Something truly horrific is being planned for Venezuela. Generals are being bought and paid for, death squads are being organised and a major regime change operation is slowly gathering steam that, if executed, will have catastrophic consequences for the people of Venezuela and possibly the region beyond.

Now that everyone is aware of the volatile political game the Prime Minister and others are willing to play in order to support Israel, what do you think anti-genocide, anti-racist, anti-fascist groups within the West Midlands will do to oppose this invasion should the ban be lifted? What do you think will be the response from Britain’s far-right? Tommy Robinson has already said he is organising his supporters for the match day.

Western leaders, including in my own country, have refused to even reply to requests that petitions/insistences be made to the Israelis to save the great Palestinian leader. They have shown more empathy for the remains of deceased Israeli hostages crushed under the rubble of buildings bombed by the Israelis, hypocritically blaming Hamas for not releasing the remains fast enough! Such is the moral calibre of our leaders. 

Much of what we thought we knew about the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 has turned out to be false or only partially true. We owe it to ourselves and, above all, to the Palestinian people, to understand both what really happened that day and why it happened.  

By noon on 7 October 2023 news of Palestinians taking hostages grip the attention of Israel’s top military and political leadership who are gathered in the “Pit”, the Kirya bunker in Tel Aviv.  Intelligence chiefs had gone there around 3am when reports came in of unusual movements by Hamas’s Al Qassam Brigades leadership. They decided not to put the IDF on high alert.

If we wish to live in a world where international law is applied fairly and is not simply a sham tool deployed by the powerful to bludgeon the weak then we must address the inconsistency of calling Israel (a state committing genocide) our ally whilst banning Hamas.

All over the world more and more people are taking direct action, stepping in because of the criminal failure of governments to fulfil their legal obligations under the Genocide Convention to “prevent and punish the crime of genocide”.

Leaders like Macron, Merz, Kallas, von der Leyen and Starmer have abandoned diplomacy, so vital in dealing with your adversaries – even hated ones – and spend their time grandstanding, insulting adversaries, and endlessly hugging each other.  How long this can go on for is uncertain because they are simultaneously kicking  down the pillars of their own economies and democracies.

Is the future of Australia and New Zealand really as NATO forts, armed to the teeth glaring menacingly at an ever-rising China?  Are we risking what we cannot afford to lose by failing to see the world around us is changing rapidly and that we may be backing the wrong horse?  Our instinctive allegiance to a US hell-bent on escalation to maintain primacy risks the people of Down Under getting a Come Uppance of terrible proportions.

War crimes tribunals on the Palestine Genocide will be essential to restore international law. War criminals whether in Tel Aviv, London, Canberra or Wellington must one day face justice.

The world’s most important hostage – must be released. The powerful Western countries have signalled that in the face of the genocide they may recognise the state of Palestine. States need leaders. That’s why Marwan Barghouti – often dubbed the Palestinian Mandela – must be freed.

Israel’s key enablers, the G7, plus Australia and New Zealand, have succeeded in muscling Israel back onto the invite list for the commemorations in Nagasaki on 9 August.  Last year Israel was excluded, triggering a refusal by these countries to attend in 2024.  Does the ‘personal’ invitation that Nagasaki has just sent to Israel represent a triumph of Western diplomacy or a sick joke?

The British government has proscribed the non-violent direct action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. Do they really bear resemblance to Al Qaeda or ISIS, or Israel’s Stern Gang or the IDF? Or, like the French Resistance, will they eventually be recognized as heroes of our time? Will Hollywood romanticize them in their usual tardy way in 50 years time? 

In conversatoin with Eugene Doyle, the Palestinian writer Yousef Aljamal says: “I see writing as an act of resistance, because in times of oppression and injustice, writing is a means of fighting back and resisting, but also documenting and remembering and healing.“ 

Stockholm.  Benjamin Netanyahu’s nomination of Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize means that for the first time in history a political figure involved in a genocide will be nominated for the prestigious award by a leader who has an arrest warrant out for him for the crime of genocide. Netanyahu’s move, however, has triggered a flood of nominations from across the globe.

Within a year of the US assuming trusteeship of the islands another pillar of international law came into effect: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) – which affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans. Exposing colonised peoples to extreme radiation for weapons testing is a racist affront to this.

Immediately after murdering Fernando Pereira and blowing up Greenpeace’s ship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, several of the French agents went on a ski holiday in New Zealand’s South Island to celebrate.  Such was the contempt the French had for the Kiwis and the abilities of our police to pursue them.  How wrong they were.

If Iran falls, war in our region – intended or unintended – becomes vastly more likely. Mainstream New Zealanders and Australians suffer from an understandable complacency: war is what happens to other, mainly darker people or Slavs. “Tomorrow”, people in this part of the world naively think, “will always be like yesterday”.

The US-Israeli surprise attack on Iran is literally and figuratively designed to unleash centrifugal forces in the Islamic Republic.  Both Iran’s nuclear programme and its government – in fact, the whole edifice and foundation of the Islamic Republic – is at the beginning of the greatest stress test of its existence.