Astronomy, and science in general, is not usually related to sociological or cultural issues. We do not want to return to the bad old days of astronomers, and the wider scientific community, having to justify their research subjects to political commissars or party functionaries. However, even in astronomy, the sociopolitical is never far away.

Mia de los Reyes, assistant professor of astronomy at Amherst College, has written a powerful article making the case that the Magellanic Clouds – galaxies visible from the southern hemisphere – should be renamed. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds – known to indigenous peoples – are named after Portuguese sailor and conquered, Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 1521).

The Magellanic Clouds – satellite galaxies of the Milky Way – were observed and known to Polynesian peoples, Australia’s indigenous nations, and the indigenous people of Chile and Argentina. For instance, the Mapuche nation of Chile observed and named the Magellanic Clouds in their oral histories. Likening them to ponds of water, the Mapuche incorporated these astronomical features into their origin stories.

The Kamilaroi nation, indigenous to Australia, observed and recorded their findings of the Magellanic Clouds in their ‘Dreamtime’ stories. The word ‘Dreamtime’ is placed between quotation marks, not out of any disrespect, but because the word though widely used, is not accurate. The indigenous cosmology stories and oral traditions regarding their origins have been inaccurately translated as ‘Dreamtime’. Prior to Ancient Greece and Persia, the indigenous nations were developing their own astronomical knowledge, and used the stars to navigate their journeys – a kind of early GPS.

Arabic and Persian astronomers were well aware of the Magellanic Clouds. Astronomy is not a new subject in the Arab-Islamic worlds, but a deep and extensive discipline. Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, (903 – 986), named the Magellanic Clouds Al-Bakr, in his extensive accounts of astronomical observations.

Each nation named the celestial objects themselves, and so the Portuguese navigator was definitely not the first to have observed the clouds named after him. Magellan was not an astronomer, and made no important contributions to the field. However, he is known for his main activities – killing, enslaving and plundering the indigenous peoples he encountered when circumnavigating the globe.

In Guam, the Philippines and other nations, Magellan is remembered as a coloniser and conquistador who employed horrific violence for greedy, imperial ambitions. The Telhueche people, in modern day Argentina, were enslaved by Magellan, with the youngest and fittest manacled – they were told the manacles were gifts. Abducted and forced to work, thousands of Telhueche people died.

In the Philippines, where Magellan burned villages and killed indigenous inhabitants, his death in 1521 was celebrated as an act of defiance in 2021, on the 500th anniversary of his demise. The Philippine government held a series of events highlighting the indigenous contribution to Magellan’s much-celebrated circumnavigation of the globe.

Where does this process stop? Being woke is all well and good for our times, but surely historical figures are all tainted in some way. If we rename every monument, public place, building, statue, scientific observatory – we will end up driving ourselves insane. William Shakespeare, the Bard, wrote an antisemitic play. Should we ban his works, and rename public buildings honouring him? Where does this stop?

The general point is not in dispute; if we critically examine each and every work of art, literature, scientific endeavour throughout human history, we will have nothing that measures up to our modern standards. When we honour a person by naming a scientific object after them, we are elevating that person’s values and conduct. Magellan’s name is used for a lunar crater, an operational 6.5m pair of optical telescopes in Chile, and an upcoming giant telescope.

When we uphold Magellan as an honourable person worthy of our respect, we are ignoring the terrible pain and suffering he inflicted on indigenous peoples. In fact, we are performing a disservice to astronomy by dismissing or downplaying the indigenous nations’ knowledge of astronomy by elevating Magellan into a heroic figure.

Am I suggesting that every discovery and invention by white European men should be discarded? No, I am not. Should each telescope, currently pointing at the heavens, be smashed to pieces as outrageous devices of scurrilous Western imperialism because they are based on the original design of Galileo? No, of course not. Should we replace modern university courses on cosmology with the Maori ways of knowing? No, I am not.

We need to approach the history of science with a perspective of cultural pluralism. That does not make everybody right about everything, it simply means that indigenous nations, and nonwhite peoples generally, have their scientific achievements accorded respect.

No, renaming the Magellanic Clouds is not the highest priority of the political authorities. It is not the primary topic of conversation at parties. Renaming these galaxies will not solve the myriad economic and social problems of our capitalist system. Actually, while we are on the subject of economic problems, there is a serious issue in the astronomy community which requires urgent economic attention – the collapse of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

Denied upgrades and underfunded for decades, astronomers and engineers warned that the predictable consequence of such systematic neglect would be the collapse of the telescope. That is precisely what happened in December 2020. So economic decisions do have an impact on the kind of science we practice. The Union of Concerned Scientists is demanding an urgent rebuild of the radio telescope.

By removing the name of a man who brought so much harm and suffering to his fellow human beings, we can begin a process of healing. Only then would the cosmos truly be said to belong to all of humanity.

Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) did much more than just write the mammoth historical epic, War and Peace. Literature involves more than just reading huge and unwieldy tomes that sit gathering dust in the Classics section. Those works we regard as Classics are important, to be sure. Please read War and Peace, if that is your wish. However, literature helps us define our understanding of ourselves. Whom we admire as the ‘great authors’ can teach us about power relations – and how we view the world – in contemporary times.

Why start with Leo Tolstoy? Because he was not only a great novelist and writer, but an intelligent social commentator. Born into a wealthy family and serving as an officer in the Crimean War, Tolstoy articulated a critique of the Russian state and Orthodox Christianity. Retaining respect for the original message of compassion and empathy contained in the sayings of Jesus, he nevertheless rejected supernatural deities, attacking the theology of the Church as crafty superstitions. He remarked that there is no afterlife, and the biblical account of miracles is fictional.

His wide ranging criticisms of the Imperial Russian state and organised religion did not stop there. He stridently defended the Boxer Rebellion in China. That rebellion (1900-01) was a widespread and tumultuous uprising – a modern jacquerie – by the Chinese peasantry against the foreign encroachments and creeping annexation of Chinese territory. Tsarist Russia, one of multiple nations with economic interests in China, sent troops as part of a counter insurgency intervention to suppress that rebellion.

Tolstoy, a former Russian army officer, noted that the Chinese, having suffered decades of violent foreign occupation, responded with peaceful means in the first place. Seeing their magnanimous actions suppressed with horrendous violence by the occupying powers (Britain, France, the US, among others), the Chinese resorted to violent methods as a last resort. Supporting anti-imperialist movements in Asia, Tolstoy reached out to Mahatma Gandhi, lending his voice to the Indian campaign against British colonialism.

Why am I raising this subject? For two main reasons. Firstly, the Russian embassy in Australia, in line with Kremlin policies and objectives, is encouraging the building of statues and busts of Alexander Pushkin, arguably the greatest of the Russian playwrights and authors. Now, there is nothing wrong with promoting Pushkin – reading his works is very commendable. However, the campaign to raise awareness of Pushkin is more than just a literary exercise.

The Moscow government is attempting to weaponise Alexander Pushkin, mobilising Russian nationalist sentiment among the expatriate community. To be sure, all embassies engage in similar activities. Let’s face it, the reason that William Shakespeare, as brilliant as he was, has become the unrivalled bard (bardology) of the English-speaking world is not an altruistic concern for literature, but a deliberate effort by the British empire to solidify cultural ties to the English homeland.

The British empire, in its zeal to strengthen its transnational project of imperial expansion, relied on cultural ties as much as brute force to unite its disparate colonies. However, there is a second reason for discussing this subject. Ta-Nehisi Coates, African American writer and commentator, was answering a question that Saul Bellow raised back in the 1980s – ‘who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?’

That culture war remark, though later denied by Bellow, did raise awareness of a gap in our conception of literature’s ‘great authors’. We have a very narrow, exclusively white European-oriented view of what makes up the canons of literature. A direct response to Bellow’s question is easy to find; Zulu writers such as Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, Mazisi Kunene, and John Langalibalele Dube can rightly claim Tolstoy’s mantle in sub-Saharan Africa.

Before there was the English philosopher and darling of Western liberalism, John Locke, there was the Ethiopian philosopher and writer Zera Yacob (1599 – 1692). He, along with other African writers, articulated a concept of Enlightenment prior to the British heavyweights. But more than just listing African Tolstoys, there is a wider point to be made. Our curriculum needs to be globalised.

It is commendable to read Shakespeare, Pushkin and the greats. There is no disputing their immense contribution to world literature and culture. The Kremlin is promoting Pushkin worldwide, while in Ukraine Pushkin’s statues are being demolished as part of a widespread programme of de-Russification. The key difference between Moscow’s policies today and those of the Soviet period is that during the Soviet times, non-Russian authors were deliberately cultivated and promoted.

The state promotion of literature – the USSR did openly what the imperialist nations did covertly during the Cold War.

The ex-Soviet republics, such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, were encouraged by the official authorities to develop a literary culture indigenous to those republics. As long as you were loyal to the Communist project, non-Russian writers, musicians and authors were heavily subsidised by the state and promoted. Chingiz Aitmatov, (1928 – 2008), born in Soviet Kyrgyzstan, produced an impressive literary output during his career. Despite the political problems he faced, he continued his creative literary activities for decades.

The Nobel Prize winning poet and humanist Rabindranath Tagore was not only admired in his native India, but was strongly influenced by his visits to the USSR. This cross cultural fertilisation is what is lacking into today’s western influenced curriculum. Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in literature as a lyricist, and that decision generated a huge controversy. Well before him, Tagore, the Nobel laureate and Bengali literary giant, wrote the lyrics of what became the national anthems of three nations. Perhaps we should be aware of that before attacking Dylan’s status as a Nobel prize recipient.

Expanding and diversifying the literary curriculum does not involve the repudiation or cancellation of the existing repertoire of writers. It consists of elaborating our understanding of non-European cultures and their literary contributions. We should all become familiar with the work of the multiple authors who could qualify as the Tolstoy of the Zulus.

The Afghan national cricket team has been on a winning streak, defeating England and Pakistan, among others. Afghan expatriates and those living in their home nation have cheered wildly at the stunning success of their team, providing a much-needed boost of optimism amidst a generally sad situation for the Afghani people.

Let’s start with a confession from the outset – I find cricket incredibly boring. My fellow Australians – yes, I was born here regardless of what impression my foreign name gives you – are excited by the sport. I always cheer for the underdog, and the Afghan win, while not in a sport I enjoy, was something to behold. If Afghanistan plays Australia in the cricket, I will be cheering enthusiastically for Afghanistan. I am happy when smaller and/or poorer nations win in sport.

The Australian cricket team has been a resilient, successful team; they can afford to lose to a smaller nation. In fact, whenever the Australians squared off against the West Indies in the 1980s, I vociferously cheered for the West Indies.

The ‘Windies’ team, as any cricketing fan will tell you, were a formidable sporting superpower in the 80s. Their long running success has ensured their players a spot as outsize heroes in the Caribbean. The team was drawn from the various nations and dependencies that constitute the region.

Back in 1976, the West Indies triumphed in cricket over their old adversary England. The effect was electrifying; no longer would the Caribbean nations be dismissed as ‘calypso cricketers.’ The West Indian team trounced their opponents, multiple times. Witnessing a smaller nation – well, a Caribbean island region in this case – emphatically defeating their larger, more organised opponents is wonderful, and supersedes nationalist parochialism.

Morocco, Spain and transcending national boundaries

In December 2022, Morocco defeated Spain in a tense penalty shootout, advancing to the quarterfinals of the FIFA World Cup. Not only was this the first time that an Arab team had advanced so far in the football, the fact that they defeated Spain, the former colonial power in Morocco, added extra resonance to the result.

Displays of euphoria, and mass celebrations of Morocco’s unprecedented advance in the football, was not restricted to Moroccan nationals. True, Moroccan people cheered in the streets, waving their flag. But they also hoisted the Palestinian flag, and the latter became a noticeable fixture in the celebrations of Morocco’s win across the Arab world.

Ben Lewis, writing in SBS news, explained that Palestinian nationalism is the common platform of solidarity and standard bearer of pan-Arab nationalism. Defeating Spain in the soccer was not just a sporting triumph, but an important signal to the world that Morocco, and Arab nationalism by extension, was a potent force in the region and could not be ignored.

The Moroccan government, headed by long term monarch Mohammed VI, is one of a number of Arab regimes that has signed normalisation treaties with Israel. The Abraham Accords, as this series of bilateral agreements is known, signalled a defeat for Palestinian nationalism. The Arab governments, such as Morocco, indicated to the world that they are prepared to abandon demands for Palestinian statehood in exchange for diplomatic recognition and economic cooperation with Israel.

Sporting diplomacy

The Moroccan football team, and their Arab supporters, waved the Palestinian flag not just as part of their jubilant celebrations. They were also repudiating the open normalisation of ties with the Zionist state by their respective governments. To be sure, Morocco has maintained secretive, cooperative contacts with Tel Aviv for decades. Tel Aviv and Rabat have coordinated their efforts in combating revolutionary and pan-Arab nationalist sentiments when it suited their mutual interests.

There is another important observation to be made here; sporting diplomacy is not the exclusive preserve of oppressed or marginalised peoples. Sport events have long been used as a vehicle to promote colonialist and ultranationalist regimes. It is no secret that Hindu supremacist Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, during his trips to Australia, the US and other countries, uses cricket as leverage in building relationships, thus softening his hardened Hindu supremacist message with a sporting gloss.

Mike Meehall Wood and Nakul M Pande write in Jacobin that India’s politicians are never far from the cricket. PM Modi knows this, and he knows that cricket, through the transnational network that was the British empire, became a common sporting and cultural interest binding England’s former colonies with the English overlords. Cultural and sporting exports served to build ties with England’s far flung possessions.

While India’s diaspora community cannot vote in India’s elections, they can certainly build bridges between India and their host nations. Pro-BJP sentiment in the Indian diasporic communities is a useful platform for international support for the Hindutva supremacist project. Cricket is the perfect instrument to solidify ties between the homeland and the expatriates.

Rather than turning expatriate communities into partisans of an ethnosupremacist project, lets briefly look at a counter example. A massive and sustained multicultural community campaign is behind the stunning success of Luton Town football club. The club, languishing in relegation for at least thirty years, finally returned to the premier league.

Obviously, the players on the team deserve all the credit for their amazing turnaround. However, we would be remiss to forget a crucial dimension of their success – the solid community engagement by Luton town people, coming from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, combining to save their football club from complete dissolution.

It was the Luton town football fans who saved their club. The combination of a collective ethos, and treating each ethnic community equitably, resulted in a new form of cooperative management of Luton club. The first in the premier league to be a living wage employer, Luton survived and flourished despite concerted efforts by venture capital to dissolve it through mergers with other clubs.

Why do I cheer for Afghanistan in the cricket? Because ethnic or national pride as a basis for sporting enthusiasm is fine, but too narrow a perspective. Australians are supposed to be renowned for cheering the underdog. Encouraging the longshot to win is deeply embedded in the Australian folklore and sense of history – at least that is what we tell ourselves.

So, in that spirit, I cheer for the smaller nations – Jamaica in the athletics, Palestinians at the Olympics, and today, Afghanis in the cricket. National pride is all well and good, but I would like to see a world where interethnic solidarity is the norm.

This year marks exactly 40 years – September 1 1983 to be exact – when the Soviet military shot down a civilian airliner, Korean Air Flight 007, killing all 269 people on board. Having flown wildly off-course for thousands of miles, deep into Soviet territory over the Kamchatka peninsula, the pilot ignored repeated warnings. The Soviet authorities, claiming that they confused the airliner with a spy craft, eventually blasted it from the sky.

That incident was seized upon by then US President Ronald Reagan to increase military spending in the United States. The corporate media had a field day, highlighting this act of barbarism as concrete evidence of Moscow’s utter ruthlessness and indifference to human suffering. While I was still in high school at the time, I remember this issue because it helped to educate me about the hypocrisies upon which American foreign policies are based.

How a civilian airliner was able to fly so flagrantly off-course is a mystery to me. It flew over sensitive Soviet military bases and installations in that part of the USSR. Why the pilot, Chun Byung-in, an ex-military man, deliberately ignored the warnings of Soviet military authorities is unclear to me. While I do not like to dabble in conspiracy theories, it is rather odd that a South Korean airliner would fly deep into enemy territory.

The American authorities, years later, admitted that the Soviets mistook the airliner for a spy plane. Moscow claimed that the KAL007 was similar to the US RC-135 spy plane. A flimsy pretext perhaps, but then Boeing, the company that manufactured the Korean airliner, is heavily involved in the construction of military aircraft. In subsequent decades, Boeing has gotten involved in the building of drones.

The Boeing corporation announced, in 2021, that they would construct unmanned drones at a facility near Toowoomba, Queensland. The ABC, which reported the story, helpfully reminds us that this development will create jobs, thus alleviating our concerns about the lethal consequences those machines will generate.

It is worth exploring the conduct of the US authorities in this regard. In 1988, five years after the Soviet shoot down of KAL 007, the American navy deliberately shot down an Iranian civilian airliner. Iran air flight 655, clearly a civilian air bus, was flying on its usual course over the Persian Gulf. The American navy ship the USS Vincennes, which could clearly identify the Iranian aircraft, shot it down killing all 290 people on board. The naval commander of the US warship was subsequently awarded a medal for his ‘courage.’

Former US President George Bush, when asked about the shoot down, angrily dismissed concerns from the relatives of the victims, stating that he would never apologise, being completely unconcerned about the facts of the case.

The KAL 007 flight, crewed by an experienced team, surely knew that they were diverting from their usual flight course. The plane’s mapping information would have contained information about the weather, the geography of the land formations on their path – so the crew would have clearly seen the rocky Kamchatka peninsula beneath them. Why did the pilot not warn the civilian authorities that he was off-course?

I am not suggesting that I have definitive answers to all these unexplored questions. What I can say is that as a consequence of KAL007 straying off course, Soviet air bases and radar systems lit up, thus exposing their locations in that part of the world. A veritable treasure trove of precious intelligence information would have been available about Soviet air defences.

On board KAL007 was Larry McDonald, a fanatical ultrarightist and member of the John Birch Society. The latter is an ultraconservative, libertarian organisation dedicated to pushing American politics further to the Right. McDonald became a kind of ultranationalist martyr for the cause, and Reagan’s White House launched a hysterical campaign of militarist spending. His administration deployed nuclear capable missiles to then West Germany.

Creating a groundswell of domestic public opinion friendly to the idea of increased military spending has lasting consequences. Mass hysteria remains in the collective psyche, able to be revived and recycled against new enemies. By the way, McDonald, during his long political career, once nominated Rudolf Hess for a Nobel Peace prize. Hess, a convicted Nazi war criminal and racist, made a desperate attempt to avoid all-out warfare with Britain, but failed.

What is wrong with that, you ask? After all, do we not regard Claus von Stauffenberg, the German officer who attempted to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Third Reich, as a hero for his ultimately failed coup d’état? Yes, we do – and we should not. Did Stauffenberg object with Hitler’s genocidal plans for war with the Soviet Union? No, he did not. Did Stauffenberg object to the use of concentration camp labour in manufacturing German armaments? No, he did not.

What relevance does all of this have for contemporary times? There are striking parallels between Reagan’s exploitation of the KAL007 tragedy, and the ballooning Sinophobic hysteria (pun intended) over the alleged Chinese spy balloon which drifted into American air space. The Pentagon, after shooting down that particular aerial intruder (and several other harmless aerial visitors) finally admitted that the Chinese balloon did not have any spying capabilities.

However, the media frenzy accompanying the balloon-paranoia is remarkable. The public is fed a steady diet of ultra processed sound bytes and public relations material based on the concerns of the US military industrial-intelligence complex. Suspicion of the ulterior motives of states designated as enemies becomes a public hobbyhorse for the media commentariat and its docile audience.

Ballooning rhetoric, while keeping us preoccupied, only serves to distribute hot air. It is time to puncture these self-serving tropes and analyse the policy implications of mass hysteria.

Firstly, stop recycling the tired old claim of Hamas antisemitism to deny Palestinians their voice. Secondly, the charge of antisemitism is serious, and it is also used as an emotionally manipulative weapon to slander Palestinian solidarity as undergirded by irrational hatred.

Let’s examine some important and related developments in the wake of the October uprising by Palestinian guerrillas. The accusation of antisemitism, flung with repetitive regularity at supporters of Palestinian rights, is aimed at silencing all opposition and condemnation of Israel’s genocidal military campaign against Gaza. The breakout of the besieged territory of Gaza – under Israeli land, sea, and air blockade since 2007 – not only exposed Tel Aviv’s military vulnerability, but also upended the apple cart that is the Abraham Accords.

Tel Aviv’s leaders are nursing their shattered collective ego, now that the carefully cultivated myth of Israel’s military invincibility has been shattered. Zionism’s supporters have spent decades deliberating manufacturing a media image of Israel’s allegedly sophisticated intelligence apparatus, backed up by a network of informants and highly advanced military technology. Gaza airspace is constantly buzzing with drones.

It is impossible to overestimate the propaganda impact, particularly in the Anglophone nations, of the Zionist-friendly image of Israel as a military power, backed by courageous and dedicated warrior citizens, for whom violence is the last resort. Making the ‘desert bloom’, these hardy and intelligent partisans of Zionism have made a home in Palestine, all the while confronting a barbarous, savage-minded, medieval Arab/Muslim ocean of hostility.

Binoy Kampmark writes that Palestinian casualties of Israeli military violence die by the thousands, condemned to anonymity and depersonalisation. Tower blocks are destroyed by Israeli Defence Force (IDF) missile strikes, and the Palestinian fatalities are barely reported. Israeli victims of Hamas attacks on the other hand, are named, their families interviewed, their lives remembered and humanised.

Our sympathy is perverted to serve the propagandistic aims of Zionism. The Palestinians and their supporters are marginalised. Julian Sayarer, writing in Jacobin magazine, makes a point with which this article was started – stop deployed the Hamas bogeyman to deny Palestinians’ independent agency.

The stereotype of the young, bearded, AK-47 waving angry Muslim has become so ubiquitous in our corporatised culture, it is difficult to challenge it. Underlying this stereotype is the perverse insinuation that Palestinian and Arab communities are motivated by an irrational antisemitism in their opposition to Zionism. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let’s make it clear – Hamas, an Islamist organisation, included antisemitic elements and tropes in its 1988 foundational document. It recycled hateful stereotypes from fraudulent sources, such as the disgraceful Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Tsarist Russian forgery. The Hamas charter, written by a people dispossessed by military violence and facing a marginalised existence, reflected the thinking of the organisation at that time.

In 2017, Hamas issued a new document, archiving the old charter. Replacing the antisemitic elements with a political perspective, Hamas agreed to a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders, and repudiated its connection with the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas specified that its conflict is not with Judaism, but with the colonialist project of Zionism. These distinctions are subtle, and important. Casting the opposition to Zionism as an anti colonial fight, not an age-old Crusading battle between Muslims and Jews, is an important step.

It is relevant to note here that Israeli politicians, whose differences are nuanced and afforded an explanation in the corporate media, routinely threaten to wipe out Palestinian and Arab populations. Benny Gantz, former IDF chief of staff and political ‘centrist’, has openly boasted of killing Palestinians. Such sentiments have not affected his political career.

Abraham Accords

Hebh Jamal, writing about the Palestinian military operation of early October, states that Palestinians are not celebrating death and destruction. No, they are not rejoicing at the killing of civilians, or the deaths of children – though the viral story about Hamas decapitating babies remains unverified. They are celebrating a chance at life. Having reduced Gaza to basic subsistence level, Israel has contributed to creating a new generation of aggrieved Palestinians.

The siege of Gaza is actually a case of collective punishment. Colonial powers, as Chris Hedges writes, normally impose collective punishment on rebellious populations – the Germans against the Herero in Namibia, the British against the Kikuyu in Kenya. For that matter, Gaza today resembles the conditions of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War 2.

The major political consequence of the October prison break is the upending of the Abraham Accords. A series of bilateral treaties between Tel Aviv and Arab states, the Abraham Accords were portrayed as ushering in a new era of Israeli-Arab normalisation. A propaganda triumph for the former Trump administration, relations between Tel Aviv and its Arab regional neighbours was always predicated on abandoning the aspirations of the Palestinians.

Normalisation, in the context of Middle Eastern politics, is promoted as a pathway of peace; a reconciliation between traditional enemies and the triumph of pragmatic thinking over ancient hatreds. There is one major problem with that image; the Palestinians remained excluded, and their legitimate demands for an independent state forgotten. For instance, Morocco, having signed a treaty with Tel Aviv in 2020, abandoned even the pretence of speaking up for Palestinian sovereignty.

During the 2022 FIFA World Cup soccer competition, after Morocco defeated Spain, Moroccan fans waved both the Moroccan and Palestinian flags, in a spontaneous and yet politically conscious display of solidarity. Defeating the former colonial power in Morocco, touched a deep chord of sympathy in the Arab psyche. Opposition to normalisation is a deep seated issue in the Arab world.

The outpouring of Palestine solidarity protests around the world demonstrate that Palestinian lives do matter. It is reasonable to oppose ‘condemning both sides’; rejecting the false equivalency between the violence of the slave owner with the enslaved. The colonial power deploys mechanised and systematic violence, while the oppressed fights back with whatever weapons are at their disposal. New York State Senator Julia Salazar wrote that the Palestinians deserve liberation because they are human beings.

Psychology presentations do not usually end up with fisticuffs and a punch up. However, fifty years ago, there was a brawl sparked by a controversial psychologist’s speech which has lessons for us today. The fracas, and the reasons for it, are issues which still reverberate throughout our cultural and social life.

Hans Eysenck, intelligence and race

German-born British psychologist Hans Eysenck (1916 – 1997) was the preeminent psychologist of his generation. Heavily cited in the literature, he was the go-to academic in matters of psychology. Assigned to speak about intelligence, IQ and race at the London School of Economics in 1973, his upcoming presentation was the focus of protests by leftwing student groups.

Eysenck, taking up the torch from American educational psychologist Arthur Jensen (1923 – 2012), claimed that intelligence was not only largely inherited, but that different racial groups achieved unequal social outcomes due to genetic differences. Eysenck and Jensen’s view were popular among white nationalist circles. They provided a veneer of scientific ‘respectability’ to viewpoints long considered racist and beyond the pale.

No sooner had Eysenck begun his speech, than students from Maoist and Afro-Asian solidarity groups jumped the stage and assaulted Eysenck. Knocked to the ground and beaten, the incident became one of the first no-platforming episodes in recent history.

It turns out that the Maoist students were correct, though not for the reasons they stated. Eysenck, similarly to his mentor Sir Cyril Burt, was posthumously exposed as a scientific fraud and systematic liar. Manufacturing data to support his pre-existing conclusions about race, heredity and intelligence, Eysenck’s papers have been declared unsafe by his previous employer as a result of his scientific misconduct.

Genomics – explaining ourselves through genes

Psychology, along with the rest of the social sciences, has taken up the gene-centric perspective of society. To be sure, neuroscience, the study of the brain and nervous system, predates the discovery of DNA by decades. However, genetic explanations of every aspect of human behaviour, from alcoholism to sexual orientation, has become predominated by the sweeping and swift genomic claim of ‘it’s in the genes.’ Mapping the human genome was supposed to unlock the mysteries of the basis of human behaviour.

The concept of heritability has been surrounded by confusion – and deliberate sleight of hand – by proponents of genetic determinism for a long time. Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, two psychologists and coauthors of The Bell Curve, postulate that intelligence is largely inherited. Following in the footsteps of Eysenck – and the American psychologist Arthur Jensen – the hereditarian advocate locates the origins of capitalist socioeconomic and racial inequality in an individual’s genes. A meritocratic society, we are told, will be rewarded for their ‘good’ genes.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding about the role of heritability here. Heritable is implicitly equated with inevitability, or determined. In casual conversation, we all talk about children inheriting traits from their parents – height, hair colour and so on. Let’s have a closer look at the concept of heritability. When something is genetic, it does not mean that it is inevitable in the phenotype.

Let’s look at genetic factors for disease risk. Heritability is a statistical concept, which means that the risk factors for a particular disease within a given population are due to heredity. The heritability estimate of a trait is expressed within the range of 0.0 to 1.0; 0 means little if any genetic factors, and 1.0 means entirely all the trait is due to heritability. For instance, Crohn’s disease has a heritability estimate of 0.75.

What does that mean? It means that within a given population, 75 percent of the risk factors for developing the disease are attributable to hereditary causes. No, it does not mean that if your parents have Crohn’s disease, you as an individual have a 75 percent chance of developing it. No, it does not mean that 75 percent of Crohn’s disease is determined by your genes. Heritability estimates apply to a given population, not to specific individuals in that population.

There is not a simple, linear gene-to-trait causal linkage. For instance, there are multiple genes identified with the expression of schizophrenia. The multifactorial causes of schizophrenia, many of which are non-genetic, are slowly being understood. There is no single ‘intelligence gene’, let alone a racial component in the expression and exercise of intelligence.

Pankaj Mehta, associate professor of physics at Boston University, observes that most phenotypes outcomes, such as height and eye colour, are not purely dependent on genes alone. Mehta explores the example of height, which we think is influenced by genes alone. There is an example, while drawn from horrifying social conditions, does illustrate the point.

During the 1980 and 90s, the Guatemalan Mayan community was targeted by American supported death squads. Mayan children who fled with their families, were raised in the United States. When comparing the respective heights of Mayan children who remained in Guatemala as opposed to US-raised Mayans (between six and twelve years old), researchers found the American-raised children were 10 centimetres taller than their Guatemalan counterparts. Better nutrition, diet and stable educational lifestyle all played a part, more so than heredity, in determining the height outcomes of these children.

Eysenck – spokesperson for big tobacco

Scientists are always debating each other. Controversy is part of the job. However, when a scientist is paid by an interested party in that controversy to manufacture misinformed doubt, that is scandalous. Eysenck, back in the 1990s, produced papers purportedly demonstrating that personality types, rather than cigarettes and its carcinogenic ingredients, were the main determinants of lung cancer.

His theory of ‘cancer prone’ and ‘heart disease’ prone personality types removed the culpability of smoking cigarettes (and the tobacco companies who own and sold them) for human mortality. Years later, an interesting fact came to light; Eysenck had received thousands of pounds in funding from tobacco companies for his research.

It is not so much Eysenck’s financial skulduggery which is at issue here, outrageous as that is. It is the pervasive and secretive influence of dark money on our political, media and scientific institutions. Not only have tobacco companies spent billions manufacturing doubt about the links between nicotine and lung cancer, American and British billionaires have funded fake think tanks, astroturf citizen groups – denying the reality of human-induced global warming.

The Koch family has spent billions on academic institutions which promote the ultra-libertarian philosophy of free markets and reduced government. Denouncing the influence of ideology, they advocate an ideology of unfettered neoliberalism. The ultrarightist Cato Institute churns out seemingly scholarly output in defence of right wing politicians. It advocates a version of individual liberty which somehow morphs into the freedom of corporations to exploit and plunder.

The malign influence of dark money did not end with Eysenck’s death. It continues to metastasise in the institutions of government and science. We must not allow the billionaire megaphone from drowning out the voices of the marginalised. I do not advocate individual violence in the manner of the Maoist students who attacked Eysenck. However, storming the outsize megaphones of the billionaire class is just as urgent today as it was fifty years ago.

We have all heard about fugitive Nazi war criminals, escaping post-war Europe, finding sanctuary in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay or some other South American nation. You could be forgiven for thinking that coddling Nazi mass murderers is somehow endemic to the Hispanic condition.

However, that stereotype is incorrect. Providing sanctuary for Nazi criminals however, is not something unique to the Latin temperament. The country in the Americas that has consistently welcomed Nazis, and assisted in rehabilitating their doctrines, is north of the equator – predominantly Anglo Canada.

In September this year, the Canadian parliament gave a rapturous ovation to Ukrainian Yaroslav Hunka. Who is he? Now 98 years old, Hunka was a member of the Waffen SS, specifically the First Ukrainian Division. This unit, originally known as the 14th Waffen SS Grenadier Division, was mostly made up of ultranationalist Ukrainians who fought alongside Nazi German troops in World War 2.

Motivated by the racist ideology of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, this division – also known as 1st Galician – committed numerous atrocities against Jews, Poles, Russians and other minority groups. Condemned as a criminal organisation at the end of World War 2, the veterans of the Galician division escaped justice in Europe. Thousands of them found refuge in Britain – and Canada. In fact, Canada is the largest recipient of fleeing Nazi war criminals on the American continent.

The fact that Hunka was officially invited to attend the official address of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the Canadian parliament, exposes the dark side of Ukrainian ultranationalist criminality.

There is one positive side to this story. As Jeremy Appel notes, the international community has asked serious questions regarding Canada’s disturbing record in rehabilitating Ukrainian ultranationalism. Nazi war criminals like Yaroslav Hunka, are not exactly isolated strangers in the wider Ukrainian-Canadian community.

I seem to recall the almighty tsunami of outrage by the Israeli and European governments in response to antisemitic remarks by Palestinian authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with senior European politicians, denounced what they saw as a repeat pattern of antisemitism on the part of Abbas. They also condemned what they viewed as the Palestinian authority’s footdragging when it comes to confronting antisemitism in its own ranks.

The Canadian government, in its turn, forcefully denounced Abbas and the Palestinian authorities for their perceived antisemitism.

If that is the case, what would the international community, and Tel Aviv’s supporters, make of Ottawa’s longstanding policy of cultivating, rehabilitating (and now applauding) East European Nazi collaborators? The latter are responsible for the mass murder of thousands of Europeans Jews. After the war, Ottawa, in cooperation with the UK, overlooked the racist criminal past of Ukrainian Nazi collaborator veterans, and provided them with sanctuary.

Ali Abuninah, writing about this topic in Electronic Intifada, notes the rank hypocrisy of those whose current silence on the issue of Canadian sanctuary for Nazi war criminals is deafening:

One might think that the members of this chorus truly care about preserving the memory of the victims of the Nazis, and even take seriously their regular invocation of such slogans as “Never Again.”

But that would be a mistake.

After World War 2, with the Cold War in full swing, thousands of Eastern European Nazi collaborators, including Ukrainian members of the Waffen SS Galician unit, were provided sanctuary in Canada. There, they established vibrant communities, with newspapers, churches, schools, sports clubs – and were a reliable anticommunist bulwark against the Canadian labour movement and trade unions.

Waffen SS veterans, such as the Ukrainians who fought in the 1st Galician division, were given refuge in Britain after the war. The UK government at the time regarded these former SS members as ‘good stock’ who were racially acceptable, and would provide bodies for labour shortages. In the 1950s, Hunka and thousands of his colleagues moved to Canada.

In Canada, these Ukrainians set up the Ukrainian Cultural Congress (UCC), an umbrella organisation dedicated to, among other things, promoting a sanitised version of the Galician division’s record. The mass killings of Jews, Poles and Russians was basically forgotten, and the Ukrainian SS members were portrayed as simple patriots driven into the arms of the Nazis by Stalinist repression. So, the excuse is – ‘the Russians made me do it’.

The Ukrainian nationalist lobby, which provided the recruits for Himmler’s Galician unit, saw Jewish Bolshevism as the main enemy to be confronted. I am certain there was a German politician who said the same thing, and targeted European Jews as the existential threat facing western civilisation. Himmler himself inspected the ranks of the Ukrainian Waffen SS soldiers, solidifying his control over the Eastern European collaborators.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, along with the Canadian political establishment, apologised for inviting and applauding Hunka. The Speaker of the House, Anthony Rota, resigned his position in the wake of the scandal. This incident is being summarily dismissed as a PR gaffe. That is a pathetic attempt to trivialise a serious issue.

It is hardly a mistake when current Canadian deputy PM, Chrystia Freeland openly boasts of her grandfather’s role in recruiting for the Ukrainian Waffen SS division. It is hardly Russian disinformation to point out Ottawa’s deliberate cultivation of a haven for Ukrainian war criminals.

Canada’s willing reception of Waffen SS veterans exposes the moral bankruptcy of Ottawa’s foreign policies. Their scarcely credible claims of fighting for democracy and freedom stand exposed as deceptions. It is high time for Trudeau and Freeland to face the consequences of their actions. The next time you are looking for Nazi refugees, don’t only look at South American nations – cast your view at a nation further up north.

August this year marked fifty years since Australian troops were completely withdrawn from Vietnam. This was in accordance with the American drawdown of military forces at the time. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese paid tribute to the courage and sacrifice of Australian soldiers who served in that conflict. His speech was one of many commemorative activities held across the country regarding the final withdrawal of Australian troops.

While hailing the values of courage and sacrifice is all well and good, Albanese’s perspective serves a definitive political purpose; whitewashing the criminal and predatory nature of the US attack on Vietnam. The courage and sacrifice of soldiers in conflict sounds like a nice, value-free statement – who could dispute that sentiment? Only traitors and scoundrels question the heroism of frontline troops, surely? Such sentiments provide a soft scented candle to mask the odious stench of criminal wars lurking underneath.

PM Albanese, in an attempt to appeal to the normally conservative military lobby, spoke of the suffering of Vietnam veterans, stated that many of them were disrespected and ignored upon returning home. There is no evidence that anti-war demonstrators ever spat at, or hurled abuse at, returning veterans. Many of these myths of the badly-behaved protester are recycled as a way to distract from the criminal and barbaric nature of the assault on Vietnam.

The Vietnam veterans did suffer – from post traumatic stress disorder and various psychological afflictions. These conditions were the result of a predatory war waged by political masters in Washington and Canberra. The short-lived tyrannical republic of South Vietnam, based in Saigon, was propped up by American force of arms. Notorious for torturing and killing prisoners in its ‘tiger cages’, stories about the barbarity of the American backed Saigon dictatorship are overshadowed by the manufactured concern of the obnoxious protester.

The United States undertook military action in Vietnam, not for any humanitarian reasons, or for the dubious claim about promoting democracy and confronting Communism. The US sought to replace France as the preeminent imperial power in Indochina. Having ‘lost’ China itself in 1949 to the Maoist revolution, Washington’s ruling circles were intent on imprinting their own footprint in Vietnam. The latter defeated French colonialism in the 1950s.

Myths about sacrifice and nobility in war become the basis of self-serving fiction. Remembering the Australian troops who served in Vietnam is not a value-free, altruistic exercise motivated by pure dedication to nationalist ideals. Notions of heroic sacrifice for king and country obscure the cynical calculations involved in starting and prolonging imperialist wars. December 2022 was the 50th anniversary of the misremembered and euphemistically named Christmas bombing of North Vietnam.

Why does this Christmas bombing matter? That particular aerial attack, lasting over eleven days in December 1972, is said to have brought Hanoi to the negotiating table to sign a peace deal. That fictionalised memory, which elevates American air power to a decisive factor, not only misrepresents a crucial historical period. It also has provided a misleading influence on American foreign policies.

Peace talks between Hanoi and Washington has been proceeding since the early 1970s. Throughout 1972, the prospects of a peace agreement looks optimistic. The Nixon administration, in an exaggerated sense of aerial ‘military might’, began an intensive bombing campaign against Hanoi and Haiphong. Civilian installation were targeted, including electric plants, hospitals and schools. Operation Linebacker II, as it is officially known, was one of the largest bombing campaigns since the end of World War 2.

The scale of civilian deaths and destruction is difficult to contemplate. The Vietnamese victims of this bombing campaign are largely forgotten. To be sure, the US Air Force experienced heavier than expected losses. Hanoi and Haiphong were well defended by anti-aircraft installations.

What is also forgotten is that the peace agreement, signed by Hanoi in 1973, did not contain any new concessions or changes that had not already been agreed to in October 1972. The war was needlessly prolonged, escalated to new levels of destructive violence, and thousands more Vietnamese suffered the consequences.

This belief in ‘bombing power’ is a self-serving delusion. It has underpinned subsequent US invasions of, and defeats in, Iraq and Afghanistan. What is forgotten in all of the commemorations is that Vietnam veterans joined the anti-war demonstrations in the 1960s and 70s. Rather than being abused or assaulted, civilian demonstrators welcomed the participation of military veterans for the purpose of achieving peace.

The civilian-military divide was overcome precisely in the anti-Vietnam war movement. As the Vietnam conflict wore on, increasing numbers of soldiers questioned the American government and turned to the anti-war campaign. The Pentagon Papers, released by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, exposed a systematic pattern of lying about the conflict on the part of Washington.

In 2019, in an eerie parallel with the earlier Pentagon papers, the Afghanistan papers revealed the systematic deceptions and duplicity of American (and Australian) authorities in covering up the failing war in Afghanistan. Senior military figures questioned not only the motives of the war in Afghanistan, but also expressed alarm that the U.S. government was “failing to tell the truth” – in other words, lying to the public.

As the last American troops madly scrambled to the rooftop of the US embassy in Kabul in 2021, the parallels with the chaotic American retreat from Saigon were unmistakable. In the wake of the defeat of US forces in Afghanistan, serious questions were asked about why we have not learned lessons from similar defeats in Iraq and Vietnam.

In an ironic turn, US President Joe Biden will visit Vietnam for the purpose of strengthening bilateral relations. Following in the footsteps of former president Obama’s pivot to Asia, Biden is hoping to draw Hanoi into its anti-China military alliance. Hanoi, while welcoming reconciliation, strongly rejects any participation in a hostile military bloc against Beijing.

Whitewashing past imperial wars, and recycling durable myths about them, only serves to reinforce Australia’s relegation as a deputy mercenary in America’s criminal wars overseas. It is time to reevaluate our priorities, and take a stand against the wars that make the crimes of Ben Roberts-Smith possible.

Art is always created for art’s sake. Every artist, whether a painter, sculptor, novelist or film director, is passionate about their art. When does art cross over into propaganda? When discussing this question, we immediately think about Soviet Russia, China, Iran or other non-democratic societies. Art with a political agenda may be motivated by political agendas – that does not make it any less effective as a work of art.

It is naive in the extreme to think that our artistic practices are completely divorced from propagandistic purposes. In fact, the British empire was an exemplar of how art was deployed as propaganda. In this case, artwork became a way of expanding and solidifying a transnational British identity, unifying its colonies through cultural imperialism.

In the Art Gallery of NSW, there is an imposing, longstanding painting by Alphonse de Neuville entitled The Defence of Rorke’s Drift. Exhibited in 1880 in Sydney – when NSW was still a penal colony of Britain – the painting propagandises the role of the British army at the battle of Rorke’s drift during the Anglo-Zulu war. The battle, a victory for Britain, inaugurated a wave of imperial patriotism.

The British soldiers, rather than being portrayed as white colonisers making incursions into Zulu territory, are seen as heroic, resourceful defenders. The Zulus by contrast, are relegated as barely discernible, anonymous individuals enmeshed into one amorphous mass. The oil on canvas painting by De Neuville is an early, and typical, example of art as imperial propaganda. The painting contributed to establishing an identity of transnational and racialised British patriotism.

In another wing of the NSW Art Gallery hang the paintings of the Flemish artist Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640). A giant of Baroque painting, he combined Flemish realism with ideas from the Italian Renaissance, and became an enthusiastic student of the artistic resurgence known as the Northern Renaissance.

Was Rubens an exceptional painter? Emphatically, yes. Was he a propagandist? Yes, he was that also. In what way? Ruben’s’ works, involving religious themes, fall into the tradition of the Counter Reformation. The latter was a resurgence of traditional Catholic dogma against what was the Protestant European Reformation. In fact, while Rubens’ works were commissioned by the Catholic authorities, a number of his contemporaries – who fell foul of the Catholic Church in Flanders – went into exile.

The southern part of Flanders, which eventually became the nation of Belgium, saw the successful reintroduction of Spanish Catholic feudalism. In the north, in what became the Dutch Republic, the nascent capitalist and artisanal class fought against the heavy repression of the Spanish monarchy. Calvinist and aspiring to independence, the Netherlands held out against attempts at reconquest. In the midst of this epic class struggle, Rubens brush became a cultural sword of counterrevolution.

While his contemporaries died in poverty, Rubens became a wealthy man, honoured by the monarchies of England, France and Spain. His artwork was part of the Catholic church’s conscious mobilisation of art as a cultural weapon in the fight against the Reformation. His paintings are remarkable – they are also examples of ideologically driven propaganda.

Religious art is beautiful, haunting, awe-inspiring and remarkable. Mosques are wondrous displays of architectural imagination and impressive engineering. Architectural Digest lists, among other things, the world’s most beautiful mosques. One does not need any supernatural deities, or gods, or immaterial beings, to experience a sense of connection, community and compassion. All we need is our empathy based on our common humanity.

Subjecting art to the commercial imperative is at the source of its corruption into corporatist propaganda, an enterprise we call public relations and advertising. It is easy to point accusatory fingers at politically motivated iconographic art – ubiquitous portraits of Stalin in the USSR, or Mao’s ever-present gaze in Maoist China. Art helped Maoism go global. Socialist realism gave us idealised pictures of peasants and collective farms.

We can easily see the artistic practices, and their perversion, in societies other than our own. The Iranian Ayatollahs have deployed art to reinforce their theocratic rule, and public murals display motifs suitable to their post-revolution rule.

Murals throughout Iran celebrate Karbala, martyrdom and political Islam. They also tell the story of Iran’s subjection to foreign powers, and the Iranian people’s struggle for self-determination. Political iconography is not the sum total of Iranian public art. It also tells of their resistance, and their ability to see through the scurrilous plans of the imperialist powers to re-subjugate the nation.

Art is the important bridge between the mind and spiritual uplift. If you want to believe in a supernatural realm, that is up to you. Art is not the exclusive province of one or another religion or spiritual outlook, but a deeply human, cultural production that makes us realise that we are more than the sum of our parts. As Larry Culliford writes:

The foremost reason that artists create, and the rest of us value their art, is because art forms a priceless living bridge between the everyday psychology of our minds and the universal spirit of humanity.

Denouncing the deployment of crude political iconography is a pastime of art commentators in the West. Yes, we can see how the Iraqi Ba’athist party, in the 1980s, elevated its leader Saddam Hussein to a heroic, larger than life figure in its propaganda. Standing beside Saladin and Nebuchadnezzar, Hussein combined Islamic motifs with pre-Islamic Babylonian history.

However, let’s also remember the words of Culliford, from whose article we quoted above. Making a strict distinction between art and merchandise, Culliford writes that art is contaminated by the drive for profit, status, wealth and success. Instead, true art conveys human emotions of compassion, creativity, patience and discernment.

It is not beyond the capacity of our modern capitalist institutions to utilise art for propaganda purposes. Let’s be honest with ourselves, and stop accusing other nations of crude cultural practices which we implement in more sophisticated ways in our own societies. Art is an expression of individual genius – that much is for certain. Let’s also be aware that art can express a collective imagination for political purposes.