It has been 16 years since Liam Neeson first played Bryan Mills, retired ex-Green Beret and CIA officer, who goes on a one-man vigilante-style, retribution-driven hunt to track down the criminals who kidnapped his daughter. Taken, launched in 2008, has become famous mostly for introducing the world to those intimidating, memorable lines growled by the grizzled Neeson – “what I do have is a particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career; skills which make me a nightmare for people like you.”

Neeson has since gone on to cement his place as an action movie star, basically recycling the same cynical, world-weary and aging veteran military man deployed into action in different environments; on a plane (Nonstop), on a train (The Commuter), an ice-covered roads (The Ice Road), a ski resort (Cold Pursuit).

Ok, Liam, we get it – you are an action movie star.

You know the old saying about life imitating art? Perhaps we can apply the reverse. There is a real life, aging veteran who deployed his particular combination of lethal skill sets to multiple situations and combat zones. No, he did not wear black leather jackets – though he did fight in various weather zones and military forces. Proving his worth as a soldier in the icy conditions of his native country, he went on to fight in the humid, stifling jungles of Vietnam.

Larry Thorne, American Green Berets participant, began his life as Finnish soldier Lauri Törni. The Green Berets, an American Special Forces unit, began in 1952 as the particular brainchild of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA. Undergoing rigorous training in guerrilla warfare, sabotage tactics, surveillance, the recruit has to be equipped with strong physical and mental stamina.

Thorne, as Lauri Törni came to be known in the US, contributed significantly to the training regime of this new unit. He honed his particular unique skill set, not only fighting for Finland, but also as an officer in the Waffen SS during the Second World War.

Let’s elaborate some relevant background here, because in order to understand Thorne and his actions, we have to examine the tensions between Finland and the USSR during the interwar period (1918-39).

Finland was given independence from Imperial Russia in the immediate aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Lenin and the Communist leadership accepted that non-Russian nationalities should have their independence. The Communist ideology inspired the abortive, short lived Red Finland experiment in 1918. Finnish workers established their own Soviet republic.

That experiment would be mercilessly crushed by an alliance of anticommunist privileged Finns, backed up by German troops. The Finnish ruling class, headed by General Carl Mannerheim, violently suppressed the Finnish workers, assisted in this undertaking by German light infantry, the Jaegers. Ironically, Mannerheim had trained as an officer in Tsarist Russia.

The Finnish civil war established Mannerheim’s reputation as an able military commander, but also demonstrated his willingness to kill his fellow Finns, enabled by outside support. It was not the last time that Germans and Finns would fight together.

Finland had acquired the territory of Karelia, along the Finnish-Soviet border. In 1939, with tensions increasing between Moscow and Berlin, the Kremlin was worried that Finland would be used as a staging post for launching German troops. Leningrad was close to the Finnish border. Moscow was concerned that with Finnish-controlled territory surrounding Leningrad, the latter could easily become encircled.

Mannerheim, understandably, did not want to cede Finnish territory.

The 1939-40 Finnish-Soviet war, popularly known as the Winter War, pitted the smaller and militarily weaker Finland against the might of the Soviet Union. The Finns, and Lauri Törni who was by now an officer, performed admirably, inflicting heavy losses on the Soviets. However, the Finns eventually lost, and had to cede even more territory than the Kremlin demanded prior to the war’s outbreak.

Finland was the underdog to be sure – it is much smaller by geography, population and economic power compared to its eastern neighbour. However, Finland was an underdog with powerful German friends in Europe.

Though Mannerheim insisted that Finland was not an ally of Nazi Germany, his government did everything it could to assist the Wehrmacht in its invasion of the USSR. Finland mined the waters in the USSR’s maritime territory, and allowed German forces to be deployed for an eventual attack on Leningrad from Finland.

Back to Lauri Törni – joining the Waffen SS, he distinguished himself in battle. After the war was over, non-German Nazi collaborators reinvented themselves as simple patriots fighting for the liberation of their respective nations. Just how implementing the Waffen SS programme of racial extermination of Jews, Slavs and ethnic minorities would assist in their emancipatory struggles, is never explained.

Imprisoned for treason by the Finnish authorities after the defeat of Nazi Germany, Lauri Törni escaped and made his way to the United States. There he found a nation not only willing to forget the recent past, but also to forget his service in the criminal and psychopathic Waffen SS organisation.

The Cold War had begun, and Larry Thorne, recent immigrant, could offer a particular set of skills, skills cultivated over a long period of time, skills which made him an invaluable asset for people like the US intelligence establishment.

If you contribute a multiple skill toolkit such as parachuting, skiing, knife-fighting and hand-to-hand combat, then the Green Berets were the outfit best suited to your resume. Unconventional warfare was a crucial part of the Cold War, and fighting in different nations in covert conditions was a must.

Thorne not only trained new recruits, but was himself deployed to Vietnam. He served two tours of duty, earning commendations for his valour. In 1965, at the age of 46, Thorne crashed his military helicopter while on a secret mission to Laos. His remains were located in 1999, and he was interred in the Arlington National Cemetery in 2003.

What does it say about us in the Anglophone West, when we rejected Jewish refugees from Europe during the war, only to provide sanctuary to their murderers and associated Eastern European collaborators after the conflict ended?

And Liam Neeson – you are an amazingly talented actor; enough with the action movies already.

Yuri Gagarin (1934 – 1968), the first person to travel into outer orbital space, has been immortalised in the form of Cosmonaut’s Day. April 12 is celebrated in Russia, and some post-Soviet states, as a national holiday. Commemorating the 1961 flight by then-27 year old Gagarin into space aboard the Vostok 1, the United Nations declared April 12 to be the International Day of Human Spaceflight in 2011.

The Vostok’s triumphant spaceflight, and Gagarin personally, were hailed around the world. Gagarin’s visit to Manchester, England in 1961, is still remembered today. He toured Egypt in 1962, and met with then Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

In June 1963, Valentina Tereshkova, aboard the Vostok 6 capsule, became the first woman to fly into outer space.

Gagarin tragically died in 1968, in an air accident. While on a training flight with another cosmonaut, a Sukhoi fighter jet flew perilously close to Gagarin’s MiG, pushing the MiG into a ferocious tailspin. Gagarin’s plane crashed.

His status as a hero, rather than diminish, only increased. The black-and-white pictures of Gagarin, his constant smile whether mixing with crowds or standing atop the podium with Soviet presidium leaders, are forever etched in my memory.

Gagarin, and Soviet cosmonauts generally, represented what ordinary working class people could accomplish. Courage, intelligence, integrity, dedication to the homeland – these qualities were those to be emulated by succeeding generations.

Growing up in a socialist household, Gagarin became a hero of mine. However, I was in a tiny minority in that respect, growing up in Sydney.

Manliness

The 1980s were the days of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood – role models of hyper-masculine types. Barely articulate, speaking with their fists (and their guns), Schwarzenegger and Rambo were the heroes for a generation of boys. Relying on violence to solve problems, they epitomised the fixation with masculinity that saturates Hollywood American culture.

Following on from the stoic, quiet types of Gary Cooper, John Wayne and cowboy types, to be a manly hero was to remain reserved, yet express yourself through violence. It was no coincidence that these Hollywood heroes were closely associated with the American military – Rambo being a prime example. Finding supreme self-expression through gunfights and warfare was the ultimate purpose of masculine identity.

Not for us was reading, mathematics, dreaming of spaceflight, history, and music. We were not going to become longhaired, wimpy hippies who cry and talk about their feelings. Real men protect hearth and home, support the military, and leave all that gooey-softie emotional stuff for sissies.

Today we can witness the hypermasculine MAGA cult, deifying its leader portrayed as a modern-day Rambo, in swollen memes. If anything, Trump behaves like a spoilt brat, maturing into the malignant narcissist that he is today.

It can be difficult to step outside of the culture in which you are raised, to examine it objectively. We all know that culture, like gravity is there. It exerts an influence on every aspect of our social interactions. Coming up with alternative masculine heroes requires we extricate ourselves from the Americanised, hyper-individualistic, consumerist culture in which we find ourselves.

Mentioning the name of Yuri Gagarin usually elicited blank stares, followed by questions along the lines of ‘who?’, and ‘what’s so special about him?’ It is sad to see that Gagarin has become a marginalised figure in contemporary Anglophone societies. This is part of a wider trend – ignoring the sacrifices of the Soviet people for the betterment of humanity.

The Cold War was primarily about politics and economics, but the cultural sphere was undoubtedly an arena of competing ideas.

Earlier this year, January in fact, was the 80th anniversary of the breaking of the Siege of Leningrad. Make no mistake; the genocidal intent of the Nazi forces was made clear from the start. Leningrad and its inhabitants were to be exterminated, its cultural achievements destroyed, and the remnants cast into slavery.

The superhuman collective sacrifices of the city’s inhabitants – who survived famine, disease, and aerial terror bombings – were historic in their impact. Inflicting a heavy defeat on the Nazi invaders, the siege marked the end of the previously invincible German army.

This particular anniversary was completely ignored in the West. Leningrad was the city that stubbornly fought to live.

The malignant fame of the Kardashians

It is fair to say that the Kardashians are the main way most Anglo background people have become familiar with Armenians. So-called ‘reality tv’, a cultural form pioneered by the Kardashian family, has promoted obsessive celebrity culture around the world. A societal poison, celebrity culture into devotees of individualistic consumerism. The cult of the entrepreneur has blinded us to collective achievements.

Toxic idol worship is scooping up ever-greater portions of our waking lives. We are ignored the issues that matter. What is wrong with enjoying the Kardashians? Is not celebrity culture just a bit of harmless fun?

Celebrity culture is selling us a fantasy – the celebrities are spokespersons for corporations. Whether they are engaged in business themselves, or a paid promoter, they are constructing a synthetic friendship with consumers to make us open our wallets. Once our wallets are empty, celebrity culture stops caring about mental health.

In Taguspark, Portugal, among all the urban artworks and statues spread throughout the location, there stands a monument to Yuri Gagarin and Vostok. His accomplishments will be remembered throughout the ages.

The reputation of the Nobel Peace Prize has taken a battering over years. Awarded to undeserving recipients, the nobility and dignity of the award has been debased. Giving a peace prize to politicians responsible for implementing wars overseas makes a mockery of the Nobel awards and international law.

Former US President Barack Obama, when given the prize in 2009, basically admitted he had not actually done anything to deserve it. The Nobel has been awarded to American war criminals, such as Henry Kissinger and Teddy Roosevelt, both responsible for the deaths of millions of non-Americans due to their reckless foreign policies.

The winner of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize is not an individual, but an organisation. A grassroots organisation in Japan, Nihon Hidankyo is a collective of atomic bombing survivors. The full name of the group is the Japan Confederation of A- and H- Bomb Sufferers Organisation. A long name, perhaps, but one which encapsulates the purpose of the group.

The Nobel committee cited the organisation’s tireless efforts to secure a world free of nuclear weapons. Founded in 1956, Nihon Hidankyo has promoted a message of peace, highlighting the destructive ferocity of nuclear weapons, and the ongoing health and safety impacts of atomic fallout. The group is made up of hibakusha – atomic bombing survivors. The US authorities opposed the formation of Nihon Hidankyo.

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Nobel committee, stated that the hibakushi experiences help future generations understand the enormity of nuclear bombings, and recommit all of us to the cause of a non-nuclear world.

We would do well, and learn from the example of the atomic bombing survivors, to carry forward the lessons they teach us. One of the issues with which we should be concerned is the proliferation of nuclear weapons since the end of World War 2. While we are all aware of the destructive arsenal of nuclear weapons possessed by the US, Russia, and other economic powers, Australia has played a crucial role in the rise of a third nuclear power after 1945 – Britain.

Montebello Islands

In 1952, only a few years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima And Nagasaki, British authorities detonated their first atomic explosion on the Montebello Islands, 130 kilometres off the coast of Western Australia. Codenamed Operation Hurricane, Britain became the world’s third nuclear power. A number of British scientists had worked on the now-famous Manhattan project during the war, and the English government had established its own nuclear programme, codenamed Tube Alloys.

The end of the war saw the closure of the Manhattan Project, and London was exploring ways to establish itself as a major nuclear power. The 1952 tests were just the beginning of a long running range of atomic testing carried out by Britain on Australian soil.

In 1956, the year that Nihon Hidankyo was founded in Japan, Britain carried out a series of secret nuclear tests on the Montebello Islands, cementing its place in the nuclear club of nations. Unbeknown to the Australian public, but with the permission of the Australian authorities, the nuclear tests at Montebello were vastly more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Initially estimated to be 50 kilotons in power, the Montebello bombings were actually 98 kilotons, six times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. The fallout from these explosions spread for hundreds of kilometres. Residents in coastal WA towns reported hearing and feeling the blasts, followed by the now-familiar image of the mushroom cloud.

The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) issued several reports into the levels of radioactivity in the islands and surrounding areas. However, beyond that, successive Australian governments, beginning with Menzies, have drawn a veil of secrecy over these tests for the last 70 years.

While Australian authorities engage in the delusional fantasy that AUKUS nuclear submarines will bring security, and Australian Trumpist imitator Peter Dutton peddles reheated lukewarm illusions in nuclear power, the danger of proliferation is ignored.

The secret that everyone knows

I cannot straightforwardly state that Israel is a nuclear power. US and Israeli officials drop hints that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, but quickly follow up with strenuous denials. The last fifty years, at least, have witnessed Israel building up its (alleged) nuclear technology. Not only the US, but France has assisted the Israeli authorities in constructing (allegedly) nuclear weapons for the Zionist state.

While no-one wants to categorically state whether Israel possesses nuclear weapons, Israeli government ministers have done an admirable job of incriminating themselves. In the early days of Israel’s assault on Gaza, at least one government minister openly suggested using a nuclear bomb on the Palestinians. It would be foolish in the extreme to suggest using a powerful weapon not in your arsenal.

Soon after the founding of the Israeli state in 1948, David Ben Gurion and other Zionist leaders took a strong interest in developing military technology. Chaim Weizmann, himself a scientist, developed those branches of science which would feed directly into military interests. Both politicians laid the scientific foundations for what would become Israel’s defence industry, including the Negev Nuclear Research Centre.

Since the 1950s, French technicians have assisted Israel in acquiring nuclear (and conventional) military technology. The two colonial states have a mutually beneficial arrangement; both are hostile to the emergence of Arab nationalism – France in its former colony of Algeria, and Zionism opposes Palestinian and wider Arab nationalist states.

The lessons of Nihon Hidankyo prompt all of us to take a stand for denuclearisation. A revived peace movement, highlighting the links between nuclear weapons, aggressive military rearmament and an economy geared towards wealth aggrandisement, is more urgent than ever.

Let’s not forget that the US military is a bigger polluter than many nations combined.

Robert Koehler, writing in Common Dreams, states that victims who have transformed their suffering into agency can guide us on the path to peace. We can stop the advocates of global militarism from being the arbiters of our future.

There are articles which, upon publication, elicit the response “finally, someone said it.’ The reader is happy to find their innermost thoughts reflected on the printed page – well, the webpage in our times – by another person. This is the reaction I had when reading John Wight’s excellent essay regarding the meaning of October 7 (2023). It was not Israel’s 9/11, it was a prison breakout, a Palestinian Tet Offensive.

Let’s clarify a number of points first. The history of the Israel-Palestine conflict existed for decades prior to October 7. The Palestinians have been fighting the occupation of their nation at least since the 1930s, even during the period of British Mandatory Palestine.

Please, stop comparing October 7 to the Holocaust. The latter was an industrialised, systematic programme of racial extermination implemented by an economically powerful nation against an ethnic minority. October 7 was analogous to a slave uprising, a modern-day Nat Turner rebellion (August 1831). When the slaves rise up and escape from their conditions of degradation, the slave owners respond with terrifying and disproportionate violence against their subjects.

In fact, the actions of Hamas on October 7 can be compared with the resistance of the Polish Jewish partisans who fought to breakout of the German-blockaded Warsaw Ghetto. The Gaza Strip, since 2006-07, increasingly resembles an open-air prison, with access to food, water, medicine and electricity strictly controlled by the Israeli authorities. It is not just me stating that Gaza’s Palestinians are blockaded, it is also an observation made by the Norwegian Refugee Council; the latter can hardly be accused of being ‘shills for Hamas.’

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Israeli government’s version of what happened on October 7 is highly questionable, to say the least. No, Hamas militants did not decapitate babies, as the media supporters of Zionism initially broadcast. No, Hamas fighters did not embark on a sadistic orgy of mass rapes – a slanderously false claim wilfully repeated without corroboration by the US, Britain and Israel’s European friends.

Please stop alleging that Hamas, and by extension the Arab states, represent the new Nazis, frothing at the mouth with vicious antisemitic hatred. A longstanding and deliberate misrepresentation promoted by Zionism and its corporate partisans is the fiction that the collective Arabs are driven by an irrational hatred of Jewish people, and intend to expel Jews into the sea. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Palestinians, and the largely Lebanese militant organisation Hezbollah, have made it abundantly clear that their fight is against colonialism and racism – they have no quarrel with the Jewish faith. The late Hassan Nasrallah, longtime leader of Hezbollah, fought against Israeli colonial predations in Lebanon. The latter nation has been the victim of Israeli military violence throughout the turbulent twentieth century.

It is interesting to note, in relation to Lebanon, that Israel’s expansionist designs on that country involved exploiting the sectarian tensions built into the Lebanese political system. Similarly to the French colonial power before them, the Zionist state deliberately favoured the Maronite Christian minority, using them as a cudgel against the Arab nationalist-minded Shia and Sunni Muslim communities.

Zionism did nothing to rescue European Jews from the Holocaust

The statement above may initially seem incongruous; surely the Zionist state of Israel was founded by politicians absolutely dedicated to the fight against antisemitism? Surely, Zionism provides a refuge for Jews from the ravages of an antisemitic world? Upon closer examination of relevant history, we discover that Zionism and antisemitism are in symbiosis – they feed off and reinforce each other. In fact, Zionist leaders in Germany, during the 1930s, signed a financial arrangement with the Nazi government.

The Haavara (transfer) agreement, signed in 1933, allowed German Jews to transfer a portion of their assets to Mandatory Palestine, and agreed to buy German products. This measure undermined the anti-Nazi economic boycott of German goods being promoted by antiracist Jewish groups around the world.

David Ben Gurion rationalised this financial instrument, stating that while European Jews suffered discrimination and eventual killing in their home nations, this transfer was helping to build an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine.

Not only did Nazi leaders endorse this arrangement, they spoke glowingly about the underlying philosophy of Zionism. Heinrich Class, president of the antisemitic Pan German League and ardent Nazi, wrote that while he staunchly opposed world Jewry, he acknowledged that among the Jews, it is the Zionists that have a racial-nationalist conception, regarding Jews as a biological race incapable of assimilation into non-Jewish nations.

To be sure, the Haavara agreement was controversial, and attacked by various Zionist politicians. However, this transfer agreement to Palestine was amply supported by Adolf Eichmann, Nazi leader and a principal architect of the Holocaust. Traveling to Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s, he spoke approvingly of Zionism, and respected the settler colonies springing up in that part of the world.

Scientist and Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, speaking in 1937 of the growing Zionist settlements in Palestine, suggested that only the best of Jewish youth should be allowed to settle there. He opined that Tel Aviv should not become another low-rent ghetto, a clone of impoverished Eastern European shtetl.

Reflecting a eugenicist approach, he revealed Zionism to be an ideological affiliate with Nazism, motivated by a desire to construct an ethno-nationalist state based on the European-inspired concept of racial purity. It is no secret that far right antisemitic politicians and parties in Europe look to Israel as a template of an ethno-nationalist state they are trying to build in their own countries.

As Israel’s barbaric assault on Gaza and Lebanon continues, destroying medical and educational infrastructure, its actions rise to the level of genocidal. That makes a mockery of Zionism’s claim to act in defence of the victims of the Holocaust. Primo Levi (1919 – 1987), Italian Jewish chemist and concentration camp survivor, warned against the weaponisation of the Holocaust by the Israeli authorities. The uplifting story about surviving the Holocaust and finding safe haven in Israel sounds all well and good, but that narrative excludes any mention of the ongoing war on the Palestinians.

The view that the creation of Israel is a kind of moral compensation for the Holocaust makes us feel good inside, but it is patently false. This view undermines our ability to speak out against the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians.

The Society for Creative Anachronisms is a university student organisation dedicated to recreating and experiencing medieval life, sword fights and all. Well, let’s be more accurate in our explanation. Yes, it is a serious multinational living history organisation. Their mission involves reliving medieval European history in all its complexity. The SCA engages in equestrian, archery competitions, fencing, recreating medieval arts. The student wing was a different story.

As a student organisation at the University of Sydney back in the late 1980s, the SCA branch recreated those parts of medieval European history as deemed important by them – hence the dressing up as knights and having sword fights.

This lighthearted excursion into campus life is intended to illustrate a serious point. Can universities continue without face-to-face lectures? Australian universities are heading in that direction. Geoff Davies, scientist and writer, reports that the upcoming renovated and enlarged Adelaide University will stop face-to-face lectures from 2026.

That university, made from an amalgamation of the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, will only be the first in an expanding effort to cease direct student attendance on campuses, and move everything online.

Binoy Kampmark, writing in his article “The Campus Life Killers: Ending Face-to-Face Lectures”, explains that the goal of university management is the Adelaide Attainment Model. This involves not only ending lectures on campus, but also cutting courses, especially in the humanities. University life, such as it is, will be reduced to a simple financial transaction.

In defence of campus life

A portfolio of experiences is accumulated through campus life. Meeting friends, making new ones, navigating the social complexities of romantic life, socialising beyond one’s own narrow circle, interacting with students from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds – you cannot put a monetary value on these experiences.

Zoom meetings (or Microsoft Teams, if you prefer) are all well and good. They are no substitute for face-to-face learning. You have questions to ask the lecturer or tutor. You interact with other students and relate shared experiences. The acquisition of knowledge is never an isolated, anti-social experience. Yes, we all know the stereotype of the lone genius, the new Einstein labouring away in solitude, and coming up with a new theory.

Before we use the ‘but Einstein was a lone genius’ located outside the university, first, go through the education system and acquire the necessary social skills for learning in a collective environment. Only then can we understand why Einstein became Einstein – and even then, the much-reviled scientific establishment worked to confirm Einstein’s theories. The allegedly sclerotic, bureaucratic university system tested and verified Einstein’s ideas.

Verification by universities is not achieved by positioning yourself as the new Einstein or Galileo. Be a lone genius if you want to, but do not allow the myth of the lone genius to distort the history of scientific discoveries.

Digital provision of education

Artificial intelligence produces artificial cleverness. The papers submitted by university students are already being created by generative AI, in a form of commercialised cheating. If more than half of the essays and projects submitted by students involve the use of AI, that devalues the worth of a university education, and produces synthetic intelligence. Universities will soon become diploma mills, with education available for a price.

Let’s remember the first part of the acronym AI – artificial, meaning synthetic, not the real product.

Let’s also not pretend that it is only the social sciences that are impacted and white-anted by AI. Scientific papers can now be generated using AI. A new machine learning AI scientist system, Sakana AI Labs announced that its system can brainstorm ideas, select from competing hypotheses, code new algorithms, and generate a research paper based on the results.

This is the end result of producing synthetic simulacra. Algorithms which mimic human writing are taking over education. We are serving the AI machine, not the other way around.

Cultivate an educational praxis, which channels inimitable human creativity into productive pursuits. Relying on AI will only increase the synthetic element in our lives, at the expense of human interaction.

Student encampments

It is not all bad news; the campus is far from dead and buried. Why do I say that? The students have found their own way to revive life on campus. No, not by drinking, or gambling, or partying – but by protesting. The Israeli assault on Gaza, ongoing since October last year, prompted student groups to set up encampments on multiple university campuses.

What was the purpose of that? To highlight the complicity of university institutions in the Israeli war machine’s criminal actions. Universities make investment decisions, and involvement in military activities is not uncommon. Universities, converted into gigantic hedge funds due to decades of neoliberalism, are heavily complicit in armaments industries which directly supply the Israeli military.

Divesting funds from universities in the armaments industry is an important socioeconomic and political issue. It demonstrates that the student groups marching for Palestine are concerned not just with their own individual lives, but are applying their education to the real world. Israeli forces in Gaza have deliberately targeted universities and schools, depriving Palestinian students of an education.

What happens to the current generation of Palestinian children who are unable to attend school, let alone university? Israel’s military campaign has demolished the educational ecosystem in Gaza. The United Nations has called Israel’s targeting of universities and schools in Gaza scholasticide – the systematic obliteration of education in Palestine.

Surely the university students must speak out about the destruction of corresponding educational establishments in Palestine? The campus is the perfect place to express outrage, and mobilise the faculty against such crimes.

Universities are more than just places to seek out profits; privatising education does not lead to improved academic outcomes. Yes, I use online resources for educating myself. No, that is not a substitute for real life university experiences. The campus is the central and collective location for learning.

Years ago, washed-up ex-actor and simpleton fundamentalist Kirk Cameron poked fun at evolutionary biology by using the phrase ‘crocoduck’. What did he mean by that? If evolution was true, according to our intrepid interlocutor, you would find ridiculous and bizarre combinations of half-half animals, such as a cross between a crocodile and a duck.

Well, he should also be aware of the old saying – be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

Welcome to the sea robin, a fish with legs like a crab, the body of a fish, and fin-wings like a bird. The legs of the sea robin, while used for locomotion, are also used for digging and tasting. That’s right, there are papillae, minute taste-receptors, on its shovel-shaped legs, enabling it to taste for prey hiding in the ocean floor.

You may view a video of the sea robin here.

Scuttling along the sea bed, the sea robin’s features serve to illustrate the development of evolutionary traits, and the genetic markers from which they originate. The sensory legs of the sea robin – modified versions of their pectoral fins – raises broader questions regarding the role of genetic factors in shaping phenotypic adaptations.

Alternating between swimming and walking, the crab-like legs are sensitive to chemical stimulants, detecting mussels and small shellfish buried in the sea floor, without any visual identification. The sea robin has eyes like a frog.

Leopard sea robins, a particular species of sea robin, use their legs for locomotion only. The northern sea robin uses its legs for digging and tasting, as well as walking.

Researchers investigating the genetic origins of the evolutionary adaptation of walking first sequenced the genome of the sea robin. Using gene-editing techniques, known as CRISPR, they modified the gene tbx3a, responsible for the development of leg-like limbs. A particular variation of this gene is responsible for the emergence of limbs in vertebrates.

Fish that can walk, or at least combine walking with swimming, are not unusual in the marine world.

The skate, another species of fish, scurries along the sea floor, using the genes and neurons vertebrates use to walk. The skate is closely related to sharks and rays – and displays walking behaviour, strongly suggesting that bipedal locomotion was already emerging before the first vertebrates ever walked on land.

Carl Zimmer, science writer for the New York Times, wrote in 2016 that scientists are finding fish that walk the way land vertebrates do. No, they do not sprint like us, or land-dwelling mammals, but they use their leg-like fins to walk and climb. Cryptotora thamicola, a waterfall-climbing cave fish, not only climbs, but possesses an intact pelvis, similar to tetrapods. A troglobitic species, it walks salamander-like, it climbs cave rocks while being splashed by a waterfall.

It was first discovered in 1985, living and climbing deep inside caves in northern Thailand.

Why is walking such a fascinating evolutionary adaptation?

Discovering how other vertebrate species began walking opens a window into our own evolutionary pathway.

The first fully bipedal hominins began to emerge millions of years ago. Standing upright, and walking on two feet for locomotion, is the decisive step in the emergence of modern humans. To be sure, other hominins adopted an upright posture, temporarily. The transition from moving on four limbs to bipedal movement was not a smooth, linear progression. Nevertheless, without bipedal locomotion, we cannot talk of genuinely modern Homo sapiens.

Bidepal locomotion freed up the hands – for counting, nonverbal communication, signalling, and working. While walking upright has enabled hominins see long distances, there is no obvious physical advantage to being bipedal. Four legged animals can certainly run faster than humans.

It was the early australopithecines, millions of years ago, that took the first tentative steps on the road of bipedalism. Numerous hominin species, coexisting with each other in the branching, messy delta of evolutionary history, adopted a mixture of walking on four limbs and being bipedal.

For instance, an early hominin ancestor, Australopithecus sediba, walked on two feet, but tended to hyperpronate – place excessive weight on the inside of the feet.

Liberating the hand from the pressures of locomotion was the most important consequential result of bipedal movement. It is not just myself saying this. The late Jacob Bronowski (1908 – 1974), Polish-born British scientist, observed that the interaction of the now-free hand and brain made possible the emergence of symbolic thinking, work, and scientific understanding.

In the nineteenth century, Frederick Engels wrote a brief pamphlet called ‘The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.’ His language reflected the paleontological knowledge of his time. He observed that adopting bipedal locomotion, thus freeing up the hand for labouring activities, was the crucial step in the emergence of modern humans.

Engels’ pamphlet presented a simple picture, to be sure. Future scientists will fill in the blanks, and flesh out a more complex scenario. However, changing our environment through labouring activities – and indeed being impacted by our environment in turn – set the stage for the emergence of consciousness.

No, the journey from bipedalism to consciousness is not a short walk (no pun intended). However, the above provides us with a basic framework to approach a large topic. In the meantime, let’s celebrate the humble sea robin, whose steps may be small, but significant in understanding how vertebrates transitioned from aquatic to land environments.

Oh, and for Kirk Cameron’s benefit; no, of course ducks and crocodiles are not related, but then these hybrids come close to being the creature he mocked. So the crocoduck came back to bite him.

In the 1970s and 80s, the word ‘greenie’ was an appellation reserved for conservationists and environmentalists.

You know the type – portrayed in the conservative circles as a kind of leftie weirdos. Those fedora-wearing, hippie-dippie, muesli- eating vegans with their soy lattes, choosing to drop out of society, more concerned about endangered species rather than ‘Aussie workers’. That purported lifestyle, ridiculed until today in hard right media quarters, is a cultural barrier many Australian workers have to any kind of ecosocialist perspective.

The false dichotomy between ‘jobs vs environment’ is being exposed for the fraudulent distraction that it is. However, my purpose is not to revisit that debate, but to focus on the issue of living in harmony with the environment. So being a ‘greenie’, motivated by concern for ecological welfare, is a kind of weirdo-lifestyle pursuit?…..I see.

That is interesting, because in the 70s and 80s, we had the portrait of Grizzly Adams, the lone frontier man who lives in the woods, in harmony with nature, only consuming enough for himself to live sustainably.

The Grizzly Adams character was meant to be a lesson in living in peace with the natural world, not against it. The frontiersman embodied the free spirit of the self-motivated individual, living free and respectful of nature.

That is not the first example of the allegedly self-starting pioneer living in tune with nature’s beat. Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862), author of Walden and proponent of individual self-reliance, lived in an environmental paradise, cultivating the food and sustenance needed from the natural resources around him. Going off-grid (a term we use today), he detached himself from the harmful influence of big government (so the story goes) and lived as a free individual.

Thoreau’s vision was that of an individualist laissez-faire capitalist, transitioning from a purely labouring person to that of a budding sovereign citizen. No, he did not describe himself as such, but we may see the beginnings of an ultra-libertarian perspective in Thoreau’s relationship with the environment.

Never matter that runaway slaves, whose individual desire for self-improvement went acknowledged, founded their own self-reliant community in Concord, Massachusetts before Thoreau even dreamt of his scheme, speaks volumes about how we in the settler-colonial Anglophone world regard the environment. Pioneering frontiersmen are applauded for their indomitable self-reliant spirit; the victims of colonial settler societies, and their drive to be free, are forgotten.

When Tory politicians in Australia – those in the misnamed Liberal-National coalition – want to pretend to be farmers, they wear an Akubra (not forgetting the leather shoes). A bit similar in poseur fashion to the greenie hippie-dippies wearing their outsized fedoras.

Yes, you may find fedora-wearing, self-absorbed types who think they are sensational because they have chosen to go vegan. At least, they are speaking about the environment, and the harmful impact of industrialised agriculture on nutrition as an important topic.

Now, a case study…..

The Wye river, flowing through Herefordshire in the UK, is the inspiration for poetic descriptions of the bucolic English countryside. William Wordsworth wrote of his joy at seeing the vast unspoiled landscape of Heredfordshire. Who would not want to live in harmony with this lush, pristine environment?

I wonder what he would say today.

Over the last 25-30 years, the River Wye has been systematically polluted by a growing poultry industry. Tonnes of harmful phosphates and surplus nitrates, deriving from the excess chicken manure at the intensified poultry processing units, is washed into the Wye river by the rains. The millions of chickens produce way too much manure to be absorbed entirely by the soil.

The Wye river has turned into a vast algal bloom, and brown slime predominates in the river. Marine life has had to migrate to less polluted parts of the river, or else be overwhelmed by the algae. Native vegetation and flowers, once reliant on a clean river system, are disappearing. No matter how sturdy or resilient the Grizzly Adams pioneering spirit may be, rugged individualism is not enough to respond to corporate-generated agricultural pollution.

It is well-nigh impossible to live the Thoreau-esque lifestyle, free and in harmony with nature, when that natural environment is being systematically exploited and destroyed. What is required, as the much-maligned greenie groups are demanding, is change and regulations targeting the exploitive poultry farming industry.

Yes, I can hear the howls of outrage from the Tory-corporate media; more regulation means socialism, bowing to the dictates of overarching government. The word bureaucracy has acquired negative connotations – sclerotic, geriatric, Soviet-style resistance to change. Except that bureaucracies, such as environmental protection agencies, have been at the forefront of social change, monitoring the environmental vandalism of large corporations.

Responding to climate change induced problems will require stronger regulations of predatory and destructive corporate practices. Holding companies accountable for the fossil fuels they use, the pollution they create, and the species they drive to extinction will require the kind of regulatory bodies that Musk, Trump and the modern day conquistadors spend time attacking.

Regulatory action has been remarkably successful in reversing the ecological damage caused by rapacious industries.

The Endangered Species Act, which reached its fiftieth anniversary last year, has catalogued and preserved multiple species from certain extinction. Cleaning up the acid rain has been achieved by regulatory legislation monitoring and reducing the harmful atmospheric acidification. We would still have a worsening hole in the ozone layer were it not for environmental protection efforts.

If you wish to live the Thoreau, ruggedly individualist lifestyle in the forest, please be my guest. Just remember that a clean, hospitable environment is possible only when the community bands together to protect it.

Kenan Malik, columnist for The Guardian newspaper, invites us to examine the changing nature of Britishness, and the things in which the Anglophone nations take pride – or feel a sense of shame. The concept of Britishness, based on an identification with Britain’s imperial past, has declined over recent years.

Malik elaborates on a study of social attitudes towards identity in Britain today. Commissioned by the National Centre for Social Research, their report can be read in full here. The findings are interesting in and of themselves, but one particular trend has raised the hackles of the Tory Right. The survey found that pride in Britishness has declined sharply since 2013.

Pride in the British empire has declined, you say? That to me is a commendable achievement. As more of the crimes of the British empire have come to light, a debate has occurred around notions of what it means to be British. For too long, we have allowed the conservatives to define what is worth commemorating in British history.

Over the decades, the conservative movement has attacked what it calls the wokeness campaign. Billionaire libertarian tech-bro Elon Musk, in a colourful turn of phrase, calls it the ‘woke mind virus’. Ah, a clever riposte, devoid of any meaning. What is being confronted is not British history per se, but an imperial mindset cultivated by a decades-long empire-nostalgia narrative.

When statues of slave traders are torn down, it enables us to see English history more clearly.

Cultural imperialism is an enduringly fascinating subject. It makes people consider the empire from the imperialist point of view. It makes us identify the project of empire building as either benign, or uplifting for the colonised peoples, or a bit of both. The obsessive flag-waving, pageantry, film-making and cultural output conceals the sword upon which empires rely, to paraphrase Lord Salisbury’s words.

An imperial mentality among the general public helps acclimatise that public to the atrocities and crimes committed by that empire. Offensive and predatory actions are presented as purely defensive in origin, thus creating a lopsided sympathy for the foot-soldiers of empire.

Now, a philosophical turn….the late great Edward Said, writing in his magisterial book Orientalism, portray themselves as positive, or at least modernising enterprises. It is worth considering his following words:

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest [civilizing mission]

I am quite certain we have all heard the objection that while the British empire may have been periodically violent, it did run the colonies efficiently. The British built railways, road, electric telegraph networks and taught English. This objection is a kind of mental balm applied to soothe the wounds on our collective conscience.

I wonder what benefits English colonisation brought to the indigenous people of Tasmania. The Black War (1824-31) involved the full scale destruction of the indigenous Tasmanians. While the numbers of people killed may have been on a smaller scale than the fatalities in other regions of Australia, the cultural and historical losses of the indigenous are incalculable.

It is only in recent years that this particular war of extermination is coming to light, casting the role of the British empire is a different way intended by its supporters. In the early years of Tasmanian colonisation, the numbers of settlers was quite small. With transportation from Britain increasingly used by the London authorities as a means of social control, the convict population in Tasmania steadily increased.

Conflict with the indigenous was at first infrequent. As the numbers of white colonists increased, (men outnumbered women six to one), the Tasmanian colonial authorities launched expeditions to kidnap indigenous women for the purpose of procreation. That was the proximate cause of increased conflict.

The colonists faced staunch resistance from the indigenous, but the firepower of the English (including convict and settler auxiliary forces) proved to be overwhelming in the end.

These ferocious frontier wars are largely ignored in the retelling stories of the British Empire as a glorious civilising project. Even when indigenous resistance is acknowledged, the actions of the English army are portrayed as purely defensive in nature (check out the 1964 film Zulu as an artefact of this kind of misrepresentation).

Let’s also stop circulating the myth, perpetuated by the English authorities, that the Palawa people (as indigenous Tasmanians are known) went extinct with the death of Truganini in 1876. The passing of the last ‘full-blooded’ Palawa woman, so the story goes, marked the extinction of that particular nation. Indigenous Tasmanians have been demanding a truth-telling commission to quash that slanderously false claim.

The purpose of this article is not simply to recite a catalogue of British atrocities and compel readers to feel a sense of shame. It is to confront the deliberate misreading of imperialist history as a source of pride. If we want to take pride in English history, then there is no shortage of episodes – the peasant uprising in 1381 against the feudal nobility and English monarchy; the Chartist movement; the solidarity of the English working class with the American anti-slavery movement.

The British empire is dead, but its imperial mindset lives on in the Anglophone nations. The United States is only the latest practitioner of the longstanding technique of cultural imperialism.

The Red Sea is the location of an ongoing yet underreported conflict. The Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, lazily named by the corporate media as the Houthis, began attacking American and British maritime traffic. Why? It is a response to the American-supported Israeli assault on Gaza and the Palestinians. The Yemenis have a long tradition of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The Ansar Allah group, by interrupting Red Sea shipping, intend to stop international trade reaching Israel and its allies in the region. Since October last year, the Ansar Allah group has fired hundreds of drones and missiles at targets in the Red Sea. The Yemeni militant group is waging a war of attrition against pro-American forces in its own country, hoping to detach itself economically and politically from the clutches of the United States.

The US responded with tactics eerily reminiscent of those adopted by the now extinct British empire – gunboat diplomacy. The US Navy deployed the aircraft carrier, the hulking USS Dwight D Eisenhower, to the Red Sea area. In the old days of the British empire, whenever the natives would get restless or rebellious, London would send British gunboats to the restive colonies.

The mere sight of massive British gunboats, so London authorities reasoned, would be so intimidating that the rebellious foreigners, quivering in fear, would quickly give up and submit to British rule. Well, that tactic did not work – the natives still fought for their independence. Apparently the authorities in Washington ignored the lessons of history.

With the Ansar Allah Yemenis attacking cargo shipping, surely they need to be taught a lesson in American power? We have all watched the Top Gun movies, where the aircraft carrier is the sanctuary. A safe and powerful presence in a dangerous world, surely the mere sight of the imposing USS Eisenhower would dissuade the rebellious Yemenis from continuing their destructive campaign?

Operation Prosperity Guardian is the official name of the US-led military campaign to stop Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea. Inaugurated in December 2023, the US and its coalition partners (a handful of token contributions made by American allied nations) would surely easily defeat these ragtag Yemeni rebels.

What Washington, London and Ottawa forgot to mention is that the Ansar Allah group can strike back – successfully. The US Navy spokespeople have admitted that the Red Sea confrontation has involved the heaviest, sustained and ferocious battles experienced since World War Two.

The Telegraph, a British newspaper which unfailingly encourages US wars overseas, admitted that the Houthis have defeated the US Navy. Not only have the massive, hulking aircraft carriers of the US Navy failed to deter Houthi attacks, the Red Sea is the scene of numerous exchanges of drones and missile fire.

The Ansar Allah has not only maintained its attacks, but its campaign has become even more diverse and sophisticated. Small arms fire, hijackings, and ballistic missiles are tactics practiced by the Yemeni rebel group. American sailors, returning from their Red Sea deployment, describe being traumatised by the experience – actually being fired upon by your enemies.

In July this year, the USS Eisenhower returned home from its Red Sea, after months of unrelenting attacks and strikes by the Ansar Allah forces. The NY Times tried to put a brave face on what was a failed mission.

Maritime trade through the Red Sea has declined by 90 percent since the start of Operation Prosperity Guardian. What was supposed to be a cakewalk for the US Navy has turned into an un-winable quagmire. Speaking of which, this past August was the third anniversary of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, another conflict that was supposed to be a walk in the park, but turned into a humiliating defeat for the United States.

Jonathan Hoffman, writing in the New Arab magazine, states that after nine months, the Houthis remain undeterred in their course of action. While Washington likes to present its maritime campaign as purely retaliatory and necessary in confronting ‘evil’ Houthis, the latter have consistently stated their motivations.

What motivates the Ansar Allah group in the Red Sea is Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, and Washington’s unstinting support for that war. The Gaza war, and its horrendous toll of Palestinian lives, is the original catalyst for the maritime campaign by the Houthis. The major trading powers, such as the US, Britain, France and others, have continued their voluminous trade with Israel, enabling its war machine to continue unimpeded.

Let’s not forget that every one of the US Navy’s missiles that is fired costs millions of dollars to replace. The US military has a bloated, gargantuan budget. The Pentagon has already allocated billions for missile production. That is not considering the multi year 2 trillion-dollar plan to upgrade and modernise nuclear weapons. All this while America’s aging infrastructure is deteriorating and buckling in heatwave conditions.

The US aircraft carrier had its time in World War Two. Today, it is a relic, an antiquated structure from a bygone era of gunboat diplomacy. Its purported intimidatory value is now as defunct as the British empire. It is time to re-examine the swollen military budget, and reallocate money to spending on public and social needs.