Those who risked their lives rescuing European Jews from certain persecution and death at the hands of Nazi authorities earned a special place as righteous people.

After World War 2 concluded and the concentration camps liberated, numerous Anglo-majority nations, such as Canada, Britain and Australia, provided sanctuary for thousands of Eastern European Nazi collaborators. This long term policy dishonoured the victims of the Holocaust, and is a slap in the face of those who rescued Jewish lives.

I have written about this subject before. Before anyone worries about covering old ground, there are two points to make here. First, we will cover new material in this article; second, this topic contains many lessons relevant for today.

Some people keep newspaper clippings of articles they find important or emotionally significant. I keep bookmarks of webpages – legions of them. One of them is an investigative piece in the Smithsonian magazine of a little-known episode of World War 2 – the rescue of thousands of Moroccan Jews from certain death by the Sultan of that country.

Morocco, ruled by Mohammed V at the time, was a French protectorate. The French installed the young Mohammed Ben Youssef in 1927. Seen as a pliant instrument, the French colonial authorities continued their rule over Morocco through their compliant lackeys, the Alawi dynasty.

How did developments in Europe impact Morocco? In 1940, France, with its much vaunted army, was soundly defeated by Nazi Germany. The French established a Nazi collaborationist government at Vichy, composed of ultranationalist French forces. Already antisemitic, Vichy enacted a series of antisemitic laws. France’s overseas dominions, such as Morocco, fell under the control of Vichy.

The Moroccan sultan was under pressure to apply Vichy’s antisemitic policies in his nation. Morocco’s 250 000 strong Jewish community was integrated into the wider society. Antisemitism was very much a European innovation and importation. The Sultan resisted implementing the antisemitic legislation of Vichy, arguing that Jews were people of the book. The followers of the Abrahamic cousins of monotheism – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – were taken seriously by the Sultan.

Vichy officials, and their Nazi overlords, applied pressure to Mohammed V, the latter reluctantly signing into law restrictive antisemitic measures. However, he still treated the Jewish community with respect, invited rabbis to celebrate religious holidays, and refused to meet Nazi officials. There were no mass roundups or deportations of Jews from Morocco. In 1942, Allied troops landed on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, and Vichy French forces were thrashed.

In 1943, Casablanca – yes, that town, associated with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall – hosted a pivotal meeting of FDR and Churchill, the two major Western powers.

Mohammed V is remembered fondly by Morocco’s Jewish community today. Since 1948, with the creation of the state of Israel, thousands of Moroccan Jews emigrated to Israel, where they became settlers in the newly colonised land of Palestine. While Morocco and Israel established formal diplomatic relations only in 2020, contacts and cooperation between Tel Aviv and Rabat go back decades.

As Algeria, another French colony, was fighting for its independence in the 1950s, Israel and Morocco cooperated secretly with the French to ensure that the Arab nationalist revolt would be put down. Morocco has acquired Israeli expertise in military and intelligence matters; on at least one occasion, Israel helped the Moroccan monarchy assassinate an opposition leader.

As Israel continues its genocidal assault on the people of Gaza, the nations that have normalised relations with Tel Aviv must re-examine their reasons for doing so.

Ancient history is one thing; the cynical manipulation of historical ties is quite another. Morocco has been home to Jewish communities since 1492, when the Jewish population was expelled from Spain and Portugal at the conclusion of the Reconquista, Cooperative relations between Tel Aviv and Rabat have nothing to do with ancient relations between Jews and Moorish people.

Let’s change tack for the moment – Albania can rightly claim to have rescued Jews from the horrors of the Holocaust. The Albanians, even though they were occupied by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, took in Jewish refugees in an under appreciated episode from World War 2.

Albania emerged from the war with a larger Jewish community than before the start of the war. This episode of sanctuary remained largely unknown since Albania was isolated from the outside under the longtime Communist premiership of Enver Hoxha.

In 1935, a young Albert Einstein transited through Durrës, an Albanian city, before continuing on his journey out of Europe. Benefiting from Albanian passport, he escaped encroaching antisemitism. Albania granted travel documents to those Jews who wished to leave.

In Pristina, capital of Kosovo, a monument was erected in 2023 to 23 Kosovar Albanians who provided refuge for escaping Jews. It is no secret that Israel enthusiastically recognised Kosovo’s independence, and contributed to investment in the fledging nation. Actually, Kosovo has been turned into an American protectorate, with most industry privatised.

We are repudiating the memory of those who rescued Jewish refugees from a genocidal regime, by supporting a government in Tel Aviv that is carrying out a genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in our own times.

The Australian rugby league games in Las Vegas, showcasing the NRL to an American audience, were intended to be the equivalent of a Russian hypersonic missile in the field of sports. It turned out to be the misfiring English Trident of the sporting world instead. A long analogy, perhaps, but one worth exploring in some detail.

The latest Trident launch was only the latest in a succession of failures

The British nuclear programme, Trident, has been aggressively promoted by both major parties of English politics for decades. Portrayed as the sterling silverware of nuclear weapons, Trident was supposed to herald the UK’s arrival as a serious nuclear-capable military power on the world stage.

The latest test, launched at a site off the coast of Florida, was intended to be a demonstration of British nuclear power. Fired from the submarine HMS Vanguard, the missile was supposed to travel 6000 kilometres. It traveled a few yards, then fell back into the water. Senior military officials, including UK defence secretary Grant Shapps, and First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Ben Key, witnessed the debacle.

The previous test of Trident, back in 2016, was a similar disaster.

The test failure of Trident last month was not unusual; there is a long catalogue of failures. Cost blowouts, engineering and technical problems, and long delays all expose the lie that Trident represents the very best in nuclear deterrence. The submarine from which the missile was launched went in for repairs estimated to last three years. The refit took seven years and went millions of pounds over the initial budget.

Another Trident-capable submarine experienced a depth gauge malfunction, diving perilously close to the crush-depth zone. Submarines must be strong enough to withstand water pressures. Luckily, sailors noticed the malfunction and the submarine ascended to safe water depths.

So much for showcasing post-Brexit Britain’s national resurgence.

The NRL in Las Vegas was an exercise in hubris and futility

In Sydney, the land where the NRL is a secular religion, badmouthing the rugby league is akin to waving a red rag to a bull. The NRL’s legion of fans, worshipping the thuggish brutality of the game, take out their venom on those who would sully the reputation of the league. No, I am not dismissing the entertainment value of the game, or the physical fitness of the players, but trying to get Americans interested in it has been attempting before, on numerous occasions. The results were underwhelming, to say the least.

The Las Vegas games, while undoubtedly entertaining, failed to make much of a dent in the American market. Lukewarm is the best adjective that can be used to describe the reception of NRL football in the US. No expense was spared to promote rugby, and no doubt Peter V’landys and Andrew Abdo, the NRL chiefs, were thinking about anticipated revenue streams from the Las Vegas launch.

Nick Tedeschi, writing in the Guardian, notes that while V’landys is a visionary for taking the NRL to America, there is a long and disappointing history of rugby forays into the EL Dorado that the US allegedly is. At least since the 1920s, numerous rugby promoters have taken the game into the US, with only modest success. The Americans have the NFL, the basketball, and NASCAR to be getting on with, so interest in an Australian import is moderate at best.

It is not only the fact that TV ratings were poor for the NRL double-header in Las Vegas. The American audience has proven resilient to the vaunted charms and spectacle of NRL. In the 1950s, Australian rugby executives tried to take the game to the United States. That was at best a moderate success.

In 1987, the regular display of brawling parochialism, the State of Origin, was played in California. That match, attended by Australian expatriates exercising this insular ‘NSW versus Queensland’ feud, failed to make a dent.

In this latest misfire in Las Vegas, the NRL incorporated the efforts of Russell Crowe, football fan, part owner of the South Sydney Rabbitohs and gladiator fantasist. Intoning sonorously in a YouTube promotional video, Crowe informs his American audience that in the NRL, no helmets or padding are used.

That is all well and good – American football tries to reduce the bloodletting and violence with tactics; in the NRL, tempers fraying is encouraged, and thuggish brawling is lauded as entertainment. Peter Mitchell, journalist and resident of the US for 25 years, states that Americans just don’t care about the NRL.

The Las Vegas venture was great for Australian and New Zealander expatriates. We Australians find it hard to accept that Americans are simply unimpressed by a sport that we love so enthusiastically.

To return to the original analogy; the NRL in Las Vegas misfired just like the Trident launch. For an example of a successful missile, look no further than the Russian hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger).

Rather than spend exorbitant amounts of money attempting to expand into a market indifferent to the NRL, let’s clean up the multiple scandals and toxic culture that plague Australian rugby league until today. Misfires, whatever field they occur in, are an opportunity for reflection. If a venture does not work out, try a new direction.

We are all familiar with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, they were not the largest nuclear detonations carried out by the US military. March 1 was the 70th anniversary of a nuclear weapons test in the Marshall Islands, codenamed Castle Bravo. Occurring at Bikini atoll, it was the first in a long series of thermonuclear tests dubbed Operation Castle.

The March 1 explosion released the equivalent of 15 megatons of TNT, one thousand times the strength of the Nagasaki bomb. In fact, that was far more powerful than the military authorities expected. That test was not an isolated event; between 1946 and 1958, the United States carried out a total of 67 nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands, the polluting effects of which are still being felt today.

The series of nuclear tests were done without the consent of the Marshallese indigenous people. The resultant radioactive fallout from these weapons tests, the full details of which were never disclosed to the Marshallese, produced higher than normal rates of cancers among the population for generations.

The long term environmental contamination was ignored by the American authorities. Until today, the US government has not acknowledged its responsibility for the pollution and adverse health impacts in the Marshall Islands from its nuclear testing.

If the indigenous people were evacuated – such as those from Enewetak and Bikini atolls – they were returned to polluted lands, and the US authorities engaged in a prolonged coverup. Marshallese people who have lived through these tests, and their descendants, have explained that it is not a case of if they will develop cancer, but when and what type, eg thyroid cancer. To add insult to injury, the United States, without consulting the Marshallese, shipped 130 tonnes of irradiated soil from its testing sites in Nevada, mainland US, to the Marshall Islands.

The Runit dome, a concrete structure built to contain the radioactive waste, is starting to crack and leak. With rising sea levels due to human-induced climate change, it is only a matter of time before another ecological disaster occurs in the Marshall Islands.

Atoms for peace disguises the predatory aims of nuclear armed powers

While the Marshall Islands were being pulverised by nuclear explosions, the American president Dwight Eisenhower gave a speech to the United Nations in December 1953. Named Atoms for Peace, Eisenhower elaborated his vision for the distribution of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes among cooperative nations.

Purportedly concerned at the prospect of atomic warfare, Eisenhower made the proliferation of nuclear technology contingent on a collective commitment to peace by participating nations. Eisenhower’s speech to the United Nations general assembly was more about public relations, responding to increasing calls for greater scrutiny about the uses of nuclear power.

As news of the horrific effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings spread, revealing the scale of human suffering and environmental destruction, Eisenhower decided to recast the atom as a largely peaceful, benign entity. What did that achieve? Disguising the atomic aspirations of the US as mainly peaceful countered the perception of the US military-industrial complex as a greedy, blood-stained imperial power.

The peaceful use of nuclear technology was emphasised to obfuscate the military uses of that technology. We all know that radioisotopes are used in medical technology, for instance. Nuclear methods are used in agriculture and food security, detecting and preventing transboundary and zoonotic transmission of diseases. None of this can obscure the true purpose of nuclear power – military applications.

When former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison brought a lump of coal into parliament, taunting his opponents by stating ‘see, it cannot hurt you’, he was not merely making a juvenile attack. He was denying the reality of fossil fuel driven climate change. Upholding the peaceful atom as a harmless object serves the equivalent dishonest purpose – obfuscating the catastrophic harm of nuclear detonation.

Eisenhower, Truman, and their colleagues, should have listened to Albert Einstein in the immediate postwar world. Much has been made of the fact that Einstein, along with his fellow physicists, signed a letter to FDR in 1939 urging the American president to build atomic weapons first, beating Nazi Germany to the punch.

On the strength of that advice, so we are told, the Manhattan project was born. Nazi Germany’s efforts to build a nuclear reactor were modest, and their proximity to constructing an atomic bomb wildly exaggerated. Be that as it may, Einstein, along with his colleague Leo Szilard, campaigned strongly for disarmament and international supervision of nuclear technology. Einstein’s efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament have been ignored in the post-Cold War world.

Einstein advocated international laws to govern the dissemination of nuclear technology. Pushing for worldwide disarmament, he and his co-thinkers were isolated from the corridors of power in Washington and London. Chairing an emergency committee of atomic scientists in 1946, he warned of the threat of nuclear catastrophe. He provided more than enough anti-nuclear advice for Truman and Eisenhower.

In the ultimate irony, the CIA and US national security authorities launched a PR campaign for nuclear power in Japan. In the 1950s, the United States wanted to cultivate Japanese public opinion favourable to nuclear power – and by 1957, Japan had its first nuclear reactor, built with American assistance. Japanese antinuclear sentiment has remained strong nevertheless.

Russia’s threat to deploy its nuclear arsenal to attack Ukraine obviously heightens anxiety about a nuclear conflagration. To assign responsibility for nuclear anxieties exclusively to Moscow’s actions is hypocritical in the extreme. The US – along with Britain – have done everything in their power to initiate and exacerbate the nuclear weapons crisis.

Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 marks the true start of World War 2. Yes, I know, all the history books state the beginning of that conflict in 1939. However, the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia was characterised by all the elements of the global conflagration – a colonial conquest motivated by racist ideology, new and improved (chemical) weapons of mass destruction, and pusillanimous behaviour by the major powers.

The crimes committed by Italian forces in Ethiopia foreshadowed the savagery of the wider global war. The current Italian government of Giorgia Meloni, who heads the ultranationalist Brothers of Italy party, has been rewriting not only the history of the Ethiopian conflict, but recasting fascist Italians as the victims.

Italy had done its share of empire-building in Africa prior to the rise of Mussolini and his fascist party. Somaliland, neighbouring Ethiopia, was under the control of Italy. However, Mussolini’s government, anxious to take its place as one of the ‘great powers’, launched a war of conquest against Ethiopia, a campaign marked by genocidal violence.

To be sure, the imperial powers, namely Britain and the United States, welcomed and admired Mussolini for reputedly ‘saving’ Italy from Bolshevism. The fascist dictatorship he constructed was portrayed as an efficient, smoothly-humming machine reviving Italian industry. Churchill, Roosevelt, and numerous global politicians joined in admiring the revamped fascist government. Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of extreme right wing Zionism, and the ideological forerunner of Netanyahu’s right wing coalition partners, was an ardent admirer of Mussolini.

The 1935 attack on Ethiopia – Abyssinia as the latter was then known – presented a problem for the fascist-admiring Anglophone academia and political establishment. There were voices in the West denouncing the violent and oppressive practices of Mussolini’s dictatorship. However, the anti war voices were drowned out. The Italian invasion of Ethiopia was a direct violent of international law. The genocidal violence unleashed by Italian forces was plainly evident in Ethiopia.

Italian forces used all the means of mechanised violence at their disposal. Facing resistance by the Ethiopians, Italian military commanders resorted to mass reprisals and collective punishment – tactics which other colonial powers had used in their African colonies. One weapon which Italy used liberally was mustard gas, a chemical weapon. The Italian fascist regime was uninterested in the outraged reactions of foreign powers, and deliberately targeted ambulances and medical personnel with this gas, among other civilian targets.

In February 1937, the military governor of Ethiopia and viceroy of Italian East Africa, General Rodolfo Graziani, was standing at a podium along with various officials of the Italian-imposed administration. Two Ethiopian resistance fighters lobbed grenades Graziani’s way, seriously wounding him and killing other officials. This assassination attempt, while unsuccessful, demonstrated that the Ethiopians had not been defeated. The Italian authorities were thrown into a panic.

Over three days, February 19 – 21, the Italian forces, backed up by armed settlers, went on a killing spree. Ethiopians were butchered, hacked and bayoneted to death. Incendiary bombs were used, crops burned, and houses destroyed. Estimates of up to 20000 Ethiopians were killed, including women and children. This gruesome massacre in Addis Ababa was carried out by the Italian fascist authorities. Italian civilians who sympathised with the fascist cause participated with axes, knives and makeshift weapons.

Foreign diplomats expressed their horror at the atrocities they witnessed, relaying information about the orgy of violence occurring in the city. The Italian government never made a secret of the methods they used, yet this massacre has faded from memory, along with the Italo-Ethiopian war.

There were demands in the League of Nations to censure fascist Italy. There were European supporters of the Ethiopian resistance, and they bravely condemned the atrocities committed by Italian troops and their civilian Blackshirt accomplices. African Americans demonstrated their racial solidarity with the Ethiopian insurgents in the United States. Time magazine declared Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie Man of the Year in 1936.

The victims were African, and the European powers participated in the fiction that Mussolini was the ‘good’ dictator, as opposed to the evil Hitler. Africa was a place populated by savages in loincloths, a continent to be carved up by the imperialist powers. Their suffering did not matter in the halls of Washington and London.

The Ethiopians continued to resist, waging a classic guerrilla war against the Italian invaders. It is worth noting that the Ethiopian forces comprised people from all the different ethnic and tribal groupings in the country – Ethiopian nationalism is not a fictional concept.

The Ethiopians won in the end, and Italian fascism was defeated as much by Ethiopian rebels as by Yugoslav partisans. Graziani was arrested by Allied forces and tried, not for his crimes in Ethiopia and Italian-occupied Africa, but for his role in the short lived Nazi collaborationist Italian Social Republic.

The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has engaged in a deliberate attempt to recast the Italian fascist party of the 1930s as victims, rather than perpetrators. The Yugoslav partisans, in Meloni’s twisted vision, committed ethnic cleansing by shooting Italian fascist officers, police and Blackshirts. Berlusconian politics, pushing the Italian electorate right wards, influences our understanding of Italy’s fascist past.

By remembering the crimes of the colonisers, we can finally achieve justice for the victims, and honour those, such as the Ethiopians, who resisted.

What ethical basis is there, if any, for espionage and intelligence activities? During the Cold War, and especially after the September 11 attacks, surveillance and espionage has been marketed to us as a necessary activity, even though it may occasionally veer off course. Staffed by bright, dedicated people motivated by the noble desire to protect the nation, spying and intelligence gathering is portrayed as having ethical motivations – to protect us from terrorists, gangsters, violent militias and so on.

But what happens when the intelligence gathering agencies themselves engage in criminal activities? We will answer that question later, but first, let’s examine a recent and parallel example.

The nuclear deterrent is allegedly based on an ethical consensus surrounding MAD – mutually assured destruction. The claim goes that while nuclear weapons are abhorrent, they are a necessary to deter the enemy. Their power and scale of destructiveness undergird the moral imperative of avoiding mutual destruction. Were not the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki morally rationalised as destructive acts which, by shortening the war, saved thousands of lives? At least, that is what we were told by the proponents of nuclear weapons.

The Trident system, marketed as the next technological step in the UK’s nuclear weapons programme, was promoted by the English ruling class and its Tory party allies as a necessary deterrent. News has emerged that the latest test of the Trident, fired from a nuclear capable submarine the HMS Vanguard, embarrassingly failed.

In full view of the UK’s defence minister and senior military figures, the Trident missile launched from the submarine basically fell back into the water. Apparently the booster rockets failed, so the missile landed close to its launch location. The last test of Trident in 2016 also ended in failure.

The incredibly expensive programme’s failure has raised serious questions about the nuclear deterrent policy. Indeed, the case for reinforcing the nuclear nonproliferation treaty has only strengthened. If Trident was supposed to be an expensive yet powerful deterrent, then Moscow and Beijing must be laughing at its ineffectiveness. Combine that with the fact that Ukrainian forces, long supported by Britain and the United States, have had to withdraw in defeat from a strategically important city, and the entire moral argument for the alleged deterrence policy lies in tatters.

It is worthwhile to point out here that, when it comes to nuclear weapons technology, the West has a long history of proliferation. While apartheid South Africa was under sanctions for its racist legislative practices, it was successful in acquiring nuclear technology from sanctions-busting Israel. Pretoria and Tel Aviv, while loudly claiming to uphold international law, repeatedly broke that law to achieve military and economic objectives.

Back to our earlier question – does not espionage and intelligence gathering have a moral basis? I mentioned the defeat of Ukrainian forces earlier in this article, to further discuss this issue. Surely Kyiv has the right to defend itself against the Russian invasion through, among other means, secret operations? Drone strikes, targeted assassinations, sabotage of military and economic resources – are these necessary, even justified in times of warfare?

Sure, they do occur in wartime. The Zelensky government is no stranger to authorising and implementing secret missions. The Washington Post published an extensive investigative article regarding the intelligence capabilities and activities of Ukrainian secret services.

The Ukrainian domestic security services, the SBU, have waged a campaign of drone strikes and killings of Russian officials. Striking the Kremlin itself, and attacking the road bridge linking Ukraine to the Crimea, this underhanded campaign has been portrayed as pure self defence. However, as the Washington Post reporters make clear, the CIA and the UK’s intelligence services have been pouring money, and providing training, to the Kyiv regime at least since 2015.

The following quote from the article, while lengthy, is necessary to shed light on the issue:

These operations have been cast as extreme measures Ukraine was forced to adopt in response to Russia’s invasion last year. In reality, they represent capabilities that Ukraine’s spy agencies have developed over nearly a decade — since Russia first seized Ukrainian territory in 2014 — a period during which the services also forged deep new bonds with the CIA.

The missions have involved elite teams of Ukrainian operatives drawn from directorates that were formed, trained and equipped in close partnership with the CIA, according to current and former Ukrainian and U.S. officials. Since 2015, the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars to transform Ukraine’s Soviet-formed services into potent allies against Moscow, officials said.

In fact, the depth of CIA involvement in converting Ukrainian intelligence into a fully integrated operative arm of the CIA has eerie similarities to the cultivation of South Vietnamese intelligence in Saigon during the American intervention in that nation. One former CIA official was quoted in the Washington Post stating that we are witnessing the birth of a new Mossad, a reference to the Israeli intelligence service.

By annexing Ukrainian assets as proxies of Western intelligence interests, the Kyiv regime resembles the now defunct Saigon client state in South Vietnam. Nurtured by American and British weapons, sustained by funding from imperialist states, the parallels between Saigon and Kyiv are striking.

No, I am not suggesting that Putin is a new Ho Chi Minh, or that he is leading a guerrilla struggle against a militarily superior opponent. However, it is incumbent on us to shine a spotlight on the activities of intelligence services which are predatory and criminal in character. How many other former Eastern bloc nations have been transformed into intelligence assets against Moscow?

Neanderthals are our closest evolutionary cousins, yet they have received an appallingly bad press. We all know the stereotype of the dim witted, barbarous caveman – brutish and simple-minded, knocking people on the head and scouring the country for women. Actually, this reputation of Neanderthals as unintelligent savages is underserved.

Since the discovery of Homo neanderthalensis in 1856, Neanderthals have been regarded as the perfect Other, almost the antithesis of Homo Sapiens. Workers in a limestone quarry near Düsseldorf discovered unusual looking bones. The latter were submitted to anatomists, who initially believed the bones were of a deformed human.

Upon closer inspection, the bones were defined as belonging to a completely different species of hominin. Neander – derived from the Greek for ‘new man’ and thal, German for valley, the new species quickly made an impact on the wider community. Officially named in 1863, this was a time when the reading public was coming to grips with the startling implications of a new book – the Origin of Species.

Darwin was not the first to suggest that species, including our own, had a natural origin, excluding supernatural explanations. But he popularised the theory of biological evolution for an English-speaking audience. Now, the discovery of Homo neanderthalensis made clear that we are just one of numerous ancestral hominins to walk the earth.

Since the 1850s, other hominin species have been identified; Homo floresiensis, inaccurately referred to as ‘hobbits’; Homo heidelbergensis, the more recently confirmed Denisovans – all of whom occupied different geographical locations, and different times (sometimes coterminous) with our own branch of the primate family.

Neanderthals and human interbred, a discovery made possible by advances in technology analysing and cataloging information from ancient DNA. Biologists and geneticists, such as Nobel prize winner Svante Pääbo, have decoded and sequenced entire Neanderthal genomes. Pääbo pioneered the field of paleo genetics, and won the Nobel prize in medicine in 2022 for his research.

Europeans and Asians have between 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal DNA, while sub-Saharan African people have none. While Neanderthals were the first fossil hominins to be discovered, exploring their DNA has increased our understanding of their relative genetic proximity to modern humans.

It is not only analysis of ancient DNA that is changing our beliefs about Neanderthals. Newly uncovered artefacts, and improved methods for dating archaeological finds, have revealed that Neanderthals made tools, clothes, created artworks, were capable of symbolic construction, and may even have had a form of language. They took care of their families, lived in small socially cohesive groups, and buried their dead.

Hardly the picture of the lumbering, dimwit savage that we have been led to believe.

In the pages of the Scientific American magazine, the findings of archaeologists and geneticists have been elaborated, which paint a completely different picture of Neanderthals as ignorant brutes. They were capable of symbolic expression and art, even if only in nascent form. In various European caves where Neanderthal artefacts have been uncovered, researchers discovered that Neanderthals decorated themselves with body art, such as using red ochre for self-painting.

Neanderthal diet, far from being dominated by red meat, was quite diverse. They ate mussels, seals, sharks and various marine resources. Their dietary variety also included numerous types of vegetables, and indeed, vegetarian diets were not uncommon.

At Krapina, Croatia, a Palaeolithic site, Neanderthal artefacts and tools have been unearthed and catalogued, suggesting a complex system of tool manufacturing and symbolic reconstruction. Eagle talons, found buried at the site, require modification to be used as hunting tools. Not only for hunting – these talons were found to be decorated, which suggests their ornamental purpose.

Neanderthals went extinct 40 000 years ago. The causes of their extinction remains a hotly contested topic. I do not propose to resolve this debate in one article. However, we can firmly lay to rest one explanation – that modern humans hunted the Neanderthals to extinction, wiping them out through systematic violence. There is very little evidence of conflict between the two groups of hominins. There is ample evidence of their peaceful coexistence and intermingling.

Most archaeologists now favour a multi factorial explanation for the demise of the Neanderthals. Climate change and the retreating Ice Age left the Neanderthals with a narrowing food supply, diseases brought by Homo sapiens would have impacted the smaller social groups of Neanderthals, leaving them vulnerable. Exchanging packages of pathogens leads to mortality. Smaller social networks also meant smaller gene pools, thus increasing the probability of heritable conditions being passed on.

Let’s put to rest the stereotype of the knuckle-dragging troll that we have circulated regarding the Neanderthals. By recognising their cognitive capacities, we can also gain an understanding of our own humanity. In fact, the discovery of numerous hominin species is a bit like discovering the multitude of Kuiper Belt objects that could be classified as planets.

Pluto, demoted to its current status as a dwarf planet, is one of many celestial bodies in the Kuiper Belt. The latter is a circumstellar region of icy bodies ringing the Solar System. Are all the objects in the trans-Neptunian Kuiper Belt planets? A similar, parallel problem of classification arises as we research and understand the various hominin species, including Neanderthals. We need to expand our definition of humanity to include the gamut of hominins who, while different, share characteristics with us.

Since the beginning of large, coordinated and sustained Palestine solidarity protests around the world, the Israeli government and its Zionist supporters have portrayed the protesters as motivated by antisemitism. This slander is nothing new; since the inception of the state of Israel, Zionism’s partisans have kept up an unrelenting barrage of accusations that Palestinians, and the wider Arab and Muslim communities, oppose the Israeli state on antisemitic grounds.

Let’s untangle this topic, because it is impossible to highlight that multiethnic solidarity underpins the protests for Palestine solidarity, which is the exact opposite of racial or ethnic hatred.

Since its origin in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Zionism’s creators have regarded European antisemitism as not only inevitable, but an important political ally. Accepting the growth of antisemitism as something unavoidable, Theodor Herzl, the main foundational thinker of modern Zionism, regarded the antisemitic nations of Europe the most reliable allies. Pushing Jews out of Europe and into the putative homeland of Palestine, Zionism’s goal of an exclusive Jewish state corresponded with the exclusionary philosophy of white European antisemitism.

So much for the claim, advanced by Tel Aviv and its supporters, that Zionism emerged as a response to European antisemitism. In fact Herzl, Weizmann and the early leaders of Zionism accepted the racist logic of the antisemite – which holds that Jews are a biologically distinct ‘race’ incapable of assimilating into their host nations.

Herzl and his cothinkers were a tiny minority in the European Jewish community at the time. Zionism was a marginal force, but one which sought the patronage of imperial powers. It is well known that Herzl actively pursued the support of, for instance, Tsarist Russia, in the hope that the Russian Tsar would encourage the expulsion of Russia’s large Jewish community. Tsarism’s secret police and paramilitaries were engaged in antisemitic pogroms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jews were maligned as the originators of Bolshevism; the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy becoming a staple of antisemitic parties.

That huge numbers of Jews participated in antiracist and socialist movements is indisputable. It is this segment of Jewish opinion against which Zionism has fought. Anti-Zionist Jews are a serious thorn in the side of the Zionist movement. Ellen Brotsky and Ariel Koren, writing in The Guardian last year, explicitly denounce Israel’s assault on Gaza for what it is; an act of collective punishment tantamount to an unfolding genocide.

Indeed, the staunchest supporters of Israel and Zionism in Europe today are the far right and ultranationalist parties. They each have their own shameful history of antisemitism. Viktor Orban, the ultrarightist president of Hungary – and populist peddler of antisemitic conspiracy theories – is a fervent Zionist.

Geert Wilders, the far rightist Dutch politician who won the most recent elections in the Netherlands, is a fanatical supporter of Zionism, finding similarities between his ethnonationalist vision and the apartheid practices of the Zionist state. A notorious Islamophobe and anti-Arab racist, he has suggested the mass expulsion of the Palestinian population and its relocation to Jordan.

In fact, Israel’s most enthusiastic supporters in the United States are not Jews, but Christens. The evangelical movement, motivated by a literal belief in the tenets of the Old and New Testaments, see the ‘ingathering’ of Jews in the holy land of Palestine as fulfilment of biblical prophecy. While rejecting the eligibility of Jews to enter heaven – Protestant millenarians have a long tradition of antisemitism – white American evangelicals encourage the settlement of Jews in Palestine in accordance with their particular interpretation of biblical orthodoxy.

Chuck Schumer, Senate Democratic majority leader, was a keynote speaker at a March for Israel rally, held in Washington by evangelical groups. Supporting the ongoing Israeli attack on Gaza, Schumer and his colleagues regard the foundation of Israel as an opening salvo in the final apocalyptic battle of Armageddon.

Let us stop comparing the October 7 attack by Hamas to the Holocaust. No, Hamas did not attack Israelis because of their Jewishness, anymore so than Belgian anti-Nazi resistance fighters attacked German soldiers because the latter were Christian. Attacks on civilians are always horrendous, but do not saddle Hamas with the equivalent moral culpability as the Israeli military. The latter has besieged, blockaded, starved and malnourished the entire population of Gaza at least since 2007.

In fact, the conditions in Gaza since 2006-07 have resembled those of the Warsaw Ghetto in World War 2. Squashing an entire population into an overcrowded open-air prison creates the conditions where the oppressed lash out in their own ways. Our comfortable feelings about Hamas tactics may be shaken, but our feelings are also irrelevant. The Palestinians in Gaza do not have to consider the ‘feelings’ of the outside world, as they are fighting for their very lives.

Invoking the Holocaust, and the feelings of Zionism’s supporters, is an emotionally manipulative tactic to divert conversation from the realities of Palestinian oppression. Comparing Palestine solidarity as motivated by a Holocaust-continuing desire to eliminate Jewish people is a smear tactic deployed by Zionism’s supporters.

The accusation of antisemitism is used to censor critics of Israeli government policies – and Australian journalists are bearing the brunt of these kinds of attacks. Even the purportedly centrist ABC is enforcing a pro-Israeli perspectives on its journalists reporting on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Do not allow the ultranationalist Right to monopolise the definition of antisemitism to criminalise Palestinian solidarity. Palestinians are fighting, not for the physical elimination of Jews, but for the repeal of Zionism, and the reestablishment of a secular, democratic state with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of nationality or religious affiliation.

The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) has prompted a deluge of commentary regarding its impact on almost every field of human endeavour. Journalism, music, art, technical writing, education- all of these fields and more have felt the impact of AI. While most articles have examined the potential automation of these jobs by AI, I want to examine the underlying assumptions, and some myths, regarding AI And its impact on human creativity.

The brain is not a computer. This long-standing analogy, which undoubtedly has assisted research in the field of computer science, has outlived its utility. It has become a hindrance in psychology and understanding the origin and expansion of language. You will never find Beethoven’s symphonies, or impressions of the paintings of Da Vinci, located in specific areas in the brain like we are examining a block of computer code. No, the brain is not analogous to ‘hardware’, like we would find a computer’s motherboard.

Matthew Cobb, writing about this very subject in the Guardian, elaborates on the long history of the brain-machine analogy. Rene Descartes, the famous philosopher, surmised that the brain was a series of hydraulic pumps and values. Throughout the ages, various technologies have inspired a wide variety of analogies – electrical, mechanical, telephonic, and currently, digital and computerised.

What has all this got to do with AI? Consciousness is not a neural network; language is not the product of coding by developers, but an outcome of our biological and sociocultural evolution. We have all seen the headlines, such as ‘can a robot write for a newspaper?’ Very interesting question, and one that needs to be answered. AI can certainly take the drudgery and monotony out of writing first drafts, reviewing and editing journalistic articles, for sure. No, it cannot substitute for human judgement.

Artwork, music – all these endeavours are the products of human labour power. AI can certainly increase productivity, but it cannot replace it. What we have been doing since the dawn of the digital age, is outsourcing our moral and value judgements to the algorithm. Search engines have become the first point of call for questions and issues we have. Medical diagnoses, prospective romantic interests, gaming hobbies, chess, shopping for music – we have enabled the algorithms to do our thinking for us.

Steven Poole, British journalist, wrote about this precise trend in 2013. The growth of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOC) was heralded in university education as a boost for the empowerment of students, making available thousands of courses for anyone willing to learn. That’ll great, but then computerised algorithms were marking papers – graduation by algorithm. Do we replace the university structure with MOOCs?

Let’s take self-driving cars. In theory they sound great – the algorithm simplifies the driving experience. That is all well and good. However, let’s look at the road toll. Gary Marcus, psychology professor at New York University, offered a scenario. You are in a self-driving car, about to cross a narrow bridge. A school bus full of children careens out of control, and there is not enough room on the bridge for both of you. Should the algorithm controlling your vehicle decide to drive your car off the bridge, sacrificing your life to save all the schoolchildren?

Even in seemingly routine matters, such as driving, moral and value judgements are required. If you think that scenario is far fetched, think again. The former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA, General Michael Hayden, stated that when it comes to the collection and retention of surveillance data, “we kill people based on metadata.” That comment was made in the context of a debate on how our metadata – phone call logs, internet searches, – is being used by surveillance and intelligence agencies.

AI, being a product of human engineering, inevitably reflects the biases and values of the corporations who own and operate it. Even the large language models (LLM) of generative AI are not value free. Language, originating in the human sociocultural experience of cognition and formation of words, can be mimicked by LLM, not replaced.

Surely something as straightforward as the retention of facial recognition data would not be subject to biases? Take the case of Randal Quran Reid, an African American man improperly arrested and jailed for six days purely on the ‘strength’ of facial recognition. Arrested by Louisiana police on the basis of theft reports from New Orleans, Reid had never actually been to New Orleans. His protestations came to nothing.

His family raised thousands of dollars to get Reid out of jail. Reid’s case is not unusual. As Silicon Valley tech magnates warn of the dangers of abusing machine intelligence, they are still spending millions of dollars on developing such tools – stochastic parrots, as one commentator put it.

The danger is not AI itself, but in how we are allowing the generative AI technology to shape the world in which we live. ChatGPT can simplify our writing tasks, but it can fully replace the nuances and subtleties of human perception, cognition and language. Indeed, a subject which has been missing from all the talk about AI – the vital importance of nonverbal communication. I seem to recall that a book, which started this subject was published in 1872, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, by Charles Darwin.

That book was the earliest foray – at least in the English-speaking world – about the psychophysical processes underlying emotions, and our nonverbal communication. I do not think it is an exaggeration to surmise that human language had a crucial nonverbal precursor, before evolving into a fully verbal and social experience.

We certainly require a discussion of AI. Lets expand that discussion into how we can shape and use it, and not let ourselves be guided by the market imperatives of those tech giants who control it.

Richard Rampton, the libel lawyer who took on Holocaust denial in his capacity as a barrister, passed away late last year. He was 82. His antagonist was the long term Holocaust denier and Nazi sympathiser David Irving. Irving, in 1996, sued Professor Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin publishers for defamation. Why? Irving contended that Lipstadt, by referring to him as a Holocaust denier, antisemite and racist, had defamed him.

The object of Irving’s irritation was the 1993 book by Lipstadt entitled Denying the Holocaust: the growing assault on truth and memory. A sweeping analysis of the burgeoning phenomenon of Holocaust denial and its basis in antisemitism and Nazi philosophy, the book made mention of numerous Holocaust deniers, and the role they played in rehabilitating Nazism. If the enormous guilt of the Holocaust could be removed from the shoulders of the Nazi regime, then the ideology which underpinned that regime would be easier to rehabilitate.

Irving was mentioned, among others, as a prolific author of books which denied or minimised the Holocaust, and praised the leading figures of the Nazi regime. Incensed, Irving launched defamation proceedings – and Richard Rampton stepped up to defend Lipstadt and Penguin Publishers. English libel law is weighted in favour of the plaintiff – the onus is on the defendant to prove that they did not libel the plaintiff.

This trial, which began in 2000, raised questions about modern history. Is there such a thing as objective historical truth? Are not Holocaust deniers exercising their freedom of speech, no matter how repulsive their views? Such issues occupy the minds of Armenians in the diaspora, facing the organised campaign to deny and downplay the genocide of the Armenians by the Turkish Republic in 1915.

Rampton, who taught himself German for the trial, attacked the falsifications and distortions in Irving’s books. Demonstrating a clear pattern of behaviour in Irving’s work that tended towards exculpating the Nazi regime, Rampton conclusively proved that Irving was a Nazi sympathiser and Holocaust denier. Rampton did not allow Holocaust survivors to testify, lest they be subjected to taunts and ridicule from Irving (the latter had done that on numerous occasions).

The court ruled in favour of Lipstadt and Penguin Publishers. Rampton, the judge stated, proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Irving was indeed a Holocaust denier, racist and antisemite. The objective facts of the Holocaust could not be disputed. Rampton, throughout his legal career, won many libel cases, but his triumph over Irving was the victory for which he wished to be remembered.

The trial, and the issues involved, were dramatised in the 2016 movie Denial, with the English actor Tom Wilkinson (RIP) playing Rampton. One of the expert witnesses who testified in Lipstadt’s defence, Richard J Evans, wrote the definitive account of the entire topic.

When a prominent person like Rampton passes away, it makes me consider what subjects I would have liked to discuss with them if they were still alive. So many topics and questions arise in that scenario, but there is one topic I would have loved to talk about with Rampton. While Irving was the most prolific Holocaust denier and history revisionist, he was not the only one attempting to whitewash the criminal record of a genocidal regime from the World War 2 years.

Established institutions, sporting clubs and migrant centres among the Croat Australian community have for decades celebrated and whitewashed the genocidal record of the 1941-45 Croat Ustasha regime. Led by Nazi collaborator Ante Pavelic, the ideology of hyper nationalist racism underpinned that regime. The Ustasha massacred Jews, Serbs, anti-Ustasha Croats, Croats who had converted to Orthodox Christianity – all with the active connivance of the Catholic Church.

The Ustasha regime earned a reputation for gruesome violence, implementing its ultranationalist vision of an ethnically pure Croatia. Defeated by the multiethnic Yugoslav partisans, functionaries of the Ustasha escaped justice in Europe, many settling in the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia.

The Croats who came to Australia were virulently anti-Yugoslav, and had experience in committing acts of terrorist violence. The soccer clubs and migrant centres founded by Croat Australians promoted a narrow, ultranationalist version of their nation’s recent history. This is not my invention, but the findings of an investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Entitled “Fascists in our midst: the community whose leaders embrace Nazi links”, the SMH journalists found that Ustasha memorabilia is incorporated into the clubs and institutions of Croat Australian communities in Sydney and Melbourne. April 10, the anniversary of the establishment of the Ustasha regime, is openly celebrated. The sadistic pogroms committed by the foot soldiers of the ultranationalist Croat regime is either denied, or downplayed as ‘Yugoslav communist propaganda.’

Srecko Rover, a Croat ultranationalist who played a crucial role in founding migrant clubs and institutions for the Croat community, had a history he would have wanted others to forget. A member of the Ustasha, he was a participant in mobile killing units, targeting Serbs, Jews, non-Catholic Croats and other minorities in the areas controlled by the Pavelic regime. Rover found sanctuary in Australia.

Since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the Croat ultranationalist community has only increased its efforts to revise the history of World War 2 era Nazi collaborator groups, such as the Ustasha. Reinventing war criminals as anticommunist ‘nationalist heroes’ was made easier by the warm reception granted to escaping Croat Ustasha killers in the immediate aftermath of the war.

In a similar manner to Canada, Australian multiculturalism has a dark underbelly – providing refuge to those Eastern European white supremacists fleeing international justice at Nuremberg. Holocaust obfuscation is a central tenet of destructive Eastern European ultranationalist revisions of modern history.

Indeed, in the former Yugoslavia, this kind of destructive revisionism is under way, with statues and memorials to the partisans vandalised, and their antifascist struggle downplayed.

I wonder what Rampton would have made of the sanctuary provided for fascist war criminals in Australia. I wonder what he would have observed about the falsification of history happening among sections of the multicultural Australia community.