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.

I am old enough to remember writing letters on clean, new sheets of paper by hand. Pen or pencil, this was the time of typewriters. Submitting essays and manuscripts by typed pages, you would have to wait for a response from the reader – if any. Publishers ruled the roost, and academics marking your paper determined your emotional wellbeing. Did I pass? Is my writing good enough? These questions driven by anxiety preoccupied your mind.

Not anymore. The advent of computerisation and the internet forced us to learn and adapt. New words entered our lexicon – hard drive, RAM, microchips, terabytes, floppy disks, pixels – the digital age had arrived.

‘Hit me up on Insta’ is now a valid sentence. Who would have anticipated such a sentence 35 years ago?

Publishing companies have had to adapt to the new ways of producing books and online content. Many have faced bankruptcy and collapsed in due course. Mediaweek magazine, in April 2025, stated that the AI-driven apocalypse for publishing companies is not coming – it is already here. Job losses and redundancies have swept through the publishing industry.

Long gone are the days of submitting manuscripts to publishers, and anxiously waiting for editors to read and evaluate them – if they did that at all.

Authors now have to consider things like dwell time – the amount of time a reader spends on a webpage. After all, audiences are constantly bombarded with clickbait, prompting us to keep moving. Authors need to consider not just the words they use, but if their writing will increase the dwell time of webpage readers.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is another variable that authors must think about – is my content appearing high up in web search results? What terms are internet users searching for? How do search engines rank the content they find? If you write the next great detective novel, that’s wonderful. But you also have to consider if your content will rank in the results of the search engine’s algorithm.

No, I am not nostalgic for the typewriter. Technology always changes, and writers must adapt. There is no future in being a technological Luddite.

However, we must be wary about the tsunami of artificial intelligence (AI) that tech company giants, and their supporters in government, are uncritically adopting. It is a cultural and socioeconomic sea change which needs to be addressed, not with blind hostility, but not with the equally blind faith with which Silicon Valley and its proponents have advocated in it.

AI is rapidly taking over school and university education tasks. Students can now use agentic resources to fully automate their essays and course requirements. Silicon Valley tech companies have pushed their way into the public education system.

It is not just a matter of ChatGPT writing essays for students, as problematic as that is. Now AI can complete your physics problems, integrate course material, ‘listen’ to lectures and write notes for you, and identify your errors in practice tests. Newer iterations of AI can be fed a course syllabus, course readings, and generate answers to your questions, all at the push of a button.

It is not just students using AI; increasingly, overworked academics are use AI bots to grade papers, and generate student-specific feedback. It saves time – a task that took 10-15 hours per week to do can now be done in a matter of minutes.

Anthropic, a major AI tech company, is paying students to be AI ‘ambassadors’, in which workshops on AI are hosted. Students enrolled in this programme have free access to the company’s latest and greatest software.

If an AI chatbot does all the educational heavy lifting, where does that leave the knowledge capital of the student? What happens when a medical student uses AI to complete their course, and graduate as a doctor? Did they learn about, for instance, the structure and workings of the human immune system?

It is true that calculators and spreadsheets did not take away our ability to do mathematics. However, AI is not just another calculator. It is collecting our information, producing results based on that input. We are increasingly outsourcing our cognitive functions to the AI stochastic parrot. Can an AI-dependent doctor adequately evaluate the clinical needs of a patient?

We cannot avoid the digital age, but we do not have to gallop towards the future as imagined by the Silicon Valley tech giants either. The large tech corporations, having railed against government intervention and ‘red tape’ all these years, want us to forget that the origins of the companies that formed today’s Silicon Valley giants were seeded by government funding in partnership with the corporate sector. Its technological innovations were viewed as part of a post-World War 2 national project of scientific revival

Today, Silicon Valley still works in partnership with the state. It is no secret that the tech billionaires had a strong input into the programmatic goals of the Trump-MAGA cult currently installed in Washington. Let’s take AI, and education for that matter, out of the hands of the billionaire tech overlords, and restructure it for the common good. I was raised in the era when the main goal of education was to educate the public, not to generate corporate profits.

Sometimes, as evidenced by military history, wars are not won by a major battle or knockout blow. It is not a boxing match, where fighters belt the daylights out of each other until one falls down. Strategic patience can wear down an enemy. There is no single decisive engagement, but the enemy retreats suffering the death of a thousand cuts.

The Duke of Wellington was a military genius, but not for the reasons everyone thinks. Yes, the English forces won the battle of Waterloo, defeating Napoleon’s attempted comeback. That battle was nowhere near on the same scale and magnitude as the battles of the Napoleonic era. Its military significance has no doubt been exaggerated by British Empire loyalists.

Be that as it may, Wellington’s genius was proven in a battle that was not a single spectacular engagement, but rather the result of careful planning – the Lines of Torres Vedras. The Duke of Wellington, and his army’s Portuguese allies, fought the powerful French armies of Marshal Massena to a standstill.

Protecting Lisbon from a French takeover, the English-Portuguese coalition decided on strategic patience. Rather than face a superior French force on open ground, they decided to use the terrain around Lisbon, building a series of interlocking defensive fortifications, digging into the mountainous countryside centred on the town of Torres Vedras.

Taking almost a year (from November 1809 to September 1810), the Lines of Torres Vedras consisted of trenches, outposts, redoubts, escarpments and fortifications deep in the mountainous environment. The English and their Portuguese workers constructed dams, controlled flooded areas – a remarkable feat of strategically patient engineering.

Preparing an impenetrable series of defences around Lisbon took skill and resilience. They could inflict losses on the French army, all the while maintaining their positions.

Then they waited for the French.

The latter, with overextended supply lines, facing a hostile population, overreaching its hand, confronted the Lines of Torres Vedras. The British, backed by Portuguese irregulars, harassed and attacked the weary French. The Iberian peninsula was not going to fall easily, and the Anglo-Portuguese forces successfully held off Marshal Massena’s gigantic army.

Hungry, demoralised, facing constant defeats at the Lines of Torres Vedras, Marshal Massena had to accept the inevitable. He failed to take Lisbon. In March 1811, he took the decision he dreaded.

The mighty French armies retreated. The seemingly unstoppable French forces suffered a terrible defeat.

The Peninsular War dragged on, but Napoleonic France never fully subdued the Spanish and Portuguese of the Iberian Peninsula.

Why am I saying all this?

The United States has faced its Torres Vedras in the shape of Iran.

The latter, using strategic patience and quiet strength, has inflicted a military defeat upon the world’s principal imperialist power.

Since 2001, when former US President George W Bush called Iran part of the axis of evil, the Tehran authorities have been preparing for this war. Redefining their military doctrines, adapting to the new technology of drones, building economic alliances which are independent of the US, upgrading its military capabilities – these were all done quietly with long term patience.

The entire network of US military bases in the Gulf states has been destroyed. US military personnel took refuge in hotels in Saudi Arabia. Tehran constructed elaborate decoys to misdirect US and Israeli air strikes. While the Trump-MAGA cult shouted and raged on social media, the Iranian leadership drew upon their knowledge of Western philosophy and computer science to outsmart and out-strategise their American opponents.

The late Ali Larijani, the former chief of Iran’s national security council, was a graduate in mathematics and computer science. He had a PhD in Western philosophy, and wrote books about the philosophy of logic. He was assassinated by the United States, an action which probably constitutes a war crime.

Drones, in and of themselves, do not win wars. However, they have effectively neutralised a long time symbol of US military might, the aircraft carrier. The latter had its time during World War 2, and was a potent symbol of military strength, projecting mobile air power. That function has been successfully countered with the deployment of drones. Tehran used drone warfare to knock out enemy radar stations, tracking bases, as well as hitting American aircraft carriers.

I think that a leadership familiar with Western philosophy, history and politics is better equivalent to handle military strategy rather than the MAGA money-worshipping cultists who have no military background.

Iran has paid an enormous humanitarian and ecological cost for this victory. The US-Israeli bombing exacted a heavy toll in civilian casualties, and toxic air pollution sits atop the residents of Tehran. The Pasteur Institute sustained heavy damage, and Iran public health infrastructure was targeted by the US-Israeli bombing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) expressed its concerns that the cessation of medicine production and damage to medical facilities will result in patient deaths.

The deliberate attack on Iranian schoolchildren, a war crime in and of itself, should have given the supporters of the US-Israeli war pause for thought.

This knowledge alone should make us pause any triumphalist declarations of victory. However, there is no hiding the fact that the US military has suffered a significant defeat.

At the time of writing, there is a ceasefire – only time will tell if this ceasefire will hold. Nevertheless, Tehran has emerged from this conflict in a strengthened position. The Trump-Epstein-MAGA cult failed to carry out regime change in Iran.

There has been regime change; not in Tehran, but on the seas. The maritime regime of the oil industry has been changed irrevocably. Tehran not only stopped the oil traffic for hostile states through the Strait of Hormuz, they are charging a toll for nations to use that maritime route. This selective blocking demonstrates to the world that the petrodollar can be weakened, thus impacting all the nations that rely on fossil fuels.

I am quite certain that more reams of commentary will be forthcoming regarding this conflict in the Middle East. Tehran enters future talks with the US possessing all the cards. Iranian strategic patience and calculation have won out over MAGA muscle-flexing and macho posturing.

Oskar Schindler, the Nazi German businessman made posthumously famous by Steven Spielberg’s hit movie of 1993, was not the only person to rescue Jews during World War 2. Before Schindler achieved international fame via Hollywood, there was the case of Raoul Wallenberg, about whom I wrote earlier. Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat and businessman in Budapest, issued travel documents for European Jews escaping Nazi persecution. Let’s not forget that he was also an intelligence agent.

Schindler and Wallenberg belong to an honorific group known as Righteous Among the Nations. The latter is the title bestowed, by the Israeli government, to a grouping of non-Jews who risked their lives and professional status to contribute to the rescue of European Jews during the Nazi era.

The criteria are set out by Yad Vashem, and the individuals bestowed with this honorific originate from different nations and backgrounds.

One of the names in this group is Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara (1900 – 1986). A Japanese diplomat, he was posted to Kaunas, temporarily the capital city of Lithuania, in 1939. As vice-consul, Sugihara not only fulfilled his consular duties, but reported to his superiors in Tokyo on Soviet and German troop movements. The Baltics, while nominally independent, were closely tied economically and militarily to Germany. The USSR occupied the Baltic states in 1940.

The Jewish community in the Baltics, already subjected to antisemitic attacks and persecution by the Baltic ultranationalist authorities, was looking for ways to flee. Sugihara, reportedly, issued transit visas to desperate Jewish families, even though this job was not within his official remit. He is credited with rescuing between 6000 and 7000 Jews.

But is this number verifiable? Is the Chiune Sugihara story, a narrative of courageous generosity in the face of lethal powers, accurate?

The Japanese government certainly thinks that Sugihara is a superhero. While Sugihara himself was inducted into the Righteous Among the Nations by Tel Aviv in 1985, since the year 2000, Tokyo has deliberately and aggressively cultivated a narrative of Sugihara the selfless, brave hero-diplomat risking life and limb to rescue Jewish refugees.

Sugihara was not just a consular official, he also worked as an intelligence agent for Tokyo. He cooperated with Polish intelligence, sending information about Polish, German, and Russian troop movements back to Tokyo. This part of his Kaunas activities is conveniently omitted from the hagiographic accounts of his life issued by Tokyo.

Tokyo has issued educational materials about him, celebrated his life story and exhorted schoolchildren to emulate his example. Parks and public places have been named after Sugihara. His putative hometown, Yaotsa, has a commemorative monument and museum for him. The town also boasts a Sugihara Remembrance Route. The Washington Post described him as the Japanese Schindler.

This picture of saintly Sugihara has come under fire from historians, researchers, as well as his surviving son, Nobuki. Nobuki has been doing his utmost to debunk the many myths and legends that have grown surrounding his late father’s role and reputation.

Certainly Sugihara issued travel documents for fleeing Jewish refugees in Lithuania. That took immense courage under pressure.

However, Sugihara’s actions were only one link in a network of sympathetic and brave people who risked their lives and professional status to help Jews fleeing persecution.

Meron Medzini, a professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Department of Asian Studies and world expert on the Sugihara story, said that while Sugihara issued thousands of visas, it is basically impossible to verify how many Jews used those visas, so the figure of 6000 or 7000 people rescued is difficult to substantiate.

One consul whose name had been airbrushed from the heroic Sugihara narrative is that of Dutchman Jan Zwartendijk. The latter, the Dutch consul in Kaunas, issued documentation for Jewish refugees, assigning Dutch-controlled Curaçao, off the coast of Venezuela. Soviet authorities issued the requisite permission for the refugees to travel, as long as they eventually left Soviet territory.

Jan Zwartendijk’s role has largely been overshadowed by the Sugihara superhero story. Why has Tokyo heavily promoted the heroic narrative of their compatriot? Imperial Japan’s World War 2 reputation is that of a predatory, ruthless and sadistic power, exploiting and murdering millions. The Japanese military’s conduct of massacres, rapes, and using ‘comfort women’ is well established.

Sugihara’s conduct as a brave, generous person, friend of the Jewish community helps to soften Japan’s wartime image. Similarly to the case of Raoul Wallenberg’s in the 1980s, the superhero narrative is built to cynically exploit the generosity of courageous individuals helping refugees to channel sympathy for geopolitical interests.

Wallenberg’s native Sweden, while officially neutral during World War 2, maintained and extended secretive commercial and economic ties to the Nazi regime. Swedish raw materials and products were exported to Germany, materials that directly fed the Nazi war machine. Having Wallenberg as a hero who rescued Jews helps to obfuscate the murky commercial ties between Stockholm and Berlin.

Certainly, the people who rescued Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution and mass murder should be respected and admired. The stories about non-Jewish Europeans extending a helping hand to fleeing Jews are still being uncovered. Emotionally manipulating their generosity for cynical objectives is an exercise we can do without.

The Australian authorities have spent decades convincing us that there are hordes of potential refugees out there, just waiting for an opportunity to enter our nation like a gigantic tidal wave. Harsh anti-refugee laws have been enacted on the rationale that any weakening on our borders will only encourage millions of would-be asylum seekers battering down our gates.

Australian voters are encouraged to be suspicious of darker-skinned and Middle Eastern people. Are they really genuine refugees, or just opportunistic migrants seeking the prosperity and financial riches of our abundant nation? Voters are encouraged to be routinely suspicious of asylum seekers – questioning their motives for fleeing is a national pastime. Funnily enough, Australians did not question the motivations of Eastern Europeans fleeing the Communist bloc during the Cold War.

Each Eastern European refugee, we were assured, had ideological motivations for leaving. Each refugee from a Communist nation was deemed a pure, freedom-seeking individual unconcerned with financial concerns. Cold War anticommunism helped to shape our concerns for refugees; victims of US-sponsored regime change wars are routinely ignored, their motivations for fleeing either minimised or subject to suspicion.

Election campaigns by both major parties have encouraged this ‘tough-on-refugees’ claim, each party attempting to demonstrate its superior ‘toughness’ and cruelty against refugees to the electorate. The mandatory detention of refugees in camps began in the early 1990s, and has been enforced until this very day. Offshore detention is a particularly egregious form of institutional cruelty – out of sight, out of mind, as far as the Australian electorate is concerned.

Leaving asylum seekers in limbo is a calculated policy of discouragement – compel them to ‘voluntarily’ leave to a third country, or their nation of origin. Canberra has paid huge sums of money to Asia-Pacific nations to take asylum seekers, even before they have attempted the dangerous journey to Australia. Advertising campaigns have targeted asylum seekers, discouraging them from even thinking about coming to Australia. Don’t the asylum seekers realise that Australia is a land of dangerous snakes, spiders and poisonous animals?

Well, imagine the turnaround over the last few months, when the Australian government went out of its way to provide fast tracked asylum applications for the members of the Iranian women’s football team. The Iranian soccer team, here to play in the AFC Asian Cup, were immediately offered asylum, jumping the much-touted ‘queue’ that boat arrivals supposedly bypass according to conservative commentators and radio shock jocks.

The Iranian women, we were assured, face certain imprisonment and death should they return to Iran. The fact that Iranians might be fleeing their nation due to the US-Israeli bombardment of Iran, willingly supported by Canberra, never enters the discussion.

The Australian immigration authorities, the Home Affairs Department, all went into a propaganda overdrive to put out the welcome mat for the Iranian football/soccer players. After a number of them accepted asylum, they then rejected those offers. Most of the women’s team have returned to Iran. To the best of my knowledge, only two have remained in Australia, and have signed contracts to play for soccer teams here – I wish them all the success and happiness in the world.

The Australian authorities, in line with other Anglophone nations, have exploited asylum seekers for propaganda purposes in the past. They have helped to manufacture an asylum seeking hysteria, such as the 1950s Petrov Affair. I will not go into all the details of that episode here, but suffice it to say that asylum seekers from official ‘enemy’ nations, are used by Canberra to whip up a hothouse, ‘we love freedom’ media-hysteria.

Manufacturing politically expedient ‘defections’, with the assistance of the police and intelligence agencies, serves to incite pro-war sentiment in the domestic population. Iran, officially designated an enemy nation, is bearing the brunt of US-Israeli military operations. In line with the military requirements of this attack, an ideological campaign of fabricated hysteria is needed to keep the Australian population in a state of high anxiety.

Aided and abetted in this campaign of orchestrated defections is the pro-war Iranian diaspora community. Staging protests and actions in front of the hotel where the Iranian women footballers were held, they cynically wrap themselves in a mantle of humanitarian concern. This purported concern has never been extended to the Palestinians, Syrians, Armenians, or other nations’ refugees – it seems that fleeing ‘mad mullahs’ is the sole criterion of concern applied by the Iranian Shah loyalist community.

While the Iranian football players were having their applications for asylum expedited – presuming they did independently apply for asylum without any pressure from the Australian authorities – there are at least 1036 refugees locked away in onshore detention camps. They have experienced long term detention, and their applications sit unprocessed by the relevant authorities.

Now I am not trying to pit one group of refugees against another. No, I am not suggesting that the Iranian women footballers are undeserving of asylum. I am saying that the fabricated crisis of their alleged asylum request reeks of governmental hypocrisy on the part of Canberra. Please stop deploying the tired old cliche that ‘Muslim women are oppressed by mad mullahs’, when trying to justify the monumental hypocrisy of Australian government leaders and officials.

Did organic molecules, originating in extraterrestrial sources, contribute to the origin of life on Earth? Was life on our planet seeded from outer space? While the theory of panspermia – that the origin life on Earth came from outer space – is rejected, scientists are exploring how life’s building blocks can be found in meteorites, objects from the early solar system.

No, life did not exclusively originate in space, but meteorite impacts did contribute to the chemical compounds that led to the formation of nucleobases, the molecules responsible for DNA and RNA.

Why am I writing about this topic?

In 2020, I wrote an article regarding the Japanese Space Agency’s (JAXA) mission to collect samples from the asteroid Ryugu. The latter is an asteroid relatively close to Earth – given the distance involved in astronomical missions. Asteroid particles were collected from Ryugu by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft. Scientists have been examining these samples for evidence of an organic compounds.

Ryugu is a remnant from the early stages of the solar system’s formation. Roughly 900 metres across, it is older than the Earth, and provides a snapshot of the materials which were predominant in the early phases of the solar system. It was found to contain all five nucleobases necessary for the making of DNA and RNA molecules, the basic building blocks of life.

Such compounds were abundant in the early solar system. They form a crucial step in the transition from the nonliving world to life.

We all learned in high school biology about the building blocks of DNA – adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine. These molecules, combined with phosphates and sugars, form the nucleotides that combine into now famous double-helix structure of DNA.

These nitrogen-containing organic molecules form the now famous letters of genetic information in DNA.

Uracil is necessary for the development of RNA. Without these nucleobases; adenine and guanine – known as purines – and cytosine, thymine and uracil – known as pyrimidines – life as we know it would be impossible.

This is the not first time that scientists have examined meteoritic and asteroid material for signs of organic compounds. The 1864 Orgueil meteorite, which slammed into southwestern France, contained various nucleobases of life. Meteorite explorations were still in their infancy at the time, but curiosity regarding the origins of life was taking on a scientific turn with the rise of geology.

The Murchison meteorite in Western Australia, which impacted in 1969, was also found to contain nucleobases. Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid has been studied by telescope for decades, but in 2018, a NASA spacecraft collected particles from it. Scientists have found the presence of nucleobases as well.

There were differences found in the relative abundances of the nucleobases when comparing the different meteoritic samples.

Ryugu contained roughly equal amounts of the purine nucleobases (adenine and guanine) and pyrimidine nucleobases (cytosine, thymine, and uracil). The Murchison meteorite mostly contained purines, while the Bennu and Orgueil samples mostly contained pyrimidines.

Bennu and Ryugu asteroids are a type of carbonaceous asteroids, the most common type in the solar system.

The question of abiogenesis, the origin of life, is separate from the subject area of evolutionary biology. Exploring the prebiotic chemistry of the early Earth and solar system is a complex subject, and scientists are working on the chemical pathways which led from inorganic matter to organic life.

The findings from the Ryugu asteroid do not conclusively prove that life was seeded from outer space, as science fiction fans would have us believe. However, the tantalising evidence that nucleobases formed in the early solar system opens up an exciting avenue of enquiry.

The distinction between the biological and geological realms is becoming blurry. Early in the 20th century, Soviet geologist and biochemist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863 – 1945) first suggested that life can be considered a geological force that shapes the Earth’s ecosystems.

He helped to popularise the concept of a biosphere, which consists of considering all living matter on Earth as an interconnected system – what we would today call the ecosystem. He looked for the origins of the animate world in inanimate matter.

Alexandr Oparin (1894 – 1980), a Soviet biologist and biochemist developed the theory of the chemical evolution of organic molecules from prebiotic sources. (I wrote about him in this article). He pioneered experiments which reproduced the prebiotic conditions of Earth, providing a chemical pathway for the emergence of organic compounds.

The Ryugu findings do not decisively prove that Vernadsky and Oparin were correct. It does bolster their findings that organic molecules can arise from non-animate worlds, such as that which prevailed in the early solar system. By piecing together the various lines of evidence, the mystery of life’s origins is beginning to be answered.