As World Press Freedom Day rapidly approaches and Reporters Without Borders has condemned the Israeli government for its massacre of journalists in Lebanon and Palestine, New Zealand journalist David Robie reflects in a speech at Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square today.

MEDIA FREEDOM: By David Robie

In a week’s time next Sunday, it is World Press Freedom Day on May 3. And already our whānau of journalists who are facing horrendous danger at the hands of the Israeli killing machine have had a shocking few days.

During our 133 weeks of protest we have become painfully accustomed to how one journalist after another has been brutally assassinated, some even alongside their family members.

Far more than 260 journalists — the actual number varies with different media freedom monitoring agencies and different methodologies — have been slaughtered in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023.

And some of you may have seen the chilling photograph circulating on some social media channels. It shows 8 Lebanese journalists – four men and four women – smiling and giving peace signs.

Eight Lebanese journalists killed in a month by Israel https://t.co/Fqeji5D3M8

— Pen MacRae (@penmacrae) April 23, 2026

They have all been murdered in the last month, including the tragic killing of Amal Khalil, who died last Wednesday under building rubble in the town of al-Tayri, southern Lebanon, after a double tap attack and then the Israelis fired a stun grenade on the ambulance rescue workers preventing them trying to save her.

But before I talk more about her tragedy and what it means– she was just buried yesterday with thousands at her funeral — I want to show you another photo.

This is Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American journalist working for the Arabic channel Al Jazeera who was a highly popular household name right across the Middle East if not the world.

She was known as the “daughter of Palestine” and she was shot and killed by Israeli occupation forces on 11 May 2022 — just eight days after Media Freedom Day that year.

I have this photo hanging on the wall of my office, thanks to Palestine Youth of Aotearoa, to remind me daily of the brutality and global impunity of the Israelis.

With my experience as a media freedom defender for Pacific Media Watch and Reporters Without Borders since 1996, I have come to a chilling and shameful conclusion:

The fact that there was no accountability for her murder and the US authorities and Biden administration orchestrated a cover-up – even though she was American — signalled to the Netanyahu government that they could target journalists and those bearing witness with absolute impunity.

So this is where we are at now, the Israeli killing machine launched into a bloody massacre of more than 72,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza over the past two plus years, especially targeting journalists, doctors and medical workers, teachers, and aid workers.

And the hypocritical Western countries, including Aotearoa New Zealand, have barely offered a timid bleat.

The Israeli bloodlust has now spread to Lebanon and other countries. The IDF claims that its military is the “most moral in the world”. That claim is an obscenity.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect journalists (CPJ), Israel is by far the world’s biggest killer of media workers.

On its monitoring website it lists the following:

• 260 journalists and media workers killed by Israel, of which:
• 207 were Palestinians killed in Gaza
• 2 Palestinian killed in Gaza during the Iran war
• 2 Palestinians killed in Israeli detention centers
• 31 Yemenis – out of a total of 32 – killed in Yemen
• 6 Lebanese in Lebanon during the war on Gaza
• 9 Lebanese in Lebanon during the Iran war
• 3 Iranians in Iran during the 12-day war

To return to the targeted murder of Amal Khalil, who worked for Al-Akhbar, she was with another journalist, Zeinab Faraj, who was rescued and survived.

The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in a statement by its Middle East desk chief Jonathan Dagher:

“The Israeli army has very likely committed two more war crimes on 22 April, by targeting journalists who were identified as such, obstructing rescue operations and continuing strikes that killed one journalist and injured another.

“Responsibility for these crimes also lies with Israel’s allies, who continue to allow the Netanyahu government to commit them with impunity.”

RSF published a compelling and disturbing timeline of how the IDF blocked her would-be rescuers for seven hours.

CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa regional director Sara Qudah said:

“We knew [Amal] was alive beneath the rubble – a real, breathing presence. Not in the abstract, not as rumour or hope.

“The 40-year-old female journalist, Amal Khalil, whose voice had just reached her family and colleagues, her survival depended on whether the machinery of rescue would be allowed to operate as it is supposed to under international law, and the law of humanity.

“That is what made what followed so difficult to process — not only emotionally, but structurally.

“Because this was not a case of disappearance in the fog of war.

“It was a case of proximity to survival that collapsed into confirmed death while rescue was still theoretically possible.”

Qudah added that her death could not be understood only as an individual tragedy, “although it was that to everyone who knew her, every journalist in the region”.

“It must also be understood as a stress test of the systems that are supposed to prevent this outcome — early warning, protection, humanitarian access and accountability. On each of these dimensions, the case raises unresolved questions.”

Israel is not only killing journalists, it is systematically torturing them — along with hundreds of other Palestinian hostages. CPJ’s recent report, “We returned from hell”, where the watchdog published the in-depth testimonies of 59 media prisoners released from jail since October 2023 is shocking reading.

I would like to finish with a quote by Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein, who visited New Zealand in 2023 to launch his book The Palestine Laboratory about how the Israeli killing machine exports in brutal technologies — a book that has been translated into many languages and had a profound influence in the world.

“With some notable exceptions, too many in the international media, journalists, editors and owners, have refused to take appropriate action against Israel. No official sanction.

“[They are] still interviewing Israeli spokespeople and politicians as normal. Not treating this as a monumental crime and outrage. Instead, often deferring to unproven Israeli claims that every journalist murdered was a ‘terrorist’.”

This complicity by many journalists — even in our own region — must be widely condemned.

Dr David Robie is convenor of Pacific Media Watch and a media freedom defender with global groups including RSF. He gave this short address at the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) rally in Auckland on Anzac Day.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Updated research has shown up lingering headaches over the impacts of decades-long nuclear testing in the Pacific islands and interventions of outside powers, amid growing threats from climate change, writes Dr Lee Duffield for the Independent Australia.

REVIEW: By Lee Duffield

The journalist, professor and peace activist Dr David Robie, was one of a media party on the ill-fated voyage of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in 1985, before its sinking by French security operatives in Auckland Harbour.

He wrote a definitive book about the lead-up in the region to the fatal sinking of the ship with limpet mines; unmasking of the plot made in Paris; attempts to obtain justice and a long aftermath with demands for empowerment by former “colonial” people to prevent such outrages in their island homelands.

The book is Eyes of Fire, first published in 1986, then successively updated as the story unfolded, with new facts and consequences of the outrage coming to light.

It ran to three revised editions, the latest out now to commemorate 40 years since the attack took place. It therefore marked 40 years since the death of the Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, a Portuguese-born Dutch national, aged 35, father of two children, Marelle and Paul, drowned on board after the second of two blasts that hit the ship.

Eyes of Fire is a highly professional work of journalism, built out of investigation and documentation of facts, then fashioned into an accessible read; illustrated also with easy-to-comprehend maps and diagrams, showing where the ship travelled and where the bombs were planted against its hull, plus photographs from a copious accumulation built up as the Greenpeace movement generated publicity for its actions worldwide.

Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior
One section describes the Rainbow Warrior, appreciatively and affectionately: a former fisheries research vessel, a trawler type, 50-metres in length, with some difficulty converted for sail as well as power, made into a “proud campaign ship”, painted a strong green with a long rainbow-emblem along the sides.

“The wheelhouse was rather lumpy and unattractive but the rest of the ship was appealing. She had a high North Sea prow, graceful sheerline and round-the-corner stern.”

For the record…
The Rainbow Warrior sailed from Hawai’i on the Pacific Voyage — taking on board seven journalists and some leading figures from the Pacific communities, to the Marshall Islands — where it evacuated the inhabitants of a nuclear afflicted island, Rongelap, to an uninhabited island Mejatto on Kwajalein Atoll.

Pacific distances are great. They transported 350 people — with house lumber and belongings — in four trips, 250 km there and back.

The islanders were suffering from contamination by the infamous upwind explosion of the experimental thermonuclear weapon, Castle Bravo, in 1954 — causing thyroid disorders, cancers and constant miscarriages and birthing disorders.

Dissatisfied that health officials sent by the United States administration were more interested in research than care, they decided to leave. The key instigator was the late Marshall Islands legislator Senator Jeton Anjain. He was one of two Pacific Islands leaders with prominent roles in Robie’s narrative.

The other was Oscar Temaru, a nuclear-free town mayor in Tahiti, also elected as the territory’s President on five occasions.

Temaru, now 81, spoke for many when he said:

“The sad truth is that the only ones who tried to help us are the Greenpeace ecologists…”

According to folklore among Greenpeace founders, a native American woman named “Eyes of Fire” told of a legend that where there was dispossession and despoilation of the land and culture, in time mythical warriors — deliverers — would come, who would mend and restore both. So the peaceship offering aid would be a “Rainbow Warrior”.

The author, Robie, in his news despatches for Radio New Zealand and other media (for which he was awarded the 1985 NZ Media Peace Prize, judged the evacuation project a change for Greenpeace towards humanitarian work connected with environmental destruction:

“This isn’t a game or the sort of action publicity stunt that Greenpeace would do so successfully.”

But the next part of the journey was another dramatic action, in Marshall Islands, at the US missile testing base on Kwajalein Atoll. A party from the ship went ashore, got through perimeter wires and hoisted a banner inscribed “Stop Star Wars” onto a space tracking dome, escaping before the arrival of security guards.

The banner was a reference to the American Strategic Defence Initiative, “Star Wars”, testing for which had increased the heavy traffic of missiles of different levels at the Kwajalein range (dubbed by the empire as the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Site).

The scene was then being set for the tragedy as the vessel made its way 5000 km to Auckland through friendly territory, calling in at Kiribati, the country hosting the former Christmas Island base for British nuclear tests (1957-58), and Vanuatu, where the leader of the then five year-old Republic, Father Walter Lini, a champion for a nuclear free Pacific, organised a big public welcome.

The strike
Celebration fitted the mood of the “Warrior” crew a lot of the time, in this account; a group of 11 skilled and idealistic younger people, sharing a mission they considered important to the world, and enjoying it as an adventure. They wanted to protect nature and promote peace, never violent, but charismatic, given to direct action, often enough dangerous.

They had others on board — in the case of David Robie, for an extended time, 11 days, time enough to get to know the characters and introduce them to readers in his book.

A further leg of the voyage was intended, to take them to Moruroa Atoll — where France was continuing with underground nuclear testing — as flagship for a flotilla of protest boats. In the event, the flotilla sailed, led by another Greepeace ship, Greenpeace III. One boat was arrested penetrating the 12-kilometre territorial limit around the atoll, where a series of tests was about to begin.

The planned disruption of activities on Moruroa may have been the death warrant for Rainbow Warrior — a solution to the riddle of what purposes its destruction was supposed to serve.

As the ship made its way towards Auckland, two French infiltrators got to work in that City, penetrating the Greenpeace operation. A group of military divers from a training base in Corsica was en route to New Zealand on a charter boat and two officers of France’s security service, DGSE, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, flew in under cover as a honeymoon couple.

Rainbow Warrior came in on Sunday, 7 July 1985, surrounded by an escort of small boats and was sunk at the dock in shallow water just before midnight on 10 July.

Divers using an inflatable boat set off the two explosions. Prieur and Mafart were spotted picking up one of the divers on a beach by men doing night watch at their boat club, who got the number of their vehicle, enabling the police to apprehend them, and begin a tortured process to try and secure justice.

Aftermath
Updating of the book takes in the negotiations over holding Prieur and Mafart, their eventual transfer to France and subsequent early release; the fate of other conspirators spirited home, promoted, decorated, “looked after” in early retirement; intensive and large scale work by the New Zealand police to find out about the charter boat carrying some of the divers, said to have transferred them onto a submarine, the Rubis; and investigative work by the French press to sheet home responsibility for the attack.

Very soon after Rainbow Warrior was sunk, the Defence Minister, Charles Hernu, was sacked and the head of the DGSE Admiral Pierre Lacoste resigned. The book has a positive impression of the replacement Minister, Paul Quiles and the Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, who admitted the obvious — that it had been done by French agents and was apologetic.

Subsequent negotiations between New Zealand and France, under United Nations auspices were made very difficult; a formal apology was avoided for some time; eventually both New Zealand and Greenpeace received financial packages in compensation and exemplary damages.

After the 1996 death of François Mitterrand, French President at the time, an investigation by Le Monde turned up circumstantial evidence that he knew of the attack in advance and a statement by Lacoste that he had approved it. Fabius evidently had not known.

Mitterrand’s motive was said to have been realpolitik — to support nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union in tandem with the US, which supplied France with highly strategic computer technology.

Reviewer intercession…
Mitterrand, as a highly equivocal and manipulative politician, walked a tightrope, always watching his soft electoral margins — in this case knowing there was 60 percent support for nuclear testing in France.

In office for four years in 1985, it may have been a new government still failing to face down entrenched security identities, undisciplined, considering themselves to be “deep state”, attached to violent solutions, with potential to go rogue.

Most of Robie’s work here is a narrative, a strong true story, but it has space for analysis, and in particular registers the correlation between devastation brought by the nuclear testing, and colonial management and manipulation of islands affairs.

The post-war wave of independence had come to the Pacific, though not to French Polynesia nor New Caledonia. In addition, the United States still held its Micronesian dependencies in trust or, for Sovereign states, via signed compacts of free association, accompanied by substantial aid payments.

France’s position against independence is incentivised by maintaining colonies of more than 200,000 settlers; and in New Caledonia, the nickel deposits, around 15 percent of world resources, as well as the 200 kilometre territorial zone off the long coast of Grande Terre island, opening onto as yet unsurveyed undersea resources.

For the Americans, the priority has been both weapons testing and maintaining a strategic barrier against Russia, then China.

Old problems, future challenges
These considerations help to address the always unanswered question of what the plotters thought they had to gain. The book suggests a clumsy and excessive attempt to stop the ship leading a flotilla to Moruroa Atoll as most likely.

It goes on to identify same-old patterns of resistance in latter-day moves, successful, to get better recognition of the impacts of nuclear contamination and in the moves through international forums — such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, South Pacific Forum, United Nations agencies, the international courts — to get recognition and action on the impacts of climate change.

Pacific communities mindful of the rising seas, and other problems like impacts on sea-life, have struggled to get a hearing, finding, again, that “great powers” outside the region which hold resources that can help hold off the crisis, hold back their response.

Nuclear testing in the atmosphere was made to stop in 1974; tests underground on the atolls continued to 1996, leaving a very brief interregnum before global warming reared its head.

The current edition of Eyes of Fire has a prologue by Helen Clark, New Zealand Prime Minister from 1999-2008, a staunch keeper of the faith in a nuclear-free Pacific. Saying, “storm clouds are gathering”, she warns against renewed militarisation especially with Australia and perhaps other Pacific states acquiring nuclear submarines under the 2021 AUKUS agreement.

It is time for “de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific”, writes Clark in her contribution to the new edition. With its peace policy, New Zealand wanted to be “a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering”.

Clark warns withdrawal of funding from the United Nations, led by the US, is a new threat: “Its humanitarian, development, health, human rights, political and peacekeeping, scientific and cultural arms all face fiscal crises.”

David Robie reports on the 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1985 events by Greenpeace, sending the new purpose-built ship, the new Rainbow Warrior, sometimes known as Rainbow Warrior III, to carry out independent radiation research. He follows up the lives and careers of the crew members and the islanders they worked with, several of whom have passed away.

While the writer’s own message, as in much good journalism, emerges from true handling of the facts, Robie does privilege a quotation from the executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa, Russel Norman, on the crew of Rainbow Warrior, to close the story:

“They faced down a nuclear threat to the habitability of the Pacific. Do we have the courage and wits to face down the biodiversity and climate crises facing humanity, crises that threaten the habitability of planet Earth?”

Dr Lee Duffield reported on Australia’s dispute with France over atmospheric testing for ABC News in Sydney and then from Paris as the ABC European Correspondent. His work entailed monitoring police actions against Kanak activists in New Caledonia, including the killings on Ouvéa Island; confrontations with French Ministers over the test programme; and negotiations between France and New Zealand, in Paris, on Rainbow Warrior, especially the jailing then early release of Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart. He later taught Journalism at QUT in Brisbane and was a contributor to Pacific Journalism Review. Dr Duffield is also one of the co-owners of Independent Australia, and the chair of its editorial board. This review is republished from the Independent Australia with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

There is a narrative going around that the war in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman – Israel/USA versus Iran – is a training exercise for the big one, a war between the United States and China centred on the Taiwan Strait.

In Hormuz Today, Taiwan Tomorrow (Project Syndicate, 20 April 2026), Todd G Buchholz argues “By closing the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has handed the Trump administration a practice test. To pass – and preserve deterrence against a Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan – the United States must reopen the Strait decisively and visibly with escorts, minesweepers, and strikes on launch sites.”

Also, from Project Syndicate (27 April 2026), we have The Hidden Chokepoints Threatening the Global Economy, by Diane Coyle. She says: “Most notably, Taiwan dominates advanced semiconductor production through TSMC, which accounts for more than 90% of the global supply.” Should military means be used to protect the Taiwanese monopoly of a strategic commodity? That’s not how capitalism is supposed to work.

What would be a geopolitical solution to the presumed – albeit poorly researched – allegation that China plans to exploit the Taiwan Strait chokepoint to bring down The West?

The Asian political territory called China – a mix of continent and islands – is claimed by two rival regimes; one in Beijing, one in Taipei. There is an obvious solution; that the territory presently controlled by Beijing becomes the Sovereign State of China and the territory presently controlled by Taipei becomes the Sovereign State of Taiwan.

Obvious to most people, because most people believe that the boundary between the two territories is the Taiwan Strait. A big miscomprehension, which the geopolitical agitators seem very keen to never discuss; because those agitators – for their own reasons – want to present the Taiwan Strait as the world’s most consequential and unresolved geopolitical boundary.

The principal boundary between the two territories is Xiamen Harbour. There is a second boundary off the coast of Fuzhou. Xiamen is a Chinese city of just over five million people, the population of New Zealand. Fuzhou is a Chinese city of over eight million people, the population of London. Both cities are in the Chinese province of Fujian. The Taiwanese counties of Kinmen and Lienchiang sit on the western (Chinese) side of the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan proper sits on the eastern side of the Taiwan Strait.

Solution

Taiwan could cede the two counties of Kinmen and Lienchiang to China; not necessarily as counties of China’s Fujian province, but as economic zones comparable to Macau and Hong Kong.

In return, China could drop its claim to Taiwan proper. China would drop its claim to the vast majority of Taiwan, which is on the eastern side of the Taiwan Strait.

The result would be two clearly distinct countries – China and Taiwan – internationally recognisable as such, separated by the wide-enough Taiwan Strait; much wider than the Strait of Hormuz.

Yes, both China and Taiwan would be making concessions. But each would be making gains in excess of those concessions; a win-win solution based on reciprocity. China already has substantial pragmatic trade relations with Taiwan; there need be no barriers to the continuance of those relations. Indeed, Taiwan’s relations with all nations could improve, with international recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign nation state.

The world could then heave a sigh of relief; the normalisation of a piece of geography deeply politicised by three small but powerful groups of people – cliques in Washington DC, Beijing, Taipei – cliques with narrow and potentially destructive nationalist and mercantilist agendas.

The people – and other species – of this world should never be held hostage to egos; to bigheads, some of whose natural inclinations are to resort to massive externalised violence if they cannot prevail upon their rivals by ‘peaceful’ means.

————-

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

It’s time that the obvious is stated explicitly. Binyamin Netanyahu and 2020s’ Israel need to be compared with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. And consider the narcissist, Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini. On the matter of language, we may call Benito Mussolini a fascist leader, and the Italian state under Mussolini – indeed the Italian Empire, which expanded under Mussolini – as history’s Fascist State.

While Nazi Germany is generally regarded as having been more extreme than the Fascist State, the word ‘fascist’ has commonly been applied to the former National Socialist regime of Germany. My language preference is to designate Nazi Germany as an ‘ultra-fascist’ state. (I would also note that Bolshevik Russia – the Soviet Union from November 1917 until the death of Josef Stalin in 1953 – might best be designated as an ‘orwellian tyranny’; and that there is a considerable overlap between an ultra-fascist state and an orwellian tyranny.)

Stacking-up Binyamin Netanyahu in 2026 against Adolf Hitler in 1940

Before conducting this simple exercise, we should note that the best perspective is one of academic detachment. Such detachment can be difficult in times of global conflict, in which most governments and probably most people take sides, explicitly or implicitly; the sides they take tend to be based upon the narratives which they have been repetitively exposed to.

We might imagine, as a detached observer in 1940, a Professor of World Affairs at the University of Chicago. And, for 2026, a Professor of World Affairs at the University of Guangzhou.

Having already designated Adolf Hitler as ultra-fascist, here are the three principal points that I would argue define ultra-fascism:

• a deep and intense racism
• an expansionist agenda, in the sense of Lebensraum
• a genocidal mix of hatred and indifference to selected other ‘peoples’ (where ‘peoples’ most commonly represents a conflation of ethnicity and religion)

It’s easy to see that Adolf Hitler ticks all three boxes, though, by 1940, Hitler had not yet committed genocide.

It’s also easy to see that Binyamin Netanyahu also ticks all three boxes; indeed, Netanyahu has already committed genocide. Unlike Hitler, Netanyahu’s career is not over, and we can have little confidence that he will not direct future genocides.

On these three bases, there can be no question that Binyamin Netanyahu and the present state which he presides over are ultra-fascist; worse than the Fascist State (and Italian Empire in Africa and the Mediterranean Sea) which Emperor Mussolini presided over.

Additional features of ultra-fascism

My first such feature is the use of pogroms, acts of terror by loyal private militias and hooligans acting with impunity. Germany before the 1940s was, in particular, characterised by judeophobic pogroms; the most famous being Kristallnacht (with at least 90 deaths) in November 1938. (There had been a substantial nineteenth century history of judeophobic pogroms in the former Russian Empire, especially in places like Ukraine with large Jewish population clusters. And also, in Western Europe in late medieval times; Jews were often blamed for the Black Death of 1347 to 1352, especially in lands which today would be classed as western Germany.)

In East Jerusalem and especially the West Bank (of the Jordan River), Netanyahu-supporting militias and hooligans commit regular and frequent pogroms on the indigenous Palestinian population, who in the main resist passively. The Palestinian death toll from these pogroms, just since October 2023, has been well over 1,000 people.

And, over the years, there have been no shortage of pogroms in Lebanon, many of which have been Israeli-incited. The worst was probably the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, which precipitated the formation of the Lebanese Shia resistance organisation Hezbollah. The 1982 pogrom death toll, mainly Palestinian refugees, was almost certainly in excess of 3,000; the principal perpetrators were Christian Lebanese Phalangists of the Kataeb Party, though aided by the Israel Defence Forces.

My second such feature is that these leaders – Hitler and Netanyahu – had and have extreme ultra-fascist henchmen. Most obvious were Goebbels and Himmler on the Nazi side; BenGivr and Smotrich on the present ultra-fascist Israeli side. These henchmen tend to blunt the malign edge of the leaders of their packs.

My third such feature is the role of propaganda and incitement through propaganda; in particular the context is that the propaganda of ultra-fascists includes overt and blatant lying – complete indifference to factual accuracy – and not simply the omission of inconvenient truths. The incitement includes, through precisely targeted narratives, the secretive and personalised incentivisation of historically allied regimes and potential new allies to participate in the ultra-fascist project.

My fourth such feature is the widespread use of assassination squads, and execution squads, to enforce a terror regime – especially but not only with respect to occupied populations. Hitler’s execution squads did most of their worst after 1940. We note that 2026 Israel has just last week passed the legislation to impose the death penalty on non-Jewish resistors and dissidents. And Israel is world-famous for its Mossad-facilitated assassination squads, even before the ascendancy of the Netanyahu regime.

Assassination was and is a terror tactic

Assassination came to be a favourite terror tactic of the Russian terrorists whose ideology found fertile ground there from the 1860s. Given that most of the most ardent of Israeli citizens today are descendants of people well familiar with the Russian political and literary landscape, the awareness and adoption of this terror tactic should be no surprise to us today.

We might note that Vladimir Lenin’s terrorist brother Alexander was executed for attempting to assassinate the Tsar of Russia, Alexander III, in 1887. A member of the same terrorist organisation, Narodnaya Volya, had successfully assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Lenin (aka Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) himself adhered to the same terrorist principles as his brother, as is reflected in his disturbing parody of the equally disturbing What Is to be Done, 1863, by Nikolay Chernyshevsky.

(The dark character of Chernyshevsky’s book is called Rakhmetov. When reading about Rakhmetov last year, I was eerily reminded of another malign character I had read about earlier in 2025; Friedrich Lindemann. And, in Rakhmetov delighting in Isaac Newton’s obscure work Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, I am reminded of Peter Thiel and his obsession with the Antichrist. See my Barbecued Hamburgers and Churchill’s Bestie 17 April 2025, and Peter Thiel: Was The John Key Led Government Taken For An April Fool? 1 April 2026.)

Two other assassinations to note are that of Pyotr Stolypin – Russia’s modernising Prime Minister, Russia’s greatest reformist politician before Gorbachev – in Kiev in 1911; perpetrated by Dmitry Bogrov, a Ukrainian Jewish leftist revolutionary lawyer. And that of Winston Churchill’s friend Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne, British Minister of State in the Middle East, who was assassinated in Cairo in 1944 by two members of the terrorist group Lehi.

Outline of a wider comparison

My comparison here is between the two current Eurasian geopolitical conflicts and the two historical Eurasian geopolitical conflicts which conflated into World War Two.

Re World War Two, the two Eurasian conflicts were of course Japan’s war on China and Southeast Asia, which, after Pearl Harbour, became the Pacific War. And the war of aggression by Nazi Germany which began in 1938 with the annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakia.

Today the Russia-Nato conflict in Ukraine is one of the two Eurasian geopolitical conflicts. The other of course is the Israel-Iran-Lebanon-Gulf conflict, aided and abetted by the United States.

Re World War Two, I’ll rate some of the leading figures on a ‘badness’ or ‘malignity’ scale – some may call it a scale of ‘evilness’ – in which a ten is the absolute maximum (which might be applied to a person of power attempting to use that power to achieve Armageddon, the end of the world) and zero represents the most saintly version of Jesus Christ. Considering the four protagonists of the European War of World War Two, I would rate Josef Stalin a 9, Adolf Hitler an 8, Benito Mussolini a 7.5, and Winston Churchill a 7. While Churchill is the one whose terror crimes have been the least acknowledged so far, he still comes out as the least malign – the lesser evil – of these four characters.

In relation to the present situation, and by virtue of my analysis above, Binyamin Netanyahu comes out as at least an 8. I will also mention some of the henchmen. Goebbels, Himmler, BenGivr, and Smotrich would each come out as a 9 by my estimation. Two people would qualify for a 9.5 rating: Stalin’s henchman Lavrentiy Beria, and Churchill’s little known close friend and advisor Friedrich Lindermann (aka Lord Cherwell). German-born Lindemann – an Oxford University Professor of Physics, and a deep racist – engineered the massive 1943 famines in India and Iran through contemptuous indifference to those populations. He was the principal voice in Churchill’s ear; advocating the carpet bombing of German civilians (euphemism: dehousing) and civilian infrastructure, and the erasure of German civilisation.

WW2 analogues

The analogues which I suggest are as follows (and relating in particular to the years 2026 and 1940): Israel is an analogue to Germany, the United States maps to the Italian Empire, Iran (plus proxies) maps to the (white) British Empire, China maps to the United States, Nato (at least its core 16 members) maps to Japan, Russia maps to Nationalist China (including Vladimir Putin as an analogue of Chiang Kai-shek), India in a few respects maps to Soviet Russia (especially its initial uncertain alignment), Ukraine maps to Romania, and the Gulf States map to occupied Western Europe (with UAE mapping to Vichy France).

This becomes a useful thought-exercise, in that it can help us today to see some of the possibilities and outcomes arising from possible escalations in the present conflicts.

A word of note. In 1940 and 1941, it was said that it was just the British Empire resisting the German-Italian Axis. There is much truth in that. Churchill’s United Kingdom did not appease Nazi Germany, just as Iran in 2025 and 2026 refused to appease Israel. Britain paid for its non-appeasement by enduring The Blitz. Both resistances to ultra-fascism contained a mix of characters with a mix of agendas. For most of the first three years of the WW2, the British did not take the fight directly to Germany (the defensive Battle of the Atlantic excepted).

Most of Britain’s fighting was against Italy, at least before and upto the 1942 invasion of Madagascar; be it in Greece, North Africa, or Mandatory Palestine. In Libya, initially at least, Germany was fighting alongside Italy and under Italian command.

And the Italian Air Force bombed the then ‘British’ city of Tel Aviv in 1940. Italy effectively withdrew from the war in 1943, and, for its troubles, was occupied by Germany; hence the 1944 Battle of Monte Cassino. Note that 1940 bombing of Palestine; the victim was the United Kingdom (analogue today of Iran), and the perpetrator was Italy (analogue today of the United States).

The final important learning from my analogy between the present conflicts and World War Two, is that – if the wars escalate and conflate – then China will emerge as the big winner (as the United States was in and after 1945) and the Axis-forces (and their allies such as UAE and Ukraine) and Nato will be the losers.

Important Note

I must emphasise that, while the two ultra-fascist regimes discussed here had and have many domestic supporters, there can be no conflation between regime-supporters and the ethnic or cultural groups which those ultra-fascist adherents identify with. ‘Germans’ as a collective never were ultra-fascist because of their nationality or their faith; though some Germans and non-German fellow travellers were, like the nazi regime, ultra-fascist. Likewise, in 2026, neither Jewish citizens of Israel, nor the wider Jewish population, can be characterised as ultra-fascist (or ‘far-right’ of any form) just because the present leaders of Israel are ultra-fascist.

Conclusion

We need to call a spade a spade. When too many good people pretend that ultra-fascists are not ultra-fascists – or choose to look away when ultra-fascism is gaining ascendancy – the world can too easily cross over a totalitarian tipping point, into something like orwellian tyranny.

————-

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

OBITUARY: By Aubrey Belford, Australia and South Pacific regional editor of OCCRP

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is deeply saddened to announce the passing of Dan McGarry, the organisation’s Pacific editor, who died yesterday in Brisbane, Australia, at the age of 62.

A veteran journalist and a pillar of the Pacific media community, Dan was instrumental in establishing and leading OCCRP’s investigative efforts across the region.

Dan joined OCCRP in late 2021 to help spearhead its first dedicated Pacific programme. A Canadian by birth, he spent more than two decades in the Pacific, eventually becoming a citizen of Vanuatu.

His deep love for the region was matched by an unparalleled knowledge of its political and social landscape, making him an essential voice for transparency and accountability.

“Words cannot convey how devastated we are by this loss,” said OCCRP editor-in-chief Miranda Patrucic. “Dan was so much more than an editor who worked with local journalists and helped build our reporting teams, including our media member centres Inside PNG and In-depth Solomons.

“He was beloved because he truly cared about the mission and the people he worked with. He possessed a bottomless well of patience and is irreplaceable as a mentor and leader.”

Dan’s life was defined by a multifaceted set of talents. Beyond his rigorous investigative work, he was a dramatic actor in theatre and television and a self-described “tech geek” who pioneered new ways to integrate technology into journalism.

When I moved back to Australia to start OCCRP’s Pacific programme, Dan’s name was the one everyone mentioned first. He had years of what was often a lonely experience fighting for press freedom and the public good in the region and he was instrumental in every single investigation OCCRP has done in the region.

He was formerly media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post.

He is mourned not just by his family, but also by the second family he built among the Pacific’s journalists.

Dan fell ill several weeks ago while on a work assignment in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. He was evacuated by jet ambulance to Australia for specialised medical care. Despite the best efforts of medical teams, he passed away peacefully with family by his side.

OCCRP remains committed to honoring Dan’s legacy by continuing the vital investigative work he championed and by providing ongoing support to his family.

Read some of Dan’s reporting

Korean Doomsday Sect Gets Rich in Fiji With Government Help

Chinese ‘Miracle Water’ Grifters Infiltrated the UN and Bribed Politicians to Build Pacific Dream City

Mystery Deepens as Second Narco-Sub Washes Ashore in Solomon Islands

Influencer Andrew Tate got Vanuatu Passport Around Time of Arrest on Rape Charges

Solomon Islands PM Has Millions in Property, Raising Questions Around Wealth

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

Westerners are about to start paying a lot more attention to the war in Iran as massive US-Israeli escalations point to a coming energy crisis set to impact on the whole world.

Israel has bombed the world’s largest natural gas field in southwestern Iran, reportedly in coordination with the United States.

Now that a major red line for Tehran has been crossed, retaliatory strikes have already begun pummeling the energy infrastructure of US allies in the region, with Qatar reporting that its primary gas facility has sustained “significant damage” from an attack after Iran issued evacuation warnings for energy facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Fuel prices are already surging. If Middle Eastern energy infrastructure starts taking extensive damage on top of the already hugely significant Iranian blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, this war could end up affecting virtually every corner of human civilisation in one way or another.

Westerners are largely apathetic about US military explosives landing on populations on other continents. But once it starts having a direct impact on their personal bank accounts, you can expect them to get a lot more interested in US foreign policy.

This war has been a bit odd for me because as an anti-imperialist peacemonger I’m not yet entirely sure what my role is in my commentary here.

Normally I’d be begging Westerners to care about another horrific act by the US war machine, but as things stand it looks like Westerners are going to be forced to care about this one whether they want to or not.

Normally I’d be writing furiously about how people should not support this war, but the war has exceptionally low public support already.

Normally I’d be trying to help everyone open their eyes and recognise the US warmongers for the psychopaths that they are, but the Trumpanyahu administration is openly waging an unprovoked war of aggression while constantly thumping its chest and boasting about how it’s showing the Iranians “no quarter, no mercy” and saying it can kill whoever it wants with impunity.

Normally I’d be writing about how the mass media are churning out war propaganda to manufacture consent for more US military butchery, but the mass media keep putting out stories about how the US government is lying about a war that should never have happened while Trump administration figures have public tantrums about how the media isn’t churning out war propaganda for them.

President Trump is on social media babbling about how news outlets “should be brought up on Charges for TREASON” for not reporting on an embarrassing story about a US aircraft carrier fire the way he wants, while Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave one of his fire-and-brimstone podium sermons bitching about how “an actual patriotic press” would be framing this war in a more positive light.

Do you see what I mean? What am I supposed to do with this? Where does that leave dissident fringesters like myself? All I can do is clear my throat and sheepishly go “Uh, yeah, I uh . . .  agree with CNN.”

With Ukraine the mass media fell all over themselves to hide the West’s role in provoking the conflict, framing Putin as an evil maniacal Hitler figure who just spontaneously flipped out and invaded a country on Russia’s border because he hates freedom.

With Gaza the Western press gave nonstop narrative cover to Israel’s genocidal atrocities, constantly dragging public attention into an endless conversation about antisemitism and Jewish feelings whenever opposition to the slaughter got too hot.

That’s just not happening with Iran. It’s the first US war I’ve ever seen where a big chunk of the imperial power structure just refuses to get on board. The media’s not playing along, US allies are telling Trump to get stuffed when he asks for military assistance with the Strait of Hormuz, and the public’s not buying the lies.

This is a frightening time to be alive  —  but you can’t say we’re in a period of stasis. Things are moving faster and faster.

They might get a whole lot worse. They might get a whole lot better. They might get a whole lot worse and then get a whole lot better. But it seems a safe bet that the situation won’t remain the same.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Yet this global diplomatic posture raises a critical question: how credible is Indonesia’s claim to peace leadership while a prolonged humanitarian crisis continues in West Papua?

In late February 2026, Prabowo offered Indonesia’s services to mediate rising tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, even stating he was prepared to travel to Tehran if both parties agreed to dialogue.

The message was reinforced when former Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla met Iran’s ambassador, Mohammad Boroujerdi, on 3 March 2026 to reiterate Indonesia’s readiness to facilitate diplomatic engagement.

In response, Iran publicly welcomed the gesture but tempered expectations.

Iranian officials insisted that any meaningful mediation must include condemnation of US and Israeli military actions, warning that diplomatic initiatives without political clarity may have limited effectiveness.

The exchange highlighted both Indonesia’s aspiration to play a larger diplomatic role and the complexities of international conflict mediation.

Peacebroker limitations
However, Indonesia’s attempt to position itself as a global peace broker has already faced significant limitations. In 2023, Prabowo proposed a peace plan for the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The proposal, which included controversial suggestions such as a demilitarised zone and a referendum in disputed territories, was quickly rejected by Ukrainian officials. The response exposed the limited influence of Indonesia’s mediation efforts in conflicts far beyond Southeast Asia.

While presenting himself internationally as a peacemaker, critics argue that Prabowo has largely paid lip service to human rights at home, particularly regarding the unresolved crisis in West Papua.

Indonesian protesters denounce US link over Iran war         Video: Al Jazeera

While Indonesia promotes its diplomatic role in international conflicts, violence and instability continue to affect civilians in West Papua.

On 11 February 2026, only weeks before Prabowo’s international mediation initiative gained attention, a small civilian aircraft operated by Smart Air came under gunfire shortly after landing at Korowai Batu airstrip in Boven Digoel, West Papua.

A spokesperson linked to the military wing of Free Papua Movement (TPNPB- OPM) later claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that the aircraft had allegedly been used to transport Indonesian security forces.

The roots of the crisis stretch back to the early 1960s, when Indonesia invaded and took control of the territory following the withdrawal of Dutch colonial administration.

Act of Free Choice controversy
The subsequent 1969 referendum, known as the Act of Free Choice, remains one of the most controversial political processes in modern Southeast Asian and South Pacific history.

Rather than a universal vote, approximately 1025 selected representatives voted under significant political and military pressure.

Many Papuans and international observers argue that the process failed to meet internationally recognized standards for self-determination. As a result, the legitimacy of the referendum continues to be contested, and its legacy remains a central grievance fueling decades of political resistance and armed conflict.

For many analysts and human rights advocates, the Papua conflict cannot simply be framed as a domestic security problem. Instead, it represents a protracted humanitarian and political crisis that has yet to find a comprehensive and inclusive resolution.

In this sense, the issue has become what some observers describe as a long-standing wound within the Indonesian state.

Such incidents highlight the tragic reality faced by ordinary Papuans, who often find themselves caught between military operations and Papuan resistance attacks.

Civilians bear the brunt of a conflict that has persisted for decades without meaningful political dialogue capable of addressing its underlying causes.

Rising internal displacement in West Papua
According to reports by human rights organisations and humanitarian groups, displacement in West Papua has increased significantly in recent years.

The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has risen dramatically, from roughly 55,000 at the end of 2023 to more than 103,000 by October 2025. Many displaced communities face severe shortages of food, healthcare, education, and basic security.

These figures reflect a broader systemic failure to protect civilians and provide sustainable solutions for affected communities. Despite decades of development initiatives and official rhetoric emphasising stability and prosperity in Papua, the lived reality for many residents remains defined by insecurity and displacement.

Prabowo’s own military history also continues to shape international perceptions of Indonesia’s human rights record. During the Indonesian occupation of East Timor between 1975 and 1999, Prabowo served as an officer in Indonesia’s elite special forces, Kopassus.

Human rights organisations have linked him to operations accused of abuses against civilians during that period.

Following the 1999 referendum that ultimately led to East Timor’s independence, the United Nations supported investigations into violence carried out by Indonesian-backed militias and security forces.

Although Prabowo was never tried or convicted by an international court, activists and some Timorese leaders have long argued that senior Indonesian officers should have faced deeper scrutiny.

Shaping of credibility
In international diplomacy, credibility is often shaped not only by external initiatives but also by a state’s domestic human rights record. When internal conflicts remain unresolved, claims to global moral leadership can face heightened scrutiny.

Prabowo was also involved in military operations in Papua during the 1990s. One of the most widely discussed incidents was the 1996 Mapenduma hostage crisis in the highlands of what is now Nduga Regency.

Human rights organisations have documented allegations of abuses committed by Indonesian security forces during that period.

Additional controversies have surrounded claims that aircraft bearing the emblem of the International Committee of the Red Cross were misused during operations. Such allegations, whether proven or not, continue to raise questions about adherence to international humanitarian law and contribute to lingering distrust among Papuan communities.

Taken together, these historical and contemporary dynamics create a sharp contrast between Indonesia’s global diplomatic ambitions and the unresolved realities within its own borders.

In international diplomacy, credibility is closely tied to domestic consistency.
It is difficult to advocate peace abroad while unresolved grievances and allegations of human rights violations persist at home.

For Indonesia, genuine leadership in global peacemaking would require more than diplomatic offers on the world stage. It would involve confronting the deeper structural issues underlying the conflict in West Papua.

Ensuring accountability
This would include ensuring accountability for past abuses, protecting civil liberties, and opening inclusive political dialogue that allows Papuans to meaningfully participate in shaping their own future.

Without such reforms, Indonesia’s peace diplomacy risks being perceived less as principled international engagement and more as a form of strategic public relations. The gap between Jakarta’s diplomatic rhetoric and the lived experiences of Papuan civilians remains stark.

Ultimately, Indonesia’s credibility as a global peacemaker will depend not only on its willingness to mediate conflicts abroad but also on its ability to address the long-standing humanitarian and political crisis within West Papua.

Until that gap is bridged, Indonesia’s aspirations for global diplomatic leadership will continue to face serious questions about legitimacy and moral authority.

The continued instability in West Papua also has broader regional implications for the Pacific, where several governments and civil society groups have increasingly raised concerns about the humanitarian situation faced by indigenous West Papuans.

Ali Mirin is a West Papuan from the Kimyal tribe in the highlands bordering the Star Mountains region of Papua New Guinea. He holds a Master of Arts in international relations from Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

SPECIAL REPORT: By Brett Wilkins of Common Dreams

US and Israeli airstrikes have killed nearly 300 Iranian and Lebanese children over the past nine days as the attackers target apartment towers, single-family homes, schools, medical facilities, and other civilian infrastructure.

Iran’s Health Ministry said Sunday that 198 women and 190 minors have been killed by US and Israeli attacks since February 28, including six children under the age of 5. The youngest reported victim is an 8-month-old girl.

Children account for more than 30 percent of those killed, according to the ministry, which also said that 1044 women and 638 children have been injured.

Overall, Iran said that more than 1300 people have been killed by the airstrikes, which are reportedly targeting 30 of the country’s 31 provinces.

The Lebanese Health Ministry announced Sunday that 394 people, including 42 women and 83 children, have been killed by Israel Defence Forces (IDF) attacks after Iran-backed Hezbollah joined the war.

The US-based charity Save the Children noted yesterday that the number of slain Iranian and Lebanese minors is the equivalent of “10 classrooms full of children”.

“It is devastating that airstrikes in Lebanon have reportedly caused the deaths of 83 children… among nearly 300 children killed in the region,” said Save the Children Lebanon director Nora Ingdal.

‘Not just numbers’
“These are not just numbers — these are young lives cut short and children whose futures have been forever scarred by war.”

Israel claims it has killed around 200 Hezbollah fighters. However, the IDF’s routine attacks on apartment towers and other residential buildings have drawn widespread condemnation.

On Sunday, an IDF strike massacred 18 people sheltering in an apartment building in Sir El-Gharbiyeh in Nabatieh district. The building was housing some of the nearly 700,000 Lebanese forcibly displaced by Israeli attacks, including around 200,000 children.

Local officials said women and children were among the victims.

Another IDF aerial massacre in the southern Lebanese town of Tafahata killed eight people, including five members of the Ezzedine family, whose home was bombed.

“This time is much worse than the previous war,” Nabatieh Civil Defence chief Hussein Faqih told the National, referring to Israel’s 2023-25 attacks on Lebanon that killed more than 4000 people, including nearly 800 women and over 300 children, in retaliation for Hezbollah’s rocket strikes in solidarity with Palestine during the Gaza genocide.

Israeli attacks on Iran during last year’s 12-Day War also killed more than 1000 Iranians, including 436 civilians.

Worst reported bombing
In the worst reported bombing of the current war — and possibly the deadliest US massacre since more than 400 Iraqis were wiped out in a “precision strike” on a Baghdad bomb shelter during the 1991 Gulf War — around 175 Iranians, most of them young children, were killed in what first responders and victims’ relatives said was a so-called double-tap strike on an elementary school in Minab in southern Iran.

US military investigators reportedly believe the strike was carried out by US forces, but President Donald Trump has blamed Iran.

On Monday, a group of Democratic US senators lead by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said they were “horrified” by the school strike.

“The killing of school children is appalling and unacceptable under any circumstance,” the senators said in a statement. “This incident is particularly concerning in light of [Defence Secretary Pete] Hegseth’s openly cavalier approach to the use of force, including his statement that US strikes in Iran wouldn’t be bound by ‘stupid rules of engagement,’ in his words.”

Multiple members of the UK Parliament have condemned the killing of Iranian and Lebanese children.

Leftist Independent Jeremy Corbyn, a former Labour leader, said yesterday on Bluesky: “Classrooms of children in Iran. Hundreds of people in Lebanon. The ongoing genocide in Gaza. The message from our political and media class is clear: Their lives are less valuable than others.”

“Every human being matters, and every human being deserves a life of peace,” Corbyn added.

‘School girls slaughtered’
Zahra Sultana, who quit Labour and started the socialist Your Party with Corbyn last year, mocked US and Israeli pretensions, saying in a BBC interview on Sunday — International Women’s Day — that the girls in the Minab school were slaughtered “apparently to liberate women”.

Retaliatory attacks by Iran have killed at least 13 Israelis and wounded nearly 2000 others since February 28, according to Israel’s government. No Israeli child deaths have been reported. Seven US troops and at least 15 people in Gulf Arab nations have also been killed by Iranian counterattacks.

While the world’s focus is on Iran, Israeli occupation forces have continued killing and wounding people in Gaza and the West Bank of Palestine.

Drop Site News reported yesterday that eight Palestinians were killed in Gaza over the past 24 hours, including two women and at least as many children.

More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. More than 20,000 children have been killed and over 44,000 others wounded.

More than 1 in 4 fatalities have been children in a war for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, and Israel is facing a genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice.

Since the 9/11 attacks, US-led wars have left nearly 1 million people dead in more than half a dozen countries in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa—over 400,000 of them civilians, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

“Every war is a war on children, and once again we are seeing them pay the highest price for a conflict they neither started nor had a say in,” Ingdal said yesterday.

“Wars have laws, and children must be off limits in every conflict,” she added. “World leaders must act urgently to prevent further escalation. There must be an immediate cessation of hostilities, and all parties must uphold international humanitarian law and do everything in their power to protect civilians—especially children.”

Republished under Creative Commons.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Three more schools and a major hospital have been bombed in Iran and more in Lebanon by the US-Israeli military, all within the first week of launching their latest war.

This is a pattern, not “collateral damage”. Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Amir-Saeid Iravani said on March 7 that the US and Israel “recognise no red line in committing their crimes” against his country.

Densely populated parts of Tehran are being pounded by wave after wave of US and Israeli bombs.  Shahid Hamedani School in Tehran was struck on March 6, the day of the funerals of schoolgirls (6-12 year-olds) killed in Minab, Iran.

UN officials have confirmed that the Minab attack killed 160 children and five staff.

The Palestinians, despite the genocide inflicted on them by Israel and the West, have never become used to the daily killing of children: “The smallest coffins are always the heaviest,” Palestinians say.

Israel has killed many times more women, children and babies than they have Palestinian resistance fighters. There is even a name for this depravity — the Dahiya Doctrine.

Israel’s Dahiya Doctrine and the law of proportionality
International media are reporting that Dahiya, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, is suffering another brutal aerial bombardment from the Israelis.

Dahiya — al-Dahiya al-Janubiya — is home to 700,000 civilians living in high-density housing. The suburb lends its name to Israel’s policy of using massive, disproportionate force against civilians and infrastructure to weaken an enemy’s resolve.

It is, of course, a war crime to do so.

In the 2006 Lebanon War, Israel attacked Dahiya, a popular stronghold of the Hezbollah movement. The massive bombing campaign wasn’t to achieve a military objective; the target was civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Hundreds of children were among the dead.

I have a fabric reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica on my office wall. It has been coloured red, green black and white – the colours of the Palestinian flag — to draw the important parallel.

The governments of New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada and all the others, with rare noble exceptions like Spain, support this depraved criminality. We share values with the Israelis and the Americans, our leaders tell us.

The Principle of Proportionality is critical to protect children
The Americans and Israelis have a bloodlust and openly brag about their destructive abilities. Operation Epic Fury screams to the world: “war crimes”.

What should constrain US-Israeli violence is international law and the principle that there are limits to what is acceptable in “incidental” harm caused to civilians.

Proportionality is one of the foundational concepts in international law, along with other important injunctions like the prohibition of force against sovereign states. Under the Geneva Convention, before undertaking military action states are obligated to consider: Distinction (separating civilians from combatants), Proportionality, Precaution (taking care to minimise civilian harm), Military Necessity (i.e. don’t launch wars of aggression), and Humanity — prohibiting unnecessary suffering.

This is the exact opposite of the Dahiya Doctrine and the American Way of War — from Korea to Iraq by way of Vietnam. Over six million civilians were killed by the US in just those three conflicts alone.

Article 51 of the Geneva Convention
The principle of proportionality is codified in Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions, and affirmed as binding customary international law applicable to all parties in all conflicts.  This is further affirmed by the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Rule 14 which states:

“Launching an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited.”

The West has torn up its copies of international law but we need to keep its spirit alive. New Zealand, Australia and most of the “civilised world” are signatories to various treaties that require them to enforce humanitarian law upon belligerents. Instead, our countries work day and night to support Israel and the US in their evil work. Evil is the appropriate word here.

I will give the last word to the Israeli commander who led the 2006 terror bombing of Dahiya, General Gadi Eisenkot, chief of Northern Command:

“What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force on it (villages) and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. This is a plan. And it has been approved.”

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser based in Wellington, publisher of Solidarity and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam war. This article was first published by Solidarity.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

According to the Manchester Evening News, the protest drew between 5000 and 6000 participants, based on estimates from the Metropolitan Police.

The rally began at Millbank near Victoria Tower Gardens at noon and was organised by a coalition of activist groups, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Stop the War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Protesters marched toward the US Embassy carrying placards reading “Stop Trump’s Wars” and “No War on Iran,” while others waved Iranian and Palestinian flags.

Some demonstrators also carried portraits of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Organisers described the military strikes as “illegal” and warned that escalating conflict could place millions of civilians at risk across the Middle East.

Chris Nineham, vice-chair of the Stop the War Coalition, said the situation represented one of “the most dangerous global moments in decades.”

‘Murder and mayhem’
“[US President Donald] Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu are creating murder and mayhem across the Middle East,” Nineham said in a video posted on social media from the protest.

“They are risking spreading war across the Middle East, and they are creating the conditions of volatility and instability around the world, and what is disgraceful is that our government is allowing British bases to be used to promote this mayhem.”

He added that many people in Britain opposed the war and called for a broad and vocal movement to mobilise against the conflict and advocate for peace.

Tensions in the Middle East have escalated since the US and Israel launched a large-scale attack on Iran on February 28, killing more than 1300 people, including Khamenei and more than 165 schoolgirls, and senior military officials.

Iran has retaliated with sweeping barrages of its own that have targeted US bases, diplomatic facilities, and military personnel across the region, as well as multiple Israeli cities. At least 11 Israelis have been killed.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In an era when images can circle the globe in seconds and newsrooms claim to uphold universal humanitarian principles; one might expect the killing of 165 schoolgirls inside a primary school to dominate international headlines.

One would expect emergency debates, moral outrage, and relentless coverage.

Yet in the southeastern Iranian city of Minab — where Israeli-American strikes obliterated classrooms filled with children — the world’s most influential media institutions have responded with something far more revealing than condemnation: they have responded with silence.

These were not combatants. They were not militants. They were children seated at their desks, pens in their hands, notebooks open before them, studying, whispering to classmates, and imagining futures that stretched decades ahead.

In seconds, that ordinary school day turned into a massacre. Desks became splintered wreckage, classrooms collapsed into dust, and rows of coffins replaced rows of pupils.

Yet the names of these girls — 165 lives extinguished before they truly began — barely entered the global conversation.

This omission is not the product of oversight. It reflects something far more structural: the hierarchy of victims that governs much of the contemporary information order.

In theory, modern Western media institutions present themselves as defenders of human rights and guardians of moral accountability. In practice, their editorial priorities often mirror geopolitical interests with striking precision.

Human rights losing integrity
When the deaths of children generate outrage in one context but indifference in another, the moral language surrounding human rights begins to lose its integrity.

When tragedies reinforce established narratives about adversarial states, they are amplified, dramatised, and transformed into global moral spectacles.

But when tragedies expose the human cost of the military actions carried out by Western powers or their closest allies, they are quietly displaced from the front page —if they appear at all.

The massacre in Minab illustrates this logic with devastating clarity.

The deaths of 165 Iranian schoolgirls do not fit comfortably within the dominant geopolitical storyline that portrays Israel and its strategic partners as defenders of stability and order in a turbulent region.

Acknowledging such an atrocity would inevitably raise difficult questions: about the legality of strikes on civilian infrastructure, about the ethics of military escalation, and about the widening humanitarian toll of ongoing Israeli-American attacks across the region.

It is therefore far easier to look away.

Minab not isolated tragedy
But Minab is not an isolated tragedy. Across Lebanon, relentless bombardments have repeatedly struck civilian neighbourhoods, reducing homes and streets to rubble.

Across Palestine, entire communities have endured cycles of destruction that claim the lives of children whose only battlefield was the ground beneath their feet. Hospitals, schools, and residential blocks have all entered the expanding geography of devastation.

These events do not occur in a vacuum. They form part of a broader pattern in which military power operates alongside narrative power. Missiles shape the physical battlefield, while selective reporting shapes the battlefield of perception.

What emerges is not merely a media bias but a form of narrative engineering. Certain victims are elevated as symbols of universal suffering, while others — often far more numerous — are rendered invisible. Compassion itself becomes curated, distributed unevenly according to political convenience.

For Western audiences accustomed to believing in the neutrality of their information systems, this selective visibility should provoke serious reflection. The credibility of humanitarian discourse depends on consistency.

The girls of Minab deserved the same recognition afforded to any victims of violence anywhere in the world. They deserved to have their stories told, their lives acknowledged, and their deaths confronted with the seriousness such an atrocity demands.

Instead, they encountered a second form of erasure.

First came the missiles that ended their lives. Then came the silence that followed.

Selective visibility needs reflection
For Western audiences accustomed to believing in the neutrality of their information systems, this selective visibility should provoke serious reflection.

In the contemporary information age, propaganda rarely announces itself openly. It often operates through absence — through the stories that never reach the front page, the victims whose names remain unspoken, and the tragedies that disappear before the world has time to notice.

The massacre in Minab therefore stands as more than a local catastrophe. It exposes a deeper crisis in the global information order — one in which the value of human life appears disturbingly contingent on political context.

And if the deaths of 165 schoolgirls in their classrooms fail to trigger universal outrage, the question is no longer about geopolitics alone.

It becomes a question about the credibility of the moral system that claims to defend humanity itself.

Dr Hana Saada is an Algerian university lecturer and journalist, and editor-in-chief of the English edition of Dzair Tube. She holds a PhD in media translation and writes on geopolitics, media narratives, and international affairs. This article is republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Asia Pacific Report

A new documentary film on the devastating “ecocide” happening in West Papua will be screened as a world premiere at a weekend solidarity forum in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau this weekend.

The 90min feature film, Pesta Babi (“Pig Feast”) — Colonialism In Our Time, produced by award-winning Papuan journalist Victor Mambor and directed by Dandhy Dwi Laksono, tells a story about the impact of the Indonesian government and military on the lives of thousands of Papuans trying to protect their rainforests from destruction.

It also relates the plight of thousands of internal refugees in the Melanesian region.

The peaceful resistance of local communities is revealed in the documentary as they face up to 54,000 Indonesian troops and large corporate entities make big profits at the expense of an ancient culture.

Dorthea Wabiser of the environmental and human rights group Pusaka, will speak on the deforestation and displacement of communities in the south-eastern district of Merauke  where Indonesia is destroying 2.5 million ha of rainforest for palm oil, sugar cane, biodiesel, rice and other crops.

Military force is deployed to silence any dissent from communities.

Pesta Babi (Pig Feast).                              Trailer: Jubi Media

Solidarity group hosts
The solidarity group West Papua Action Aotearoa with West Papua Action Tāmaki are hosting the two-day public forum on March 7 and 8 with the speakers from West Papua including environmental champions and filmmakers who operate in militarised zones at considerable risk to their personal safety.

Also, a media talanoa featuring Jubi Media founder Victor Mambor and others will be hosted by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub on March 9.

“The forum is an important event with a number of speakers and filmmakers from West Papua telling the hidden stories of the Indonesian occupation of their country,” said organiser Catherine Delahunty.

The climate impact of their destruction was incredibly serious as was the use of the military to enforce an end to traditional life, food sources, and forests, she said in a statement.

“These people are our Pacific neighbours with a devastating story to tell that our government and others across the world have chosen to ignore,” she said.

“They have a right to come here and to be heard despite the media bans in Indonesia and the desire of successive New Zealand governments to ignore structural genocide in our region.

NZ citizen kidnapped
“Only when a NZ citizen was kidnapped by Papuan soldiers did the government show any interest in West Papua, and this quickly faded once he was safely released thanks especially to West Papuan efforts.”

Other speakers at the forum include veteran activist and writer Maire Leadbeater, Green MP Teanau Tuiono, Hawai’an academic Dr Emalani Case, journalist and author Dr David Robie, Dr Arama Rata of Te Kuaka, and PNG academic Dr Nathan Rew.

• Forum Day One (public sessons), Saturday, March 7:  Old Choral Hall, University of Auckland, 7 Symonds St,  9am–4pm.
• World Premiere of “Pesta Babi” (The Pig Feast) documentary with Q&A – The Academy Cinema, Lorne St, CBD (below the Auckland Public Library), March 7, 6-8.30pm.
• Forum Day Two (solidarity development), Sunday, March 8: The Taro Patch, 9 Dunnotar Rd, Papatoetoe.
• Media Talanoa, Monday, March 9: “Kōrero with Victor Mambor: West Papua: Journalism as Resistance” – Whānau Community Centre and Hub, 165 Stoddard Rd, Mt Roskill (Next to Harvey Norman), 6-8pm.
• Further information: Catherine Delahunty, West Papua Action Tāmaki and West Papua Action Aotearoa. Tel: 021 2421967

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Journalists in Iran have been working amid hostile air strikes for almost a week since the start of the US-Israeli offensive while also facing repression from the Iranian regime.

Internet access in the country remains limited and information is scarce.

As war spreads across the region, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has expressed its solidarity with journalists in the zone and has called on all parties involved in the conflict to guarantee their protection and the right to information.

“As the region goes up in flames, access to reliable information about the war following the attacks carried out by the United States and Israel, is more essential than ever — both regionally and internationally,” said Jonathan Dagher, head of RSF’s Middle East Desk, in a statement.

“Every single stakeholder involved in this war in Iran and the Middle East more widely is required, under international law, to guarantee the safety of reporters and their freedom to carry out their work.”

Although the situation was volatile and characterised by violence, respect for the right to information was still an obligation,” he said.

“The safety of journalists is non-negotiable. War must under no circumstances hinder the work of the press.

‘Release journalists’ call
“US and Israeli strikes against Iran must not endanger the media professionals covering those events. The Iranian regime must immediately release the journalists it is holding and cease all pressures against those covering the war.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

There is no doubt that the war Israel and the United States have launched against Iran will have global economic consequences. While it is difficult to know what those consequences will be, it is hard to see them as positive, and they could be very, very negative.

Already we have seen oil prices spike by 8 percent since last week, and by much more since January.

Oil prices reached above US$100 a barrel with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but then gradually started to fall, and by the start of the year had returned to their pre-2022 level of US$60.

Just before the weekend they had risen to US$70 and now they are almost at US$80. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, they could rise much more.

That is on the price front. There could also, unlike in 2022, be problems on the quantity side.

If it continues to be difficult to ship oil out of the Middle East, then shortages of oil might start to emerge. The countries that will do best in such a situation are those with large stockpiles or plenty of bargaining power.

The Pacific Island countries have neither.

Reliant on 80% oil
The Pacific is also vulnerable because of its extreme reliance on oil. According to a 2022 UN report, the Pacific meets 80 percent of its energy requirements through oil.

Even in the electricity sector, renewable energy sources make only a limited contribution.

There has been some growth in renewable energy as an electricity source. According to analysis by Janendra Prasad at UNSW, the share of renewable energy in electricity production in the Pacific has increased from 17 percent in 2017 to 24 percent in 2023. That is still low, and nowhere near what Pacific governments are themselves targeting (in excess of 80 percent by 2030).

The Pacific is also vulnerable because of its lack of domestic oil production and very limited storage capacity. In fact, Tonga suffered fuel shortages last year due to problems with its fuel depot and a stranded fuel vessel.

With drivers now queuing in Australia and the UK to get their petrol before prices rise or petrol rationing begins, it wouldn’t be surprising to see queues develop across the Pacific.

Governments can tell people not to panic, but it may seem like a rational response given the risks of petrol price rises and rationing.

It is important to clarify that PNG is the “odd one out” in the Pacific. PNG will actually likely benefit from the crisis as it is a large exporter of LNG. The government’s tax and dividend take will increase as LNG prices rise.

PNG oil refinery
PNG also has an oil refinery. And this war will also help the prospects for PNG’s much-delayed and still-uncertain future LNG projects by increasing the value to Asia of sourcing its LNG nearer to home than the Middle East.

So far we have focused on petroleum. But there are also the wider ramifications of the war.

It may lead to an uptick in global inflation, and may even push the world towards or even into recession. An oil shock on its own is unlikely to be enough to lead to a recession, but an escalated, widespread Middle East conflict (or possibly a conflict that extends to Turkey and Europe) certainly could.

Again, PNG will benefit from a further increase in the gold price as investors lose faith in the US, and therefore in the US dollar.

But overall, what is bad for the world is bad for the Pacific. Remittances, tourism, fishing licence fees, aid and investment returns would all suffer in the event of a global recession.

There is a possible upside. If Iran capitulates and, with or without regime change, gives in to US demands, then, with sanctions removed, oil production might go up and oil prices down.

Right now, that doesn’t seem like a likely scenario.

Relevant positives
More relevant are the positives that could limit or to some extent offset the downside for the Pacific.

One is that it is still unclear how long this war will go on for. The shorter it is the less worrying the outcomes.

A second is the positive role Australia can play. Although there are questions about Australia’s own limited oil storage capacity, Australia will be under pressure to share whatever oil it is able to import with its Pacific family.

Third, and longer-term, this crisis, especially if it is long-lasting, might make the world more serious about the renewable transition, not so much to avoid dangerous climate change, but to shore up energy security.

Understandably, for the Pacific, which is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts and whose emissions are negligible at the global level, the focus to date has been on climate change adaptation rather than mitigation.

But the sort of crisis currently unfolding should give the Pacific countries and their funders a stronger incentive to close the growing gap between Pacific renewable energy targets and reality — not to reduce the risks of climate change, but rather to reduce Pacific vulnerability to an increasingly shock- and conflict-prone Middle East.

Stephen Howes is director of the Development Policy Centre and professor of economics at the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University. Rubayat Chowdhury is a macroeconomist with experience working on monetary policy, growth, and economic development in emerging market economies. He is a research officer at the Development Policy Centre. 

Stephen Howes was recently interviewed on this topic for the ABC’s Pacific Beat programme.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By Michael West

We are led by fools and sycophants. The illegal, unprovoked invasion of Iran is not just garden-variety stupidity. This is stupidity on a grandiose, stratospheric scale.

The Israeli propaganda narrative that Iranians would sprinkle rose petals at the feet of their invaders has not come to pass. It has already been demolished in fact.

Instead of bringing freedom and democracy — “regime change” — we have brought chaos, possibly a world war, and definitely the destruction of the Middle East.

The world economy is being hit hard as we write; oil prices spiralling, energy prices about to soar, and the inexorable spectre of inflation and recession.

And it didn’t have to happen.

This was a war of choice. Even without the “Epstein Coalition” — as the Iranian media so aptly dubs their invaders — murdering 165 Iranian school girls on day one, “peace through strength” was never going to happen.

Quite the contrary. The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Iran has hardened the resolve of Iranians, who are massing in their hundreds of thousands across the country to mourn their dead and chant “Death to America”, to back their regime.

Where was the advice?
The Epstein Coalition killed the Ayatollah, who was actually against nuclear power; he was a moderate.

Did Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong not seek advice from Foreign Affairs that attacking Iran was folly, that the anti-regime protesters were a minority, that the pre-invasion protests were a Mossad and CIA psyop, that Iran might attack US proxy states in the region, that invasion would be a Brobigdadgian mistake?

Or did they ignore the advice in favour of a Washington regime compromised by the Epstein pedophile scandal?

And now, we see the feeble, hypocritical whining by Israel and its supporters about Iran attacking the Gulf states. Is that our only moral defence?

Decades of supporting these regimes: Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — US proxy states all — regimes now unravelling, the oil price is soaring, inflation and recession are beckoning globally.

Images are emerging from Bahrain of locals cheering on the Iranian missiles. Were DFAT and our politicians unaware of popular angst in the Gulf states against American imperialism?

And what did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat? Not blow up American bases and infrastructure while the US attacked them; after the US betrayed them at the very negotiating table when they were offering significant concessions on nuclear enrichment, all to avoid war? This war.

War drums over Tehran.             Video: The West Report

Australia, the US flunkies
Yet here was Australia, Saturday night, first out of the blocks worldwide to throw its support behind Donald Trump and his preposterous “Operation Epic Fury”, a probable pedophile being blackmailed and led around by the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu like a pony at the fairground show.

“Operation Epstein Fury”, it was fast labelled. The soaring, craven stupidity is hard to grasp. Both major parties backing it.

Albo first, then Angus Taylor rushing to tow the Donald’s line. Then, One Nation’s Pauline Hanson, too, who even congratulated and praised Netanyahu. We are led by fools and sycophants.

The flawed defence of atrocity
To address the empty rhetoric of the pro-war lobby, criticism of this war does not equate to support for the regime in Iran. Defenders of the US-Israel atrocity are busy with their swarms of social media bots peddling the argument that “you are an Islamist terror supporter” if you criticise the invasion.

This is the 2026 version of “You are a Hamas supporter” if you argue against genocide in Gaza.

The cold facts of this debacle are that regime change does not work, that Iran did not want this war, that Iran appears to be exceptionally well prepared, that the Epstein Coalition, which Australia supports, is daily backing war crimes: blowing up hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure.

This is a war which has already been lost.

The obvious reality is that regime change wars are a demonstrable failure. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq — a million dead, irretrievable regional stability. In Afghanistan, 20 years, trillions of dollars spent, four US presidents, six Australian PMs — all to replace the Taliban . . . with the Taliban.

And here we are, the world’s busybodies, doing it again.

Who would ever negotiate with the US in good faith again, or Israel for that matter? Iran did not want this war. Iran has not attacked another country in 300 years.

The US lured them to the negotiating table, then, without warning, murdered their leadership. This echoes last year’s 12-day war, where Israel and the US lured them in on the premise of good faith talks, then murdered them and now play the victim.

What did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat?

The record speaks for itself. The US is the biggest invader of other countries in history. Israel has, last year alone, attacked Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia, Malta, and Greece.

Six illegal attacks of sovereign nations, as well as three illegal attacks in international waters equals nine all up. In one year.

And now they are invading Lebanon again, seizing more territory as their puppets, America, fight their campaign against Iran.

Albo, what are you doing?
We know who the warmongers are. We are the warmongers. Yet, in his bizarre statement of support, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was the fastest out of the blocks of all the allies on the weekend, issuing a false statement.

Australia stands with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against oppression.

For decades, the Iranian regime has been a destabilising force, through its ballistic missile and nuclear programs, support for armed proxies, and brutal acts of violence and intimidation.

Iran…

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) February 28, 2026

The claim, echoed by the usual warmongers of the Lib-Lab establishment, is that Iran is guilty of attacks on Australian soil, referencing alleged attacks on a deli in Bondi.

Apart from the common sense, why would Iran commit an act of terror on a deli in Bondi? Senior police have conceded that there is no evidence of this.

The nuclear furphy
Then there is the age-old claim that Iran is about to produce nuclear weapons. The US and Israel’s nuclear risk claims have been so roundly discredited it’s a joke.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to instigate a war against Iran for 30 years — claiming Iran is days away, weeks away, months away from nuclear missiles.

And they were at the negotiating table again when the Epstein forces murdered them.

The propaganda
We are now seeing mainstream media decry the “illegal attacks” on Israel and the Gulf states. Yet the ‘victim card” is tapped out.

Around the world, outside the legacy media propaganda, there is little sympathy for Israel having razed Gaza and slaughtered between 72,000 and 700,000 Palestinians while stealing more land in the West Bank daily.

It will continue. The media and political classes have failed so majestically that they can only try to salvage their authority with more propaganda.

The deplorable coverage of the murdered schoolgirls in Iran is a case in point. The “40 beheaded babies” and the “mass rapes” of Hamas filled the headlines in the West on October 8, 2023. Yet real murders — 165 murdered schoolgirls — have hardly rated a mention. Yes, a mention perhaps, but a side story, buried, no headlines of outrage.

Can’t handle the truth?

Is the truth too hard to handle? Is it not evident to everybody except the most brainwashed advocate of the Epstein lobby that Israel — the government, the state — is the problem here?

Netanyahu has won his ambition to drag America into a war against Iran, and if you follow the money, while world stock markets teeter, the stock market in Tel Aviv is surging, replete with weapons companies as it is.

Meanwhile, the ASX is tanking, ergo our savings. Oil prices are surging, ergo higher energy prices and inflation. The Houthis, Iran’s allies, are shooting again in the Red Sea while, on the other side of the Arabian peninsula, Iran has blocked the Straits of Hormuz, choking off a large chunk of the world’s oil supply.

Higher prices in India and China will mean higher prices for imports and inflation around the world.

The lessons of history have not been learnt; in fact, they have been discarded in spectacular fashion.

> 70 years ago, Iran looked just like any Western country.
> Short skirts, rock’n’roll, open universities.
> It’s 1953. Iran elects a secular socialist: Mohammad Mossadegh.
> He nationalizes oil. That pisses off BP.
> Cold War excuse.
> CIA and MI6 stage a coup. Operation Ajax.
>… pic.twitter.com/ZNWaLdBlCN

— Dr. Simon Goddek (@goddek) March 1, 2026

Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz