Thinking Beyond the Bars: How Higher Education Helped Me Develop Confidence in Myself and Rediscover My Humanity

by Darrell Jackson / September 16th, 2025

Ambitious young people are told that a college degree is necessary to launch a successful career. For me — a “lifer” taking courses from my cell in a state prison — higher education isn’t about job preparation but rediscovering my humanity, about learning to think beyond the bars.

I’m not the first person to discover the power of education while incarcerated, but I feel a responsibility to tell this story, not only to reach other prisoners but for all the people who feel left behind by educational institutions. There have been a lot of obstacles between me and higher education — times I didn’t believe in myself and times when institutions didn’t believe in people like me — but I have learned that no one has to settle for that.

Let me start with a stereotype of young Black men — that they think excelling in school is for nerds, not for tough guys on the street. That doesn’t describe all Black boys, of course, but it was true of the guys I ran with. I had loved learning when I was younger, but a combination of institutional failures and peer pressure knocked me off that path. I regret giving up so easily, which was reinforced by a school system that didn’t seem to care much about Black children. I ended up in that “school-to-prison pipeline” for the poor and marginalized.

A series of bad choices as a young adult led to my current residence in the Washington Corrections Center, serving a life-without-parole sentence. While incarcerated, I became a “better late than never” enthusiast for higher education.

But the prison system hasn’t made that easy. The tough-on-crime politics of the 1990s produced the federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, which eliminated almost all financial aid to prisoners. (It was only in 2023 that prisoners once again became eligible for Pell Grants.)

In 1995, Washington state passed a law that prohibited public funding to support higher education for prisoners beyond adult basic education and the General Education Diploma (GED). Prisoners who had been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole were denied access to more than one post-secondary degree, unless it was pre-vocational or vocational training was needed for their work in prison. The legislation was supposed to eliminate “unnecessary” spending by the Department of Corrections. (That law was partially repealed in 2017, allowing some funding up to two-year degrees.)

Tough-on-crime laws — including “Three Strikes, You’re Out” and “Hard Time for Armed Crime” — led to larger prison populations in Washington state and around the country. Access to education was not a priority, and budget cuts after the 2008 recession led the Department of Corrections to prioritize education for prisoners with less than seven years on their sentence. The rest of us were out of luck.

Don’t ask me to explain how that fits with the rehabilitation mission of prisons — people who are incarcerated know the gap between that rhetoric and the reality of warehousing prisoners. That’s why incarcerated people have done much of the work themselves, one of the most exciting aspects of my experience.

My introduction into higher education began in 2015 through my experience with the TEACH program (Taking Education and Creating History) at Clallam Bay Corrections Center, another prison where I was incarcerated. TEACH was created in 2013 by the Black Prisoners Caucus to address the educational disparities that exist within the prison system for minority, long-term, and undocumented prisoners.

That experience helped me rediscover my humanity.

At that facility, we had a healthy working relationship with prison officials, who gave us classroom space. Through TEACH, we were able to develop and facilitate the courses we needed. We understood that the educational system had left most of us behind, and I learned that some of us came with life experiences and credibility that some of the most decorated professionals did not have.

But we couldn’t deepen our knowledge from experience without help. TEACH leaders established a relationship with Peninsula College and Seattle Central College. For me, getting ready for college-level study took some work.

Before I could start taking college courses, I needed to earn certificates in college-prep math and anger management. After the completion of those two nine-week courses, I took African American studies, a parenting class, and college-prep writing. Then I felt ready to take my first college course through Seattle Central. That sociology class required a lot of writing, which was intimidating at first, but I loved what I was learning, and that course showed me that my experience was shaped by larger social forces.

At the beginning of my college journey, I was uncertain of my ability, an insecurity rooted in so many bad experiences in school. But TEACH had helped me believe in myself, teaching me not to accept the limits of the bars I lived behind, and eventually I was able to start giving back to the program. I was given a chance to facilitate the stress and anger-reduction class I had taken, which led to me joining the program’s board at Clallam Bay. After being transferred to Washington Corrections Center, I was elected vice chair of the program when it was brought to that prison in 2018.

As I worked with the program, I learned my experience was not unusual.

I talked with Taking Education and Creating History) at Clallam Bay Corrections Center a prisoner-student who went on to create and facilitate a sound and song-production course at WCC, which taught prisoners to play and create songs on a keyboard. He said that initially he wasn’t sure he could teach a class, let alone one that he created. TEACH helped him gain the confidence he needed, encouraging him to teach the course the way he thought best. More prisoners sought his expertise, deepening his confidence.

Dwuan Conroy, another TEACH student, said that in addition to the direct benefits for him, the funding for this program took the burden off his wife and family to pay for his education. And when he is released, his enhanced ability to set goals and meet deadlines means that he’ll have a chance at better paying jobs. And, he said, it shows his family that he is making the changes needed to be a better man.

Unfortunately, six months later Mullin-Coston’s sound course was canceled, because it was “not serving a facility need.” That is an example of short-sighted decision-making. If we care about rehabilitation, any learning that creates a positive environment and promotes healthy interactions among prisoners should be seen as a crucial facility need.

The COVID pandemic also created obstacles, shutting down the WCC TEACH partnership with Centralia College and Seattle Central. Conroy was enrolled in courses in biology, anthropology, and English, but lockdowns meant that formal classes were canceled. With little help available from teachers and staff, he said, the prisoner-students relied on each other to finish courses.

“It was these interactions with other prisoners that helped me through the course work despite my learning disabilities,” Conroy said. ”Knowing I had others around in TEACH that could help me through it and not judge, that empowered me to continue my focus during such a difficult time.”

Once the college’s staff members where allowed back into the prison, it was clear that our peer-support work had been crucial in keeping us on track, and 10 students graduated in the fall of 2023.

Taxpayers and politicians who prioritize punishment over rehabilitation may not care about how education enhances prisoners’ mental health and intellectual development. Once again, that’s short-sighted, because education also reduces recidivism. For every dollar spent on education programs, four dollars are saved on re-incarceration costs. One study showed that prisoners who complete some high school courses have a recidivism rate of 55 percent. Vocational training cuts recidivism to 30 percent, an associate degree to 13.7 percent, and a bachelor’s degree to 5.6 percent. A master’s degree brings the recidivism rate down to zero,

Prison education is not a frivolous expense for society but instead an essential investment in human beings. Education reduces conflict among prisoners. Communities are safer when educated and empowered prisoners return home.

As for me, I need two classes to earn my associate degree, after which I want to pursue a bachelor’s degree in behavioral health, and perhaps a master’s degree someday. I still live behind bars. But developing my mind has helped me find the humanity in myself and see more clearly the humanity in others as well.FacebookTwitterReddit

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Darrell Jackson is a member of the Black Prisoners Caucus, Co-Chair of T.E.A.C.H (Taking Education and Creating History), and a writer through Empowerment Avenue. He is a student, mentor, and social justice advocate, who is currently serving a life without the possibility of parole sentence at Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, Washington. He can be contacted at securustech.net. Darrell Jackson#329268 and can be found on X @DKJackson20. Read other articles by Darrell.

 

Suspending Courses, Washing Delicates, and Baking: A University Justifies Harming Staff

and Students

by Binoy Kampmark / September 17th, 2025

These people are a charming, lynch worthy bunch. In claiming they are short of cash, the managerial dunderheads at the University of Technology Sydney thought it prudent to throw A$4.8 million at the tax consultants KPMG to design what it calls the Operational Sustainability Initiative (OSI). The linking of these three words alone suggests that something sinister and inhumane is afoot, a program closer to an assassination or disposal program than a sensible readjustment. Indeed, the OSI became the subject of a “notice to give information” in June from Safework NSW, accusing the university of “wilful and negligent mismanagement” of the restructuring undertaking “despite full knowledge that the process is causing significant psychological harm to staff, including documented instances of suicidal ideation, anxiety, and depression.”

The university, as reported in The Australian Financial Review in May, was hoping to give a savage pruning to the institution’s budget to the value of A$100 million. This initially involved the sacking of 400 staff members, a proposal cooked up even as five senior UTS executives travelled to the United States on an alumni trip worth A$140,000. That financially minded paper also wondered why UTS ended up using KPMG “instead of its own staff to design this plan” in an adventurously asinine contract stuffed with such terms as “leveraging solutions”, “acceleration of value”, and “decision trees”. (Meaningless terms suggest a mind without meaning.) KPMG crows in convoluted ecstasy about a “six-layer framework for target operating model design”. No wonder the technocrats were so wooed by it all.

The suggested program from the firm was ordinary and, as with most products arising from such an organisation, prosaic. It could have just as easily been done by clumsy butchers with a plagiarised MBA. KPMG produced spreadsheets dealing with courses and subjects that might be offered in future, which ones deserved to be confined to oblivion and what areas of research warranted interest as opposed to those that did not. Just to confirm the firm’s almost awe-inspiring lack of expertise, it was also called upon to examine “current and future state teaching capacity”.

Part of the tool kit of advice developed by KPMG to staff most likely heading for the chop developed into a ragbag of nonsense and piffle: to stay mentally sound, best wash delicates with your hands. Try to take up baking, because that is what a disturbed mind awaiting imminent suffering needs. Keep a gratitude journal. Make sure to brush and floss your teeth, because you obviously did not do that before a consultancy firm hired by a university told you to do.

There is every reason to suppose that ChatGPT could have come up with the same, risible nonsense, saving the shameful creeps in management some cash. But sound reasoning is not a prerequisite to those rising up the greasy towers of technocracy in learning institutions, let alone any other institution. Incompetence is often essential, while talent and ethical worth are impediments best done away with.

The vice-chancellor of the university is very much short of parfit, though sports the name Andrew Parfitt. He is adamant that no decisions have been made on job losses or the discontinuing of any courses which, knowing the pattern of university practices, is precisely the opposite of what will happen. “The temporary suspension is aimed at prospective new students for 2026.” This is the sort of shoddy reasoning we have come to expect from the vice-chancellorship and any number of university proconsuls and viceroys that suck the lifeblood out of education. Ella Haid, spokesperson of the UTS Students Association General Councillor and Stop the Cuts UTS, is hard to fault in her assessment on this: “We should be clear that management is doing this because they’re pursuing a hefty financial surplus. They’ve no interest in seeking student or staff consultation on this major restructure.”

The response from UTS to reports, notably by the ABC, was one of dastardly fudging, oily manoeuvring and sickly denial. Rather than admitting to blunder, organisational insensitivity, and being outed, it attacked the national broadcaster for its reporting in a statement. “We are disappointed that the ABC reported that these comprehensive support initiatives were only rolled out as a result of their reporting.”

The reports, claimed the university, had ignored context. “By focusing on just six dot points from a single article on an external wellbeing hub comprising extensive, differentiated resources, the ABC chose to portray this as being representative of the tone, intent and totality of support provided to UTS employees.”

The parasitic problems associated with university management have become critically colossal. Being unable to exist without attachment to the authentic university, that pulsing, thriving organism of cerebration sustained by students and research, the leadership of such bodies continues to make decisions that harm academic staff and any chance of a rich learning experience for students. (A survey from the National Tertiary Education Union of 380 respondents from UTS found that 35% had experienced high levels of psychological distress from the OSI endeavour.)

That harm is then justified through cringeworthy programs of “wellbeing” and assistance, their very existence intended to exonerate the misdeeds of culprits who shamelessly engender an environment of emotional and intellectual terrorism. They create the bullets, use them, and drag out the psychological bandaging to conceal the wounds.

Should courage ever be mustered by cowed academics and the atomised student body, the cosmos of the vice-chancellor and those complicit in sustaining it can finally be terminated with little sorrow and much relish.

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

Trump Wants “Denuclearization,” But Does Washington?

by Chris Wright / September 19th, 2025

In the grim competition between environmental destruction and nuclear war over which one will cause the demise of civilization, the nuclear option gets considerably less media coverage than global warming. This is unfortunate, for nuclear weapons are no less of a threat. In fact, given how many close calls there have been since the 1950s, it’s miraculous that we’re still around to discuss the matter at all. In a global geopolitical environment that continues to see rising tensions between the West and both China and Russia, as well as between India and Pakistan, and between a genocidal nuclear-armed Israel and much of the Middle East, few political agendas are more imperative than, to quote President Trump in early 2025, denuclearization.

The signs are not auspicious, however. For one thing, the last remaining missile treaty between Russia and the U.S., New START, expires in February 2026. New START limits both countries to 1,550 deployed warheads on no more than 700 long-range missiles and bombers. If Trump and Putin don’t come to an agreement before then, the end of this treaty could lead to a dangerous increase in deployed nuclear arsenals and possibly a new arms race. On the other hand, if the two countries embrace the opportunity presented by the impending expiration of New START to forge a new and ambitious arms control regime, that could at least set the Doomsday Clock back a few seconds.

Russia wants a new treaty to limit arms, as it proposed that topic for discussion at the Alaska summit in August between Trump and Putin. Sadly, it is unlikely that Washington shares the same goal. On multiple occasions, Trump has said he wants “denuclearization” talks with Russia and China, but the Washington establishment is much more ambivalent. In October 2023, the Congressional Commission on the U.S. Strategic Posture endorsed a very belligerent stance. Among other things, it recommended that the U.S. fully modernize and expand its nuclear arsenal; mount on delivery vehicles “some or all” of the nuclear warheads it holds in reserve; increase the planned procurement of B-21 bombers, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missiles; “re-convert” SLBM launchers and B-52s that New START rendered incapable of launching a nuclear weapon; deploy nuclear delivery systems in Europe and the Asia-Pacific; and prepare for a two-theater war against China and Russia.

Similarly, in February 2024, the head of the U.S. Strategic Command recommended a return to deploying ICBMs with multiple nuclear warheads. Incredibly, some officials even advocate resuming explosive nuclear testing, on which the U.S. declared a moratorium in 1992. Such a resumption would doubtless encourage other nuclear states to do the same thing, which could trigger an arms race.

It is worth noting that Washington’s aggressive posture is nothing new. Since the start of the Cold War, the U.S. has been by far the most globally imperialistic state and by far the most responsible for escalating arms races. Its military and CIA interventions in countries around the world have been on a vastly larger scale than the Soviet Union’s or Russia’s, and it has typically rebuffed Russia’s frequently expressed desire for peace. In his magisterial book The Limits of Power (1972), the historian Gabriel Kolko argued that as early as the 1940s, “Russia’s real threat [to Washington] was scarcely military, but [rather] its ability to communicate its desire for peace and thereby take the momentum out of Washington’s policies.” Due to the Soviet Union’s relative economic and military weakness, Stalin sponsored international peace conferences and made numerous peace overtures to the Truman administration, all of which were rejected. Such overtures continued in the months and years after Stalin’s death, but in most cases they met with a chilly reception.

Decades later, Gorbachev enraged American officials by pursuing “public diplomacy” around nuclear disarmament. In 1985, he unilaterally declared a moratorium on nuclear weapons tests, hoping the U.S. would follow suit. It didn’t. The following year, he announced his hope of eliminating all nuclear weapons everywhere by the year 2000. The Reagan administration was flabbergasted and generally appalled by the idea, though Reagan himself was sympathetic. But at the summit later that year, Reagan followed his advisors’ recommendations and rejected Gorbachev’s pleas to eliminate nuclear weapons. At least something was salvaged the following year, when Reagan and Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty.

In our own century, as NATO expanded ever farther east—blatantly threatening Russia—the Kremlin responded, yet again, with what amounted to peace initiatives. Putin floated the idea of joining NATO (as Yeltsin and even Gorbachev had), but the U.S. had no interest in that. A few years later, in 2008, Moscow proposed a pan-European security treaty, arguing that this was necessary in order to overcome all vestiges of the Cold War. That idea went nowhere, much like Moscow’s 2010 proposal of an EU-Russia free-trade zone to facilitate a Greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, “which would provide mutual economic benefits and contribute to mitigating the zero-sum format of the European security architecture,” to quote the analyst Glenn Diesen. Ultimately, the U.S. rebuffed all Russian attempts to thaw relations.

Evidently, for many decades, the U.S. has rarely had much interest in respectful coexistence with Russia. As outlined in a very revealing RAND Corporation report from 2019, its priority has been to “stress” Russia, to “overextend” it, for instance, by provoking it to invade Ukraine. Because “some level of competition with Russia is inevitable,” Washington has to wage a “campaign to unbalance the adversary” and “caus[e] the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence.” This campaign has been going on since the 1940s.

Indeed, in its report, RAND even tentatively suggested that “U.S. leaders could probably goad Russia into a costly arms race by breaking out of the nuclear arms control regime. Washington could abrogate New START and begin aggressively adding to its nuclear stockpile and to its air and missile delivery systems. Moscow would almost certainly follow suit, whatever the cost.” In 2023, as we have seen, the Commission on the U.S. Strategic Posture endorsed these recommendations.

The only hope for peace, and particularly for a reduction of nuclear arsenals, is that American citizens will relentlessly pressure their elected representatives to stop marching towards Armageddon and act to ensure human survival. After all, if there is a danger of a two-front war with Russia and China, as the Congressional Commission reported in 2023, the obvious way to avoid such a horror is through diplomacy. Not through a massive arms race that could precipitate this very war.

From the antiwar left to the MAGA right, we all must demand that, for once, politicians choose the path of sanity.

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  Class War, Then and Now: Essays toward a New LeftChris Wright

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Chris Wright, Ph.D. in U.S. history (University of Illinois at Chicago), is the author of Worker Cooperatives and Revolution and Popular Radicalism and the Unemployed in Chicago during the Great Depression. Read other articles by Chris, or visit Chris's website.

Silvertongue’s Demise: Lord Mandelson’s Epstein Problem

by Binoy Kampmark / September 19th, 2025

It was so startlingly obvious that it seemed to snuff out any comment. Lord Peter Mandelson, otherwise known as the sinister Mr Fixit of New Labour from the Blair years, was an intimate of the late convicted paedophile and socially connected financier Jeffrey Epstein. If it was intended as a humorous appointment – Britain’s Epstein-familiar ambassadorial representative to Washington attending the court of an administration with another Epstein-familiar, President Donald Trump – it was not one to last.

It began at the end of last year, when Mandelson, who seemed to specialise in the art of being sacked, was called upon to take up one of British diplomacy’s most important offices: the ambassadorship to the United States. As a result, he was glowing, brightly telling all that President George W. Bush had dubbed him “Silvertongue”. This same tongue had called Trump, in 2019, a “danger to the world” and “little short of a white nationalist and racist”. Chris LaCivita, who co-campaigned the President’s election bid, thought Mandelson “an absolute moron” – high praise indeed.

Mandelson took it all in his stride. He promised the administration that they would “discover I’m not uber-liberal, I’m not a wokey-cokey sort of person, and I’m pro-market and pro-business.” His remit: to keep Trump onside in terms of staying in Europe for security reasons, forge commercial ties, and limit tariffs on UK exports.

Then came those emails, as reported by Bloomberg. They revealed the extent of Mandelson’s association with Epstein. The Dark Lord was found encouraging Epstein to “fight for early release” shortly after his sentencing to 18 months in prison. He showed signs of infatuation, saying “I think the world of you,” a day before the sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in June 2008 commenced.

More material surfaced. From the US House Oversight Committee came the disclosure of a scrapbook made to celebrate the financier’s fiftieth birthday, with the Mandelson effusion “best pal”. (Trump can also count himself a fellow Epstein enthusiast in the collection.)

The scene was set for yet another sacking. The embarrassed British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, was again exposed for his flawed judgment. He had already known of Mandelson’s soiled ties, yet remained unmoved. In June 2023, for instance, the Financial Times obtained an internal JPMorgan report that showed the extent of the association, even after Epstein’s imprisonment. In January 2024, when asked at a press conference about Mandelson’s stays at the home of a convicted sex offender in Manhattan, the Labour leader proved implausibly unaware: “I don’t know any more than you, and there’s not really much I can add to what is already out there, I’m afraid.”

The new correspondence, however, was seen as “materially different” from the information available when the new ambassador arrived in Washington. “Had I known then what I know now,” Starmer stated emphatically, “I’d never have appointed him.” Then came that churning feeling of dissatisfaction from Starmer’s own Labour MPs, whose views he occasionally respects. One of them, Andy McDonald, noted “widespread revulsion that we, by association, being in the same party, are being brought under the microscope for something that [Mandelson] has done.”

Mandelson, for his part, expressed a feeling of “tremendous” regret regarding his friendship with Epstein, and a “tremendous sense of sympathy” for the victims, but insisted that he never witnessed or was aware of any wrongdoing when spending time with him. As he told the BBC: “I relied on assurances of [Epstein’s] innocence that turned out later to be horrendously false.” Lawyers representing his best pal “claimed that it was a shake down of him, a criminal conspiracy. I foolishly relied on their word, which I regret to this day.” What fabulous, mountainous mendacity.

Some tried to explain the appointment as a symptom of establishment blindness and insularity. In the Spectator, there was a rather apt observation that Mandelson, at least in Britain, “was part of the furniture – the man you loved to hate. It was everywhere implied that this amoral figure, relic of a subtler age, would be able to ‘run rings’ around the various oik populists – chief among them the 47th president.” A less likely, though equally apposite reading, is that Mandelson’s spotty record was exactly what was needed in a Washington distinctly unmoored from any moral compass. The Trump administration, with its venality, its solipsistic universe, its tendency to muddy and contaminate institutions, would have suited “Petie”, as Epstein liked to call him.

The greatest insult of all, and one that Trump inspires on most occasions, is the feigned (or genuine) ignorance of a person he has known or had an acquaintance with. Trump has selective amnesia for those he professes fondness for; he has an elephantine memory for those he hates. As both the President and Starmer were drooling and slobbering over the Anglo-American “special” alliance in a press conference during the President’s UK visit, Mandelson’s name did come up. Trump claimed to have never known the fellow, suggesting that Starmer was better placed to answer. Starmer, exploiting the situation, walked it on with his now conditioned response: Mandelson was sacked once new information surfaced about the Epstein link. Mr Fixit was, at least in the metaphorical sense, dead and buried.

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Launching Silent Courier: MI6 Goes WikiLeaks

by Binoy Kampmark / September 24th, 2025

There is night and day between an entity such as WikiLeaks, a daring publisher of classified government documents extraordinaire, and the dour, secretive intelligence service of any country. But it seems that, just as the owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk, some of them are learning a few lessons. For one thing, the British foreign intelligence service, M16, has decided to take to the World Wide Web, especially its dark version, to lure recruits and secrets. How close, then, to the practices of Julian Assange and the publishing organisation that made him infamous and the subject of much abomination in intelligence circles.

The intended platform is to have the name Silent Courier. “As the world changes and threats multiply, we must stay ahead of our adversaries,”stated Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. “Our intelligence agencies work tirelessly to keep British people safe, and this cutting-edge technology will help M16 recruit new agents, including in Russia and beyond.” Given the extensive historical record of deep penetration of the British intelligence services by Russians, this is bound to have induced a bored yawn.

The official announcement came from Sir Richard Moore, the outgoing M16 chief who decided to use Istanbul as the place to make it. “Today, we’re asking those with sensitive information on global instability, international terrorism, or hostile state activity to contact MI6 securely online.” With paternal assurance, he promised that, “Our virtual door is open to you.”

The recruitment approach is not dissimilar to the campaigns used by the US Central Intelligence Agency. In 2022 and 2023, the organisation employed such platforms as Telegram, Facebook, X (previously X) and Instagram to net potential recruits from Russia. Instructions were also released on how to contact the agency on the dark web. The CIA, being convinced of the efficacy of these moves, released a video last year on Telegram titled “Why I contacted the CIA: the motherland” urging Russians to target Russia’s real enemies: the country’s leadership. “Our leaders sell out the country,” moralises the fictional officer of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, “for palaces and yachts while our soldiers chew rotten potatoes and fire ancient weapons.”

An uncharitable reading of such moves suggest that the US spy outfit, being incapable of building human networks with human agents in Russia, requires the services of social media to secure contacts. While we are not sure about the extent of how successful these moves have been, the standard of efficacy, if we are to believe a CIA spokesperson, is taken to be the number of viewings of the various posts. Troubling, if true.

This month, a partnership with Google Cloud between the UK and US was minted, an agreement that again shows the insatiable appetite on the part of governments to secure the services of Big Tech. “The partnership,”states the September 12 press release from the Ministry of Defence, “means that the latest technology developed by Google Cloud, including AI, data analytics, and cyber security, will be used by defence intelligence and national security specialists to share secure information between our partners and outcompete our adversaries.”

These agencies, it would seem, have been seduced by the very world hated by government bureaucrats and the secrecy mongers: the use of the dark web, the incitement to steal information, and using an encrypted platform that echoes the WikiLeaks model for securing information from leakers and whistleblowers.

For some, the world of clandestine meetings and the exchange of envelopes has become a bit fusty and mothballed, though there is something more profound about those personal ties in the recruitment process. The use of technology, however, has become irresistible, even a fetish, and agencies have come to realise that secure platforms enabling foreign agents or those in foreign employ to communicate classified material is a worthwhile endeavour.

The MI6 platform makes use of the Tor network, a facility that, while strong, is not impervious. The agency advises that potential contacts resort to VPNs to access the platform, supplying a dedicated email address for communications. Also encouraged is the use of private browsing with devices equipped with updated security and eschewing the use of credit cards.

The dark web, while attractive, is not an impenetrable jungle. The resourceful and persistent will find a way. Beijing’s Ministry of State Security has, for instance, previously succeeded in penetrating encrypted CIA platforms with spectacular success. Between 2010 and 2012, according to the New York Times, some 20 CIA informants were either killed or imprisoned by the Chinese authorities. The theories offered are conventional: traditional, old-school exposure of the sources by virtue of a well-placed mole within the American agency, or the ability of the country’s cyber platoons to break the channels of secure communication. And never, of course, rule out simple negligence.

M16, in going WikiLeaks, has acknowledged, at the very least, the value of having avenues of disclosure that do cast light on rough, inscrutable terrain drawn from sources of value. The legacy of WikiLeaks speaks to exposing the secretive information that should be known to the public, exposing those venal types in power to withering scrutiny. MI6 intends to perform the same function, with one crucial difference: those secrets will be intended for minimal circulation among the anointed elite in order to advance the agenda of His Majesty’s Government. That, at least, is the intention.

After Five Decades, It Comes to This: The PNG-Australia Pukpuk Treaty

by Binoy Kampmark / September 16th, 2025

It’s clearer than ever: the Albanese government is continuing its efforts to shut out China in wooing and seducing island states across vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Bilateral security treaties are being pursued as a matter of urgency. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has, for instance, stated that he is open to closer defence ties with Fiji, which “could range from increased interoperability, the sort of training that we are seeing with the Pacific Policing Initiative, being expanded to increased engagement between our defence forces”.

The template, however, would seem to be the Pukpuk Treaty between Australia and Papua New Guinea (pukpuk being the pidgin word for “crocodile”). It was reported on September 15 that the PNG cabinet had, despite a few procedural hiccups, approved the pact, with a PNG cabinet submission observing that the treaty is intended “to prepare our militaries to be battle-ready and for a very bad day”. With exaggeration, the document also envisages a treaty with the bite of a crocodile in linking the militaries of the two countries.

While the contents of the treaty have yet to be published – the Albanese government is showing itself increasingly secretive – the Australian national broadcaster has seen a copy. There are also clues about what is expected. PNG Defence Minister Billy Joseph has said that a provision much like Article 4 in NATO’s founding treaty, obliging member states to consult when any one feels a threat to their territorial integrity, political independence or security, is in the offing. The existing 1977 Status of Forces framework will be modernised to include a mutual defence obligation, a hefty expenditure on weapons and equipment for PNG while permitting unimpeded access of Australian Defence Forces to facilities in PNG. PNG nationals will also be able to be recruited into the ADF, as will Australians wishing to be recruited into the PNG Defence Forces.

Despite celebrating five decades of independence, PNG has decided to throw a good bit of it away by surrendering the complete autonomy of its armed forces to Australian influence and control. Such arrangements are always advertised as ostensible exercises of “interoperability”, consultation and equality, with various domestic processes needing to be observed. In truth, this gives Canberra greater say over what Port Moresby will do with its armed forces and, by implication, its foreign policy.

Such greater say also risks involving Australia in a range of security concerns. Don Rothwell, an international law authority based at the Australian National University, sees the prospect of Canberra being snagged in PNG-Indonesia border issues arising from West Papua, and dirtying itself with “an active independence movement in Bougainville, which raises issues of PNG’s ‘political independence or security’.”

With the attraction of a pathway to Australian citizenship and the prospect of equal rates of pay as earned by members of the ADF, there is a genuine chance that PNG will see its own forces depleted while swelling the ranks of the ADF. In terms of planning, this looks like a fantastic instance of self-harm and diminishment.

International relations commentary rarely does a good line in ironic reflection. A piece in The Conversation by Ian Kemish does not disappoint, flecked with platitudes on “deep roots in shared history”, Australia being the “most trusted partner” to PNG, and sentimental guff about “partnership and equality”. Port Moresby had evidently felt that the relationship with Canberra was “unique – the only one that combines proximity, capability and an enduring sense of shared history.” Michael Shoebridge of the Strategic Analysis Australia think tank, described the pact as “a pretty big step”, with PNG saying “‘Yes we agree, you actually are our security partner of choice, and we mean it enough to put it into a treaty’.”

Australian self-interest, ever jittery about China’s regional influence, shines so brightly in these arrangements as to make such remarks feeble. Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles, often circuitous and waffly at press conferences, was candid in admitting that “PNG is obviously on our northern flank. It really matters that we have the very best relationship we have with PNG in a security sense. And I’m really excited about the fact that this agreement is going to give expression to that.”

The need to keep PNG close to Australia’s military interests is also of ongoing interest to such anti-China hawks as the sacked and disgraced former secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, Mike Pezzullo. For some reason, press outlets think his predictable views matter. To The Australian Financial Review, he explained rather banally that “PNG would be in peril were it to be attacked by a foreign power.” He advised that Australia “for the first time in our bilateral relationship, commit to coming to PNG’s assistance in the event of it being attacked by a foreign power.” Any agreement that did not codify such an undertaking “would be, while useful, not reflective of our deep strategic interdependence.”

With each utterance on sovereignty from Canberra, officials in Port Moresby would do well to consider the implications of the pact. PNG may have existed as a nominally independent state for fifty years, but that independence is set to come to an end.

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

It’s Revolution or Death

Part 3: Reclaiming the World Wherever We Stand

by subMedia / September 23rd, 2025

The third and final installment of the series seeks to bring the lessons learned in the first two episodes home. This segment features an interview with Peter Gelderloos in which he describes his experience working to build transformative infrastructure in Catalunya.

Not all of us are so lucky to live near a large and organized movement like those described in part two, and that’s ok. For us to be truly organized as a global community, we need do work wherever we are. As Neto reminds us in part two, “We need to start from where we’re standing and from a reality that we recognize.” There are no answers, only strategies. This video seeks to provide guidance to anarchists just getting started organizing around the climate crisis. Different strategies work in different locales, social conditions and contexts.

Peter shares three urgent suggestions for those looking to organize around these issues:

Urgent Suggestion #1: A complete and Total Rejection of All the Institutions Responsible for This Disaster

Relying on those responsible for this crisis to save us is the worst thing we can do. It’s time to act collectively outside of the state and capital’s stranglehold over our lives to try to carve out spaces and networks that will give us the best possible chances of survival. Relying on nonprofits, elections, or authoritarian left movements has failed time and time again. We cannot afford to continue to misplace our trust in institutions that will not save us.

Urgent Suggestion #2: Pick a Project of Transformative Survival

The hour is seriously late. The sooner we get involved in organizing for survival, the better. If people in the territories you reside in are already working towards similar goals, it may be better to join them than to try and build a movement from the ground up. Sometimes we need to create new projects where there is a need for them and people willing to get them going. Building our collective autonomy may not appear to be directly related to our chances at surviving the climate crises, but it is! Any time we build our collective power outside of the state and capital we build power that is combative to the institutions that created this disaster, and that gives us the means to survive it.

Urgent Suggestion #3: Connect your project to a revolutionary web of solidarity 

The climate crisis is a worldwide issue. We need to have a global response. Networks of people organizing around these issues exist all over around the world. We need to build an international web of solidarity and the more connections a web has, the stronger it will be.

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SubMedia is directed and produced by Frank Lopez. Read other articles by subMedia, or visit subMedia's website.