The National Geographic magazine is not the first place you would think of as having anything related to modern history or politics. However, you would be mistaken – there is a large History and Culture section of the magazine. In the May issue, there is a detailed summary of Operation Paperclip, which began in 1945.

Operation Paperclip was a covert mission, initiated and organised by US intelligence, to secretly transport and settle numerous German rocket scientists in the United States. These scientists, heavily involved in the military programmes of Nazi Germany, worked in the American space and military industries.

Their membership of the SS, their use of forced labour in concentration camps, was quietly swept under the carpet. The name Paperclip came from an identifiable paper clip earmarking the files examining these scientists.

One of the most famous of these German scientists was Wernher von Braun, (1912 – 1977) an engineer and rocket scientist who led the creation of the so-called V-2 ballistic missile. This ‘vengeance weapon’ was used to target British cities in the last years of the war. Slave labourers from concentration camps, built to accommodate the needs of the rocket program, died in their thousands from overwork, starvation and disease.

In a cruel irony, more people died extracting the raw materials required for building these rockets than the civilians killed in Britain due to V-2 attacks. Braun’s passion for ballistic missiles helped fuel the space ambitions of NASA.

You may find more details about the specifics of this operation here.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War 2. Numerous commemorative activities, presentations and ceremonies were held across the world. One of the most important of these was the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow. Multiple heads of state attended the parade on that day, marking the decisive contribution of the USSR in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Other writers have examined in great detail the incredible sacrifices of the Soviet people, including 300 000 Armenians, in breaking the back of the Nazi war machine. I will not go into the details of the extraordinary and heroic efforts of the Red Army here. What I can anticipate though, is the screaming objection by Western commentators, indoctrinated in the Hollywood-Longest Day-Guns of Navarone-Saving Private Ryan fan club version of history – what about the Western contribution to the Nazi defeat?

This question is important, though it is deployed in a cynical fashion. It is not asked out of genuine interest in the Anglo-American-Canadian contribution to the war effort, but to distract us from the complicity of imperialist powers in accommodating and encouraging the rise of Nazi power.

Large corporations in the United States and Britain, while wary of Nazi designs on Western Europe, were definitely encouraging Hitler to build a German empire in the European east – a project involving the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler himself made no secret of the fact that Eastern Europe constituted German lebensraum (living space), in much the same fashion that white settlers in the United States expanded West. The tactics used to expel the indigenous people of the American West were adapted by Nazi Germany to exterminate the Slavs and Jews of the European East.

What about Britain’s undeniable effort to defeat Nazi Germany? There is no question regarding the courage and determination of the English people facing the Nazi blitz, but they were hardly standing alone. Gary Younge, sociology professor at the University of Manchester, writes that millions of nonwhite people from the far flung territories of the British empire, volunteered to fight for Britain.

Millions from India, (and the Indian subcontinent), sub-Saharan Africa, Jamaica, the Caribbean nations, Kenya, North African Arab-speaking nationalities – the British fight against fascism was multicultural. They have never received their VE Day, and their contribution has been written out of the history books.

While Europeans were ecstatically celebrating their newly-won freedom on VE Day 1945, another scenario unfolded in the former French colony of Algeria. France had been occupied by Nazi Germany, and it had signed, along with the other Allied powers, the Atlantic Charter, a document that stipulated that occupied nations in Europe had the right to self-determination.

Well, the Algerians for one, decided that the principle of self-determination applies to them. Protesting peacefully, they were met with French gunfire. 45 000 Algerian were killed over the course of May and June. The French army, backed up by armed French settlers, launched a campaign of terrifying violence against the Algerians, using low level bombings, massacres and torture of anti colonial Algerians.

Clearly, the lauded principle of self determination did not apply to the darker skinned nationalities of the French and British empires. As we all now know, the former French territory of Vietnam waged a stubborn battle for independence after 1945. Where the French failed, the Americans stepped in.

April 30 was the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Saigon from American occupation. A hard fought campaign of resistance to colonial rule, the Vietnamese paid the price for American unwillingness to learn the lessons of colonial history.

Actually, in a way, the United States did learn from history. Closing its doors to European Jewish refugees during the war, Washington and Ottawa opened their doors to provide sanctuary for fleeing Nazi war criminals.

How about, this time around, we remember those who have been forgotten amidst the manufactured nostalgia surrounding World War 2. The prisoners of Buchenwald concentration camp were overjoyed to see American troops approaching their location in April 1945. The American soldiers were confronted by scenes of unimaginable horror and cruelty. But it would be a mistake to say that US forces liberated Buchenwald.

It was the prisoners who liberated themselves in Buchenwald. Forming underground action committees, and taking matters into their own hands, they bravely rose up and disarmed their fascist captors. Their heroism and collective spirit, even in such an inhumane and horrific place, could not be extinguished.

Gary Younge provides a cautionary observation for our times. It would be a perverse irony if the ideological descendants of ultranationalist and fascist parties, currently polling strongly across European nations, were to regain power through the ballot box 80 years after being defeated on the battlefield.

What are we to do when an elite sport player, musician or artist – outstanding in their particular field – turns out to be an obnoxious a*sehole in life?

A few years back, I wrote about the legendary chess player the late Bobby Fischer (1943 – 2008). A child prodigy at chess, he defeated his Soviet counterpart in the 1950s, thus earning his place in the pantheon of chess greats. However, as a person, he turned out to be a bigot, contemptuously sneering at anyone who disagreed with him.

Should we continue to admire a person who, while outstanding as a sportsperson or musician, is an obnoxious lout in life?

Let’s begin with baseball. I tried baseball in high school, and was never any good at it. I probably hit only 20 percent of the pitches I faced. Hitting a home run was a rarity. To top it off, I got more interested in squash, and so my incipient baseball career came to an end before it even started.

Baseball is not that big in Australia, in comparison to the Major Leagues in the United States. I never fully understood all the statistics of baseball playing – and I still do not. However, I can appreciate the ability of fans to accumulated vast and complex baseball data sets in their minds. I also think that elite baseball players are worthy of admiration.

Ty Cobb (1886 – 1961) was an exceptional baseball player, the absolute greatest of his generation. His baseball achievements hit record levels, and remained so for decades.

His approach to the game was one of tactical aggression, unafraid to confront his opponents absolutely head-on. Undeterred by threats from fans, he pursued baseball with an unmatched intensity, stealing bases, a steely-eyed gaze, anticipating his opponents’ moves and countering them. He was able to think quickly and decisively under pressure. Fearless and strong, he would deliberately crash into the opposing fielders at the bases, sparking numerous confrontations that became a hallmark of his career.

He was also an antisemite and obnoxious person, described by his friends and colleagues as a ‘son of a b*tch.’ Known for a hair-trigger temper, he was abusive and obnoxious to waiters, porters, hotel staff, his intimate partners and certainly towards other baseball players. Loudly and frequently disparaging his slightly younger contemporary, George ‘Babe’ Ruth, Cobb reserved a special hatred for Ruth’s superb hitting and sporting abilities.

Nicknamed the Bambino, Babe Ruth was a portly, stocky man, who grew up in relative poverty. Attending a reformatory school, nothing in his academic records suggested that he would amount to anything out of the ordinary. Preferring drinking and carousing to baseball training, there was no indication yet of his sporting abilities.

Yet, in his first season as a professional base baller, in 1920, Ruth scored an amazing 54 home runs for the New York Yankees. Ruth displayed a remarkable intelligence and resilience on the baseball field. Making decisions under intense pressure, he worked out the tactics of his opponents and decided how to outsmart them.

Elite sportspeople can be both physically adept, and intelligent in their field. Ruth confounded the stereotype of ‘great at sport, dumbo at academics.’ We have all confronted the ‘sports jock’ archetype – excelling in football, for instance, but barely passing their school subjects. In fact, to be an elite competitor, you need not just physical strength, but mental agility and flexibility.

Let’s change tack here….why am I talking about this particular subject now? The topic above – appreciating sport or music produced by scoundrels – has resurfaced in recent days.

American rapper and musician Kanye West (or Ye as he prefers to be know) is no stranger to controversy. A talented rapper with a global following, his gradual descent into mental health problems is no secret. His political deterioration into a MAGA-aligned far rightist has been the subject of analysis in the past. I have written about his antisemitic and ignorant recycling of conspiratorial misinformation previously.

Earlier this month, West released a single called ‘Heil Hitler’ from his forthcoming album. Praising the Nazi leader and architect of the Holocaust, West’s song is a mishmash of antisemitic outbursts and juvenile profanities. Identifying himself as a fellow traveler of Nazi ideology, West has been dropped by major music companies. His song, while also dropped from streaming platforms, nevertheless remains in circulation through AI-generated versions.

The song’s cover illustration resembles a swastika. The song ends with excerpts from a speech by Hitler. West is increasingly resembling an emotionally and mentally unhinged person. His narcissistic selfishness was previously excused on the grounds that he is a brilliant musician. His legions of fans either ignored or rationalised his outbursts.

However, West has now chosen to occupy a position in the foul cesspit of the MAGA cult’s ultra-libertarian and fanatical ‘America First’ nationalism. Trump, Musk, Vance, and the swamp of fascistic social media influencers have taken their toll on West, and now they are hailing their new musical recruit to their ideology.

It is not everyday that a black man, and an influential one at that, sings the same tune as MAGA – the modern day updated version of the Klan. It is only a small step from white hoods to red MAGA hats.

West needs help with his mental health issues, plus an extensive education in the history of racism, the American civil war, the Holocaust, and settler colonialism.

We would do well to remember, and learn from, the example of Jackie Robinson (1919 – 1972). An African American baseball champion who broke through the colour line, he maintained his integrity while never backing down against bigotry. Today’s American MAGA administration would have kept Robinson out of the Major Leagues, given the chance.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby, a classic American novel. Taught in high schools and universities across the Anglophone nations, its message of financial opulence hiding dark secrets is still relevant in Trump’s United States.

There were numerous exhibitions and commemorative activities held in April this year, celebrating the publication of The Great Gatsby one hundred years ago. There are multiple themes and leitmotifs in that book, and it deserves to be hailed as the great American novel. F Scott Fitzgerald, the author, already had two commercially successful novels under his belt. The Great Gatsby, however, was not a financial success initially.

The exhibitions and literary events commemorating the book come at a difficult time for writers, libraries and museums in the US today. The Trump administration, under the guise of saving money, has issued numerous executive orders cutting the federal government’s funding of public libraries, museums and educational institutions. Trump himself has been compared to Gatsby, a nouveau riche hustler who equates financial success with possessing an ethical compass.

The main character of the novel, Jay Gatsby, is an enormously wealthy man. He hosts lavish cocktail parties, sumptuous gatherings and social events at his mansion at West Egg, New York. Beneath the glitz and glamour, there is a dark story; Gatsby, originating from an impoverished background, made his wealth through bootlegging and other criminal activities. Desiring nothing else than the love of the rich and already married Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby longs to be accepted by ‘old’ money families.

Indeed, if there is an Australian counterpart to Gatsby, it is convicted criminal and former NSW politician Eddie Obeid. The latter used his position and connections to amass a fortune in property development and real estate speculation. Charged and convicted of corruption and financial misconduct, he made a statement during the trial that indicates his personality.

During one of many heated exchanges with the prosecuting lawyer, Obeid remarked “I’ve spent more money than you have made in your entire lifetime.” He said that statement with pride, as if it is an accomplishment. The parallels with the Trumpian obsession with wealth are apparent. Nothing else matters except financial accumulation.

Obeid’s sneering remark reminded me of Jay Gatsby, the man for whom wealth is the ultimate measure of success. Reminds me of Trump for that matter. F Scott Fitzgerald, when asked why he wrote the novel, stated:

The idea that we’re the greatest people in the world because we have the most money in the world is ridiculous. Wait until this wave of prosperity is over! Wait ten or fifteen years! Wait until the next war in the Pacific, or against some European combination!

Indeed, Jonah Raskin, in his article examining the Gatsby novel, states that class consciousness comes through in this book by Fitzgerald. The novel is set in the Roaring Twenties, when success seemed unstoppable, Fitzgerald wrote a kind of warning for his fellow Americans. Seduced by the seeming and superficial allure of capitalism, he was indicating that there was an emptiness and vacuity at the heart of this system.

There is one criticism that Raskin makes of the book – the near total absence of working class characters. Sure, there are servants, cleaners, the chatty motor mechanic. However, the great mass of workers, without whom any economic success would be impossible, are conspicuously absent in Fitzgerald’s tale.

Earlier, I alluded to the Trump administration’s sustained attacks on public libraries and museums. The executive order to gut funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) may not appear to be that harmful at first glance. The IMLS is responsible for funding and maintaining the thousands of libraries and museums across the nation.

Formed in 1996 out of a merger of existing government departments, the IMLS has had legislative bipartisan support throughout its existence until today. This institution, while handing out grants, is not just a funding body. It helps poor and isolated rural and urban working class communities of diverse backgrounds to access books, audiovisual materials, internet connections, educational presentations and adult education courses.

The US Congress allocated $266.7 million for the IMLS in the 2024 fiscal year. That is quite a chunk of money, to be sure. However, that figure constitutes 0.003 percent of the federal budget. Cutting that amount would save 75 cents per person. In contrast, the US military budget for fiscal year 2024 was $842 billion.

Cutting the financial support for the IMLS will mean the closure of educational programs for rural communities, the stopping of internet access and drinking water for isolated communities in the largely rural state of New Mexico, and the elimination of educational avenues for young people. In fact, it will be harder for students to come by a copy of The Great Gatsby, which is still in demand 100 years after its publication.

I have not touched upon all the knowledge capital that will be lost should museums go under. They are a trusted and easily accessible venue of scientific knowledge. A treasure trove of scientific information and communication will be gutted should the IMLS close its doors.

Just a brief note here regarding the frontal assault by the MAGA cult on books that the Trump administration deems to fall within the purview of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI). While we are quick to point an accusatory finger at communist or socialist governments that we feel are censoring books not aligned with official political ideology, let’s take a brief look at the free-market fundamentalism sweeping the US.

The US military, in line with Trump’s directives to remove books which promote DEI, one book that has been purged is Memorializing the Holocaust by Professor Janet Jacobs. Is this book so frightening, its subject matter so disturbing, that future US soldiers do not have the courage or resilience to read it? Perhaps the hyper masculine MAGA cult is too weak and sensitive (snowflakes perhaps?) to handle the difficult issues pertaining to the Holocaust.

Libraries and museums are not just something nice to have, but are part and parcel of what an educated and informed citizenry require. I think that is what today’s Gatsbys, the financial oligarchs of the MAGA cult, find absolutely terrifying.

Technical writing, the job which I have performed over the last 30 years, has a core skill. Taking complex information, for instance about a software platform, and writing clear and concise instructions for the customer on how to use it, is a core objective.

Software developers, with all due respect, produce code. While they can write documentation, their perspective is necessarily a coding one. The customer does not want coding lessons, they want to use the software to achieve their goals.

This is where the technical writer steps in, and extracts information from software developers, project managers and subject matter experts. Collecting and translating all this information into instructional material is the key objective of the technical writer. What am I leading up to?

Social skills are just as important as writing and communication skills for a technical writer. We have to deal with people; managers, office staff, software geeks, hardware engineers, salespeople – all can be stakeholders in a project. As a technical writer, it is our job to interview people for their expertise. Does a technical writer know everything about obscure and complex topics? Of course not.

Now that I am over 50, and have a resume as lengthy as War and Peace, there are skills which I have not included on my resume. One of those topics is emotional intelligence.

I have gone through all the stresses and storms of project delivery, attended thousands of hours of meetings, delivered training courses, handled people’s personal problems, been in companies that have fallen into bankruptcy and receivership, trained up new staff, and dealt with all sorts of sociopathic personalities in the workplace.

I worked for a company that produced geographic information systems (GIS). Think Google Maps, and you get the idea. There was a team of developers, headed by a senior software engineer. This person was older than me – at the time I was in my mid-twenties, and they were in their mid-forties. They had a reputation of being cranky, cantankerous and difficult to work with.

This person, whom I will call ‘Joe’ (not their real name) could be positively obnoxious to the junior developers and business analysts. I had to approach Joe, and set up a cordial working relationship that them – after all, they were the senior subject matter experts on the GIS platform I was documenting.

How to solve this problem?

I waited until Joe was in a good mood (or at least, not cranky), and approached him after work. I patiently explained my job requirements, and said that I never treat anyone as an ‘enemy’, but as a collaborator on a project. I would require the benefit of his expertise, because clear documentation for the customer reduced the amount of unnecessary support calls and burden on the developers.

From that day onwards, Joe was polite and cooperative with me. He never raised his voice, and was always willing to answer my questions. He was still obnoxious to his staff.

Many months later, I learned the reason for his behaviour; he saw that the junior developers did not possess the basic skill set he expected of graduates in computer programming. His frustration with their apparent lack of basic knowledge would boil over in the workplace.

Years later, after I had finished on that project and moved on to other jobs, I was sitting in the food court when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and was pleasantly surprised – it was Joe saying hello. Here was this grumpy, cranky person standing there being friendly to me. I do not know what happened to Joe after that, but I hope he is okay.

What is my point? AI cannot read the room. Yes, it is wonderful technology, but it cannot replace the social skill capital accumulated over years of experience.

Reading the room, and navigating the intricacies of social interactions is a skill developed over time. Lived experience is not something you can describe to AI. Oh yes, I can see numerous copywriting jobs which involve creating text for AI engines, which is basically a method of getting writers to train their automated replacements.

Synthetic intelligence, which is what AI has achieved, prompts us to revisit debates about self-awareness and consciousness. These topics are nothing new. We all know that good ol’ Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650), preeminent philosopher, scientist and mathematician created the famous statement ‘I think, therefore I am’.

That is all well and good, however, he was not the first to explore the topic of human self-awareness. Centuries before him, Islamic scientist, philosopher and polymath Ibn Sina (westernised as Avicenna 980 – 1037), theorised the flying man thought experiment.

Let’s suppose that god (the monotheistic one, not the hundreds of other creator deities), created a man instantaneously. This man has no memories or experiences. His limbs are outstretched, so he cannot feel his own body with his hands. His eyes are covered, his hearing is blocked, and he is floating in mid-air. Would he be conscious of himself? Avicenna said yes. He was working towards a solution for what we today call the mind-body problem.

The world of social experience cannot be replicated or replaced by AI. The latter certainly helps with monotonous tasks, alleviating the drudgery of IT. However, AI is not a project manager, or a socially skilled entity, capable of bringing multiple stakeholders together for a common project.

Indeed, we are now, in the era of Big Tech, dominated by an attentional oligarchy. Our attention spans have been commoditised by the tech giants. Our banking, health data, romantic searches, political questions, music preferences – are all part and parcel of big data. Surveillance capitalism is a marketing panopticon which monitors our tastes and habits, and converts them into corporate profitability.

Now, the big tech corporations want permission to sell and trade your data.

My question for you is; why are we allowing the billionaires to decide what makes us human? Surely our common humanity is something worth fighting for?

Eleven years ago, I wrote a long article drawing comparisons between the Warsaw ghetto of the 1940s with the open-air prison of Gaza in current times. The similarities between the different occupations, and the response of the entrapped Palestinians in Gaza with their Jewish counterparts in the Warsaw Ghetto, is not just a figment of my imagination.

I did not invent this for rhetorical purposes, or as a kind of literary flourish designed to provoke emotional reactions. Any kind of comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto and Gazan Palestinians is bound to provoke a furious overreaction from Zionism’s supporters. While I have changed my mind about lots of issues in the intervening years since 2014, I still believe that the parallels between those two ghettoised populations, and the tactics used by the respective occupiers, remains a valid exercise.

As Michelle Weinroth stated, we still have to make the Jewish Ghetto comparison. She is a member of Independent Jewish Voices in Canada.

No, this exercise is not aimed at earning more likes or dislikes on social media. Your feelings do not matter to me. It is one thing to be sensitive to the plight of others, it is quite another to deploy ‘hurt feelings’ as a rhetorical distraction, derailing conversations about the genocidal violence directed at the Palestinians. I do not care about placating manufactured anxieties.

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising, in 1943, was the largest act of armed resistance by Jewish groups against the Nazi occupation. Since October of 1940, Warsaw’s Polish Jewish population were forcibly confined to a ghetto, given starvation rations, and compelled to live in unsanitary and squalid conditions. Hundreds of thousands died of malnutrition and disease.

Multiple underground Jewish organisations formed a coordinated resistance committee, and began preparations for an uprising. Starting in April 1943, the outgunned and outnumbered Jewish resistance fighters courageously fought against the more powerful and mechanised German army. They waged a guerrilla type campaign, for as long as they could hold out.

The Nazis eventually razed the entire ghetto, street by street and building by building. Tanks, aerial bombardment, flame throwers – all kinds of weapons were used against the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. By May 1943, the armed resistance was crushed.

While the uprising was ultimately defeated by overwhelming force, the Jewish fighters are hailed as heroes today. But that lionisation of Jewish resistance was not always the case.

Poland in the interwar years was a deeply antisemitic society, and statements denouncing the Jews as vermin, bloodsuckers and parasites was not uncommon. While the Nazi army was systematically destroying the Warsaw Ghetto, Polish Catholics outside the ghetto cheered on the Germans, maintaining a festive atmosphere. Music, dances and merry-go-rounds from outside the ghetto accompanied the screams of anguish and horror from within.

Dehumanising the Palestinians, and Arabs more generally, has a long ideological pedigree among Zionist leaders. Since 1948, the Israeli authorities have cynically manipulated the trauma of the Holocaust, demonising Palestinians and the wider Arab society as modern day antisemites and equivalents of Nazis.

As the Israeli military uses mass starvation as a weapon of war, bombing hospitals and schools, and forcibly displacing millions of Gazan Palestinians, one cannot fail to notice the striking parallels with the suffering inflicted on the Warsaw ghetto. Much like the celebrating Poles of Warsaw, Israelis the town of Sderot, in 2014, danced and cheered while the Israeli military hit Gaza with missiles and bombs.

Cheering for Somaliland in 1991

I remember seeing on the news, in 1991, the crowds of cheering Somalis as they celebrated their nation’s Declaration of Independence. Somaliland was politically and economically separated from the main united Somalia, and the crowds were jumping with joy at the flag-raising ceremony for their new nation.

I remember thinking, gee, my fellow Australians cheer loudly only for the rugby league or AFL. The celebratory crowds, jumping with joy in their new homeland, are cheering for something important.

Another aspect of the new Somaliland made an impression on me at the time – the clear and distinct inclusion of the Shahada on the new nation’s flag. What is the Shahada?

The Islamic oath, which declares “I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God”. That text is on the top horizontal stripe of the Somaliland flag.

Weren’t we supposed to be fighting the Muslim enemy, the existentially threatening fanatics determined to bring down our way of life? Why are we in the allegedly ‘good’ West covering the emergence of an Islamist statelet positively?

To date, Somaliland remains unrecognised by the international community.

Why am I talking about Somaliland? That statelet is the proposed site of a projected Palestinian concentration camp. Forcibly relocating the entire Palestinian population of Gaza is a long term goal of West Jerusalem and its American backers. The Somaliland proposal will create a new ghetto, reminiscent of Warsaw, by using that territory as a dumping ground for the unwanted Palestinians.

Scratch beneath the surface of the Somaliland flag, and you will find the symbol of the real powerbroker in that statelet, the Union Jack.

Since the early 1990s, Britain has ensured that its economic, political and cultural resources gain unfettered access to Somaliland. The latter is basically an economic colony of London, even though it maintains formal political independence. The Somaliland military, intelligence and police services are trained by, and heavily integrated with, Britain.

Located on the strategically important Red Sea coast, Somaliland is in close proximity to Yemen. The Ansar Allah forces, commonly called Houthis, are waging a military campaign against Israeli shipping. Washington and London have sounded out the Somaliland government about the plausibility of using the Somaliland statelet as an open-air prison for millions of forcibly displaced Palestinians.

The US administration of Donald Trump has loudly stated its intention to facilitate such a mass deportation, fantasising about turning Gaza into a Mar-a-Lago-type resort complex.

Mass deportation requires dutiful subcontractors, such as Somaliland, to perform their role in the repression of the imperialist empire’s unwanted people. Such deplorable schemes as the proposed ghettoisation of Palestinians are bound to fail, and generate resistance. Somaliland’s own population has repeatedly risen up against the repressive state apparatus in that statelet. Shining a spotlight on the parallels between the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza equips us with the resources to combat the sinister intrigues of empire.

It is always beneficial, and in some ways inevitable, that there will be comparisons between the Holocaust and other genocides. That exercise, of genocide comparison, is sometimes familiar to Armenians in diaspora. The descendants of genocide survivors try to make sense of what happened, why it happened, and whether similar crimes occurred in other parts of the world.

That exercise is a pivot into a topic which I will take up here.

But first, let’s begin with the story of Uncle Kurt, better known as Kurt Heinrich Debus, (1908 – 1983). His trajectory illustrates better than I can an ideological affinity that has largely gone underreported – the ideological similarities between American settler colonialism, and Nazi German white supremacy.

No, similarities do not mean both experiences are completely identical. But the convergence between the doctrine of Manifest Destiny in the American colonial settler expansion in the West, and the German Lebensraum (living space) in the East, are not coincidental.

Uncle Kurt and NASA

Uncle Kurt, rocket scientist and NASA director, had the kind of storied career you would only find in epic historical sagas.

His expertise was impeccable; a pioneer of the German V2 rocket programme, he was responsible for the technology underpinning the Saturn rocket family of NASA missions, as well as supervising countless space missions involving military missiles. It is no exaggeration to say that without Debus, the NASA astronauts would never have made it to the Moon.

Debus was a member of the SA (Sturmabteilung), the Nazi paramilitary brown shirts, an organisation crucial in the rise of the Nazi party. He went on to become an officer in the Waffen SS. However, he was not just a brainless thug, but a scientist and rocket engineer.

He and his colleagues were responsible for the deadly V2 ballistic rocket. That weapon was responsible for, among other things, thousands of casualties among the British population, when the Nazi leadership launched these ‘vengeance’ weapons targeting civilian populations.

After the war was over, the knowledge of rocketry was in demand, particularly in the United States. The bombing of cities was a war crime. Never matter, said the Washington authorities.

The Waffen SS was condemned as a criminal organisation by the International Military Tribunals – aka the Nuremberg trials – in 1946. Individual membership of that group automatically attracted imprisonment. However, SS membership was not an impediment to emigration to the United States.

Debus was one of the hundreds of Nazi German scientists appropriated by Operation Paperclip, the covert American government programme to acquire German scientists and their knowledge capital. Provided refuge by the US authorities who were now waging a Cold War against the Soviet Union, technological advancements in that confrontation, particularly of a military nature, outweighed any concerns about using war criminals as allies.

Debus and his colleagues, including the more famous Wernher von Braun, went to successful careers as scientists and administrators for NASA. Cape Canaveral became their sanctuary.

Race, living space and Manifest Destiny

The white American colonists, from the Revolutionary Wars onwards, were determined to expand their agricultural settlements across the continent at the expense of the indigenous peoples. George Washington waged a simultaneous war; against the British authorities, and against the native nations in the form of the Iroquois confederation.

Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers of the new American republic, envisioned liberty, democracy and an agrarian-based nation devoid of the native population. The latter were destined to die out, he reasoned.

The so-called ‘red Indians’ as they were known, were to be eliminated and their lands seized. The Mississippi River, as the decades wore on, was considered the outermost boundary of the expanding settler nation. A new race of yeoman farmers, combining the qualities of sturdy self-reliance and dedication to the cultivation of the land, were to take over the new spaces emptied of their indigenous inhabitants.

In the 1840s, this expansionist imperative was summarised in the concise phrase Manifest Destiny. The white race, preordained by god, were on a mission to conquer the lands of continental North America. Biblically sanctioned violence became the cornerstone of the westward expansion of the American colonies.

An interesting side note here; no-one has ever invaded and colonised a country in the name of Satan….

The practices of mass killings, rape, starvation, disease, forced settlement into reservations, adopted against the indigenous peoples were remarkably effective, if I can use that term for a genocidal programme. Combining ideas of race and expanding living space for a new race of yeoman farmer colonists was a defining feature of continental imperialism.

What has all that got to do with Nazi Germany?

Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and the top Nazi leadership envisioned a continental empire in the European East. They drew direct inspiration from the American West. Himmler in particular developed a doctrine of ‘blood and soil’; a race of German colonist farmer-warriors settling the lands of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The Slavs, Jews and other so-called ‘inferior’ peoples were to be eliminated in a social Darwinist experiment in societal reengineering.

Indeed, Hitler himself declared that the Volga river was the German equivalent of the Mississippi. All the conquered territories were to be Germanised, and the native Eastern European peoples eliminated or turned over to pitiful reservations.

Taking the westward expansion of the United States’ colonists as a template, Nazi propaganda portrayed hardy German settlers on wagons, heading out on a colonising mission to the California of the East. Writing in Mein Kampf, Hitler expressed his admiration for how Aryan America had seized the continental West, clearing out the doomed ‘red Indians’, thus making way for white settlers.

It is this kind of modern history that is under attack from the cultural vandals and free-market fanatics of the MAGA cult embodied in the Trump-Musk-Silicon Valley nexus administration. Understanding more about ourselves equips us with the tools to confront the current creeping censorship of the underbelly of US continental imperialism.

The Nazi East and the American West are geographically separated by thousands of kilometres, but have more in common than we realise.

De-extinction, the genetic engineering practice of resurrecting extinct species, sounds like a good idea. Surely, in this era of biodiversity loss – and Australia in particular is going through an extinction crisis – bringing back extinct species is ethically responsible and ecologically sound?

While that may appear to be a laudable goal, de-extinction will do nothing to address the extinction crisis, or solve the increasing loss of biodiversity. Indeed, de-extinction does not actually resurrect long-dead species, but simply provide high tech substitutes of the real thing.

Let’s sort this out.

Ancient DNA has achieved a kind of celebrity status of its own. Along with time travel, splitting the atom, and interplanetary travel, ancient DNA has provided the basis for Hollywood blockbusters, the most famous being the Jurassic Park movie franchise. Setting movie-making to one side, can extinct species be brought back to life from ancient DNA? This is where the topic of de-extinction comes in.

What is de-extinction?

De-extinction is not a new idea; it tracks back to scientific projects in the 1970s aiming to freeze the DNA, tissues, blood and reproductive cells from endangered animals with the hope of one day resurrecting them. The simple definition is that de-extinction is a form of species revivalism – cloning or generating an organism that revives or resembles an individual from an extinct species.

The extinction crisis, and declining biodiversity, are very real problems. Human economic activity, extractive capitalism, logging, mining, overexploitation of marine resources – all these practices are driving more species to extinction.

These issues require urgent political and economic solutions, and the genomics industry has stepped up to the plate with a seemingly simple solution based on the latest technology – de-extinction. Surely, the morally responsible thing to do would be to restore species that we have driven to extinction?

Gene-editing technology already stirs up ethical and political controversies. Colossal Biosciences, the genomics company that had previously announced their intention to revive the woolly mammoth, grandly proclaimed that they had de-extincted the dire wolf, a long-extinct canine species native to the Americas.

However, what they have brought back is a gene-edited version of a gray wolf with some dire wolf characteristics. That is an impressive feat of gene editing technology, but it is not de-extinction. Editing the genomic makeup of the gray wolf, the closest living relative to the dire wolf, and making specific modifications to its makeup is very clever, but it is creating a high tech replacement, not reviving the real thing.

Geneticists extracted ancient DNA from the preserved remains of the dire wolf, and then sequenced the entire genome. They compared the dire wolf genome with that of three gray wolf, identified multiple locations which were the genetic origins of key differences with the gray wolf.

The gray wolf genes were then edited (the single nucleotide polymorphisms were modified) to correspond to the distinctive characteristics of the dire wolf. From these cells, embryos were created, which developed into the three pups, which while born from a gray wolf, exhibit characteristics of the dire wolf.

That is all fascinating, and raises questions regarding the ethical implications of editing the genetic sequences of animals. But they are not dire wolves. They are not a resurrection of the extinct canine species. How does a species arise? Well, I seem to recollect that an English naturalist wrote an entire book on the topic back in 1859…..

The thylacine is a top candidate for de-extinction in Australia. The Tasmanian Tiger, as it is popularly known, is an extinct Australian marsupial. Hunted to extinction, there are those who would like to revive this species.

It is interesting to note that the debate around resurrecting the thylacine gets recycled with monotonous regularity in the Australian media, but the actual genocidal violence against the indigenous population of Tasmania still struggles to be recognised as a valid topic for national attention. No, I am certainly not suggesting that the indigenous nations of Tasmania are equivalent to mammalian wildlife – by no means.

I am just pointing out the recrudescence of nationalistic fervour underlying the ‘bring back the Tassie Tiger’ debate. That concern for life apparently does not extend to the indigenous peoples, who have been falsely accused of having been completely exterminated by the British.

That the British settlers ruthlessly eliminated the indigenous nations is not in doubt. What is false is the myth that with the passing of Truganini was the last ‘full-blooded’ indigenous person left in Tasmania. While she was one of the last speakers of indigenous Tasmanian languages, she was not the last Palawa Tasmanian person.

Be that as it may, the revival of the thylacine may seem like an ecologically responsible course of action, but there are many unanswered questions. How will the ‘new’ copy survive? Will it adapt to the radically altered landscape? After all, the hunting of the thylacine did not occur in a vacuum, but was part of the larger ecological effort to convert land into pastoral grazing territory for cattle and sheep.

Can a restored ‘thylacine’ reproduce? You may certainly be able to de-extinct individuals, but how will they adapt to the wider ecosystem?

Back in 2016, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature developed guidelines for the revival of species. It noted that while de-extinction has marketing appeal, none of the gene editing technologies will reproduce an exact replica of the extinct animal. Indeed, the IUN does not use the word ‘de-extinction’ in the title of its guidelines.

It is very true that Australians want to do more to protect nature. Currently, there are now 2000 threatened species and ecological communities in Australia. We need to strengthen the laws that protect natural habitats, stop land clearing, and implement a federal environmental protection agency. We need more research into and programmes for controlling invasive species.

We are not going to address the extinction crisis by the methods of gene editing technology. De-extinction, while an important genomic development, is a distraction from the important national conversation we should be having about reversing the damaging economic and industrial practices which result in the loss of biodiversity.

Some topics are like pulling on a thread; you may initially want to remove the individual thread, but end up untying an entire pullover instead. You gradually realise that you have unraveled more than initially expected. That is the case of Anglo-American provision of sanctuary, and secretive cooperation with, ex-Nazis after the end of World War 2.

At first glance, you may be wondering what an obscure episode of modern history has to do with today’s political configurations. The policies of secret wheeling and dealing with escaping Nazis and ultranationalist foot soldiers finds a direct continuation with current US and British foreign policies with regard to Ukraine and Kyiv’s conflict with Russia.

Let’s begin with the first thread – in the late 1980s and 90s, while I was at university, I followed with interest the case of Klaus Barbie. The latter was a Nazi Gestapo officer, Waffen SS member and war criminal, known as the Butcher of Lyon. Advising Vichy France, the Nazi controlled state in France, Barbie was responsible for the torture, deportation and murder of thousands of Jews.

After the defeat of Nazi Germany, Barbie fled Europe, and found secret sanctuary in Bolivia. His case was made public in the 1970s and 80s, after French investigators identified him. Barbie had been using the pseudonym of Klaus Altmann.

How did a former Gestapo officer find refuge for decades in Bolivia? This is where pulling at the thread begins to unravel the entire fabric.

Barbie’s career as an intelligence officer did not end in 1945. Recruited by the United States army’s Counterintelligence Corps. Barbie, like many ex-Nazis, were viewed as intelligence assets in the context of the emerging Cold War against the Soviet Union. Barbie had a new assignment; helping to instigate an anticommunist uprising in the Eastern bloc. His record of war crimes was quietly expunged, and he became a useful asset for his new American paymasters.

Barbie went on to provide the Bolivian military and intelligence services with expert advice on the capture, torture and imprisonment of dissidents. While there, he provided support for CIA-organised military coups, participated in narcotics trafficking and arms smuggling, and even provided a then unknown drug runner called Pablo Escobar with a start in the business.

Escaping justice in Europe, the US CIC helped him flee to South America. However, it is not only South American nations where ex-Nazis found sanctuary.

The main nations in the Americas that provided fleeing Nazis with a fresh start were the US and Canada.

As for Barbie, he was finally extradited to France in 1983, and while on trial, died of cancer in 1991.

Canada became a favoured destination of escaping Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and ultranationalists from the 1950s onwards. The fighters of the Galician Waffen SS division, composed mostly of Ukrainians, were given sanctuary in Canada as part of Ottawa’s commitment to the Cold War.

Implanting and cultivating the Ukrainian ultranationalist community has been a longstanding practice of Ottawa’s authorities. This is not my own invention, by no means. The late David Cesarani, expert on Jewish history, Europe and the Holocaust, documented the extensive relations between the British intelligence establishment and Ukrainian ultranationalist Nazi collaborators from the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

Obtaining sanctuary in Britain and then Canada, these militants for white supremacy has a long track record of killing Jews, massacring Poles, Russians and anti-Nazi Ukrainians. These killers of Jews were rebranded as patriotic freedom fighters by Ottawa and London, with help from the CIA.

Not only did the veterans of the OUN and its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) find refuge in Canada, they were allowed to build up their own communities, publish their own newspapers, organise sporting clubs and social associations, start scouting groups featuring symbols of the Galician Waffen SS as mementos, acquire academic posts at universities, and built statues honouring Nazi collaborators.

They airbrushed from history the long history of the Ukrainian socialist Left in Canada, because they were foot-soldiers of anticommunist ultranationalism.

Stepan Bandera, the main leader of the wartime OUN and Nazi collaborator, was targeted for recruitment by British intelligence after the end of the Second World War. The thuggish leaders and foot-soldiers of Ukrainian ultranationalism found renewed purpose as anticommunist militants in the Cold War. Today, Bandera and his fellow ultranationalist commanders are hailed as heroes in Zelensky’s Ukraine.

Britain wanted Ukrainians with on-the-ground knowledge of Eastern Europe, hoping to instigate an anticommunist uprising in Ukraine. Detaching Ukraine from the USSR would have been an enormous success for Anglo-American foreign policy. Bandera’s agents were dropped behind enemy lines throughout the late 1940s and 50s.

A problem crept up in this budding insurgency – Britain and the US were backing rival Ukrainian ultranationalist groups. Bandera refused to cooperate with those he regarded as rivals, after all, he could not stomach the fact that there was more than one pony in the stable.

Let’s be clear about this; the ashes of the war had barely settled, and Jewish victims were buried, when the imperialist powers made clandestine measures to recruit antisemitic murderers. This sinister handshake across the needs to be exposed for what it is – a mockery of Holocaust memory, and an insult to the victims of Judeocide.

It is one thing to support the right of Ukrainians to self-determination; it is quite another to use ultranationalist Ukrainians as proxies forces in a long term attempt to weaken Russia.

The New York Times, the main newspaper of record in the United States, published an extensive expose of the intricate and essential interconnections between the US/British military forces on the one hand, and the Ukrainian military. The latter would not be able to continue fighting without the crucial logistical, intelligence and armaments support of the United States.

The intimate partnership between the US and its client regime in Kyiv makes a mockery of claims by the former Biden administration that it is not engaged in a proxy war against Russia. Not only is the US (and Britain) directly engaged in fighting Russian forces, it has turned Kyiv into a modern day Saigon South Vietnam client state

Of course US President Donald Trump shouted at Zelensky when the latter was in Washington; the organ-grinder always yells orders at the monkey.

The US and Britain have been using ultranationalist Ukrainians as proxies for decades; the Kyiv authorities are following the same decades-old configuration implemented by its American and British managers.