After a dizzying year of global upheaval, this reflection looks back on writing as resistance – against war, media failure, imperial power and silence – and why truth-telling still matters heading into 2026.

In 2025 if your head wasn’t spinning like a propeller you weren’t paying attention. As a writer I was propelled in different directions. In the course of 2025 I have had 54 stories published. I subjected myself to a brutal tempo but it was an absolute privilege to see them appear in such excellent publications as Pearls and Irritations and as far afield as – sometimes unexpectedly – Vietnam, the US, Europe and China. 

My mantra is: in the great battle for truth, writing is fighting.

The first story of the year for me was ‘The Rule of the Oligarchs and the Machines is here’ which looked at the deadly combination of the rise of AI under the control of the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos. My second story of the year – was it just a year ago? It feels like a decade! – was about Trump, freshly re-installed in the White House attempting a rough wooing of both Canada and Panama, and feasting his eyes on Greenland.

Two stories that I worked on and which emotionally affected me were 'All I wanted was to bid my daughter a final farewell' – hostages and the mainstream media about Khalida Farrar, a leading Palestinian who was finally freed from an Israeli hell-hole. Hostages like Khalida garner little coverage in the mainstream but number in the thousands, thanks to our wilful blindness.

As a dad, I found marking the anniversary of the self-immolation of US serviceman Aaron Bushnell gruelling. He was obviously such a sweet, intelligent young man and I would have given anything to have encouraged him to choose another path of resistance to the Israeli genocide than killing himself in front of Washington’s Israeli embassy. He gave us all, however, one of the lessons of all time: “Many of us like to ask ourselves ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery?  Or the Jim Crow South? Or Apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

There were stolen elections in Romania, digital chip wars between China and the US which dragged in the Netherlands, anti-imperialist coups in West Africa, the Western desecration of the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, the stark reality of the collapse of Western grand strategy in Europe, and the tragedy in Ukraine as the war inches towards a near-inevitable conclusion.

The struggle of the Palestinian people and the movements across the planet to support them rightly captured a lot of my attention. Closer to home, the AUKUS alliance and what I saw as the danger of New Zealand and Australia’s misguided entanglement with the United States demanded that I shared insights from important thinkers who advocated a more nuanced approach, one that steered us away from joining an anti-China alliance.

Many of this year’s stories involved the United States and, I must admit, I have a very dim view of their conduct in the world. I balance this with having huge respect for many outstanding American thinkers, some of whom, like Chas Freeman, Ray McGovern and John Whitbeck, I’m honoured to call my friends.

Part of my writer’s journey has small pleasures like sitting in a rooftop restaurant in Tokyo discussing the world with Neutrality Studies’ Pascal Lottaz or resolving global issues over coffees in a London cafe with Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasian program at the Quincy Institute.

I’ve had valuable conversations with CIA veteran Ray McGovern, professor of Russian history Geoff Roberts, and experts on the Palestinian struggle like Helena Cobban. I learnt so much from my correspondence with exemplary people like human rights lawyer John Whitbeck, activists in Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, the US and and, less frequently, with heroes like UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. They have all enriched both my life and my writing.

I’ll never forget Palestinian activist-writer Yousef Aljamal sitting in my study telling me of the loss of over 40 members of his family to Israeli attacks since 7 October 2023. As a writer, I felt a real sense of kindredness when he said: “I see writing as an act of resistance, because in times of oppression and injustice, writing is a means of fighting back and resisting, but also documenting and remembering and healing.“

And, of course, I have loved working with Pearls and Irritations’ powerhouse combo of John Menadue and Catriona Jackson. John has on a number of occasions set me challenges to write pieces, particularly about the great Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, who to this day endures life in cruel captivity.

History looms large in my life (as it does, whether one knows it or not, for everyone). For that reason I wrote a series of articles on the anniversary of 7 October, and another series on the looming US attack on Venezuela, taking lessons all the way back to the French Revolution. I marked two important anniversaries also with a series of articles this year: the 50th anniversary of the “fall of Saigon”/liberation of Vietnam and the 40th anniversary of the sinking of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior by the French state in Auckland harbour.

During the year I met Iranian activists here in New Zealand, renewed contacts in Iran and revived great memories of my time travelling there in 1980 and in 2018.

Critiquing the woeful performance of our mainstream media is obligatory for anyone serious about geopolitics. I wrote ‘ Radio New Zealand’s report on its Israel-Gaza coverage is not credible' with Jeremy Rose, a member of Alternative Jewish Voices and Ramon Das a senior lecturer at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University

As a writer I am blessed to have fellow writers who take the time to check and critique my articles before they are sent into the world. I hugely appreciate their support.

It is hard not to despair at times; realising how vast and well-resourced the forces arrayed against us are. At such moments it’s worth remembering and celebrating the courage and importance of the teams at Pearls and Irritations, Brave New Europe, Asia Pacific Report, Counterpunch, Scoop, and all the excellent online platforms like Novara Media, electronic intifada, Econoclasts, Useful Idiots, Responsible Statecraft, Breaking Points and others that shatter the dominant myths whist attracting audiences in greater and greater numbers.

The writer’s journey should always be heretical to the orthodoxies that seek to control and exploit humanity. That’s what keeps me shackled to my keyboard. In truth, there is nowhere else I would rather be; there is nothing else I would rather be doing. I hope you’ll join me again in 2026!