This poem is from a slim volume of new and selected poems, Like Many Other Things by Brian Topping, published by the recently established Newcastle based, Valparaiso Arts.
This is Valparaiso Arts first publication.
At only £7 inc p&p all proceeds will go to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Two weeks ago, saw the launch of something historic. TOGETHER is an alliance of over 80+ organisations, hundreds of public figures and thousands of everyday people with a simple message: unity against the far right.
Support for TOGETHER includes Sir Lenny Henry, Paloma Faith, Fontaines DC, Leigh Anne Pinnock, Paul Weller and hundreds of other national figures, plus 80+ organisations. The voices of division in Britain are growing louder and more confident. A far right party is topping the polls and they are mobilising the biggest numbers they ever have on the streets. But we can change things when we stand together. Our alliance is aiming to build unity over division, love over hate and hope over fear. That’s why we’re asking you to sign up, adding your name to the Together Alliance statement.
We know that our strength lies in solidarity and unity. Your support helps make that unity visible and will inspire others to speak out. Together, we can shift the culture. It’s in this spirit that we’ll be mobilising and organising in the build-up to a major national demonstration in London next year on Saturday, 28 March 2026. This is our first public action — and your participation will set the tone, showing that the majority of people in this country stand for unity, not division. Sign up below and join us at this powerful display of solidarity.
Oil workers in Iran – part of a growing wave of workers taking industrial action
The emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, following the revolution which overthrew the Shah in 1979, and its persistence as a focus for the development of political Islam has increasingly been seen as a threat by Israel. The United States has been equally concerned with the turn of events following 1979 and was instrumental in encouraging the attack upon Iran by Iraq in 1980, which led to the Iran-Iraq war raging from 1980-1988.
The war did not dislodge the Iranian dictatorship but encouraged the intensification of the arrest, torture and execution of dissident voices inside Iran and a consolidation of its control of the state by the medieval theocracy. The fragile alliance with Iraq, having served its purpose soon saw the US perform a volte face, eventually resulting in the downfall of former ally Saddam Hussein and the fragmentation of Iraq as a functioning state following the invasion of 2003.
It is against this background that the legitimate fears of the Iranian people of further military action must be viewed. Since the attack upon Iran in June the regime in the Islamic Republic is reported to have significantly increased missile production with a view to generating enough capability to overwhelm Israeli missile defences. Inside Iranian ruling circles the threat of renewed conflict is widely considered high, with some officials and experts suggesting that another war is “only a matter of time”.
Such thinking is fuelled, not only by the desire of the regime to increase its defence capability, but also by reports from reliable Israeli sources that Israel aims to topple the existing regime in Tehran by the end of the term of US President Donald Trump in 2029. Israeli security sources indicate that Israel is preparing to respond “much more aggressively” and for hostilities to last longer than the June conflict.
The religious zealots in the Israeli government view Iran as an existential threat and, in spite of the degrading of the network of Iran’s proxies in the Middle East notably Hamas and Hezbollah, the ultimate goal remains the elimination of the regime in Iran itself. Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium and increase in missile production are seen as sufficient justification for such an approach.
The current situation is exacerbated by the diplomatic impasse which has existed since the June attacks with efforts to resume nuclear talks between the US and Iran floundering, removing a key channel for de-escalation.
The threat of war, likely to be launched by Israel with the backing of the United States, is clearly the most urgent and pressing issue facing the Iranian people. Wider escalation across the Middle East, which could follow, would be disastrous not only for the people of Iran but would bring closer the prospect of worldwide conflict, given the geo-political significance of Iran for both Russia and China.
In parallel, the debate over access to nuclear facilities attacked in the June assault by the United States continues, with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently passing a resolution requesting access to sites in Fordo and Natanz, which were hit in the strikes. Iran’s resistance to further inspections of these sites, though it has allowed access to others, is fuelled by the reluctance of the IAEA to condemn the June attacks.
In response to the IAEA resolution Iranian ambassador to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, told reporters that, “I’m afraid the resolution will have its own consequences”. Asked what those were, he said, “We will announce the consequences later.”
Recent pronouncements from the United States suggest that President Donald Trump may be willing to break the current diplomatic impasse, claiming that Tehran is seeking a diplomatic resolution with Washington, which has sought the dismantlement of its nuclear programme.
“I am totally open to it, and we’re talking to them,” Trump said.
“And we start a process. But it would be a nice thing to have a deal with Iran. And we could have done it before the war, but that didn’t work out. And something will happen there, I think.”
The actions of the US in giving Israel the green light to attack Iran when negotiations were ongoing, and the subsequent US role in attacking nuclear sites, make it difficult to take Trump’s words at face value. There is no doubt that a section of the corrupt leadership in Tehran realises that its survival depends upon some rapprochement with the West, while more hardline factions are reluctant to engage in anything they would regard as compromise.
Perhaps the only certainty in the current situation is that the main losers are the Iranian people who, as well as the threat of external intervention, are also having to struggle with the impact of international sanctions, endemic corruption within the state and widespread economic mismanagement.
The response of Iranian workers to the collapsing political and economic environment they face has been to increase their demand for recognition, fair pay and employment rights. Strike action in the oil industry, the transport sector, the public sector and amongst pensioners has demonstrated the extent of internal resistance to the policies of the regime.
The regime continues to respond with the arrest, imprisonment and torture of trade union, cultural and academic activists, underlining its inability to fulfil the needs of its people and resort only to force to maintain its position.
The future of Iran ultimately must lie with its people and their resistance to the theocratic dictatorship, opposition to the pressures of external intervention and the demands for a non-aligned democratic Iran. Opposing war against Iran is the first step in this process and one which should be a priority for international solidarity work in the coming year. Only peace will give the people of Iran the chance they deserve.
The full text of this article appears in Liberation Journal, Winter 2025
It is hard to think of a worse candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize than US President, Donald Trump. Not just because of the brazen campaign run by him and his supporters to try and secure the award. The ongoing role of the US in selling arms and fuelling conflicts around the world is an even more significant factor.
Benjamin Netanyahu, given his role in the genocide perpetrated in Gaza, would be as bad a candidate. The actual recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize 2025, Maria Corina Machado, was a shock to progressive movements arond the world, as she also has no claim to the award. The opinion piece below by Michelle Ellner, for Venezuela Analysis, explains why.
Machado certainly wasted no time in trying to take advantage of the profile associated with the award. Her first call was to Donald Trump, to thank him for his support in stationing US warships off the coast of Venezuela. Trump’s pretext for such action has been to allegedly stop drug traffiking but the US has been looking to take advantage of Venezuela’s oil reserves for some time and is clearly stepping up the pressure now that Trump has returned to the Presidency.
Details of the aggressive nature of US actions and the fear for direct military intervention have been raised in Britain by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. Find out more here
When Maria Corina Machado Wins the Nobel Peace Prize, ‘Peace’ Has Lost Its Meaning
by Michelle Ellner
Maria Corina Machado is known for her incendiary speeches
When I saw the headline Maria Corina Machado wins the Peace Prize, I almost laughed at the absurdity. But I didn’t, because there’s nothing funny about rewarding someone whose politics have brought so much suffering. Anyone who knows what she stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics.
If this is what counts as “peace” in 2025, then the prize itself has lost every ounce of credibility. I’m Venezuelan-American, and I know exactly what Machado represents.
She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatization, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.
Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help “liberate” Venezuela with bombs under the banner of “freedom,” She has demanded sanctions, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations.
Machado has spent her entire political life promoting division, eroding Venezuela’s sovereignty and denying its people the right to live with dignity.
This is who Maria Corina Machado really is:
She helped lead the 2002 coup that briefly overthrew a democratically elected president, and signed the Carmona Decree that erased the Constitution and dissolved every public institution overnight.
She worked hand in hand with Washington to justify regime change, using her platform to demand foreign military intervention to “liberate” Venezuela through force.
She cheered on Donald Trump’s threats of invasion and his naval deployments in the Caribbean, a show of force that risks igniting regional war under the pretext of “combating narcotrafficking.” While Trump sent warships and froze assets, Machado stood ready to serve as his local proxy, promising to deliver Venezuela’s sovereignty on a silver platter.
She pushed for the U.S. sanctions that strangled the economy, knowing exactly who would pay the price: the poor, the sick, the working class.
She helped construct the so-called “interim government” a Washington backed puppet show run by a self-appointed “president” who looted Venezuela’s resources abroad while children at home went hungry.
She vows to reopen Venezuela’s embassy in Jerusalem, aligning herself openly with the same apartheid state that bombs hospitals and calls it self-defense.
Now she wants to hand over the country’s oil, water, and infrastructure to private corporations. This is the same recipe that made Latin America the laboratory of neoliberal misery in the 1990s.
Machado was also one of the political architects of La Salida, the 2014 opposition campaign that called for escalated protests, including guarimba tactics. Those weren’t “peaceful protests” as the foreign press claimed; they were organized barricades meant to paralyze the country and force the government’s fall. Streets were blocked with burning trash and barbed wire, buses carrying workers were torched, and people suspected of being Chavista were beaten or killed. Even ambulances and doctors were attacked. Some Cuban medical brigades were nearly burned alive. Public buildings, food trucks, and schools were destroyed. Entire neighborhoods were held hostage by fear while opposition leaders like Machado cheered from the sidelines and called it “resistance.”
She praises Trump’s “decisive action” against what she calls a “criminal enterprise,” aligning herself with the same man who cages migrant children and tears families apart under ICE’s watch, while Venezuelan mothers search for their children disappeared by U.S. migration policies.
Machado isn’t a symbol of peace or progress. She is part of a global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism, an axis that justifies domination in the language of democracy and peace. In Venezuela, that alliance has meant coups, sanctions, and privatization. In Gaza, it means genocide and the erasure of a people. The ideology is the same: a belief that some lives are disposable, that sovereignty is negotiable, and that violence can be sold as order.
If Henry Kissinger could win a Peace Prize, why not María Corina Machado? Maybe next year they’ll give one to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for “compassion under occupation.”
Every time this award is handed to an architect of violence disguised as diplomacy, it spits in the face of those who actually fight for peace: the Palestinian medics digging bodies from rubble, the journalists risking their lives in Gaza to document the truth and the humanitarian workers of the Flotilla sailing to break the siege and deliver aid to starving children in Gaza, with nothing but courage and conviction.
But real peace is not negotiated in boardrooms or awarded on stages. Real peace is built by women organizing food networks during blockades, by Indigenous communities defending rivers from extraction, by workers who refuse to be starved into obedience, by Venezuelan mothers mobilizing to demand the return of children seized under U.S. ICE and migration policies and by nations that choose sovereignty over servitude. That’s the peace Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, and every nation of the Global South deserves.
In a debate in the House of Commons in 2016, on the renewal of Britain’s Trident nuclear submarine capability, then Prime Minister, Theresa May, was asked point blank if she would be prepared to use these weapons of mass destruction. Her equally blunt response was that yes, she would, on the basis that there is no point in having a deterrent unless you are prepared to use it. There is an inexorable logic to May’s position, if you believe that possessing nuclear weapons has a deterrent effect.
There is no evidence that nuclear weapons do deter, any more than there is any absolute evidence that they do not. So the real motivation behind whatever position is taken on the issue has to be a mix of the political, the moral and the humanitarian.
The war crimes committed by the United States of America, in dropping nuclear bombs upon the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, have never been acknowledged as war crimes. History, written by the victors as ever, records the use of nuclear weapons as having brought an end to the war in the Far East more quickly. That at least is the generally accepted wisdom. The fact that the war in the Far East was all but over, and the Japanese were seeking mediation through the Soviet Union to end the war, an outcome that the United States could not countenance, finds little airspace.
This poem was written in 2015 on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the bombings. Then, as now with the eightieth anniversary, Hiroshima gained much news coverage, due to being the first, while Nagasaki received less attention, hence the subject of the poem.
Not long after writing this poem I read the first hand account, Hiroshima by John Hersey, first published in the New Yorker in August 1946 and now published as a Penguin paperback. It is probably the most harrowing 100 pages of journalism you are ever likely to read.
The debate about Trident is not the major political fault line in 2025 that it was in 2016. The Tories, and no doubt Reform, are emphatic in their defence of Britain retaining nuclear weapons. In the debate in 2016 then Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was categorical in his opposition to the recommissioning of Trident and vowed never, under any circumstances, to resort to the use of nuclear weapons.
Current Labour leader, Kier Starmer, has made no such commitment. On the contrary, Starmer actively commits to and embraces Britain’s role as part of the NATO war machine.
The possession of nuclear weapons and membership of NATO are subjects on which we all must all take a stand, a stand in opposition to either.
Don’t Leave Nagasaki
Little Boy pushed his way to the front, Had to be first in the queue. Fat Man groaned as the boy shoved past, ‘Hey son, I was there too.’
In the cold war light the atomic flash Turned people to shadows on the floor, Shedding thousands of tears in the eighty years, Since opening the nuclear door.
Don’t leave Nagasaki burning With the shame of this regret Don’t leave Nagasaki wondering Why no justice yet?
At The Hague they try war criminals So the world can understand, But there is no space to try the case Of the melting of Japan.
The United States stands for freedom, The United States stands for law. Is there anyone outside of the United States Who believes that, anymore?
Don’t leave Nagasaki burning With the burden of this war crime. Don’t leave Nagasaki thinking That there could even be a next time.
Steve Bishop
Note
Little Boy was the name given to the atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6th August 1945. Fat Man was the name given to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later, on 9th August 1945. Over 200,000 people died as a result of the bombings. Tens of thousands more have died subsequently from burns and radiation.
With your help, the Cuba Vive appeal hopes to raise over £200,000 by the end of the year
Eighteen months after its launch, the Cuba Vive Medical Appeal for Cuba has raised more than £190,000 and will hopefully surpass £200,000 by the end of the year. Thanks to the generosity of CSC members, affiliates and friends, hundreds of thousands of items of essential medical supplies, from syringes to surgical gloves, are being used by Cuban health workers to improve and save the lives of patients.
Second container on its way with more scheduled for 2025 Another 40ft container of life-saving medical aid departed from the Yorkshire port of Immingham in July and is due to arrive in Cuba in late August.
The container is packed full of much-needed resources such as catheters, tracheostomy equipment, syringes, needles, surgical scrub, colostomy bags, wheelchairs, Zimmer frames, crutches, and specialist operating theatre supplies including eight operating beds.
This is the second container of aid (of three consignments sent so far) that will be delivered working in partnership with UK charity Jacob’s Well Appeal, who organise the logistics, including sorting, storage, packing and shipping. A further container will leave later this summer, and more by the end of the year.
First aid kits for every residential education centre The container includes over 200 first aid packs for every educational residential establishment in Cuba. They form part of medical aid funded by the National Education Union (NEU) for each of the country’s 147 residential schools for children in rural areas and 54 children’s homes.
The NEU is responding to a special request from the Cuban education union SNTECD since the shortages in the Cuban health service also impact the education sector. These are especially acute in educational care and residential settings, where everything from basic first aid kits to PPE and paediatric medical supplies are scarce.
Cuba Vive aid supports Cuban cancer hospital
In May, CSC director Rob Miller visited Havana’s Institute of Oncology and Radiobiology, one of the hospitals that has benefited from the Cuba Vive appeal, and spoke to staff and patients about how the medical aid was helping their work and treatment.
Published by the recently established Newcastle based, Valparaiso Arts, a slim volume of new and selected poems, Like Many Other Things by Brian Topping is now available.
This is Valparaiso Arts first publication.
At only £7 inc p&p all proceeds will go to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
The persistence of the genocide carried out on behalf of the Israeli government by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) continues at a staggering level. The IDF show no remorse for the killing of innocent civilians, 15 of whom died queueing to access food this week. The IDF claim to have been targeting a Hamas ‘terrorist’ so the loss of civilian life was simply collateral damage.
This weekend has seen a further 50 deaths including 10 at a water collection point which saw 6 children killed. This follows the killing of 110 people on Saturday including 34 at a food collection point in Rafah. Since 7th October 2023 the IDF has killed at least 57,882 people and wounded 138,095, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
According to the United Nations an estimated 800 Palestinians, many children, have died while seeking food at the so called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution points. The GHF is run by the United States, using American mercenaries, and backed by Israel. GHF has four distribution points, compared to the 400 previously operated by the UN, which Israel will no longer permit to operate.
Random killing was also the approach applied by the IDF in the recent Israeli bombing of Iran, which resulted in the assassination of a number of leading figures in the Iranian armed forces as well as key nuclear scientists. Western media reports played down the fact that in many instances it was not only the military and scientific targets who were murdered but many of their families, innocent of any ‘crime’ as deemed by the Israelis.
Such atrocities are often mis-reported, under reported or not reported at all by the media, keen to play down the extent of Israel’s flouting of international law but also uncomfortable covering any British government complicity in the genocide.
Palestinian deaths certainly don’t warrant the attention any criticism of the IDF does for the British media. Punk rap act Bob Vylan became the all round media villain recently when his Glastonbury set included him chanting “Death to the IDF”. The Mail on Sunday saw fit the following day to go with the banner headline “NOW ARREST PUNK BAND WHO LED ‘DEATH TO ISRAELIS’ CHANTS AT GLASTONBURY”.
The bandwagon rolled on into Monday with the Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express weighing in and Kier Starmer proclaiming the comments “appalling hate speech”, stronger language than he uses when mentioning IDF atrocities.
Quite apart from the inaccuracy of the original Mail on Sunday headline, the claim made by the paper, that this was “antisemitic chanting”, was simply not true. The IDF, being the military wing of the Israeli state, does not represent all Israelis, any more than the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which continues to face internal criticism for its policy and actions in relation to Gaza and the West Bank. Criticism of the IDF or the Israeli government is not antisemitic, it is a perfectly legitimate political stand to take in the face of their ongoing actions against the Palestinian population.
That Kier Starmer, as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party, should join in such baying for blood along with the right wing media is a disgrace. Starmer and the government’s complicity in crimes against the Palestinian people is underlined by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) which, in relation to British arms sales to Israel,
“…estimates that between October 2023 and May 2024, over 100 new licences were issued, with a total estimated value of at least £100 million in military equipment since October 7th, 2023. These sales include components for F-35 combat aircraft, which CAAT estimates account for approximately 15% of the value of each F-35 and are used in ongoing conflicts, including those in Gaza.”
The government defends its position by claiming that “no evidence has been seen that Israel is deliberately targeting civilian women or children”. It further claims that “there is also evidence of Israel making efforts to limit incidental harm to civilians”.
The actual evidence, coming back from the UN, Médecins Sans Frontieres and Palestinian people themselves suggests that the British government is either being extremely naïve, or is simply lying.
The latest Israeli proposal, to create a concentration camp for Palestinians on the ruins of Rafah in the south of Gaza, would be a further crime against humanity.
The latest National March for Palestine, organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its allies takes place on 19 July in London. The pressure on the British government to stop arming Israel and stop the starvation in Gaza must continue.
War room: US imperialists Vance and Trump endanger world peace
The bombing of Iranian nuclear sites by the United States overnight (21 June) is a flagrant breach of international law and a further indication of the designs of US imperialism to re-shape the map of the Middle East.
Following the unprovoked attack upon Iran by Israel last week, US President, Donald Trump, called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender”, while preparing to give the green light for overt military intervention by the United States. That order has now been enacted and Trump, in spite of his America first and no foreign intervention rhetoric, has acted like every US President before him. Though without Congressional approval for such action impeachment may be an issue Trump has to face, his action having made the danger of a world war significantly higher than at any time in the past.
The US had already been covertly assisting the Israeli assault by providing back up for its Iron Dome missile defence system, designed to intercept any Iranian missiles fired towards Israel in response.
That the United States has added to the unprovoked Israeli military intervention in Iran, is an international scandal. Israel has a decades long record of flouting international conventions and dismissing United Nations resolutions but, to be backed so overtly in doing so, by its major ally and arms supplier, takes the threat to world peace which US and Israeli actions represent, to a new level.
In addition, it is widely known that Israel has a nuclear capability though, in line with its official policy of “nuclear ambiguity”, it refuses to confirm or deny the existence of a nuclear arsenal. The possibility of the use of nuclear weapons by Israel, given the religious fundamentalist nature of its leadership, cannot be ruled out.
Just as there can be no justification for the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the attacks upon Iran have no legal or moral basis. They do however, have a clear political objective and that is one which has been asserted more prominently in the past few days; regime change.
In line with the wishes of the Iranian people as expressed in their opposition to the dictatorship of the former Shah in 1979 and, as increasingly expressed in their opposition to the theocratic dictatorship today, change in Iran is vital to secure peace, democracy and social justice for the people of Iran.
However, the regime change which Trump in the White House or Netanyahu in Tel Aviv are seeking is not for a progressive and democratic Iran. On the contrary, support for Monarchist opposition in the form of Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah based in the United States, is given greater prominence by Western politicians and media.
Netanyahu’s call for Iranians to rise up against the present regime in Iran have been echoed by Pahlavi, who met Netanyahu on a visit to Israel in 2023. The likelihood of Pahlavi being able to mobilise mass popular support inside Iran is slim however, given his distance from the country and the perception of many Iranians that he is collaborating with the aggressor Israel.
Any return to Iran for Pahlavi would need the significant backing of US or Israeli military forces to suppress the opposition which such a reactionary move would provoke. The danger of Iran becoming a state dismembered by Western imperialism, such as has been the case with Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria would be all too real in such a scenario.
An alternative for the West could be backing the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled group that enjoys support in the US from hawks such as veteran Republican John Bolton. During the 1980s, the MEK backed Iraq in its war with Iran, and the Islamic regime often accuses it of collaborating with Israel. Like Pahlavi, the MEK does not enjoy popular support inside Iran and would require significant external backing in order to maintain any grip on power.
The US and Israeli cover story for their actions against Iran, to halt the nuclear programme, simply do not hold water. Recent years have seen increasingly popular opposition movements inside Iran. Millions protested disputed elections in 2009 in what became known as the Green Movement. In 2022, the Women, Life, Freedom Movement mobilised millions across Iranian cities, calling for an end to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rule following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for allegedly not properly wearing her hijab.
Workers in the transport, oil, public services and teaching sectors have taken action to improve wages and conditions in spite of trade unions being effectively outlawed in Iran. These are the potential movers of regime change that Trump and Netanyahu do not want to see. Those who are opposed to the theocratic dictatorship but equally do not want to see Iran’s future shaped by the outside interests of Israel or US imperialism.
Change in Iran has been coming for a long time but it must be change for the people, by the people, not change shaped by foreign intervention and an imperialist agenda, imposed upon the people of Iran.
Avanti Populo 