A litmus test of Israel’s commitment to abandon genocide and start down the road towards lasting peace is whether they choose to release the most important of all the hostages, Marwan Barghouti.  During the past 22 years in Israeli prisons he has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken.  What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian - a symbol of his people’s ‘legendary steadfastness’ and determination to win freedom from occupation and resist the genocidal forces of the US, Israel and their Western enablers like Australia and New Zealand.

Trump’s rough woo-ing of Canada to become the 51st state, and his threat to use military force to seize both Greenland and the Canal, speak to a back-to-basics focus for American imperialism – a shift in US policy that will bring it closer to its core strategic interests

Ordinary humanity faces an emerging threat from the combined might of the Human Elites (billionaires and the military-political class) working with perhaps the greatest power the planet has ever seen: artificial intelligence. Their combined might has the potential to totally screw us.

States don't tend to kill each other's generals, not least because it invites reciprocal action. The bombing in Moscow this week, killing General Igor Kirillov, was a successful attack by Ukraine and its allies. The ongoing use of long-range missiles used by the West to hit targets inside Russia is, I suggest, surprisingly similar. Both are designed to provoke a reaction rather than achieve anything militarily. They can't alter battlefield realities. It says a lot about where we have got to in the Ukraine War.

What we are witnessing is not just the end of a regime but quite possibly the destruction of the Syrian state.  We are being told by the Western media that we should join Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden and the Europeans in celebrating what risks being the creation of yet another failed state in the Middle East/West Asia. 

They “will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America."  Donald J Trump about the people of Gaza and their defenders.

“Western justifications for their barbarism is well-established – after all, genocide is a Western liberal value.” Professor Joseph Massad.

Far from the killing grounds of Gaza, an incredible display of defiance to settler colonialism has broken out in, of all places, New Zealand.  The two projects - Israel and New Zealand’s - are linked more than many would like to think.  Palestinian leaders raise their voices in support of New Zealand’s Māori people at this critical moment. 

Imagine any human being chanting “Why is school out in Gaza?  There are no children left there!” after an entire year of genocide in Gaza, after the deaths of so many thousands of children, after thousands of children have lost limbs due to US-Israeli violence, hundreds of thousands having to sleep in tents, a couple of million people being slowly starved by Israel.  Imagine who is capable of chanting that.  

Former director of the CIA’s Russia desk and current director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute George Beebe gives a masterclass in responsible statecraft - and why the West must negotiate with Russia to end the war.

Looking at what has happened in Gaza over the past year and how – with many noble exceptions – most of the priests, nuns, bishops and rabbis have kept their congregations passive and on the sidelines.  As Paolo Freire said:

“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

The political and military leader of Hamas is dead.  Some cheer. Some weep.  History will judge the living and the dead.  I wish Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar had appeared before an international tribunal of judges for their role in October 7th, rather than being murdered by the Israelis.  All who committed crimes in the past year should face justice.

What is at stake is epochal in its scale and implications for future generations. In the midst of a genocide, on the edge of wars that could wreck the global economy, we are also experiencing an increasingly ruthless war being waged to eliminate or silence dissent.  All of this means we have to build a better media environment that will challenge the dominant narrative; we have to find the courage within ourselves to oppose the terrible trajectory the Western elites have committed us to.  

Something absolutely stupefying is happening in Germany: its iconic auto company, VW, the darling of every Chancellor from Adolf Hitler to Olaf Scholz, appears to be in a death spiral.  At the end of this story I’ll draw a link to the salutary lesson countries like Australia and New Zealand need to draw from the German experience if we are to survive and thrive in the coming world.

History didn’t start on October 7th. True that. To get a deeper sense of why the shocking destruction in Gaza is happening we have to revive the forgotten war that the US waged against North Korea in the 1950s.  In many ways, it was the template for all that followed.

Ordinary New Zealanders and Australians have little idea about the momentous changes coming our way. For a couple of centuries we have been outposts of a Western empire that is losing its dominance of the region. Instead of having open national discussions about how our countries should respond to the rise of China, India and Indonesia – just part of the coming Asian Century – our leaders are shuttering our minds and framing public discourse in ways that hinder rather than help.  Our media and many leading members of the commentariat are keeping our collective minds in thrall to a US-Western world view.  If we wish to survive and thrive in this region – and in the emerging multipolar world – we may need to free ourselves from this form of mental slavery.

Iran may be about to launch a proper missile strike on Israel for the first time ever - in retaliation for the attack on Tehran last month which killed Ismail Haniyeh. Israeli intelligence says an attack is likely to come within days.

The Jerusalem Post on 11 August quoted Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of the Iranian Parliament's National Security Commission, as saying, "Iran's aerial operations against Israel could last three to four days.”