War always commands its own appeal. It has its own frazzled laurels, the calling of its own worn poets tenured in propaganda. In battle, the poets keep writing, and keep glorifying. The chattering diplomats are kept in the cooler, biding their time. The soldiers die, as do civilians. The politicians are permitted to behave badly.

With Ukraine looking desperately bloodied at the hands of their Russian counterparts, the horizon of the conflict had seemingly shrunk of late. Fatigue and desperation had set in. Washington seemed more interested in sending such musically illiterate types as the Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Kyiv for moral cuddling rather than suitably murderous military hardware.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, mindful of the losses inflicted on his own side in the conflict, thought it opportune to spring the question of peace talks. On June 14, while speaking with members of the Russian Foreign Ministry, he floated the idea that Russia would cease combat operations “immediately” if Ukraine abandoned any aspirations of joining NATO and withdrew its troops from the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Rather than refrigerate the conflict into its previous frozen phase, Putin went further. It would end provided that Kyiv accepted Moscow’s sovereign control over the four regions as “new territorial realities”. Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine would also be afforded protections; sanctions imposed by Western states would be lifted. “Today,” he stated, “we have put forward another concrete, genuine peace proposal. If Kyiv and Western capitals reject it as they have in the past, they will bear political and moral responsibility of the ‘continuation of the bloodshed.’”

He further added that, as soon as Ukraine began withdrawing its military personnel from Donbas and Novorossiya, with an undertaking not to join NATO, “the Russian Federation will cease fire and be ready for negotiations. I don’t think it will take long.”

Length and duration, however, remain the signal attributes of this murderous gambit. Ukraine’s defeat and humbling is unacceptable for the armchair strategists in the US imperium, along with their various satellites. NATO’s obsessive expansion cannot be thwarted, nor can the projection of Washington’s influence eastwards from Europe. And as for the defence contractors and companies keen to make a killing on the killings, they must also be considered.

This was unpardonable for the interests of the Biden administration. The Washington War Gaming Set must continue. Empires need their fill, their sullied pound of flesh. Preponderance of power comes in various forms: direct assault against adversaries (potentially unpopular for the voters), proxy enlistment, or the one degree removed sponsorship of a national state or entity as a convenient hitman. Ukraine, in this sense, has become the latter, a repurposed, tragic henchman for US interests, shedding blood in patriotic gore.

In keeping with that gore, US President Joe Biden, in announcing a funding package for Ukraine from the G7 group, promised that “democracies can deliver”. The amount on the ledger: $US50 billion. “We are putting our money to work for Ukraine, and giving another reminder to Putin that we are not backing down.” That particular amount is derived from frozen Russian assets outside Russian territory, most of it from the Russian Central Bank amounting to US$280 billion. The circumstances of such freezing will, in future, be the subject of numerous dissertations and legal challenges, but that very fact suggests that Ukraine’s allies are tiring from drawing from their own budgets. We support you, but we also hate to see the money of our taxpayers continually splurged on the enterprise.

Biden’s remarks from the Hotel Masseria San Domenico in Fasano have a haunting quality of repetition when it comes to US support for doomed causes and misguided goals. The fig leaf, when offered, can be withdrawn at any given movement: South Vietnam, doomed to conquest at the hands of North Vietnam; Afghanistan, almost inevitably destined to be recaptured by the Taliban; Kurds the Marsh Arabs, pet projects for US strategists encouraged to revolt only to be slaughtered in betrayal.

Thus goes Biden: “A lasting peace for Ukraine must be underwritten by Ukraine’s own ability to defend itself now and to deter future aggression anytime […] in the future,” Biden explains, drawing from the echo of Vietnamisation and any such exultation of an indigenous cause against a wicked enemy. The idea here: strengthen Ukrainian defence and deterrence while not sending US troops. In other words, we pay you to die.

The NATO disease, poxy and draining, rears its head. Weapons and ammunition are to be provided to Ukraine along with the expansion of “intelligence-sharing” and training while “enhancing interoperability between our militaries in line with NATO standards.” Money is to be put into Ukraine’s own defence industry so that they can duly “supply their own weapons and munitions.” In the floral bouquet, a cautionary note is appended. “In terms of longer range of weapons into the interior of Russia we are not changing our positions.” Killing is always a matter of quantum, and calculation. The note for Kyiv is clear: use the weapons but do so carefully.

As for the logistics of finance, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan is already voicing concerns about the complexity of the funding venture. “The simple proposition is we got to put these assets to work. The complex proposition is how you do that specifically.”

While Putin has turned his nose up at the UN Charter in its solemn affirmation of the sovereignty of states, Washington has taken its own wrecking ball to the text. It has meddled, fiddled and tampered with the internal affairs of states while accusing Russia of the very same thing. Spiteful of history and its bitter lessons, it has employed such saboteurs as former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to undertake such tasks, poking the Russian Bear while courting and seducing the Ukrainian establishment. The horror is evident for all to see, and unlikely to halt.

The ashes had barely settled on a Rafah tent camp incinerated by an Israeli airstrike before the next, gorged massacre presented itself for posterity’s gloomy archive. It was intended as a golden operation and had been months in the making. The rescue of four Israeli hostages, the killing of three others (bound to happen for the expertly inclined), and the massacre of over 274 Palestinians at the Nuseirat refugee camp were the end result.

The logistics that led to the bloodbath had been rehearsed with detail verging on the manic. Many a vengeful mind was at play. Two buildings were constructed for training purposes. Participants involved the special counter-terrorism unit Yamam, Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet, and members of the Israeli Defence Forces. An enormous casualty rate would have already been contemplated given the remarks of IDF spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. “We understood that in those apartments with those guards, daytime will be the ultimate surprise.”

The lies barely have time to fledge. First, the numbers. Hagari could only count “dozens”, and “knew of less than 100”. He conceded to not knowing how many of such a reduced number were civilians. Israel’s Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, was happy to soften the carnage in attacking his country’s detractors. “Only Israel’s enemies complained about the casualties of Hamas terrorists and their accomplices.”

Then came the praise, manifold, effusive. The Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant cooed with satisfaction, calling the effort “one of the most extraordinary operations”. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu merely offered the following morsel: “Israel does not surrender to terrorism.”

Furthermore, no civilian trucks, claimed the IDF, were used in the operation. Yet undercover vehicles were apparently deployed, one very much resembling those used by Israel to traffic commercial goods into Gaza; another being a white Mercedes truck packed and stacked with furniture and miscellaneous belongings typical of the dislocated and dispossessed. Disgorged from the latter, Palestinian eye-witness accounts noted men in plainclothes and some 10 heavily armed soldiers ready for mischief. The commencement of firing signalled the start of the butchery.

The UN Special Rapporteur of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, was certain. The IDF, she stated with exasperation, had “perfidiously” hidden “in an aid truck”. This constituted “‘humanitarian camouflage’ at another level.” While expressing relief at the rescue of four hostages, the enterprise “should not have come at the expense of at least 200 Palestinians, including children, killed and over 400 injured by Israel and allegedly foreign soldiers.”

In time, it became clear that the mission, venerated for its secrecy and praised for its planning, had not caught the Hamas guards responsible for three male hostages by surprise. They duly engaged the Yamam operatives. “Immediately, it became a war zone,” reservist brigadier general Amir Avivi told The Washington Post. The Israeli air force commenced indulgent fire. Death reigned at Nuseirat for some 75 minutes, concealed by the now standard refrain by the IDF: “Aircraft struck dozens of military targets for the success of the operation.”

Other, more tormented descriptions seemed closer to the mark. The Intercept noted the observations of a Palestinian witness by the name of Suhail Mutlaq Abu Nasser. “The area turned to ashes… I couldn’t find my wife and started calling out to those around me to ensure they were still alive.” The account goes on to document the use of armed quadcopter drones, the presence of tank tracks, the hovering of Apache attack helicopters, the targeting of homes by missiles. Camp resident Anas Alayyan was also convinced that the entire military operation by Israeli forces did not fall short of a mass execution.

There is a pattern here, a murderous ratio justified by that most elastic yet horrific of reasons: self-defence. The hostage rescue will go down a treat in Israel. The names of those captured by Hamas on October 7 will be anointed in Israeli mythology: Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, Shlomi Ziv. But at what cost to those around them?

In addition to the slaughter, some indication of the aftermath is provided by Al Jazeera. “The wounded were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, an already overwhelmed facility.” Medics are found to be in utter despair.

The scale of killing on this score also raises troubling issues with Israel’s closest ally. Despite some political grumbling in the ranks, the Biden administration remains steadfast in support. The deaths in Rafah were still excusable because, in the words of US State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, Israel had not engaged in “a military operation on the scale of those previous operations [in Khan Younis and in Gaza City].”

The hefty death toll of Palestinian civilians in the Nuseirat operation was of lesser concern to President Joe Biden than the welfare of Israeli hostages. Speaking in Paris, Biden welcomed “the safe rescue of four hostages that were returned to their families in Israel. We won’t stop working until all the hostages come home and a ceasefire is reached.”

The sanguinary episode at Nuseirat is hard to stomach, even by Biden’s rubbery standards. It stands to reason. The entire operation had the buttressing of what the New York Times reported to be “intelligence and other logistical support” from the United States. Two Israeli intelligence officials also confirmed that “American military officials in Israel provided some of the intelligence about the hostages rescued Saturday.” And let us not forget murderous military hardware, readily supplied from US defence companies. It follows that the lives of Israeli hostages, dubbed “diamonds” by their rescuers, are invaluable, the precious stones of Israeli-US policy. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are mere coal dust.

Lock them up. The whole bally lot. The pollsters, the pundits, the parasitic hacks clinging to the life raft of politics in the hope of earning their crust. Yet again, the election results from a country have confounded the chatterers and psephologists. India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was meant to romp home and steal the show in the latest elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party was meant to cut through the Lok Sabha for a third time, comprehensively, conclusively. Of 543 parliamentary seats, 400 were to be scooped up effortlessly.

From a superficial perspective, it was easy to see why this view was reached. Modi the moderniser is a selling point, a sales pitch for progress. The builder and architect as leader. The man of temples and faith to keep company with the sweet counting of Mammon’s pennies. Despite cherishing an almost medieval mindset, one that rejects Darwinian theories of evolution and promotes the belief that Indians discovered DNA before Watson and Crick, not to mention flying and virtually everything else worth mentioning, Modi insists on the sparkle of development. Propaganda concepts abound such as Viksit Bharat (Developed India). The country, he dreams, will slough off the skin of its “developing” status by 2047, becoming a US$30 trillion economy.

The BJP manifesto had pledges aplenty: the improvement of the country’s infrastructure, the creation of courts programmed to be expeditious in their functions, the creation of “high-value” jobs, the realisation of India as a global hub for manufacturing.

The electors had something else in mind. At the halfway point of counting 640 million votes, it became clear that the BJP and its allies had won 290 seats. The BJP electoral larder had been raided. The Modi sales pitch had not bent as many Indian ears as hoped. The opposition parties, including the long-weakened Congress Party, once the lion of Indian politics, and the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, had found their bite. States such as Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Maharashtra, had put the Hindutva devotees off their stroke.

Despite Modi’s inauguration of a garish temple to Ram at Ayodhya, occupying the site of a mosque destroyed by mob violence (the cliché goes that criminals return to the scene of their crime), the Socialist party and Congress alliance gained 42 of the 80 seats on offer in Uttar Pradesh. A rather leaden analysis offered in that dullest of publications, The Conversation, suggested that Hindu nationalist policies, while being “a powerful tool in mobilising the BJP’s first two terms” would have to be recalibrated. The theme of religious nationalism and its inevitable offspring, temple politics, had not been as weighty in the elections as initially thought.

For such politics watchers as Ashwini Kumar, the election yielded one fundamental message: “the era of coalition politics is back.” The BJP would have to “put the contentious ideological issues in cold storage, like the uniform civil code or simultaneous elections for state assembly and the Parliament.”

While still being the largest party in the Lok Sabha, the BJP put stock in its alliance with the National Democratic Alliance. The NDA, said Modi, “is going to form the government for the third time, we are grateful to the people.” The outcome was “a victory for the world’s largest democracy.”

Modi, sounding every bit a US president dewy about the marble virtues of the republic, romanced the election process of his country. “Every Indian is proud of the election system and its credibility. Its efficiency has not [sic] match anywhere else in the world. I want to tell the influencers that this is a matter of pride. It enhances India’s reputation, and people who have a reach, they should present it before the world with pride.”

For a man inclined to dilute and strain laws in a breezy, thuggish way, this was quite something. Modi spoke of the Indian constitution as being “our guiding light”, despite showing a less than enlightened attitude to non-Hindus in the Indian state. He venerated the task of battling corruption, omitting the fact that the vast majority of targets have tended to be from the opposition. The “defence sector”, he vowed, would become “self-reliant.”

In an interview with the PTI news agency, the relentlessly eloquent Congress Party grandee Shashi Tharoor had this assessment. The electorate had given a “comeuppance” to the BJP’s “overweening arrogance” and its “my way or the highway attitude.” It would “be a challenge for Mr Modi and Amit Shah who have not been used to consulting very much in running their government and I think this is going to test their ability to change their way of functioning and be more accommodative and more conciliatory within the government and also I hope with the Opposition.”

Whatever Modi’s sweet words for the Indian republic, there was no getting away from the fact Hindutva’s juggernaut has lost its shine. We anticipate, to that end, something amounting to what Tharoor predicts to be a “majboor sarkaar (helpless government)” on fundamental matters. Far better helpless in government than ably vicious in bigotry.

Australia’s modest sovereign wealth fund, modestly standing at A$272.3 billion, has crawled into some trouble of late. Investors, morally twinged, are keeping an eye on where the money of the Australian Future Fund goes. Inevitably, a good slice of it seems to be parked in the military-industrial complex, a sector that performs on demand.

Filed last October, a Freedom of Information request by Greens Senator David Shoebridge revealed that as much as A$600 million in public funds had found their way into defence company assets. In December, it was reported that the 30 defence and aerospace companies featured, with some of them receiving the following: Thales (A$3.5 million), Lockheed Martin (A$71 million), BAE Systems (A$26 million), Boeing (A$10.7 million), Rocket Lab USA (A$192 million) and Elbit Systems (A$488,768).

The findings gave Shoebridge a chance to spray the board administering the fund with gobbets of chastening wisdom. “The Future Fund is meant to benefit future generations. That rings hollow when they are investing in companies making equipment that ends future generations.”

Some cleansing of the stables was on offer, and the choice of what was cleaned proved popular – at least for the Canberra security establishment. In May, the Board upped stakes and divested from funds associated with the People’s Liberation Army of China. Eleven companies were noted, among them Xinjiang Guanghui Energy, a natural gas and coal producer whose chairman, Sun Guangxin, teased US officials by purchasing ranches for reasons of building a wind farm in proximity to a US Air Force base in Texas.

Relevant companies included Jiangsu GoodWe and LONGi, both with expertise in the line of solar energy generation. “Taxpayer funds and Australians’ retirement savings should never be invested in companies linked to serious human rights abuses, sanctions evasion or military suppliers to an authoritarian state,” gloated a satisfied opposition home affairs spokesman, Senator James Paterson. The same, it would seem, would not apply to human rights abuses committed by a purported democratic state.

To that end, things are somewhat murkier when it comes to the companies of other, friendlier powers. For some obstinate reason, Israel’s military poster boy, Elbit Systems, continues to make its presence felt in the field of Australian defence and finance. Despite a spotty reputation and a resume of lethal drone production; despite the ongoing murderous conflict in Gaza, the Israeli defence company managed to convince the Australian government to throw A$917 million its way in a contract signed in February. The contract, to be performed over a period of five years, will supply “advanced protection, fighting capabilities and sensors” for the Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) of Korean design. With wonderful opportunism, the vehicles are being constructed in the same electorate that belongs to the Australian Defence Minister, Richard Marles.

And what of the near half-million dollars invested by the Future Fund in Elbit Systems? In October 2023, a list of the Fund’s direct holdings in various companies was published. It included Elbit Systems. An odd matter, given that the company, since 2021, is precluded from investing in the fund given, as Shoebridge tells us, the ratification by Australia of various “military weapons-related conventions or treaties”. The board, accordingly, had to furnish reasons “how it continues to invest in Elbit Systems despite the publicly announced direction it gave to withdraw those funds because of Australia’s international legal obligations.”

The internal correspondence of December 7, 2023, prompted by Shoebridge’s FOI request, including the prodding of Michael West Media, proved arid in detail. A Canberra bureaucrat in finance asks an official associated or attached to the Future Fund (both names are redacted) to clarify the status of Elbit Systems in terms of the exclusion list. The reply notes the role of “expert third party service providers” (who, pray?) who keep an eye on company activities and provide research upon which a decision is made by the Board every six months.

Elbit had been previously excluded as an investment option “in relation to its involvement in cluster munitions following its acquisition of IMI [Systems]”. IMI, rather than Elbit, was the spoiling consideration, given its role in producing technology that violates the Convention on Cluster Munitions. As of April 2023, Elbit was “no longer excluded by the portfolio. This reflects the updated research of our expert research providers.”

The response is not obliging on the exact details of the research. Banal talking points and information stifling platitudes are suggested, crude filling for the news cycle. The Board, for instance, had “a long-standing policy on portfolio exclusions and a robust process to implement” them. The policy was reviewed twice a year, buttressed by expert third party research. Recent media reporting had relied on an outdated exclusions list. The Board did not invest in those entities on the exclusions list. For the media establishment, this would have more than sufficed. The Board had said, and revealed, nothing.

Last month, Michael West noted that efforts to penetrate the veil of inscrutability had so far come to naught. The Future Fund and its Board of Guardians persisted in their refusal to respond to inquiries. “Since our last media request for comment, Israel has ramped up its war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.” Given various interim orders by the International Court of Justice warning Israel of a real risk of committing genocide, even as it ponders South Africa’s application to make that finding, what are those expert researchers up to?

It was much like witnessing a boy killing flies, with a slight afterthought of apology. The spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, did little to acquit himself, or the cause, as to why more Palestinian civilians had been indulgently killed in yet another Israeli air strike. “Despite our efforts to minimize civilian casualties during the strike, the fire that broke out was unexpected and unintended … Our investigation seeks to determine what may have caused such a large fire to ignite.”

The release commences with the usual garnish. The strike, despite resulting in deaths in a camp of displaced Palestinians in Tal al-Sultan, was soberly designated and professionally targeted. It was successful. Two Hamas terrorists had been procedurally “eliminated” (in the social media release, the IDF proudly places the word upon the heads of Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar). “The strike was based on precise intelligence,” Hagari tells us. Those killed had, in turn, killed Israelis. They were having a meeting. “Their deaths saved lives.”

Away from the glove handling reflections of Hagari, the returns of the May 26 strike showed that Palestinian civilians were also seen as miscellaneous detritus, fundamentally dispensable. The butchery is now a matter of record: 46 dead civilians, including 23 women, children and the elderly. All on a sliver of territory fast becoming the most famous real estate of death on the planet. It’s a particularly bloody ratio for killing two alleged terrorists.

In a statement on May 29 from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, various rapporteurs, including such figures as Francesca Albanese, responsible for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, to Ben Saul, charged with the task of promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, expressed their dismay. “Harrowing images of destruction, displacement and death have emerged from Rafah, including infants torn apart and people burnt alive.” Such reports indicated “that the strikes were indiscriminate and disproportionate, with people trapped inside burning plastic tents, leading to a horrific casualty toll.”

The Israelis have been told by a number of international bodies, entities, and sympathisers, with repeated urgency, that its current murderous efforts are simply not worth it. The Rafah front presents further calamitous risks. The toll, notably in striking camps of civilians displaced by prior bombings and military engagements, would be too great. The reputational toll, likewise. The slaughter that pads out and packs morgues; the bodies of women and children that seem to multiply with pestilential cruelty; the incidents of pure callousness dressed in a décor of euphemism: We target, and we target well; the rest is accidental or unavoidable.

The International Court of Justice, in yet another ruling on Israel’s campaign in Gaza, recently concluded that the military offensive in Rafah, along with “any other action in the Rafah governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” be “immediately” halted. It also ordered Israel to open the Rafah crossing and permit UN officials to enter Gaza and report back to the court within a month to verify compliance.

The ICJ also noted the concerns of UN officials about the risks arising from any military assault on Rafah, one that would put “hundreds of thousands of people … at imminent risk of death.” Such risks had already “started to materialize and will intensify even further if the operation continues.”

Israel’s politicians and military personnel – at least those lacking candour – always hit upon the same formula in such instances. It is one noted by such unflagging scribes as the late Robert Fisk: the justification of violence with seemingly sound process, decency with the stuffing of crime. A trained pupil in such efforts is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Despite our utmost efforts not to harm innocent civilians, last night, there was a tragic mistake.” When compared with his previous statements equating all Palestinians to actors behind a terrorist cause, one that would, in turn, give birth to a terrorist state, the element of mistake is less relevant than the desire to conclude the task at hand.

The next instalment of the performance involves the mandatory investigation that yields no culprits, no charges, and no prosecutions. “The details of the incident are still under investigation, which we are committed to conducting to the fullest extent,” gabbled Major-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi at a news conference, noting that the IDF “regrets any harm to non-combatants during the war.”

Such a method is also approved by Israel’s staunchest ally. “You cannot reach a conclusion about the results of these investigations in the middle of a conflict,” reasoned White House spokesman John Kirby. Why, it should be asked, bother?

The Israeli response to attacks on its citizens on October 7 last year, increasingly enfeebled by reality, long ago moved into the realm of farce. But farce and advertising tend to be part of the same show, and the advertising about the ongoing campaign in Gaza by the Israeli forces continues to rattle the swill bucket.

France’s Emmanuel Macron can, at times, show himself at odds with the grime and gristle of grounded politics. Able to pack in various snatches of philosophical reflection in a speech, straddling the highs and lows of a rhetorical display, his political acumen has, at times, deserted him.

Nothing is more evident of this than his treatment of New Caledonia, a Pacific French territory annexed in 1853 and assuming the title of a non-self-governing territory in 1946. Through its tense relationship with France and the French settlers, the island territory has been beset by periodic bursts of violence and indigenous indignation. Pro-independence parties such as L’Union Calédonienne have seen their leaders assassinated over time – Pierre Declerq and Eloi Machoro, for instance, were considered sufficiently threatening to the French status quo and duly done away with. Kanak pro-independence activists have been butchered in such confrontations as the Hienghène massacre in December 1984, where ten were killed by French loyalists of the Lapetite and Mitride families.

As for Macron, New Caledonia was always going to feature in efforts to assert French influence in the Indo-Pacific. In 2018, he visited the territory promising that it would be a vital part of “a broader strategy” in the region, not least to keep pace with China. Other traditional considerations also feature. The island is the world’s fourth ranked producer of nickel, critical for electric vehicle batteries.

In July 2023, Macron declared on a visit to the territory that the process outlined in the Nouméa Accord of 1998 had reached its terminus. The accords, designed as a way of reaching some common ground between indigenous Kanaks and the descendants of French settlers through rééquilibrage (rebalancing), yielded three referenda on the issue of independence, all coming down in favour of the status quo. In 2018, the independence movement received 43% of the vote. In 2020, the number had rumbled to 47%.

The last of the three, the December 2021 referendum, was a contentious one, given its boycott by the Kanak people. The situation was aided, in large part, by the effects of Covid-19 and its general incapacitation of Kanak voters. Any mobilisation campaign was thwarted. A magical majority for independence was thereby avoided. The return of 97% in favour of continued French rule, despite clearly being a distortion, became the bullying premise for concluding matters.

The process emboldened the French president, effectively abandoning a consensus in French policy stretching back to the Matignon Accords of 1988. With the independence movement seemingly put on ice, Macron could press home his advantage through political reforms that would, for instance, unfreeze electoral rolls for May 2024 elections at the provincial and congressional level. Doing so would enable French nationals to vote in those elections, something they were barred from doing under the Nouméa Accord. New Caledonian parliamentarians such as Nicolas Metzdorf heartily approve the measure.

On May 13 riots broke out, claiming up to seven lives. It has the flavour of an insurrection, one unplanned and uncoordinated by the traditional pro-independence group. Roadblocks have been erected by the Field Action Coordination Cell (CCAT). It had been preceded by peaceful protests in response to the deliberations of the French National Assembly regarding a constitutional arrangement that would inflate the territory’s electoral register by roughly 24,500 voters.

Much of the violence, stimulated by pressing inequalities and propelled by more youthful protestors, have caught the political establishment flatfooted. Even Kanak pro-independence leaders have urged such protestors to resist resorting to violence in favour of political discussions. The young, it would seem, are stealing the show.

Macron, for his part, promptly dispatched over 3,000 security officers and made a rushed visit lasting a mere 18 hours, insisting that, “The return of republican order is the priority.” Various Kanak protestors were far from impressed. Spokesperson for the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), Jimmy Naouna, made the sensible point that, “You can’t just keep sending in troops just to quell the protests, because that is just going to lead to more protests.” To salve the wounds, the president promised to lift the state of emergency imposed on the island to encourage dialogue between the fractious parties.

Western press outlets have often preferred to ignore the minutiae about the latest revolt, focusing instead on the fate of foreign nationals besieged by the antics of desperate savages. Some old themes never dissipate. “We are sheltered in place because it’s largely too dangerous to leave,” Australian Maxwell Winchester told CNN. “We’ve had barricades, riots … shops looted, burnt to the ground. Our suburb near us basically has nothing left.”

Winchester describes a scene of desperation, with evacuations of foreign nationals stalling because of Macron’s arrival for talks. Food is in short supply, as are medicines. “Other Australians stranded have had to scrounge coconuts to eat.”

René Dosière, an important figure behind the Nouméa Accord, defined the position taken by Macron with tart accuracy. Nostalgia, in some ways even more tenacious and clinging than that of Britain, remains. The French president had little interest in the territory beyond its standing as “a former colony”. His was a “desire to have a territory that allows you to say, ‘The sun never sets on the French empire’.”

For the indigenous Kanak population, the matter of New Caledonia’s fate will have less to do with coconut scrounging and the sun of a stuttering empire than electoral reforms that risk extinguishing the voices of independence.

The application for arrest warrants by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim A.A. Khan in the Israel-Hamas War gives us a chance to revisit a recurring theme in the commission of crimes in international humanitarian law. Certain states, so this logic goes, either commit no crimes, or, if they do, have good reasons for doing so, be they self-defence against a monstrous enemy, or as part of a broader civilisational mission.

In this context, the application for warrants regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, merits particular interest. Those regarding the Hamas trio of its leader Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, the commander-in-chief of Al-Qassam Brigades, and the organisation’s political bureau head Ismail Haniyeh, would have left most Western governments untroubled.

From Khan’s perspective, the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant will focus on policies of starvation, the intentional causing of “great suffering, or serious injury to body or health”, including cruel treatment, wilful killing or murder, intentional attacks on the Palestinian population, including extermination, persecution and other inhumane acts falling within the Rome Statute “as crimes against humanity.”

The ICC prosecutor’s assessment follows the now increasingly common claim that Israel’s military effort, prosecuted in the cause of self-defence in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks by Hamas, is not what it claims to be. Far from being paragons of proportionate warfare and humanitarian grace in war, Israel’s army and security forces are part of a program that has seen needless killing and suffering. The crimes against humanity alleged “were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population pursuant to State policy.”

The reaction from the Israeli side was always expected. Netanyahu accused the prosecutor of “creating a false symmetry between the democratically elected leaders of Israel and the terrorist chieftains.” He rejected “with disgust the comparison of the prosecutor in The Hague between democratic Israel and the mass murderers of Hamas.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog also found “any attempt to draw parallels between these atrocious terrorists and a democratically elected government of Israel – working to fulfil its duty to defend and protect its citizens in adherence to the principles of international law […] outrageous and cannot be accepted by anyone.”

Israel’s staunchest ally, sponsor and likewise self-declared democracy (it is, in fact, a republic created by those suspicious of that system of government), was also there to hold the fort against such legal efforts. US President Joe Biden’s statement on the matter was short and brusque: “The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”

The democracy-as-purity theme, one used as a seeming exculpation of all conduct in war, surfaced in the May 21 exchange between Senator James Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Was the secretary, inquired Risch, amenable to supporting legislation to combat the ICC “sticking its nose in the business of countries that have an independent, legitimate, democratic judicial system”? (No consideration was given to the sustained efforts by the Netanyahu government to erode judicial independence in passing legislation to curb the discretion of courts to strike down government decisions.)

The response from Blinken was agreeable to such an aim. There was “no question we have to look at the appropriate steps to take to deal with, again, what is a profoundly wrong-headed decision.” As things stand, a bill is already warming the lawmaking benches with a clear target. Sponsored by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act would obligate the President to block the entry of ICC officials to the US, revoke any current US visas such officials hold, and prohibit any property transactions taking place in the US. To avoid such measures, the court must cease all cases against “protected persons of the United States and its allies.”

The Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer similarly saw the prosecutor’s efforts as a pairing of incongruous parties. “The fact however that the leader of the terrorist organisation Hamas whose declared goal is the extinction of the State of Israel is being mentioned at the same time as the democratically elected representatives of that very State is non-comprehensible.”

From the outset, such statements do two things. The first is to conjure up a false distinction – that of equivalence – something absent in the prosecutor’s application. The acts alleged are relevant to each specified party and are specific to them. The second is a corollary: that democracies do not break international law and certainly not when it comes to war crimes and crimes against humanity, most notably when committed against a certain type of foe. The more savage the enemy, the greater the latitude in excusing vengeful violence. That remains, essentially, the cornerstone of Israel’s defence argument at the International Court of Justice.

Such arguments echo an old trope. The two administrations of George W. Bush spilled much ink in justifying the torture, enforced disappearance and renditions of terror suspects to third countries during its declared Global War on Terror. Lawyers in both the White House and Justice Department gave their professional blessing, adopting an expansive definition of executive power in defiance of international laws and protections. Such sacred documents as the Geneva Conventions could be defied when facing Islamist terrorism.

Lurking beneath such justifications is the snobbery of exceptionalism, the conceit of power. Civilised liberal democracies, when battling the forces of a named barbarism, are to be treated as special cases in the world of international humanitarian law. The ICC prosecutor begs to differ.

The legal world was abuzz. The diplomatic channels of various countries raged and fizzed. It had been rumoured that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his cabinet colleagues, had been bracing themselves for a stinging intervention from the International Criminal Court, a body they give no credence or respect to.

Then came the words from the Prosecutor of the ICC, Karim A.A. Khan on May 20, announcing that arrest warrants were being sought in the context of the Israel-Hamas War, benignly described as the “Situation in Palestine”, under the Rome Statute. “On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my Office, I have reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin NETANYAHU, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav GALLANT, the Minister of Defence of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for […] war crimes and crimes against humanity on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 8 October 2023.”

Hamas figures responsible for the attacks of October 7 against Israel also feature. They include the essential triumvirate: Hamas chief, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, the commander-in-chief of Al-Qassam Brigades, and Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas Political Bureau. All “bear responsibility for […] war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Israel and the State of Palestine (on the Gaza Strip) from at least 7 October 2023.”

On Israel’s part, Khan’s office points the accusing finger at such alleged war crimes as starvation, the wilful causing of “great suffering, or serious injury to body or health”, including cruel treatment, wilful killing or murder, the intentional direction of attacks against a civilian population, extermination, persecution and other inhumane acts falling within the Rome Statute “as crimes against humanity.”

The ICC prosecutor’s assessment follows the now increasingly common claim that Israel’s military effort, prosecuted in the cause of self-defence, is not what it claims to be. Far from being paragons of proportionate warfare and humanitarian grace in war, Israel’s army and security forces are part of a program that has seen needless killing and suffering. The crimes against humanity alleged “were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population pursuant to State policy.”

Khan acknowledges Israel’s innate right and marrow to self-defence. He does not consider it estranged from the objects of international humanitarian law. To divorce them would merely enliven barbarism. The means Israel chose to achieve its military aims in Gaza, “namely, intentionally causing death, starvation, great suffering, and serious body or health of the civilian population – are criminal.”

On the part of Hamas, the prosecutor cites extermination, murder, the taking of hostages, the use of rape and sexual violence, the resort to torture, cruel treatment and “[o]utrages upon personal dignity” as crimes worthy of investigation. Khan finds that the accused individuals “planned and instigated the commission of crimes” on October 7 and had “through their own actions, including visits to hostages shortly after their kidnapping, acknowledged their responsibility for their crimes.”

When law intrudes into the violence of war and conflict, the participants and instigators are rarely satisfied. The matter becomes even more testy when international tribunals feature. Concerns about power, bias, and an inappropriate coupling (or decoupling) of potential culprits abound.

No doubt anticipating the fulminating response, Khan convened a panel of experts in international law to advise him whether his applications for arrest warrants met the threshold requirements of Article 58 of the Rome Statute. It would be hard to dismiss the weighty credentials of a group made up of such figures as Lord Justice Fulford, Judge Theodor Meron and Baroness Helena Kennedy.

None of this mattered in the catatonic rage arising from pairing the warring parties in the same effort. The response reads like a decrypting key to hate and exceptionalism. All wage war justly; all wage war righteously. According to Netanyahu, Israel had suffered a “hit job”, with Khan “creating a false symmetry between the democratically elected leaders of Israel and the terrorist chieftains.” The subtext is clear: democracies, at least those declaring themselves as such, are beyond reproach when fighting designated savages.

On the side of the Middle East’s only nuclear power (officially undeclared) came the erroneous argument that lumping Hamas officials with Israeli cabinet members was tantamount to equivalence. “The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous,” declared US President Joe Biden. “And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.” Ditto the Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who thought the pairing “non-comprehensible.”

The prosecutor implied no such thing, focusing on the profile of each of the individuals. The allegations regarding Netanyahu and Gallant, for instance, keenly focus on starvation as a means of waging war, including broader applications of collective punishment against Gaza’s civilian population. For the leaders of Hamas, the interest is on allegations of murder, sexual violence, extermination, torture, hostage taking and incidents of captivity.

The trope of faultless democracy at war against terrorism is a common one. The George W. Bush administration made incessant use of it in justifying illegal renditions and torture during the scandalously named Global War on Terror. Memoranda from the White House and the US Justice Department gave nodding approval to such measures, arguing that “illegal combatants” deserved no human rights protections, notably under the Geneva Conventions.

Unfortunately, many a just cause sprouts from crime, and the protagonists can always claim to be on the right side of history when the world takes notice of a plight. Only at the conclusion of the peace accords can stock be taken, the egregiousness of it all accounted for. Along the way, the law looks increasingly shabby, suffering in sulky silence. These applications for arrest warrants are merely a modest measure to, pardon the pun, arrest that tendency. It is now up to the pre-trial chamber of the ICC to take the next step.

It was faint, but there was more than just a flicker of hope. In the tormented (and tormenting) journey the WikiLeaks founder and publisher, Julian Assange, has endured, May 20, 2024 provided another pitstop. As with many such stops over the years, it involved lawyers. Many of them.

The occasion was whether the UK High Court of Justice would grant Assange leave to appeal his extradition to the United States to face 18 charges, 17 hewn from the monstrous quarry that is the Espionage Act of 1917. He is wanted for receiving and publishing classified US government materials comprising diplomatic cables, the files of those detained in Guantanamo Bay, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Any computed sentence, glacially calculated at 175 years, would effectively spell his end.

News on the legal front has often been discomforting for Assange and his supporters. The US has been favoured, repeatedly, in various appeals, chalking up the lion’s share of victories since successfully overturning the decision by Judge Vanessa Baraitser to bar extradition in January 2021 on mental health grounds. But Justice Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp of the High Court of Justice in London promised to keep matters interesting.

A key sticking point in the proceedings has been whether the First Amendment would protect Assange’s publishing activity in the course of any trial in the US. The attitude from the central US prosecutor in the extradition proceedings, Gordon Kromberg, and former Secretary of State and ex-CIA director Mike Pompeo, has been one of hearty disapproval that it should.

Pompeo’s remarks in an infamous April 2017 address as CIA director to the Center for Strategic and International Studies openly branded WikiLeaks “a hostile intelligence service” that proselytised in the cause of transparency and aided such powers as Russia. Assange “and his kind” were “not in the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom. They have pretended that America’s First Amendment freedom shield them from justice.” They were “wrong” to have thought so.

On January 17, 2020, Kromberg submitted an affidavit to the UK district court that was eye opening on the subject. The following remains salient: “Concerning any First Amendment challenge, the United States could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information, and even were they so entitled, that Assange’s conduct is unprotected because of his complicity in illegal acts and in publishing the names of innocent sources to their grave and imminent risk of harm.”

In March 2024, the High Court curtly dismissed six of the nine arguments submitted by Assange in part of his effort to seek a review of the entire case. The judges, anchoring themselves in the initial reasoning of the district court judge, refused to accept that he was being charged with a political offence, something barred by the US-UK Extradition Treaty, or that the CIA had breached lawyer-client privilege in having spied on him in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, not to mention the serious thought given to abduction and assassination.

The judges gave the prosecution a heavy olive branch, implying that the case for extradition would be stronger if a number of assurances could be made by the US prosecution. These were, in turn, that Assange be offered First Amendment protections, despite him not being deemed a journalist; that he not be prejudiced, both during the trial and in sentence, on account of his nationality, and that he not be subject to the death penalty. The insistence on such undertakings had a slightly unreal, woolly-headed air to them.

On April 16, the US State Department filed the fangless assurances in a diplomatic note to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). “Assange will not be prejudiced by reason of nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing.” If extradited, he could still “raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the US Courts.”

The US authorities further undertook to avoid seeking or imposing the death sentence. “The United States is able to provide such assurance as Assange is not charged with a death-penalty eligible offense, and the United States assures that he will not be tried for a death-eligible offense.” This can only be taken as conjecture, given the latitude the prosecution has in laying further charges that carry the death penalty should Assange find himself in US captivity.

In court, Edward Fitzgerald KC, representing Assange, explained with cold sobriety that such an assurance made no guarantee that Assange could rely on the First Amendment at trial. “It does not commit the prosecution to take the point, which gave rise to this court’s concerns, i.e. the point that as a foreign citizen he is not entitled to rely on the First Amendment, at least in relation to a national security matter.” In any case, US courts were hardly bound by it, a point emphasised in the statement given by defence witness and former US district judge, Professor Paul Grimm. It followed that the assurance was “blatantly inadequate” and “would cause the applicant prejudice on the basis of his nationality.”

Written submissions to the court from Assange’s legal team also argued that discrimination “on grounds that a person is a foreigner, whether on the basis that they are a foreign national or a foreign citizen, is plainly within the scope of the prohibition [against extradition under the UK Extradition Act 2003]. ‘Prejudice at trial’ must include exclusion on grounds of citizenship from fundamental substantive rights that can be asserted at trial. On the US argument, trial procedures could discriminate on grounds of citizenship.”

In response, the US submitted arguments of a headshaking quality. Through James Lewis KC, it was submitted that the High Court had erred in its March judgment in equating “prejudice on grounds of foreign nationality with discrimination on grounds of foreign citizenship.” The UK Extradition Act mentions “nationality” in preference to “citizenship.” These terms were not “synonymous.”

According to Lewis, Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) protecting journalists and whistleblowers was qualified by conduct “within the tenets of reasonable and responsible journalism.” One factor in this context “whether it is reasonable and responsible is where the publication took place – inside a member state’s territory or outside a member state’s territory.”

The prosecution’s written submissions summarise the points. The First Amendment’s applicability to Assange’s case depended on “the components of (1) conduct on foreign (outside the United States of America) soil; (2) non-US citizenship; and (3) national defense information.” Assange, Lewis elaborated, “will be able to rely on it but that does not mean the scope will cover the conduct he is accused of.”

The prosecution suggested that former US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, a vital source for WikiLeaks, had been unable to rely on the First Amendment, limiting the possibility that its protections could extend to covering Assange.

Mark Summers KC, also representing Assange, was bemused. “The fact that Chelsea Manning was found in the end to have no substantial First Amendment claims tells you nothing at all. She was a government employee, not a publisher.”

He also made the point that “You can be a national without being a citizen [but] you cannot be a citizen without nationality.” It followed that discrimination arising out of citizenship would result in discrimination based on nationality, and nothing adduced by the prosecution in terms of case law suggested otherwise.

Unconvinced by the prosecution’s contorted reasoning, Dame Victoria Sharp agreed to grant leave to Assange to appeal on the grounds he is at risk of discrimination by virtue of his nationality, in so far as it affects his right to assert protections afforded by Article 10 of the ECHR and the First Amendment.

It remains to be seen whether this legal victory for the ailing Australian will yield a sweet harvest rather than the bitter fruit it has. He remains Britain’s most prominent political prisoner, held in unpardonable conditions, refused bail and subject to jailing conditions vicariously approved by those in Washington. In the meantime, the public campaign to drop the indictment and seek his liberation continues to ripen.

Things are looking dire for the Ukrainian war effort. Promises of victory are becoming even hollower than they were last summer, when US President Joe Biden could state with breathtaking obliviousness that Russia had “already lost the war.” The worst offender in this regard remains the United States, which has been the most vocal proponent of fanciful victory over Russia, a message which reads increasingly as one of fighting to the last Ukrainian.

Such a victory is nigh fantasy, almost impossible to envisage. For one thing, domestic considerations about continued support for Kyiv have played a stalling part. In the US Congress, a large military aid package was stalled for six months. Among some Republicans, in particular, Ukraine was not a freedom loving despoiled figure needing props and crutches. “From our perspective,” opines Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, “Ukraine should not and cannot be our problem to solve. It is not our place to defend them in a struggle with their longtime adversary, Russia.” The assessment, in this regard, was a matter of some clarity for Paul. “There is no national security interest for the United States.”

Despite this, the Washington foreign policy and military elite continue to make siren calls of seduction in Kyiv’s direction. On April 23, the Senate finally approved a $US95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, with the lion’s share – some US$61 billion – intended for Ukraine’s war effort.

On April 24, a press release from US Secretary State Antony Blinken announced a further US$1 billion package packed with “urgently needed capabilities including air defense missiles, munitions for HIMARS, artillery rounds, armored vehicles, precision aerial munitions, anti-armor weapons, and small arms, equipment, and spare parts to help Ukraine defend its territory and protect its people.”

On May 14, in his address to the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Blinken described what could only be reasoned as a vast mirage. “Today, I’m here in Kyiv to speak about Ukraine’s strategic success. And to set out how, with our support, the Ukrainian people can and will achieve their vision for the near future: a free, prosperous, secure democracy – fully integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community – and fully in control of its own destiny.” This astonishingly irresponsible statement makes Washington’s security agenda clear and Kyiv’s fate bleak: Ukraine is to become a pro-US, anti-Russian bastion, with an open cheque book at the ready.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has made the prevention of that vision an article of faith. While Russian forces, in men and material, have suffered horrendous losses, the attritive nature of the conflict is starting to tell. While Blinken was gulling his audience, the military realities show significant Russian advances, including a threatening push towards Kharkiv, reversing Ukrainian gains made in 2022.

There are also wounding advances being made in other areas of the conflict. US and NATO artillery and drones supplied to Ukraine’s military forces have been countered by Russian electronic warfare methods. GPS receivers, for instance, have been sufficiently deceived to misdirect missiles shot from HIMARS launchers. In a number of cases, the Russian forces have also identified and destroyed the launchers.

Russian airpower has been brought to bear on critical infrastructure. Radar defying glide bombs have been used with considerable effect. On the production and deployment front, Colonel Ivan Pavlenko, chief of EW and cyber warfare at Ukraine’s general staff, lamented in February that Russia’s use of drones was also “becoming a huge threat”. Depleted stocks of weaponry are being replenished, and more soldiers are being called to the front.

Despite concerns, one need not scour far to find pundits who insist that such advances and gains can be neutralised. Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace admits to current Russian “material advantage” and holding “the strategic initiative,” though goes on to speculate that this “may not prove decisive.”

The gong of deceit and delusion must, however, go to Blinken. Americans, he claimed, understood “that our support for Ukraine strengthens the security of the United States and our allies.” Were Putin to win – and here, that old nag of appeasement makes an undesirable appearance – “he won’t stop with Ukraine; he’ll keep going. For when in history has an autocrat been satisfied with carving off just part, or even all, of a single country?”

Towards that end, “we do have a plan,” he coyly insisted. This entailed ensuring Ukraine had “the military that it needs to succeed on the battlefield.” Biden was encouraged by Ukrainian mobilisation efforts, skipping around the logistical delays that had marred it. Washington’s “joint task” was to “secure Ukraine’s sustained and permanent strategic advantage”, enabling it to win the current battles and “defend against future attacks. As President Biden said, we want Ukraine to win – and we’re committed to helping you do it.”

Even by the standards of US Secretaries of States, Blinken’s conduct in Kyiv proved brazen and shameless. A perfect illustration of this came with his musical effort alongside local band, 19.99, involving a rendition of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

Local indignation was quick to follow. “Six months of waiting for the decision of the American Congress” had, fumed Bohdan Yaremenko, legislator and former diplomat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party, “taken the lives of very, very many defenders of the free world.” What the US was performing “for the free world is not rock ’n’ roll, but some other music similar to Russian chanson.”

As for the performance itself, the crowd at Barman Dictat witnessed yet another misreading – naturally by a US politician – of an anthem intended to excoriate American failings, from homelessness to “a kinder, gentler machine gun hand.” Appropriately, the guitar, much like the performer, was out of tune.