Writer. Columnist @NZStuff. @TEDx speaker. Bylines at The Guardian, Stuff, NZ Herald, The Listener. Newsroom, The Spinoff. Former senior mathematics lecturer.

Christchurch, NZ
Joined November 2014
Watch this incredible protest as the indigenous Maori MPs perform a haka to disrupt the vote on a bill that seeks to diminish their rights. Imagine if Western politicians had the same courage to stand up to genocide and shame Israel in similar ways.
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
I really think everyone needs to pay attention to this cordinated campaign to delegimatize Muslim Americans - not just as citizens but as humans. These increasingly hysterical attacks are a prelude to Republicans bringing us to a very, very dark place after the election.
RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Novel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."
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Blimey! RFK Jr.’s speech is riddled with ignorance. It starts with the basic error of treating Arabs and Muslims as the same thing. Most of the world’s Muslims are not Arab (including large majorities in Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Iran), and there are non-Muslim Arabs (Jewish Iraqis, Christian Lebanese, etc.). As for achieving nothing: one example from a long list is Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the Fields Medal in mathematics, who was born into a Muslim family in Iran. Bigotry is blinding.
US Secretary of Health Robert F Kennedy Jr. has said that Arabs don’t produce science or literature, or win Nobel prizes. RFK Jr.’s remarks, which were made during a Republican rally, have been widely condemned as factually incorrect and racially biased.
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
Netanyahu has blurred the lines of what is national security for Israeli and what is political threat to him. For Israel that lack of clarity means that war, devastation and fate of the Middle East, despite the rhetoric, are becoming matters of domestic politics. That would be bad for the region and Israel itself. nytimes.com/2026/10/26/world…
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The timing of this Jerusalem Post piece feels deliberate. As the IRGC prepares for another conflict, publicly detailing Mossad’s expanded recruitment and training of local Iranian dissidents, beyond its own agents, only heightens the risk of more mass arrests, torture, and executions of ordinary Iranians. When Iran responds with further crackdowns and hangings of those it labels spies (many with no Mossad ties), it supplies fresh evidence of the regime’s brutality, making continued illegal US/Israeli war on Iran easier for the world to accept.
What former Mossad chief David Barnea has revealed is a shocking admission of an intelligence operation that knowingly put 1000s of innocent Iranians at risk of imprisonment, torture, and execution, all to protect Israeli agents operating inside Iran. According to @Jerusalem_Post, Barnea acknowledged that Mossad deliberately publicized footage of its covert operations inside Iran during the June 2025 war, intending to provoke mass arrests and overwhelm Iranian security forces. “We wanted to make sure they arrested so many people in Iran that they wouldn’t be able to distinguish the wheat from the chaff,” he said. Barnea claimed that Iranian authorities arrested 21,000 people on the 2nd day of the war. He also acknowledged that many of those arrested or executed as alleged Mossad agents had nothing to do with the agency, while nearly all actual Mossad operatives escaped capture. Think about the extraordinary cruelty of that calculation. Israeli intelligence officials understood the nature of the govt they were dealing with: a repressive state with a documented record of arbitrary detention, torture, forced confessions, and executions. Yet, according to Barnea’s own account, they deliberately sought to exploit those very practices, making ordinary Iranians the expendable human cost of protecting their operatives. I think about the 1000s of families who may have been caught between an Israeli intelligence operation and an Iranian security apparatus gripped by fear of infiltration. The fathers and mothers of whose children disappeared into detention centers. The young people whose only political involvement may have been protesting for a better life. The students, workers, and ordinary citizens who could suddenly find themselves accused of collaborating with a foreign intelligence service. For them, an arrest is not a temporary inconvenience in an intelligence game. It can mean months or years in prison, torture, a coerced confession, a destroyed future, or a death sentence. Human rights organizations have documented how Iranian authorities used the war to intensify repression, including mass arrests and executions on allegations of espionage and collaboration with Israel. The Iranian government bears direct responsibility for every arbitrary arrest, every act of torture, and every unlawful execution. Nothing Israel did absolves Tehran of those crimes. But Israel cannot escape scrutiny and accountability for deliberately engineering conditions in which it knew innocent people could become targets of that repression. What Barnea describes is not simply clever intelligence work. It raises profound questions about the deliberate exploitation of foreseeable harm to civilians in pursuit of military and intelligence objectives. And perhaps the most disturbing part is the apparent indifference to what happened to those people afterward. For Mossad, the measure of success was whether its agents survived and escaped detection. For Iranian families, the consequences could last a lifetime. The lives of ordinary Iranians are not disposable assets in an intelligence operation. Their imprisonment, suffering, and deaths cannot be dismissed as the acceptable price of protecting foreign agents.. International humanitarian law does not give intelligence agencies a free pass to deliberately expose civilians to foreseeable harm. If Mossad intentionally provoked mass arrests in Iran, knowing that innocent people could face torture, imprisonment, or execution, this raises serious questions of international legal responsibility, including potential complicity in war crimes. As I said, Iranian government bears direct responsibility for its repression, but that does not absolve Israeli officials of responsibility for deliberately exploiting it. The lives of innocent civilians cannot be treated as expendable assets in an intelligence operation. This revelation deserves serious scrutiny, independent investigation. jpost.com/middle-east/iran-n…
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
Thank you Grand Rapids! When we send Abdul El-Sayed to the U.S. Senate, we are going to send a profound message: NO to hatred, bigotry and diviseness NO to oligarchy NO to authoritarianism Let’s get it done.
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
Someone who lies to cover up her country's role in aiding and abetting genocide (by sending arms and mercenaries to the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary in Sudan) should NEVER be UN secretary general. That's United Arab Emirates diplomat Lana Nusseibeh. xitter.cf/Amgad_Fareid/status/21…
In July 2024, Lana Nusseibeh publicly and categorically rejected the UN Panel of Experts’ findings of credible evidence that #UAE supports the atrocities and genocide committed by the Rapid Support Forces (#RSF) militia in Sudan. Confronted on CNN, she declared: “No. Those allegations are categorically untrue.” Asked directly whether she disputed the UN experts’ findings, she replied: “Yes, absolutely.” Now, Ms. Nusseibeh seeks to lead the very institution whose findings she so emphatically dismissed in defence of her government. How can she possibly be entrusted with that responsibility? The fundamental question is not whether Nusseibeh was entitled to defend her regime. It is whether someone who placed that defence above the credible findings of UN experts can genuinely be entrusted with upholding the independence, integrity, and authority of the United Nations. Why should the world trust her judgment when the UN’s findings conflict with the interests of the very government that nominated her? The UN highest office is not for protecting a criminal regime from scrutiny and accountability. The seat of the UN Secretary-General should not be for sale!
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The first woman UN Secretary-General should strengthen the institution’s credibility, not test it. Lana Nusseibeh has been a senior UAE diplomat who publicly denied her government’s support for the RSF as it carried out mass murder and mass rape in El Fasher, atrocities UN investigators said bore the hallmarks of genocide. Four other qualified women are already in the race. The UN needs a Secretary-General who will confront atrocities, not deny them.
It's worth noting that the massacres and mass rape in El Fasher, Sudan, claiming tens of thousands of lives, happened with the complicity of the UAE and @Lana_Nusseibeh, now seeking to be the next UN Secretary-General. Empowering mass murder and rape should be disqualifying.
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
The world cannot ignore what is happening in Sudan. One year on from the mass atrocities in El Fasher, the UK is sanctioning those linked to these and other atrocities, and strengthening support for survivors and communities at risk of famine.
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As Mayor Mamdani said in his congratulatory post to Lula: “The people united will never be defeated!”
Incredible turnaround in #Brazil where voters came out to give #Lula a clear win in 2nd round of election. What a champion! This & #Serbian Student List win must give hope for parties of inclusion, sustainability, & decency everywhere. Next #NZ? theguardian.com/world/2026/o…
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
waiting to vote and there are people coming up and asking us in line if they can enrol here ☠️
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FT’s report on Lula’s comeback says Flávio Bolsonaro’s “nine fingers” jab in the final debate, mocking the finger Lula lost in a factory accident at 17 while working nights, became a turning point. The attack let Lula draw a sharp contrast between his own working-class history and Bolsonaro’s background, helping shift momentum in the runoff.
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
Potential for a breakthrough between Iran and the Gulf powers? @GeoffMillerNZ @MatyOBrien @NegarPartow @UnPressed @les_politiques @Oggie_A
MASSIVE Iran CONFIRMS ultra-high-level security summit with Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan in Tehran, TODAY. Ali Bagheri Kani says the summit was proposed by Asim Munir - during his latest trip to Tehran. They will talk in detail about - yes, Grandmaster Lavrov explained it, also in his latest visit to Tehran: Indivisible regional security. Iran wants: • A security framework led by REGIONAL POWERS. • Cooperation WITHOUT U.S. or Israeli interference. • West Asia stability and security independence. In the room: • Iran's Security Council Secretary, Major General Mohsen Rezaee • Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman • Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir • Turkish Intelligence Chief Ibrahim Kalın The Mecca Defense Alliance finally wakes up.
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
I always vote on the first day. Today is the first day of voting so I went to the Wainuiomata advance voting place at the hall. It is closed. A disgrace. Along with early roll closing it is looking like the voter suppression you expect from Trump or Hungary not here in Aotearoa.
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
Congratulations to Lula on his extraordinary reelection victory in the Brazilian presidential election. Lula has stood up for Brazilian workers & democracy — and will continue to do so in the next four years.
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came from behind to win Brazil’s runoff election, halting a right-wing wave sweeping Latin America and defying predictions that the 80-year-old political veteran had finally reached the end of his extraordinary career. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
Thousands of Israelis rallied against PM Benjamin Netanyahu, demanding a change of government and an independent inquiry into the security failures surrounding the Hamas-led October 7th attacks. The election will be held on Tuesday October 27.
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Donna Miles دانا مجاب retweeted
Serbian President and Netanyahu ally Vučić concedes defeat in election haaretz.com/world-news/europ…
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