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Category: Opinion

  • Taking Stock of the World

    Donald Trump’s distasteful State of the Disunion address urged salvation, anything to give relief from the madness. A lack of empathy and gruff manner displayed a chilling use of the anguish of parents of ravished children to promote the war on immigrants. Did the parents want to be there? Did they want their deceased children used for political opportunity? Naming public places after the children, as if the parents had won a prize, is unconscionable. If a close relative had a major accomplishment and died peacefully and graciously, relatives would welcome having his/her name forged in the consciousness of the American public. I doubt parents want to be daily reminded of the gruesome and untimely deaths of their children when they walk their neighborhoods.

    Trump continued his sadistic excursion through graveyards by continually pointing to the Democratic aisle, letting everyone know the Dems and their previous leaders, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, were in charge during vicious attacks on Americans. Mentioning the capture of the “mastermind” of the Kabul airport killings of American citizens, “you know the killings during the mess that Joe Biden allowed,” in a State of the Union to both houses of Congress, just to ridicule Biden and show his mastery, made Trump equal in depravity to the “so called” mastermind. Is the person really the “mastermind,” or someone Pakistani intelligence willingly supplied for a few greenbacks? What does the revelation of a “capture” have to do with the state of the union?

    Aggravating that we will have four years of this punishing behavior; more aggravating to realize that tens of millions support this malicious behavior; more and more aggravating is that we encounter similar disturbances in everyday life. Try to discuss Israel’s genocide at Columbia University.

    It does not have to be this way. We don’t have to tear each other apart and subdue the rest of the world to live decently; the Ukrainians and Russians don’t have to fight and die for land that Russians and Ukrainians can peacefully determine by themselves; Jews can live well anywhere in the word, they don’t need to slaughter Palestinians to survive.

    Without having economic or political power, having an effect in changing attitudes and the course of civilization is a difficult challenge. Exposing injustice is now leading to enhancing injustice ─ making it happen faster. Correcting false information is now leading to spreading false information faster; mendacity is appreciated. It’s the ancient story ─ good vs. evil, and the “good guys,” who refuse to adopt the winning methodology of “cheat, lie, and accuse,” have no chance. In all institutions — academic, medical, scientific, economic — those in control protect their agendas, regardless of validity or truth.

    The apathetic and those disinterested in encouraging challenges accept conventional beliefs and concepts, even when thought exposes them as spurious. Many, accepted theories and notions deserve and need attack. Changing a programmed mindset and planning a strategy to liberation are official civil duties. The only alternative is revolution. Where is Georges Danton when we most need him?

    “The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.”- Maximilien Robespierre

    The post Taking Stock of the World first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • How New Zealand is venturing down the road of political upheaval

    ANALYSIS: By Peter Davis

    With the sudden departure of New Zealand’s Reserve Bank Governor, one has to ask whether there is a pattern here — of a succession of public sector leaders leaving their posts in uncertain circumstances and a series of decisions being made without much regard for due process.

    It brings to mind the current spectacle of federal government politics playing out in the United States. Four years ago, we observed a concerted attempt by a raucous and determined crowd to storm the Capitol.

    Now a smaller, more disciplined and just as determined band is entering federal offices in Washington almost unhindered, to close agencies and programmes and to evict and terminate the employment of thousands of staff.

    This could never happen here. Or could it? Or has it and is it happening here? After all, we had an occupation of parliament, we had a rapid unravelling of a previous government’s legislative programme, and we have experienced the removal of CEOs and downgrading of key public agencies such as Kāinga Ora on slender pretexts, and the rapid and marked downsizing of the core public service establishment.

    Similarly, while the incoming Trump administration is targeting any federal diversity agenda, in New Zealand the incoming government has sought to curb the advancement of Māori interests, even to the extent of questioning elements of our basic constitutional framework.

    In other words, there are parallels, but also differences. This has mostly been conducted in a typical New Zealand low-key fashion, with more regard for legal niceties and less of the histrionics we see in Washington — yet it still bears comparison and probably reflects similar political dynamics.

    Nevertheless, the departure in quick succession of three health sector leaders and the targeting of Pharmac’s CEO suggest the agenda may be getting out of hand. In my experience of close contact with the DHB system the management and leadership teams at the top echelon were nothing short of outstanding.

    The Auckland District Health Board, as it then was, is the largest single organisation in Auckland — and the top management had to be up to the task. And they were.

    Value for money
    As for Pharmac, it is a standout agency for achieving value for money in the public sector. So why target it? The organisation has made cumulative savings of at least a billion dollars, equivalent to 5 percent of the annual health budget. Those monies have been reinvested elsewhere in the health sector. Furthermore, by distancing politicians from sometimes controversial funding decisions on a limited budget it shields them from public blowback.

    Unfortunately, Pharmac is the victim of its own success: the reinvestment of funds in the wider health sector has gone unheralded, and the shielding of politicians is rarely acknowledged.

    The job as CEO at Pharmac has got much harder with a limited budget, more expensive drugs targeting smaller groups, more vociferous patient groups — sometimes funded in part by drug companies — easy media stories (individuals being denied “lifesaving” treatments), and, more recently, less sympathetic political masters.

    Perhaps it was time for a changing of the guard, but the ungracious manner of it follows a similar pattern of other departures.

    The arrival of Sir Brian Roche as the new Public Service Commissioner may herald a more considered approach to public sector reform, rather than the slightly “wild west” New Zealand style with the unexplained abolition of the Productivity Commission, the premature ending of an expensive pumped hydro study, disbandment of sector industry groups, and the alleged cancellation of a large ferry contract by text, among other examples of a rather casual approach to due process.

    The danger we run is that the current cleaning out of public sector leaders is more than an expected turnover with a change of government, and rather a curbing of independent advice and thought. Will our public media agencies — TVNZ and RNZ — be next in line for the current thrust of popular and political attention?

    Major redundancies
    Taken together with the abolition of the Productivity Commission, major redundancies in the public sector, the removal of research funding for the humanities and the social sciences, a campaign by the Free Speech Union against university autonomy, the growing reliance on business lobbyists and lobby groups to determine decision-making, and the recent re-orientation of The New Zealand Herald towards a more populist stance, we could well be witnessing a concerted rebalancing of the ecosystem of advice and thought.

    In half a century of observing policy and politics from the relative safety of the university, I have never witnessed such a concerted campaign as we are experiencing. Not even in the turmoil of the 1990s.

    We need to change the national conversation before it is too late and we lose more of the key elements of the independence of advice and thought that we have established in the state and allied and quasi-autonomous agencies, as well as in the universities and the creative industries, and that lie at the heart of liberal democracy.

    Dr Peter Davis is emeritus professor of population health and social science at Auckland University, and a former elected member of the Auckland District Health Board. This article was first published by The Post and is republished with the author’s permission

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Return of Stagflation

    When investing, as in horror films, the most terrifying villains are the ones we thought were dead. Stagflation that economic nightmare of the 1970s characterized by stagnant growth paired with persistent inflation was supposedly dead and buried decades ago. But like any good movie monster, it’s clawing its way back to the surface, and Americans need to prepare for its return.

    The warning signs are unmistakable. Despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate-hiking campaign over the past two years, inflation remains stubbornly above target. February’s Consumer Price Index showed prices still rising at 3.2%, while previous months have delivered unwelcome upside surprises. Meanwhile, GDP growth has begun to sputter, at just 1.6% in the first quarter, down sharply from 3.4% in late 2023.

    Even more alarming, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s closely watched GDPNow forecast model has recently slashed its second-quarter growth projection. When the Fed’s regional banks signal economic deceleration while inflation persists, the stagflation alarm bells should be ringing loudly.

    This toxic combination represents the classic stagflation recipe: prices rise faster than paychecks while economic momentum simultaneously loses steam. Conventional economic models struggle to address this scenario, as policies that fight inflation typically hamper growth, while growth-boosting measures often exacerbate inflation.

    Stagflation is particularly pernicious because it confounds traditional economic remedies. When inflation and unemployment rise simultaneously, policymakers face an impossible choice between fighting one problem while exacerbating the other.

    The warning signals extend beyond inflation and growth statistics. Federal agencies have begun implementing hiring freezes and initiating workforce reductions as budget pressures mount. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that federal government employment declined by 5,000 jobs in January alone, with more cuts potentially looming. These job losses contribute to economic stagnation without addressing the underlying inflation problem.

    Meanwhile, fiscal austerity measures designed to address budget deficits have reduced government spending across multiple agencies. While necessary for long-term fiscal health, these spending cuts remove economic stimulus precisely when private sector growth is already slowing, amplifying stagflationary pressures.

    Perhaps most concerning for millions of Americans is the resumption of student loan payments after a three-year pandemic pause. With average monthly payments of $200-$300, the Department of Education estimates that borrowers collectively face over $7 billion in monthly payments—essentially a massive consumer spending tax that dampens economic activity without addressing supply-side inflation drivers. For many households, these payments come on top of significantly higher housing costs, energy bills, and grocery expenses.

    Labor markets offer another concerning indicator. Despite headlines touting low unemployment, job growth has slowed considerably. In contrast, wage growth hasn’t kept pace with inflation in many sectors. Companies are increasingly caught in a vise between rising costs and consumers unable or unwilling to absorb higher prices.

    The roots of our current predicament are not hard to identify. Years of extraordinary monetary accommodation followed by trillions in pandemic stimulus created excess liquidity. Supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions, and energy price volatility fueled the fire. We’re left with an economy where growth is cooling, but prices refuse to follow suit.

    For investors, the stagflation playbook requires a dramatic departure from conventional wisdom. The investment landscape of the next several years will reward those willing to adapt and punish those clinging to outdated strategies.

    First and foremost, commodities deserve a prominent place in any stagflation-resistant portfolio. During the 1970s stagflation, the S&P GSCI commodity index delivered a staggering 586% return over the decade. Gold performed even more spectacularly, rocketing from about $269 per ounce in 1970 to over $2,500 by 1980.

    Why do commodities shine in stagflationary environments? They represent tangible assets with intrinsic value that tend to rise with inflation. Hard assets become monetary safe havens when currencies weaken through policy interventions or economic uncertainty.

    Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) also merit serious consideration. Unlike conventional bonds, which suffered brutal losses during the 1970s with approximately negative 3% annualized actual returns, TIPS adjust their principal value based on the Consumer Price Index. This built-in inflation protection can preserve purchasing power when conventional fixed-income investments crumble.

    Investors should pivot decisively toward defensive sectors within equities—consumer staples, healthcare, and utilities. These industries provide essential goods and services people need regardless of economic conditions, and many possess the pricing power to pass inflation through to consumers. During past stagflationary episodes, U.S. consumer staples delivered average quarterly returns of +7.9%, while consumer discretionary stocks declined by 1.3%.

    The dangers of stagflation extend far beyond investment portfolios. The most insidious aspect of stagflation is how it methodically erodes societal living standards. When prices rise faster than wages for extended periods, everyday purchases become increasingly painful. Essentials consume a growing share of household budgets, leaving less for discretionary spending, savings, or investments in the future.

    The psychological toll shouldn’t be underestimated either. During the 1970s stagflation, consumer confidence plummeted to record lows as Americans believed economic malaise was permanent. This pessimism affected everything from marriage rates to entrepreneurship, creating a downward spiral of reduced risk-taking and investment precisely when the economy needed it most.

    Stagflation particularly punishes those on fixed incomes especially retirees whose pension or Social Security benefits fail to keep pace with true living costs. It also penalizes savers, and those with traditional fixed-income investments, who watch their purchasing power diminish monthly.

    For younger Americans already grappling with housing affordability challenges and now facing resumed student loan payments, stagflation compounds financial stress. Many millennials and Gen Z workers entered a labor market already characterized by stagnant real wages; persistent inflation threatens to erase what little progress they’ve made.

    Businesses suffer, too, caught between rising input costs and price-sensitive consumers. Profit margins contract, leading to reduced hiring, investment cuts, and, in many cases, layoffs. Small businesses with less pricing power and financial cushion are particularly vulnerable, potentially leading to increased market concentration as only the largest firms survive.

    Stagflation will eventually end through successful policy intervention or economic adjustment, but the transition may prove lengthy and painful. The 1970s stagflation persisted for nearly a decade before Paul Volcker’s Federal Reserve crushed inflation, with interest rates approaching 20%.

    Today’s policymakers face a similar dilemma, but even higher debt levels constrain their options. The Fed has signaled reluctance to cut rates while inflation remains elevated, yet maintaining restrictive policy risks further dampening growth—the very definition of our stagflationary trap.

    Preparation means building financial resilience for individuals: reducing high-interest debt, maintaining emergency savings, and seeking opportunities to increase skills and income potential. Homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages benefit from what amounts to an inflation discount on their housing debt, while renters may need to budget more aggressively as housing costs continue climbing.

    Though difficult, stagflation is ultimately a surmountable challenge. Following the 1970s ordeal, America entered a period of extraordinary growth and prosperity. The pain of adjustment, while real, eventually gave way to renewed economic vitality. The same can happen again if we make the difficult choices necessary to restore price stability while fostering sustainable growth.

    The stagflation monster may be back, but America has faced and overcome economic challenges throughout its history. By understanding the nature of the threat and taking appropriate actions both as individuals and as a society, maybe we can weather this economic storm and emerge stronger on the other side. The alternative of ignoring the warning signs until a crisis forces our hand will only prolong the pain and deepen the eventual reckoning. The time for clear-eyed assessment and deliberate action is now.

    Whilst observing the questionable economic decisions of our elected officials, it seems that no one will bury stagflation back in the graveyard.

    The post The Return of Stagflation first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Won’t Get Fooled Again?

    Of course I want peace. Probably as much as anyone reading this.

    Naturally, I get excited and hopeful, whenever there are any signs that we are moving in the direction of a more peaceful world.

    At the same time, I’m fed up with being led down a primrose path only to find an Abrams tank waiting at the end.

    Trump has made enormous strides, or the appearance of enormous strides, toward rapprochement with Russia and ending the Ukraine war. He rightfully points out that this was a needless conflict. Whether he could and would have prevented it is debatable.

    Certainly, the fact that the horrifying slaughter which has claimed an estimated 1,000,000 Ukrainians and 100,000 Russians may finally be ending soon is welcome news.

    But make no mistake about it.

    Trump is not a Peace President.

    Because at the same time we entertain the prospect of peace in Ukraine, there are many extremely disturbing things unfolding elsewhere. Here are just a few revealing items.

    Trump has ramped up the bombing of Somalia. Of course, we know what a threat to our national security Somalia is. And we also know that innocent Somali citizens are the wrong color, so if we kill a few thousand more, who cares?

    It has been reported by reliable non-mainstream sources that a formidable number of B-52 bombers continue to arrive at U.S. bases in the Middle East. These are high-altitude aircraft, so it is doubtful they will be used to drop food and other humanitarian supplies to the besieged people of Gaza. That anti-Iran rhetoric is also accelerating makes this very concerning. Trump may not be Putin’s puppet, but he most assuredly is Bibi’s buttboy. WW3 anyone?

    Lethal weapons from the U.S. continue to pour into Israel. So far Trump has approved $12 billion, that enormous sum within only a month-and-a-half. The Trump administration in a ham-fisted unconstitutional end run around Congress days ago rushed more than $2 billion to Netanyahu’s killing machine, justifying the armaments by declaring that Israel is facing a state of emergency. What’s the emergency? The tour buses for Israelis to gleefully view the genocide need an oil change?

    Then there’s the constant saber rattling about China. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently announced that the U.S. is ready to go to war with China. It’s inevitable, you know. War with China. No other option. Why? DON’T BE SO RUDE! What? Are you a Xi Jinping apologist? They’re COMMIES. Enough said.

    Many analysts are saying that seeking peace in Ukraine actually serves the war agenda: 1) The U.S. is seeking to split Russia off from their close relationship with China, and 2) Ukraine is a distraction. America must marshal its military resources for the Big War. Kiddie cops cozy up to Kiev. Real men bomb Beijing.

    Trump loves power. Trump loves thumping his chest as the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet. Any talk of peace ultimately only in some twisted fashion feeds into delusions of empire, underscores the right of might, fuels the quest for conquest.

    So …

    When you walk that primrose path, take care to avoid the landmines.

    The post Won’t Get Fooled Again? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • OPINION: Resuming bilateral Cambodian military drills won’t be enough for the US

    Why is Phnom Penh now willing to give the United States what it has been demanding for years?

    At a meeting on Feb. 24 with Ronald Clark, commanding general of the the U.S. Army Pacific, Cambodia’s military chief Vong Pisen made the most explicit call to date for restarting the bilateral “Angkor Sentinel” military drills that Phnom Penh had suspended in 2017.

    Washington has been encouraging the resumption of the exercises since at least 2020, yet Phnom Penh had strung the U.S. along with offers of counterterrorism cooperation, a much lower-level form of engagement.

    Cambodia suspended Angkor Sentinel in early 2017 on the premise that its troops were needed to guard that year’s local elections.

    Gen. Ronald P. Clark, left, commander of the US Army Pacific, meets with Gen. Vong Pisen, commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, on Feb. 24, 2025.
    Gen. Ronald P. Clark, left, commander of the US Army Pacific, meets with Gen. Vong Pisen, commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, on Feb. 24, 2025.
    (Royal Cambodian Armed Forces)

    A few months later, however, Cambodia’s military started its first joint “Golden Dragon” drills with China. A few months after that, Cambodia’s ruling party dissolved its only political opponent on charges of plotting a U.S.-backed coup.

    The same year, Phnom Penh banned several U.S. Congress-funded organizations, sparking a deterioration in U.S.-Cambodia relations.

    In 2018, Washington started alleging that Phnom Penh had agreed to a secret deal to allow China exclusive use of its Ream Naval Base. U.S. policymakers came to see Cambodia as a “lost” Chinese client state.

    Some observers suggest that Phnom Penh’s offer to restart the Angkor Sentinel drills is a result of Cambodia’s leadership succession in 2023.

    That year, long-ruling prime minister Hun Sen, who typically has taken a dim view of the U.S., handed over power to his eldest son Hun Manet, a West Point-educated general considered by some to be reformist and Western-looking.

    This is almost certainly not the reason.

    China dependency

    Hun Manet might be the prime minister, but Hun Sen still calls the shots, especially over foreign policy. Hun Sen’s trusted ally, Prak Sokhonn, was brought back as foreign minister last November to further solidify his control over foreign relations.

    Another claim is that Phnom Penh is trying to appease U.S. President Donald Trump to avoid tariffs and wants to win over Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who as senator had long called for U.S. sanctions on Cambodia over its democratic backsliding and human rights violations.

    In fact, it was the Biden administration that began a slow, gradual process of reengaging Cambodia, and talks about Angkor Sentinel began at least in October.

    The foundations were probably laid long before that, possibly when then-CIA Director Bill Burns visited Phnom Penh last June to meet with Hun Sen. It was the Biden administration that arranged for an U.S. warship to make a port call in Cambodia in December, the first to do so since 2016.

    The actual motivation for Phnom Penh to reopen the war games is that it has now accepted that it must reduce its dependency on China.

    This explains why Cambodia has spent considerable energy in improving relations with Japan, Canada, Australia and Saudi Arabia in recent months — while also trying to silence exiled dissidents in those countries.

    The Chinese military ship Qijiguang prepares to dock at the Sihanoukville port, Cambodia, May 19, 2024.
    The Chinese military ship Qijiguang prepares to dock at the Sihanoukville port, Cambodia, May 19, 2024.
    (AFP)

    Cambodia’s economy grew by around 5 percent last year, but it’s far from healthy.

    Aside from domestic factors like private debt and bad loans, a lack of Chinese investment since the COVID-19 pandemic has weakened the construction and real estate sectors, while tourism is still reeling from the lack of Chinese visitors.

    The U.S., by contrast, has steadily accounted for around two-fifths of all Cambodia’s exports for almost a decade.

    More importantly, Beijing will no longer throw armfuls of cash at every infrastructure project Phnom Penh thinks it needs.

    This became clear last year when Beijing refused to put up substantial funds for the Funan Techo Canal, a vanity megaproject for the Hun family. Last year, China did not approve any new loans to Cambodia.

    Scam center crackdown

    As well as being more picky, the Chinese government has demanded that Southeast Asian governments tackle their vast cyber scam industries, which are defrauding ordinary Chinese out of tens of billions of dollars each year

    The scam centers have put a strain on China’s already weakened economy and the heavy role of Chinese crime groups in the sector is increasingly a source of national embarrassment for the Chinese Communist Party.

    Beijing launched a massive public information campaign about its scam-busting efforts in December, before public anger rose in January over news that Chinese actor Wang Xing had been kidnapped in Thailand and forced to work in a scam compound in Myanmar.

    He was rescued, but the Chinese public is demanding their government take more action to rescue their relatives.

    Talk among Cambodia watchers is that Beijing is irate about Phnom Penh’s lackluster efforts at cracking down on the scam sector.

    A casino in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, Feb. 2020.
    A casino in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, Feb. 2020.
    (Reuters)

    China has found a willing partner in Thailand—which launched major raids on scam compounds on its border with Myanmar last month. Beijing has also cooperated with Laos’ communist government and some parties in Myanmar’s raging civil war.

    Cambodia, though, is allegedly dragging its feet, much to everyone’s frustration, not just China’s.

    Some analysts reckon that “pig-butchering” scammers are finding a safe haven in Cambodia as compounds are shut down elsewhere in the region.

    Bangkok has just revealed that it is debating whether to build a wall along parts of its border with Cambodia.

    Pressing Phnom Penh

    If the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) is correct, Cambodia’s scam industry is worth $12.5 billion annually, the equivalent of a third of the formal economy.

    According to some experts, Cambodia is also somewhat unique in that a large percentage of the proceeds are laundered through the local economy.

    If the authorities were to launch a major crackdown, most Cambodian oligarchs and senior ruling party politicians would allegedly lose access to billions of dollars in tithes and dodgy contracts.

    “The level of co-option of state actors in countries like Cambodia exceeds what we saw in narco-states of the 1990s in Latin America,” Jacob Sims, an expert on organized crime in Southeast Asia, recently told The Economist.

    Worse, it might destabilize the economy. Who knows how much money from the scammers is propping up construction or property or any other sector?

    We now have the ironic situation in which the U.S. and China are aligned over what they want from the Cambodian government: a substantial and meaningful crackdown on the scammers.

    Indeed, Washington, like Beijing, is also increasingly concerned that Cambodia-based scammers are defrauding its nationals.

    Last September, the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh estimated that Americans had lost at least $100 million to scams originating in Cambodia.

    The same month, Ly Yong Phat, a Cambodian senator and the oligarch arguably closest to the Hun family, was hit by U.S. sanctions because of his association with the illegal industry.

    RELATED STORIES

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    Beijing’s growing frustration with Phnom Penh might soon come to a head.

    There is talk that Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to visit Phnom Penh, possibly next month. It’s unlikely that he would arrive — or depart — without a major concession from the Hun family on the scam industry.

    Phnom Penh possibly wants to use the resumption of the Angkor Sentinel drills with the U.S. as a way of signaling to Beijing that it is not as beholden as it once was to Chinese pressure.

    Whether China would go “soft” so as not to lose influence to the U.S. is another matter.

    According to informed sources in Phnom Penh and Washington, most U.S. policymakers don’t view the resumption of Angkor Sentinel as a major sea change after eight years of fraught U.S.-Cambodia relations.

    While welcoming an important step towards healthier relations, Washington will be looking for Cambodia to make a more drastic break from Beijing, they say.

    David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by commentator David Hutt.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The only reason No Other Land was palatable at the Oscars was because Israelis were involved

    No Other Land rightly won Best Documentary Feature at this year’s Oscars. The film has been touted as a Palestine-Israel collaboration, with Palestinian Basel Adra and Israeli Yuval Abraham part of the directorial team alongside Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal. Basel and Yuval both appear in the film, which is a meticulously crafted documentary on repeated Israeli demolitions of Basel’s hometown, Masafer Yatta.

    In a collective statement, the directors said:

    We made this film because we believe that there can be no just future between the river and the sea for all the inhabitants without real justice for the Palestinian people and the Palestinian refugees.

    However, Yuval’s comments at the Oscars reveal much about both the political dynamics within the film, and in Hollywood more broadly.

    No Other Land

    Basel was the first to speak during their acceptance speech at the Oscars, and he said:

    Thank you to the Academy for the award. It’s such a big honour for the four of us and everybody who supported us for this documentary. About two months ago, I became a father and my hope to my daughter that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing settler violence, home demolitions, and forced displacements that my community, Masafer Yatta, is living and facing every day under the Israeli occupation.

    No Other Land reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still persist as we call on the world to take serious action to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.

    Basel served as the primary figure in No Other Land, and his family and community in Masafer Yatta were the subjects of the film. Through his camera, we meet his mother, father, and siblings.

    The documentary is punctuated with frequent and terrifying interventions from the Israeli military.

    We see them thrust demolition papers signed by Israeli officials into the faces of the Masafer Yatta community. They repeatedly force Palestinians out of their homes, confiscate building materials, and bodily remove people from their homes.

    They demolish an elementary school, they arrest Palestinians, they terrorise children. And, these soldiers increasingly stalk Basel as it becomes clear that he will persist with recording their actions.

    Sanitisation

    Yuval travels across the border as Basel’s friend. Yuval is there to document the ethnic cleansing of the region as an Israeli journalist. The two go for food, and Yuval serves as a kind of interlocutor once the Israeli military square up to residents in Masafer Yatta.

    No Other Land explores Yuval’s tenuous position as a friend of Basel as the reality of Israeli ethnic cleansing understandably makes Basel and his community weary and suspicious of Yuval.

    At the Oscars, Yuval said:

    We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger. We see each other, the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end. The Israeli hostages, brutally taken in the crime of October 7th, which must be freed.

    When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law, and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control. There is a different path, a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path.

    Why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe, if Basel’s people are truly free and safe. There is another way. It’s not too late for life, for the living. There is no other way.

    Yuval’s comments are typical of someone who has had a settler colonial upbringing. The equation of the destruction of Gaza alongside the hostages taken on 7 October is, at best, a partial and ignorant narrative. Israel has been abducting Palestinians for decades, holding them without charge or trial, and brutally torturing people.

    Using 7 October as somehow equivalent to the genocide in Gaza is a sickening sanitisation of the horror Israel has unleashed in Gaza.

    Yuval’s acceptance speech is underpinned with notions of a two state solution which, considering the ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine that Israeli forces have carried out with horrifying glee, is a fantasy.

    American foreign policy is indeed blocking any path to peace. But, Yuval’s remarks gesture towards a vision of peace where coexistence is presumed to be an Israeli desire. The past year or so has demonstrated that Israeli leadership, allies, and civilians desire no such thing.

    Zionist tactics

    Yuval’s comments stand starkly against his colleagues. Basel is calling for a stop to ethnic cleansing and forced displacement. Yuval, meanwhile, is calling for a ‘both sides’ approach which pretends that Israel and Palestine are on an even playing field.

    Israel continues to have the might of the Western world supporting its ethnic cleansing, while the most powerful states could barely even muster a call for ceasefire, never mind a call for a liberated Palestine.

    No Other Land does lay these tensions out. For anyone who’s seen the documentary, Yuval’s comments won’t have come as a surprise.

    On multiple occasions, Basel’s face is etched with sorrow and yearning as he sees his friend, Yuval, able to travel and live freely. Yuval is so accustomed to his own freedom that he is able to casually declare he is going home, after a day gathering journalistic information about the forced displacement of Basel’s family.

    Later in the documentary when Basel and Yuval go out for food, Yuval asks Basel if he’d like to have a family, a wife and kids, of his own. When Basel answers that for him this question is complicated, Yuval asks if it’s a question of money.

    Basel doesn’t give a direct answer – often during the film, he stops talking in the middle of a conversation, looking wearied and heartbroken.

    What else could he say or do?

    No Other Land: showing Israel’s relentless ethnic cleansing

    No Other Land demonstrates the relentless nature of Israeli ethnic cleansing. Not only do they force children and injured civilians out of their homes, they leave them having to live in caves. They confiscate construction equipment, lest the local community recover. They shoot at protesters. They arrest people and disappear them. Their arrivals in the middle of the night herald only terror.

    Yuval has to know that he is the more acceptable face of No Other Land. His presence is there to make Palestinian suffering palatable to a Western palate. It’s difficult to forget Basel’s expressions as the trauma of his daily life plays out on his face. Yuval is able to imagine any kind of future he likes, full of family, children, travel, joy, and laughter. His future is a certainty, all while his countrymen, and perhaps even friends and family, terrorise Palestinians.

    Israeli safety (and the very notion of its future) has been directly tied to the destruction of Palestinian life since the creation of Israel. The least we can do is consider the Palestinian imaginary of freedom and liberation as one that is irrevocably tied to the Israeli genocidal ethos.

    No Other Land is a triumph of a documentary – but it is a triumph that belongs to Basel, his family, and his community in Masafer Yatta.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • We need to stop young boy’s dangerous fascination with Andrew Tate. It’s already gone too far

    After waking up and hearing the news that Kyle Clifford had watched Andrew Tate videos before his sadistic rape and murder of Louise Hunt (his then-girlfriend) and the cold-blooded killing of her sister and mum, it got me thinking: surely now, people will stand up against the war of terror on women?

    Andrew Tate: a vilified misogynist

    Andrew Tate, who has been charged in Romania for rape and human trafficking as well as setting up organised crime groups to sexually exploit women, is a vilified misogynist. He makes hating women and girls his career, as he bombards men and young, vulnerable teenage boys with content that encourages them to treat women as subordinate and deserving of punishment and abuse if they don’t do as they are instructed by their ‘master’. 

    In several of his clips, he consistently discusses choking women, controlling them, and even threatening them with a machete:

    It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up bitch.

    Self-styled hero to men and boys, Tate is instead the absolute embodiment of toxic masculinity. He and his views no longer hide in the shadows of the dark web, but in full view of the public as he perpetuates the very seams of social media, with his videos worryingly being viewed more than 11.6 billion times. 

    Yet little to nothing has been done by social media platforms to prevent Tate’s extremely harmful content from appearing on people’s timelines. It seems that there is no care or guardrails even remotely being put up to stop him from poisoning the minds of boys who are infected by the Tate misogyny parasite. 

    More and more, we see young teenage boys being pulled into the sphere of Tate and other dangerous far-right figures such as Tommy Robinson.

    Ensnaring young men and boys

    Many teachers across schools in England have also expressed their concerns. The growing influence of Andrew Tate is doing irreparable harm to the minds of boys who believe that women are beneath them and should be forced to simply stay in the house to cook and clean and obey their orders. 

    Enamoured by Tate’s lifestyle – the flash cars, the Lamborghinis, and the crypto – it is clear that Andrew Tate is essentially grooming young boys en masse to share his same deeply polluted and chauvinistic views, so they too might become minions of Tate

    But the reality of that is far from the truth.

    It will simply create people like Kyle Clifford, who was so incandescent with rage towards his girlfriend that he plotted the triple murder for months on end before he eventually carried out his savage and cold-blooded crime.   

    Before committing murder, he had begun to research and purchase weapons as well as watching porn online and misogynistic videos. 

    The prosecutor, Alison Morgan, argued that the kind of material and content that Clifford was searching was key in terms of how:

    he views women and why sexualised violence is an important part of the attack.

    During the trial, the prosecution was also told that Clifford did not like to be told “no” by women. Louise had raised concerns to close friends and loved ones about him being an aggressive person with a very nasty temper. 

    Enabling misogyny, rape, and murder

    Four British women who had sued Andrew Tate on Thursday for his harmful content, and published a statement through their lawyers, also reinforced the call for Tate to be removed from social media companies’ platforms, as the misogynist continues to “reap enormous profits from his hateful content”. 

    Whilst women are made to suffer, boys as young as 10 and 11 are being convinced to believe the rhetoric that “men are better than women”. There are even reports of young girls in the classroom who engage with Andrew Tate’s content being asked for sex by their schoolmates. 

    It is therefore clear that this ultra-macho world is more than just crypto, fitness, and getting other men on side. It also suggests that belittling women is fine and acceptable in a world where Tate and others like him are not held to account for their actions. 

    Similar to being groomed for a terrorist gang or organisation, teachers have also raised concerns that schools must get a grip on Tate’s catastrophic influence on teenage boys. They’ve said that the public and government needs to start a wider conversation about how to stop violence against women and girls and his impact and encouragement of this. 

    Police have raised fears and alarms too. They have in recent years and months come across cases where Andrew Tate has been at the front and centre of the radicalisation of young men, with recent statistics from the NPCC stating that from 2022-23, violence against women and girls accounted for “20% of all police recorded crime”.

    Andrew Tate: blood on his hands

    To make matters worse, just last week, Andrew Tate was welcomed to the US with open arms by president Donald Trump who evidently sees the influencer as a useful tool to reinforce his anti-DEI and anti-‘woke’ world view. 

    This is not at all surprising considering that Trump has been accused of raping several women in the US and made consistent comments that degrade women. For example, during his first election campaign he deemed it as acceptable to “grab em by the pussy” (meaning women). So, Trump clearly sees Tate as a man who is cut from the same twisted cloth.  

    Surely this is enough for social media companies to take back control to protect users from such harmful and repulsive content?

    We must do more to protect women and girls across the country who are at a high risk of experiencing abuse at the hands of men by removing Tate from social media platforms. 

    It is evident that by simply letting Andrew Tate continue to pollute the minds of men and boys across the world, we are not only going to see a rise in domestic abuse and violence, but the rapes and murders of young women and girls.  

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Megan Miley

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • #SwindonsSundaySermon: vote Labour, get maniacs, war, and neo-Nazis

    Apparently, the greatest battles are fought within ourselves, and I can kind of run with that right now.

    On one hand, you have the ex-comedy guy that somehow ended up in charge of a country with a bit of a Nazi problem, Voldemort Zelenskyy.

    President Zelenskyy may well do something for Home Counties women of a certain age, but I’m always going to be a tad sceptical of a man that said he wants his country to become a “big Israel”.

    Ukraine and Zelensky: no friends of ours

    Part of this drive to become a big Israel involves “conscription squads” descending on towns and cities across Ukraine, searching for men between the ages of 25 and 60, KIDNAPPING them, and forcing them to sign up to stand in front of Putin’s army.

    I still see a few lost souls on the left with a Ukrainian flag next to their social media user names. Honestly, Ukraine and Zelenskyy are no friends of ours, although they do have a deep and intimate relationship with the British tax payer.

    May I remind you, Zelenskyy described the fugitive leader of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, as the greatest statesman of our times.

    Child killer, ethnic cleanser, tyrant, evil genocidal murderer — add one of your own if you like — but greatest statesman of our times? Fuck off.

    Then on the other hand, you have the greatest threat to world peace since himself, a Hillbilly MAGA fanatic masquerading as a vice president, and the world’s richest person egging them on from the sidelines.

    President Donald Trump definitely doesn’t do anything for Home Counties women of a certain age, but I have absolutely no scepticism towards Trump, because he makes no secret of his desire to turn Gaza into a rich (white) man’s paradise.

    Trump: truly evil

    What can I say about Trump that hasn’t already been said?

    Robert De Niro, an actor that is entirely familiar with portraying violent and dangerous characters, said of Trump:

    I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men. I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly. I see an evil one.

    So there you have it. Two cheeks of the same, yet entirely different arse.

    While some on the left will applaud Trump for cutting out the supply of American arms to Ukraine, let us not forget the very same American idiot is arming Israel to “finish the job”, in Gaza.

    Don’t get me wrong, president Zelenskyy got exactly what he deserved. I’m regularly sickened to see European leaders emptying their respective countries’ coffers to fund and fuel further death and destruction.

    Did anyone ask you how you felt about cuts to vital public services to fund a conflict in a former Soviet state? Nor me.

    Take from the pensioners to give to Ukraine

    What the Labour Party takes from Britain’s poorest pensioners with one hand, they give to Zelenskyy to fight an unwinnable war with the other.

    Putin’s Russia is likely to win, and no amount of sabre rattling, Euros, or British Pounds from domestically-desperate liberals is going to change that.

    Why aren’t the far-right flag shaggers apoplectic with rage with the military welfare being gifted to the tiresome Zelenskyy when there were 2,270 homeless veteran cases reported last year? The double standards are truly staggering.

    This has to end somewhere and somehow because it is unsustainable and entirely unacceptable when there is a vast array of problems both home and abroad that need to be prioritised way ahead of Zelenskyy’s pocket money.

    We seem to live in an age where the corporate media demand that you pick a side. If you’re not screaming “Slava Ukraini” from the rooftops you’re labelled a Putin apologist.

    The Putin apologist label is often used to stifle perfectly legitimate criticisms of the Ukrainian regime in the same way Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters were wrongly accused of being virulent antisemites to stifle perfectly legitimate criticisms of the Israeli pariah state.

    If we carry on as we are, Keir Starmer’s final bill for the Ukraine distraction will end up making Brexit look like a bargain.

    I know it’s not a popular opinion amongst the British people, but if Ukraine is our problem so is Gaza, Lebanon, and South Sudan.

    Why should a failed colonialist country like Britain get to decide the life of a child from Kyiv is worth more than the life of a child from Rafah?

    Vote Labour, get ne-Nazis

    Nearly 900,000 Russian sons and daughters have died fighting this needless war. Countless Ukrainian’s have perished, many of whom had absolutely no choice but to lay down their lives for someone else’s conflict.

    Unless peace prevails, it will be British sons and daughters that pay the ultimate price for NATO’s ongoing expansion and Putin’s aggressive response.

    The voices for peace are few and far between. There is no weakness in declaring death and destruction must come to an immediate end. A strong leader understands that every war starts with words and ultimately, ends with words.

    Britain simply does not have that leadership. Starmer is no different to any of the previous occupants of Number 10, Downing Street.

    If Keir Starmer was a genuinely principled leader, he wouldn’t be allowing British Labour MPs to parade members of Ukraine’s far-right Azov Brigade around parliament, would he?

    Vote Labour, get Neo-Nazis.

    They secretly harbour ambitions of a return to the ‘halcyon days’ of the British Empire and a time when Britain had an armed forces that rampaged and robbed its way around the world with no fucks given for the millions of victims of its colonial desires.

    Zelenskyy got the brutal stage-managed slap he well and truly deserved, be in no doubt of that. Britain now has to decide if they want to be next in line for a pasting, and while that is unlikely to come from a mesmerised Donald Trump, it will take a bit more than a state visit to stop Mr Putin from reaching out and putting little isolated Keir Starmer flat on his backside.

    Featured image via Rachael Swindon

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • In the dying days of late-stage capitalism, are Kate, Rachel, and Kemi really our ‘feminist icons’?

    Let’s start off with the good news: Gisele Pelicot has been awarded the number one spot in the Independent’s 50 most influential women of 2025. The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is ‘accelerate action’; in view of current projections that gender equality will not be achieved until 2158 at the existing rate of progress. 

    Pelicot undoubtedly deserves the top spot. Due to her brave public testimony, dozens of perpetrators of male violence have been convicted. International awareness of the dark web, and sexual violence against older women, has been raised.

    However, as I scrolled down to find Kate Middleton, Rachel Reeves and – I kid you not – Kemi Badenoch occupying 2nd, 3rd and 4th place in the Independent’s list, I wondered if I’d slept through March and woken up on April Fool’s Day. 

    Independent’s 50 most influential women: surely a joke?

    It’s not easy to feel optimistic about gender equality in this political climate. Violence against women and girls is increasing, workplace equality is tanking, and women in Afghanistan are banned from speaking or showing their faces in public.

    We certainly need to do something but, with all due respect, I’m not sure that trad wife multi-millionaire Kate Middleton – a literal Princess – is going to lead us out of this mess.

    While even Meghan Markle concedes that Kate is essentially a ‘good person’, as the suffragettes knew all too well – centuries of women being ‘good’ and ‘well behaved’ has never led to women receiving an equal share of social, political, and economic power. 

    I’m struggling to recall an occasion in the past two decades when Kate Middleton, the epitome of white aristocratic privilege, has used her power to effect real change for disadvantaged women. She sits at the top of an archaic institution that embodies feudalism, colonialism, and the patriarchy, and she is one of the few women who benefits from the status quo.    

    Rachel Reeves, aka the Iron Chancellor, isn’t doing too badly out of the capitalist status quo either.

    She went down a storm at Davos with her pledge to help multimillionaires evade tax and her willingness to make life even harder for homeless women, disabled women, and single mothers – all to balance some imaginary books.

    Let’s be clear: Rachel Reeves is not a champion for working class and marginalised women, and our desperately under-funded public services will continue to suffer while she remains at the helm. 

    Kate, Rachel, and Kemi: the worst of the worst?

    Kemi Badenoch is no feminist ally either.

    While she opens the Independent’s sleek, corporate-style IWD short video by stressing the importance of ‘equality of opportunity’, it’s worth clarifying that she is talking about the ‘opportunity’ that disadvantaged women have to compete for jobs with Oxbridge-educated white men.

    Sadly, these ‘opportunities’ have done almost nothing to shift the gender income and wealth gap, or the number of women being killed by male partners or family members. Kemi’s keenness to deport Black and brown refugee women and girls to unsafe countries, and withdraw from human rights treaties, reveals where her true interests lie.    

    To be fair to the Independent, Kate, Rachel and Kemi are extremely influential, and that’s precisely the problem we’re up against. They represent loyalty and obedience to a system of ultra-capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy that threatens the human rights of women everywhere.   

    The Independent: more clear-eyed realism, less loyalty and obedience

    This all sounds terribly bleak, but truly, if we really want to dismantle systemic oppression against women, we need clear-eyed realism, and we need ordinary women and men to join grassroots movements.

    We can use our people power to show that we won’t stand for sexism in 2025.  

    There are smaller things we can do too.

    The UK is full of feminist icons, but they’re probably not sitting in a Palace or the House of Commons. I’m fairly sure there’s a true feminist icon in your neighbourhood: maybe she lives on your street, or even in your house.

    This International Women’s Day, we should let these women know that we see them, their struggle isn’t in vain, and we’ve got their back.   

    Featured image via screengrab

    By Kate Bermingham

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • OPINION: Rohingya women are the grassroots advocates behind genocide arrest warrants

    The global celebration of International Women’s Day is a call to action to support and amplify the efforts of the extraordinary girls and women around the world who are tirelessly working within their communities to defend their rights and to empower future generations.

    Last month, we saw the Argentinian federal court issue arrest warrants against 25 Myanmar officials, including the seniormost military leaders, for genocide and crimes against humanity committed against the Rohingya community between 2012 and 2018. Our thoughts immediately went to the brave Rohingya women who helped make this significant legal action possible.

    For years, the Shanti Mohila (Peace Women), a group of over 400 Rohingya women living in the refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh, have defied societal expectations and conservative gender norms.

    They are leaders in their community fighting for recognition and justice for the harms endured at the hands of the Myanmar military. They play a vital role as leaders, educators, and advocates for justice.

    RELATED STORIES

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    The 2017 “clearance operations” by the Myanmar military against the historically persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority living in the Rakhine state were a series of widespread and systematic attacks involving mass killings, torture, and destruction of houses that led to the largest forced displacement of the Rohingya community from Myanmar into neighboring Bangladesh.

    Sexual violence was a hallmark of these “clearance operations,” with young women and girls disproportionately affected by brutal and inhuman acts of sexual and gender-based violence. Yet, despite efforts to destroy them through long-term serious physical and mental harm, Rohingya women fought back.

    Shanti Mohila members participate in a series of art facilitation sessions conducted by Legal Action Worldwide in collaboration with Artolution Inc. in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in 2024.
    Shanti Mohila members participate in a series of art facilitation sessions conducted by Legal Action Worldwide in collaboration with Artolution Inc. in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in 2024.
    (Ayesha Nawshin/Legal Action Worldwide)

    Shanti Mohila members have mobilized to raise awareness of the large-scale sexual and gender-based violence endured by Rohingya women between 2016 and 2017. They have spoken about their experiences before international justice proceedings and catalyzed change by breaking down the stigma associated with victimhood and inspiring next generations of Rohingya women through action.

    In 2023, their remarkable achievements were recognized as they were honored as Raphael Lemkin Champions of Prevention by the U.N. Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide.

    Contributing evidence to justice mechanisms

    The testimonies Shanti Mohila members have provided and encouraged other survivors to step forward to provide over the past years have given the opportunity to investigative mechanisms, NGOs, and lawyers to present evidence before all ongoing international justice proceedings.

    Specifically, Shanti Mohila members are among the survivors who provided key witness statements in The Gambia v. Myanmar case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

    In 2019, two representatives were in The Hague as part of The Gambia delegation to observe provisional measures hearings at the ICJ.

    In 2023, they were among the group of seven witnesses in Buenos Aires to testify in the investigative hearings under the universal jurisdiction principle before the federal criminal court – leading to the recent court order of the first-ever arrest warrants for crimes of genocide against key state officials and members of the Myanmar military.

    “I could not believe I could tell an international court about my sufferings. I could not believe it until I stepped into the courtroom,” said “Salma” (not her real name), a Rohingya female witness who requested anonymity for privacy and safety concerns.

    “It was difficult for me to speak about the death of my family and their names, but I did it for justice, for my grandchildren, for a future where we can return home with dignity,” she said. “They [perpetrators] targeted women first to break our community, our morale.”

    “Who would have thought that we, the Rohingya women, would one day be taking the Myanmar military to the court?”

    It is worth highlighting here why exactly the evidence from survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is so critical to successfully prosecute and hold the Myanmar military accountable, particularly for genocide.

    The “intent to destroy a group in whole or in part” is a necessary element to prove the crime of genocide, which can be notoriously difficult to evidence.

    In the Rohingya context, the scale and brutality of SGBV during the 2017 “clearance operations” was identified by the U.N. Independent Fact-Finding Mission as one of the key factors that “inferred” the Myanmar military’s genocidal intent to destroy the Rohingya people.

    Rohingya refugee women hold placards as they take part in a protest at the Kutupalong refugee camp to mark the first year of their exodus in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Aug. 25, 2018.
    Rohingya refugee women hold placards as they take part in a protest at the Kutupalong refugee camp to mark the first year of their exodus in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Aug. 25, 2018.
    (Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)

    Sexual violence against Rohingya women and young mothers in front of their families, and the accompanying sexual mutilations and forced pregnancies, are some of the most significant reflections of the perpetrators’ desire to inflict severe social and reproductive harm on the community.

    The SGBV was not only a part of the campaign of mass killings, torture and destruction of property in 2017 but also committed in the context of decades-long propagated narrative that uncontrolled Rohingya birth rate is a threat to the survival of the nation, and state policies that placed significant legal restraint on Rohingya reproductive rights.

    In a 2023 study on long-term impact of sexual and gender-based violence against the Rohingya men, women, and hijra conducted by the Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), clinical analysis by psychologists and medical doctors revealed that the SGBV against Rohingya had resulted in: permanent damage to survivors’ genitalia impacting their ability to procreate; severe psychological injuries that have left them in a state of extreme emotional distress; damaged the survivors’ family relations including with their spouse and children; severe ostracization of the women and children born of rape; and forced reorganization of the Rohingya households.

    The evidence of SGBV is critical in that its commission and its enduring and foreseeable impact on survivors clearly shows that the Myanmar military inflicted serious mental and bodily harm and imposed measures intending to prevent births within the community. It also reflects a deliberate incremental step in causing the biological or physical destruction of the group while inflicting acute suffering on its members in the process.

    Leaders within the Shanti Mohila network have been instrumental in supporting the conceptualization and implementation of studies such as the 2023 report – making them truly the grassroots advocates for the community.

    Towards holistic justice and healing

    Alongside these important contributions, the Shanti Mohila members continuously work within the camps in Cox’s Bazar to ensure awareness of the ongoing justice processes and provide peer support to one another and the wider community.

    Last year, LAW and Shanti Mohila engaged with Rohingya activists around the globe through LAW’s Rohingya Diaspora Dialogue initiative to foster wider recognition and advocacy for the significant work being done by the Rohingya women in Cox’s Bazar on gender equality and to hold the perpetrators of serious crimes responsible.

    These actions embody Shanti Mohila’s commitment and openness to learning.

    They are dedicated to remaining bold and effective advocates for their community and being against the illegitimate military regime that continues to commit atrocities against civilians across Myanmar.

    Shanti Mohila members stand in an embrace in a gesture of support and solidarity, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in 2022.
    Shanti Mohila members stand in an embrace in a gesture of support and solidarity, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in 2022.
    (Ayesha Nawshin/Legal Action Worldwide)

    The challenges remain plenty since the renewed conflict between Arakan Army and Myanmar military in late 2023 has led to upward of 60,000 Rohingya arriving in Cox’s Bazar in a new wave of forced displacement, joining over 1 million Rohingya refugees already living in the camps.

    The evolving conflict dynamics in the Rakhine state and its impact on the Rohingya there add to the tensions in the camps. The risk of another surge in the forced recruitment of the Rohingya in the camps by organized groups pressuring youths to join the civil war in Myanmar persists.

    Amid this, the work and growth of Shanti Mohila can prove to be a stabilizing force, beyond their contributions to women empowerment and the justice process. They can provide an avenue to offset the negative impacts of the deteriorating regional security situation through promoting efforts toward reconciliation and encouraging people to keep the rule of law and justice at the center of their struggle.

    On this International Women’s Day, we celebrate the groundbreaking work of Shanti Mohila and the power and legacy they are creating for generations of Rohingya women, their community as a whole, and women across fragile and conflict-affected contexts worldwide.

    Ishita Kumar, based in Cox’s Bazar, is the legal and program adviser on the Rohingya crisis for Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), an independent, non-profit organization of human rights lawyers and jurists working in fragile and conflict-affected areas. LAW has been supporting Shanti Mohila leaders and representing over 300 Rohingya in the ongoing international justice processes about their treatment in Myanmar, including at the International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court and supporting universal jurisdiction cases in foreign domestic courts such as in Argentina. The views expressed here are hers, not those of Radio Free Asia.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by guest commentator Ishita Kumar.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Ukrainian Commando vs US Business-Being

    Commando Zelenskyy

    One thing that instantly struck me watching the White House press conference February 28, 2025 with US President Donald Trump, Vice President J. D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was that the grand welcome accorded to Zelenskyy by the previous US government of Joe Biden and some Western European governments had gone to Zelenskyy’s head. He expected that as he was like an idol to warmongers like Biden and to reporters itching to see Russia defeated, that he would be so to Trump, too.

    (Watch Biden/Zelenskyy bonhomie at a press conference with reporters from the dominant/major/traditional/legacy media, the war media, to whom Russia is the “evil empire,” per President Ronald Reagan’s label.)

    Zelenskyy was told to put on a suit when visiting the White House. He showed up wearing a commando like stylish black sweatshirt with the logo of Ukrainian tryzub or trident and black pants, both from Ukrainian fashion designer Elvira Gasanova’s menswear label Damirli.

    One should have the freedom to wear whatever one wants, however, Zelenskyy has not always worn such casual clothes. He used to wear suits till Russia attacked1 Ukraine, since then his attire has been military/commando style clothes which he says he’ll wear till the war ends. Zelenskyy is not always on the war front, but his clothing creates an impression that he is just coming from the war front, this in turn deludes him into believing that he is kind of a commando. This commando mentality proved almost fatal for the United States-Ukraine relations when he acted as one during the meeting. On March 3, Trump ordered a pause to all military aid to Ukraine — the first wise step to stop the war. Intelligence sharing is also on pause. Zelenskyy needs to come out of this commando mentality.

    If Zelenskyy was more powerful than Trump, he could do, wear, say, whatever he wanted to. But he is not. He met Trump for Ukraine, not for himself. If the meeting was a personal one, no one will give a damn even if he blew it up. No. This interaction was for Ukraine and he should have remembered that. As the saying goes: Beggars can’t be choosers. Or as Trump put it: “You don’t have the cards. With us, you have the cards. Without us, you don’t have any cards.”

    Zelenskyy badly needs a class in 101 diplomacy. You don’t cut off the branch you’re sitting on; Zelenskyy almost cut off the branch (of the US aid tree) on which Ukraine depends. During the meeting, he constantly argued rather than try and take the conversation towards a more agreeable path.

    Despite the fact that US Senator Lindsey Graham, a strong Trump supporter, had warned Zelenskyy beforehand: “Don’t take the bait. Don’t let the media or anyone else get you into an argument with President Trump.”

    Zelenskyy’s arguments wouldn’t have mattered if he was arguing with the Biden team, because it was the Biden regime’s war.

    Another thing one can deduce from Zelenskyy’s behavior is that he’s not smart like Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu or India’s Narendra Modi (both have big egos and cruel mentality, and wouldn’t hesitate to unleash violence to achieve the desired goals). But neither argue or show any displeasure when they meet Trump because they know they are weak partners vis-a-vis the US which is very strong — I would say too strong for our world, not a very good thing. Israeli leaders are famous for insulting, bypassing, or ordering US leaders but they can’t do that with Trump — of course, instead, they get things done with flattery.

    Invited for lunch, but humiliated and shown the door without lunch from the White House, Zelenskyy flew into London in the warm and comforting embrace (albeit, a momentary one) of Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the UK. (Britain, once the greatest empire in the world, now has not much power except, every now and then, it makes some noise to draw attention.)

    A conference of 18 leaders: Europeans and Canada’s Justin Trudeau, were called to support Ukraine which Starmer called “coalition of the willing.” The unwilling ones will be crushed or maligned. But the leaders were aware that without the US not much can be accomplished.

    Donald Tusk of Poland: “Dear [Zelenskyy], dear Ukrainian friends, you are not standing alone.”

    Tusk should have added: We are all together but still alone unless the Globo Cop US joins in.

    It seems like Zelenskyy came his senses. On March 4, he said:

    “None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians.” “My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.”

    Zelenskyy must be feeling very humiliated: first for being dressed down by Trump, and, then for accepting “Trump’s strong leadership.”

    Advice for Zelenskyy, if he’s allowed to stay in power, or any other leader who takes over: Try to stay neutral, avoid joining NATO, be friendly, as much as possible, with your neighbors, including Russia, and prevent being a proxy in the hands of US/European warmongers. The devastating result in the form of death and destruction for both Ukraine and Russia is in front of you, due to your prolongation of the war.

    Ukrainians must watch the following video of a speech given by Jeffrey Sachs to the European Parliament.

    Business-being Trump

    The effective rate for many anti-bacterial, disinfectant, and other products is advertised as 99.99% effective. In other words, it’s not absolutely effective and not totally potent.

    The same analogy can also be applied to Trump. One could say Trump is 99.99% nasty, greedy, cruel, or whatever. That, however, leaves room for some uprightness in Trump.

    Trump’s figure for US support of $350 billion dollars to Ukraine was, as usual, exaggerated, the actual amount is about $183 billion — huge sum of money for the war, for which major support comes only from the Democratic Party’s “affluent upper-middle class base.” However, the total amount Ukraine received from the US, European Union institutes, several countries, and groups amounts to $380 billion.

    For Trump, Zelenskyy is not a hero. Trump is a different entity with a diverse agenda; he has been talking about ending the Russia/Ukraine war for a long time and so it was counterproductive to argue and throw tantrums rather than listening to Trump and then requesting a favor here and a favor there. Of course, Trump has his own interest in facilitating a ceasefire, he is eyeing Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.

    After all, Trump is business-being and like most businesspersons, his motive is always a financial one.

    Trump is right when he points out the danger of the Russian Ukraine war:

    “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War Three2.”

    Trump attacked

    The war news media and many European leaders instead of thanking Trump for his efforts in working for a ceasefire, which would not only prevent loss of life and destruction in Ukraine and Russia but would also save US and European taxpayers’ money, lambasted him for being a “bully” and termed discussion with Zelenskyy an “ambush.”

    Financial Times’ Europe editor Ben Hall said Trump and Vance “were spoiling for a fight” with Zelenskyy. Marc Polymeropoulus, MSNBC’s National Security & Intelligence Analyst noted that Trump and Vance “have humiliated the United States” when they shouted at Zelenskyy.

    German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier: “The scene in the White House yesterday took my breath away. I would never have believed that we would one day have to protect Ukraine from the U.S.A.”

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused Trump and Vance of “doing Putin’s dirty work.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) described Trump’s berating of Zelenskyy “utter embarrassment” for the US.

    Trump is wrong on a huge number of issues but not on this one. All those criticizing him are foes of Ukrainian people; it’s they who are paying the price for this meaningless war.

    ENDNOTES:

    The post Ukrainian Commando vs US Business-Being first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    The former USSR’s (now Russia) request for NATO membership in mid 1950s was rejected. Why? two logical reasons: one, if Russia is in NATO then you have no enemy to fight with. That is a no, no. Also, there wouldn’t be a war lobby and no arms-related corruption; not a good thing for lobbyists, Congresspersons, weapons producers who always get their cuts, profit, and so on. The other reason was a united Europe wouldn’t be as vulnerable to US dictates as it is now.
    2    The World War I and the World War II started by Europeans and the world was dragged in because most countries were under European colonial rule. (The name World War is a misnomer — actually it should be called European World War.) How wise are these idiot European leaders whose insanity could drive Europe towards the European World War III.

    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will introduce 27 European Union members with her “ReArm Europe” costing $840 billion.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Through the lens of time: A tribute to ‘Rocky’ Roe’s PNG photography

    PROFILE: By Malum Nalu in Port Moresby

    For nearly half a century, Papua New Guinea has been more than just a home for Laurence “Rocky” Roe — it has been his canvas, his inspiration, and his great love.

    A master behind the lens, Rocky has captured the soul of the nation through his photography, preserving moments of history, culture, and progress.

    He bid farewell to the country he has called home since 1976 in June 2021 and is now retired and living in Australia. We reflect on the extraordinary journey of a man whose work has become an indelible part of PNG’s visual history.

    A journey born of adventure
    Rocky Roe’s story began in Adelaide, Australia, where he was born in 1947. His adventure in Papua New Guinea started in 1976 when he arrived as a mechanical fitter for Bougainville Copper. But his heart sought more than the structured life of a mining camp.

    In 1979, he took a leap of faith, moving to Port Moresby and trading a higher salary for a passion — photography. What he lost in pay, he gained in purpose.

    “I wanted to see Papua New Guinea,” Rocky recalls. “And I got an opportunity to get paid to see it.”

    Capturing the essence of a nation
    From corporate photography to historic events, Rocky’s lens has documented the evolution of Papua New Guinea. He was there when leaders rose to prominence, capturing moments that would later adorn national currency — his photograph of Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare graces the K50 note.

    His work went beyond the formal; he ventured deep into the Highlands, the islands, and bustling townships, preserving the heart and spirit of the people.

    With each shot, he chronicled the changing landscape of Port Moresby. From a city of well-kept roads and modest housing in the 1970s to its present-day urban sprawl, Rocky witnessed and documented it all.

    The evolution of photography
    Rocky’s career spanned a transformative era in photography — from the meticulous world of slide film, where exposure errors were unforgiving, to the digital revolution, where technology made photography more accessible.

    “Autofocus hadn’t been invented,” he recalls. “Half the world couldn’t focus a camera back then.” Yet, through skill and patience, he mastered the art, adapting as the industry evolved.

    His assignments took him to mine sites, oil fields, and remote locations where only helicopters could reach.

    “I spent many hours flying with the door off, capturing PNG from above. Looking through the camera made it all feel natural. Without it, I might have been scared.”

    The man behind the camera
    Despite the grandeur of his work, Rocky remains humble. A storyteller at heart, his greatest joy has been the connections he forged—whether photographing Miss PNG contestants over the years or engaging with young photographers eager to learn.

    He speaks fondly of his colleagues, the friendships he built, and the country that embraced him as one of its own.

    His time in Papua New Guinea was not without challenges. He encountered moments of danger, faced armed hold-ups, and saw the country grapple with law and order issues. Yet, his love for PNG never wavered.

    “It’s the greatest place on earth,” he says, reflecting on his journey.

    A fond farewell, but not goodbye
    Now, as Rocky returns to Australia to tend to his health, he leaves behind a legacy that will live on in the countless images he captured. Papua New Guinea will always be home to him, and its people, his extended family.

    “I may come back if someone brings me back,” he says with a knowing smile.

    Papua New Guinea bids farewell to a legend, a visual historian who gave us the gift of memories frozen in time. His photographs are not just images; they are stories, emotions, and a testament to a life well-lived in the pursuit of beauty and truth.

    Farewell, Rocky Roe. Your work will continue to inspire generations to come.

    Independent Papua New Guinea journalist Malum Nalu first published this article on his blog Happenings in Papua New Guinea as part of a series leading up to PNG’s 50th anniversary this year. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The world cannot ignore Trump’s death threat to the people of Gaza

    COMMENTARY: By Ahmed Najar

    ‘To the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!’

    These were not the words of some far-right provocateur lurking in a dark corner of the internet. They were not shouted by an unhinged warlord seeking vengeance.

    No, these were the words of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world. A man who with a signature, a speech or a single phrase can shape the fate of entire nations.

    And yet, with all this power, all this influence, his words to the people of Gaza were not of peace, not of diplomacy, not of relief — but of death.

    I read them and I feel sick.

    Because I know exactly who he is speaking to. He is speaking to my family. To my parents, who lost relatives and their home.

    To my siblings, who no longer have a place to return to. To the starving children in Gaza, who have done nothing but be born to a people the world has deemed unworthy of existence.

    To the grieving mothers who have buried their children. To the fathers who can do nothing but watch their babies die in their arms.

    To the people who have lost everything and yet are still expected to endure more.

    No future left
    Trump speaks of a “beautiful future” for the people of Gaza. But there is no future left where homes are gone, where whole families have been erased, where children have been massacred.

    I read these words and I ask: What kind of a world do we live in?

    President-elect Donald Trump
    President Trump’s “words are criminal. They are a direct endorsement of genocide. The people of Gaza are not responsible for what is happening. They are not holding hostages.” Image: NYT screenshot/APR/X@@xandrerodriguez

    A world where the leader of the so-called “free world” can issue a blanket death sentence to an entire population — two million people, most of whom are displaced, starving and barely clinging to life.

    A world where a man who commands the most powerful military can sit in his office, insulated from the screams, the blood, the unbearable stench of death, and declare that if the people of Gaza do not comply with his demand — if they do not somehow magically find and free hostages they have no control over — then they are simply “dead”.

    A world where genocide survivors are given an ultimatum of mass death by a man who claims to stand for peace.

    This is not just absurd. It is evil.

    Trump’s words are criminal. They are a direct endorsement of genocide. The people of Gaza are not responsible for what is happening. They are not holding hostages.

    Trapped by an Israeli war machine
    They are the hostages – trapped by an Israeli war machine that has stolen everything from them. Hostages to a brutal siege that has starved them, bombed them, displaced them, left them with nowhere to go.

    And now, they have become hostages to the most powerful man on Earth, who threatens them with more suffering, more death, unless they meet a demand they are incapable of fulfilling.

    Most cynically, Trump knows his words will not be met with any meaningful pushback. Who in the American political establishment will hold him accountable for threatening genocide?

    The Democratic Party, which enabled Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza? Congress, which overwhelmingly supports sending US military aid to Israel with no conditions? The mainstream media, which have systematically erased Palestinian suffering?

    There is no political cost for Trump to make such statements. If anything, they bolster his position.

    This is the world we live in. A world where Palestinian lives are so disposable that the President of the United States can threaten mass death without fear of any consequences.

    I write this because I refuse to let this be just another outrageous Trump statement that people laugh off, that the media turns into a spectacle, that the world forgets.

    My heart. My everything
    I write this because Gaza is not a talking point. It is not a headline. It is my home. My family. My history. My heart. My everything.

    And I refuse to accept that the President of the United States can issue death threats to my people with impunity.

    The people of Gaza do not control their own fate. They have never had that luxury. Their fate has always been dictated by the bombs that fall on them, by the siege that starves them, by the governments that abandon them.

    And now, their fate is being dictated by a man in Washington, DC, who sees no issue with threatening the annihilation of an entire population.

    So I ask again: What kind of world do we live in?

    And how long will we allow it to remain this way?

    Ahmed Najar is a Palestinian political analyst and a playwright. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Trump has ‘declared war against the American people’, says Ralph Nader

    Democracy Now!

    AMY GOODMAN: President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress in a highly partisan 100-minute speech, the longest presidential address to Congress in modern history on Wednesday.

    Trump defended his sweeping actions over the past six weeks.

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years, and we are just getting started.

    AMY GOODMAN: President Trump praised his biggest campaign donor, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who’s leading Trump’s effort to dismantle key government agencies and cut critical government services.

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And to that end, I have created the brand-new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps.

    Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight. Thank you, Elon. He’s working very hard. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

    AMY GOODMAN: Some Democrats laughed and pointed at Elon Musk when President Trump made this comment later in his speech.

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s very simple. And the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over.

    AMY GOODMAN: During his speech, President Trump repeatedly attacked the trans and immigrant communities, defended his tariffs that have sent stock prices spiraling, vowed to end Russia’s war on Ukraine and threatened to take control of Greenland.

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland: We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it.

    But we need it, really, for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it.


    ‘A declaration of war against the American people.’  Video: Democracy Now!

    AMY GOODMAN: During Trump’s 100-minute address, Democratic lawmakers held up signs in protest reading “This is not normal,” “Save Medicaid” and “Musk steals.”

    One Democrat, Congressmember Al Green of Texas, was removed from the chamber for protesting against the President.

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Likewise, small business optimism saw its single-largest one-month gain ever recorded, a 41-point jump.

    REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEMBER 1: Sit down!

    REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEMBER 2: Order!

    SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions. That’s your warning. Members are engaging in willful and continuing breach of decorum, and the chair is prepared to direct the sergeant-at-arms to restore order to the joint session.

    Mr Green, take your seat. Take your seat, sir.

    DEMOCRAT CONGRESS MEMBER AL GREEN: He has no mandate to cut Medicaid!

    SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Take your seat. Finding that members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum, the chair now directs the sergeant-at-arms to restore order, remove this gentleman from the chamber.

    AMY GOODMAN: That was House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called in security to take Texas Democratic Congressmember Al Green out. Afterwards, Green spoke to reporters after being removed.

    Democrat Congressman Al Green (Texas)
    Democrat Congressman Al Green (Texas) . . . “I have people who are very fearful. These are poor people, and they have only Medicaid in their lives when it comes to their healthcare.” Image: DN screenshot APR

    DEMOCRAT CONGRESS MEMBER AL GREEN: The President said he had a mandate, and I was making it clear to the President that he has no mandate to cut Medicaid.

    I have people who are very fearful. These are poor people, and they have only Medicaid in their lives when it comes to their healthcare. And I want him to know that his budget calls for deep cuts in Medicaid.

    He needs to save Medicaid, protect it. We need to raise the cap on Social Security. There’s a possibility that it’s going to be hurt. And we’ve got to protect Medicare.

    These are the safety net programmes that people in my congressional district depend on. And this President seems to care less about them and more about the number of people that he can remove from the various programmes that have been so helpful to so many people.

    AMY GOODMAN: Texas Democratic Congressmember Al Green.

    We begin today’s show with Ralph Nader, the longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, former presidential candidate. Ralph Nader is founder of the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper. His most recent lead article in the new issue of Capitol Hill Citizen is titled “Democratic Party: Apologise to America for ushering Trump back in.”

    He is also the author of the forthcoming book Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country That Works for the People.

    Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, all these different programmes. Ralph Nader, respond overall to President Trump’s, well, longest congressional address in modern history.

    Environmentalist and consumer protection activist Ralph Nader
    Environmentalist and consumer protection activist Ralph Nader . . . And he’s taken Biden’s genocidal policies one step further by demanding the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza. Image: DN screenshot APR

    RALPH NADER: Well, it was also a declaration of war against the American people, including Trump voters, in favour of the super-rich and the giant corporations. What Trump did last night was set a record for lies, delusionary fantasies, predictions of future broken promises — a rerun of his first term — boasts about progress that don’t exist.

    In practice, he has launched a trade war. He has launched an arms race with China and Russia. He has perpetuated and even worsened the genocidal support against the Palestinians. He never mentioned the Palestinians once.

    And he’s taken Biden’s genocidal policies one step further by demanding the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza.

    But taking it as a whole, Amy, what we’re seeing here defies most of dictionary adjectives. What Trump and Musk and Vance and the supine Republicans are doing are installing an imperial, militaristic domestic dictatorship that is going to end up in a police state.

    You can see his appointments are yes people bent on suppression of civil liberties, civil rights. You can see his breakthrough, after over 120 years, of announcing conquest of Panama Canal.

    He’s basically said, one way or another, he’s going to take Greenland. These are not just imperial controls of countries overseas or overthrowing them; it’s actually seizing land.

    Now, on the Greenland thing, Greenland is a province of Denmark, which is a member of NATO. He is ready to basically conquer a part of Denmark in violation of Section 5 of NATO, at the same time that he has displayed full-throated support for a hardcore communist dictator, Vladimir Putin, who started out with the Russian version of the CIA under the Soviet Union and now has over 20 years of communist dictatorship, allied, of course, with a number of oligarchs, a kind of kleptocracy.

    And the Republicans are buying all this in Congress. This is complete reversal of everything that the Republicans stood for against communist dictators.

    So, what we’re seeing here is a phony programme of government efficiency ripping apart people’s programmes. The attack on Social Security is new, complete lies about millions of people aged 110, 120, getting Social Security cheques.

    That’s a new attack. He left Social Security alone in his first term, but now he’s going after [it]. So, what they’re going to do is cut Medicaid and cut other social safety nets in order to pay for another tax cut for the super-rich and the corporation, throwing in no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security benefits, which will, of course, further increase the deficit and give the lie to his statement that he wants a balanced budget.

    So we’re dealing with a deranged, unstable pathological liar, who’s getting away with it. And the question is: How does he get away with it, year after year? Because the Democratic Party has basically collapsed.

    They don’t know how to deal with a criminal recidivist, a person who has hired workers without documents and exploited them, a person who’s a bigot against immigrants, including legal immigrants who are performing totally critical tasks in home healthcare, processing poultry, meat, and half of the construction workers in Texas are undocumented workers.

    So, as a bully, he doesn’t go after the construction industry in Texas; he picks out individuals.

    I thought the most disgraceful thing, Amy, yesterday was his use of these unfortunate people who suffered as props, holding one up after another. But they were also Trump’s crutches to cover up his contradictory behavior.

    So, he praised the police yesterday, but he pardoned over 600 people who attacked violently the police [in the attack on the Capitol] on 6 January 2021 and were convicted and imprisoned as a result, and he let them out of prison. I thought the most —

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph? Ralph, I —

    RALPH NADER: — the most heartrending thing was that 13-year-old child, who wanted to be a police officer when he grew up, being held up twice by his father. And he was so bewildered as to what was going on. And Trump’s use of these people was totally reprehensible and should be called out.

    Now, more basically, the real inefficiencies in government, they’re ignoring, because they are kleptocrats. They’re ignoring corporate crimes on Medicaid, Medicare, tens of billions of dollars every year ripping off Medicare, ripping off government contracts, such as defence contracts.

    He’s ignoring hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare, including that doled out to Elon Musk — subsidies, handouts, giveaways, bailouts, you name it. And he’s ignoring the bloated military budget, which he is supporting the Republicans in actually increasing the military budget more than the generals have asked for. So, that’s the revelation —

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph? Ralph, if I — Ralph, if I can interrupt? I just need to —

    RALPH NADER: — that the Democrats need to pursue.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph, I wanted to ask you about — specifically about Medicaid and Medicare. You’ve mentioned the cuts to these safety net programmes. What about Medicaid, especially the crisis in this country in long-term care? What do you see happening in this Trump administration, especially with the Republican majority in Congress?

    RALPH NADER: Well, they’re going to slash — they’re going to move to slash Medicaid, which serves over 71 million people, including millions of Trump voters, who should be reconsidering their vote as the days pass, because they’re being exploited in red states, blue states, everywhere, as well.

    Yeah, they have to cut tens of billions of dollars a year from Medicaid to pay for the tax cut. That’s number one. Now they’re going after Social Security. Who knows what the next step will be on Medicare? They’re leaving Americans totally defenceless by slashing meat and poultry and food inspection laws, auto safety.

    They’re exposing people to climate violence by cutting FEMA, the rescue agency. They’re cutting forest rangers that deal with wildfires. They’re cutting protections against pandemics and epidemics by slashing and ravaging and suppressing free speech in scientific circles, like CDC and National Institutes of Health.

    They’re leaving the American people defenseless.

    And where are the Democrats on this? I mean, look at Senator Slotkin’s response. It was a typical rerun of a feeble, weak Democratic rebuttal. She couldn’t get herself, just like the Democrats in 2024, which led to Trump’s victory — they can’t get themselves, Juan, to talk specifically and authentically about raising the minimum wage, expanding healthcare, cracking down on corporate crooks that are bleeding out the incomes of hard-pressed American workers and the poor.

    They can’t get themselves to talk about increasing frozen Social Security budgets for 50 years, that 200 Democrats supported raising, but Nancy Pelosi kept them, when she was Speaker, from taking John Larson’s bill to the House floor.

    That’s why they lose. Look at her speech. It was so vague and general. They chose her because she was in the national security state. She was a former CIA. They chose her because they wanted to promote the losing version of the Democratic Party, instead of choosing Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, the most popular polled politician in America today.

    That’s who they chose. So, as long as the Democrats monopolise the opposition and crush third-party efforts to push them into more progressive realms, the Republican, plutocratic, Wall Street, war machine declaration of war against the American people will continue.

    We’re heading into the most serious crisis in American history. There’s no comparison.

    AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, we’re going to have to leave it there, but, of course, we’re going to continue to cover these issues. And I also wanted to wish you, Ralph, a happy 91st birthday. Ralph Nader —

    RALPH NADER: I wish people to get the Capitol Hill Citizen, which tells people what they can really do to win democracy and justice back. So, for $5 or donation or more, if you wish, you can go to Capitol Hill Citizen and get a copy sent immediately by first-class mail, or more copies for your circle, of resisting and protesting and prevailing over this Trump dictatorship.

    AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, four-time presidential candidate, founder of the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper. This is Democracy Now!

    The original content of this programme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence. Republished by Asia Pacific Report under Creative Commons.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Why America, the EU, and Ukraine, Should Lose to Russia in Ukraine’s War

    The war in Ukraine is, but in reverse, the same situation that America’s President JFK had faced with regard to the Soviet Union in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. would have invaded Cuba if Khrushchev wouldn’t agree to a mutually acceptable settlement — which he did, and so WW3 was averted on that occasion. But whereas Khrushchev was reasonable; Obama, Biden, and Trump, are not; and, so, we again stand at the brink of a WW3, but this time with a truly evil head-of-state (Obama, then Biden, and now Trump), who might even be willing to go beyond that brink — into WW3 — in order to become able to achieve world-conquest. This is as-if Khrushchev had said no to JFK’s proposal in 1962 — but, thankfully, he didn’t; so, WW3 was averted, on that occasion.

    How often have you heard or seen the situation in the matter of Cuba being near to the White House (near to America’s central command) being analogized to Ukraine’s being near  — far nearer, in fact — to The Kremlin (Russia’s central command)? No, you probably haven’t encountered this historical context before, because it’s not being published — at least not in America and its allied countries. It’s being hidden.

    The Ukrainian war actually started after the democratically elected President of Ukraine (an infamously corrupt country), who was committed to keeping his country internationally neutral (not allied with either Russia or the United States), met privately with both the U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2010, shortly following that Ukrainian President’s election earlier in 2010; and, on both occasions, he rejected their urgings for Ukraine to become allied with the United States against his adjoining country Russia. This was being urged upon him so that America could position its nuclear missiles at the Russian border with Ukraine, less than a five-minute striking-distance away from hitting the Kremlin in Moscow.

    The war in Ukraine started in 2014, as both NATO’s Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s Zelensky have said (NOT in 2022 as is alleged in the U.S.-controlled nations). This war was started in February 2014 by a U.S. coup which replaced the democratically elected and neutralist Ukrainian President, with a U.S. selected and rabidly anti-Russian leader, who immediately imposed an ethnic-cleansing program to get rid of the residents in the regions that had voted overwhelmingly for the overthrown President. Russia responded militarily on 24 February 2022, in order to prevent Ukraine from allowing the U.S. to place a missile there a mere 317 miles or five minutes of missile-flying-time away from The Kremlin and thus too brief for Russia to respond before its central command would already be beheaded by America’s nuclear strike. (As I headlined on 28 October 2022, “NATO Wants To Place Nuclear Missiles On Finland’s Russian Border — Finland Says Yes”. The U.S. had demanded this, especially because it will place American nuclear missiles far nearer to The Kremlin than at present, only 507 miles away — not as close as Ukraine, but the closest yet.)

    Ukraine was neutral between Russia and America until Obama’s brilliantly executed Ukrainian coup, which his Administration started planning by no later than June 2011, culminated successfully in February 2014 and promptly appointed a anti-Russian to impose in regions that rejected the new anti-Russian U.S.-controlled goverment an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” to kill protesters, and, ultimately, to terrorize the residents in those regions in order to kill as many of them as possible and to force the others to flee into Russia so that when elections would be held, pro-Russian voters would no longer be in the electorate.

    The U.S. Government had engaged the Gallup polling organization, both  before  and  after  the  coup,  in order to poll Ukrainians, and especially ones who lived in its Crimean independent republic (where Russia has had its main naval base ever since 1783), regarding their views on U.S., Russia, NATO, and the EU; and, generally, Ukrainians were far more pro-Russia than pro-U.S., pro-NATO, or pro-EU, but this was especially the case in Crimea; so, America’s Government knew that Crimeans would be especially resistant. However, this was not really new information. During 2003-2009, only around 20% of Ukrainians had wanted NATO membership, while around 55% opposed it. In 2010, Gallup found that whereas 17% of Ukrainians considered NATO to mean “protection of your country,” 40% said it’s “a threat to your country.” Ukrainians predominantly saw NATO as an enemy, not a friend. But after Obama’s February 2014 Ukrainian coup, “Ukraine’s NATO membership would get 53.4% of the votes, one third of Ukrainians (33.6%) would oppose it.” However, afterward, the support averaged around 45% — still over twice as high as had been the case prior to the coup.

    In other words: what Obama did was generally successful: it grabbed Ukraine, or most of it, and it changed Ukrainians’ minds regarding America and Russia. But only after the subsequent passage of time did the American billionaires’ neoconservative heart become successfully grafted into the Ukrainian nation so as to make Ukraine a viable place to position U.S. nuclear missiles against Moscow (which is the U.S. Government’s goal there). Furthermore: America’s rulers also needed to do some work upon U.S. public opinion. Not until February of 2014 — the time of Obama’s coup — did more than 15% of the American public have a “very unfavorable” view of Russia. (Right before Russia invaded Ukraine, that figure had already risen to 42%. America’s press — and academia or public-policy ‘experts’ — have been very effective at managing public opinion, for the benefit of America’s billionaires.)

    Then came the Minsk Agreements (#1 & #2, with #2 being the final version, which is shown here, as a U.N. Security Council Resolution), between Ukraine and the separatist region in its far east, and which the U.S. Government refused to participate in, but the U.S.-installed Ukrainian government (then under the oligarch Petro Poroshenko) signed it in order to have a chance of Ukraine’s gaining EU membership, but never complied with any of it; and, so, the war continued); and, then, finally, as the Ukrainian government (now under Volodmyr Zelensky) was greatly intensifying its shelling of the break-away far-eastern region, Russia presented, to both the U.S. Government and its NATO military alliance against Russia, two proposed agreements for negotiation (one to U.S., the other to NATO), but neither the U.S. nor its NATO agreed to negotiate. The key portions of the two 17 December 2021 proposed Agreements, with both the U.S. and with its NATO, were, in regards to NATO:

    Article 1

    The Parties shall guide in their relations by the principles of cooperation, equal and indivisible security. They shall not strengthen their security individually, within international organizations, military alliances or coalitions at the expense of the security of other Parties. …

    Article 4

    The Russian Federation and all the Parties that were member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as of 27 May 1997, respectively, shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other States in Europe in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997. With the consent of all the Parties such deployments can take place in exceptional cases to eliminate a threat to security of one or more Parties.

    Article 5

    The Parties shall not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles in areas allowing them to reach the territory of the other Parties.

    Article 6

    All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States.

    And, in regards to the U.S.:

    Article 2

    The Parties shall seek to ensure that all international organizations, military alliances and coalitions in which at least one of the Parties is taking part adhere to the principles contained in the Charter of the United Nations.

    Article 3

    The Parties shall not use the territories of other States with a view to preparing or carrying out an armed attack against the other Party or other actions affecting core security interests of the other Party.

    Article 4

    The United States of America shall undertake to prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and deny accession to the Alliance to the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

    The United States of America shall not establish military bases in the territory of the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, use their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them.

    Any reader here can easily click onto the respective link to either proposed Agreement, in order to read that entire document, so as to evaluate whether or not all of its proposed provisions are acceptable and reasonable. What was proposed by Russia in each of the two was only a proposal, and the other side (the U.S. side) in each of the two instances, was therefore able to pick and choose amongst those proposed provisions, which ones were accepted, and to negotiate regarding any of the others; but, instead, the U.S. side simply rejected all of them.

    On 7 January 2022, the Associated Press (AP) headlined “US, NATO rule out halt to expansion, reject Russian demands”, and reported:

    Washington and NATO have formally rejected Russia’s key demands for assurances that the US-led military bloc will not expand closer towards its borders, leaked correspondence reportedly shows.

    According to documents seen by Spanish daily El Pais and published on Wednesday morning, Moscow’s calls for a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted as a member of NATO were dismissed following several rounds of talks between Russian and Western diplomats. …

    The US-led bloc denied that it posed a threat to Russia. …

    The US similarly rejected the demand that NATO does not expand even closer to Russia’s borders. “The United States continues to firmly support NATO’s Open Door Policy.”

    NATO-U.S. was by now clearly determined to get Ukraine into NATO and to place its nukes so near to The Kremlin as to constitute, like a checkmate in chess, a forced defeat of Russia, a capture of its central command. This was, but in reverse, the situation that America’s President JFK had faced with regard to the Soviet Union in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. would have invaded Cuba if Khrushchev wouldn’t agree to a mutually acceptable settlement — which he did agree to, and so WW3 was averted on that occasion. But whereas Khrushchev was reasonable, America’s recent Presidents are not; and, so, we again stand at the brink of WW3, but this time with a truly evil head-of-state (America’s recent Presidents), who might even be willing to go beyond that brink in order to become able to achieve world-conquest.

    Russia did what it had to do: it invaded Ukraine, on 24 February 2022. If Khrushchev had said no to JFK’s proposal in 1962, then the U.S. would have invaded and taken over Cuba, because the only other alternative would have been to skip that step and go directly to invade the Soviet Union itself — directly to WW3. Under existing international law, either response — against Cuba, or against the U.S.S.R. — would have been undecidable, because Truman’s U.N. Charter refused to allow “aggression” to be defined (Truman, even at the time of the San Francisco Conference, 25 April to 26 June 1945, that drew up the U.N. Charter, was considering for the U.S. to maybe take over the entire world). Would the aggression in such an instance have been by Khrushchev (and by Eisenhower for having similarly placed U.S. missiles too close to Moscow in 1959), or instead by JFK for responding to that threat? International law needs to be revised so as to prohibit ANY nation that is “too near” to a superpower’s central command, from allying itself with a different superpower so as to enable that other superpower to place its strategic forces so close to that adjoining or nearby superpower as to present a mortal threat against its national security. But, in any case, 317 miles from The Kremlin would easily be far “too close”; and, so, Russia must do everything possible to prevent that from becoming possible. America and its colonies (‘allies’) are CLEARLY in the wrong on this one. (And I think that JFK was likewise correct in the 1962 case — though to a lesser extent because the distance was four times larger in that case — America was the defender and NOT the aggressor in that matter.)

    If this finding appears to you to be too contradictory to what you have read and heard in the past for you to be able to believe it, then my article earlier today (March 4), “The Extent of Lying in the U.S. Press” presents also five other widespread-in-The-West lies, so that you will be able to see that there is nothing particularly unusual about this one, other than that this case could very possibly produce a world-ending nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. People in the mainstream news-business are beholden to the billionaires who control the people who control (hire and fire) themselves, and owe their jobs to that — NOT really to the audience. This is the basic reality. To ignore it is to remain deceived. But you can consider yourself fortunate to be reading this, because none of the mainstream news-sites is allowed to publish articles such as this. None of the mainstream will. They instead deceived you. It’s what they are hired (by their owners and advertisers) to do, so as to continue ruling the Government (by getting you to vote for their candidates).

    Furthermore, I received today from the great investigative journalist Lucy Komisar, who has done many breakthrough news-reports exposing the con-man whom U.S. billionaires have assisted — back even before Obama started imposing sanctions against Russia in 2012 (Bill Browder) — to provide the ‘evidence’ on the basis of which Obama started imposing anti-Russian sanctions, in 2012 (the Magnitsky Act sanctions), recent articles from her, regarding how intentional the press’s refusals to allow the truth to be reported, actually are: on 28 February 2025, her “20 fake US media articles on the Browder Magnitsky hoax and one honest reporter from Cyprus”, and on 4 December 2024, her “MSNBC killed reporter Ken Dilanian’s exposé of the Wm Browder-Magnitsky hoax. State Department knew about it.”

    This isn’t to say, however, that ALL mainstream news-reports in the U.S. empire are false. For example, the Democratic Party site Common Dreams, headlined authentic news against the Republican Party, on March 4, “Trump Threatens Campus Protesters With Imprisonment: ‘Trump here is referring to pro-Palestine protests so you won’t hear a peep from conservatives or even pro-Israel liberals,’ said one journalist”, by Julia Conley; and so did the Republican site N.Y. Post, headlining on 15 October 2020, against the Democratic Party (which Democratic Party media similarly ignored), “Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm.” However, NONE of the empire’s mainstream media publish reports against the U.S. Government or against its empire; so, the lies that have been covered here are virtually universal — go unchallenged — throughout the empire.

    The post Why America, the EU, and Ukraine, Should Lose to Russia in Ukraine’s War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Australian university workers: ‘We will not be silenced over Palestine’

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Markela Panegyres and Jonathan Strauss in Sydney

    The new Universities Australia (UA) definition of antisemitism, endorsed last month for adoption by 39 Australian universities, is an ugly attempt to quash the pro-Palestine solidarity movement on campuses and to silence academics, university workers and students who critique Israel and Zionism.

    While the Scott Morrison Coalition government first proposed tightening the definition, and a recent joint Labor-Coalition parliamentary committee recommended the same, it is yet another example of the Labor government’s overreach.

    It seeks to mould discussion in universities to one that suits its pro-US and pro-Zionist imperialist agenda, while shielding Israel from accountability.

    So far, the UA definition has been widely condemned.

    Nasser Mashni, of Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, has slammed it as “McCarthyism reborn”.

    The Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) has criticised it as “dangerous, politicised and unworkable”. The NSW Council of Civil Liberties said it poses “serious risks to freedom of expression and academic freedom”.

    The UA definition comes in the context of a war against Palestinian activism on campuses.

    The false claim that antisemitism is “rampant” across universities has been weaponised to subdue the Palestinian solidarity movement within higher education and, particularly, to snuff out any repeat of the student-led Gaza solidarity encampments, which sprung up on campuses across the country last year.

    Some students and staff who have been protesting against the genocide since October 2023 have come under attack by university managements.

    Some students have been threatened with suspension and many universities are giving themselves, through new policies, more powers to liaise with police and surveil students and staff.

    Palestinian, Arab and Muslim academics, as well as other anti-racist scholars, have been silenced and disciplined, or face legal action on false counts of antisemitism, merely for criticising Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine.

    Randa Abdel-Fattah, for example, has become the target of a Zionist smear campaign that has successfully managed to strip her of Australian Research Council funding.

    Intensify repression
    The UA definition will further intensify the ongoing repression of people’s rights on campuses to discuss racism, apartheid and occupation in historic Palestine.

    By its own admission, UA acknowledges that its definition is informed by the antisemitism taskforces at Columbia University, Stanford University, Harvard University and New York University, which have meted out draconian and violent repression of pro-Palestine activism.

    The catalyst for the new definition was the February 12 report tabled by Labor MP Josh Burns on antisemitism on Australian campuses. That urged universities to adopt a definition of antisemitism that “closely aligns” with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition.

    It should be noted that the controversial IHRA definition has been opposed by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) for its serious challenge to academic freedom.

    As many leading academics and university workers, including Jewish academics, have repeatedly stressed, criticism of Israel and criticism of Zionism is not antisemitic.

    UA’s definition is arguably more detrimental to freedom of speech and pro-Palestine activism and scholarship than the IHRA definition.

    In the vague IHRA definition, a number of examples of antisemitism are given that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, but not the main text itself.

    By contrast, the new UA definition overtly equates criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism and claims Zionist ideology is a component part of Jewish identity.

    The definition states that “criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic . . . when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel”.

    Dangerously, anyone advocating for a single bi-national democratic state in historic Palestine will be labelled antisemitic under this new definition.

    Anyone who justifiably questions the right of the ethnonationalist, apartheid and genocidal state of Israel to exist will be accused of antisemitism.

    Sweeping claims
    The UA definition also makes the sweeping claim that “for most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity”.

    But, as the JCA points out, Zionism is a national political ideology and is not a core part of Jewish identity historically or today, since many Jews do not support Zionism. The JCA warns that the UA definition “risks fomenting harmful stereotypes that all Jewish people think in a certain way”.

    Moreover, JCA said, Jewish identities are already “a rightly protected category under all racial discrimination laws, whereas political ideologies such as Zionism and support for Israel are not”.

    Like other aspects of politics, political ideologies, such as Zionism, and political stances, such as support for Israel, should be able to be discussed critically.

    According to the UA definition, criticism of Israel can be antisemitic “when it holds Jewish individuals or communities responsible for Israel’s actions”.

    While it would be wrong for any individual or community, because they are Jewish, to be held responsible for Israel’s actions, it is a fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former  minister Yoav Gallant for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    But under the UA definition, since Netanyahu and Gallant are Jewish, would holding them responsible be considered antisemitic?

    Is the ICC antisemitic? According to Israel it is.

    The implication of the definition for universities, which teach law and jurisprudence, is that international law should not be applied to the Israeli state, because it is antisemitic to do so.

    The UA’s definition is vague enough to have a chilling effect on any academic who wants to teach about genocide, apartheid and settler-colonialism. It states that “criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions”.

    What these are is not defined.

    Anti-racism challenge
    Within the academy, there is a strong tradition of anti-racism and decolonial scholarship, particularly the concept of settler colonialism, which, by definition, calls into question the very notion of “statehood”.

    With this new definition of antisemitism, will academics be prevented from teaching students the works of Chelsea Watego, Patrick Wolfe or Edward Said?

    The definition will have serious and damaging repercussions for decolonial scholars and severely impinges the rights of scholars, in particular First Nations scholars and students, to critique empire and colonisation.

    UA is the “peak body” for higher education in Australia, and represents and lobbies for capitalist class interests in higher education.

    It is therefore not surprising that it has developed this particular definition, given its strong bilateral relations with Israeli higher education, including signing a 2013 memorandum of understanding with Association of University Heads, Israel.

    It should be noted that the NTEU National Council last October called on UA to withdraw from this as part of its Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions resolution.

    All university students and staff committed to anti-racism, academic freedom and freedom of speech should join the campaign against the UA definition.

    Local NTEU branches and student groups are discussing and passing motions rejecting the new definition and NTEU for Palestine has called a National Day of Action for March 26 with that as one of its key demands.

    We will not be silenced on Palestine.

    Jonathan Strauss and Markela Panegyres are members of the National Tertiary Education Union and the Socialist Alliance. Republished from Green Left with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Douglas Murray: a pathetic nuisance who’s had a mid-life radicalisation crisis

    Whilst the majority of viewers yelped at the saluting hand of alt-right granddaddy Steve Banon, it was easy to miss the more interesting array of speakers at this month’s conservative conventions, ARC and CPAC. One who has largely gone unnoticed is associate editor of the Spectator, Douglas Murray.

    Once the golden boy of the neoconservative right, he’s taken an odd turn in his output over the last few years. In this, he is a representative of a wider plague amongst once “moderate conservatives” who have taken the plunge into something much more vulgar.

    Murray delighted the crowd with his comments that either implicitly or explicitly slagged off various groups including Palestinians, migrants, and trans people. He pulled out all of the right’s best tools, such as the infamous “what are men and women?” query.

    Ultimately, this residue from the culture war is mostly nonsense. But what is perhaps most striking is this turn in ideology Murray has solidified, namely his more far-right approach on every issue – economic, cultural, and other. The man clearly sees himself to be our generations answer to Bill Buckley, but better resembles a bloated Brownshirt.

    Douglas Murray: part of the intellectual dark web

    Douglas Murray began his, admittedly, quite prominent career as a descendent of the neoconservative political movement, choosing to dedicate his first book on the subject. Emerging from this committee, he modelled his style of oration on his elder contemporaries, embarrassingly being seen to imitate the exact phraseology of famous leftist-turned-neo imperialist Christopher Hitchens.

    He wrote a rather wet eulogy for the old war-monger in a 2011 edition of the Spectator and clearly took a lot from his persona – portraying a bombastic and thick-skinned character. This has obviously aided him in the transition he’s made from neoconservative missionary to podium-thumping far-rightist.

    In 2012, Murray became associate editor of the Spectator which is far more of an important detail than at first it may appear. The Spectator is a large publication from the right in the UK and has a circulation two-fold bigger than the New Statesman, its historic (though desperately turncoat) competitor. It reaches a tremendous audience and had significant links to the annals of authority in the Conservative governments of the last 15 years. Murray’s reach, just in regard to his day job, then, is not to be underestimated at all.

    Sheltered from a storm

    The growing “intellectual dark web” sheltered him from the right-wing storm against neo-conservativism in the mid 2010s and he hasn’t really gone back. Disgraceful figures from this period like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson slowly became fellow travelers on this journey of his.

    This group, for the blessedly unaware, constituted a group of intellectuals and pseudo intellectuals writing and speaking on subjects which had little to do with their field of study or experience. And if one took a critical lens to what they were claiming in their tweets, podcasts, and sad excuses for books, you wouldn’t be stunned to know that they and Murray have taken their flags and driven them far into the ground of the Euro-American Far-right.

    Immigration – as always

    Of course, at this time Douglas Murray was still adjusting his scope to take shot at Europe’s recent immigrant and refugee populations, in light of the contemporary shifts like the Syrian Refugee Crisis. These arguments are one’s he’s devoted serious thought to and uses in almost every slapdash diatribe published under his name.

    Those seemingly coherent lines about how multiethnic migration into “The West” – by which he means the white world – has watered down our culture have become more explicit. This is seen in his recent ARC speech, in which he failed to quite hit the register of humour (even in that sweaty locker room of fascists) as he compared “western culture” to the complexities of vanilla ice-cream. For a man who built his lot on identity politics, he’s more than happy to rile up “Westerners” with their own notions of identity.

    It is on the immigration issue that Murray first seemed to take his more overtly right turn. His casual Islamophobia is clear, yet what he has attempted to shelter under an auspice of “skepticism” is his flirtation with the most right-wing of the British conservative movement.

    The race riots

    In his famous article on the subject of the 2024 race riots, Murray states correctly that one of the causes of the unrest was the unemployment in Northern Towns, inflated by the Conservative government post-2008. He on the one hand slams those who undertook class analysis on the 2011 riots, stating that he was “reluctant” to “assume that unemployment and the resultant hopelessness were factors” in that year’s violence. But he then undertakes the precept as the key factor of analysis in the case of the post-Southport riots.

    In her recent book, Ash Sarkar points out that many journalists, and in this I would include Murray, only deign to care about the working-class when they’re white and can be crow-barred from their black and brown neighbours.

    Douglas Murray: a mid-life radicalisation crisis

    As is to be expected from a right-winger like Douglas Murray, he takes on absolutely no critical class analysis whatsoever, as I’m sure he would claim this as a facet of “cultural Marxism”. He doesn’t blame unemployment on deindustrialisation, or on austerity imposed on the North by Conservative governments, but instead on immigrants.

    The real “uncomfortable truth” is that wages and jobs are not cut by immigrants, but by bosses and boards of directors, incentivised by the financialisation of our economy and by the British government.

    Murray will likely not stop in his swing further and further right. But the story of his trajectory is perhaps an interesting example of what happened to many moderate conservatives. In the late 2010s, those “right-of-centre” commentators were given a wink and a nudge to say what they truly think by powerful far-right political leaders.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By James Horton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • In siding with Russia over Ukraine, Trump is not putting America first. He is hastening its decline

    ANALYSIS: By Matthew Sussex, Australian National University

    Has any nation squandered its diplomatic capital, plundered its own political system, attacked its partners and supplicated itself before its far weaker enemies as rapidly and brazenly as Donald Trump’s America?

    The fiery Oval Office meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday saw the American leader try to publicly humiliate the democratically elected leader of a nation that had been invaded by a rapacious and imperialistic aggressor.

    And this was all because Zelensky refused to sign an act of capitulation, criticised Putin (who has tried to have Zelensky killed on numerous occasions), and failed to bend the knee to Trump, the country’s self-described king.


    The tense Oval Office meeting.    Video: CNN

    The Oval Office meeting became heated in a way that has rarely been seen between world leaders.

    What is worse is Trump has now been around so long that his oafish behaviour has become normalised. Together with his attack dog, Vice-President JD Vance, Trump has thrown the Overton window — the spectrum of subjects politically acceptable to the public — wide open.

    Previously sensible Republicans are now either cowed or co-opted. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is gutting America’s public service and installing toadies in place of professionals, while his social media company, X, is platforming ads from actual neo-Nazis.

    The FBI is run by Kash Patel, who hawked bogus COVID vaccine reversal therapies and wrote children’s books featuring Trump as a monarch. The agency is already busily investigating Trump’s enemies.

    The Department of Health and Human Services is helmed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine denier, just as Americans have begun dying from measles for the first time in a decade. And America’s health and medical research has been channelled into ideologically “approved” topics.

    At the Pentagon, in a breathtaking act of self-sabotage, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered US Cyber Command to halt all operations targeting Russia.

    And cuts to USAID funding are destroying US soft power, creating a vacuum that will gleefully be filled by China. Other Western aid donors are likely to follow suit so they can spend more on their militaries in response to US unilateralism.

    What is Trump’s strategy?
    Trump’s wrecking ball is already having seismic global effects, mere weeks after he took office.

    The US vote against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia for starting the war against Ukraine placed it in previously unthinkable company — on the side of Russia, Belarus and North Korea. Even China abstained from the vote.

    In the United Kingdom, a YouGov poll of more than 5000 respondents found that 48 percent of Britons thought it was more important to support Ukraine than maintain good relations with the US. Only 20 percent favoured supporting America over Ukraine.

    And Trump’s bizarre suggestion that China, Russia and the US halve their respective defence budgets is certain to be interpreted as a sign of weakness rather than strength.

    The oft-used explanation for his behaviour is that it echoes the isolationism of one of his ideological idols, former US President Andrew Jackson. Trump’s aim seems to be ring-fencing American businesses with high tariffs, while attempting to split Russia away from its relationship with China.

    These arguments are both economically illiterate and geopolitically witless. Even a cursory understanding of tariffs reveals that they drive inflation because they are paid by importers who then pass the costs on to consumers. Over time, they are little more than sugar pills that turn economies diabetic, increasingly reliant on state protections from unending trade wars.

    And the “reverse Kissinger” strategy — a reference to the US role in exacerbating the Sino-Soviet split during the Cold War — is wishful thinking to the extreme.

    Putin would have to be utterly incompetent to countenance a move away from Beijing. He has invested significant time and effort to improve this relationship, believing China will be the dominant power of the 21st century.

    Putin would be even more foolish to embrace the US as a full-blown partner. That would turn Russia’s depopulated southern border with China, stretching over 4300 kilometres, into the potential front line of a new Cold War.

    What does this mean for America’s allies?
    While Trump’s moves have undoubtedly strengthened the US’ traditional adversaries, they have also weakened and alarmed its friends.

    Put simply, no American ally — either in Europe or Asia — can now have confidence Washington will honour its security commitments. This was brought starkly home to NATO members at the Munich Security Conference in February, where US representatives informed a stunned audience that America may no longer view itself as the main guarantor of European security.


    Vice-President Vance’s controversial speech to European leaders. Video: DW

    The swiftness of US disengagement means European countries must not only muster the will and means to arm themselves quickly, but also take the lead in collectively providing for Ukraine’s security.

    Whether they can do so remains unclear. Europe’s history of inaction does not bode well.

    US allies also face choices in Asia. Japan and South Korea will now be seriously considering all options – potentially even nuclear weapons – to deter an emboldened China.

    There are worries in Australia, as well. Can it pretend nothing has changed and hope the situation will then normalise after the next US presidential election?

    The future of AUKUS, the deal to purchase (and then co-design) US nuclear-powered submarines, is particularly uncertain.

    Does it make strategic sense to pursue full integration with the US military when the White House could just treat Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul and Canberra with the same indifference it has displayed towards its friends in Europe?

    Ultimately, the chaos Trump 2.0 has unleashed in such a short amount of time is both unprecedented and bewildering. In seeking to put “America First”, Trump is perversely hastening its decline. He is leaving America isolated and untrusted by its closest friends.

    And, in doing so, the world’s most powerful nation has also made the world a more dangerous, uncertain and ultimately an uglier place to be.The Conversation

    Dr Matthew Sussex, is associate professor (adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and research fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • OPINION: Despots face a security rethink in the age of drones

    On Feb. 11, Hun Sen, Cambodia’s de-facto ruler, claimed that the authorities had weeks ago uncovered a plot to kill him at his provincial mansion using drones.

    One person was apparently arrested, Hun Sen said, but others may still be at large.

    Who knows whether it is true or not?

    Some people suspect it’s a conceit by Hun Sen, the former prime minister who handed power to his eldest son in 2023, to justify his incoming law that will brandish political opponents as “terrorists”, in an attempt to deter foreigners from aiding the exiled opposition movement.

    Cambodia's Senate President Hun Sen at a ceremony marking the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, in Phnom Penh on Jan. 7, 2025.
    Cambodia’s Senate President Hun Sen at a ceremony marking the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, in Phnom Penh on Jan. 7, 2025.
    (Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP)

    Speaking about the alleged plot on his life, Hun Sen connected the two: “This is an act of terrorism, and I’d like to urge foreigners to be cautious, refraining from supporting terrorist activities.”

    Such skepticism led one commentator, in an interview with Radio Free Asia, to claim that “ordinary citizens do not have the ability” to hit his heavily guarded Takhmao home.

    In fact, they do.

    Cheap drones for Myanmar opposition

    Myanmar’s four-year-old civil war has shown just how much drones have revolutionized not just warfare but the balance of power between the state and the individual.

    A long-range modified and armed drone costs Myanmar’s rebels around US$1,500.

    By comparison, the International Crisis Group reckons second-hand AK-47s or M-16s cost US$3,000 each.

    Myanmar’s military recently took delivery of six Su-30SMEs fighter jets from Russia, for which it paid $400 million — excluding the weaponry.

    As one commentator put it last year: “In an asymmetric conflict, the drone is helping to equalize the battlescape.”

    Members of the Mandalay People's Defense Force prepare to release a drone amid clashes with Myanmar's military in northern Shan state, Dec. 11, 2023.
    Members of the Mandalay People’s Defense Force prepare to release a drone amid clashes with Myanmar’s military in northern Shan state, Dec. 11, 2023.
    (AFP)

    Junta forces are catching up, for sure. AFP reported a few weeks ago that “the military is adopting the equipment of the anti-coup fighters, using drones to drop mortars or guide artillery strikes and bombing runs by its Chinese and Russian-built air force.”

    However, the revolutionary importance of drones isn’t that a superior force will never adopt the same technology. It’s that drones — now an irreplaceable weapon in modern warfare — cannot be monopolized by a state.

    Not for almost two centuries has there been such a technological leap in the balance of power. Not for at least the past 100 years has a dominant weapon been as cheap and available to the masses.

    ‘History of weapons’

    In October 1945, George Orwell published a short essay that’s best known for popularizing the term “Cold War”.

    “You And The Atom Bomb” also offered a take on the weapons that’s rarely reflected on these days.

    Had the nuclear bomb been as cheap and easy as a bicycle to produce, Orwell reasoned, it might have “plunged us back into barbarism.”

    But because the bomb is a rare and costly thing to make, it might “complete the process [of] robbing the exploited classes and peoples of all power to revolt.”

    Mutually Assured Destruction would keep the peace between the nuclear states, but it meant that existing dictatorship could become permanent, Orwell feared.

    How would a band of rag-tag rebels fair against a despot or imperialist prepared to quell any rebellion with a nuclear explosion?

    Would the dictator who happily drops biological weapons on their own people not as easily reach for tactical nuclear bombs if they could?

    A cruise missile that North Korea has implied has nuclear capabilities nears its target during a test flight off the coast of the Korean peninsula, Feb. 26, 2025.
    A cruise missile that North Korea has implied has nuclear capabilities nears its target during a test flight off the coast of the Korean peninsula, Feb. 26, 2025.
    (KCNA via Reuters)

    Would the North Korean regime not prefer to go down in a nuclear blaze if the masses were ever to rise up?

    Orwell noted that “the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons.”

    Students of history are taught that gunpowder made possible a proper rebellion against feudal power; that the musket, cheap and easy to use, replaced the cannon and made possible the American and French revolutions.

    Its successor, the breech-loading rifle, was slightly more complex, yet “even the most backward nation could always get hold of rifles from one source or another,” Orwell noted.

    State arsenals only

    The early 20th century, however, saw the invention of weapons only available to the state and only the most industrialized states—the tank, the aircraft, the submarine and, foremost, the nuclear bomb.

    Vietnamese communists, by some accounts, were peasant volunteers who battled with nothing but smuggled guns, punji traps and a clear sense of what they were fighting for, but they were able to defeat the industrialized armies of France and the United States.

    In reality, the communists were well supplied with non-rudimentary weaponry by Beijing and Moscow.

    East Timorese pro-independence FALINTIL rebels set off on patrol Oct. 3, 1999.
    East Timorese pro-independence FALINTIL rebels set off on patrol Oct. 3, 1999.
    (John Feder/News Ltd. via AFP)

    More representative of rag-tag guerrilla success were the East Timorese rebels, who had no patrons and only the most basic weapons to battle against Indonesian imperialism and its vastly superior forces.

    Their stunning achievement was simply keeping their struggle alive for so long.

    But the East Timorese were never going to secure independence in the jungles and hills; their victory depended on staying in the fight until international opinion turned in their favor.

    Had it not, Timor-Leste would still be a province of Indonesia, as West Papuans know all too well.

    RELATED STORIES

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    Perhaps drone warfare won’t bring victory to Myanmar’s revolutionaries.

    Fighting alone doesn’t win wars. Alliances, superior industrial production, international opinion and quite a bit of luck — all are as important.

    Yet without drone warfare, the junta would arguably have won this battle a lot sooner.

    It probably hasn’t been lost on the Thai military that another coup might not be accepted as meekly as in earlier military takeovers by a populace which has closely observed events in neighboring Myanmar.

    Cambodian soldiers attend celebrations marking the 65th anniversary of the country's independence, in Phnom Penh, Nov. 9, 2018.
    Cambodian soldiers attend celebrations marking the 65th anniversary of the country’s independence, in Phnom Penh, Nov. 9, 2018.
    (Samrang Pring/Reuters)

    Intentional or not, Hun Sen’s revelation that someone apparently tried to kill him using drones has imbued him and his impregnable regime with a rare sense of vulnerability.

    His family rules over a 100,000-strong military that he has instructed to “destroy… revolutions that attempt to topple” his regime, plus a loyal National Police and an elite private bodyguard unit.

    One son is head of military intelligence. Another son, Prime Minister Hun Manet, was previously the army chief.

    But, as despots are now realizing, all that now means a lot less in the age of the drone.

    David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by commentator David Hutt.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • #SwindonsSundaySermon: fascist-charmer-meets-Starmer part one – a horrendous spectacle

    Does any rational individual honestly think it’s a sensible idea to cut the money we spend on supporting victims of brutal conflicts around the world – the foreign aid budget – so this Labour Party government and Keir Starmer have a bit more money to spend on brutal conflicts around the world?

    Notice I said “rational individual”, so this immediately rules out any Reform UK charity-begins-at-home loyalists that might’ve accidentally stumbled across my weekly column in the Canary.

    Let’s be honest. The foreign aid budget is an easy target. It’s more a case of juicy apples, conveniently scattered across the ground than low-hanging fruit.

    Foreign aid: the easiest of targets for Starmer

    Foreign aid is used for lifesaving medicines, food, clean water, assistance for farmers, keeping women and girls safe, promoting peace, and has been used for so much more over the decades.

    Are we really supposed to believe sabre-rattling Starmer’s abandonment of our global responsibilities is anything other than an act of utter desperation, designed to appease the racist warmongers, both home and abroad?

    I’m genuinely surprised that right-wing Rachel from accounts didn’t suggest squeezing a few more quid out of Britain’s disabled people. We’ve always been a fantastic source of income down the years, regardless of the party that has been in power.

    The cynic in me might just think that Starmer’s commitment to increase military spending will only be used to serve as the perfect excuse as to why honest Keir felt the need to break nearly every single promise that he ever made throughout his time as opposition leader.

    How easy will it be for one cabinet minister after another to declare they would love to spend money on poor people, or public services, but someone has to make those “difficult decisions”, which in this case is a decision to prioritise arms over aid?

    As if Keir Starmer’s pledges aren’t worthless enough already.

    Promises, promises

    On one hand, he will make entirely undeliverable promises in the hope of catching a few favourable headlines in his favourite right-wing tabloids, and then he will take it away with the other, all in the name of national security.

    Do you remember when Keir Starmer promised to “cut bills by £300 on average and deliver real energy security”?

    What about the promise of a “windfall tax on big oil and gas companies making £44,000 profit, in one minute, so we can put up to £400 back in people’s pockets”?

    These promises from Keir Starmer have been met with huge increases in energy bills, council tax, and water bills, and that’s before we’ve even got on to the military welfare for Ukraine and a wholly unnecessary increase in defence spending.

    It frustrates the hell out of me.

    It wasn’t that long ago we had a Tory government finding temporary accommodation for thousands of people who were sleeping rough off the streets, and they did this in a matter of days.

    Where there is political will, there is a way.

    When a government wants to do something for the good of its people, it can. But governments of all persuasions choose not to look after its most vulnerable people because there’s more votes to be had in warmongering than there is to be had in providing an adequate level of social security.

    The Starmer-Trump bromance: a flash in the pan

    Despite what the corporate media say, Keir Starmer’s trip to see the tangerine tantrum at the White House wasn’t anything particularly special, unless you enjoy being reminded of the fact that Britain could fight its way out of a wet paper bag.

    Murdoch’s Times would have you think the prime minister swam across the Atlantic wearing no more than his finest budgie smugglers, with a neatly laminated list of demands and another state visit for Trump, tightly gripped between his butt cheeks. Vom.

    The Daily Mail went as far as talking of a lovely bromance between Donald Trump and Starmer. Will someone pass me the fucking sick bucket?

    I don’t want to know what any of the mainstream client journalists have got to say about their client, Starmer. I have my own eyes and ears, and I also have my own toes that are still curling from the humiliating sight of a Labour prime minister sucking up to the malignant, loathsome Trump.

    Fascist-charmer-meets-Starmer part one was a horrendous spectacle. You may call it diplomacy, and you are entitled to have that view, but what did Starmer actually achieve?

    The Chagos Islands? Will somebody think of the 371 different species of coral? And what about the Coconut Crab with its leg span of more than one metre?

    Seriously though, he swapped Trump’s approval for a state visit. Hardly a monumental victory for the serial loser, Starmer.

    A trade deal? Show me this deal. Trump is either incredibly forgetful, like his predecessor, genocide Joe, or he’s a liar that changes his mind from one hour to the next.

    I’m absolutely plumping for the latter.

    Starmer: skating on thin ice

    All it will take is one shit round of golf and Trump will take to Truth Social (or whatever it’s called) to call Starmer a communist despot and our trade deal will be forgotten quicker than you can call Zelensky a dictator, and then say you didn’t. Twice.

    A successful visit would’ve been no visit whatsoever, but isolated Starmer walked into the circus as a clown, and left as a clown.

    The one thing that Starmer really wanted from Trump was a cast iron guarantee that American forces would provide a security backstop in Ukraine. Without this guarantee, Britain and France would be sending 30,000 of our own lambs to the slaughter.

    As it stands, the British army would run out of ammunition within a week of fighting a war. You don’t have to be a leading military strategist to come to the conclusion that we would get utterly obliterated without the support of a superpower.

    Starmer didn’t get the assurances that he wanted and needed, but we’ll just ignore that and celebrate the decolonisation of the Coconut Crab and the possibility of a trade deal that nobody knows anything about.

    I just hope Starmer told the president that his dad used to be a toolmaker, otherwise the whole trip was absolutely pointless.

    Featured image via Rachael Swindon

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • OPINION: China’s flyers flout aviation rules with flares and flybys

    It happened again. A Chinese pilot flew his aircraft dangerously close to a foreign aircraft, something that is happening with increased frequency.

    In the latest incident, on Feb. 19, a Chinese naval helicopter flew within 9 meters (yards) of a small low-flying Cessna Caravan turboprop over Scarborough Shoal that belongs to the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.

    Situated 120 miles (192 kilometers) from Luzon, Scarborough Shoal is well within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone.

    The previous week, a Chinese J-16 jet fighter made an “unsafe and unprofessional interaction”, releasing at least four flares, 30 meters in front of a Royal Australian Air Force P–8A Poseidon anti submarine aircraft that was flying near the Paracel Islands.

    China claims the Australian aircraft “intentionally intruded” into Chinese airspace. A Chinese described the response as “completely reasonable, legal and beyond reproach,” and “a legitimate defense of national sovereignty and security.”

    A Chinese J-16 fighter jet carries out a maneuver that the U.S. military said was “unnecessarily aggressive” near an American reconnaissance plane flying over the South China Sea, May 26, 2023.
    A Chinese J-16 fighter jet carries out a maneuver that the U.S. military said was “unnecessarily aggressive” near an American reconnaissance plane flying over the South China Sea, May 26, 2023.
    (U.S Indo-Pacific Command)

    In violation of international law, China has drawn straight baselines around the Paracel and Spratly Islands; something that only archipelagic states are allowed to do under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.

    Countries routinely challenge these excessive maritime claims through naval and aerial freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs).

    We have seen a pattern of aggressive behavior from Chinese pilots. An October 2023 report by the U.S. Department of Defense documented some 180 unsafe aerial encounters by Chinese pilots in the previous two years, and over 100 additional encounters with the aircraft of U.S. allies and partners.

    That tally was more than all such incidents in the previous decade combined.

    Creating unsafe situations

    Most U.S. Navy aircraft are now equipped with external cameras to document dangerous Chinese encounters.

    One should recount that the April 2001 EP3 incident that caused the emergency landing and a hostage-like situation for the 24 member U.S. Navy crew, was caused by a Chinese pilot who was unaware of the concept of propellers. The J-8II pilot was killed in the crash.

    While Chinese pilots are famously aggressive and routinely fly at unsafe and unprofessional close quarters over the South China Sea, the dropping of flares was unseen until around 2022.

    While using flares to signal an unresponsive airplane at a safe distance is lawful and a signal of escalatory actions, how the Chinese pilots are employing them now is dangerous, unprofessional, and dramatically escalates the potential for the loss of life.

    A U.S. team removes fuel and other fluids from an American EP-3E reconnaissance aircraft with a damaged propeller at Lingshui Airfield June 18, 2001 in Hainan, China.
    A U.S. team removes fuel and other fluids from an American EP-3E reconnaissance aircraft with a damaged propeller at Lingshui Airfield June 18, 2001 in Hainan, China.
    (Courtesy of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co./US Navy via Getty Images)

    On Oct. 5, 2023, a Canadian CP-140 reconnaissance helicopter conducting patrols in support of a UN Security Council-authorized sanctions monitoring against North Korea in the Yellow Sea experienced “multiple passes” at five meters (yards).

    Three weeks later, a pair of PLA-Navy J-11 fighters made multiple passes at a Canadian helicopter that was conducting routine patrols as the HMCS Ottawa was conducting a FONOP near the Paracel Islands.

    The Chinese pilots ejected flares during the second flyby, forcing the Canadian pilot to take evasive action.

    In May 2024, PLA-Air Force pilots deployed flares in front of an Australian MH-60-R helicopter that was flying in international waters in support of UNSC-authorized sanctions monitoring against North Korea. The helicopter had to take evasive actions to avoid the flares.

    The following month, a Dutch helicopter flying above its destroyer, also in support of the UN sanctions monitoring in international waters in the Yellow Sea, was approached by two Chinese jets and a helicopter, which “created a potentially unsafe situation.”

    Flares present risks

    There are major risks from using flares. The first is proximity: If a Chinese pilot is close enough to deploy flares in a way that could cause damage, his plane is already flying at an unsafe distance.

    Most of the flares used are pyrotechnic magnesium, i.e. a dense mass of inflamed metal that burns at very high temperatures – to perform as decoys for heat-seeking missiles.

    A J-16 fighter jet ejects flares during a performance at the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force Aviation Open Day in Changchun, Jilin province, Oct. 17, 2019.
    A J-16 fighter jet ejects flares during a performance at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force Aviation Open Day in Changchun, Jilin province, Oct. 17, 2019.
    (AFP)

    These flares pose multiple risks to planes that could lead to the loss of human life.

    For planes such as a P-8, they can be sucked into a jet engine intake. For propeller driven planes, such as a P-3 or smaller surveillance craft, a direct hit on the engine could irreparably damage the propeller.

    Though the four-engine P-3s and P-8s are both able to fly on one engine, it’s still a risk.

    There is a greater threat to the helicopter rotors. Though it is unlikely they could get through the rotor blades and into the filtered intake, it’s not impossible.

    Moreover, the skin of many military helicopters is made of magnesium alloys and is itself highly flammable.

    An aircraft identified by the Philippine Coast Guard as a Chinese Navy helicopter flies near a Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources plane at Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea on Feb. 18, 2025.
    An aircraft identified by the Philippine Coast Guard as a Chinese Navy helicopter flies near a Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources plane at Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea on Feb. 18, 2025.
    (Jam Sta Rosa/AFP)

    RELATED STORIES

    China sets up live-fire exercise zone near Taiwan ‘without warning’

    China conducts live fire drills in Tonkin Gulf as Vietnam draws sea border

    Philippines slams Chinese actions against air force plane as unjustified, reckless

    Many surveillance and anti-submarine helicopters fly with open doors, and the last thing the crew wants is a flare, ejected out of a plane at an angle, getting inside an aircraft.

    Another concern is an escalatory threat. To some sensors on aircraft, the flares can appear as missiles. This is in an already tense operating environment, when an aircraft’s counter-measures are being controlled automatically in response to its sensors.

    Pilots’ perverse incentive structure

    There is no need to use flares in this way, but someone, somewhere, in the PLA decided that this is tactically a good idea – and a natural escalatory step from the “thumping” tactics that their pilots routinely conduct.

    The use of flares is tied to the aggression that we have long seen from Chinese pilots. In their system, aggressive and unprofessional flying is not only not discouraged, but is actually encouraged.

    While there’s no evidence that there’s a PLA-AF directive that requires pilots to make unsafe encounters, it is clearly what is considered “commanders intent” to defend China’s “historical waters and airspace.”

    In Chinese military doctrine, this is referred to as “using the enemy to train the troops.”

    A Chinese Navy J-11 fighter jet flies near a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace over the South China Sea, according to the U.S. military, Dec. 21, 2022.
    A Chinese Navy J-11 fighter jet flies near a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace over the South China Sea, according to the U.S. military, Dec. 21, 2022.
    (U.S. Indo-Pacific Command via Reuters)

    According to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Center for the Study of the PLA-AF, there is not a single incident that they can point to where a Chinese pilot has faced disciplinary action for aggressive flying.

    In short, behavior that would cost a U.S. pilot his or her wings is encouraged by the PLA leadership.

    The Chinese Navy and Air Force will continue their coercive and risky operational behavior in the East and South China Seas as they seek to enforce Beijing’s excessive maritime claims, impinging on the sovereign rights of other states or making illegal assertions in international waters and airspace.

    A flotilla of PLA-N ships has been sailing some 150 nautical miles east of Sydney, Australia. While such passages are lawful, China’s unprofessional and aggressive tactics are meant to raise the costs to deter other states from flying or sailing where international law permits.

    The law for me, not for thee.

    Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or Radio Free Asia.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by commentator Zachary Abuza.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Manipulated media: The weapon of the Right

    The re-election of Donald Trump is proof that the Right’s most powerful weapon is media manipulation, ensuring the public sphere is not engaged in rational debate, reports the Independent Australia.

    COMMENTARY: By Victoria Fielding

    I once heard someone say that when the Left and the Right became polarised — when they divorced from each other — the Left got all the institutions of truth including science, education, justice and democratic government.

    The Right got the institution of manipulation: the media. This statement hit me for six at the time because it seemed so clearly true.

    What was also immediately clear is that there was an obvious reason why the Left sided with the institutions of truth and the Right resorted to manipulation. It is because truth does not suit right-wing arguments.

    The existence of climate change does not suit fossil fuel billionaires. Evidence that wealth does not trickle down does not suit the capitalist class. The idea that diversity, equity and inclusion (yes, I put those words in that order on purpose) is better for everyone, rather than a discriminatory, hateful, destructive, divided unequal world is dangerous for the Right to admit.

    The Right’s embrace of the media institution also makes sense when you consider that the institutions of truth are difficult to buy, whereas billionaires can easily own manipulative media.

    Just ask Elon Musk, who bought Twitter and turned it into a political manipulation machine. Just ask Rupert Murdoch, who is currently engaged in a bitter family war to stop three of his children opposing him and his son Lachlan from using their “news” organisations as a form of political manipulation for right-wing interests.

    Right-wingers also know that truthful institutions only have one way of communicating their truths to the public: via the media. Once the media environment is manipulated, we enter a post-truth world.

    Experts derided as untrustworthy ‘elitists’
    This is the world where billionaire fossil fuel interests undermine climate action. It is where scientists create vaccines to save lives but the manipulated public refuses to take them. Where experts are derided as untrustworthy “elitists”.

    And it is where the whole idea of democratic government in the US has been overthrown to install an autocratic billionaire-enriching oligarchy led by an incompetent fool who calls himself the King.

    Once you recognise this manipulated media environment, you also understand that there is not — and never has been — such as thing as a rational public debate. Those engaged in the institutions of the Left — in science, education, justice and democratic government — seem mostly unwilling to accept this fact.

    Instead, they continue to believe if they just keep telling people the truth and communicating what they see as entirely rational arguments, the public will accept what they have to say.

    I think part of the reason that the Left refuses to accept that public debate is not rational and rather, is a manipulated bin fire of misleading information, including mis/disinformation and propaganda, is because they are not equipped to compete in this reality. What do those on the Left do with “post-truth”?

    They seem to just want to ignore it and hope it goes away.

    A perfect example of this misunderstanding of the post-truth world and the manipulated media environment’s impact on the public is this paper, by political science professors at the Australian National University Ian McAllister and Nicholas Biddle.

    Stunningly absolutist claim
    Their research sought to understand why polling at the start of the 2023 Indigenous Voice to Parliament Referendum showed widespread public support for the Voice but over the course of the campaign, this support dropped to the point where the Voice was defeated with 60 per cent voting “No” and 40 per cent, “Yes”.

    In presenting their study’s findings, the authors make the stunningly absolutist claim that:

    ‘…the public’s exposure to all forms of mass media – as we have measured it here – had no impact on the result’.

    A note is then attached to this finding with the caveat:

    ‘As noted earlier, given the data at hand we are unable to test the possibility that the content of the media being consumed resulted in a reinforcement of existing beliefs and partisanship rather than a conversion.’

    This caveat leaves a gaping hole in the finding by failing to account for how media reinforcing existing beliefs is an important media effect – as argued by Neil Gavin here. Since it was not measured, how can they possibly say there was no effect?

    Furthermore, the very premise of the author’s sweeping statement that media exposure had no impact on the result of the Referendum is based on two naive assumptions:

    • that voters were rational in their deliberations over the Referendum question; and
    • that the information environment voters were presented with was rational.

    Dual assumption of rationality
    This dual assumption of rationality – one that the authors interestingly admit is an assumption – is evidenced in their hypothesis which states:

    ‘Voters who did not follow the campaign in the mass media were more likely to move from a yes to a no vote compared to voters who did follow the campaign in the mass media.’

    This hypothesis, the authors explain, is premised on the assumption ‘that those with less information are more likely to opt for the status quo and cast a no vote’, and therefore that less exposure to media would change a vote from “Yes” to “No”.How the media failed Australia in the Referendum 'campaign'What this hypothesis assumes is that if a voter received more rational information in the media about the Referendum, that information would rationally drive their vote in the “Yes” direction. When their data disproved this hypothesis, the authors used this finding to claim that the media had no effect.

    To understand the reality of what happened in the Referendum debate, the word “rational” needs to be taken out of the equation and the word “manipulated” put in.

    We know, of course, that the Referendum was awash with manipulative information, which all supported the “No” campaign. For example, my study of News Corp’s Voice coverage — Australia’s largest and most influential news organisation — found that News Corp actively campaigned for the “No” proposition in concert with the “No” campaign, presenting content more like a political campaign than traditional journalism and commentary.

    A study by Queensland University of Technology’s Tim Graham analysed how the Voice Referendum was discussed on social media platform, X. Far from a rational debate, Graham identified that the “No” campaign and its supporters engaged in a participatory disinformation propaganda campaign, which became a “truth market” about the Voice.

    The ‘truth market’
    This “truth market” was described as drawing “Yes” campaigners into a debate about the truth of the Voice, sidetracking them from promoting their own cause.

    What such studies showed was that, far from McAllister and Biddle’s assumed rational information environment, the Voice Referendum public debate was awash with manipulation, propaganda, disinformation and fear-mongering.

    The “No” campaign that delivered this manipulation perfectly demonstrates how the Right uses media to undermine institutions of truth, to undermine facts and to undermine the rationality of democratic debates.

    The completely unfounded assumption that the more information a voter received about the Voice, the more likely they would vote “Yes”, reveals a misunderstanding of the reality of a manipulated public debate environment present across all types of media, from mainstream news to social media.

    It also wrongly treats voters like rational deliberative computers by assuming that the more information that goes in, the more they accept that information. This is far from the reality of how mediated communication affects the public.

    The reason the influence of media on individuals and collectives is, in reality, so difficult to measure and should never be bluntly described as having total effect or no effect, is that people are not rational when they consume media, and every individual processes information in their own unique and unconscious ways.

    One person can watch a manipulated piece of communication and accept it wholeheartedly, others can accept part of it and others reject it outright.

    Manipulation unknown
    No one piece of information determines how people vote and not every piece of information people consume does either. That’s the point of a manipulated media environment. People who are being manipulated do not know they are being manipulated.

    Importantly, when you ask individuals how their media consumption impacted on them, they of course do not know. The decisions people make based on the information they have ephemerally consumed — whether from the media, conversations, or a wide range of other information sources, are incredibly complex and irrational.

    Surely the re-election of Donald Trump for a second time, despite all the rational arguments against him, is proof that the manipulated media environment is an incredibly powerful weapon — a weapon the Right, globally, is clearly proficient at wielding.

    It is time those on the Left caught up and at least understood the reality they are working in.

    Dr Victoria Fielding is an Independent Australia columnist. This article was first published by the Independent Australia and is republished with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Nullifying the Constitution Won’t Make America Great Again

    Anyone who wants to put America first needs to start by putting the Constitution first.

    This should be non-negotiable.

    Winning an election does not give President Trump—or any politician—the authority to sidestep the Constitution and remake the government at will.

    That’s not how a constitutional republic works, even in pursuit of the so-called greater good.

    Thus far, those defending the Trump administration’s worst actions, which range from immoral and unethical to blatantly unconstitutional, have resorted to repeating propaganda and glaring non-truths while insisting that the Biden administration was worse.

    “They did it first” and “they did it worse” are not justifications for disregarding the law.

    For that matter, omitting the Constitution from the White House website—pretending it never existed—does not give the president and the agencies within the Executive Branch the right to circumvent the rule of law or, worse, nullify the Constitution.

    Mounting a populist revolution to wrest power from the Deep State only to institute a different Deep State is not how you make America great again.

    How you do something is just as important as why you do something, and right now, the means by which the Trump administration is attempting to accomplish many of its end goals are antithetical to every principle on which this nation was founded: natural rights, popular sovereignty, the rule of law, the rejection of monarchical law, the need for transparency and accountability, due process, liberty, equality, and limited government, to name just a few.

    Whether the concerns driving this massive overhaul of the government are legitimate is not the question. We are certainly overdue for a reckoning when it comes to our bloated, corrupt, unaccountable, out-of-control bureaucracy.

    So far, however, the Trump administration’s policies have exacerbated government dysfunction, undermined constitutional rights, and deepened public distrust.

    Trump is not making America great again. In fact, things are getting worse by the day.

    Nowhere is this clearer than in the erosion of fundamental freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights. Government officials are muzzling the press, threatening protesters, and censoring online speech. Due process is being ignored altogether.

    The government’s haphazard, massive and potentially illegal firing spree is leaving whole quadrants of the government understaffed and unable to carry out the necessary functions of government as it relates to veterans, education, energy, agriculture, and housing.

    Rather than draining the swamp of corrupt, moneyed interests, Trump has favored the oligarchy with intimate access to the halls of power.

    Rather than reducing the actual size of the government, it appears that the groundwork is being laid by Trump’s administration to replace large swaths of the federal workforce with artificial intelligence-powered systems, expanding automation rather than shrinking bureaucracy.

    Despite claims of saving the country billions through massive layoffs and terminations, cancelled leases and contracts, and the discovery of wasteful or corrupt spending, the supporting documentation provided by DOGE, the so-called department of efficiency headed up by Elon Musk, has been shown to be riddled by errors and miscalculations.

    While claiming to cut back on wasteful government spending in order to balance the federal budget, Trump is pushing to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion while adding at least that much in tax cuts to benefit corporations and billionaires, all of which would be paid for by the already overburdened middle- and lower-classes.

    Despite campaign promises to bring down prices “on Day One,” inflation is on the rise again and financial markets are tumbling on fears that Americans will be the ones to pay the price for Trump’s threatened tariffs.

    In defiance of states’ rights and in a complete about-face given his own past statements about the authority of state and local governments, Trump is increasingly attempting to browbeat the states into compliance with the dictates of the federal government. Historically, legal precedent has tended to favor the states, whose sovereignty rests in the Tenth Amendment.

    All appearances to the contrary, Trump is not so much scaling back the nation’s endless wars as he appears to be genuflecting to authoritarian regimes in the hopes of building an international authoritarian alliance with fascist governments, while announcing plans to seize other countries’ lands, a clear act of military provocation.

    Trump’s eagerness to expand the U.S. prison system and impose harsher punishments, including the death penalty, would inevitably result in more American citizens being locked up for nonviolent crimes. The Trump administration has also floated the idea of imprisoning American “criminals” in other countries.

    Then you have Trump’s frequent references to himself as an imperial ruler (the White House even shared images of Trump wearing a royal crown), coupled with his repeated trial balloon allusions to running for a third term in contravention of the 22nd Amendment, which bars presidents from being elected more than twice.

    Nothing adds up.

    Not the numbers, not the policies, not the promises.

    If Trump continues to put into power people who are more loyal to him than they are to the Constitution, the consequences will be dire.

    Nullifying the Constitution is not how you make America great again.

    Trump may not have been given a mandate to act as a dictator or a king, but he was given a mandate to rein in a government that had grown out of control.

    That mandate came with one iron-clad condition, which Trump swore to abide by: the U.S. Constitution.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, no government official should be allowed to play fast and loose with the rule of law.

    So where does that leave us?

    The job of holding the government accountable does not belong to any one person or party. It belongs to all of us, “We the people,” irrespective of political affiliations and differences of race, religion, gender, education, economics, social strata or any other labels used to divide us.

    No politician, of any party, will save America.

    Only the Constitution—and the people who defend it—can do that.

    The post Nullifying the Constitution Won’t Make America Great Again first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • J’accuse!… the Jew who accuses his fellow Jews of being antisemites

    A rally on the steps of the Victorian Parliament under the banner of Jews for a Free Palestine was arranged for Sunday, February 9. At 11:11pm on the eve of that rally, Mark Leibler —a  lawyer who claims to have a high profile and speak on behalf of Jews by the totally unelected organisation AIJAC — put out a tweet on X (and paid for an advertisement of the same posting) as follows:

    COMMENTARY: By Jeffrey Loewenstein

    As someone Jewish, the son of Holocaust survivors and members of whose family were murdered by the Nazis, it is hard to know whether to characterise Mark Leibler’s tweet as offensive, appalling, contemptuous, insulting or a disgusting, shameful and grievous introduction of the Holocaust, and those who were murdered by the Nazis, into his tweet — or all of the foregoing!

    Leibler’s tweet is most likely a breach of recently passed legislation in Australia, both federally and in various state Parliaments, making hateful words and actions, and doxxing, criminal offences. It will be “interesting” to see how the police deal with the complaint taken up with the police alleging Leibler’s breach of the legislation.

    In the end, Leibler’s attempted intimidation of those who might have been thinking of going to the rally failed — miserably!

    There are many Jews who abhor what Israel is doing in Gaza (and the West Bank) but feel intimidated by the Leiblers of this world who accuse them of being antisemitic for speaking out against Israel’s actions and not those rusted-on 100 percent supporters of Israel who blindly and uncritically support whatever Israel does, however egregious.

    Leibler, and others like him, who label Jews as antisemites because they dare speak out about Israel’s actions, certainly need to be called out.

    As a lawyer, Leibler knows that actions have consequences. A group of concerned Jews (this writer included) are in the process of lodging a complaint about Leibler’s tweet with the Commonwealth Human Rights Commission.

    Separately from that, this week will see full-page adverts in both the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age — signed by hundreds of Jews — bearing the heading:

    “Australia must reject Trump’s call for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza. Jewish Australians say NO to ethnic cleansing.”

    Jeffrey Loewenstein, LLB, was a member of the Victorian Bar and a one-time chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission and member of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria. This article was first published by Pearls & Irritations public policy journal and is republished here with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Alexei Sayle and his comic revelations of state surveillance of subversives are closer to the truth than we think

    The following article is from reader Dr Michael Maguire.

    Older readers may recall that Alexei Sayle was one of the ‘alternative comedians’ that appeared on TV programmes such as The Young Ones many years ago.

    But today, Alexei Sayle is regularly on BBC Radio 4, with his current and innovative Alexei Sayle’s Imaginary Sandwich Bar (Wednesdays at 6:30pm, and on the BBC Sounds app).

    Alexei Sayle: a radical Maoist?

    His lack of ‘imaginary customers’ allows Alexei to muse on his political evolution as the son of parents who were both members of the British Communist Party.

    So, he recalled in a programme last year that his ‘teenage rebellion’ focused on his becoming a ‘Maoist during the Chinese Cultural Revolution’. This led to heated doctrinal arguments with his parents; and his father’s rebuke that he shouldn’t denounce his mother as a ‘running dog supporter of the Moscow Deviationists’ (from the true Marxist-Leninist path to revolution).

    In a recent broadcast, he recalls that when his home got a telephone (land line) his parental warnings that this was undoubtedly being ‘monitored’ by the police or the ‘SS’; the Security Service (MI5), who unlike the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6), very much dislike this abbreviation because of its unfortunate historical connotations.

    So his parents, when using the telephone, would resort to using ‘camouflaged’ terminology when speaking to comrades, in the hope that this would confuse ‘the monitors’.

    Occupational paranoia?

    Listening to this account of ‘occupational paranoia’, I recalled meeting British comrades who were convinced that not only was their telephone and post monitored, but that they were actually subject to periodic surveillance by the police, Special Branch, or even by the SS. Comrades, who didn’t appreciate just how resource intensive such surveillance can be, as it requires no less that ten persons working in shifts to effectively provide 24-hour close surveillance.

    I personally know this from reading Jackie O’Malley’s – my late wife’s – court records, when she was convicted of renting flats and vehicles for the IRA Active Service Unit (ASU), sent to London in 1979 to rescue Brian Keenan from Brixton Prison.

    The detailed Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) monitoring reports reveals that on a Friday evening, the surveillance team outside her New Convent Garden ‘Food For Britain’ (a Civil Service agency) office had to decide that if she was driving not to her London flat, but to her Guildford mother’s home – to cease their ‘tailing’ and simply contact the Surrey Police to request that a patrol car should periodically check if Jackie’s car was parked outside her mother’s house during the weekend.

    An organisational decision made, because the ATS resources had been so stretched by the need to monitor not just the four man ASU, but also their suspected supporters; with some 50 raids subsequently undertaken on homes across England.

    Alexei Sayle: his parents were probably right

    The ‘low level’ and minimal resource monitoring of potential ‘subversives’ can also be potentially undertaken during elections by monitoring the votes cast for those deemed to be ‘subversive’ candidates; a thought that occurred to myself, when I was employed as a Hackney Council town planner, to act as a polling clerk. This involved ticking the electoral register and writing the voters’ registration number on the counterfoil of the ballot paper.

    So, as the ballot papers and their counterfoils have to be legally kept for at least a year, in case of any legal challenges by dissatisfied candidates, it would be potentially possible to identify those voting for a ‘subversive candidate’, particularly if it was a relatively small number. Of course, this would involve violating the ‘sanctity’ of the democratic electoral process of the ‘secret vote’.

    ‘Unthinkable’, of course, in a country which provides funding and the deployment of its Foreign Office staff to monitor the electoral process in countries with a ‘lesser democratic history’.

    Alas no, according to Gordon Winter, a South African BOSS agent stationed in Britain to monitor the Anti Apartheid movement. For he recalled in his memoirs how ‘friendly’ Special Branch officers had enabled his inspection of the ballot papers cast for a very active opponent of the South African regime.

    So, maybe Alexei Sayle’s parents were right – however impossible it sounds.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Dr Michael Maguire

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • An End to Guilt and Shame

    In Sunday’s election in Germany a new party, Alternatives for Germany, broke through the established power structure to become the second strongest force in parliament. A key factor in its success was a call to overcome the postwar guilt and shame that have been predominant in the country. For many years these were a necessary reckoning with past atrocities, but this burden of blame has increasingly lamed the country and become a handicap to its progress. Leaving it behind is part of a gradual evolution that has been going on since the 1990s.

    When I came to Germany in 1993 as a guest professor, I noticed that many students were eager to express their dislike of their country: Germany had done terrible things, and they were ashamed of it. They took pride in this dislike, as if it were a virtue, and they seemed to be trying to win my approval with it. When I pointed out they were feeling guilty about crimes their grandparents’ generation had committed 50 years ago, they responded, “It might happen again!”

    I left Germany after 2½ years and returned in 2000. The attitude of guilt was still there, but not so universal. In classroom discussions a few students defended their country, but they were quickly overruled by the majority. Sometimes after class some students would apologize to me for this minority. They were embarrassed by it, found it shameful.

    The minority grew over the years. Classroom discussions sometimes became heated arguments. The students who wanted to hold on to guilt seemed to do so out of civic duty. Those who wanted to abandon it had an impatient, enough-is-enough attitude.

    In 2010 Shimon Peres, Israel’s president and Nobel-Prize-winner, told the German parliament the most important lesson to be learned from the Holocaust is, “Never again!” His statement was a warning that the Holocaust came not just out of the historical situation back then but out of something in Germans that is there even today. Germans have a personal responsibility for atrocities committed before they were born. This received widespread praise from the establishment.

    The pro-guilt students felt affirmed by this. They insisted present-day Germans have to guard against these tendencies. These students wore their shame like a badge of honor.

    In 2017 Alternatives for Germany gained entry to parliament with 12 percent of the vote as the third strongest party. The establishment parties and media went into full alarm at this threat to their power. They launched a defamation campaign with slanted news and outright lies, implying the AfD was full of Neo-Nazis who would again turn Germany into a pariah in the family of nations. AfD representatives became targets of hatred, their voters of contempt.

    This polarized the country, including the students. Discussions became much more emotional, loaded with anger, self-righteousness and defensiveness. The society was going through a rending transition that has intensified in the past eight years, and the AfD is an important factor in it. In addition to their historical revisionism, they are nationalist libertarian-conservatives favoring less government and stricter asylum laws – a position that is gaining momentum worldwide.

    After Sunday’s election the parties face the unwieldy task of building a coalition that can actually govern. The strongest force is the conservative Union with 28% of the vote. AfD is second with 20%, Social Democrats 16%, Greens 11%, and Left 8%. To isolate the AfD, the Union has refused to form a coalition with it, preferring to cobble together a three-way coalition with the smaller parties. But the differences among them are so deep that agreements will be difficult to reach. The political process will be deadlocked at a time when Germany needs decisive action. The resulting chaos will strengthen AfD all the more, and it may end up with an absolute majority after the next election. If the government falls apart, that could be soon.

    In spite of the political wrangling, Germans are on the way to overcoming their guilt and shame. They’ll remember the atrocities of those twelve terrible years but know they are history. They’ll no longer be chained to the past.

    Then will come the most needed step: Germany must recover its sovereignty after 80 years of Allied domination.

    The post An End to Guilt and Shame first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by William T. Hathaway.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Fighting Fascism Means that We Cannot Give Them an Inch

    Donald Trump
    Imperialist Donald Trump unleashed Elon Musk for a hostile takeover of the US government. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo/picture alliance)

    The gradual worldwide shift towards fascism over the past 10 years has significantly elevated the threat of world annihilation. Though this might sound alarmist, as a student of history, there are certainly significant parallels with the 1920s and 1930s one can draw on.

    Only today the threat is even greater. With massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons held by at least nine countries, one wrong move could lead to the kind of bloodbath the world has never before experienced. But, even without the nuclear threat, national stockpiles of conventional weapons have the capacity to destroy entire cities hundreds of times over.

    The wholesale destruction of Gaza is a case in point. As of November 2024, Israel’s military had, in a single year, dropped more than 85 000 tonnes of bombs on the Gaza Strip, exceeding the amount of explosives used in the entirety of World War II. This is only a small fraction of the bombs available to the world’s largest militaries.

    The previous neoliberal order — which began during the 1970s and, arguably, ended with the US’s housing bubble collapse in 2008 — was of course not an era of diplomacy and peace. The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and its aggressive bombing of over a dozen other countries, portray an era of hawkish Western imperialism in which hundreds of thousands were killed.

    And yet, with the second election of Donald Trump, this imperialist crusade is being set into overdrive.

    It has only been a few weeks since Trump took office and unleashed Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to conduct a hostile takeover of the entire US government bureaucracy.

    In this time, Trump has already threatened to take over the Panama Canal, floated the annexation of Greenland, suggested that Canada become the nation’s 51st state, threatened tariffs on Mexico, Canada, Colombia and China and cut the “soft-imperial” initiatives of USAid — including its funding of HIV medication and sympathetic investigative journalism — in favour of more aggressive influence strategies and threats of economic warfare and military dominance.

    Most recently, with Israel’s genocidal prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, standing next to him, Trump announced the proposed forced removal and ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians from Gaza. In his plan, the US would take colonial ownership of the territory to enable his real estate ambitions and turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”.

    Some have rationalised Trump’s blackmail as merely a bargaining tactic to pressure other countries into a “better deal”. However, even if these belligerent threats are meant to give him an advantage in negotiations, Trump has shown he is willing to follow through with his ideas when given the chance.

    This is why caving in to any of Trump’s threats is extraordinarily dangerous. The more his tactics are successful, the more he will continue to use them. Everything he can get away with entices him to try to get away with more.

    This has been, and will always be, the modus operandi of such tyrannical politics. Giving even an inch to any aspect of a fascist movement always emboldens it. Just as the establishment politicians of Germany’s Weimar Republic’s appeasement of Hitler enabled him to expand his power and displace them, so too will such capitulation allow the make America great again movement to expand and take over.

    Our politics, therefore, cannot simply be non-fascist. We cannot allow for negotiation and compromise when dealing with fascists. We cannot give them any room to expand or any oxygen to breathe.

    Nor can we limit our opposition to polite and civil forms. We must employ all possible means to fight back because, ultimately, we are defending our dignity and sovereignty in the face of unrelenting, domineering expansionism.

    In other words, we must embrace a politics of anti-fascism.

    What does this mean in the context of South Africa?
    It means that we demand — even compel — President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government of national unity to resist any show of weakness and any propensity to capitulate to US government blackmail. We cannot compromise by quieting our support for the Palestinians or by revoking the Expropriation Act. Doing so will simply embolden the US to demand even more.

    It also means that we need to build solidarity between nations in the Global South. The Hague Group is a start. But it not only needs to expand its membership significantly, its scope should also include political and economic collaboration against US imperial threats. If one nation is threatened with retaliatory tariffs or sanctions for refusing to submit to Trump’s dictates, all nations within this group ought to collectively respond.

    What makes a nation like Colombia or South Africa vulnerable to US blackmail is their insignificant economic power in relation to the largest economy and military on Earth. But a collective response from the Global South can ensure that none of us is isolated and that we are not able to be picked off one by one.

    Last, and most important, it means that we urgently need to build a huge grassroots anti-fascist movement here in South Africa, in collaboration with similar movements worldwide. This movement must be ready to take to the streets to defend one another. It should find new and creative ways to ridicule, undermine and isolate wannabe fascists like the Patriotic Alliance’s Gayton McKenzie, minister of sports, arts and culture, who are happy to make South Africa a neocolony of the US.

    Our movement needs to also physically protect other Africans threatened by xenophobes, conduct citizen arrests of Israeli war criminals who enter the country, block coal exports to the Israeli regime and create an environment hostile to any form that this fascist movement might take.

    Working together, we must defend anti-fascist organising in the belly of the beast, support anti-colonial resistance in Palestine and stop right-wing populism in its tracks.

    We cannot budge and we cannot allow those with a weak backbone in government to budge either, no matter what threats come our way.

    The post Fighting Fascism Means that We Cannot Give Them an Inch first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • No Excuses. No Compromises. No Fear. No Forgiveness

    “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

    Spoken by a fellow in a time when tolerance and trust, faith in the essential goodness of human beings, belief in turn-the-other-cheek stoicism, all were still possible. It was innovative even back then, but an option which could be considered.

    These are different times. No longer does innocence bloom. Hope is a four-letter word, gutted by abuse, now a contemptuous metaphor for hypocrisy and cunning. Faith, charity and love have been quantified, digitized, commodified, sexualized, turned into more weapons of mass deception and poisoning of the human spirit, just box cutters in the toolbox of a tiny elite, self-anointed as the class of absolute privilege and ultimate prerogative, self-appointed as Masters of the Universe. The sociopaths have won the class war and sit at the top of the sh*tpile they’re fabricating.

    No, good people, forgiveness is no longer recommended, no longer possible, such graciousness is not the appropriate noble response anymore.

    We simply cannot forgive those who are doing to our world what we see happening right now.

    It’s unconscionable. It’s repulsive. It’s malevolent. It’s nihilistic. It’s … unforgivable.

    Jesus Christ surely would not approve of what I’m about to say. Then again, these days He’s basically irrelevant, just another marketing brand, an advertising gimmick for knee-jerk religiosity.

    Please listen, friends. Take heed. It’s getting late. We have no choice. Urgency drives our mission. Common decency and timeless morality dictate our agenda.

    Forgive them not … for endless war, carnage for conquest, slaughter for power and control, the creation of enemies to drive weapons sales, the demonization of other countries and their leaders to prepare the public for war and more war.

    Forgive them not … for destroying the environment, killing untold numbers of species, filling the waterways with toxins, polluting the air, pumping greenhouse gases at an accelerating rate into the atmosphere.

    Forgive them not … for poisoning our bodies with man-made chemicals and for-profit pharmaceuticals, for poisoning our food with herbicides, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, for boosting the bottom line with no regard for human health or dignity.

    Forgive them not … for filling the oceans with millions of tons of the debris of “civilization” and turning the vast expanses of life-giving, life-sustaining water into graveyards for the creatures of the sea.

    Forgive them not … for fostering suspicion and hatred, promoting racism and intolerance, for setting humans against one another to make us all easier to control, manipulate and exploit.

    Forgive them not … for persecuting Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and other truth-tellers, while promoting to positions of power serial liars, prevaricating warmongers, self-enriching enemies of truth.

    Forgive them not … for destroying science as an objective methodology for obtaining knowledge and achieving understanding, for buying and bribing scientists to front for their deceptive, money-driven agendas.

    Forgive them not … for rigging the economy via influence peddling and grotesque warping of the democratic process with enormous infusions of money, in order to accelerate the transfer of wealth to a handful of beneficiaries at the top, then use that wealth to leverage even more money to further enrich the already incomprehensibly rich.

    Forgive them not … for desertification, deforestation, the destruction of enormous swaths of arable land, the destruction of rainforests, the ruin of ecologically-sensitive marshlands, the oil spills, chemical spills, all the direct result of blind avarice and predation.

    Forgive them not … for hoarding epic, inconceivable piles of money, while so many millions on the planet struggle to survive, live meal-to-meal, starve to death, die of easily curable diseases.

    Forgive them not … for flooding the planet with weapons, seeding crisis after crisis, being witness and perpetrators of killing, slaughter, unconscionable terror, death and destruction, all in the name of defense industry profits and stock portfolios.

    Forgive them not … for using the media, movies, TV and internet, entertainers and celebrities, to spread lies, propaganda, disinformation, fake news to slander and marginalize bearers of truth, and to confuse, distract, and disempower everyday people.

    Forgive them not … for destroying democracy and the promise of our bold and once-affirming experiment in self-government.

    Forgive them not … for exploiting our innate fear of death and universal desire for well-being, for turning medical care and maintenance of health into yet another revenue stream for predatory capitalism.

    Forgive them not … for violating the innocence of children, exploiting their thirst for knowledge and natural curiosity, destroying their inherent creativity, and turning our educational system into a factory for consumer robots.

    Forgive them not … for taking the beautiful, majestic heavens, the pure, wholesome expanse of outer space and turning it into yet another battlefield, bristling with weapons of terror and killing.

    Forgive them not … for mangling and mutilating timeless messages for spiritual growth and healing; for inverting the lessons teaching the virtues of compassion, caring and sharing; for turning institutionalized religion into cults of self-worship and warring tribes of exclusion and vilification.

    Forgive them not … for Monsanto, Raytheon, Pfizer, Chase, the Fed, Amazon, Google, the NYT, Facebook, Microsoft, the entire web of corporate tyranny.

    Forgive them not … for the Patriot Acts, for the 17 intelligence agencies, the CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS, the NDAA, the duopoly, Citizens United, for election rigging, voter machine fraud, gerrymandering, the scam of government by the people.

    Forgive them not … for massive intrusive unconstitutional citizen surveillance, both by security agencies and private corporations, and for the oppressive censorship which has destroyed the most fundamental rights of free expression and open exchange of ideas and information.

    Forgive them not … for simply being so self-centered, so selfish, so arrogant, so self-righteous and delusional, they are undermining everyone else on the planet, and creating a world which will eventually be uninhabitable for any of us, including them — the stupid self-sabotaging bastards!

    FORGIVE THEM NOT … FOR THEY KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY DO.

    And what they do is sick and evil … pure and simple.

    We have to get it together, folks! Tolerate none of this. Do not forgive the “people of privilege”. Capture them. Bring them to trial. Imprison them. They know exactly what they’re doing. They do it callously, maliciously, mercilessly, intentionally, with plan and pre-meditation. We know who they are. They cannot be trusted. They cannot be excused — now or ever — if there is to be a world which is functional and supports life and positive human interaction.

    No forgiveness. No excuses. No compromises. No fear.

    FORGIVE THEM NOT …

    The post No Excuses. No Compromises. No Fear. No Forgiveness first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John Rachel.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Parihaka’s matriarch, champion of tikanga and peace advocate Maata Wharehoka dies at 74

    OBITUARY: By Heather Devere

    Maata Wharehoka (Ngāti Tahinga, Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Kuia. 1950-2025

    Maata Wharehoka has been described as the Parihaka Matriarch, Parihaka leader and arts advocate, “champion of Kahu Whakatere Tupapaku, the tikanga Māori practices, expert in marae arts, raranga (weaving) and karanga”, renowned weaver who revived traditional Māori methods of death and burial, “driving force behind Parihaka’s focus to be a self-sufficient community”, Kaitiaki (or guardian) of Te Niho marae for nearly 30 years.

    And I want to add Peace Advocate and Activist. She died aged 74.

    At Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa, the National Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPCS) at Otago University, Ōtepoti Dunedin, we were fortunate that Maata brought her knowledge and her exceptional presence to help us learn some of the lessons from Parihaka about peaceful resistance, non-violent communication, conflict resolution, consultation, hospitality, humility and mana.

    One of her first talks was entitled “Why do I wear feathers in my hair and scribbles on my face?” and she explained to us the significance of the raukura or albatross feathers that signify peace to the people of Parihaka.

    She used the moko (tattoos) on her mouth, chin and from her ears to her cheeks to teach us the importance of listening first, before you speak.

    Maata taught us the use of the beat of the poi to signify the sound of the horses hooves when the pacifist settlement at Parihaka was invaded by the British militia in 1881.

    The poi and waiata have served as a “hidden-in-plain-sight” performative image by the people of Parihaka that represents consistent resistance to the oppression.

    Maata had been shocked when she first came to the peace centre that we were only able to sing (badly) what she called a “nursery school” waiata. So she gifted a unique waiata to NCPACS to help with our transition to being a more bicultural centre, now named Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa.

    Maukaroko ki te whenua,
    Whakaaro pai ki te tangata katoa
    Arohanui ki te aoraki
    Koa, koa, koa ki te aoraki,
    Pono, whakapono
    Ki te ao nei
    Ko rongo, no rongo, na rongo
    Me rongo, me rongo, me rongo

    Translation:
    Peace to the land
    Be thoughtful to all
    Great love to the universe
    Joy, joy, joy to the universe
    Truth, truth to the world
    It is Rongo, from Rongo, by Rongo
    Peace, peace, peace.

    Maata also hosted a number of students from TAOR/NCPACS at Parihaka for both PhD fieldwork and practicum experience, building a link between them and Parihaka that extends to the next generation.

    She named her expertise “deathing and birthing” as she taught Māori traditions of preparation for dying and for welcoming the new born. One of the students learnt from Maata about the process where the person who is dying is closely involved in the preparations, including the weaving of the waka kahutere (coffin) from harakeke (flax) for a natural burial.

    Maata herself was very much part of the preparations for her own death and would have advised and assisted those who wove her waka kahutere with much love and expertise.

    For me, Maata became one of my very best friends. Her generosity, sense of humour, high energy and kindness quite overwhelmed me. We also became close through working and writing together, with Kelli Te Maihāroa (from Waitaha — the South Island iwi with a long peace history) and Maui Solomon (who upholds the Moriori peace tradition).

    We collaborated on a series of articles and chapters, and our joint work was presented both locally and at international conferences.

    On my many visits to Parihaka I was also warmly welcomed by the Wharehoka family and was able to meet Maata’s mokopuna, all growing up with Māori as their first language and steeped in Māori knowledge and tikanga.

    Maata is an irreplaceable person, a true wahine toa, exuberant, outgoing, funny, clever, fiece, talented, indomitable. Maata, we will miss you terribly, but will continue to be guided by your wisdom and ongoing presence in our hearts and our lives.

    In the words of Kelli Te Maihāroa “She was an amazing wahine toa, who loved sharing her gifts with the world. Moe Mai Rā e te māreikura o Te Niho Parihaka.’

    Dr Heather Devere is chair of Asia Pacific Media Network and former director of research of Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa.

    Publications:
    Kelli Te Maihāroa, Heather Devere, Maui Solomon and Maata Wharehoka (2022). Exploring Indigenous Peace Traditions Collaboratively. In Te Maihāroa, Ligaliga and Devere (Eds). Decolonising Peace and Conflict Studies through Indigenous Research. Palgrave Macmillan.

    Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihāroa, Maui Solomon and Maata Wharehoka (2020). Concepts of Friendship and Decolonising Cross-Cultural Peace Research in Aotearoa New Zealand. AMITY: The Journal of Friendship Studies, 6(1), 53-87 doi:10.5518/AMITY/31.

    Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihāroa, Maui Solomon and Maata Wharehoka (2019). Tides of Endurance: Indigenous Peace Traditions of Aotearoa New Zealand. Ab-Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First National and First Peoples, 3(1), 24-47.

    Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihāroa, Maata Wharehoka and Maui Solomon (2017). Regeneration of Indigenous Peace Traditions in Aotearoa New Zealand. In Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihaora and John Synott (eds.), Peacebuilding and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Experiences and Strategies for the 21st Century. Cham, Springer.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Tragic Tale of a Flower that Wilted too Soon (Part 2 of 2)

    Ruttie Jinnah and M.A. Jinnah IMAGE/Dawn

    Read Part 1    .

    Drugs

    Ruttie’s rush to dash off to Paris was to get drugs. Mrs. Naidu’s letters from Paris and New York to Padmaja make that clear.

    While in Paris in 1929, Mrs. Naidu incidentally discovered from a princess (cousin of queen of Italy), who knew Ruttie, the reason for her visits to Paris. She said that “Madam Zhinna” had been getting drugs through “the long needle,” that is, morphine since her Paris visit in 1924. The concerned princess informed Mrs. Naidu that she had warned Ruttie: “she was ruining her life with drugs and how all her beauty was being destroyed.” (Reddy, p. 314-15.) But Ruttie was in no mood to listen; she just wanted to cope with the crisis, chaos, and commotion that were destroying her from the inside.

    Incidentally, Mrs. Naidu was told the same thing by another person, Princess Journevitch (wife of a famous Russian sculptor), with whom she had lunch in New York in 1929 who said that years ago in Paris Madam “Zhinna’s” drug habit was playing havoc with her gorgeousness and life. (Reddy, p. 364-65.)

    In the US, Mrs. Naidu learned from Syud Hossain that Ruttie was taking drugs while she was in the US. Hossain alerted her of the harmful effects. (For religious violation, Gandhi had ejected Hossain out of India, see note <9> below.)

    That means halfway through their marriage, Ruttie started taking drugs the kamikaze way, i.e., carelessly taking drugs and ignoring warnings of their harmful effects on her mental and physical health. It must have been depressing to watch such a brilliant person travel over 4,000 miles to find solace in drugs.

    Moved out

    On January 4, 1928, Ruttie and Jinnah got down from the train at Bombay’s Victoria train station. They came back after attending the Muslim League session in Calcutta. Mrs. Naidu was on the same train too. Ruttie informed Jinnah that she’s moving to Taj Mahal Hotel. She left with Mrs. Naidu and got a room next to hers. Jinnah went to South Court alone. Kanji helped Ruttie in moving her belongings. Mrs. Naidu’s letter to her daughters:

    “It is extraordinary how few people have even an inkling of what has happened in the very heart of Bombay. Fortunately, everyone is so used to seeing her [Ruttie] here at all hours [that is, in Mrs. Naidu’s room] that no one suspects her being here with her cats and he at home alone.”

    Reddy, p. 333.

    Ruttie and Jinnah’s separation had disturbed Mrs. Naidu more than the couple who got separated, as is obvious the way she put it to her friend Syud Hossain: “The really tragic part of it is that both seem so relieved.” (Ibid, p. 336.)

    An old Parsee friend tried to reunite them. Jinnah shouldered the blame:

    “It is my fault: we both need some sort of understanding we cannot give.”

    In April, Ruttie, joined by her mother Dinbai Petit, left for Europe. Jinnah was already in London with his friend Chaman Lal who had gone to Geneva to attend the ILO (International Labour Organization) Conference.

    Chamanlal then went to Paris. Upon learning of Ruttie’s illness, he headed to the Champs Elysee clinic where Ruttie was bedridden and had 106 degree fever. Ruttie handed him a book of poems by Oscar Wilde and requested him to read. Chamanlal:

    “When I came to the closing lines of The Harlot’s House:

    ‘And down the long and silent street,
    The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
    Crept like a frightened girl.’

    “I looked up and Ruttie was in coma.”

    Chamanlal’s impression of Ruttie:

    “… I had always admired Ruttie Jinnah so much: there is not a woman in the world today to hold a candle to her for beauty and charm. She was a lovely, spoiled child, and Jinnah was inherently incapable of understanding her. …”

    Ritu Marwah, Jinnah’s daughter, India Currents.

    Chaman Lal informed Jinnah that Ruttie wasn’t feeling well. Jinnah, who was in Ireland, rushed to Paris where he booked a room at George V. Jinnah went to the clinic as Chaman Lal waited for him at a nearby cafe. Jinnah returned after three hours in a relaxed mood and informed him Ruttie was to be transferred to a new clinic with a new medical adviser.

    Money was no deterrent. Jinnah held constant vigil by her side. He stayed with Ruttie at the clinic for over a month. He took care of her and even shared the clinic food with her. She recovered and left for Bombay but without Jinnah.

    Could any one have saved their marriage?

    Interceder

    The thought that crosses one’s mind when reading Ruttie and Jinnah’s story is they needed intercession and someone should have mediated to save their marriage. Was there anyone who could have saved their marriage? The only person who had such credentials and could have gotten any success in reconciling Jinnah and Ruttie was Sarojini Naidu — a devoted friend of Jinnah and a mother figure to Ruttie. And she, in fact, did try to mediate.

    Actually, it was the pitiable state of Ruttie that had prompted Mrs. Naidu to make an effort. Mrs. Naidu’s letter to Padmaja:

    “Well, Ruttie has only us really. Her own people are strangers to her. Her poor mother loves her but drives her distracted … She loves us and trusts us and so she comes to me for sanctuary., poor child. She feels safe here. Safe in her soul.”

    Reddy, p. 335-6.

    It was her genuine love for Ruttie that led Mrs. Naidu to talk to her very good friend Jinnah. Mrs. Naidu continues:

    “Jinnah has grown so dumb. No one can even approach him. I think he is hurt to the core because she left him like that, almost without warning. In any case no one can interfere with him. He is too hard and proud and reserved for even an intimate friend to intrude beyond a certain point. All he says is, ‘I have been unhappy for ten years. I cannot endure it any longer. If she wants to be free I will not stand in her way. Let her be happy. But I will not discuss the matter with anyone. Please do not interfere.’ And he is I suppose like a stone image in his loneliness and Ruttie is, although reveling in what she believes to be the beginning of liberty for her–liberty costs too dear sometimes and is not worth the price.”

    Ibid, 336.

    Mrs. Naidu was writing to her elder daughter but her younger Leilamani was not far from her mind. She continued:

    “I am writing a line to Papi today. Poor child. She must like Ruttie be clamouring for ‘freedom.’ This freedom!!”

    Ibid.

    The only person whose mediation could have bore some fruit, failed. If Mrs. Naidu couldn’t, then probably no one could.

    Author Sheela Reddy believes Ruttie should have consulted Gandhi.

    Could Gandhi have played the savior?

    Reddy (p. 271.) writes: “… Ruttie, without sharing Jinnah’s animus against Gandhi, turned away from the one man who might have saved her.”

    Ruttie, as far as her own life or marriage were concerned, was a very private person. She never mentioned the inner turmoil she was going through or her marital problems even to Kanji, one of her best friends. With Mrs. Naidu and her daughter Padmaja, she was close in that regard and would vent her exasperation and would tell them her problems and frustrations.

    Gandhi and Ruttie met a few times. They did correspond sometimes. Once Ruttie donated money to his fund for Jallianwala Bagh memorial. Jinnah didn’t know about it — not that Ruttie was hiding it from him, it was an spontaneous act. Gandhi wrote in his newspaper column:

    “Mrs Jinnah truly remarked when she gave her mite to the fund, the memorial would at least give us an excuse for living.”

    Reddy, p.230.

    Gandhi’s April 30, 1920, letter to Ruttie asked her to cajole Jinnah to learn Gujarati and Hindustani (a mix of Hindi/Urdu):

    “Please do remember me to Mr. Jinnah and do coax him to learn Hindustani or Gujarati. If I were you, I should begin to talk to him in Gujarati or Hindustani. There is not much danger of you forgetting your English or your misunderstanding each other, is there? … Yes, I would ask this even for the love you bear me.”

    (Kanji was another person to be reminded by Gandhi that his mother tongue was Gujarati. See the letter written in 1947 here. ( https://pennds.org/doing-research/exhibits/show/dwarkadas/gandhi )

    In a June 28, 1919 letter to Jinnah, Gandhi had urged him to learn those languages:

    “I have your promise, that you would take up Gujarati and Hindi as quickly as possible. May I then suggest that like Macaulay you learn at least one of these languages on your return voyage? You will not have Macaulay’s time during the voyage, i.e., six months, but then you have not the same difficulty that Macaulay had.”

    Unlike Ruttie, Jinnah’s background was that of a middle class family from Gujarat and spoke Kuchchhi and Gujarati “beautifully,” per Chagla. His Hindustani was not that good. Both Jinnah and Ruttie were comfortable speaking English. Gandhi knew his letter was unnecessary, but couldn’t resist playing politics.

    (For Jinnah’s Gujarati handwriting, see “Rare Speeches and Documents of Quaid-E-Azam,” compiler, Yahya Hashim Bawany (Karachi: Mr. Arif Mukati, 1987, p. 39. Jinnah was answering questions for a Gujarati monthly Vismi Sadi or Twentieth Century in 1916. The questions were about favorite author, flower, etc. Jinnah is known as Quaid-E-Azam that translates to a Great Leader. See also Dr Muhammad Ali Shaikh, “History: Becoming Jinnah,” Dawn,)

    In the above letter, Gandhi also asked Jinnah to inform Ruttie,

    “Pray tell Mrs Jinnah that I shall expect her on her return to join the hand-spinning class that Mrs Banker Senior and Mrs Ramabai, a Punjabi lady, are conducting.”

    Ruttie never joined the spinning classes. (Her mother Lady Petit had joined and she used to go to those classes).

    In 1924, Gandhi wanted Ruttie to convince Jinnah to boycott British and all other foreign goods. Ruttie didn’t see any political wisdom or practicality in such actions. (Dwarkadas, p. 18. Kanji had similar ideas as Ruttie and he elaborated those in an interview to the Evening News of India May 1924. Ibid. p. 19-20.)

    The question remains: would Gandhi have been the right person to save Ruttie?

    Looking at Gandhi’s

    • married life,
    • his views on sex,
    • his relations with several women (including philosopher/poet Rabindranath Tagore’s niece Sarala Devi Chaudhurani, an educationist and political activist, and
    • “young, golden-haired, blue-eyed Danish beauty,” Esther Faering1, a devout Christian missionary), and
    • his mistreatment of his wife Kasturba,
    • his constant juggling to please and/or to save his girls/women friends from Kasturba’s justified wrath,
    • his experiments of sleeping with young girls to control his sexual urge,
    • his idea of restricting sexual activities to just procreation without any element of pleasure,
    • asking husbands and wives to consider each other as brothers and sisters,
    • and his so many other eccentricities don’t seem the right qualities to qualify him for that role.

    Here is one of the Gandhi advices to Indians:

    “It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife.”

    B. R. Gowani, “Was Gandhi Averse to climax?”

    Very strange and unhealthy advice, indeed. The institution of marriage was and, to a great extent, is still a legal outlet for most people to relieve themselves of troublesome hormones.

    And what was the guarantee that Gandhi, a hardcore politician, wouldn’t have played Ruttie’s request for help to further humiliate Jinnah?2

    Ruttie was a very reserved person when it came to her personal life and so would have never allowed Gandhi to play any role in resolving any of her problems. Gandhi’s intervention wouldn’t have solved anything but could have had detrimental outcome.

    Let’s assume that Ruttie had approached Gandhi for help. (Jinnah would not have stopped Ruttie from approaching Gandhi.) The most Gandhi could have done was to convince Ruttie to join his Ahmadabad ashram where, undoubtedly he would have given her special treatment (as he had offered to Motilal’s daughter Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit who was sent there to wean her away from her Muslim husband). For Ruttie, the stay there would have been worse than the “slave” like life with Jinnah. She was a free bird and thus couldn’t be caged — not only she would have flown out of the ashram in no time but would have probably persuaded many other ashramites to flee with her.

    Another thing Gandhi would have done was to assign Ruttie some social or political work to keep her busy and thus caused her to forget her depression and other problems. But then, she was already doing some of those things with Kanji, but it seems that she didn’t stay too long in those ventures. Dewan Chamanlal had asked her to join trade union but she declined that.

    The final letter

    On a ship back to India, Ruttie poured out her torment and hurt in her letter to Jinnah:

    S. S. Rajputana.
    Marseilles 5 Oct 1928.

    Darling – thank you for all you have done. If ever in my bearing your over tuned senses found any irritability or unkindness – be assured that in my heart there was place only for a great tenderness and a greater pain – a pain my love without hurt. When one has been as near to the reality of Life – (which after all is Death) as I have been dearest, one only remembers the beautiful and tender moments and all the rest becomes a half veiled mist of unrealities. Try and remember me beloved as the flower you plucked and not the flower you tread upon.

    I have suffered much sweetheart because I have loved much. The measure of my agony has been in accord to the measure of my love.

    Darling I love you – I love you – and had I loved you just a little less I might have remained with you – only after one has created a very beautiful blossom one does not drag it through the mire. The higher you set your ideal the lower it falls.

    I have loved you my darling as it is given to few men to be loved. I only beseech you that our tragedy which commenced with love should also end with it.

    – Darling Goodnight and Goodbye

    Ruttie

    I had written to you at Paris with the intention of posting the letter here – but I felt that I would rather write to you afresh from the fullness of my heart. R.

    Shagufta Yasmeen, “Ruttie Jinnah: Life and Love” (Islamabad: Shuja Sons, no date, p. 71-2, for the original letter in Ruttie’s handwriting). For online, see Letters of Note.

    Final months

    Ruttie left Paris just a few days before Mrs. Naidu arrived on October 10. Mrs. Naidu wrote to Padmaja:

    “I think Jinnah tried very hard to get her to come back.” “But Ruttie is, so I am told, beyond all appeal. Her health is still very precarious. But I have had no talk with Jinnah as yet.”

    Reddy, p. 348-9.

    She met him the next day and discussed the political situation in India where politicians were waiting for Jinnah’s arrival and response to Nehru Report.

    Once in India, he got busy. On December 28, at the All-Parties Convention in Calcutta, Jinnah’s demand for 33% Muslim representation in the central legislature was met with derision. One of the Congress leaders Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru ridiculed him and said give whatever this “spoilt child was asking for and be finished with it.” (Wolpert, p. 100.) M. R. Jayakar, spokesman for the Hindu Mahasabha, a communal outfit, said Jinnah represents “a small minority of Muslims.” (Ibid. p. 101.) (The Muslim population was around 25%. Jinnah wanted some kind of parity to secure Muslims with the majority Hindu population.)

    Jinnah calmly requested:

    “… Minorities cannot give anything to the majority….Believe me there is no progress of India until the Musalmans and Hindus are united, and let no logic, philosophy or squabble stand in the way of coming to a compromise and nothing will make me more happy than to see a Hindu-Muslim union.”

    Ibid.

    He also said:

    “We are all sons of the soil. We have to live together… If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ, but let us part as friends.”

    A. G. Noorani, “Assessing Jinnah,” Frontline ( https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article30205988.ece )

    Jinnah’s plea fell on deaf ears; he failed miserably. (This is a universal problem, the majority lacks a genrous spirit to concede something concrete to the minority which could make it feel secure.)

    All through January and February 1929, Ruttie remained ill which in turn made her depressed.

    Depression was not restricted to Ruttie, it affected many of her friends in her age group or younger, Reddy notes (p. 352). Mrs. Naidu’s son Ranadheera was addicted to alcohol and so was his sister Leilamani who was teaching in Lahore and surviving as a single woman. Their older brother Jaisoorya was in a Berlin sanatorium, the city where he was studying medicine. Padmaja drowned in melancholy at her own problems. (Years later, Padmaja had a live-in relationship with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.) The only difference between the Naidu children and Ruttie was that the former had their father Dr. Govindarajulu Naidu who was a source of great support to their children while Ruttie didn’t have that kind of continuous help. Lady Petit’s visits to Ruttie were not helpful either. Sarojini Naidu was in North America. In February, Jinnah was off to Delhi for government work. Only Kanji was around who tried his best to give Ruttie as much time as possible.

    Jinnah regularly visited Ruttie in the evenings where Kanji was present too. Their discussions reminded Kanji of the good old days when all three of them used to meet, eat, and discuss politics.

    Ruttie who loved going out, had almost confined herself indoor except for short walks with Kanji. Theosophist Krishnamurti and his secretary came for tea on February 1 at Ruttie’s place. Kanji was there too. Krishnamurti then invited Ruttie at Kanji’s friend’s place for dinner which she attended with Kanji. Around February 11, Jinnah had to leave for Delhi. A couple of days later, Ruttie, Kanji’s wife, and Kanji went for a night show movie.

    On 16 and 17 February, Kanji was on night duty as an honorary magistrate due to the riots in Bombay. On the 17th morning, Kanji picked Mrs. Besant from the train station and had lunch with her. After that he went home for a little while where Ruttie showed up “terribly depressed and unhappy.” (Dwarkadas, p. 56.)

    After four hours he went to drop Ruttie at her place where she served him tea. (Kanji was supposed to have tea with Mrs. Besant.) Kanji stayed there till 7pm due to Ruttie’s “terrific depression,” and left with a promise to return back at 10:15. Mrs. Besant understood and asked him to take care of Ruttie. Upon his return, Kanji was horrified to find Ruttie unconscious but was able to revive her.

    On the 18th morning, Ruttie called and told him to drop by on the way to his office. Her state of depression hadn’t disappeared yet; he did his best to cheer her up. Before leaving, he said: “I’ll see you to-night.” Ruttie’s gloomy reply:

    “If I am alive. Look after my cats and don’t give them away.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 57.

    Kanji writes: “These were the last words Ruttie spoke to me.” Kanji stopped by at 11:15 at night but Ruttie was asleep. He left as he hadn’t slept for two nights. A telephone call on the 19th afternoon informed Kanji that Ruttie had lost consciousness and her surviving chances are minimal. Right away he went to her place but couldn’t find her. (Dwarkadas, p. 57.)

    Ruttie no more

    Jinnah was in Delhi for the Budget Session of the Assembly. On the night of 20 February, 1929, Chamanlal was in Jinnah’s Western Court house in Delhi when Jinnah received a trunk call about Ruttie’s illness. He told Chaman Lal:

    “Rati is seriously ill. I must leave tonight.” “Do you know who that was? It was my father-in-law. This is the first time we have spoken to each other since my marriage.”

    Dewan ChamanLal, “The Quaid-i-Azam As I Knew Him” in Jamil-ud-din Ahmad compiled “Quaid-I-Azam as Seen by his Comtemporaries” (Lahore: Publishers United Ltd., 1966, p. 172.)

    Actually, his father-in-law had communicated the sad news of Ruttie’s death to Jinnah. She had passed away in the evening.

    One hundred and thirty eight days after her last letter, Ruttie died of an overdose – exactly on her 29th birthday. The clutches of sickness, insomnia, drugs, inner anguish, piecemeal companionship instead of constant comradery, inability to cope with life, and anxiety had gotten to the resplendent Ruttie.

    Mrs. Naidu’s January 1928 letter to Padmaja had mentioned about Ruttie’s previous attempt at suicide, “… as I have only now learned–how difficult have been those ten years,” “and how she even tried to put an end to herself deliberately …” (Reddy, p. 335.)

    Ruttie must have thought death was the only way out; so she annihilated herself.

    Funeral

    On the morning of 22nd February, Kanji with Col and Mrs. Sokhey picked up Jinnah from the Grant Road station.

    Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Kanji Dwarkadas, M. C. Chagla, and a good many people (both men and women) had gathered at Arambagh, a Shia Muslim cemetery in Mazgaon (Bombay), for the burial ceremony.

    Jinnah sat next to Kanji during the five hour long rites, and gave an impression that he was alright. After a while, he broke the silence and started talking hastily how he assisted Vittalbhai Patel, speaker of the Assembly, who had gotten himself in a tight corner with the government. He also talked about his work in the Assembly.

    But when the process of placing Ruttie’s body in her final abode began, Jinnah couldn’t maintain the facade of stoicism any longer. Kanji described the scene:

    “Then, as Ruttie’s body was being lowered into the grave, Jinnah, as the nearest relative was the first to throw the earth on the grave and he broke down suddenly and sobbed and wept like a child for minutes together.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 58.

    Jinnah was followed by Kanji:

    “I followed Jinnah and looking for the last time through sorrowful and tearful eyes at the mortal remains of the lovely and beautiful immortal soul, I promised to Ruttie that one day I would write her full story….”3

    Ibid.

    M. C. Chagla described it thus:

    “She was buried on February 22 in Bombay according to Muslim rites. Jinnah sat like a statue throughout the funeral but when asked to throw earth on the grave, he broke down and wept. That was the only time when I found Jinnah betraying some shadow of human weakness. It’s not a well publicised fact that as a young student in England it had been one of Jinnah’s dreams to play Romeo at The Globe. It is a strange twist of fate that a love story that started like a fairy tale ended as a haunting tragedy to rival any of Shakespeare’s dramas. ”

    Darwaish, “The Softer Side of Mr. Jinnah” (Globeistan.com).

    Religion restricts, politics prohibits

    her parents would have consigned her
    to a     Tower of Silence
    she wanted to be cremated
    but as Jinnah’s wife
    she was caged underground

    religion restricts
    politics prohibits

    Mahbano, Masoumeh, and Morvarid
    are to be left at dakhma
    Manisha, Manorama, and Menka
    are destined to be burned
    Mariam, Mahjabin, and Mominah
    are to be imprisoned 6 feet under …

    religion is like a life sentence,
    freedom or parole are hard to come by

    Jinnah meets Kanji

    Next evening, Jinnah met Kanji to know about her final days. Kanji:

    “Never have I found a man so sad and so bitter. He screamed his heart out, speaking to me for over two hours, myself listening to him patiently and sympathetically, occasionally putting a word here and there. Something I saw had snapped in him. The death of his wife was not just a sad event, nor just something to be grieved over, but he took it, this act of God, as a failure and a personal defeat in his life. I am afraid he never recovered right till the end of his life from this terrible shock.”

    Dwarkadas, p. 58.

    Jinnah and Kanji received condolence messages from India’s Viceroy Lord Irwin, Sarojini Naidu (who was in North America at that time), Jiddu Krishnamurti, and others.

    Could anyone be blamed?

    We know about Ruttie’s pain and suffering through her correspondence with Mrs. Naidu and her two daughters, Leilamani and especially Padmaja. and the exchange of letters between the Naidu women. Also Ruttie’s friendship with and her constant need for Kanji throws some light on her sadness and depression. But from Jinnah’s side we know almost nothing of his intense sorrow except for a few sentences spoken to his close friends here and there on rare occasions.

    Thirty nine years after Ruttie’s passing, Kanji was interviewed by an Urdu writer from Pakistan Syed Shahabuddin Dosnani in February 1968, in his apartment in Bombay. Acording to Kanji, sleeping pills were always by Ruttie’s bedside and she ended her life with it. Kanji:

    “She [Ruttie] chose to die on her birthday.”

    Reddy, p. 358.

    It is very tragic that such a wonderful person went to waste and met an untimely death.

    Years later, Jinnah told a friend’s wife:

    “She was a child and I should never have married her. The fault was mine.”

    Reddy, p. 362.

    Let us suppose Ruttie was born in 1880. and was in her mid thirties at the time of their marriage, would it have made their married life more workable? That is doubtful. The problems of time, attention, intimacy, and communication would have cropped up even with a spouse of same age group whether it was with Ruttie or some other person. It was not Ruttie’s age but her passion to live life to fullest and her need for companionship that would have created problems. The marriage would have worked whether the spouse was a “child” or same age person if that person was of a quiet and introverted nature, and not as needy.

    One could say that with Ruttie, Jinnah’s was a second marriage — in a sense that Jinnah was already wedded to politics and was committed to it. But then one has to take into account the fact that Ruttie was almost cut off from her family and from her community (Parsis). Also, Ruttie’s age and her vulnerability made her dependent on Jinnah for all kinds of support, so Jinnah was somewhat right at the assessment.

    To be fair to Jinnah, Ruttie also caused, consciously or unconsciously, immense pain to Jinnah. It is almost impossible to find any of Jinnah’s contemporaries with similar tolerance power as him. One wonders who would have tolerated in the 1920s India, hundred years ago, that his wife was living alone in Paris for months while he was paying the expenses. And his door was open for her upon her return. Jinnah was a very liberal person, ahead of his time. What needed was a bit less solemnness and a little more fun on part of Jinnah which his serious personality and commitments didn’t permit. It was unfortunate.

    When Ruttie was in Paris for a long period, she had met Bhikaiji Rustom Cama (1861 – 1936), a friend of Hamabai Petit, Ruttie’s aunt. Madam Cama, as she was known, was a wealthy Parsi woman who had separated from her husband in India and was residing in Paris and was involved in women’s rights and Indian freedom movement. Upon learning from Ruttie about her nightclub visit with some nobleman whose overdrinking caused a car collision on their way back, Madam Cama flared-up:

    “When such a remarkable man has married you, how could you go to a nightclub with a tipsy man?”

    Reddy, p. 272.

    Madam Cama’s admonishment was harsh but could be overlooked because she was unaware of what Ruttie was going through.

    Ruttie’s was a restless soul full of energy, ideas, curiosity, intellect, bravado, knowledge, literary treasure, and more. She was a romantic but was unable to instill similar feelings in Jinnah, after a couple of years into their marriage, because of his heavy involvement with his professional and political engagements.

    Her illness and reliance on drugs cut her life prematurely short. If she would have gotten more attention from Jinnah, the multi-talented Ruttie could have utilized her potential to the maximum and could have lived longer. She would have been Pakistan’s First Lady if death had not brutally snatched her. And who knows, after Jinnah’s death, she may have been a governor of a state in Pakistan like her contemporaries Vijaya Laxmi Pandit and Padmaja Naidu were in India- or an ambassador, or she would have represented her country at United Nations or would have become a renowned poet/author. Sadly, it was not to be so.

    Two and a half decades after her death, people in Bombay reminisced about Ruttie to Hector Bolitho in these words:

    “Ah, Ruttie Petit! She was the flower of Bombay.” “She was so lively, so witty, so full of ideas and jokes.”

    Hector Bolitho, Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan (London: John Murray, 1954, p.74)

    Dr. Muhammad Ali Shaikh in his article “The Women in Jinnah’s Life” puts the blame on Ruttie,

    “While Jinnah was purpose-oriented and wanted to accord adequate attention and time to his causes in life, Rattanbai wanted to continue living a fairytale romance.”

    Shaikh is entitled to his opinion. However, Ruttie was young and may have gotten over the romantic phase, like most do, and channeled her vigor on issues that were important to her. As we have seen, Ruttie was active at women’s issues, animal welfare, etc. Her intellectual curiosity, her interest in varied subjects, and her prolific reading wouldn’t have permitted her to be in the romantic state for too long. Who knows, she could have been a great writer, poet, or activist.

    The time and company she was not getting from Jinnah, she was looking or begging from Mrs. Naidu and Kanji. At the end of April 1927 Ruttie and Mrs. Naidu met in Lahore. Ruttie begged her to spend a few days with her. Ruttie’s troubled state prompted Mrs. Naidu to accompany her till Rawalpindi but she couldn’t part due to Ruttie’s insistence and went to Kashmir. Upon Mrs. Naidu’s departure, Ruttie wept. Mrs. Naidu to Padmaja:

    “Poor child!” “How she cried when I left. How she pleaded for me to stay and for me to bring you in June. …”

    Reddy, p. 326.

    It was indeed a tragic end.

    Cruel contrast

    Jinnah founded a nation; Ruttie didn’t even manage to find herself.

    Post Ruttie

    Jinnah was heart broken.

    All Ruttie’s books, jewelry, clothes, and other items were packed and put aside.

    Religion had been used in India before but Gandhi exploited it on a national scale. Post three Round Table Conferences between the British government and Indian politicians (November 1930 to December 1932), achieved nothing of significance, Jinnah, attended the first one.

    Jinnah decided to settle in Hampstead, an area in London, where he bought a house in September 1931. He was joined by his daughter Dina and his sister Fatima, who had quit her dental practice in Bombay. She devoted the rest of her life to Jinnah. Dina joined a school and Jinnah started his practice at Privy Council.

    The Manchester Guardian had in 1931 described various groups’ perception of Jinnah at the Round Table Conference:

    “Mr. Jinnah’s position at the Round Table Conference was unique. The Hindus thought he was a Muslim communalist, the Muslims took him to be pro-Hindu, the princes deemed him to be too democratic. The Britishers considered him a rabid extremist-with the result that he was everywhere but nowhere. None wanted him.”

    In 1934, when prominent Indian Muslim League leaders begged him to come back and take over the party leadership, Jinnah returned to India. Dewan Chamanlal also wanted him back in politics. Jinnah took over the leadership of Muslim League, which didn’t do very well in the 1937 provincial elections. In Bombay and UP (the United Provinces), the Congress refused Muslim League a place in the cabinet unless they switched over to Congress. Jinnah’s plea for a “united front” of Muslim League and Congress was rejected by arrogant Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress Party, including Gandhi. (A. G. Noorani, “Why Jinnah became defiant,” Frontline, August 21, 2013.

    Aijaz Ahmad points out Congress leaders’ folly in refusing Jinnah’s offer.

    “Few realized that such acts of generosity were necessary if the Congress was to win the confidence of those who felt threatened by the size of its victory; if Jinnah was capable of seeking a ‘united front’ he was also capable of whipping up hysteria on the charge that the ‘Hindu party’ which had taken over was refusing to share with the Muslims any part of its power.”

    Ahmad, p. 14.

    The Congress Party perceived itself as a vast umbrella which wanted all the groups belonging to different castes, ethnicity, and religions to be a part of it.

    So Jinnah used his religious card, vehemently.

    “… The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and litterateurs. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. … To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of such a state.”

    Banglapedia, “Two Nation Theory.”

    (Jinnah was not the first to propound the two-nation theory; several Hindu leaders, including Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, had offered such plans, as far as 1860s. See Shamsul Islam, “Guilty men of the two-nation theory: A Hindutva project borrowed by Jinnah,” Sabrang, 16 May, 2018.)

    In 1936, Jinnah’s daughter Dina fell in love with Neville Ness Wadia, a Christian. (Wadia’s father was born in a Parsee family but had converted to Christianity.) Later on, Neville Ness Wadia converted to Zoroastrianism. Dina had her maternal grandmother’s approval but not of Jinnah.

    Dina countered Jinnah:

    “Why don’t you grant me the freedom which you had in choosing your lifepartner.”

    Saadat Hasan Manto, “Mera Sahab” at Rekhta in both Devanagari & Urdu scripts.

    Jinnah’s reason for insisting Dina marry a Muslim man was a political one because by this time he was deep into the religious swamp. Dina went ahead with the marriage and their relationship got strained.

    Jinnah was a tough person but once in a while he was overcome with memories of Ruttie and Dina so he would order a trunk with Ruttie’s and Dina’s clothes and would reminisce over them; his eyes would get wet.

    (Great Urdu short story writer Saadat Hasan Manto got the above and many other tidbits from Jinnah’s driver Mohammad Hanif Azad. See Manto’s Mera Sahab at Rekhta which has it in both Devanagari & Urdu scripts. Azad4 has narrated the incidents in an interesting manner.)

    Memory Lane has nothing but agonies

    in the middle of the night
    when darkness and loneliness commingled
    the heart wept in whispers
    the mind strolled down memory lane
    there is no joy or bliss
    only pain, sorrow, and agony
    solace is urgently needed–
    it’s the necessity of the moment
    the ship-shaped trunk was ordered to be opened
    Ruttie and Dina’s clothes were spread out
    Jinnah stared at those clothes
    recreating the happy family moments
    remembering the two beautiful women
    one a wife, other a daughter
    one no more, other estranged
    like a dead man standing,
    heart’s pain expressed through tears
    monocle removed, tears wiped off

    After sometime the daughter-father reconciled. Dina and Jinnah corresponded regularly. In 1943, Dina and Neville divorced.

    [Jinnah’s (1939) Will also had Dina and her children as beneficiaries. Jinnah didn’t make any changes to the Will. The Will in its entirety is in Khwaja Razi Haider, “Ruttie Jinnah: The Story Told and Untold” (Karachi: University of Karachi, Appendix IV, p. 155-7.)]

    In August 1947, before departing for Karachi, Jinnah visited Dina and her two children. He gave the Karakul cap he was wearing to his grandson Nusli Wadia. Jinnah also stopped by Ruttie’s grave to say goodbye.

    IMAGE/Dr Muhammad Ali Shaikh/National Archives Islamabad/Dawn/Duck Duck Go

    The love between Ruttie and Jinnah was never lost and they always had it in their hearts till the end.

    Jinnah never got married or had an affair with any one. Ruttie was close to Kanji and she could have found loving comfort in his company if she wanted too, but she never did. She loved Jinnah only.

    Perhaps, some romances are destined that way.

    Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity who took a 180 degree detour from secularism to don an Islamic cap was back to his secularist self when he got Pakistan. On August 11, Jinnah addressed the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan:

    “… You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State….

    “… in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”

    On August 14, Pakistan came into existence and the next day India got its independence. It was one of history’s greatest tragedies with communal killing on a vast scale, accompanied by vast scale destruction and innumerable refugees.

    Gandhi. In less than six months after British left, on January 30, 1948, Gandhi became the victim of a Hindu fanatic — Nathuram Godse who pumped three bullets in his chest. One has to really appreciate Gandhi’s efforts during post Partition butchery to save Muslim lives in Delhi and other areas. The shots fired at Gandhi were forewarning of the Hindu fascist raj India will one day become.5

    Jinnah. More than seven months after Gandhi’s assassination, Jinnah passed away on September 11, 1948 after suffering from tuberculosis which he was infected with many years ago but was known only to his Parsi doctor J. A. L. Patel, his sister Fatima, and very few other people. Jinnah was a chain smoker who had smoked for three decades 50 or more Craven “A” cigarettes a day. In May 1946, Dr. Patel had warned him to take things very easy because he only had a year or two left to live. Jinnah had survived the past ten years, in the words of Dr. Patel, on “will power, whiskey and cigarettes..” [Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975, p. 124-6.)]

    From Quetta, where Jinnah was recuperating, he was flown back to Karachi. The ambulance carrying Jinnah, then Governor General of Pakistan, from Karachi airport to the government house broke down. It took a long time for another vehicle to arrive. Military Secretary Colonel Birnie was the only person sent to receive Jinnah. There was no other person or vehicle. It definitely was strange and suspicious. Was Liaquat Ali Khan’s (Jinnah’s right hand) government waiting for Jinnah to die as soon as possible? Jinnah said so, according to his sister.6

    Sister Phyllis Dunham, the nurse who was attending Jinnah in the ambulance, said they were near the refugee camp. There was mud and hundreds of flies. She fanned Jinnah’s face with a piece of cardboard to keep the flies away.

    “I was alone with him for a few minutes and he made a gesture I shall never forget. He moved his arm free of the sheet, and placed his hand on my arm. He did not speak, but there was such a look of gratitude in his eyes. It was all the reward I needed, for anything I had done. His soul was in his eyes at that moment.”

    The same evening, that is, September 11, 1949, Jinnah passed away.

    Dina flew into Karachi from Bombay to attend her father’s funeral. She then returned back to Bombay. After Partition, Dina had decided to stay in India but later on moved to New York, USA.

    Dina Wadia (extreme left), Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s only child, flew in to attend her father’s funeral. Second from right is Jinnah’s sister Fatima. PHOTO/The Press Information Department, Ministry of Information, Broadcasting & National Heritage, Islamabad/Dawn

    Sarojini Naidu (known as “Nightingale of India” or “Bharat Kokila,” a name given by Gandhi), became the governor of Indian state of UP or United Provinces after independence. She had a fatal cardiac arrest on March 2, 1949.

    Fatima Jinnah. (In Pakistan, she is known as Mader-e Millat or Mother of the Nation.) On the first couple of death anniversaries of Jinnah, his sister Fatima was not allowed to make radio speeches. In 1951, she was allowed but was censored. Some pages had disappeared from her book My Brother before it reached the publisher, because they were deemed to be “against the ideology of Pakistan.” (See the pages here for the ideology crap.)

    In 1965, the opposition parties contesting the elections against the US supported military dictator Field Marshall General Ayub Khan persuaded Ms. Jinnah to contest the presidential election against Ayub Khan. Fatima gave a good fight but lost the election because it was rigged. However, she won in both Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, and also in Dacca, East Pakistan’s capital. Fatima Jinnah passed away on July 9, 1967.7

    Kanji Dwarkadas was the senior-most personnel officer and labor consultant in India. In 1946 and 1951, he was invited by the United States government to study housing and labour problems. He passed away in the early 1970s.

    Padmaja was the fourth governor of the Indian state of West Bengal from November 1956 to June 1967. Padmaja waited for Nehru to propose but he never did because he wanted to avoid offending his daughter Indira’s feelings. But they lived together. Nehru had affairs with many other women8 too. Padmaja was aware of it. She once said: “Nehru is not a one woman man!”

    Independent India’s first prime minister Nehru’s seventeen year rule deserves high praise; it was good for minorities. Nehru was worried about the majority communalism when he said: “Communalism of the majority is far more dangerous than the communalism of the minority.” He passed away on 27 May 1964. Since Hindu nationalist Modi came to power in 2014, his government never misses a chance to vilify Nehru.

    Padmaja Naidu passed away on May 2, 1975.

    Dina avoided state invitations from Pakistan but did visit again in March 2004 at the invitation of former chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board Sheharyar Khan to watch India/Pakistan cricket match in Lahore. It was termed “cricket diplomacy” as she and her family, like so many Indians and Pakistanis, wanted to see good relations between both countries. She and her son Nusli Wadia and her grand sons Jehangir and Ness, visited her father’s mausoleum in Karachi. In the visitors’ book, she wrote:

    “This has been very sad and wonderful for me. May his dream for Pakistan come true.”

    Dina passed away on November 2, 2017.9

    ENDNOTES:

    The post The Tragic Tale of a Flower that Wilted too Soon (Part 2 of 2) first appeared on Dissident Voice.
    1    Gandhi’s political power provided him an opportunity to have many girl friends. Whereas his genius let him juggle and manage these relations while having a wife. Madeleine Slade (Mirabehn), Sushila Nayar, Bibi Amtus Salam are some of the females Gandhi was close to. Some of the extracts from Gandhi’s letters:

    “You will continue to haunt me in my sleep. No wonder that [your husband] Panditji (Rambhuj Dutt) calls you the greatest shakti. You may cast that spell over him. You are performing the same trick over me.”

    In another letter dated January 23, 1920, Gandhi wrote, “Saraladevi has been showering her love on me in every possible way.”

    The nature of their relationship is further uncovered in a letter dated August 23, 1920: “You are mine in the purest sense. You ask for a reward of your great tender, well, it is its own reward.”

    Acutely aware of how jealous Kasturba was of several of his adoring disciples, Gandhi tried at first to disarm his wife of such feelings by asking Esther “to help Ba in the Kitchen”. But he warned his “Dear Child” that

    “Ba has not an even temper. She is not always sweet. And she can be petty… You will therefore have to summon to your aid all your Christian charity to be able to return largeness against pettiness… To pity the person who slights you… And so, my dear Esther, if you find Mrs. Gandhi trying your nerves, you must avoid the close association I am suggesting to you.”

    It did not work, of course. Kasturba treated his “Dear child” so harshly in her kitchen that Esther soon broke down. “You were with me the whole of yesterday and during the night. I shall pray that you may be healthier in mind, body and spirit,” Bapu wrote to console Dear Child Esther, “with deep love.”… Gandhi was “glad you opened out heart” about his “difficult” wife. He immediately insisted that Esther must have a “separate Kitchen” for herself. “My heart is with you in your sorrow.”
    2    See “Gandhi Kept On …” (Counterpunch, August 14, 2015).
    3    Kanji: “… It has taken me more than thirty years to fulfil this promise. I dedicated to Ruttie my 85 page “Gandhiji through my Diary Leaves” (1915-1948), published in May 1950.” Dwarkadas, p. 58.
    4    Prior to joining Jinnah, Azad used to work as an extra in Bombay film industry. Post Partition, he worked as a character actor in Pakistan film industry.)
    5    Since 2014, Hindu Modi has created internal partition in India by turning Muslims, over 14% of India’s population, into second class citizens. Other minorities are not doing any better either. Modi’s rise to power, i.e., from Gujarat state’s chief minister to India’s premier, was on the Muslim corpses piled under his watch. He was termed the “butcher of Gujarat.”

    Aijaz Ahmad: “… communal violence always leads to very rich electoral dividends for the BJP [Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party] and its associates …”

    Modi government has banned the recent two part BBC documentary on Gujarat genocide. Many websites, including Elon Musk’s Twitter, have been ordered to take down the documentary; they have complied. Musk, “a free-speech absolutist,” had no qualms in carrying out Modi’s order because India is a huge market. In 2019, the US government overthrew Bolivia’s government. Musk boasted: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” One is prompted to ask Musk: How about a coup in India.? No way, Musk is waiting for a tax break for Tesla in India. One of opposition politician in India, Mahua Moitra, had posted the video on her twitter account but has been taken off; same with the US actor John Cusack‘s twitter account.
    6    Why was Jinnah transported in a broken ambulance and why was there not a spare vehicle? The question has been raised many times but the people in power are neither in a hurry nor are willing to answer. Just after three years, Liaquat Ali Khan, born in 1895, was shot twice during a public rally on October 16, 1951. He was rushed to a hospital but didn’t survive. Within a few seconds after shooting, the police killed the assassin. Pakistan was just a four year old baby then, but its police was far too mature in this matter. It finished the assassin and thus saved lot of the poor country’s money and time from being wasted on finding the real culprits. (In November 1963, US President John F. Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was shot dead in the Dallas Police Headquarters, just two days after Kennedy’s murder, by a nightclub owner Jack Ruby.)

    First week of March in 1949 witnessed Allah, Muhammad, and Koran making inroads in Pakistan via Objectives Resolution. Four years later, the Islamists went after one of the Muslim minorities, the Ahmadis, to declare them non-Muslims. They succeeded in 1974. Jogendra Nath Mandal, a Hindu, whom Jinnah had chosen as one of his ministers, had felt insignificant after Jinnah’s death and handed his resignation to Liaquat Ali Khan and migrated to India.

    (Those interested in understanding the tragic condition of minorities in Pakistan should read Mandal’s entire letter.

    Unlike the Hindu parties in India, the Islamic parties in Pakistan have never reached the corridors of power, but then have never been far from the people in power. They have forced politicians to do things in the name of Islam which have done great harm to the country. On the other hand, the army and politicians also use them when needed. On January 17, 2023, the Pakistan’s National Assembly voted to broaden the blasphemy laws by including Prophet Muhammad’s companions which may be a huge number. It seems, pretty soon, the National Assembly will add another clause to the blasphemy laws declaring anyone criticizing the members of the ruling class for their corrupt, criminal, conscienceless actions as blasphemous because they are relatives of Muhammad or of Muhammad’ companions. Nothing is impossible for people in power. (Look at Planet’s Earth’s current Landlord who wants Gaza as “Riviera of the Middle East” which is now in the ruin due to former Landlord‘s genocidal war on Palestinians who are all alone.)

    Pakistan imported 2200 luxury cars in the second half of 2022. A country with more than 232 million people has mere $16 billion in reserves as of February 2025! Every now and then, Pakistani beggars have to rush to China, UAE, Saudi Arabia, or IMF (International Monetary Fund) for either a few billion dollars loan or to extend the payment time. IMF loans are accompanied with harsh conditions — and as usual, the common people bear the brunt.

    S. Akbar Zaidi puts it bluntly:

    “The irony of ironies. An institution which across the globe has been acknowledged as anti-people, elitist and responsible for increasing poverty, misery and destitution across dozens of countries, is now being seen as Pakistan’s only saviour, as it seems the rulers in this country have come round to restarting an agreement which has been in abeyance for almost a year.”

    Another thing the government does, with the blessing of the army, is to apply censorship. In February 2023, access to Wikipedia, a free source of information for students and other people in a country where the government doesn’t provide much, blocked. The reason: Pakistan wants Wikipedia to remove “blasphemous content.” How could you fight this idiocy. After a few days, the ban was lifted. In January 2025, some important amendments were passed to the 2016 Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) which has become a tool to harass media people and journalists — more than 200 such incidents have happened. The army is also good at silencing or disappering its critics or people asking for their rights, such as people of Balochistan.

    The main opposition leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan (a Pakistani version of Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Tayyip Erdogan, and Victor Orban) is not any better.
    7    If common sense had prevailed over the US supported generals and the elite that this was a golden opportunity to repair relations with the eastern wing, which had been turned into West Pakistan’s colony, it would have saved the break up of Pakistan. It didn’t. After a bloody war, fought in East Pakistan with killings, rapes, and devastation, in December 1971, East Pakistan became Bangladesh.
    8    Nehru’s sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit: “Didn’t you know, Pupul?” They lived together for years–for years.” “He felt that Indu [Indira Gandhi] had been hurt enough. He did not want to hurt her further.”

    Pupul Jayakar, Indira Gandhi: A Biography, p. 92.

    Nehru had affairs with some other women too, including Lady Edwina Mountbatten, the wife of Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, who presided over India’s partition. Mountbatten’s was an open marriage
    9    In 2007, Dina wrote a letter to India’s then Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh requesting to hand over Jinnah’s Bombay/Mumbai house (South Court, also called Jinnah House) to her with an assurance the house will be used for personal use without any commercial motive.

    “It is now almost 60 years since my father’s death and I have been deprived of my house where I grew up and lived until I married.” “I request you return it to me.”

    Dr. Singh never replied back; had no intention to return back the property.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.