In my previous blog article, I referred to the increasing trend of AI replacing humans in various highly-skilled industries. Occupations which required years of training and sophisticated technical expertise are now being occupied by generative AI, replacing the human factor. One such occupation where AI is increasingly taking over is that of the fighter pilot.

The human Top Gun is steadily being replaced by drones and computer-controlled automated systems. It is not just me saying this; experts in the field are increasingly sounding the alarm bells about this development. It is true that senior US military officers are pushing back against AI-drone doomerism. Brigadier General Doug Wickert (US Air Force) has stated that AI pilots are still years away from realisation.

Be that as it may, let’s examine this issue of AI piloted drones replacing the fighter ace pilot.

Harrison Kass, a lawyer and Air Force pilot training school graduate, explores this topic in his article. Human air fighter pilots are prone to making human errors; drones and AI driven fighter planes do not require toilet breaks. An F-15E, an American fighter plane, costs millions to make – $65 million to be exact, according to Kass. Training a pilot for missions in such a plane costs 8 million dollars, and each hour of operation costs $30 000 for fuel and maintenance.

Surely it makes financial sense to entrust expensive equipment like that in a computer system, not in human hands? Drones and AI piloted aircraft sound like a financially viable alternative to human fighter pilots, but as Kass explains, no young person grows up idolising and wanting to be a drone operator; they grow up, like Kass himself did, dreaming of becoming a fighter pilot.

The gallant, courageous, morally upstanding fighter ace image predates the Top Gun movies by decades. Indeed, during World War One, the French and Germans put out cultural propaganda promoting the fighter pilot as the epitome of daring, dedication to nation, and glamorous fame. Dogfights with the Red Baron were portrayed in posters and associated Hollywood movies.

The United States, never a nation to lag behind in the promotion of war propaganda, developed its own narrative of heroic pilots. The late John Wayne portrayed a fighter pilot in a Cold War romance propaganda film in 1957. In the 1970s, Robert Redford reminded us of the post-WW1 American aviators and their derring-do exploits in The Great Waldo Pepper.

The fighter pilot became the archetypal hero; resilient in the face of difficulties, setting aside personal problems to serve their country, the fighter pilot embodied patriotic devotion to duty, no matter the circumstances.

It was, of course, the Top Gun movies that were the most successful in promoting the image of the heroic, clean cut military aviator. Well, the fighter pilot profession did need a makeover; after the Vietnam war, when Air Force pilots bombed villages, schools, hospitals, water treatment plants, napalming entire region, spreading chemical poisoning, the line between fighter pilot and war criminal was crossed.

The US Air Force dropped more tonnage of bombs onto the tiny nation of Laos during the 1970s than during all of its aerial operations against German-occupied Europe. This information tarnished the popular image of the fighter pilot as a sturdy, resolute defender of freedom. The admiration for military aviators was reduced as knowledge about their war crimes spread throughout the American population.

Kass wants us to admire and respect the skills, intelligence and courage of the human fighter pilots currently under threat of redundancy from AI systems. Drones cannot inspire future generations to join the air force.

I think I understand where he is coming from. I have a suggestion that makes sense given Kass’ frame of reference.

The original Top Gun aviators were African Americans. They should be widely promoted as examples of heroism, skill, and dedication to country – a nation which rejected them.

The original Top Gun military aviators in the United States were black. African American servicemen proved their superior air combat skills and intelligence in the very first aviation competition, organised by the US Air Force, in May 1949. The victory of the Tuskegee airmen was ignored by their white counterparts, forgotten by the lily-white officer class, and their trophy packed away.

In fact, let us rebuff the systematic effort by the Trump-MAGA cult, a network of financial fraudsters and child abusers masquerading as politicians, from abolishing black studies altogether. The MAGA cult has, under the banner of ‘fighting wokism’, overseen the dismantling of African American studies in universities across the United States.

One major consequence of this cultural war is the erasure of the contributions of African American military veterans. African Americans fought for the United States in World Wars One and Two; they returned to a country that rejected them, and subjected them to racial violence.

In December 1946, John T Walker, a black Navy veteran, returned home to California. Demobilised at the conclusion of World War Two, he had hoped to build a peaceful life. Instead, he found his home in flames. White attackers burned his house down. The arsonists left him a note, in which they clearly expressed their feelings:

We burned your house to let you know that your presence is not wanted among white people. You should know by now we mean business. Niggers who are veterans are making a mistake thinking they can live in white residential districts.

Walker’s experience was not exceptional.

Isaac Woodward, a black US army veteran, boarded a bus in South Carolina in February 1946. Brutally beaten by South Carolina police, he was blinded in the attack. Lynwood Shull, the police chief who led the assault, was taken to court. The all-white jury acquitted Shull of all charges in 28 minutes.

Decades later, and after Woodward himself passed away of natural causes in 1992, his case was revisited – his conviction overturned.

I have no opinion on whether or not AI should replace human fighter pilots. That is a decision for the US Air Force to make. I do know that AI has no ethics or values, but humans do. AI does not care about human life, or the environment. It has no concept of empathy or compassion, or concern for consequences.

Introducing AI will only reduce human accountability. If a warplane bombs the wrong target, or innocent civilians are killed, who is to blame, the AI or the commander directing it?

Let’s abandon the propagandistic Top Gun Tom Cruise stereotype, and honour the African American veterans, who loyally served and risked their lives in combat, but were denied recognition they richly deserved.

In Australia, as in the UK, there is large cliche industry called royal watching. Numerous stories about the lives and loves of various royal family members fill the newspaper pages and clog up the tv screens. The adventures of Harry and Meghan were a staple of this particular genre. Royal watching does not interest me in the least, let alone the sexual escapades of royals and vacuous celebrities.

However, for the purpose of the current article, I am willing to combine the two topics that while marginally interesting to me, take up untold hours of tv screen time; royal families and sex.

Most of us in the Anglophone communities have heard of Tutankhamun, the king from ancient Egypt, due to the 1922 discovery of his burial place. I get asked about him whenever I mention that my parents come from Egypt. The subject of Egyptomania still occupies the fascination of Anglophone audiences.

But here is something you do not know about him, a fact that opens a window into the lives of royal dynasties. Tutankhamun’s mother and father were also siblings – cousins to be sure. The good king was a child of a sibling sexual relationship. Inbreeding, also known as consanguineous marriages, was a common practice among royal families attempting to concentrate power in a closed circle of hands.

Many unresolved questions still remain regarding Tutankhamun’s lineage, but his ancestry is full of incest and intrigue. His was certainly not the first or last royal dynasty to practice consanguineous marriages.

We all know about Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt from Macedonian Greek heritage. Richard Burton fell in love with her when he, (Marc Antony), went to Egypt and saw Elizabeth Taylor (Cleopatra). She was a member of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, descended from Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great’s generals. Seizing power in Egypt in the immediate aftermath of Alexander’s death, Ptolemy founded his own ruling dynasty. His descendants, such as his son and successor Ptolemy II, married siblings.

Indeed, Ptolemy II married his sister, Arsinoe II. Indeed, King Ptolemy II was known as philadelpus, which in Greek means ‘sibling lover.’ Keeping power in the one family was a primary motivation for this inbreeding.

However, as we all realise today, consanguineous marriages come with a host of problems – mainly medical.

The Habsburgs, once a powerful German-Austrian royal dynasty whose power and influence extended across European kingdoms, consolidated their power by consanguineous intermarriage. It was also, ironically, a cause of their ultimate downfall.

The danger of consanguineous marriages is the increasing likelihood of harmful alleles, located on recessive genes, combining in the offspring, thus finding phenotypic expression. The now famous Habsburg jaw, the jutting lower jaw which doctors call mandibular prognathism, was the result of generations of inbreeding.

When siblings have children, the homozygosity of their children increases. Having a restricted gene pool, numerous hereditary conditions arise. The final Habsburg king, Charles II of Spain, not only had a lower jaw overbite, he also suffered from multiple chronic medical conditions.

Experiencing epilepsy, intestinal problems, and unable to have children he was nicknamed ‘the bewitched’ or the ‘cursed’ by his contemporaries. Dying at barely 38 years of age in 1700, he left no heirs.

His father, Philip IV, had married his niece. This, combined with centuries of inbreeding, only amplified the inbreeding coefficient, the likelihood that two identical genes, in particular recessive ones with deleterious alleles, will combine due to the closeness of their parents’ relation.

Royal dynasties, over the years, have practiced consanguineous marriages as a matter of power consolidation. This practice is no longer such a serious problem in Europe. Well, let’s be clear, the late Queen Elizabeth II married her third cousin. While not a direct sibling relationship, it still ranks as a marriage of consanguinity.

Sibling relationships are still a large and important factor, not among the European royal families, but among the Gulf petroleum monarchies. The Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiratis, Bahrainis and similar royal families still carefully select marriage partners from siblings. Extended siblings to be sure, but the inbreeding coefficient is still there.

No, I am not suggesting that the Arab-Muslim Persian Gulf peoples are culturally regressive or backwards – by no means. I am highlighting the physiological problems arising from frequent consanguineous marriages, and the political and economic consequences that can result.

I have only written once before about Harry and Meghan, in all these years. I have no desire to follow the soap opera saga that their relationship with the British royal family has become. The only salient point here is how the Windsor-Mountbatten-Battenberg-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha royal family of Britain has treated, or mistreated, a woman of colour.

What did Meghan expect to happen by marrying into the royal inbred dynasty as an outsider, and person of biracial background? Royal dynasties intermarry not for reasons of pure romantic love (the heart wants what the heart wants) but for reasons of consolidating wealth into familial hands. Outsiders are not easily accepted, if ever, as equals.

There is one royal event which I have kept in mind all these years. My late father would explain to me in great detail about this particular event, which involved the enforced abdication, and end of, a royal dynasty.

This was the July 1952 revolution in Egypt, when nationalist minded army officers carried out a revolutionary overthrow, ousting the British-backed hereditary monarchy of King Farouk. The latter was the head of the Alawiyya family, an Arabised dynasty of Albanian origin. My father lived through those events, enthusiastically supporting the revolution, and emphasising its singular historical importance.

No, I am not suggesting that military officers take political power in a particular nation. However, that method of removing a royal family has retained its appeal to me to this very day.

Josef Mengele, the Nazi SS officer and doctor at Auschwitz, escaped justice in Europe by fleeing to South America. He conducted horrific medical experiments on concentration camp inmates, crimes which fell into the category of crimes against humanity. In 1945, he fled Europe amidst the ruins of the war.

He found refuge in South American nations.

First settling into a new life in Argentina after the war, he died in Brazil, with family and friends. His sanctuary was protected by a network of sympathisers. Living under a pseudonym, he nevertheless lived openly, set up businesses and bought farmland. He went canoeing with his grandchildren and the kids of family friends.

The Auschwitz doctor found, if not Nazis, then people who viewed his perspective sympathetically, among Germans in Brazil and Argentina. He lived for approximately 40 years after the end of WW2, dying of a stroke in 1979. While resident in Argentina and Brazil, he made overseas trips to West Germany. He could not have done so without authenticating his true identity.

What has all this got to do with Croatian expats?

Jasenovac, a concentration camp in Croatia during WW2, is the Auschwitz of the Balkans. Created and maintained by the Nazi satellite state of the Ustasha (Insurgent) movement, the atrocities committed by the Ustasha state have been systematically downplayed and minimised by Croatian expatriate communities in Australia, the United States, Britain and other countries.

No, not every expat Croatian is a Nazi. But the Jasenovac camp has been the target of a relentless campaign by the Croat expat community. To what end? To minimise the horror and cruelty of the genocidal crimes committed by the Croat ultranationalist Ustsha regime, thus rehabilitating its doctrines and the personnel who implemented them.

Let’s sort all of this out.

To be clear, no, the Germans in Brazil were not all Nazi fugitives. There is a long history of German immigration to Brazil. Thousands of Germans settled in that country from 1815 onwards, at the invitation of the Brazilian government. The latter nation, newly independent, offered German farmers land, seed and agricultural equipment for them to settle.

In the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, the German states were impoverished, land was devastated, and economic prospects were poor. Brazil provided a combined package – land and startup money for German farmers. Thousands took up this offer, and settled in Brazil over the years.

There was another motivation underlying the Brazilian government’s offer – to whiten the population. Germans being good white European stock were acceptable migrants. Let us also remember that German settlers, having taken up farming in Brazil, were also required to serve in the army. The Brazilian emperor, Don Pedro I, launched a series of frontier wars against the indigenous people. German soldiers participated in massacres of indigenous nations, and that is the bleak side of the German immigration success story.

It is wrong to portray Germans in Brazil as being composed of former Nazi fugitives. However, there were Mengele sympathisers ready and willing to provide sanctuary for the Auschwitz doctor.

While Auschwitz has come to symbolise a place of unspeakable racist-driven horrors and cruelties, the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac has escaped such a culturally iconographic status – if such a positive description can be used for a place of inhumanity. The Independent State of Croatia (called Nezavisna Država Hrvatska in Croatian, NDH) lasted from 1941 to 1945, under German protection. Its leader, Ante Pavelic, modeled his movement the Ustasha on the Italian fascist government.

Identifying strongly with the Nazi regime, the NDH established the Jasenovac concentration camp on their own initiative, not at the request or instruction of the Nazi leadership. It was the only instance of a Nazi satellite state establishing its own concentration camp, in direct imitation of Nazi Germany.

Serbs, Jews, Roma, and antifascist Croatians were routinely massacred using gruesome methods. Jasenovac was the only camp that had a separate sub-camp for children. Prisoners were dispatched with sledgehammers, knives, and pregnant women had their uterus cut out. The NDH passed racial laws, copying the example of the 1935 Nuremberg racial exclusion laws in Germany.

Pavelic and his colleagues wanted to create an ethnically pure Croatia, cleansed of all non-Croat communities and cultures.

This particular camp has become the topic of intense controversy and debate, particularly among the expatriate Croatian population. Let’s accept the lower estimates of the number of victims killed in this camp – 100 000. Let us say for the moment, that the postwar Yugoslav Communist authorities exaggerated the numbers of those murdered at Jasenovac. Correcting an overinflated figure is one thing.

What is occurring however, is not just an academic exercise in correcting misinformation. The mainstream Croatian expatriate organisations have engaged in a systematic, persistent exercise in denial and Holocaust obfuscation, minimising and even denying that Jasenovac was a death camp.

By denying the racialised criminality of the NDH regime, they have helped to rehabilitate this so-called independent Croatia, obfuscating its ideological similarities and military ties with Nazi Germany. The far right inside Croatia today draw their strength from expatriate communities.

This rightwing revisionist rewriting of Jasenovac’s history is not confined to recent times. In 1991, Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, declared that the high point of Croatia’s long centuries of history, was the 1941-45 NDH regime. He conveniently omitted to mention that it was a blood-drenched murderous Nazi satellite state.

We deplore those German immigrants who gave sanctuary to the Angel of Death, the Auschwitz Doctor Josef Mengele. What can we say about those in the Croatian diaspora who insist on rehabilitating the Auschwitz of the Balkans? Jasenovac demonstrates that rather than revive the past glories of Croatian history, the 1941-45 NDH chapter forms one of the most shameful chapters in that nation’s history.

The topic of genocide is not one I would have chosen for myself, but one that I have had to tackle given my Armenian heritage. As children and grandchildren of genocide survivors, Armenians in the diaspora have had to carry a certain weight of history. Why do genocides occur? What was the Holocaust? How do we prevent ethnic cleaning in the future?

Grappling with these questions leads us down different paths, difficult topics to be sure, but also quite fruitful. They help us to understand today’s problems and challenges. I do not get out of bed every morning with the intention of writing about the Holocaust and similar genocides every day, but it is worth examining whom and for what reasons genocide perpetrators are given comfort or sanctuary.

April 25 is not an official public holiday outside of Australia and New Zealand, but it is nevertheless an important anniversary to be remembered. I am not referring to Anzac Day, important as that is. On April 25, 1945, American and Soviet troops met up for the first time on the Elbe River, near the city of Torgau, eastern-central Germany. The Soviets fought their way to Nazi Germany from Moscow. The US, having opened a second front in Western Europe in June 1944, fought their way to Germany.

The meeting of both sides, fighting in a common struggle against fascism and the perpetrators of the Holocaust, was a joyous occasion. There was singing, dancing and drinking. Hugs and handshakes were exchanged between Soviet and American troops. Some formed lifelong friendships which survived through the subsequent decades.

Though not an official holiday, the Elbe river meeting is still commemorated until today. The Russian ambassador to the US visits Arlington National Cemetery where American veterans of World War Two, among other conflicts, are buried.

The Elbe Day spirit seemed to augur well, a spirit of cooperation and friendship across borders. Superpower cooperation in an atmosphere of mutual cordiality ruled the day. That spirit however, did not last long.

When Allied troops landed on the coast of France on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), there were accompanied by thousands of American intelligence agents. Their purpose was to collect, collate and organise information about German scientists, their military work, their technical expertise, and even the individual scientists themselves. Once captured, this information and the relevant Nazi scientists were transported via detention camps to mainland United States.

Nazi scientists, those who had helped to implement the worst atrocities of the Holocaust, were heading West.

President Franklin Roosevelt, while leading the negotiations with the other Allied powers, was weakened and dying by late 1944. He hung on to witness the formal end of hostilities. The military intelligence complex, and what would become the nucleus of the future CIA, debriefed the captured German scientists for their eventual employment in US government scientific establishments.

The knowledge capital and skills of these ex-Nazis was required in the struggle against Soviet communism. Their wartime crimes were conveniently ignored.

A typical example of the type of scientist provided refuge in the US after the war is Dr Siegfried Rascher. A medical doctor at Dachau concentration camp, the good doctor conducted experiments on Jewish camp inmates, Soviet prisoners of war, and Polish underground resistance fighters.

For instance, he locked prisoners in specially made low pressure chambers, which simulated oxygen-lacking conditions at high altitudes. Numerous prisoners asphyxiated, suffered from brain injuries due to cerebral hypoxia. Those who miraculously survived in a semi-conscious state were drowned in vats of ice water. Rascher filmed his experiments and autopsies, and sent his results to Nazi authorities.

Wernher von Braun, one of the most famous Nazi rocket scientists to find refuge in the US, relied on slave labourers to provide the materials for his creations. Thousands of prisoners from concentration camps were worked to death, supervised by attendant Nazi foremen.

Georg Rickhey was one such psupervisor at the Dora concentration camp, who was whisked away by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), one of the predecessor components of the CIA. Rickhey, when confronted by prisoners sabotaging production, would hang them 12 at a time. Children at the Dora camp were considered ‘useless mouths’, and Richkey ordered SS troops to club them to death, an order that was carried out.

US military intelligence interrogated thousands of Nazi officers similar to Rickhey, so there was no question that they knew the full extent of the horrors to which concentration camp inmates were subjected. Escaping war crimes trials in Europe, these scientists were considered useful assets in the new Cold War political climate. Rickhey, an engineer by training, was one of thousands of German beneficiaries of Operation Paperclip.

The Elbe day spirit was well and truly dead by the early 1950s.

The horrendous methods employed by Nazi German scientists had been condemned at the Nuremberg trials, and subsequent international military tribunals. By providing sanctuary for, and employing, Nazi scientists, the US authorities were deliberately turning their backs on the victims of the Holocaust. Operation Paperclip was a direct slap in the face for all the US soldiers who had helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp, among others.

On April 29, 1945, when US soldiers confronted the horrific suffering in Dachau, between 35 and 50 German SS officers were killed in reprisal. You are free to condemn these reprisals, but I will not. I do not place an equals sign between the moral culpability of the sadistic SS guards, and the US soldiers who killed in defence of the Dachau camp inmates.

What should be condemned are the actions of the US authorities who deliberately cooperated with and provided employment for those who facilitated the Holocaust and the Nazi war machine. They abandoned the spirit of Elbe for their own geopolitical interests.

There are two words that are certain to bring anxiety and stress to every high school student. A tsunami of groans followed by a sinking feeling overwhelm the student who hears the two most dreaded words – William Shakespeare.

It is quite true that Shakespeare’s works can be difficult, even inaccessible, to a modern English-speaking audience. The language has evolved over the centuries; the nation of Britain has changed many times over since Shakespeare’s day. There was no such formation as the United Kingdom when he passed away in 1616. The Union Jack, the flag with which Australians are familiar, only became the national flag of England in 1707, nearly a century after Shakespeare’s death.

The language he wrote in is archaic and unfamiliar to us today. There are ways to teach his works to a contemporary audience, which will not only lessen the weary groans and existential dread of the high school student, but also make him relevant to the general reading public.

Shakespeare wrote about love, hate, romance, loyalty, jealousy, trust, betrayal, civil war, morale, morals, prejudice, history, politics, comedy, tragedy, insanity, courage – he covered the entire gamut of the human condition and experience in his plays. No, I am not ignoring or downplaying the contributions of writers from nonwhite backgrounds. James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, W E B Du Bois – these writers are all important.

I have written about globalising the literature curriculum previously, and I still stand by that article. I am not opposed to Shakespeare, but to uncritical bardolatry – the elevation of Shakespeare into a semi-legendary figure that excludes all others. Do not wield Shakespeare as a literary cudgel in the service of British empire loyalism.

The influence of Shakespeare’s writings is still with us, and its reach can be subtle yet distinct. We all know about the stirring speech delivered by William Wallace to his Scottish fighters when confronted by a militarily superior English army in the semi-fictional but entertaining movie, Braveheart (1995). Well, actually it was Mel Gibson, and his movie was largely the product of Hollywood imagination, but a great movie nevertheless.

Wallace/Gibson’s speech, a pre battle exhortation to fight the dreaded English, ends with the following morale-boosting lines:

“Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live — at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!”

This rousing exhortation is at least partially inspired by the more famous St Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V. Gibson is a classically trained actor, who has produced and performed Shakespeare’s plays.

One the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, Shakespeare has the heroic Henry V deliver a powerful oration, drumming up the courage and morale of his vastly outnumbered troops. Speaking about themes of honour, loyalty, and immortality, his speech remains one of the most quoted of Shakespeare’s works.

You may find the original text, alongside a modern updated version, at the No Sweat Shakespeare web page. I will not reproduce the entire speech here, because it will make the current article excessively lengthy. However, let’s focus on the crux of the speech, namely, Henry’s statement that years from now, the soldiers who fought in this battle will remember with pride their heroism, forming a ‘band of brothers.’

Here is the modernised translation of the last portion of his speech:

Old men are forgetful, but even if he remembers nothing else he’ll remember, with embroideries, what feats he did that day. Then our names, as familiar in his mouth as household words – Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester – will be remembered in their toasts. This good man will teach his son, and Crispin Crispian will never pass from today until the end of the world without us being remembered: we few; we happy few; we band of brothers!

The man who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; however humble he may be, this day will elevate his status. And gentlemen in England, still lying in their beds, will think themselves accursed because they were not here, and be in awe while anyone speaks who fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.’

Indeed, Shakespeare rescued the feast day of St Crispin from obscurity. The feast day, falling on October 25, commemorates the martyrdom of brothers Crispin and Crispinian in 286 CE. Persecuted for their faith, they were tortured and killed during the reign of Roman emperor Diocletian.

Declared the patron saints of shoemakers, this particular feast day was removed from the liturgical calendar by the Second Vatican Council because there was not enough evidence to support the story. Ironic isn’t it – the Vatican demanding evidence before it believes in something…..Noah’s ark anyone, the talking snake, the virgin birth….?

Be that as it may, the St Crispin’s day speech has inspired numerous dramaturgical orations. Who could forget President Bill Pullman’s rousing invocation to unite and fight the all-powerful extraterrestrial invaders in Independence Day? All of us, whether rich or poor, were united by the common cause of rescuing humanity from doom, regardless of a person’s rank, social standing or societal status?

Henry V, when inspiring his troops, states that no matter a person’s social status, whether ‘vile’ (which meant lowly-born at the time) or a gentleman, all had equal standing to achieve glory and immortality by fighting the French at Agincourt.

The English went on to win that battle in 1415, and the St Crispin’s Day speech has become a touchstone of English nationalism, and the stuff of nightmares for generations of students.

No need to wrap Shakespeare in the mantle of Union Jack empire loyalism. Let’s tackle the subject matter with updated, modern translations that preserve the meaning and spirit of the original. Making his work accessible does not have to come at the expense of conceptual originality and integrity.

The right of nations to self determination is a fundamental principle of international law. It is a basic human right enshrined in two foundational international treaties; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

Both these documents explicitly state that people have the right to formulate their own political system, and pursue their own economic, social and cultural development. Furthermore, they also enshrine the principle of decolonisation, where a colonised people can decide to secede from, or rebel against, the colonising state.

These are non-negotiable rules. Why am I explaining all of this?

The United States and Britain, the Anglophone axis, has selectively applied these principles, cynically invoking them and turning ethnic minorities into guns for hire. The right of nations to self determination is loudly supported by the Washington-London axis when it suits their regime change purposes.

To be sure, the Anglophone allies have a track record of exploiting national self determination when it suits their interests. In August 1941, UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and US President Franklin D Roosevelt, signed the Atlantic Charter. In this document, they declared their willingness to actively support those nations struggling for self determination to break free from Nazi German occupation.

Admirable sentiments to be certain, but they faced an obvious problem – should not the right of national self determination extend to those peoples living under British colonial rule? For instance, Mahatma Gandhi asked that very question when discussing the future of British India. Should not the Vietnamese have their own independent government, free from French rule in Indochina?

Churchill strongly rejected the universal applicability of the right of nations to self determination. Fully committed to the preservation of the British empire, Churchill categorically rejected any notion of granting independence to India.

What has this history got to do with current political events? There has been a deluge of commentary regarding the US-Israeli attack on Iran, and most of it has focused on immediate military exchanges between the opposing forces. That is all well and good, but there is an episode which has received scant attention, but deserves more scrutiny. This is the attempt (abortive in the end) to instigate a Kurdish uprising against the Tehran authorities inside Iran.

The Kurds, a marginalised ethnic minority spread out over several Middle Eastern nations, are a sizeable group inside Iran. There were reports, subsequently denied, that the US administration of President Trump tried to supply weapons to Kurdish political parties inside Iran.

The purpose of such supplies was to incite an anti-government uprising, weakening the Tehran government’s grip on the nation. Such an uprising was to be welcomed by Washington and London as a welcome expression of the right of self determination by an oppressed ethnic group fighting a repressive regime.

The Iranian Kurdish political groups, through their representatives, expressly denied that any such covert arms supplies were ever delivered. They stated that there never was any such arrangement, or for any American weapons to be subsequently turned over to anti-Tehran rebels inside the country.

The Iraqi Kurds, for their part, stated that they were not going to carry out any military incursion into Iran on behalf of Washington. Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed, prominent Kurdish politician and wife of the current Iraqi president Abdul Latif Rashid, denounced plans to use the Kurds as cannon fodder for a war started by Washington and its Tel Aviv collaborators. She stated ‘leave the Kurds alone, we are not guns for hire.’

Unfortunately, Kurdish organisations have been used as mercenaries for Anglophone regime change wars in the past. It is no secret that Tel Aviv’s government strongly supports an independent state for the Kurds – as long as the latter agree to trade with Tel Aviv and support its economic interests. Cynically exploiting the principle of national self determination, Tel Aviv and its supporters have cultivated economic and military ties with Kurdish parties (and other non-Arab peoples) as a way of outflanking Arab nations.

Iranian media, aligned with the Tehran government, bragged that they foiled a CIA-sponsored plan to use Kurdish militias in an anti-government uprising. The article, by journalist and documentary maker Robert Inlakesh, elaborates that several Kurdish organisations inside Iran entered into a formal alliance, only days prior to the start or formal hostilities. The timing of such a move suggests that the Kurdish militias were readying for a military role in toppling the Tehran authorities. However, such plans came to nothing.

There is an element of bravado here to be sure. If there was a CIA-MI6 plot to use Iranian Kurds as military proxies, I do not know. However, the Al Mayadeen media outlet does have good reason to warn of CIA plots. The intelligence agencies of Washington and London have long track records of surreptitiously supplying and organising mercenary ethnic-based militia groups under the guise of supporting national self determination.

During the closing stages of World War 2, while the British and American governments were opposing granting national self determination to India, Cyprus, Palestine and other British empire colonies, they were loudly demanding national self determination for the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940.

In fact, the London authorities recruited Baltic ultranationalist and Nazi collaborator groups, and refurbished them into military-grade fighting units. These Baltic groups, reconstituted into the Forest Brothers, were Holocaust perpetrators and ultranationalist killers. They were responsible for killing thousands of Jews in the Baltic states, and assisted the Nazi secret police at every turn.

Rebranded as super-patriotic freedom fighters, they launched an anti-Soviet guerrilla war in 1944. Upheld as heroes until today in the Baltic republics, their role as accomplices to genocide has been carefully airbrushed from history.

That particular anticommunist insurgency failed. But it did set the template for American and British foreign policy – self determination is great as a weapon against officially designated enemies. Ethnic minorities can be deployed as guns for hire. Even ex-Nazi collaborators can find gainful employment as long as they agree with Washington and London’s geopolitical objectives.

The club of great Austrians was already large, and it has just gotten bigger.

What the hell am I talking about? Austrians from different walks of life have had a positive impact on my life, and it is important to share their stories. Some are famous, and some are not. They are great in the sense of enriching my life, widening my horizons, and deepening my worldview.

No, none of them deliberately set out to influence my life. Indeed, most of the Austrians I include in this association were not personal friends of mine. But I think more people should read about their lives, and hopefully take away valuable lessons from the experience.

Johann Strauss I (1804 – 1849) was an influential Austrian composer. He wrote waltzes, polkas and light hearted music – well, it was considered light hearted for his time. My late father would listen to various pieces of Strauss’ music, and those records had an enormous impact on me. I was familiar with the big bands of the 1970s and 1980s – Abba, Cold Chisel, Sherbet, and the performers on Countdown. But at home, Strauss’ records were frequently played. His music fed my psyche.

His most famous composition is the powerful, triumphant orchestral work The Radetzky March. Named after Austrian Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz, he commanded the victorious Austrians, who defeated the Italians at the Battle of Custoza in 1848. While it is considered martial music, it is also celebratory. I still listen to the Radetzky march today.

Let’s not forget his son, Johann Strauss Jnr, (1825 – 1899) who became an influential composer in his own right. The Blue Danube, one of his main works, is a stirring work, and it helped to imprint the Austrians in my mind. His works are still popular pieces of classical music in our times.

We have all heard of Sigmund Freud, the famed Austrian psychoanalyst, but how many of us have heard of one of his followers, Alfred Adler (1870 – 1937)? A psychologist, socialist, physician and early member of Freud’s inner circle, he broke away from Freudianism and developed his own psychological school of thought.

Summarised in the German word Gemeinschaftsgefühl, it can be roughly translated into English as a community of equal members working towards the social interest. There is no single word in English that truly captures the meaning of the word, but the expression ‘social interest’ comes close enough.

Rather than prioritising individual aggression or sex drives as motivators of human behaviour and development, Adler emphasised the social and cultural connections in which individual personality emerges. For instance, in one of his early books, he examined the diseases of Viennese tailors. While he described the aetiology of their individual conditions, he also closely scrutinised the economic and social conditions of factory industrialisation.

Industrialisation was not a matter of purely individual interest, but an economic system that impacted the public lives of the workers. Adler warned of a decline in public health if the industry was not regulated, with strong provisions against pollution and restrictions to exposure to dangerous chemicals. His psychosocial view was informed by an ethical concern for the lives and wellbeing of his fellow humans.

Surely we should not restrict ourselves to an examination of human behaviour – what about the animals with which we share the Earth? Well, when it comes to a greater awareness of animal behaviour and minds, we must thank pioneering Austrian zoologist and scientist Konrad Lorenz (1903 – 1989).

Studying instinctive behaviour in animals, Lorenz was more responsible than any other scientist for founding ethology, a sub-branch of biology that deals with animal behaviour. Sharing the 1973 Nobel prize for physiology or medicine, Lorenz became famous for examining filial imprinting – a newly born animal immediately bonds with and becomes dependent upon the first animal they witness after birth, usually the parent.

Interestingly, in his Nobel acceptance speech, mentioned one of his teachers who influenced his outlook, the Benedictine monk, Philip Heberdey. It was this teacher that freely taught Lorenz Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection. Lorenz mentioned that freedom of thought is still characteristic of modern Austria.

Let’s not dismiss Lorenz as a boring, ivory-tower academic. In 1944, he was conscripted into the German army as a physician, and served on the Soviet front. Captured by the Soviets, he was held as a prisoner of war from 1944 to 1948 in Soviet Armenia. Repatriated in 1948, he expressed his regret that he had joined the Nazi party.

There are many other Austrians who qualify in the category of greatness, but to elaborate on all of them would make this article excessively lengthy. There is Karl Popper (1902 – 1994), philosopher of science who came up with the concept of falsifiability; Friedrich Hasenöhrl (1874 – 1915) a physicist who independently of and before Einstein, correctly suggested the relation between electromagnetic mass and energy, anticipated the famous equation E=mc².

Be that as it may, I would like to conclude by stating that the club of great Austrians has expanded by one. I made a new friend at the coffee shop where I usually go to find sanctuary from life’s tempestuous times. Let’s call him Günther.

Hailing from Austria, he is neither rich nor famous, and has not made any scientific or philosophical breakthroughs. His friendliness is infectious, his personal charm matched only by the warmth of his disposition. Possessing the social skills to get on with people, he may be older in years, but still youthful in mind. I send a big thank you to Günther for his friendship. He makes the club of great Austrians that much brighter.