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Category: Opinion

  • Gerard Otto on Palestine, genocide and the media: ‘Not if – but when – but not now’

    COMMENTARY: By Gerard Otto

    This morning there is no article on the political page of The New Zealand Herald about the plight of people in Gaza, the same is the case at The Post and at RNZ. Even the 1News political page is Gaza free but what may stun you over a Sunday morning coffee is the fact that there is also no mention of Gaza on the “World Pages” of any of these so-called news organisations.

    It’s not news in the world of our mainstream media journalists.

    Instead, there is articles about “no deal” between Trump and Putin, 300 dead in Pakistan, Trump will meet Zelenskyy, Stone Age Humans were picky about what stones they used . . . and other things — in fact the only article in the “big ” New Zealand mainstream media “World” pages about Gaza is at Stuff and it’s a link to a three minute news video item from yesterday’s Auckland protest about Neil Finn supporting Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.

    Chlöe said the evidence is pretty clear and you don’t kill journalists for no reason when Israel laughed off claims that people in Gaza were starving.

    Last night, TVNZ 1News broadcast a news item that led with Neil Finn singing “Don’t Dream it’s Over” and Simon Mercep interviewing Chlöe about her stance on an apology.

    The news Chlöe would be back next week at Parliament probably shocked Duncan Garner but there was precious little coverage of what was said in protest speeches because the limitations of broadcasting news concision (a sequence of soundbites) prevent the New Zealand public from hearing too much about Gaza from our own mainstream news services.

    Gordon’s action list
    Over on social media many people are sharing Gordon Campbell’s article around — where he details the actions you could take and points out how the people of Gaza don’t have time for symbolic stances and the kinds of actions that might help — like sanctions and UN peacekeeping intervention on the ground.

    Gordon Campbell has “a go at” the stance taken by the NZ government that “it’s not a matter of if, but when” by adding “but not now” and why not now?

    One reason for “but not now” pitched by Campbell is that with Todd McClay now heading over to the US to beg for a return to 10 percent tariffs, New Zealand is stalling and playing a wait and see game — watching whether Australia will be punished for backing a Palestinian state and whether tariffs will be part of the game.


    G News on yesterday’s Palestine solidarity rally in Te Komititanga Square, Auckland.

    A map of the nations in the world who support a Palestinian state shows most of it in green — and the holdouts in white — with New Zealand holding out in white as we recite “Not if, but when, but not now”.

    The editorial at The New Zealand Herald this morning is about how Labour MPs should have shown up and performed publicly at the Covid Circus Phase 2 Royal Commission of Inquiry in the opinion of the Herald (run by Steven Joyce and cookers from The Centrist) — because an urgent Taxpayers’ Union Poll claims 53 percent say so with a giant margin for error not even mentioned — nor how the Royal Commission has all the information it needs from the previous government but it needs the same questions answered in public.

    The priorities and partisanship of The NZ Herald are on show as it campaigns hard against Labour and the left bloc even while there’s an unfolding genocide taking place in the world and it’s “World” pages are empty about this — while decent people cancel their subscriptions.

    Many of us are still aghast at the way senior political correspondent Audrey Young wished Chlöe would go away when all she was doing was asking National MPs to act with their conscience and Speaker Gerry Brownlee had taken offence and dished out injustice — which now has backfired at grassroots level across the nation and media starve us all of the real content in those speeches.

    Chlöe has said from the start this is not about her and she was telling people this again yesterday as folks thanked her for taking an unapologetic stand.

    Green Party's Chlöe Swarbrick has said from the start this is not about her and she was telling people this again
    Green Party’s Chlöe Swarbrick has said from the start this is not about her and she was telling people this again yesterday as folks thanked her for taking an unapologetic stand. Image: Stuff screenshot APR

    Who controls the spotlight? Media!
    We wanted to hear from Chlöe and we wanted to hear those speeches.

    I personally felt I had let down the show yesterday because my cell and sound gear seized up in the bitter cold wind and rain so I missed Chlöe’s speech and some of the other messages — Hey Now Don’t Dream it’s Over — but with no umbrella, no raincoat and standing in the rain my frozen fingers took some time to come right and I sat on a ferry in cold wet clothes like a failure afterwards but it is what it is.

    My apologies for not being better prepared.

    It was pointed out in speeches at the rally (there has almost been 100 of them now) how NZ journalists do not support their colleagues who are being murdered for doing their jobs in Gaza and when I got home and warmed up we discussed the way Al Jazeera is a good news channel and how crap things are in New Zealand media.

    Gordon Campbell and a few other notable exceptions keep the faith and his observation “but not now” has done the thinking for many of us about the spineless government who are stalling and pretending this is complex and needs to take weeks while every day more people starve to death, get shot going for food. And it all just happens as if — it’s “a mystery” – while our government names Hamas strongly but nobody else.

    Criticism of State Terror is more toned down and we care more about our US relationship than anything much else it seems — putting our own interests first and not reporting much about the facts.

    RNZ has finally published “Spine and Punishment: A review of Swarbrick v Brownlee” because the media spotlight was on this local issue and the history of Speakers’ rulings versus “a new decency” because Gerry was offended and overreached.

    Gerry must withdraw
    In my opinion, Gerry has got to withdraw and apologise or step down and any more stick about this towards Chlöe is going to further the focus on National MPs who are silent and hiding behind “But not now”.

    If only six of 68 National MPs voted with their conscience and not their party “but not now” instructions then we’d be actively progressing a new law to sanction Israel — and our actions would speak louder than merely words and symbolic gestures.

    “But not now” is the order of the day for New Zealand’s mainstream media as Dr Paul Goldsmith is caught out supporting what David Seymour wrote to the UN — Education Minister Erica Stanford overreaches banning Te Reo words, Public Service Minister Judith Collins is threatening to prevent strikes, and PM Christopher Luxon is now loathed by the business community as his fluffers at The NZ Herald look the other way.

    The unfolding genocide in Gaza seems to be going to plan as NZ news media also lack a spine and any kind of support for their dead colleagues while this one term government clings to “Not if, but when — but not now”.

    Might as well carry on starving until September.

    “He’s lost the plot” – “but not now”.

    Because this government and its sycophantic media need more time to argue about this very “complex” issue.

    Gerard Otto is a digital creator and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Why we need protection from brutality of some thuggish NZ police

    COMMENTARY: By Saige England

    A New Zealand policeman pushed over an elderly man who was doing nothing but waving a Palestinian flag at a solidarity rally in Ōtautahi yesterday.

    Yes the man employed to protect the public committed a violent assault. Not a wee shove, a great big push that caused the man to fall the ground – onto hard tarmac.

    It comes on top of a woman being fatally shot this week by police and her partner being shot and injured. In that case a knife was involved but it’s kind of like paper-scissors-rock, is it not?

    Police wear protective clothing and where are the tasers?

    In other, different, situations I know for a fact that some of our police are violent against peaceful people.

    I have experienced their brutality directly while filming their brutality. Like the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) they see journalists who film their offensive actions as the enemy.They used pepper spray against me illegally to stop me filming their perversity.

    But look, it’s a hard job so they need how-not-to-be-thugs training.

    Pre-trained as thugs
    Some young men are already pre-trained to be thugs and they seem to be out at the front. They feel great in this mostly white gang.

    I have witnessed police haul people off the pavement, beat them up, and then arrest the victims of their assaults “for assault”.

    False accusations to protect themselves? Twisting the narrative completely to hide their own violence?

    False arrests when they themselves should face arrest.

    I think we’ve had enough.

    Some of the boys in blue really really need to grow up.

    They need training that teaches them that manning or womaning up (some women cops play the thug game too) doesn’t mean training to be a wanker white supremacist.

    Self awareness
    Good training means teaching police to be self aware, aware of thoughts and feelings, not just learning cognitive behavioural tools but applying them.

    They are in the community to protect the community. They should not see people who are supporting human rights or kids attending a party as their opposition, their enemy.

    These thug police need to unlearn their thuggery and learn instead, how to relate to the people. They are not defending themselves against the public. They must not view people — real human beings — as their enemy.

    The thug cops are adept at dehumanising others. They need to learn to see people as individuals and this includes people attending group functions like parties or protests or club activities. People have human rights.

    This includes the right to be respected and treated with dignity.

    The perpetrators of violent crime are — far too often — the police. I’ve seen it happen with no provocation time and again. Too many times to count.

    They don the black gloves and black sunnies and wear bullet proof vests and feel what?How do they feel when they gear up? Threatened or threatening?

    Public protection
    Questions need to be asked.

    The public needs protection from some — not all — of our police.

    And the legal system, the justice system — (I’m trying not use an ironic tone here) needs to be applied to violent crimes, including the police crims who assault members of the public.

    I worry for unseen victims too. I worry for their wives and children because if they assault with no provocation on the street what do they do at home?

    Do people who behave like street devils turn into angels at home?

    Investigations must be held about why our police are assaulting bystanders and peaceful protesters.

    Tragedy investigation
    I guess there wll be an investigation into the bullets against knife tragedy. But we need other investigations too.

    I know the footage of what happened to our innocent elderly protester will be posted on social media.


    New footage emerges of policeman pushing partygoer (2021 1News video)

    In the meantime, here’s other footage above of Christchurch police doing what they are in danger of doing best.

    This footage is four years ago but this alarming, aggressive behaviour continues as demonstrated yesterday by a cop shoving to the ground an unarmed, unprotected, elderly man waving a Palestinian flag whom they then — so wrongly — charged with assault!

    Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This commentary was first published on her social media.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Rise Up for Our Planet: September 18-21

    It is crystal clear that millions of US Americans are prepared to organize and take action to fight the efforts of the Trump regime to impose a form of 21st Century fascism on the USA. From the first youth-led, #50501 actions in all 50 states on February 5 to the more than five million people who came out in over 2,200 localities on June 14, No Kings Day, and everything in between and since, it is unquestionable that there is a mass resistance movement that is not giving up.

    History is calling upon us to step up, and we are doing so.

    This resistance movement has been a multi-issue movement participated in by people with a wide diversity of radical to progressive to liberal to common sense sentiments but who are united in our fear, rage, and support for democracy and social and environmental justice.

    One of the issues of this multi-issue movement has been the climate crisis, but it has not been a priority. This is the case even as the world’s scientists and accelerating extreme weather events worldwide are clearly saying that this existential crisis is getting worse, and time is running out to turn things around in enough time to prevent worldwide climate catastrophe.

    Since the Trumpists have taken office it has become increasingly clear that, despite significant Republican voter support in many states for jobs-producing wind and solar energy and electric cars, the Trump Administration is doing everything it can to halt and reverse the growth of these critical industries. A few weeks ago the head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, former NY Republican candidate for Governor, announced that he intends to try to overturn the “endangerment finding” upheld by the US Supreme Court 16 years ago. That finding determined that CO2, methane and four other greenhouse gases are pollutants that can be regulated and reduced.

    But the climate movement in the US and elsewhere is fighting back. Finally, on the fall equinox weekend of September 20 and 21, the climate crisis will be a central issue in mass demonstrations around the US and beyond.

    On the 20th world leaders will be gathering in NYC for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week. A major climate justice demonstration will be held that day in NYC, convened by international 350.org, DRUM, Climate Defenders and the Women’s March and endorsed by over 100 other groups so far. Simultaneous actions will happen on that day around the world as part of a Draw the Line campaign. The youth-led Fridays for Future is calling for actions around the world beginning on September 20. We are uniting across the world to demand a better future for our communities and for all living beings!

    Then on Sunday, September 21, “Sun Day”, local actions around the country organized by national Third Act will “celebrate solar and wind power and the movement to leave fossil fuels behind. Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power on the planet—and gives us a chance to actually do something about the climate crisis. But fossil fuel billionaires are doing everything they can to shut it down. We will build, rally, sing and come together in the communities where we must work to get laws changed and work done.”

    But this isn’t all that is happening five weeks from now. On the Thursday and Friday before this big weekend, September 18-19 in Washington, DC, actions are happening each day calling for: Hands Off Our Planet, No Fracking Petrostate

    –Thursday morning: Action at the monthly meeting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to demand that this agency do what the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals has said they must do: stop approving new methane gas projects unless they have done serious analyses of the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice impacts of proposed new methane gas pipelines and other infrastructure.

    –Thursday afternoon: Action at the federal headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency as the beginning of a sustained national campaign to demand its restoration and the removal of Administrator Lee Zeldin.

    –Friday morning: A Petrostate Tour stopping at trade associations that have captured our government, compromised the environment, and violated private property rights, including the American Petroleum Institute (API), American Exploration and Production Council (AXPC), and the American Gas Association (AGA).

    These DC actions are being organized by Beyond Extreme Energy, Elders Coalition for Climate Action, Third Act Actions Lab and the UnFrack FERC Campaign, supported by many others.

    The peril our planet is in cannot be overstated. The popular democracy movement which has done so much over the last seven months to resist Trumpist tyranny must, really must, hit the streets next month.

    The post Rise Up for Our Planet: September 18-21 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Gordon Campbell: The lack of spine in New Zealand’s foreign policy on Gaza

    ANALYSIS: By Gordon Campbell

    The word “Gaza” is taking on similar connotations to what the word “Auschwitz” meant to a previous generation. It signifies a deliberate and systematic attempt to erase an entire people from history on the basis of their ethnic identity.

    As a result, Israel is isolating itself as a pariah state on the world stage. This week alone has seen Israel target and kill four Al Jazeera journalists, just as it had executed eight Red Crescent medical staff and seven other first responders back in March, and then dumped their bodies in a mass grave.

    Overall 186 journalists have died at the hands of the IDF since October 7, 2023, and at least 1400 medical staff as of May 2025.

    On Monday night a five-year-old disabled child starved to death. Reportedly, he weighed only three kilograms when he died. Muhammad Zakaria Khudr was the 101st child among the 227 Palestinians now reported to have died from starvation.

    Meanwhile, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters keep on saying that with regard to New Zealand recognising a Palestinian state, it is a matter of “Not if, but when.” Yet why is “ but not now” still their default position?

    At this rate, a country that used to pride itself on its human rights record — New Zealand has never stopped bragging that this is where women won the right to vote, before they did anywhere else — will be among the last countries on earth to recognise Palestine’s right to exist.

    What can we do? Some options:

    1. Boycott all Israeli goods and services;
    2. Engage with the local Palestinian community, and support their businesses, and cultural events;
    3. Donate financial support to Gaza. Here’s a reliable link to directy support pregnant Gaza women and their babies;
    4. Lobby your local MP, and Immigration Minister Erika Stanford — to prioritise the inclusion of hundreds of Gazans in our refugee programme, just as we did in the wake of the civil war in Syria, and earlier, in Sudan;
    5. Write and phone your local MP, and urge them to support economic sanctions against Israel. These sanctions should include a sporting and cultural boycott along the lines we pursued so successfully against apartheid South Africa
    6. Contact your KiwiSaver provider and let it be known that you will change providers if they invest in Israeli firms, or in the US, German and UK firms that supply the IDF with weapons and targeting systems. Contact the NZ Super Fund and urge them to divest along similar lines;
    7. Identify and picket any NZ firms that supply the US/Israeli war machines directly, or indirectly;
    8. Contact your local MP and urge him or her to support Chloe Swarbrick’s private member’s bill that would impose economic sanctions on the state of Israel for its unlawful occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Swarbrick’s Bill is modelled on the existing Russian sanctions framework.If 61 MPs pledged support for Swarbrick’s Bill, it would not have to win a private members ballot before being debated in Parliament. Currently 21 MPs (the Greens and TPM) formally support it. If and when Labour’s 34 MPs come on board, this will still require another six MPs (from across the three coalition parties) to do the right thing. Goading MPs into doing the right thing got Swarbrick into a world of  trouble this week. (Those wacky Greens. They’re such idealists.);
    9. We should all be lobbying our local MPs for a firm commitment that they will back the Swarbrick Bill. Portray it to them as being in the spirit of bi-partisanship, and as them supporting the several UN resolutions on the status of the occupied territories. And if they still baulk ask them flatly: if not, why not?
    10. Email/phone/write to the PM’s office, and ask him to call in the Israeli ambassador and personally express New Zealand’s repugnance at Israel’s inhumane actions in Gaza and on the West Bank. The PM should also be communicating in person New Zealand’s opposition to the recently announced Israeli plans for the annexation of Gaza City, and expansion of the war in Gaza.
    11. Write to your MP, to the PM, and to Foreign Minister Winston Peters urging them to recognise Palestinian statehood right now. Inquire as to what further information they may need before making that decision, and offer to supply it. We need to learn how to share our outrage; and
    12. Learn about the history of this issue, so that you convince friends and family to take similar actions.

    Here’s a bare bones timeline of the main historical events.

    This map showing (in white) the countries that are yet to recognise Palestinian statehood speaks volumes:

    Those holdout nations in white tend to have been the chief enablers of Israel’s founding in 1948, a gesture of atonement driven by European guilt over the Holocaust.

    This “homeland” for the Jews already had residents known to have had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Yet since 1948 the people of Palestine have been made to bear all of the bad consequences of the West’s purging of its collective guilt.

    Conditional justice
    The same indifference to the lives of Palestinians is evident in the belated steps towards supporting the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Even the recognition promised by the UK, Canada, France and Australia next month is decked out with further conditions that the Palestinians are being told they need to meet. No equivalent demands are being made of Israel, despite the atrocities it is committing in Gaza.

    There’s nothing new about this. Historically, all of the concessions have been made by the Palestinians, starting with their original displacement. Some 30 years ago, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) formally recognised Israel’s right to exist. In response, Israel immediately expanded its settlements on Palestinian land, a flagrant breach of the commitments it made in the Oslo Accords, and in the Gaza-Jericho Agreement.

    The West did nothing, said little.  As the New York Times recently pointed out:

    In a 1993 exchange of letters, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chairman, Yasir Arafat, recognized the “right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” and committed the PLO to peaceful negotiations, renouncing terrorism and amending the Palestinian charter to reflect these commitments. In return, Israel would merely recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people — and only “in light of” Mr Arafat’s commitments. Palestinian sovereignty remained remote; Israeli occupation continued apace.

    This double standard persists:

    This fundamental unfairness has informed every diplomatic effort since. The rump Palestinian government built the limited institutions it was permitted under the Oslo Accords, co-operated with Israeli security forces and voiced support for a peace process that had long been undermined by Israel. Led by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s statehood campaign in the 2000s was entirely based on playing the game according to rules set by Israel and the Western-dominated international community. Yet recognition remained stalled, the United States blocked Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations — and still, no conditions were placed on the occupying power.

    That’s where we’re still at. Luxon, Peters and David Seymour are demanding more concessions from the Palestinians. They keep strongly denouncing the Hamas October 7 atrocities — which is valid — while weakly urging Israel to abide by the international laws and conventions that Israel repeatedly breaches.

    When a state deploys famine as a strategic weapon, doesn’t it deserve to be condemned, up front and personal?

    Instead, the language that New Zealand uses to address Israel’s crimes  is almost invariably, and selectively, passive. Terrible things are “happening” in Gaza and they must “stop.” Children, mysteriously, are “starving.” This is “intolerable.”

    It is as if there is no human agent, and no state power responsible for these outcomes. Things are just somehow “happening” and they must somehow “cease.” Enough is enough, cries Peters, while carefully choosing not to name names, beyond Hamas.

    Meanwhile, Israel has announced its plans to expand the war, even though 600 Israeli ex-officials (some of them from Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent to the SIS) have publicly said that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel.

    As mentioned, Israel is publicly discussing its plans for Gaza’s “voluntary emigration” and for the permanent annexation of the West Bank. Even when urged to do so by Christopher Luxon, it seems that Israel is not actually complying with international law, and is not fulfilling its legal obligations as an occupying power. Has anyone told Luxon about this yet?

    Two state fantasy, one state reality
    At one level, continuing to call for a “two state” solution is absurd, given that the Knesset formally rejected the proposal a year ago. More than once, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly denounced it while also laying Israel’s claim to all of the land west of Jordan, which would include the West Bank and Gaza.

    Evidently, the slogan “ from the river to sea” is only a terrorist slogan when Hamas uses it. Yet the phrase originated as a Likud slogan.Moreover, the West evidently thinks it is quite OK for Netanyahu to publicly call for Israeli hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

    Basic rule of diplomacy: bad is what they do, good is what we do, and we have always been on Team Israel.

    Over the course of the three decades since the Oslo Accords were signed, the West has kept on advocating for a two state solution, while acting as if only one of those states has a right to exist. On what land do Luxon and Peters think that a viable Palestinian state can be built?

    One pre-condition for Palestinian statehood that Luxon cited to RNZ last week required Israel to be “not undermining the territorial integrity that would then undermine the two state solution.” Really? Does Luxon not realise that this is exactly what Israel has been doing for the past 30 years?

    Talking of which . . .  are Luxon and Peters genuinely expecting Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders? That land was agreed at Oslo and mandated by the UN as the territory needed for a viable Palestinian state. Yet on the relatively small area of the West Bank alone, 3.4 million Palestinians currently subsist on disconnected patches of land under occupation amid extreme settler violence, while contending with 614 Israeli checkpoints and other administrative obstacles impeding their free movement.

    Here’s what the land left to the Palestinians looks like today:

    A brief backgrounder on Areas A, B and C and how they operate can be found here.  Obviously, this situation cannot be the template for a viable Palestinian state.

    What is the point?
    You might well ask . . . in the light of the above, what is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? Given the realities on the ground, it can only be a symbolic gesture. The reversion to the 1967 borders (a necessary step towards a Palestinian state) can happen only if the US agreed to push Israel in that direction by withholding funds and weaponry.

    That’s very hard to imagine. The hypocrisy of the Western nations on this issue is breath-taking. The US and Germany continue to be Israel’s main foreign suppliers of weapons and targeting systems. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership as well, the UK sales of military equipment to Israel have sharply increased.

    New export licensing figures show that the UK approved licenses for £127.6 million worth of military equipment to Israel in single issue licenses between October to December 2024. This is a massive increase, with the figure in this three-month period totaling more than 2020-2023 combined.

    Thanks to an explicitly enacted legal exemption, the UK also continues to supply parts for Israel’s F-35 jets.

    UK industry makes 15% of every F-35 in contracts [estimated] to be worth at least £500 million since 2016, and [this] is the most significant part of the UK arms industry [relationship]with Israel . . . at least 79 companies [are] involved in manufacturing components.

    These are the same F-35 war planes that the IDF has used to drop 2000 pound bombs on densely populated residential neighbourhoods in Gaza. Starmer cannot credibly pose as a man of peace.

    So again . . . what exactly is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? No doubt, it would boost Palestinian morale if some major Western powers finally conceded that Palestine has a right to exist. In that narrow sense, recognition would correct a historical injustice.

    There is also optimistic talk that formal Palestinian statehood would isolate the US on the Security Council (Trump would probably wear that as a badge of honour) and would make Israel more accountable under humanitarian law. As if.

    Theoretically, a recognition of statehood would also enable people in New Zealand and elsewhere to apply pressure to their governments to forthrightly condemn and sanction Israel for its crimes against a fellow UN member state. None of this, however, is likely to change the reality on the ground, or prevent the calls for Israel’s “accountability” and for its “compliance with international law” from ringing hollow.

    As the NYT also says:

    After almost two years of severe access restrictions and the dismantling of the UN-led aid system in favour of a militarised food distribution that has left more than 1300 Palestinians dead, [now 1838 dead at these “aid centres”  since late May, as of yesterday] . . . The 15 nations [at a UN meeting in late July that signed a declaration on Gaza] still would not collectively say “Israel is responsible for starvation in Gaza”. If they cannot name the problem, they can hardly hope to resolve it.

    In sum . . . the world may talk the talk of Palestinian statehood being a matter of “not if, but when” and witter on about the “irreversible steps” being taken toward statehood, and finally — somewhere over the rainbow — towards a two state solution.  Faint chance:

    “For those who are starving today, the only irreversible step is death. Until statehood recognition brings action — arms embargoes, sanctions, enforcement of international law — it will remain a largely empty promise that serves primarily to distract from Western complicity in Gaza’s destruction.

    Exactly. Behind the words of concern are the actions of complicity. The people of Gaza do not have time to wait for symbolic actions, or for sanctions to weaken Israel’s appetite for genocide. Consider this option: would New Zealand support an intervention in Gaza by a UN-led international force to save Gaza’s dwindling population, and to ensure that international humanitarian law is respected, however belatedly?

    Would we be willing to commit troops to such a force if asked to do so by the UN Secretary-General? That is what is now needed.

    Footnote One: On Gaza, the Luxon government has a high tolerance for double standards and Catch 22 conditions. We are insisting that the Palestinians must release the remaining hostages unconditionally, lay down their arms and de-militarise the occupied territories. Yet we are applying no similar pre-conditions on Israel to withdraw, de-militarise the same space, release all their Palestinian prisoners, allow the unrestricted distribution of food and medical supplies, and negotiate a sustainable peace.

    Understandably, Hamas has tied the release of the remaining hostages to the Israeli cessation of their onslaught, to unfettered aid distribution, and to a long-term commitment to Palestinian self-rule.  Otherwise, once the Israeli hostages are home, there would be nothing to stop Israel from renewing the genocide.

    We are also demanding that Hamas be excluded from any future governing arrangement in Gaza, but – simultaneously – Peters told the House recently that this governing arrangement must also be “representative.” Catch 22. “Representative” democracy it seems, means voting for the people pre-selected by the West. Again, no matching demands have been made of Israel with respect to its role in the future governance of Gaza, or about its obligation to rebuild what it has criminally destroyed.

    Footnote Two: There is only one rational explanation for why New Zealand is currently holding back from joining the UK, Canada, France and Australia in voting next month to recognise Palestine as a full UN member state. It seems we are cravenly hoping that Australia’s stance will be viewed with such disfavour by Donald Trump that he will punish Canberra by lifting its tariff rate from 10%, thereby erasing the 5% advantage that Australia currently enjoys oven us in the US market.

    At least this tells us what the selling price is for our “independent” foreign policy. We’re prepared to sell it out to the Americans – and sell out the Palestinians in the process – if, by sitting on the fence for now, we can engineer parity for our exports with Australia in US markets. ANZAC mates, forever.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • 750,000 people have signed up to Your Party – and the establishment is panicking

    The concern trolls are out in force over Your Party: “They will split the vote and let Reform in”. “It will have extremist policies”. “There will just be infighting”. Or my favourite: “It will attract all kinds of unsavoury characters”.

    Thing is, this is a perfect description of our existing political parties.

    All the trolls crawl out the woodwork over Your Party

    Unsavoury characters? Let’s start at the top.

    Former prime minister David Cameron took £8.2m to promote Greensill Capital, who the Serious Fraud Office are investigating.

    Prime minister Tony Blair lied to start an illegal war in Iraq that cost the lives of at least half a million Iraqi citizens and 179 British servicemen and women.

    Reform MP Nigel Farage took £40,000 from Nomad Capitalist to advise people on how to avoid paying UK tax.

    Peter Mandelson had “a particularly close relationship” with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

    That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp VIP lanes for covid contracts. Rachel Reeves giving a donor a Treasury job. Born-again immigrant basher Robert Jenrick took £12,000 from billionaire Richard Desmond then fast-tracked a planning approval that saved him £40m – which is really bad negotiating, as much as anything. Reform MP James McMurdock jailed for kicking a woman on the ground. Remember that next time they say they’re defending women and children.

    The list is long and unsettling. For the record, I claimed £0 expenses in my five years as mayor, and declined all offers of corporate hospitality.

    Labour has lost the vote all on its own, no help needed

    Infighting? Reform have already lost 20% of their MPs in an acrimonious row threatening legal action. The Tories had four PMs in four years. Labour is suspending MPs at an alarming rate, while the lean and hungry are circling to replace Starmer. They spent years victimising and expelling people on spurious grounds, then feign surprise when people find another home.

    Your Party hasn’t split the Labour vote. Labour had already thrown it away when Reform took control in Durham and won the Runcorn by-election, after the sitting Labour MP was convicted of violent assault.

    In July last year the British people handed the keys to Labour. Not with much enthusiasm, mind, after their increasingly limp performance.

    What was the first thing Starmer & co do? Stuck two fingers up at the British people, cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance. Cosying up to financiers rather than the people who voted for them. Mistake after mistake and insult after insult has compounded this. Freebiegate, the “Island of strangers” speech, cutting money from disabled people while ordering new American nuclear jets.

    The real ‘extremist’ is this Labour government: participating in genocide

    We are told that Reform voters are this, Reform voters are that. It’s all speculation. What is a statistically certain fact is that most Reform voters are ex-Labour and ex-Tory voters.

    What about extremism? That’s the one they’ll really push. But not with any facts. Like the fact that if you enforced the regulations on the private water companies, their value would drop and public ownership would cost almost nothing and save billions in unjustified dividends paid from our bills. 82% of Britons support public ownership. By definition, that can’t be extreme.

    Or extremism like declaring non-violent protesters terrorists, while supplying weapons to a foreign military on trial for genocide. I don’t think it’s an extreme position to say that gunning down unarmed civilians queuing for food is immoral. Despite unbalanced reporting, a majority of Britons oppose the IDF’s action, while just one in five supports them.

    Psychological projection is a defence mechanism where individuals attribute their own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or impulses to others. Such defensive patterns are often used to justify prejudice or evade responsibility. That’s what we’re seeing from Labour’s ruling elite in particular.

    Speaking of extremes, Britain has 156 billionaires. Last year, 2.8 million people relied on foodbanks just to get enough to eat. Only an extremist government would allow that. Like frogs in boiling water, we’ve been desensitised into accepting extremism. Yet even 68% of millionaires support a wealth tax!

    Your Party: time to build community power

    Your Party could be massive. But it will be pointless unless it changes things. It needs to build community power, as we are in Tyneside with Majority. It needs to contest and win elections, otherwise we’ll have the same merry-go-round of charlatans. Any large organisation will attract a few bad apples, too. A culture of openness and transparency is the only way to deal with that.

    Jeremy Corbyn has confirmed the new party will be federal. Majority members have been at the heart of building this. We’re already organised, active, and effective. We will be running candidates in council elections next May. If you’re in the North East, get in touch.

    Zarah Sultana is speaking at the Majority annual conference in Newcastle on Saturday 6 September. Book your ticket quickly. If Your Party appeals to you, join Majority today, and get a head start on making a difference.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Jamie Driscoll

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • John Hobbs: New Zealand’s shameful stance on Israel

    ANALYSIS: By John Hobbs

    Aotearoa New Zealand once earned praise for its “principled” and “independent” foreign policy. Think nuclear-free Pacific, for example.

    Yet that reputation doesn’t hold true when it comes to Gaza and the Palestinian desire and right to self-determination.

    Under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, states must take positive steps to prevent genocide. The New Zealand government appears to be failing in this obligation.

    Researcher John Hobbs
    Researcher John Hobbs . . . “So far, our ministers have chosen carefully crafted diplomatic language buried under joint country statements to influence the situation in Gaza.” Image: John Hobbs

    So far, our ministers have chosen carefully crafted diplomatic language buried under joint country statements to influence the situation in Gaza, while at the same time protecting relationships with allies, particularly the US.

    An example of these was a statement issued last month, in which New Zealand joined a group of 28 “concerned” countries to express horror at the “suffering of civilians in Gaza”, which, it says, “has reached new depths”. The statement calls for the lifting of restrictions on the “flow of aid” and demands “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire.”

    Just to be clear, the “flow of aid” is the life-saving food and water that’s needed to prevent the mass starvation of Palestinians as famine driven by Israel deepens.

    Demands for a ceasefire have been made on numerous occasions in the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, to no effect.

    Failure to sanction Israel
    Yet countries like New Zealand fail to sanction Israel for its non-compliance. Indeed, they do worse. These same countries continue to trade with Israel, and a number of them continue to provide weapons and arms.

    According to trade data, New Zealand in 2023 imported goods and services of US$191 million from Israel and exported US$16.4 million the other way.

    Most recently, New Zealand joined 14 other countries to “express the willingness or the positive consideration of our countries to recognise the State of Palestine, as an essential step towards the two-State solution.”

    The statement is heavily caveated by saying that “positive consideration” is one option — so it’s not clear if all, or indeed any, of the countries will end up recognising Palestinian statehood.

    By contrast, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has issued a separate statement, saying the UK would recognise the state of Palestine in September if Israel doesn’t agree to a ceasefire.

    Starmer’s concern for the starvation of civilians in Gaza hasn’t stopped the UK from sending military arms to Israel. But this is at least a clearer stance than New Zealand has been able to muster.

    More than 147 UN member states out of 193 formally recognise Palestinian statehood now.

    Level of solidarity
    And while recognition of statehood is largely symbolic, it does signal a level of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Inexplicably, New Zealand has been unwilling to take that step, while calling it a future option under “two-state” diplomacy.

    New Zealand has trundled out its support of the two-state solution since at least 1993, reinforced by its co-sponsorship, in 2015-16, of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion.

    That resolution declared settlements in occupied territories illegal under international law and urged member states to distinguish in its dealings between Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.

    Since then, Israel has continued to transfer its citizens to the West Bank and Gaza. More than 750,000 Israeli settlers are now living illegally in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — areas where a future Palestinian state would be located.

    Meanwhile, New Zealand has failed to take any meaningful action — sanctions or suspension of trade, for example — to implement the requirements of the Security Council resolution. That the government consistently frames its response as supporting a two-state solution beggars belief in light of such inaction.

    New Zealand’s refusal to sanction Israel is nothing but shameful.

    When foreign affairs minister Winston Peters expressed shock about the “intolerable situation” in Gaza, RNZ asked him whether New Zealand would entertain placing sanctions on Israel. He responded by saying that we are a “long, long way off doing that.”

    The genocide in Gaza is happening with the support of countries like New Zealand, through inaction and failure to implement sanctions.

    And statements about recognising statehood provide the appearance of supporting an end to the genocide, but change nothing in reality.

    John Hobbs has been a career public servant, working in a number of government departments (most recently the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet). He also worked for a number of ministers on secondment from government agencies. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Te Tumu School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, Otago University. This article was first published by E-Tangata and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘If I die, I die steadfast … I bear witness … for the path of freedom for my people’ – Anas’ last testament

    Anas al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza, last Sunday has triggered protests around the world, including journalists in Israel. He left behind a powerful farewell message — his final testament to his people, his family, and the world.

    Palestine Chronicle staff

    Palestinian journalists Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqea were killed last Sunday in an Israeli bombardment that struck a journalists’ tent near Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.

    Cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal also died in the attack, which was carried out by an Israeli drone. The Israeli army admitted targeting al-Sharif shortly after the strike.

    Al-Sharif, 28, from Jabaliya refugee camp, was an award-winning journalist who became a leading global voice from Gaza during the war. He inspired thousands.

    Protest and vigils have been held around the world from South Africa’s Cape Town to Manila in the Philippines and London in the UK to honour al-Sharif and his colleagues in condemnation of this targeted murder.

    Less than two weeks ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists had warned that his life was in “acute” danger due to repeated threats from an Israeli military spokesperson.

    Before his death, al-Sharif prepared a farewell message to be shared if he was killed. His family and colleagues posted it to his social media accounts after the news of his death.

    Below is the full English translation of that message.

    Anas al-Sharif’s final message
    “This is my will and my final message.

    “If my words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.

    “First, peace be upon you and God’s mercy and blessings.

    “God knows I gave all I had — strength and effort — to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys of Jabaliya refugee camp. My hope was to live long enough to return with my family and loved ones to our original town, Asqalan (al-Majdal), now under occupation.

    “But God’s will came first, and His decree is final.

    “I have lived pain in all its details and tasted loss many times. Yet I never stopped telling the truth as it is, without falsification or distortion — so that God may bear witness over those who stayed silent, accepted our killing, and did nothing to stop the massacre our people have endured for more than a year and a half.

    “I entrust you with Palestine — the jewel of the Muslim crown and the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people and children, whose pure bodies have been crushed under Israeli bombs and missiles.


    Australian journalists protest over the killings.      Video: MEAA

    “Do not let chains silence you or borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland.

    “I entrust you with my family: my beloved daughter Sham; my dear son Salah; my mother, whose prayers were my fortress; and my steadfast wife Bayan (Umm Salah), who carried the responsibility in my absence with strength and faith. Stand by them after God.

    “If I die, I die steadfast in my principles. I bear witness that I am content with God’s decree, certain of our meeting, and convinced that what is with God is better and everlasting.

    “O God, accept me among the martyrs, forgive me my sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people. Forgive me if I fell short, and pray for me with mercy, for I have kept my pledge and never changed.

    “Do not forget Gaza… and do not forget me in your prayers.”

    Anas Jamal al-Sharif

    April 6, 2025

    Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif with his daughter Sham and his son Salah
    Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif with his daughter Sham and his son Salah. Image: via social media

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Western media has blood on its hands as Israel slaughters more Palestinian journalists

    Mourners have carried out the funerals of assassinated Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Horrifying footage has shown journalists ripped to pieces, covered in blood and body parts, and later in white funeral shrouds stained with blood. Israel’s repeated attacks on journalists are the height of impunity, and a brutal attempt to remove the people reporting on the genocide of their own people.

    However, in remarks that are characteristic of a bloated and rotting Western media system, veteran journalist John Simpson said last week:

    The world needs honest, unbiased eyewitness reporting to help people make up their minds about the major issues of our time. This has so far been impossible in Gaza. Journalists around the world should support calls for reporters to be allowed into Gaza.

    Anyone who is yet to ‘make up their minds’ about Israel’s genocide in Gaza is an ignorant and immoral fuckwit. How many more internationally renowned organisations need to declare genocide? How many UN experts need to explain over and over again that Israel is committing war crimes? That it is purposely targeting journalists and their families?

    Palestinian journalists are journalists

    Of course, we all know what Simpson means when he calls for:

    honest, unbiased eyewitness reporting.

    He means Western journalists – those unbiased and diligent reporters who’ve….erm…ignored Israel’s genocide for years now. Simpson implicitly rejects the Palestinian journalists who’ve risked their lives to livestream the genocide of their own people. And, in doing so, he upholds the rotting edifice of Western journalism: objectivity.

    It should be understood as a standard of a bygone time, but, Westerners cling to the facade of objectivity with the desperation of children grasping for certainty and meaning. After all, who could understand the behemoth of a killing machine that Israel has built, without understanding settler colonialism, white supremacy, and the military industrial complex? In that situation, who wouldn’t cling to the lie of Western objectivity as some kind of standard for reporting? A comforting lie, if nothing else.

    It takes a truly evil – and colonial – outlook to consider that Palestinian journalists who have been killed for their journalistic efforts are somehow ‘biased.’ Simpson’s dismissal of Palestinian journalism is an implicit demand for anyone who isn’t Palestinian – and therefore ‘biased’ – to report on the genocide.

    Neutrality

    Why? Who could be trusted more than the people who are being exterminated to report on what they see? Simpson’s remarks are the sometimes unspoken but always heavy assumptions about who can be trusted. Who can be believed? Being white and from the West are synonyms for neutrality and being unbiased: for trust. After all, how could the East ever spit out a decent journalist from a population of savages and uncivilised brutes?

    Just yesterday, Palestinians in Gaza carried out the funerals of the journalists who have pushed through unimaginable trauma and bloodshed to do their jobs. Along with Anas Al-Sharif, Al Jazeera reported that the funerals of more of their reporters were carried out:

    The strike late on Sunday killed seven people, including correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, along with camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa, and Mohammed Noufal. Freelance reporter Mohammed al-Khaldi was also among those killed. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said three more journalists were wounded in the attack.

    At least 238 journalists have been killed since late 2023. As the Canary’s Palestinian correspondent, Alaa Shamali wrote, journalists like Anas Al-Sharif are more than just reporters:

    Anas Al-Sharif was not just a reporter conveying cold news, but a messenger of truth from Gaza to the world. He knew that the camera could be a reason for him to be targeted, but he believed that the lens was the most powerful weapon to break the wall of silence. He climbed rooftops, searched for internet signals in the corners of hospitals, and cut through destroyed streets to film hungry children and mothers searching for bread amid the rubble.

    Shamali continued:

    With his execution at the hands of Israel, Gaza has lost more than a journalist; it has lost a witness who carried its pain on his shoulders, and a bridge connecting its alleys to the eyes of the world. His reports remain in the archives, but they are not mere media material; they are fragments of the spirit of a city that continues to struggle for life.

    Heartbreaking losses

    Simpson’s comments represent a prevailing belief across Western countries that Palestinians cannot speak for themselves, and certainly cannot do so to the lofty standards of Western corporate media. It is unspeakably horrific to see Anas’ lifeless body covered in ashes, deformed by the blast that killed him, his flesh still glowing from the embers of his slaughter. The screams of bystanders as they realise more of their people are assassinated by the Zionists. The stillness of Anas’ body as his head flops to the side, weighted and weightless. His press vest reduced to bloody tatters.

    The world is used to seeing him reporting on the genocide of his people, both in spite of and because of his fear, heartbreak, grief, and terror of Israel’s genocide. And, the world is too used to seeing Palestinians torn limb from limb, and doing nothing. It’s not enough for a bloodthirsty West that Palestinians are seen in their most terrifying moments, bodies and bodies and bodies piling up. So extensive is the dehumanisation of Palestinians that Western standards of truth, honesty, and good journalism are so warped as to twist the knife of Palestinians whether dead, alive, or dying.

    Anyone who can be ‘objective’ or ‘unbiased’ about this is fucking lying.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/ABC News (Australia)

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • ‘Do not forget Gaza… and do not forget me’: Anas al-Sharif’s final message to the world before Israel killed him

    The following statement was written by Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif and published posthumously on his X account after al-Sharif was assassinated by Israeli forces on Sunday, August 10. “Sharif, one of Al Jazeera’s most recognisable faces in Gaza, was killed while inside a tent for journalists outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Sunday night,” The Guardian reports. “Seven people were killed in the attack, including the Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and the camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, according to the Qatar-based broadcaster.”

    This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings.

    Allah knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and streets of the Jabalia refugee camp. My hope was that Allah would extend my life so I could return with my family and loved ones to our original town of occupied Asqalan (Al-Majdal). But Allah’s will came first, and His decree is final. I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification—so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.

    I entrust you with Palestine—the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls.

    I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland. I entrust you to take care of my family. I entrust you with my beloved daughter Sham, the light of my eyes, whom I never got the chance to watch grow up as I had dreamed.

    I entrust you with my dear son Salah, whom I had wished to support and accompany through life until he grew strong enough to carry my burden and continue the mission.

    I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose blessed prayers brought me to where I am, whose supplications were my fortress and whose light guided my path. I pray that Allah grants her strength and rewards her on my behalf with the best of rewards.

    I also entrust you with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife, Umm Salah (Bayan), from whom the war separated me for many long days and months. Yet she remained faithful to our bond, steadfast as the trunk of an olive tree that does not bend—patient, trusting in Allah, and carrying the responsibility in my absence with all her strength and faith.

    I urge you to stand by them, to be their support after Allah Almighty. If I die, I die steadfast upon my principles. I testify before Allah that I am content with His decree, certain of meeting Him, and assured that what is with Allah is better and everlasting.

    O Allah, accept me among the martyrs, forgive my past and future sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family. Forgive me if I have fallen short, and pray for me with mercy, for I kept my promise and never changed or betrayed it.

    Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.

    Anas Jamal Al-Sharif
    06.04.2025

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • As an infertile woman, I found JK Rowling’s comment about “faulty equipment” absolutely disgusting

    Like most others whose mind isn’t addled by transphobia brain rot, I had a good laugh at JK Rowling insinuating that anything that produced eggs was a woman this weekend. Amongst the trolling were people posting chickens, dinosaurs, and my personal fave, a machine that makes easter eggs.

    Of course, the comment was the usual terfery from auld mouldy castle, but, it also made me feel isolated and angry.

    Joanne was responding to tweets after she’d tweeted that womanhood was more than an “essence” and that she’s a woman because she was “born with the equipment to produce large gametes” (no I’ve no fucking idea either) and others rightly asked that if you’ve had a hysterectomy, or are infertile by this standard, does this mean you’re no longer a woman.

    It was at this point that JK Rowling used an absolutely vile term that she apparently thought won her the argument:

    If you are born with egg-producing equipment, even if faulty, it’s proof you are a woman.

    Am I faulty, JK Rowling?

    After having a good chuckle at all the memes that spawned from JK Rowling and her truly foot-in-mouth statement, I took a step back and realised just what she was saying about women who couldn’t have kids. Faulty.

    I fought doctors for over 15 years to have my excruciating pain believed. I was crippled by pain during ovulation, and my super irregular periods would have me doubled over and bleeding through pads. I jumped through hoops and tried every birth control under the sun to sort my periods out and ease the pain.

    I was left suicidal on many an occasion.

    Finally, after years of begging, doctors agreed to a hysterectomy, but they insisted on leaving my ovaries even though ovulation was the most painful time. I was forced into a medical menopause that changed my body and left me almost unable to walk – all because I was “too young” to have my ovaries taken away.

    Finally, in 2021, I had my ovaries removed. It was then a doctor told me they’d found endometriosis too. After this, I was plunged straight into menopause at just 32. Weeks, months, years of mood swings, depression, stress on my body and all the other things which come with that. All by the way, whilst still having endometriosis, which I will still have until the tissue dies off naturally.

    Being childless doesn’t make you incomplete

    An incredibly hard part of this journey has been coming to terms with never being able to have children naturally.

    A big reason for this was that society still views motherhood as the pinnacle of womanhood and what we can achieve as women. As I neared my 30s, I was constantly being asked when I was going to settle down and have kids. At family events, I’d constantly be told that my ex would make a great dad. All of the things I achieved in my professional life seemed to pale in comparison to others my age who became mothers. I had nightmares of being the elderly great aunt that nobody wanted to visit at Christmas. I was also constantly told by medical professionals that I would regret not having kids when I was older. I was made to feel less than everywhere I looked in the media.

    But despite, or maybe in spite of, this I’ve built a good life for myself. I’ve navigated divorce, written books, travelled the country speaking about disability rights, lived through grief, and given myself time to find who I am again.

    In time, I stopped dreading a friend’s pregnancy announcement; instead I was able to be an amazing aunt to my biological and chosen nieces and nephews. I’ve even become a mother in a different way – to my gorgeous dachshund Rusty. I’m fulfilled in my personal and professional life.

    Without a doubt, getting rid of my uterus and then my ovaries was the best thing I ever did, because it allowed me to get my life back. Yet this miserable woman, whose seemingly only goal in life is to make it harder for marginalised people to live, wants to call me faulty?

    Terves, doing the right wing sexist pigs jobs for them

    It’s truly both horrific and absolutely ridiculous seeing how much this hateful movement doesn’t even realise how much they’re conforming to right-wing patriarchal standards. Whilst Moldemort equates being a fully functioning woman to whether we can reproduce, her little army of saddos are also policing who and who doesn’t look “woman” enough to piss or, apparently, talk to customers at their job.

    Last week, we of course had the discourse of a trans woman daring to ask customers in the shop she worked if they needed any help. We still don’t actually know if this woman was actually trans, all we have to go off here is the mother saying she sounded manly and was tall. As if tall women with deep voices don’t exist.

    When I defended this woman, I was hit with a barrage of hundreds of tweets calling me a man and sending me my own photos as evidence that I’m trans. Citing my big hands, “wig”, sharing close-ups of me both made up and wearing no makeup at all, trying to simultaneously prove i was “wearing womanface” (again no idea) and that I was clearly a man because I wasn’t made up.

    These “feminists” who just a few years ago were running pointless campaigns about toys having no gender and preaching that boys can wear pink, have now been completely swallowed up by the alt right ideals that women should only look and act a certain way and if they don’t they won’t be accepted.

    What’s especially hilarious is that whilst terves regularly called trans allies “transmaidens” or compared us to the rich women in A Handmaid’s Tale by forcing poor women to show a scrap of compassion and humanity to trans women, they’re the ones who are really leading us to Gilead.

    By reducing women down to whether we can reproduce, whilst insisting we must look pretty at all times, JK Rowling and her lot are doing far-right men’s job for them.

    And she has the gall to call me faulty.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Why Israel’s assassination of Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif and crew threatens all journalists

    By David Robie, convenor of Pacific Media Watch

    I never knew Anas al-Sharif personally. But somehow he seemed to be part of our whānau.

    We watched so many of his reports from Gaza that it just appeared he would be always around keeping us up-to-date on the horrifying events in the besieged enclave.

    Although he actually worked for Al Jazeera Arabic, the 28-year-old was probably the best known Palestinian journalist in the Strip and many of his stories were translated into English.

    It is yet another despicable act by the Israeli military to assassinate him and four of his colleagues on the eve of launching their new mass crime to seize and demolish Gaza City with a population of about one million as part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to occupy the whole of Gaza.

    In many ways the bravery of al-Sharif — he had warned several times that he was being targeted — was the embodiment of the Palestinian courage under fire when UNESCO awarded the 2024 World Press Freedom Award collectively to the Gazan journalists.

    But it wasn’t enough just to “murder” him and his colleagues — as the Al Jazeera channel proclaimed in red banner television headlines — Israel attempted unsuccessfully to try to smear him in death as a “Hamas platoon leader” without a shred of evidence.

    The drone attack late on Sunday night hit a journalists’ work tent near the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, killing seven people. Among those killed beside al-Sharif were fellow Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed Noufal.

    Call for UNSC emergency session
    Al Jazeera later said a sixth journalist, freelancer Mohammad al-Khaldi, was also killed in the strike. Reporters Without Borders said three more journalists had been wounded and called for a UN Security Council emergency session to discuss journalist safety.

    In a statement, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network condemned in “the strongest terms” the killing of its media staff in “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom”, noting that the Israeli occupation force had “admitted to their crimes”.

    “This attack comes amid the catastrophic consequences of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the relentless slaughter of civilians, forced starvation, and the obliteration of entire communities,” Al Jazeera said.

    “Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people.”

    Five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Gaza by Israel’s “psychopathic liar” — Marwan Bishara Video: Al Jazeera

    Ironically, the killings came hours after Netanyahu told media he had decided to “allow” some foreign journalists into the Gaza Strip.

    “In fact, we have decided, and I’ve ordered, directed the military, to bring in foreign journalists, more foreign journalists,” Netanyahu told a news conference in Jerusalem.

    Israeli authorities have in the past barred any foreign media from entering the Gaza Strip, while it has been deliberately targeting and killing local Palestinian journalists.

    Other attacks on Al Jazeera
    The deadly strike on Anas al-Sharif and his four colleagues is not the first attack on Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza since the start of Israel’s current war on the Palestinian territory in October 2023

    Israeli forces have previously killed five Al Jazeera journalists: Samer Abudaqa, Ismael al-Ghoul, Ahmed al-Louh, Hossam Shabat and Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, as well as many of the family members of Al Jazeera journalists.

    The Israeli military has been systematically killing journalists, photographers and local media workers in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war in an attempt to silence their reports.

    The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has verified the killing of at least 186 journalists since October 7, 2023. At least 90 journalists have been imprisoned by Israel.

    But some media freedom groups put the casualty figure even higher. The Government Media Office in Gaza, for example, reports that 242 journalists have been killed.

    The Israeli military have frequently accused journalists of being “terrorists” without evidence.

    According to Muhammad Shehada, a writer and analyst from Gaza, Anas al-Sharif was a “loved by everyone, by his entire community”.

    ‘Enormous influence’
    “He’s held enormous influence there, and that’s precisely why Israel murdered him.

    Shehada told Al Jazeera he had “looked into the allegations” that Israel produced, trying to smear him as a Hamas militant, adding that “the allegations were completely contradictory.” He added:

    “There’s zero evidence that al-Sharif took part in any hostilities, in any armed actions, aided or abetted any kind of these hostilities. None at all. His entire daily routine was standing in front of a camera from morning to evening.”

    An early Instagram report of the killing of the Gazan journalists
    An early Instagram report of the killing of the Gazan journalists . . . later updated to five Al Jazeera staff and a sixth journalist. Image: AJ

    Reporting from Amman, Jordan, because Israel banned Al Jazeera from reporting from inside Israeli territory and the occupied West Bank, Hoda Abdel-Hamid said: “When you read the statement issued by the Israeli army, which was well prepared before all this happened, it’s almost as if it is bragging about it.”

    It had been alleged by Israel that Anas al-Sharif was a member of the military wing of Hamas, and the army claimed that it had found documents in Gaza that proved their point.

    “It includes some links to content that anyone could have printed,” she said. “This has been going on for a few weeks, ever since Anas started reporting on the starvation in Gaza, and he had such a huge impact on the Arab world.

    “Immediately after, a spokesman for the Israeli army in Arabic… posted a video on social media, accusing al-Sharif of being a Hamas member and threatening him.”

    ‘Knew he was at serious risk’
    Abdel-Hamid said she had been going through his X feed.

    “He knew his life was at serious risk, and he repeatedly wrote that he was just a journalist, and he wanted his message to be spread widely, because he thought that was a way to protect him.”

    Posted on his X account in case he was killed was his “last will” and final message. He wrote in part:

    “I entrust you with Palestine — the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace.

    “Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls.

    “I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland . . . “

    Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said that last October Israel had accused al-Sharif and “a number of other journalists of being terrorists without providing any credible proof”.

    “We warned back then that this felt to us like a precursor to justify assassination, and, of course, last month… we saw again, a repeated smear campaign”, she told Al Jazeera.

    “This is not solely about Anas al-Sharif, this is part of a pattern that we have seen from Israel… going back decades, in which it kills journalists.”

    Accusations repeated
    Al-Sharif had warned last month about the starvation facing journalists — “and we saw then the accusations repeated.

    “Of course, now we are seeing a new offensive, plans for a new offensive, in Gaza, the kind of thing that Anas has been reporting on for the best part of three years.”

    The medical director of al-Shifa Hospital said that Israel had killed the journalists to prevent coverage of atrocities it intended to carry out in its Gaza City seizure.

    “The [Israeli] occupation is preparing for a major massacre in Gaza, but this time without sound or image,” Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya told Turkiye’s Anadolu news agency.

    “It wants to kill and displace the largest number of Palestinians in Gaza City but this time in the absence of the voice of Anas, Mohamed, Al Jazeera and all satellite channels.”

    Assassinated Gazan journalist Anas al-Sharif
    Assassinated Gazan journalist Anas al-Sharif . . . “killed to prevent coverage of atrocities” Israel intends to carry out in its Gaza City seizure. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    ‘Fabrications don’t wash’
    Al Jazeera’s senior analyst Marwan Bishara warned that “Israel’s lies” about al-Sharif endangered journalists everywhere, saying that the “best response to the killing of our colleagues is by continuing to do what we do”.

    “I want to correct one thing [about Western media reports], and I need our viewers and readers around the world to pay attention:

    “It doesn’t matter whether what Israel said about al-Sharif is correct or not.

    “It’s an absolute fabrication. It’s wrong. But it doesn’t matter.

    “Because if every American journalist who served in Iraq and Afghanistan would have been killed because there’s a suspicion that they worked for the CIA; if every French and British journalist would be killed because they work for the MI5 or something like that, then I think there will be no Western journalists working in the Middle East.

    “It’s not OK to kill a journalist in a tent of journalists because you accuse him of something.

    “If you accuse him of something, you take him to court, you make a complaint, you follow certain procedures, with the network, with the [International Federation of Journalists], and so on and so forth.

    “You don’t kill a journalist who has been doing their job for months on, day in, day out, night and day, and claim later that they work for Hamas.

    “That doesn’t wash.

    “It’s wrong, it’s a lie, it’s a fabrication as usual, but this psychopathic liar should not get away with killing a journalist and simply attaching an accusation to it.

    “It doesn’t wash, because otherwise, every single Western journalist covering a war that a Western government is involved in is going to be a target.

    “Why?

    “Because Israel has done it.”

    In January 2024, three months into the war, I wrote an article for Declassified Australia about “Silencing the messenger” when I made the point that while “Israel killed journalists, the West merely censored them”.

    I wrote that it was time for journalists to take a moral stand for truth and justice, and although I expected a strong response, the feedback was merely tepid. It was as if Western journalists did not comprehend the enormity of the Gaza crisis facing the world.

    It is shameful that New Zealand journalists and media groups have not come out in the past 22 months with strong denunciations of Israel’s war on both journalists and truth – and the genocide against Palestinians.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Rushanara Ali and her appalling behaviour should be the biggest scandal this year

    There ain’t no hypocrisy like Labour Party hypocrisy. Sure, fourteen years of Tory rule was built upon foundations of sanctimony, deception and staggering duplicity — nobody is forgetting that in a hurry — but Minister for Homelessness Rushanara Ali  evicting tenants from her inner-city townhouse before going on to re-advertise the same four-bedroom property for an extra £700 per month is hypocrisy in its most extreme and vile form.

    Rushanara Ali: vile, vile, vile

    I don’t want to hear about Rushanara Ali not breaking any rules. I’m sick of hearing pathetic Starmer simps attempting to defend the indefensible, time after time.

    Ali’s resignation was very much a sorry-not-sorry affair. But why was Ali afforded the luxury of dictating her own departure? She’s really not that special, and be in no doubt, she will return to a senior ministerial position in due course.

    Rushanara Ali, the Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Stepney has previously been vocal about renters’ rights and “private renters being exploited”, yet here she is, exploiting private renters.

    Has anybody asked, why didn’t Keir Starmer remove her from government the moment Ali’s hypocrisy was exposed?

    Political hypocrisy isn’t a criminal offence, of course. The politicians of today stand on a manifesto of promises and pledges that are ultimately meaningless because they tend to break every commitment in favour of right-wing billionaire media moguls pumping out populist click bait headlines to the gullible masses.

    They gain power with lies and they maintain power with lies. A bit of ministerial hypocrisy doesn’t even begin to register on the spectrum of moral abandonment, these days.

    Judgement for Rushanara Ali will come.

    Not on X, but by the X that is placed next to the candidate that is standing against Ali in her Bethnal Green and Stepney constituency.

    Obliterated by Your Party

    Early indications are suggesting that she and Labour are getting utterly obliterated by the new Corbyn/Sultana coalition, currently known as Your Party.

    I would expect a repeat of this across Labour constituencies that harbour a bought-and-paid-for genocide apologist for an MP. Keir Starmer is also on course to lose his seat to a ‘Your Party’ candidate.

    If enough of us work together, anything is possible.

    We’re not here to “enable Farage”, deluded, subservient Labourites. We are here to finish Farage. What a shame you cannot say the same.

    Weak Keir Starmer will be hoping nest-feathering Ali’s resignation will bring about an end to the scandal. But the embarrassing revelations have piled further pressure on an already-damaged Prime Minister.

    The conflict of interests between being a landlord and a politician are numerous and blindingly obvious. A politician already holds significant power.

    Why allow them to be in a position where they can create laws and regulations that benefit property owners over renters? We used to call this sort of thing, “corruption”.

    There’s nothing to stop a landlord politician from opposing rent controls, tenant protections, or even affordable housing initiatives.

    According to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, around 13% of British parliamentarians are landlords in receipt of rental income exceeding £10,000 per year.

    The actual number is likely to be considerably higher, as MPs with rental income below this threshold, even if it’s £9,999 per year, don’t have to declare anything.

    Stop the slum landlords and housing associations

    If ‘Your Party’ wants a big chunk of the votes of Britain’s 20 million renters, they will ban elected Members of Parliament from being landlords, and they will rebalance the system with policies that benefit tenants, because these unscrupulous landlords have been having it way too easy for way too long.

    Don’t get me wrong. Not every single landlord is hellbent on making an immoral killing from the 8.5 million renting households that pay their landlords mortgage.

    Just a vast majority of them, in my humble opinion.

    So there you go, Jezza, scribble that one down on your notepad, start putting unscrupulous, greedy landlords on notice and give the elected members of parliament — already earning a healthy salary, north of £90,000 per annum — a very simple ultimatum.

    They can be a landlord, and they can be an MP, but if we want a system for renters with integrity at its core, they cannot be both. MPs cannot have second jobs, and that includes being a landlord.

    Look to Germany?

    I welcome the accusations of my thoughts being based in the “politics of envy”, because I am envious of the countries that treat renters with respect and dignity.

    The rental laws in Germany heavily favour tenants. Evictions are incredibly difficult for landlords, requiring substantial justification, and tenants can often remain in their homes for years, even if the property is sold.

    The Germans also tightly regulate rent increases, particularly in popular areas such as Berlin and Munich where you will find caps on rent increases to prevent these unaffordable spikes.

    Germany has a stronger rental culture than most other countries because it sees renting as a stable, long term housing option, rather than a stepping stone that leads to the apparent dream of home ownership.

    I have absolutely no confidence in Keir Starmer delivering the progressive housing reforms that are needed to make Britain a renter-friendly country.

    Rushanara Ali: a permanent bad taste?

    A quick glance at the current opinion polls would suggest I am not alone, and the bad taste in the mouth that has been left behind by the Rushanara Ali revelations is only going to further damage Starmer’s shaky government.

    The Conservatives had long enough. Starmer has already proven to be a no-change establishment lickspittle. And who in their right fucking mind would believe the millionaire, Nigel Farage, would ever do anything to make their life better?

    The urgent and very real need for a progressive force for good, to challenge this acceptance of a scamming MP doing ‘nothing wrong’, grows greater by the day.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Anas Al-Sharif: Gaza loses the eyes that conveyed its tragedy to the world

    Anas Al-Sharif grew up in the heart of Gaza, where days are measured by the number of endless battles. He was not born with a camera in his hands, but he came into life amid billowing smoke, scattered ruins, and the sounds of the radio repeating the names of the martyrs at the break of dawn each new day.

    Anas Al-Sharif: more than a reporter

    He grew up in the Jabalia refugee camp, aware that every house had a tragic story of bombing and that every street carried the memory of those who had lost their lives. He studied radio and television, but his path did not lead him to quiet offices, but to muddy streets, where he had to convey the sounds of explosions and tears to the world, whatever the cost.

    Anas Al-Sharif was not just a reporter conveying cold news, but a messenger of truth from Gaza to the world. He knew that the camera could be a reason for him to be targeted, but he believed that the lens was the most powerful weapon to break the wall of silence. He climbed rooftops, searched for internet signals in the corners of hospitals, and cut through destroyed streets to film hungry children and mothers searching for bread amid the rubble.

    The occupation did not hide its hatred for him, as he faced continuous incitement and smear campaigns, and accusations were levelled against him to justify his assassination, until the tragic Sunday when occupation aircraft bombed the journalists’ tent near Al-Shifa Hospital, killing Anas and his colleagues, leaving the cameras hanging in the void and silence.

    Hours before his martyrdom, he spoke on screen about children slowly dying of hunger. He did not realize that his next image would be on the news, but this time without sound, with a headline that summed it all up: “Anas Al-Sharif martyred.”

    A witness to genocide

    With his execution at the hands of Israel, Gaza has lost more than a journalist; it has lost a witness who carried its pain on his shoulders, and a bridge connecting its alleys to the eyes of the world. His reports remain in the archives, but they are not mere media material; they are fragments of the spirit of a city that continues to struggle for life.

    Anas Al-Sharif became a martyr, but he remained a witness to the genocide, the hunger of children, mothers searching through rubble for bread crumbs, displaced people walking on muddy roads under rain and shelling, the bodies of innocents in cold hospital corridors, and the sound of houses collapsing stone by stone, amid a global silence that ignores it all as if it were a passing scene.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Another Gaza injustice. Israel targets Anas in Al Jazeera media crew of 5

    COMMENTARY: By Saige England

    Another truth-teller targeted and killed in Gaza. I wish the journalists — some of whom I taught to master the skills of journalism, would look at this travesty and call it what it is: a genocide.

    I wish they would remember that journalists have a code of ethics, I wish they would remember to serve the people and not despotic governments.

    Good journalists are truth seekers and truth tellers.

    Like this man, Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif, targeted, murdered for revealing the truth that tens of thousands of children, women, and men are regarded as the enemy by a country that wants to take their land and expand.

    His Al Jazeera crew of five were wiped out yesterday.

    In 1982, I asked an Israeli what he thought of the (then) invasion into Lebanon. He replled that if the government in Tel Aviv had its way and some Israelis were not against invasion, the army would have invaded Turkey. Look at what has happened now.

    Massacre after massacre
    Far more Palestinians were killed in the year leading up to October 7, 2023, than Israelis killed on that day. Palestinians have faced massacre after massacre ever since the Nakba in 1948.

    They experience apartheid, they experience exile, they are not allowed to call Palestine their homeland, but it is their homeland.

    Britain swooped into that country and appropriated a religious myth that dated back thousands of years, but being anti anti semitism means ensuring that people are comfortable in their own land, it does not mean booting one people out to make a home for yourself.

    Settler colonisation continues to perpetuate the worst injustice. It just dealt another blow. Starving children and a good man, a truth teller, killed in cold blood.

    Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This commentary was first published on England’s social media.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • 80 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are we on the verge of another nuclear war?

    Common Dreams Logo

    This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Aug. 06, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

    Eighty years ago, the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are now nine nuclear-armed nations, many in military confrontation with one another. It is quite remarkable that there has not been another nuclear war. How can this be explained?

    Some say the absence of another nuclear war proves that nuclear “deterrence” is working, and to some extent that is true. These nations are rightfully afraid of a nuclear conflagration, which could obliterate their societies, and even destroy all life on planet Earth. With escalating military confrontations today—even the possibility of a World War—how long can “deterrence” work?

    “So Far, So Good…”

    “So far so good” is probably the faintly hopeful refrain heard from many who feel helpless to undo the nuclear danger. This is reminiscent of the cartoon of the man falling from the top of a building. As he passes each descending floor, he proclaims, “So far, so good…”

    In reality, a fair amount of luck has helped humanity avert nuclear catastrophe until now. We came very close during the “Cuban Missile Crisis.” A political officer on a Russian submarine that was out of communication and uncertain if a nuclear war had already begun called off a missile launch at the last minute. Another Russian military technician, suspicious of an errant radar reading that appeared to show incoming U.S. missiles, called off another imminent nuclear strike. It could just as easily have gone the other way.

    Many experts worry that it will be an accidental nuclear launch that ends us. This is all the more concerning as Artificial Intelligence is applied to nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, decreasing the decision-making time to split seconds, and removing human oversight. What could go wrong?

    Never Again?

    2025 also marks 80 years from the end of World War II and the defeat of the German fascists by Russia, the United States, and the European Allies. Eighty years since Russian and U.S. troops liberated thousands of skeletal prisoners from German concentration camps, much to the horror of the world, which reacted with calls of “Never Again!”

    But wait, don’t we have concentration camps now in the U.S.? Isn’t that why Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) now has a larger budget than many national militaries, and larger than the entire current federal prison system? They are building concentration camps for undocumented workers, whom they demonize as “murderers,” “rapists,” “gang members,” and “terrorists.” The vast majority of immigrants who have already been violently taken from their jobs and families, imprisoned, and deported have no criminal records whatsoever, and are productive, respected members of their communities.

    If you think I am pointing the finger at the U.S. as the “bad guy” who is mostly responsible for the prospect of a civilization-ending nuclear war, then you are reading correctly.

    Authoritarianism with distinct overtones of white supremacy is on the rise once again, while craven European politicians clamor for war with Russia and more military spending. What could go wrong?

    Israel, purportedly a safe haven for the persecuted Jewish people—a “land without people for a people without land”—is escalating its blatant genocide in Gaza. The images of intentionally starved Palestinian men, women, and children conjure images of emaciated prisoners—mostly Jews—in World War II concentration camps.

    Israel Wages Genocide While Threatening Its Neighbors with Nuclear Weapons

    Israel is also a nuclear power, although it has long been considered impolite to say so. The United States helped Israel gain nuclear technology and has helped to shield Israel from any nuclear accountability. Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Its nuclear arsenal is not inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which the U.S. weaponized to support its rationale for war against Iraq, Syria, and Iran. The IAEA announced a resolution critical of Iran’s nuclear program on Thursday, June 12, the day before Israel’s attack on Iran. Coincidence? Probably not. Like so many other international bodies, the IAEA has been subverted to serve U.S. and Israeli war aims.

    Unlike Iran, Israel actually has nuclear weapons. Will they use them against Iran? The Israeli government of right-wing extremists has already shown us the depths of depravity they are willing to go. Furthermore, all their Arab neighbors know Israel is the only nuclear-armed nation in the Middle East.

    Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, reminded us that “nuclear weapons are used every day. They are like a gun you point at somebody’s head.”

    Aside from “luck,” it has been nuclear arms treaties that have held nuclear war in check. In recent years, however, the U.S. has shredded most of these treaties and missed many opportunities for peace:

    • Former President Ronald Reagan rejected Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s offer for both countries to eliminate all their nuclear weapons if the U.S. would stop deployment of a “Star Wars” missile defense system in space.
    • Former President Bill Clinton refused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to cut our massive nuclear arsenals to 1,500 bombs and to call on all of the other nuclear-armed states to negotiate the elimination of all nuclear weapons, in exchange for the U.S. not placing missile sites in Romania.
    • Former President George W. Bush walked out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and put a missile base in Romania. President Donald Trump placed another missile base in Poland.
    • Former President Bush in 2008 and former President Barack Obama in 2014 blocked any discussion of Russian and Chinese proposals for a space weapons ban in the consensus-bound United Nations Committee for Disarmament in Geneva.
    • President Obama rejected President Putin’s offer to negotiate a treaty to ban cyber war.
    • President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
    • President Trump withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal, and placed sanctions on Iran.
    • From President Clinton through President Trump, the U.S. has never ratified the 1992 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was ratified by Russia has ratified.

    Taken in their totality, these U.S. moves constitute an attempt to gain nuclear superiority, including the possibility of launching a First Strike nuclear attack. Pulling out of the ABM and INF treaties, in particular, indicate U.S. intentions to threaten Russia with nuclear war.

    Is it any wonder that Russia, faced with the prospect of the U.S.-North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops and nuclear weapons systems stationed on its border with Ukraine, felt compelled to take military action? Now Russia is stuck in a bloody war that has been constantly escalated by the U.S., which has rejected multiple opportunities for peace talks since the war began. Russia asked for neutrality for Ukraine and respect for the rights of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking populations. Over 1 million casualties later (both sides), the bloody trench-and-drone war drags on, not because of Russian intransigence, but because of the aggressive U.S. policy of “full-spectrum dominance” in every corner of the globe.

    Drone Attack on Russia’s Strategic Bombers Tempted Nuclear War

    On June 1 of this year, a U.S.-supported Ukrainian drone attack on nuclear bombers in Russia almost triggered a nuclear war. According to a Russian general who spoke with former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) geopolitical analyst Larry Johnson, the world was even closer to nuclear war than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Russian bombers were openly visible on the tarmac, in accordance with the New START Treaty, which is designed to prevent a nuclear-first strike by either Russia or the U.S. This last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia is due to expire this coming February. But it already has been drone bombed.

    News Flash! President Trump just posted on his Truth Social account that he is sending two nuclear-armed submarines closer to Russia. Why? Because he didn’t like something that Russia’s Dmitri Medvedev said on social media. What? Trump is scoring pissing points by playing with nuclear weapons? A narcissistic psychopath has his hand on the nuclear button. This is all the more reason to push for an end to the president’s sole authority to launch a nuclear war.

    To round out this bleak report, we must at least mention that the U.S. is planning for war against China. The United States is openly planning to wage a war against China—some say as soon as 2027. Why? Because China’s remarkable revolution from extreme poverty to becoming a prosperous global powerhouse is something that the U.S. ruling class (or “deep state”) will not accept. So China will not be attacked because of its military aggression. Even as the U.S. wages perpetual war on multiple countries, China has not been at war with anybody in this century. U.S. complaints about Taiwan are nothing more than an excuse, a trigger for the war that U.S. leaders are determined to wage, at all costs.

    The Pentagon Is Planning a Nuclear First-Strike Against China

    The Pentagon has figured out that it cannot win a conventional war against China, however. It is planning to use nuclear weapons—an overwhelming first strike or possibly only “tactical nuclear weapons,” those cute little guys that are several times more powerful than what was dropped on Hiroshima.

    U.S. war planners recently asked Australia and Japan to declare what military resources they will bring to bear in a war against China. And get this… the U.S. held talks with Japan, of all nations, to discuss how they will coordinate their efforts after a nuclear strike on China. Among the issues they discussed were how they could best manage public opinion after a nuclear war.

    It is mostly by dumb luck, however, that we have not all perished in a nuclear Armageddon already.

    So if you think I am pointing the finger at the U.S. as the “bad guy” who is mostly responsible for the prospect of a civilization-ending nuclear war, then you are reading correctly. To put it bluntly, the problem is U.S. imperialism. The waning U.S. empire, desperate to maintain its hegemony and expand it, is the elephant in the room. It is buttressed by a very large and powerful military-industrial complex (MIC), the one that former President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about—now on steroids. Ray McGovern of Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a former CIA analyst himself, has expanded the MIC acronym to MICIMATT (Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence Media Academia Think Tanks). Yes, they are all complicit, not just with genocide in Palestine, but with militarizing and destroying the world. We peace-loving people have our work cut out for us. We are up against a lot.

    There is a lot of money to be made from war and militarism. And politicians learn the advantages of justifying war and funding the war machine. The ever-growing Pentagon budget has ballooned to over $1 trillion under Trump, money that will be redirected from the social security net that is being systematically shredded. Spending on nuclear weapons “modernization” alone will cost $100 billion in just the next year (from the budgets of the Pentagon and the Department of Energy).

    “The End Is Near”

    For decades, peace activists, scientists, and others have been warning us about the “growing danger of nuclear war.” Those sounding the nuclear alarm have been treated like the proverbial fanatic with the sign, “The End Is Near,” or like Chicken Little—“The sky is falling.” It is mostly by dumb luck, however, that we have not all perished in a nuclear Armageddon already. The guard rails have been removed, with the U.S. abrogation of nuclear arms deals. There are very few “adults in the room,” certainly not in the U.S., where neocons who love Israel but hate Iran and Russia have seized the helm. It will take a miracle and a lot of activism to avoid utter disaster in the relatively near future.

    Many peoples are already experiencing disaster, what with wars, genocide, extreme poverty, starvation, and the climate crisis—the fruits of corporate greed and militarism. Many people also suffer from the poison of the entire nuclear cycle. There are 15,000 abandoned uranium mines in the Western U.S., many of them on First Nations lands. Radiation contaminates the water, the air, the land, and the people, who suffer from many cancers and radiation-related diseases.

    The U.S. Exploded 67 Nuclear Bombs in the Marshall Islands

    Then there are the “downwinders” who suffer from the radiation of nuclear bomb testing. Or worse. The Marshall Islands were devastated by nuclear bomb testing. From 1946 to 1958, the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear bombs on this island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. To add insult to injury, their islands are now “sinking” from global warming and rising seas. Many Marshallese, unable to grow food on radiated land and unable to eat the fish from radiated waters, have been allowed to live in the U.S., without citizenship or security, and denied healthcare by many states. There is no cancer treatment facility in the Marshall Islands, and no Veterans Affairs facility for its many veterans of the U.S. military.

    We will end this disturbing nuclear tour on a positive note. It has to do with the Marshall Islands. In 1958, four Quaker peace activists bought a sailboat and announced to the world their intention to sail from Los Angeles 4,000 miles into the nuclear test zone in the Marshall Islands to stop U.S. nuclear testing. They were led by Albert Bigelow, a World War II Navy commander who resigned his commission in protest of the U.S. nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    The Golden Rule Crew Tried to Stop U.S. Nuclear Testing

    Halfway through the voyage, when Bigelow and his intrepid crew pulled into Honolulu, they were arrested and thrown in jail and the Coast Guard seized their boat, named Golden Rule. They never made it to the Marshall Islands, but they succeeded in bringing worldwide attention to the danger of radiation that was floating all over the globe, even getting into mothers’ milk. Opposition to nuclear testing led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1962, signed by then-President John F. Kennedy and the leaders of Russia and the United Kingdom. The treaty banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in the water, and in space. Only underground tests were permitted. These days most nuclear testing is done using computer simulations.

    The remarkable saga of the Golden Rule continued. The 34-foot ketch was sold and sailed as a pleasure boat by several families to the South Pacific and the Caribbean. Somehow, in 2010 it was found in Humboldt Bay in northern California—a derelict boat that had sunk in a gale and had a big hole in its side. Some locals dragged the beat-up boat onto the beach and planned to make a bonfire of it. When a someone discovered the boat’s legacy, however, local members of Veterans For Peace rescued it and decided to restore it to its original glory.

    In June of 2015, after five years of dedicated volunteer labor by veterans, Quakers, and boat lovers, the Golden Rule splashed back into the waters of Humboldt Bay and began sailing up and down the West Coast from British Columbia to Mexico (Ensenada), then to Hawai’i and all around the Hawai’ian islands. Back to California, trucked to Minneapolis, sailed down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, to Cuba and up the East Coast to Toronto and back to Chicago, a 12-month voyage with a total of 102 port stops. At every stop the Golden Rule and its crew were welcomed excitedly by local peace and environmental activists as well as by state and local officials. Nobody wants a nuclear war!

    The Golden Rule Is Sailing Around San Francisco Bay

    The historic Golden Rule peace boat sailed last week from its homeport in Humboldt Bay to San Francisco Bay, where it will spend the month of August educating the public about the “growing danger of nuclear war,” and the importance of supporting the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The treaty, supported by an overwhelming majority of countries, went into force in January 2021. It prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using, or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory. It also prohibits them from assisting, encouraging, or inducing anyone to engage in any of these activities

    Peace at Home, Peace Abroad!

    The Golden Rule is a national project of Veterans For Peace, a 40-year-old organization dedicated to exposing the true costs of war; to restraining our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations; and to ridding the world of nuclear weapons. At its recent national convention, veterans from U.S. wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and recent deployments made a united call for opposition to the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and for resistance to racist ICE attacks in our own communities. While calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, the Golden Rule will be echoing these urgent cries for “Peace at Home, Peace Abroad.”

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Soaring food prices prove the Gaza famine is real – and will affect generations to come

    ANALYSIS: By Ilan Noy, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

    The words and pictures documenting the famine in the Gaza strip are horrifying.

    The coverage has led to acrimonious and often misguided debates about whether there is famine, and who is to blame for it — most recently exemplified by the controversy surrounding a picture published by The New York Times of an emaciated child who is also suffering from a preexisting health condition.

    While pictures and words may mislead, numbers usually don’t.

    The Nobel prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen observed some decades ago that famines are always political and economic events, and that the most direct way to analyse them is to look at food quantities and prices.

    This has led to decades of research on past famines. One observation is that dramatic increases in food prices always mean there is a famine, even though not every famine is accompanied by rising food costs.

    The price increases we have seen in Gaza are unprecedented.

    The economic historian Yannai Spitzer observed in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that staple food prices during the Irish Potato Famine showed a three- to five-fold increase, while there was a ten-fold rise during the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. In the North Korean famine of the 1990s, the price of rice rose by a factor of 12.

    At least a million people died of hunger in each of these events.

    Now, The New York Times has reported the price of flour in Gaza has increased by a factor of 30 and potatoes cost 50 times more.

    Israel’s food blockade
    As was the case for the UK government in Ireland in the 1840s and Bengal in the 1940s, Israel is responsible for this famine because it controls almost all the Gaza strip and its borders. But Israel has also created the conditions for the famine.

    Following a deliberate policy in March of stopping food from coming in, it resumed deliveries of food in May through a very limited set of “stations” it established through a new US-backed organisation (the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation), in a system that seemed designed to fail.

    Before Israel’s decision in March to stop food from coming in, the price of flour in Gaza was roughly back to its prewar levels (having previously peaked in 2024 in another round of border closures). Since March, food prices have gone up by an annualised inflation rate of more than 5000 percent.

    The excuse the Israeli government gives for its starvation policy is that Hamas controls the population by restricting food supplies. It blames Hamas for any shortage of food.

    However, if you want to disarm an enemy of its ability to wield food supplies as a weapon by rationing them, the obvious way to do so is the opposite: you would increase the food supply dramatically and hence lower its price.

    Restricting supplies and increasing their value is primarily immoral and criminal, but it is also counterproductive for Israel’s stated aims. Indeed, flooding Gaza with food would have achieved much more in weakening Hamas than the starvation policy the Israeli government has chosen.

    The UN’s top humanitarian aid official has described Israel’s decision to halt humanitarian assistance to put pressure on Hamas as “cruel collective punishment” — something forbidden under international humanitarian law.

    The long-term aftermath of famines
    Cormac Ó Gráda, the Irish economic historian of famines, quotes a Kashmiri proverb which says “famine goes, but the stains remain”.

    The current famine in Gaza will leave long-lasting pain for Gazans and an enduring moral stain on Israel — for many generations.

    Ó Gráda points out two main ways in which the consequences of famines endure. Most obvious is the persistent memory of it; second are the direct effects on the long-term wellbeing of exposed populations and their descendants.

    The Irish and the Indians have not forgotten the famines that affected them. They still resent the British government for its actions. The memory of these famines still influences relations between Ireland, India and the UK, just as Ukraine’s famine of the early 1930s is still a background to the Ukraine-Russia war.

    The generational impact is also significant. Several studies in China find children conceived during China’s Great Leap Forward famine of 1959–1960 (which also killed millions) are less healthy, face more mental health challenges and have lower cognitive abilities than those conceived either before or after the famine.

    Other researchers found similar evidence from famines in Ireland and the Netherlands, supporting what is known as the “foetal origins” hypothesis, which proposes that the period of gestation has significant impacts on health in adulthood. Even more worryingly, recent research shows these harmful effects can be transmitted to later generations through epigenetic channels.

    Each day without available and accessible food supplies means more serious ongoing effects for the people of Gaza and the Israeli civilian hostages still held by Hamas — as well as later generations. Failure to prevent the famine will persist in collective memory as a moral stain on the international community, but primarily on Israel. Only immediate flooding of the strip with food aid can help now.The Conversation

    Dr Ilan Noy is chair in the Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. 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.

  • Eugene Doyle: Recognise Palestine? Then free Marwan Barghouti

    COMMENTARY:  By Eugene Doyle

    The world’s most important hostage — must be released. The powerful Western countries have signalled that in the face of the genocide they may recognise the state of Palestine.

    States need leaders. That’s why Marwan Barghouti – often dubbed the Palestinian Mandela — must be freed.

    A former head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Ephraim Halevy, agrees with calls by leaders from across the Middle East for Barghouti’s release: “Barghouti is popular with his people, he has a clear position, he speaks Hebrew well and can negotiate; all of which qualifies him to lead a new path.

    “We have to be creative in dealing with the future in the West Bank as well and the rest of the territories, as there are millions of Palestinians, and transferring two million Palestinians from Gaza is unrealistic,” Halevy told Middle East Monitor.

    States need leaders
    The UK, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a baker’s dozen of Western-aligned states have signalled they may finally join humanity and recognise the right of Palestine to exist as a state.

    They are doing so at a moment when the physical existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine is in peril due to the US-Israeli genocide.

    If this is not simply another hollow, performative gesture, real things must happen: first and foremost the lifting of the siege and the ending of the man-made famine.

    Simultaneously, Palestine needs a credible leadership to negotiate its future. Why call for recognition of a state when hundreds of the top leadership of that future state are held in cruel captivity?

    These hostages seldom receive any attention — in contrast to the remaining 20 or so living hostages held by Hamas and other groups.

    Who decides who represents Palestine?
    In typical Western fashion the announcement of potentially recognising the Palestinian state comes with a swag of conditions — foremost that Hamas, the most popular movement in Palestine, the winner of the last free and fair elections in both the West Bank and Gaza, must not be part of any government.

    OK, so, if the Palestinians bow to that condition, who will be the leaders of this state? Who has the standing with all the factions of the Palestinian polity?

    Marwan Barghouti could be such a man. The geriatric and thoroughly discredited Mahmoud Abbas, unelected leader of the Palestinian Authority, is largely seen as a tool of the US and Israel.

    More than 90 percent of Palestinians want him gone. In contrast, Barghouti is a revered figure, respected by all Palestinian organisations. He consistently polls as the most popular leader.

    The Israelis have murdered many of the Palestinian leaders (along with targeted assassinations of hundreds of writers, professors, lawyers, doctors and other people crucial to state-building). They even killed the lead negotiator in the hostage release process.

    It is vital that the West ensures Barghouti is protected from further mistreatment. It is also worth dismissing the lie that Israel has no Palestinian partner to negotiate with; Barghouti has the will and the attributes.

    The blockage is actually Western complicity in ethnic cleansing, land stealing and the overall Greater Israel Project.

    Barghouti: the most important political prisoner
    During the past 23 years in Israeli prisons Barghouti has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken, as documented by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian — a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation.

    As I wrote in 2024:

    “Barghouti, the terrorist, rotting in jail. Barghouti, the indomitable leader who has not given up on peace. Barghouti, loved by ordinary people as ‘a man of the street’. Barghouti, supporter of the Oslo Accords. Barghouti, the 15 year-old youth leader standing beside Yasser Arafat.

    “Barghouti, once a member of parliament and Fatah secretary-general. Barghouti, leader of Tanzim, a PLO military wing, choosing militancy after the betrayal of the Oslo promise by the Americans and Israelis became fully clear.

    “Barghouti, a leader of the intifada that restored hope to a broken people. Barghouti, the scholar and thinker. Barghouti, the political strategist and unifier.”

    Marwan is the most famous Palestinian prisoner but it should never be forgotten that the entire Palestinian people have been held in bondage for generations.

    The West should force the Israelis to release Barghouti — and thousands of other hostages held by Israel. To do so publicly and successfully would be a powerful statement of future intentions.

    The release of one man cannot, however, change the world: it will take a genuine course correction by the West to use their collective power to force the Israelis to abandon the endless killings, starvation, land thieving and other lawlessness in the Palestinian lands.

    The West must stop posturing and start acting
    If the Western states fail to quickly move to change facts on the ground, it will suggest that the whole exercise was only intended to achieve political cover for the pro-genocidal forces of the US and the other enablers like Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

    Netanyahu is driving both the Palestinians and Israel to destruction.

    Ironically, the Palestinian Marwan Barghouti could save Israel from moral death and, simultaneously, the Palestinians from further physical destruction. He is a leader that the West and the Israelis, if they chose, could negotiate with.

    As Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, said a couple of years ago: Barghouti is “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” and “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”

    One final point: negotiating with ‘terrorists’
    The West has made it clear they believe Hamas are too monstrous, too terroristic to be involved in a peace process.

    But the West is entirely comfortable with the racist, fascist, genocidal leaders of Israel remaining at the helm of their country. There is a reason for this and one the West needs to front up to: racism and contempt for the Palestinians as a people.

    Barghouti and hundrds of other leaders have endured torture and worse without our side raising even an eyebrow. The recent skite videos posted by IDF soldiers committing rape-murder inside Sde Temein prison says it all — they rightly assumed their depraved criminality would be sanctioned by the state and silently tolerated by the West.

    War crimes are fine and no barrier to leadership if these crimes are committed by regimes that we are deeply committed to. After all, as our leaders repeatedly tell us: we share values with the Israelis.

    I’ll give the last word to Marwan Barghouti.

    “Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation. Nobody should forget that the Palestinian people negotiated for 10 years and accepted difficult and humiliating agreements, and in the end didn’t get anything except authority over the people, and no authority over land, or sovereignty.”

    It is time to change that and to stand with humanity. Free Marwan Barghouti!

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Working Class Hero

    As soon as you’re born they make you feel small
    By giving you no time instead of it all
    Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
    A working class hero is something to be
    A working class hero is something to be

    They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
    They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool
    Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules
    A working class hero is something to be
    A working class hero is something to be

    When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years
    Then they expect you to pick a career
    When you can’t really function you’re so full of fear
    A working class hero is something to be
    A working class hero is something to be

    Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
    And you think you’re so clever and classless and free
    But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see
    A working class hero is something to be
    A working class hero is something to be

    There’s room at the top they’re telling you still
    But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
    If you want to be like the folks on the hill

    A working class hero is something to be
    A working class hero is something to be
    If you want to be a hero well just follow me
    If you want to be a hero well just follow me

    Songwriters: John Winston Lennon
    © Downtown Music Publishing
    For non-commercial use only.

    This was powerful stuff in the 70s as it should be now, 50+ years later. Sadly, nothing has changed for the better for us working stiffs. Matter of fact, it is even worse in 21st Century Amerika! As this writer and countless other great writers have offered, the disparity between the Haves (1/4 of 1 % of our nation) and Have Nots (the rest of us, especially the working poor or ‘near poor’ is comparable to the Gilded Age (1870s to 1900 approx.). This Military Industrial Empire has seen corporations literally eating up Mom and Pop America for generations. All one has to do is observe those Amazon delivery trucks flowing through your neighborhoods to realize the impact. Drive by those Wal-Mart Supercenters any hour of the day to see how powerfully these giants control things. How many Wal-Mart Associates (don’t you just love how they call clerks such a nice name?) have to get food stamps and need Medicaid? As it is, over half of the corporation’s employees are Part Time, which means they get less in the way of benefits. Of course, both Amazon and Wal-Mart are NON UNION, thus, not so great for any such benefits that even ‘Sweetheart’ unions would secure them.

    This writer remembers, with a sad prism, of when my late parents were in a nursing home from 2000-04. Of course, this was one of the millions of corporate owned and operated nursing homes, where top management made out like the bandits they were. How about the janitor they employed, who earned less than $8.00 an hour? This fellow, with an infirm mother at home, had to work 33 hours weekly at the place (this was so he would not qualify as a Full Time employee), and then he picked up a 2nd job as janitor at the local hospital (also P/T) at about the same wage. No sick pay, no vacation pay, no holiday pay (I actually wrote about him when I saw him working on Christmas day), no health coverage… no nothing!

    One day, when I visited my parents (I went by three times a week) I arrived as an aide was going to give my mom a shower. It was very difficult to move my semi-invalid mother in and out of the bathroom and shower.

    I asked the aide, “How much do you make an hour?”

    He replied “Nine dollars an hour.”

    Nine dollars!! I knew that the nurses at the place were getting around $ 22 and hour… and they deserved more! But $9.00 and hour to wipe our parents’ asses clean when they sometimes shit themselves? Can one even imagine how difficult it is to do such work? For $9.00 and hour? No union, no real benefits to speak of.

    I remember, before my mother passed away, I received, as their legal representative, a printout of the monthly medications she was getting , along the costs billed to Medicaid. It was astounding! What they were pushing into her old and frail body was incredible! Did anyone ever hear of homeopathy? Of course, the elder care doctor assigned to her came and went ‘whenever’ as the nurses and aides did all the grunt work. Her doc did such a great job that my mom died because she got gangrene in her foot from an infection that it seems no one even noticed. They finally hospitalized her and had to cut off BOTH her legs from the knee down… and she died a few days later… better for her, believe me.

    As the late Edward R. Murrow would say it: “This is America.” Maybe this tragic Trump 2.0 pandemic will finally wake up the Sleeping Giant of our mass of working stiffs. Yes, the Wobblies were correct. We need ONE BIG UNION to save us from the vipers of this empire.

    The post Working Class Hero first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Regime Change 2025

    The popular protest sign “They’re eating the checks, they’re eating the balances” exactly captures the destruction Donald Trump has wrought in his first six months in office as he follows the Project 2025 roadmap to change every aspect of American government and American life. No American institution has escaped Trump’s wrath: the U.S. Constitution’s three branches of government, the media (including Rupert Murdoch), higher education, large law firms, free trade, the corporate sector, and even the very definition of who is an American, not to mention windmills, EVs, and showerheads. Trump uses extortion like a mafia Don to back these changes while his MAGA foot soldiers threaten violence. However imperfect, our American form of democracy has functioned for nearly 250 years not only because of the rule of law but also because of all the informal rules and traditions that allow our two-party system to govern. Regime change is not merely a change in players. It is a change in the very structure and norms of government and its relationship to the governed. We are witnessing regime change.

    Much ink has been spilled on the White House’s invocation of “unitary executive theory,” its appeal to 18th century emergency powers to legitimize assaults on immigration, DEI, elite law firms, universities, and most especially the federal government itself. But it is important not to miss the forest for the trees. When one branch of government moves aggressively and successfully to subordinate all others to its will, basic principles of checks and balances and separation of powers are not only trampled, they are abandoned, lost. Donald Trump and his team are building new political norms, new political habits, new rules of the game. The most important one is, Trump is Supreme Ruler and anything he says goes. It is difficult to overstate how radical President Trump’s claims for his executive power really are. They effectively eradicate the intricate machinery of our constitutional system, our republican form of democracy. The outward institutional forms remain, but the political substance of our form of government is disintegrating right before our eyes.

    There is no point more critical in America’s founding texts than the Framer’s fear and caution against concentrated, monopolized state power. As James Madison declared in Federalist 48, power is “of an encroaching nature” and to maintain the separation of powers the separate branches of government need to have “a constitutional control” over one another. That means each branch has significant independent power, not just the executive. Trump won’t tolerate this. Ergo, there goes the old regime.

    Regime change can only happen when politicians allow it. Squeezed between Trump’s threats to “primary” them and Maga’s threats to harm them and their families, virtually all congressional Republicans have prioritized saving their seats rather than preserving our constitutional principles. That’s why elections are still important. With the off-year election rapidly approaching and Trump’s poll numbers plunging, Democrats are already envisioning a “Blue Wave.” But the challenge to Democrats cannot be overstated. First, they must stop Trump’s reckless rampage. Given the senate’s sixty-vote standard to pass a bill and a two-third majority in both houses needed to override a presidential veto, a Blue Wave isn’t enough. The Dems need a tsunami to get that super majority to stop Trump and the larger MAGA movement he feeds. At the same time, they must also rebuild the institutions of our procedural democracy. After all, despite its many limitations, a bourgeois democracy is better than a fascist autocracy. It’s a long way to November 2026 and much can change, but even a Blue Tsunami may not be enough to stop what may be irreversible changes in the form and substance of the republic.

    The post Regime Change 2025 first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Australian media faces existential crisis after realising ‘free Palestine’ might extend well beyond university lawns and Instagram

    COMMENTARY: By Clancy Overell, editor of The Betoota Advocate

    After years of sitting on the fence and looking the other way, the Australian media is today reckoning with the fact that showing basic sympathy towards the starving and war-weary people of Gaza is actually a very mainstream sentiment.

    This explosive moment of self-reflection has rocked newsrooms all over the country, from the talk back radio stations to the increasingly gun-shy ABC.

    This comes as the tens of thousands of everyday Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in solidarity in protest against the abhorrent war crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.

    • READ MORE: More satire about Israel’s horrendous war on Gaza

    This existential media feeling of extreme detachment from the general public is only amplified by the undeniable fact this crowd actually isn’t even that representative of the actual number of people who are horrified by the events taking place on the Gaza Strip — as the extreme weather conditions clearly shrank the overall number of people who would have otherwise attended this record-breaking protest.

    The crowd that did make it there is still one of the biggest to ever march the Harbour Bridge, many who braved heavy winds and rain to join the chants “ceasefire now” and “free Palestine”.

    With a large number of high-profile household names such as Julian Assange and former NSW Premier Bob Carr making their presence known, it’s now very difficult for the media to now write these protesters off as “terrorist sympathisers”.

    It’s also clear that the plight of the Palestinians is something that ripples far beyond the university lawns and instagram timelines that have since been dismissed as the musings of “detached inner-city elites” and “brazen antisemites”.

    Sydney’s “Rainy Sunday” march also comes as a blow to both the Federal and State Labor governments, which have worked tirelessly to squash these protests using police powers and anti-free speech laws.

    The Betoota Advocate is an Australian satirical news website that takes its name from the deserted regional western Queensland town of Betoota but is actually published in Sydney.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • #SwindonsSundaySermon: subordinating the Palestinians to Israel is all in a day’s work for Starmer

    The question of Palestinian statehood has been front and centre of the news agenda for much of the past week. Forgive me for not joining in with the celebrations because this was a desperate act by a desperate man, not a principled stand for justice for the Palestinian people. I won’t be celebrating Keir Starmer’s performative nonsense because it is driven by domestic political pressures and has absolutely nothing to do with the Palestinian people’s inherent right to statehood.

    Palestinian statehood is being used as an ineffective, diplomatic tool by a weak, ineffective tool of a prime minister. That really is the measure of the man.

    Recognising Palestine: a sham from Starmer

    Keir Starmer’s conditional recognition of Palestinian statehood — that still reinforces a power imbalance that favours the occupier over the occupied — effectively subordinates an inalienable Palestinian right to Israeli approval.

    You can drive your new car Mr/Mrs Random, but on the condition of you gaining your neighbours approval beforehand.

    I may be getting on a bit, but I do remember the time in 2019 and 2022 when the Labour Party were fully committed to unilaterally and immediately recognising a Palestinian state.

    I might’ve mentioned it once or twice before, but Keir Starmer is a bought-and-paid for asset of the British security state. He will let you down, He will lie to you. He will betray you. A commitment today is a broken promise tomorrow.

    The timing of Keir Starmer’s statement, after Britain has watched Israel brutally and unlawfully kill at least 60,000 Palestinian civilians is a case of way too little and way too late.

    When it comes to Britain’s opportunity to influence change in the Middle East, the horse bolted a long time ago. Again, Israel condemned and rejected Starmer’s statement, as you would expect from a genocidal pariah state that is hellbent on ethnically cleansing an entire people to create Greater Israel, by any means necessary.

    Starmer remains entirely complicit in Israel’s actions by authorising arms sales and military support, such as spy missions for Israel, which undermines his rhetoric on Palestinian rights.

    But I will tell you who will buy into this meaningless, performative hogwash…

    Throw the increasingly-annoying soft left of Labour a few unpalatable scraps of brisket and they’ll soon appear in media studios across the country to tell you to enjoy the plump fillet steak that’s just been served up by Chef Starmer.

    A new left on the horizon

    The emergence of a new left-wing party has already served a purpose. Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together? The marrows will be plump in Islington North tonight.

    Keir Starmer’s number crunchers are fully aware that a new left-wing party — working closely with other anti-genocide leftist independents, and a Green Party led by a reinvented, but entirely convincing Zack Polanski — could leave the Labour Party scrapping it out for fourth place with the Liberal Democrats, assuming they’re still a thing?

    Let us be absolutely crystal clear. Starmer’s apparent shift has nothing whatsoever to do with moral conviction and more about countering the loss of Muslim votes to the left in urban constituencies such as Bristol Central and Sheffield Hallam.

    There was nothing in the statement that addresses the urgency of the situation in Gaza, because Keir Starmer doesn’t look at the heartbreaking images of defenceless, starving Palestinian children in the same way that we do.

    Keir Starmer’s feeble, conditional approach makes no attempt to rectify the historical injustice of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and instead perpetuates a painfully cautious, lawyerly stance that prioritises alignment with the neofascist in the White House over anything that resembles bold, moral leadership.

    I will take Keir Starmer just a little bit more seriously if he ever gets a hefty bash on the head and suddenly agrees to unconditional recognition, a complete end to arms sales, sanctions on Israel, and acknowledgment of the genocide.

    That should be the starting point.

    A political con merchant

    Symbolic gestures will not bring a much-needed end to the death, destruction and famine in the besieged enclave.

    Keir Starmer is a political con merchant of the very highest order. He frequently dresses up more-of-the-same as “change”. A changed NHS means a continuation of privatisation. A changed welfare system means a continuation of austerity for those that can least afford it.

    And a changed approach to handling Israel, or perhaps mishandling, means absolutely nothing to the men, women, and children of Gaza that will go to sleep tonight, knowing that it could well be for the very last time.

    Featured image via Rachael Swindon

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Hiroshima 80 years on – why AUKUS is imperial madness and needs to be stopped

    Three times this year the world has been close to nuclear catastrophe of one form or another — the India–Pakistan conflict, the ongoing Ukraine–Russia war and more recently the Israel/US–Iran “12 day war”. Here is one of the speeches at the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima Day in Sydney before the “March for Humanity” on Sydney Harbour Bridge.

    COMMENTARY: By Peter Murphy

    I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation as the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we are gathered and pay respect to their Elders past and present. I also acknowledge the Pitjantjatjara and other peoples of the APY lands who suffered the direct impact of nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and nearby in the 1950s and early 1960s.

    I am standing in here for Michael Wright, the national secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, who was unable to take up our invitation to be here today.

    The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has a very solid record for opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, and really campaigned hard on this issue against Peter Dutton and the Coalition in the May federal elections.

    The ETU campaigned in Dutton’s seat of Dickson and he lost his seat to Labor’s Ali France. You have to conclude that among the many reasons that Australian voters deserted the Coalition and Dutton, the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy was a big one.

    Since the election, the Coalition has continued to entertain the idea of a nuclear-powered Australia, showing that they just refuse to listen to the Australian people. But they are only too happy to listen to and take the money of the fossil fuel corporations and the nuclear power companies like Westinghouse, who are the ones who benefit from government policies to foster nuclear power.

    They are determined to delay the transition to renewable energy as long as possible, whatever the cost to all of us in runaway climate disasters.

    The ETU’s official policy against the nuclear industry dates back to the 1950s, resulting from the shared experiences of ETU members who returned from Japan after the Second World War. In the decades since, the ETU has regularly revisited this policy to learn more about the nuclear fuel cycle, changes and advances to technologies, technical interaction with the network and economic viability.

    Opposed nuclear industry
    Let’s honour those long-gone ETU members who recognised the crimes that took place at Nagasaki and Hiroshima 80 years ago by vigorously opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons today. And let’s remember some other Australians who were there then — Tom Uren saw the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki from the copper mine where he was working as a prisoner of war; and Wilfred Burchett, the journalist, who first told the world from Hiroshima about radiation sickness.

    Nuclear power stations generate radioactive waste such as spent reactor fuel, reprocessing effluents, and contaminated tools and work clothing. These materials can remain radioactive and hazardous to human health for tens of thousands of years.

    And this is the kind of waste that comes from nuclear-powered submarines, during regular maintenance, and at the end of their life — 30 years we have been told for the AUKUS submarine nuclear reactors.

    This waste will need to be trucked across the country on public roads to be disposed of in a nuclear waste facility.

    But, Australia does not have a dedicated national radioactive waste facility. And the Albanese government is refusing to say where they plan to put that waste.

    The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those at the nuclear tests sites in Nevada, the Marianas, French Polynesia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Fields, Maralinga in Australia have been living with these nuclear wastes in their environment for up to 80 years.

    We don’t want this to go any further in Australia or anywhere else in the world.

    Democratic failure over AUKUS
    How dare the Albanese government commit future generations to somehow keep that deadly nuclear waste safe for tens of thousands of years.

    The ETU stood up at the August 2023 ALP National Conference and opposed the AUKUS project, spelling out these concerns and also the democratic failure of Labor to consult the public and the Parliament before committing to the AUKUS deal.

    The Albanese leadership tried very hard to make sure that AUKUS was not debated at that ALP National Conference. So it was a victory first of all to have the debate and openly discuss the big problems with AUKUS.

    The pro-AUKUS case was so weak that the Defence Industry Minister at the time, Pat Conroy, defended it by accusing the critics of being like the appeasers of the Nazis in the 1930s. In doing so he was saying that China is a fascist state and it is the enemy we have to fight with these hopeless submarines.

    The grotesque comparison of us and of China to Nazis is ironically more appropriate for Trump and the USA, who are right now purging people of colour from the streets and workplaces of the United States and supporting a genocide in Gaza.

    AUKUS is one building block in the US plan to wage war on China to remove its capacity to challenge US primacy in this region and world-wide. A conga line of US military commanders and cabinet secretaries have made this clear.

    It is imperial madness writ large.

    The deeper reason
    And this is the deeper reason why we must oppose AUKUS, because we have to stop this deadly drive for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers. Such a war would almost certainly go nuclear, the world would go into nuclear winter, there would be no winners and huge huge casualties.

    Japan, the Philippines, and Australia would be very early targets in such a war.

    We remember that 200,000 people, almost all civilians, men women and children of all ages, were killed by those two nuclear bombs 80 years ago, and endless suffering has continued down to this day.

    So we recommit to opposing nuclear weapons and the nuclear industry which produces them. We commit to getting Australia’s signature on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.

    We commit to stopping AUKUS. We commit to stopping the active US and Australian plan for a war with China.

    This is edited from Peter Murphy’s speech at the 80th anniversary Horoshima Day rally for the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition and Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition on 3 August 2025.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Mirror or Mirage? The Future of Truth and Freedom of the Press Today

    Truth or Perception?

    True to the words of the legendary 19th-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert, “there is no truth. There is only perception”. The truth may sound or taste bitter. But in reality, there is no singular truth and perception about anything and everything in this divine universe, even about the most abstract ones. Inherent truth is subjective, which lies in the hands of an individual’s interpretation. Together, they have a profound influence on shaping people’s views.

    Its real-life exponent is none other than the dictator Hitler⸺thanks to his exceptional oratory skills, once dangerous and fascinating. On the other side of the coin lies the legacy of the great American social and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. His non-violent liberal views on racial equality echoed deeply. Both historical figures left an indelible mark on the world courtesy of their respective mindsets strategically manifested, intertwined with truth and perception.

    To shape public perception, key news sources include print and electronic media. These include newspapers, television, books, magazines, and radio. Newspapers and television are naturally the most widely ubiquitous, commanding massive audience coverage and deep penetration.

    India has one of the largest newspaper circulations in the world. It endures and reveres the media, but here is the catch. According to media literacy index data, our homeland, India, ranked at a very low level globally. The magnitude of freedom is handy to the journalists at large, and it is alarming! Sadly, in India’s context, it is directionless. Ultimately, it is a wake-up call. The freedom of the press is inextricably linked to the democracy of a country. Apart from this, news channels on television are not behind in the rat race with their contemporaries. Selling content to the audience instead of ensuring quality content that informs them the most. Running for TRP, the real news gets diluted. The essence of informing and information gets killed long before through various media.

    India’s complex emotional landscape

    In a country as emotionally vulnerable and socially heterogeneous — as India. The longstanding challenges, such as Hindu-Muslim tensions, population explosion, poverty, illiteracy, and more. Labyrinths of other enigmas are often engulfed, which causes reactive, colloquial responses. They manifest vividly during nightmarish, complex — Kafkaesque episodes. Numerous instances of public unrest like riots, rapes, suicides, and more are evidence to it. Such emotionally charged reactions complicate the government’s ability to implement and administer policies in a consistent, transformative manner. This is where the truth and the press hold a critical role. In these complexities, the leakages of the internal machinery get highlighted.

    A Press Under Siege

    Having such a media state has major concerns and equally questionable consequences. They often tend to leave a painful scar later in the long term. On the contrary, the case is very different in countries as Russia, China, the US, and the U.K. They usually have concrete, strong, hassle-free, definite political motives and policies. They refrain from the ways India often tends to follow. The typical Indian answer to our emotional country goes back to our heated history textbooks. There have been countless deliberate attempts the whole world has made to conquer the roots of our ‘bhāratavarṣa’. It was not only for centuries but for millennia indeed. Starting from the advent of Alexander the Great in 326 BCE to the British Empire in 1947. The continual cycle of ‘sought and fought’ had fragmented and fractured the internal cohesion. This legacy left the nation in a difficult yet diverse situation. Still, it often backfires, creating an ironic, complicated situation of unity in diversity. Unlike other countries, the US and Russia. Unfortunately, India hasn’t enjoyed an uninterrupted political lineage with a uniform singularity of purpose. In our case, the press doesn’t report the truth. It often has to wrestle for it amid the noise of unresolved historical background, painstakingly.

    Indispensable, twin forces — the truth is an expression, the press is the medium. Shaping and reshaping our views, then our beliefs. Eventually, it solidifies respective ideologies. The media are the purveyors of truth and freedom. Conveying information concisely under the instructions of the government. With such a vital authority and verdict resting on the press, it is a transparent, crystal-clear mirror of the country. It is a double-edged sword, bridging the supreme authority with the assurance of the people. Just exactly like Snow White’s enchanted mirror, today’s press undergoes examination, “Mirror, mirror on the wall: Who tells the truth among us all”? Publicly, things get amplified and complicated with social media. It affects the scenario, which itself is in an uneasy, lopsided state.

    Social Media Perils and Content Pollution

    True to the words of the legendary English poet Alexander Pope, the warmth of his lines is produced in his thought-provoking work, ‘An Essay on Criticism’. The lines “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” These are so apt to the complex content we consume today. The essence of the magnum opus is deeply felt even today in the 21st-century modern world.

    In the essence of the digital age today, Social Media is the online medium that makes shallow learning among the masses a dangerous thing! It has a profound impact and internal pressure on one’s daily life. The ignorance of countless posts on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and so on, will undoubtedly be bliss. In shades of innumerable benefits, it often results in ruining one’s privacy. Social media validation and accumulating more and more followers are blinding. It is infused with overloaded fake news, intense addiction, and the urge to form opinions and criticism (trolling). Everyone wants to express something without having the real knowledge about it. With this huge confusion and anxiety, it has emerged everywhere like wildfire. All of this has created misconceptions, prejudice, manipulation, censorship, ambiguity, rumours, and misuse. This mess is one of the major grey shades of social media.

    Content is not just consumed; it is exaggerated, engineered, and fabricated. All this is exercised under legitimate knowledge claims. Ultimately, this flooding mechanism has blurred the line between what is reel and what the actual reality is. It has adulterated information to an unprecedented level. India itself produces a large number of content creators globally. In turn, Indians also tend to consume a huge volume of content. Thanks to insanely addictive reels and posts on apps like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, and more. As a result, India also leads in average mobile screen time. The estimated screen time is more than 5 hours daily. Even sometimes creating obscene content for the sake of likes and comments is considered normal! At least for disseminating genuine content, social media proves to be an easy yet complex option. Consequently, it has driven the Indian media into peril.

    The Collapse of Free Speech

    Unearthing the truth in the crossword and its clues embedded in a web of lies is hard. It has paradoxically suffocated the very freedom of speech within the compound chaos altogether. Truth is born out of freedom and courage. The press, which once investigated the unknown, unbelievable, and the unthinkable, now tirelessly circles. Just hunting for the truth for the sake of real, meaningful truth. But alas, today, there is both speech and courage immersed deep. The axis of profoundly malicious, politically motivated actions and intentions is strongly holding it. Both truth and press now operate in a system they once sought to expose. Here, language often bought through bribes speaks loudly and boldly to rule over everyone. Often, institutions buy and sell the freedom of speech, putting their agenda forward to the masses. This dirty, unethical transaction not only trades monetary value but also corrupts the system. It hollows the society morally, emotionally, and socially, both intentionally and unintentionally, like a parasite.

    The voice of the innocent (media professionals), who dare to speak the truth, often embraces unjust retribution and tyrannical faith. Their remarkable efforts peel back those thick layers of deception, corruption, and bribery, but go in vain. Pressure groups and others often bury uneasy truths and astonishing facts under the guise of national interest and public welfare. The beautiful irony is just showcased as normal in thin air! The menace is that it is paraded to the audience as a sideshow spectacle. Such skillful, shrewd wordplay and rhetorical acrobatics contribute significantly to it. As a result, even the sharpest person in the room can’t pose a question. This puppetry media manipulation in a performative democracy becomes art, not for informing, but for controlling.

    The Legal Lens: Indian Constitution and the Press

    Laws and the press share a valiant, intertwined relationship where both have the power and potential in society. The law acts as a watchdog over the duty of both the people and the press. The freedom of the media is not only linked to journalism but to the vocal freedom of a country. Leaving it in a deadly dilemma of oblivion if left unchecked.

    Resorting to legal methods for a hand-to-hand confrontation and cleansing it eventually may be the tedious yet best remedy. Highlighting the pitfalls and sorting them to the roots, as there is no smoke without fire. Although this is an even bigger headache since the magnitude of the Indian media industry is a whopping amount of more than a billion dollars.

    By turning through the pages of the most voluminous rulebook of the world, the Indian Constitution. It offers us both a better, comprehensive, and far-sighted view. Indian law is just and faithful enough to meet both ends and refine its application by drawing the light of wisdom over the respective case.

    Article 19(1)(a) relates to the independent freedom of voice and their respective opinions against the actions of the government. The media is legally backed up to highlight the plight of truth ‘lying’ beneath the surface and above it. Likewise, some notable eye-opening cases include the Romesh Thappar vs State of Madras and the Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) (P) Ltd. vs Union of India. These astounding cases had thrust the freedom of the press and media into the limelight, concreting their status even more. These cases and many more are at the confluence of the political and social environment. The emancipation to advance facts and reports without any intervention, but with reasonable restrictions behind the fences.

    Freedom and truth in the press should be carried sensibly within the thin line of legal demarcation relative to the audience. Sensitive news often triggers harmful ideas, and it can lead to both psychological and mental pain directly. Avoiding the spread of any fake news, defamation, contempt of court, blasphemy, voyeurism, and any threat to the sovereignty and integrity of India is of utmost national significance. There has been some progress over time to overcome the stagnant debacle; there is a long road to travel.

    Press, Sacrifice, and Political Ironies

    Dubbed as the 4th pillar of democracy, the press and media enjoy an ironic status owing to their gullible volatility. There remain shining examples of fearless Indian journalism that delivered the truth at the right place and at the right time, undeterred by mental pressure. But ironically, the most staggering report gathered is that our motherland, India, stands amongst the top countries to have the most journalist deaths.

    Renowned cases of such ill-fated scapegoats include Gauri Lankesh, J.Dey, and Daniel Pearl; the list goes on. Their “sacrifice” bears a thought-provoking lesson. These media professionals fearlessly tried to unmask the bitter truth of the wrongdoers and guilty minds. To combat such authoritarian regimes, often influential political ideals march forward carrying the baton, calling for a major upheaval or revolution. In the process, this leads to doublespeak from the other side in a counterreaction. Often, when things take a U-turn, these political ideals later turn into political prisoners! Eventually, their descendants find their lives embroiled, burdened with defining and redefining their ideologies and legacy.

    Such a misuse or mistake can lead to an Orwellian dystopia in a totalitarian manner, as pointed out by the great 20th-century English author George Orwell. In his magnum opus novel, 1984, he showcases the political nightmare the caged media and press cast upon it.

    In the dynamics of India, the silver lining is certainly visible. The architectural Gandhian values of truth and freedom will be followed and resonate. Both the sanguine prospects and outputs of journalism will emerge rooted in integrity and moral duty, without fleeting urgency. But rather with an imperative role, a pillar of democracy, not with transience but with transparency.

    The post Mirror or Mirage? The Future of Truth and Freedom of the Press Today first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ethiopia: Where Political Power Grows From the Barrel of a Gun

    There is a brutal civil war being waged in Ethiopia where political power grows from the barrel of a gun. On one side is the western backed corrupt, brutal gangster regime of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, he who was bestowed the Nobel Peace prize by the imperialists on the Nobel Committee in Norway

    On the other side, are three armed groups with the ethnic Amhara FANO/Patriots army at the forefront. Included is the former ruling class the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) and what’s left of its once powerful army, today pretty much holding coats in this conflict. The other armed group opposing the gangster Abiy Ahmed is the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), not nearly as powerful or well lead as FANO but a threat nevertheless.

    The Abiy gangster regime is backed by the west, to be counted on when it comes to supporting their puppets in Africa. Abiy is little more than the Mayor of the capital Addis Ababa having lost control of some 80% of the country. With the FANO fighters on one side and the OLA on the other side Abiy has only about a thirty mile radius between him and the loss of his capital city and, if he is lucky, an exile in his supporters capital Abu Dhabi (maybe Dubai?) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

    The bankster criminal class in the west is continuing to back Abiy with a recent emergency grant of $260 million along side a “loan” for $1.5 billion as well a a “debt reduction” of $3.5 billion (Ethiopia has historically been the largest recipient of “debt reduction” in Africa). It seems even the banksters in the IMF have begun to realize they are backing a losing hand in Abiy Ahmed, admitting their western banksters investors are increasing skeptical about putting up more money to prop up another gangster regime in Africa on the verge of collapse.

    And now we hear about another US/UN World Food Program “aid” scheme that will see the diversion of more millions of dollar$ of food from those millions of starving people in Ethiopia to the Ethiopian military of Abiy Ahmed. The same thing happened a few years ago until this scandal could no longer be covered up and this “aid” diversion scheme was “suspended”. Now the same scam has been restarted with the pious reassurances that those in charge have “learned their lesson” and “it wont happen again”.

    FANO is on a roll militarily, steadily capturing territory around the capital Addis Ababa as the defeat of the Ethiopian Army under Abiy accelerates. In the last few weeks, maybe a couple of months, over 7,000 Ethiopian army troops, mainly from the Amhara ethnic group/nation, have surrendered to FANO with hundreds more surrendering almost daily. Some dozen generals from the Ethiopian Army, all Amhara, have either been “retired” or defected to FANO as PM Abiy grows increasingly paranoid of a coup de tat by those left in his inner circle of the army generals corp.

    With the noose tightening around him Abiy’s days are numbered and its not if but when he makes a desperate dash for safety for exile in the UAE. Hopefully he will be captured and have to face justice for the genocidal crimes he has committed against the Ethiopian people.

    Either way its seems that the once mighty Abyssinian Empire, what Ethiopia was known as up until the middle of the 20th century, is about to come apart at the seems. A prison house of nations, Abyssinia/Ethiopia has been Africa’s only indigenous empire, built on the conquest of its neighbors using western firearms provided mainly by the Italians. Machine guns against cavalry has an inevitable ending with the result being a particularly brutal colonial empire. The Oromo nation, the largest in Africa today numbering over 50 million with the second largest language in Africa was the main goal of the Abyssinian conquest, something they had failed to do for centuries until acquiring Italian machine guns and artillery.

    The subsequent brutality of the Abyssinian subjugation of the Oromo’s should be recognized for what it was, a genocide, with an estimated 5 million Oromo’s dying as a result. The scale and sheer inhumanity of the Abyssinian subjugation of the Oromo’s remains equal if not surpassing the worst crimes of the western imperialists when they invaded and colonized Africa. When you hear names like Menelik and Haile Sellasie, heroes amongst many of those who have been deluded by historical fiction in the west, remember the Oromo genocide.

    The Ethiopian empire is about to come apart at its seams with the birth of new nations with names like Oromia, Amhara, Tigray, Afar, Ogaden amongst others in the soon to be defunct Ethiopian prison house of nations.

    Hopefully these newly independent nations will find enough common ground to establish a cooperative organization similar to the Sahel Alliance of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.

    A saying in the Horn of Africa is “all roads to peace run through Asmara, Eritrea” and the long, principled leadership role of the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front, today’s Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice under the Lion of Africa, President Issias Aferwerki will help guide the newly independent nations that once composed the Ethiopian empire through the perilous times to come.

    Behind the scenes President Issias has been preparing for this transition period from colonialism to independence with “unofficial official” spokespersons like Eritrean media star Awel Seid already providing guidance for what Horn of Africans should expect in the not to distant future.

    Of course, the western bankster regimes are not going to sit idly by and watch their “policeman on the beat” in Ethiopia become a footnote in history for the Horn of Africa is to strategically critical to ignore, no matter the moronic programs the west will continue to promote. Western hegemony is being battered on all sides but they won’t go down without a fight so expect twists and turns in the coming months and years including all sort of lies and slander spewed against Eritrea as it begins to lead the transformation taking place from the Ethiopian empire to the birth of multiple new nations once imprisoned in Africa’s only indigenous empire, todays Ethiopia.

    The post Ethiopia: Where Political Power Grows From the Barrel of a Gun first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Thomas C. Mountain.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran’s plan to abandon GPS is more about a looming new ‘tech cold war’

    COMMENTARY: By Jasim Al-Azzawi

    For the past few years, governments across the world have paid close attention to conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. There, it is said, we see the first glimpses of what warfare of the future will look like, not just in terms of weaponry, but also in terms of new technologies and tactics.

    Most recently, the United States-Israeli attacks on Iran demonstrated not just new strategies of drone deployment and infiltration but also new vulnerabilities. During the 12-day conflict, Iran and vessels in the waters of the Gulf experienced repeated disruptions of GPS signal.

    This clearly worried the Iranian authorities who, after the end of the war, began to look for alternatives.

    “At times, disruptions are created on this [GPS] system by internal systems, and this very issue has pushed us toward alternative options like BeiDou,” Ehsan Chitsaz, deputy communications minister, told Iranian media in mid-July. He added that the government was developing a plan to switch transportation, agriculture and the internet from GPS to BeiDou.

    Iran’s decision to explore adopting China’s navigation satellite system may appear at first glance to be merely a tactical manoeuvre. Yet, its implications are far more profound. This move is yet another indication of a major global realignment.

    For decades, the West, and the US in particular, have dominated the world’s technological infrastructure from computer operating systems and the internet to telecommunications and satellite networks.

    This has left much of the world dependent on an infrastructure it cannot match or challenge. This dependency can easily become vulnerability. Since 2013, whistleblowers and media investigations have revealed how various Western technologies and schemes have enabled illicit surveillance and data gathering on a global scale — something that has worried governments around the world.

    Clear message
    Iran’s possible shift to BeiDou sends a clear message to other nations grappling with the delicate balance between technological convenience and strategic self-defence: The era of blind, naive dependence on US-controlled infrastructure is rapidly coming to an end. Nations can no longer afford to have their military capabilities and vital digital sovereignty tied to the satellite grid of a superpower they cannot trust.

    This sentiment is one of the driving forces behind the creation of national or regional satellite navigation systems, from Europe’s Galileo to Russia’s GLONASS, each vying for a share of the global positioning market and offering a perceived guarantee of sovereign control.

    GPS was not the only vulnerability Iran encountered during the US-Israeli attacks. The Israeli army was able to assassinate a number of nuclear scientists and senior commanders in the Iranian security and military forces. The fact that Israel was able to obtain their exact locations raised fears that it was able to infiltrate telecommunications and trace people via their phones.

    On June 17 as the conflict was still raging, the Iranian authorities urged the Iranian people to stop using the messaging app WhatsApp and delete it from their phones, saying it was gathering user information to send to Israel.

    Whether this appeal was linked to the assassinations of the senior officials is unclear, but Iranian mistrust of the app run by US-based corporation Meta is not without merit.

    Cybersecurity experts have long been sceptical about the security of the app. Recently, media reports have revealed that the artificial intelligence software Israel uses to target Palestinians in Gaza is reportedly fed data from social media.

    Furthermore, shortly after the end of the attacks on Iran, the US House of Representatives moved to ban WhatsApp from official devices.

    Western platforms not trusted
    For Iran and other countries around the world, the implications are clear: Western platforms can no longer be trusted as mere conduits for communication; they are now seen as tools in a broader digital intelligence war.

    Tehran has already been developing its own intranet system, the National Information Network, which gives more control over internet use to state authorities. Moving forward, Iran will likely expand this process and possibly try to emulate China’s Great Firewall.

    By seeking to break with Western-dominated infrastructure, Tehran is definitively aligning itself with a growing sphere of influence that fundamentally challenges Western dominance. This partnership transcends simple transactional exchanges as China offers Iran tools essential for genuine digital and strategic independence.

    The broader context for this is China’s colossal Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While often framed as an infrastructure and trade project, BRI has always been about much more than roads and ports. It is an ambitious blueprint for building an alternative global order.

    Iran — strategically positioned and a key energy supplier — is becoming an increasingly important partner in this expansive vision.

    What we are witnessing is the emergence of a new powerful tech bloc — one that inextricably unites digital infrastructure with a shared sense of political defiance. Countries weary of the West’s double standards, unilateral sanctions and overwhelming digital hegemony will increasingly find both comfort and significant leverage in Beijing’s expanding clout.

    This accelerating shift heralds the dawn of a new “tech cold war”, a low-temperature confrontation in which nations will increasingly choose their critical infrastructure, from navigation and communications to data flows and financial payment systems, not primarily based on technological superiority or comprehensive global coverage but increasingly on political allegiance and perceived security.

    As more and more countries follow suit, the Western technological advantage will begin to shrink in real time, resulting in redesigned international power dynamics.

    Jasim Al-Azzawi is an analyst, news anchor, programme presenter and media instructor. He has presented a weekly show called Inside Iraq.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Lib Dems must ally with Labour to keep Farage out of Number 10

    Ed Davey is the Frodo Baggins of UK politics. Understated and from the Shires, he’s been chosen for a quest to save British democracy, if only he realised. The creation of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new ‘as yet untitled, don’t call me by your name’ party will split the Left’s vote further, potentially handing the keys of Number 10 to Reform. Prime Minister Nigel Farage – or Sauron – would pose an existential threat to the UK. Davey has a responsibility to stand in his way. A Lib Dem alliance with Labour would do it.

    Reform’s surging popularity is frightening. The poll of polls currently puts them at 28-30%, at least six clear of Labour and 11 of the Conservatives. Anything can change, of course. We could be four years out from an election. But the very prospect of a Farage government should keep sensible Brits awake at night.

    Liz Truss’ mini-Budget would pale in insignificance compared to Reform’s fiscal commitments, their policy of returning all small boats to France would amount to a seaborne invasion of our closest ally, and they have vowed to crush our renewable energy sector.

    Reform must be stopped, and Labour isn’t up to the job.

    Starmer is wrong to underestimate Corbyn and Sultana

    Keir Starmer won power by promising “change” but has shown himself to be incapable of delivering it. Unforced political errors like the Winter Fuel Allowance aside, Starmer’s first year in government is notable more for what hasn’t happened.

    Watered down planning reform is now worthless; we won’t get the homes and infrastructure we need. A functional NHS remains a pipedream. Despite talk of “smashing the gangs” and a deal with France, illegal immigration will continue to anger the right wing, unabated. All the while, growth forecasts are downgraded, and we pay more on debt interest than defence. Reform voters are restless.

    Corbyn and Sultana’s new party make matters worse. Labour’s left flank has long been dissatisfied with Starmer’s leadership, whether it be his anti-immigration “island of strangers” speech, attempts to reduce welfare, or hesitancy to support Palestine. The Greens were always an imperfect replacement. This new party makes defection easier.

    Starmer would also be wrong to underestimate the 76-year-old’s enduring cult of personality. Polling suggests that Corbyn and Sultana’s party could win the most votes of 18–24-year-olds (and likely also 16–18-year-olds). The viciousness of the Green Party leadership election shows how the Left fights itself rather than the Right, to the benefit of the latter.

    Volatility

    This volatility is symptomatic of the breakdown of the two-party system. As critics of First Past the Post since inception, many Lib Dems will welcome this moment. But they must recognise that it will be Farage, not them, who stands to benefit; a man with a fickle attachment to both liberalism and democracy, and whose leadership would be detrimental to Britain.

    All parties have a responsibility to stop him. The Conservatives must switch to Robert Jenrick in November, for example, no matter how queasy that makes some in the party. But with Corbyn, Sultana, and the Greens more interested in scoring moral purity points, it’s Davey’s responsibility to unite the Left and prevent catastrophe.

    Davey can’t hold Farage to account singlehandedly, as he is currently attempting to. His accusation that Reform’s policies don’t hold water in a recent BBC interview will easily be dismissed by Farage, who could accuse him of the same.

    Mr. Tumble antics aside, Davey’s party similarly promises unfunded spending and still has a surprisingly weak proposal on social care, despite making it their flagship policy. But more fundamentally, polling at 14%, the Lib Dems simply don’t have the electoral heft. They must combine with Labour.

    Enter the Lib Dems

    A Lib Dem-Lab alliance could take several forms. An official merger pitched to keep Farage out of Number 10 would be a gamble. Some would be motivated by a last-ditch attempt to save Britain; others would see it as the establishment combining to stop the only man who can. Long-time supporters at the fringes of either party may also be alienated, and you’d risk bleeding vital votes. The transparency of a merger would carry more legitimacy, however.

    More covert would be an informal voting pact, aimed at creating a Labour-led coalition post-election. Beyond tacit agreements not to campaign in the same constituencies, Labour and the Lib Dems should create targeted platforms to capture different parts of the electorate. This will take time. There is no time to wait. A pact could backfire, however. If a backroom deal keeps Reform out of government despite having the most seats, many will cry foul.

    It’s ironic that a party predisposed to wishy-washy fence-sitting has the responsibility to act decisively to save Britain from the spectre of Farage. But fate often chooses the unassuming to be heroes.

    Davey must hold his nose and support a failing Labour government in the next election on the condition that Starmer embraces proportional representation immediately afterwards. Reform will then never command a majority, even if they are the largest party. The ring will have been destroyed.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ben Cope

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • ‘We pose no threat – our aim is to break the siege’: Tan Safi on joining the Handala Gaza flotilla

    No New Zealanders were on board the Handala in the latest arrest and abductions of Freedom Flotilla crew on humanitarian siege-busting missions to Gaza. However, two Australians were and one talks to The New Arab just before the attack on Saturday.

    INTERVIEW: By Sebastian Shehadi

    The Handala, a 1968 Norwegian trawler repurposed by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), set sail for Gaza from southern Italy on July 20, carrying around 21 people and a cargo of food, medical kits, baby formula, water desalination units and more.

    The ship is named after the iconic Palestinian cartoon figure, Handala, who symbolises Palestinian identity, resilience and the ongoing struggle against displacement and occupation.

    Just hours before departure, the crew uncovered deliberate sabotage: a rope tightly bound around the propeller and a sulfuric acid swap mistaken for water, leading to chemical burns in two people.

    Despite this alarming start, the mission continued, echoing the defiance of past flotilla efforts such as the interception of the Madleen in June and the Israeli drone strike on the Conscience in May.

    However, contact with the vessel was reported lost on July 24, with coalition officials warning that communications have been jammed and drones have been seen near the ship, raising concerns about interception or further hostile action.

    The mission resumed following the brief two-hour communications blackout. “Connection has now been re-established. ‘Handala’ is continuing its mission and is currently less than 349 nautical miles from Gaza,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) announced on Telegram on July 25.

    Then on Saturday, the Israeli military attacked the ship and violently detained and “abducted” the entire crew and issued a statement saying they were “safe” and on their way to Israel.

    The New Arab spoke to one of Handala’s crew, Lebanese-Australian filmmaker, human rights activist and journalist Tan Safi, before the arrest to find out more about the mission and why she chose to be on board this mission:

    The New Arab: How’s the mood on the ship at the moment?
    Tan Safi: The morale of everyone at the moment is high, as everyone is happy to be here. Of course, different emotions come up, and we talk them out, but as a collective, we’re all looking out for one another. Everyone is very caring and kind.

    We are a group of 21 people from 10 different countries. We have a very proud grandmother, as well as MPs, nurses, a human rights lawyer, a comedian, an actor, human rights activists and more. We’re from many different walks of life, and we pose absolutely no threat to anyone.

    We’re simply trying to challenge something illegal. Like previous Freedom Flotilla actions, we will be sailing through international waters into Palestinian territorial waters.

    Australian Handala crew member Tan Safi
    Australian Handala crew member Tan Safi . . . “Back in 2010, we sent a flotilla that was caught in a deadly raid. The Israelis came in a helicopter, boarded the ship and killed nine people instantaneously, while another person died from a coma years later.” Image: FFC

    How are you preparing for the very real threat of Israeli violence?
    Back in 2010, we sent a flotilla that was caught in a deadly raid. The Israelis came in a helicopter, boarded the ship and killed nine people instantaneously, while another person died from a coma years later.

    So we know very well that Israel poses a real threat.

    More importantly, we’ve seen what they’re capable of over the last two years. The most horrific things imaginable. Israeli soldiers are committing endless crimes against Gazan children, and then going into the homes of the Palestinians they’ve murdered and taking selfies in women’s lingerie. We know what they’re capable of.

    Any interception of our vessel would violate international maritime law. The ICJ [International Court of Justice] itself ordered Israel not to interfere with any delivery of international aid. Of course, we know that Israel gets to exist in this world by hopping over international law, without any accountability, without any real sanctions.

    In terms of processing, what might happen to me? I’ve had to do it time and time again whenever I’ve joined FFC missions over the last two years. I’ve had to say goodbye to my friends and family, but also try to keep them reassured.

    Sometimes I feel like I’m lying, to be honest. I tell them that “everything will be okay”. But it’s psychologically impossible to explain.

    Are you worried that Handala is less protected than the last ship, Madleen, which had the global media attention (and protection) of having Greta Thunberg on board?

    A Gaza Freedom Flotilla Instagram poster
    A Gaza Freedom Flotilla Instagram poster. Image: Instagram/@loremresists

    No matter how many Instagram followers you have, your life is just as important as the next person’s. We have people on this boat who have Instagram. We have people who do.

    The lives of all these people are as valuable as everyone else’s. I would just try to focus on the fact that we’re all human beings, just as every Palestinian in Gaza is. I’m more worried that Israel’s violence will expand until it’s too late, and people wish that they had done more. The time is now.

    What is your message to global or Australian leaders?
    I’m Lebanese, but I grew up in so-called Australia, a country that has such a dark history. What our politicians forget is that so-called Australia was not theirs to begin with. Australia was, and will always be, Aboriginal land. They can try to hide their dark truths, just like Israel used to as well. But the truth will become exposed in time.

    To this day, Aboriginal people are abused and discriminated against by the state. My message to Australia’s leadership is: how can you watch tens of thousands of men, women and children being slaughtered and still be enabling Israel’s siege and genocide?

    The Australian embassy in Israel sent me a message urging me to “please reconsider your decision to join a humanitarian aid trip to Gaza”. If they’re so concerned about the two Australians on this boat, I would urge them to be more concerned with the millions of Palestinians who are suffering daily.

    The Palestinian cartoon character Handala
    The Palestinian cartoon character Handala . . . reimagined with deliberate starvation by the Israeli military forces. Image: X/@RimaHas

    Can you tell us more about daily life and organisation on the ship?
    We all put our hands up to volunteer for various tasks throughout the day. Some of us are more skilled in certain areas than others. For example, we have someone here from France who is a nurse, and they’re helping anyone who is feeling sick.

    We have the proud grandmother, Vigdis from Norway, who loves to cook. And then someone will put their hand up to do the dishes. No one is too good to clean the toilets.

    We’re all helping out to keep this ship organised. We also do shifts, helping out with the crew when needed. No one is sitting around. And if someone is, it’s because it’s really hot or the seas are rough.

    What do you hope Handala will achieve, beyond potentially breaking the siege?
    I hope this action will encourage all forms of solidarity and, more importantly, inspire direct action. I know that protests and non-direct actions serve a purpose, but we have talked and talked and talked at length. I don’t know how people are finding the strength.

    Sometimes when I’m asked to talk at events, I just don’t know what to say, because if you need me to explain this, maybe you will never understand.

    But what we clearly need to do is disrupt the financial flow that enables and fuels this genocide. The BDS movement is huge. People used to look down on it and question its efficacy. But now we’re able to quantify that it’s actually affecting real, big business.

    I’ve always been advocating for that and asking people to be aware of the companies they consume from, such as Unilever, Nestle and Coke. This is having a real impact on these companies that are profiteering from unethical practices to begin with, that extends far beyond the genocide in Gaza.

    Direct action could also involve blockading shipments of weapons from ports and docks, as seen in Greece. It’s amazing to see more countries step up. However, we often see a lot of lip service as well. It takes everyday people to actually stand up and say: “I’m able-bodied. I’m sick to my stomach. I’m gonna listen to my instinct and explore other options”.

    If protesting is not working, explore other options. If there is no direct action group, create one. All it takes is one person to begin.

    Are there any final or other messages you’d like to convey?
    The Handala ship is the 37th boat from the FFC to travel to Gaza. There are thousands of people behind each of these journeys who make these voyages happen.

    The FFC has existed for as many years as Israel’s siege on Gaza has. The FFC exists only because of Israel’s illegal siege.

    We are people from around the world who are united in our shared consciousness and care for Palestine. We pose no threat. I’m looking at a bunch of toys and baby formula. We have as much food as we can carry, but our main goal is to break Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza because you need to fix a problem at the root of the cause.

    Sebastian Shehadi is a freelance journalist and a contributing writer at the New Statesman. This article was first published by The New Arab. Follow Shehadi on X: @seblebanon

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Debunking the theological gaslighting of Israel-supporting Imams

    Muslims, and the global community, must rally around the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights: to exist, to return home, and to live free from occupation.

    ANALYSIS: By Shadee ElMasry

    In our world today, one would be hard-pressed to find a reputable, well-known scholar or group of scholars who support Israel. Of course, the keywords here are “well-known” and “reputable”, after a “misguided” delegation of European Imams travelled to Israel to placate the Israeli occupation and sponsor the genocide of the Palestinian people.

    It is increasingly common to find these figures, Muslim apologists for Israel, who have breached the Islamic tenet of standing against injustice, laundering their authority to provide cover for Israel’s crimes against humanity against their brothers and sisters in Palestine and across the wider Arab world.

    We live in a world of shameless opportunism, where the poisoned fruit of “normalising” relations with the Israeli occupation is weighed against moral conviction and our duty to stand with the afflicted Palestinians.

    A few weeks ago, this tradeoff played out across our screens.

    The delegation’s visit, which included 15 European Imams, was led by the controversial Hassen Chalghoumi (known for supporting Nicolas Sarkozy’s burqa ban) and involved meetings with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who has been accused of inciting genocide.

    Clearly, their consciences weren’t troubled by the catastrophic famine now gripping Gaza, a “hell on earth” where women and children are killed for scrambling to get flour, and men are killed without rhyme or reason.

    I, like many companions across mosques and online feeds, was dumbfounded by the delegation’s complicity. This visit happened at a time when we as Muslims, and the global community, must rally around the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights: to exist, to return home, and to live free from occupation, especially as they face an existential threat.

    Delegation swiftly denounced
    The delegation was swiftly denounced. Al-Azhar University stressed that they “do not represent Islam and Muslims.” Worshippers walked out of UK mosques. A Dutch Imam was suspended.

    But this isn’t just about them. We need to ask how this happened and ensure it does not repeat with us. As one scholar said, if an Imam sees the community fall into usury, then gives his Friday sermon on adultery, the Imam has betrayed his congregation.

    The same is the case with Muslim apologists for Israel.

    To understand their motives, we must examine three theological “traps” these figures use to justify their support for Israel, or at least the very least, their silence over Palestine. The first of which is the “Greater Good Trap”.

    They claim that “speaking up against Israel will result in more harm than good”. But only the Prophet Muhammad’s silence constitutes tacit approval. Their reasoning doesn’t hold up.

    A weak-willed person will always accept this reasoning because it allows them to have their proverbial cake and eat it: they gain spiritual cover for remaining silent. As we’ve seen, the scholar will say: “Yes, I can speak, but then our school will get shut down, or we’ll lose funding. For the sake of the greater good, I must remain silent.”

    Israel, I’m sure, is delighted by this self-censorship. But we should also ask how it is that so many non-scholars, non-Muslims, and non-Arabs are speaking the truth about the Gaza genocide, while Islamic scholars remain silent.

    It raises eyebrows, at the very least.

    ‘Pure theology’ trap
    The second trap is the “Pure Theology” trap. Here, the scholar says: “Sound belief is the most important thing. How can we support the Palestinians when they resort to armed conflict? Their theology is flawed. I prioritise the truth, what’s wrong with that?”

    But what they overlook is that falsehood has degrees. It is foolish to denounce one error while ignoring a greater one.

    To attack a people’s doctrinal shortcomings while staying silent on their oppression is not principled; it is a failure to understand the fiqh of priorities.

    This trap lies in misplacing truths: loudly condemning the religious mistakes of Israel’s victims while conveniently forgetting the far graver injustice of Israel itself and the violent context that brought it into being.

    The final, and most sophisticated, trap that Muslim apologists for Israel use is metaphysical: they attempt to misdirect Muslims to a higher order of spiritual thought about the Divine will.

    They ask what sounds like a noble question: “Why is Allah doing this to us? It must be because of our sins. Israel is merely a tool God is using to punish us or purify us.”

    But the catch here is that the spiritual angle often (but not always) becomes a cover for pacifism. These figures that travelled to Israel, for instance, actively promote inaction. They showed no emotion, no voice, when witnessing the oppression of their own; only when it came to their sponsors did they find something to say.

    Suffer in silence
    The idea here is to suffer in silence, to clothe disengagement in the language of spiritual endurance.

    In the end, this is precisely what Israel and its supporters want: to keep the spotlight off themselves. Any diversion, theological or otherwise, is welcome. As we know, the oppressor laughs at those who fixate on what is bad while ignoring what is worse. And that is the danger behind all three traps.

    Yet despite these efforts, something far more powerful holds. The drive within the hearts and minds of Muslims to carry the burden of the Palestinian people, to speak their truth and fight for their freedom has not been extinguished.

    It is sustained by faith, shared memory, and the belief that justice is not a slogan but a sacred duty. We ask Allah for continued guidance and protection, and the strength to continue this noble and just cause. Ameen.

    Dr Shadee Elmasry has taught at several universities in the United States. Currently, he serves as scholar in residence at the New Brunswick Islamic Center in New Jersey. He is also the founder and head of Safina Society, an institution dedicated to the cause of traditional Islamic education in the West. This article was first published by The New Arab.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • #SwindonsSundaySermon: Zarah and Jeremy now have to deliver – for all our sakes

    Had Israel been nearly any other country on the face of planet earth — particularly a predominantly Muslim nation — a global task force, led by the United States, France, and little Britain, would bomb the country back into the Middle Ages with zero fucks given for international approval.

    Israel’s disgusting actions in Gaza over the past week have been a bloody and disturbing continuation of a brutal and morally indefensible campaign of death, destruction and ethnic cleaning stretching back to the 1940’s.

    This didn’t start on October 7th, 2023.

    The Israeli murderers’ relentless airstrikes and ground operations, which have indiscriminately killed hundreds of innocent, desperate Palestinians, including children — and targeted civilian infrastructure like hospitals and aid distribution points — are not just entirely disproportionate but a deliberate escalation of extreme violence against an already devastated population.

    Israel’s callous, criminal collective punishment must not go unanswered. Words are no longer sufficient. The world must act, with or without the approval of the satsuma-faced-fascist that had a small part in Home Alone 2, Wrestlemania, and the Epstein files. Allegedly.

    Israel can be stopped – but who will?

    Writers with far greater skill than I will ever possess will undoubtedly bring you captivating and euphonious ways to describe the genocidal madness of the Israeli state, and I stand in awe of the power and purpose of their craft.

    They’ll talk of sanctions, how terrible Israel is behaving, and they’ll want to give Binbag Netanyahu a sharp slap on the wrist for vaporising the children of Gaza and using the besieged enclave and its battered population as a testing ground for the United States’ latest weaponry.

    Me? I hate war. I hate fighting. Whether it’s your next door neighbour or an American colonial outpost such as Israel, peace is the only way to get through life.

    An eye for an eye may well leave the whole world blind, eventually, but if anyone deserves a swift index finger to the pupil, it’s Tel Aviv.

    How do we deal with Israel? I’m not sure we can deal with the Zionist ideology, now it’s cancerous roots have spread throughout the corridors of power around the world.

    But we can do the following.

    End it now

    Stop the flow of Israeli cash that is so blatantly prevalent in our political parties. The Israel lobby has funded one in four MPs. Why does any British political party or politician need to take these hefty paydays from a foreign donor? The only conceivable answers are access and influence. This has to stop.

    Recognise the state of Palestine. British politicians voted to do so, eleven years ago. France is about to do so.

    Who are we, of all people, to deny the Palestinian people their absolute right to statehood? Stop this fucking disgusting behaviour.

    End ALL arms sales to Israel and reduce trade with any nation that refuses to comply with the will of the world’s people. Germany’s historic guilt complex is not our responsibility.

    There are 100,000 personnel serving the United Nations peacekeeping forces. Why not deploy a number of them to Palestine, not just to protect the Palestinian people from the Butcher of Gaza, but to ensure international law is enforced?

    It’s all very well the United Nations — who have witnessed their own staff being murdered by Israel — routinely complaining about Israel’s campaign of mass starvation through various press releases, but it is the United Nations that possess the only possible solution to end the bloodshed and criminality that is being live-streamed to an aghast global audience.

    Hope is on the horizon

    Of course, you need a government that is willing and able to take the necessary measures to prevent the suffering and brutality that we have witnessed in Gaza and across the occupied territories, and that government isn’t the one that is currently falling apart, thanks to its ideological assault on poor and disabled people in our communities.

    But… hope isn’t just on the horizon, it’s finally landed in your living room, and the utter carnage that it is causing amongst Labour ranks is nothing short of astonishingly delicious.

    “You will split the left vote”, is a particular favourite. Red Tory tears do have a certain comforting effect.

    Chucking three billion quid a year to the Ukrainian regime, and the 21st century Nazi’s that occupy it, isn’t particularly left-wing.

    Targeting sick, poor, disabled, and vulnerable people with perpetual austerity isn’t particularly left-wing.

    You know the charge sheet by now. Barely a day goes by without the Labour government effortlessly managing to disgrace itself. The bottom of each and every barrel hasn’t just been scraped, but ploughed through by an appallingly dishonest prime minister and the Blairite tribute band that he has assembled in the background.

    Britain needs hope, not hate. And I’m not talking about that overtly mainstream ‘anti-racism’ organisation that aligns itself with establishment institutions and was entirely complicit in the establishment’s efforts to discredit Jeremy Corbyn (and Zarah Sultana) and the slightest sniff of a socialist policy.

    Sultana and Corbyn must deliver

    Is a new left-wing party likely to please everyone on the left? No, probably not. But we’re now at the critical point where slight ideological differences need to be put to one side for the greater good. Anything less would be an unforgivable abandonment of our responsibilities as decent, compassionate people.

    The last time I checked, around a half a million people had signed up for the fight of their lives, and this number is only set to grow as the party carves out their own identity within the political arena.

    It has been a delight to see so much genuine hope in the hearts of so many good people.

    So now it is time for Jeremy, Zarah and the future leaders to deliver, because it may well be our very last chance to bring together anywhere near the sort of numbers we need to keep the frog-faced fash, Farage, as far away from power as possible.

    Featured image via Rachael Swindon

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Opinion: Confidential by Default? The Transparency Dilemma in Europe’s Novel Foods System

    eu novel foods
    4 Mins Read

    Regulatory consultant Stephen O’Rourke argues why the EU’s current novel food regulation is slow, and what it can learn from competitors.

    When startups develop novel food ingredients, from precision-fermented proteins to algae-based fats, they inevitably run up against the same challenge: getting regulatory approval.

    In Europe, that means submitting a detailed novel food dossier to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). But what happens to that data once submitted? In most cases, it becomes “confidential by default”, and that raises deeper questions about transparency, trust, and the pace of food innovation.

    The current system: slow, opaque, and cautious

    EFSA’s approach to novel food applications is cautious by design. Companies submit extensive documentation covering composition, toxicology, manufacturing processes, and proposed uses. Much of this data is treated as confidential unless the applicant agrees otherwise or EFSA decides that specific information must be made public.

    In practice, while EFSA does publish a list of applications under assessment, the public has no access to the full content of those dossiers, including the specific scientific rationale, data models, or risk concerns being reviewed. EFSA publishes a final opinion if one is reached, though there is no visibility into the review process itself, nor any obligation to explain delays, withdrawals, or failed submissions.

    While this protects trade secrets, it creates an ecosystem where other stakeholders, too, including competitors, researchers, investors, and even consumers, have limited visibility into what kinds of products are being reviewed, where they are in the process, and why some are delayed or rejected.

    lab grown meat approval
    Courtesy: Sherry Hack

    Why transparency matters

    Food safety is a public good. When regulatory processes are opaque, it can undermine public trust, especially when it comes to novel technologies like cultured meat, precision fermentation, or synthetic biology. Without transparency, confusion and speculation fill the gap, creating mistrust where clarity is most needed.

    Moreover, it creates inefficiencies: multiple companies may duplicate effort, or pursue similar applications without realising that EFSA has already issued clarifications or raised concerns about comparable substances.

    Other models: What the UK and US are doing differently

    The UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA), post-Brexit, has experimented with a regulatory sandbox model for cultivated meat that encourages open dialogue between applicants and regulators. More notably, they offer structured pre-application support and publish limited information about applications in progress.

    In the US, the GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) notification process often results in public postings of company-submitted safety summaries and FDA responses. While they are redacted for trade secrets, they are still accessible to scientists, investors, and even competitors. This creates a richer ecosystem of shared knowledge and regulatory learning.

    These alternative models demonstrate how transparency doesn’t have to come at the cost of safety, and in fact, can improve trust and regulatory efficiency.

    eu precision fermentation
    Courtesy: Onego Bio

    The downside of secrecy: chilling innovation

    Startups, especially those navigating EFSA’s long timelines, often operate in near-silence for two to three years while their dossier sits under review. This not only slows down innovation, but can scare off investors, who are reluctant to fund what they cannot see or benchmark against. When no one knows what has been approved or rejected, and why, the system becomes harder to navigate.

    Time for a shift? Rethinking transparency

    A more balanced model is needed. One that protects genuine proprietary information, while also releasing anonymised summaries, procedural timelines, or outcome rationales.

    Imagine a system where:
    – Applicants consent to summary publication at submission.
    – EFSA shares anonymised rejection reasons.
    – Public dashboards track dossier status.
    – Industry can learn from precedent without compromising IP.

    Would this benefit startups and SMEs? Very much so. It would help EFSA itself, an agency with world-class scientists who are sometimes constrained by outdated confidentiality rules. Greater transparency would reduce repetitive questions, make workflows more efficient, and allow the agency’s scientific work to be better understood and trusted by the public.

    lab grown meat ban
    Courtesy: Mosa Meat

    Final thoughts

    The “confidential by default” culture served a purpose when food innovation moved slowly. In today’s fast-evolving foodtech world, where scientific literacy and public scrutiny are both rising, the EU must modernise how it balances IP protection with public transparency.

    Trust in novel foods will depend not only on their safety, but on how that safety is demonstrated, communicated, and understood. It’s time to bring more light into the system.

    Without reform, we risk turning Europe’s food safety system into a bottleneck instead of a bridge — one that slows down the very innovation it was designed to protect.

    That light isn’t just for startups or regulators. It’s for the public as well, who deserve a clearer view of how safety decisions are made. Making these systems more understandable, more visible, and more connected to real-world innovation must be part of how we build trust in the future of food.

    The post Opinion: Confidential by Default? The Transparency Dilemma in Europe’s Novel Foods System appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.