COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

The first demonstration I ever went on was at the age of 12, against the Vietnam War.

The first formal history lesson I received was a few months later when I commenced high school. That day the old history master, Mr Griffiths, chalked what I later learnt was a quote from Hegel:

“The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn the lessons of history.” It’s about time we changed that.

• READ MORE: ‘I sent them a good boy and they made him a murderer’ — The My Lai massacre
• The fall of Saigon 1975: Part two: The Quiet mutiny and the US army falls apart

Painful though it is, let’s have the courage to remember what they desperately try to make us forget.

Cultural amnesia and learning the lessons of history
Memorialising events is a popular pastime with politicians, journalists and old soldiers.

Nothing wrong with that. Honouring sacrifice, preserving collective memory and encouraging reconciliation are all valid. Recalling the liberation of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) on 30 April 1975 is important.

What is criminal, however, is that we failed to learn the vital lessons that the US defeat in Vietnam should have taught us all. Sadly much was forgotten and the succeeding half century has witnessed a carnival of slaughter perpetrated by the Western world on hapless South Americans, Africans, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, and many more.

It’s time to remember.

Memory shapes national identity
As scholars say: Memory shapes national identity. If your cultural products — books, movies, songs, curricula and the like — fail to embed an appreciation of the war crimes, racism, and imperial culpability for events like the Vietnam War, then, as we have proven, it can all be done again. How many recognise today that Vietnam was an American imperial war in Asia, that “fighting communism” was a pretext that lost all credibility, partly thanks to television and especially thanks to heroic journalists like John Pilger and Seymour Hersh?

Just as in Gaza today, the truth and the crimes could not be hidden anymore.

If a culture doesn’t face up to its past crimes — say the treatment of the Aborigines by settler Australia, of Māori by settler New Zealand, of Palestinians by the Zionist state since 1948, or the various genocides perpetrated by the US government on the indigenous peoples of what became the 50 states, then it leads ultimately to moral decay and repetition.

Lest we forget. Forget what?
Is there a collective memory in the West that the Americans and their allies raped thousands of Vietnamese women, killed hundreds of thousands of children, were involved in countless large scale war crimes, summary executions and other depravities in order to impose their will on a people in their own country?

Why has there been no collective responsibility for the death of over two million Vietnamese? Why no reparations for America’s vast use of chemical weapons on Vietnam, some provided by New Zealand?

Vietnam Veterans Against War released a report “50 years of struggle” in 2017 which included this commendable statement: “To VVAW and its supporters, the veterans had a continuing duty to report what they had witnessed”. This included the frequency of “beatings, rapes, cutting body parts, violent torture during interrogations and cutting off heads”.

The US spends billions projecting itself as morally superior but people who followed events at the time, including brilliant journalists like Pilger, knew something beyond sordid was happening within the US military.

The importance of remembering the My Lai Massacre
While cultural memes like “Me Love You Long Time” played to an exoticised and sexualised image of Vietnamese women — popular in American-centric movies like Full Metal Jacket, Green Beret, Rambo, Apocalypse Now, as was the image of the Vietnamese as sadistic torturers, there has been a long-term attempt to expunge from memory the true story of American depravity.

All, or virtually all, armies rape their victims. The US Army is no exception — despite rhetorically jockeying with the Israelis for the title of “the world’s most moral army”. The most famous such incident of the Vietnam War was the My Lai Massacre of 16 March 1968 in which about 500 civilians were subjected to hours of rapes, mutilation and eventual murder by soldiers of the US 20th Infantry Regiment.

Rape victims ranged from girls of 10 years through to old women. The US soldiers even took a lunch break before recommencing their crimes.

The official commission of inquiry, culminating in the Peers Report found that an extensive network of officers had taken part in a cover-up of what were large-scale war crimes. Only one soldier, Lieutenant Calley, was ever sentenced to jail but within days he was, on the orders of the US President, transferred to a casually-enforced three and half years of house arrest. By this act, the United States of America continued a pattern of providing impunity for grave war crimes. That pattern continues to this day.

The failure of the US Army to fully pursue the criminals will be an eternal stain on the US Army whose soldiers went on to commit countless rapes, hundreds of thousands of murders and other crimes across the globe in the succeeding five decades. If you resile from these facts, you simply haven’t read enough official information.

Thank goodness for journalists, particularly Seymour Hersh, who broke rank and exposed the truth of what happened at My Lai.

Senator John McCain’s “sacrifice” and the crimes that went unpunished
Thousands of Viet Cong died in US custody, many from torture, many by summary execution but the Western cultural image of Vietnam focuses on the cruelty of the North Vietnamese toward “victims” like terror-bomber John McCain.

The future US presidential candidate was on his 23rd bombing mission, part of a campaign of “War by Tantrum” in the words of a New York Times writer, when he was shot down over Hanoi.

Also emblematic of this state-inflicted terrorism was the CIA’s Phoenix Programme, eventually shut down after public outrage and hearings by the US Congress into its misdeeds. According to US journalist Douglas Valentine, author of several books on the CIA, including The Phoenix Program:

“Central to Phoenix is the fact that it targeted civilians, not soldiers”.

Common practices, Valentine says, quoting US witnesses and official papers, included:

“Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electrical shock (“the Bell Telephone Hour”) rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue; “the water treatment”; “the airplane,” in which a prisoner’s arms were tied behind the back and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in midair.”

No US serviceman, CIA agent or other official was held to account for these crimes.

Tiger Force — part of the US 327th Infantry — gained a grisly reputation for indiscriminately mowing down civilians, mutilations (cutting off of ears which were retained as souvenirs was common practice, according to sworn statements by participants). All this was supposed to be kept secret but was leaked in 2003.

“Their crimes were uncountable, their madness beyond imagination — so much so that for almost four decades, the story of Tiger Force was covered up under orders that stretched all the way to the White House,” journalists Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss reported.

Their crimes, secretly documented by the US military, included beheading a baby to intimidate villagers into providing information — interesting given how much mileage the US and Israel made of fake stories about beheaded babies on 7 October 2023. The US went to great lengths to hide these ugly truths — and no one ever faced real consequences.

Helicopter gunships and soldiers at checkpoints gunned down thousands of Vietnamese civilians, including women and children, much as US forces did at checkpoints in Iraq, according to leaked US documents following the illegal invasion of that country.

The worst cowards and criminals were not the rapists and murderers themselves but the high-ranking politicians and military leaders who tried desperately to cover up these and hundreds of other incidents. As Lieutenant Calley himself said of My Lai: “It’s not an isolated incident.”

Here we are 50 years later in the midst of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, with the US fuelling war and bombing people across the globe. Isn’t it time we stopped supporting this madness?

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser and activist in Wellington, New Zealand. He received an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian award in 2023 for community service. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at his public policy website Solidarity and is republished here with permission.

Here is a scenario, but first a broad brush-painted historical parallel.

Hitler and the Nazis could well have accomplished everything that they wanted to do within German borders, including exterminating Jews, so long as they confined their ambitious to Germany itself. After all, the world pretty much sat and watched as the Nazi pogroms unfolded in the late 1930s.

But Hitler never intended to confine himself to Germany and decided to attack his neighbours simultaneously, on multiple fronts East, West, North and South.

• READ MORE: Germany rebuffs US ‘dictated peace’ for Ukraine at Munich security summit
• Thousands take part in London rally against Donald Trump’s Gaza plan
• Other Donald Trump reports

This came against the advice of his generals, who believed that his imperialistic war-mongering should happen sequentially and that Germany should not fight the USSR until it had conquered Europe first, replenished with pillaged resources, and then reorganised its forces for the move East. They also advised that Germany should also avoid tangling with the US, which had pro-Nazi sympathisers in high places (like Charles Lindbergh) and was leaning towards neutrality in spite of FDR’s support for the UK.

Hitler ignored the advice and attacked in every direction, got bogged down in the Soviet winter, drew in the US in by attacking US shipping ferrying supplies to the UK, and wound up stretching his forces in North Africa, the entire Eastern front into Ukraine and the North Mediterranean states, the Scandinavian Peninsula and the UK itself.

In other words, he bit off too much in one chew and wound up paying the price for his over-reach.

Hitler did what he did because he could, thanks in part to the 1933 Enabling Law that superseded all other German laws and allowed him carte blanche to pursue his delusions. That proved to be his undoing because his ambition was not matched by his strategic acumen and resources when confronted by an armed alliance of adversaries.

pic.twitter.com/95GzNiAaqs

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 15, 2025

A version of this in US?
A version of this may be what is unfolding in the US. Using the cover of broad Executive Powers, Musk, Trump and their minions are throwing everything at the kitchen wall in order to see what sticks.

They are breaking domestic and international norms and conventions pursuant to the neo-reactionary “disruptor” and “chaos” theories propelling the US techno-authoritarian Right. They want to dismantle the US federal State, including the systems of checks and balances embodied in the three branches of government, subordinating all policy to the dictates of an uber-powerful Executive Branch.

In this view the Legislature and Judiciary serve as rubber stamp legitimating devices for Executive rule. Many of those in the Musk-lead DOGE teams are subscribers to this ideology.

At the same time the new oligarchs want to re-make the International order as well as interfere in the domestic politics of other liberal democracies. Musk openly campaigns for the German far-Right AfD in this year’s elections, he and Trump both celebrate neo-fascists like Viktor Urban in Hungry and Javier Milei in Argentina.

Trump utters delusional desires to “make” Canada the 51st State, forcibly regain control of the Panama Canal, annex Greenland, turn Gaza into a breach resort complex and eliminate international institutions like the World Trade Organisation and even NATO if it does not do what he says.

He imposes sanctions on the International Criminal Court, slaps sanctions on South Africa for land take-overs and because it took a case of genocide against Israel in the ICC, doubles down on his support for Netanyahu’s ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians and is poised to sell-out Ukraine by using the threat of an aid cut-off to force the Ukrainians to cede sovereignty to Russia over all of their territory east of the Donbas River (and Crimea).

He even unilaterally renames the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in a teenaged display of symbolic posturing that ignores the fact that renaming the Gulf has no standing in international law and “America” is a term that refers to the North, Central and South land masses of the Western Hemisphere — i.e., it is not exclusive to or propriety of the United States.

Dismantling the globalised trade system
Trump wants to dismantle the globalised system of trade by using tariffs as a weapon as well as leverage, “punishing” nations for non-trade as well as trade issues because of their perceived dependence on the US market. This is evident in the tariffs (briefly) imposed on Canada, Mexico and Colombia over issues of immigration and re-patriation of US deportees.

In other words, Trump 2.0 is about redoing the World Order in his preferred image, doing everything more or less at once. It is as if Trump, Musk and their Project 2025 foot soldiers believe in a reinterpreted version of “shock and awe:” the audacity and speed of the multipronged attack on everything will cause opponents to be paralysed by the move and therefore will be unable to resist it.

That includes extending cultural wars by taking over the Kennedy Center for the Arts (a global institution) because he does not like the type of “culture” (read: African American) that is presented there and he wants to replace the Center’s repertoire with more “appropriate” (read: Anglo-Saxon) offerings. The assault on the liberal institutional order (at home and abroad), in other words, is holistic and universal in nature.

Trump’s advisers are even talking about ignoring court orders barring some of their actions, setting up a constitutional crisis scenario that they believe they will win in the current Supreme Court.

I am sure that Musk/Trump can get away with a fair few of these disruptions, but I am not certain that they can get away with all of them. They may have more success on the domestic rather than the international front given the power dynamics in each arena. In any event they do not seem to have thought much about the ripple effect responses to their moves, specifically the blowback that might ensue.

This is where the Nazi analogy applies. It could be that Musk and Trump have also bitten more than they can chew. They may have Project 2025 as their road map, but even maps do not always get the weather right, or accurately predict the mood of locals encountered along the way to wherever one proposes to go. That could well be–and it is my hope that it is–the cause of their undoing.

Overreach, egos, hubris and the unexpected detours around and obstacles presented by foreign and domestic actors just might upset their best laid plans.

Dotage is on daily public display
That brings up another possibility. Trump’s remarks in recent weeks are descending into senescence and caducity. His dotage is on daily public display. Only his medications have changed. He is more subdued than during the campaign but no less mad. He leaves the ranting and raving to Musk, who only truly listens to the fairies in his ear.

But it is possible that there are ghost whisperers in Trump’s ear as well (Stephen Miller, perhaps), who deliberately plant preposterous ideas in his feeble head and egg him on to pursue them. In the measure that he does so and begins to approach the red-line of obvious derangement, then perhaps the stage is being set from within by Musk and other oligarchs for a 25th Amendment move to unseat him in favour of JD Vance, a far more dangerous member of the techbro puppet masters’ cabal.

Remember that most of Trump’s cabinet are billionaires and millionaires and only Cabinet can invoke the 25th Amendment.

Vance has incentive to support this play because Trump (foolishly, IMO) has publicly stated that he does not see Vance as his successor and may even run for a third term. That is not want the techbro overlords wanted to hear, so they may have to move against Trump sooner rather than later if they want to impose their oligarchical vision on the US and world.

An impeachment would be futile given Congress’s make-up and Trump’s two-time wins over his Congressional opponents. A third try is a non-starter and would take too long anyway. Short of death (that has been suggested) the 25th Amendment is the only way to remove him.

It is at that point that I hope that things will start to unravel for them. It is hard to say what the MAGA-dominated Congress will do if laws are flouted on a wholesale basis and constituents begin to complain about the negative impact of DOGE cost-cutting on federal programmes. But one thing is certain, chaos begets chaos (because chaos is not synonymous with techbro libertarians’ dreams of anarchy) and disruption for disruption’s sake may not result in an improved socio-economic and political order.

Those are some of the “unknown unknowns” that the neo-con Donald Rumsfeld used to talk about.

In other words, vamos a ver–we shall see.

Dr Paul G Buchanan is the director of 36th-Parallel Assessments, a geopolitical and strategic analysis consultancy and co-presenter of the weekly A Few From Afar security commentaries with Evening Report. This article is republished from Kiwipolitico with the permission of the author.

Vietnam’s famous Củ Chi tunnel network was on our bucket list for years.

For me, it was for more than half a century, ever since I had been editor of the Melbourne Sunday Observer, which campaigned against Australian (and New Zealand) involvement in the unjust Vietnam War — redubbed the “American War” by the Vietnamese.

For Del, it was a dream to see how the resistance of a small and poor country could defeat the might of colonisers.

• READ MORE: Flashback to the 1968 My Lai massacre: ‘Something dark and bloody’
• Ho Chi Minh City’s War Remnants Museum

“I wanted to see for myself how the tunnels and the sacrifices of the Vietnamese had contributed to winning the war,” she recalls.

“Love for country, a longing for peace and a resistance to foreign domination were strong factors in victory.”

We finally got our wish last month — a half day trip to the tunnel network, which stretched some 250 kilometres at the peak of their use. The museum park is just 45 km northeast of Ho Chi Minh city, known as Saigon during the war years (many locals still call it that).

Building of the tunnels started after the Second World War after the Japanese had withdrawn from Indochina and liberation struggles had begun against the French. But they reached their most dramatic use in the war against the Americans, especially during the spate of surprise attacks during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

The Viet Minh kicked off the network, when it was a sort of southern gateway to the Ho Chi Minh trail in the 1940s as the communist forces edged closer to Saigon.

Eventually the liberation successes of the Viet Minh led to humiliating defeat of the French colonial forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

Cutting off supply lines
The French had rebuilt an ex-Japanese airbase in a remote valley near the Laotian border in a so-called “hedgehog” operation — in a belief that the Viet Minh forces did not have anti-aircraft artillery. They hoped to cut off the Viet Minh’s guerrilla forces’ supply lines and draw them into a decisive conventional battle where superior French firepower would prevail.

However, they were the ones who were cut off.

The Củ Chi tunnels explored.    Video: History channel

The French military command badly miscalculated as General Nguyen Giap’s forces secretly and patiently hauled artillery through the jungle-clad hills over months and established strategic batteries with tunnels for the guns to be hauled back under cover after firing several salvos.

Giap compared Dien Bien Phu to a “rice bowl” with the Viet Minh on the edges and the French at the bottom.

After a 54-day siege between 13 March and 7 May 1954, as the French forces became increasingly surrounded and with casualties mounting (up to 2300 killed), the fortifications were over-run and the surviving soldiers surrendered.

The defeat led to global shock that an anti-colonial guerrilla army had defeated a major European power.

The French government of Prime Minister Joseph Laniel resigned and the 1954 Geneva Accords were signed with France pulling out all its forces in the whole of Indochina, although Vietnam was temporarily divided in half at the 17th Parallel — the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and the republican State of Vietnam nominally under Emperor Bao Dai (but in reality led by a series of dictators with US support).

Debacle of Dien Bien Phu
The debacle of Dien Bien Phu is told very well in an exhibition that takes up an entire wing of the Vietnam War Remnants Museum (it was originally named the “Museum of American War Crimes”).

But that isn’t all at the impressive museum, the history of the horrendous US misadventure is told in gruesome detail – with some 58,000 American troops killed and the death of an estimated up to 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. (Not to mention the 521 Australian and 37 New Zealand soldiers, and the many other allied casualties.)

The section of the museum devoted to the Agent Orange defoliant war waged on the Vietnamese and the country’s environment is particularly chilling – casualties and people suffering from the aftermath of the poisoning are now into the fourth generation.

The global anti-Vietnam War peace protests are also honoured at the museum and one section of the compound has a recreation of the prisons holding Viet Cong independence fighters, including the torture “tiger cells”.

A guillotine is on display. The execution method was used by both France and the US-backed South Vietnam regimes against pro-independence fighters.

A placard says: “During the US war against Vietnam, the guillotine was transported to all of the provinces in South Vietnam to decapitate the Vietnam patriots. [On 12 March 1960], the last man who was executed by guillotine was Hoang Le Kha.”

A member of the ant-French liberation “scout movement”, Hoang was sentenced to death by a military court set up by the US-backed President Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime.

In 1981, France outlawed capital punishment and abandoned the use of the guillotine, but the last execution was as recent as 1977.

Museum visit essential
Visiting Ho Ch Min City’s War Remnants Museum is essential for background and contextual understanding of the role and importance of the Củ Chi tunnels.

Also for insights about how the last US troops left Vietnam in March 1973, Nixon resigned the following year under pressure from the Watergate revelations, and a series of reverses led to the collapse of the South Vietnam regime and the humiliating scenes of the final Americans withdrawing by helicopter from the US Embassy rooftop in Saigon in April 1975.

Back in my protest days as chief subeditor and then editor of Melbourne’s Sunday Observer, I had published Ronald Haberle’s My Lai massacre photos the same week as Life Magazine in December 1969 (an estimated 500 women, children and elderly men were killed at the hamlet on 16 March 1968 near Quang Nai city and the atrocity was covered up for almost two years).

Ironically, we were prosecuted for “obscenity’ for publishing photographs of a real life US obscenity and war crime in the Australian state of Victoria. (The case was later dropped).

So our trip to the Củ Chi tunnels was laced with expectation. What would we see? What would we feel?

The tunnels played a critical role in the “American” War, eventually leading to the collapse of South Vietnamese resistance in Saigon. And the guides talk about the experience and the sacrifice of Viet Cong fighters in reverential tones.

The tunnel network at Ben Dinh is in a vast park-like setting with restored sections, including underground kitchen (with smoke outlets directed through simulated ant hills), medical centre, and armaments workshop.

ingenious bamboo and metal spike booby traps, snakes and scorpions were among the obstacles to US forces pursuing resistance fighters. Special units — called “tunnel rats” using smaller soldiers were eventually trained to combat the Củ Chi system but were not very effective.

We were treated to cooked cassava, a staple for the fighters underground.

A disabled US tank demonstrates how typical hit-and-run attacks by the Viet Cong fighters would cripple their treads and then they would be attacked through their manholes.

The park also has a shooting range where tourists can fire M-16s and AK-47s — by buying their own bullets.

‘Walk’ through showdown
When it came to the section where we could walk through the tunnels ourselves, our guide said: “It only takes a couple of minutes.”

It was actually closer to 10 minutes, it seemed, and I actually got stuck momentarily when my knees turned to jelly with the crouch posture that I needed to use for my height. I had to crawl on hands and knees the rest of the way.

A warning sign said don’t go if you’re aged over 70 (I am 79), have heart issues (I do, with arteries), or are claustrophobic (I’m not). I went anyway.

People who have done this are mostly very positive about the experience and praise the tourist tunnels set-up. Many travel agencies run guided trips to the tunnels.

“Exploring the Củ Chi tunnels near Saigon was a fascinating and historically significant experience,” wrote one recent visitor on a social media link.

“The intricate network of tunnels, used during the Vietnam War, provided valuable insights into the resilience and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people. Crawling through the tunnels, visiting hidden bunkers, and learning about guerrilla warfare tactics were eye-opening . . .

“It’s a place where history comes to life, and it’s a must-visit for anyone interested in Vietnam’s wartime history and the remarkable engineering of the Củ Chi tunnels.”

“The visit gives a very real sense of what the war was like from the Vietnamese side — their tunnels and how they lived and efforts to fight the Americans,” wrote another visitor. “Very realistic experience, especially if you venture into the tunnels.”

Overall, it was a powerful experience and a reminder that no matter how immensely strong a country might be politically and militarily, if grassroots people are determined enough for freedom and justice they will triumph in the end.

There is hope yet for Palestine.

• The Melbourne-based Asia Vacations Group has recently expanded its Vietnam offering in New Zealand.

When New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day today on April 25, it’s not only to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in World War I and subsequent conflicts, but also to mark a defining event for national identity.

The battle of Gallipoli against the Ottoman Empire, the story goes, was where the young nation passed its first test of courage and determination.

The question of why New Zealand soldiers ended up on Turkish beaches in April 1915 is typically not part of these commemorations. Rather, our collective memories begin with the moment of the early morning landing.

• READ MORE: New lessons about old wars: keeping the complex story of Anzac Day relevant in the 21st century
• A century on, the Balfour Declaration still shapes Palestinians’ everyday lives
• Less than illustrious: remembering the Anzacs means also not forgetting some committed war crimes
• Other war on Gaza reports

Consider, for example, the timing of the Anzac Day dawn service, or the Museum of New Zealand-Te Papa Tongarewa’s exhibition, Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War, which plunges visitors straight into the action.

This selective retelling of history is necessary for the “coming of age” narrative to work. It helps conceal that Britain was pursuing its own colonial ambitions against the Ottomans, and that New Zealand took part in World War I as “a member of the British club”, as historian Ian McGibbon puts it, loyally devoted to the imperial cause.

Against the background of the recent horrors and escalating tensions in the Middle East, however, it seems more important than ever to make these silences speak in our commemorations of Gallipoli.

Britain’s colonial interests
While the causes of World War I are complex and multifaceted, historians have extensively documented that Britain had long seen parts of the decaying Ottoman Empire as prey for colonial expansion.

Already, in the late 1800s, Britain had taken control of Cyprus and Egypt.

Turkey’s Middle Eastern possessions were of interest to the government in London because they provided not only a land route to the colony in India, but also rich oil reserves.

Hence, when the Ottoman Empire signed an alliance with Germany — mainly to guard against Russian territorial aspirations – and somewhat reluctantly entered World War I, the British did not lament this as a diplomatic defeat.

“The decrepit Ottoman Empire was more useful to them as a victim than as a dependent ally,” as the late historian Michael Howard explained.

The day after Britain declared war on the Ottomans on November 5, 1914, British troops attacked Basra (in today’s southern Iraq) to secure nearby oil facilities.

In the following months, the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia won a number of easy victories, which fuelled the belief the Turkish military was weak. This in turn led Britain to devise a plan to launch a direct strike on Constantinople, the Ottoman capital.

First, however, they had to clear the Gallipoli peninsula of enemy defences. And who better suited to this task than the first convoy of Anzac troops, just a short distance away in Egypt after passing through the Suez Canal?

Palestine: a complex tangle of pledges
As is well known, war planners in London had underestimated the enemy’s military strength. The battle of Gallipoli ended in a Turkish victory over Britain and its allies.

Nevertheless, fortunes eventually turned against the Ottoman Empire.

Although a whole century has gone by, British diplomatic efforts and secret agreements that were meant to accelerate the collapse of the Ottoman Empire still shape the Middle East today.

Most significantly, it is the violent conflict over Palestine that can be traced back to colonial power dealings during World War I. The crux of the problem is that Britain affirmed three irreconcilable wartime commitments in relation to Palestine.

First, in the hope of initiating an Arab revolt against Ottoman rule, the British made promises to Sharif Husayn, the emir of Mecca, about the creation of an independent Arab kingdom.

Second, in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Ottomans’ Arab lands into British and French spheres of interest, Palestine was designated for international administration.

Third, in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, the British government pledged support for a “Jewish national home” in Palestine — a move motivated by a mixture of realpolitik and Biblical romanticism.

In the end, it was the third commitment that turned out to be the most enduring.

How should we remember Gallipoli?
Amid this complex history, we must not forget the thousands of New Zealand soldiers who died in World War I — men who had either volunteered, expecting a quick and heroic war, or served as draftees.

However, we need to have a public discussion about whether it is still appropriate for our commemorations to skip over the question of why these men fought in Europe and the Mediterranean.

Facing up to this question not only makes us aware of our responsibilities towards the Middle East problem, but it can also serve as a lesson for the future — not to blindly follow great powers into their military adventures.

Olli Hellmann, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The US has carried out another air raid on Yemen, with targets reportedly including the international airport in the capital city of Sanaa. This comes a day after US and UK airstrikes on Yemen in retaliation for Houthi attacks on Red Sea commercial vessels.

For weeks Yemen’s Houthi forces have been greatly inconveniencing commercial shipping with their blockade, with reports last month saying Israel’s Eilat Port has seen an 85 percent drop in activity since the attacks began.

This entirely bloodless inconvenience was all it took for Washington to attack Yemen, the war-ravaged nation in which the US and its allies have spent recent years helping Saudi Arabia murder hundreds of thousands of people with its own maritime blockades.

• READ MORE: This genocide is being live-streamed. We can’t say we didn’t know
• How the US, UK bombing of Yemen might help the Houthis
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Yemen has issued defiant statements in response to these attacks, saying they will not go “unanswered or unpunished”.

The U.S. can have a multi-decade long blockade on Cuba and it’s normalized.

Israel can have a decade and a half long total air, land, and sea blockade on Gaza and it’s normalized.

But Yemenis block some ships to stop a genocide and all the sudden it’s indefensible.

— James Ray (@GoodVibePolitik) January 13, 2024

The Biden administration’s dramatic escalation toward yet another horrific war in the Middle East has been hotly criticised by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who argue that the attacks were illicit because they took place without congressional approval.

This impotent congressional whining will never go anywhere, since, as Glenn Greenwald has observed, the US Congress never actually does anything to hold presidents to account for carrying out acts of war without their approval.

But there are some worthwhile ideas going around.

After the second round of strikes, a Democratic representative from Georgia named Hank Johnson tweeted the following:

“I have what some may consider a dumb idea, but here it is: stop the bombing of Gaza, then the attacks on commercial shipping will end. Why not try that approach?”

By golly, that’s just crazy enough to work. In fact, anti-interventionists have been screaming it at the top of their lungs since the standoff with Yemen began.

All the way back in mid-October Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi was already writing urgently about the need for a ceasefire in Gaza to prevent it from exploding into a wider war in the region, a position Parsi has continued pushing ever since.

“Huge Miscalculation”: Biden’s Refusal to Push for Gaza Ceasefire Could Drag U.S. into Middle East War https://t.co/eJuzswi2BJ

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 8, 2024

As we discussed previously, Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza is threatening to bleed over into conflicts with the Houthis in Yemen, with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with Iran-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria, and even potentially with Iran itself – any of which could easily see the US and its allies committing themselves to a full-scale war.

Peace in Gaza takes these completely unnecessary gambles off the table.

And it is absolutely within Washington’s power to force a ceasefire in Gaza. Biden could end all this with one phone call, as US presidents have done in the past. As Parsi wrote for The Nation earlier this month:

“In 1982, President Ronald Reagan was ‘disgusted’ by Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. He stopped the transfer of cluster munitions to Israel and told Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a phone call that ‘this is a holocaust.’ Reagan demanded that Israel withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Begin caved. Twenty minutes after their phone call, Begin ordered a halt on attacks.

“Indeed, it is absurd to claim that Biden has no leverage, particularly given the massive amounts of arms he has shipped to Israel. In fact, Israeli officials openly admit it. ‘All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US,’ retired Israeli Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Brick conceded in November of last year. ‘The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability.… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.’ ”

In the end, you get peace by pursuing peace. That’s how it happens. You don’t get it by pursuing impossible imaginary ideals like the total elimination of Hamas while butchering tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.

You don’t get it by trying to bludgeon the Middle East into passively accepting an active genocide. You get it by negotiation, de-escalation, diplomacy and detente.

The path to peace is right there. The door’s not locked. It’s not even closed. The fact that they don’t take it tells you what these imperialist bastards are really interested in.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

Prominent West Papuan independence activist Victor Yeimo was yesterday released from prison in Jayapura, Indonesia’s occupied capital of West Papua, sparking a massive celebration among thousands of Papuans.

His release has ignited a spirit of unity among Papuans in their fight against what they refer to as racism, colonialism, and imperialism.

His jailing was widely condemned by global human rights groups and legal networks as flawed and politically motivated by Indonesian authorities.

• READ MORE: Ribuan rakyat Papua sambut Viktor Yeimo di panggung budaya Ekspo Waena, Kota Jayapura
• OPM calls for decolonisation of West Papua, condemns UN ‘collusion’
• Other Victor Yeimo reports

“Racism is a disease. Racism is a virus. Racism is first propagated by people who feel superior,” Yeimo told thousands of supporters.

He described racism as an illness and “even patients find it difficult to detect pain caused by racism”.

Victor Yeimo’s speech:

“Racism is a disease. Racism is a virus. Racism is first propagated by people who feel superior. The belief that other races are inferior. The feeling that another race is more primitive and backward than others.

“Remember the Papuan people, my fellow students, because racism is an illness, and even patients find it difficult to detect pain caused by racism.

“Racism has been historically upheld by some scientists, beginning in Europe and later in America. These scientists have claimed that white people are inherently more intelligent and respectful than black people based on biological differences.

“This flawed reasoning has been used to justify colonialism and imperialism in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, with researchers misguidedly asserting genetic and ecological superiority over other races.

“Therefore, there is a prejudice against other nations and races, with the belief that they are backward, primitive people, belonging to the lower or second class, who must be subdued, colonised, dominated, developed, exploited, and enslaved.

“Racism functions like a pervasive virus, infecting and spreading within societies. Colonialism introduced racism to Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, profoundly influencing the perspectives and beliefs of Asians, Indonesians, and archipelago communities.

“It’s crucial to acknowledge that the enduring impact of over 350 years of racist ideology from the Dutch East Indies has deeply ingrained in generations, shaping their worldview in these regions due to the lasting effects of colonialism.

“Because racism is a virus, it is transmitted from the perpetrator to the victim. Colonised people are the victims.

“After Indonesia became independent, it succeeded in driving out colonialism, but failed to eliminate the racism engendered by European cultures against archipelago communities.

“Currently, racism has evolved into a deeply ingrained cultural phenomenon among the Indonesian population, leaving them with a sense of inferiority as a result of their history of colonisation.

“Brothers and sisters, I must tell you that it was racism that influenced Sukarno [the first President of Indonesia] to say other races and nations, including the Papuans, were puppet nations without political rights.

“It is racist prejudice.

“There is a perception among people from other nations, such as Javanese and Malays, that Papuans have not advanced, that they are still primitives who must be subdued, arranged, and constructed.

“In 1961, the Papuans were building a nation and a state, but it was considered an impostor state with prejudice against the Papuans. It is important for fellow students to learn this.

“It is imperative that the Papuan people learn that the annexation of this region is based on racist prejudice.

“The 1962 New York Agreement, the 1967 agreement between Indonesia and the United States regarding Freeport’s work contract, and the Act of Free Choice in 1969 excluded the participation of any Papuans.

“This exclusion was rooted in the belief that Papuans were viewed as primitive and not deserving of the right to determine their own political fate. The decision-making process was structured to allow unilateral decisions by parties who considered themselves superior, such as the United States, the Netherlands, and Indonesia.

“In this arrangement, the rightful owners of the nation and homeland, the Papuan people, were denied the opportunity to determine their own political destiny. This unequal and biased treatment exemplified racism.”

Victor Yeimo’s imprisonment
According to Jubi, a local West Papua media outlet, Victor Yeimo, international spokesperson of the West Papua Committee National (KNPB), was unjustly convicted of treason because he was deemed to have been involved in a demonstration protesting against a racism incident that occurred at the Kamasan III Papua student dormitory in Surabaya, East Java, on 16 August 2019.

He was accused of being a mastermind behind riots that shook West Papua sparked by the Surabaya incident, which led to his arrest and subsequent charge of treason on 21 February 2022.

However, on 5 May 2023, a panel of judges from the Jayapura District Court ruled that Victor Yeimo was not guilty of treason.

Nevertheless, the Jayapura Court of Judges found Yeimo guilty of violating Article 155, Paragraph (1) of the Criminal Code.

The verdict was controversial because Article 155, Paragraph (1) of the Criminal Code was never the charge against Victor Yeimo.

The article used to sentence Victor Yeimo to eight months in prison had even been revoked by the Constitutional Court.

On 12 May 2023, the Public Prosecutor and the Law Enforcement and Human Rights Coalition for Papua, acting as Victor Yeimo’s legal representatives, filed appeals against the Jayapura District Court ruling.

On 5 July 2023, a panel of judges of the Jayapura High Court, led by Paluko Hutagalung SH MH, together with member judges, Adrianus Agung Putrantono SH and Sigit Pangudianto SH MH, overturned the Jayapura District Court verdict, stating that Yeimo was proven to have committed treason, and sentenced him to one year in imprisonment.

Jubi.com stated that the sentence ended, and at exactly 11:17 WP, he was released by the Abepura Prerequisite Board.

International response
Global organisations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have condemned the Indonesian government’s treatment of Papuans and called for immediate action to address the issue of racism.

They have issued statements, conducted investigations, and raised awareness about the plight of Papuans, urging the international community to stand in solidarity with them.

Yeimo’s release brings new hope and strengthens their fight for independence.

His release has not only brought about a sense of relief and joy for his people and loved ones but has also reignited the flames of resistance against the Indonesian occupation.

At the Waena Expo Arena in Jayapura City yesterday, Yeimo was greeted by thousands of people who performed traditional dances and chanted “free West Papua”, displaying the region’s symbol of resistance and independence — the Morning Star flag.

Thousands of Papuans have united, standing in solidarity, singing, dancing, and rallying to advocate for an end to the crimes against humanity inflicted upon them.

Victor Yeimo’s bravery, determination and triumph in the face of adversity have made him a symbol of hope for many. He has inspired them to continue fighting for justice and West Papua’s state sovereignty.

Papuan communities, including various branches of KNPB offices represented by Victor Yeimo as a spokesperson, as well as activists, families, and friends from seven customary regions of West Papua, are joyfully celebrating his return.

Many warmly welcome him, addressing him as the “father of the Papuan nation”, comrade, and brother, while others express gratitude to God for his release.

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

What happened on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey 108 years ago has shocked and shaped Aotearoa New Zealand ever since. The challenge in the 21st century, then, is how best to give contemporary relevance to such an epochal event.

The essence of the Anzac story is well known. As part of the first world war British Imperial Forces, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzacs) landed at Gallipoli on April 25 1915. For eight months they endured the constant threat of death or maiming in terrible living conditions.

Ultimately, their occupation of that narrow and rugged piece of Turkish coast failed. The 30,000 Anzacs were evacuated after eight months. More than 2700 New Zealand and 8700 Australian soldiers died, with many more wounded.

• READ MORE: Less than illustrious: remembering the Anzacs means also not forgetting some committed war crimes
• Peter Weir’s Gallipoli 40 years on: deftly directed and still devastating
• For many Australians, Anzac Day has been defined by a pilgrimage to Gallipoli. Can we mark the day differently?

The first anniversary of the landing was a day of mourning, with Anzac Day becoming a public holiday in 1922. A remembrance day of sorrow mixed with pride, it has grown over the years to include all those who served and died in later international conflicts.

Over time, various narratives and themes have emerged from that Gallipoli “origin story”: of Aotearoa New Zealand’s emergence as a nation, proving itself to Britain and Empire; of the brave, fit, loyal soldier-mates who emblemised the Kiwi spirit of egalitarianism, fairness and duty. All this mingled with the lasting shock and underlying anger at class hierarchy and the British leadership’s incompetence.

But historians know well that the “Anzac spirit” is a complex and ever-evolving idea. In 2023, what do we teach school-aged children about its meaning and significance? One way forward is to rethink those Anzac narratives and tropes in a more complex way.

Colonialism and class
The Anzac story is tied up in the nation’s history as part of the British Empire. The Anzac toll was just part of a staggering 46,000 “Britons” — including many from India and Ireland — who died at Gallipoli.

Some 86,000 Turks also died defending their peninsula. We need to teach about the Anzac sacrifice in the context of a global conflict where the magnitude of loss was horrific.

Importantly, Anzac themes are bound up in early forms of colonial nationalism: New Zealand proving itself to Britain and developing its own fighting mentality on battlefields far from home.

Part of this involves the notion of incompetent British commanders who let down the Anzac troops — but this is part of a bigger story.

Focusing on imperial and class hierarchies of the time can place what happened in that broader context. The legendary story of Chunuck Bair, taken on August 8 by Colonel William Malone’s Wellington Regiment, but where most of the soldiers were killed when they were not relieved in time, is particularly evocative.

Māori and the imperial project
From our vantage point in the present, of course, we cannot ignore the Māori experience of war and colonialism. As the historian Vincent O’Malley has suggested, New Zealand’s “great war” of nation-making was actually Ngā pakanga o Aotearoa — the New Zealand Wars.

It’s time to teach the complexity of this past and the multiple perspectives on it. For example, Waikato leader Te Puea Hērangi led opposition to World War I conscription and spoke against Māori participation on the side of a power that had only recently invaded her people’s land.

Conversely, Māori seeking inclusion in the settler nation did participate. On July 3, 1915, the 1st Māori Contingent landed at Anzac Cove. Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck) (Ngāti Mutunga) was to say:

Our feet were set on a distant land where our blood was to be shed in the cause of the Empire to which we belonged.

These words echo the familiar Anzac trope of the New Zealand nation being born at Gallipoli. Such sentiments led to postwar pilgrimages to retrace the steps of ancestors and claim the site as part of an Anzac heritage — a corner of New Zealand even.

For many young New Zealanders it has become a rite of passage, part of the big OE. That a visit to Anzac Cove is still more popular than visiting the sites of Ngā pakanga o Aotearoa is something our teaching can investigate.

Mateship and conformity
The notion of the Anzac soldier as courageous and beyond reproach, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for nation and empire, is also overdue for revision. The “glue” of mateship — a potent combination of masculine bravery and strength with extreme loyalty to fellow soldiers — is again a contested narrative.

By the 1970s, as historian Rowan Light’s work shows, there was a significant challenge to such perceptions from the counterculture, peace protesters and feminists. And by the 1980s, veterans were sharing their stories more candidly with writer Maurice Shadbolt and war historian Chris Pugsley.

Teaching about the meaning of mateship might examine the history of those peer-pressured into participating in war, those who were conscripted and had no choice, and more on the fate of conscientious objectors like Archibald Baxter. At its worst, the idea of mateship was window dressing for uniformity and parochialism.

New Zealanders today have complex multicultural and global roots. We have ancestors who were co-opted to fight on different sides in 20th-century wars, including those who fought anti-colonial wars in India, Ireland and Samoa.

Some came here as refugees escaping conflict. Jingoism and what it really represents deserves critical analysis.

Poppies and peace
The ubiquitous poppy, an icon much reproduced in classrooms, is also ripe for contextualisation and debate over its meaning. In the age of global environmental crisis, it can be seen as more than a symbol of sacrifice immortalised in verse and iconography.

The poppy also reminds us of the landscapes devastated by the machinery of war that killed and maimed people, plants and animals. It contains within it myriad lessons about the threats science and technology can pose to a vulnerable planet.

Anzac Day rose from the shock, loss and grief felt by those on the home front. And beyond the familiar tropes of nationalism, mateship and egalitarianism, this remains its overriding mood.

Remembering and learning about the terrible physical and mental cost of war is the real point of those familiar phrases “lest we forget” and “never again”. That spirit of humanitarianism chimes with Aotearoa New Zealand’s modern role and evolving self-image as a peacekeeping, nuclear-free nation.

Anzac Day also speaks to the need for global peace and arbitration, and how war is no viable solution to conflict. Those are surely lessons worth teaching.

Dr Katie Pickles is professor of history, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

During the present period of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II, public sensitivities in the United Kingdom and Australia are high. There is strong sentiment in both countries in favour of showing respect for the Queen’s death.

Some people may wish to do this privately. Others will want to demonstrate their respect publicly by attending commemorations and processions.

There are also cohorts within both countries that may wish to express discontent and disagreement with the monarchy at this time.

• READ MORE: The Queen has left her mark around the world. But not all see it as something to be celebrated
• Other reports on UK royalty

For instance, groups such as Indigenous peoples and others who were subject to dispossession and oppression by the British monarchy may wish to express important political views about these significant and continuing injustices.

This has caused tension across the globe. For instance, a professor from the United States who tweeted a critical comment of the Queen has been subject to significant public backlash.

Also, an Aboriginal rugby league player is facing a ban and a fine by the NRL for similar negative comments she posted online following the Queen’s death.

This tension has been particularly so in the UK, where police have questioned protestors expressing anti-monarchy sentiments, and in some cases, arrested them.

Police arrest anti-monarchy protesters at royal events in England, Scotland https://t.co/GJSzOa1SKU

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 13, 2022

But should such concerns about the actions of the Queen and monarchy be silenced or limited because a public declaration of mourning has been made by the government?

This raises some difficult questions as to how the freedom of speech of both those who wish to grieve publicly and those who wish to protest should be balanced.

What laws in the UK are being used to do this?
There are various laws that regulate protest in the UK. At a basic level, police can arrest a person for a “breach of the peace”.

Also, two statutes provide specific offences that allow police to arrest protesters.

Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 UK provides that a person is guilty of a public order offence if:

• they use threatening or abusive words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour
• or display any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening or abusive.

The offence provision then provides this must be “within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress” by those acts.

There is some protection for speech in the legislation because people arrested under this provision can argue a defence of “reasonable excuse”. However, there’s still a great deal of discretion placed in the hands of the police.

Seriously worrying that holding a sign saying #notmyking can get you removed by police. What ever your views on the monarchy, this should concern you. https://t.co/uj1TGkdL5t

— Clay Sinclair (@claysinclair) September 12, 2022

The other statute that was recently amended is the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act of 2022, which allows police to arrest protesters for “public nuisance”.

In the context of the period of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II, the wide terms used in this legislation (such as “nuisance” and “distress”) gives a lot of discretion to police to arrest protesters who they perceive to be upsetting others.

For instance, a protester who holds a placard saying “Not my king, abolish the monarchy” may be seen as likely to cause distress to others given the high sensitivities in the community during the period of mourning.

Is there a right to protest under UK and Australian law?
Protest rights are recognised in both the UK and in Australia, but in different ways.

In the UK, the right to freedom of expression is recognised in Article 10 of the Human Rights Act.

In Australia, there’s no equivalent of the right to freedom of expression at the federal level as Australia doesn’t have a national human rights charter. Rather, there’s a constitutional principle called the “implied freedom of political communication”.

This isn’t a “right” as such but does provide some acknowledgement of the importance of protest.

Also, freedom of expression is recognised in the three jurisdictions in Australia that have human rights instruments (Victoria, Queensland and the ACT).

pic.twitter.com/8s01SZc1gx

— Paul Powlesland (@paulpowlesland) September 12, 2022

Can the right to protest be limited in a period of mourning?
In this period of public mourning, people wishing to assemble in a public place to pay respect to the queen are exercising two primary human rights: the right to assembly and the right to freedom of expression.

But these are not absolute rights. They cannot override the rights of others to also express their own views.

Further, there is no recognised right to assemble without annoyance or disturbance from others. That is, others in the community are also permitted to gather in a public place during the period of mourning and voice their views (which may be critical of the queen or monarchy).

It is important to also note that neither the UK nor Australia protects the monarchy against criticism. This is significant because in some countries (such as Thailand), it is a criminal offence to insult the monarch. These are called “lèse-majesté” laws — a French term meaning “to do wrong to majesty”.

The police in the UK and Australia cannot therefore use public order offences (such breach of the peace) to unlawfully limit public criticism of the monarchy.

It may be uncomfortable or even distressing for those wishing to publicly grieve the Queen’s passing to see anti-monarchy placards displayed. But that doesn’t make it a criminal offence that allows protesters to be arrested.

The ability to voice dissent is vital for a functioning democracy. It is therefore arguable that people should be able to voice their concerns with the monarchy even in this period of heightened sensitivity. The only way in which anti-monarchy sentiment can lawfully be suppressed is in a state of emergency.

A public period of mourning does not meet that standard.

Dr Maria O’Sullivan, associate professor in the Faculty of Law, and deputy director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.