Secretary of Marco Rubio said today (Friday) that “If it’s not possible to end the war in Ukraine , we need to move on.” Rubio told reporters that the Trump could decide this “in a matter of days…” (NYTimes, 4/18/2025)
The context: Russia has made its conditions very clear. (1) Ukraine must not join NATO. (2) Ukraine must give up the four oblasts and Crimea. 3) Ukraine must be demilitarized and not pose a military threat to Russia.
Although to this point Trump been unwilling or unable to do so, he must accept these nonnegotiable conditions and do it against the opposition of European leaders. Or conceivably, he could simply walk away.
British political analyst Alexander Mercouris reports that European leaders are meeting in Paris to, in their words, achieve a “fair and lasting peace in Ukraine” and for them, this means a “Ukrainian victory.” Even as they voice this objective, reliable reports indicate that Russian recruitment is running at 1,000 per day, which is more than enough to replace lost soldiers. Ukrainian forces are steadily getting smaller and for the first time, external military analysts can foresee the fall of Kiev as a real possibility. Russian forces are making significant gains and Ukrainians are retreating in several areas. Finally, there is no question that Europe lacks the resources to achieve anything in Ukraine.
Presumably, the US will explain to the Europeans that they’re engaged in a dangerous fantasy and that peace will occur only by accepting the Russian demands (see above). However, the British, French and Danish are considering sending troops to Ukraine via Romania. This will be absolutely unacceptable to Russians but will come as no surprise to them. The few thousand (probably French) soldiers entering Odessa will be annihilated. Here one wonders how long French citizens would tolerate the war if coffins began returning home. (Note: Some of you may recall my earlier post about European and US intervention in the Russian Civil War and how they were expelled. Russian citizens will be reminded once again of Western intentions).
Given the above, one is forced to wonder why European leaders are doing everything possible to undermine and sabotage any meaningful peace talks? Why are they pursing a doomed policy that’s bankrupting their economies? Why alienate the US and Trump? I don’t have a definitive answer but I suspect that Mercouris is close to one when he speculates that European leaders hate Russia and have come to loathe Donald Trump. They cannot accept that they’ve lost the war and Trump was actually correct. I’ll leave for another day to speculate about what this means for the Democrats and unprincipled “progressives” (think AOC and Bernie Sanders) who gave left cover to US imperialism in its proxy was in Ukraine. In my opinion, they have much to answer for.
This week Cambodia marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the murderous Khmer Rouge, and Vietnam celebrates the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in April 1975.
They are being commemorated very differently; after all, there’s nothing to celebrate in Cambodia. Its capital Phnom Penh was emptied, and its people had to then endure the “killing fields” and the darkest years of its modern existence under Khmer Rouge rule.
Over the border in Vietnam, however, there will be modest celebrations for their victory against US (and Australian) forces at the end of this month.
Yet, this week’s news of Indonesia considering a Russian request to base aircraft at the Biak airbase in West Papua throws in stark relief a troubling question I have long asked — did Australia back the wrong war 63 years ago? These different areas — and histories — of Southeast Asia may seem disconnected, but allow me to draw some links.
Through the 1950s until the early 1960s, it was official Australian policy under the Menzies government to support The Netherlands as it prepared West Papua for independence, knowing its people were ethnically and religiously different from the rest of Indonesia.
They are a Christian Melanesian people who look east to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Pacific, not west to Muslim Asia. Australia at the time was administering and beginning to prepare PNG for self-rule.
The Second World War had shown the importance of West Papua (then part of Dutch New Guinea) to Australian security, as it had been a base for Japanese air raids over northern Australia.
Japanese beeline to Sorong
Early in the war, Japanese forces made a beeline to Sorong on the Bird’s Head Peninsula of West Papua for its abundance of high-quality oil. Former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam served in a RAAF unit briefly stationed in Merauke in West Papua.
By 1962, the US wanted Indonesia to annex West Papua as a way of splitting Chinese and Russian influence in the region, as well as getting at the biggest gold deposit on earth at the Grasberg mine, something which US company Freeport continues to mine, controversially, today.
Following the so-called Bunker Agreement signed in New York in 1962, The Netherlands reluctantly agreed to relinquish West Papua to Indonesia under US pressure. Australia, too, folded in line with US interests.
That would also be the year when Australia sent its first group of 30 military advisers to Vietnam. Instead of backing West Papuan nationhood, Australia joined the US in suppressing Vietnam’s.
As a result of US arm-twisting, Australia ceded its own strategic interests in allowing Indonesia to expand eastwards into Pacific territories by swallowing West Papua. Instead, Australians trooped off to fight the unwinnable wars of Indochina.
To me, it remains one of the great what-ifs of Australian strategic history — if Australia had held the line with the Dutch against US moves, then West Papua today would be free, the East Timor invasion of 1975 was unlikely to have ever happened and Australia might not have been dragged into the Vietnam War.
Instead, as Cambodia and Vietnam mark their anniversaries this month, Australia continues to be reminded of the potential threat Indonesian-controlled West Papua has posed to Australia and the Pacific since it gave way to US interests in 1962.
Russian space agency plans
Nor is this the first time Russia has deployed assets to West Papua. Last year, Russian media reported plans under way for the Russian space agency Roscosmos to help Indonesia build a space base on Biak island.
In 2017, RAAF Tindal was scrambled just before Christmas to monitor Russian Tu95 nuclear “Bear” bombers doing their first-ever sorties in the South Pacific, flying between Australia and Papua New Guinea. I wrote not long afterwards how Australia was becoming “caught in a pincer” between Indonesian and Russian interests on Indonesia’s side and Chinese moves coming through the Pacific on the other.
All because we have abandoned the West Papuans to endure their own “slow-motion genocide” under Indonesian rule. Church groups and NGOs estimate up to 500,000 Papuans have perished under 60 years of Indonesian military rule, while Jakarta refuses to allow international media and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit.
Alex Sobel, an MP in the UK Parliament, last week called on Indonesia to allow the UN High Commissioner to visit but it is exceedingly rare to hear any Australian MPs ask questions about our neighbour West Papua in the Australian Parliament.
Canberra continues to enhance security relations with Indonesia in a naive belief that the nation is our ally against an assertive China. This ignores Jakarta’s deepening relations with both Russia and China, and avoids any mention of ongoing atrocities in West Papua or the fact that jihadi groups are operating close to Australia’s border.
Indonesia’s militarisation of West Papua, jihadi infiltration and now the potential for Russia to use airbases or space bases on Biak should all be “red lines” for Australia, yet successive governments remain desperate not to criticise Indonesia.
Ignoring actual ‘hot war’
Australia’s national security establishment remains focused on grand global strategy and acquiring over-priced gear, while ignoring the only actual “hot war” in our region.
Our geography has not changed; the most important line of defence for Australia remains the islands of Melanesia to our north and the co-operation and friendship of its peoples.
Strong independence movements in West Papua, Bougainville and New Caledonia all materially affect Australian security but Canberra can always be relied on to defer to Indonesian, American and French interests in these places, rather than what is ultimately in Australian — and Pacific Islander — interests.
Australia needs to develop a defence policy centred on a “Melanesia First” strategy from Timor to Fiji, radiating outwards. Yet Australia keeps deferring to external interests, to our cost, as history continues to remind us.
Ben Bohane is a Vanuatu-based photojournalist and policy analyst who has reported across Asia and the Pacific for the past 36 years. His website is benbohane.com This article was first published by The Sydney Morning Herald and is republished with the author’s permission.
When I was a Uyghur child living in communist China in the 1970s, we had no way of knowing what was happening around the world, within China, or even to our own Uyghur people in our homeland of East Turkistan (also known as Xinjiang, China). For colonized people like us, living under a total information blackout and bombarded by communist propaganda 24/7, discovering the truth was not a luxury – it was a yearning, something we sometimes risked our lives for.
I remember those days vividly. My father would gather us in the dead of night and begin tuning our old radio, searching for foreign broadcasts to find out what was happening in our homeland, where we lived. Due to the Chinese Communist Party’s strict media control and harsh punishment for those who sought outside information, this was an act of defiance.
At the time, the only source of information for the Uyghur people was propaganda in the state-run media. Yet, despite the risks, we longed to hear the truth. In our home in the capital, Urumqi, we had a microwave-sized radio with glowing tubes inside. My father would carefully fine-tune it by hand each night. Sometimes the signal was clear; other times it was full of static. But it was the only source of free news from the outside world.
He always told us to stay quiet and warned us never to mention to anyone that we listened to foreign broadcasts. “If the Chinese communists find out,” he said, “we will be severely punished.”
We thought we were alone in this. But by the late 1980s, we learned that many Uyghur families were secretly doing the same – tuning in to foreign voices in the dark.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, communist China not only survived but thrived, largely due to the failure of America and its Western allies to grasp the colossal threat this regime posed. Today, China has become a global superpower, and perhaps the most serious national security threat to the United States and the democratic world.
Like all totalitarian regimes, communist China rules through brute force and carefully curated propaganda designed to suppress the truth. From the Tiananmen Square Massacre to the COVID-19 pandemic, China manipulates public perception and rewrites history. For the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, information is both a weapon and a shield. Its total control over media ensures its rule remains unchallenged. But there is one thing the regime fears most: the truth.
The CCP does not just use propaganda to brainwash its people. It weaponizes it against perceived enemies, foreign and domestic. The success of its rule over 1.4 billion people for more than 75 years lies in its ability to craft and control the narrative.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) headquarters in Washington, March 18, 2025.(Gemunu Amarasinghe/RFA)
That is why the establishment of the Uyghur Service at Radio Free Asia (RFA) in November 1998 was such a historic moment. At last, the long-suffering Uyghur people had a voice – one that could tell the world about the atrocities they had endured under communist Chinese rule since 1949. Uyghurs in the homeland rejoiced, seeing in America – the leader of the free world – a beacon of hope and justice. Unsurprisingly, China condemned this move, with its Foreign Ministry denouncing the creation of the first independent international Uyghur broadcasting service.
Under China’s brutal rule, the Uyghur people have never been allowed an independent voice. Anyone who dared to speak out against the communist regime was quickly silenced – labeled a “separatist,” “extremist,” or “terrorist,” and disappeared.
This has been especially true since 2017, when China began detaining an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs in concentration camps and forcibly separating children from their parents to be sent to Chinese-run boarding schools. This systematic targeting of an entire ethnic group was eventually labeled as genocide and crimes against humanity by the first Trump administration. The European Parliament echoed this condemnation, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report stating that China’s actions may constitute crimes against humanity.
Much of this international recognition was made possible by the groundbreaking reporting of the RFA Uyghur Service. Despite the threat of retaliation against their families in China, Uyghur journalists at RFA fearlessly investigated and exposed the Orwellian surveillance state Beijing had imposed on their people.
The United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) has recognized the tremendous contributions made by the brave RFA Uyghur journalists. USAGM states on its website:
“Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur Service was the first to report on the implementation of a vast, high-tech security state in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and the mass arbitrary detentions there sweeping up the mostly Muslim Uyghur population and other ethnic groups in the region in early 2017, when much of the world was unaware of the situation. Since then, RFA Uyghur has diligently and tirelessly continued to break key stories that bring to light major events, aspects, and developments of a massive humanitarian crisis. This crisis has undoubtedly achieved global notice and notoriety, in large part because of RFA’s Uyghur Service’s courageous journalism, despite risks and threats. RFA’s Uyghur Service has risen above and beyond and continues to stay on top of one of the most difficult, complex, and important stories of our lifetimes.”
The closure of the RFA Uyghur Service would be a tragedy. For a people still suffering under an ongoing genocide, it would extinguish a vital light of hope. China would seize the moment to tell Uyghurs: “You are forgotten. No country, not even America, cares anymore.” This would be a powerful psychological blow, not just to the Uyghurs, but to millions across China who have looked to the United States as a symbol of justice, democracy, and freedom.
If America lets the RFA Uyghur Service disappear, it risks abandoning an entire people and ceding the information war to a regime that thrives on lies.
The RFA Uyghur Service is worth saving – and worth every penny America has spent since its creation. Preserving it allows the U.S. to stand on moral high ground and push back against China’s disinformation campaigns. It ensures the truth can still be told about the genocide, the repression, and the resilience of a people who refuse to be erased.
Dr. Rishat Abbas is a pharmaceutical scientist based in the United States and president of Uyghur Academy International. The academy is a a global network of Uyghur intellectuals who raise awareness about the Uyghur genocide, and seek to counter CCP influence abroad, and preserve Uyghur language, culture and identity. The views expressed in this commentary are Dr. Abbas’ own.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by commentator Rishat Abbas.
In the absence of any measures taken by the New Zealand government to respond to the genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza, Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick is doing the principled thing by trying to apply countervailing pressure on Israel to stop its brutal actions in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
New Zealand is a state party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).
As a contracting party New Zealand has a clear obligation to respond to a genocide when it is indicated and which it must “undertake to prevent and to punish”.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024, deemed that a “plausible genocide” is occurring in Gaza. That was a year ago. Thousands of Palestinians have died since the ICJ’s determination.
The New Zealand government has failed its responsibilities under the Genocide Convention by applying no pressure to influence Israel’s military actions in Gaza. There are a number of interventions New Zealand could have chosen to take.
For example, a United Nations resolution which New Zealand co-sponsored (UNSC 2334) when it was a non-permanent member of the Security Council in 2015-16 required states to distinguish in their trading arrangements between Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank and the rest of Israel.
New Zealand could have extended this to all trading arrangements with Israel.
Diplomatic pressure needed
Diplomatic pressure could have been put on Israel by expelling the Israeli ambassador to New Zealand. Finally, New Zealand could have shown well-needed solidarity with Palestine by conferring statehood recognition.
In contrast, Swarbrick is looking to bring her member’s Bill to Parliament to apply sanctions against Israel for its ongoing illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza).
The context is the UN General Assembly’s support for the ICJ’s recent report which requires that Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem comes to an end.
New Zealand, along with 123 other general assembly members, supported the ICJ decision. It is now up to UN states to live up to what they voted for.
Swarbrick’s Bill, the Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill, responds to this request, in the absence of any intervention by the New Zealand government. The Bill is based on the Russian Sanctions Act (2022), brought forward by then Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta, to apply pressure on Russia to cease its military invasion of Ukraine.
While Swarbrick’s Bill has the full support of the opposition MPs from Labour and Te Pāti Māori she needs six government MPs to support the Bill going forward for its first reading.
Andrea Vance, in a recent article in the Sunday Star-Times, called Swarbrick’s Bill “grandstanding”. Vance argues that the Greens’ Bill adopts “simplistic moral assumptions about the righteousness of the oppressed [but] ignores the complexity of the conflict.”
‘Confict complexity’ not complicated
The “complexity of the conflict” is a recurring theme which dresses up a brutal and illegal occupation by Israel over the Palestinians, as complicated.
It is hardly complicated. The history tells us so. In 1947, the UN supported the partition of Palestine, against the will of the indigenous Palestinian people, who comprised 70 perent of the population and owned 94 percent of the land.
Palestine’s historical land shrinking from Zionist colonisation . . . From 1947 until 2025. Map: Geodesic/Mura Assoud 2021
In 1948, Jewish paramilitary groups drove more than 700,000 Palestinian people out of their homeland into bordering countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, the UAE) and beyond, where they remain as refugees.
Finally, the 1967 illegal occupation by Israel of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. This occupation, which multiple UN resolutions has termed illegal, is now over 58 years old.
This is not “complicated”. One nation state, Israel, exercises total power over a people who have been dispossessed from their land and who simply have no power.
It is the unwillingness of countries like New Zealand and its Anglosphere/Five-Eyes allies (United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia) and the inability of the UN to enforce its resolutions on Israel, which makes it “complicated”.
Historian on Gaza genocide
One of Israel’s most distinguished historians, Emeritus Professor Avi Shlaim at Oxford University, in his recently published book Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine, now chooses to call the situation in Gaza “genocide”.
In arriving at this position, he points to the language and narratives being adopted by Israeli politicians:
“Israeli President Isaac Herzog proclaimed that there are no innocents in Gaza. No innocents among the 50,000 people who were killed and nearly 20,000 children.
“There are quotes from [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] that are genocidal, as well as from his former Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, who said we are up against ‘human animals’.
“I hesitated to call things genocide before October 2023, but what tipped the balance for me was when Israel stopped all humanitarian aid into Gaza. They are using starvation as a weapon of war. That’s genocide.”
There is growing concern among commentators about the ability of international rules-based order to function and hold individuals and states to account.
Institutions such as the UN, the ICJ and the ICC are simply unable to enforce their decisions. This should not come as a surprise, however, as the structure of the UN system, established at the end of the Second World War was designed to be weak by the victors, with regard to its enforcement ability.
Time NZ supports determinations
It is time that New Zealand supported these same institutions by honouring and looking to enforce their determinations.
Accordingly, New Zealand needs to play its part in holding Israel to account for the atrocities it is inflicting on the Palestinian people and stand behind and support the Palestinian right to self-determination.
Swarbrick is absolutely right to introduce her Bill.
At the very least it says that New Zealand does care about the plight of the Palestinian people and is willing to stand behind them. It is the morally correct thing to do and incumbent on the government to provide support to Swarbrick’s Bill — and not just six of its members.
John Hobbs is a doctoral candidate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otago. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with the author’s permission.
On Wednesday 16 April, the Supreme Court ruled that a woman was defined by biological sex. This was, of course, after years of pressure and hatred from people who hate trans women. Despite many claiming this as a win for women, the ruling will have no actual effect on our lives. But that didn’t stop the usual suspects from spending the day out of their minds in ecstasy.
J.K. Rowling, who part-bankrolled the campaign to make this happen, celebrated how any normal oppressed woman would do: from a yacht.
Resident feminist Graham Linehan, a man, spent the day telling anyone he deemed to be a trans woman to get out of women’s spaces and instructing his (again largely male) following to do the same.
If terves know what a “real woman is” why did they spend the day telling a biological woman she was a man?
What is a woman? Not me, apparently.
Yesterday, I tweeted trans women are and will always be women. I then went for a nap and got on with my life. I forgot however, that the terves have no lives to get on with and returned an hour or so later to over 100 of them telling me I was wrong. A grand total of 17 of them were calling me a man, so I pulled out an old party trick of mine and sent them a photo of my uterus:
Rachel, why the fuck do you have a picture of your uterus casually to hand?
Well you see, almost eight years ago to the day I had a hysterectomy and at the time I was working for a magazine that focused on reproductive health. So, as a way to distract myself from the horrific operation I was about to undergo, I liveblogged my hysterectomy.
Over the years, my support of the trans community has meant many on Twitter have decided I must be a man. So, this has meant I’ve been sending terves my uterus for about four years now. I don’t do it to disgust anyone or to “prove” that you can only be a woman if you have a uterus – because I clearly don’t and I am.
The response this week has been the most bizarre I’ve ever encountered, though. In this post-truth age, many don’t believe that’s really my uterus and think I’m lying about having a hysterectomy, a few even said I was posting my fake uterus as part of some sick sexual fantasy.
A post-truth terfnami
Glinner, who’s infamously drove his family away with his weird obsession with trans women, decided to quote tweet me with “how are males female Rachel?”
Me being the dick I am quote tweeted this with “how’s the family, Graham?”
I had also, as previously mentioned, just woke up from a nap so I forgot I’d sent that and then replied to him with “how’s the wife Graham?” This led to an absolute terfnami of the biggest weirdos you’ve ever known in my mentions.
Replies ranging from “she’s a woman, unlike you” to the absolutely bizarre, accusing me of abusing my dog. There were also a ridiculous number asking about the contents of my pants. Because nothing says “protecting women from perverts” like incessantly inquiring about someone’s genitals.
The thing is though, a big area of my journalism and activism work for many years has been focused on reproductive health. I’ve written about my struggles to be believed through endometriosis pain, my experience with different birth control, my desire for a hysterectomy, and on one occasion live blogged my period.
I’ve also, unlike many of the people screaming that they’re supporting women, campaigned for awareness of the gender pain gap and domestic violence towards disabled women. You can literally Google my name and “hysterectomy” and find many articles. You can effectively find my whole reproductive health history on the internet.
What has all this hate actually achieved?
According to the esteemed gynaecologists who follow Glinner, however, I’ve never had a period, don’t have a vagina, and most bizarrely paid someone to perform a fake hysterectomy. Because I support trans rights, I must be trans, because why would you care about something if it didn’t directly affect you?
The main argument for the necessity of this ruling is that it will protect women, stop men telling us what to do, and we will no longer be silenced. If that’s the case, why have they all spent the last day and a half calling me a liar and attempting to silence me? Why have vast amounts of the internet refused to believe me, someone who was born a woman, when I’ve said that I am a woman?
What is the point of a ruling which dictates that only “biological” women are seen as women if people will then refuse to believe a woman who was born a woman when they say that they are in fact, a woman?
Where were they all before?
How will who is and isn’t a woman actually be determined? If the court case is anything to go by, it’ll be a panel of men deciding – and considering many men spent yesterday telling me I had a gaping rotting fake vagina, I don’t trust them very much.
Will a REAL woman only be someone who can give birth? Someone who has a cervix? Someone who has periods? Because I’ve done all those things and still I was told I’m a man based purely on the perceived notion of what a woman should look like.
And if we are to believe that I genuinely do “look like a man”, it’s probably due to the fact that I have less estrogen in my body because I’m post-menopausal – an issue that massively affects women and one that the Equality Act refused to acknowledge as a real issue a few years ago.
Where were they all then?
What is a woman? We’re soon going to find out.
How far will this go? How long before women are attacked in bathrooms because they don’t look feminine enough? Will butch lesbians be forced to wear dresses and keep their hair long for fear of being attacked (again). Will strangers be able to strip women they suspect of being trans naked to inspect them?
At the end of the day, this isn’t about who is and isn’t a woman. It’s about who performs womanhood enough. It’s about who presents themselves as being a good little pretty wifey who doesn’t stand up to men.
This ruling won’t protect women, it’ll only force them to conform to society’s view of what a woman is out of fear that they’ll be abused and ostracised.
It’s the sort of shit our feminist foremothers would be protesting about.
The long-awaited and much-government-touted ME Delivery Plan is shaping up to be, predictably, largely a whitewash. As ministers slowly drip out pieces of information about the upcoming publication, it’s becoming increasingly obvious the plan is set to offer little more than lukewarm gestures, rather than anything remotely resembling meaningful change for people living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).
However, it’s a wonder that anyone in the ME community is even mildly shocked at this. Nothing has really changed about the abusive, gaslighting government and NHS patient culture for people living with the devastating disease. That’s painfully evident in the fact multiple patients with severe ME are still trapped in a vicious ouroboros of NHS physician arrogance and ignorance – one feeding the other in a harrowing hospital care catalogue of continued errors.
So why exactly would anyone think that it’s about to turn this appalling situation on its head now?
The ME Delivery Plan: no new funding is NOT a shock
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: new funding for ME research.
We’ve known since at least February that the government has no new funding forthcoming for this. In particular, parliamentary under-secretary for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Ashley Dalton confirmed it. This was in a response to a written question.
An article in the Timespresented this like it was a shock, reporting how:
Charities and MPs said they were “incredibly disappointed” and that without extra funding efforts to improve the lives of people with ME would fail and it would be hard to unlock new treatments.
The Times quoted one of the usual suspects, namely a long-controversial leading ME charity. This was Action for ME (AfME) chief executive Sonya Chowdhury. The non-profit has nothing if not a problematic past. It’s one of holding back, or even actively sabotaging progress for patients, wrapped up as it was in the junk PACE trial part-funded by the DWP. For all its rumblings that it has reformed to centre patients, it still rubs shoulders with prominent biopsychosocial (BPS) circles and proponents.
Behind the scenes, Chowdhury has literally been working with successive governments on the delivery plan. Specifically, she represents AfME on the ME/CFS Delivery Plan Task & Finish Group. It’s therefore hard, to nigh-on impossible really, to imagine Chowdhury would be unaware of the government’s intentions for funding.
Arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic crisis in ME care
Now, a new response from Dalton has only drove all this home further. Specifically, in another written question reply on 4 April, she said in one crucial part that:
We also intend to provide additional support to ME/CFS researchers to develop high quality funding applications and access existing National Institute for Health and Care Research and Medical Research Council research funding. All research funding applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality. Our forthcoming ME/CFS delivery plan will outline the additional support we will offer to the research community to increase the volume and quality of applications and, therefore, increase the allocation of funding to this area.
To put it simply: there’s no new funding. When the government talks of “boosting” it for ME research, as Dalton said earlier in her answer, all that really seems to mean in practice is giving researchers some advice on how to make grant applications. That might actually seem more than a little insulting to researchers as well. It’s basically implying the lack of quality research for ME revolves around their failures to secure funding. This is in lieu of the glaring lack of it available in the first place.
The Canaryhas also highlighted before how the funding focus has largely revolved around harmful psychologising treatments. So ring-fenced funding for causes and genuine curative treatments is essential. Not so to the upcoming ME Delivery Plan it seems. ME research will continue to compete with research for other better-recognised conditions. But don’t worry. Researchers will have DHSC top tips to pip other patient communities also desperately needing more research funding to the post.
It’s another case of the government trying to look like it’s doing something. In reality, all it’s doing is “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”. This sinking ship of a spiralling crisis that is surging numbers of people living with ME and long Covid with no lifeboat curative treatments in sight.
Connect the dots: this government couldn’t care less about ME patients
Moreover, while we say we’ve known since February, in reality, this has been obvious for a good time longer. A government that can’t even commit to real-terms public funding increases for the NHS is hardly about to plough more funding into tackling one specific, and frankly, under-recognised disease.
Throw in the fact that Labour’s rhetoric around the DWP cuts has been leaning heavily into ableist ‘work-shy scrounger’ narratives and it’s really no major surprise.
The Canary has after all, also connected the dots between its attack on chronically ill and disabled people unable to work, and its plans to coerce them into its new workfare programmes. In fact, we revealed how the biopsychosocial lobby and model is deeply embedded in one key work programme – WorkWell – the DWP has been trumpeting.
The BPS model has long been a feature of the Labour right’s approach to disability benefits. Crucially, it was under Tony Blair’s New Labour government that a chief medical adviser for the DWP – Mansel Aylward – embedded this into the government’s approach to welfare. You can read more about this murky history here.
But the point is that Blairites’ neoliberal Starmerite successors are picking up this mantle and running with it. Far be it for a Labour government fixated on more austerity through public service cuts to put its money where its mouth is for ME patients. Instead, schemes like WorkWell and controversial Independent Placement and Support (IPS) are more on-brand.
That is, forcing ME patients into work will save it money overall, so that’s where Labour is more likely heading. It will publish the ME Delivery Plan in this context. In short: it was only too predictable that new funding was never going to happen.
New ME specialist services? Not likely with the ME Delivery Plan
To sum up then: work programmes cost less money than funding research, or ensuring a stable and sufficient social security safety net. It means more ME patients shunted into work – a boon in Labour’s mind for business, tax revenues, and the welfare purse. Though obviously, it’s all at the significant risk of severely worsening their health. Those unable just lose out on DWP disability entitlements regardless.
No matter – not Labour’s problem, because there’s no real treatments or services ME patients can access anyway. So, any concern it has that exacerbating ME patients’ health condition might overload an already stretched NHS and eat into its budget, is moot. It’s counting on ME patients not accessing services at all – because they won’t exist.
And it’s sure looking like Labour doesn’t intend to change the provision available now. From what we can glean ahead of the delivery plan itself, this very likely won’t set out more government support for specialised ME services either. Notably, Dalton responded to another question that Labour MP Chris Ward submitted. This concerned:
what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact on clinical support staff of referring patients with long covid to ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome specialist services.
Dalton replied that the government has made no such assessment, only that:
NHS England has published commissioning guidance for post-Covid services which sets out the principles of care for people with long COVID.
There is also specific advice for healthcare professionals to manage long COVID. Patients should be managed according to current clinical guidance, such as that published and updated by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network and the Royal College of General Practitioners. Whilst NICE guidelines are not mandatory, the Government does expect clinicians and healthcare commissioners to take them fully into account.
On top of this, she highlighted that:
Commissioning, service provision and staffing for both myalgic encephalomyelitis services and long COVID services are the responsibility of local integrated care boards.
Reading between the lines then, it implies that through the delivery plan, the government won’t mandate the commissioning of new services. Nor, again, will it deign to fork up new funding allocations for it. But then, why would it? See again: all the above. This is another instance in which it was something already supremely obvious.
Not that we can trust Labour or the NHS anyway
All that said, it’s rather hard to trust that the government and NHS would bring forward genuinely decent services for ME patients anyway.
As anyone living with it will tell you, the ‘specialist clinics’ for ME that do exist are absolutely woeful. At best, they’re abysmally underequipped to help ME patients. Since there’s no current treatments or cures, it’s largely advice-based. The most these can usually do is suggest symptom management techniques like pacing.
At worst, these have been a hotbed of actively harmful so-called ‘treatments’ like graded exercise therapy (GET) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for years.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) that Dalton referenced may have removed GET as a treatment recommendation, and downgraded CBT in its new 2021 guidelines, but that hasn’t stopped specialist services promoting them anyway. That is, even now, some of these services are offering slyly rebranded versions of this, such as Bristol ME service’s lead Peter Gladwell’s ‘pacing up’ approach. NICE guidelines are, after all, not mandatory.
Will the delivery plan do anything to hold healthcare providers accountable for this? Once again, it’s doubtful. And, there was nothing in the December 2024 interim delivery plan that suggested it would either.
Did we mention arch BPS promoter Simon Wessely is still on the NHS England board? The NHS commissioning new services without a BPS approach is looks a lot less likely while he has a steer.
Severe ME services seem even more unlikely with the ME Delivery Plan
Moreover, while it would be nice to think the plan will commit to commissioning specialist NHS services for severe ME patients, similar problems abound.
This narrative around the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital having a protocol for severe ME in an inpatient setting is admirable.
But let’s be realistic: all any of this will do is possibly – not definitely – stop severe/very severe ME patients from starving to death.
If the interim delivery plan is anything to go by again, there won’t be a lot on this in the forthcoming publication either. All we got was another “work with stakeholders to consider” type promise to:
better support health commissioners and providers to understand the needs of people with ME/CFS, what local service provision should be available and how existing national initiatives to improve accessibility of health services can be adapted or best utilised for people with severe or very severe ME/CFS – by July 2024.
That’s a far cry from a pledge to fund and commission new specialist severe ME services. And these would be arguably even more complex to implement – as nothing like it currently exists.
Dalton’s response on general service commissioning seems to pass the buck onto Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). So, this Labour government – always one to rest on its laurels rather than take concerted action – is not about to break a habit of its to-date parliamentary term lifetime.
More than three years of waiting, and it’s just more hollow hand-wringing that awaits us
According to Dalton on 2 April, the repeatedly delayed publication is now coming at the end of June.
By then, it’ll have been over three years since then Conservative health secretary Sajid Javid launched work on the damn thing.
The Tory government at the time originally promised to publish this by the end of 2022. Then, it was meant to be by the close of 2023. Then, it was going to be published in 2024 – with ministers rather cagey on the definitive dates. To be frank, we’ve lost count of the number of times first the Tories, and now Labour have delayed its publication. Most recently, Labour had promised it for March. Yet, that came and went with not a delivery plan document on DHSC site.
Purportedly, the government needs another couple of months to shore up its document with stakeholders. This is to – we kid you not – ensure its “as ambitious as possible”. Because apparently, two years and ten months wasn’t quite enough time to do that.
In May 2024, I wrote for the Chronic Collaboration about the Westminster debate for ME Awareness Day. In this, I expressed how:
At a previous debate in 2018, the Chronic Collaboration’s Steve Topple wrote for the Canary that parliament had offered a “ray of hope” to the ‘millions missing’ with the devastating disease. Six years on and this glimmer of possibility has all but faded. Not least because at this latest parliamentary affair, ministers were still hand-wringing over all the same problems raised over half a decade ago.
Now as the auspicious 12 May is rapidly approaching again, the ME community will still be minus the delivery plan. However, with the way it’s shaping up, a meagre but at minimum, benign document full of monumental “hand-wringing”, might be the best that we can hope for.
US President Donald Trump and his team is pursuing a white man’s racist agenda that is corrupt at its core. Trump’s advisor Elon Musk, who often seems to be the actual president, is handing his companies multiple contracts as his team takes over or takes down multiple government departments and agencies.
Trump wants to be the “king” of America and is already floating the idea of a third term, an action that would be an obvious violation of the US Constitution he swore to uphold but is doing his best to violate and destroy.
Every time we hear the Trump team spouting a “return to America’s golden age,” they are talking about 60-80 years ago, when white people ruled and schools, hospitals, restrooms and entire neighborhoods were segregated and African Americans and other minority groups had little opportunity.
Every photo of leaders from that time features large numbers of white American men. Trump’s cabinet, in contrast to recent cabinets of Democratic presidents, is mainly white and male.
This is where the US going. And lest any white women feel they are included in the Trump train, think again. Anything to do with women’s empowerment — including whites — is being scrubbed off the agenda by Trump minions in multiple government departments and agencies.
“Women” along with things like “climate change,” “diversity,” “equality,” “gender equity,” “justice,” etc are being removed from US government websites, policies and grant funding.
The white racist campaign against people of colour has seen iconic Americans removed from government websites. For example, a photo and story about Jackie Robinson, a military veteran, was recently removed from the Defense Department website as part of the Trump team’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Broke whites-only colour barrier
Robinson was not only a military veteran, he was the first African American to break the whites-only colour barrier in Major League Baseball and went on to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame for his stellar performance with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
How about the removal of reference to the Army’s 442nd infantry regiment from World War II that is the most decorated unit in US military history? The 442nd was a fighting unit comprised of nearly all second-generation American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who more than proved their courage and loyalty to the United States during World War II.
The Defense Department removing references to these iconic Americans is an outrage. But showing the moronic level of the Trump team, they also deleted a photo of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan at the end of World War II because the pilot named it after his mother, “Enola Gay.”
Despite the significance of the Enola Gay airplane in American military history, that latter word couldn’t get past the Pentagon’s scrubbing team, who were determined to wash away anything that hinted at, well, anything other than white, heterosexual male. And there is plenty more that was wiped off the history record of the Defense Department.
Meanwhile, Trump, his team and the Republican Party in general while claiming to be focused on eliminating corruption is authorising it on a grand scale.
Elon Musk’s redirection of contracts to Starlink, SpaceX and other companies he owns is one example among many. What is happening in the American government today is like a bank robbery in broad daylight.
The Trump team fired a score of inspectors general — the very officials who actively work to prevent fraud and theft in the US government. They are eliminating or effectively neutering every enforcement agency, from EPA (which ensures clean air and other anti-pollution programmes) and consumer protection to the National Labor Relations Board, where the mega companies like Musk’s, Facebook, Google and others have pending complaints from employees seeking a fair review of their work issues.
Huge cuts to social security
Trump with the aid of the Republican-controlled Congress is going to make huge cuts to Medicaid and Social Security — which will affect Marshallese living in America as much as Americans — all in order to fund tax cuts for the richest Americans and big corporations.
Then there is Trump’s targeting of judges who rule against his illegal and unconstitutional initiatives — Trump criticism that is parroted by Fox News and other Trump minions, and is leading to things like efforts in the Congress to possibly impeach judges or restrict their legal jurisdiction.
These are all anti-democracy, anti-US constitution actions that are already undermining the rule of law in the US. And we haven’t yet mentioned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its sweeping deportations without due process that is having calamitous collateral damage for people swept up in these deportation raids.
ICE is deporting people legally in the US studying at US universities for writing articles or speaking about justice for Palestinians. Whether we like what the writer or speaker says, a fundamental principle of democracy in the US is that freedom of expression is protected by the US constitution under the First Amendment.
That is no longer the case for Trump and his Republican team, which is happily abandoning the rule of law, due process and everything else that makes America what it is.
The irony is that multiple countries, normally American allies, have in recent weeks issued travel advisories to their citizens about traveling to the United States in the present environment where anyone who isn’t white and doesn’t fit into a male or female designation is subject to potential detention and deportation.
The immigration chill from the US will no doubt reduce visitor flow resulting in big losses in revenue, possibly in the billions of dollars, for tourism-related businesses.
Marshallese must pay attention
Marshallese need to pay attention to what’s happening and have valid passports at the ready. Sadly, if Marshallese have any sort of conviction no matter how ancient or minor it is likely they will be targets for deportation.
Further, even the visa-free access privilege for Marshallese and other Micronesians is apparently now under scrutiny by US authorities based on a statement by US Ambassador Laura Stone published recently by the Journal
It is a difficult time being one of the closest allies of the US because the RMI must engage at many levels with a US government that is presently in turmoil.
Giff Johnson is the editor of the Marshall Islands Journal and one of the Pacific’s leading journalists and authors. He is the author of several books, including Don’t Ever Whisper, Idyllic No More, and Nuclear Past, Unclear Future. This editorial was first published on 11 April 2025 and is reprinted with permission of the Marshall Islands Journal.marshallislandsjournal.com
Freedom of speech at the Marshall Islands High School
Messages of “inclusiveness” painted by Marshall Islands High School students in the capital Majuro. Image: Giff Johnson/Marshall Islands Journal
The above is one section of the outer wall at Marshall Islands High School. Surely, if this was a public school in America today, these messages would already have been whitewashed away by the Trump team censors who don’t like any reference to “inclusiveness,” “women,” and especially “gender equality.”
However, these messages painted by MIHS students are very much in keeping with Marshallese society and customary practices of welcoming visitors, inclusiveness and good treatment of women in this matriarchal society.
But don’t let President Trump know Marshallese think like this. — Giff Johnson
I didn’t meet a Republican until I was 18 years old, my freshman year at university. I grew up in working class suburbs of Detroit. Everyone was union. Everyone was a Democrat. This was the party of the New Deal, FDR, JFK.
That political party, that institution which understood and worked for everyday people – the blue collars of the lower class and the white collars of the middle class – that political force which invested its energy to foster an America for all, to serve the citizenry equally regardless of class status, the party which took seriously the constitutional mandate “to promote the general welfare”, no longer exists.
The transition took place during the 90s under the saxophone president, Bill Clinton, and was complete by the turn of the century. No longer was the Democratic Party a party of the people. It ended up serving the same monied class as the Republicans. As Ralph Nader puts it, choice at the polls now was deciding between Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
Democrats currently wonder why party loyalty has been diminishing, why Hillary Clinton lost to a glib reality show host/gambling casino magnate in 2016, a manifestly dishonest, terminally shallow, narcissistic, manipulative, self-serving, completely unqualified candidate in Donald Trump. It’s not difficult to explain: The new Democratic Party is the party which railroaded one of the most popular candidates in recent history, Bernie Sanders, out of the race, stranding the largest populous uprising in decades.
As if that weren’t insulting enough, Hillary made no secret of her disdain for the “deplorables” of America, the unwashed masses who didn’t benefit from pedigree educations, bulging stock portfolios, and natty wardrobes from Prada and Armani. Her elitist predilection was then reinforced by the leak of a speech she gave to top banking executives, where she claimed she had “both a public and private position” on Wall Street reform. The execs got the real story and the voting public was served up the usual campaign blather. Is it any wonder that her bid for the presidency was crippled by plummeting trust?
The feel-good campaign mounted by the Democrats for Kamala Harris is likewise revealing. It completely lacked substance, saturated with word salad and puerile rhetoric. Openly on display was how cynical Democratic Party leaders are and just how disconnected the party is from doing anything to improve the lives of everyday citizens living real lives in real time.
To his credit in both 2016 and 2024, Trump said many of the right things which resonated with the masses of voters alienated by the new corporate trimmings of the DNC and its penchant for supporting centrist establishment-friendly candidates. To his discredit, in 2016 Trump apparently didn’t mean what he said and managed to avoid fulfilling most of the promises he made in his campaign. But it was too late. And it’s still too late. Huge numbers of frustrated and angry voters are so fed up with the tone-deaf Democratic Party, they seem to be willing to forgive Trump for just about anything. We shouldn’t do what the Dems did in 2016 and underestimate the Orange Oligarch. Because he is perhaps the most gifted smooth talker to come down the pike since ‘Slick Willy’. Fool me twice.
Of course, the Democrats couldn’t leave it at just being disconnected from flesh-and-blood entities – the voting public, real life people. They made the existential leap of disconnecting from reality itself. I refer to Russiagate.
I’m not going to get into the messy details of this scam. As there are still folks out there who believe the Earth is flat, there are a frightening number of individuals who believe that Russia, in collusion with KGB mole Drumpf – code name Agent Orange – stole the election from the universally-adored Hillary and dropped it off at the Mar-a-Lago clubhouse. Many of these folks also think that Saddam Hussein attacked the Twin Towers, Iraq had nuclear bombs ready to lob at the Lincoln Memorial and on Disney World, and the space shuttle tiles are oven-crisp taco shells.
Suffice it to say, the ham-fisted subterfuge created to cover Hillary’s embarrassing electoral failure has, to put it mildly, created extensive collateral damage. Granted, the project to disappear Russia as a nation, dismember it, and parcel it into manageable chunks for maximum exploitation, already had legs, thanks to the PNAC neoconiacs. However, Russiagate went the extra mile in convincing most of the U.S. population that Vladimir Putin is a Hitlerian monster, and Russia a backward, malevolent, evil, ruthless, genocidal gas station masquerading as a country, bent on destroying America and forcing us all to listen to balalaika music 24 hours a day. Subsequent loathing lasting right up to the present for both Putin and everything Russian – now at warp speed with the Ukraine meatgrinder in full swing – has been meticulously built on the sludgerock foundation of the DNC/Hillary Russiagate propaganda. Even today, slanderous attacks, whole-cloth fabrications about the sinister Putin and revanchist Russian war machine continue to spew out 24/7. Questioning this baseless vitriol is equated with treason. Both sides of the congressional aisle scream for blood – Russian blood – and the prospects for WWIII are real and terrifying!
Not that such mass psychosis is anything new. Manufactured crisis is one product line we haven’t offshored to China. It’s a nefarious web of deceptions at which our own Deep State excels. Which is why the U.S. never runs out of enemies and why it’s always at war. Our Nobel Peace Prize president was actively engaged in military conflict with seven countries. Obama dropped 26,171 bombs on foreign soil, just his final year in office. A “peace time” record?
Assuring the public that we’re not wasting tax dollars, that as global policeman, we’re killing people who really deserve it, that we’re eliminating serious threats to the security of America, that we’re “fighting them over there so we don’t end up fighting them here,” is a lot of work and not always as easy as it looks. Nothing reflecting favorably on the “enemy” can be allowed. America’s vile nemesis must be marginalized, dehumanized, demonized. Their leaders must be portrayed as devils, Hitlers, evil incarnate. The evil country, its citizens, its leadership, its democracy-hating government must be blamed for every mishap, no matter how unrelated. Experts must offer ever more outrageous prognostications about what nefarious plans said enemy is conjuring in order to inflict more horrors on the U.S. and its loyal allies.
With a lot of practice, the U.S. propaganda machine has gotten very good at all of this. For example, the day after Russia started its special military operation to eliminate the growing military threat NATO was creating in Ukraine, we were instructed – and dutifully did our patriotic duty by enthusiastically complying – to hate Russian music, dance, art, literature, sports figures. Even Russian cats and dogs were barred from appearing in pet shows in the West. Western businesses based in Russia packed up and left, losing billions of dollars, rather than be around those despicable, foul, savage Russians. Air space was closed to any aircraft or carrier that had any affiliation with Russia. Offices of Russian media outlets in the West were shut down. It was truly the most viciously thorough campaign of cultural genocide in recent history. And yes, U.S. citizens have in hordes stepped up to the plate and carried their weight. Saying anything even moderately nice about Russia in America – especially Vladimir Putin – risks at minimum a barrage of expletives, a possible beating, even gunshot wounds. Order a White Russian from a bartender at your own risk.
‘Hate’ like ‘love’ is a four-letter word. But apparently the former is a much easier sell. Or perhaps, considering the frustrations and anger which seem to be mounting as chaos and dysfunction in everyday life become more the norm, people were and are uniquely primed for some heavy-duty animus.
It’s a truly disheartening comment on human nature.
One final point.
Like Anthrax spores, hatred is almost impossible to put back in the bottle. It’s contagious and grows exponentially. We hate Russia, we hate North Korea, we hate Assad of Syria, we hate the Ayatollah of Iran, we hate Cuba, we hate Venezuela. We need to hate China much more. Yes, we’re lagging a little in that department. After all … Covid-19, communism, TikTok.
The problem is, hate knows no borders. Inevitably, it comes back home. Now we see the acid-drip is corroding the vital fabric of American society. The Democrats hate Trump. Republicans hate Biden. MSNBC viewers hate Fox viewers. The vaccinated hate the unvaccinated. Of course, all enlightened people are derelict if they don’t hate haters. Haters would be anyone who is a transphobe, homophobe, racist, a racism denier, anti-Semite, an anti-Semitism denier, anyone who questions the positive impact of BLM and mRNA vaccines or the necessity of internet censorship, puberty blockers for children, 5G, 3-D printed meat, or 80+ genders. No reason to talk to any of these people. Just hate them.
By the way, as haters of all that should be hated, we should be proud we live in the most democratic, wealthiest, most powerful, most just and free nation in history! We are exceptional and indispensable, God is on our side, and we are chosen by destiny to rule the entire known universe. Thus, everything we do is good and wonderful. That even includes hating!
Yes, this is how disconnect works. It operates by its own rules, has no time for mind-muddling distractions like facts, logic, reason, objectivity, respectful debate, historical perspective, common sense, common decency, love of truth.
D is for disconnect.
D is for deception.
D is for dystopia.
[This is an excerpt from my book, Electing A Kennedy Congress, a thoroughly misunderstood and mindlessly maligned attempt at restoring our country to a recognizable version of itself, one which aligns with the grossly misleading, totally fabricated image it peddles to its citizens and the world. That would be an America I am proud of!]
The following is an open letter to Minister of State for Social Security and Disability Stephen Timms from reader Shane Brown about the Labour Party government’s DWP PIP and health-based benefit cuts.
DWP PIP cuts: Labour’s war on disabled people
As the Canaryhas previously reported, the Labour Party government has now laid down its plans for cuts to Personal Independence (PIP) and the health-based part of Universal Credit. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) boss Liz Kendall launched its Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working green paper on 18 March.
The paper included a suite of regressive reforms to make it harder for people to claim disability benefits like PIP. As expected, the changes it’s proposing will target certain claimants in particular, namely young, neurodivergent, learning disabled, and those with mental health disorders. Moreover, disabled people who need help with things like cutting up food, supervision, prompting, or assistance to wash, dress, or monitor their health condition, will no longer be eligible.
Specifically, it’s increasing the number of points a person will need to score in their DWP PIP assessment to access the daily living component of the benefit. This will now require people to score four points or more in a daily living category to claim it.
Alongside this, there’ll be cuts to out-of-work benefits like the LCWRA health-related component of Universal Credit. Once again, Labour additionally want to make this harder to claim, and all as it ramps up reassessments and conditionality requirements for doing so.
Now, Canary reader Shane Brown has penned a scathing letter. And notably, he has addressed it to the minister supposedly responsible for standing up for disabled people, East Ham MP Stephen Timms – who so far has done anything but.
An open letter to Stephen Timms on PIP cuts
Dear Mr. Timms,
Following the furore over Darren Jones and Rachel Reeves’s comparison of the forthcoming disability benefit cuts to “pocket money”, it is with astonishment that I see that you have referred to being unable to cut up food, needing assistance to wash or shower, and needing supervision to use the toilet as “low level functional” problems that can be dealt with by “small interventions” on April 7 in your reply to a question by Richard Burgon MP. At the same time, you defended the decision to change the eligibility for the daily living element of DWP PIP to require four points in at least one category.
The problem with the approach to disability benefits that you, your department, the chancellor, and the prime minister are taking, is that you appear to be wilfully using provocative language, misinformation, and downright lies in order to persuade the public at large that those of us with problems that are spread over a wide range of daily tasks, are somehow not disabled enough to be worthy of a benefit.
With this in mind, I have to ask the question of why you have only come to this conclusion since you have been in the party of government. After all, on 8 June 2016, you voted against reductions in disability benefits when you were in opposition. Perhaps you would be good enough to tell us what has changed your mind?
Those ‘low level’ inconveniences: essential to daily living
But let us return to those “low level” problems, those tiny inconveniences, of not being able to wash, cut food, or go to the toilet. I am sure that I don’t have to remind you that the dozen questions on the DWP PIP form are there for the purpose of deciding whether we should get the benefit or not. Those questions, and the answers we give to them, are not the sum of the problems we have to deal with on a daily basis.
If we need help with those basic things, it is highly likely that it is because of pain, discomfort, and restricted movement. That does not start and end with dressing and washing. It is there for every moment of every day, from the time we get up in the morning until the time we go to bed at night. What’s more, you appear to ignore the costs associated with these “low level” problems.
Let us look at just one example. If we can only use a microwave to prepare meals, one would assume that means eating ready meals. Two ready meals a day is around £8-10. We know that cooking from scratch is considerably cheaper than that. So, yes, using the microwave is a “small intervention”, but it costs anyone who does that every day probably 50% more to eat than those who don’t have to.
That’s an extra £28 a week for that “small intervention” alone. But you don’t want PIP to cover that? Why? THAT is what DWP PIP is there for – to pay for the things that cost us more because we are disabled.
Benefit cuts will not make people ‘miraculously fit and able to go to work’
I might have some respect for your position if I thought that it was one that you actually believe in, but your previous voting record suggest that it isn’t. I have psoriatic arthritis. I am in pain from the moment I get up in the morning until the moment I go to bed. I suffer from fatigue, as many do who have inflammatory conditions of this kind.
Beyond that, I’m taking extra strong codeine three or four times a day that makes my brain foggy and makes me generally tired. And you want me – and others like me – to go to work. My biologic medication costs the NHS £650 every four weeks. Do you really think I would be given it if my condition wasn’t severe?
I’ve been told I shouldn’t work. But you say I should and, either way, you’re going to take my DWP PIP away from me because I’m just not disabled enough. Oh, and when you take that, you’re also going to take my LCWRA element of Universal Credit (UC) when the Work Capability Assessment is scrapped, because it’s somehow going to cause a “behavioural change” (according to Keir Starmer), and I’ll be miraculously fit and able to go to work.
What’s more, you are not even allowing those of us with mobility element of PIP to get that higher element of UC. Are you REALLY of the belief that those who can’t walk more than one metre are not disabled enough to get the health element of UC?
Labour’s DWP PIP plans are downright ‘patronising, pathetic, and puerile’
What you are suggesting is diabolical. These DWP PIP changes have no basis in reality. The disabled community knows this. The medical profession know this. And the worst of it all is that YOU know this. So does Liz Kendall, and Darren Jones, and Rachel Reeves, and Keir Starmer, and every member of your party who doesn’t have the guts to stand up for those of us that need their help right now.
What you are suggesting isn’t just diabolical, it’s insulting. It is patronising, pathetic, and puerile, and it is trivialising what we, the disabled community, have to go through every day of our lives, and through no fault of our own.
How dare you tell us that what we have are merely “multiple low-level functioning needs” that need a “small intervention”, just because your government has decided that we are collateral damage for your budgetary failures.
Your position is no better than that of Boris Johnson who thought that Covid was “nature’s way of dealing with old people”. In the future, people will look back and view what you are doing as the Labour government’s way of ‘dealing with the disabled’. The results will be the same. People will die.
Content warning: this article includes commentary on sexual assault, domestic abuse, and violence against women that some readers may find distressing.
Once under the influencer’s spell, many women have since come forward and reported serious allegations of rape, sexual assault, and coercive control, and in recent days, one woman has even claimed that she was held at gunpoint back in 2015.
From adoring love letters, love-bombing, and Prince Charming-like behaviour, to a violent figure with a deep-seated hatred of women, it comes as no surprise that these are the allegations that are damningly levelled against the world’s most infamous misogynist.
Brianna Stern: Andrew Tate’s ex-girlfriend speaks out
One of the women who had unfortunately fell prey to Andrew Tate’s manipulative spell, is Brianna Stern, his ex-girlfriend, who has in recent weeks gone public with her allegations and lawsuit.
Emotionally abusive, manipulative, aggressive, and menacing – Brianna’s relationship with Tate was, in no uncertain terms: domestic abuse.
It was only in March this year that Stern came forward and decided to expose Tate’s conquest of abuse, that had continued to get worse as their relationship progressed.
At first, like many abusers are, Tate was loving, kind, and charming. He took Brianna on dates, luxurious holidays, and bought her flashy designer items.
In an interview with the Times, Stern opened up about the pair’s relationship, including Tate’s disgusting abuse.
Within hours of meeting Stern, Tate claimed he had fallen in love with her, and said:
you’re my girl now, we’re together, we’re going to be together for ever.
Looking back and reflecting on this, Stern has said how she feels she was “dumb” and fell into a trap.
But this was a trap that was convincingly set for her, as Tate promised her financial security and a life where she would never have to work. She said that:
He was unlike anyone I’d ever met.
However, despite offering her everything a girl could possibly dream of, from designer bags, to all-inclusive 5-star resorts, and flash cars, happiness was far from the picture.
Manipulated by Tate: a barrage of love-bombing
He said to Stern early on that he required monogamy from her, whilst he could go and enjoy himself with other women, sleeping and dating as many of them as he wanted.
However, Stern was, like many victims of sexual assault and domestic abuse, taken in by Andrew Tate. He frequently sent her hundreds of affectionate messages, referring to her as “pookie”,”pumpkin”, and “pookiepumpkinprincess”.
The love-bombing from here only continued to get worse. One day, he even wrote a sickeningly cringey poem for her, which began:
across the seas, across the skies, two pookies live with loving ties.
Recently, documents have emerged from an ongoing court case. These allege that Tate used a gun to threaten a woman at his sex cam business, and had raped and strangled four women over two years.
Despite Tate having an immense following on social media, and his name consistently being in the news and public discourse, Stern has insisted that she doesn’t read the news, so wasn’t aware of the allegations against the Tate brothers.
don’t pay attention to whatever you see about me, it’s not true.
He also told Brianna that he respects women. This is obviously an infinity away from the truth of his violent, chauvinistic personality, where he infamously said that women should “bear responsibility” for sexual assault, rather than the cruel and warped men who commit these violent crimes.
Fearing for her own safety
After a while though, Stern found herself more fearful for her own personal safety as she became aware of the allegations that were made against the brothers.
She even spoke to Tristan Tate’s girlfriend at the time, and they confided in each other about their worries and concerns surrounding their romantic relationships with the brothers:
We would ask each other, ‘are you sure they didn’t do this?’ We would always come to the conclusion that, no, they couldn’t have done that – they’re not monsters, they’re not capable of that.
But over time, the picture once again started to change, and Stern began to fear for her own safety and even her life.
After a while, the ‘honeymoon period’ had ended, and the true horror and reality of Andrew Tate’s real personality began to shine through. As the Timesreported, Stern alleged that:
Tate had become aggressive and controlling, demanding she hand over her social media passwords and download a tracking app so he could see where she was at all times.
Stern also alleges in her lawsuit that Tate said:
if I crossed him, he would ruin my life, rape me or kill me.
But after moments of cruelty, like many abusers do after an outburst, Tate would blame his violent actions on Brianna. As Stern’s lawyers stated:
like many abusers, Tate would often tell the plaintiff that his outbursts were her own fault.
Further to this, it became clear to Stern that he used punishment as a way of controlling her, as he began to treat her like a caged animal.
A series of text messages that were exchanged between the pair were shared in court, which revealed Tate’s sickening use of abusive language towards Stern, writing:
You back talk too much whore, so I beat you
I will hit you today, but I love you.
Stern replied “Why the name calling?” and “Why the hitting :(“.
Tate only doubled-down on the abuse, responding:
Do you belong to me or not
In another, Tate wrote to her:
Because I want to beat the fuck out of you
He followed this with:
you will give me a child this year bitch.
Trump’s America: rolling out the red carpet to the violent misogynist
Soon Stern’s life became a living nightmare, as the Romanian authorities began to intensify their investigation into the Andrew Tate’s and their alleged sickening human trafficking ring.
Many of the women involved in this investigation claimed that the brothers had coerced lots of women into doing webcam pornography and generated around $600,000, which the Tate’s mainly used for themselves.
However, to this day, both brothers continue to deny the allegations levied against them.
Soon the investigation had tracked Brianna down, and the Romanian Organised Crime Unit identified her as a victim of the brothers. It told her that she would be banned from any form of contact with him unless she recorded a video that denied this.
In another red flag, Stern claimed that the video recording she then made had been directed by Tate.
A few months later, Trump had won the 2024 US presidential election. It was a victory that was celebrated by Tate, who could almost taste the freedom on his lips, as he was:
sure that he was going to be able to come back to the US in January.
Despite deporting thousands of migrants for alleged crimes, Tate was, in Trump’s America, a welcome guest, whom the red carpet was rolled out for.
As the administration essentially paved the way to Tate’s escape from exile in Romania, the brothers travelled by private jet to Miami on the 28 February, and were given a glamorous welcome as the press clamoured to get a photo of the Tate brothers stepping off their luxury jet.
After spending a few days in the comfort of Miami, Tate also went to hang out with another MAGA magnet, Kanye West, the Nazi sympathiser, to record an interview with him.
Tate’s sexual assault of Brianna Stern
Following the interview, Andrew Tate met Stern in Beverly Hills, where Stern was sadly in for the worst night of her life, as a consensual sexual encounter turned into a serious sexual assault. Court documents revealed that:
Tate began verbally degrading Stern as he routinely did.
He said Trump was going to help him, and then he did but this time it was much worse, more aggressive and more violent. Tate began to choke Stern.
He also began to aggressively shout at her and state:
I beat you because I love you and your mine, why wouldn’t I be able to hit you?
Distressed and petrified, Stern began to cry and begged for him to stop, but he would not.
Tate continued to choke Stern harder and harder, making Stern nearly lose consciousness
In disturbing text messages after the violence, Tate also said to Stern:
I really love hitting you it’s very good for me
Followed by:
It’s relaxing don’t you think?
Stern believes he didn’t stop this sadistic, brutal assault because he got sick sexual pleasure out of degrading and assaulting her to the point where she felt worthless and was crying.
Following the attack, all Stern wanted to do was escape this hellish atmosphere, but like other victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault, Stern was completely and utterly terrified about what Tate might do to her.
So, Stern decided to stay the night, and leave the next morning as though nothing had occurred and finally escaped from the shackles of her cruel abuser.
When she was leaving the hotel, Stern alleged that Tate’s final words to her were:
Shut the f*** up bitch, you will never backtalk me, you are my property.
The sickening celebration of Andrew Tate in the MAGA ‘manosphere’
In the weeks after the attack happened, Stern bravely took to social media after reporting the incident to the police, to post a photograph of her battered and bruised face. It displays her red cheeks and mascara running down from her eyes.
Clearly in a distressed state, Stern also published medical records from a visit to New York hospital, where she claimed she was diagnosed with “post-concussion syndrome”.
Speaking about the incident, she said that at many points during the relationship she felt like:
silently leaving Andrew and say nothing, doing nothing because I was scared, and honestly It was so hard for me to accept that I was being abused.
However, she decided to go public with her experience of sexual assault and domestic abuse at the hands of the toxic Andrew Tate, to help other victims come forward to expose their abusers.
After filing her lawsuit, instead of being met with supportive messages, albeit a few, Tate’s manosphere of loving supporters gave Brianna a torrent of hurtful abuse.
As a result of this, Stern was left fearing for her safety once again, and was forced to hire a private bodyguard for the first few days. Since then, she has had to let the bodyguard go due to expense.
Speaking about the public’s attitude towards him and potential other victims of abuse she said:
Some people in my life are so scared of him that they just don’t want anything to do with me now, which is really upsetting. It’s sad to see that this is what our society has come to
VAWG normalised by the likes of Andrew Tate
In response to Andrew Tate’s fans, who still protest his innocence (as does he denying all allegations), Stern believes that his fans and other women are:
under his spell, just as I once was.
Now, our society is arguably a place where violence against women is normalised and accepted, and where men are allowed to have a supreme sense of superiority above women, which Stern describes as “scary”.
Overall, after mounting allegations against the brothers, it is evident that the ‘Tate Empire’ is one that is built on violence, extreme misogyny, and the monetisation of men’s insecurities. As shows like Adolescenceexpose the manosphere and incels, the consequences of letting this philosophy reign free are frankly terrifying.
It is therefore paramount that governments around the world begin to act upon this sickening virus that is spreading rapidly throughout our societies.
The warning signs are now in plain view; Tate is an immense danger to women and girls, and governments will be complicit if something much worse than this happens in the future.
“Wherever Palestinians have control is barbaric.” These were the words from New Zealand’s Chief Human Rights Commissioner Stephen Rainbow.
During a meeting with Philippa Yasbek from Jewish Voices for Peace, Dr Rainbow allegedly told her that information from the NZ Security Intelligence Services (NZSIS) threat assessment asserted that Muslims were the biggest threat to the Jewish community. More so than white supremacists.
But the NZSIS has not identified Muslims as the greatest threat to national security.
In the 2023 threat environment report, NZSIS stated that it: “Does not single out any community as a threat to our country, and to do so would be a misinterpretation of the analysis.
“White Identity-Motivated Violent Extremism (W-IMVE) continues to be the dominant IMVE ideology in New Zealand. Young people becoming involved in W-IMVE is a growing trend.”
Religiously motivated violent extremism (RMVE) did not come from the Muslim community, as Dr Rainbow has also misrepresented.
The more recent 2024 NZSIS report stated: “White identity-motivated violent extremism (W-IMVE) remains the dominant IMVE ideology in New Zealand. Terrorist attack-related material and propaganda, including the Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto and livestream footage, continue to be shared among IMVE adherents in New Zealand and abroad.”
To implicate Muslims as being the greatest threat may highlight Dr Rainbow’s own biases, racist beliefs, and political agenda. These false narratives, that have recently been strongly pushed by the US and Israel, undermine social cohesion and lead to a rise in Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism.
It is also deeply troubling that he has framed Muslim and Arab communities as potential sources of violent extremism while failing to acknowledge the very real and documented threats they have faced in Aotearoa.
The Christchurch Mosque attacks — the most horrific act of mass violence in New Zealand’s modern history — were perpetrated not by Muslims, but against them, by an individual radicalised by white supremacist ideology.
Chief Human Rights Commissioner Dr Stephen Rainbow . . . “It is also deeply troubling that he has framed Muslim and Arab communities as potential sources of violent extremism while failing to acknowledge the very real and documented threats they have faced in Aotearoa.” Image: HRC
Since that tragedy, there have been multiple threats made against mosques, Arab New Zealanders, and Palestinian communities, many of which have received insufficient public attention or institutional response.
For a Human Rights Commissioner to overlook this context and effectively invert the victim-aggressor dynamic is not only factually inaccurate, but it also risks reinforcing harmful stereotypes and undermining the safety and dignity of communities who are already vulnerable.
Such narratives are inconsistent with the Human Rights Commission’s mandate to protect all people in New Zealand from discrimination and hate.
The dehumanisation of Muslims and Palestinians
As part of Israel’s propaganda, anti-Muslim and Palestinian tropes are used to justify violence against Palestinians by framing us as barbaric, aggressive, and as a threat. We are dehumanised in order to normalise the harm they inflict on our communities which includes genocide, land theft, ethnic cleansing, apartheid policies, dispossession, and occupation.
In October 2023, Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, described Palestinians as “horrible, inhuman animals” and was perplexed with the growing global concern for us.
That same month Yoav Gallant, then Israeli Defence Minister, referred to Palestinians as “human animals” when he announced Israel’s illegal and horrific siege on Gaza that included blocking water, food, medicine, and shelter to an entire population, the majority of which are children.
In making his own remarks about the Muslim community being a “threat” in New Zealand as a collective group, and labelling Palestinians being “barbaric”, Dr Stephen Rainbow has shattered the credibility of the Human Rights Commission. He has made it very clear that he is not impartial nor is he representing and protecting all communities.
Instead, Dr Rainbow is exacerbating divisions within society. This is a worrying trend that we are witnessing around the world; the de-humanising of groups to serve political agendas, retain power, or seek public support for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Dr Rainbow’s appointment also points a spotlight onto this government’s commitment to neutrality and inclusiveness in its human rights policies. Allowing a high-ranking official to make discriminatory remarks undermines New Zealand’s commitment to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
A high-ranking official should not be allowed to engage in Islamic and Palestinian racist rhetoric without consequence. The public should be questioning the morals, principles, and inclusivity of those currently in power. Our trust is being eroded.
Dr Stephen Rainbow’s comments can also be seen as a breach of human rights principles, as he is supposed to uphold equality and non-discrimination. Yet his beliefs seem to be peppered with racism, often falsely based on religion, ethnicity, and race.
Foreign influence in New Zealand
This incident also shines accountability and concerns for foreign influence and propaganda seeping into New Zealand. The Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ) has published articles that some perceive as dehumanising toward Palestinians.
“The Left has found a new underdog to replace the Jews — the Palestinians — in spite of the fact that the treatment of gay people, women, and political opponents wherever Palestinians have control is barbaric.”
By publicising these comments, The Israel Institute of New Zealand signalled its support of these offensive and racist serotypes. Such statements risk reinforcing a narrative that portrays Palestinians as inherently violent, uncivilised, and unworthy of basic rights and dignity.
This kind of rhetoric contributes to what many describe as anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism, and it warrants public scrutiny, especially when shared by organisations involved in shaping public discourse.
Importantly, the NZSIS 2024 threat report stated that “Inflammatory and violent language online can target anyone, although most appears directed towards those from already marginalised minority communities, or those affected by globally significant conflicts or events, such as the Israel-Gaza conflict.”
Other statements and reposts published online by the IINZ on their X account include:
“Muslims are getting killed, is Israel involved? No. How many casualties? Under 100,00, who cares? Why is this even on the news? Over 100,000. Oh, that’s too bad, what’s for dinner?” (12 February 2024)
“Fact. Gaza isn’t ‘ancestral Palestinian land’. We’ve been here long before them, and we’ll still be here long after the latest propaganda campaign.” (12 February 2024)
Palestinian society was also described as being “a violent, terror-supporting, Jew-hating society with genocidal aspirations.” (16 February 2025)
The “estimate of Hamas casualties, the civilian-to-combat death ratio could be as low as 1:1. This could be historically low for urban warfare.” (21 February 2025)
“There has never been a country called Palestine.” (25 February 2025)
Even showing a picture of Gaza before Israel’s bombing campaign with a caption saying, “Open air prison”. Next to it a picture of a completely destroyed Gaza with a caption that says “Victory.” (23 February 2025)
“Palestinian society in Gaza is in my eyes little more than a death loving cult of murderers and criminals of the lowest kind.” (28 February 2025)
Anti-Palestinian bias and racism
Portraying Muslims and Palestinians as a threat and extremist reflects both Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian bias and potential racism. These statements risk dehumanising Palestinians and are typical of the settler colonial narrative used to erase indigenous populations by denying our history, identity and legal claim.
The IINZ has published content that many see as mocking the deaths of Palestinian Muslims and Christians, which is not only ethically questionable but can be seen as a complete lack of empathy.
And posting the horrific images of a completely destroyed Gaza, appears to revel in the suffering of others and contradicts basic ethical norms, such as decency and compassion.
There also appears to be a common theme among pro-Israeli organisations, not just the IINZ, that cast negative connotations on our national symbols including our Palestinian flag and keffiyeh.
In an article on the IINZ webpage, titled “A justified war”, they write “chorus of protesters wearing keffiyehs, waving their Palestinian and terrorist flags, and shouting about Israel’s alleged war crimes.”
It seemingly places the Palestinian flag — an internationally recognised national symbol– alongside so-called “terrorist flags,” suggesting an equivalence between Palestinian identity and terrorism. Many view this language as dehumanising and inflammatory, erasing the legitimate national and cultural characteristics of Palestinians and feeding into harmful stereotypes.
The Palestinian flag represents a people, their identity, and national aspirations.
There is nothing wrong with our keffiyeh, it is part of our national dress. The negative connotations of Palestinian cultural symbols have to stop, including vilifying other MPs or supporters who wear it in solidarity.
This is happening all too often in New Zealand and must be called out and addressed. Our keffiyeh is not just a scarf — it is a symbol of our Palestinian identity, our resistance, and our rich, historic and deeply rooted cultural heritage.
Pro-Israeli groups attack it because they aim to delegitimise Palestinian identity and resistance by associating it with violence, terrorism, or extremism.
In 2024, ISESCO and UNESCO both recognised the keffiyeh as an essential part of their Intangible Cultural Heritage lists as a way of safeguarding Palestinian cultural heritage and reinforcing its historical and symbolic importance.
As a safeguarded cultural artifact, much like indigenous dress and other traditional attire, attempts to ban or demonize it are acts of cultural erasure and need to be called out as such and dealt with accordingly.
In the same IINZ article titled “A Justified War”, the authors present arguments that appear to defend Israel’s military actions in Gaza, including the targeting of civilians.
Many within the community (most of us have been affected), including survivors and those with direct ties to the region, have found the article deeply distressing and feel that it lacks compassion for the victims of the ongoing violence, and the framing and tone of the piece have raised serious ethical concerns, especially as some statements are factually incorrect.
The New Zealand Palestinian communities affected by this unimaginable genocide are suffering. Our family members are being killed and are at threat daily from Israel’s aggression and illegal war.
Unfortunately, much rhetoric from this organisation aligns with Israeli state narratives and includes statements that some view as racist or immoral, warranting further scrutiny from the government.
There is growing public concern over the association of Human Rights Commissioner Dr Stephen Rainbow with the IINZ, which promotes itself as a research and advocacy body.
A Human Rights Commissioner requires neutrality and a commitment to protecting all communities from discrimination; aligning with Israel and publishing harmful rhetoric may lead to bias in policy decisions and discrimination.
It is also important to remember that we are not a monolithic group. Christian Palestinians exist (I am one) as well as Muslim and historically Jewish Palestinians. Christian communities have lived in Palestine for two thousand years.
This is also not a religious conflict, as many pro-Israeli groups wish the world to believe, and it is not complex. It is one of colonialism, dispossession, and human rights. A history that New Zealand is all too familiar with.
“A Human Rights Commissioner requires neutrality and a commitment to protecting all communities from discrimination; aligning with Israel and publishing harmful rhetoric may lead to bias in policy decisions and discrimination.” Image: HRC screenshot APR
The need for accountability
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith’s inaction and disrespectful response, claiming that a staunchly pro-Israeli supporter can be impartial and will be “very careful” from now on, hints that he may also support some forms of racism, in this case against Muslims and Palestinians.
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith . . . “There needs to be accountability for Goldsmith. Why has he not removed Dr Rainbow from office and acted appropriately?” Image: NZ Parliament
You cannot address only some groups who are discriminated against but then ignore others, or accept excuses for racist, intolerable actions or statements. This is not justice.
This is the application of selective principles, enforced and underpinned by political agendas, foreign influence, and racism. Does Goldsmith understand that justice is as much about human rights, fairness and accountability as it is about laws?
Without accountability, there is no justice at all, or perhaps he too is confused or uncertain about his role, as much as Dr Rainbow seems oblivious to his?
There needs to be accountability for Goldsmith. Why has he not removed Dr Rainbow from office and acted appropriately? If Dr Rainbow had said that Jews were the biggest threat to Muslims or that Israelis were the biggest threat to Palestinians, would this government and Goldsmith have sat back and said, “he didn’t mean it, it was a mistake, and he has apologised”?
Questions New Zealanders should be asking are, what kind of Human Rights Commissioner speaks of entire peoples this way? What kind of minister, like Paul Goldsmith, looks at that and does very little?
What kind of Government claims to champion justice, while turning a blind eye to genocide? This is betraying the very idea of human rights itself.
Although we are a small country here in New Zealand, we have remained strong by upholding and standing by our principles. We said no to apartheid in South Africa. We said no to nuclear weapons in the Pacific. We said no to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
And we must now say no to dehumanisation — anywhere. Are we a nation that upholds justice or do we sit on the sidelines while the darkest times in modern history envelopes us all?
The attacks against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims must stop. We have already faced horrific acts of violence against us here in New Zealand and currently in Palestine. We need support and humanity, not dehumanisation, demonisation and cruelty. This is not what New Zealand is about, we must do better together.
There needs to be a formal enquiry and policy review to see if structural biases exist in New Zealand’s Human Rights institutions. This should also be done across some government bodies, including the Ministry of Education and Immigration NZ, to determine if there has been discrimination or inequality in the handling of humanitarian visas and how the Education Ministry has handled the complaints of anti-Palestinian discrimination at schools.
Communities have particular concern at how the curriculum in many schools deals with the creation of the state of Israel but is silent on Palestinian history.
Public figures should be held to a higher standard, with consequences for spreading racially charged rhetoric.
The Human Rights Commission needs to rebuild trust in our multicultural New Zealand society. The only way this can be done is through fair and just measures that include enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, true inclusivity and action when there is an absence of these.
We are living in a moment where silence is complicity. Where apathy is betrayal.
This is a test of whether New Zealand, Minister Goldsmith and this government truly uphold human rights for all, or only for some.
The Labour Party goes apoplectic with rage when a couple of their MPs are refused entry in to Israel, but couldn’t care less when Israel is quite literally evaporating entire families in the blink of an eye.
Thankfully, the remaining MPs did still happily pose for a photo opportunity AFTER their colleagues were refused entry. I’m living the solidarity.
Labour and the corporate media: like flies around Israel’s shit
The corporate media are way more offended by two Youth Demand supporters leaving a few fake children’s body bags in David Lammy’s garden than they are by the sight of grief-stricken parents carrying the few body parts that remain of their precious child, in a plastic carrier bag.
A vast majority of British journalists and broadcasters — many on the payroll of tax-shy foreign billionaires and dodgy lobbyists — feed on the frenzy surrounding the fascistic flump Trump without a single mention of the systematic targeting of journalists working in Gaza.
Note to UK media: Israel has murdered more than 200 of your colleagues, since October 2023, and instead of growing a fucking set and speaking up for humanity, you just carry on trying to flog the antisemitism dead horse. Why?
Would I tiptoe into ludicrous Lammy’s front garden to decorate it with body bags? No. But in a situation as dire as Gaza, drastic non-violent means are entirely justified and I applaud anyone that is willing to put their own neck on the line for the greater good.
Meanwhile, if you’re a disabled person…
Like many of you, I have been keeping a close eye on the events surrounding Labour’s savage, callous and utter unnecessary attacks on the sick and disabled people of Britain.
It was Keir Starmer’s turn to sit in front of the Work and Pensions Liaison Committee, this past week, and he decided the best line of defence was to criticise the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for not agreeing with him.
This daft approach might have made just a little bit more sense had Starmer’s own government not put through the Budget Responsibility Act in October, last year, requiring the government to actually listen to the OBR.
Starmer spent much of his time in opposition lauding the OBR and their work in attempting to hold Conservative governments to account.
But here we are, witnessing Keir Starmer wriggle like a gutless red Tory worm on a hook, dismissing the OBR findings because they do not support his and Rachel from accounts claim of Britain’s sick and disabled people finding sudden and miraculous cures to lifelong illnesses and conditions, and returning to the workplace, bright-eyed and bushy tailed.
I’m no supporter of the OBR. It was set up by the coalition government in 2010, which should tell you pretty much everything that you need to know, and some may argue that it is an anti-democratic quango.
But, and to their credit, they are correct to predict that Labour’s assault on sick and disabled people is likely to push at least 250,000 people into desperate poverty. I think we all know each other well enough to agree, the appalling quarter-of-a-million figure is likely to be a massive underestimation.
Getting rid of the quangos. Well, the Tory ones, anyway…
Talking of quangos, former PwC consultant, Oli de Botton has been appointed as Keir Starmer’s “expert adviser on education and skills”. His ‘job’ will be to “advise ministers and drive forward the government’s vision for education and skills”.
What I did find quite remarkable about this appointment is the fact Oli’s wife, Amber de Botton, was director of communications at 10 Downing Street under the Tories in 2022 and 2023, when Rishi Sunak was screwing everything up.
Amber is now the Chief Communications Officer for the Guardian.
Surely the de Botton’s must be the first example of a married couple being appointed political advisers to governments of a different party, albeit with the same rancid, neoliberal ideology?
I wonder what would happen if the government appointed a few ordinary people, rather than wedge open the revolving door between the Labour and Conservative parties?
Perhaps a headmaster, a school teacher, or maybe even a fucking dinner lady could do a considerably better job advising the government on “education and skills”, instead of some private-schooled luvvy with a name that makes you think of de butt cheeks whenever you see it?
Cronyism for them, cuts for us
Keir Starmer was supposed to bring an end to cronyism. Indeed, the compulsive liar of a prime minister pledged to slash the number of regulators, cultural institutions and advisory bodies, which are funded by taxpayers but not directly controlled from Whitehall.
But this is Keir Starmer, and his Labour government has already set up more than TWENTY new quangos since taking office, less than a year ago.
So why does the government feel it is fair to cut disability money when the government of 2022/23 spent an eye-watering £353 BILLION on quangos?
This awful government thinks it’s easier to rinse disabled people for everything they have than it is to find a few savings across more than three hundred unelected regulators and advisory bodies with an annual budget that could build six hundred brand new hospitals, every damn year.
Doesn’t this tell you absolutely everything you need to know about this anti-poor, pro-cronyism shitheap of a fraudulent Labour administration?
Cuts for chronically ill people, jobs for the boys for them.
Anger when they can’t send a couple of Labour MPs to Israel for some brainwashing, but utterly acquiescent to the unimaginable suffering of a Palestinian child.
A long, cold winter for Britain’s pensioners, free Coldplay tickets for Keir Starmer.
A celebration of poverty wages for us, and £94,000 a year basic for them, which isn’t their fault, of course.
Labour: betraying us week in, week out
Didn’t we have enough of this flabbergasting hypocrisy under the Conservatives to last us an entire lifetime? How have we allowed ourselves to become so ridiculously resigned and obedient to their way of doing things?
Starmer’s Labour are set to take one hell of a beating at the forthcoming local elections, and they can’t even use the midterm excuse. Hollow soundbites won’t save him this time around.
The fear of seeing numerous hard-right, Farage Party councillors elected to council chambers across the country certainly won’t be allayed by the inevitable Labour bloodbath, as deserved as their rapid demise will be.
When a politician routinely betrays not only the fools that voted for them, but also the people that thought that they couldn’t possibly be any worse than the last lot, they open the door to fascism.
The details of a new visa enabling Tuvaluan citizens to permanently migrate to Australia were released this week.
The visa was created as part of a bilateral treaty Australia and Tuvalu signed in late 2023, which aims to protect the two countries’ shared interests in security, prosperity and stability, especially given the “existential threat posed by climate change”.
The Australia–Tuvalu Falepili Union, as it is known, is the world’s first bilateral agreement to create a special visa like this in the context of climate change.
Here’s what we know so far about why this special visa exists and how it will work.
Why is this migration avenue important? The impacts of climate change are already contributing to displacement and migration around the world.
As a low-lying atoll nation, Tuvalu is particularly exposed to rising sea levels, storm surges and coastal erosion.
As Pacific leaders declared in a world-first regional framework on climate mobility in 2023, rights-based migration can “help people to move safely and on their own terms in the context of climate change.”
And enhanced migration opportunities have clearly made a huge difference to development challenges in the Pacific, allowing people to access education and work and send money back home.
How does the new visa work? The visa will enable up to 280 people from Tuvalu to move to Australia each year.
On arrival in Australia, visa holders will receive, among other things, immediate access to:
education (at the same subsidisation as Australian citizens)
Medicare
the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)
family tax benefit
childcare subsidy
youth allowance.
They will also have “freedom for unlimited travel” to and from Australia.
This is rare. Normally, unlimited travel is capped at five years.
According to some experts, these arrangements now mean Tuvalu has the “second closest migration relationship with Australia after New Zealand”.
Reading the fine print The technical name of the visa is Subclass 192 (Pacific Engagement).
The details of the visa, released this week, reveal some curiosities.
First, it has been incorporated into the existing Pacific Engagement Visa category (subclass 192) rather than designed as a standalone visa.
Presumably, this was a pragmatic decision to expedite its creation and overcome the significant costs of establishing a wholly new visa category.
But unlike the Pacific Engagement Visa — a different, earlier visa, which is contingent on applicants having a job offer in Australia — this new visa is not employment-dependent.
Secondly, the new visa does not specifically mention Tuvalu.
This would make it simpler to extend it to other Pacific countries in the future.
Who can apply, and how?
To apply, eligible people must first register their interest for the visa online. Then, they must be selected through a random computer ballot to apply.
The primary applicant must:
be at least 18 years of age
hold a Tuvaluan passport, and
have been born in Tuvalu — or had a parent or a grandparent born there.
People with New Zealand citizenship cannot apply. Nor can anyone whose Tuvaluan citizenship was obtained through investment in the country.
This indicates the underlying humanitarian nature of the visa; people with comparable opportunities in New Zealand or elsewhere are ineligible to apply for it.
Applicants must also satisfy certain health and character requirements.
Strikingly, the visa is open to those “with disabilities, special needs and chronic health conditions”. This is often a bar to acquiring an Australian visa.
And the new visa isn’t contingent on people showing they face risks from the adverse impacts of climate change and disasters, even though climate change formed the backdrop to the scheme’s creation.
Settlement support is crucial With the first visa holders expected to arrive later this year, questions remain about how well supported they will be.
Australia would provide support for applicants to find work and to the growing Tuvaluan diaspora in Australia to maintain connection to culture and improve settlement outcomes.
That’s promising, but it’s not yet clear how this will be done.
A heavy burden often falls on diaspora communities to assist newcomers.
For this scheme to work, there must be government investment over the immediate and longer-term to give people the best prospects of thriving.
Drawing on experiences from refugee settlement, and from comparative experiences in New Zealand with respect to Pacific communities, will be instructive.
Extensive and ongoing community consultation is also needed with Tuvalu and with the Tuvalu diaspora in Australia. This includes involving these communities in reviewing the scheme over time.
But whilst many of the world’s poor people were fearing the catastrophic impact this might have on their finances and businesses, Trump instead took to his Truth Social platform to tell his followers to:
BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before.
This was all despite global markets tanking.
Trump tariffs: a ‘GREAT TIME TO BUY’ for billionaire capitalists
As the markets opened at the New York Stock Exchange, Trump practically hailed a golden era of corruption as he told his followers:
THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.
Laughing and ridiculing the American public, a video hours later emerged of Trump talking to his wealthy pals, as he pointed to them and said:
He made $2.5 billion today and he made $900 million. That’s not bad.
Not even hiding the fact that this was never about tariffs but simply market manipulation, the oligarchy was yesterday in full view of the public, as its ugly head emerged from the shadows.
Just four hours later, the president changed his mind, he paused and lowered tariffs on goods from most nations for 90 days.
Suddenly, stocks and shares were soaring, and social media erupted into a frenzy, as journalists and members of the public questioned Trump’s “pump and dump” scheme.
Republican US representative for Georgia, and close Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, had disclosed to her fans that she had made several purchases in stocks and shares on 3 and 4 April. These were two days that the markets were at a critically low point, due to Trump setting out his reciprocal tariff plan on 2 April. Conveniently shares in Amazon and Apple rose by 12% and 15% on 9 April, allowing Greene to cash in.
The S&P 500 blue chip index had closed by more than 9% whilst stocks rose in Asia and Europe, with the FTSE 100 index rising by 4%.
Insider trading: anything goes in Trump’s America
In any other democracy, this would be classed as a criminal offence, or named “insider trading”, but for Donald Trump, who is treated like God incarnate, this appears completely acceptable.
Democratic Senator, Adam Schiff, has called for an investigation into the alleged insider trading, as he raised grave concerns over people buying up the stocks when the prices were low before they rose again.
Economically, diplomatically, and politically illiterate, Trump’s on-and-off-like-a-tap tariffs, create an environment where corruption is able to breed in the petri dish swamp that is the White House.
Yet again shedding a light upon Trump’s parasitic administration Schiff stated, “these constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading”.
“Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell stocks and profit at the public’s expense?”.
This was followed by democrat Steven Horsford’s remarks as he expressed his frustration at the Trump regime “WTF! WHO’s in charge”. “The empathy I have is for the American people, whose wellbeing and livelihoods are being affected. This is not a game. This is real life”.
UK feeling the effects
With the UK economy already in a grave state of health due to chancellor Rachel Reeve’s disastrous budget and callous cuts to benefits, one thing is clear, the poorest people in our society will bear the brunt of yet more economic instability whilst the rich take advantage of market turmoil.
The Bank of England (BoE) has warned that higher government bond yields would “reduce their capacity to respond to future shocks”.
British economic growth is therefore likely to be severely impacted by these on and off tariffs, as the trade war continues to haunt countries across the globe.
Furthermore, the BoE’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) said that the shift in geopolitical relations from both an economic standpoint, and the vast rifts between traditional allies, has reduced the likelihood of trading partners wishing to co-operate.
Hence:
the probability of adverse events and the potential severity of the impact have also risen.
It is therefore clear that Keir Starmer and Reeves must wake up and smell the coffee; the US is no longer an ally but rather a country that wishes to inflict peril and confusion, whenever it is given the opportunity.
Trump: world leaders lining up to kiss ‘my a** to negotiate’
At the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner in Washington, Trump appeared to be gushing over the leverage that he holds over the rest of the globe.
Gleefully mocking the weakness of world leaders, who appear to be submissively bowing down to Trump in the hope that he might be merciful, he said:
They are calling us up, kissing my a** to negotiate…Please, Sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything Sir.
Despite this, world leaders will continue to attempt to appease Trump, but they must be reminded what happened when a certain dictator was appeased back in the 1930s; he soon became a genocidal war criminal.
Import prices will inevitably rise, and domestic products will simply inflate in price, and even the rich billionaire tech bros are beginning to have serious doubts about Trump’s policies.
This of course includes Elon Musk, the former big pal and bestie of Trump, who had until recently enjoyed tampering with the government’s finances.
But as his Tesla sales plummeted, and the tariffs came into fruition, the tech bro saw his finances plummet by billions and it was announced that he would depart from DOGE in early May.
He has recently had a very public spat with Peter Navarro, a member of Trump’s cabinet who is dubbed in political circles as the “architect“ of Trump’s catastrophic tariffs. Navarro called Musk a “car assembler” as he criticised his Tesla company with Musk then responding to this by calling him, “dumber than a sack of bricks”.
Trump ‘abusive’ tariffs on China
Aside from the rift between Trump and some members of his possie, tensions have also deepened with China.
Despite pausing the tariffs for 90 days for other countries, he has kept them for China, as he set the rate to 125% earlier on Wednesday, accusing them of showing a “lack of respect”.
This therefore means that every single country with existing tariffs, will receive the lowered rate of 10% except for China.
In response, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian hit back and said that the US uses bullying practices and that it:
continues to impose tariffs on China in an abusive manner.
The spokesman also said that if America hopes to resolve any of these problems through negotiation, the US must show:
an attitude of equality, mutual respect, and reciprocity
Speaking to journalists in the oval office about his trade war with Xi Jinping, he said he believed that a deal could be struck with China:
we’ll end up making a very good deal.
But whilst he dubbed the Chinese president “one of the smartest people in the world”, he warned the country of their extensive weaponry:
we have weapons that nobody even knows.
Of course, it shows that Trump is clearly enjoying the power struggle between the two world powers.
The ‘art of the deal’ is only for the rich elite
However, despite the reversal of this decision, this is inevitably a time of grave instability. The Bank of England has warned that the:
Major shift in the nature and predictability of global trading arrangements could harm financial stability by depressing growth.
Whilst Karoline Leavitt and MAGA die-hards continue to argue and portray this move as a success for Trump, calling it the “art of the deal”, the deal is only for the elite few who took advantage of the volatility of the stock market as a chance to get even richer.
Meanwhile the poor people of the world are left to suffer under a capitalist system that benefits the few, not the many.
James Murdoch, founder of circular tech firm Alchemy, argues why circularity isn’t just good for the planet – it makes business sense too, and smart tech brands know it.
The circular economy – the infrastructure by which we collect used products and give them a second life – is no longer a niche concept confined to environmental summits or corporate pledges. It’s already shaping how products are designed, manufactured, and brought to market.
Circularity means designing products that are durable, repairable, and reusable, and creating an infrastructure to keep them in the marketplace. At this point, it’s not just an environmental initiative -it’s good business. Consumers, brands, and industries are waking up to a simple truth: waste is expensive, and efficiency pays.
The brands getting ahead are the ones embedding circular principles right from the start. This shift indicates more than a response to consumer or regulatory pressures – it’s a change in mindset.
Leading the charge
If any industry has made circularity a reality, it’s technology. Over the last decade, major tech manufacturers have normalised trade-in programmes, where you exchange old devices in return for credit toward new ones. These programmes succeed because they reduce waste and offer tangible benefits: consumers get value for money, and brands keep their customers’ loyalty.
Secondary tech has grown into a thriving sector. The key to this success lies in product design: devices built with longevity in mind have better lifespans and hold their value for longer.
Since founding Alchemy and refurbishing over ten million electronic devices, we’ve seen firsthand what makes products suitable for the circular economy. The best performers are those that have aspirational value, an ecosystem worth buying into, and a trade-in programme that is regulated and easy to access. Designing products that are reliable over several generations, with accessible parts and multi-year software updates, inadvertently prioritises circularity, too.
Courtesy: Alchemy
The role of regulation
In the US, regulations supporting a circular economy are still in the early stages, with some measures laying the groundwork for broader circular practices. For example, parts of the Inflation Reduction Act provide incentives for domestic manufacturing of clean technologies, and new regulations limiting ‘forever chemicals’ (PFAS) reflect a growing need to design products with long-term environmental impact in mind.
In our experience though, change is mostly being driven by the private sector, which is responding to changing consumer behaviours, while also grasping the business case for offering a circular solution.
How business leaders can advance a circular economy
Regulation will naturally play catch-up, but in the meantime, companies that want to build a circular economy will need to be proactive. For those looking to refurbish and remarket products, three key strategies that can be implemented quickly include:
Move away from flash sales: Brands that have constant flash sales damage their trade-in programmes. There is less incentive to buy a refurbished, older model if the new one is only 10% more while a sale is on. By offering high-quality, certified refurbished goods at a discount, brands appeal to new customers who might otherwise opt for a lower-end competitor product. For example, instead of choosing a new, lower-cost, non-brand smartphone, many will choose a refurbished iPhone 11 at a similar price but with a longer warranty and a trusted brand.
Follow the secondary market closely: You must understand how the secondary market behaves so you can anticipate changes, rather than react to them. At Alchemy, we have an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of device prices over time – this is crucial.
Identify policy and infrastructure gaps: Companies must prepare for potential legal complexities, particularly in regions where access to circular markets is restricted or where laws around product reuse are increasing.
Work with experienced partners: Many manufacturers’ existing systems need to be designed for the second-hand market. It requires facilities for grading and refurbishing products, managing inventory, handling sales logistics, and much more. Outside experts have the infrastructure, systems, and know-how to manage, refurbish, and sell used products at scale. This allows companies to focus on their core business and ensures that their circular programmes are efficient, profitable, and aligned with brand standards.
Circularity is going mainstream
Circularity isn’t just happening in electronics or accessories. IKEA and Unilever have recently announced circular initiatives, including the ability to trade in and buy second-hand directly from them, and driving used packaging collection.
Even the fashion industry – traditionally focused on churn – has begun experimenting with circularity through trade-in, repair and resale programmes. These efforts go beyond eco-friendly branding; they signify a long-term strategy where profitability aligns with sustainability.
There is also a major commercial opportunity in circularity. According to the World Economic Forum, transitioning to a circular economy could generate up to $4.5T globally by 2030. Companies that engage in it have better brand equity, and they capture a growing segment of consumers – those who want newer functionality but are neutral about having the latest model. These buyers would have previously gone elsewhere, but now, they’ll join a top-tier brand’s ecosystem.
Courtesy: Alchemy
Designing for circularity from the start
The foundation of a circular economy is laid in the design phase – products must be built with their second and third lifecycle in mind. This requires attention to several key factors. Firstly, and most obvious, is durability – manufacturers that place focus on quality products that last longer and benefit the most from circularity.
Repairability is also very important, but a product that lasts twice as long as another will naturally have a much lower carbon footprint than its cheaper alternative. It often starts with design – I’ve seen time and time again that devices built with longevity in mind make all the difference.
In tech, consumers are now more interested in buying refurbished devices because we’ve got to the point where they trust the process. This behaviour is setting a template for other sectors, from fashion to furniture, where information about reusing or restoring items has become trendier and easily accessible.
Compliance or competitive advantage?
Leading companies see circularity as a strategic opportunity to differentiate themselves. Trade-in programmes and secondary marketplaces help companies tap into the “quality over quantity” mindset among customers. But these initiatives only work if the process is seamless – consumers need simplicity and full transparency every step of the way.
Brands that embrace circularity today aren’t just future-proofing their operations – they’re setting themselves apart in a marketplace that puts affordability, loyalty and sustainability first. If tech’s circular journey shows anything, it’s that good design reduces waste, and keeps customers happy – everyone wins.
On 16 March, as Wes Streeting was being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg, the neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan was mentioned with her view that too many people are over-diagnosed in terms of mental health and learning disabilities. Streeting generally agreed, saying “too many people were being written off”. The dropping of O’Sullivan’s name was no accident, as her book on the subject of ‘overdiagnosis’ was published two days later. In The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, health and why medicine has gone too far, O’Sullivan argues that a lot of the cases she encounters or has examined were psychosomatic – including long Covid.
She suggests that we should be aware and wary of ‘diagnosis creep’: the gradual expansion of diagnostic criteria.
Suzanne O’Sullivan: selling the overdiagnosis myth to lay the groundwork for benefit cuts
For this book, long Covid is just one of the conditions O’Sullivan decided to examine. Other topics include Autism, ADHD, cancer, Huntington’s Disease, depression, mental health, and hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS).
As a neurologist, it’s clear she’s rummaging into other specialities, something ‘Darcie’ – a patient – pointed out to her, saying:
You’re not an EDS doctor and you’re not a PoTS doctor, so you have no right to look into these.
But O’Sullivan did feel she had the right to examine these topics for the book.
This ‘psychosomatic’ mantra and talk of ‘overdiagnosis’ is a divisive issue. For certain politicians and sections of the media it can also be highly seductive.
This was a concern expressed by readers. One said:
It was clear this (book) isn’t about following the evidence, its ideological.
For the government, it could give justification for its harsh cuts to Personal Independence Payment (PIP). These are cuts directed at learning disabled people and those living with mental health issues.
It could also have an impact on NHS services for these groups with Baroness Claire Fox calling for a review of the ‘problems’ of overdiagnosis. She said this review should look at the impact on NHS resources of overdiagnosis of those with mental health problems, ADHD, and those on the Autistic spectrum.
A controversial medical circle of ‘overdiagnosis’ clinicians – notably over long Covid
In medical circles, O’Sullivan is not alone in making such ‘overdiagnosis’ claims, but she’s not in the majority with her belief that so many of the conditions she covered in her book are potentially because of overdiagnosis, misdiagnosis, or over-screening.
But being somewhat of an ‘outsider’ doesn’t deter her, because along with others in her bubble of ‘free-speech, non-believers’, they promote and quote each other.
So, in the chapter ‘The Age of Diagnosis’ on ADHD, Depression, and Neurodiversity O’Sullivan used the ‘trauma not illness’ arguments made by psychologist Lucy Johnstone.
Likewise, in the chapter I am looking at here on long Covid, she used the comments of the highly controversial doctor Paul Garner, who has claimed he recovered from Covid through graded exercise activity.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Covid-19 can lead to serious long-term effects, known as post Covid-19 condition (PCC). This is referred to by the patient-preferred term, long Covid.
Long Covid is characterised by a range of symptoms which usually start within three months of the initial Covid-19 infection. It can affect a person’s ability to do day-to-day activities and hinder their ability to participate in society.
With so many people affected by long Covid, there has been a controversial debate from some commentators like O’Sullivan, who in The Age of Diagnosis said:
Long Covid behaves just as psychosomatic illnesses do.
This claim has been rejected by those with long Covid. Exasperated, one person said:
Has the author not read any of the thousands of research papers that identify microclots, lung damage, immune system malfunction? The psychosomatic take is beyond offensive.
Long Covid: O’Sullivan’s dangerous misdiagnosis beliefs
O’Sullivan is not new to being controversial. A previous book from 2015 entitled: It’s all in Your Head: stories from the frontline of psychosomatic illness caused much ire amongst those living with ME/CFS, another condition she believes is psychosomatic.
With ME/CFS having many of the features of long Covid, it’s hardly a surprise she’s also repeating the message here for most patients.
Why not all patients? That’s because O’Sullivan concedes some people do have persistent symptoms. She separates all long Covid patients into four groups.
The first group are those who were hospitalised with Covid. She thinks this group could indeed have persistent symptoms following hospital treatment.
The second group are those who have these symptoms after being infected with Covid. Some of these patients she believes could have some sort of post-viral infection.
The third group, rather than long Covid, she believes their symptoms may be a misdiagnosis, not helped by the lack of face-to-face GP appointments.
But it’s the fourth group, where she thinks the majority of long Covid patients are with long Covid having a psychosomatic cause.
O’Sullivan’s reasons for this include it being a patient who first discovered the link between her symptoms and Covid. Also, she points to the number of symptoms now attributed to long Covid.
But her main two arguments involve the demographic and mental health.
O’Sullivan’s book is ideological opinion, not evidenced fact
In terms of the demographic O’Sullivan suggests those with long Covid are different than those who were ventilated and/or died from Covid, who were more likely to be older, and men.
In response, there are studies showing younger adults and adolescents suffer more neurological long Covid symptoms that adults over 65. So, the demographic is different, because long Covid is different, hitting a younger demographic.
Her second argument is that studies showing factors like anxiety, depression, and even loneliness may play a role, and as such, O’Sullivan thinks this may make long Covid psychosomatic.
But the question is: does living with a chronic condition such as long Covid cause the secondary problems with mental health or vice versa?
Professor Carolyn Chew-Graham, who was the first in the UK to publish on long Covid said:
I don’t think the authors opinions follow from the research. NICE is very clear that anxiety and depression are more likely to be consequences of long Covid than causes.
And psychiatrist Dr Linda Gask says:
When you have pre-existing anxiety or depression you always feel worse in your mood when you are physically unwell, especially with a viral illness. Post-viral depression is common. People who have long Covid may be more likely to be lonely, that doesn’t mean loneliness is the cause of it.
With suggestions of overdiagnosis, misdiagnosis, and even a tendency to over-screen for conditions, this book not only undermines those who are suffering from long-term chronic illnesses, but could be used as justification to cut funding and benefits. It should be taken as how it reads, ideological rather than anything else.
NZME’s directors have fired their own shots in the war for control of the media company, saying they have concerns about a takeover bid including the risk of businessman Jim Grenon taking editorial control.
In a statement to the NZX, the board said it was delaying its annual shareholders meeting until June and opening up nominations of other directors.
NZME . . . RNZ report on NZME’s directors “firing their own shots in the war for control of the media company”.
Grenon, a New Zealand resident since 2012, bought a 9.3 percent stake in NZME for just over $9 million early in March.
NZME is publisher of a number of newspapers, including The New Zealand Herald, as well as operating radio stations and property platform OneRoof.
Within days of taking the stake, Grenon had written to the company’s board proposing that most of its current directors be replaced with new ones, including himself, and said the performance of the company had been disappointing and he was wanted to improve the editorial content.
NZME has now told the stockmarket it had concerns whether Grenon’s proposals were in the best interests of the company and shareholders. — RNZ News
Dear NZME Board,
I was once a columnist for The New Zealand Herald, but I’m too left wing for your stable of acceptable opinions and now just run award-winning political podcasts instead.
The Daily Blog editor and publisher Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury. Image: TDB screenshot APR
Normally as board members of a financialised media company in late stage capitalism with collapsing revenue thanks to social media, you don’t generally have to consider the actual well being of our democracy.
Let me be as clear as I can to you all.
You hold in your hands the fate of Fourth Estate journalism and ultimately the democracy of New Zealand itself.
As the largest Fourth Estate platforms in the country, your obligations go well beyond just shareholder profit.
Alt-right billionaire Jim Grenon has in my view been extremely disingenuous.
The manner in which NZME has been sold as underperforming so that the promise of a quick buck from OneRoof seems the focus point is made more questionable because I suspect Grenon’s true desire here is editorial control of NZME.
His relationship with a far-right culture war hate blog that promotes anti-Māori, anti-trans, anti-vaccine, climate denial editorial copy alongside his support for culture war influencers suggest a radicalised view of the world which he intends to implement if he gains control.
Look.
NZME is right wing enough, your first editorial in The New Zealand Herald was calling for white people to start war with Māori, Mike Hosking is the epitome of right wing commentary and the less said about Heather Du Plessis Allan, the better, but all of you acknowledge that 2 + 2 = 4.
Alt-Right billionaires don’t admit that.
Alt-right billionaires tend to lean into divisive culture war rhetoric and are happy to promote 2 + 2 = whatever I say it is.
You cannot allow alt-right billionaires with radicalised culture war beliefs take over the largest media platforms in the country.
This moment demands more than dollars and cents, it requires a strong defence of independent editorial content, even when that editorial content is right wing.
The NZ Herald, Heather and Mike are without doubt right wingers, but they are right wingers who pitch their argument within the realms of the real and factual.
Alt-right billionaires do not do that.
If NZME is taken over and the editorial direction takes a hard right culture war turn, you will be dooming NZ democracy and planing us on a highway to hell.
You must, you must, you must stand against this attack on editorial independence.
I’ll be honest: I have voted Labour all my life. I grew up in a Northumbrian mining town and come from a family who worked in the pits. I’m old enough to remember the Thatcher years. I’m still in shock from the announcements aboutDepartment for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefits cuts to disabled welfare in the Spring Statement.
I never thought that having a Labour government in power would equal a devastating attack on disabled people like me. People like me who have worked hard all their life, only to find themselves disabled with an incurable disease. It’s a disease that our NHS doesn’t even have a single bed in the entire country set aside for or any medical treatments available. That’s myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).
DWP benefits cuts: a deep-set discriminatory attitude to disabled people
I believe that this deprivation of financial support for disabled people is in no way related to ‘supporting people into work’. MP Darren Jones has compared us to children having their pocket money taken away. What an absolutely degrading comparison. He may have apologised, but the damage is done. Millions watched those comments, and will have been influenced into believing disabled people are lazy children.
It is telling that Jones thought that this was an acceptable comment to make on national television. It suggests that this attitude is accepted in Westminster. This is not about balancing the books. This goes deeper. This government’s actions display a deep-set, nasty, discriminatory attitude towards disabled people: an attitude that the world has seen before.
The government’s own assessments show that 250,000 disabled people, 50,000 of them children, will be pushed into poverty by these DWP benefits cuts. The Labour Party appears happy with these statistics and is continuing with its devastating plan. Why?
Why, knowing you are about to push 50,000 children into starvation, would you be unconcerned? I think the answers lie in your beliefs.
The Labour government doesn’t see disabled people as human beings
These are children of disabled people. Yes, disabled women have children too. We are, after all human beings. Although, you would be forgiven for thinking we aren’t, the way this government is attempting to convince the rest of society we aren’t worthy of basic human rights. Those 50,000 children come from families with a disabled parent. The overwhelming message being sent by our Labour government is that we are less.
The belief that disabled people are somehow ‘less’ than abled people is, sadly, extremely common. I have experienced this frequently as a disabled mother of a disabled child. It is almost an accepted norm in our society. As disgusting as that is, that is the reality.
The shocking thing is that, Labour appealed to disabled people to vote for them. Keir Starmer made a consistent point of saying that his government would listen to disabled people.
On national television, Starmer stood there saying we needed to let him regain the public’s trust in politicians. Disabled people voted for the Labour party based on these promises. Yet, now, when disabled people are saying ‘you are going to starve us and these DWP benefits cuts will kill us, please do not go forward’, we’re being ignored.
Perhaps if you truly can’t afford £5bn in DWP benefits support, scrap the new Thames crossing and save £8bn? The lives of disabled people clearly mean nothing to our government. A bridge, that may reduce their own commute time is more important to them, than my child having a meal on the table.
We’ve been here before… in Nazi Germany
Can you sink any lower?
An election campaign that tricked disabled people into voting for a party that is, knowingly, with the facts right in front of them, pushing quarter of a million of us towards starvation. DWP benefits cuts kill.
There are reams of evidence showing how disabled people have died in the most appalling conditions following inhumane treatment from the DWP. That evidence is about to increase in size. The horror of what is coming is unimaginable.
On a final note, and I’m not going to apologise in advance if you are offended by this stark comparison. Go and Google Aktion T4.
Starting in 1939 the German government killed between 275,000 and 300,000 disabled people because they were considered a financial burden to society. These killings were two years before the start of WWII. Why did they start with us, with disabled people? Because they knew it was an easy sell to the public.
This attitude that disabled people are less is an attitude perpetuated by fascist governments throughout history.
As the mother of a child with Down’s Syndrome, it is a physical pain I feel when I see photos from historical archives showing people with my daughter’s condition, who were deemed a financial burden to society, because they couldn’t work, and therefore either starved to death or murdered by another means.
I wouldn’t have made it either.
The chilling reality is though, that this perception of disabled people who can’t work as a ‘burden’ seems to be shared by our current UK government in 2025.
Disabled lives matter: stand with us against DWP benefits cuts
In this current climate, with our government pushing the narrative that disabled people don’t deserve DWP benefits if we can’t work, please question what information you are being fed by those in power. Please question what beliefs are driving our government to punish disabled people, for having the audacity to be alive, and require food and shelter.
Above all, please stand up for us, for those who cannot advocate for themselves. Learning disabled people, those with dementia, or any condition that creates a barrier to being able to speak out. We need you stand with us and say: “No. This is not right. Disabled lives matter”.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) disability benefit cuts affect all disabled people – there’s no doubt about that. They will plunge thousands into poverty, isolate individuals, and without the ability to fund their disability aids, care, or therapies, impact their independence, and this is true for those across the community. However, for disabled women and marginalised genders and their families, it’s critical to understand the ways that the cuts are even more of a threat.
To comprehend the context of the cuts as a gender issue, it must first be understood that disability itself is a feminist issue across the board. Women are more likely to be disabled, and often left undiagnosed or without the support they need for longer. It is also women who commonly bear the brunt of state underfunding.
DWP disability benefit cuts: women are providing more care
Just as women are more likely to perform household tasks and take on the burden of social reproduction – the unpaid and unseen work to keep society functioning – they are more likely to be providing care. Whilst social reproduction refers to a wider profile of tasks, without proper social care funding, the responsibility of care for disabled individuals often falls on the shoulders of families. Notably, this heavily primarily impacts women, who make up 59% of unpaid carers.
For families providing care themselves, Personal Independence Payment (PIP) can be what keeps them afloat, to make up the difference in funds where they are caring rather than working. This is particularly true because Carer’s Allowance is still criminally low, and still places limits on how many hours can be worked to top up funds, as well as often being tied to eligibility of other benefits.
In 2024, the Centre for Care found that the economic contribution of unpaid carers in the UK was £184 billion a year – whilst the combined NHS budget in 2021/22 was £189 billion. This makes unpaid care provision equivalent to a second NHS: to cut support to the bone to these families is shameful.
For many, the disability benefit cuts will push them even further away from employment due to having to provide further unpaid care, or stop their ability to undertake part-time work. It means the impact on employment rates may have the opposite effect to what Reeves intends. When the reasoning for the cuts supposedly surrounds boosting employment, this is absurd: the cuts are not only to benefits, but to gender equality.
The additional threats to disabled women
For disabled women and marginalised genders, the disability benefit cuts also pose additional threats. Disabled women and marginalised genders are more than twice more likely to experience domestic abuse, and the cuts mean that these individuals are much less likely to be able to leave such a situation without access to funds.
In particular, disabled women and marginalised genders are more likely to experience economic abuse, and are four times more likely than their non-disabled peers to have a partner or ex-partner stop them, or try to stop them, accessing benefit payments that they or their children are entitled to receive.
Similarly, disabled women are over three times more likely to have a partner or ex-partner refuse to give child support or maintenance (or pay it unreliably) when they can afford to pay it normally. For many, PIP or similar benefits are a lifeline that keep themselves and their children out of poverty.
290,000 of children in poverty are living in families on PIP, and children living in a family with a disabled person are more likely to be in poverty than those without. This shows the further devastating impact for families, and particularly the women within them, who are bearing the burden of care and labour much more heavily.
It is fundamentally reprehensible for the chancellor to allow these cuts to have such impacts across vulnerable populations, and leave those who are multiply marginalised behind, in search of ‘savings’. While the government’s argument that they have inherited a difficult financial position is true, the reality is that this is not the only way they can fix that. Hitting disabled people, and particularly women and marginalised people the hardest, is something utterly unnecessary.
The disability benefit cuts must be seen intersectionally
It’s key for the cuts to be understood from an intersectional lens, and to be aware of the double burden these changes will have on women and those of marginalised genders.
Similarly, it must be acknowledged that those who are also marginalised by their race will be more heavily impacted, and are often more likely to experience some of the issues discussed in this article. This includes living with certain conditions such as autoimmune diseases, and being less likely to receive needed painkillers and support.
Disabled Black and brown women will also be hit harder by the disability benefit cuts. They experience the additional burden of racism that is often seen in the medical and benefit system, as well as lower standards of living than both their non-disabled or white peers.
When discussing the cuts and advocating against them, we must understand this as not isolated to disability: this is an issue that feminists and those working in gender equality must also be a part of pushing back on.
Outgoing RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, reinvigorated the trade union movement and gave marginalised citizens hope for a fairer society. Mick is a hard act to follow, but his successor Eddie Dempsey has already proven his mettle during the disputes – not just for his members, but for all other workers too.
Mick Lynch passes the baton to Eddie Dempsey: from one champion of progressive change to another
Eddie Dempsey, like Mick Lynch, eloquently presents his case without hyperbole and champions progressive change for working-class people. History has already proven that they are both on the right side of it, especially in their fight to oppose driver-only trains and the closure of the ticket offices.
Both men have accumulated a treasure chest of memorable moments in time. They debunked the neoliberal ideology that insidiously pervades our society. Eddie dismissed the excuse of a wage price spiral as a three-card trick to stop workers asking for a pay rise and designed to keep them skint.
One of the most inspiring speeches Eddie delivered was in Glasgow, where he opined:
they say the market must rule but the market can’t run society. It can’t feed the children and cannot keep our old people warm. We can do that and that is what they are frightened of. My trade union has got a motto – unity is strength.
There is a plethora of Eddie’s erudite quotes; it’s hard to choose the top three but each and every one is always evidence-based and backed up by his diligent research – certainly no spreading of fake news or disinformation from this union man. Other classics which will go down in history amongst us who greatly admire him:
There has been a transfer of wealth from working class people to people at the top. And that can’t carry on; that has got to change because the people at the top of the economy – they’re having a disco and everyone else is being told they’ve got to carry the can and tighten their belts.
Really this is about who owns what. Are we going to have a country run for corporations with some people in it or are we going to have a country run for the people in it with some corporations?
I think a lot of the politicians are aligned with the big corporations and they should be made to wear their sponsors on their suits and dresses.
Eddie Dempsey has the press and billionaires running scared already
I have been fortunate to meet Eddie Dempsey and Mick Lynch a few times now at rallies and recently had a chat with Eddie at a Strengthening the Employment Rights Bill rally. It is unequivocal that Eddie will continue Mick’s work with aplomb, and then some – he has, after all, got right on his side and the billionaire press is running scared.
Eddie was quick to help and provide practical advice and empathy to every person at the rally, especially a group of domestic workers whose working conditions are beyond lamentable. At one point, a delegate raised concerns about a work place issue, and immediately, he was able to offer sound advice.
Eddie, like Mick, has an abundance of emotional intelligence, integrity, and empathy – attributes that simply cannot be taught – it’s in their DNA. Both men are always meticulous in their preparedness and are fully versed in the history of howworkers’ struggles won our rights – rights that those who oppose unions take for granted today, such as holiday and sick pay.
Their demands? Pretty elementary – a fairer society for all. No fellow citizen should ever have to choose between heating and eating while billionaires do all they can to avoid paying taxes by becoming non-domiciles and hiring expensive lawyers to find tax loopholes. As Bernie Sanders said when he turned up to support the RMT during the strikes:
We fight for government of the people, by the people, for the people- not government of, by and for the billionaires.
Another world is possible for all key workers on the frontline
While on the subject of billionaires – the High Pay Centre continues to produce some eye watering facts:
If you had earned £1,000 a day since Jesus died and kept it under the mattress, you still wouldn’t have accumulated £1bn.
And:
FTSE 100 bosses make more money in less than three days than the average worker does in a year.
The pandemic proved to us who the key workers are and the immense value they contribute to our society – not that it should have taken a pandemic to remind us –and it certainly wasn’t the FTSE 100 bosses who devour money from the top. It was the wealth creators who were on the frontline risking their lives to keep us safe, fed, and watered. Key workers are still paid a paltry salary with precarious employment and Eddie, is on a mission to address this in his own inimitable way.
Thatcher was wrong with her iniquitous TINA neoliberal doctrine – there is an alternative and another world is possible. One of the first steps is to replace Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a metric – as Robert Kennedy said:
it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
Even the economist, Simon Kuznets, who pioneered the modern concept of GDP, disowned it as a metric.
Following in the footsteps of union giants
Union funding is the cleanest money in the UK – Eddie Dempsey and the union movement must now unite and continue to do all they can to enhance workers’ rights and pay. The ‘service-model approach’ should be put to rest and other unions must be bold and unapologetic like the RMT. Unions must continue to spread the message to all via feet on the ground outreach – especially to our young workers – that it is imperative to join a workplace union and to consider following in the footsteps of giants – become a union rep.
The poet Keats wrote, “a thing of beauty is a joy forever” – Eddie and readers of the Canary know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a fairer society is possible and this, is indeed, a beautiful thing.
Some in our nation have our history wrong. In light of discussions regarding Ukraine and wider conflicts, the British political class have attempted to galvanise young people with ideas of service to the British state. To specify – the establishment newspaper outlets, elements of Keir Starmer’s cabinet, and the growing far-right Reform UK, have shown their willingness to compel young people to serve king and country.
They’ve attempted to leverage notions of Britain’s Second World War triumph and National Service (discontinued in 1963) to admonish the young, 14% of whom, as we keep hearing, are not in work, education, or training. Their attempts at historical citation are often misused, sometimes just factually incorrect, and this narrative will continue to hurt a generation which has already been mistreated.
War in British memory: fetishised to send the working class to the frontline
“If it weren’t for them, you’d be speaking German … we’d all be speaking German” goes the line from schoolteachers to politicians. The generation whose responsibility it was to defend the British shores from Nazi encroachment hold a rightly venerated place in British political and social memory. Young men and women who held firm against Nazi tyranny which swept through France in little but six weeks, have mostly passed away. Anyone who came into contact with veterans of that generation will know their lives were immeasurably different to the ones that their children faced. But the legacy of other war-torn generations remains oversimplified in Britain’s memory.
The most poignant example of this phenomenon which is not too much discussed, is the First World War, which litters the iconography of British military remembrance. The poppy is nominally a symbol of British appreciation to those who volunteered to give their lives. However, it’s utilised by British nationalists who fetishise historical crimes, and use it as an excuse to suggest sending the working class to the front line. One can observe that this symbol does not do justice to the true history of the First World War and other conflicts, as a series of futile tragedies which needlessly took the lives of generations.
Not telling the whole truth on remembrance
Ad infinitum, the poppy and the whole idea of remembrance leaves behind the rage that many (including veterans) feel about the truth of war and international conflict. One should feel grateful and appreciative at the lives given by men in the 6 years between 1939 and 1945, which halted fascist imperialism and its overtake of all Europe. But the purposeful waste and ruin of lives by decision-makers in the 318 year history of the British military is a nauseating disgrace. This is without even really discussing the genuinely countless millions who were murdered by British imperialist projects following the 1707 Act of Union and 1914, where the vast majority of Britain’s wars were offensive and not defensive.
In recent decades, when young people join the military, they usually come from poor backgrounds, in neglected towns, and do so as a way of getting out, or having experiences they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. These working-class kids are brought into the system, which is more-often-than-not just a job for them, and are then taught to serve a set of institutions whose material intentions involve the killing of innocent people.
‘Unpatriotic’ young people
If they survive, they are promptly spat out and frequently end up jobless and homeless, severed from state welfare. What’s more is that if we ignore this, they will continue to be ensnared by this country’s political right.
In contemplating where our global situation is, and how this particular idea of remembrance disregards the politics of class in our society, where does it leave the young? In pure and simple terms, according to the top military spokespersons, if the country were to be invaded by a reasonably well equipped foreign state, it would be hopeless. We know this fact from the February 18th speech given by defence secretary John Healy, who seems increasingly anxious at the current capacity of the British state to field manpower and armaments. An intelligent follow-up question should be, then, why do the young feel so unwilling to join the military and serve the state?
Ask any follower of the British right-wing this question and you get the answer that the generation currently undergoing late adolescence or early adulthood is simply too idle or “unpatriotic” to undertake the defence of their communities. What a flagrant load of bullshit.
When your government breaks their promises
The founding idea in modern liberal political theory is the idea of the social contract – in that if all members of a society give over some of their autonomy to the state and the government, they will be able to live in stability, and perhaps prosperity. This notion, widely understood in the pre and post-WW2 era, has completely vanished. If you listen to popular political commentators and economic analysts on the left, then you would know that this is because of neoliberalism.
The way that movement for ultra-capitalism stripped working people of job security, and any hope of social welfare, has led many young working-class people to completely forgo the idea of a permanent home, a stable career, and a steady community. Socialists and anarchists know that the economy puts assets in the hands of a small number of people, and that the state will protect itself before its citizens. But not being surprised doesn’t help anyone when your society continues to crack.
Autonomy for our communities who won’t stand for exploitation any longer
What we should be demanding is autonomy for our communities, so they can make their own decisions on matters of welfare, community support, and self-reliance. Taking the current system as it is however, if you’re going to ask working people to potentially sign over their lives, you need to make and keep your promises. You need to give them something to fight for, rather than only something to fight against, however dangerous the adversary.
The British Welfare State was not a generous offer of charity from the establishment to ‘the poor’ of 1950s Britain; it was a concession given to those who lived under systems of exploitation and likely wouldn’t stand for it any longer. With the probability of global conflict in our lifetimes, working people are yet to see anything of the sort.
Whoever would’ve thought that Labour’s malevolent assault on the sick and disabled people of Britain would plummet Keir Starmer’s widely detested Labour Party government to new depths of utterly deserved unpopularity?
Anyone with an iota of common sense, possibly?
Even before Starmer and Reeves chose to unleash a raft of cost-cutting measures across the welfare budget, poverty was on the rise. Child poverty has shamefully soared to a record 4.5 million – 100,000 up on the previous year.
21st century capitalism has been an unmitigated disaster, so why is Starmer insisting on dragging us down this demonstrably ruinous and self-destructive path?
Labour should be dismantling capitalism – not worsening it
Britain’s capitalist state doesn’t need rebuilding, it needs dismantling, destroying, and burying in the bowel of Satan, somewhere between colonialism and Margaret Thatcher
Apparently, we have the sixth largest economy in the world. Britain’s billionaires saw their wealth increase by £11 billion, last year.
I need you to explain it to me as if I am five-years-old, please.
I do not understand why this god awful Labour government thinks it is entirely necessary to hit children, sick and disabled people, their careers, and Britain’s pensioners with the brunt of austerity 2.0. Do you?
I do not understand why this corrupted Labour government is hellbent on serving up one overt act of aggression after another against the sick and poor while giving bosses and bankers the green light to continue to make eye-watering profits out of the exploitation of the working classes. Do you?
I dare you, Labour voter, I fucking dare you to come and tell me how your favourite Labour MP would manage to survive off £12.21 an hour. I’m all ears.
Take away their energy bill handouts from the public purse. Take away the blatant corporate bribery that lavishes these £94,000-a-year careerist carpetbaggers with tickets to everything from sold-out Taylor Swift concerts to Premier League football matches – luxuries that are way beyond the means of ordinary people.
Did you know, these MPs — that want to legislate for a legal right to kill a disabled person if they can’t manage to dispose of us through the traditional social murder method — can even claim back the cost of a fucking TV licence?
But let’s all celebrate keeping poor people in their place, right?
Turncoats
Labour MPs, once vocally supportive of Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 ‘For The Many’ manifesto that won 12,877,918 votes (three million more than Starmer’s apparent landslide) seem to think it’s worth cheering about.
These remorseless, entirely-owned freeloaders are more concerned with the cost and standard of food in the House of Commons restaurants than they will ever be with the cost and standard of the cheap processed shit that you are forced to serve up to your family.
The Tories’ cost of living crisis hasn’t magically disappeared. It has simply been given a thin coat of red gloss paint and largely ignored by the corporate media in favour of the blundering tangerine tantrum and the rich dude that didn’t actually create Tesla, across the pond.
If I have still got your attention, Labour voters, you might remember telling us something along the lines of, “Let’s get Starmer in first and then worry about what follows”. Ring any bells?
Well, here we are. Starmer is in power and his government has had plenty of time to let us know what to expect over the duration of this parliament
And they had the bloody nerve to call *us*, “Tory enablers”? Have you ever seen a Labour Party that is so reliably obedient to power and wealth?
What follows is what’s important
Now is the time to concern ourselves with what follows, because the British government has declared a vindictive and entirely unnecessary war on those with the least means to defend themselves.
Now is the time to confront the rampant inequality that slices its way through our little-remaining social fabric. Middle manager Starmer doesn’t want to spook the ruling classes, the billionaire media and the wealth-hoarding elite because he doesn’t have a fucking backbone.
Now is the time for Labour’s dogmatic obsession with debt reduction to end and Starmer’s useless government has to indicate how they are going to pay for the massive increase in public spending that is needed to produce economic growth.
Rachel from accounts’ plan for growth would make sense if she had a fucking clue knew how to achieve it. Employing Tory policies to tackle a Tory-made crisis isn’t going to create growth, but it will create hardship, record food bank usage, poverty wages, and a continuing downward spiral for your standard of living.
Are you a Labour supporter? Take a glance at the opinion polls and ask yourself if austerity 2.0 and trying to “out-racist the racists” in the upcoming Runcorn and Helsby by-election is working well for you and your party.
Labour are likely to lose this safe red seat to Reform UK. They are likely to lose the next general election because Keir Starmer and his rancid Labour government are synonymous with deceit, betrayal, incompetence, humiliation and hypocrisy.
Labour: letting in a Farage/Badenoch government
How does a Farage/Badenoch government sound to you, Mr Starmer? Because that is exactly where you are leading us to.
There is no trust in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, they have no ethics and no moral etiquette. If Keir Starmer told you to close your eyes so he can pray for you, keep one eye open.
By the time Keir Starmer has finished attacking sick and disabled people, privatising the NHS, killing off pensioners and reducing Britain to an insignificant, global laughing stock, you probably won’t see another Labour government in your lifetime.
Bookmark this article, come back in four years time and read this final sentence.
Labour will gift the next general election to the hard-right, marking the biggest defeat for an incumbent government since 1685, and hell on earth will be unleashed.
The 1981 Springbok Tour was one of the most controversial events in Aotearoa New Zealand’s history. For 56 days, between July and September, more than 150,000 people took part in more than 200 demonstrations in 28 centres.
It was the largest protest in the country’s history.
It caused social ruptures within communities and families across the country. With the National government backing the tour, protests against apartheid sport turned into confrontations with both police and pro-tour rugby fans — on marches and at matches.
The success of these mass protests was that this was the last tour in either country between the two teams with the strongest rivalry among rugby playing nations.
This deeply rooted antipathy towards the racism of apartheid helps provide context to today’s growing opposition by New Zealanders to the horrific actions of another apartheid state.
A township protest against apartheid in South Africa in 1980. Image: politicalbytes.blog
Understanding apartheid Apartheid is a humiliating, repressive and brutal legislated segregation through separation of social groups. In South Africa, this segregation was based on racism (white supremacy over non-whites; predominantly Black Africans but also Asians).
For nearly three centuries before 1948, Africans had been dispossessed and exploited by Dutch and British colonists. In 1948, this oppression was upgraded to an official legal policy of apartheid.
Apartheid does not have to be necessarily by race. It could also be religious based. An earlier example was when Christians separated Jews into ghettos on the false claim of inferiority.
In August 2024, Le Monde Diplomatic published article (paywalled) by German prize-winning journalist and author Charlotte Wiedemann on apartheid in both Israel and South Africa under the heading “When Apartheid met Zionism”:
She asked the pointed question of what did it mean to be Jewish in a country that saw Israel through the lens of its own experience of apartheid?
It is a fascinating question making her article an excellent read. Le Monde Diplomatic is a quality progressive magazine, well worth the subscription to read many articles as interesting as this one.
Relevant Wiedemann observations Wiedemann’s scope is wider than that of this blog but many of her observations are still pertinent to my analysis of the relationship between the two apartheid states.
Most early Jewish immigrants to South Africa fled pogroms and poverty in tsarist Lithuania. This context encouraged many to believe that every human being deserved equal respect, regardless of skin colour or origin.
Blatant widespread white-supremacist racism had been central to South Africa’s history of earlier Dutch and English colonialism. But this shifted to a further higher level in May 1948 when apartheid formally became central to South Africa’s legal and political system.
Although many Jews were actively opposed to apartheid it was not until 1985, 37 years later, that Jewish community leaders condemned it outright. In the words of Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris to the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission:
“The Jewish community benefited from apartheid and an apology must be given … We ask forgiveness.”
On the one hand, Jewish lawyers defended Black activists, But, on the other hand, it was a Jewish prosecutor who pursued Nelson Mandela with “extraordinary zeal” in the case that led to his long imprisonment.
Israel became one of apartheid South Africa’s strongest allies, including militarily, even when it had become internationally isolated, including through sporting and economic boycotts. Israel’s support for the increasingly isolated apartheid state was unfailing.
Jewish immigration to South Africa from the late 19th century brought two powerful competing ideas from Eastern Europe. One was Zionism while the other was the Bundists with a strong radical commitment to justice.
But it was Zionism that grew stronger under apartheid. Prior to 1948 it was a nationalist movement advocating for a homeland for Jewish people in the “biblical land of Israel”.
Zionism provided the rationale for the ideas that actively sought and achieved the existence of the Israeli state. This, and consequential forced removal of so many Palestinians from their homeland, made Zionism a “natural fit” in apartheid South Africa.
Nelson Mandela and post-apartheid South Africa Although strongly pro-Palestinian, post-apartheid South Africa has never engaged in Holocaust denial. In fact, Holocaust history is compulsory in its secondary schools.
Its first president, Nelson Mandela, was very clear about the importance of recognising the reality of the Holocaust. As Charlotte Wiedemann observes:
“Quite the reverse . . . In 1994 Mandela symbolically marked the end of apartheid at an exhibition about Anne Frank. ‘By honouring her memory as we do today’ he said at its opening, ‘we are saying with one voice: never and never again!’”
In a 1997 speech, on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Mandela also reaffirmed his support for Palestinian rights:
“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Mandela’s identification with Palestine was recognised by Palestinians themselves. This included the construction of an impressive statue of him on what remains of their West Bank homeland.
Palestinians stand next to a 6 metre high statue of Nelson Mandela following its inauguration ceremony in the West Bank city of Ramallah in 2016. It was donated by the South African city of Johannesburg, which is twinned with Ramallah. Image: politicalbytes.blog
Comparing apartheid in South Africa and Israel So how did apartheid in South Africa compare with apartheid in Israel. To begin with, while both coincidentally began in May 1948, in South Africa this horrendous system ended over 30 years ago. But in Israel it not only continues, it intensifies.
Broadly speaking, this included Israel adapting the infamously cruel “Bantustan system” of South Africa which was designed to maintain white supremacy and strengthen the government’s apartheid policy. It involved an area set aside for Black Africans, purportedly for notional self-government.
In South Africa, apartheid lasted until the early 1990s culminating in South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994.
Tragically, for Palestinians in their homeland, apartheid not only continues but is intensified by ethnic cleansing delivered by genocide, both incrementally and in surges.
Apartheid Plus: ethnic cleansing and genocide Israel has gone further than its former southern racist counterpart. Whereas South Africa’s economy depended on the labour exploitation of its much larger African workforce, this was relatively much less so for Israel.
As much as possible Israel’s focus was, and still is, instead on the forcible removal of Palestinians from their homeland.
This began in 1948 with what is known by Palestinians as the Nakba (“the catastrophe”) when many were physically displaced by the creation of the Israeli state. Genocide is the increasing means of delivering ethnic cleansing.
Ethnic cleansing is an attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas by deporting or forcibly displacing people belonging to particular ethnic groups.
It can also include the removal of all physical vestiges of the victims of this cleansing through the destruction of monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship.
This destructive removal has been the unfortunate Palestinian experience in much of today’s Israel and its occupied or controlled territories. It is continuing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Genocide involves actions intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
In contrast with civil war, genocide usually involves deaths on a much larger scale with civilians invariably and deliberately the targets. Genocide is an international crime, according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).
Today the Israeli slaughter and destruction in Gaza is a huge genocidal surge with the objective of being the “final solution” while incremental genocide of Palestinians speeds up in the occupied West Bank.
Notwithstanding the benefits of the recent ceasefire, it freed up Israel to militarily focus on repressing West Bank Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Israel’s genocide in Gaza during the current vulnerable hiatus of the ceasefire has shifted from military action to starvation.
The final word One of the encouraging features has been the massive protests against the genocide throughout the world. In a relative context, and while not on the same scale as the mass protests against the racist South African rugby tour in 1981, this includes New Zealand.
Many Jews, including in New Zealand and in the international protests such as at American universities, have been among the strongest critics of the ethnic cleansing through genocide of the apartheid Israeli state.
They have much in common with the above-mentioned Bundist focus on social justice in contrast to the dogmatic biblical extremism of Zionism.
Amos Goldberg, professor of genocidal studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is one such Jew. Let’s leave the final word to him:
“It’s so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained.”
This is a compelling case for the New Zealand government to join the many other countries in formally recognising the state of Palestine.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
This writer recalls back in the mid 80s when I took myself a vacation to Club Med in Martinique. It was discount time, June, so I could afford the week of fun. When I arrived at the facility, man it was a lot hotter than Elmont, Long Island. They placed me in a cottage with a roommate, nice guy from the Philly area, a bit younger than my 35 years. The first night we both were bushed from the trip and the heat. I lay in my bed with the bug net surrounding me. I suddenly realized that the place had no AC, just windows with slots… enough to let ALL the mosquitoes in. Having an enlarged prostate meant at least two or three trips to the john. My initial piss trip allowed me to see who my enemies were- mosquitoes, at least three or four humongous ones, awaited me by the toilet.
The next morning, after breakfast, I was walking through the grounds when something stung me in my calf. I hobbled to the infirmary to be treated as the lump just grew seemingly like a red cherry. That afternoon I said, “Screw this,” and I checked out immediately. A Mercedes town car picked me up and off I went to the airport. Before that, I called my secretary and arranged to have a taxi pick me up at JFK upon my arrival. A few brief hours later I was hobbling out of the cab and up to my attic apartment. As I entered the hallway, I fell to my knees and literally kissed the carpeted floor. At that moment I vowed to never diss my country again.
Sadly, my love affair with America only lasted until, 16 years later, the Bush-Cheney Cabal orchestrated their phony war on Iraq. From that point on I realized that I will always be in conflict between my love for what this nation should stand for, and the leaders who I cannot stand. Not enough bug nets to keep their evil away from me.
While public opinion of Israel plummets, each day the genocide continues without significant repercussions only reinforces that they can ignore this opinion, writes Alex Foley.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Alex Foley
Israel announced that Hossam Shabat was a “terrorist” alongside six other Palestinian journalists. Hossam predicted they would assassinate him.
He survived several attempts on his life. He wrote a brief obituary for himself at the age of 23, carried on reporting, and then on March 24, 2025, Israel killed him.
For those of us outside of Gaza, helpless to stop the carnage but unable to look away, a begrudging numbness has set in, a psychic lidocaine to cope with the daily images of the shattered bodies of dead children.
The other pro-Palestinian advocates and activists I speak with all mention familiar brain fogs and free-floating agitations.
By this point, I am accustomed to opening my phone and steeling myself for the horrors. But learning of Hossam’s death cut through me like a warm knife.
Through whatever fluke of the internet, many of the friends I have made over the course of the genocide are from the city of Beit Hanoun, like Hossam Shabat.
One was his classmate. Another walked with him through the bombed-out ruins of the North. Looking upon his upturned face, splattered with three stripes of crimson blood, I could not help but imagine each of them lying there in his place.
“Hossam Shabat wasn’t alone. He carried the grief of Beit Hanoun, the cries of children trapped under rubble, the aching voices of mothers queuing for bread, and the gasps of the wounded in hospitals that no longer functioned as hospitals.”
Many will remember the video of 14-year-old aspiring journalist Maisam Al-Masri greeting Hossam Shabat in his car, elated that he had not been killed when the occupation first took the North.
Separated from family
Hossam remained in Northern Gaza throughout the genocide, separated from his family, in full knowledge that staying and working was a death sentence. His reports were an invaluable insight into the occupation’s crimes, and for that they killed him.
In death, his eyes remained open, bearing witness one last time.
The Israeli account is, of course, very different. The Israeli army has claimed that Hossam Shabat was a “Hamas sniper” with the Beit Hanoun Battalion.
It is the kind of paper-thin lie we have grown accustomed to, dutifully repeated by the Western press. I am no military tactician, but I find it hard to believe that a young man with a high profile who reported his location frequently, including in live broadcasts, would be an effective sniper.
In the weeks before he was assassinated, Hossam Shabat was tweeting up to a dozen times a day.
Hasbara killed Hossam Shabat because it’s losing the PR war A qualitative shift has occurred over the course of the genocide; Israel no longer seems interested in or capable of convincing the rest of the world that its actions are just. Rather, they are preoccupied with producing increasingly flimsy justifications with the sole aim of quelling internal dissent.
The Hasbara machine is foundering.
How could it not? For 17 months we have experienced a daily split screen between the endless stream of atrocities committed against the Palestinians and the screeching histrionics of Zionist influencers. While the people of Gaza endure blockade and bombing, Noa Tishby and Michael Rapaport moan about campus demonstrations.
The campus encampments are also the subject of a new documentary, October 8, currently in theatres throughout the US. Originally titled October H8te, the film claims to be a “searing look at the eruption of antisemitism in America that started the day after Hamas’ attack on Israel”.
The trailer is a series of to-camera interviews of the usual suspects, all decrying the lack of support Zionists discovered in the wake of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. They cite social media censorship and foreign interference as reasons for Zionism’s wild unpopularity among college students.
It never seems to occur to them that it might be Israel’s actions doing the damage.
In a recently shared clip, former Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, leans into the victim role, fighting through tears that do not come while relaying a story of asking a close friend if she would hide her while the pair were on a walk. Sandberg attributes her friend’s confusion at the question to the woman not being Jewish and not to the fact that it is a frankly absurd thing for a woman worth over $2 billion to ask.
‘Disappearing’ student protesters
The reality is, while Sandberg talks about how unsafe she feels in the US because of the university encampments, the government itself has begun “disappearing” student protesters on her behalf.
Plainclothes ICE agents are continuing to abduct student activists like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk at the behest of Betar USA, a far-right militant movement founded by Jabotinsky that has been providing the Trump administration with deportation lists.
The violent fantasies that Sandberg argues warrant a global outpouring of sympathy for Zionists are being enacted on an almost daily basis against the very students she claims are a threat.
The hysteria around the encampments has reached a new ludicrous pitch with a lawsuit filed by a group including the families of hostages taken on October 7 against students at Columbia, among them Khalil, whom they allege have been coordinating with Hamas.
The “bombshell” filing includes such evidence as an Instagram post by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine published three minutes before Hamas’ attack that stated, “We are back!!” after the account was dormant for several months.
The reasonable person might note that the inactivity on the account coincided with the Summer holidays. They might point out that it seems unlikely Hamas was coordinating with student groups in the US about an operation that required the element of surprise.
They might even question what the American students could provide that would make such a risk worth it.
Securing flow of weapons
But Hasbara is no longer concerned with the reasonable person; its sole purpose is securing the flow of weapons. Despite the government announcing earlier this year that they are spending an additional $150 million on “international PR,” Israel seems increasingly uninterested in convincing anyone other than the Western governments that still back them.
While public opinion of Israel plummets, each day the genocide continues without significant repercussions only reinforces that they can ignore this opinion.
This is reflected in the degree to which the goalposts have shifted. First, we were told Israel would never bomb a hospital, then we were shown elaborate schematics of nonexistent subterranean command centres, and now they execute and bury first responders without so much as a shrug.
The perverse result of Hasbara falling apart is more brazen, ruthless killing.
While legacy media may still run interference for Israel and universities continue to roll over for the Trump administration, Israel is facing a real threat. It can kill and kill — the number of journalists they have slain far outstrips other major conflicts — but for every Hossam Shabat they kill, there is a Maisam waiting in the wings, ready to shed light on their crimes.
Alex Foley is a researcher and painter living in Brighton, UK. They have a background in molecular biology of health and disease. They are the co-founder of the Accountability Archive, a web tool preserving fragile digital evidence of pro-genocidal rhetoric from power holders. Follow them on X:@foleywoley Republished from The New Arab under Creative Commons.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Now that Phil Goff has ended his term as New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, he is officially free to speak his mind on the damage he believes the Trump Administration is doing to the world. He has started with these comments he made on the betrayal of Ukraine by the new Administration.
By Phil Goff
Like many others, I was appalled and astounded by the dishonest comments made about the situation in Ukraine by the Trump Administration.
As one untruthful statement followed another like something out of a George Orwell novel, I increasingly felt that the lies needed to be called out.
I found it bizarre to hear President Trump publicly label Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator. Everyone knew that Zelenskyy had been democratically elected and while Trump claimed his support in the polls had fallen to 4 percent it was pointed out that his actual support was around 57 percent.
Phil Goff speaking as Auckland’s mayor in 2017 on the nuclear world 30 years on . . . on the right side of history. Image: Pacific Media Centre
Trump made no similar remarks or criticism of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and never does. Yet Putin’s regime imprisons and murders his opponents and suppresses democratic rights in Russia.
Then Trump made the patently false accusation that Ukraine started the war with Russia. How could he make such a claim when the world had witnessed Russia as the aggressor which invaded its smaller neighbour, killing thousands of civilians, committing war crimes and destroying cities and infrastructure?
That President Trump could lie so blatantly is perhaps explained by his taking offence at Zelenskyy’s refusal to comply with unreasonable and self-serving demands such as ceding control of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to the US. What was also clear was that Trump was intent on pressuring Ukraine to capitulate to Russian demands for a one sided “peace settlement” which would result in neither a fair nor sustainable peace.
It is astonishing that the US voted with Russia and North Korea in the United Nations against Ukraine and in opposition to the views of democratic countries the US is normally aligned with, including New Zealand.
Withdrew satellite imaging
It then withdrew satellite imaging services Ukraine needed for its self defence in an attempt to further pressure Zelenskyy to agree to a ceasefire. No equivalent pressure has yet been placed on Russia even while it has continued its illegal attacks on Ukraine.
Trump and Vance’s disgraceful bullying of Zelenskyy in the White House as he struggled in his third language to explain the plight of his nation was as remarkable as it was appalling.
What Trump was doing and saying was wrong and a betrayal of Ukraine’s struggle to defend its freedom and nationhood.
Democratic leaders around the world knew his comments to be unfair and untrue, yet few countries have dared to criticise Trump for making them.
Like the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, everyone knew that the emperor had no clothes but were fearful of the consequences of speaking out to tell the truth.
As New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, I had on a number of occasions met and talked with Ukrainian soldiers being trained by New Zealanders in Britain. It was an emotionally intense experience knowing that many of the men I met with would soon face death on the front line defending their country’s freedom and nationhood.
They were extremely grateful of New Zealand’s unwavering support. Yet the Trump Administration seemed to care little for that country’s cause and sacrifice in defending the values that a few months earlier had seemed so important to the United States.
The diplomatic community in London privately shared their dismay at Trump’s treatment of Ukraine. The spouse of one of my High Commissioner colleagues who had been a teacher drew a parallel with what she had witnessed in the playground. The bully would abuse a victim while all the other kids looked on and were too intimidated to intervene. The majority thus became the enablers of the bully’s actions.
Silence condoning Trump
By saying nothing, New Zealand — and many other countries — was effectively condoning and being complicit in what Trump was doing.
The lesson of history, going back to the Munich Conference in 1938, when British Prime Minister Chamberlain and his French counterpart Daladier ceded the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, was clear.
Far from satisfying or placating an aggressor, appeasement only increases their demands. That’s always the case with bullies. They respect strength, not weakness.
Czechoslovakia could have been part of the Allied defence against Hitler’s expansionism but instead it and the Czech armaments industry was passed over to Hitler. He went on to take over the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland.
As Churchill told Chamberlain, “You had the choice between dishonour and war. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”
The question needed to be asked because Trump was using talking points which followed closely those used by the Kremlin itself and was clearly setting out to appease and favour Russia.
A career diplomat, trained as a public servant to be cautious, might have not have asked it. I was appointed, with bipartisan support, not as a career diplomat but on the basis of political experience including nine years as Foreign, Trade and Defence Minister.
Question central to validity, ethics
“The question is central to the validity as well as the ethics of the United States’ approach to Ukraine. It is also a question that trusted allies, who have made sacrifices for and with each other over the past century, have a right and duty to ask.
The New Zealand Foreign Minister’s response was that the question did not reflect the view of New Zealand’s Government and that asking it made my position as High Commissioner untenable.
The minister had the prerogative to take the action he did and I am not complaining about that for one moment. For my part, I do not regret asking the question which thanks to the minister’s response subsequently received international attention.
Over the decades New Zealand has earned the respect of the world, from allies and opponents alike, for honestly standing up for the values our country holds dear. The things we are proudest of as a nation in the positions we have taken internationally include our role as one of the founding states of the United Nations in promoting a rules-based international system including our opposition to powerful states exercising a veto.
They include opposing apartheid in South Africa and French nuclear testing in the Pacific. We did not abandon our nuclear free policy to US pressure.
In wars and in peacekeeping we have been there when it counted and have made sacrifices disproportionate to our size.
We have never been afraid to challenge aggressors or to ask questions of our allies. In asking a question about President Trump’s position on Ukraine I am content that my actions will be on the right side of history.
Phil Goff, CNZM, is a New Zealand retired politician and former diplomat. He served as leader of the Labour Party and leader of the Opposition between 11 November 2008 and 13 December 2011. Goff was elected mayor of Auckland in 2016, and served two terms, before retiring in 2022. In 2023, he took up a diplomatic post as High Commissioner of New Zealand to the United Kingdom, which he held until last month when he was sacked by Foreign Minister Winston Peters over his “untenable” comments.
On April 2, Reuters headlined “US officials object to European push to buy weapons locally,” which means that Trump’s demand for Europe to increase greatly its ‘defense’ spending is, indeed, part of his plan to keep the boom in the U.S. stock markets going. This needs to be understood in the relevant context:
Right now, Trump is promising to stop America’s apparently ceaseless creation of, and participation (such as in Ukraine) in, foreign wars, but he isn’t reducing — and is instead actually increasing — America’s ‘defense’ (aggression) expenditures while cutting virtually everything else (the federal expenditures that don’t help billionaires); and, in order to do this beyond the 2027 end-date of his $400 billion weapons-sale to the Sauds, he is trying to get America’s colonies (‘allies’), such as Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc., to increase their armaments-purchases from American firms such as Lockheed Martin — the firms whose sales-volumes are especially important to America’s billionaires, the people who control the U.S. Government. This is why he doesn’t want Europeans to grow their own ‘defense’ industries.
If a European nation will allow foreign (especially American) billionaires to benefit from its sharp increase in armaments-purchases, this won’t hurt ONLY their own domestic billionaires, but it will ALSO be sending those manufacturing jobs to America and thereby boost America’s economy at the expense of the local economy. For Trump to be requesting them to do that is to insult not only that country’s billionaires but also its residents.
This is not the only reason why NATO might soon break apart. For example: Trump is determined to take Greenland for the U.S. Government — to expand the U.S. to include Greenland. However, polls show that around 85% of Greenlanders are opposed to that, and Trump is also saying that if they won’t willingly comply, then he will do it militarily. Greenland is a Danish colony, and Denmark is a part of NATO. If the U.S. invades Greenland, then how will other countries in NATO feel about that? It would present the U.S. blatantly as aggressor against a NATO member-nation — the very nation that had previously been supposedly their chief protector. What would this do to NATO?
The U.S. Congress is, according to the U.S. Constitution, supposed to be the ultimate determinant of whether or not U.S. military forces invade another country; but, so far, there has been prevailing silence from Congress about Trump’s threat against Greenlanders and even Danes — not the outrage that would prevail if America were still governed under its Constitution.
We are entering the twilight zone. Will it turn out to be the end of the U.S. empire — the end of the largest empire in all of world history? It could — especially if Congress remains silent about what has been happening. The longer this silence continues, the deeper into it we are getting.
This is certainly a weird moment in world history. Of course, ultimately, NATO will end, but the question is when and how. NATO had started on 25 July 1945 as a sentiment and resulting decision by Truman, and was then born in 1949, but is probably near its end now, and the public don’t know it because lots of ‘history’ that has been told in The West is false.
The US administration claims these tariffs on imports will reduce the US trade deficit and address what it views as unfair and non-reciprocal trade practices. Trump said this would
forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed.
The “reciprocal” tariffs are designed to impose charges on other countries equivalent to half the costs they supposedly inflict on US exporters through tariffs, currency manipulation and non-tariff barriers levied on US goods.
Each nation received a tariff number that will apply to most goods. Notable sectors exempt include steel, aluminium and motor vehicles, which are already subject to new tariffs.
The minimum baseline tariff for each country is 10 percent. But many countries received higher numbers, including Vietnam (46 percent), Thailand (36 percent), China (34 percent), Indonesia (32 percent), Taiwan (32 percent) and Switzerland (31 percent).
The tariff number for China is in addition to an existing 20 percent tariff, so the total tariff applied to Chinese imports is 54 percent. Countries assigned 10 percent tariffs include Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Canada and Mexico are exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, for now, but goods from those nations are subject to a 25 percent tariff under a separate executive order.
Although some countries do charge higher tariffs on US goods than the US imposes on their exports, and the “Liberation Day” tariffs are allegedly only half the full reciprocal rate, the calculations behind them are open to challenge.
For example, non-tariff measures are notoriously difficult to estimate and “subject to much uncertainty”, according to one recent study.
GDP impacts with retaliation Other countries are now likely to respond with retaliatory tariffs on US imports. Canada (the largest destination for US exports), the EU and China have all said they will respond in kind.
To estimate the impacts of this tit-for-tat trade standoff, I use a global model of the production, trade and consumption of goods and services. Similar simulation tools — known as “computable general equilibrium models” — are widely used by governments, academics and consultancies to evaluate policy changes.
The first model simulates a scenario in which the US imposes reciprocal and other new tariffs, and other countries respond with equivalent tariffs on US goods. Estimated changes in GDP due to US reciprocal tariffs and retaliatory tariffs by other nations are shown in the table below.
The tariffs decrease US GDP by US$438.4 billion (1.45 percent). Divided among the nation’s 126 million households, GDP per household decreases by $3,487 per year. That is larger than the corresponding decreases in any other country. (All figures are in US dollars.)
Proportional GDP decreases are largest in Mexico (2.24 percent) and Canada (1.65 percent) as these nations ship more than 75 percent of their exports to the US. Mexican households are worse off by $1,192 per year and Canadian households by $2,467.
Other nations that experience relatively large decreases in GDP include Vietnam (0.99 percent) and Switzerland (0.32 percent).
Some nations gain from the trade war. Typically, these face relatively low US tariffs (and consequently also impose relatively low tariffs on US goods). New Zealand (0.29 percent) and Brazil (0.28 percent) experience the largest increases in GDP. New Zealand households are better off by $397 per year.
Aggregate GDP for the rest of the world (all nations except the US) decreases by $62 billion.
At the global level, GDP decreases by $500 billion (0.43 percent). This result confirms the well-known rule that trade wars shrink the global economy.
GDP impacts without retaliation In the second scenario, the modelling depicts what happens if other nations do not react to the US tariffs. The changes in the GDP of selected countries are presented in the table below.
Countries that face relatively high US tariffs and ship a large proportion of their exports to the US experience the largest proportional decreases in GDP. These include Canada, Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, Switzerland, South Korea and China.
Countries that face relatively low new tariffs gain, with the UK experiencing the largest GDP increase.
The tariffs decrease US GDP by $149 billion (0.49 percent) because the tariffs increase production costs and consumer prices in the US.
Aggregate GDP for the rest of the world decreases by $155 billion, more than twice the corresponding decrease when there was retaliation. This indicates that the rest of the world can reduce losses by retaliating. At the same time, retaliation leads to a worse outcome for the US.
Previous tariff announcements by the Trump administration dropped sand into the cogs of international trade. The reciprocal tariffs throw a spanner into the works. Ultimately, the US may face the largest damages.
What’s the best way to relatably communicate the carbon footprint of food products on their packaging?
What do a running man, a banana, and a footprint all have in common?
No, it’s not the start of a bad joke, but each of these items has been used at one point or another to communicate risk to the public.
The ‘Banana Equivalent Dose’ was developed in the mid-90s as a way for scientists to explain radiation levels to a population concerned about nuclear exposure. Bananas contain potassium, a naturally radioactive substance, albeit in very small amounts – approximately 0.1 microsieverts per fruit.
This fact led to the evolution of a banana rating scale to help explain nuclear exposure in units that were more easily understandable by you and me – going for a dental X-ray? That’s 50 bananas’ worth of radiation. Flying from New York to London? 400 bananas. Heading to your scheduled mammogram? 20,000 bananas.
What about living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant? Surprisingly, that’s the equivalent radiation dose to consuming just one extra banana per year.
Making climate risks relatable
Courtesy: Fork Ranger
This idea of communicating risk using intuitive units rather than raw statistics has latterly also been trialled by the food industry. For example, brands have experimented with adding ‘exercise equivalent’ labels to products explaining how much time you’d need to spend running or walking to burn off the snack that you just ate. This time, one banana is equivalent to a 20-minute walk. A bar of chocolate, on the other hand, will double your walk length, while a large pizza will cost you an 80-minute hike.
And a similar approach has also been explored to explain the environmental risks associated with our diets. Here, research has looked into the benefits of communicating carbon emissions as a traffic light grading system, total values (an approach chosen by brands such as Oatly or Quorn), or simply designating items as ‘sustainable’ or ‘plant-based’.
A little footprint icon or green leaf is often used on packaging and menus, while more recent research has looked into coloured food emojis as a more tangible alternative.
Equivalently effective labeling
The intention here is to communicate an otherwise complicated idea in more relatable terms, enabling consumers to make more mindful food choices. But, the big question is: do any of these approaches actually work?
When it comes to making healthier food choices, the research suggests that exercise equivalent labelling is indeed better than no labelling to help us cut the calories, but shows little benefit above standard numeric kcal information. For carbon footprints, fewer studies have looked into equivalent labels, although adding carbon information has been found to motivate more sustainable food choices in general. There is, however, no compelling evidence that one label format – i.e. colours, icons or numbers – is superior to any other. It’s all equivalent, it seems.
Clouds, coal or car trips?
Courtesy: Royal Society for Public Health
This leads us to the question: what is the most intuitive unit of carbon to communicate to the public? Should we be sticking with the numbers, or instead talking in terms of the size of a smoke cloud issuing from a factory chimney, the number of chunks of coal or even cans of carbonated drink that we have avoided when switching to more sustainable snacks?
Perhaps not, although using equivalent values that more naturally fit our own ‘saving the planet’ mental schemas may help. For example, talking in terms of the activities that we are already doing to cut our personal environmental footprints, such as making fewer car trips or fewer laundry loads, recycling bottles or cans, or avoiding plastic bags.
Some quick calculations (with the help of ChatGPT) suggest that switching out one average burger meal may be equivalent to avoiding 3 typical car trips or 2 loads of laundry, recycling 10 aluminium cans, or foregoing 155 plastic bags. While these figures require more accurate calculation, they do help put our dietary choices into the context of our daily efforts to live more sustainably.
Climate costs in micro-lives
Previous health research can also inspire other ideas to enhance the impact of carbon labels. Personalising risk estimates or visualising consequences (as in the case of cigarette pack images) have been used with some success to change risky health behaviours.
Other studies have tried to make risk more concrete and salient by communicating the minutes of your life that you will lose as a direct consequence of small, but cumulative bad habits. Smoking one cigarette will cost you 20 minutes of life, for example, while switching out 10% of your daily calories from beef to plant-based foods will save you 48 minutes.
This concept of micro impacts might similarly prove valuable to describe the environmental impact of different items in more consequential terms. Relevant micro units here might be something like ‘days of extra AC you’ll need to pay for to combat extreme heat’ or ‘days that you’ll spend breathing in highly polluted air’ per steak consumed.
It is here that the concept of ‘omni’ labels has been floated, as a way to communicate multiple health and environmental impacts wrapped into a single label or score. It remains to be seen whether cleverly designed versions of these labels will help consumers to make more value-aligned food choices, or whether they will just wash out the effect of a single compelling impact metric or lead to more overall confusion about what to eat.
While describing the environmental impact of our food is a valuable way for businesses to engage consumers and support better choices, carbon ‘literacy’ amongst the public remains low, and for those consumers who value convenience, taste or price to a greater extent than sustainability, omni-labels may be a case of just too much information. For these shoppers, a solid carbon equivalent label, in whatever format, might prove effective at landing the intended point of ‘eat this, not that’.
And if you’re thinking that reviving that banana benchmark might be a good way to go here, you may like to know you can eat almost 17 fruits to match the carbon footprint of one single beef burger.
Ironically, it was the US under President Trump which has broken with the US national security establishment’s bi-partisan strategy of incremental encirclement and escalation against Russia. That break offered Europe the opportunity to escape the trap created by its past lack of policy vision. Instead, Europe has proved plus royaliste que le roi (more royal than the King) and has remained loyal to the US national security Deep State.
In her recent “Threat Assessment” testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reasonably described Russia as a “formidable competitor.” However, in keeping with Trump’s desire for improved diplomatic and economic relations with Moscow, she avoided the word “adversary.” And, in a thinly disguised reference to Biden’s “Ukraine Project,” Gabbard said that Russia has gained significant information about US intelligence and weapons from the Ukraine war. As for Biden’s plan to weaken or overthrow Putin, Gabbard concluded that the Russian leader “is presently less likely to be replaced than at any point in his quarter-century rule.” Gabbard’s assessment was considerably at odds with those under Biden, which referred to Russia’s “malign influence” and a threat to the United States and its allies. Most important is the conclusion that “This grinding war of attrition will lead to a steady erosion of Kyiv’s position on the battlefield, regardless of any U.S. or allied attempt to impose new and greater costs on Moscow.” This is not an equivocal statement, and Trump surely knows it’s true.
One encouraging consequence of the report is that it leaves Democrats and liberals in the awkward position of supporting not just a lost cause but one that’s increasingly becoming known as a war provoked by the United States. Those who’ve long asserted that Ukraine was used as a proxy have been provided further vindication — as if any was needed — by the “expose” in the New York Times, titled “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine.” The roughly 13,000-word piece is “secret” only if one relies on the Times as their only source of information. In any event, the article details how American military and intelligence officers shaped Ukraine’s strategy. Planning began with the US and Ukraine at a clandestine meeting in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 2022, a gathering known “only to a small circle of American and allied officials.” As the war progressed, “One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback by how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in the Ukraine operation. They are part of the kill chain now.”
One surely unintended takeaway for the reader from the Times’ investigation is US hubris. According to the authors, the Biden administration provided everything to Ukraine but boots on the ground, and the effort was succeeding until the Spring of 2023. At that point, Ukrainian generals went rogue, became disobedient, and denied their US overlords a devastating victory over Russian forces. The latter are barely stick figures waiting to be chopped down by Ukrainian forces, who the omniscient American advisors have been giving every advantage. Zelensky also receives his share of the blame because he was too obsessed with good PR to be an effective wartime leader.
Notably, none of the 300 (mostly anonymous) interviewees were Russian, so that perspective is absent. Not surprisingly, there’s neither a scintilla of remorse nor even a tacit admission of the price Ukrainians paid for allowing their country to be used by the United States in this manner. Finally, one is forced to wonder whether this duplicitous account of the war will be the “blame game” narrative for the Democrats when the war is lost.
Checkmate in Ukraine isn’t imminent, but nothing can be done to prevent the loss of this US-initiated war. Putin has a strong hand to play, and all indications point toward the conclusion that the longer the fighting continues, the more territory will fall to Russian advances. Whether Trump will be able to end the war remains an open question. We know that Starmer, Macron, Mertz (once he assumes the German chancellorship), and Zelensky all seek to sabotage peace. And in Kyiv, the Azov Battalion has morphed into the Third Army Brigade, and its leader is Andriy Biletsky, today’s Stephan Bandera. He and his Hitler-worshipping Nazi followers oppose any negotiations with Russia and will continue some rearguard action until they are finally vanquished.
Trump also faces strong opposition from neoliberal warhawks like Waltz and Rubio. I sense that if Trump wants an actual peace settlement—and I believe he does—he must instruct more capable and trustworthy negotiators that Moscow sees Ukraine as an existential threat and its demands are non-negotiable. Russia is clearly winning and continues to absorb more territory. Finally, I wouldn’t bet against Trump going back on his promise and walking away from the Ukraine Project, leaving the remaining parties to resolve matters.
Because the billionaire sector of the US ruling class behind Trump has a different world order in mind, the present iteration of European oligarchs find themselves up that proverbial creek without paddles. Trump isn’t even bothering to say, “Thank you for your service in fighting Russia” because he knows these vassals enthusiastically cooperated with a doom-to-fail war that killed well over a million soldiers. In a final desperate attempt to save themselves, Europe’s soon-to-be politically extinct vassals want Trump to give them a “security guarantee” before inserting their own “peacekeepers” into Ukraine. That will never happen
Some critics have employed words like delusional, crazy, and stupid to describe European leaders. However, it’s more accurate to say that these heads of state are so heavily invested in the fable, the fiction of the “Russian threat,” for over seventy years in order to maintain their junior accomplice role with Washington. Thomas Palley argues they have become a “US foreign policy satrap, a condition which still endures.” These leaders are certainly not “stupid,” and they know that if the truth about the “Ukraine project” gains traction — and Trump seeks closer relations with Russia — suspicions will rise within the European public that Russophobia was manufactured and remains a hoax.
Finally, as I have argued in the past, what makes Ukraine so difficult to grasp is the edifice of lies, the false narrative about the “Russian threat” that is so pervasive in the popular mindset and used to disguise the actual motives behind US imperialism. Political scientist Michael Parenti once characterized this as “suppression by omission,” in this case, the entire context of the war in Ukraine. We must use every means to bring those omissions to light.
