The Government and the mainstream media have gone ballistic (thankfully not literally just yet) over the move by the small Pacific nation to sign a strategic partnership with China in Beijing this week. It is the latest in a string of island nations that have signalled a closer relationship with China, something that rattles nerves and sabres in Wellington and Canberra.

It generally ends badly.  An old tyrant embarks on an ill-considered project that involves redrawing maps. They are heedless to wise counsel and indifferent to indigenous interests or experience.  Before they fail, are killed, deposed or otherwise disposed of, these vicious old men can cause immense harm.

To save Democracy, the US and the European elites appear to have found it necessary to destroy democracy.  For the first time ever an election was overturned in an EU/NATO country.  Ever.  There were no allegations of voting irregularities – it was about whether Russia had spent money on a Tik Tok influence campaign to support the eventual winner of the first round.  If that sounds an unconvincing reason for such an historic event, the truth is even weirder. 

This story is about vast quantities of uranium, stealing squillions of dollars, how to screw desperately poor people and what an outstanding job the mainstream media does in keeping us all blithely ignorant of this.

Khalida Farrar, a leading Palestinian is finally free from an Israeli hell-hole. The mainstream media has ignored the incredible stories of hostages like her. It’s time to share their stories.

Back at the very start of the war retired US Ambassador Chas Freeman, an eloquent critic of many aspects of his government’s international conduct, warned that the US was prepared “to fight to the last Ukrainian”.  Some want to prove him right.  Others want to save the remaining young men of Ukraine. 

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.