Let’s start with the late Byelorussian-born Jewish American scholar Solomon Grayzel (1896 – 1980). He wrote numerous books, but one in particular made an impact in our household, A History of the Jews (1968). A sweeping examination of the Jewish people and their triumphs and tribulations, we had a well-thumbed copy of that particular paperback in our lounge room bookcase.

Presenting the foundation of the Zionist state of Israel in 1948 as the triumphant pinnacle of Jewish history over their antisemitic persecutors, he covered all the important and decisive twists and turns of their tortuous history from Babylonian captivity until modern times. He made one important observation that has stayed with me, regarding the relationship between the Jewish people and the United States.

Grayzel observed that without Jewish immigration, and immigrants in general, the US educational and university system would atrophy and die. Without the pipeline of immigration from Europe, the United States would wither and die on the vine – at least, their educational, scientific and publishing establishments. He was not wrong.

I was very young when I first read his book, and could not formulate my own thoughts on the subject. If Israel is a triumphal conclusion of the Jewish people’s struggle against genocidal antisemitism, why did the establishment of that state require the genocidal expulsion of the indigenous Palestinians?

I wish I had advice at the time on how to respond to Grayzel’s assertions. No, not because I was on an egotistical trip to prove my credentials and surpass Grayzel’s status as a historian. I am definitely not an expert in Jewish history. However, I did want to understand the underlying motivations of Grayzel’s framework, if only to be better prepared next time round.

A tiny firecracker about a big bang

Gerald Schroeder (1938 – ) is an Orthodox Jewish physicist, author and lecturer. Born in the United States, he moved to Israel in 1971 where he resides and works until today, in 1990, he published the first of what turned out to be multiple books trying to reconcile modern science with Orthodox Jewish religious doctrines, Genesis and the Big Bang.

Schroeder was not the first to try to reconcile the Big Bang theory with the biblical account of creation in Genesis. Pope Pius XII, in the 1950s, tried to suggest that the Big Bang (which was not actually an explosion) was scientific confirmation of the creation ex nihilo mythology in the Bible. Georges Lemaitre himself, Belgian priest, cosmologist and the founder of the Big Bang, strongly repudiated such an interpretation.

Schroeder valiantly tries to suggest, for instance, that the days mentioned in Genesis do not refer to our common understanding of 24-hour time periods, but denote time dilation, a concept known to physicists. This is a phase of Big Bang chronology during the microseconds in the initial frame of reference.

Schroeder is stretching the linguistic boundaries. A day may refer to millions of years, geological time eras, or the quark-gluon plasma in the immediate vicinity of the Big Bang.

That is all very creative, but does not amount to much. Indeed, Schroeder is attempting to demonstrate to his readers that he possesses vast scientific knowledge. He certainly does, but that does nothing to prove his case.

Indeed, Schroeder’s expertise is not in question, it is his philosophical approach that is dubious. He wants us to return to the pre-1850s state of science, when the overwhelming majority of scientists were devoted creationists, and upheld the literal inerrancy of the Bible. Louis Agassiz, for instance, was a fervently religious person. He was also the preeminent scientist in the fields of anthropology and biology.

Agassiz, a scientific authority in the United States regarding the Earth’s natural history, strenuously opposed biological evolution, mocked Darwin’s books, and upheld that the plan of creation divided humanity into superior and inferior races.

I wish I had advice from someone who could guide me through all the complexities of this topic, without being overwhelmed.

Elie Wiesel, the international intellectual limited by his nationalism

Elie Wiesel (1928 – 2016) was a Romanian born American intellectual and speaker. He survived the horror of the concentration camps in World War 2, and wrote numerous books about his experiences. He gained a kind of moral authority as a Holocaust survivor, and was promoted as a leading light in dark times.

Speaking out about human rights, and defending the victims of genocide, his internationalist vision had one enormous blind spot. He ignored the plight of the Palestinians, vociferously defending the Israeli government from all criticisms. His ultranationalist perspective lead him to see every criticism of the Israeli government’s practices as motivated by antisemitism.

The hidden hand of Judeophobia was the demon he perceived in every attack on the Israeli political establishment.

Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, he went on to support every US intervention overseas, such the American war on Iraq (in 1991, and 2003). He is not the first Nobel recipient to advocate for war. But he was outstanding in turning the Holocaust into a secular religion, a sacrament that was beyond human rationality or understanding.

True, the horrors of the Holocaust are confronting and challenge our ability to explore the inhumanity. Wiesel did his utmost to turn the Holocaust not into an object for understanding, but into an ideological prop for the criminal policies of the apartheid Israeli government.

Wiesel had his opinions, and that is fine. Turning his books into required reading in educational curricula, promoting his documentaries and interviews on television as the perspective of a morally upstanding intellectual – these do not insulate him from critical scrutiny.

His views were not those of just another scholar. Interviewed and promoted by Oprah, Wiesel gained an international audience and similarly highflying reputation. He helped to turn the Holocaust into a kind of exceptional theology. The genocide of European Jews was the ultimate mystery, according to Wiesel.

Questioning the irrational bases of religions, and theology, should be part of every adult’s intellectual maturity. The Holocaust may be the ultimate mystery, but the motivations of Wiesel are not. His Zionist nationalism ensured that he excluded the Palestinians from his ostensible internationalist vision.

It is true that the sins of the father should not be visited upon the children. That saying acquired new relevance in recent days, and it is time to revisit this particular aphorism.

The newly elected far right president of Chile, Jose Antonio Kast, faces renewed criticism because of the fact that his father, a German immigrant, was a Nazi party member and officer. So what you may say; surely Kast does not need to face generational judgements because of the sins of his father?

That much is true, but this popular wisdom should not undermine our ability to ask the difficult questions. Providing sanctuary for refugees is a noble goal. It is one of the standards by which we evaluate the humaneness of a given society.

It is in this connection that we should explore the following juxtaposition; after World War 2, Cuba showed solidarity to black African nations fighting for their independence from colonialism. At the same time, the United States, Britain and other Anglophone nations provided sanctuary to ex-Nazis and their Eastern European collaborators fleeing justice.

Molly coddling ex-Nazis is not a practice specific to Latin American nations. The US, Canada and other Anglophone nations have a longstanding history of opening their borders to Nazis, white immigrants considered acceptable refugees. I have explored this topic at some length previously.

The subject of visiting the crimes of the parent on the children is something I have been wrestling with for decades. In 1993, former US President Bill Clinton nominated General John Shalikashvili (pronounced Sha-Lee-kash-vee-Lee) to be the chairman of the US Joinr Chiefs of Staff. That basically means the head honcho of the entire US armed forces.

It is always great to see the child of immigrants make it big in the US. What is interesting about this particular episode is that the general’s father, Dimitry Shalikashvili, was a member of the Georgian Legion, an ultranationalist Georgian unit under the operational command of the Nazi Waffen-SS. He fought in this unit as an officer, finding sanctuary in the United States at the conclusion of the world war.

There is no suggestion that Shalikashvili junior was a Nazi or member of the Ku Klux Klan. However, we must ask the obvious question; how did an officer in the Waffen-SS, an organisation proscribed by the Nuremberg trials as a criminal group, find refuge in the United States?

I have previously recounted how the US, Canada and other western nations turned away Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe, but provided sanctuary for ex-Nazis after the end of the war. Rather than recycle the details of that long-ignored undercurrent of Cold War history, let’s focus on two important historical anniversaries which will help us understand the contrasting behaviours of the US and Cuba.

This year, November to be exact, marked the 50th anniversary of the Cuban intervention in Angola. The latter, a newly independent nation after the withdrawal of Portuguese troops, faced a relentless and covert war of terrorism waged by Angolan proxies of apartheid South Africa. If there was a racist regime in the world, it was the racially stratified society of apartheid South Africa.

Beginning in the 1970s, the South African (and American) backed National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) waged a terrorist campaign to sabotage the newly won independence of that nation. It seemed like Angola would fall, and so the authorities asked for Cuban help.

Thousands of Cuban soldiers, fighting alongside their Angolan counterparts, drove the South African army out of Angola, and also from Namibia, another nation targeted by apartheid South Africa. This is an example of Cuba’s internationalism, helping to hasten the eventual demise of the apartheid regime in South Africa. The military defeat of the South African forces in Angola was a setback from which Pretoria never fully recovered.

Operation Carlota, as the Cuban mission was called, is fondly remembered until today as an example of interethnic solidarity.

Keep that in mind, as we explore another milestone. This year marked the 50th anniversary of the passing of Spain’s former military dictator, Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Hitler and Mussolini were both dead in 1945. Franco, whose regime came to power after a three year civil war, received substantial funding and military assistance from the Axis powers.

Franco stayed in power over the decades. Spain under his command sent 40 000 troops to fight alongside German forces in the Soviet Union; the so-called Blue Division. How did he remain in power for over 30 years?

There are many answers to that question, but one major reason is the support and international backing provided by the United States. The Cold War was on, and the US required allies in Western Europe. After the conclusion of WW2, there was a concerted effort in the US and Western Europe to rehabilitate Franco’s reputation.

He was regarded as a stable ruler, one who promoted a conservative national Catholicism. Indeed, the Nobel Prize winning novelist anti-Soviet Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, led the charge to rehabilitate Franco’s reputation not as a pawn of the Axis powers, but as a staunch Catholic who ‘saved Spain from communism.’ How exactly he rescued Spain by killing thousands of his fellow Spaniards is never explained by Solzhenitsyn.

That is true as far as it goes, but it is only half the story. Franco’s regime advocated a vicious antisemitism, kept Republican prisoners in concentration camps, and his record of actively siding with Hitler was underplayed.

German U-boats refilled their tanks and replenished their stocks in Spanish ports. Texaco, the American oil company, provided information about the movements of Allied commercial shipping to Franco’s government. Rather than ‘keeping Spain out of the war’ as Franco’s apologists would have us believe, Nationalist Spain participated in the Nazi war effort. Leon Degrelle, a Belgian wartime Nazi collaborator, Waffen-SS officer and fugitive, found sanctuary in Franco’s Spain after 1945.

The purpose of juxtaposing these episodes is to cast a spotlight on little-known areas of modern history. We reveal our characters when we become known by the friends we keep.

What would you say about a person who keeps interviewing for a job opening that is never available? Over the decades, the Iranian version of a dauphin, Reza Pahlavi, has been doing just that. Offering his services to the regime change fanatics in the Washington Beltway (and Whitehall), he pops up whenever tensions escalate between Tehran and Washington.

That is the assessment of Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah and marionette for the US, of Anthony Anchetta in his informative article for Current Affairs magazine. He details the role of Washington’s willing puppets, usually migrants from countries targeted by the US and Britain for regime change.

I wrote about Venezuelan celebrity dissident Maria Corina Machado here, and her role as a puppet-in-waiting for the United States attack on her nation. Celebrity dissidents are a curious bunch; parroting the talking points of Washington and London, they place the interests of the Anglo-American financial oligarchy above those of their respective nations.

To be clear, the Pahlavis, the ex-Royal dynasty that ruled over Iran for decades, were placed in power through foreign interference. Indeed, Rena’s father and grandfather were selected as compliant agents by foreign powers. Britain in the case of granddaddy Reza Shah Pahlavi (who ruled from 1925 to 1941), the United States in the case of his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi Shah (ruling from 1941 to 1979).

The father, his authority reinforced in 1953 after an American and British backed coup d’état, relied on a secret police service – Savak – which earned a reputation for brutality. Interrogations were carried out using torture, rape and electric shocks. The Iranian monarchy was a solid ally of the US and Israel during the Shah’s tenure, and Iranian oil flowed easily into the hands of Anglo-American oil companies.

The 1979 revolution toppled the pro-American Pahlavi dynasty, and since then Tehran has been politically disobedient towards Washington and London. Reza Pahlavi has made a career out of denouncing the Tehran mullahs, hiding his regime change agenda behind a mask of secularism.

The Iranian opposition in exile, such as it is, is a fractious, squabbling, bickering collection of political groups. Their only unifying feature is hostility to the government of Tehran. The main preoccupation of the diaspora Iranian opposition is threatening each other with violence should any group deviate ever so slightly from the MAGA regime change policy.

Pahlavi himself visited Israel in 2023, under the watchful guidance of the then Israel intelligence minister Gila Gamliel. Pahlavi is continuing in the pro-Israeli footsteps of his father. That is interesting, because in early 2024, when an Islamic State offshoot carried out coordinated attacks inside Iran, Pahlavi was on hand to basically rationalise those bombings.

Exculpating the responsibility of an ISIS-affiliated group is an eye-opening exercise, given Washington’s unceasing rhetoric regarding the threat of terrorism.

Numerous articles have been written regarding the defeat of Iranian influence in Syria, following the toppling of the former Ba’athist government in that nation. Others much more knowledgeable than me have tackled this difficult topic. I cannot claim to provide superior knowledge or intelligence on such matters.

I can state however, that the new authorities in Damascus, the militants of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), were deliberately cultivated and groomed for the task of regime change by London. Transforming the HTS organisation from terrorists to politicians is no mean feat, considering that HTS has its origins as an Al Qaeda and ISIS affiliate.

The HTS uprising against the former Syrian regime was successful; it is the modern-day Syrian equivalent of the Sudeten German uprising in the late 1930s in former Czechoslovakia. Both uprisings, organised and supported by a foreign power, relied on political forces that advocated a form of ideological extremism; takfiri jihadist fanaticism in Syria, fanatical pan-German racism in the Sudeten case.

Remember the evil dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, who has remained in power all these decades in the former Soviet republic of Belarus? He was on our television screens for quite some time in 2020, because he was going to be the next villainous ogre to be ousted in a Western backed regime change operation. Was there a Belarusian equivalent of Reza Pahlavi or Maria Corina Machado? A Belarusian politician singing the tune that Washington wants to hear?

You bet there was – entering the stage as the smiling face of the liberal opposition was Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, portrayed as a modern day Joan of Arc by the mouthpiece of American capitalism, the New York Times. Showered with money, political backing and fawning media coverage, she was the toast of London, Washington, Paris and other imperial capitals. She was going to overthrow the evil Lukashenko, removing a pro-Russian ally, and steer Belarus on a pro-Western course.

Unlike Hollywood movies, where every scene is scripted, choreographed and rehearsed, reality does not always go to plan. Her government in exile is collapsing, five years on from the heady days of 2020. Plagued by financial scandals, corruption, personality clashes, and even allegations of taking money from the Belarusian equivalent of the KGB, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s career as a regime change leader lies in tatters.

No longer the feted darling of the West, even former allies have abandoned her. Her United Transitional Cabinet could not even unite its constituent bickering factions, let alone masses of Belarusian voters. There is no schadenfreude at this lamentable, pathetic situation. We have to maintain a clear-eyed focus on the failings of yet another EU-US supported astroturf project.

Such a fiasco should compel us to re-examine our practice of using celebrity dissidents as proxies of Anglophone power. They do not have their countries’ best interests in mind, but rather view their lucrative careers as satraps within the Anglo-American fold as the ultimate priority.

Amidst all the online chatter regarding the impact of AI, I can only contribute one point which initially may seem strange. The main claim of ChatGPT, and generative AI, is its remarkable speed. At the click of a button, any question you may have is answered nearly instantaneously by AI. Writing a paper? No problem; ChatGPT will generate a flawless essay in a matter of seconds.

My experience has been the exact opposite – ChatGPT slows down the writing/blogging process. Yes, you read that correctly. ChatGPT is an impediment to the writing/blogging process.

Let’s begin with a bit of background, so we can all understand what I am arguing. I grew up in the age before the internet, during a time when artificial intelligence was the stuff of science fiction. The latter can be quite useful, portraying a society (or dystopia) should existing scientific trends continue.

However, when science fiction becomes a recipe for obsessive technofixes, this is when we become trapped in our own delusions. The tech billionaires want us to fixate on technofixes, technological innovations that will allegedly solve our societal problems.

Technology is wonderful, contributing to all sorts of improvements in our lives. Longer and healthier lives, unraveling the mysteries of outer space, bringing species back from the brink of extinction – these are awesome accomplishments.

We must overcome the focus on the technofixes-plus-markets scenario promoted by the tech giants.

Ok, let’s get back to my school days. I distinctly remember the English teacher from senior high school, Ms Williams, putting me on the spot.

The subject of nuclear weapons and the possibility of thermonuclear war came up in class. I think we were discussing George Orwell’s 1984. We were sitting in a rectangular fashion, all of us facing the centre. The topic of whether or not Nazi Germany was developing an atomic weapon came up. Were they pursuing a nuclear programme? Were they close to building a bomb, or decades away? Did the US do the right thing by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The teacher looked at me and said, ‘Rupen, you seem to know a lot about this subject, World War 2 and so on, what do you think? Was Germany building a nuclear weapon?’

I answered the question to the best of my abilities. After class ended, I was thinking about that episode. The teacher asked for my evaluation about an important topic. She saw me, all of 16 years old, as a subject matter expert. She asked in front of the whole class. I relied on books – and documentaries – to answer her question.

I had to separate science fiction from reality. What does that mean?

Nazi Wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) have been the subject of intense fascination since the end of World War 2. All the documentation, prototypes and military equipment of the Nazi war machine (at least, that which was not destroyed) was seized and studied by the Allied authorities. That included the Nazi nuclear program.

While the Nazi party had hundreds of military projects and proposed technological projects (involving thousands of civilian contractors), they were decades away from constructing a nuclear bomb. This is not to dismiss the German scientists as incompetents; far from it. As the Nazis were losing territory and resources, the capability of achieving a controlled nuclear chain reaction diminished.

There has been all sorts of speculation about the Wunderwaffen – prototypes of gigantic super tanks to anti-gravity flying saucers and UFOs. Occultism and Western fascination with esoteric spiritualism has melded with Nazi Germany, the latter associated with supernatural and mystical forces. Let us remember that the Nazi authorities did their best to promote occultism and pseudo-archaeology in their official policies.

What was a demonstrably successful super-duper weapon was the V-2 rocket, an early version of a cruise missile. Dubbed the vengeance weapon, this guided ballistic missile brought terror to the hearts of the Allies. Flying undetected and unable to be brought down by anti-aircraft systems, these rockets were technically the first human-made vehicles to reach outer space, just surpassing the Karman line of the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

They caused casualties in Britain, but the heaviest toll the V-2 rockets took was on the thousands of forced labourers, concentration camp inmates compelled to build them. Yes, the scientists and engineers designed them, but it was the thousands of concentration camp workers who died building them.

The V-2 scored spectacular successes, but did not change the course of the war.

ChatGPT is similar to the V-2 missile; a spectacular piece of technology that is initially impressive, but has a hidden human-environmental cost, a technofix that will not ultimately change the current course of our capitalist society.

There are increasing reports, and awareness of, the enormous ecological costs of the data centres which process our AI requests. Data centres are the unrecognised engines (or forced labourers) of the digital age. They consume vast amounts of electricity and require huge quantities of water to cool them down. That water cannot be replaced. Each ChatGPT essay requires a staggering amount of water to sustain the processing power of the data centre.

If AI can perform a statistical analysis of complex data sets, thus saving you time, that is great. If ChatGPT produces a greater return on investment (ROI) for your business, that is fantastic.

If you write an essay using ChatGPT, and submit that as part of a university course, think about what you have actually learned. If the tutor or instructor uses ChatGPT to evaluate your essay, does that mean they have actually understood what your paper?

If our educational experience is mediated by AI-driven exchanges, what happens to the meaning of a university education?

Open ChatGPT, and think of the topic you want to ask it. Type in your question and press Return. It will give you a wonderful answer. Is it correct? Is it hallucinating references or citations, which it is known to do?

You still need to edit and rewrite what it has produced. You still need to verify the content as correct. You still need to ensure that the essay says what you want to say. You could allocate all that time and energy towards creating your own work. So, close ChatGPT and write your own essay.