich.

    How do we heal?
    So how do we hope and how do we heal? We see the change. We be the change.

    I like listening to intelligent insightful people like Richard D Wolff and Yanis Varoufakis:


    Mamdani beats the money men.      Video: Diem TV

    Personally, for my mental and physical health I’ve been sea bathing, dipping in the sea. I join a group of mainly women who all have stories, and who plunge into nature for release and relief, to relieve ourselves from the debris. Uniting in nature.

    I’ve learned that every day is different. The sea is always changing. No two waves are the same and they all pull in the same direction.

    We are part moon, part wave, part light, part darkness. We are the bounty and the beauty.
    I do have hope that we will all unite for common good. Sharing on common ground. The word Common is so much better than Capital.

    If you are working for the kind of people that are discussing how to get more out of you for less, then unite.

    And if you know people who are being exploited in any way at all unite with them not the exploiter. Be the change.

    By helping each other we save each other. And that includes helping our friend and exploited lover: Nature.

    Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • CPJ, partners call on UN Working Group to issue opinion on imprisoned Russian journalist 

    The Committee to Protect Journalists and nine partner organizations urged the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on November 12, 2025, to issue an opinion on the case of imprisoned Russian journalist Nika Novak.

    The Press Freedom Center at the National Press Club recently filed submissions to the working group requesting an opinion finding that Novak’s continued detention by the Russian government is arbitrary and violates international law.

    Novak is serving a four-year prison sentence in the Siberian region of Irkutsk after being convicted on November 26, 2024, on charges of “confidential cooperation with a foreign organization” stemming from her independent journalism for RFE/RL. She was detained by Russian authorities in December 2023.

    The joint statement highlights Novak’s worsening detention conditions. She has been placed in isolation and solitary confinement several times in recent months and has begun a hunger strike — her third — to protest her circumstances.

    Read the full letter here.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Zohran Mamdani Will Follow the Path of AOC, Bernie, and Brandon Johnson

    The disenfranchised, cast aside people of the US find hope when an AOC, Brandon Johnson, Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders campaigns and wins public office. These campaigns overcame corporate backed opponents, relying on people power not corporate financing, organizing many thousands of our fellow working people to participate. Yet, possessing public office does not change the economic and class structure of this country, where the real ruling power lies. Our country’s system, on the local, state, and national level, is a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

    The public offices they won are one cog in an entrenched economic and political structure, and changing this has little relation to winning office. Once elected the AOCs, Brandons, Bernies and Mamdanis can be easily swallowed up by the system run by billionaires. The billionaires have one thousand and one weapons to neutralize any progressive measures and make them compromise. They began as outsiders fighting the system, but step by step, they become its representatives.

    Brandon Johnson, a Chicago Teachers Union organizer, political kin to Mamdani, was elected mayor of Chicago in April 2023, so gives a glimpse of Mamdani’s future as mayor. Mamdani made a name for himself by speaking out for Palestine. Mayor Johnson cast the deciding vote to pass the first Gaza ceasefire resolution in a big city. While Brandon’s campaign inspired progressives and the left, and many thousands volunteered, his platform was mild compared to the Great Society programs of LBJ and Nixon. He declared, “everyone in Chicago deserves to have a roof over their head,” and called for increasing the real estate tax on properties over $1 million to provide housing and services to the homeless.  But, two and a half years later, taxes on the rich have not been raised. He called for childcare for all, now forgotten. He campaigned on replacing lead service lines to the 400,000 Chicago houses, eliminating a major source of lead poisoning. Chicago replaced 5,100 leadlines in 2024 and aims for another 8,000 this year.

    Brandon campaigned on increasing summer youth jobs to 60,000. The number has reached 31,199 in 2025, half, but still a 55% increase since he took office. He campaigned on reopening all 14 mental health centers; two and a half years later, three were reopened.

    Johnson campaigned on combating police abuse. Given a boost before he took office in 2023, voters elected community representatives in 22 Chicago Police District Councils, with the power to hold police accountable, said Chicago Alliance against Racist and Political Repression. Yet PBS reports slightly more police abuse. Moreover, in 2024 Chicago taxpayers spent at least $107.5 million on police misconduct lawsuits, the highest total in over a decade. In 2025, “Through May alone, the City Council has already approved at least $145.3 million in taxpayer payments to settle lawsuits involving the Chicago Police Department, a record number that dwarfs sums from past years.“ Where is the change?

    Johnson’s program committed to free public transit for public school students. Today only the first day of school is free. It committed to reduced or eliminated fares for seniors, those with disabilities, and residents living below the poverty line. Today, there are reduced fares, though Chicago had free fares for the first two groups from 2008-2011 under Mayor Daley; still no reduced fares for the poor. Even if all were free, this is but a minor progressive change.

    Brandon became mayor of Chicago, a city $29 billion in debt, in a state $223 in debt. His progressive platform morphed into overseeing cuts to manage the debt. Brandon’s new budget would cut Chicago Public Library funding for new books and materials in half – quite stunning for a Chicago Teachers Union organizer. We elected a progressive to do that?

    Brandon Johnson did not betray his program. He, like the others, campaigned on wishes he could not keep, given real decision-making power is not in his hands. In this era of slow US economic decline of their system, the billionaire elite who lord over us reduce progressive agendas to moderating cutbacks to services provided the people. Once in office, these progressive Democrats face a power structure that boxes them, making their campaign commitments pipedreams.

    What could Brandon, or AOC, or Bernie do? The rich with their vast wealth, control government, own the print media, TV, radio, social media, own the all-powerful banking system, business and factories, the food industry, real estate and housing market, educational institutions, the courts and legal system, and the police forces. All major institutions of society do their bidding.

    The rich can buy members of the New York or Chicago city council, control state legislatures, dictate interest rates on city loans, launch hostile media campaigns, stymie the mayor through the city bureaucracy. They can use control of the police to let crime worsen, manipulate a city union to go on a disruptive strike, inflate or reduce real estate and home prices, cause business and jobs leave the city, block bank loans to the city, cut state and federal funds for city programs, and so on. Their control gives them endless tools.

    As Susan Kang writes in Truthout that “analysts have rightly noted that a grassroots movement to reshape state-level politics and take on Wall Street will be necessary to realize Mamdani’s campaign promises.” Mamdani had 104,000 volunteers working on his election campaign. Bernie must have had the names of millions from his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. Block Club Chicago noted, How Grassroots Organizing Fueled Brandon Johnson’s Victory: ‘It Was 100-Percent People Power’ The people’s desire and commitment to fight for serious social change is real.

    The only way to institute the (mildly) progressive programs Brandon or Mamdani ran on is to challenge the control by the rich, to educate, organize, and mobilize people in the streets, massively, repeatedly, to counter every attack by the ruling rich with a mass popular response. The only way to combat corporate control is to build an alternative center of organized power among the people, a popular power beyond the control of the two corporate parties.  Otherwise, people like Mamdani will be neutralized, co-opted, swallowed up, reduced to administering the government apparatus for the ruling rich. Like AOC and Bernie do today.

    This is the only feasible route to take. The Bernies, AOCs, Brandons and Mamdanis would have to explain to people how the rich control the government and the world we live in, explain to the people that their organizing and mobilizing does not end with the election victory, it is the first baby step. A long journey of trials would lie ahead, where the real organizing, mobilizing, and political education taking on the rich who run this country is essential.

    But none of these candidates, now officials, call for building a people’s political force independent of either of the two corporate parties. They discourage it. They push the movement into the Democratic Party, and this party only serves to derail the movement into ineffectual protest channels. Seven million turned out for the Democrats’ No Kings Day, and just three weeks later the Democrats are surrendering to Trump’s social budget cuts.

    In effect, the great hope of an AOC, Mamdani or Brandon Johnson ends the day they take office. No longer it is a campaign for the people to take over government. Rather, we watch the people’s hope turn into a government clerk for the rich.

    When new progressive leaders build an election campaign and movement independent of the two corporate parties, as Bernie had advocated before his capitulation, then we will witness a profound breakthrough in the system.

    The post Zohran Mamdani Will Follow the Path of AOC, Bernie, and Brandon Johnson first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Scenes in Sheffield showed the police just bow-down to the far-right

    On Saturday 8 November, Sheffield played host to Nick Tenconi, UKIP, his cronies, and a sea of far-right YouTube personalities; police facilitated chaos on the streets from several different forces:

    There was the unmistakable smell of gammon in Sheffield. A queue of them was already making its way through town when I arrived at the station, and I followed the well-trodden path to the cathedral. The police had a section 14 in place for the day to prevent any risk of violence. It would have been far easier if they hadn’t allowed the march to happen, but hey ho. Here at the Canary, we are all for free speech:

    Sheffield

    It’s a shame that you can’t say the same for the dozens of YouTubers pretending to be journalists, with “We are the press now” stickers on their recording equipment. Since when did the press hide their beloved leader with umbrellas because you’re “a left-wing reporter”?

    Yeah, lad, I am. I’m like, an actual journalist, and I actually get paid to do this… I’m not wasting my Saturday for 20p a view, buddy.

    Wilful chaos in Sheffield

    The cathedral in Sheffield was full of several thousand left-wing activists, who knew that being a racist cunt isn’t popular. Sorry, Amy, I’m back to swearing, but come on, they kind of are:

    The gathering at the cathedral wasn’t a legal assembly – section 14. Wooo. The lefties defied the police, briefly, and after they made it clear who really owns the streets, they acquiesced to the planned route after some deliberation with officers in attendance.

    I asked the police if this meant that the UKIP march could now start and come via the cathedral… no comment. Even the sergeant didn’t know; she told me to wait right there while she found out what was going on, then instantly walked to the wrong police van and tried to get in. It’s a perfect metaphor: no one has a clue whatsoever what’s going on. The marches were rerouted multiple times throughout the day.

    Flag-clad rabble rousers from UKIP

    I headed to Tudor Square, where a small group of one hundred or so flag-clad rabble-rousers were waiting for the huddle of six-foot men that was hiding Nick Tenconi from passersby to join, which it eventually did (umbrellas at the ready):

    Sheffield

    The group listened to this angry wee man ranting and raving, chanting about deporting people – presumably most of them British citizens. A man in the crowd periodically piped up to shout that “we all know the left have always been the real fascists”… one copper in my eyeline was literally stood there screaming with his eyes. When even the police know you’re full of shit, you know it’s time to put down the megaphone:

    Two incredible young women had apparently maneuvered their way into the middle of the crowd and unfurled their signs (“Stop sucking off Nigel Farage”… yes, gurls!), and were instantly chased out by a baying mob of men who came into the street to demand safety for women and children. Gotta love that irony.

    Chat shit, get banged

    While I was talking to them – clearly shaken by the experience – a man walked past who was part of the crowd: “Those two put my kid in danger – horrible little bastards they are.”

    Maybe don’t take your child to a UKIP rally. It’s not hard.

    These are the same people who later shouted at another reporter that she was a nonce because she posted pictures of someone’s kids online at a rally. In the words of a wise man (my boss):

    Chat shit, get banged. If you take your kid to a far-right rally, you can’t complain when they end up on the internet forever.

    I spent a few moments taking the women’s comments:

    I don’t know what they want from me… and it’s really scary, you walk past these people every day, and they say things like I hope you get gang – raped… so you know.

    Fortunately for me, I don’t. I wish those two young women realised how brave they were for what they just did. They have more balls as individuals than that whole crowd of men. Solidarity to you both. I hope you found somewhere safe to regroup.

    Two-tier policing in Sheffield

    As the march started, I stood to one side and then followed – the reactions from people on the side of the road ranged from disgust to happy cheering. Mostly disgust, though. One woman was in tears, another on the verge of it.

    A scuffle broke out right in front of me – an activist with a Palestine flag on the side of the road was barged into by a lass with a flag of St. George… she barged back – suddenly there’s a melee as the Palestinian flag becomes a tug-of-war. A man in orange steps in and wrestles the instigator to the ground to get the flag back. After the scuffle was over, the Muslim woman with the flag was arrested and led away to the nearby police station by several officers:

    I have since been contacted by a witness who says:

    Unfortunately [she] had her phone stolen and was very upset that no efforts were made to retrieve it. The two people implicated had England/Israel flags on their backs, and the husband came to attack me. Whilst I was distracted, his wife attacked the woman who was eventually arrested. We hadn’t really exchanged any verbal insults or anything; we were silently walking alongside.

    Sometimes you just wish they would stop and look around them and realise what they are doing. It’s almost like, because they aren’t charging protesters on horseback anymore, it’s impartial policing. That’s literally the context in which I realised I was viewing policing  –  “they aren’t kicking the fuck out of me, so therefore it’s balanced.” Yes, I am sometimes an idiot.

    Kettling the left while letting the far-right roam around

    I caught up with the tail end of the march going past the area where the left-wing protesters were being cordoned:

    Tangent: when does a cordon become a kettle, or is it literally just semantics?

    Anyway, I wasn’t allowed through for my own safety  –  fuck the NUJ, they don’t count. I followed down the road, where there were half a dozen far-right auditors and bloggers just happily walking between the double police cordon set up to contain the vitriol. It’s strange, I asked:

    Why do they just get to do what they want?

    “They don’t,” replied an officer, “please stay this side of the cordon, sir.” He followed up as I watched yet another YouTube personality just walk straight through. At one point, there was an instigator literally communicating with members of the entourage on the other side of the lines – the police said they were trying to identify who it was – just put them all back behind the lines:

    One of them was literally standing there, screaming at a young woman that she’s a nonce. This whole thing is a circus run by clowns.

    A joke in Sheffield from the cops

    We got pushed back further, YouTubers allowed to follow behind the police:

    Sheffield

    I went back up to the bridge – maybe I’ll have to content myself with the lefties today – nope, not allowed in. After showing a sergeant my payslip with “Canary Media Limited” on it, I’m in – but then I can’t leave:

    Sorry, it’s not safe, we are dealing with this on an individual basis.

    I replied:

    I’m a journalist, I have a right to come through, and I have a train to catch.

    Apparently that wasn’t valid. Let’s get this straight – first it’s too dangerous for a legitimate journalist to enter this area, and then it’s not safe for me to leave… but it’s safe for the police to allow two auditors into the cordoned – off area.

    I pointed it out to the two officers on camera duty, but they were more interested in taking the piss out of a bloke on the megaphone, reading from his phone. Clowns. Circus:

    Eventually, UKIP were once again paraded past the left. It turns out Mr. Tenconi was escorted from the area by the police with his minions for their own safety, whilst the left were allowed out to make their way home through the streets with far-right hooligans side by side.

    Walking through the bus station in Sheffield, I bumped into a few of them. Safety first, eh?

    Featured image and additional images via the Canary

    By Barold

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Op-Ed: After the Hype, Signs That Complementary Proteins Are Entering A New Phase

    aleph farms
    5 Mins Read

    Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of cultivated meat pioneer Aleph Farms, believes alternative proteins are bouncing back as business models mature and regulators take notice.

    For several years, complementary proteins have followed a familiar pattern described by the Gartner Hype Cycle, a framework that maps how emerging technologies rise through early excitement, fall into disillusionment, and eventually mature through practical progress.

    The sector’s early surge of enthusiasm was followed by a steep correction. Investment slowed, companies consolidated, and critics questioned whether the field could deliver on its promise. What is emerging now is a smaller, stronger cohort building on firmer ground.

    Recent developments suggest that complementary proteins, including plant-based, fermentation and other fungi-based, cultivated, and blended products, are beginning to climb what Gartner calls the slope of enlightenment.

    Pressure on the old system, momentum in the new

    lab grown beef
    Courtesy: Aleph Farms

    Outbreaks of animal disease, climate shocks, water scarcity, and geopolitical volatility are creating mounting pressure on conventional supply chains. Natural-resource scarcity and a shrinking national cattle herd (the US herd fell to 86.7 million head in 2025, the lowest since 1951) are steadily driving meat prices upward.

    These risks are opening space for alternative protein production systems and reinforcing the strategic imperative for diversification in global protein production.

    Public-sector support is expanding in key markets such as the UK, Switzerland, the UAE, Japan, and South Korea through government-backed strategies and innovation programs, to name a few.

    In the UAE, Abu Dhabi launched the AGWA agrifood cluster last year, with the goal of adding $24.5B to GDP and creating 60,000 jobs. Both South Korea and Japan have explicitly integrated alternative proteins into their national food security strategies, signalling growing alignment between innovation and policy.

    Consumers shifting behaviours as regulators catch up

    believer meats usda approval
    Believer Meats is the latest to receive US approval to sell cultivated meat | Courtesy: Believer Meats

    GLP-1 medications are accelerating a broader trend toward protein density, healthy indulgence and portion control. Market analyses show that menu items highlighting ‘protein’ or offering smaller portions resonate with both GLP-1 users and mainstream diners.

    Governments and regulators around the world are moving from theory into practice. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) have cleared five cultivated meat producers, including three within the past six months, which is a notable acceleration.

    Israel, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand have also approved cultivated meat products for marketing, while South Korea inaugurated a regulation-free special zone for cultivated meat development in 2024.

    At the same time, regulators across the UK, the UAE, Switzerland, and Japan are finalising frameworks for novel proteins, paving the way for initial local market clearances.

    In parallel, international efforts to harmonise standards are accelerating, with regulatory agencies collaborating through working groups to develop shared definitions, labelling requirements, and safety protocols.

    As realism replaces hype, business models are maturing

    impossible heme patent
    Impossible Foods has teased a move into blended meat | Courtesy: Impossible Foods

    The focus has shifted from branding and rapid scale to solving real unmet needs, whether at the protein supply or consumer level. Companies that once prioritised growth at any cost are now emphasising operational discipline, profitability, rigorous attention to food safety, and a sharper articulation of consumer value.

    The industry is moving toward clearer value propositions and more deliberate product segmentation. Instead of trying to replace all conventional meat, leading companies are identifying where they can create distinctive value and meet specific consumer needs.

    Blended products combining plant proteins and ingredients such as mushrooms are gaining traction by offering balance: the familiarity of traditional meat with the nutritional and environmental advantages of plants.

    Precision fermentation players are concentrating on high-end applications where functionality, flavour performance, and nutrition justify premium positioning. Some leading cultivated meat producers, including Aleph Farms, are focusing on healthy indulgence products crafted for today’s conscious consumer seeking taste, quality, and alignment with personal values

    The sector is entering a phase of greater realism. Market projections and timelines are being revised to reflect lessons learned across the alternative protein landscape.

    For plant-based products – whose inflated ambitions triggered the initial hype – early growth forecasts have been tempered as the category matures. The right products are now growing steadily in well-defined categories.

    Valuations across the alternative protein ecosystem have also undergone a necessary correction. Average pre-money valuations for Series B and later-stage alternative protein startups fell by 30-40% between 2021 and 2024, according to PitchBook data, as investors prioritised capital efficiency and clearer paths to profitability. 

    Early signs of a rebound, and the road ahead

    plant based meat funding
    Nxtfood raised Europe’s largest plant-based funding round since 2022 | Courtesy: Nxtfood

    As a result, and after two years of retrenchment, investment is flowing again to companies with proven technology and solid fundamentals. According to PitchBook, late-stage leaders in alternative proteins and novel ingredients are attracting larger checks as early-stage valuations remain under pressure.

    We’ve seen five complementary protein companies with strong growth prospects and value propositions raise significant funding in the last few months, from plant-based to fermentation and fungi-based innovations.

    We can prudently say that together, these trends suggest that the sector is regaining its footing and entering a more pragmatic phase of growth.

    Since late 2022, many voices in the field have viewed cellular agriculture and other complementary proteins as stalled in the trough of disillusionment, the low point that follows the initial hype.

    That perspective captured the mood of the moment. But the data emerging over the past year, and especially in recent months, across public support, regulatory progress, refinement of product strategies and business models, and consumer trends, suggest that the inflexion point may already be underway. The recent industry consolidation trend and investments rebound could indicate signs of maturation.

    The path from disillusionment to maturity will not be automatic. It will require discipline, focus, continued technical progress, thoughtful regulation, and new models of collaboration between the public and private sectors. But the foundations are stronger today than they were two years ago.

    The next phase of growth will be defined not by hype cycles but by prudent execution, relevance, and credibility. Companies delivering real value will ultimately carry the sector to the plateau of productivity, where complementary proteins become a lasting part of a secure and sustainable global food system.

    The post Op-Ed: After the Hype, Signs That Complementary Proteins Are Entering A New Phase appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Canary Leaks: emails show Downing Street aide losing it over Maccabi Tel Aviv balls-up

    From: tonygordstein@number10.gov.uk

    To: sirmarkrowley@met.police.uk

    Subject: Maccabi Tel Aviv against Aston Villa

    Mark,

    Bit of a favour to ask you today: if you’ve time, read this and get back to me. The long and short of it is, I’m hoping you’ll put in a call to Craig Guildford at West Midlands Police for us. I’ll give you a bit of background and try not to go off on a tangent because there is so much going on with this story that it’s fried my head in the last couple of weeks.

    So – Maccabi Tel Aviv against Aston Villa. You know the basics. WMP banned the away fans. We gave Keir a script to go public and accuse them of making the wrong decision, while dropping antisemitism into the sentence in a suggestive and loaded way. All good Labour Together stuff. The problem is that it isn’t really working out the way we’d planned. In the old days, all we had to do was mention antisemitism, and every careerist would run for cover. Now we have these independent MPs with Corbyn; it only takes one of them to push back, and it makes our life harder. The problem is that the MP for the area around Villa Park is one of them (Ayoub Khan). The thing with Khan is that he’s clever and he’s not afraid of us. He basically pushed Lisa Nandy into misleading parliament twice in one statement, just after the ban was announced. This is what the stupid bitch said at the despatch box:

    This isn’t a decision to ban football hooligans; this is a decision to ban all away fans from a game which a safety advisory group has not done for nearly 25 years in this country, and it was a decision taken not on the grounds that he suggests, which was the risks posed by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. It was a decision taken in no small part because of the risk posed to them because they support an Israeli team and because they are Jewish.

    On the banning away fans thing, we’re getting roasted on Reddit by actual Villa fans saying that a ban like that isn’t unusual, which TBH is true. Celtic and Rangers banned away fans for a couple of years between 2023 and 2025, and worse than that, Legia Warsaw fans were banned from Villa Park of all places in Nov 2023. I don’t know if you’ve seen that clip of a Legia fan throwing a jar of mayonnaise at Villa fans and then falling on his face (off the record, hilarious). The mayonnaise mishap, they called it on Villa forums. It went kind-of viral. I’d like to tell you that Nandy is some use in deciding what to do here, but no. I kid you not, she wanted to go back to parliament to say that the Legia Warsaw decision wasn’t relevant because Jews don’t like mayonnaise. Apparently, it’s traditional to put mustard on all those deli sandwiches. I mean, Jesus wept.

    The ban lie isn’t that bad for us, though, because she was careful with her words and had remembered what Blair has been coaching us on since the election. Keir is on the phone with Blair nearly as often as I am with Mandy and they have it drummed into us how to mislead people and get away with it. What you do is very carefully tell a narrow technical version of the truth, while at the same time leaving a great big fucking lie as the main impression. So, she said ‘all away fans’ banned from a game ‘by a safety advisory group’ for ‘nearly 25 years’. So that means if a club banned all except a few, or the police banned them all without consulting the safety advisory group, or UEFA did it, or some other obscure difference, there are enough ways to wriggle out of it. If all else fails, we can say that two years is nearly 25 years because there are only 23 years between them!

    We have a bigger problem with the last sentence about the reason for the ban, and that’s where I need your help. There is this guy in WMP called Chief Superintendent Tom Joyce who gave an interview to Sky News, and I’ll try to quote from it as exactly as I can because this is important:

    I’m aware there’s a lot of commentary around the threat to the fans being the reason for the decision. To be clear that was not the primary driver…

    He goes on a bit, but the gist of it is that they had a good chat with the Dutch police and gathered that Maccabi fans are violent bastards who shouldn’t come anywhere near Birmingham. I mean, that’s true, of course, but it’s not the point. The Sky News guy was well enough coached in the usual Sky way and did his best to push our narrative about antisemitism, but this Tom guy just batted him away like a pro. We’re thinking that it might be better to come from one Chief Constable to another, so if you could call Craig and work out what to do about Tom, we’d owe you one.

    Maybe Craig could put out a statement that antisemitism has no place in safety advisory groups and that Tom Joyce had misspoken by recycling an ancient medieval antisemitic trope that Israeli football fans are not all nice people. Or we could get Tom himself to apologise and ‘clarify’ his statement. Nandy said the decision was in ‘no small part’ because they were Jewish, but he’s saying it wasn’t part of it at all. What we’ve been bouncing around the office is that if we can’t get away with ‘in large part’, we could maybe get Tom to make a statement to say that it was ‘in medium part’ because the Maccabi fans are vicious violent thugs who sing songs about raping Arabs, and another medium part but not as big a medium part that some of the local people in Birmingham that they would have attacked might have attacked them back. I think that could work because we could make it all so complicated that most people wouldn’t really understand what the hell he’s saying, and then we could spin it as a retraction.

    If Tom won’t play ball with this then I hate to say it and don’t quote me, but you might have to ‘suggest’ an educational trip to Auschwitz to go with the apology for the trope, and if that doesn’t work it might have to be, ‘nice career you have there, Tom; shame if anything was to happen to it’. Just saying.

    You’re probably wondering where Shabana Mahmood has been since the Home Secretary would normally be all over a police and public safety thing like this. We decided to keep her out of it and put Nandy up instead. Shabana’s constituency is in Birmingham, and most of her constituents hate her and want her out anyway, so we figure there is no point in adding to it. Plus, I was one of the people pushing for her to get the Home Secretary job, so it would be a bit embarrassing for me if she only lasted five minutes in it. She’s valuable to us because she is apparently a Muslim, but she’d basically hand her granny to the Israelis to be tortured if she thought it would help her career. There is this seductive mixture of ambition, greed, and cruelty about her that I’ve always found sexy. Anyway, the plan is to keep a wall around her while putting Nandy out front, but if possible, keeping both in their jobs till this thing blows over.

    Anything you can do to help will be appreciated. It might even make the peerage more likely. I’m joking, of course – that process is totally separate and independent. (Wink!)

    Your friend,

    ‘Tony’

    Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction but any similarities to a person or persons living or dead is exactly what we wanted.

    By Tony Gordstein

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The arms industry is complicit in Andrew and his ilk’s abuse of women and girls

    Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is vile. The line we are fed about the bastard formerly known as Prince Andrew is that he is a bad apple. But that photo, the one with his arm around Virginia Giuffre, was broadly part of his government job – where he influenced elites through sex and good times to buy British weapons.

    This is a systematic problem, but no one wants to talk about it. Understandably, because no one wants to talk about the rape of minors, but this is how the arms trade does business. We do the survivors of sexual assault a disservice if we ignore the system that uses our entitled, out-of-touch, vile elite to sell weapons to entitled, out-of-touch, vile elites around the world.

    Andrew – the Godfather (but not quite)

    The thing to understand first is that Andrew is the Fredo of the Royal Family. He’s not going to be king. He can’t ride a horse that well. He’s a womaniser. Just like in the Godfather films, the Royals had to find something useful that their useless brother could do. Given the Royals’ traditional roles and Andrew’s time in the Navy, there was one obvious answer: sell weapons to despots around the world.

    Despots have two problems: One, they need weapons (to shore up their grip on power) and two, legitimacy (being a despot lessens one’s legitimacy significantly). Britain has the most high-profile and respected royal family in the world. If you buy weapons from us, our royals will hang out with you and make you look more legitimate.

    Brutally repressive King of a tiny island, but wants to buy our second-hand patrol boats? Watch horses with the Queen! Evil Saudis want to sign the biggest British weapons deal of the generation? Prince Charles will turn up and do your swordy dance with you! Son of a dictator who is an international pariah but wants to buy British killing gear? Hang out with Andrew, son of the Queen!

    ‘Special’

    Andrew was the UK’s “Special Representative for International Trade and Investment”. Special as in “let’s make sure everyone has a special time.” “International Trade and Investment” as in selling weapons. As Fredo did, Andrew made himself useful to the family business.

    Andrew showed up at defence shindigs around the world for decades. Andrew’s job was to make sure those despotic Princes and their like had a good time. We don’t know much because the government won’t release the files, but all the evidence is that he did it really really well. As Buckingham Palace said, “He brings immeasurable value in smoothing the path (my emphasis) for British companies…because of who he is.”

    Andrew’s name always came up whenever I talked to researchers about the enormous Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia. An arms deal that Andrew was caught appearing to condone bribery, defending. An arms deal signed amid epic corruption and spectacular entertainment.

    Facilitating corruption

    The arms trade, the military, and the whole Defence sector see themselves as having to protect the rest of us by making tough, real-world choices. Having to be corrupt so that the rest of us can live our peaceful lives. And you can see their logic throughout Andrew’s career. He facilitated corruption – at least we sold British weapons. Some children got r*aped in the process – turning a blind eye to the deaths of foreign children is a fundamental plank on which British arms are sold. The arms trade wouldn’t bat an eye.

    We are told Andrew is a bad apple. Just like when a police officer kills someone. Or when yet another politician is corrupt. We are told not to look at the barrel—just remove that one bad apple. We are never told that the system is the problem. The UK establishment is completely unrepentant about the system that empowered, paid for, and gave Andrew a specially created job so that he could act as he did. They only cry crocodile tears now that Andrew has been caught, decades after the fact.

    There is no intention on the part of our establishment to change how they do business. If the government genuinely wanted to show contrition for its part in Andrew’s vile deeds, it could release the files on the matter.

    Andrew, a disgusting human being

    They won’t for three reasons: Firstly, it would embarrass all those despots who also took part in those vile deeds, and we wouldn’t be able to sell them weapons anymore. Secondly, it would show that Andrew has done many terrible things for far longer than we currently know about. Thirdly, it would show that they know about all of this, all along.

    Spoilers, but it doesn’t end well for Fredo in The Godfather Part II. Just as Fredo was removed from the family, so is Andrew. Being angry with Andrew is as pointless as expecting the Godfather to become a legitimate businessman. Let’s focus our anger on the institutions that have fucked up more children than Andrew ever will: the arms trade, British government support for it, and the Royal Family.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Sam Walton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The arms industry is complicit in Andrew and his ilk’s abuse of women and girls

    Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is vile. The line we are fed about the bastard formerly known as Prince Andrew is that he is a bad apple. But that photo, the one with his arm around Virginia Giuffre, was broadly part of his government job – where he influenced elites through sex and good times to buy British weapons.

    This is a systematic problem, but no one wants to talk about it. Understandably, because no one wants to talk about the rape of minors, but this is how the arms trade does business. We do the survivors of sexual assault a disservice if we ignore the system that uses our entitled, out-of-touch, vile elite to sell weapons to entitled, out-of-touch, vile elites around the world.

    Andrew – the Godfather (but not quite)

    The thing to understand first is that Andrew is the Fredo of the Royal Family. He’s not going to be king. He can’t ride a horse that well. He’s a womaniser. Just like in the Godfather films, the Royals had to find something useful that their useless brother could do. Given the Royals’ traditional roles and Andrew’s time in the Navy, there was one obvious answer: sell weapons to despots around the world.

    Despots have two problems: One, they need weapons (to shore up their grip on power) and two, legitimacy (being a despot lessens one’s legitimacy significantly). Britain has the most high-profile and respected royal family in the world. If you buy weapons from us, our royals will hang out with you and make you look more legitimate.

    Brutally repressive King of a tiny island, but wants to buy our second-hand patrol boats? Watch horses with the Queen! Evil Saudis want to sign the biggest British weapons deal of the generation? Prince Charles will turn up and do your swordy dance with you! Son of a dictator who is an international pariah but wants to buy British killing gear? Hang out with Andrew, son of the Queen!

    ‘Special’

    Andrew was the UK’s “Special Representative for International Trade and Investment”. Special as in “let’s make sure everyone has a special time.” “International Trade and Investment” as in selling weapons. As Fredo did, Andrew made himself useful to the family business.

    Andrew showed up at defence shindigs around the world for decades. Andrew’s job was to make sure those despotic Princes and their like had a good time. We don’t know much because the government won’t release the files, but all the evidence is that he did it really really well. As Buckingham Palace said, “He brings immeasurable value in smoothing the path (my emphasis) for British companies…because of who he is.”

    Andrew’s name always came up whenever I talked to researchers about the enormous Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia. An arms deal that Andrew was caught appearing to condone bribery, defending. An arms deal signed amid epic corruption and spectacular entertainment.

    Facilitating corruption

    The arms trade, the military, and the whole Defence sector see themselves as having to protect the rest of us by making tough, real-world choices. Having to be corrupt so that the rest of us can live our peaceful lives. And you can see their logic throughout Andrew’s career. He facilitated corruption – at least we sold British weapons. Some children got r*aped in the process – turning a blind eye to the deaths of foreign children is a fundamental plank on which British arms are sold. The arms trade wouldn’t bat an eye.

    We are told Andrew is a bad apple. Just like when a police officer kills someone. Or when yet another politician is corrupt. We are told not to look at the barrel—just remove that one bad apple. We are never told that the system is the problem. The UK establishment is completely unrepentant about the system that empowered, paid for, and gave Andrew a specially created job so that he could act as he did. They only cry crocodile tears now that Andrew has been caught, decades after the fact.

    There is no intention on the part of our establishment to change how they do business. If the government genuinely wanted to show contrition for its part in Andrew’s vile deeds, it could release the files on the matter.

    Andrew, a disgusting human being

    They won’t for three reasons: Firstly, it would embarrass all those despots who also took part in those vile deeds, and we wouldn’t be able to sell them weapons anymore. Secondly, it would show that Andrew has done many terrible things for far longer than we currently know about. Thirdly, it would show that they know about all of this, all along.

    Spoilers, but it doesn’t end well for Fredo in The Godfather Part II. Just as Fredo was removed from the family, so is Andrew. Being angry with Andrew is as pointless as expecting the Godfather to become a legitimate businessman. Let’s focus our anger on the institutions that have fucked up more children than Andrew ever will: the arms trade, British government support for it, and the Royal Family.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Sam Walton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The arms industry is complicit in Andrew and his ilk’s abuse of women and girls

    Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is vile. The line we are fed about the bastard formerly known as Prince Andrew is that he is a bad apple. But that photo, the one with his arm around Virginia Giuffre, was broadly part of his government job – where he influenced elites through sex and good times to buy British weapons.

    This is a systematic problem, but no one wants to talk about it. Understandably, because no one wants to talk about the rape of minors, but this is how the arms trade does business. We do the survivors of sexual assault a disservice if we ignore the system that uses our entitled, out-of-touch, vile elite to sell weapons to entitled, out-of-touch, vile elites around the world.

    Andrew – the Godfather (but not quite)

    The thing to understand first is that Andrew is the Fredo of the Royal Family. He’s not going to be king. He can’t ride a horse that well. He’s a womaniser. Just like in the Godfather films, the Royals had to find something useful that their useless brother could do. Given the Royals’ traditional roles and Andrew’s time in the Navy, there was one obvious answer: sell weapons to despots around the world.

    Despots have two problems: One, they need weapons (to shore up their grip on power) and two, legitimacy (being a despot lessens one’s legitimacy significantly). Britain has the most high-profile and respected royal family in the world. If you buy weapons from us, our royals will hang out with you and make you look more legitimate.

    Brutally repressive King of a tiny island, but wants to buy our second-hand patrol boats? Watch horses with the Queen! Evil Saudis want to sign the biggest British weapons deal of the generation? Prince Charles will turn up and do your swordy dance with you! Son of a dictator who is an international pariah but wants to buy British killing gear? Hang out with Andrew, son of the Queen!

    ‘Special’

    Andrew was the UK’s “Special Representative for International Trade and Investment”. Special as in “let’s make sure everyone has a special time.” “International Trade and Investment” as in selling weapons. As Fredo did, Andrew made himself useful to the family business.

    Andrew showed up at defence shindigs around the world for decades. Andrew’s job was to make sure those despotic Princes and their like had a good time. We don’t know much because the government won’t release the files, but all the evidence is that he did it really really well. As Buckingham Palace said, “He brings immeasurable value in smoothing the path (my emphasis) for British companies…because of who he is.”

    Andrew’s name always came up whenever I talked to researchers about the enormous Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia. An arms deal that Andrew was caught appearing to condone bribery, defending. An arms deal signed amid epic corruption and spectacular entertainment.

    Facilitating corruption

    The arms trade, the military, and the whole Defence sector see themselves as having to protect the rest of us by making tough, real-world choices. Having to be corrupt so that the rest of us can live our peaceful lives. And you can see their logic throughout Andrew’s career. He facilitated corruption – at least we sold British weapons. Some children got r*aped in the process – turning a blind eye to the deaths of foreign children is a fundamental plank on which British arms are sold. The arms trade wouldn’t bat an eye.

    We are told Andrew is a bad apple. Just like when a police officer kills someone. Or when yet another politician is corrupt. We are told not to look at the barrel—just remove that one bad apple. We are never told that the system is the problem. The UK establishment is completely unrepentant about the system that empowered, paid for, and gave Andrew a specially created job so that he could act as he did. They only cry crocodile tears now that Andrew has been caught, decades after the fact.

    There is no intention on the part of our establishment to change how they do business. If the government genuinely wanted to show contrition for its part in Andrew’s vile deeds, it could release the files on the matter.

    Andrew, a disgusting human being

    They won’t for three reasons: Firstly, it would embarrass all those despots who also took part in those vile deeds, and we wouldn’t be able to sell them weapons anymore. Secondly, it would show that Andrew has done many terrible things for far longer than we currently know about. Thirdly, it would show that they know about all of this, all along.

    Spoilers, but it doesn’t end well for Fredo in The Godfather Part II. Just as Fredo was removed from the family, so is Andrew. Being angry with Andrew is as pointless as expecting the Godfather to become a legitimate businessman. Let’s focus our anger on the institutions that have fucked up more children than Andrew ever will: the arms trade, British government support for it, and the Royal Family.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Sam Walton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The arms industry is complicit in Andrew and his ilk’s abuse of women and girls

    Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is vile. The line we are fed about the bastard formerly known as Prince Andrew is that he is a bad apple. But that photo, the one with his arm around Virginia Giuffre, was broadly part of his government job – where he influenced elites through sex and good times to buy British weapons.

    This is a systematic problem, but no one wants to talk about it. Understandably, because no one wants to talk about the rape of minors, but this is how the arms trade does business. We do the survivors of sexual assault a disservice if we ignore the system that uses our entitled, out-of-touch, vile elite to sell weapons to entitled, out-of-touch, vile elites around the world.

    Andrew – the Godfather (but not quite)

    The thing to understand first is that Andrew is the Fredo of the Royal Family. He’s not going to be king. He can’t ride a horse that well. He’s a womaniser. Just like in the Godfather films, the Royals had to find something useful that their useless brother could do. Given the Royals’ traditional roles and Andrew’s time in the Navy, there was one obvious answer: sell weapons to despots around the world.

    Despots have two problems: One, they need weapons (to shore up their grip on power) and two, legitimacy (being a despot lessens one’s legitimacy significantly). Britain has the most high-profile and respected royal family in the world. If you buy weapons from us, our royals will hang out with you and make you look more legitimate.

    Brutally repressive King of a tiny island, but wants to buy our second-hand patrol boats? Watch horses with the Queen! Evil Saudis want to sign the biggest British weapons deal of the generation? Prince Charles will turn up and do your swordy dance with you! Son of a dictator who is an international pariah but wants to buy British killing gear? Hang out with Andrew, son of the Queen!

    ‘Special’

    Andrew was the UK’s “Special Representative for International Trade and Investment”. Special as in “let’s make sure everyone has a special time.” “International Trade and Investment” as in selling weapons. As Fredo did, Andrew made himself useful to the family business.

    Andrew showed up at defence shindigs around the world for decades. Andrew’s job was to make sure those despotic Princes and their like had a good time. We don’t know much because the government won’t release the files, but all the evidence is that he did it really really well. As Buckingham Palace said, “He brings immeasurable value in smoothing the path (my emphasis) for British companies…because of who he is.”

    Andrew’s name always came up whenever I talked to researchers about the enormous Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia. An arms deal that Andrew was caught appearing to condone bribery, defending. An arms deal signed amid epic corruption and spectacular entertainment.

    Facilitating corruption

    The arms trade, the military, and the whole Defence sector see themselves as having to protect the rest of us by making tough, real-world choices. Having to be corrupt so that the rest of us can live our peaceful lives. And you can see their logic throughout Andrew’s career. He facilitated corruption – at least we sold British weapons. Some children got r*aped in the process – turning a blind eye to the deaths of foreign children is a fundamental plank on which British arms are sold. The arms trade wouldn’t bat an eye.

    We are told Andrew is a bad apple. Just like when a police officer kills someone. Or when yet another politician is corrupt. We are told not to look at the barrel—just remove that one bad apple. We are never told that the system is the problem. The UK establishment is completely unrepentant about the system that empowered, paid for, and gave Andrew a specially created job so that he could act as he did. They only cry crocodile tears now that Andrew has been caught, decades after the fact.

    There is no intention on the part of our establishment to change how they do business. If the government genuinely wanted to show contrition for its part in Andrew’s vile deeds, it could release the files on the matter.

    Andrew, a disgusting human being

    They won’t for three reasons: Firstly, it would embarrass all those despots who also took part in those vile deeds, and we wouldn’t be able to sell them weapons anymore. Secondly, it would show that Andrew has done many terrible things for far longer than we currently know about. Thirdly, it would show that they know about all of this, all along.

    Spoilers, but it doesn’t end well for Fredo in The Godfather Part II. Just as Fredo was removed from the family, so is Andrew. Being angry with Andrew is as pointless as expecting the Godfather to become a legitimate businessman. Let’s focus our anger on the institutions that have fucked up more children than Andrew ever will: the arms trade, British government support for it, and the Royal Family.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Sam Walton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The arms industry is complicit in Andrew and his ilk’s abuse of women and girls

    Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is vile. The line we are fed about the bastard formerly known as Prince Andrew is that he is a bad apple. But that photo, the one with his arm around Virginia Giuffre, was broadly part of his government job – where he influenced elites through sex and good times to buy British weapons.

    This is a systematic problem, but no one wants to talk about it. Understandably, because no one wants to talk about the rape of minors, but this is how the arms trade does business. We do the survivors of sexual assault a disservice if we ignore the system that uses our entitled, out-of-touch, vile elite to sell weapons to entitled, out-of-touch, vile elites around the world.

    Andrew – the Godfather (but not quite)

    The thing to understand first is that Andrew is the Fredo of the Royal Family. He’s not going to be king. He can’t ride a horse that well. He’s a womaniser. Just like in the Godfather films, the Royals had to find something useful that their useless brother could do. Given the Royals’ traditional roles and Andrew’s time in the Navy, there was one obvious answer: sell weapons to despots around the world.

    Despots have two problems: One, they need weapons (to shore up their grip on power) and two, legitimacy (being a despot lessens one’s legitimacy significantly). Britain has the most high-profile and respected royal family in the world. If you buy weapons from us, our royals will hang out with you and make you look more legitimate.

    Brutally repressive King of a tiny island, but wants to buy our second-hand patrol boats? Watch horses with the Queen! Evil Saudis want to sign the biggest British weapons deal of the generation? Prince Charles will turn up and do your swordy dance with you! Son of a dictator who is an international pariah but wants to buy British killing gear? Hang out with Andrew, son of the Queen!

    ‘Special’

    Andrew was the UK’s “Special Representative for International Trade and Investment”. Special as in “let’s make sure everyone has a special time.” “International Trade and Investment” as in selling weapons. As Fredo did, Andrew made himself useful to the family business.

    Andrew showed up at defence shindigs around the world for decades. Andrew’s job was to make sure those despotic Princes and their like had a good time. We don’t know much because the government won’t release the files, but all the evidence is that he did it really really well. As Buckingham Palace said, “He brings immeasurable value in smoothing the path (my emphasis) for British companies…because of who he is.”

    Andrew’s name always came up whenever I talked to researchers about the enormous Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia. An arms deal that Andrew was caught appearing to condone bribery, defending. An arms deal signed amid epic corruption and spectacular entertainment.

    Facilitating corruption

    The arms trade, the military, and the whole Defence sector see themselves as having to protect the rest of us by making tough, real-world choices. Having to be corrupt so that the rest of us can live our peaceful lives. And you can see their logic throughout Andrew’s career. He facilitated corruption – at least we sold British weapons. Some children got r*aped in the process – turning a blind eye to the deaths of foreign children is a fundamental plank on which British arms are sold. The arms trade wouldn’t bat an eye.

    We are told Andrew is a bad apple. Just like when a police officer kills someone. Or when yet another politician is corrupt. We are told not to look at the barrel—just remove that one bad apple. We are never told that the system is the problem. The UK establishment is completely unrepentant about the system that empowered, paid for, and gave Andrew a specially created job so that he could act as he did. They only cry crocodile tears now that Andrew has been caught, decades after the fact.

    There is no intention on the part of our establishment to change how they do business. If the government genuinely wanted to show contrition for its part in Andrew’s vile deeds, it could release the files on the matter.

    Andrew, a disgusting human being

    They won’t for three reasons: Firstly, it would embarrass all those despots who also took part in those vile deeds, and we wouldn’t be able to sell them weapons anymore. Secondly, it would show that Andrew has done many terrible things for far longer than we currently know about. Thirdly, it would show that they know about all of this, all along.

    Spoilers, but it doesn’t end well for Fredo in The Godfather Part II. Just as Fredo was removed from the family, so is Andrew. Being angry with Andrew is as pointless as expecting the Godfather to become a legitimate businessman. Let’s focus our anger on the institutions that have fucked up more children than Andrew ever will: the arms trade, British government support for it, and the Royal Family.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Sam Walton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The arms industry is complicit in Andrew and his ilk’s abuse of women and girls

    Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is vile. The line we are fed about the bastard formerly known as Prince Andrew is that he is a bad apple. But that photo, the one with his arm around Virginia Giuffre, was broadly part of his government job – where he influenced elites through sex and good times to buy British weapons.

    This is a systematic problem, but no one wants to talk about it. Understandably, because no one wants to talk about the rape of minors, but this is how the arms trade does business. We do the survivors of sexual assault a disservice if we ignore the system that uses our entitled, out-of-touch, vile elite to sell weapons to entitled, out-of-touch, vile elites around the world.

    Andrew – the Godfather (but not quite)

    The thing to understand first is that Andrew is the Fredo of the Royal Family. He’s not going to be king. He can’t ride a horse that well. He’s a womaniser. Just like in the Godfather films, the Royals had to find something useful that their useless brother could do. Given the Royals’ traditional roles and Andrew’s time in the Navy, there was one obvious answer: sell weapons to despots around the world.

    Despots have two problems: One, they need weapons (to shore up their grip on power) and two, legitimacy (being a despot lessens one’s legitimacy significantly). Britain has the most high-profile and respected royal family in the world. If you buy weapons from us, our royals will hang out with you and make you look more legitimate.

    Brutally repressive King of a tiny island, but wants to buy our second-hand patrol boats? Watch horses with the Queen! Evil Saudis want to sign the biggest British weapons deal of the generation? Prince Charles will turn up and do your swordy dance with you! Son of a dictator who is an international pariah but wants to buy British killing gear? Hang out with Andrew, son of the Queen!

    ‘Special’

    Andrew was the UK’s “Special Representative for International Trade and Investment”. Special as in “let’s make sure everyone has a special time.” “International Trade and Investment” as in selling weapons. As Fredo did, Andrew made himself useful to the family business.

    Andrew showed up at defence shindigs around the world for decades. Andrew’s job was to make sure those despotic Princes and their like had a good time. We don’t know much because the government won’t release the files, but all the evidence is that he did it really really well. As Buckingham Palace said, “He brings immeasurable value in smoothing the path (my emphasis) for British companies…because of who he is.”

    Andrew’s name always came up whenever I talked to researchers about the enormous Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia. An arms deal that Andrew was caught appearing to condone bribery, defending. An arms deal signed amid epic corruption and spectacular entertainment.

    Facilitating corruption

    The arms trade, the military, and the whole Defence sector see themselves as having to protect the rest of us by making tough, real-world choices. Having to be corrupt so that the rest of us can live our peaceful lives. And you can see their logic throughout Andrew’s career. He facilitated corruption – at least we sold British weapons. Some children got r*aped in the process – turning a blind eye to the deaths of foreign children is a fundamental plank on which British arms are sold. The arms trade wouldn’t bat an eye.

    We are told Andrew is a bad apple. Just like when a police officer kills someone. Or when yet another politician is corrupt. We are told not to look at the barrel—just remove that one bad apple. We are never told that the system is the problem. The UK establishment is completely unrepentant about the system that empowered, paid for, and gave Andrew a specially created job so that he could act as he did. They only cry crocodile tears now that Andrew has been caught, decades after the fact.

    There is no intention on the part of our establishment to change how they do business. If the government genuinely wanted to show contrition for its part in Andrew’s vile deeds, it could release the files on the matter.

    Andrew, a disgusting human being

    They won’t for three reasons: Firstly, it would embarrass all those despots who also took part in those vile deeds, and we wouldn’t be able to sell them weapons anymore. Secondly, it would show that Andrew has done many terrible things for far longer than we currently know about. Thirdly, it would show that they know about all of this, all along.

    Spoilers, but it doesn’t end well for Fredo in The Godfather Part II. Just as Fredo was removed from the family, so is Andrew. Being angry with Andrew is as pointless as expecting the Godfather to become a legitimate businessman. Let’s focus our anger on the institutions that have fucked up more children than Andrew ever will: the arms trade, British government support for it, and the Royal Family.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Sam Walton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The arms industry is complicit in Andrew and his ilk’s abuse of women and girls

    Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is vile. The line we are fed about the bastard formerly known as Prince Andrew is that he is a bad apple. But that photo, the one with his arm around Virginia Giuffre, was broadly part of his government job – where he influenced elites through sex and good times to buy British weapons.

    This is a systematic problem, but no one wants to talk about it. Understandably, because no one wants to talk about the rape of minors, but this is how the arms trade does business. We do the survivors of sexual assault a disservice if we ignore the system that uses our entitled, out-of-touch, vile elite to sell weapons to entitled, out-of-touch, vile elites around the world.

    Andrew – the Godfather (but not quite)

    The thing to understand first is that Andrew is the Fredo of the Royal Family. He’s not going to be king. He can’t ride a horse that well. He’s a womaniser. Just like in the Godfather films, the Royals had to find something useful that their useless brother could do. Given the Royals’ traditional roles and Andrew’s time in the Navy, there was one obvious answer: sell weapons to despots around the world.

    Despots have two problems: One, they need weapons (to shore up their grip on power) and two, legitimacy (being a despot lessens one’s legitimacy significantly). Britain has the most high-profile and respected royal family in the world. If you buy weapons from us, our royals will hang out with you and make you look more legitimate.

    Brutally repressive King of a tiny island, but wants to buy our second-hand patrol boats? Watch horses with the Queen! Evil Saudis want to sign the biggest British weapons deal of the generation? Prince Charles will turn up and do your swordy dance with you! Son of a dictator who is an international pariah but wants to buy British killing gear? Hang out with Andrew, son of the Queen!

    ‘Special’

    Andrew was the UK’s “Special Representative for International Trade and Investment”. Special as in “let’s make sure everyone has a special time.” “International Trade and Investment” as in selling weapons. As Fredo did, Andrew made himself useful to the family business.

    Andrew showed up at defence shindigs around the world for decades. Andrew’s job was to make sure those despotic Princes and their like had a good time. We don’t know much because the government won’t release the files, but all the evidence is that he did it really really well. As Buckingham Palace said, “He brings immeasurable value in smoothing the path (my emphasis) for British companies…because of who he is.”

    Andrew’s name always came up whenever I talked to researchers about the enormous Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia. An arms deal that Andrew was caught appearing to condone bribery, defending. An arms deal signed amid epic corruption and spectacular entertainment.

    Facilitating corruption

    The arms trade, the military, and the whole Defence sector see themselves as having to protect the rest of us by making tough, real-world choices. Having to be corrupt so that the rest of us can live our peaceful lives. And you can see their logic throughout Andrew’s career. He facilitated corruption – at least we sold British weapons. Some children got r*aped in the process – turning a blind eye to the deaths of foreign children is a fundamental plank on which British arms are sold. The arms trade wouldn’t bat an eye.

    We are told Andrew is a bad apple. Just like when a police officer kills someone. Or when yet another politician is corrupt. We are told not to look at the barrel—just remove that one bad apple. We are never told that the system is the problem. The UK establishment is completely unrepentant about the system that empowered, paid for, and gave Andrew a specially created job so that he could act as he did. They only cry crocodile tears now that Andrew has been caught, decades after the fact.

    There is no intention on the part of our establishment to change how they do business. If the government genuinely wanted to show contrition for its part in Andrew’s vile deeds, it could release the files on the matter.

    Andrew, a disgusting human being

    They won’t for three reasons: Firstly, it would embarrass all those despots who also took part in those vile deeds, and we wouldn’t be able to sell them weapons anymore. Secondly, it would show that Andrew has done many terrible things for far longer than we currently know about. Thirdly, it would show that they know about all of this, all along.

    Spoilers, but it doesn’t end well for Fredo in The Godfather Part II. Just as Fredo was removed from the family, so is Andrew. Being angry with Andrew is as pointless as expecting the Godfather to become a legitimate businessman. Let’s focus our anger on the institutions that have fucked up more children than Andrew ever will: the arms trade, British government support for it, and the Royal Family.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Sam Walton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Farage once again has the corporate media in the palm of his fag-stained hand

    Writing about Nigel Farage is a frequent quagmire for me.

    On one hand, Farage wants publicity, good or bad. He will eat marsupial testicles and record a personalised birthday greeting for you for cash. He would happily turn up at the opening of a fucking envelope if it meant a few more column inches to spout his xenophobic rhetoric.

    Farage thrives on attention.

    On the other hand, the relentless over-platforming of this reactionary relic by the BBC and the frothing right-wing press leads to a toxic drip-feed of disinformation that poisons the well of public discourse.

    And this must be challenged.

    The BBC: obsessed with facilitating Nigel Farage

    The BBC is a bloated behemoth of “public service” broadcasting, funded by your license fees like a reluctant sugar daddy to the establishment.

    Once said to be the gold standard of impartiality, the BBC has treated Farage like everyone’s favourite pint-sinking hero, shoving him onto every screen from Question Time to The One Show with the reverence of a visiting dignitary.

    Back in 2019, while Labour and the Lib Dems scrapped for scraps, Farage’s Brexit Party — literally a one-trick pony with zero seats — got more airtime than actual governing parties.

    Farage’s grinning mug was disproportionately plastered across BBC News’ Election coverage, despite his utter irrelevance to parliamentary arithmetic. This isn’t impartiality and balance, it’s an infatuation and a willingness to peddle poison as populism to the masses.

    The BBC’s Farage obsession normalises his dog-whistle drivel as if it’s some sort of quirky pub banter rather than the kindling for societal arson, and whilst I hold Keir Starmer entirely responsible for the rise of Reform UK, the establishment media are responsible for the rise of Nigel Farage.

    GBeebies and the Daily Mail

    Then there’s the right-wing media circus. GBeebies News (Farage TV), the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, and a snarling pack of Murdoch minions deify Farage as their messiah of manufactured outrage.

    Once you get past the fact these rancid outlets aren’t actually newsrooms but megaphones for the 1%, churning out dishonest headlines that make Mein Kampf look like a balanced op-ed, the rest just seems to fall into place.

    I’ve only ever caught GB News a couple of times, and I have to say, any media outlet that allows Eamonn Holmes a prime time slot to peddle his conspiracy theories and rant on about the woke bogeyman while ignoring the food bank queues snaking around austerity-ravaged estates really shouldn’t be considered to be a credible source of news.

    From ‘national treasure’ to the deluded cunt on some extremist satellite news channel. Nice work, Eamonn. You will be flogging fluffy moon boots on QVC, soon enough.

    The Daily Mail also has an unhealthy Farage fixation. They peddle a barrage of headlines framing him as the saviour from the liberal elites which is irony so thick you could cut it with a knife.

    This amplification isn’t accidental but a structural stitch-up that is intended to drown out the voices from the margins.

    A ratings and revenue winner for the corporate media

    Trade unionists fighting zero-hour contract hell, migrants that are building our economy, or the committed climate activists who are warning of the catastrophic inferno we’re sleepwalking into, the establishment media wants to silence you so they can provide a feedback loop of Farage’s fascism-lite.

    Farage gets the mic because he brings chaos and a ratings rocket for ad breaks and clicks, while the left’s vision for solidarity and systemic change gets the cold shoulder.

    These spineless establishment sycophants are propping up a gammon-faced gambler whose “populism” is just fash-talk for dismantling workers’ rights and flogging the NHS to hedge funds.

    The over-platforming of Farage really isn’t free speech. The corporate media elite are shifting the Overton window so far right that even the most drab of centrist policies sound like a Bolshevik fever dream.

    Thank fucking God we have the Canary. We are the perfect example of how the media should platform the supposed powerless, rather than the pint-pullers. If you’re not informing a democracy, you’re undermining one.

    We must unite against Farage

    This past week saw Farage pitching Reform UK’s “pro-business” manifesto in the City of London, dialing back his many wild, uncosted promises to try and sound vaguely responsible, but in reality, Farage is simply rebranding fascism-lite for the stock exchange.

    While the £90 billion tax bonfire might’ve been placed on the back burner, Farage still thinks that under-25 year old workers should be exploited even more than what they are already. These Thatcherite Tories love a bit of naked class war, particularly when it is dressed up as populism.

    Farage’s speech, which was delivered, rather tellingly, to a room full of bankers and billionaires, was billed as Reform UK’s grand economic vision for Farage’s Britain.

    What it actually revealed was a retreat into the same old Thatcherite playbook of viciously slashing public services, gutting workers’ rights, and praying the markets sprinkle some magic fairy dust on the wreckage.

    Farage’s speech wasn’t visionary, it was a clear warning shot. Reform isn’t here to disrupt the status quo, it’s here to restore it with extra nationalism thrown in for not-so-good measure.

    The first significant cracks in Reform UK’s armour are beginning to appear. Now the left must find its voice as one to guide voters towards the real systemic reform that we so desperately need.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • A former drug addict pleas for Zack Polanski’s drug policy to become reality

    When the leader of the Greens, Zack Polanski, talks about the need for a compassionate, public health approach to drugs, I hear the echo of a lifeline that comes too late for so many.

    The real cost of the criminalisation of drugs

    I am in my mid-thirties, from a Northern town ripped apart by drugs – and in my lifetime I have lost four friends to them. Trust me, I know the actual cost of the current law, not through the statistics the government throws out; I know it through the bigger, personal reality of it all. I know it through the stomach cramps and the sweats, through feeling the cold of the concrete as I slept under another doorway, a bag of white powder tucked to my chest.

    My ketamine addiction was never fun. It was a desperate attempt to self-medicate a trauma I couldn’t even think about, let alone confess to anyone else. For two years, I lived in a walking dream-state, alternating between friends’ sofas and the cold, unyielding streets of Leeds.

    One of the lucky ones

    I worked full-time, paid my taxes, but because the state saw my addiction as a crime, I couldn’t escape the spiral. The fear of being arrested, the all-consuming shame, was a force that kept me silent. The social system that should have seen me and reached out to offer me hope —the one I paid into —pushed me further into the shadows. Stigma haunted me.

    I was in my very early twenties, young and meant to be full of life. But the actual machinations of our drug system take the most vulnerable, and through criminalisation, ensure their silence until they’re beyond saving.

    I’m one of the lucky ones. My health deteriorated, the NHS were forced to pay attention, but if it wasn’t for some very good friends, I know I wouldn’t be writing this right now. I count my lucky stars every day I am where I am, but there are four names eternally etched into my mind, the names of four people who never should have died, who the system should have and could have saved.

    Addiction is a fucking disease. Can we please treat it that way?

    The reason the UK is failing so many people so badly is its stubborn refusal to accept a scientific truth. That addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease, not the failure of a person. So many major global organisations officially classify addiction as a disease; it’s not semantics, it’s a fucking fact. Prolonged substance abuse alters the structure and the function of the brain, specifically the circuits which give us rewards, motivation, memory, and self-control.

    Jesus, do I remember the high so well. And even to this day, I miss it so fucking badly. That first hit of ketamine, as soon as I woke up and rolled over, there was nothing like it. Narcotics hijack your body’s reward system, it floods the brain’s reward centre with dopamine, telling it that ‘this is vital for your survival… You need this.’ But over time, these receptors become broken, meaning you’re no longer using the drug for pleasure, but to feel normal.

    What self-control?

    And self-control? What self-control? Chronic use ruins your prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for judgment and impulse control. This is why the hallmark of addiction is the loss of power, and it really is all-consuming. From the moment your eyes open until the moment you have that drug in your system, it’s all your brain will think about. For me, it was that, and the compulsion to self-medicate the pain of a trauma I didn’t even know I carried.

    Addiction is a relapsing condition. It is a chronic disease influenced by genetics, environment, and mental health. You don’t imprison people who are ill, yet the UK legal system continues to treat possession of drugs as a crime. And the treatment? A criminal record and a spiral into shame and further use.

    But Zack Polanski’s push for legalisation and a public health model is so very, very overdue. It’s the adoption of an evidence-based medicine over moral judgment, and we fucking need it.

    Our national shame is in the number of deaths from drugs

    Polanski is absolutely right. The ‘war on drugs has absolutely failed.’

    All we have to do is look at the heartbreaking stats to see it. But we don’t. In typical British fashion, we ignore those begging for help. In the most recent reporting period, there were around 5,448 deaths related to drug poisoning in England and Wales. That’s the highest number since records began in 1993. And it has doubled since 2012.

    The saddest indictment of our system can be seen when you compare the UK to Portugal. In 2001, Portugal made the rational switch to decriminalising drugs and shocked the world with what happened next.

    Whilst our death rates have surged to record highs, Portugal’s overdose deaths have remained dramatically low. Some estimates even suggest their drug mortality rate is up to 28 times lower than our own. The stark reality is that the fear-driven policies the UK clings to are actively killing our own, whilst the compassion-driven model we fear so badly is actively saving them.

    The economic black hole. Why are we paying out billions to harm people?

    It’s been fucking wild since Polanski announced his stance on our drug system. To those who argue his proposal is too soft or costly, we need to present the cold, hard economic truth.

    The UK’s approach has failed. It is not fiscally responsible and is a massive annual drain on the public purse, costing an estimated £20 billion. This is the price tag for keeping up the shame, silence, and stigma.

    But where does this unimaginable sum go?

    Policing and prosecution costs are wild. We arrest those suffering, drag them through the courts for minuscule amounts to the tune of approximately £1.4 billion per year.

    The ‘revolving door’ of prison, where we lock up the sick, with one in three prison places going to someone with addiction, is another massive drain. Billions upon billions are spent on maintenance, yet inadequate treatment means reoffending rates remain high as hell.

    Social exclusion from criminalisation of drugs

    And the crisis of social exclusion. The law ensures that people leave the system with a criminal record, which immediately blocks the path to recovery. Nearly 21% of people starting drug treatment don’t have a roof over their head. This is a devastating figure which shows the current system leaves people homeless, rather than curing it.

    Polanski’s new proposal makes fucking sense. The evidence is clear. For every £1 spent on drug treatment, we can save society up to £4 by reducing demand on other services such as health, prisons, and emergency services.

    This isn’t charity, it’s a common-sense fiscal policy. The Portuguese model has proven that shifting funds from prisons to health care saves money and lives. By legalising and regulating, as Polanski suggests, not only would the UK save billions, but it would also gain tax revenue from a legally controlled market. This can be used to directly fund and fight the integrated trauma and mental health support that people like me desperately need.

    Heal the UK with hope

    My own recovery, my second chance so many didn’t get, came not from the state but from friends who possessed the compassion that the state massively lacks. Time and time again, I tripped and fell, I fucked up and used over and over. But they got it. They understood that underneath the perpetual cycle of use and abuse was a scared and hurting girl, worried and running from something.

    My friends understood that my addiction was a symptom of pain, not who I was.

    And this is the essence of the policy that Zack Polanski champions: formalising compassion.

    This switch to a public health model is a statement to every single suffering addict, to every homeless person self-medicating their trauma in a cold doorway, and to every family who has watched their loved ones fall and fade.

    It is a statement which says, ‘We see you. We see your illness. We will not abandon you.’

    This policy shift is not proposing a drug-free-for-all; we are proposing control – control over a system which is currently chaotic, violent, and fuels a fatal black market. It is proposing treatment over trauma, to finally end the senseless waste of life and money that has defined the last fifty years in the UK.

    We need to stop being the shameful example of the ‘war on drugs’ failure. Come on, guys, drugs have won, but it doesn’t have to be this way. We must heed this national call for reform, listen to the voices of those who managed to get out of the cycle of addiction, and embrace a model that won’t just save our country billions, but more importantly, the lives of so many of our people.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Antifabot

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Gaza ‘ceasefire’ simply means that Israel can do whatever it wants. We can’t.

    A Gaza resident tells his story of the struggle to survive in Israel’s Gaza genocide today, “ceasefire” or not.

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Qasem Waleed El-Farra

    On October 19, Israel launched a barrage of airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, killing dozens of people in a blatant violation of US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan, which had come into effect just over a week earlier.

    And a day after world leaders had gathered in Egypt to discuss implementation, I went back to my neighborhood in eastern Khan Younis on October 14 to gather anything that could protect me and my family against the approaching winter — clothes, sheets, wood, books even, for those cold nights where there will be little else to do but read.

    I had not long been searching through the rubble of my home — which has been completely destroyed — when I heard shooting and saw people running.

    I had been in enough of such situations to know not to ask questions. I left everything I had pulled from under the rubble and fled back toward downtown Khan Younis.

    While we were — yet again — fleeing our area, I learned that an Israeli quadcopter had attacked a group of civilians in the area. One of them, I was told, was shot right in the heart.

    I’ve faced death many times throughout the genocide. But this time was different. This was just one day after Trump, backed by a number of world leaders, announced a plan to bring peace to Gaza and the Middle East.

    That day, Israel had also announced that Zikim beach, which is located in the Gaza Strip envelope, to enable the Israeli settlers there to “breathe again.”

    When I arrived in my tent in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, I pondered just one question: Is this the ceasefire they want to bring us? Or do they just want to announce a cessation of violence, but have no interest in enforcing it?

    Targeting global solidarity
    As a person in Gaza who has been living through a genocide for two years and five major Israeli attacks on Gaza before that, the term “ceasefire” is selective and always shadowed with deadly threats.

    As far as I have experienced, the word simply means that Israel is able to do whatever it wants. We aren’t.

    More broadly, for Israel, ”peace” in Palestine equals a Palestine with no Palestinians, as Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior government ministers have made very clear.

    Over the years, Palestinians have learned the hard way that when the colonial plans and their various institutional manifestations — from the Peel Commission in 1936 to Trump’s “Board of Peace” — are formed, allegedly to bring peace, the oppressed people’s rights are lost.

    The reason is that behind the proposal, there is always a gun pointed at us.

    Or, like how Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, put it: “Ceasefire according to Israel = ‘you cease, I fire.’”

    When I read through the Trump-Netanyahu 20-point ceasefire plan for Gaza, all I could think of is that we have gone back a century in time: It is another colonial promise of peace that includes everyone but Palestinians, the land’s native population.

    Of course, in Gaza, we all want this ceasefire to hold, to save what remains of our home. Still, it does not take a genius to see that the ceasefire plan is nothing but a grotesque charade directed by Trump and Netanyahu — a desperate move to save Israel from being internationally isolated, especially after the unprecedented pro-Palestine demonstrations across the globe.

    Thus, the plan deprives Gaza of the increasing momentum of world support, while also resulting in the continued loss of people and land in Gaza. It is either Netanyahu’s rock or Trump’s hard place.

    On-off genocide
    The ceasefire plan depends fundamentally on a phased Israeli withdrawal “based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarisation that will be agreed upon between the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], ISF [International Stabilisation Force], the guarantors, and the United States.”

    In more precise terms, there is no specified timeline.

    This means that with Israeli troops withdrawal to the yellow line on the plan’s map, it is still in control of 58 percent of Gaza, and while some people might be able to return to their areas of residence, I cannot.

    The plan has allowed Israel to do what it does best — stall, manipulate and deceive. By October 28, according to Gaza’s authorities, Israel had breached the ceasefire 125 times.

    The killings continue, aid is still being hindered and the Rafah crossing remains closed, denying people travel to receive urgent medical treatment.

    A significant reason for the continued killing in Gaza is that the Israeli withdrawal lines are tricky and ambiguous, even unknown to locals, especially those who live in the eastern part of Gaza.

    On October 17, for instance, Israel killed 11 members of the Abu Shaaban family: seven children, three women and the father, as they returned to check on their house in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood of eastern Gaza City.

    In my neighborhood, Sheikh Nasser, in eastern Khan Younis, neighbors marked a destroyed house with a big red sheet to warn others not to cross further.

    We have witnessed two prior ceasefire agreements in the past two years of genocide. Both times I hoped they would bring an end to our misery. Many of us in Gaza remain very sceptical about this ceasefire, and we can’t afford to let hope in our hearts again.

    Israel loves to fish in muddy water, or, like we in Gaza like to put it, ala nakshah, meaning that Israel is merely awaiting any slight excuse to resume the killing.

    Netanyahu has repeatedly made it obvious that it’s either his political future or our future. For as long as he is in power, Israel will keep coming for us in an on-off genocide in order to make our misery constant.

    This is the “peace” we are offered after two years of suffering the crime of crimes.

    Qasem Waleed El-Farra is a physicist based in Gaza. His article was first published by The Electronic Intifada on 6 November 2025.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Elite media to Mamdani: Drop everything that made you successful and act more like a generic Democrat

    Unable to stop Zohran Mamdani’s momentum after he won New York’s mayoral Democratic primary last June––fueled by a message of populist policies and social justice, and unperturbed by nonstop bad faith attacks by pro-Israel bullies––centrist and liberal media has adopted a different, more subtle tone in their effort to “moderate” the Mayor-elect: using the trappings of pragmatism and technocracy to whittle down the redistributive policies and class-driven language that defined his campaign. Rather than govern as he campaigned, as a crusading outsider socialist standing for tenants, Gaza, and workers, they insist it’s time for Mamdani to Grow Up, put on his big boy pants, purge his circle of Democratic Socialists, and hire Serious People motivated by Serious Solutions. 

    This makes sense. After all, traditional media attacks on Mamdani fell universally flat for months on end. Nothing seemed to stick, in part due to the fact that Mamdani seems to genuinely be a choir boy whose greatest transgressions are saying objectively true, but critical, statements about Israel and referring to his parent’s cousin at his “Auntie”––two things, it turns out, 90% of the world does. So a new tactic has emerged, one of attempted co-option, supposedly good faith advice, phone calls from powerful and famous Democratic luminaries, backroom meetings with “business leaders,” and the parallel implied threats of pushback if he doesn’t go along with The Way Things Are. This piece isn’t meant to be a commentary on whether this approach has been, or will be, successful (the jury is very much out on that). But it is worth documenting the way this particular mode of ideological disciplining works, and how it manifests in our media. 

    Those engaging in this process of moderation would not, of course, put it in these sinister terms. They would say they were simply seeking to guide a young, naive political novice through the myriad headwinds of “the second hardest job in America.” And in some cases this may be true. But for an elite media apparatus that, itself, can create these headwinds whenever it wishes, this posture serves as both warning and threat. It’s the process of establishing acceptable ideological boundaries––the crossing of which, everyone understands, will result in negative coverage and editorial scolding. 

    Now, the obligatory “to be sure” paragraph: I am not saying that there aren’t genuine limitations to what mayors can accomplish and real technocratic hurdles. Mayors cannot deficit spend; they require party and state support to achieve much of anything; the police manage their security and thus loom tremendous, undemocratic power over them. New York City has over 300,000 employees, all with discrete and oftentimes conflicting interests. But these complexities are very often used as cover for the nontechnocratic, ideological work of pushing politicians into taking more capital-friendly positions and priorities. This article will be a discussion of that process: of the bad faith nuance-trolling and how the narrowing of the horizon of the possible, before the ink even dries on the ballots, is less about good-faith concerns over limitations and logistics and very much about trying to turn Mamdani into Pete Buttigieg 2.0.

    Complexities are very often used as cover for the nontechnocratic, ideological work of pushing politicians into taking more capital-friendly positions and priorities.

    First and most prominently was the New York Times’ post-election editorial. The Times editorial board, which infamously published a cowardly anti-endorsement of Mamdani before the June Democratic primary (after saying they would not run endorsements anymore less than a year earlier), now takes on the tone of a principal calling Mamdani into their office for a stern talking-to. They’re not mad, they’re not going to attack him, they’re just disappointed and Deeply Concerned. 

    The Times board sets the tone early, leading off with the patronizing and false premise that Mamdani ran a “social-media-driven campaign.” The Mamdani campaign, it’s worth noting, knocked on an unprecedented 3 million doors, 1 million more than the 2 million actual votes cast, fueled by a DSA volunteer core that the Times later, of course, recommends Mamdani throw under the bus. This is followed by framing their advice as Mamdani lowering his progressive expectations. “For Mr. Mamdani to be effective, he will need to grapple with the recent history of big-city civic leaders promising bold, progressive change. They have mostly delivered disappointment, including in Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore., as well as in New York City itself under Bill de Blasio,” they begin. It doesn’t matter that several of the relevant mayors listed are not progressive in any meaningful sense and all of them, save perhaps Johnson in Chicago, have adopted every Tough on Crime policy the Times goes on to recommend. It’s a vibe, not an intellectually honest assessment on the limits of left-wing politics. Those cities are left-coded, and that’s all that matters. 

    From there, the Times lists six ways Mamdani “can improve life in New York by marrying his admirable ambition to pragmatism and compromise.” The Times advises he abandon his pledge for free buses, saying this plan “would leave the system without the revenue it needs to pay for speed improvements,” and that “free buses could also reduce the sense of security for riders, turning buses into homeless shelters.” Somewhat bizarrely, they ignore Mamdani’s other major campaign pledge, freezing rent for rent stabilized units, then praise his willingness to incentivize more private development by undoing supposedly burdensome fire regulations. The editorial then runs down a list of campaign promises he must abandon or “compromise” on: free childcare (“He is unlikely to achieve this goal in full, given its costs and the lack of an obvious revenue source.”) and alternatives to policing (which they insist should only be done “when feasible,” whatever that means). And they push Mamdani to make nice with Big Business (both Mamdani and business leaders “should recognize that they have a common interest in the city’s well-being and in preserving its status as a hub of business and finance”). The Times then finishes with the obligatory ideological tsk tsk-ing over DSA, anti-police politics and, of course, Israel: 

    But the reasons that many New Yorkers are skeptical of him also deserve to be taken seriously. He had almost no management experience before his campaign, and extreme rhetoric was his normal mode of communication until recently. He called the New York Police Department “a major threat to public safety.” He initially refused to condemn Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel. To this day, he proudly identifies with the Democratic Socialists of America, whose platform supports open borders, voting access for noncitizens and a weaker U.S. military.

    He can win at least some of his skeptics over by getting results as mayor. He should start by building a leadership team light on democratic socialists and heavy on officials with records of accomplishment and proven management skills.

    In short: aim for small wins that do not offend capital, make peace with Big Business, purge your ranks of anyone with progressive or socialist ideological commitments, be nice to the police and its powerful union, and continue to engage in conspicuous gestures of moderation on Israel like “condemning Hamas” (with no parallel demand he, or anyone, “condemn” the entity that has killed 20,000 children and committed genocide). Put another way: shed everything that made your campaign interesting and exciting and instead just be a slightly more liberal version of Eric Adams. 

    Put another way: shed everything that made your campaign interesting and exciting and instead just be a slightly more liberal version of Eric Adams. 

    The Washington Post editorial board would scold Mamdani along similar lines, albeit more openly ideological––a result of their Bezos-driven, overt turn to the right. After lamenting Mamdani’s radical politics and what they say about The State of Things, the Post writes that “the best outcome would be for Mamdani to take a cautiously incremental approach and try pilot programs for his most radical ideas instead of immediately imposing them on the entire city. It seems that there are enough voters to put him in power — but if New Yorkers begin to flee in droves, it could force him to moderate.” This is a popular line from oligarchs and their media organs but you don’t usually see it spelled out like this––an explicit threat of a capital strike in a paper owned by the world’s second-richest person. But this is certainly what’s going on: moderate or New York’s wealthy will use their tremendous leverage to make governing more that much more difficult. 

    This isn’t to say slimy and racist attacks from other liberal quarters are not still ongoing. ADL chief and MSNBC mainstay Jonathan Greenblatt announced a “Mamdani monitor” Wednesday that’s basically a Canary Mission for just the Mamdani administration (and no other mayor, congressperson, or elected, much less the current White House, which is drowning in antisemites). This “monitor,” which will surveil and attempt to dig up dirt on any Mamdani hires, has been widely condemned by everyone from former Human Rights Watch Director Ken Roth to Patrick Gaspard of the Center for American Progress as selective and racially motivated. It’s yet another disciplinary mechanism designed to keep Mamdani in line, albeit more stick than carrot. 

    ADL chief and MSNBC mainstay Jonathan Greenblatt announced a “Mamdani monitor” Wednesday that’s basically a Canary Mission for just the Mamdani administration (and no other mayor, congressperson, or elected, much less the current White House, which is drowning in antisemites).

    Politico, a reliable conduit of elite opinion, painted a picture of a “divided” city and a “narrow victory” that would force Mamdani to moderate his policies and message. Reporter Joe Anuta leans heavily into editorializing, writing that Mamdani’s “victory over moderate Democrat Andrew Cuomo was fueled by record turnout and deep enthusiasm among progressives. But it also exposed raw divides over religion, ideology and identity that will define his first days in office.” It’s unclear what elections don’t expose similar divisions but one is meant to takeaway the vague impression that it’s incumbent upon Mamdani to win over the people who loathe him, regardless of how valid or invalid their reasons––a requirement, of course, never imposed on moderate politicians when they win elected office. What follows is a series of vague threats from the extremely wealthy and their lobbyists, unsubstantiated claims of antisemitism, and rambling sour grapes. 

    “As he faces the dual challenge of reassuring his critics and proving that his movement can run the nation’s largest city. The degree of antipathy toward his fledgling administration complicates that dual pursuit. In practical terms, repairing relations with blocs of the city wary of his leadership will require the devotion of significant political capital — energy that could otherwise go toward delivering on his main policy planks.” Translation: moderate on taxing the rich and Israel or we’ll make governing that much more difficult. 
    CNN’s Van Jones, who works with a mentor program funded by pro-Israel donors and used “dead Gaza baby” as punchline on Bill Maher three weeks ago, expressed a simular attitude towards Mamdani after his victory speech Tuesday night, which he apparently believed contained too much DSA red meat:

    “Is he going to be more of a class warrior even in office? I think he missed a chance tonight to open up and bring more people into the tent,” a Very Concerned Jones laments. “I think his tone was sharp. I think he was using the microphone in a way that he was almost yelling. And that’s not the Mamdani that we’ve seen on Tiktok and the great interviews and stuff like that.”

    The message here is fairly consistent across high-status pundits, lobbyists-populated articles, and editorials: you won. We can’t stop you from winning (unfortunately humans still get to cast one vote each). But think very carefully about your rhetoric, the targets of your criticism, and what your priorities are. Here are the boundary lines. If you cross them, things will be made more difficult—by the rich, by pro-Israel pressure groups, by other Democrats, by us in the media. Play ball, and you can coast with modest, incremental improvements. Govern as the class warrior, govern as someone who leans into meaningfully redistributive policies, support for Palestine, and genuinely universalist policies like free transportation and childcare, and we will help fuel the very headwinds that we are now ostensibly warning you about.  

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Why Blue Pacific’s infrastructure distress is a cocktail poisoning human development progress

    Keeping a line of sight to the challenges of both COP30 in Brazil next week and also the subsequent Pacific’s COP31. A Pacific perspective.

    COMMENTARY: By Dr Satyendra Prasad

    As Pacific’s leaders and civil society prepare for the United Nations Climate Conference in Brazil (COP30) next week, they also need to keep a line of sight to the subsequent Pacific’s COP31.

    As they engage at COP30, they will have in their thoughts the painful and lonely journey ahead in Jamaica and across the Caribbean as they rebuild from Hurricane Melissa.

    The Blue Pacific needs to build a well-lit pathway to land Pacific’s priorities at COP30 and COP31. The cross winds are heavy and the landing zone could not be hazier.

    COP30 BRAZIL 2025
    COP30 BRAZIL 2025

    At the recent Pacific Islands Forum Meeting in Honiara, Pacific leaders called for accelerating implementation of programmes to respond to climate change. They said that finance and knowhow remained the binding constraints to this.

    The Pacific’s leaders were unanimous that the world was failing the Pacific.

    Climate-stressed infrastructure
    Pacific leaders spoke about their infrastructure deficit. The region today needs well in excess of $500 million annually to maintain infrastructure in the face of rising seas and fiercer storms.

    There are more than 1000 primary and secondary schools, dozens of health centres across coastal areas in Solomon Islands, PNG, Vanuatu and Fiji that need to be repaired rehabilitated or relocated.

    The region needs an additional $300-500 million annually over a decade to build and climate proof critical infrastructure — airports, wharves, jetties, water and electricity and telecommunications.

    The Blue Pacific’s infrastructure distress is a cocktail that poisons its human development progress. This has lethal consequences for our elderly, for children and the most vulnerable.

    As a region has fallen short in convincing the international community that the region’s infrastructure distress is quintessentially a climate distress. This must change.

    Fiji’s former ambassador to the UN Dr Satyendra Prasad
    Fiji’s former ambassador to the UN Dr Satyendra Prasad . . . “the ball may be in the Pacific’s court on how successfully we can harness this rare opening.” Image: Wansolwara News

    The constant cycle of catastrophe, recovery and debt are on autoplay repeat across the world’s most climate vulnerable region. The heart-braking images coming out of Jamaica and the Caribbean in the wake of Hurricane Melissa makes this same point.

    The Blue Pacific as a region attracts a woefully insufficient share of existing climate finance. Less than 1.5 percent of the total climate finances reaches the world’s most climate vulnerable region today. This is unacceptable of course.

    Is our planet headed for a 3.0C world?
    At COP30, the world will see what the new climate commitments (NDCs) add up to. Our best estimates today suggest that the planet is headed for a 3.0C plus temperature rise. Anything above 1.5C will be catastrophic for the Blue Pacific.

    Life across our coral reef systems will simply roast at 3.0C temperature increase. The regions food security will be harmed irreparably. This will have massive consequences for tourism dependent economies. Bleached reefs bleach tourism incomes.

    The health consequences arising from climate change are set to worsen rapidly. As will the toll on children who will fall further behind in their learning as schools remain inaccessible for longer periods; or children spend long hours in hotter classrooms.

    For Pacific’s women, the toll of runaway temperature increase will be heavy — on their health, on their livelihoods and on their security. It will be too heavy.

    A deal for the Pacific at COP30
    The world of climate change is becoming transactional. Short termism and deal making have become its norm.

    As Pacific leaders, its civil society, its science community and its young engage at COP30 in Brazil, they are reminded that the Blue Pacific needs more than anything else, a settled outlook climate finance that will be available to the region. Finance must be foremostly predictable.

    The region should not feel like it is playing a lottery — as is the case today. Tonga must know broadly how much climate finance will be available to it over the next five years and so must Papua New Guinea.

    At Bele’m, the world will need to agree to a road map for how the climate financing short fall will be met. This is a must to restore trust in the global process.

    The weight on the shoulders of host Brazil is extraordinarily heavy. Brazil is the home of the famous Rio Conference in 1992 where the small island states first succeeded in placing climate change, biodiversity loss on the global agenda.

    The Small Islands States grouping is chaired by Palau. President Whipps Jnr will lead the islands to Brazil. He will no doubt remind the host that the world has failed the small states persistently since that moment of great hope at the Rio Conference in 1992.

    Belém hosts the Climate Summit
    Belém hosts the UN Climate Summit, an international meeting that will bring together heads of state and government, ministers, and leaders of international organisations on 10-21 November 2025. Image: Sergio Moraes/COP30/Wansolwara News

    Pace of climate finance
    There are three principal reasons why climate finance must flow to the Pacific at speed.

    First, is that most countries in our region have less than a decade to adapt. Farms and family gardens, small businesses, tourist resorts, villages and livelihoods need to adapt now to meet a climate changed world.

    Second, if adaptation is pushed into the future because of woefully insufficient finances — the window to adapt will close.

    As more sectors of our economy fall beyond rehabilitation, the costs of loss and damage will rise. Time is of the essence. And on top of that loss and damage remain poorly funded. This too must change.

    The Pacific needs to do many things concurrently to build its resilience. Everything for the Blue Pacific rests on a decent outcome on financing.

    The region needs to make its clearest argument that its share of climate finance must be ring-fenced. That its share of climate finance will remain available to the region even if demand is slow to take shape.

    The Pacific’s rightful share of climate finance over the next decade is between 3-5 per cent of the total across all financing windows. This is fundamentally because based the adaptation window is so short in such a uniquely specific way.

    This should mean that the Blue Pacific has access to a floor of US$1.5 billion annually through to 2035. This is very doable even if global currents are choppy.

    TFFF and Brazil’s leadership
    Brazil has already demonstrated that it can forge large financing arrangements through its leadership and creativity. It will launch the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) at COP. PNG’s Prime Minister has played an important role on this. We hope that forested Pacific states will be able to access this new facility to expand their conservation efforts with much higher returns to landowners.

    Beyond Bele’m
    COP30 in Brazil is an opportunity for the Pacific to begin to frame a larger consensus — well in time for COP31. It is my hope that Australia and Pacific’s leaders will have done enough to secure the hosting rights for COP31.

    A ‘circuit-breaker’ COP31
    Fiji’s former Deputy Prime Minister Biman Prasad and Australia’s Climate Minister Chris Bowen recently said that COP31 must be “a circuit breaker moment” for the Blue Pacific.

    The reversals in our development story arising from the climate chaos have become too burdensome. Repeated recoveries means that every next recovery becomes that much harder.

    Ask anyone in Jamaica and Caribbean today and you will hear this same message. Their finance ministers know too well that in no time they will be back at the mercy of international financial institutions to rebuild roads and bridges that have been washed away and water systems that have been destroyed by Hurricane Melissa.

    Climate finance by its very nature therefore must involve deep changes to the architecture of international development and finance. The rich world is not yet ready to let go of privilege and power that it wields through an archaic financial international system.

    But fundamental reform is a must. Fundamental reform is necessary if small states are to reclaim agency and begin to drive own destinies.

    Future proofing our societies
    The risks arising from climate change are so multi-faceted that economic, social and political stability cannot no longer be taken for granted.

    Conflicts over land lost to rising seas, the strain on education, health and water infrastructure, deepening debt stress take their toll on institutions through which stability is maintained in our societies.

    The Blue Pacific needs to work with this elevated risk of fragility and state failure. This reality must shape the Blue Pacific expectations from a Pacific COP.

    Building on the excellent work underway in climate ministries in Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, PNG and across the region through the SPC, SPREP, OPOC, I have outlined what the Pacific’s expectations could be from a Pacific COP31.

    COP31 must be about transformation and impact. The Blue Pacific’s leaders should seek a consensus that includes both the rich industrial World and large developing countries such as China and India in support of a Pacific Package at COP31.

    A Pacific COP 31 package
    The core elements of a Pacific package at COP31 are:

    1. Ensuring that the Loss and Damage Fund has become fully operational with a pipeline of investment ready projects from across the Blue Pacific.
    2. Securing the Pacific Regional Infrastructure Facility (PRIF) as a fully funded and disbursement ready financing facility with a pipeline of investment ready projects.
    3. Securing ring-fenced climate finance allocations for the Blue Pacific at the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and across international financial institutions.
    4. Securing support for Blue Pacific’s “lighthouse” multi-country (region wide) transformative programs to advance marine and terrestrial biodiversity protection and promote sustainability across the Blue Pacific Ocean.
    5. A COP decision that is unambiguous on quality and speed of climate and ocean finance that will be available to small states for the remainder of the decade.
    6. Securing sufficient resources that can flow directly to communities and families to rapidly rebuild their resilience following disasters and catastrophes including through insurance and social protection vehicles.
    7. Ensuring that knowhow, resources and mechanisms for disaster risk reduction are in place, are fully operational and are sustainable.

    An Ocean of Peace for a climate changed world
    Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has championed the Blue Pacific as an Ocean of Peace. Its acceptance by Pacific leaders opens up opportunities for the region’s climate diplomacy.

    The Pacific’s leaders accept that the Ocean of Peace anchors its stewardship of our marine environment to the highest principles of protection and conservation. An Ocean of Peace super-charges the Pacific’s efforts to take forward transboundary marine research and conservation, end plastic and harmful waste disposal, end harmful fisheries subsidies and decarbonise shipping.

    It boosts the Pacific’s efforts to main-frame the ocean-climate nexus into the international climate change frameworks by the time a Pacific COP31 is convened.

    A window of hope
    Between COP30 and COP31 lies a rare window of hope. The Blue Pacific must leverage this.

    Both a Brazilian and an Australian Presidency offer supportive back-to-back opportunities and spaces to take forward the regions desire to project a solid foundation of programs that are necessary to secure its future.

    Uniquely the ball may be in the Pacific’s court on how successfully we can harness this rare opening in the international environment.

    Dr Satyendra Prasad is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Fiji’s former ambassador to the UN. He is the Climate Lead for About Global. This article was first published by Wansolwara Online and is republished by Asia Pacific Report in partnership with USP Journalism.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Mainstream media are responsible for creating a racist rape culture around grooming gangs

    The grooming gangs inquiry coverage has been deeply flawed, with corporate media spearheading vicious xenophobia. They’ve jumped at the opportunity to attack migrant communities, spewing Islamophobia whilst not actually paying attention to the facts of the grooming gangs themselves.

    Far-right misogynists like Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, and Nigel Farage have used the grooming gang cases to leverage yet more anti-migrant sentiments, inflame public tensions, and paint whole communities of Pakistanis and Muslims as rapists. They’ve done all this whilst erasing the survivors of sexual violence and grooming perpetrated by men of all races – brown, white, or otherwise.

    The truth is, failure to safeguard girls and women in England is a flaw of the British government and the British media. Instead, what has unfolded has been a toxic and pernicious attempt to conflate all rape, particularly through organised grooming gangs, as solely the domain of Pakistani and Muslim communities.

    Grooming gang inquiry is a litany of failures

    Even the grooming gang inquiry itself has, horrifically, further pushed aside survivors. Women on the inquiry panel made it clear they were uncomfortable with the idea of police or social workers being involved in any capacity. This comes as little surprise, given that End Violence Against Women reported that:

    73% of rape survivors say police treatment worsened their mental health.

    And, the media is hardly any better, as writer Emilie Buchwald described rape culture as:

    A society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality is seen as violent.

    Undoubtedly, corporate media has a significant role to play in upholding said rape culture. They had the perfect opportunity to examine why police, in particular, are central to facilitating rape culture. Doing so would have helped to shift public narrative in a manner that centred the experiences of survivors.

    Racialisation of rape culture

    However, the media is culpable for much more, still. We’ve all seen the headlines, splashed across front pages, that align grooming gangs as solely the reserve of Pakistanis and Muslims. But, there were no such headlines about the grooming of Shamima Begum and her now murdered friends Kadiza Sultana and the missing Amira Abase.

    The three girls were groomed, trafficked, and handed on a plate to ISIS. There were multiple state failings that led to this. Rather than being treated as a victim of grooming and trafficking, Shamima has become a pariah in the UK. A denial of her experience would have been one thing, but the British state removed her citizenship – leaving her stateless.

    Surely those who feel strongly about grooming of teenage girls, should be concerned about failing all teenage children. Survivors are not treated equitably by the media: white girls are ‘groomed’ but brown girls are ‘radicalised.’

    British negligence from the state supported child trafficking of Shamima Begum. But, it was the media that manufactured consent for constructing the narrative that Shamima had been ‘radicalised,’ rather than groomed. These girls were failed by Britain, not Bangladesh, or any other country their parents were born in. If the school girls were white, there would have been uproar. And, even when it comes to white victims of grooming, as the current sham of an inquiry shows, even those survivors are being abandoned by the media in favour of a breathlessly racist focus on brown men as the sole savage rapists.

    Sidelining of survivors

    The ideas that solely men from South Asian and African communities are inherently sexually abusive towards children and women is deeply flawed. White survivors are also detrimentally affected by this racist rape culture. When a white survivor of sexual assault got onto a podium at a far-right march and said she had been raped by middle aged white men, the microphone was ripped from her hands. She was heckled, and quickly rushed off stage. Empathy towards her was dismissed from the crowd and the media, as her lived experience did not fit their agenda of scapegoating migrant communities as the sole perpetrators of sexual violence.

    If they were genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of brave young woman who stepped forward to share her experience, they would have treated her with compassion and sensitivity. Instead, political point scoring is the name of the game. The girl who spoke up at the rally was perceived as a nuisance to be shoved out of sight, and out of mind. The men present were not sensitive towards the abuse of young women and girls. Instead, they were more interested in the ethnicity of the perpetrator fitting a specific narrative.

    Mainstream media has a responsibility here

    Mainstream media has been focused on sensationalism and creating divisions across Britain. Suddenly migrants in hotels become the issue at hand, men from Global South communities in Britain become the sole boogeyman and the root of the problem.

    The jurisdiction of the inquiry should be scrutinised for resources to be utilised productively, instead of a PR exercise where recommendations are shelved, and never heard from again. The inquiry not having the power to prosecute any perpetrators is the typical merry-go-round of inquiries in Britain: offering solutions with no haste or appetite to implement them. This is further evidence, were it needed, that the safeguarding of children from all groomers online and in-person is not being taken seriously.

    For mainstream British media to have genuine concern towards survivors, it is vitally important survivors of grooming by perpetrators of all ethnicities are taken just as seriously. Mainstream media newsrooms are rushing to spotlight only stories of rape when perpetrated by men of colour. Of course, this haste is only present when the rapists involved are Pakistani or East African, or from somewhere else in the Global South.

    That is undoubtedly an example of racist rape culture which damages survivors of all races.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Shareefa Energy

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Bryce Edwards: Mamdani lessons – NZ left need to catch up with the Zeitgeist

    COMMENTARY: By Bryce Edwards

    Yesterday’s victory of “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani in the race for the New York mayoralty is fuelling debate among progressives around the world about the way forward.

    And this has significant implications and lessons for the political left in New Zealand, casting the Labour and Green parties as too tired and bland for the Zeitgeist of public discontent with the status quo.

    Mamdani’s startling victory in the financial capital of the world symbolises a broader shift in global politics.

    His triumph, alongside the rise of similar left populists abroad, sends an unmistakable message: voters are hungry for politicians who take the side of ordinary people over corporations, and who offer bold solutions to the cost-of-living crises squeezing families worldwide.

    The Mamdani phenomenon follows on from some other interesting radical left politicians doing well at the moment, including the new leader of the Green Party in the UK, Zach Polanski. These politicians seem to be doing better by appealing to the Zeitgeist of anger with inequality and oversized corporate power that characterises Western democracies everywhere.

    Such politicians and activists are channelling the tone of other recent radicals like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, who both embraced a leftwing populism concerned with working class citizens.

    Here in New Zealand, however, the contrast is stark, where the political forces of the left are very timid by comparison. The Labour and Green parties remain stuck in the past and unwilling to catch up with the anti-Establishment radicalism, that focuses on broken economic systems.

    However, locally some commentators are pushing for the political left to learn lessons from the likes of Mamdani and Polanski.

    Simon Wilson: Focus on class, not identity politics
    Leftwing columnist Simon Wilson wrote yesterday in The New Zealand Herald that “Labour and the Greens can learn from Mamdani”, pointing out that although the New Zealand left has become overly associated with identity politics, the successful way forward is “class politics”.

    Wilson says: “Instead of allowing his opponents to define him as an “identitarian lefty” — and they really have tried — Mamdani is all about the working class.”

    In policy and campaign terms, Wilson says Mamdani has been successful by getting away from liberal/moderate issues:

    “His main platform is simple. He wants to reduce the cost of living for ordinary working people. And instead of wringing his hands about it, he has a plan to make it happen. It includes childcare reform, a significant rise in the minimum wage, a rent freeze, more affordable housing, free public transport and price-controlled city-owned supermarkets. Oh, and comprehensive public-safety reform and higher taxes on the wealthy.”

    Wilson also suggests that the political left in NZ should be focused on the enemy of crony capitalism (also the theme of my ongoing series about oversized corporate power): “It might be corporates, determined to prevent meaningful reform of oligopolistic sectors of the economy, such as banking, supermarkets and energy.”

    Such an approach, Wilson suggests dovetails with a type of “democratic socialism” that should be embraced here. As another example of this, Wilson says, is the new leader of the Green Party in the UK, Zach Polanski.

    Donna Miles: Kiwi politicians need to push back against corporate capture

    On Monday, columnist Donna Miles also wrote in The Press that Zack Polanski and Zohran Mamdani are showing the way for the global left to push back against corporate power. She explains the problem of how corporate power now swamps New Zealand politics, in a similar way to what Mamdani and Polanski are fighting:

    “New Zealand faces a parallel plague of vested interests eroding faith in democracy. The revolving door between politics and lobbying creates unfair access, allowing former officials to trade insider knowledge for influence.”

    Miles explains the recent success of the new environmental populist leader in the UK:

    “The second politician you should know about is Zack Polanski, the gay Jewish leader of the UK Green Party who is of Eastern European descent. Elected last month with a landslide 85 percent of the vote from party members, Polanski’s bold policies on wealth taxes, free childcare, green jobs, and social justice have triggered an immediate ‘Polanski surge’, with membership reaching 126,000, making it the third-largest political party in the UK.”

    New Zealand’s timid political left
    Leftwing thinkers in New Zealand are viewing the rise of these bold leftwing populists with envy. Why can’t New Zealand’s left tap into the Zeitgeist that Mamdani and Polanski are successfully surfing? Why can’t they concentrate on the “broken economic system” that Mamdani put at the centre of his widely successful campaign?

    For example, Steven Cowan has blogged to say “Mamdani’s election victory will be a rebuke for NZ’s timid politics”. He argues that Mamdani’s victory shows “that voters are not allergic to bold politics”, and he laments that the parties of the left here are worried about coming across as too radical.

    Chris Trotter suggests that there is a new shift towards class politics occurring around the world, which the New Zealand left are missing out on, saying “Poor old Labour doubles-down on identity politics, just as democratic-socialism comes back into fashion.”

    Trotter points out that Labour managed to alienate all their democratic socialists many years ago, and their absence meant that a “new left” took over the party:

    “To rise in the Labour Party of the 21st century, what one needed was a proven track record in the new milieu of ‘identity politics’. Race, gender and sexuality now counted for much, much, more than class. One’s stance on te Tiriti, abortion, pay equity and LGBTQI+ rights, mattered a great deal more than who should own the railways. Roger Douglas had slammed the door to ‘socialism’ – and nailed it shut.”

    Trotter holds out some hope that the Greens might still avoid being pigeonholed in identity politics:

    “The crowning irony may well turn out to be the Greens’ sudden lurch into the democratic socialist ‘space’. Chloë Swarbrick makes an unlikely Rosa Luxemburg, but, who knows, in the current political climate-change, ditching the keffiyeh for the red flag may turn out to be the winning move.”

    Taking on corporate capture: Could Chlöe Swarbrick ditch the keffiyeh for the red flag?
    The rise of figures like Mamdani and Polanski is not occurring in a vacuum. It reflects growing public recognition of a problem I’ve been documenting in this column for weeks: the systematic capture of democratic politics by corporate interests.

    As I’ve detailed in my ongoing series on New Zealand’s broken political economy, our democracy has been hollowed out by lobbying firms, political donations, and the revolving door between government and industry. From agricultural emissions policy to energy market reforms, we see the same pattern: vested interests using their wealth and access to shape policy in their favour, while the public interest is systematically ignored.

    Throughout the campaign, Mamdani made it clear who the enemies of progress were. He railed against corporate landlords, Wall Street banks, and monopolistic companies profiteering off essential goods. New York’s economy, he argued, was full of broken markets that enriched a wealthy few at the expense of everyone else – and it was time to take them on.

    By naming and shaming the elites (and proudly embracing the “socialist” label), Mamdani gave voice to a public anger that had long been simmering.

    Mamdani’s win is part of a broader pattern. Across the world, leftwing populists are gaining ground by focusing relentlessly on material issues and openly targeting the corporate elites blocking progress. Rather than moderating their economic demands, these leaders channel public anger toward the billionaire class and monopolistic corporations.

    And they back it up with concrete proposals to improve ordinary people’s lives. This approach is proving far more popular than the cautious centrism that dominated recent decades.

    It turns out that a “bread-and-butter” socialist agenda of making essentials affordable, and forcing the ultra-rich to pay their fair share, resonates deeply in an age of rampant inequality. Policies once dismissed as too radical are now vote-winners.

    Freeze rents? Tax windfall profits? Use the state to break up corporate monopolies and provide free basic services? These ideas excite voters weary of struggling to make ends meet while CEOs and shareholders prosper.

    We’ve seen this new left populism surge in many places. In the United States, for example, Bernie Sanders’ campaigns and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s outspoken advocacy popularised these themes, and recently Chicago elected a progressive mayor on a pledge to tax the rich for the public good.

    In Latin America, a string of socialist leaders, from Chile’s Gabriel Boric to Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, have swept to power promising to rein in corporate excess and uplift the masses. The common denominator is clear: voters respond to politicians who offer a clear break from the pro-corporate consensus and speak to their real economic grievances.

    Here in New Zealand, the Labour Party and its ally the Greens should have been the vehicle for bold change. But instead they’ve both largely stayed the course. When Labour took office in 2017, there were high hopes for a transformational government. Yet Jacinda Ardern and her successors ultimately shied away from any fundamental challenge to the economic status quo.

    They tinkered around the edges of problems, unwilling to upset the powerful or depart from orthodoxy.

    Even when Labour admitted certain markets were broken, for instance acknowledging the supermarket duopoly that was overcharging Kiwis for food, it refused to take decisive action. A Commerce Commission inquiry into supermarkets resulted in gentle recommendations and a voluntary code of conduct, but no real crackdown on the grocery giants’ excess profits.

    The government balked at imposing windfall taxes on the booming banks or power companies. Its much-vaunted KiwiBuild housing scheme collapsed far short of targets, and it never embarked on a serious state house building program. Time and again, opportunities for bold intervention were passed up. It often seemed Labour was more afraid of annoying corporate interests than of disappointing its own voters.

    In the end, the Labour-led government managed a broken economic system rather than transforming it. And during a mounting cost-of-living crisis, “managing” wasn’t enough. By 2023, many traditional Labour supporters felt little had changed for them — and they were right. The party had kept the seat warm, but it hadn’t delivered the economic justice it once promised.

    Time to catch up with the Zeitgeist
    The contrast between New Zealand’s left and the new wave of international left triumphs could not be more stark. Overseas, the left is rediscovering its purpose as the champion of the many against the few, of public good over private greed.

    At home, our left has spent recent years timidly managing a broken status quo. If there is one lesson from Zohran Mamdani’s New York victory — and from the broader resurgence of socialist politics abroad — it’s that boldness can be a virtue for parties that claim to represent ordinary people.

    To catch up with the Zeitgeist, New Zealand’s Labour and Green parties will need to break out of their cautious mindset and actually fight for transformative change. That means making our next political battles about the “big guys” – the profiteering banks, the supermarket duopoly, the housing speculators – and about delivering tangible gains to the public.

    It means having the courage to propose taxing wealth, curbing corporate excess, and rebuilding a fairer economy, even if it upsets a few CEOs or lobbyists. In short, it means offering a clear alternative to “broken markets” and business-as-usual.

    The winds of political change are blowing in a populist-left direction globally. It’s high time New Zealand’s left caught that wind. If Labour and the Greens cannot find the nerve to ride the new wave of public enthusiasm for economic justice, they risk being left behind by history.

    In an age of crises and inequality, timidity is a recipe for oblivion. Boldness, on the other hand, just might revive the left’s fortunes.

    Dr Bruce Edwards is a political commentator and analyst. He is director of the Integrity Institute, a campaigning and research organisation dedicated to strengthening New Zealand democratic institutions through transparency, accountability, and robust policy reform.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Bryce Edwards: Mamdani lessons – NZ left need to catch up with the Zeitgeist

    COMMENTARY: By Bryce Edwards

    Yesterday’s victory of “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani in the race for the New York mayoralty is fuelling debate among progressives around the world about the way forward.

    And this has significant implications and lessons for the political left in New Zealand, casting the Labour and Green parties as too tired and bland for the Zeitgeist of public discontent with the status quo.

    Mamdani’s startling victory in the financial capital of the world symbolises a broader shift in global politics.

    His triumph, alongside the rise of similar left populists abroad, sends an unmistakable message: voters are hungry for politicians who take the side of ordinary people over corporations, and who offer bold solutions to the cost-of-living crises squeezing families worldwide.

    The Mamdani phenomenon follows on from some other interesting radical left politicians doing well at the moment, including the new leader of the Green Party in the UK, Zach Polanski. These politicians seem to be doing better by appealing to the Zeitgeist of anger with inequality and oversized corporate power that characterises Western democracies everywhere.

    Such politicians and activists are channelling the tone of other recent radicals like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, who both embraced a leftwing populism concerned with working class citizens.

    Here in New Zealand, however, the contrast is stark, where the political forces of the left are very timid by comparison. The Labour and Green parties remain stuck in the past and unwilling to catch up with the anti-Establishment radicalism, that focuses on broken economic systems.

    However, locally some commentators are pushing for the political left to learn lessons from the likes of Mamdani and Polanski.

    Simon Wilson: Focus on class, not identity politics
    Leftwing columnist Simon Wilson wrote yesterday in The New Zealand Herald that “Labour and the Greens can learn from Mamdani”, pointing out that although the New Zealand left has become overly associated with identity politics, the successful way forward is “class politics”.

    Wilson says: “Instead of allowing his opponents to define him as an “identitarian lefty” — and they really have tried — Mamdani is all about the working class.”

    In policy and campaign terms, Wilson says Mamdani has been successful by getting away from liberal/moderate issues:

    “His main platform is simple. He wants to reduce the cost of living for ordinary working people. And instead of wringing his hands about it, he has a plan to make it happen. It includes childcare reform, a significant rise in the minimum wage, a rent freeze, more affordable housing, free public transport and price-controlled city-owned supermarkets. Oh, and comprehensive public-safety reform and higher taxes on the wealthy.”

    Wilson also suggests that the political left in NZ should be focused on the enemy of crony capitalism (also the theme of my ongoing series about oversized corporate power): “It might be corporates, determined to prevent meaningful reform of oligopolistic sectors of the economy, such as banking, supermarkets and energy.”

    Such an approach, Wilson suggests dovetails with a type of “democratic socialism” that should be embraced here. As another example of this, Wilson says, is the new leader of the Green Party in the UK, Zach Polanski.

    Donna Miles: Kiwi politicians need to push back against corporate capture

    On Monday, columnist Donna Miles also wrote in The Press that Zack Polanski and Zohran Mamdani are showing the way for the global left to push back against corporate power. She explains the problem of how corporate power now swamps New Zealand politics, in a similar way to what Mamdani and Polanski are fighting:

    “New Zealand faces a parallel plague of vested interests eroding faith in democracy. The revolving door between politics and lobbying creates unfair access, allowing former officials to trade insider knowledge for influence.”

    Miles explains the recent success of the new environmental populist leader in the UK:

    “The second politician you should know about is Zack Polanski, the gay Jewish leader of the UK Green Party who is of Eastern European descent. Elected last month with a landslide 85 percent of the vote from party members, Polanski’s bold policies on wealth taxes, free childcare, green jobs, and social justice have triggered an immediate ‘Polanski surge’, with membership reaching 126,000, making it the third-largest political party in the UK.”

    New Zealand’s timid political left
    Leftwing thinkers in New Zealand are viewing the rise of these bold leftwing populists with envy. Why can’t New Zealand’s left tap into the Zeitgeist that Mamdani and Polanski are successfully surfing? Why can’t they concentrate on the “broken economic system” that Mamdani put at the centre of his widely successful campaign?

    For example, Steven Cowan has blogged to say “Mamdani’s election victory will be a rebuke for NZ’s timid politics”. He argues that Mamdani’s victory shows “that voters are not allergic to bold politics”, and he laments that the parties of the left here are worried about coming across as too radical.

    Chris Trotter suggests that there is a new shift towards class politics occurring around the world, which the New Zealand left are missing out on, saying “Poor old Labour doubles-down on identity politics, just as democratic-socialism comes back into fashion.”

    Trotter points out that Labour managed to alienate all their democratic socialists many years ago, and their absence meant that a “new left” took over the party:

    “To rise in the Labour Party of the 21st century, what one needed was a proven track record in the new milieu of ‘identity politics’. Race, gender and sexuality now counted for much, much, more than class. One’s stance on te Tiriti, abortion, pay equity and LGBTQI+ rights, mattered a great deal more than who should own the railways. Roger Douglas had slammed the door to ‘socialism’ – and nailed it shut.”

    Trotter holds out some hope that the Greens might still avoid being pigeonholed in identity politics:

    “The crowning irony may well turn out to be the Greens’ sudden lurch into the democratic socialist ‘space’. Chloë Swarbrick makes an unlikely Rosa Luxemburg, but, who knows, in the current political climate-change, ditching the keffiyeh for the red flag may turn out to be the winning move.”

    Taking on corporate capture: Could Chlöe Swarbrick ditch the keffiyeh for the red flag?
    The rise of figures like Mamdani and Polanski is not occurring in a vacuum. It reflects growing public recognition of a problem I’ve been documenting in this column for weeks: the systematic capture of democratic politics by corporate interests.

    As I’ve detailed in my ongoing series on New Zealand’s broken political economy, our democracy has been hollowed out by lobbying firms, political donations, and the revolving door between government and industry. From agricultural emissions policy to energy market reforms, we see the same pattern: vested interests using their wealth and access to shape policy in their favour, while the public interest is systematically ignored.

    Throughout the campaign, Mamdani made it clear who the enemies of progress were. He railed against corporate landlords, Wall Street banks, and monopolistic companies profiteering off essential goods. New York’s economy, he argued, was full of broken markets that enriched a wealthy few at the expense of everyone else – and it was time to take them on.

    By naming and shaming the elites (and proudly embracing the “socialist” label), Mamdani gave voice to a public anger that had long been simmering.

    Mamdani’s win is part of a broader pattern. Across the world, leftwing populists are gaining ground by focusing relentlessly on material issues and openly targeting the corporate elites blocking progress. Rather than moderating their economic demands, these leaders channel public anger toward the billionaire class and monopolistic corporations.

    And they back it up with concrete proposals to improve ordinary people’s lives. This approach is proving far more popular than the cautious centrism that dominated recent decades.

    It turns out that a “bread-and-butter” socialist agenda of making essentials affordable, and forcing the ultra-rich to pay their fair share, resonates deeply in an age of rampant inequality. Policies once dismissed as too radical are now vote-winners.

    Freeze rents? Tax windfall profits? Use the state to break up corporate monopolies and provide free basic services? These ideas excite voters weary of struggling to make ends meet while CEOs and shareholders prosper.

    We’ve seen this new left populism surge in many places. In the United States, for example, Bernie Sanders’ campaigns and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s outspoken advocacy popularised these themes, and recently Chicago elected a progressive mayor on a pledge to tax the rich for the public good.

    In Latin America, a string of socialist leaders, from Chile’s Gabriel Boric to Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, have swept to power promising to rein in corporate excess and uplift the masses. The common denominator is clear: voters respond to politicians who offer a clear break from the pro-corporate consensus and speak to their real economic grievances.

    Here in New Zealand, the Labour Party and its ally the Greens should have been the vehicle for bold change. But instead they’ve both largely stayed the course. When Labour took office in 2017, there were high hopes for a transformational government. Yet Jacinda Ardern and her successors ultimately shied away from any fundamental challenge to the economic status quo.

    They tinkered around the edges of problems, unwilling to upset the powerful or depart from orthodoxy.

    Even when Labour admitted certain markets were broken, for instance acknowledging the supermarket duopoly that was overcharging Kiwis for food, it refused to take decisive action. A Commerce Commission inquiry into supermarkets resulted in gentle recommendations and a voluntary code of conduct, but no real crackdown on the grocery giants’ excess profits.

    The government balked at imposing windfall taxes on the booming banks or power companies. Its much-vaunted KiwiBuild housing scheme collapsed far short of targets, and it never embarked on a serious state house building program. Time and again, opportunities for bold intervention were passed up. It often seemed Labour was more afraid of annoying corporate interests than of disappointing its own voters.

    In the end, the Labour-led government managed a broken economic system rather than transforming it. And during a mounting cost-of-living crisis, “managing” wasn’t enough. By 2023, many traditional Labour supporters felt little had changed for them — and they were right. The party had kept the seat warm, but it hadn’t delivered the economic justice it once promised.

    Time to catch up with the Zeitgeist
    The contrast between New Zealand’s left and the new wave of international left triumphs could not be more stark. Overseas, the left is rediscovering its purpose as the champion of the many against the few, of public good over private greed.

    At home, our left has spent recent years timidly managing a broken status quo. If there is one lesson from Zohran Mamdani’s New York victory — and from the broader resurgence of socialist politics abroad — it’s that boldness can be a virtue for parties that claim to represent ordinary people.

    To catch up with the Zeitgeist, New Zealand’s Labour and Green parties will need to break out of their cautious mindset and actually fight for transformative change. That means making our next political battles about the “big guys” – the profiteering banks, the supermarket duopoly, the housing speculators – and about delivering tangible gains to the public.

    It means having the courage to propose taxing wealth, curbing corporate excess, and rebuilding a fairer economy, even if it upsets a few CEOs or lobbyists. In short, it means offering a clear alternative to “broken markets” and business-as-usual.

    The winds of political change are blowing in a populist-left direction globally. It’s high time New Zealand’s left caught that wind. If Labour and the Greens cannot find the nerve to ride the new wave of public enthusiasm for economic justice, they risk being left behind by history.

    In an age of crises and inequality, timidity is a recipe for oblivion. Boldness, on the other hand, just might revive the left’s fortunes.

    Dr Bruce Edwards is a political commentator and analyst. He is director of the Integrity Institute, a campaigning and research organisation dedicated to strengthening New Zealand democratic institutions through transparency, accountability, and robust policy reform.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Canary Leaks: a Downing Street aide begs head of Met to arrest 93-year-old Jewish protester

    From: tonygordstein@number10.gov.uk

    To: sirmarkrowley@met.police.uk

    Subject: we need you to nick this Jewish antisemite, and quickly

    Hey Mark,

    I’m writing under the pseudonym Tony Gordstein here because Mandy has ordered the whole Downing Street team to be bloody paranoid about anything getting out with one of our names attached. Bear with me here, but Tony is David Gordstein’s younger and even more twisted and ruthless brother.

    You might remember the David Gordstein thing. He doesn’t actually exist—Gordstein is a Jewish-sounding name we just made up. Euan Phillips played an absolute blinder with him for years as we brought Corbyn down. I wish you could have had a ring-side seat to that, like me!

    Euan came up with a simple and evilly effective technique, which was to watch out for when a Jewish critic of Israel said something that doubted the antisemitism narrative that we had built up around Corbyn and then submit a complaint about them as ‘Dave’. It worked a treat dozens of times, and we got most of the bastards expelled or pushed out one way or another. Martin Abrams and Jenny Manson held out until September past, which was wise, as we probably wouldn’t have let them into the conference in Liverpool if they’d turned up!

    One of my personal favourites was Riva Joffe. The old bitch was literally on her deathbed when we had her under investigation for antisemitism. She wrote to us from the hospital and was completely unrepentant about criticising Israel and defending Richard Burgon. She accused us (wait for it) of being driven to a ‘frenzy of purging’ and that it ‘smacked of desperation and panic’.

    Oh, how we laughed as we purged her!

    The funniest thing about it was that she hadn’t actually said anything antisemitic at all. Our targets didn’t have to, of course. All they had to do was defend someone who had said something that denied or downplayed something that one of our stooges would say made them feel uncomfortable, and we were in business.

    We had it set up that denying it was evidence of guilt, like the witch trials.

    It was fucking hilarious.

    We had this raffle game we played in the office where we’d put a bunch of names — like Ian Austin, Luciana Berger, and John Mann — in a box and pick one at random. Then we’d call them and they would always oblige and create fake outrage for us against some lefty bastard we had our sights on. I remember John literally chasing Corbyn down the street and shouting at him about antisemitism. God, I miss those days!

    Anyway, Joffe’s son wrote this pathetic letter to Keir after she died, going on and on about her lifetime of service in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, as a socialist and a psychotherapist who did a lot of work for her local community and blah-dee-fucking blah. He probably thought he might get a reply from Starmer as she was one of his constituents in Camden. He didn’t. LOL.

    You can read about it in Paul ‘my dad was gay’ Holden’s book that’s just out (called The Fraud, ROFL). It’s a good job no one reads books anymore, or we’d be fucked.

    Now, Mark, you’re probably thinking: if Tony is even more twisted than his big brother, Dave, how am I going to outdo that?

    Well, I’ll try!!

    I’ve got another old Jewish anti-Zionist cunt who’ll be dead soon for you – Margaret Owen. And it’s hilarious now that we control the state, not just the party —we can lock people up instead of just sending disciplinary letters.

    It’s perfect – she’s 93, needs a Zimmer frame to walk, a former human rights lawyer, and an OBE. All things that in the old days, before the Terrorism Act, would have made mistreating her a bit risky from a PR point of view. But then we’re not in the old days, are we, my lovely police chief friend?

    She’s against ‘genocide’ (yawn) and wants the Palestine Action ban repealed (boo hiss!), so pack up your things, Margaret – it’s jail time!

    Funny story – I thought of this idea last night before I went to bed, fell fast asleep, and then woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

    I’d dreamt that your guys had arrested her, the BBC had reported it and given it prominence on Laura Kuenssberg’s show, the Guardian ran an opinion piece condemning it, and then the Daily Mail and the Telegraph felt they couldn’t avoid it, and even they covered it too.

    And I know you won’t believe this bit, but Lord Toby Young from the Free Speech Union came out and said it was giving him doubts about the Palestine Action ban!

    Next thing we knew, there was a whole national debate going on about Margaret fucking goody two-shoes save-the-children, Owen. Thanks be to God, the Virgin Mary, Sir Robbie Gibb, and Saint Katherine Viner that it was all just a dream!

    I know how it gives you the horn to arrest critics of Israel and label them as terrorists (extra points if they’re Jewish). So, this old doll is perfect for you! She lives in Hammersmith —go get her, Mark:

    Till next time,

    ‘Tony’

    Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction but any similarities to a person or persons living or dead is exactly what we wanted.

    By Tony Gordstein

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Eugene Doyle: Venezuela and Trump’s war to save the Ancien Régime

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    “The Past is not dead; it is not even past.”

    William Faulkner was right: past events continue to inform and shape our world.  With powerful forces gathering to reassert US dominance over not just Venezuela but the entire Western hemisphere, the vexed issue of local elites, for example Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado and her backers, enlisting an imperial power in domestic broils, is again top of the agenda.

    Back in the 1980s I studied in France.  The most thrilling lecture of my university career was an outline of the significance of the Battle of Valmy, a crucial win for the young French Revolution.

    The lecture was given by the distinguished historian Antoine Casanova.

    One of the revolutionary generals that day in 1792 was a Venezuelan, Francisco de Miranda, who in time, returning to the Americas, would wrest power from imperial Spain and become leader of an independent Venezuela.

    Miranda knew Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and, of significance to this story, the father of the Monroe Doctrine, President James Monroe. Were he alive today he would again unsheathe his sword to fight King Donald Trump and all the forces of L’Ancien Régime.

    L’Ancien Régime — the “Old Order” — refers to the system of absolute monarchy, hereditary privilege, and rigid social hierarchy where a tiny elite owned everything while the masses owned little or nothing.

    In today’s world, given the concentration of power among the few in our countries, I extend the term Ancien Régime to capture the way the US, working in concert with local elites, is operating in ways that would be familiar to a Bourbon King or a British monarch.

    If they had such a thing as shame, the American elites should wince that their country, born out of an epic anti-colonial struggle, now plays the role of a Prussian army seeking to impose its will on another state.

    1792. La patrie en danger. The homeland is in peril.
    The monarchies of Europe had rallied their armies for an assault on France to destroy the Revolution that had swept from power not only King Louis XVI but the entire absolutist order of L’Ancien Régime.

    After a string of victories, the invaders swung their armies towards Paris, intent on snuffing out the revolution, to ensure the contagion did not infect the rest of Europe. Desperate, the French Assembly declared “La Patrie en danger” and called on patriotic citizens to rally to the flag.

    The two world orders clashed in a pivotal battle at Valmy, 200 km northeast of Paris on 20 September 1792.

    At Valmy, for the first time in history, the battle cry that General Miranda and others called out — and thousands of citizen soldiers answered — was “Vive la nation!”  “Long live the Nation! (not for a king, nor an emperor, nor a god).

    Confronting them on the field was the superpower of the day, the best armed, best drilled war machine in history: the Prussian Army, led by Prince Field Marshall Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand. As well as his Prussians, he commanded the army of the Holy Roman Empire and, significantly, L’Armée de Condé, led by King Louis XVI’s cousin and comprised of French royalist émigrés.

    To the citizen soldiers of France, this latter group were traitors to their country, men who put their privileges and their class ahead of the interests of their homeland. This is a theme relevant to discussions of Venezuela today.

    Things went badly for the republican French in the opening and the lines wavered.  The Venezuelan Miranda, history records, raced his charger up and down the lines, urging the troops to sing La Marseillaise, written earlier that year by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle. We know it now as the French National Anthem. It is a stirring call to arms, a passionate appeal to fight the enemies of the nation.

    French First Republic
    Long story short, the French prevailed that day and France’s First Republic was declared in Paris two days later.  A witness to the battle was the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who, by way of consolation — I would have thought a little rashly —  told some dejected Prussian officers, “Here and today, a new epoch in the history of the world has begun, and you can boast you were present at its birth.”

    Today Francisco Miranda’s name is among the 660 heroes of the Republic engraved on L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He has been called the “First Global Revolutionary”, having fought in the American War of Independence as well as his other exploits in Europe and Latin America.

    The first global revolutionary - Miranda
    The “first global revolutionary” . . . Miranda knew President James Monroe, father of the Monroe Doctrine. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

    Some of my fellow students at L’Université de Franche-Comté were South and Central Americans who had fled political persecution. Their stories were my first exposure to the concept of “death squads”.

    This was a time when El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua were drenched in blood as a pitiless struggle was waged by the US and the local military and financial elites on one side, and coalitions of workers, peasants, intellectuals, teachers and various progressives on the other.

    Repeated US interventions to support companies like United Fruit Company went hand in hand with brutal suppression of peasant workers. The CIA-backed coup that overthrew democratic progressive Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 led to a war — the Guatemalan Genocide or The Silent Genocide — in which 200,000 were killed and tens of thousands more “disappeared” over the succeeding three decades. Amnesty International estimated 83 percent of those killed were indigenous Maya people.

    In 1980, while I was in France, Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was gunned down mid-service by a killer working for El Salvador’s military dictatorship. A quarter of a million people braved the junta to attend his funeral.

    Romero’s fate was sealed when he appealed to US President Jimmy Carter to end aid to El Salvador’s military dictatorship.

    Death squads follow
    Whether we look at the Iran Contra scandal, Reagan’s funding of the infamous Honduran Battalion 316 or any of dozens of such organisations, the pattern is clear: where the US wishes to assert control via elites, death squads follow. The State Department and CIA spent decades building and evolving El Salvador’s National Security Agency. They helped compile lists of leftists, intellectuals and all sorts of people who were then eliminated by the regime’s death squads.

    While I was getting an education in history, literature and politics, tens of thousands were killed in Argentina by the US-backed Junta during the “Dirty War”. Similarly in Chile, from the US-promoted military takeover forward, being a social worker, teacher or trade unionist could be a fatal occupation.

    Sadly, as most people my age know, one could go on and on and on about US covert activity to destroy democratic movements and foster alliances with the most vicious oligarchs on the continent.  That is why I fear for Venezuela and I have zero confidence in any political leader who calls for US direct military and paramilitary (via CIA) action in her own country.

    For these reasons and more, I shuddered when I heard Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Maria Corina Machado praising Donald Trump and urging him to continue his pressure campaign, saying only Trump can “save Venezuela”.

    “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause,” she wrote in a post on X.

    Praising a man who is indiscriminately killing your own citizens is not, in my estimation, a good look for either a Nobel Peace laureate or a patriot. Francisco Miranda would roll in his grave.

    The price of freedom from foreign powers is often counted in millions of lives and centuries of struggle; it should not be given away lightly.

    The Maduro government has its fans and its detractors; both can mount solid arguments.

    One thing I believe is firmly in its favour, however, is that, for its many faults, it is a national project that seeks to resist dominance from foreign interests, foremost the US.  I will give the last word to Sebastián Francisco de Miranda y Rodríguez de Espinoza (28 March 1750–14 July 1816):

    “I have never believed that anything solid or stable can be built in a country, if absolute independence is not first achieved.”

    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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.