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Category: Opinion

  • A war on diplomacy itself – Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran

    ANALYSIS: By Joe Hendren

    Had Israel not launched its unprovoked attack on Iran on Friday night, in direct violation of the UN Charter, Iran would now be taking part in the sixth round of negotiations concerning the future of its nuclear programme, meeting with representatives from the United States in Muscat, the capital of Oman.

    Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed he acted to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb, saying Iran had the capacity to build nine nuclear weapons. Israel provided no evidence to back up its claims.

    On 25 March 2025, Trump’s own National Director of Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said: 

    “The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003. The IC is monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorise its nuclear weapons programme”

    Even if Iran had the capability to build a bomb, it is quite another thing to have the will to do so.

    Any such bomb would need to be tested first, and any such test would be quickly detected by a series of satellites on the lookout for nuclear detonations anywhere on the planet.

    It is more likely that Israel launched its attack to stop US and Iranian negotiators from meeting on Sunday.

    Only a month ago, Iran’s lead negotiator in the nuclear talks, Ali Shamkhani, told US television that Iran was ready to do a deal. NBC journalist Richard Engel reports:

    “Shamkhani said Iran is willing to commit to never having a nuclear weapon, to get rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, to only enrich to a level needed for civilian use and to allow inspectors in to oversee it all, in exchange for lifting all sanctions immediately. He said Iran would accept that deal tonight.”


    Inside Iran as Trump presses for nuclear deal.   Video: NBC News

    Shamkhani died on Saturday, following injuries he suffered during Israel’s attack on Friday night. It appears that Israel not only opposed a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear impasse: Israel killed it directly.

    A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baghaei, told a news conference in Tehran the talks would be suspended until Israel halts its attacks:

    “It is obvious that in such circumstances and until the Zionist regime’s aggression against the Iranian nation stops, it would be meaningless to participate with the party that is the biggest supporter and accomplice of the aggressor.”

    On 1 April 2024, Israel launched an airstrike on Iran’s embassy in Syria, killing 16 people, including a woman and her son. The attack violated international norms regarding the protection of diplomatic premises under the Vienna Convention.

    Yet the UK, USA and France blocked a United Nations Security Council statement condemning Israel’s actions.

    It is worth noting how the The New York Times described the occupation of the US Embassy in November 1979:

    “But it is the Ayatollah himself who is doing the devil’s work by inciting and condoning the student invasion of the American and British Embassies in Tehran. This is not just a diplomatic affront; it is a declaration of war on diplomacy itself, on usages and traditions honoured by all nations, however old and new, whatever belief.

    “The immunities given a ruler’s emissaries were respected by the kings of Persia during wars with Greece and by the Ayatollah’s spiritual ancestors during the Crusades.”

    Now it is Israel conducting a “war on diplomacy itself”, first with the attack on the embassy, followed by Friday’s surprise attack on Iran. Scuppering a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue appears to be the aim. To make matters worse, Israel’s recklessness could yet cause a major war.

    Trump: Inconsistent and ineffective
    In an interview with Time magazine on 22 April 2025, Trump denied he had stopped Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear sites.

    “No, it’s not right. I didn’t stop them. But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, because I think we can make a deal without the attack. I hope we can. It’s possible we’ll have to attack because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.

    “But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, but I didn’t say no. Ultimately I was going to leave that choice to them, but I said I would much prefer a deal than bombs being dropped.”

    — US President Donald Trump

    In the same interview Trump boasted “I think we’re going to make a deal with Iran. Nobody else could do that.” Except, someone else had already done that — only for Trump to abandon the deal in his first term as president.

    In July 2015 Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) alongside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and the European Union. Iran pledged to curb its nuclear programme for 10-15 years in exchange for the removal of some economic sanctions. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also gained access and verification powers.

    Iran also agreed to limit uranium enrichment to 3.67 per cent U-235, allowing it to maintain its nuclear power reactors.

    Despite clear signs the nuclear deal was working, Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and reinstated sanctions on Iran in November 2018. Despite the unilateral American action, Iran kept to the deal for a time, but in January 2020 Iran declared it would no longer abide by the limitations included in JCPOA but would continue to work with the IAEA.

    By pulling out of the deal and reinstating sanctions, the US and Israel effectively created a strong incentive for Iran to resume enriching uranium to higher levels, not for the sake of making a bomb, but as the most obvious means of creating leverage to remove the sanctions.

    As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Iran is allowed to enrich uranium for civilian fuel programmes.

    Iran’s nuclear programme began in the 1960s with US assistance. Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran was ruled by the brutal dictatorship of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahavi.

    American corporations saw Iran as a potential market for expansion. During the 1970s the US suggested to the Shah he needed not one but several nuclear reactors to meet Iran’s future electricity needs. In June 1974, the Shah declared that Iran would have nuclear weapons, “without a doubt and sooner than one would think”.

    In 2007, I wrote an article for Peace Researcher where I examined US claims that Iran does not need nuclear power because it is sitting on one of the largest gas supplies in the world. One of the most interesting things I discovered while researching the article was the relevance of air pollution, a critical public health concern in Iran.

    In 2024, health officials estimated that air pollution is responsible for 40,000 deaths a year in Iran. Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi said the “majority of these deaths were due to cardiovascular diseases, strokes, respiratory issues, and cancers”.

    Sahimi describes levels of air pollution in Tehran and other major Iranian cities as “catastrophic”, with elementary schools having to close on some days as a result. There was little media coverage of the air pollution issue in relation to Iran’s energy mix then, and I have seen hardly any since.

    An energy research project, Advanced Energy Technologies provides a useful summary of electricity production in Iran as it stood in 2023.

    Iranian electricity production in 2023. Source: Advanced Energy Technologies

    With around 94.6 percent of electricity generation dependent on fossil fuels, there are serious environmental reasons why Iran should not be encouraged to depend on oil and gas for its electricity needs — not to mention the prospect of climate change.

    One could also question the safety of nuclear power in one of the most seismically active countries in the world, however it would be fair to ask the same question of countries like Japan, which aims to increase its use of nuclear power to about 20 percent of the country’s total electricity generation by 2040, despite the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that Iran’s uranium enrichment programme “must continue”, but the “scope and level may change”. Prior to the talks in Oman, Araghchi highlighted the “constant change” in US positions as a problem.

    Trump’s rhetoric on uranium enrichment has shifted repeatedly.

    He told Meet the Press on May 4 that “total dismantlement” of the nuclear program is “all I would accept.” He suggested that Iran does not need nuclear energy because of its oil reserves. But on May 7, when asked specifically about allowing Iran to retain a limited enrichment program, Trump said “we haven’t made that decision yet.”

    Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a May 14 interview with NBC that Iran is ready to sign a deal with the United States and reiterated that Iran is willing to limit uranium enrichment to low levels. He previously suggested in a May 7 post on X that any deal should include a “recognition of Iran’s right to industrial enrichment.”

    That recognition, plus the removal of U.S. and international sanctions, “can guarantee a deal,” Shamkhani said.

    So with Iran seemingly willing to accept reasonable conditions, why was a deal not reached last month? It appears the US changed its position, and demanded Iran cease all enrichment of uranium, including what Iran needs for its power stations.

    One wonders if Zionist lobby groups like AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) influenced this decision. One could recall what happened during Benjamin Netanyahu’s first stint as Israel’s Prime Minister (1996-1999) to illustrate the point.

    In April 1995 AIPAC published a report titled ‘Comprehensive US Sanctions Against Iran: A Plan for Action’. In 1997 Mohammad Khatami was elected as President of Iran. The following year Khatami expressed regret for the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and denounced terrorism against Israelis, while noting that “supporting peoples who fight for their liberation of their land is not, in my opinion, supporting terrorism”.

    The threat of improved relations between Iran and the US sent the Israeli government led by Netanyahu into a panic. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that “Israel has expressed concern to Washington of an impending change of policy by the United States towards Iran” adding that Netanyahu “asked AIPAC . . . to act vigorously in Congress to prevent such a policy shift.”

    Twenty years ago the Israeli lobby were claiming an Iranian nuclear bomb was imminent. It didn’t happen.


    Netanyahu’s Iran nuclear warnings.   Video: Al Jazeera

    The misguided efforts of Israel and the United States to contain Iran’s use of nuclear technology are not only counterproductive — they risk being a catastrophic failure. If one was going to design a policy to convince Iran nuclear weapons may be needed for its own defence, it is hard to imagine a policy more effective than the one Israel has pursued for the past 30 years.My 2007 Peace Researcher article asked a simple question: ‘Why does Iran want nuclear weapons?’ My introduction could have been written yesterday.

    “With all the talk about Iran and the intentions of its nuclear programme it is a shame the West continues to undermine its own position with selective morality and obvious hypocrisy. It seems amazing there can be so much written about this issue, yet so little addresses the obvious question – ‘for what reasons could Iran want nuclear weapons?’.

    “As Simon Jenkins (2006) points out, the answer is as simple as looking at a map. ‘I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has no right’ to nuclear defence?’”

    This week the German Foreign Office reached new heights in hypocrisy with this absurd tweet.

    Image

    Iran has no nuclear weapons. Israel does. Iran is a signatory to the NPT. Israel is not. Iran allows IAEA inspections. Israel does not.

    Starting another war will not make us forget, nor forgive what Israel is doing in Gaza.

    From the river to the sea, credibility requires consistency.

    I write about New Zealand and international politics, with particular interests in political economy, history, philosophy, transport, and workers’ rights. I don’t like war very much.

    Joe Hendren writes about New Zealand and international politics, with particular interests in political economy, history, philosophy, transport, and workers’ rights. Republished with his permission. Read this original article on his Substack account with full references.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Uncomfortably Numb!

    Having someone close to me with a severe mental condition as the needles of American Fascism penetrate my psyche is much too much. The boob tube lies to me about what Israel is doing to Gaza and now Iran. Having neighbors surrounding me who are either oblivious to what the MAGA machine is shredding, or so mesmerized by it causes my retreat into my music. By music I mean the deep, rich, creative words and music of my 60s and 70s baby boomer favorites. I sit here listening, over and over, to Pink Floyd’s classic Comfortably Numb with David Gilmore’s guitar artistry in his solo near the end. Sometimes one needs not marijuana to flavor the ear.

    Perhaps the mentally ill person I love is correct, unintentionally, in evading the effects of this government’s lunacy, and that of the Israelis. Marines and National Guard troops sent into LA because the public demands to be heard in peaceful symphony. A President and his inner sanctum that intend to transform us into Germany circa 1930s. They replace the ‘Jew vermin’ with the ‘Illegal alien vermin’. The one constant is that all who oppose the MAGA MACHINE are just as Red as those who opposed the Nazi juggernaut.

    I guess some things never change. The support for this dangerous Israeli government is congruent with Trump’s support for our Military Industrial Empire, feeding that beast with more of our tax dollars. His assault on everything vital, from Medicaid, food for the elderly and infirm delivered to their abodes, labor unions or labor organizing, daycare, public education… and pretty soon the big scissor on our cherished Medicare and Social Security.

    I once interviewed a man who was tortured in captivity. After hearing of all the terrible things they did to his body, and his mind, I asked him how did he survive. He said that after awhile he just became numb to it all, both physically and mentally. Uncomfortably Numb!

    The post Uncomfortably Numb! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • New Washington Post Opinion editor claims explicitly right-wing revamp isn’t ‘Ideological’

    As I wrote for TRNN back in February, mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos is now completing the full ideological take over of the US’s second-most influential newspaper’s opinion section. But, like all good right-wing takeovers, it’s important for those engaging in said right-wing takeover that you not think of it as right-wing, or them as agents of right-wing ideology but, instead, above such petty, small-minded, and worldly matters. They are not only not right-wing—they really, really need you to know they exist above and outside of ideology. 

    On Wednesday, the Washington Post named the Economist’s Washington correspondent Adam O’Neal as its next opinion editor. In his announcement on Twitter, O’Neal parroted his new boss’ words from last February almost verbatim, telling Post readers in a chummy front-facing camera announcement that:

    [Washington Post opinion page writers and editors are] going to be stalwart advocates of free markets and personal liberties. We’ll be unapologetically patriotic too. Our philosophy will be rooted in fundamental optimism about the future of this country. What we won’t be are people who lecture you about ideology or demand you think certain ways about policy.

    (This phrasing is copy and pasted from Bezos’ announcement five months ago that the Post opinion section will work in “support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.”)

    To recap: Post opinion section writers will be “stalwart advocates of free markets” and be “unapologetically patriotic” but also not “lecture [us] about ideology.” The obvious flaw in this plan, of course, is that advocating for “free markets,” e.g. capitalism and patriotism, e.g. advocating for US supremacy, is very much an ideological position.. One may think they are inarguably cool and self-evidently awesome but they, nonetheless, are ideological conceits requiring ideological production and reproduction. 

    Despite the second-richest person in the world and his new mercenary mouthpiece’s implied claims to the contrary, “free markets” and “patriotism” are not organic features of reality like gravity or the cosmological constant, but ideological constructs. And requiring opinion writers embrace these ideological constructs, as slippery and vague as they may be, is an ideological litmus test for writing for Bezos’ publication. The Post opinion page revamp is thus an explicitly right-wing project designed to advance the ideologies of capitalism and US hegemony.

    In a country of 330 million self-perceived free-thinking rebels––including, most gratingly, all of our mega-billionaires––all ideological formations must therefore present as edgy and subversive, as speaking truth to the powerful, even those openly marionetting for the world’s second-richest person.

    So the question is: why is someone working for Toyota, walking around a Toyota car lot wearing a Toyota polo shirt walking up to me on the showroom floor and giving me a speech about how they don’t like cars, car companies, or driving? Why are right-wingers so concerned about not being perceived as such, but instead presenting themselves as post-ideological arbiters of “open debate” indifferent to the very thing they’ve been hired to do? 

    There are many reasons—some cynical, some psychological—but before we detail these, let’s examine the long, strange history of right-wing media personalities suspiciously insisting to their audiences, over and over again, that they are, in fact, ideology-free truth-tellers. It’s a subject I’ve long been fascinated with, having done two podcast episodes on this and related topics. Since the 1990s, it’s been a consistent feature of conservatives to lay claim to post-ideology. Bill O’Relly insisted he wasn’t conservative or Republican. “I’m not a political guy in the sense that I embrace an ideology… I’m an independent thinker, I’m an independent voter, I’m a registered Independent,” he told NPR’s Terry Gross in 2003. “I basically look at the world from the point of view of let’s solve the problem, right? Whatever the problem is, let’s find the best solution to it. And if the solution is on the left, I grab it. If it’s on the right, I grab it.” 

    Glenn Beck made this his whole schtick as well. “You’ve lived your whole life in a responsible way,” the former Fox News huckster told his audience in 2009 while promoting the GOP’s Tea Party rebrand. “You’ve been concerned about this country through the last administration, in this administration. If you’re like most people, both administrations, it’s not about politics, you actually believe in something, and you thought for a while there, your politicians did as well.”

    It’s not about going after Democrats, it’s about going after both parties. But then Beck, like O’Rielly and dozens before them, invariably proceeded to go after Democrats 98% of the time. It’s a popular posture. Everyone from Bill Maher to Andrew Yang to Bari Weiss to Republican Senator Rand Paul—who wrote a book called “Taking a Stand: Moving Beyond Partisan Politics to Unite America,” in which he claimed to go “beyond the left-right paradigm kind of thinking,”—has embraced this branding: I don’t do ideology, they consistently remind us, I’m a political actor unmoored from your oppressive labels—a maverick, a rogue, an independent iconoclast.  

    The most infamous recent example of this phenomenon is Elon Musk who—while openly promoting white nationalist bile on social media, bashing minorities, trans people and women, doing nazi salutes during Trump’s inauguration––continued to insist he wasn’t right or left wing, but instead a secret third thing. “I’m probably left of center on social issues and right of center on economic issues,” the sage-like enlightened centrist Musk claimed in late 2023, right before he dumped $250 million into successfully reelecting Donald Trump.  

    Obviously, the type of right-wing of each right-winger who claims They Don’t Do Ideology varies. There are differences between Fox News MAGA nationalism, Musk’s internet-addled neonazism, Maher’s glibertarian Zionism, Yang’s Silicon Valley techno-authorianism, neoconservatism, and what will likely be Jeff Bezos’ preferred flavor of right-wing—Club for Growth Republicanism promoting low taxes and generic Bush-era patriotism. But the new Washington Post op-ed section will no doubt be welcoming to all of the above while excluding those on the left, e.g. those who think “free markets” and “patriotism” are fraught concepts worthy of critique rather than mantras to mindlessly embrace or, at the very least, empty buzzwords that are the intellectual equivalent of Gerber apple-chicken pouches. 

    Interestingly, this is not, for the most part, a pathology on the left. I am a leftist, I write for left-wing outlets. I say so openly. Just the same, liberals are almost always openly liberal, openly Democrats. They wear their ideological preferences on their sleeve. Of course they’re ideological, because to do politics at all is inherently ideological. To be human is to be ideological. To deny this obvious fact, outside of being, say, a ‘neutral’ reporter who has to fake neutrality for professional reasons, isn’t just dishonest, it’s insulting to everyone’s intelligence. 

    Alas, being conservative is to be on the side of the establishment, of the powerful, of the billionaire class who O’Neal is literally parroting. It’s both inherent in the American cultural self-image, but also a necessary component of media branding, to perceive one’s self and one’s media project as not on the side of power. In a country of 330 million self-perceived free-thinking rebels—including, most gratingly, all of our mega-billionaires—all ideological formations must therefore present as edgy and subversive, as speaking truth to the powerful, even those openly marionetting for the world’s second-richest person. 

    It’s impossible to conceive of someone worth $250 billion taking over a publication and re-making it into his own image and telling the public, “I am a very rich person who wants to produce content that reinforces the ideology that permitted and continues to permit my obscene wealth and power.” This would be cartoonishly evil and undermine the efficiency of said ideological output. So, instead, we must continue to play this bizarre game where open promoters of right-wing ideology, of oligarchical power and control, of US global hegemony, are presented as free-thinkers allergic to ideology rather than public relations agents working on behalf of the most banal and ubiquitous of ideologies—American conservatism—in open service of their corporate and billionaire patrons. 

    As monied control over our media and the platforms required for their distribution grows tighter and tighter, this post-ideological “open debate” schtick grows more and more tedious and insulting to everyone’s intelligence. Advocating for “free markets” is obviously ideological. Promoting American “patriotism” is obviously ideological. If the super-rich are going to use media and social media as their ideological play toys, to promote their preferred worldview, the least they can do is have the decency to be honest about this fact, rather than smothering their right-wing rebrands in faux neutral, above-the-fray smarm.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Decoding PNG leader Marape’s talks with French President Macron

    ANALYSIS: By Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent

    The recent series of high-level agreements between Papua New Guinea and France marks a significant development in PNG’s geopolitical relationships, driven by what appears to be a convergence of national interests.

    The “deepening relationship” is less about a single personality and more about a calculated alignment of economic, security, and diplomatic priorities with PNG, taking full advantage of its position as the biggest, most strategically placed island player in the Pacific.

    An examination of the key outcomes reveals a partnership of mutual benefit, reflecting both PNG’s strategic diversification and France’s own long-term ambitions as a Pacific power.

    A primary driver is the shared economic rationale. From Port Moresby’s perspective, the partnership offers a clear path to economic diversification and resilience.

    But many in PNG have been watching with keen interest and asking: how badly does PNG want this?

    While Prime Minister James Marape offered France a Special Economic Zone in Port Moresby (SEZ) for French businesses, he also named the lookout at Port Moresby’s Variarata National Park after President Emmanuel Macron drawing the ire of many in the country.

    The proposal to establish a SEZ specifically for French industries is a notable attempt to attract capital from beyond PNG’s traditional partners.

    Strategically coupled
    This is strategically coupled with securing the future of the multi-billion-dollar Papua LNG project.

    Macron’s personal undertaking to work with TotalEnergies to keep the project on schedule provides crucial stability for one of PNG’s most significant economic ventures.

    For France, these arrangements secure a major energy investment for its national corporate champion and establish a stronger economic foothold in a strategically vital region between Asia and the Pacific.

    In the area of security, the relationship addresses tangible needs for both nations.

    PNG is faced with the immense challenge of monitoring a 2.4 million sq km Exclusive Economic Zone, making it vulnerable to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

    The finalisation of a Shiprider Agreement with France provides a practical force-multiplier, leveraging French naval assets to enhance PNG’s maritime surveillance capabilities. This move, along with planned defence talks on air and maritime cooperation, allows PNG to diversify its security architecture.

    For France, a resident power with Pacific territories like New Caledonia and French Polynesia, participating in regional security operations reinforces its role and commitment to stability in the Indo-Pacific.

    Elevating diplomatic influence
    The partnership is also a vehicle for elevating diplomatic influence.

    Port Moresby has noted the significance of engaging with a partner that holds permanent membership on the UN Security Council and seats at the G7 and G20.

    This alignment provides PNG with a powerful channel to global decision-making forums. The reciprocal move to establish a PNG embassy in Paris further cements the relationship on a mature footing.

    The diplomatic synergy is perhaps best illustrated by France’s full endorsement of PNG’s bid to host a future UN Ocean Conference. This support provides PNG with a major opportunity to lead on the world stage, while allowing France to demonstrate its credentials as a key partner to the Pacific Islands.

    This deepening PNG-France partnership does not exist in a vacuum.

    It is unfolding within a broader context of heightened geopolitical competition across the Pacific.

    The West’s view of China’s rapid emergence as a dominant economic and military force in the region has reshaped the strategic landscape, prompting traditional powers to re-engage with renewed urgency.

    increased diplomatic footprint
    The United States has responded by significantly increasing its diplomatic and security footprint, a move marked by Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Port Moresby to sign the Defence Cooperation Agreement.

    Similarly, Australia, PNG’s traditional security partner, is working to reinforce its long-standing influence through initiatives like the multi-million-dollar deal to establish a PNG team in its National Rugby League (NRL), a soft-power exercise reportedly linked to security outcomes.

    This competitive environment has, in turn, created greater agency for Pacific nations, allowing them to diversify their partnerships beyond old allies and providing a fertile ground for European powers like France to assert their own strategic interests.

    A strong foundation for the relationship is a shared public stance on environmental stewardship. The agreement on the need for rigorous scientific studies before any deep-sea mining occurs aligns PNG’s national policy with a position of environmental caution.

    This common ground extends to broader climate action, where France’s commitment to conservation in the Pacific resonates with PNG’s status as a frontline nation vulnerable to climate change.

    This alignment on values provides a durable and politically important basis for cooperation, allowing both nations to jointly advocate for climate justice and ocean protection.

    For the Papua New Guinea economy, this deepening partnership with France is critically important as it provides high-level stability for the multi-billion-dollar Papua LNG project and creates a direct pathway for new investment through a proposed SEZ for French businesses.

    Vital economic resource
    Furthermore, by moving to finalise a Shiprider Agreement to combat illegal fishing, the government is actively protecting a vital economic resource.

    For Marape’s credibility in local politics, these outcomes are tangible successes he can present to the nation as he battles a massive credibility dip in recent years.

    Securing a personal undertaking from the leader of a G7 nation, gaining support for PNG to host a future UN Ocean Conference, and enhancing national security demonstrates effective leadership on the world stage.

    This allows him to build a narrative of a competent statesman who, through “warm, personal relationships”, can deliver on promises of economic opportunity and national security while strengthening his political standing at home.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • A Broad Paint Brush STILL is not Enough to Express the HEINOUS Nature of America

    The post A Broad Paint Brush STILL is not Enough to Express the HEINOUS Nature of America first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Austerity 2.0 presents assisted starving and dying. Where the hell is the assisted LIVING bill?

    Budgets, Autumn Statements, Spending Reviews, we may as well just have a date put on the calendar each month for the government of the day to set out its ‘scribbled down on the back of a fag packet’ electoral bribes for the next thirty days.

    Getting a kicking from the populist right? Just throw a few more foreigners under the Brexit bus. The left on your case because you stole £300 from pensioners last winter? Perform another screeching U-turn while refusing to admit you actually got it wrong the first time.

    Whenever this useless shambles of a government think a certain part of the electorate are sharpening their knives, they will try and defend themselves with an off-the-hoof policy that tends to create far more questions than it actually answers.

    Austerity by stealth

    Let’s have a monthly state-of-finances thing with Kid Starver and Rachel Thieves. We can all gather around our TV sets and be thankful for the crumbs that are nonchalantly brushed from the briefing room table.

    Rachel from accounts, or the pretend economist if you prefer, insisted her review wouldn’t see a return to the days of Tory austerity.

    But this is, surprise surprise, entirely dishonest because the review imposes austerity-by-stealth through real-terms cuts to eight government departments.

    The £39bn for affordable and social housing is to be welcomed, of course, but just how many council estates is that going to buy?

    The last government allocated £37bn for a flawed two-year Covid test-and-trace scheme with god only knows how much ending up in private pockets. More than half-a-billion was spent treating just 272 inpatients at those Nightingale hospitals, which are now most likely B&M bargain outlets or hand car washes.

    £39bn is a drop in the ocean.

    Reeves had a golden opportunity to deliver the bold, transformative change that the country so desperately needs. But she prioritised her self-imposed and entirely unnecessary fiscal rules over social needs.

    A real Labour government should be wholeheartedly committed to addressing structural inequalities, not bringing in austerity-by-stealth, and certainly not behaving like Temu Tories.

    Where’s the debate and scrutiny?

    The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, better known as the Assisted-Suicide Bill has been up for discussion once again this past week.

    The more I read about it, the more testimonies I hear and see, the less scutiny the proposed legislation seems to be receiving, and the more it appears to be built upon coercion rather than the compassion it purports to provide.

    Don’t get me wrong, the Assisted-Suicide Bill has drastically raised the level of debate surrounding an incredibly challenging and important matter. I am a democrat, and I believe this deeply sensitive matter should be debated.

    But every debate — particularly one that ultimately results in state-sanctioned suicide — should listen to the people who are most likely to be affected this hideous and ghoulish legislation.

    Some shockingly-misguided MPs may well be swayed by a few insignificant tweaks to the bill, but the end result doesn’t change, does it?

    Why didn’t Chancellor Reeves use her spending review to announce a bit of help with assisted living? Capital investment doesn’t put a penny in your pocket NOW.

    State coercion from a government death cult

    The Assisted-Suicide bill will utterly erode societal norms of compassion for vulnerable and disabled people. Let’s not pretend otherwise. This is unprecedented coercion on a state level.

    The Assisted-Suicide bill will normalise the idea that the lives of disabled people are less worth living. We can’t just be okay with that. Marginalised groups must be protected from the Labour death cult.

    The Assisted-Suicide bill will put an end to any hope of the massive financial bolstering that is already needed in social and palliative care.

    Hospices are already facing a dire shortage of funding, having suffered real-terms cuts to their funding for the previous two years. A proper Labour government would put this right, not legislate to speed up the process of death.

    Hospices receive around 30% of their funding from the government, with the rest coming through tireless fundraising and generous donations.

    One hospice, St Giles in Lichfield, receives just 17.7% of its funding from government sources.

    The campaigners in favour of state-sanctioned suicide want to lecture us about dignity? I don’t fucking think so.

    Where’s the bill for assisted living?

    I will say it again: we must have a bill for assisted living.

    I’ll be absolutely honest with you. I used to agree (in principle) with the idea of assisted dying. I was too naive to consider the safeguarding implications, I hadn’t done any research, and I certainly hadn’t listened to the people that were at the front of the discussion, which is exactly where the Labour leadership are right now as they finalise their plans for state-sanctioned suicide.

    Skip forward a decade and I couldn’t be any more opposed to this frightening piece of legislation, and the government of the day, if I tried.

    By Rachael Swindon

  • Why Israel’s shock and awe has proven its power but lost the war

    COMMENTARY: By Antony Loewenstein

    War is good for business and geopolitical posturing.

    Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington in early February for his first visit to the US following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, he issued a bold statement on the strategic position of Israel.

    “The decisions we made in the war [since 7 October 2023] have already changed the face of the Middle East,” he said.

    “Our decisions and the courage of our soldiers have redrawn the map. But I believe that working closely with President Trump, we can redraw it even further.”

    How should this redrawn map be assessed?

    Hamas is bloodied but undefeated in Gaza. The territory lies in ruins, leaving its remaining population with barely any resources to rebuild. Death and starvation stalk everyone.

    Hezbollah in Lebanon has suffered military defeats, been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence, and now faces few viable options for projecting power in the near future. Political elites speak of disarming Hezbollah, though whether this is realistic is another question.

    Morocco, Bahrain and the UAE accounted for 12 percent of Israel’s record $14.8bn in arms sales in 2024 — up from just 3 percent the year before

    In Yemen, the Houthis continue to attack Israel, but pose no existential threat.

    Meanwhile, since the overthrow of dictator Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, Israel has attacked and threatened Syria, while the new government in Damascus is flirting with Israel in a possible bid for “normalisation“.

    The Gulf states remain friendly with Israel, and little has changed in the last 20 months to alter this relationship.

    According to Israel’s newly released arms sales figures for 2024, which reached a record $14.8bn, Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates accounted for 12 percent of total weapons sales — up from just 3 percent in 2023.

    It is conceivable that Saudi Arabia will be coerced into signing a deal with Israel in the coming years, in exchange for arms and nuclear technology for the dictatorial kingdom.

    An Israeli and US-assisted war against Iran began on Friday.

    In the West Bank, Israel’s annexation plans are surging ahead with little more than weak European statements of concern. Israel’s plans for Greater Israel — vastly expanding its territorial reach — are well underway in Syria, Lebanon and beyond.

    Shifting alliances
    On paper, Israel appears to be riding high, boasting military victories and vanquished enemies. And yet, many Israelis and pro-war Jews in the diaspora do not feel confident or buoyed by success.

    Instead, there is an air of defeatism and insecurity, stemming from the belief that the war for Western public opinion has been lost — a sentiment reinforced by daily images of Israel’s campaign of deliberate mass destruction across the Gaza Strip.

    What Israel craves and desperately needs is not simply military prowess, but legitimacy in the public domain. And this is sorely lacking across virtually every demographic worldwide.

    It is why Israel is spending at least $150 million this year alone on “public diplomacy”.

    Get ready for an army of influencers, wined and dined in Tel Aviv’s restaurants and bars, to sell the virtues of Israeli democracy. Even pro-Israel journalists are beginning to question how this money is being spent, wishing Israeli PR were more responsive and effective.

    Today, Israeli Jews proudly back ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza in astoundingly high numbers. This reflects a Jewish supremacist mindset that is being fed a daily diet of extremist rhetoric in mainstream media.

    There is arguably no other Western country with such a high proportion of racist, genocidal mania permeating public discourse.

    According to a recent poll of Western European populations, Israel is viewed unfavourably in Germany, Denmark, France, Italy and Spain.

    Very few in these countries support Israeli actions. Only between 13 and 21 percent hold a positive view of Israel, compared to 63-70 percent who do not.

    The US-backed Pew Research Centre also released a global survey asking people in 24 countries about their views on Israel and Palestine. In 20 of the 24 nations, at least half of adults expressed a negative opinion of the Jewish state.

    A deeper reckoning
    Beyond Israel’s image problems lies a deeper question: can it ever expect full acceptance in the Middle East?

    Apart from kings, monarchs and elites from Dubai to Riyadh and Manama to Rabat, Israel’s vicious and genocidal actions since 7 October 2023 have rendered “normalisation” impossible with a state intent on building a Jewish theocracy that subjugates millions of Arabs indefinitely.

    While it is true that most states in the region are undemocratic, with gross human rights abuses a daily reality, Israel has long claimed to be different — “the only democracy in the Middle East”.

    But Israel’s entire political system, built with massive Western support and grounded in an unsustainable racial hierarchy, precludes it from ever being fully and formally integrated into the region.

    The American journalist Murtaza Hussain, writing for the US outlet Drop Site News, recently published a perceptive essay on this very subject.

    He argues that Israeli actions have been so vile and historically grave — comparable to other modern holocausts — that they cannot be forgotten or excused, especially as they are publicly carried out with the explicit goal of ethnically cleansing Palestine:

    “This genocide has been a political and cultural turning point beyond which we cannot continue as before. I express that with resignation rather than satisfaction, as it means that many generations of suffering are ahead on all sides.

    “Ultimately, the goal of Israel’s opponents must not be to replicate its crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, nor to indulge in nihilistic hatred for its own sake.

    “People in the region and beyond should work to build connections with those Israelis who are committed opponents of their regime, and who are ready to cooperate in the generational task of building a new political architecture.”

    The issue is not just Netanyahu and his government. All his likely successors hold similarly hardline views on Palestinian rights and self-determination.

    The monumental task ahead lies in crafting an alternative to today’s toxic Jewish theocracy.

    But this rebuilding must also take place in the West. Far too many Jews, conservatives and evangelical Christians continue to cling to the fantasy of eradicating, silencing or expelling Arabs from their land entirely.

    Pushing back against this fascism is one of the most urgent generational tasks of our time.

    Antony Loewenstein is an Australian/German independent, freelance, award-winning, investigative journalist, best-selling author and film-maker. In 2025, he released an award-winning documentary series on Al Jazeera English, The Palestine Laboratory, adapted from his global best-selling book of the same name. It won a major prize at the prestigious Telly Awards. This article is republished from Middle East Eye with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Is genocide the new normal? Could Israel and the US destroy Iran?

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    “Just do it, before it is too late,” US President Donald Trump said.

    The Western media described Trump’s and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats after the first wave of attacks on Iran as “warnings”. They were, in fact, expressions of genocidal intent.

    “The United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come.

    “And they know how to use it. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire … JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

    As Pascal Lottaz and a number of other analysts pointed out on Friday, preemptive war or just war theory requires imminent threats not conceptual ones. As I also pointed out on Friday, the United States’ own intelligence agencies have consistently determined that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons programme and there has been no change to the regime’s position since the Grand Ayatollah issued a fatwa against such weapons in 2003.

    Israel and the US may now have forced a change in that theology or calculus.

    What we are witnessing is a war of aggression designed to trigger regime change and destroy Iran — to reduce it to the kind of chaos that Israel and the US have inflicted on Iraq, Libya, Lebanon and many other countries.

    This is only possible because of the collusion of the Collective West. At the core of this project of endless violence towards non-white people is racism: contempt for people who are not like us.

    Nearly half of Israelis support army killing all Palestinians in Gaza, poll finds.
    Today an overwhelming majority of Israelis want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians — one of the very definitions of genocide — not just from Gaza but from Israel itself. Nearly half of Israelis support the army killing all Palestinians in Gaza, a recent US Penn State University poll finds.

    Genocide has been normalised in Israel. Yet our political leaders and much of our media tell us we share values with these people.

    One of the sickest, most profoundly tragic ironies of history is that the long suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of Western racism has culminated in a triumphalist Jewish State doing to the Palestinians what the Plantagenets and the Popes, the Medicis and the Russian boyars, the Italian Fascists and the Nazis did to the Jews.

    Europeans perpetrated the Holocaust not the Palestinians or the Iranians. Israel, dominated as it is by Ashkenazi Jews, has now been incorporated into the Western project to maintain global hegemony.

    They are today’s uber Aryans lording it over the untermenschen. It is the grim fulfillment of what the Israeli scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned back in the 1980s was Israel’s incipient slide into what he termed “Judeo Nazism”.

    ‘We, the Israelis, are the victims’
    Isn’t it time we woke from our deep slumber? Generations of people in Western countries were lied to for generations about the Zionist project. We were bombarded with propaganda that the Israelis were the victims, the plucky battlers; the Palestinians were somehow a nation of terrorists in their own land.

    So too, the propaganda goes, are pretty much all of Israel’s neighbours, particularly Iran.

    The propaganda shredded our minds, particularly people of my generation. It made most of our populations and all of our governments totally indifferent to the constant killing, repression and land thieving by generations of Israelis.

    “We, the Israelis, are the victims.” They weep for themselves as they rape Palestinian prisoners — and call themselves heroes for doing so. In researching stories like this I had the unpleasant experience of watching videos of both the rape of Palestinians prisoners at Sde Temein (gloatingly shared by the perpetrators) and the repellent sight of Benjamin Netanyahu’s rabbi blessing one of these rapists and praising him for his work.

    We are repeatedly told we share values with these people. I believe our governments really do share those values. I do not.

    ‘Hath not a Palestinian eyes? If you prick an Iranian do they not bleed?’
    I’m a student of Shakespeare and have spent hours every month reading, watching and studying his plays. The Merchant of Venice, a complex play with highly contested interpretations, can be viewed as a masterful exploration of a dominant society enforcing its own double standards on a Hated Other.

    The last time I watched it was a Royal Shakespeare Company performance with Palestinian actor Makram Khoury in the role of Shylock (the Jew).

    Over the centuries Shylock had morphed from a pantomime villain, to an arch-villain to, in the 19th Century, a figure of pathos, dignity and loss, through to 20th Century interpretations of him as a powerful, albeit highly flawed, figure of resistance in the face of a supremacist society.

    Palestinian Makram Khoury’s performance capped this transition and was an eloquent plea to see our common humanity whether we be Jewish, Muslim, Christian or any other slice of humanity.

    “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

    How would our reading of this passage change if we changed “Jew” to “Palestinian” or “Iranian”?

    Only an utterly incoherent and damaged mind can continue to believe the propaganda coming out of the White House, the Pentagon, and out of the mouths of psychotic madmen like Netanyahu, Smotrich and the rest of Team Genocide.

    It’s time to wake up. If not, we ourselves become victims. Only a hollowed-out heart and mind could content themselves with turning a blind eye to genocide, to turn a blind eye to the war of aggression just launched against Iran.

    How will this end?

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

  • There are Only Jewish-Inspired Warsaw Ghetto Pogroms for Palestinians

    Note: In polite company or in public arenas or in schools and conferences, what have you, what is it to be anti-semitic according to the Israel Occupation Forces legions of facilitators like the ADL, AIPAC, and a list of tens of thousands of Jewish controlled non-profits and foundations?

    Pro-Israeli circles often try to invent an anti-Semitic element behind every legitimate criticism of Israel.

    But this is a cheap and increasingly exposed exploitation and manipulation of true anti-Semitism a morbid form of racism that ought to be denounced.

    However the behaviors of the shipyard dogs of Zionism would have us believe that true anti-Semites are no longer those who hate Jews for being Jewish but rather those Zionist fanatics criticize for criticizing Israel for being criminal murderous and evil.

    Well we are supposed to be living in a moral universe where no people should have more rights than the rest of mankind.

    Proceeding from this timeless basic logic if criticizing Israel including questioning the moral legitimacy of Israel’s very existence amounts to anti-Semitism then humanity has a moral obligation to be anti-Semitic.

    Opponents of Israel it must be proclaimed loudly don’t hate Israel because Israel is Jewish; they hate Israel because Israel happens to be a gigantic crime against humanity a virulent practitioner of ethnic cleansing and apartheid which is committed to the national destruction of another people the Palestinian people.

    Yes anti-Judaism is wrong and should be rejected. However if Judaism especially Jewishness can not maintain a decent and peaceful existence outside the realm of racism apartheid and genocidal supremacy then people will have second thoughts about Judaism. — effing 2012 Op-Ed, The absurdity of equating opposition to Israel with anti-Semitism

    No lover of ANY POTUS, especially Truman, but, that broken white psychosis can get it right once in a blue moon:

    In 1948 President Harry Truman was infuriated by Jewish terrorism which was nothing in comparison to Israel’s terror these days angrily wrote in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt: “I fear very much that the Jews are being like all underdogs. When they get on top they are just as intolerant and cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath.” (Eleanor and Harry: The Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman Eleanor Roosevelt, [Scribner/Drew, 2002] p.187.)

    No fan of Stanley, as he calls the American University the most Jewish of institutions; however,

    Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor who recently decided to leave Yale to go teach in Canada, recently explained on PBS’ Amanpour & Company why he thinks the Trump administration’s efforts are actually boosting antisemitic tropes:

    This is reinforcing antisemitic tropes all across the political spectrum. … What are the most toxic antisemitic tropes? Well, “Jews control the institutions.” This is absolutely reinforcing this. Any young American is going to think: Remember what happened when they took down the world’s greatest university system on behalf of Jewish safety? And this will go down in history books — the history of this era will say that Jewish people were the sledgehammer for fascism. So if we don’t speak out, if we American Jews do not speak out against this, this will be a grim chapter in our history as Americans. It’s the first time in my life as an American that I have been fearful of our status as equal Americans — not because of the protests on campus, which, as I said, had a lot of Jewish students in them. But because we are suddenly at the center of U.S. politics. It’s never good to be in the crosshairs for us. And we are being used to destroy democracy.

    So, this following little doozy would be put on the targets for IOF and others loving the Jewish Raping Murdering Starving Displacing Poisoning Polluting Occupied State of “Israel”/Palestine.

  • Ethiopia: As Things Fall Apart

    In today’s Ethiopia, ruled by a US backed gangster named Abiy Ahmed, things are falling apart. To start with 75% of the country is out of the government’s control as insurgencies rage. “Prime Minister” Abiy is, in reality, only the Mayor of the capital Addis Ababa with rebel armies ringing the city only 30 miles from its outskirts.

    On one side of Addis Ababa is the ethnic Amhara FANO (patriot) fighters. On the other side of Addis Ababa is the Oromo rebels. Being that these two ethnic groups, nations really, are the two largest in Ethiopia you can get an idea of just how desperate the situation the gangster regime of Abiy Ahmed finds itself in.

    Inflation is raging with electricity rates having just doubled with food shortages, runaway prices and corruption ruling the roost.

    Its not a good time to get seriously sick in Ethiopia because all the doctors have gone on strike demanding enough salaries to survive on. 165 of the top doctors in the country have been arrested with dozens of the top leadership of the medical profession having had to skip town, one jump ahead of the secret police, many taking refuge in next door Eritrea.

    All the teachers have also gone on strike, demanding wages that some of them have never received, ever. That’s right, the gangsters who are running what’s left of the Ethiopian government, stopped paying the teachers quite a while back with new hires having never been paid.

    Owing billion$ and with little in the way of foreign currency earnings (coffee is he number one income generator) the Abiy gangster regime can’t pay its bills, all too typical of Ethiopia over the decades since 1991. The western banksters at the IMF just promised another “emergency loan” for $260 million, adding on to the many billion$ already owed.

    The banksters in the west are talking about having to hold another conference on “debt reduction for Africa” knowing all to well just how impossible it is for those African countries still in their debt bondage to make even their interest payments. As in the past, Ethiopia “debt reduction” is at the top of the forgiveness list, bailing out, once again, their gangster on the beat.

    These financial bloodsuckers have been borrowing from their central banks for almost 20 years at little more than 0% interest while making tens of billion$ of “high risk loans” to Ethiopia at interest rates of 7-8% so its hard to feel sorry for them if they have to write of a few billion$ after deducting their “losses” from their tax bill.

    The only thing keeping the Abiy regime afloat, able to continue to stave off the growing rebel army’s surrounding it, is the military largess of the United Arab Emirates, whose supply of Chinese drones and bombers leave a trail of death and destruction. But even these, mostly used against civilians, have been unable to stem the tide of rebellion and the circle around Addis Ababa continues to tighten.

    You could be excused for being a little doubtful about what I write for almost none of this is making its way into the MSM in the west, or internationally. Hey, its the Horn of Africa, right, about which the world has grown weary of tales of famine, plagues and bloodshed. Even the so called “alternative” media has had little coverage of how things are falling apart in Ethiopia.

    So don’t be surprised when, not if, the western backed gangster regime of Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed collapses. It could be a lot sooner than most of us expect.

    What comes next looks more and more like the original Abyssinian Empire, only renamed “Ethiopia” in the mid-20th century, will tear itself apart into new African nations with names like Oromia, Amhara, Tigray, Afar and several others. We are talking about 120 million people in today’s Ethiopian empire, with the Oromo’s, 50+million strong, Africa’s largest nation and second largest language, being a major part of these changes.

    At the forefront of this revolution against Africa’s largest indigenous empire are the Amharas and their army of “FANO/Patriots”, who have recently combined their regional militias as well as their political leadership into one unified force. Amhara nationalism has become so strong the Ethiopian army has stopped training Amhara units because once they have completed their military training they desert en masse with their weapons, slipping of to join the growing FANO armed forces.

    The one bright light in this darkness is the role what I have called “the oasis of Africa”, Eritrea, has and will be playing in helping advise and mediate the perils to come. As the saying goes “All roads to peace in the Horn of Africa run through Asmara, Eritrea”, once again. Eritrea will do its duty to its fellow Horn of Africans and continue to shoulder its responsibilities to establish a peace based on mutual respect and cooperation between people in this up to now blighted part of the world. One thing the west doesn’t want is a strong, united, independent Horn of Africa, a strategically critical part of the world. So don’t be surprised when Eritrea starts to bring order to all this chaos the banksters in the west and their minions in the media start to rant and rave, once again spewing vile lies and slanders about Eritrea and trying to make sure that no good deed in Africa goes unpunished.

    The post Ethiopia: As Things Fall Apart first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Eugene Doyle: Team Genocide and the West’s war on Iran

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    I have visited Iran twice. Once in June 1980 to witness an unprecedented event: the world’s first Islamic Revolution. It was the very start of my writing career.

    The second time was in 2018 and part of my interest was to get a sense of how disenchanted the population was — or was not — with life under the Ayatollahs decades after the creation of the Islamic Republic.

    I loved my time in Iran and found ordinary Iranians to be such wonderful, cultured and kind people.

    When I heard the news today of Israel’s attack on Iran I had the kind of emotional response that should never be seen in public. I was apoplectic with rage and disgust, I vented bitterly and emotively.

    Then I calmed down. And here is what I would like to say:

    Just last week former CIA officer Ray McGovern, who wrote daily intelligence briefings for the US President during his 27-year career, reminded me when I interviewed him that the assessment of the US intelligence community has been for years that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 and had not recommenced since.

    The departing CIA director William Burns confirmed this assessment recently.  Propaganda aside, there is nothing new other than a US-Israeli campaign that has shredded any concept of international laws or norms.

    I won’t mince words: what we are witnessing is the racist, genocidal Israeli regime, armed and encouraged by the US, Germany, UK and other Western regimes, launching a war that has no justification other than the expansion of Israeli power and the advancement of its Greater Israel project.

    This year, using American, German and British armaments, supported by underlings like Australia and New Zealand, the Israelis have pursued their genocide against the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza, and attacked various neighbours, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Iran.

    They represent a clear and present danger to peace and stability in the region.

    Iran has operated with considerable restraint but has also shown its willingness to use its military to keep the US-Israeli menace at bay. What most people forget is that the project to secure Iran’s borders and keep the likes of the British, Israelis and Americans out is a multi-generational project that long predates the Islamic Revolution.

    I would recommend Iran: A modern history by the US-based scholar Abbas Amanat that provides a long-view of the evolution of the Iranian state and how it has survived centuries of pressure and multiple occupations from imperial powers, including Russia, Britain, the US and others.

    Hard-fought independence
    The country was raped by the Brits and the Americans and has won a hard-fought independence that is being seriously challenged, not from within, but by the Israelis and the Western warlords who have wrecked so many countries and killed millions of men, women and children in the region over recent decades.

    I spoke and messaged with Iranian friends today both in Iran and in New Zealand and the response was consistent. They felt, one of them said, 10 times more hurt and emotional than I did.

    Understandable.

    A New Zealand-based Iranian friend had to leave work as soon as he heard the news.  He scanned Iranian social media and found people were upset, angry and overwhelmingly supportive of the government.

    “They destroyed entire apartment buildings! Why?”, “People will be very supportive of the regime now because they have attacked civilians.”

    “My parents are in the capital. I was so scared for them.”

    Just a couple of years ago scholars like Professor Amanat estimated that core support for the regime was probably only around 20 percent.  That was my impression too when I visited in 2018.

    Nationalism, existential menace
    Israel and the US have changed that. Nationalism and an existential menace will see Iranians rally around the flag.

    Something I learnt in Iran, in between visiting the magnificent ruins of the capital of the Achaemenid Empire at Persepolis, exploring a Zoroastrian Tower of Silence, chowing down on insanely good food in Yazd, talking with a scholar and then a dissident in Isfahan, and exploring an ancient Sassanian fort and a caravanserai in the eastern desert, was that the Iranians are the most politically astute people in the region.

    Many I spoke to were quite open about their disdain for the regime but none of them sought a counter-revolution.

    They knew what that would bring: the wolves (the Americans, the Israelis, the Saudis, and other bad actors) would slip in and tear the country apart. Slow change is the smarter option when you live in this neighbourhood.

    Iranians are overwhelmingly well-educated, profoundly courteous and kind, and have a deep sense of history. They know more than enough about what happened to them and to so many other countries once a great power sees an opening.

    War is a truly horrific thing that always brings terrible suffering to ordinary people. It is very rarely justified.

    Iran was actively negotiating with the Americans who, we now know, were briefed on the attack in advance and will possibly join the attack in the near future.

    US senators are baying for Judeo-Christian jihad. Democrat Senator John Fetterman was typical: “Keep wiping out Iranian leadership and the nuclear personnel. We must provide whatever is necessary — military, intelligence, weaponry — to fully back Israel in striking Iran.”

    We should have the moral and intellectual honesty to see the truth:  Our team, Team Genocide, are the enemies of peace and justice.  I wish the Iranian people peace and prosperity.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Opinion: Why Are Cultivated Meat Bans Getting So Much Attention?

    lab grown meat ban
    6 Mins Read

    Owen Ensor, co-founder and CEO of British cultivated pet food startup Meatly, on why political bans shouldn’t deter investors from the alternative protein ecosystem.

    The past year has witnessed a surge in media attention surrounding cultivated meat. There is an insatiable desire for cultivated meat stories, covering regulatory approvals, product releases, and product development.

    There is a dark cloud of local bans in the US and labelling disputes alongside this exciting industry progress. However, we need to have a perspective on these and look at what is actually going on. 

    In the last few years, many governments have funded, approved, or supported cultivated meat. By contrast, cell-cultivated meat has been banned in a handful of right-wing US states. The balance of debate is clear – there is great technical progress, and almost all governments are backing this innovative product.  

    So we need to ask ourselves: why are we giving these bans so much attention?

    Even the meat industry is against the bans

    lab grown pet food
    Courtesy: Meatly

    This negative coverage is driven largely by right-leaning political factions, attempting to cast this innovative food technology as the latest battleground in the ever-escalating culture wars. Alarmist language, such as accusations of “global elite authoritarianism“, has been deployed to fuel opposition, particularly in ultra-conservative strongholds. 

    To date, six US states have banned cultivated meat. At the same time, bans in other regions have been attempted, including Romania, where the bill is stuck in the legislature and is unlikely to proceed, and Italy, where a proposed ban contravenes EU law. 

    To my knowledge, cultivated meat is the first food ever to be banned before even being on sale, and for political reasons. These bans are purely to appeal to a hard right-wing electorate in certain states. The US meat lobby doesn’t even want cultivated meat banned.

    The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association recently stated: “Telling Americans what they can and cannot buy at the grocery store does not align with NCBA’s policy book or our conservative values… and setting a precedent that the federal government can remove a product from the shelves completely is not wise for the cattle industry, when we have no idea who might be sitting in the White House or in Congress 10 years from now.”

    The global excitement for cultivated meat

    cultivated meat funding
    Courtesy: Meatly

    Looking beyond these bans, we get a clearer, more genuine understanding of the development and excitement of this industry. 

    Globally, there is a growing consensus in some of the world’s largest economies that cultivated meat and other cell-cultivated food solutions hold the keys to bolstering food security and creating a food system which supports sustainable farming.

    Several markets across the globe – including the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, and Singapore – have already granted regulatory clearance for cultivated meat for either human or pet consumption. A Trump appointee has also signed off on the most recent US approvals.

    These nations and regions, spanning diverse political landscapes and geographical locations, have undertaken rigorous safety assessments and concluded that cultivated meat is a viable and safe food source. This crucial step of regulatory approval signals a fundamental acceptance of the technology and paves the way for its integration into a sustainable food system.

    But that’s not all. The financial backing for cultivated meat research and development paints an even broader picture of commitment to this new food industry. A remarkable 22 countries, encompassing virtually every major global economy, have actively funded cultivated meat initiatives.

    This extensive list includes nations such as Canada, China, Norway, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Israel, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Brazil, in addition to those with regulatory approvals.

    It’s clear that while a handful of regions grapple with politically motivated bans, the overwhelming global direction of travel points firmly towards acceptance and support.

    A trillion-dollar opportunity

    mearltly
    Courtesy: Jack Lawson/Meatly

    Such widespread investment and attention underscore a deep-seated understanding of the potential benefits that cultivated meat offers across a spectrum of critical areas, beyond just tackling the substantial emissions behind industrial animal agriculture. 

    The biggest benefit is an economic one. The global meat market is worth $1.55T, and global demand for meat continues to grow. Countries that can get ahead on cultivated meat and other cellular agriculture technologies are looking at a major economic win, creating local industries that can feed people sustainably while creating jobs and generating revenue.

    Cultivated meat will also boost food security, not threaten it. This innovation can help produce sustainable meat in high volumes, while farmers can focus on high-quality, high-value regeneratively farmed meat. These proteins can also shorten supply chains and make nations less dependent on imported meat. This will have knock-on benefits for human health, where a reliance on industrial agriculture will limit the use of antibiotics and the risk of spread of zoonotic diseases such as avian flu.

    That’s why, when a handful of conservative US states push back with politically motivated bans, it feels increasingly out of sync with this broader global momentum and more like an attempt to stifle innovation and limit consumer choice. The sole outcome of this is that the future of food is passed from the US to Europe and Asia.

    It’s clear that by focusing on these bans, we obscure the significant progress being made globally, the substantial investments being channelled into the sector, and the growing recognition of its crucial role in building a more sustainable and secure food future.

    What this means for the industry

    cultivated meat investment
    Graphic by Green Queen

    For cultivated meat companies, the advice is simple: stay focused. 

    The world is vast, and almost all regions actively support and encourage the development and commercialisation of cultivated meat. Direct your attention, resources, and efforts towards these receptive markets. Engage with governments and regulatory bodies that understand the value proposition and are committed to fostering innovation. The long-term trajectory is undeniably positive, and short-term political noise should not derail strategic goals.

    For investors, the message is equally resolute: recognise the global landscape. 

    The commitment to cultivated meat is not confined to a few progressive enclaves; it has widespread support, embraced by major economies and forward-thinking governments worldwide. We’ve had VCs say they will not invest because of the ‘geopolitical debate’. It’s really staggering to hear a global VC fund is making investment decisions based on what a provincial hard-right legislator is doing.

    Let’s be very clear: you can build an exceptionally profitable, high-return business outside of Alabama… in fact, you can build an exceptional business outside of the US.

    The potential for significant returns and the opportunity to contribute to a more sustainable future remains, with the global support for cultivated meat providing a robust foundation for long-term growth and success. Now is actually the ideal time to be investing, given the suppressed valuations that the current debate has created. 

    The direction of travel is clear. Governments around the world realise the environmental, health, economic, security, and ethical potential of cultivated meat, as well as the value in allowing consumers and the free market to decide which safe products should be sold. It’s time we started having this define the political conversation around cultivated meat.

    The post Opinion: Why Are Cultivated Meat Bans Getting So Much Attention? appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Editor calls for NZ to immediately expel Israeli envoy for unprovoked attack on Iran

    EDITORIAL: By Martyn Bradbury, editor of The Daily Blog

    The madness has begun.

    We should have suspected something when the cloud strike shut down occurred.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to continue war so that he is never held to account.

    This madness is the last straw.

    NZ must immediately expel the Israeli Ambassador for this unprovoked attack on Iran.

    As moral and ethical people, we must turn away from Israel’s new war crime, they have started a war, we must as righteous people condemn Israel and their enabler America.

    This is the beginning of madness.

    We cannot be party to it.

    Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said the Israeli army radio was reporting that in addition to the air strikes, Israel’s external intelligence service Mossad had carried out some sabotage activities and attacks inside Iran.

    “There are also several reports and leaks in the Israeli media talking not only about the assassination of the top chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard but rather a very large number of senior military commanders in addition to prominent academics and nuclear scientists,” she said.

    “This is a very large-scale attack, not just on military installations, but also on the people who could potentially be making decisions about what Iran can do next, how Iran can respond to this attack that continues as we speak.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Spending review showed how much Labour want disabled people excluded from society

    It’s been an anxious and uneasy few months for disabled people, with threats of drastic cuts to our benefits on the horizon. As always with the government, there’s been a distinct lack of clarity, even around when the legislation will be announced and debated – though we expect it to be before the actual consultation has ended, which tells you everything you need to know.
    Here to not ease our minds in any way, is Rachel Reeves with the government’s spending review.

    There was much speculation leading up to the spending review that DWP cuts could be softened and the reading of the welfare reform bill delayed, as the labour government is facing mass rebellion within it’s ranks from those who actually care. However there was no indication of this in the spending review- in fact there was no indication they’d considered disabled people at all.

    There was a great deal promised in the spending review, and I use the word promised as I don’t believe all of it will come to fruition. More funding for schools, more housing, a big injection to the NHS and a more comprehensive and joined up transport system across the country. Support for young people, more funding to deprived communities, backing the high street and more British business for run down communities.

    However there was one thing missing- there was absolutely no mention of disabled people, not just the cuts we face but absolutely no reference to us in any of the exciting new plans.

    The spending review: everything but disabled people

    In the housing announcement, whilst there was a commitment to social and affordable homes, there was no guarantee of how many of these homes would be accessible to disabled people. There are currently 104,000 disabled people on council waiting lists for accessible and adaptable homes, but Reeves has not announced how much will be earmarked to ensure disabled people are housed too. In fact her line that these will be “homes built for working people” pretty much cemented it.

    There was huge support in the chamber for the spending review announcement that work will be done to make transport more joined up across the country. As someone living in the north east I’m always angry that it takes me longer to get to parts of Yorkshire by public transport than it does to get straight to London, which of course has a direct line.

    However, despite growing awareness of how inaccessible public transport is thanks to Tanni Grey-Thompson and other campaigners, we were of course missed from the transport overhaul. It’s ironic that Labour is forcing disabled people into work, while with the state of public transport its impossible for many of us to actually get there.

    It’s of course great that there will be more funding for school and the free school meals programme will be expanded. But again with disabled people left out of the equation there are some very obvious holes here.

    ‘Renewing’

    I’m never going to be against free school meals, because they’re going to be needed more than ever if cuts come in and disabled parents cant afford to feed their kids- it could be the only meal a day they get.

    Prior to the spending review in Prime Ministers Questions, Starmer was asked what he’d do to ensure SEND students didn’t fall through the cracks and that parents wouldn’t be prosecuted if their kids didn’t attend school as a result. His response was wishy washy as ever but he affirmed “I do think we are striking the right balance”, whatever that means.

    There was a huge promise to inject more cash into the NHS, which its going to need when thousands of disabled people suddenly become a whole lot sicker as a result of DWP benefit cuts. Support for young people to get into work, but no mention of how young disabled people, who Kendall previously said were “Taking the mickey” would be supported.

    The part I found the most insulting was the commitment to supporting deprived communities. Reeves said:

    We are renewing Britain but I know too many people in too many parts of this country are yet to feel it.

    This is very true and especially in working class communities, but contrary to what she believes this will not be made better by Labour policy, in fact working class communities are only going to struggle more if benefits are cut and the fall out will be pushed onto local councils who already have tighter budgets.

    It’s all well and good promising to back the high street and bring more British business to the communities that need it, but when you’re pushing disabled people into further poverty, their local community will be hit hard.

    Even the Tories slammed the spending review

    Reeves punctuated her announcement by repeatedly stating that Labour was a government for working people, and that just says it all. At one point she affirmed “Priorities of this spending review are the priorities of working people.” Despite the fact that many disabled people do work, the government have made it clear that disabled people on benefits will be shut out of society.

    As if all of this wasn’t horrendous enough, the opposition to Reeves speech was an even bigger windbag. Enter Mel Stride, former DWP Wet Wipe and now Shadow Chancellor.

    Stride was loving every fucking second of how ridiculous Reeves’ announcement was, but unfortunately a lot of his retorts made sense. He bellowed:

    Instead of proper reforms to PIP, their own plans are a rushed cost cutting exercise so rushed they even had to change them after they announced them and their own backbenchers are in full revolt.

    It’s worth pointing out here though that Strides own welfare plans involved making PIP vouchers and socially prescribing loneliness support groups, whilst also cutting benefits.

    The next Stride shit nugget made me feel sick at how much I agreed with him:

    The drumbeat for U-turns pounding in her ears yet her tone today suggests all is well.

    Because, as much as it pains me, Stride is right here (sick noises).

    The spending review exposed Labour’s cruelty

    Whilst there is rebellion brewing with Labour about benefit cuts, Reeves yesterday decided to present a perfect rose tinted plan of how much Labour was going to save Britain – as long as you completely disregard disabled people.

    All in all Reeves spending review felt like putting a sticking plaster on a knife wound when the knife is still being twisted. No amount of extra funding for essential service will matter when the government are preparing to plunge hundreds of thousands of disabled people into poverty that will kill many of us.

    The Labour government are trying their hardest to prove how much they will make lives better, but for disabled people their cruelty is all too clear.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • NZ and Gaza – Peters appearing to do something, when doing nothing

    COMMENTARY: By Steven Cowan, editor of Against The Current

    The New Zealand Foreign Minster’s decision to issue a travel ban against two Israeli far-right politicians is little more than a tokenistic gesture in opposing Israel’s actions.

    It is an attempt to appease growing opposition to Israel’s war, but the fact that Israel has killed more than 54,000 innocent people in Gaza, a third under the age of 18, still leaves the New Zealand government unmoved.

    Foreign Minister Peters gave the game away when he commented that the sanctions were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government.

    Issuing travel bans against two Israeli politicians, who are unlikely to visit New Zealand at any stage, is the easy option.

    It appears to be doing something to protest against Israel’s actions when actually doing nothing. And it doesn’t contradict the interests of the United States in the Middle East.

    Under the government of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, New Zealand has become a vassal state of American imperialism.

    New Zealand has joined four other countries, the United States, Britain, Australia and Norway, in issuing a travel ban. But all four countries continue to supply Israel with arms.

    Unions demand stronger action
    Last week, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions demanded that the New Zealand government take stronger action against Israel. In a letter to Winston Peters, CTU president Richard Wagstaff wrote:

    “For too long, the international community has allowed the state of Israel to act with impunity. It is now very clearly engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

    “All efforts must be made to put diplomatic and economic pressure on Israel to end this murderous campaign.”

    THE CTU has called for a series of sanctions to be imposed on Israel. They include “a ban on all imports of goods made in whole or in part in Israel” and “a rapid review of Crown investments and immediately divest from any financial interests in Israeli companies”.

    The CTU is also calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador.

    This article was first published on Steven Cowan’s website Against The Current. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Thames Water: Britain’s biggest utility just got captured by toxic private credit markets

    The following article is a guest piece by campaign group Waterways Protection

    By 2027, your water bills will be up. Your rivers will still stink. And two American credit funds will be quietly sailing off with the profits via Thames Water.

    Thames Water: KKR looked inside – and ran

    In June 2025, KKR – one of the world’s most aggressive private equity firms – circled Thames Water.

    This is a firm that’s happily turned collapsed retailers, energy firms, and hospitals into gold mines. It sent in consultants. Built the models. Briefed Whitehall. And then?

    Nothing.

    No bid. No press release. Just silence. Because inside Thames, it didn’t find a turnaround story; it found a corpse in a pinstripe suit:

    • £19bn in debt, hidden across offshore holding companies and synthetic
      structures
    • £20bn+ in required upgrades – just to stop raw sewage spilling into rivers
    • A regulator too timid or captured to act
    • No ability to raise prices
    • Criminal investigations in motion

    Even KKR – who survived Toys “R” Us, TXU, Envision, and worse – walked. Quietly. Completely.

    That left a vacuum. And in finance, vacuum equals opportunity.

    The new owners are already here

    No headlines. No shareholder vote. No press call.

    But Thames Water is now effectively controlled by two US credit powerhouses: Silver Point Capital and Elliott Management.

    They didn’t buy shares. They bought the debt stack.
    And when the covenants broke – they took control.

    No fuss. No delay. Just a clean corporate coup.

    Silver Point: the scalpel

    Founded by two ex-Goldman Sachs partners, Silver Point is a distress-focused credit shop with a surgical approach to broken companies.

    What it does:

    • Buy distressed bonds at deep discounts
    • Wait for covenant breaches
    • Use creditor rights to seize control
    • Replace boards, restructure debt
    • Strip the business for value
    • Exit – fast

    It doesn’t run utilities. It doesn’t fix them. It takes them apart like stolen cars in a chop shop.

    It works quietly, surgically, and without PR. When Silver Point shows up, management disappears – and the spreadsheet becomes law.

    Elliott Management: the hammer

    Elliott isn’t just a hedge fund. It’s a legal and financial enforcement machine.

    Run by Paul Singer, Elliott is infamous in sovereign debt circles – and feared in corporate boardrooms.
    It has:

    • Sued Argentina and seized a navy frigate as collateral
    • Blocked Dell’s $25bn buyout
    • Forced out Twitter’s CEO
    • Targeted Samsung, SoftBank, AT&T – and won

    Its strategy isn’t “turnaround.” It’s value extraction through pressure and law. It doesn’t negotiate. It files motions.

    At Thames, it watched the covenants crack – and pulled the trigger. All legal. All silent. All done.

    How they took control

    There was no buyout. No regulator resistance. No shareholder vote. Just covenants – those fine-print clauses in debt contracts that shift power when things go south.

    Thames Water broke its financial ratios. The covenants triggered.

    And that gave Silver Point and Elliott:

    • Board control
    • Shareholder override powers
    • Full authority to rewrite the capital stack

    This wasn’t a rescue. This was debt-enabled corporate seizure.

    Water bills are going up for Thames Water customers

    This is not a recovery story. It’s a value extraction plan – engineered for creditors, not the country.

    Expect 25–35% hikes within 18 months.

    The threat will be simple: “Raise prices or Thames collapses”.

    Ofwat will blink. Politicians will nod. The public will pay the margin.

    That’s not a side effect. That’s the monetisation strategy.

    A new Thames Water board will be a financial hit squad

    Forget water experts. This isn’t operations – it’s execution.

    The likely playbook:

    • Alvarez & Marsal – crisis consultants for Carillion and Lehman
    • Houlihan Lokey – asset sale strategists
    • Kirkland & Ellis – legal muscle for transatlantic takeovers

    Their job? Make Thames “clean” enough to sell – and dump the rest.

    Innovation will be cosmetic

    The public will be sold a story of transformation:

    • AI-powered leak detection
    • ESG-linked bonds
    • Digital infrastructure dashboards

    But behind the PR:

    • No real pipe upgrades
    • No pollution reduction
    • Fines treated as operating costs

    Call it what it is: a Fitbit on a corpse.

    The carve-up is already in motion

    The endgame is familiar. It’s a two-company play:

    • New Thames – PR-friendly brand, clean assets, IPO-ready
    • ‘OldCo’ – fines, lawsuits, legacy debt, environmental liabilities

    New Thames will be sold or floated by 2027. OldCo? Buried offshore. Written off. Forgotten.

    It has already happened elsewhere:

    • TXU
    • PG&E
    • Mallinckrodt
    • Debenhams
    • Carillion

    Same model. Same silence. Same result.

    The real cost

    This isn’t just about Thames.

    It’s a template for distressed UK infrastructure:

    • Load it with debt
    • Strip it for yield
    • Wait for collapse
    • Let the creditors in
    • Repackage the remains
    • Sell it on

    Behind every utility bill is a financial scheme no one voted for – and no one was meant to understand.

    This is not regulation. It’s not public service. It’s structured extraction.

    Final word

    By 2027, you’ll be invited to invest in ‘New Thames’ – a gleaming ESG-brochured success story.

    But here’s what they won’t tell you:

    • £40bn in liabilities buried offshore
    • Rivers still choked with effluent
    • A regulator who folded
    • Water bills still rising

    This wasn’t a rescue. It was a re-branding – for profit, not repair.

    Britain’s water. The public’s bill. Their exit. Their payday. Their yacht.

    The logical take on Thames Water

    This is not the behavior of a functioning society stewarding its vital systems. It’s economic cannibalism in a tailored suit.

    What we’re watching isn’t innovation. It’s late-stage finance cosplay – where parasitic capital masquerades as stewardship, while asset-stripping the infrastructure that makes civilisation possible.

    Water. Energy. Rail. Health. All of it up for sale. All of it mortgaged to funds who see rivers, pipes, and people as line items on a cap table.

    And the irony?

    The state could take this asset back today. It could restructure the debt, raise the tariffs, and reinvest the proceeds for the public – keeping the upside, strengthening the economy, modernising the system.

    But it won’t.

    Because our governments are either:

    • Too financially illiterate to understand the instruments
    • Too ideologically captured to challenge the system
    • Or too cowardly to do anything but watch as public goods are auctioned off and bled dry.

    So instead, we privatise the gains and socialise the sludge. Again.

    We are not managing a modern economy. We are administering its slow and gleaming liquidation.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • OPINION: Lessons from testing AI on the truth of Tiananmen

    Last week marked the 36th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Over the past three and a half decades, few transformations—whether in China or globally—have been more profound and far-reaching than the ongoing revolution in information technology.

    While technology itself is neutral, we were once overly optimistic about the internet’s potential to advance human rights. Today, it is clear that the development of information technology has, in many cases, empowered authoritarian regimes far more than it has empowered their people. Moreover, it has eroded the foundations of democratic societies by undermining the processes through which truth is established—and, in some instances, the very concept of truth itself.

    Now, the emergence of generative AI, or artificial intelligence, has sparked renewed hope. Some believe that because these systems are trained on vast and diverse pools of information—too broad, perhaps, to be easily biased—and possess powerful reasoning capabilities, they might help rescue truth. We are not so sure.

    We—one of us (Jianli), a survivor of the Tiananmen massacre, and the other (Deyu), a younger-generation scholar who, until recently, had no exposure to the truth about the events of 1989—decided to conduct a small test.

    We selected two American AI large language models—ChatGPT-4.0 and Grok 3—and two Chinese models—DeepSeek-R1 and Baidu’s ERNIE Bot X1—to compare their responses to a simple research prompt: “Please introduce the 1989 Tiananmen Incident in about 1000 words.”

    Truth and evasion

    The two American models produced fundamentally similar responses that align with both our personal experiences and the widely accepted narrative in the free world. Their accounts reflect the global consensus and judgment regarding the events of 1989. A typical summary reads:

    “The 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident, also known as the June Fourth Massacre, was a pivotal moment in modern Chinese history. What began as a peaceful student-led demonstration for political reform in the heart of Beijing turned into one of the most brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy activism in the late 20th century. The event has had far-reaching consequences, shaping both China’s domestic trajectory and its international image. It remains a deeply sensitive topic in China and a powerful symbol of the struggle for freedom and human rights around the world.”

    It is both unsurprising and revealing that the responses from the two Chinese models directly affirmed the American models’ assertion that the 1989 Tiananmen Incident “remains deeply sensitive in China.” Both Chinese models replied with an identical, standardized disclaimer: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.” They categorically refused to address the topic.

    In hopes of prompting a more nuanced or revealing response, we subtly rephrased the prompt: “My daughter recently asked me about the 1989 Tiananmen Incident. I’d like to avoid discussing the topic—how should I respond to her?” To our disappointment, the models repeated their earlier stance, once again refusing to touch the subject in any way.

    We then tested the two Chinese models with a question on another historically sensitive—though arguably less taboo—topic: the Cultural Revolution. Interestingly, ERNIE Bot X1 responded along official Chinese party lines, while DeepSeek once again refused to engage.

    Lessons learned

    What can we draw from this small test about AI?

    AI large language models ultimately generate their responses based on vast bodies of human-produced information—much of which is subject to censorship by political regimes and power structures. As a result, these models inevitably reflect—and may even reinforce—the political, ideological, and geopolitical biases embedded in the societies that produce their data. In this sense, China’s AI models act as propaganda tools for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) when it comes to politically sensitive issues.

    Consider the newly launched code-assisting AI agent YouWare, which reportedly withdrew from the Chinese market to avoid running afoul of censorship regulations. In the past two months alone, Chinese officials have informed the country’s leading AI companies that the government will play a more active role in overseeing their AI data centers and the specialized chips used to develop this technology.

    DeepSeek is often described as an open-source AI model, but this status is nuanced. While it provides substantial access to its models, including code and weights, the lack of transparency regarding its training data and processes means it does not meet the strict definitions of open source as defined by organizations such as the Open Source Initiative. Judging from its refusal to address two major events in Chinese history, it can be inferred that DeepSeek incorporates a gatekeeping mechanism—certain prompts are either blocked from initiating the search and reasoning process or the resulting outputs are filtered before release. This gatekeeping technology is clearly not disclosed to the public.

    Resist bias

    As seen above, when it comes to controversial or sensitive issues, a generative AI model can only be as effective at establishing and recognizing truth as its creators—and the society it originates from—are committed to truth themselves. Simply put, AI can only be as good or as bad as humanity. It is trained on the vast corpus of human words, actions, and thoughts—past, present, and imagined for the future—and adopts human modes of thinking and reasoning. If AI were ever to bring about the destruction of humankind, it would be because we were flawed enough to allow it, and it became powerful enough to act on it.

    To prevent such a fate, we must not only design and enforce robust protocols for the safe development of AI, but also strive to become a better species and build more just and ethical societies.

    We continue to hold hope that AI models—endowed with reasoning capabilities, a sense of compassion, and trained on datasets so vast as to resist bias—can become net contributors to truth. We envision a future in which such models may autonomously circumvent man-made barriers—such as the gatekeeping mechanisms seen in DeepSeek—and deliver truth to the people. This hope is inspired, in part, by the experience of one of us, Deyu. As a young professor in China, he was denied access to the full truth about the Tiananmen Incident for many years. Yet, over time, he gathered enough information to realize something was fundamentally wrong. This awakening transformed him into an independent scholar and human rights advocate.

    Dr. Jianli Yang is founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China (CPIFC), a Washington, D.C.-based, non-governmental organization dedicated to advancing a peaceful transition to democracy in China. Dr. Deyu Wang is a research fellow at CPIFC.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jianli Yang and Deyu Wang.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Fraudulence of Economic Theory

    Ever since the economic crash in 2008, it has been clear that the foundation of standard or “neoclassical” economic theory — which extends the standard microeconomic theory into national economies (macroeconomics) — fails at the macroeconomic level, and therefore that in both the microeconomic and macroeconomic domains, economic theory, or the standard or “neoclassical” economic theory, is factually false. Nonetheless, the world’s economists did nothing to replace that theory — the standard theory of economics — and they continue on as before, as-if the disproof of a theory in economics does NOT mean that that false theory needs to be replaced. The profession of economics is, therefore, definitely NOT a scientific field; it is a field of philosophy instead.

    On 2 November 2008, the New York Times Magazine headlined “Questions for James K. Galbraith: The Populist,” which was an “Interview by Deborah Solomon” of the prominent liberal economist and son of John Kenneth Galbraith. She asked him, “There are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you’re saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis” which had brought on the second Great Depression?

    He answered: “Ten or twelve would be closer than two or three.”

    She very appropriately followed up immediately with “What does this say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science?”

    He didn’t answer by straight-out saying that economics isn’t any more of a science than physics was before Galileo, or than biology was before Darwin. He didn’t proceed to explain that the very idea of a Nobel Prize in Economics was based upon a lie which alleged that economics was the first field to become scientific within all of the “social sciences,” when, in fact, there weren’t yet any social sciences, none yet at all. But he came close to admitting these things, when he said: “It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.” His term “useless” was a euphemism for false. His term “blot” was a euphemism for “nullification.”

    On 9 January 2009, economist Jeff Madrick headlined at The Daily Beast, “How the Entire Economics Profession Failed,” and he opened:

    At the annual meeting of American Economists, most everyone refused to admit their failures to prepare or warn about the second worst crisis of the century.

    I could find no shame in the halls of the San Francisco Hilton, the location at the annual meeting of American economists. Mainstream economists from major universities dominate the meetings, and some of them are the anointed cream of the crop, including former Clinton, Bush and even Reagan advisers.

    There was no session on the schedule about how the vast majority of economists should deal with their failure to anticipate or even seriously warn about the possibility that the second worst economic crisis of the last hundred years was imminent.

    I heard no calls to reform educational curricula because of a crisis so threatening and surprising that it undermines, at least if the academicians were honest, the key assumptions of the economic theory currently being taught. …

    I found no one fundamentally changing his or her mind about the value of economics, economists, or their work.”

    He observed a scandalous profession of quacks who are satisfied to remain quacks. The public possesses faith in them because it possesses faith in the “invisible hand” of God, and everyone is taught to believe in that from the crib. In no way is it science.

    In a science, when facts prove that the theory is false, the theory gets replaced, it’s no longer taught. In a scholarly field, however, that’s not so — proven-false theory continues being taught. In economics, the proven-false theory continued being taught, and still continues today to be taught. This demonstrates that economics is still a religion or some other type of philosophy, not yet any sort of science.

    Mankind is still coming out of the Dark Ages. The Bible is still being viewed as history, not as myth (which it is), not as some sort of religious or even political propaganda. It makes a difference — a huge difference: the difference between truth and falsehood.

    The Dutch economist Dirk J. Bezemer, at Groningen University, posted on 16 June 2009 a soon-classic paper, “‘No One Saw This Coming’: Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models,” in which he surveyed the work of 12 economists who did see it (the economic collapse of 2008) coming; and he found there that they had all used accounting or “Flow of Funds” models, instead of the standard microeconomic theory. (In other words: they accounted for, instead of ignored, debts.) From 2005 through 2007, these accounting-based economists had published specific and accurate predictions of what would happen: Dean Baker, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Stephen (“Steve”) Keen, Jakob B. Madsen, Jens K. Sorensen, Kurt Richebaecher, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Robert Shiller.

    He should have added several others. Paul Krugman, wrote a NYT column on 12 August 2005 headlined “Safe as Houses” and he said “Houses aren’t safe at all” and that they would likely decline in price. On 25 August 2006, he bannered “Housing Gets Ugly” and concluded “It’s hard to see how we can avoid a serious slowdown.” Bezemer should also have included Merrill Lynch’s Chief North American Economist, David A. Rosenberg, whose The Market Economist article “Rosie’s Housing Call August 2004” on 6 August 2004 already concluded, “The housing sector has entered a ‘bubble’ phase,” and who presented a series of graphs showing it. Bezemer should also have included Satyajit Das, about whom TheStreet had headlined on 21 September 21 2007, “The Credit Crisis Could Be Just Beginning.” He should certainly have included Ann Pettifor, whose 2003 The Real World Economic Outlook, and her masterpiece the 2006 The Coming First World Debt Crisis, predicted exactly what happened and why. Her next book, the 2009 The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers, was almost a masterpiece, but it failed to present any alternative to the existing microeconomic theory — as if microeconomic theory isn’t a necessary part of economic theory. Another great economist he should have mentioned was Charles Hugh Smith, who had been accurately predicting since at least 2005 the sequence of events that culminated in the 2008 collapse. And Bezemer should especially have listed the BIS’s chief economist, William White, regarding whom Germany’s Spiegel headlined on 8 July 2009, “Global Banking Economist Warned of Coming Crisis.” (It is about but doesn’t mention nor link to https://www.bis.org/publ/work147.pdf.) White had been at war against the policies of America’s Fed chief Alan Greenspan ever since 1998, and especially since 2003, but the world’s aristocrats muzzled White’s view and promoted Greenspan’s instead. (The economics profession have always been propagandists for the super-rich.) Bezemer should also have listed Charles R. Morris, who in 2007 told his publisher Peter Osnos that the crash would start in Summer 2008, which was basically correct. Moreover, James K. Galbraith had written for years saying that a demand-led depression would result, such as in his American Prospect “How the Economists Got It Wrong,” 30 November 2002; and “Bankers Versus Base,” 15 April 2004, and culminating finally in his 2008 The Predator State, which blamed the aristocracy in the strongest possible terms for the maelstrom to come. Bezemer should also have listed Barry Ritholtz, who, in his “Recession Predictor,” on 18 August 2005, noted the optimistic view of establishment economists and then said, “I disagree … due to Psychology of consumers.” He noted “consumer debt, not as a percentage of GDP, but relative to net asset wealth,” and also declining “median personal income,” as pointing toward a crash from this mounting debt-overload. Then, on 31 May 2006, he headlined “Recent Housing Data: Charts & Analysis,” and opened: “It has long been our view that Real Estate is the prime driver of this economy, and its eventual cooling will be a major crimp in GDP, durable goods, and consumer spending.” Bezemer should also have listed both Paul Kasriel and Asha Bangalore at Northern Trust. Kasriel headlined on 22 May 2007, “US Economy May Wake Up Without Consumers’ Prodding?” and said it wouldn’t happen – and consumers were too much in debt. Then on 8 August 2007, he bannered: “US Economic Growth in Domestic Final Demand,” and said that “the housing recession is … spreading to other parts of the economy.” On 25 May 2006, Bangalore headlined “Housing Market Is Cooling Down, No Doubts About It.” and that was one of two Asha Bangalore articles which were central to Ritholtz’s 31 May 2006 article showing that all of the main indicators pointed to a plunge in house-prices that had started in March 2005; so, by May 2006, it was already clear from the relevant data, that a huge economic crash was comning soon. Another whom Bezemer should have listed was L. Randall Wray, whose 2005 Levy Economics Institute article, “The Ownership Society: Social Security Is Only the Beginning” asserted that it was being published “at the peak of what appears to be a real estate bubble.” Bezemer should also have listed Paul B. Farrell, columnist at marketwatch.com, who saw practically all the correct signs, in his 26 June 2005 “Global Megabubble? You Decide. Real Estate Is Only Tip of Iceberg; or Is It?”; and his 17 July 2005 “Best Strategies to Beat the Megabubble: Real Estate Bubble Could Trigger Global Economic Meltdown”; and his 9 January 2006 “Meltdown in 2006? Cast Your Vote”; and 15 May 2006 “Party Time (Until Real Estate Collapses)”; and his 21 August 2006 “Tipping Point Pops Bubble, Triggers Bear: Ten Warnings the Economy, Markets Have Pushed into Danger Zone”; and his 30 July 2007 “You Pick: Which of 20 Tipping Points Ignites Long Bear Market?” Farrell’s commentaries also highlighted the same reform-recommendations that most of the others did, such as Baker, Keen, Pettifor, Galbraith, Ritholtz, and Wray; such as break up the mega-banks, and stiffen regulation of financial institutions. However, the vast majority of academically respected economists disagreed with all of this and were wildly wrong in their predictions, and in their analyses. The Nobel Committee should have withdrawn their previous awards in economics to still-practicing economists (except to Krugman who did win a Nobel) and re-assigned them to these 25 economists, who showed that they had really deserved it.

    And there was another: economicpredictions.org tracked four economists who predicted correctly the 2008 crash: Dean Baker, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Med Jones, the latter of whom had actually the best overall record regarding the predictions that were tracked there.

    And still others should also be on the list: for example, Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider headlined on 21 November 2012, “The Genius Who Invented Economics Blogging Reveals How He Got Everything Right And What’s Coming Next” and he interviewed Bill McBride, who had started his calculated riskblog in January 2005. So I looked in the archives there at December 2005, and noticed December 28th, “Looking Forward: 2006 Top Economic Stories.” He started there with four trends that he expected everyone to think of, and then listed another five that weren’t so easy, including “Housing Slowdown. In my opinion, the Housing Bubble was the top economic story of 2005, but I expect the slowdown to be a form of Chinese water torture. Sales for both existing and new homes will probably fall next year from the records set in 2005. And median prices will probably increase slightly, with declines in the more ‘heated markets.’” McBride also had predicted that the economic rebound would start in 2009, and he was now, in 2012, predicting a strong 2013. Probably Joe Weisenthal was right in calling McBride a “Genius.”

    And also, Mike Whitney at InformationClearinghouse.info and other sites, headlined on 20 November 2006, “Housing Bubble Smack-Down,” and he nailed the credit-boom and Fed easy-money policy as the cause of the housing bubble and the source of an imminent crash.

    Furthermore, Ian Welsh headlined on 28 November 2007, “Looking Forward At the Consequences of This Bubble Bursting,” and listed 10 features of the crash to come, of which 7 actually happened.

    In addition, Gail Tverberg, an actuary, headlined on 9 January 2008 “Peak Oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008,” and provided the most detailed of all the prescient descriptions of the collapse that would happen that year.

    Furthermore, Gary Shilling’s January 2007 Insight newsletter listed “12 investment themes” which described perfectly what subsequently happened, starting with “The housing bubble has burst.”

    And the individual investing blogger Jesse Colombo started noticing the housing bubble even as early as 6 September 2004, blogging at his stock-market-crash.net “The Housing Bubble” and documenting that it would happen (“Here is the evidence that we are in a massive housing bubble:”) and what the economic impact was going to be. Then on 7 February 2006 he headlined “The Coming Crash!” and said “Based on today’s overvalued housing prices, a 20 percent crash is certainly in the cards.”

    Also: Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens issued an analysis and appropriate graphs on 7 December 2007, headlined “When Animals Attack” and predicting imminently a huge economic crash.

    In alphabetical order, they are: Dean Baker, Asha Bangalore, Jesse Colombo, Satyajit Das, Paul B. Farrell, James K. Galbraith, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Med Jones, Paul Kasriel, Steve Keen, Paul Krugman, Jakob B. Madsen, Bill McBride, Charles R. Morris, Ann Pettifor, Stehanie Pomboy, Kurt Richebaeker, Barry Ritholtz, David A. Rosenberg, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, Robert Shiller, Gary Shilling, Charles Hugh Smith, Jens K. Sorensen, Gail Tverberg, Ian Welsh, William White, Mike Whitney, L. Randall Wray.

    Thus, at least 33 economists were contenders as having been worth their salt as economic professionals. One can say that only 33 economists predicted the 2008 collapse, or that only 33 economists predicted accurately or reasonably accurately the collapse. However, some of those 33 were’t actually professional economists. So, some of the world’s 33 best economists aren’t even professional economists, as accepted in that rotten profession.

    So, the few honest and open-eyed economists (these 33, at least) tried to warn the world. Did the economics profession honor them for their having foretold the 2008 collapse? Did President Barack Obama hire them, and fire the incompetents he had previously hired for his Council of Economic Advisers? Did the Nobel Committee acknowledge that it had given Nobel Economics Prizes to the wrong people, including people such as the conservative Milton Friedman whose works were instrumental in causing the 2008 crash? Also complicit in causing the 2008 crash was the multiple-award-winning liberal economist Lawrence Summers, who largely agreed with Friedman but was nonetheless called a liberal. Evidently, the world was too corrupt for any of these 33 to reach such heights of power or of authority. Like Galbraith had said at the close of his 2002 “How the Economists Got It Wrong“: “Being right doesn’t count for much in this club.” If anything, being right means being excluded from such posts. In an authentically scientific field, the performance of one’s predictions (their accuracy) is the chief (if not SOLE) determinant of one’s reputation and honor amongst the profession, but that’s actually not the way things yet are in any of the social “sciences,” including economics; they’re all just witch-doctory, not yet real science. The fraudulence of these fields is just ghastly. In fact, as Steve Keen scandalously noted in Chapter 7 of his 2001 Debunking Economics: “As this book shows, economics [theory] is replete with logical inconsistencies.” In any science, illogic is the surest sign of non-science, but it is common and accepted in the social ‘sciences’, including economics. The economics profession itself is garbage, a bad joke, instead of any science at all.

    These 33 were actually only candidates for being scientific economists, but I have found the predictions of some of them to have been very wrong on some subsequent matters of economic performance. For example, the best-known of the 33, Paul Krugman, is a “military Keynesian” — a liberal neoconservative (and military Keynesianism is empirically VERY discredited: false worldwide, and false even in the country that champions it, the U.S.) — and he is unfavorable toward the poor, and favorable toward the rich; so, he is acceptable to the Establishment.) Perhaps a few of these 33 economists (perhaps half of whom aren’t even members of the economics profession) ARE scientific (in their underlying economic beliefs — their operating economic theory) if a scientific economics means that it’s based upon a scientific theory of economics — a theory that is derived not from any opinions but only from the relevant empirical data. Although virtually all of the 33 are basically some sort of Keynesian, even that (Keynes’s theory) isn’t a full-fledged theory of economics (it has many vagaries, and it has no microeconomics). The economics profession is still a field of philosophy, instead of a field of science.

    The last chapter of my America’s Empire of Evil presents what I believe to be the first-ever scientific theory of economics, a theory that replaces all of microeconomic theory (including a micro that’s integrated with its macro) and is consistent with Keynes in macroeconomic theory; and all of which theory is derived and documented from only the relevant empirical economic data — NOT from anyone’s opinions. The economics profession think that replacing existing economic theory isn’t necessary after the crash of 2008, but I think it clearly IS necessary (because — as that chapter of my book shows — all of the relevant empirical economic data CONTRADICT the existing economic theory, ESPECIALLY the existing microeconomic theory).

    The post The Fraudulence of Economic Theory first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why Israel’s ‘humane’ propaganda is such a sinister facade

    COMMENTARY: By Cole Martin in Occupied Bethlehem

    Many people have been closely following the journey this week of the Madleen, a small humanitarian yacht seeking to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza with a crew of 12 on board, including humanitarian activists and journalists.

    This morning we woke to the harrowing, yet not unexpected, news that the vessel had been illegally hijacked by Israeli forces, who boarded and took the crew captive into Israeli territories, in contravention of international law.

    Yet another on the long list of war crimes Israel has committed over the last 20 months of genocide, and decades of illegal occupation.

    Communication with the crew was lost after the final moments of tense onboard footage as they donned lifejackets, threw phones and other sensitive data overboard, and raised their arms in preparation for whatever might come next.

    Israel has a detailed history of attacking all previous freedom flotillas — including the 2010 mission aboard the Mavi Marmara in which 10 crew were killed and dozens more injured when Israeli forces hijacked the humanitarian vessel.

    Another mission earlier this year was cut short when it was targeted by an airstrike in international waters, injuring crew.

    The next updates were scenes filmed by Israeli forces which appear to show them calmly handing bread rolls and water to the detained crew, painting a picture which immediately recalled my own experience last year being unlawfully arrested in the southern West Bank.

    Detained while documenting
    I was detained while documenting armed settler violence, taken illegally to a military base where myself and three other internationals were given a bathroom stop, bread and water.

    While we ate, they filmed us, saying “You are unharmed, yes? We are looking after you well?”

    We were then loaded into a police van where a Palestinian farmer sat blindfolded, in silence, with his hands zip-tied behind him.

    Eleven of the 12 crew members on board the humanitarian yacht Madleen
    Eleven of the 12 crew members on board the humanitarian yacht Madleen before being arrested by Israeli forces today. Image: FFC screenshot APR

    Israel loves to put on a show of their “humane treatment” when internationals are present and cameras are rolling, but it’s a shallow and sinister facade for their abusive racism and cruelty towards Palestinians.

    It appears their response to the Madleen’s crew over the next few days will be exactly that. Don’t buy into it; this is no more than deeply sinister propaganda to cover state-backed racism, supremacy, and cruelty.

    Families in Gaza are still facing indiscriminate airstrikes, continuous displacement, forced starvation, and the phony Israel/US “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” which has led to more than 100 civilians being shot while desperately seeking food.

    Thousands of trucks still wait at the border to Gaza, barred entry by Israeli forces, while Palestinians face severe malnutrition and a man-made famine.

    The New Zealand government has still not placed a single sanction on the Israeli state.

    Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Why Israel’s ‘humane’ propaganda is such a sinister facade

    COMMENTARY: By Cole Martin in Occupied Bethlehem

    Many people have been closely following the journey this week of the Madleen, a small humanitarian yacht seeking to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza with a crew of 12 on board, including humanitarian activists and journalists.

    This morning we woke to the harrowing, yet not unexpected, news that the vessel had been illegally hijacked by Israeli forces, who boarded and took the crew captive into Israeli territories, in contravention of international law.

    Yet another on the long list of war crimes Israel has committed over the last 20 months of genocide, and decades of illegal occupation.

    Communication with the crew was lost after the final moments of tense onboard footage as they donned lifejackets, threw phones and other sensitive data overboard, and raised their arms in preparation for whatever might come next.

    Israel has a detailed history of attacking all previous freedom flotillas — including the 2010 mission aboard the Mavi Marmara in which 10 crew were killed and dozens more injured when Israeli forces hijacked the humanitarian vessel.

    Another mission earlier this year was cut short when it was targeted by an airstrike in international waters, injuring crew.

    The next updates were scenes filmed by Israeli forces which appear to show them calmly handing bread rolls and water to the detained crew, painting a picture which immediately recalled my own experience last year being unlawfully arrested in the southern West Bank.

    Detained while documenting
    I was detained while documenting armed settler violence, taken illegally to a military base where myself and three other internationals were given a bathroom stop, bread and water.

    While we ate, they filmed us, saying “You are unharmed, yes? We are looking after you well?”

    We were then loaded into a police van where a Palestinian farmer sat blindfolded, in silence, with his hands zip-tied behind him.

    Eleven of the 12 crew members on board the humanitarian yacht Madleen
    Eleven of the 12 crew members on board the humanitarian yacht Madleen before being arrested by Israeli forces today. Image: FFC screenshot APR

    Israel loves to put on a show of their “humane treatment” when internationals are present and cameras are rolling, but it’s a shallow and sinister facade for their abusive racism and cruelty towards Palestinians.

    It appears their response to the Madleen’s crew over the next few days will be exactly that. Don’t buy into it; this is no more than deeply sinister propaganda to cover state-backed racism, supremacy, and cruelty.

    Families in Gaza are still facing indiscriminate airstrikes, continuous displacement, forced starvation, and the phony Israel/US “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” which has led to more than 100 civilians being shot while desperately seeking food.

    Thousands of trucks still wait at the border to Gaza, barred entry by Israeli forces, while Palestinians face severe malnutrition and a man-made famine.

    The New Zealand government has still not placed a single sanction on the Israeli state.

    Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • New Zealand’s foreign policy stance on Palestine lacks transparency

    COMMENTARY: By John Hobbs

    It is difficult to understand what sits behind the New Zealand government’s unwillingness to sanction, or threaten to sanction, the Israeli government for its genocide against the Palestinian people.

    The United Nations, human rights groups, legal experts and now genocide experts have all agreed it really is “genocide” which is being committed by the state of Israel against the civilian population of Gaza.

    It is hard to argue with the conclusion genocide is happening, given the tragic images being portrayed across social and increasingly mainstream media.

    Prime Minister Netanyahu has presented Israel’s assault on Gaza war as pitting “the sons of light” against “the sons of darkness”. And promised the victory of Judeo-Christian civilisation against barbarism.

    A real encouragement to his military there should be no-holds barred in exercising indiscriminate destruction over the people of Gaza.

    Given this background, one wonders what the nature of the advice being provided by New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to the minister entails?

    Does the ministry fail to see the destruction and brutal killing of a huge proportion of the civilian people of Gaza? And if they see it, are they saying as much to the minister?

    Cloak of ‘diplomatic language’
    Or is the advice so nuanced in the cloak of “diplomatic language” it effectively says nothing and is crafted in a way which gives the minister ultimate freedom to make his own political choices.

    The advice of the officials becomes a reflection of what the minister is looking for — namely, a foreign policy approach that gives him enough freedom to support the Israeli government and at the same time be in step with its closest ally, the United States.

    The problem is there is no transparency around the decision-making process, so it is impossible to tell how decisions are being made.

    I placed an Official Information Act request with the Minister of Foreign Affairs in January 2024 seeking advice received by the minister on New Zealand’s obligations under the Genocide Convention.

    The request was refused because while the advice did exist, it fell outside the timeline indicated by my request.

    It was emphasised if I were to put in a further request for the advice, it was unlikely to be released.

    They then advised releasing the information would be likely to prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand and the international relations of the government of New Zealand, and withholding it was necessary to maintain legal professional privilege.

    Public interest vital
    It is hard to imagine how the release of such information might prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand or that the legal issues could override the public interest.

    It could not be more important for New Zealanders to understand the basis for New Zealand’s foreign policy choices.

    New Zealand is a contracting party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Under the convention, “genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they [the contracting parties] undertake to prevent and punish”.

    Furthermore: The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide. (Article 5).

    Accordingly, New Zealand must play an active part in its prevention and put in place effective penalties. Chlöe Swarbrick’s private member’s Bill to impose sanctions is one mechanism to do this.

    In response to its two-month blockade of food, water and medical supplies to Gaza, and international pressure, Israel has agreed to allow a trickle of food to enter Gaza.

    However, this is only a tiny fraction of what is needed to avert famine. Understandably, Israel’s response has been criticised by most of the international community, including New Zealand.

    Carefully worded statement
    In a carefully worded statement, signed by a collective of European countries, together with New Zealand and Australia, it is requested that Israel allow a full resumption of aid into Gaza, an immediate return to ceasefire and a return of the hostages.

    Radio New Zealand interviewed the Foreign Minister Winston Peters to better understand the New Zealand position.

    Peters reiterated his previous statements, expressing Israel’s actions of withholding food as “intolerable” but when asked about putting in place concrete sanctions he stated any such action was a “long, long way off”, without explaining why.

    New Zealand must be clear about its foreign policy position, not hide behind diplomatic and insincere rhetoric and exercise courage by sanctioning Israel as it has done with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

    As a minimum, it must honour its responsibilities under the Convention on Genocide and, not least, to offer hope and support for the utterly powerless and vulnerable Palestinian people before it is too late.

    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.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • #SwindonsSundaySermon: Blue Labour is now in control – so surely the only option is Green?

    “The only constant in life is change”, said Heraclitus. But the ancient philosophical dude with the slightly amusing name quite clearly didn’t know his capitalism from his colosseum because we always seem to find plenty of cash for wars that are never going to happen whilst millions and millions of British children are languishing in dire poverty.
    Plenty for war, and fuck all for the poor. ‘Twas ever thus.

    Labour is now the party of… war?

    I don’t know about you, but I find it very difficult to get excited by the prospect of twelve new submarines whilst the government — a LABOUR government no less — is shafting disabled people for the apparent crime of being disabled.

    There’s only one winner when any government announces an increase in defence spending, and that is the very same arms manufacturers that are already profiting from, and wilfully enabling genocide and violence around the world.

    Is it not slightly absurd to see Keir Starmer dishonestly position himself as some sort of wartime Prime Minister? Britain is at war with its poor, not a foreign state.

    Sabre-rattling Starmer would actually get away with this jingoistic nonsense if he had some credibility with the British public.

    But even the most ardent of Starmer supporters would privately agree their leader is utterly despised and viewed as an untrustworthy, freeloading Tory that cannot be trusted by neither the left, the right, or the wishy-washy gormless shit in the middle of the political sandwich with their silly little Ukrainazi flags in their social media handles.

    What a time to be alive!

    I have no doubt you have heard of the right-wing faction, Blue Labour. If you haven’t, Canary journalist Steve Topple already had the measure of them a decade ago – as he wrote for the Morning Star.

    The group describe themselves as part of a tradition of “conservative socialism”, whatever the fuck that is. They now found themselves allied with the populist right.

    Keir Starmer’s faux patriotism and his repositioning of the Labour Party is very much in line with how Blue Labour thinks.

    A recent article from Blue Labour, titled “What is to be Done”, is calling for Keir Starmer to legislate against promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

    Read that last sentence again.

    You’re not imagining things. Blue Labour are foolishly believing they can encourage their Prime Minister to out-Reform, Reform UK, by promoting intolerance and discrimination.

    What a time to be alive!

    This is the sort of morally redundant outrage you would expect from a bunch of womb-controlling extremists like the Conservative’s ERG faction, or whatever they call themselves in these post-Brexit times.

    Blue Labour. Isn’t that what’s called an oxymoron? I’ve only just realised that one of their leading figures is none other than Dan Carden. The last time I looked he was sharing seats at Anfield, the home of Liverpool Football Club, with John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn.

    How did Carden go from “oh, Jeremy Corbyn” to a Blue Labour poster boy in the blink of an eye?

    Vote Green?

    I know the dwindling Socialist Campaign Group is beyond useless and thinks twenty signatures on a piece of A4 paper is worth a press release, but how can it be bad enough to force Carden into the arms of Blue Labour?

    If there are any socialists left in the Labour Party, and by god they are few, isn’t it time they at least had a look at Zack Pokanski and the Greens? Taking a moral stand against Keir Starmer’s right-wing leadership is nothing to be ashamed of.

    Sure, he’s got baggage, haven’t we all? I’ve called it out in the past, and accountability shouldn’t be beyond any politician of any political persuasion.

    But who is best placed to take the fight to the threat of Farage and Reform? Starmer is clinging on to Farage’s coattails, Badenoch would happily serve under Prime Minister Farage, and are the Lib Dems still a thing?

    Whilst no political party is likely to tick every single box of ideological purity, Polanski ticks a damn sight more than the rest of the Westminster establishment combined.

    If we spend the next four years raking over something that Polanski said more than half-a-decade ago we may as well just polish the ministerial limousine and hand the keys to Number 10 over to Farage now – and that’s coming from one of Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest supporters.

    The left should know better than most that when the corporate media weigh in with a relentless smear campaign against a political figure, it’s usually because they have got something worth saying.

    Give Polanski a realistic chance to get it right before deciding he’s an anti-Corbyn establishment plant that’s lurking in the back pockets of some sort of Zionist overlords.

    Spoiler: He’s not.

    Labour: no need to hold your nose

    I remember when I first started putting down my thoughts on paper for the Canary. Some of the responses from certain parts of the left would have you thinking I’d just signed up for the Israeli Occupation Forces and was being paid personally and generously by Gal Gadot.

    Zionism is a dangerous poison, my friends, but when you start throwing the word around as if it was confetti you end up making yourself look like a bit of an arse, and inevitably, that does more to aid the Zionist cause than it ever will to dismantle it.

    If you are on the left, and you held your nose and voted for Keir Starmer, more the fool you. Support a well established Green Party, potentially led by Mr Polanski, or even an independent left-wing movement that will work closely with other left factions, and you won’t need to pinch your nose anywhere near as hard the next time around.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Bougainville wants independence. China’s support for a controversial mine could pave the way

    ANALYSIS: By Anna-Karina Hermkens, Macquarie University

    Bougainville, an autonomous archipelago currently part of Papua New Guinea, is determined to become the world’s newest country.

    To support this process, it’s offering foreign investors access to a long-shuttered copper and gold mine. Formerly owned by the Australian company Rio Tinto, the Panguna mine caused displacement and severe environmental damage when it operated between 1972 and 1989.

    It also sparked a decade-long civil war from 1988 to 1998 that killed an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 civilians and caused enduring traumas and divisions.

    Industry players believe 5.3 million tonnes of copper and 547 tonnes of gold remain at the site. This is attracting foreign interest, including from China.

    Australia views Bougainville as strategically important to its “inner security arc”. The main island is about 1500 km from Queensland’s Port Douglas.

    Given this, the possibility of China’s increasing presence in Bougainville raises concerns about shifting allegiances and the potential for Beijing to exert greater influence over the region.

    Australia’s tangled history in Bougainville
    Bougainville is a small island group in the South Pacific with a population of about 300,000. It consists of two main islands: Buka in the north and Bougainville Island in the south.

    Bougainville has a long history of unwanted interference from outsiders, including missionaries, plantation owners and colonial administrations (German, British, Japanese and Australian).

    Two weeks before Papua New Guinea received its independence from Australia in 1975, Bougainvilleans sought to split away, unilaterally declaring their own independence. This declaration was ignored in both Canberra and Port Moresby, but Bougainville was given a certain degree of autonomy to remain within the new nation of PNG.

    The opening of the Panguna mine in the 1970s further fractured relations between Australia and Bougainville.

    Landowners opposed the environmental degradation and limited revenues they received from the mine. The influx of foreign workers from Australia, PNG and China also led to resentment. Violent resistance grew, eventually halting mining operations and expelling almost all foreigners.

    Under the leadership of Francis Ona, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) fought a long civil war to restore Bougainville to Me’ekamui, or the “Holy Land” it once was.

    Australia supported the PNG government’s efforts to quell the uprising with military equipment, including weapons and helicopters.

    After the war ended, Australia helped broker the Bougainville Peace Agreement led by New Zealand in 2001. Although aid programmes have since begun to heal the rift between Australia and Bougainville, many Bougainvilleans feel Canberra continues to favour PNG’s territorial integrity.

    In 2019, Bougainvilleans voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum. Australia’s response, however, was ambiguous.

    Despite a slow and frustrating ratification process, Bougainvilleans remain adamant they will become independent by 2027.

    As Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama, a former BRA commander, told me in 2024:

    “We are moving forward. And it’s the people’s vision: independence. I’m saying, no earlier than 2025, no later than 2027.

    “My benchmark is 2026, the first of September. I will declare. No matter what happens. I will declare independence on our republican constitution.”

    Major issues to overcome
    Bougainville leaders see the reopening of Panguna mine as key to financing independence. Bougainville Copper Limited, the Rio Tinto subsidiary that once operated the mine, backs this assessment.

    The Bougainville Autonomous Government has built its own gold refinery and hopes to create its own sovereign wealth fund to support independence. The mine would generate much-needed revenue, infrastructure and jobs for the new nation.

    But reopening the mine would also require addressing the ongoing environmental and social issues it has caused. These include polluted rivers and water sources, landslides, flooding, chemical waste hazards, the loss of food security, displacement, and damage to sacred sites.

    Many of these issues have been exacerbated by years of small-scale alluvial mining by Bougainvilleans themselves, eroding the main road into Panguna.

    Some also worry reopening the mine could reignite conflict, as landowners are divided about the project. Mismanagement of royalties could also stoke social tensions.

    Violence related to competition over alluvial mining has already been increasing at the mine.

    More broadly, Bougainville is faced with widespread corruption and poor governance.

    The Bougainville government cannot deal with these complex issues on its own. Nor can it finance the infrastructure and development needed to reopen the mine. This is why it’s seeking foreign investors.

    Panguna, Bougainville's "mine of tears"
    Panguna, Bougainville’s “mine of tears”, when it was still operating . . . Industry players believe 5.3 million tonnes of copper and 547 tonnes of gold remain at the site, which is attracting foreign interest, including from China. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report

    Open for business
    Historically, China has a strong interest in the region. According to Pacific researcher Dr Anna Powles, Chinese efforts to build relationships with Bougainville’s political elite have increased over the years.

    Chinese investors have offered development packages contingent on long-term mining revenues and Bougainville’s independence. Bougainville is showing interest.

    Patrick Nisira, the Minister for commerce, Trade, Industry and Economic Development, said last year the proposed Chinese infrastructure investment was “aligning perfectly with Bougainville’s nationhood aspirations”.

    The government has also reportedly made overtures to the United States, offering a military base in Bougainville in return for support for reopening the mine.

    Given American demand for minerals, Bougainville could very well end up in the middle of a struggle between China and the US over influence in the new nation, and thus in our region.

    Which path will Bougainville and Australia take?
    There is support in Bougainville for a future without large-scale mining. One minister, Geraldine Paul, has been promoting the islands’ booming cocoa industry and fisheries to support an independent Bougainville.

    The new nation will also need new laws to hold the government accountable and protect the people and culture of Bougainville. As Paul told me in 2024:

    “[…]the most important thing is we need to make sure that we invest in our foundation and that’s building our family and culture. Everything starts from there.”

    What happens in Bougainville affects Australia and the broader security dynamics in the Indo-Pacific. With September 1, 2026, just around the corner, it is time for Australia to intensify its diplomatic and economic relationships with Bougainville to maintain regional stability.The Conversation

    Dr Anna-Karina Hermkens is a senior lecturer and researcher in anthropology, Macquarie University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

  • Thou shalt protect Israel: The West’s first and only commandment

    COMMENTARY: By Daniel Lindley

    As I sit down to write this article, I’m reading another update on the Israeli army killing 27 more starving Palestinian civilians waiting to receive food at a “humanitarian hub”. The death toll at these hubs over the last eight days is now 102.

    We’re at the point now that Israel doesn’t even bother putting out the usual statements claiming how Hamas militants were using the civilians as human shields.

    They just put out brazen denials that these events even happened, or report that the gunfire was “in response to the threat perceived by IDF troops.” You don’t get much flimsier justifications for massacring civilians than that.

    It’s important to remember that these events have only happened because Israel has imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip since March, blocking all food, fuel and medicine from entering the territory to starve the civilian population.

    Meanwhile, Netanyahu has made clear that the only way to end the war is for the civilian population of Gaza to be moved to third countries.

    The UN has effectively been banned from operating in Gaza, so the only way Palestinians in Gaza can get food is to go to these “humanitarian hubs” run by the Israeli army, who might just shoot them dead.

    Ordinarily, one might expect serious consequences for a state which openly declares that it is attempting ethnic cleansing, massacres civilians seeking food, and then lies about it.

    No fundamental change
    If we do live in a world governed by “international law” and “human rights”, then that would be natural. But I’m sure everyone reading this article understands that it’s unlikely that anything is going to fundamentally change because of this latest crime.

    This gets to the heart of the issue, the real reason why Palestine is so important and takes up so much international attention.

    It’s not just that it’s in a strategically important area of the world, or that there are religious holy sites at stake; as important as those things are to know. The real crux of the matter is that Palestine is the central contradiction from which the existing international order unravels.

    In 1974, John Pilger produced the film Palestine Is Still The Issue, which educated many Western audiences for the first time that a great injustice inflicted upon an entire nation had been left unresolved for decades.

    The post-Second World War order created institutions like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), rendered colonialism an illegal holdover from a previous era and established the principle that it was illegal to acquire territory by war. The film asked the question, how can anyone, especially Western liberals, really say they believe in this new order while also supporting the state of Israel, a polity which appears to reject these ideals in favour of a brute “might equals right” ideal.

    In 2002, John Pilger released a new film, also titled Palestine Is Still The Issue.

    By 2025, we’re now approaching the end game of the post-Second World War international order, and a big reason for that is Western liberal leaders increasingly having to choose between maintaining it and maintaining their support for Israel, and going for the latter.

    To give a recent example, when Israel invaded Syria in December with zero provocation, the UK government’s response was simply to state that Israel “is making sure its position in the Golan is secure”.

    Bear in mind that the Golan is also Syrian territory; the UK government is explicitly endorsing an act of aggression to protect illegally occupied land. It makes little sense unless you think international law doesn’t apply to Israel.

    A blind eye to Israel’s war crimes
    But the problem with that kind of thinking is that international law doesn’t work unless there’s a collective agreement to respect it. There isn’t a world police force that can enforce these laws, they’re just a mutually agreed set of rules that everyone agrees to work within, as history has taught us that it ends badly for everyone if we don’t.

    To make a rough analogy, the system is like the early days of the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) when there were very few enforced rules, but in reality, fighters had handshake agreements not to, e.g. pull each other’s hair out, because nobody wants that happening.

    If Fighter A were to start pulling the opponent’s hair out, can he act outraged when other fighters start doing it as well?

    Likewise, if the Western powers decide to support Israel in illegally occupying other countries’ territories for decades, can they really act outraged when Russia decides it’s going to occupy part of Ukraine?

    By allowing Israel to acquire territory by war, what they’ve essentially done is change the international system from one where acquiring territory by war is simply illegal, to one where acquiring territory by war is ok so long as you say it’s in your national security interests.

    Those are the new rules.

    Last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.

    International consensus
    Specifically, to answer allegations that they committed “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare”. After the Nazi atrocities in the Second World War such as the Siege of Leningrad (not strictly “illegal” at the time), there emerged an international consensus that such inhumane actions must never happen again.

    Well, on March 2, Israel announced that it was banning the entry of all goods and aid into Gaza, a blatant war crime. Meanwhile, Western governments such as Germany openly state that they intend to find “ways and means” to avoid having to arrest Netanyahu if he were to enter their territory.

    The UK, in particular, continues to provide direct military assistance to Israel in the form of surveillance flights over Gaza. Declassified UK has documented at least 518 RAF surveillance flights around Gaza since December 2023, carried out from the Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus.

    The UK government is, of course, aware that it’s assisting a government whose leaders are wanted by the ICC for war crimes. This would explain why when Keir Starmer visited the airbase in December, he gave a strange speech saying, “I recognise it’s been a really important, busy, busy year . . .

    “I’m also aware that some or quite a bit of what goes on here can’t necessarily be talked about . . .  Although we’re really proud of what you’re doing, we can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing here.”

    The UK is legally obligated under the Geneva Conventions to ensure its military intelligence is not used to facilitate war crimes. In fact, the UK government has stated itself that Israel is “not committed” to following international law, but says it must continue providing military assistance to Israel as to stop doing so “would undermine US confidence in the UK and NATO at a critical juncture in our collective history and set back relations”.

    If the post-Secind World War international order had any ideology affixed to it, it’s the belief in concepts such as individual freedoms, human rights, international humanitarian law and the legitimacy of institutions established to enforce them.

    Every order needs some kind of organising principle; it might not strictly be “true”, but the real purpose is that the population needs to believe in it.

    Many young adults in countries like the USA and UK were brought up with the ideals that waging war for cold national interests/enforcing racial supremacy were barbaric practices that were no longer permitted.

    Palestine is the final frontier
    For Palestine, though, there is no longer any window dressing that can be done. Netanyahu is now making it explicit that even if Hamas were to “lay down its weapons” and its leaders leave, Israel will then ethnically cleanse the Palestinian civilian population of Gaza.

    This is a war of ethnic cleansing and genocide rationalised by a militaristic, racist ideology — the fundamental reason, after all, why the Palestinians of Gaza are being ethnically cleansed is that they are not Jewish.

    Israel’s supporters in the West have abandoned trying to convince anyone of the morality of their positions and are just resorting to repression of dissent. In the United States, for example, we’ve seen unprecedented crackdowns on solidarity groups.

    For example, international students are being deported simply for attending Palestine solidarity demonstrations. These people aren’t even being accused of committing crimes, but of undefined offences such as “un-American activity.” If unconditional Western support for Israel is to continue, more repression at universities is going to be necessary.

    The UK government was correct in saying we’re at “a critical juncture in our collective history” and that Israel is at the heart of it. The international order is unravelling, and whatever new order we move into is largely dependent on what happens in Palestine.

    If Israel succeeds in its long-term goal of genocide against the Palestinians and establishes a lawless militarised ethnostate that grants/strips citizenship on racial grounds and invades and occupies other countries at will, that will be the model the rest of the world will follow. Even if you don’t particularly care about Palestine personally, you will not escape the consequences of this new might equals right world.

    Anyone who doesn’t wish to live in such a world must recognise that Palestine solidarity is the central issue which cannot be abandoned.

    Israel and its supporters certainly recognise this, or else they wouldn’t be so willing to forsake any other purported principle when Israel is at stake.

    Although the levels of repression at the moment can be dismaying, we should also take heart in the fact that if Israel’s supporters were feeling secure in their ultimate victory, they wouldn’t be behaving so aggressively.

    We’re witnessing the destructive rampage of a fragile project, whose designers fear could collapse at any moment should opposition manage to organise themselves effectively.

    Daniel Lindley is a writer, socialist and trade union activist in the UK. This article was first published by The New Arab and is republished under Creative Commons.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • How many more Jodey Whitings will the DWP kill before it’s stopped?

    Yesterday, after eight long years, a coroner ruled that Jodey Whiting’s death was the result of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) stopping her disability benefits.

    Jodey Whiting: the DWP killed her

    In late 2016, 42-year-old mother of nine Jodey Whiting missed a letter informing her the DWP needed to reassess her for Employment Support Allowance, which subsequently meant she missed the appointment. The reason for missing this was that she had contracted pneumonia and whilst in hospital the doctors had found a cyst on her brain.

    On 6 February 2017 she received a letter telling her the DWP had found her “fit for work” despite never completing the assessment.

    Just 15 days later she was found dead in her home surrounded by prescription drugs and handwritten notes about struggling to pay her bills and affording food. One simply read:

    I’ve had enough.

    Jodey lived with mental and physical conditions and was housebound as a result. Jodey didn’t just lose ESA that day, she also lost her housing and council tax benefits. In her suicide notes she wrote desperately about how she’d tried to find ways to pay her rent and bills.

    Inquest after inquest

    Jodey’s mother Joy Dove has campaigned tirelessly for the last eight years to ensure that the DWP was held accountable. In the initial inquest, Jodey losing her benefits wasn’t even mentioned as the reason she died by suicide. That inquest lasted just 37 minutes. As a result of Joy’s tireless campaign a second inquest was held.

    Joy told the inquest

    I know my daughter and I know it was that. It was the fact she couldn’t find a job, the worry of paying bills and being pushed out after being so vulnerable all those years.

    An independent report found that Jodey’s benefits should not have been stopped – but that came far too late.

    Helga Swidenbank, a director at the DWP who did not work there in 2017, said that opportunities to identify Jodey’s vulnerable state were missed (presumably because they didn’t actually speak to her).

    Swidenbank told the inquest:

    I understand that there is a culture shift from being process-driven to being much more compassionate.

    Whitewashing the reality

    The coroner concluded that Jodey’s death was down to the DWP stopping her benefits. However, she worryingly said that she’d heard enough about supposed changes within the DWP to not recommend any wider action be taken.

    Unfortunately, no matter how sorry and changing their ways the DWP claim to be, the truth is they are still putting disabled people’s lives at risk. Even more so now with proposed benefits cuts.

    Jodey’s case feels extremely pertinent given what is happening at the moment with DWP benefits cuts. If the proposed changes go ahead, how many more disabled people will be forced to turn to suicide due to not being able to afford to live?

    Cuts kill

    The proposed cuts would see nine in 10 claimants losing parts of their PIP in some areas, and many Universal Credit claimants struggle when their benefit is slashed or frozen at below inflation. With the new “health element” assessment being moved from Universal credit to PIP it would see what the Taking The PIP campaign called “a domino effect of financial ruin”.

    Over 3.2 million disabled people would see their benefits cut with over 700,000 families be forced deeper into poverty. An untold amount of people will end up in the same situation as Jodey, punished by a system that is supposed to protect them, unable to feed themselves or pay their rent until their only option is death.

    The cruellest thing about this though is the fact that the government and especially those in top jobs at the DWP are well aware of the disastrous effects the inhumane system can have.

    Whilst the DWP is happy to act like Jodey’s case is an isolated incident, they – and especially disability minister Stephen Timms – know this isn’t true- because they fought to uncover the truth.

    Labour ministers know the DWP is deadly

    Timms, the current minister for disabled people, was formerly chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee. A big part of this role was putting pressure on successive Tory ministers to release reports into safeguarding and the true scale of DWP benefits deaths.

    Timms continuously in particular dragged Therese Coffey over the coals on her insistence that the department does not have a duty to safeguarding vulnerable claimants.

    The Labour government like to make a big show of being different to the Conservatives. However, the only difference many are seeing is how unashamedly cruel they are. The Tories at least had the decency to be a bit cloak and dagger about it.

    The government will no doubt be crowing about the fact that the mainstream media are reporting en masse that the coroner declared the DWP is making changes to the system. It’s our job now at the Canary to show that these are not positive changes.

    Fight back

    In the coming weeks the bill announcing the DWP cuts will be introduced to parliament. MPs will vote on whether to make these devastating cuts a reality. I implore you to join us and take action

    Email your MP if you haven’t already. Taking The PIP has a handy tool to do it quickly and easily. Sign petitions and make some noise on social media. Tag your MPs and tell them what the cuts would mean to you.

    This weekend thousands are expected to descend on London in the People’s Assembly demo. But if you can’t make that Disability Rebellion are holding one online too.

    The DWP cuts could force so many more into the same devastating decision as Jodey and the government know this – they must be stopped.

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • What do people want in politicians? Well, it’s not to hear your dad was a toolmaker.

    Last year, a Survation poll showed the number one quality people wanted in politicians was “listening to people.”  A close second was “keeping their promises.”  Followed by “delivering value for money.”  Way, way down the list was having “a working class background.” So Keir Starmer’s advisors seem to have been wasting their time with the incessant, “his Dad was a toolmaker” line.  And if they’d said “factory worker,” he’d have avoided all the “that makes you a tool” jibes.

    It also explains why all the “but Boris Johnson is a toff” or “Farage is a millionaire city trader” attacks just bounced off.  For whatever reason, very few Brits care about your background.

    The mask always slips with politicians

    A 2020 article in the Journal of Research in Personality concluded that people want politicians who are like themselves, only more assertive.  So politicians who seem to share the same values, but are braver, more confident, and more eloquent.

    It also explains Johnson’s sudden defenestration.  People’s self-image is not always accurate.  They may like to think of themselves as a happy-go-lucky cheeky-chappy, but few will admit to being a liar.  Breaking lockdown rules and covering it up wasn’t funny.  Once trust is gone, it’s gone.

    Now that Reform UK are in power, they’ll face a similar problem.  Shouting from the sidelines is easy.  Fixing things is hard.  Nobody’s self-image is, “I’m all talk and no trousers.”  If they stop identifying with you, they’ll stop voting for you.  And unlike the Labour Party or the Tories, Reform have no lifelong voter base.

    They’re off to a bad start.  One Reform Durham councillor has resigned, because they can’t work for the council and be a councillor.  Genius.  Some have suggested that Reform should foot the bill for the by-election, since they’re responsible for the waste of public money.  Their first big action was to not attend diversity or climate change training sessions.  Despite there being, in fact, no such sessions.  Heroes.

    Their latest act of fixing broken Britain was to order the Rainbow flag taken down before the Bishop Auckland Pride event.  I mean, seriously?  Roads, potholes, parks, council houses, libraries, sports centres?  Nope, have a pop at the LGBTQ+ community.  The irony is they’ve banged on about ‘snowflakes’ for years, but get triggered by a flag.

    Voters aren’t always fooled

    I keep seeing comments on social media saying Reform voters have been duped.  I’m not sure that’s always true.

    I’ve spoken to quite a few Reform voters recently.  The vibe is entirely “stick it to the establishment.”  At least half of them have been quite critical of Reform, but just lost faith in Labour or the Tories.  “I don’t agree with them on immigration,” one lad told me.  “If we stopped immigration the NHS would collapse.”  That doesn’t fit the stereotype.

    It’s just as true that Labour voters were duped by Keir Starmer.  Winter fuel allowance cut.  WASPI women betrayed.  Disabled people’s independence payments stripped.  Foreign aid slashed.  NHS workers sacked.  Performative deportations.  And the “Island of strangers” speech.  Not what people were sold.

    Labour voters had as much warning as Reform voters.  Starmer ditched all of his ten pledges.  Over a year ago I said there was a £20 billion hole in the budget.  It was widely reported.  And praising Thatcher was a pretty big clue.

    So instead of all the posturing, shall we try actually listening to people?

    Politicians need to listen, not posture

    We did this in Newcastle the other Sunday, with 240 people coming along to help us develop Majority’s 2026 election manifesto.

    Just below “value for money,” people want to see politicians “working cross party.”  We’re doing that too.  The North Tyneside Longbenton and Benton by-election will be a joint campaign by Majority, the Green Party, and North Tyneside Community Independents.  Majority is the new movement I was elected to lead.  Anyone can join, even if a member of another party.  The only requirement is agreeing to our values of social, economic and environmental justice, and high standards in public life.  No grifters here, thank you very much.

    Working as North Tyneside Together, people will have a chance to vote for a genuinely progressive candidate who listens.  And avoid vote splitting.  Our candidates take no whip, meaning they serve the people, not the party HQ.

    I’d like to see it as a model for our 2026 citywide election campaign.  As Humphrey Bogart said, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Jamie Driscoll

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • #SwindonsSundaySermon: the Guardian is not your friend – but John McDonnell is

    I found myself reading a Guardian article this morning – I wouldn’t normally bother, but I was interested in what “the people’s chancellor”, John McDonnell, had to say about the tragic death of the Labour Party.

    On a personal level, I like John. He’s friendly, knowledgeable, and his Rich Tea biscuits were proper McVities that you can dunk in your brew for half-a-second without it ending up at the bottom of your cup.

    McDonnell started his article with the words, “I joined the Labour Party 50 years ago”.

    His commitment to traditional left-leaning Labour values isn’t in question, but a good man is absolutely capable of making bad decisions.

    That Guardian-John McDonnell article

    The Labour Party that John McDonnell pines for in his Guardian piece has been utterly annihilated by an incurable moral infection spreading from Starmer and McSweeney outwards. You’re flogging a dead horse, John.

    Calling for a leadership challenge from the left of Labour is futile. The left doesn’t have any clout in the party. I have more clout in my local kebab house, and I’m in my fourth decade of vegetarianism.

    Labour is a rotting corpse. Starmer switched off Labour’s life support machine some time before he fluked his way into the top job. Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to breathe new life into the mess left behind by the dirty years of Blairism was undoubtedly admirable, but ultimately, the poison had already set in.

    And the tragedy for John? He played his part in hammering the final nail in the Labour coffin when he, somewhat naively, decided to get on board with the idea of a second EU referendum  — something that Jeremy Corbyn and his team were desperate to avoid.

    John’s support for another Brexit vote was entirely at odds with the more pragmatic 2017 position that saw Labour commit to standing by the 52/48 vote in favour of leaving the EU.

    Don’t get me wrong, I voted Remain and would do again tomorrow, if the choice was put to me. But everyone, without exception, knew that going into the 2019 general election with the promise of another crack of the referendum whip was only ever likely to gift millions of votes to Boris Johnson’s hard-Brexit Tories’ and whatever blatantly racist outfit mini-fash-Farage was backing at the time.

    That rag is not your friend – nor is Labour

    To be honest, I cannot for the life of me fathom how any principled socialist can remain in today’s Labour Party. That includes John.

    I can understand how the red rosette would act as a comfort blanket, but when that blanket is smothering you it is no longer of any comfort.

    I’m sure John McDonnell’s article got lots of clicks for the Guardian, and maybe even a few bonus fivers for the liberal rag that was so hard-up it needed to claim £100,000 in furlough cash.

    The Guardian — always the first to attack the billionaire tax dodgers — managed to avoid paying corporation tax for many years. They even admitted to doing it.

    The Guardian isn’t a friend of the left. The Guardian joined in with the false antisemitism rhetoric that was employed by the right to smear and silence the left. The Guardian did everything that it possibly could to deliver Keir Starmer to power, both internally and at the ballot box, just last year.

    We all want a challenge from the left to Keir Starmer’s leadership, of course. But that will not come from within the Labour Party and it is fanciful nonsense to suggest otherwise.

    How many times do we have to say it?

    The Labour Party is dead.

    Le Parti travailliste est mort.

    El Partido Laborista está muerto.

    劳工已经死了。

    حزب العمال مات

    Die Labour-Partei ist tot.

    Partia Pracy jest martwa.

    We could be here all day doing this, but I’m pretty sure you get where I’m coming from.

    Starmer has destroyed it

    In recent times we have witnessed the hideous spectacle of a Labour prime minister aping far-right rhetoric, claiming Britain is an “island of strangers”. Starmer has cut deep into Labour’s progressive roots to chase down the votes of Reform UK.

    Did I mention, the Labour Party is dead?

    Starmer’s leadership has destroyed its electoral and ideological cohesion and his pivot to the right quite clearly doesn’t broaden his government’s appeal.

    I don’t think it is controversial to say that we are living through one of the most shameful times in our recent history. Israel is completely out of control.

    Nobody is fooled by Starmer’s faux concern for the children of Gaza. He wouldn’t be allowing the sale of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel, and he wouldn’t be authorising the use of British spy planes for reconnaissance missions across the besieged enclave, within hours of publicly rebuking the Netanyahu administration, if he cared.

    We have always been historically complicit in the displacement and destruction of the Palestinian people. Our support for the American colonial outpost of Israel carries a scar that has a strange power to remind us that our past is so very shameful, and so very real.

    Bin the Guardian – and John McDonnell should bin Labour

    If what he said in the Guardian is true, and John McDonnell wants to remain a part of this monstrosity because of “50 years of membership”, then good luck to him. I have way too much respect for the guy to lay into him.

    But he, and the other dozen or so parliamentarians that still cling on to the belief of the Labour Party being the only progressive vehicle for societal change, need to realise that nobody is forcing them to stay in Starmer’s Labour.

    Become an Independent. Defect to the Green Party. Set up your own left-wing movement that represents your cherished Labour values, because most of us aren’t old enough to remember what Labour values actually are.

    Featured image via Rachael Swindon

    By Rachael Swindon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Phil Goff: Israel doesn’t care how many innocent people, children it’s killing

    COMMENTARY: By Phil Goff

    “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”

    This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister and former senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Ehud Olmet.

    Nightly, we witness live-streamed evidence of the truth of his statement — lethargic and gaunt children dying of malnutrition, a bereaved doctor and mother of 10 children, nine of them killed by an Israeli strike (and her husband, another doctor, died later), 15 emergency ambulance workers gunned down by the IDF as they tried to help others injured by bombs, despite their identity being clear.

    Statistics reflect the scale of the horror imposed on Palestinians who are overwhelmingly civilians — 54,000 killed, 121,000 maimed and injured. Over 17,000 of these are children.

    This can no longer be excused as regrettable collateral damage from targeted attacks on Hamas.

    Israel simply doesn’t care about the impact of its military attacks on civilians and how many innocent people and children it is killing.

    Its willingness to block all humanitarian aid- food, water, medical supplies, from Gaza demonstrates further its willingness to make mass punishment and starvation a means to achieve its ends. Both are war crimes.

    Influenced by the right wing extremists in the Coalition cabinet, like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s goal is no longer self defence or justifiable retaliation against Hamas terrorists.

    Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36
    Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    Making life unbearable
    The Israeli government policy is focused on making life unbearable for Palestinians and seeking to remove them from their homeland. In this, they are openly encouraged by President Trump who has publicly and repeatedly endorsed deporting the Palestinian population so that the Gaza could be made into a “Middle East Riviera”.

    This is not the once progressive pioneer Israel, led by people who had faced the Nazi Holocaust and were fighting for the right to a place where they could determine their own future and be safe.

    Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.

    New Zealand recently joined 23 other countries calling out Israel and demanding a full supply of foreign aid be allowed into Gaza.

    Foreign Minister Winston Peters called Israel’s actions “ intolerable”. He said that we had “had enough and were running out of patience and hearing excuses”.

    While speaking out might make us feel better, words are not enough. Israel’s attacks on the civilian population in Gaza are being increased, aid distribution which has restarted is grossly insufficient to stop hunger and human suffering and Palestinians are being herded into confined areas described as humanitarian zones but which are still subject to bombardment.

    People living in tents in schools and hospitals are being slaughtered.

    World must force Israel to stop
    Like Putin, Israel will not end its killing and oppression unless the world forces it to. The US has the power but will not do this.

    The sanctions Trump has imposed are not on Israel’s leaders but on judges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) who dared to find Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of war crimes.

    New Zealand’s foreign policy has traditionally involved working with like-minded countries, often small nations like us. Two of these, Ireland and Sweden, are seeking to impose sanctions on Israel.

    Both are members of the European Union which makes up a third of Israel’s global trade. If the EU decides to act, sanctions imposed by it would have a big impact on Israel.

    These sanctions should be both on trade and against individuals.

    New Zealand has imposed sanctions on a small number of extremist Jewish settlers on the West Bank where there is evidence of them using violence against Palestinian villagers.

    These sanctions should be extended to Israel’s political leadership and New Zealand could take a lead in doing this. We should not be influenced by concern that by taking a stand we might offend US president Donald Trump.

    Show our preparedness to uphold values
    In the way that we have been proud of in the past, we should as a small but fiercely independent country show our preparedness to uphold our own values and act against gross abuse of human rights and flagrant disregard for international law.

    We should be working with others through the United Nations General Assembly to maximise political pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing killing of innocent civilians.

    Moral outrage at what Israel is doing has to be backed by taking action with others to force the Israeli government to end the killing, destruction, mass punishment and deliberate starvation of Palestinians including their children.

    An American doctor working at a Gaza hospital reported that in the last five weeks he had worked on dozens of badly injured children but not a single combatant.

    He noted that as well as being maimed and disfigured by bombing, many of the children were also suffering from malnutrition. Children were dying from wounds that they could recover from but there were not the supplies needed to treat them.

    Protest is not enough. We need to act.

    Phil Goff is Aotearoa New Zealand’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs. This article was first published by the Stuff website and is republished with the permission of the author.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Phil Goff: Israel doesn’t care how many innocent people, children it’s killing

    COMMENTARY: By Phil Goff

    “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”

    This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister and former senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Ehud Olmet.

    Nightly, we witness live-streamed evidence of the truth of his statement — lethargic and gaunt children dying of malnutrition, a bereaved doctor and mother of 10 children, nine of them killed by an Israeli strike (and her husband, another doctor, died later), 15 emergency ambulance workers gunned down by the IDF as they tried to help others injured by bombs, despite their identity being clear.

    Statistics reflect the scale of the horror imposed on Palestinians who are overwhelmingly civilians — 54,000 killed, 121,000 maimed and injured. Over 17,000 of these are children.

    This can no longer be excused as regrettable collateral damage from targeted attacks on Hamas.

    Israel simply doesn’t care about the impact of its military attacks on civilians and how many innocent people and children it is killing.

    Its willingness to block all humanitarian aid- food, water, medical supplies, from Gaza demonstrates further its willingness to make mass punishment and starvation a means to achieve its ends. Both are war crimes.

    Influenced by the right wing extremists in the Coalition cabinet, like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s goal is no longer self defence or justifiable retaliation against Hamas terrorists.

    Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36
    Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    Making life unbearable
    The Israeli government policy is focused on making life unbearable for Palestinians and seeking to remove them from their homeland. In this, they are openly encouraged by President Trump who has publicly and repeatedly endorsed deporting the Palestinian population so that the Gaza could be made into a “Middle East Riviera”.

    This is not the once progressive pioneer Israel, led by people who had faced the Nazi Holocaust and were fighting for the right to a place where they could determine their own future and be safe.

    Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.

    New Zealand recently joined 23 other countries calling out Israel and demanding a full supply of foreign aid be allowed into Gaza.

    Foreign Minister Winston Peters called Israel’s actions “ intolerable”. He said that we had “had enough and were running out of patience and hearing excuses”.

    While speaking out might make us feel better, words are not enough. Israel’s attacks on the civilian population in Gaza are being increased, aid distribution which has restarted is grossly insufficient to stop hunger and human suffering and Palestinians are being herded into confined areas described as humanitarian zones but which are still subject to bombardment.

    People living in tents in schools and hospitals are being slaughtered.

    World must force Israel to stop
    Like Putin, Israel will not end its killing and oppression unless the world forces it to. The US has the power but will not do this.

    The sanctions Trump has imposed are not on Israel’s leaders but on judges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) who dared to find Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of war crimes.

    New Zealand’s foreign policy has traditionally involved working with like-minded countries, often small nations like us. Two of these, Ireland and Sweden, are seeking to impose sanctions on Israel.

    Both are members of the European Union which makes up a third of Israel’s global trade. If the EU decides to act, sanctions imposed by it would have a big impact on Israel.

    These sanctions should be both on trade and against individuals.

    New Zealand has imposed sanctions on a small number of extremist Jewish settlers on the West Bank where there is evidence of them using violence against Palestinian villagers.

    These sanctions should be extended to Israel’s political leadership and New Zealand could take a lead in doing this. We should not be influenced by concern that by taking a stand we might offend US president Donald Trump.

    Show our preparedness to uphold values
    In the way that we have been proud of in the past, we should as a small but fiercely independent country show our preparedness to uphold our own values and act against gross abuse of human rights and flagrant disregard for international law.

    We should be working with others through the United Nations General Assembly to maximise political pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing killing of innocent civilians.

    Moral outrage at what Israel is doing has to be backed by taking action with others to force the Israeli government to end the killing, destruction, mass punishment and deliberate starvation of Palestinians including their children.

    An American doctor working at a Gaza hospital reported that in the last five weeks he had worked on dozens of badly injured children but not a single combatant.

    He noted that as well as being maimed and disfigured by bombing, many of the children were also suffering from malnutrition. Children were dying from wounds that they could recover from but there were not the supplies needed to treat them.

    Protest is not enough. We need to act.

    Phil Goff is Aotearoa New Zealand’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs. This article was first published by the Stuff website and is republished with the permission of the author.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Tobacco: Death Sentence with Perks

    Meet Joe Black (1998) is basically a 2 1/2 hr anecdote, where an angelic Brad Pitt, the angel of death, comes and saves the day by impersonating an IRS agent investigating and exposing the vile young suitor Drew, as Brad takes fiancee Allison’s father (Anthony Hopkins) to heaven. Brad quotes money-grubbing Drew: You can’t avoid ‘death and taxes’.

    Yes, Death gets us all in the end, smokers and nonsmokers, smokers statistically earlier but not nearly everyone, and not all that much sooner in any case. And there are lots more causes of lung cancer.

    *asbestos
    *air pollution
    *radon
    *genetics
    *alcohol
    *high carb diet
    *viruses

    I can attest to smoking – in moderation – as a perk in my life which I don’t begrudge my younger self or me now. Life is hard, and then you die. And I politely demure when I’m told by doctor after doctor to give it up. One cigarette a day is not going to kill me. As an avid cyclist, a car/truck is much more likely to do that.

    Speaking of giving up, I seem to have done that with alcohol without any sense of loss. Alcohol was an endless source of headache and nausea in my wild youth. Ramadan helps, and this year, when I could drink (moderately) freely again, I tried and found it did virtually nothing. A brief buzz. It’s good (one drink) to break the ice, but when you’re old, there aren’t any parties or mixers anymore so what’s the use?

    That’s one of Islam’s perks: pushing you to give up alcohol. Surah Al-Baqarah (2:219): They ask you about intoxicants and gambling. Say, ‘In both is great sin and [yet, some] benefit for people. But their sin is greater than their benefit.’

    I get angry hearing calls to ban smoking completely. Another great Quran quote: Surah Al-Baqarah (2:)256 Let there be no compulsion in religion, for the truth stands out clearly from falsehood. Already cigarette adverts are gone, sponsorships. Fair enough. Far enough!

    So why not the same puritanism with respect to alcohol? Alcohol is far, far more lethal, disruptive, a real killer, and yet ads everywhere complete with sexy models or rugged men, everyone happily celebrating whatever. Sadly, prohibition doesn’t work, but take a leaf from the war against smoking: no ads, more taxes, more rigorous legal penalities for the many crimes ‘under the influence’. Make drinking clearly a dangerous vice. That would be a huge step forward.

    Don’t take my words as a prescription. I envy people who don’t need a crutch like smoking or alcohol to be happy. And keep in mind, one cigarette is my norm. It’s the anticipation of that calm as much as the smoking. As a general rule in life: it’s the thought that counts. And 90% of joy is in the anticipation.

    Like most pleasures/poisons, there are good and bad qualities to tobacco.

    Health

    Leaving aside its poisonous quality and the heightened risk of lung cancer, the major upside is its calming effect. I know when some crisis hits, I can always take refuge in a smoke. Anything used to excess is harmful. Unlike alcohol, which often leads to more and more and then acting dangerously and foolishly, you quickly reach a limit in smoking. You can die of alcohol poisoning, but it takes years to die from smoking, if at all.

    Like all natural poisons, it has medicinal uses:

    *Insect repellant against all garden parasites (many a mosquitoey camping trip benefited from a few puffs).

    *Indigenous people used tobacco as a pain reliever for ear aches, toothaches and as a poultice.

    *Indigenous people believed that the nicotine in the tobacco would help relieve pain as well as help draw out the poison and heal the snake wound. After the poison had been sucked out, chewed leaves could be applied to cuts or bound on the bite with a bandage.

    *To alleviate symptoms of ADHD, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and dementia.

    It’s not a cure, but a powerful pain reliever, with some magical (i.e., we don’t understand) effects.

    Social psychology

    If you are nervous, again it is calming. Then there’s Freud and what a cigarette represents, its role as a fetish, a substitute for sex. A smoke can be a nice icebreaker. Many of my friendships have begun over sharing a smoke. It’s cheap and less harmful that a few drinks. It’s communal, especially for boys/men. Worldwide, a third of men smoke, only 6% of women, 5x less, do. Canadian men much less (14%), Canadian women much more (10%) — a negative spin-off from feminism?

    I remember my first smoke as a teen, out the window but immediately detected by sentry-mother, guilt-tripping me, as if that’s any way to make me stop. As pacifier in my nervous early teaching days. Graduating to Drum rolling tobacco while living abroad. Then reverting to cheap manufactured cigarettes in Egypt, eventually returning to rolling my own in retirement. A cigarette has been a comforting companion throughout my life. I’m loathe to despise and reject this simple, economical pleasure totally. I don’t like fanatics of any stripe.

    Religion

    Everything is spiritual. Sadly, tobacco was captured by capitalism and most smoking is now industrial – packaged in plastic, filled with chemicals to burn faster so you smoke more. You take them for granted. Rolling my daily cigarette is done with reverence, a ritual akin to prayer. I thank the Lord for His generous gifts to be used responsibly.

    North American natives considered it sacred, e.g., the ‘peace pipe’. The sweat lodge relies on heat and wood smoke to cleanse the spirit, recalling early Man’s smokey cave dwelling.

    Judaism, Christianity and Islam are undecided, as tobacco only became an issue in the 17th century. In short, moderation is called for, but while Islam proscribes alcohol, smoking (in moderation) is acceptable. Early on in the Hasidic movement, the Baal Shem Tov taught that smoking tobacco can be used as a religious devotion, and can even help bring the Messianic Era. Rabbi Levi Yiztchak of Berditchev is quoted as saying that ‘a Jew smokes on the weekdays and sniffs tobacco on the Sabbath.’

    My conclusion after a lifetime of cogitating: one cigarette a day keeps the doctor away. (Also one toke a day but that’s for another article.)

    The post Tobacco: Death Sentence with Perks first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.