War

Challenging relentless, misguided wars and military waste

The discussion here continues on from my commentary on the parlous state of civil liberties and the ill treatment of refugees in Australia, where the authoritarianism and lack of compassion shown by our governments, which so often are "justified" by fearmongering about national security & terrorism, actually illustrate the dark nature of our own leaders and institutions.

Ironically, even if one accepted that the West was fighting for a "free society" (which in 2024-25 is self evidently not true), then as Australian and other global leaders repeat the same moronic slogans whilst curtailing our freedoms in the name of security, they essentially hand victory to the terrorists.  Worse, as they pursue ineffective prevention strategies that attempt to "deradicalise" potential violent extremists, they continue a failed "war on terror" that actually encourages terrorism, whilst ignoring the true, underlying causes of terrorism (instead of listening to understand those who have turned to violence) — which is not Islam in itself, or Muslims, who defy ISIS in their millions (although we must support free-speech and also listen openly to understand the views of those who see "Islamic extremists" as a problem, as long as we avoid giving them a platform to incite violence).

Whatever the Quran says (I haven't read it but I understand it is principally a book of peace, at least as much as Christianity in practice), it just doesn't make sense to suggest that an otherwise reasonable person will decide to commit atrocious terror attacks because of what they've read in a book (& even if a terrorist claims they're motivated by their readings, the real problem is their mental health & potentially traumatic history, rather than a book).

Far more plausible causes of terrorist actions are decades of resentment built up from Western foreign policies, especially the long history (confirmed by declassified files) of exploitation of the Middle East — particularly Iran, where in 1953 a joint CIA-MI6 operation orchestrated a coup to overthrow the elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, because he nationalised Iran’s oil industry (threatening BP's profits).  It is the long repercussions of that coup, which installed the Shah as a repressive monarch/dictator and ultimately led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, along with ongoing political/military interference from the USA that leads to constant war and oppression of people, courtesy also of US arms-sales to tyrannical governments like Saudi Arabia (amongst the 36 of the world's 49 dictatorships receiving US military support in 2015-16) — with the vast flow of US weapons also sometimes finding their way to groups who turn them back on the US.

It is the far-reaching and disastrous consequences of (strategically incompetent) Western interference — supporting revolutions/regime-changes and engaging in ill-conceived, self-serving wars based on lies — that impacts religion in these regions, rather than religion itself that has fuelled anti-Western feelings and ultimately spawned antagonistic governments and a series of new terrorist groups.

Yet we're supposed to believe that the Islamic motivation for retaliation is that "they hate our freedoms" & "culture"?! — rather than the much more understandable reasons actually articulated by Bin Laden, which are, of course, primarily opposition to US imperialism and oppression & exploitation of Muslims & resources in the Middle East, including US support for Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian lands (that was originally enabled by France & Britain), as discussed further below.

But unrepentant & undeterred, the West's response (the US & UK especially) is to dismiss all warnings and launch further illegal wars based on lies about weapons of mass destruction (spread especially by Israeli Prime Ministers), with the invasion of Iraq killing many hundreds of thousands of people and the broader US-led wars in the region directly killing almost or over a million people across the Middle East in retaliation for the 3,000 Americans killed in "9/11", plus an additional 3.5 million people dying from indirect effects and over 38 million people displaced from their homes, whilst costing Americans at least $8 trillion.  That war, led by President George W. Bush, was part of a plan for war against Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan, and was preceded by sanctions against Iraq that are estimated to have killed half a million young children — a price that President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, thought was "worth it".

Then, in its fury with WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes — including "assassination, torture and the casual killing of civilians" (whilst he protected his informers, contrary to what was claimed) – and having not been able to directly kill him, the US, aided by the UK Government & media, ensures he is persecuted & tortured through 14 years of detention, before finally being pressured into releasing him (but no thanks to the complicit media that engages in hate & propaganda rather than true journalism, and it's also hard to give credit to the Australian Government, although Assange does for PM Anthony Albanese).

Consequently, hundreds of thousands of soldiers are sent to pointless deaths, whilst the rest of Ukraine's population and Europe's economy suffer severely, not least due to Ukraine & the US sabotaging Europe's gas supplies (US Navy vessels were seen over Russia's Nord Stream pipelines days before their bombing), and probably also destroying the Nova Kakhovka dam (which killed 84 people and released tonnes of “highly toxic” heavy metals) — all with the cover of silence from Western media, which abruptly switched to one-sided propaganda mode and became cheerleaders for war as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, as the media and politicians almost universally deny the West's role in provoking Russia (contrary to all evidence, including "the enormous surge in Ukrainian ceasefire violations immediately prior to the invasion" — as observed by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission), whilst uncritically praising Ukraine's President Zelensky as a defender of freedom & democracy, even though he appeases Ukrainian Nazis and refused to hold presidential elections due in March 2024, and instead runs an authoritarian regime under martial law applying violent conscription practices to men up to age 60, in a country that's renowned for longstanding, widespread corruption.

None of this of course means that Russia has not also interfered in Ukraine's politics (such as the 2004 "Orange Revolution" & subsequent turmoil), or that its invasion was justified, or that Putin is not authoritarian & brutal, or guilty of various crimes and corruption and should simply be trusted, or that the Russians' true motives are any better than the Americans (who are stupid and arrogant enough to say out loud that their objective is to exploit Ukraine's mineral resources).  It does, however, mean that there is more than one legitimate perspective to the situation (rather than being a simple, "black & white" battle between "right" & "wrong"), and, at the very least, shows the short-sighted, strategic foolishness of arrogant US imperialism and antagonism, which fails to appreciate how any leader might react to NATO's implicit threats to Russia right along its European border (one should be careful what one pushes for through violence, because the alternatives to Putin that could be unleashed may be much worse).

In the first instance at least, the way to resolve this conflict is to put aside the weapons and the excuses for continued war, and address, in a principled way (not as "appeasement"), the legitimate issues of concern on all sides.  Above all, that means making the lives of ordinary people the top priority, rather than sending them to their deaths in an unwinnable war (sadly, history shows that those who are "right" don't always win, so sometimes appeasement or surrender is the least-worst option), for the pointless, symbolic cause of fabricated nationalism, or the illusion of greater freedom and democracy, when in reality they're fighting for the competing interests of those with power and wealth who want to exploit land and resources.

This is a war that could easily have been avoided (or stopped within a month) if NATO were willing to negotiate – as JFK would have – especially if the US was genuinely concerned for the citizens of these countries and willing to consider potential solutions "outside the box".  You cannot hope for peace if all you pursue is militarism and war.  But opponents of the US war machine are not allowed to become President, and those like JFK that turn against it, are taken out.  (No this is not a kooky conspiracy theory; on the contrary, if you believe the official, absurd "magic bullet" explanation of JFK's assassination you're a gullible fool.)

Palestine Is Still The Issue

After a long history of European and especially British imperialism throughout the Middle East, Africa, India & elsewhere, the founding of Israel in 1947/48 marked a new phase of European settler-colonialism.  Prior to that, Britain had allowed a wave of Jewish European immigration into Palestine, partly due to pressure from the 1933 Haavara Agreement between Zionists & Nazi Germany, which ironically undermined the Jewish-led 1933 international anti-Nazi boycott.  Quite understandably after centuries of Jewish persecution, Zionists already believed that antisemitism was so deeply ingrained in Europe that they needed a Jewish state as a safe haven.  In 1896, the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, suggested Palestine or Argentina, with the latter considered an option due to its fertile lands and small population at that time.  The Zionist claim on Palestine adopted the false slogan of, "A land without a people for a people without a land", similarly to the "terra nullius" (nobody's land) lie used by the British in its settler-colonial genocide of Aboriginal Australians.

On 6 November 1944, the British Minister Resident in the Middle East, Lord Moyne, was assassinated in Cairo by members of Lehi, a Zionist terrorist group, for standing in the way of establishing a Jewish state on Palestinian land.  Lehi’s leader, Yitzhak Shamir (later Israel’s prime minister), openly justified political assassinations as a “moral” tool.  Then after the horrors of the WWII Holocaust, with independence for Palestine having been frustrated by Zionists and violence, Britain – "protecting its own interests from the Suez Canal to Iraq" – offered up Palestinian lands (that it had no moral right to give away) to Jewish European migrants through an absurd UN Plan that left Palestine as three disconnected (or barely connected) areas of land — which was rightly opposed in the 1947 UN Resolution 181 by every Arab country in the region (and notably with the UK abstaining).

The subsequent self-declared establishment of Israel as a Jewish State in 1948 (without specified borders) involved the violent ethnic cleansing of at least 750,000 Palestinians through the "Nakba" — as was always intended by Zionist founders like the racist Vladimir Jabotinsky, author of "The Iron Wall", and supported by multiple racist Prime Ministers such as David Ben-Gurion (who, despite dispute over one of many quotes, advocated ethnic cleansing even if at the expense of Jewish children's lives) as well as Moshe Sharett, Golda Meir and the terrorist leader Menachem Begin.  Israel even carried out "false flag" attacks against Arab Jews in neighbouring countries like Iraq, to encourage Jewish migration to Israel. 

This violent colonisation inevitably led to war and ongoing resistance from the occupied Palestinians and (with varying commitment) their Arab allies, notwithstanding the 1947 UN Resolution 181 establishing Israel (under much pressure), which is arguably voided by Israel's non-compliance with the condition of providing compensation for any Arab land "expropriated" (which was reinforced in 1948 and subsequent UN resolutions by affirming the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their land or be compensated).

Though the origins of Zionism are understandable, in practice – and perhaps inevitably for a misplaced, unscientific ideology that a group of people are "God's chosen ones" (based on misrepresentations from an old book full of nonsense and glorified violence) – its implementation in Israel has created a deeply racist & violent apartheid state, populated by people who really believe they are entitled to land because of their religion or claimed ancestry from thousands of years ago (an ancestral claim that is not well supported by historical or genetic evidence, and even if it was, by that logic we could all find ancestral links to justify claiming a global property portfolio for ourselves!).  It is perhaps also the sign of a deeply traumatised nation of people that awards their highest cultural honour – the Israel Prize – to a man, Abba Kovner, who tried to murder 6 million Germans as revenge for the Holocaust.

A genocide enabled by Western leaders and biased media

The insidious, subtle manipulation of public opinion through Western media propaganda (involving systematic double standards and frequent violations of journalistic principles, along with longstanding political interference & peddling of Israeli disinformation) – designed to minimise widespread public opposition – is reinforced by spreading the West's own anti-Muslim racism (pandering to the prejudice of half of right-wing Australians) and false accusations of antisemitism (with backing from political leaders), whilst using deliberately & insidiously biased language, which applies persistently unbalanced descriptions that dehumanise Palestinians murdered & taken hostage by Israel, and selectively reporting events to downplay or ignore Israel's inhumane, sickening barbarity & sadistic atrocities — which have overwhelming support from Israel’s "mainstream", including the gleeful backing of a racist, genocidal Israeli public and an army who celebrate killing Palestinian children (and mock grieving Palestinian children), along with Rabbis who say the Torah demands they kill all Palestinians in Gaza, including infants, children, women and the elderly (and is also reflected by Goebbels-level Israeli propaganda that varies from the absurd to sickening snuff videos (run by the IDF) and material reminiscent of Hitler Youth – Israeli children singing "The Friendship Song 2023", with the words, “We will annihilate everyone” in Gaza – shocking, yet not surprising in such a heavily indoctrinated, brainwashed, racist population with an education system that dehumanises Palestinians and teaches all Jews to consider themselves as the victims).

All this deliberate control of biased mainstream media messaging (which starkly contrasts with its reporting on Ukraine) then whitewashes or ignores Israel's war crimes (perpetrated by thousands of soldiers) and erases the context of history, thus helping to provide cover for Western leaders who repeatedly refuse to condemn Israel's extreme response or demand restraint and back a ceasefire, and instead actively support crimes against humanity as warmongering US leaders continue to supply Israel with weapons without proper scrutiny & approval (committing $17 billion in additional military aid, with $6.5 billion worth of weapons over 9 months, including 14,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs, despite opposition from a clear majority of Americans) — as does a fully-supportive Germany (accounting for 30% of major arms sales to Israel), and also the UK (with the backing of Britain's chief rabbi) through munitions supply as well as surveillance, training, SAS & logistical services via Cyprus and other British support for US & Israeli air forces, along with further military support from other countries (including Australian assistance through secretive military exports such as parts for F-35s, tanks, other vehicles & armour, weapons sold to Israel via the US, and its intelligence from Pine Gap used to guide Israel's missiles — making Australia fully complicit in enabling the genocide of Palestinians).  After 15 months of this one-sided war on Palestinians, Britain welcomes a chief IDF war-criminal accomplice for secret military talks (protected from arrest), to studious silence from the mainstream media.

This Western backing enables Israel to systematically & flagrantly violate international laws and the rules of war — defying the UN (as well as killing over 150 of its aid workers in 3 months and over 230 UN personnel in a year) as it reinforces its prior 17-year siege designed to make Gaza uninhabitable by blockading the supply of water, food, fuel, aid & medicines (as it said it would, with support from British PM, Keir Starmer) whilst proudly carpet-bombing Gaza with flesh-burning phosphorus bombs and explosives on the scale of nuclear weapons within only a few weeks (6,000 bombs or 1kt of explosives in just the first week and 30,000 bombs in 3 months – 8 times more than the U.S. dropped on Iraq during 6 years of war – with 70,000 tonnes over 6 months, which is more than twice the total dropped on Dresden, Hamburg & London combined in WWII).

Any notion that the widespread civilian casualties could be considered legitimate collateral damage of war is clearly dispelled by Israel's deliberate and constant targeting of hospitals (even children's hospitals, as part of what the UN declared to be "a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza") and multiple refugee camps (full of children) spread all over Gaza, as well as many more refugees sheltering in schools (as Israel has done in prior years, repeatedly) and even kindergartens, along with mosques, churches & universities (all of them), plus water supply pipes, sewage systems and desalination plants, whilst killing more than 30k people (over 90% civilians, with about 40% children & 20-30% women) in 100 days (70% women & children in 6 months, with over 18k children massacred in 8 months), including over 100 journalists (often murdered in their homes, along with their family, or assassinated in a hospital, openly & deliberately for doing journalism) — with more journalists killed in just 7 weeks than in all of Vietnam or WWII and over 130 or 10% of local journalists and media workers slaughtered in about 6 months (170 in a year according to Gaza's government, then soon after reaching 180 and over 200), whilst compliant Western journalists – deliberately detached from the massacre of Arabs – dutifully relay Israel's propaganda, with all sympathy devoted to the psychological trauma of Israeli soldiers who have committed atrocities and two white-skinned Israeli child victims.

After 9 months of this genocidal campaign, in which Israel dropped the equivalent of 6 Hiroshima bombs on Gaza (79kt) and an average of 10 surviving children a day lost one or both of their legs, research published in The Lancet estimated the death toll from traumatic injuries by the end of June 2024 was about 64k (with 59% of the victims being women, children, and the elderly), excluding some 10k people buried under rubble and deaths due to indirect causes such as a lack of healthcare, food, water, sanitation, or the spread of disease.  Other research in The Lancet conservatively estimated that the full death toll, including the indirect effects of Israel's seige & destruction of basic services, could well reach 186,000 (8% of Gaza's population) or even more if the war continued (as it did).

The inevitable and clearly intentional consequence of this murderous terror campaign is to push the entire population into submission and "voluntary migration" or else death through ubiquitous starvation, famine & disease, if not through effectively indiscriminate destruction of civilian targets & entire neighbourhoods — "justified" as always with the hypocritical lie that civilians are being used by Hamas as "human shields", even though Israel's supposed targets of Hamas militants are hiding in underground tunnels.

Israel's lies are further demonstrated by their deliberate targeting of children & the elderly (bombed and then systematically & repeatedly shot by drones or executed by snipers with deliberate single shots to the head) and the use of an AI-enabled 'mass assassination factory' as an excuse to kill almost anyone — using surveillance and statistics to identify lists of targets (done so casually it gathered at least 1,000 students’ names on an exam list), totalling as many as 37,000 Palestinian men, with human involvement of maybe 20 seconds then used to approve each target, with "AI rules" allowing 15-20 civilian casualties during airstrikes on low-ranking militants, and more than 100 civilians for top-ranking Hamas officials — because Israel prefers to use “dumb” bombs (not “smart” precision bombs) that destroy entire homes & families, as they "don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people", and anyway they consider that no-one in Gaza is innocent.

The contempt shown by the IDF for Palestinian lives & property is reinforced by reports of them "burning down houses just to lift the atmosphere", extensive self-recorded videos of them wilfully & proudly destroying property and dressing up in Palestinian women's underwear, as well as humiliating detainees, or shooting unarmed Palestinians because they're "bored", aiming for specific body parts as target practice (including boys' testicles), deliberately running over them in tanks (& boasting about it), shooting children in cars from tanks (children that Western media passively reports as inexplicably "found dead", in contrast to Israelis, who are "butchered" or "massacred"), burying children alive in mass graves, and hunting civilians with armed quadcopters — even luring them out of hiding to their deaths by playing recordings of crying babies and women screaming in distress (see also here).

UN investigations also revealed a (longstanding) Israeli "rape culture" applied as part of a broad strategy of psychological warfare and genocide (with little reaction, let alone outrage from the West) through "standard operating procedures toward Palestinians" involving "systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence, including rape, under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership".

Accelerated annexation of the West Bank & Jerusalem, with mass detention & torture

Alongside these atrocities & destruction in Gaza, Israel also simultaneously provokes further violence & killing of Palestinians in the West Bank (with soldiers killing "mostly children and teenagers"), as it locks down life for Palestinians there and extends illegal Jewish settlements through continuing & accelerating theft of Palestinian land in both the West Bank and in illegally occupied East Jerusalem — enabled by an Israeli Government policy of mass land appropriation/annexation that deliberately aims to undermine the possibility of an independent Palestinian state.  Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, himself a West Bank settler, threatens to turn West Bank cities “into ruins like the Gaza Strip”, and openly supports the expansion of West Bank settlements, with annexation being the ultimate goal (quite explicitly and actively pursued, with preparations ordered in anticipation of support from the re-elected President Trump and his pick for UN ambassador).  Israeli forces & settlers killed at least 700 people, including 159 children, in the West Bank & East Jerusalem over the 12 months following 7/10/23 and intensified their attacks on West Bank families, infrastructure & hospitals in January 2025.

The excuse that Israel is only trying to address terrorist threats is exposed as a lie, when Arab Bedouins in the Negev desert get similar violent treatment from the Israeli colonisers – like they have endured for decades since 1948 – as they are displaced from the lands they've lived on for generations before Israel was founded.

The hypocrisy of the authoritarian "free world" silencing opposition

Throughout this widely recognised and most documented genocide in history (e.g. see here), the US bullies the UN (see video from 10') as the West conflates criticism of Israel & Zionism with antisemitism (a stance influenced by extreme & unrepresentative Jewish organisations but rejected by many anti-Zionist Jews who support peace, including several prominent Jews in videos listed at the end of this article) and minimises reporting of Israel's crimes whilst trying to repress pro-Palestinian demonstrations (e.g. in the UK & Australia) along with any dissenting voices (whether artists, teachers, doctors, professors, airline & government staff or politicians) — including by firing actors, nurses and even Jewish professors & Jewish, Palestinian-supporting social workers, along with local & national politicians (on both sides of politics).  

A concerted strategy to silence dissent and control the "narrative" in society is pursued by the West's enmeshed political-corporate establishment, assisted by Facebook/Instagram (Meta) and other complicit big-tech US companies suppressing opposition (even the supposedly free-speech "X"/Twitter) and/or enabling Israel with their technology, including Amazon, Google/YouTube/Alphabet, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, HP & Nvidia, along with Palantir and many other military, financial/banking, energy/resources and other major global companies who are liable for violating international law as they profit from Israel's colonialism, land-theft & apartheid.

The West's claims to stand for free speech & news media are exposed as a sham, as British & Australian journalists, sports commentators & cartoon satirists (& anyone else who speaks out) are blocked, sacked, intimidated, arrested (violently) & mistreated — on the basis of false accusations of "disinformation" or "supporting terrorism" or "hate speech" and enabled by an abuse of draconian UK anti-terror legislation applied broadly to all Hamas entities (not just its military) and used to silence critical journalists & protestors and arrest not only a British-Palestinian professor but even a veteran anti-Zionist, Jewish Israeli woman (whose family died in the Holocaust) and a pacifist, anti-Zionist, Jewish Israeli historian in his seventies (without basis).  British police also threaten inter-faith carol singers with arrest to shut them down and protestors are even arrested for carrying a banner with a peace dove on a blue sky background that was absurdly deemed to indicate they were "supporting a proscribed organisation” (Hamas).  Then the British Government even declares anyone expressing support for the non-violent Palestine Action group to be guilty of terrorism, and arrests an 83-year old retired female priest for doing so, followed by a blind man in a wheelchair amongst over 500 protestors (half of them aged over 60), simply for displaying placards expressing support for the group.

In Australia, the right-wing Murdoch media and politicians fabricate a fake "antisemitism crisis" (including a “fake terrorism plot contrived by organised criminals domestically and from offshore”, ludicrously blamed on Iran) and use this to rush through superficially anti-racism but actually authoritarian & undemocratic, anti-protest laws, whilst the head of the state broadcaster ABC said it’s antisemitic to use the phrase “unlawful occupation of Palestine” as he tried to justify the corporation’s firing of a journalist for retweeting facts about Israel’s criminality in Gaza.  Meanwhile Australian universities adopt a definition of antisemitism that conflates Jewish identity with Zionism and support for the state of Israel (in order to suppress student protests), and Australian schools ban students from wearing a keffiyeh scarf or Palestinian flag on their bags, and even banned a student of Palestinian heritage from attending its "formal" event, after he wore a keffiyeh at his graduation.  Then the extreme Zionist appointed as a supposed antisemitism envoy  seeks to further weaponise claims of antisemitism so as to restrict opposition to Israel (replicating the authoritarian practices pursued by Trump in the US).

The authoritarianism is not limited to Anglo countries, as France bans protests and threatens to contravene basic civil rights by imprisoning anyone who criticises Israel (through criminalising opposition to Zionism).  Switzerland also joins in with arresting journalists (abducted & arbitrarily detained without charges, on the orders of its Israel-supporting justice director) and student protests across Europe are met with police violence, with particular severity (& concern to Amnesty International) in the Netherlands.

And sadly Germany seems to have learned little from its past, as once again it behaves like a fascist state, when its police brutally assault peace protestors after storming & shutting down a Palestine congress and arresting participants (including Jews) speaking out against the historic & continuing oppression of Palestinians and in support of universal human rights & peace.  Simultaneously (& contrary to the supposed free movement of EU citizens), the German Government bans the former Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, from entering or conducting any political activity in Germany, and also detains & blocks the entry to Germany of a prominent British-Palestinian surgeon (who was going to speak to the conference about his work in Gaza hospitals) as well as blocking him from entering France and the Netherlands (under a ban applied across the 29-country Schengen group) — perhaps because he has spoken about Israel using EU-funded sniper drones to execute Gazans inside hospitals.

It appears that Germany's contempt for free speech is endemic (and shared to varying degrees across Europe).  German criminal courts even convict & fine people for using the slogan, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" on social media (or in demonstrations), on the claimed basis of it constituting a "terrorist symbol" and/or “denied the right of the state of Israel to exist” (a ridiculous proposition – applied with hypocritical inconsistency – for a slogan that isn't even banned in Israel).  Despite the opposition of Jewish groups around the world, the German Bundestag also endorsed weaponised antisemitism used to stigmatise immigrants that racist, right-wing parties want to "remigrate" back to Africa.

The West's descent into an Orwellian dystopia accelerates as its politicians acclaim "democracy, decency & freedom" whilst backing continued global wars as the US suppresses political opposition through a "new McCarthyism" in universities by banning social media platforms (TikTok) that facilitate younger people's opposition to genocide (whilst Meta – packed with former IDF people – collaborates with Israel to censor Facebook & Instagram content) and sending in police to attack student peace protestors with rubber bullets, tasers & teargas (& even target them with snipers) and aggressively arrest university professors, whilst doing nothing to protect those in peace camps from violent attacks by nationalist & Zionist mobs.  Then Congress goes full-on crazy fascist by proposing laws that would cancel the visas of foreign students in the US if they are arrested for "unlawful protest" (even if they're not charged with an actual crime), and even enable student peace camp protesters to be sent to Gaza for a minimum of 6 months, then advocating that Israel use nuclear weapons on Gaza!

The climate of fear this creates, along with subtle propaganda that encourages denial of the truth, then minimises public opposition (with the mainstream silence itself also having a self-reinforcing effect) whilst duplicitous & cowardly Western leaders – encouraged by prominent right-wing figures – stand by or actively support Israel's war on Palestinians, and fail in their obligations to hold Israel accountable, as they refuse to initiate or support actions through international institutions to prevent genocide (institutions that the US intimidates and Israel treats with contempt, as it does international law).  One can only speculate that their reticence to do so may be partly out of concern for being charged with similar crimes committed by the US in Iraq (which were even more hidden from the Western public, in the days before Twitter) — such as the denial of food, water, electricity, medical care & humanitarian aid to civilians whilst attacking hospitals and using white phosphorous along with indiscriminate shelling of cities (not the ‘precision’ targeting claimed).

Western complicity, dishonesty and contempt for international law

Instead of opposing Israel's actions (which the US could easily stop if it wanted), the West compounds its complicity as it bombs the Houthis, relentlessly (who were trying to stop Israel's genocidal war on Gaza) in an already-devastated Yemen, and then on the day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) orders "the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance" in Gaza, the US & its allies respond to allegations from an habitually lying Israel – based on flimsy, unevidenced & unverified claims (fed to media by the IDF and apparently derived from torture and not even supported by US intelligence agencies) – by immediately halting aid for Palestinians (following “reverse due process” that revealed "no evidence" even after rigorous inquiry) provided by the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA), which Israel has long sought to destroy (encouraging Israeli extremists to attack it), not just to starve Gazans but also because UNRWA supports the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homelands, which Israel opposes.

Thus the West actively help to create a monumental disaster and directly contribute to the genocide by amplifying Israel's strategy of making Gaza uninhabitable — as if that wasn't already achieved by Israel's total destruction of Gaza and obstruction of aid (just as it said it would do) with criminally spurious excuses (backed up by blatant US lies denying it), reinforced by its shooting of starving people (which it lies about to try and deny its crimes) and repeated attacks on food aid trucks by the IDF & celebrating Israeli activists (which are quickly ignored by the media as they become normalised, just like Israel’s relentless attacks on hospitals — destroying medical equipment (methodically), torturing healthcare workers, murdering staff & patients and bulldozing them amongst the wreckage of multiple hospitals into horrifying mass graves across Gaza, which Israel's military simply deny).

Then rather than acting to ensure Israel's compliance with international laws, an arrogant, failing and demonstrably untrustworthy US empire gaslights the UN & Western public by claiming the ICJ "has not ordered an immediate cease-fire", even though the ICJ ordered an immediate stop to "killing members of the group" for Palestinians in Gaza — and so with help from the media the US gives a green light (contrary to woefully late measures and insincere concerns expressed for political purposes, along with worthless, fudged, non-"ceasefire" motions and gaslighting that UN resolutions are not legally binding) with further unconditional military support (the illegality of which is scandalously denied through falsified reports) for an out-of-control, fascist Israel to continue the genocide in areas crammed with refugees where it told Gazans to flee to for safety, but bombed anyway (even striking the masses of refugees in tents).

US support for Israel is then further backed up by open threats to the already-compromised International Criminal Court (reinforcing years of secret, criminal threats from Israel and contempt from the US, which the ICC rightly considered “an offence against the administration of justice”), with explicit opposition to any Israeli being investigated – a prospect absurdly deemed "antisemitic" by Netanyahu – with this gross misuse of that term reinforced by the US through media that labels pro-Palestinian peace protestors as antisemitic and by unconstitutional new US laws banning free speech & assembly if someone criticises Israel.

Tellingly, only after Israel murdered several Western aid workers did US President Biden decide to force Israel to make changes (which they acted on within just hours of his phone call, because Israel's military is completely dependent on US support).  Clearly, whilst the US Government cries for Israelis, Palestinian lives (that could have been saved just as easily) mean nothing to them, or to most other Western politicians and media, who had nothing to say about Israel's slaughter of nearly 200 Arabic aid workers and were only finally motivated to express outrage and condemn Israel when one of their own was killed (and even then only in the most lame, diplomatic way and without any real consequences).  The striking imbalance in empathy is reinforced by the US establishment's crazy preoccupation with denouncing chants in support of Palestinian rights and other language that they falsely claim to be antisemitic, in order to distract from or excuse the ongoing horror of an actual genocide the US Government is enabling (and likewise in Australia).

However, whilst the extremist Israeli public's active support for the abuse & massacre of Palestinians might be driven by fear & hate, the motives of its government – and certainly also what's behind US support for Israel's actions (along with backing from the arms industry and Zionist funding of US politicians) – are surely greed & power, combined with an utter disregard for any Palestinian lives that get in the way of that.  In fact these motives were blatantly advertised by Netanyahu in his September 2023 address to the UN, in which he announced plans (agreed just two days prior with US President Biden) for a new trade alliance with Israel's undemocratic Arab neighbours, enabling them to "build a new corridor" (the trade corridor he marked on a map in which Palestine was erased) through Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel & the Mediterranean Sea to Europe (via a major industrial port in Gaza) — emphasising that Palestinians would not have a veto over these supposed "peace plans" (whilst declaring it critical that "Iran must face a credible nuclear threat").  When the US seeks to hand Palestine over to Saudi rulers, you know they're not concerned about democracy and human rights!

The plan to redevelop Gaza that was released later (on 3 May 2024), which is clearly part of this bigger geoeconomic strategy, labelled Gaza an "Iranian outpost" that "sabotages emerging supply chains" (translation: a competitive threat to US global bullying & dominance), and then as Israel yet again ordered the evacuation of Gazan refugees who had already been displaced to tents in Rafah (whilst intensifying their starvation, bombing them and sending its tanks in), Netanyahu had the audacity to include in this plan vague statements about future Palestinian self-governance (just a week before Israel childishly shred the UN charter in protest at the General Assembly endorsing Palestine's bid to become a full member) — which, if they can be believed at all, seem likely to amount to little more than local council status, as Israel intends to maintain its system of apartheid and "security" that is brutally enforced by the IDF (just like in the West Bank).

The interests of the US and complicit, undemocratic Arab rulers are clearly spelled out, with reference to "newly discovered gas fields just north of Gaza" (see here) and the potential for "defensive pacts with the US" (i.e. profits for the US arms industry as it supports continued rule by force in the region) and "unfettered access to Gaza's Mediterranean ports through railways and pipelines", plus future opportunities for the "intervention in Gaza to be repeated in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon".

This shouldn't be surprising.  Every nation on the top ten proven oil reserves list is either a target of US warmongering, has already been ruined by US warmongering, or is an ally of the US.  Venezuela – with the largest proven oil reserves of any country on Earth – is the next target for US bullying, violence and regime-change (thinly disguised as some kind of righteous war for democracy).

Racism and relentless fearmongering, military antagonism & waste

With so much arrogance & contempt shown for Palestinian people (& Arab & Muslim lives generally) – who western leaders & media don't seem to see as even human – it's also hard not to believe that aside from self-interest, the actions or inactions of the West are at least partly influenced by racism (as well as by millions of US religious zealots) — a conclusion transparently reinforced by far greater media concerns for Ukrainians, because they are, "civilised, middle-class Europeans like us, with blue eyes and blond hair, who watch Netflix and drive cars like ours".

So what is the source of this racism, and is it a conscious or subconscious bias?  Although I'm not persuaded by the "Critical Race Theory" that "race (is) a creation of society, not a biological reality" and that subconscious racism is systemically embedded in white societies' institutions (because ultimately I think the behaviour of society's institutions depends on the individual people within them, although leaders & group culture can inhibit contrary views), I do think there is a natural biological and evolutionary basis for subconscious racism, which is our inherent tribalism and fear of those who look different and we don't recognise (&/or those who speak an unfamiliar language).  This means if we don't become familiar with faces of different "races" when we're young (when we can even learn to distinguish between individual monkey faces), then it becomes much harder to do so as adults, because we specialise in distinguishing between faces amongst those around us, whilst all faces of a different race tend to look rather similar & unfamiliar, and are therefore an instinctive source of fear (albeit perhaps exhibited in a mild way by most people as a relative reluctance to engage with those who seem different from ourselves).

So to combat this source of racism, we must try to become aware of such subconscious feelings and override them with conscious will — accepting that all people are essentially the same, with similar hopes & fears (albeit manifested in different ways according to their history), and equally deserving of the same basic rights, care and treatment.

Even worse is the ramped up antagonism towards China (which gets slurred along with Russia & Iran as being part of an updated "axis of evil"), led by the "extreme fools" in NATO whose attempts to exert US/Anglo dominance in Asia through the new "AUKUS" alliance are "an accident on its way to happen”, with Australia making itself a military outpost as the "51st State" of an aggressive US and being bullied again into one of its "worst defence and foreign policy decisions" ever by wasting a staggering $368 billion on absurdly-expensive yet still obsolete, readily-detected (by various new technologies) nuclear submarines that (in the increasingly unlikely event that they're ever delivered) will support US nuclear missile capabilities but otherwise are likely to be displaced by undersea drones — a "monumental folly" pushed by a right-wing agenda of US hegemony focussed on attacking China and thwarting the French-Indian strategy for a multilateral balance with China in the region, and then backed by the Opposition leader (& subsequent PM), Anthony Albanese, for purely political reasons (despite being an even more crazy and useless "con-job" than the previous plan to spend $90 billion on dated & "obsolete" French submarines).

Combined with Australia accommodating a build-up of US military & spies (alongside other US bases in the region), giving the US military unimpeded access to and use of multiple sites across Australia (used to bomb the Houthis in Yemen for opposing the genocide of Palestinians) – contrary to the views of a clear majority of Australians (even despite all the anti-China propaganda they're subjected to) – and enabling the global proliferation of US nuclear weapons capabilities, whilst reinforcing the antagonism towards Asian neighbours by acquiring threatening long-range missiles, and being pressured by the US to spend ever more on defence, Australia is somehow managing to fuel a new arms race that weakens regional stability and increases the risk of being targeted through retaliation or pre-emptive action by a nervous foreign power, whilst simultaneously massively increasing military spending yet squeezing the budget that's left for potential truly defensive initiatives.  And then our politicians try to justify the "mind boggling" waste with absurd arguments about job creation.

The US has trashed the "rules-based order"

The warmongering behaviour of the US and its Western allies (including Australia, where the government is also heavily influenced by "extremely conservative lobbying for Israel, and the approach to human rights is determined by "interests" rather than principles) – and especially the most blatant hypocrisy & dishonesty shown by the support for Israel's barbaric slaughter of Palestinians and its contempt for the United Nations – has "ripped the mask off" the West's true nature and revealed the lie of its claim to support a "rules-based international order" — rules that the US is less compliant with than any other country, and which it resists when it comes to Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land (as determined by the ICJ) and even openly rejects with more threats against the ICC (from "world leaders" and especially from Republicans, in laws put to Congress, as well as via British-Israeli lawyers) for seeking the arrest of Israeli (& Hamas) leaders for their war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine, coupled with preposterous attempts to challenge ICC jurisdiction (using the UK lapdog to do it's bidding), so as to buy Israel more time to continue its genocide and constant atrocities.  However, Netanyahu & Biden were at least technically right when they attempted an irrelevant distraction by saying there is no comparison or equivalence between Israel's & Hamas' crimes (echoed by subservient German, British, Canadian and Australian politicians, along with right-wing media) — because Israel's monstrous crimes have been far worse!  With the full backing of the West, Israel has literally incinerated global rules and enacted a new holocaust.

Some Western leaders even admit they think the ICC was only "built for Africa and for thugs like Putin", not for the West & its allies, and say, "the ICJ can go to hell" as the complicit US & submissive UK (though not Australia) ignore the ICJ while they maintain support for Israel as it continues its attacks on Gazans in Rafah (slaughtering hundreds as it bombs refugees in tents there, as well as those sheltering in schools & mosques across Gaza) after the ICJ dismissed Israel's lies and ordered it to stop, immediately.  The US even actively enables more Israeli war crimes — openly declaring that "Israel has the right to target civilians" and then using its nonsensical "aid-delivery" pier (ordered by President Biden against expert advice) to support a "Trojan horse" massacre as part of a hostage-rescue operation (assisted as usual by Western media, which refuses to report the use of the pier and an aid truck to hide IDF soldiers), before abandoning the pier as famine spreads across Gaza.

Then they carry on with sham "peace negotiations" used by the US & Israel as a sideshow distraction for political & military tactical advantage, as Israel continues with its blatant war crimes and ongoing terrorism, genocidal-violence and destruction of Palestinian society (including attacking aid trucks and relentlessly slaughtering children & other civilians by constantly bombing them & deliberately shooting them in the head — with minimal recognition in Western media), whilst it ramps up its violence and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank (displacing 40,000 refugees in January 2025, with property theft supported by Israel's "justice" system) and in North Gaza, where – undeterred by US "demands" that are no more than an election stunt – Israel completely blocks food supplies to 400k trapped people and orders an indefinite, mass evacuation of the area, including of hospitals (which it bombs with the cover of the complicit Western media's usual lack of concern compared to that shown for a few Israeli soldier casualties), as it moves towards annexation and blatant ethnic cleansing (supported by zealous, extremist Israeli settlers) with an extermination campaign by intensifying its attacks, widespread child-killing and starvation siege — totally banning the aid agency, UNRWA, with the support of right-wing Western politicians, until the entire population of North Gaza is at risk of dying.  

The change of US President makes no difference, and the IDF continues to shoot Palestinians through a supposed "ceasefire" that Israel flagrantly violates, even by its own admission, enabled as usual by Western media portraying Hamas as the guilty party, to manufacture consent for more war — which Israel then fervently continues as it illegally blocks aid and hijacks ships (with no opposition from the West), funds criminal gangs in Gaza to terrorise civilians and steal what aid does get in (& then blames it on Hamas), and starves the Gazan population to death – children first – or lets in the bare minimum of aid that it openly admits is purely to ensure Israel maintains Western backing for its total annihilation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza (as it uses aid to lure desperate Palestinians to the southern border and then massacres them, repeatedly).  Despite the West having supported Israel through all this, and still suppressing opposition protests, it is only after 22 months of these non-stop atrocities, as we see skeletal images of starved children, do some Western mainstream voices speak out against what can no longer be hidden or denied, yet still only respond with empty protestations & gestures to the famine they have enabled.

As if that wasn't enough, and unencumbered by any international restraints, Israel also expands its cross-border attacks with terrorist activity in neighbouring countries using illegal, booby-trapped pager communications devices (ordered by Netanyahu and enabled by silent hypocrisy from US leaders & celebratory headlines & admiration of how "audacious" it was) and relentless escalation with massive bombing (of multiple countries) — destroying regions of city blocks in Beirut (continuing Israel's long history of attacks on Lebanon) and killing hundreds of civilians alongside political assassinations just days after supposedly agreeing to a ceasefire (& enabled as always by Western media), and culminating in over 1,200 killed in Lebanon in just 2 weeks and almost 4,000 in just over a year (with IDF killing of civilians continuing under the absurd guise of "enforcing a ceasefire"), as Israel threatens the same destruction as inflicted on Gaza and conducts another invasion of Lebanon (displacing over a million people) that again involves widespread bombing of residential areas along with deliberate attacks on healthcare facilities (with the usual lies about terrorists using them, fully backed by the German foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock as she supports Israel's attacks on civilians — exposing her Green party principles and “feminist foreign policy” as a sham, although actually quite consistent with the dishonest, hateful & tribal nature of feminism) as well as news media offices and UN peacekeepers (followed up by further threats to the UN directly from Netanyahu).  This inevitably leads to more extremism and, understandably, retaliation by Iran on military targets (with the usual hypocritical & one-sided Western reactions along with authoritarian suppression of protests from Western governments like Australia), followed by more "retaliation" by Israel with supposed "precise strikes" against Iran, as NATO backs Israel and declares that any nation aligning itself with Iran would be regarded as an adversary...

Then Israel subjects Syria to its heaviest bombing in history (destroying Syria's military through hundreds of strikes, including on Damascus) prior to illegally invading it (as the IDF expels civilians and beats journalists) with help from the US (motivated by gas & oil), who had vastly more troops there than claimed, as well as Turkey (as it wages war on the Kurds), when enabled by the overthrow of the Assad regime (as long planned by the US) by US-backed & prepared Islamic terrorists who are willing to ally with Israel (the HTS offshoot of ISIS & al-Qaeda quickly relabelled as reformed, “diversity-friendly" moderate "rebels" – without evidence to justify it – or "national resistance" forces, with sympathetic reporting by western media reinforcing a long-running campaign of US propaganda).  As usual, Israel claims defence to justify its attacks and "indefinite" occupation whilst absurdly claiming to have no intention of interfering in Syrias’s internal affairs, and then treating it like a new West Bank as it continues its constant attacks across Syria and expands IDF infrastructure there (& in Lebanon, which it continues to strike).  Predictably, western media downplays the subsequent slaughter of civilians by HTS jihadists, or western-backed "rebels" (many from outside Syria).

And then Israel starts another war with Iran (based on more lies about weapons of mass destruction), which the US pretends it had nothing to do with...

This pervasive, US-backed Israeli aggression – allowing it to attack 6 countries in 3 days with impunity (including a flotilla of more than 50 peaceful, private vessels seeking to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza) – is consistently enabled by a combination of active support, imbalanced or falsely balanced reporting, and silent complicity from the entire US-UK-Western political-media establishment (including the supposedly left-wing Guardian, the Australian ABC and most egregiously by the BBC — controlled by a blatant supporter of Israel and protected from protests by a Zionist Police State), which shamelessly hides the truth of the Western-backed Israel's long history of oppressing & abusing Palestinians, and even blatantly manipulates its reporting to deliberately produce misleading, one-sided versions of events that favour fascist Israeli soccer hooligans and demonise Arabs with false & hysterical claims of pogroms in Amsterdam and distorted accusations of antisemitism, which are then used to "justify" the blocking of protests against genocide whilst hiding & denying the holocaust that's occurring in Gaza (including even in the supposedly progressive Guardian).

US enablement of sick, twisted and plain evil Israeli fascism may be the most starkly obvious example — as Republicans especially in the US Congress applaud the lies and racist invective of the shameless war-criminal Netanyahu — but it's not some kind of weird aberration from an otherwise peaceful & benevolent US Empire.  Nor are America's never-ending wars a series of unfortunate failures, despite the most noble intentions.  US leaders may be crazy and/or senile (yet the obvious is denied), but the Establishment that puts them there are not so stupid that they can't see that their "forever wars" never have any hope of achieving any kind of conventional military objective (e.g. the hatred towards Israel and the West generated by the Gaza genocide led to Hamas recruiting almost as many new fighters as it lost in battle).  No, non-stop war itself is the objective; it's global terrorism, with the not-so-subtle accompanying message, "Do what America says!" (plus it operates as a money-laundering operation delivering a constant flow of $ from taxpayers to the corrupt military-industrial-political elite).  That's what President Biden plainly reveals when he says he's, "running the world".  The brutal reality is that we in the West are the terrorists!  US contempt for a true "rules-based order" is plainly revealed when it vetoes ceasefires in the UN and opposes ICC arrest warrants (and sanctions ICC members for issuing them, with threats of further unspecified consequences, after further bullying of the ICC by the UK PM failed) then threatens Spain with sanctions for trying to uphold international law by blocking weapons shipments to Israel and threatens to "crush" its allies' economies if they arrest Netanyahu in compliance with their obligations to do so in accordance with ICC orders.

And the increasingly clear pattern and intensity of global bullying, warmongering & antagonism reflects an empire whose global hegemony is under threat – especially from China's growing economic power – which is revealing with increasing transparency US leaders' true motives and the brutal lengths they will go to as they vainly try to retain domination at all cost and resist the USA's inevitable relative decline.  In the war that it provoked with Russia in Ukraine, US psychopaths in both parties press for teenage Ukrainian boys to be sent to their deaths on the frontline as NATO engages in reckless nuclear escalation and Congressmen openly admit their aim of profiting from Ukrainian mineral wealth (worth some $15 trillion — see details of Ukraine's resources here) — a goal reaffirmed by the re-elected Trump (& shared by the UK), after being restored to head the US gangster empire (Trump's push for peace in Ukraine is not for moral reasons and not at all pursued consistently in the Middle East, where he signed off on the reignition of the Gaza holocaust and intensified the witch-hunt against anyone voicing support for Palestinians).

Meanwhile the US plans for full-scale war over Taiwan and simultaneous nuclear war with Russia, China & North Korea, whilst also pushing Canada and the EU into joining its self-destructive, protectionist trade war with China (based on casually fabricated claims of "overproduction"), whilst EU leaders enthusiastically join the US in its preparations for war.

Yet as the US acts contrary to the interests of its own citizens and seems hell-bent on a path to WWIII, its government is shrouded in secrecy (as it hypocritically advocates for a free press and free speech whilst forcibly excluding unsympathetic journalists from media briefings, banning protests against Israel in universities and restricting Americans’ access to Russian media) and its rigged & broken democracy is completely failing — a global joke in 2024, as, urged on by Netanyahu, the Presidential candidates in the 2-party duopoly compete to be most hawkish in their enthusiasm for a war with Iran (in order to maintain US global dominance).  However, in this dystopian world the American people do get to choose a special kind of feminist genocide, delivered with flowers and “joy” by a "commanding girlboss with brown skin and she/her pronouns" (although unsurprisingly this blend of anti-male & anti-Arab prejudice wasn't very popular).

The US is really just a plutocracy corrupted by money and lobbyists, especially the military-industrial complex and Zionists (including many Zionist billionaires), which Netanyahu bragged about in the 1980s and former President Jimmy Carter said in 2007,

"Not a single member of Congress could possibly speak out and call for Israel to withdraw to their legal boundaries, or to publicise the plight of Palestinians, or even to call for peace talks.
If any did speak out, they would probably not be back in Congress the next term."

The truth of this was demonstrated by the elimination of pro-Palestinian Congress candidates in 2024 primaries — a consequence of election campaign spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which was among the top 20 spenders in the 2022 elections (the only one in the top 20 focussed on the interest of a foreign entity) as it contributed to the campaigns of 365 candidates and 342 Congress members elected since 2021.  AIPAC then boasted about the success of its blatant election interference in the elections of 5 November 2024.

What should we do?

US global leadership and economic dominance is over.  In 2024-25, the end of the "petrodollar" and accelerating pursuit of "dedollarization" initiatives, including the establishment of a BRICS payment system (a threat to the US$ that the US labels a "threat to democracy") – supported by a queue of nations looking at joining BRICS (41 countries applied or interested in joining in October 2024, with economies surging ahead of several European ones and the G7 overall, and including Indonesia as it engages in military cooperation with Russia & China), who no longer want to be bullied or to buy spiralling US debt – are both symptoms of, and contributing forces to the decline of US neocon hegemony.  Although an increasingly fascist-like US may still notionally lead an alliance of Western nations, it no longer has any global respect from the majority of the world's population or states (not least its former ally Canada), and clearly it's unconscionable for any nation that claims to stand for human decency and universal rights to remain in military alliance with such a depraved, morally bankrupt empire.

On the question of Palestine, the US is becoming increasingly isolated, as US support for Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza (owned by the US & enforced by its military) is rightly opposed by its Arab "allies" as another "Nakba", whilst more countries reject the US position on Palestine by recognising it as a State and stand up to US obstruction of international law by overwhelmingly supporting a UN vote endorsing the implementation of ICJ orders for Israel to end its unlawful occupation of Palestinian Territories and make reparation for damage caused to all.  Seventy nine of 125 ICC member states (excluding Australia) also dared to explicitly oppose the US move to sanction ICC staff (which the US did with the help of Microsoft, which closed the ICC prosecutor's email account, and the UK, which froze his bank accounts).  Whilst a corrupted UN & EU does nothing to stop a genocide, global revulsion at the US can only be accelerated by the staggeringly blunt and crass approach of the re-elected Trump, in his view of Gaza as a property development deal (even though he's just being more open about existing US policy).  All moral nations, and those threatened by US imperialism, must unite against the bullying US and sanction the innately fascist Israel to force the establishment of a contiguous state of Palestine from Gaza to the West Bank (as I propose here).

In Ukraine, cheerleaders for continued war in Europe should be ignored and creative "out of the box" solutions should be considered to help reach a negotiated peace agreement that accommodates the legitimate concerns of Russia (especially a balanced security framework) and the desires of the people in the affected areas (including the Russian-speaking population, whose culture & language is being banished by extreme Ukrainian nationalists).  Then the warmongering NATO (& AUKUS) should be dismantled — to be replaced by regional security plans & agreements that can be genuinely supported and backed up by the UN (possibly on the basis of a new regional UN structure).

And strident anti-China rhetoric & global propaganda (supported by massive US government funding) needs to be replaced with a more effective diplomatic approach that reflects our strong, mutually-beneficial economic interdependencies, with any challenges presented by China's growing economic power (which is what the West is really concerned about, because it threatens an end to centuries of exploiting "the Global South") being best addressed by countries like Australia through smarter economic strategies, such as reducing the reliance on old resource-export industries and working in partnership with other countries (e.g. in the British Commonwealth) — developed as part of a truly defensive & holistic, integrated approach through a new "Ministry for National Security".

Ultimately, the foundations for lasting peace with all nations will not come from brandishing weapons at each other and promoting fear & loathing by engaging in antagonistic, black & white, "us vs them" rhetoric.  Peace will be maintained, as it was in Europe after WWII, through the mutual benefits of free trade, supported by free (or nearly free) movement of people, that breaks down barriers between people and creates a mutual dependency on continued co-operation and peace.  At the very least, we should "keep our friends close, and our enemies even closer", until conditions change and favour genuine partnership.  Nothing is forever, except nuclear armageddon (which, through so much reckless escalation, we've only avoided so far through luck).

However, given our current leaders are doing the exact opposite of these things, contrary to public opinion, we need to tackle the fundamental problems in our democracies that are producing such failing governance — through the constitutional reforms that I outline here for Australia (& other nations).