Category: Crime

  • Hunter Biden received a sweet hear plea deal after being caught not paying his taxes for several years, but that deal was tossed out of court after the judge determined that Biden’s lawyers weren’t being completely honest. The deal is still on hold, but things aren’t looking good for the President’s son. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. […]

    The post Judge Rejects Hunter Biden’s Sweet Heart Plea Deal appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

  • RNZ Pacific

    Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has called again for the immediate release of New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens, who has now been held hostage by pro-independence fighters in West Papua for six months.

    Speaking in Auckland, Hipkins said Mehrtens — a pilot for the Indonesian airline Susi Air which provide air links to remote communities in Papua — was a much-loved husband, brother, father and son.

    He said Mehrtens’ safety was the top priority and the six-month milestone would be a difficult time for the family.

    New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens, flying for Susi Air, appears in new video 100323
    New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens, flying for Susi Air, has been held hostage by the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) since February 7. Image: Jubi TV screenshot APR

    “We will continue to do all we can to bring Phillip home,” he said.

    “I want to urge once again those who are holding Phillip to release him immediately. There is absolutely no justification for taking hostages. The longer Phillip is held the more risk there is to his wellbeing and the harder this becomes for him and for his family.

    “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is leading our interagency response and I’ve been kept closely informed of developments over the last six months.”

    Prime Minister Chris Hipkins
    Prime Minister Chris Hipkins . . . “I want to urge once again those who are holding Phillip to release him immediately. There is absolutely no justification for taking hostages.” Image: Angus Dreaver/RNZ

    Hipkins said consular efforts included working closely with the Indonesian authorities and deploying New Zealand consular staff.

    The family was being supported by the ministry both in New Zealand and Indonesia, he said.

    “I acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging time for them but they’ve continued to ask for their privacy and I thank people for respecting that.”

    Police report ‘good health’
    Indonesian police say the NZ pilot taken hostage by the pro-independence fighters on February 7 is in good health and negotiations for his safe release are ongoing.

    Jubi reported from Jayapura that Papua police chief Inspector General Mathius Fakhiri said on Monday that Mehrtens remained in good health, but he did not expand on how he obtained that information.

    General Fakhiri said the security forces were actively closing in on the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) faction led by Egianus Kogoya and were engaged in negotiations to secure the prompt release of the pilot.

    “We are currently awaiting further developments as we work to restrict the movement of Egianus Kogoya’s group. The pilot’s overall condition is healthy,” General Fakhiri said.

    Tempo reported General Fakhiri as saying the local government was allowing community and church leaders and family members to take the lead on negotiating with Kogoya, the rebel leader holding Mehrtens.

    “Our primary concern is the safe rescue of Captain Phillip. This is why we are prioritising all available resources to aid the security forces in negotiations, ultimately leading to the pilot’s safe return without exacerbating the situation,” General Fakhiri said.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

  • PNG Post-Courier

    Papua New Guinea police have arrested three men and seized a stockpile of unlicensed firearms, ammunition, explosives and other illegal items in a raid in Western Highlands province last week.

    The arrests identified a further seven men who were alleged to be part of a blackmarket network who move the illegal items from Western Highlands into the upper Highlands provinces. They were also arrested.

    About 800 rounds of ammunition, firearms, explosives and other illegal items were  confiscated from the trio, including a Winchester shotgun, shotgun belts, sniper scopes, a Glock pistol and a hand grenade.

    Deputy Commissioner of Police-Operations Dr Philip Mitna confirmed that a security operation had been carried out.

    “Illegal firearms and drug trade is an ongoing issue in the highlands,” he said.

    Firearms and live ammunition are smuggled into many border provinces linked by the Okuk Highway.

    “A security team in Hela had made surveillance on firearms and ammunition. They visited Hagen (travelling in from Tari) and engaged with Hagen police, who organised raids and executed two search warrants on July 30, 2023, and effected several arrests,” Deputy Commissioner Mitna said.

    Regular arms supply
    According to information received by the Post-Courier newspaper, there is a regular ammunition and firearms supply arriving from illegal dealers in the Highlands eastern end and this is supplied to the western end, which includes Hela, Enga and Southern Highlands.

    “With the continued tribal fights in Hela and Enga provinces and other criminal activities involving firearms, the intelligence had confirmed most of the ammunition was being bought from Jiwaka and Mt Hagen dealers,” Deputy Commissioner Mitna said.

    “So far, the number of people being detained has increased to 10, and we anticipate more arrests. Among those arrested included a prominent businessman and security firm owner in Mt Hagen.”

    According to the findings and assessment by security personnel, the Western Highlands share has built up to 80 percent of illegal ammunition and has been supplying other provinces.

    The team tracked persons of interest from Tari to Mt Hagen and sought assistance, leading to several search warrants being executed by police with support from the PNG Defence Force Reconnaissance Unit.

    The arrests of the 10 men came as the operations were executed in two-week intervals and continued last month.

    The arrest of a local man in Hides started an investigation into the proliferation and movement of firearms and ammunition within the Highlands region.

    Allegedly involved in kidnappings
    The man who was picked up in Hides was allegedly involved in the recent series of kidnappings and ransom and incidents in Mt Bosavi, Southern Highlands, and parts of Western Province.

    The arrest of the man in Hides and nine more in Mt Hagen led to the uncovering of a large stash of unlicensed firearms and varieties of live ammunition, including a hand grenade as well as several other illegal items at a home in Newtown, Mt Hagen.

    According to reports, the intelligence gathered led to the arrest of the main suspect  who was apprehended in Mt Hagen. He is alleged to be the main supplier and distributor of unlicensed weapons and ammunition in the tribal fighting zones in the Highlands region as well as other parts of PNG.

    On Tuesday, August 1, 2023, the main suspect was formally cautioned and formally charged with 10 counts under the newly Amended Firearms Act 2022 and two counts under the Explosive Act (chapter 308) respectively.

    The charges are:

    • Two counts of unlawfully in possession of unlicensed Firearms under section 65 (c)(ii) of the Amendment Firearms Act, 2022;
    • Eight counts of unlawfully in possession of unlicensed live ammunitions under the section 65A (a) of the Amendment Firearms Act, 2022; and
    • Two counts of unlawfully in possession of unlicensed explosive under the section 14(1) of the Explosive Act, Chapter 308.

    The other nine men were still being interviewed and were being processed.

    Police investigations were continuing.

    Republished with permission.

  • PNG Post-Courier

    Faced with a rise in the number of criminals in Papua New Guinea who are now armed and shooting at the police, Police Commissioner David Manning says “all gloves are off”.

    “We will not be practising any leniency and we will neutralise the criminals through any means — meaning they will be shot and killed,” he said.

    Last month in Northern province, a policeman was shot and killed by armed 16-year-olds who had access to firearms and were committing crimes in the province.

    This week settlers who were allegedly evicted opened fire at police officers with a stray bullet wounding a female reporter.

    The escalating law and order problems even got Prime Minister James Marape and former prime minister Peter O’Neill “yelling” and blaming each other over daily killings nationwide.

    O’Neill challenged Marape to explain what the government’s plans were on tackling the escalating law and order situation nationwide.

    Countering aggression
    However, Manning said: “The RPNGC [Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary] is moving from what had been an overarching emphasis on crime prevention over recent decades to focus on responding to criminal activity and countering aggression head-on.

    “Standing orders for police officers to neutralise violent offenders through the escalated and reasonable use of force are being reinforced across units.”

    The RPNGC, with the support of the Marape government, is repositioning police personnel and assets to take a harder stand against violent offenders and domestic terrorists.”

    “The ‘soft glove’ approach as the frontline policy has not worked, and now the gloves are off and the frontline is the confrontation and neutralisation of criminal activity at its roots,” Manning said.

    Police officers were trained in the escalated use of force when confronting criminal activities — up to and including the use of lethal force — and they had sworn an oath to fulfil this duty, he added.

    Empowering commands
    Commissioner Manning said that an important component of this direction included further empowering provincial police commands to engage with provincial administrations to respond to local crime problems.

    “Legislation is being developed that clearly articulates actions of domestic terrorism, and the changes in our police force counter-terrorism approach will be reflected in this policy development.

    According to information received, the estimated number of firearms possessed by civilians stands at “tens of thousands”.

    With the high number of the proliferation of firearms since 2022, the number of firearms has increased to an unknown figure.

    Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • PNG Post-Courier

    Police in Papua New Guinea’s National Capital District are investigating the shooting yesterday of a woman reporter working with the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) Central during an alleged confrontation between police and settlers at 8-Mile in Port Moresby.

    In the midst of the firing, allegedly aimed at each other, a stray bullet hit the reporter who was among 13 journalists reporting at the Moitaka plant.

    Assistant Commissioner of Police-NCD and Central Anthony Wagambie Jr condemned the shooting, saying “I have directed Metsupt NCD to have police investigators look into this immediately.

    “We have to establish what happened and where the bullet came from.

    “If this was a stray bullet or intentionally fired. Everyone must respect the work of journalists and protect them as they are the voice of the people.”

    The Media Council of Papua New Guinea said in a statement that while commending PNG Power representatives who ensured that an ambulance was arranged to take the wounded journalist to hospital and covered her treatment, it reminded public and corporate organisations that when the media was invited to cover an event in “potentially hostile environments”, precautions must be made to ensure their safety.

    The council reaffirmed that it stood ready to work with the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC) and other law enforcement agencies to find ways that the media could be protected, rather than be caught in the crossfire.

    This would take some time and work in sensitising both the public and the media on their equally important roles in the pursuit of truth, information, and awareness, the council statement said.

    Moitaka power station progress
    According to our reporters, the incident happened when the group had ended their tour of the facility organised by PPL.

    The purpose of the visit was to see the progress of the Moitaka Power station and the new Edevu Hydro power construction and transmission lines undertaken by the PNG Hydro Limited and PNG Power.

    While the team was at the Moitaka power station, a commotion erupted outside at the nearby residents where multiple gun shots were fired.

    A stray bullet from the shootout grazed one of the cameramen and hit the female journalist on her left arm.

    The stray bullet lodged into her left arm causing her to bleed as she fell to the ground in shock.

    The shootout continued for about 5 minutes with other journalists and PPL staff taking cover.

    The journalist was rushed to the Paradise Private Hospital for treatment.

    Other reporters did not sustain any injuries. However, they were in shock and traumatised.

    The team was accompanied by the PNG Power CEO, Obed Batia, PNG Hydro Ltd managing director Allan Guo, PNG Power chairman, McRonald Nale, and staff of PNG Power.

    Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Christina Persico, RNZ Pacific bulletin editor

    Papua New Guinea’s police commissioner David Manning says a man allegedly involved in the kidnapping of 17 girls earlier this year has been arrested.

    Commissioner Manning said the man was wanted in connection with a series of criminal activities within the Mt Bosavi area bordering Hela, Southern Highlands, and Western provinces.

    “Among the alleged crimes committed by the individual are the armed robbery of K100,000 [NZ$46,000] in cash, the killing of a Chinese national, and multiple cases of rape at the Kamusi logging camp and surrounding villages in the Delta Fly region since 2019,” the commissioner said.

    “Recently, the arrested man was also allegedly involved in the kidnapping of 17 girls in the Mt Bosavi area.”

    Manning said the police and PNG Defence Force officers, acting on intelligence reports from the community, tracked down the man at the Komon Market in Tari, Hela province.

    “He was arrested, and a homemade pistol and 5.56 ammunition confiscated,” he said

    The commissioner said the arrest would bring a sense of relief to the affected communities, as the investigation continues.

    “At the same time, we are sending a strong message to the criminals and those who aid, abet and benefit from them, that they will be caught and dealt with, sooner or later by whatever force is deemed necessary.”

    Breakthrough in election incident
    Police have also arrested the main suspect in the shooting of a helicopter hired by police during the 2022 National General Election.

    This man is the main suspect in the killings and the burning of Kompiam Station and has been charged with five counts of wilful murder and one count of arson.

    David Manning, PNG's State of Emergency Controller and Police Commissioner.
    Police commissioner David Manning is calling on leaders to support law and order. Image: PNG PM Media/RNZ Pacific

    Manning said the investigation into the various crimes carried out in Kompiam during the 2022 National General Election continues.

    “New evidence has come to light of the involvement of senior provincial and national leaders in Kompiam during the election in 2022,” he said.

    “Our investigation continues, but the information we have uncovered thus far is concerning.

    “It is a sorry state of affairs when the government is working to end violence and we find that leaders are encouraging these crimes to be committed.”

    The police chief said following the recent killings in Wapenamanda, two additional mobile squads had been deployed into the area to assist the Enga Provincial Police Command to restore law and order.

    “A fight in the Kandep has already left 22 killed, and other fighting in Laiagam has resulted in the killing of six people and 20 in Wapenamanda.

    “We are facing serious law and order situation in the province and engaging security personnel and applying strategies to stop those fights from escalating.

    “This includes active involvement of provincial and national leaders from the province to engage and take responsibility.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • New data shows that American police officers killed more than 1,000 civilians last year – a record high for law enforcement. Also, a possibly illegal database of financial transactions has been kept for years by the Arizona state government. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please […]

    The post Police Killings Set Record High In 2022 & Arizona’s Secret Surveillance Program appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • By Rakesh Kumar in Suva

    The Fiji Council of Social Services (FCOSS) has warned that the nation needs to prepare itself to face more children being in conflict with the law.

    Chief executive officer Vani Catanasiga highlighted this while responding to Attorney-General Siromi Turaga’s revelation at the Lomaiviti Provincial Council meeting last week that schoolchildren were being used to peddle the highly addictive illegal drug methamphetamine, commonly known as “ice”.

    She said a concerted and coordinated approach was needed to tackle this issue.

    If the issue was not resolved, there could be a drop in education attainment rates and pressure on national social services systems, she added.

    Methodist Church in Fiji and Rotuma president Reverend Ili Vunisuwai said poverty was the root cause of the problem.

    He said the issue was serious and the government, church and vanua should come together to solve the issue.

    Rakesh Kumar is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.


  • A photo I took during the early days of BLM.

    It was December 4, 2014.

    Black Lives Matter had sprung up almost four months earlier after the events in Ferguson, Missouri. The remnants of Occupy Wall Street immediately latched onto this Movement™ as if it were life support.

    Our plan that night was to stage a “die-in” inside Saks Fifth Avenue during the holiday shopping crush. Dozens of “activists” (of all ethnicities) entered the posh department store and pretended to be shoppers.

    When we got the signal, we were supposed to plop down onto the floor and pretend to be dead (see my photo below).

    This was (somehow) supposed to represent all the people of color being killed by law enforcement. I opted to not lie down because I wanted to get photos to document the action and well… I’d already had my fill of almost being arrested in this particular venue.

    We perform such futile, dishonest exhibitionism because the hive mind keeps telling us: American police are hunting down black men in an epidemic of “lynchings.”

    I’m not being hyperbolic.

    In 2020, for example, pundits of the woke kind declared that cops are hunting black people (particularly black men).

    LeBron James himself tweeted: “For Black people right now, we think you’re hunting us.” Some folks unselfconsciously call it an “epidemic.”

    In the Black Lives Matter mission statement, it is stated that black people are being “systematically targeted for demise.”

    The media picks up these quotes and runs with them as clickbait stories — without any pretense of fact-checking. Opinions are manufactured and thus, narratives are created and sides are drawn.

    BLM was founded on this deception.

    I took this photo in Times Square, in January 2015.

    Do you know how many unarmed black people were actually killed by U.S. law enforcement in 2020, the Year of George Floyd™?

    I would not blame anyone if, based on public rhetoric, they guessed hundreds if not thousands. But here’s the breakdown:

    There are roughly 60 million interactions between police and civilians (age 16 and older) each year.

    In 2020, during those 60 million interactions, 1,021 people were killed by police.

    Of that number, 55 were unarmed.

    Of that number, 24 were white while 18 were black.

    Yes, proportional to population demographics, unarmed blacks are indeed being killed at a higher rate than unarmed whites. But please allow me to repeat:

    In 2020, 18 unarmed black people were killed by law enforcement agents.

    Is that 18 too many? Yes.

    Is it equivalent to “hunting,” an “epidemic,” or being “systematically targeted for demise”? Of course not.

    However, an organization called Black Lives Matter™ opted to make this its focus. In the process, they ignore (for example) that the top cause of death for black men under 44 is homicide. Those murders are obviously not being committed by cops.

    Could you instead imagine concerned citizens holding a “die-in” in the name of finding ways to prevent even more victims of gang activity, drug dealing, and other crimes?

    Can you imagine pro athletes and members of Congress kneeling to honor those victims?

    Sure, it would still be virtue signaling, but at the very least, they’d be trying to live up to a name like “Black Lives Matter.”


    If anyone is smugly enjoying this takedown of the woke crowd, I suggest you take a good look around. The “truth” movement™ and “medical freedom” movement™ can be just as deluded and deceptive in their own way.

    The longstanding “activist” blueprint is a delusion.

    Let’s learn to be more discerning and embrace independent thought before we embark on journeys to free others. And remember:

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Lawyers are begging the Biden administration to finally take Cuba off the state sponsors of terrorism list and put an end to the Cold War for good. Plus, the secrets of a brutal Florida school for boys is finally being exposed, decades after the death and abuse occurred. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was […]

    The post Biden Keeps Cuba On Terrorism Watchlist & Secrets Of Brutal Florida School Exposed appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • PNG Post-Courier

    Papua New Guinea police in Madang and the National Capital District have arrested a total of 101 men suspected of being involved in two separate incidents reported in both provinces over the long weekend.

    In Madang, 34 villagers were arrested after they clashed with police over the death of a local man from Korak village identified as Joseph Masul.

    After the death of Masul was reported, the villagers along the Bogia-Madang Highway were up in arms and retaliated by blocking the main highway.

    The blocking of the highway, according to Madang police, hindered services and movement of people into Madang over the long weekend.

    Police moved in after Assistant Commissioner of Police-Northern Peter Guinness assisted with police officers from Lae, who removed the roadblock and picked up 34 suspects.

    While in NCD, 67 men were rounded up by police at Gerehu Stage 5 over a fight that erupted after the death of a man was reported during the third game of Australia’s State of Origin rugby league series two weeks ago.

    The 67 men were on their way to instigate another fight when police were informed and moved in swiftly, arresting all 67 men and removing their weapons.

    Murder suspect in hiding
    NCD Metropolitan Superintendent Silva Sika said the suspect in the initial murder case had been hiding from police, angering the victim’s relatives.

    The relatives approached a youth who lives at Banana Block who was about to leave for school and questioned him about what had happened a week earlier.

    Superintendent Sika said the youth then went to the block, organised his friends who painted their faces black and and marched towards where the deceased’s haus krai (house of mourning) was. They were about to attack the mourners when police stopped them.

    He said they would be charged for unlawful assembly, armed with offensive weapons and about to cause a fight in public.

    Sika said the men were all armed and were moving in a public place that instilled fear in the public.

    While speaking to the suspects at Waigani police station, Superintendent Sika told the suspects that people living Port Moresby must try to respect the rule of law.

    ‘Respect rule of law’
    “I will not hesitate to demolish the areas where you are residing. Moving around in public places with weapons shows no respect for the rule of law,” he said.

    “I am happy that the police responded on time to arrest and remove all the weapons from you. If they had not done that it [would] be another disaster in the city where innocent lives and properties will be lost or damaged.

    “The weapons that you had in your possession are dangerous and life threatening so you must be charged for that to show others that carrying offensive weapons and moving in groups in public places is against the law.”

    Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Politicians are experiencing an increase in theft from their campaign funds, with cyber criminals targeting these massive campaign accounts. Plus, the US government has filed a lawsuit to stop Microsoft from becoming an even bigger monopoly. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. […]

    The post Hackers Target Political Super PAC Money & Microsoft Blocked From Mega-Merger appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Anyone watching Sound of Freedom might wonder how such evil has become so embedded in human culture. One method involves the world of “entertainment” and the individuals we’re conditioned to view as heroes.

    For example, below you will find a brief glimpse at two writers who enjoy places of honor in the American literary canon.

    Trigger warning: Please don’t keep reading if you wish to avoid discussions of deviant and criminal behavior.

    Click here to learn more about Allen Ginsberg than you probably know now:

    Allen Ginsberg: poet, writer, artist, activist, teacher… and pedophile

    MICKEY Z. JUNE 20, 2022

    Allen Ginsberg: poet, writer, artist, activist, teacher… and pedophile

    When you think of the iconic Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg, what comes to mind? His poem, Howl? His appearance in a legendary Bob Dylan video? What about his omnipresence in a vast array of protests, marches, etc.? Or could it be the fact that Ginsburg — hero of radicals, outcasts, and rebels everywhere — was a member of North American Man/Boy Lov…

    Read full story

    Moving on to another renowned Beat writer, William S. Burroughs is often called one of the greatest and most influential writers of the 20th century, most notably by Norman Mailer who deemed Burroughs to be, “The only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius.”

    Side note: Norman Mailer also once declared, “A little bit of rape is good for a man’s soul.” 

    According to the always reliable Wikipedia: “William Seward Burroughs II (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature.”

    Curiously, they left out the words pedophile or hebephile. Perhaps some enterprising soul out there will add something like this excerpt (from a 1955 letter written by Burroughs in Tangiers and addressed to Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac) to Burroughs’ Wiki page:

    The Italian school is just opposite, and I stand for hours watching the boys with my 8-power field glasses. Curious feeling of projecting myself, like I was standing over there with the boys, invisible earthbound ghost, torn with disembodied lust. They wear shorts, and I can see the goose pimples on their legs in the chill of the morning, count the hairs. Did I ever tell you about the time Marv and I paid two Arab kids sixty cents to watch them screw each other — we demanded semen too, no half-assed screwing. So I asked Marv: ‘Do you think they will do it?’ and he says: ‘I think so. They are hungry.’ They did it. Made me feel sorta like a dirty old man…”

    Contrary to the protestations of the swooning Left, none of the above is edgy or underground. It’s not trenchant or innovative. It’s criminal, predatory, and pathological.

    To discuss Burroughs as a “culturally influential” icon and canonize his work without mentioning his sexual assaults on children (and his open celebration of such heinous crimes) is to support and sustain the rampant, ever-increasing pedophile culture.

    We talk and talk and talk about the horrific state of human culture, then talk some more about what needs to be changed. We go round and round in our ever-tightening circles.

    But when will we dig deeper — as deep as we can possibly go — to begin comprehending the many ways diabolical power manifests and the many ways we each choose to ignore and/or support it in one way or another?

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • RNZ News

    A scene examination is continuing at a construction site in central Auckland after a fatal shooting there shocked the city yesterday morning.

    The gunman, 24-year-old Matu Tangi Matua Reid, was on home detention but allowed to work at the construction site.

    He died at the scene in a shoot-out with police after killing two civilians with a pump-action shotgun. Six others were wounded, including two police officers.

    The horror unfolded on the opening day of the FIFA Women’s Football World Cup in Auckland and a minute’s silence for the shooting victims was held at the first game at Eden Park last night when New Zealand defeated Norway 1-0.

    Police officers in high-vis vests have today re-entered the high-rise building on the corner of Queen and Quay streets and at least seven police cars are at the cordoned off site.

    A man working on the repairs at nearby Queen’s Wharf told RNZ the rules had been tightened at their site and people entering were being checked.

    A commuter said there appeared to be extra security at Britomart Station transit hub this morning but he felt safe.

    cbd shooting
    An armed police officer is seen at the cordon surrounding Thursday’s shooting incident in Auckland’s CBD. Image: Ziming Li/RNZ

    Shooting ‘out of the ordinary’, says Auckland mayor
    Reflecting on yesterday’s events, Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown told RNZ Morning Report the shooting was a “dreadful, unexpected thing”.

    “It was every emotion yesterday,” he said, but he thought the city had coped well in the aftermath of the ‘shock and horror’ of the morning’s events.”

    Matu Tangi Matua Reid
    The dead gunman Matu Tangi Matua Reid . . . on home detention but allowed to work at the central city construction site. Image: TDB

    Brown said he supported Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei’s decision to call for a rahui in the CBD area, and the FIFA fan zone on Quay Street had been closed.

    Ngāti Whātua has said this morning that no rahui is in place.

    “[The] fan zone was right hard up against the dreadful event and it just didn’t seem to be right to be having a night of celebration right next door to something that had been so horrible,” he said.

    “Ngāti Whātua called for, and I supported, a rahui on the area down there so we shut the fan zone and people, with a sad tinge, did go to the game at Eden Park, but with respect.

    “They had the one minute’s silence, which was part of our culture and the correct thing to do, and then there was a wonderful game afterwards so, I think … the city took it well.”

    ‘Good end to dreadful day’
    Brown said he had spoken to Prime Minister Chris Hipkins after last night’s match between New Zealand and Norway and they had agreed it was “a very good end to a dreadful day”.

    He said FIFA officials had been “very sympathetic” about the shooting.

    “They were very understanding, they were very concerned about the impact on the tournament, but also deeply respectful of the losses of — almost innocence — of the people here in Auckland CBD, plus of course the dreadful loss of life from this shocking experience.”

    While he had been one of the people raising concerns about ongoing crime issues such as ram raids in Auckland, Brown said he was not thinking about anything on the scale of what occurred yesterday.

    “It’s something out of the ordinary and I think this is one random person … and we shouldn’t possibly extrapolate that across the district, but crime on the streets with the ram raids is something which has got to be dealt with.”

    Brown had praise for both the police and members of the public regarding how they responded to the unfolding crisis on Thursday morning.

    “The police were wonderful, they responded bravely and promptly,” he said.

    “People behaved very well considering what an appalling thing had happened.”

    Violence like this has no place in city, says Swarbrick
    There would be a time for political debate and discussions about how to prevent incidents like yesterday’s shooting, Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick told Morning Report, but that time was not right now.

    “I very, very strongly want the message to be here that this violence has absolutely no place in our city or in our country, and we utterly reject it,” she said.

    Swarbrick said her thoughts were with the whānau and friends of those who had died as well as those who had been injured, emergency service staff, and the workers who had experienced the traumatic event.

    She said questions had been put to police officials at a briefing she attended yesterday, including about how the shooter had obtained a gun without a licence and while he was on home detention.

    Swarbrick expected those questions would be answered “in due course” but said it was important the facts were “crystal clear” first.

    “I don’t think that anyone benefits from politicians speculating in a vacuum of facts.”

    The briefing had made it “very clear that this was a tragic but isolated incident connected to the workplace and that there is no outstanding associated risk”, she said.

    Asked whether she believed a broader inquiry was needed to look into the use of home detention, Swarbrick said a number of reports commissioned by successive governments had identified evidence-based policies to address what was a complex issue, but that evidence was often “politically unpalatable”.

    The rhetoric and debate around law and order was often reduced to “soundbyte-solutions”, she said, “things that politicians know will not work and oftentimes are contrary to evidence”.

    She said New Zealanders deserved evidence-based interventions when it came to tackling crime.

    “It is really clear what we have to resource in terms of evidence-based policy but it is the crunchy and the hard stuff which looks meaningfully at prevention, it’s not this knee-jerk ‘tough-on-crime’ nonsense.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • New York, July 20, 2023—Belarusian authorities should immediately disclose the reason for the recent detention of journalist Ihar Karnei, reverse their decision to ban Polish journalist Justyna Prus, and let the media work freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.

    On Monday, July 17, authorities in Minsk searched the home of Karnei, a former freelance journalist with Radio Svaboda, the Belarus service of the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, detained him, and ordered him to be held for 10 days, according to a Facebook post by his daughter Palina Karnei, a report by the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an advocacy and trade group operating from exile, and multiple media reports. He is held in Akrestina temporary detention center in Minsk, those sources said.

    Palina Karnei told independent news website Mediazona that her father was facing criminal charges, but authorities did not disclose the reason for Karnei’s detention. Police seized computers and phones during the search of his apartment, media reports said.

    Separately, on June 30, a Belarusian border guard in Brest, a Belarusian city at the Poland-Belarus border, gave Prus, a Polish correspondent with Polish state news agency PAP, who was leaving Belarus, a document stating that she was banned from entering Belarus until June 7, 2028, following a decision by the Belarusian State Security Committee, or KGB, according to media reports, Tomasz Jarosz, the head of PAP’s foreign desk, who communicated with CPJ via email, and another PAP representative who communicated with CPJ via messaging app on condition of anonymity.

    “With the arrest of Ihar Karnei, the Belarusian authorities are following their usual pattern of detaining journalists on opaque grounds to maintain the pressure on independent voices. Meanwhile, the ban on Justyna Prus marks the departure of one of the last Western journalists from Belarus,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities should immediately disclose the reason for detaining Karnei, reverse the ban on Justyna Prus, and let the media work freely in Belarus.”

    Belarusian authorities have jailed an increasing number of journalists for their work since 2020, when the country was wracked by mass protests over the disputed reelection of Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko. In 2022, CPJ ranked the country as the world’s fifth worst jailer of journalists, with at least 26 journalists behind bars when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census on December 1.
     
    On July 1, Lukashenko signed into law a bill empowering the country’s Ministry of Information to ban the activities of foreign media in Belarus “in the event of unfriendly actions by foreign states against Belarusian media.”

    The PAP representative told CPJ that Prus was leaving Belarus for a personal trip to Poland on June 30, when she was notified of the five-year ban. Jarosz told CPJ that the document handed to Prus stated she was banned under Article 30 of the law on the legal status of foreign citizens in Belarus, but did not provide further details.

    Prus had been reporting from Belarus for PAP since 2016, and was accredited by the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the PAP report said. The representative told CPJ that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs canceled her accreditation in October 2020, when it annulled all foreign media accreditation, and reinstated it in the first half of 2021. Prus’ accreditation was valid at the time of the ban, but expired on July 13.

    Other recent detentions of journalists in Belarus:

    • Previously, around July 7, authorities in the eastern city of Mahilou detained Dzmitry Lyapeyka a freelance journalist and a former reporter with the local outlet Mahilou Vedomosti, and ordered him to be detained for 15 days for “subscriptions and likes,” according to multiple media reports and a BAJ report. Those reports did not specify the exact date of Lyapeyka’s detention or the charges he faces. CPJ is investigating to determine whether Lyapeyka’s detention is related to his journalism.
    • On June 9, officers with the Ministry of Interior’s Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption detained at least four journalists with privately-owned broadcaster Ranak in the southeastern city of Svietlahorsk on charges of distributing extremist materials, according to multiple media reports and BAJ. The journalists included Ranak editor-in-chief Vadzim Vezhnavets, reporter Andrei Lipski, and cameramen Pavel Rabko and Uladzimir Papou. In addition, law enforcement detained three other non-journalist employees of the broadcaster and two employees whose occupation was not made public.

    On June 12, a court in Svietlahorsk ordered Lipski and Rabko to be detained for seven days, confiscated their phones, and ordered Vezhnavets and Papou to be held for three days. They were all released after serving their sentence, a BAJ representative told CPJ via messaging app, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. The other five Ranak employees received fines ranging from 780 (US$312) to 925 (US$370) Belarusian rubles.

    According to BAJ’s unnamed source, the charges opened against the journalists are retaliation for Ranak’s coverage of a June 7 explosion of a pulp and paper mill in Svietlahorsk. Ranak covered the 2020 nationwide protests demanding Lukashenko’s resignation, media and BAJ reported. Authorities had previously searched the company’s office and some of its journalists’ apartments in 2020 and 2021.

    The Belarusian Ministry of Information blocked Ranak’s website shortly after the detentions, BAJ reported. On July 4, a court in the southeastern city of Homel labeled Ranak’s website and its social media as “extremist,” BAJ said

    • On June 6, law enforcement detained Tatsiana Pytko, the wife of freelance camera operator Vyacheslau Lazarau, who was detained in February, in the outskirts of the northeastern city of Vitebsk, BAJ and banned human rights group Viasna said. Lazarau was charged with facilitating extremist activity and Pytko, was charged with participating in an extremist formation, those sources said. If found guilty, they both face up to six years in jail, BAJ reported.

    The charges against Lazarau stem from his alleged collaboration with the banned Poland-based independent broadcaster Belsat TV. According to BAJ, while examining the content of Lazarau’s computer and phone, investigators noticed that Pytko appeared in some of the footage.

    CPJ emailed the Belarusian Investigative Committee and the KGB, but did not receive any reply.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • By Martyn Bradbury, editor of The Daily Blog

    My daughter came into the kitchen early today to tell me her friends were downtown in Auckland at Britomart, the transit hub of New Zealand’s biggest city, and that a construction worker had just run past them saying a man with a gun was shooting people.

    I immediately swept all the online news media and saw nothing and was in the process of suggesting to her that maybe her friends were pranking her when it broke on Breakfast TV.

    I know the area this shooting occurred in well — I was there a few days ago; most Aucklanders will know it as it is a vital entry point to downtown Auckland. To have a mass shooting event there is utterly outside the norm for Aucklanders.

    As the reverberations and shock ease, there will of course be immediate political fall out.

    Before all that though, first, let us acknowledge the uncompromising courage of our New Zealand police and emergency services. We all saw them sprint into that building knowing someone was armed and shooting people.

    I am the first to be critical of the NZ Police, but on this day, their professionalism and unflinching bravery was one of the few things we can be grateful for on such a poisoned morning.

    Let us also pause and mourn the two who were killed and 10 wounded. These were simply good honest folk going about their day of work and not one of them deserved the horror visited upon them by 24-year-old Matu Tangi Matua Reid.

    Now let’s talk about Matu.

    Troubling pump-action shotgun access
    The media have already highlighted that he was on home detention for domestic violence charges and was wearing an ankle bracelet. This is of no surprise nor shock, many on home detention have the option of applying for leave to work — we do this because those on home detention still need to pay the rent, far more troubling was his access to a pump-action shotgun he didn’t have a gun licence for.

    We know he had already been in a Turn Your Life Around Youth Development Trust programme.

    Political partisans will try and seize any part of his story to whip into political frenzy for their election narrative and we should reject and resist that.

    The banality of evil always tends to be far more basic than we ever appreciate.

    There is nothing special about Matu; he is simply another male without the basic emotional tools to facilitate his anger beyond violence. In that regard Matu is depressingly like tens of thousands of men in NZ.

    His background didn’t justify this terrible act of violence today and his actions can’t be conflated to show Labour are soft on crime.

    Another depressing violent male
    Matu is just another depressing male whose violence he could not control. There are tens of thousands like him and until we start focusing on building young men who have the emotional tools to facilitate their anger beyond violence, he won’t be the last.

    He has shamed himself.

    He has shamed his family.

    He has shamed us all.

    Today isn’t a day for politics, it is far too sad for that, the politics will come and everyone will be screaming their sweaty truth, but at its heart this is about broken men incapable of keeping their violence to themselves.

    What a sorrowful day for my beautiful city.

    Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RNZ News

    Two people have been killed in a shooting in Auckland central business district today.

    At least six people are also wounded, including police officers.

    Police say the situation is now contained and the shooter is dead.

    They were alerted to the incident when someone discharged a firearm inside a construction site at about 7.20am.

    The gunman moved through the construction site discharging his pump action shotgun, police say.

    When he reached the upper levels he hid inside an elevator shaft.

    Police attempted to engage with him, but the gunman fired further shots, before he was found dead a short time later, they say.

    The New Zealand Herald reports Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has praised the “heroic” actions of emergency services.

    He said there was no identified “political or ideological motivation” for the shooter and as such, there was no need to change the national security risk.

    The government has spoken to FIFA organisers today and the Women’s Football World Cup tournament will proceed as planned with the opening match tonight between New Zealand and Norway.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Democrats in Massachusetts have a proposal for prison inmates: Give up your internal organs and we’ll reduce your sentence. Also, a leader at the Church of Scientology has disappeared after authorities tried to serve him with a child trafficking lawsuit. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so […]

    The post Prisoners Trading Organs For Reduced Sentences & Scientology Leader On The Run To Avoid Lawsuit appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Pfizer is spending big money to control online media. And, a group of 8 teenage girls have been arrested for murdering a homeless man in Canada, and authorities think social media may have played a role in the killing. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please […]

    The post Pfizer Paying Big Money To Control Media Criticism & Teen Girls Commit Murder For Online Fame appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • By Dorothy Mark in Madang, PNG

    In the last 15 days of the month of July, 15 murders have occurred in the northern Papua New Guinean town of Madang — once described as “beautiful” — and the community now faces a law and order crisis.

    Madang Mayor Peter Masia said the Madang district authority could not do much in assisting police to actively carry out law and order action because public funds were still on hold after sitting MP Bryan Kramer had been dismissed as Madang MP.

    Calling Madang the “murder capital of PNG”, Masia said there had been an increase in killings with the latest killing occurring yesterday afternoon.

    Compared to the National Capital District (NCD) — Port Moresby — where killings happen every 2 to 3 days, Madang has seen killings every day for the last 15 days.

    An NCD police officer confirmed that every 2 to 3 days they were responding to a report of a killing in Port Moresby.

    “Yesterday a young man in his mid 20s from Angoram in East Sepik was stabbed in the chest by a street seller in broad daylight in the heart of [Madang] killing him instantly,” he said.

    Madang police desperately need resources to help them tackle Law and Order challenges in the province everyday.

    Police need housing, vehicles
    A senior policeman who wished not to be named said Madang police needed housing, vehicles and things like office stationery and manpower to boost police work in the province.

    There are two police stations in Madang — one is the Jomba police station and the other is the town police station.

    The officer said the estimated population ratio for one policeman to the Madang population was 1:1500 to 2000.

    He said they needed more police manpower to tackle the law and order problems, especially the killings that were happening every day.

    Transgogol people are now calling on the government to establish a police mobile squad base in the area to prevent more brutal murders in their area.

    Transgogol community leader and spokesman Morris Bann said there was state-owned land available.

    He said the type of killings in the area warranted the government to take serious steps in addressing law and order.

    Call for police mobile squad
    “We want a police mobile squad base built . . . so that law and order is monitored closely to instill the trust and security the people require from its government,” said Bann.

    Madang town resident Breed Kanjikali said the number of deaths required all Madang MPs to step in and address issues affecting the province and map out how they would assist police in combating crimes in the province.

    Bundi leader Alois Pandambai said the murder toll in the province was very significant and it portrayed an image where there was dysfunction in the political leadership of the province.

    He said Madang province did not seem to be functioning normally in the last seven months because of a political hussle and tussle over the position of the Provincial Administrator Frank Lau.

    “While our leaders are fighting over an appointment made by the NEC [National Executive Council], we are not giving 100 percent support to police work and our own people are being killed everyday,” he said.

    The 10 Nissan Patrol vehicles bought two years ago to support police work were now experiencing mechanical faults and had been grounded.

    Dorothy Mark is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • PNG Post-Courier

    Papua New Guinea police in East New Britain have launched a 21-day operation to clamp down on community conflicts in the province.

    Police operation camps have also been set up at conflict hotspots.

    ENB provincial police commander Chief Inspector Januarius Vosivai said the aim of the operation was to ease tension to allow the next processes to start.

    The Gelegele resettlement, Nangananga and Takubar are among other crime hotspots being closely monitored by police.

    Chief Inspector Vosivai said the two weeks of the term 2 school holidays had been the peak of community fights in the province.

    He said school-aged children — mostly boys — were involved in the confrontations in the communities.

    “Community fights is fuelled by petty criminal activities and when people do not report such matters to authorities and take it upon themselves, it further escalates,” he said.

    Collaborative efforts
    Authorities and local leaders are taking collaborative efforts to restore peace as well as seeking long term resolutions to the conflicts.

    Police response units have set up camps in the fighting zones and are monitoring the situation.

    Meanwhile, authorities in the province have initiated a peace process to be staged at the Gelegele resettlement area in the Rabaul district today.

    Community leaders at Gelegele have also urged youth to let the authorities deal with the matter while they refrain from instigating further violence.

    Several meetings at the Kabiu local level government chamber in Rabaul had been held with each rival community convening to stabilise tension within the resettlement area.

    “We are doing all we can to restore peace in our community, it is sad to see homes ransacked, houses burnt down and families fleeing for their lives,” a local leader said.

    Republished with permission.

  • Image Source: DonkeyHotey – CC BY 2.0

    Six Republicans on the Supreme Court just killed President Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness program.

    Republicans, predictably, are giddy, celebrating another Supreme Court victory in which, on behalf of their neofascist billionaire owners, they’re again “owning the libs.”

    They’re ecstatic that poor and working class people — particularly Black women who, as ABC News noted, “hold nearly two-thirds of the nearly $2 trillion outstanding student debt in the U.S.” — will find it ever harder to climb into the middle class, which increasingly requires a college degree.

    When you search on the phrase “student debt forgiveness” one of the top hits that comes up is a Fox “News” article by a woman who paid off her loans in full.

    “There are millions of Americans like me,” the author writes, “for whom debt forgiveness is an infuriating slap in the face after years of hard work and sacrifice. Those used to be qualities we encouraged as an American culture, and if Biden gets his way, we’ll be sending a very different message to the next generation.”

    This is, to be charitable, bullsh*t.

    Forgiving student debt is not a slap at anybody; it’s righting a moral wrong inflicted on millions of Americans by Ronald Reagan and his morbidly rich Republican buddies.

    Student debt is evil.

    It’s a crime against our nation, hobbling opportunity and weakening our intellectual infrastructure. It maintains and in many cases rigidifies the racial and class caste systems today’s Americans inherited from our eras of slavery and indenture.

    Combine this decision with the six Republicans on the Court ending affirmative action and legalizing discrimination this term and it’s clear this is exactly what the rightwing billionaires who put them on the Court and support their lavish vacations and lifestyles want.

    Many, if not most, of the people in today’s billionaire class have supported — and fought for — such a caste system since the founding of America, and in every other country around the world, since time immemorial. It’s literally the history of western civilization from ancient Greece and Rome, the stories of kings and conquistadors, and the “Robber Barons” of America’s gilded age.

    They really don’t care about improving the lives of everyday Americans; their philosophy is, “I got mine; screw you.” Educated themselves, they’ve always worked to “pull up the ladder” behind them and thus maintain their elite status.

    As history shows, this harms countries in real and measurable ways.

    Every nation’s single biggest long-term asset is a well-educated populace, and student debt diminishes that.

    Every other advanced democracy on the planet understands this.

    That’s why student debt at the scale we have in America literally does not exist anywhere else in the rest of the developed world.

    American students, in fact, are going to college for free right now in Germany, Iceland, France, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, because pretty much anybody can go to college for free in those countries and dozens of others.

    “Student debt?” The rest of the developed world doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

    Student debt also largely didn’t exist in modern America before the Reagan Revolution. It was created by Republicans here in the 1980s — intentionally — and if we can overcome Republican opposition we can intentionally end it here and join the rest of the world in once again benefiting from an educated populace.

    Forty years on from the Reagan Revolution, student debt has crippled three generations of young Americans: over 44 million people carry the burden, totaling a $2+ trillion drag on our economy that benefits nobody except the banks earning interest on the debt and the politicians they pay off.

    But that doesn’t begin to describe the damage student debt has done to America since Reagan, in his first year as governor of California, ended free tuition at the University of California and cut state aid to that college system by 20 percent across-the-board.

    After having destroyed low income Californians’ ability to get a college education in the 1970s, Reagan then took his anti-education program national as president in 1981.

    When asked why he’d taken a meat-axe to higher education and was pricing college out of the reach of most Americans, he said, much like Ron DeSantis might today, that college students were “too liberal” and America “should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.”

    It was the 1980s version of today’s “war on woke.”

    On May 1, 1970, Governor Reagan announced that students protesting the Vietnam war across America were “brats,” “freaks” and “cowardly fascists,” adding, as The New York Times noted at the time:

    “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement!”

    Four days later four were dead at Kent State, having been murdered by national guard riflemen using live ammunition against anti-war protesters.

    Before Reagan became president, states paid 65 percent of the costs of colleges, and federal aid covered another 15 or so percent, leaving students to cover the remaining 20 percent with their tuition payments.

    It’s why when I briefly attended college in the late 1960s — before Reagan — I could pay my tuition working a weekend job as a DJ at a local radio station and washing dishes at Bob’s Big Boy restaurant on Trowbridge Road in East Lansing.

    That’s how it works — at a minimum — in most developed nations, although in many northern European countries college is not only free, but the government pays students a stipend to cover books and rent.

    Here in America, though, the numbers are pretty much reversed from pre-1980 as a result of Reaganommics, with students now covering about 80 percent of the costs. Thus the need for student loans here in the USA.

    As soon as he became president, Reagan went after federal aid to students with a fanatic fervor.  Devin Fergus documented for The Washington Post how, as a result, student debt first became a thing across the United States during the early ‘80s:

    “No federal program suffered deeper cuts than student aid. Spending on higher education was slashed by some 25 percent between 1980 and 1985. … Students eligible for grant assistance freshmen year had to take out student loans to cover their second year.”

    It became a mantra for conservatives, particularly in Reagan’s cabinet. Let the kids pay for their own damn “liberal” educations.

    Reagan’s college educated Director of the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman, told a reporter in 1981:

    “I don’t accept the notion that the federal government has an obligation to fund generous grants to anybody who wants to go to college.  It seems to me that if people want to go to college bad enough then there is opportunity and responsibility on their part to finance their way through the best way they can. … I would suggest that we could probably cut it a lot more.”

    After all, cutting taxes for the morbidly rich was Reagan’s first and main priority, a position the GOP holds to this day. Cutting education could “reduce the cost of government” and thus justify more tax cuts.

    Reagan’s first Education Secretary, Terrel Bell, wrote in his memoir:

    “Stockman and all the true believers identified all the drag and drain on the economy with the ‘tax-eaters’: people on welfare, those drawing unemployment insurance, students on loans and grants, the elderly bleeding the public purse with Medicare, the poor exploiting Medicaid.”

    Reagan’s next Education Secretary, William Bennett, was even more blunt about how America should deal with the “problem” of uneducated people who can’t afford college, particularly if they were African American:

    “I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime,” Bennett famously said, “you could — if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”

    These doctrines became an article of faith across the GOP and remain so to this day, as we saw last week with the Republicans on the Supreme Court ending affirmative action.

    Reagan’s OMB Director David Stockman told Congress that students were “tax eaters … [and] a drain and drag on the American economy.” Student aid, he said, “isn’t a proper obligation of the taxpayer.”

    This was where, when, and how today’s student debt crisis was kicked off in 1981.

    Before Reagan, though, America had a different perspective.

    Both my father and my wife Louise’s father served in the military during World War II and both went to college on the GI Bill.  My dad dropped out after two years and went to work in a steel plant because mom got pregnant with me; Louise’s dad, who’d grown up dirt poor, went all the way for his law degree and ended up as Assistant Attorney General for the State of Michigan.

    They were two among almost 8 million young men and women who not only got free tuition from the 1944 GI Bill but also received a stipend to pay for room, board, and books.  And the result — the return on our government’s investment in those 8 million educations — was substantial.

    The best book on that time and subject is Edward Humes’ Over Here: How the GI Bill Transformed the American Dream, summarized by Mary Paulsell for the Columbia Daily Tribune:

    “[That] groundbreaking legislation gave our nation 14 Nobel Prize winners, three Supreme Court justices, three presidents, 12 senators, 24 Pulitzer Prize winners, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 450,000 engineers, 240,000 accountants, 17,000 journalists, 22,000 dentists and millions of lawyers, nurses, artists, actors, writers, pilots and entrepreneurs.”

    Free education literally built America’s middle class.

    When people have an education, they not only raise the competence and vitality of a nation; they also earn more money, which stimulates the economy.  Because they earn more, they pay more in taxes, which helps pay back the government for the cost of that education.

    In 1952 dollars, the GI Bill’s educational benefit cost the nation $7 billion.  The increased economic output over the next 40 years that could be traced directly to that educational cost was $35.6 billion, and the extra taxes received from those higher-wage-earners was $12.8 billion.

    In other words, the US government invested $7 billion and got a $48.4 billion return on that investment, about a $7 return for every $1 invested.

    In addition, that educated workforce made it possible for America to lead the world in innovation, R&D, and new business development for three generations.

    We invented the transistor, the integrated circuit, the internet, new generations of miracle drugs, sent men to the moon and reshaped science.

    Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln knew this simple concept that seems so hard for Reagan and generations of Republicans since to understand: when you invest in young people, you’re investing in your nation.

    Jefferson founded the University of Virginia as a 100% tuition-free school; it was one of his three proudest achievements, ranking higher on the epitaph he wrote for his own tombstone than his having been both president and vice president.

    Lincoln was equally proud of the free and low-tuition colleges he started. As the state of North Dakota notes:

    “Lincoln signed the Morrill Act on July 2, 1862, giving each state a minimum of 90,000 acres of land to sell, to establish colleges of engineering, agriculture, and military science. … Proceeds from the sale of these lands were to be invested in a perpetual endowment fund which would provide support for colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts in each of the states.”

    Fully 76 free or very-low-tuition state colleges were started because of Lincoln’s effort and since have educated millions of Americans including my mom, who graduated from land-grant Michigan State University in the 1940s, having easily paid her minimal tuition working as a summer lifeguard in her home town of Charlevoix, Michigan.

    Every other developed country in the world knows this, too: student debt is rare or even nonexistent in most western democracies. Not only is college free or close to free around much of the developed world; many countries even offer a stipend for monthly expenses like our GI Bill did back in the day.

    As mentioned earlier, thousands of American students are currently studying in Germany at the moment for free. Hundreds of thousands of American students are also getting free college educations right now in Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, among others.

    Republican policies of starving education and cranking up student debt have made US banks a lot of money, but they’ve cut America’s scientific leadership in the world and, since the institution of trickle-down Reaganomics, stopped three generations of young people from starting businesses, having families, and buying homes.

    The damage to working class and poor Americans, both economic and human, is devastating. Even worse for America, it’s a double challenge for minorities.

    And now the Supreme Court has essentially told our young people who weren’t members of the “Lucky Sperm Club” with wealthy or legacy parents that they’re simply out of luck. And, as noted, the GOP is celebrating.

    Which raises the question: how gullible do these Republicans think their voters are?

    Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on Twitter that student loan forgiveness was “completely unfair.” She’s the same Republican congresswoman who had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven, and happily banked that government money without a complaint.

    Republican members of Congress, in fact, seem to be among those in the front of the debt-forgiveness line with their hands out, even as billionaires bankroll their campaigns and backstop their lifestyles.

    As the Center for American Progress noted on Twitter in response to a GOP tweet whining that, “If you take out a loan, you pay it back”:

    Member —— Amount in PPP Loans Forgiven
    Matt Gaetz (R-FL) – $476,000
    Greg Pence (R-IN) – $79,441
    Vern Buchanan (R-FL) – $2,800,000
    Kevin Hern (R-OK) – $1,070,000
    Roger Williams (R-TX) – $1,430,000
    Brett Guthrie (R-KY) – $4,300,000
    Ralph Norman (R-SC) $306,250
    Ralph Abraham (R-AL) – $38,000
    Mike Kelly (R-PA) – $974,100
    Vicki Hartzler (R-MO) – $451,200
    Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) – $988,700
    Carol Miller (R-WV) – $3,100,000

    Every single one of these Republican members of Congress has echoed Greene’s criticism of student debt relief or supported efforts to block it. Every one eagerly welcomed forgiveness of their Covid-era debts.

    So, yeah, Republicans are complete hypocrites about forgiving loan debt, in addition to pushing policies that actually hurt our nation (not to mention the generations coming up).

    Ten thousand dollars in student debt forgiveness would have been a start, but if we really want America to soar, we need to go away beyond that.

    Just like for-profit health insurance, student loans are a malignancy attached to our republic by Republicans trying to increase profits for their donors while extracting more and more cash from working-class families.

    If Democrats can regain control of the House and hold the Senate and White House in 2024, they must not only zero-out existing student debt across our nation but revive the post-war government support for education — from Jefferson and Lincoln to the GI Bill and college subsidies — that the Reagan, Bush, Bush, and Trump administrations have destroyed.

    Then, and only then, can the true “making America great again” begin.

    This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thom Hartmann.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A human trafficking survivor is suing budget hotel chain Red Roof Inn for allowing trafficking to happen at their properties. Then, a new report has found that eating a single freshwater fish is the same as drinking dangerous PFAS chemicals for an entire month. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party […]

    The post Lawsuit Says Red Roof Inn Ignored Trafficking Warning Signs & PFAS Toxins Found In Freshwater Fish appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Several victims of Jeffrey Epstein are suing big banks for allowing Epstein to use his money for human trafficking and abuse. Then, a gas station owner has made headlines after hiring private security armed to the teeth as crime ravages Philadelphia. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, […]

    The post Epstein Victims Target Wall Street Bank Enablers & Gas Station Owner Hires Armed Guards appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

    Papua New Guinea’s amended Criminal Code Act will give police the power to deal with what they are calling “domestic terrorists”.

    The impetus for the new legislation has been the rash of kidnappings carried out in a remote part of the Southern Highlands.

    In Bosavi, gangs of youths have captured at least three groups, held them for ransom, and in the case of 17 teenage girls allegedly raped them.

    Police Commissioner David Manning said the kidnappings and ransom demands constituted domestic terrorism.

    “The amendments establish clear legal process for the escalated use of up to (sic) lethal force, powers of search and seizure, and detention, for acts of domestic terrorism,” he said.

    “It is high time that we call these criminals domestic terrorists, because that is what they are, and we need harsher measures to bring them to justice one way or another.”

    Police Commissioner, David Manning.
    PNG Police Commissioner David Manning . . . “It is high time that we call these criminals domestic terrorists.” Image: PNG police/RNZ Pacific

    Manning, in a statement, went on to say domestic terrorism included the “deliberate use of violence against people and communities to murder, injure and intimidate, including kidnapping and ransoms, and the destruction of properties.

    Includes hate crimes
    “An accurate definition of domestic terrorism also includes hate crimes, including tribal fights and sorcery-related violence.”

    Transparency International Papua New Guinea chair Peter Aitsi said he doubted the new law would be effective.

    He said police already had lethal powers.

    “I think in terms of changing the act to give them more power, I think they already have it,” he said.

    “But I doubt whether it will have any significant improvement in terms of the response to this emerging problem we are having now, of hostage taking and ransom seeking.”

    Aiitsi said that in the Highlands there was a proliferation of guns, and government authority had been overwhelmed by one or two individuals with the money and guns to maintain power.

    “So in this type of environment you can see the police and authorities, so-called authorities, would be powerless, because it’s these individuals that control these large sections of these communities, that are now well armed, that are the power in these areas.”

    PNG Highlands Highway
    PNG authorities “would be powerless, because it’s [some] individuals that control these large sections of these communities, that are now well armed”. Image: Koroi Hawkins/RNZ Pacific

    Call For a different approach

    Cathy Alex was one of a group kidnapped in February, along with a New Zealand-born Australian archaeologist and two others.

    She said she had got some insight into the age and temperament of the kidnappers.

    “Young boys, 16 and up, a few others,” she said.

    “No Tok Pisin, no English. It’s a generation that’s been out there that has had no opportunities.

    “What is happening in Bosavi is a glimpse, a dark glimpse, of where our country is heading to.”

    She said there was a need for a focus on providing services to the rural areas as soon as possible.

    Transparency International PNG's Peter Aitsi
    Transparency International PNG’s Peter Aitsi . . . PNG has allowed its government system to be undermined by political elites with “our people really being pushed to the real margins of our development”. Image: Transparency International PNG/RNZ Pacific

    Peter Aitsi said that over the past 20 years PNG had allowed its government system to be undermined with political elites taking control of sub-national services.

    He said this had led to “our people really being pushed to the real margins of our development”.

    Not engaged in society
    “So as a result they are not engaged in the process of society building or even nationhood.”

    Aitsi said this results in the lawless conduct.

    “Their interest is to serve those who can put food on the table for them, and essentially what they see as people who care about their welfare, but they are just using them for their individual outcomes.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

  • SPECIAL REPORT: By Yamin Kogoya

    An Indonesian court hearing was held at Tipikor Court, Jakarta, last week when suspended Papuan Governor Lukas Enembe was arraigned before a panel of judges on allegations of bribery and gratification over the Papua provincial infrastructure project.

    The panel of judges refused Enembe’s exception, or memorandum of objection, to the charges after finding sufficient evidence to reject the governor’s arguments.

    However, given the governor’s ill health, the judges ruled to prioritise his health and grant his request to suspend proceedings until he is medically fit to stand trial.

    The governor’s request to have his son’s Melbourne-based university student bank account unblocked to continue his studies was not granted, and his legal case is pending.

    The following three points were determined by the judges last Monday week (24 June 2023):

    1. Granted the access request of the defendant/the defendant’s legal advisory team;
    2. Ordered the Public Prosecutor at the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to object to the detention of Lukas Enembe from 26 June to 9 July 2023; and
    3. Ordered the Public Prosecutor at the commission to report on the progress of the defendant’s health to court.

    Abandoned in Indonesia’s military hospital
    Governor Lukas Enembe is now being held in Indonesia’s military hospital (Gatot Soebroto Army Hospital) in Jakarta.

    The governor repeatedly informed the Indonesian authorities that he was in need of medical treatment and needed to be monitored in Singapore by his regular medical specialists. These requests, however, have been rejected to date.

    Psychologically, his treatment in Singapore is completely different from that in Jakarta. The governor is constantly being monitored by KPK, treated by KPK’s appointed doctors in military-controlled hospitals.

    It is highly unlikely that these environments are ideal for his recovery. The hospital where he is currently being held is named after a national hero of Indonesia, Gatot Soebroto.

    The ailing accused Papua Governor Lukas Enembe in a wheelchair and handcuffed
    The ailing accused Papua Governor Lukas Enembe in a wheelchair and handcuffed . . . his defence lawyers and family accuse Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency of ill treatment. Image: Odiyaiwuu.com

    In 1819, the hospital was established as the main hospital for the Indonesian Army. The hospital also provides limited services for civilians. Papua’s governor, the head of the Papuan tribes, is now being held in this military hospital.

    The governor’s family complains about the ongoing inhumane treatment.

    The governor’s family admits that it was difficult for them to care for him while he was abandoned at Gatot Subroto Army Central Hospital, as determined by a panel of judges from the Jakarta Corruption Court (Tipikor).

    Restrictions imposed
    Governor Enembe’s family said the detention officers imposed restrictions on them.

    Elius Enembe, the governor’s brother, and family spokesperson, said: “KPK Detention Centre regulations allow us to visit Mr Lukas only on Mondays. It was only for two hours.”

    According to Elius, the family feels that two hours of treatment a week are not adequate and not optimal for treatment, reports Odiyaiwuu.com.

    Governor Enembe is currently under the custody of the judicial system, not KPK. Thus it is the judge, and not the KPK, who has the authority to determine when and how long the family is allowed to visit Enembe.

    “But why are we restricted by KPK detention officers now?” Elius said.

    Even in the courtroom, the judge explained that Mr Lukas’ treatment at the hospital follows standard hospital operating procedures and not KPK detention procedures.

    Moreover, the KPK prosecutor was present in the courtroom and was able to hear the judge’s statement that Lukas Enembe’s delivery followed hospital procedures, not those at the KPK detention facility.

    Family objections
    Because of this, Elius said, the family strongly objected to the restrictions placed by KPK detention officers on the days and hours of Enembe’s visit.

    According to Elius, Lukas Enembe’s ongoing trial would undoubtedly be a unique legal cases both in Indonesia and internationally.

    Lukas Enembe, who suffers from various serious health conditions, such as chronic kidney disease — stage 5, suffered four strokes, and has hepatitis, and is being abandoned at Gatot Soebroto Hospital. His physical condition is very poor, and his legs are swollen.

    He is the only defendant who has appeared before the court barefoot and wearing training pants. As well as being the only defendant accompanied by a lawyer in the defendant’s seat, he was also the only defendant whose defence memorandum was not read by himself or by a lawyer.

    Governor Lukas Enembe has difficulty speaking after suffering the strokes and needs to use the bathroom frequently.

    “This will undoubtedly be a historical record in itself, a citizen of this country [with senior official roles] . . .  ranging from the Deputy Regent of Puncak to the two-term Governor of Papua, and yet has been treated as a criminal,” said Enembe’s younger brother in Jakarta, reports Kompas.com.

    KPK continues to issue new accusations and allegations, which are being widely reported by Indonesia’s national media.

    Case takes new turn
    The corruption case against Governor Lukas Enembe, however, took a new turn when allegations of misappropriation of the Papuan Regional Budget (APBD) funds emerged, according to Busnis.com.

    The governor’s senior lawyer, Professor O C Kaligis, challenged KPK’s new allegations as “tendentious and misleading”, reports Innews.co.

    KPK is now investigating a massive sport, cultural, and recreational complex built under Lukas Enembe’s administration and named the Lukas Enembe Stadium.

    The governor has only been given until July 6 to get some treatment for his deteriorating health.

    There is an element of brutality, savagery, and mercilessness in Jakarta’s treatment of this Papuan leader.

    The once highly acclaimed Papuan tribal chief, governor, and leader not just of his people, but of Indonesians and Melanesian as well many people, is being locked up and tortured in Jakarta as if he is a “dangerous terrorist’.

    As his family, Papuans, lawyers, and he himself have warned, if he dies the KPK would be responsible for his death.

    Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic/activist who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ANALYSIS: By François Dubet, Université de Bordeaux

    Although they never fail to take us aback, French riots have followed the same distinct pattern ever since protests broke out in the eastern suburbs of Lyon in 1981, an episode known as the “summer of Minguettes”: a young person is killed or seriously injured by the police, triggering an outpouring of violence in the affected neighbourhood and nearby.

    Sometimes, as in the case of the 2005 riots and of this past week’s, it is every rough neighbourhood that flares up.

    Throughout the past 40 years in France, urban revolts have been dominated by the rage of young people who attack the symbols of order and the state: town halls, social centres, schools, and shops.

    An institutional and political vacuum
    That rage is the kind that leads one to destroy one’s own neighbourhood, for all to see.

    Residents condemn these acts, but can also understand the motivation. Elected representatives, associations, churches and mosques, social workers and teachers admit their powerlessness, revealing an institutional and political vacuum.

    Of all the revolts, the summer of the Minguettes was the only one to pave the way to a social movement: the March for Equality and Against Racism in December 1983.

    Numbering more than 100,000 people and prominently covered by the media, it was France’s first demonstration of its kind. Left-leaning newspaper Libération nicknamed it “La Marche des Beurs”, a colloquial term that refers to Europeans whose parents or grandparents are from the Maghreb.

    In the demonstrations that followed, no similar movement appears to have emerged from the ashes.

    At each riot, politicians are quick to play well-worn roles: the right denounces the violence and goes on to stigmatise neighbourhoods and police victims; the left denounces injustice and promises social policies in the neighbourhoods.

    In 2005, then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy sided with the police. France’s current President, Emmanuel Macron, has expressed compassion for the teenager killed by the police in Nanterre, but politicians and presidents are hardly heard in the neighbourhoods concerned.

    We then wait for silence to set in until the next time the problems of the banlieues (French suburbs) and its police are rediscovered by society at large.

    Lessons to be learned
    The recurrence of urban riots in France and their scenarios yield some relatively simple lessons.

    First, the country’s urban policies miss their targets. Over the last 40 years, considerable efforts have been made to improve housing and facilities. Apartments are of better quality, there are social centres, schools, colleges and public transportation.

    It would be wrong to say that these neighbourhoods have been abandoned.

    On the other hand, the social and cultural diversity of disadvantaged suburbs has deteriorated. More often than not, the residents are poor or financially insecure, and are either descendants of immigrants or immigrants themselves.

    Above all, when given the opportunity and the resources, those who can leave the banlieues soon do, only to be replaced by even poorer residents from further afield. Thus while the built environment is improving, the social environment is unravelling.

    However reluctant people may be to talk about France’s disadvantaged neighbourhoods, the social process at work here is indeed one of ghettoisation – i.e., a growing divide between neighbourhoods and their environment, a self-containment reinforced from within. You go to the same school, the same social centre, you socialise with the same individuals, and you participate in the same more or less legal economy.

    In spite of the cash and local representatives’ goodwill, people still feel excluded from society because of their origins, culture or religion. In spite of social policies and councillors’ work, the neighbourhoods have no institutional or political resources of their own.

    Whereas the often communist-led “banlieues rouges” (“red suburbs”) benefited from the strong support of left-leaning political parties, trade unions and popular education movements, today’s banlieues hardly have any spokespeople. Social workers and teachers are full of goodwill, but many don’t live in the neighbourhoods where they work.

    This disconnect works both ways, and the past days’ riots revealed that elected representatives and associations don’t have any hold on neighbourhoods where residents feel ignored and abandoned. Appeals for calm are going unheeded. The rift is not just social, it’s also political.

    A constant face-off
    With this in mind, we are increasingly seeing young people face off with the police. The two groups function like “gangs”, complete with their own hatreds and territories.

    In this landscape, the state is reduced to legal violence and young people to their actual or potential delinquency.

    The police are judged to be “mechanically” racist on the grounds that any young person is a priori a suspect. Young people feel hatred for the police, fuelling further police racism and youth violence.

    Older residents would like to see more police officers to uphold order, but also support their own children and the frustrations and anger they feel.

    This “war” is usually played out at a low level. When a young person dies, however, everything explodes and it’s back to the drawing board until the next uprising, which will surprise us just as much as the previous ones.

    But there is something new in this tragic repetition. The first element is the rise of the far right — and not just on that side of the political spectrum. Racist accounts of the uprisings are taking hold, one that speaks of “barbarians” and immigration, and there’s fear that this could lead to success at the ballot box.

    The second is the political and intellectual paralysis of the political left. While it denounces injustice and sometimes supports the riots, it does not appear to have put forward any political solution other than police reform.

    So long as the process of ghettoisation continues, as France’s young people and security forces face off time and time again, it is hard to see how the next police blunder and the riots that follow won’t be just around the corner.The Conversation

    Dr François Dubet, professeur des universités émérite, Université de Bordeaux. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

  • By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist, and Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent

    A woman who was part of a group kidnapped in Papua New Guinea in February has spoken out after the kidnapping and reported rape of 17 schoolgirls in the same area of Southern Highlands earlier this month.

    Cathy Alex, the New Zealand-born Australian academic Bryce Barker and two female researchers, were taken in the Mt Bosavi region and held for ransom.

    They were all released when the Papua New Guinea government paid a ransom of US$28,000 to the kidnappers to secure their release.

    Alex, who heads the Advancing Women’s Leaders’ Network, said that what the 17 abducted girls had gone through prompted her to speak out, after the country, she believed, had done nothing.

    A local said family members of the girls negotiated with the captors and were eventually able to secure their release.

    The villagers reportedly paid an undisclosed amount of cash and a few pigs as the ransom.

    Alex said she and the other women in her group had feared they would be raped when they were kidnapped.

    PNG Prime Minister James Marape shared a photo on Facebook of two of the hostages, including professor Bryce Barker, after their release.
    Professor Bryce Barker and an unnamed woman after being released by kidnappers in February. Image: PM James Marape/FB

    ‘My life preserved’
    “My life was preserved even though there was a time where the three of us were pushed to go into the jungle so they could do this to us.

    “We chose death over being raped. Maybe the men will not understand, but for a woman or a girl rape is far worse than death.”

    Alex said they had had received a commitment that they would not be touched, so the revelations about what happened to the teenage girls was horrifying.

    She said her experience gave her some insight into the age and temperament of the kidnappers.

    “Young boys, 16 and up, a few others. No Tok Pisin, no English. It’s a generation that’s been out there that has had no opportunities. What is happening in Bosavi is a glimpse, a dark glimpse of where our country is heading to.”

    The teenage girls from the most recent kidnapping are now safe and being cared for but they cannot return to their village because it is too dangerous.

    Need for focus
    Cathy Alex said there was a need for a focus on providing services to the rural areas as soon as possible.

    She said people were resilient and could change, as long as the right leadership was provided.

    Bosavi is one of the remotest areas in PNG, with no roads and few services

    It suffered significant damage during earthquake in 2018.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

  • By Jeffrey Elapa in Port Moresby

    In what is described as a “significant relief”, seven Papua New Guinea teachers and their families were rescued from an attempted kidnapping in the remote Mt Bosavi region in Hela Province.

    Hela Education Director Ronny Angu said the teachers and their families were rescued safely by the Hela Education Division from their attempted kidnappers.

    He said the teachers are from the Wagalu primary school, the same primary school where 17 school girls were recently kidnapped, raped and held hostage for ransom.

    Angu said the teachers and their families have escaped from an organised kidnapping and potential harm by criminals after a successful rescue operation, executed with the help of key stakeholders that demonstrated “unwavering commitment and collaboration”.

    He said the “heroic efforts” from Hela police and Moro police, the Hela Provincial government and the Hela Education Division, ensured that the teachers and their families were successfully relocated to safety.

    “Their dedication and selflessness significantly contributed to the success of the rescue mission,” he said.

    “To commemorate the safe return of the teachers and their families and for God’s guidance and protection, the Hela Education Division organised a welcome party. It was a moment of immense joy and relief, where experiences and challenges were openly discussed, and tears were shared.

    Support for healing
    “Hela Education Division is committed to providing the necessary support to the staff members to help them settle back into their respective homes.

    “We aim to provide an opportunity to the teachers to reconnect with their families and begin the process of healing from the traumatic experiences they endured.

    “The success of the rescue mission is a powerful testament to the unwavering commitment of the education division to serve the community and provide quality education in Hela Province.

    “The division expressed sincere gratitude to those who supported and made the rescue operation successful, especially the Hela police, Moro police, Hela Provincial government, and Hela Education Division,” Angu said.

    “This successful rescue operation is a significant relief to Hela Province. The safe return of the teachers and their families after such a perilous experience cannot be more relieving news.

    “We wish all of them a speedy recovery from their ordeal.”

    Jeffrey Elapa is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.