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Category: Democracy

  • NZ ‘running out of patience’ – Peters lashes Israel over Gaza aid blockade

    RNZ News

    New Zealand has joined 23 other countries calling out Israel and demanding a full supply of foreign aid be allowed into the territory.

    Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report today it was “intolerable” that Israel had blocked any aid reaching residents for many weeks.

    The UN is warning that 14,000 babies are estimated to be suffering severe acute malnutrition in Gaza and ideally they need to get supplies within 48 hours.

    The UK, France and Canada have expressed their frustration, with the UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy telling Parliament the war in Gaza had entered a “dark new phase” and the UK was cancelling trade talks with Israel.

    Although the situation had come about because of acts of terrorism by Hamas, for residents in Gaza it had become “intolerable”, Peters told Morning Report.

    “We’ve had enough of this and we want the matter resolved and now.”

    A full resumption of aid should have happened a long time ago and it was essential that the United Nations be involved in delivering it.

    ‘Had enough of it’
    “… we’ve just simply had enough of it, utterly so [from Israel].”

    The statement by the countries reaffirmed what had been said for a long time that Israel must make aid available.

    New Zealand also opposed Israel’s latest expansion of military operations in Gaza, Peters said.

    The Palestinian Authority and countries such as Egypt and Indonesia understood New Zealand’s position.

    “We just want to sort this out and the long-term thing [Palestinians’ future alongside Israel] has got to be resolved as well.

    “Israel needs to get the message very clear — we are running out of patience and hearing excuses.”

    Asked if the Israeli ambassador should be called in so the message could be conveyed more clearly, he said it would be a symbolic gesture that would not help starving babies.

    Israel already knew what this country’s stance was, he said.

    It was an appalling situation that had started with “unforgivable terrorism” but Israel had gone “far too far” in its response, Peters said.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Trump’s First Four Months

    Today marks four months since would-be dictator Trump took office. How is the progressive resistance doing in its urgent battle to prevent what Trump and the MAGA want to impose?

    In early February, a few weeks into this time of testing, I identified our objectives over the next two years as “making as many advances as we can on local and state levels while preventing as much damage as possible to the primary MAGA targets: US democracy, human and civil rights, including internationally, organized labor and programs that benefit low- and moderate-income working people, and the natural environment on which all life depends.” I put forward five areas of focus, five tactics, that I thought were critical for successful resistance: street heat, local/state/federal government, courts, media and publicity, and outreach.

    I think the most important development over these months has been the emergence of massive, repeated, and geographically widespread street heat, millions of us demonstrating in state capitols, in DC, at Tesla dealerships, in thousands of towns in every single state. The high point so far was three and a half million of us in the streets for the April 5 “Hands Off” actions, but the many other national days of action, beginning with 50501’s February 5 mobilization, have all been critical to building a widespread spirit of resistance.

    June 14, No Kings Day, is the next major nationwide action, and with 880  actions already on the calendar, there is reason to believe this will be bigger than April 5. We should all do whatever we can to make it so!

    These actions have undoubtedly strengthened those of us taking part in them and others: law firms, Harvard and other major universities, judges, media figures, faith leaders, and more. Indeed, courage is contagious, and on that front, we should feel good about what we have accomplished so far.

    As far as the courts, according to the Associated Press, as of today, 158 Trump executive orders, or 76% of them, have either been blocked or are pending, with 49, or 24%, taking effect. These are not good numbers for the Trumpfascists and a sign that they are going to have a hard time doing all that they want to do.

    It’s also significant that the Supreme Court has, in several cases, refused to do Trump’s bidding. There are clear signs that not just the three liberal judges but also some conservatives, especially Roberts and Barrett, have substantial concerns about Trump’s efforts to dominate both Congress and the courts.

    What about Congress? As I write, the Republicans who run the House of Representatives with a tiny majority struggle to pass the reconciliation bill, ridiculously named the “Big Beautiful Bill,” they have been working on for months. If eventually passed, and that’s a definite “if,” the Republican-run Senate is by no means ready to approve what the House comes up with. There are many internal differences, some strongly felt, both within the overall House and on the part of more than a few Senators in relation to how and what the House is doing.

    That is why many groups, right now, are organizing to mobilize massive pressure on members of the House. All of us should be flooding House members demanding, if Democrats, that they speak out and do whatever they can to frustrate MAGA plans. Even more important, pressure is needed on Republicans, especially those who are in Congressional districts that are expected to be competitive in 2026.

    As far as media and publicity, our actions in the streets and the growing willingness of people and organized groups from a broad mix of backgrounds to speak up and resist have had an impact on more than the usual progressive media sources. The Wall Street Journal (!), as one big example, has been very critical of Trump, mainly for his poor leadership when it comes to the economy, especially the tariff debacle. Every once in a while, Fox News people have had specific criticisms of what the Trump Administration is doing. Overall, in no way has the mass media, and certainly not progressive media, including social media, been cowed into silence and submission.

    There are other indicators that the progressive resistance should take heart and keep on with our absolutely essential work:

    -Where have the MAGAs been when we have demonstrated repeatedly in the streets, including the streets in deep red states? I’ve heard of very, very few instances of any substantive, MAGA, in-person street opposition. This has to be in part because, as polls have shown, there is a lot of discontent among a significant percentage of Trump voters about his handling of the economy, particularly the tariff debacle.

    -Bernie Sanders and AOC deserve a loud shout-out for the leadership they gave with their Fight Oligarchy tour of mainly red states, drawing thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of people to their rallies. That’s a huge example of the kind of outreach much needed over the coming months and years.

    There is something special about this demonstration of the power of age and youth joining together, which has also been reflected in many of the street actions. Bernie and AOC are showing in action how to take on the MAGAs in a way that also builds a strong, independent people’s movement not controlled by the corporate-friendly wing of the Democratic Party.

    -And what about Pope Leo 14? The Catholic Church, as male-dominated and hierarchical as it still is, has decided to continue the more progressive direction that the late Pope Francis worked to advance. We now have a new Pope from Chicago, an American who has already made clear he will speak out for those whom the Trumpists are demonizing and deporting, criminalizing, and hurting. For those who believe in a higher power, it could be seen as a sign that, despite Trump, despite Gaza, despite so many reasons not to have hope, there is hope.

    It really is true that there ain’t no power like the power of the people, organized, and the power of the people doesn’t stop.

    The post Trump’s First Four Months first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Starvation of Gaza – a distressing continuation of a decades-old plan

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Jeremy Rose

    Reading an NBC News report a couple of days ago about a Trump administration plan to relocate 1 million Gazans to Libya reminded me of a conversation between the legendary Warsaw Ghetto leader Marek Edelman and fellow fighter and survivor Simcha Rotem that took place more than quarter of a century ago.

    In the conversation, first reported in Haaretz in 2023, Rotem said the Jews who walked into the gas chambers without a fight did so only because they were hungry.

    Edelman disagreed, but Rotem insisted. “Listen, man. Marek, I’m surprised by your attitude. They only went because they were hungry. Even if they’d known what awaited them they would have walked into the gas chambers. You and I would have done the same.”

    Edelman cut him off. “You would never have gone” [to the gas chamber.] Rotem replied, “I’m not so sure. I was never that hungry.”

    Edelman agreed, saying: “I also wasn’t that hungry,” to which Rotem said, “That’s why you didn’t go.”

    The NBC report claims that Israeli officials are aware of the plan and talks have been held with the Libyan leadership about taking in 1 million ethnically cleansed Palestinians.. The carrot being offered is the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Libya’s own money seized by the US more than a decade ago.

    The Arabic word Sumud — or steadfastness — is synonymous with the Palestinian people. The idea that 1 million Gazans would agree to walk off the 1.4 percent of historic Palestine that is Gaza is inconceivable.

    Equally incomprehensible
    But then the idea that my great grandmother and other relatives walked into the gas chambers is equally incomprehensible. But we’ve never been that hungry.

    The people of Gaza are. No food has entered Gaza for 76 days. Half a million Gazans are facing starvation and the rest of the population (more than 1.5 million people) are suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, according to the UN.

    Last year, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was widely condemned when he suggested starving Gaza might be “justified and moral”.

    The lack of outrage and urgency being expressed by world leaders — particularly Western leaders — after nearly 11 weeks of Israel actually starving the inhabitants of what retired IDF general Giora Eiland has called a giant concentration camp — is an outrage.

    As far as I’m aware there’s been no talk of cutting off diplomatic relations, trade embargos or even cultural boycotts.

    Israel — which last time I looked wasn’t in Europe — just placed second in Eurovision. “I’m happy,” an Israeli friend messaged me, “that my old genocidal homeland (Austria) won and not my current genocidal nation.”

    A third generation Israeli, she’s one of a tiny minority protesting the war crimes being committed less than 100km from her apartment.

    Honourable exceptions
    Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Irish President Michael Higgins are honourable exceptions to the muted criticism being expressed by Western leaders, although this criticism has finally been stepped up with the threatened “concrete actions” by the UK, France and Canada, and the condemnation of Israel by 22 other countries — including New Zealand.

    Sanchez had declared Israel a genocidal state and said Spain won’t do business with such a nation.

    And peaking at a national famine commemoration held over the weekend Higgens said the UN Security Council had failed again and again by not dealing with famines and the current “forced starvation of the people of Gaza”.

    He cited UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying “as aid dries up, the floodgates of horror have re-opened. Gaza is a killing field — and civilians are in an endless death loop.”

    Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen argued in his 1981 book Poverty and Famines that famines are man-made and not natural disasters.

    Unlike Gaza, the famines he wrote about were caused by either callous disregard by the ruling elites for the populations left to starve or the disastrous results of following the whims of an all-powerful leader like Chairman Mao.

    He argued that a famine had never occurred in a functioning democracy.

    A horrifying fact
    It’s a horrifying fact that a self-described democracy, funded and abetted by the world’s most powerful democracy, has been allowed by the international community to starve two million people with no let-up in its bombing of barely functioning hospitals and killing of more than 2000 Gazans since the ban on food entering the strip was put in place. (Many more will have died due to a lack of medicine, food, and access to clean water.)

    After more than two months of denying any food or medicine to enter Gaza Israel is now saying it will allow limited amounts of food in to avoid a full-scale famine.

    “Due to the need to expand the fighting, we will introduce a basic amount of food to the residents of Gaza to ensure no famine occurs,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained.

    “A famine might jeopardise the continuation of Operation Gideon’s Chariots aimed at eliminating Hamas.”

    If 19-months of indiscriminate bombardment, the razing to the ground of whole cities, the displacement of virtually the entire population, and more than 50,000 recorded deaths (the Lancet estimated the true figure is likely to be four times that) hasn’t destroyed Hamas to Israel’s satisfaction it’s hard to conceive of what will.

    But accepting that that is the real aim of the ongoing genocide would be naïve.

    Shamefully indifferent Western world
    In the first cabinet meeting following the Six Day War, long before Hamas came into existence, ridding Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants was top of the agenda.

    “If we can evict 300,000 refugees from Gaza to other places . . .  we can annex Gaza without a problem,” Defence Minister Moshe Dayan said.

    The population of Gaza was 400,000 at the time.

    “We should take them to the East Bank [Jordan] by the scruff of their necks and throw them there,” Minister Yosef Sapir said.

    Fifty-eight years later the possible destinations may have changed but the aim remains the same. And a shamefully indifferent Western world combined with a malnourished and desperate population may be paving the way to a mass expulsion.

    If the US, Europe and their allies demanded that Israel stop, the killing would end tomorrow.

    Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and his Towards Democracy blog is at Substack.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Investigation Reveals “Systematic” Destruction in Gaza

    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

  • Trade unions urged “to take the lead in forming a new working-class party”

    Dozens of trade unionists, including several serving and former trade union leaders, have called for the formation of a working-class party with the labour movement at its heart.

    Trade unions and a new, working-class party

    The trade unionists have signed a petition with the title Time for trade unions to take the lead in forming a new working class party. This reflects on Reform’s successes in the May 2025 local election. The results of the vote, they say, “show the need for a new party that the working class can trust”.

    The signatories include BFAWU leaders Ian Hodson and Sarah Wooley, former ASLEF and USDAW leaders Tosh McDonald and Amy Murphy, and numerous prominent figures from the NEU, PCS, UCU, and Unison. And they slam the current Labour government’s positions, saying:

    Stagnant wages, underfunded public services, the scandal of the housing crisis, Labour councils pursuing fire and rehire, cuts to pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, reductions in disability benefits, and continued government support for Israel’s murderous campaign in Gaza – and all under a Labour government.  Labour isn’t Labour anymore, and Reform UK is becoming a significant beneficiary of working people’s anger.

    They add that they:

    believe it’s time for the trade union movement to seriously discuss founding a new anti-austerity, anti-war party. Our movement will be weakened if workers see us as a voice for pro-austerity Labour. We call for urgent discussions within our union and across unions to organise a conference to establish a political voice for working people.

    They conclude that:

    The Establishment has four parties – it’s time the working class had one of its own.

    Where’s the difference?

    Petition starter Dave Nellist has been working with Collective, which is aiming to “drive the formation of a new, mass-membership political party of the left”. And he previously told the Canary that:

    We’re roughly where we were a century and a quarter ago when the trade union movement at the back end of the 19th century was looking at the Tories and Liberals and saying ‘I can’t really see a difference there, we need a Labour Party’.

    We’re now looking at the Labour Party and the Tories and the Liberal Democrats and saying ‘well I can’t see much difference in that overlapping agenda, we need a new political voice for the working class’.

    The aim now is to build up the number of signatories of trade unionists from every level of the movement to add weight to the campaigns already under way in different trade unions for independent working class political action.

    The petition for this can be signed online here. There is a template to print out paper versions to use at meetings, demonstrations, and so on. It is available here.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • From a Palestinian Refugee Camp to Columbia: Mohsen Mahdawi Graduates After Being Jailed by Trump


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  • Culture at the core: examining journalism values in the Pacific

    ANALYSIS: By Birte Leonhardt, Folker Hanusch and Shailendra B. Singh

    The role of journalism in society is shaped not only by professional norms but also by deeply held cultural values. This is particularly evident in the Pacific Islands region, where journalists operate in media environments that are often small, tight-knit and embedded within traditional communities.

    Our survey of journalists across Pacific Island countries provides new insight into how cultural values influence journalists’ self-perceptions and practices in the region. The findings are now available as an open access article in the journal Journalism.

    Cultural factors are particularly observable in many collectivist societies, where journalists emphasise their intrinsic connection to their communities. This includes the small and micro-media systems of the Pacific, where “high social integration” includes close familial ties, as well as traditional and cultural affiliations.

    The culture of the Pacific Islands is markedly distinct from Western cultures due to its collectivist nature, which prioritises group aspirations over individual aspirations. By foregrounding culture and values, our study demonstrates that the perception of their local cultural role is a dominant consideration for journalists, and we also see significant correlations between it and the cultural-value orientations of journalists.

    We approach the concept of culture from the viewpoint of journalistic embeddedness, that is, “the extent to which journalists are enmeshed in the communities, cultures, and structures in which and on whom they report, and the extent to which this may both enable and constrain their work”.

    The term embeddedness has often been considered undesirable in mainstream journalism, given ideals of detachment and objectivity which originated in the West and experiences of how journalists were embedded with military forces, such as the Iraq War.

    Yet, in alternative approaches to journalism, being close to those on whom they report has been a desirable value, such as in community journalism, whereas a critique of mainstream journalism has tended to be that those reporters do not really understand local communities.

    Cultural detachment both impractical and undesirable
    What is more, in the Global South, embeddedness is often viewed as an intrinsic element of journalists’ identity, making cultural detachment both impractical and undesirable.

    Recent research highlights that journalists in many regions of the world, including in unstable democracies, often experience more pronounced cultural influences on their work compared to their Western counterparts.

    To explore how cultural values and identity shape journalism in the region, we surveyed 206 journalists across nine countries: Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Nauru and the Marshall Islands.

    The study was conducted as part of a broader project about Pacific Islands journalists between mid-2016 and mid-2018. About four in five of journalists in targeted newsrooms agreed to participate, making this one of the largest surveys of journalists in the region.

    Respondents were asked about their perceptions of journalism’s role in society and the extent to which cultural values inform their work.

    Our respondents averaged just under 37 years of age and were relatively evenly split in terms of gender (49 percent identified as female) with most in full-time employment (94 percent). They had an average of nine years of work experience. Around seven in 10 had studied at university, but only two-thirds of those had completed a university degree.

    The findings showed that Pacific Islands journalists overwhelmingly supported ideas related to a local cultural role in reporting. A vast majority — 88 percent agreed that it was important for them to reflect local culture in reporting, while 75 percent also thought it was important to defend local traditions and values.

    Important to preserve local culture
    Further, 71 percent agreed it was important for journalists to preserve local culture. Together, these roles were considered substantially more important than traditional roles such as the monitorial role, where journalists pursue media’s watchdog function.

    This suggests Pacific islands journalists see themselves not just as neutral observers or critics but as active cultural participants — conveying stories that strengthen identity, continuity and community cohesion.

    To understand why journalists adopt this local cultural role, we looked at which values best predicted their orientation. We used a regression model to account for a range of potential influences, including socio-demographic aspects such as work experience, education, gender, the importance of religion and journalists’ cultural-value orientations.

    Our results showed that the best predictor for whether journalists thought it was important to pursue a local cultural role lay in their own value system. In fact, the extent to which journalists adhered to so-called conservative values like self-restraint, the preservation of tradition and resistance to change emerged as the strongest predictors.

    Hence, our findings suggest that journalists who emphasise tradition and social stability in their personal value systems are significantly more likely to prioritise a local cultural role.

    These values reflect a preference for preserving the status quo, respecting established customs, and fostering social harmony — all consistent with Pacific cultural norms.

    While the importance of cultural values was clear in how journalists perceive their role, the findings were more mixed when it came to reporting practices. In general, we found that such practices were valued.

    Considerable consensus on customs
    There was considerable consensus regarding the importance of respecting traditional customs in reporting, which 87 percent agreed with. A further 68 percent said that their traditional values guided their behaviour when reporting.

    At the same time, only 29 percent agreed with the statement that they were a member of their cultural group first and a journalist second, whereas 44 percent disagreed. Conversely, 52 percent agreed that the story was more important than respecting traditional customs and values, while 27 percent disagreed.

    These variations suggest that while Pacific journalists broadly endorse cultural preservation as a goal, the practical realities of journalism — such as covering conflict, corruption or political issues — may sometimes create tensions with cultural expectations.

    Our findings support the notion that Pacific Islands journalists are deeply embedded in local culture, informed by collective values, strong community ties and a commitment to tradition.

    Models of journalism training and institution-building that originated in the West often prioritise norms such as objectivity, autonomy and detached reporting, but in the Pacific such models may fall short or at least clash with the cultural values that underpin journalistic identity.

    These aspects need to be taken into account when examining journalism in the region.

    Recognising and respecting local value systems is not about compromising press freedom — it’s about contextualising journalism within its social environment. Effective support for journalism in the region must account for the realities of cultural embeddedness, where being a journalist often means being a community member as well.

    Understanding the values that motivate journalists — particularly the desire to preserve tradition and promote social stability — can help actors and policymakers engage more meaningfully with media practitioners in the region.

    Birte Leonhardt is a PhD candidate at the Journalism Studies Center at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her research focuses on journalistic cultures, values and practices, as well as interventionist journalism.

    Folker Hanusch is professor of journalism and heads the Journalism Studies Center at the University of Vienna, Austria. He is also editor-in-chief of Journalism Studies, and vice-chair of the Worlds of Journalism Study.

    Shailendra B. Singh is associate professor of Pacific journalism at the University of the South Pacific, based in Suva, Fiji, and a member of the advisory board of the Pacific Journalism Review.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Israel steps up its “genocidal military campaign”: Mouin Rabbani

    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

  • On 100th Birthday of Malcolm X, Family Presses Trump to Release Gov’t Files on Assassination


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  • Project Esther: NYT Details Right-Wing Plan to “Rebrand All Critics of Israel” as Hamas Supporters


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  • “Absolutely Genocidal”: Mouin Rabbani on Israel’s Latest Escalation of War on Gaza


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  • Top U.S. & World Headlines — May 19, 2025


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  • Trump Proposes Tax-Increases on Poor to Fund Tax-Cuts on Rich

    On May 17, MSNBC, a Democratic Party propaganda-site, issued an “opinion” article that was loaded with links to its sources, including Republicans, and the article honestly represented what it reported, and its sources were entirely credible, so that that article actually constituted news, and not only this, but it is very important news for every American: Donald Trump’s proposed tax-legislation would, if passed into law, include front-end-loaded (short-term) tax-cuts for the poor, and back-end-loaded — indeed PERMANENT — tax-cuts for multimillionaires and billionaires, so as to pay for the increased spending that Trump wants for just two federal Departments — the Defense Department and the Homeland Security Department (both of which Departments most other nations’ Governments classify as being for national security or the military and so are called “defense spending”) — and decreased spending on every other federal Department (including all services to the poor).

    So: on the taxes side, Trump wants increases on the poor and decreases on the rich; and, on the spending side, he wants spending increases on the military, and spending decreases on everything else.

    If you want to see the MSNBC News report, click here; and, if you want to see the analysis that I did on Trump’s proposed federal budget, click here.

    A further indication of Trump’s priorities as to how he intends to spend U.S. taxpayers’ dollars was provided also on May 17, at The Arab Weekly, headlining “US said to be developing ‘a plan’ to move one million Palestinians to Libya: In exchange for resettling the Palestinians, the administration would release to Libya billions of dollars of funds.” Some important background on why Palestinians refuse to relocate out of Palestine, is that any who do, will thereby lose their legal right of return because that territory will then be taken by Israel and resettled by Zionist Jews, so that the result would then be a total defeat of the Palestinians by Israel — all of their legal rights will have been lost. And whatever they might ‘gain’ would be at gunpoint — NOT as part of any authentic deal that they had participated in. (And, indeed, the recipients of those American taxpayers’ billions of dollars will have been NOT any Palestinians, but, instead, whatever Libyan ‘government’ would be agreeing to accept the Gazans.) And then, that would be a million Gazans whom Netanyahu won’t need to slaughter in order for Trump and his friends to be able to build their hotels and resorts on the Mediterranean Sea, at the sandy beaches which had formerly been the Gaza beachfront of Palestine.

    According to the U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 2, Clause 2), all proposed international agreements, or “treaties,” that the U.S. Government joins, have first been passed by a two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate. However, ever since 1974, that provision of the U.S. Constitution has routinely been violated. (It’s done on the theory that if the Executive and the Legislative branches both want to violate it, then the treaty will be simply relabeled a “congressional-executive agreement” — CEA) — which is negotiated between those two Branches and approved not by any two-thirds vote, but only by a 50% majority in both Houses, just like any regular law does that gets to a President’s desk for his/her signature. This verbal trick against the Founders’ intention when they wrote the Constitution, makes far easier for America’s billionaires to get the treaties that they want. The U.S. has had a traitorous Government like this ever since 1945, when the Declaration-of-War clause became no longer functional — and thus the military-industrial complex started to rule the U.S. Government — which also was achieved by means of a form of CEA.)

    The post Trump Proposes Tax-Increases on Poor to Fund Tax-Cuts on Rich first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Speight’s Fiji coup had more to do with power, greed than iTaukei rights, says Chaudhry

    By Vijay Narayan, news editor of Fijivillage News

    Today marks the 25th anniversary of the May 19, 2000, coup led by renegade businessman George Speight.

    The deposed Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, says Speight’s motive had less to do with indigenous rights and a lot more to do with power, greed, and access to the millions likely to accrue from Fiji’s mahogany plantation.

    On this day 25 years ago, the elected government was held hostage at the barrel of the gun, the Parliament complex started filling up with rebels supporting the takeover, Suva City and other areas in Fiji were looted and burnt, and innocent people were attacked just because of their race.

    Chaudhry said indigenous emotions were “deliberately ignited to beat up support for the treasonous actions of the terrorists”.

    He said the coup threw the nation into chaos from which it had not fully recovered even to this day.

    Chaudhry said using George Speight as a frontman, the “real perpetrators” of the coup, assisted by a group of armed rebels from the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF), held Chaudhry and members of his government hostage for 56 days as they plundered, looted and terrorised the Indo-Fijian community in various parts of the country.

    The Fiji Labour Party leader said that, as with current Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, who led the first two coups in 1987, so with Speight in May 2000, that the given reason for the treason and the mayhem that followed was to “protect the rights and interests of the indigenous community”.

    Chaudhry said today that it was widely acknowledged that the rights of the indigenous community was not endangered either in 1987 or in 2000.

    He added that they were simply used to pursue personal and political agendas.

    Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka with former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry
    Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka with former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry . . . apology accepted during the Girmit Day Thanksgiving and National Reconciliation church service at the Vodafone Arena in Suva. Image: Jonacani Lalakobau/The Fiji Times

    The FLP leader said those who benefitted were the elite in Fijian society, not ordinary people.

    Chaudhry said this was obvious from current statistics which showed that currently the iTaukei surveyed made up 75 percent of those living in poverty.

    He said poverty reports in the early 1990s showed practically a balance in the number of Fijians and Indo-Fijians living in poverty.

    Prisoner George Speight speaking to inmates in 2011
    Prisoner George Speight speaking to inmates in 2011 . . . he and his rogue gunmen seized then Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his government hostage in a 2000 crisis that lasted for 56 days. Image: Fijivillage News/YouTube screenshot

    The former prime minister says it was obvious that the coups had done nothing to improve the quality of life of the ordinary indigenous iTaukei.

    Instead, he said the coups had had a devastating impact on the entire socio-economic fabric of Fiji’s society, putting the nation decades behind in terms of development.


    Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre coordinator Shamima Ali reflects on the 2000 coup.

    Chaudhry said the sorry state of Fiji today — “the suffering of our people and continued high rate of poverty, deteriorating health and education services, the failing infrastructure and weakened state of our economy” — were all indicators of how post-coup governments had failed to deliver on the expectations of the people.

    He said: “It is time for us to rise above discredited notions of racism and fundamentalism and embrace progressive, liberal thinking.”

    Chaudhry added that leaders needed to be judged on their vision and performance and not on their colour and creed.

    Republished with permission from FijiVillage News.

    2000 attempted coup leader George Speight with a bodyguard
    2000 attempted coup leader George Speight with a bodyguard and supporters during the siege drama in May 2000. Image: Fijivillage News

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • SCOTUS hears birthright citizenship case


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  • EXCLUSIVE: Mohsen Mahdawi speaks out


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  • Democrats Won a North Carolina Supreme Court Seat. But They Lost Control Over the Board That Sets Election Rules.

    by Doug Bock Clark

    ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

    Last week, North Carolina Democrats scored a victory when Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin, who’d lost a tight race for the state’s Supreme Court, finally conceded defeat after a six-month legal battle to throw out ballots that he contended were illegitimate.

    But that same morning, the party suffered a setback that may be more consequential: losing control of the state board that sets voting rules and adjudicates election disputes.

    The board oversees virtually every aspect of state elections, large and small, from setting rules dictating what makes ballots valid or invalid to monitoring compliance with campaign finance laws. In the Supreme Court race, it consistently worked to block Griffin’s challenges.

    The conservative takeover comes after the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a law stripping the power to appoint board members from North Carolina’s Democratic governor and gave it to the Republican state auditor.

    Although a board spokesperson said its chair was traveling and unavailable to answer questions about how the new Republican majority would reshape North Carolina elections, experts said it will likely make it easier for challenges like Griffin’s to succeed and reduce expansive access to early voting.

    It will “tilt the playing field to the advantage of the GOP,” said Gene Nichol, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies democracy in the state.

    The party that controls the board holds significant power over who votes, how those votes are counted and who ultimately wins races.

    Ann Webb, the policy director for Common Cause North Carolina, a liberal voting advocacy organization, called the shift “very consequential” and said she was worried the new board would seek to remove voters whose registrations have missing information from the state’s rolls and tighten requirements for people seeking to register or have provisional ballots count.

    Conservatives called Democrats’ concerns overblown, particularly after years of Democratic control. Mitch Kokai, a senior political analyst at the John Locke Foundation, a conservative North Carolina think tank, conceded the board’s new majority might alter early voting locations or voter ID rules, over which the parties are divided. But he pointed out that many board decisions are made unanimously, not split along party lines.

    “There is some sense that in the age of Trump there is some grand scheme to throw out election results and let the GOP win despite how people voted,” Kokai said. “I don’t think you’re seeing the stage being set for anything like that.”

    Historically, the board’s five members have been appointed by North Carolina’s governor, with three of them coming from the governor’s party. Since 2016, the governor has been a Democrat.

    When Josh Stein won a four-year term last fall, a Republican supermajority in the state legislature passed a law, then overrode his predecessor’s veto, to transfer this power to the state auditor. It was an unusual step. No other state has elections overseen by the state auditor.

    Stein sued to block the law and, initially, a lower court sided with him. But in April, the state’s Court of Appeals, which has a Republican majority, issued a three-sentence decision overturning the lower court’s ruling without hearing oral arguments.

    The next day, the state auditor named two new Republican members to the elections board, flipping control of it to conservatives. One is a former legislator who led efforts to redraw the state’s congressional districts in conservatives’ favor. The other was the longtime head of a conservative think tank with a history of advancing unsubstantiated voter fraud claims.

    After swearing in the new members last week, the board’s first move was to fire its executive director, Karen Brinson Bell, replacing her with the general counsel to the speaker of the North Carolina House, a Republican. The board denied Bell’s request to address her staff during the meeting, but she subsequently released a statement that a spokesperson provided to ProPublica in response to a request for comment.

    “We have done this work under incredibly difficult circumstances and in a toxic political environment that has targeted election professionals with harassment and threats,” she said of the board’s employees. “I hope we return to a time when those who lose elections concede defeat rather than trying to tear down the entire election system and erode voter confidence.”

    Experts say the just-concluded battle over the Supreme Court seat provides a window into how changes at the elections board could affect future races, especially close ones with contested results. North Carolina is a swing state, and there have been several such cases in recent years. After the 2018 election, the board ordered a new election for a U.S. House of Representatives seat when a Republican victory was found to be tainted by an illegal absentee ballot scheme.

    Before the 2024 election, right-wing activists discussed ways to overturn close election losses using a plan similar to the one Griffin put into action, according to a recording of a call obtained by ProPublica.

    In the month after suffering a 734-vote loss to incumbent Democrat Allison Riggs, Griffin asked the elections board to toss out tens of thousands of ballots, mostly because information about the voters who cast them was missing from the state’s election database. The board, then majority Democrat, dismissed his challenges, concluding that voters had followed the rules in place at the time and that much of the missing information reflected administrative or clerical errors. Then Griffin sued.

    Gerry Cohen, a former counsel for the legislature who is now a Democratic member of the Wake County Board of Elections, said it was “a real possibility” that a Republican-controlled state board “would have approved some of Griffin’s challenges” to throw out ballots. If that had happened, Riggs could have fought the board’s decision in the courts and won, but she would have then been litigating against the board rather than on the same side as it.

    The law that gave the state auditor the power to appoint members of the state election board also gives him similar authority over North Carolina’s county election boards, which will mean each of them will be controlled by Republican majorities by the end of next month.

    County boards approve locations and times for early voting, which is when the vast majority of North Carolinians vote. Experts predicted this could lead some boards to reduce the number of polling sites in areas that have more Democrats, like college campuses, or to close polls when Democratic voters are more likely to use them, such as Sundays when Black churches conduct “souls to the polls” voter drives.

    Kokai contends that such changes aren’t necessarily meant to suppress the vote, if they even happen, and doubts they’d have much of an effect on Democratic turnout.

    “If you really do care about voting, you do it,” he said. “If you go a mile off campus to do other things, you can do it to vote, too.”

    Liberals, however, expect the revamped board to work hand-in-hand with the Republican-controlled legislature to transform elections in other ways.

    “Things are going to look very different,” Webb said, in the 2026 midterm elections.

    This post was originally published on ProPublica.

  • New U.S.-Israeli aid plan in Gaza may use facial recognition software


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • This Is What Democracy Looks Like

    Above photo: Retrofit for all/Carbon Coop stall from their Facebook page. To fix our broken democratic system, the environmental movement needs to help reinvent it. To ensure people can be active participants in the decisions that affect their daily lives. “Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming rather than being. It […]

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    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “Surveillance Humanitarianism”: As Gaza Starves, U.S.-Israeli Plan Would Further Weaponize Food


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israel’s “Crime of Apartheid”: New Report by U.S. Professors as Palestinians Mark Nakba Day


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • As Trump basks in Gulf Arab applause, Israel massacres children in Gaza

    Nakba Day today marks 15 May 1948 — the day after the declaration of the State of Israel — when the Palestinian society and homeland was destroyed and more than 750,000 people forced to leave and become refugees.  The day is known as the “Palestinian Catastrophe”. 

    By Soumaya Ghannoushi

    US President Donald Trump’s tour of Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Doha is not diplomacy. It is theatre — staged in gold, fuelled by greed, and underwritten by betrayal.

    A US president openly arming a genocide is welcomed with red carpets, handshakes and blank cheques. Trillions are pledged; personal gifts are exchanged. And Gaza continues to burn.

    Gulf regimes have power and wealth. They have Trump’s ear. Yet they use none of it — not to halt the slaughter, ease the siege or demand dignity.

    In return for their riches and deference, Trump grants Israel bombs and sets it loose upon the region.

    This is the real story. At the heart of Trump’s return lies a project he initiated during his first presidency: the erasure of Palestine, the elevation of autocracy, and the redrawing of the Middle East in Israel’s image.

    “See this pen? This wonderful pen on my desk is the Middle East, and the top of the pen — that’s Israel. That’s not good,” he once told reporters, lamenting Israel’s size compared to its neighbours.

    To Trump, the Middle East is not a region of history or humanity. It is a marketplace, a weapons depot, a geopolitical ATM.

    His worldview is forged in evangelical zeal and transactional instinct. In his rhetoric, Arabs are chaos incarnate: irrational, violent, in need of control. Israel alone is framed as civilised, democratic, divinely chosen. That binary is not accidental. It is ideology.

    Obedience for survival
    Trump calls the region “a rough neighbourhood” — code for endless militarism that casts the people of the Middle East not as lives to protect, but as threats to contain.

    His $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia in 2017 was marketed as peace through prosperity. Now, he wants trillions more in Gulf capital. As reported by The New York Times, Trump is demanding that Saudi Arabia invest its entire annual GDP — $1 trillion — into the US economy.

    Riyadh has already offered $600 billion. Trump wants it all. Economists call it absurd; Trump calls it a deal.

    This is not negotiation. It is tribute.

    And the pace is accelerating. After a recent meeting with Trump, the UAE announced a 10-year, $1.4 trillion investment framework with the US.

    This is not realpolitik. It is a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace

    Across the Gulf, a race is underway — not to end the genocide in Gaza, but to outspend one another for Trump’s favour, showering him with wealth in return for nothing.

    The Gulf is no longer treated as a region. It is a vault. Sovereign wealth funds are the new ballot boxes. Sovereignty — just another asset to be traded.

    Trump’s offer is blunt: obedience for survival. For regimes still haunted by the Arab Spring, Western blessing is their last shield. And they will pay any price: wealth, independence, even dignity.

    To them, the true threat is not Israel, nor even Iran. It is their own people, restless, yearning, ungovernable.

    Democracy is danger; self-determination, the ticking bomb. So they make a pact with the devil.

    Doctrine of immunity
    That devil brings flags, frameworks, photo ops and deals. The new order demands normalisation with Israel, submission to its supremacy, and silence on Palestine.

    Once-defiant slogans are replaced by fintech expos and staged smiles beside Israeli ministers.

    In return, Trump offers impunity: political cover and arms. It is a doctrine of immunity, bought with gold and soaked in Arab blood.

    They bend. They hand him deals, honours, trillions. They believe submission buys respect. But Trump respects only power — and he makes that clear.

    He praises Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Is Putin smart? Yes . . .  that’s a hell of a way to negotiate.” He calls Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “a guy I like [and] respect”. Like them or not, they defend their nations. And Trump, ever the transactional mind, respects power.

    Arab rulers offer no such strength. They offer deference, not defiance. They don’t push; they pay.

    And Trump mocks them openly. King Salman “might not be there for two weeks without us”, he brags. They give him billions; he demands trillions.

    It is not just the US Treasury profiting. Gulf billions do not merely fuel policy; they enrich a family empire. Since returning to office, Trump and his sons have chased deals across the Gulf, cashing in on the loyalty they have cultivated.

    A hotel in Dubai, a tower in Jeddah, a golf resort in Qatar, crypto ventures in the US, a private club in Washington for Gulf elites — these are not strategic projects, but rather revenue streams for the Trump family.

    Reward for ethnic cleansing
    The precedent was set early. Former presidential adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, secured $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund shortly after leaving office, despite internal objections.

    The message was clear: access to the Trumps has a price, and Gulf rulers are eager to pay.

    Now, Trump is receiving a private jet from Qatar’s ruling family — a palace in the sky worth $400 million.

    This is not diplomacy. It is plunder.

    And how does Trump respond? With insult: “It was a great gesture,” he said of the jet, before adding: “We keep them safe. If it wasn’t for us, they probably wouldn’t exist right now.”

    That was his thank you to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar; lavish gifts answered with debasement.

    And what are they rewarding him for? For genocide. For 100,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on Gaza. For backing ethnic cleansing in plain sight. For empowering far-right Israeli politicians, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as they call for Gaza’s depopulation.

    For presiding over the most fanatically Zionist, most unapologetically Islamophobic administration in US history.

    Still, they ask nothing, while offering everything. They could have used their leverage. They did not.

    The Yemen precedent proves they can act. Trump halted the bombing under Saudi pressure, to Netanyahu’s visible dismay. When they wanted a deal, they struck one with the Houthis.

    And when they sought to bring Syria in from the cold, Trump complied. He agreed to meet former rebel leader turned President Ahmed al-Sharaa — a last-minute addition to his Riyadh schedule — and even spoke of lifting sanctions, once again at Saudi Arabia’s request, to “give them a chance of greatness”.

    No US president is beyond pressure. But for Gaza? Silence.

    Price of silence
    While Trump was being feted in Riyadh, Israel rained American-made bombs on two hospitals in Gaza. In Khan Younis, the European Hospital was reportedly struck by nine bunker-busting bombs, killing more than two dozen people and injuring scores more.

    Earlier that day, an air strike on Nasser Hospital killed journalist Hassan Islih as he lay wounded in treatment.

    As Trump basked in applause, Israel massacred children in Jabalia, where around 50 Palestinians were killed in just a few hours.

    This is the bloody price of Arab silence, buried beneath the roar of applause and the glitter of tributes.

    This week marks the anniversary of the Nakba — and here it is again, replayed not through tanks alone, but through Arab complicity.

    With every cheque signed, Arab rulers do not secure history’s respect. They seal their place in its sordid footnotes of shame

    The bombs fall. The Gaza Strip turns to dust. Two million people endure starvation. UN food is gone.

    Hospitals overflow with skeletal infants. Mothers collapse from hunger. Tens of thousands of children are severely malnourished, with more than 3500 on the edge of death.

    Meanwhile, Smotrich speaks of “third countries” for Gaza’s people. Netanyahu promises their removal.

    And Trump — the man enabling the annihilation? He is not condemned, but celebrated by Arab rulers. They eagerly kiss the hand that sends the bombs, grovel before the architect of their undoing, and drape him in splendour and finery.

    While much of the world stands firm — China, Europe, Canada, Mexico, even Greenland – refusing to bow to Trump’s bullying, Arab rulers kneel. They open wallets, bend spines, empty hands — still mistaking humiliation for diplomacy.

    They still believe that if they bow low enough, Trump might toss them a bone. Instead, he tosses them a bill.

    This is not realpolitik. It is a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace.

    With every cheque signed, every jet offered, every photo op beside the butcher of a people, Arab rulers do not secure history’s respect. They seal their place in its sordid footnotes of shame.

    Soumaya Ghannoushi is a British Tunisian writer and expert in Middle East politics. Her journalistic work has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Corriere della Sera, aljazeera.net and Al Quds. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye. A selection of her writings may be found at: soumayaghannoushi.com and she tweets @SMGhannoushi.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Whole Process People’s Democracy: The Path Forward

    China’s political form is called ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.’ Chinese scholar Zhang Weiwei calls the Chinese political content ‘whole-process people’s democracy’. He distinguishes this model from the formulaic, procedure-obsessed, and anti-democratic model of the North American Republic and European social democracies. What separates the Chinese model from the political model of the central capitalist formations are a number of variables: firstly, mass participation from top to bottom is a key feature of Chinese socialism. Secondly, the subordination of the capitalist class to the party-state and thus the imperatives of the masses defines China’s ability to develop a socialist market economy.

    The post Whole Process People’s Democracy: The Path Forward appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Fiji Indians in NZ ‘not giving up’ on Pasifika classification struggle

    By Susana Suisuiki, RNZ Pacific Waves presenter/producer, and Christina Persico, RNZ Pacific bulletin editor

    The co-founder of Auckland’s Fiji Centre is concerned that Indo-Fijians are not classified as Pacific Islanders in Aotearoa.

    This week marks the 146th anniversary of the arrival of the first indentured labourers from British India to Fiji, who departed from Calcutta.

    On 14 May 1879, the first group of 522 labourers arrived in Fiji aboard the Leonidas, a labour transportation ship.

    That date in 1987 is also the date of the first military coup in Fiji.

    More than 60,000 men, women and children were brought to Fiji under an oppressive system of bonded labour between 1879 and 1916.

    Today, Indo-Fijians make up 33 percent of the population.

    While Fiji is part of the Pacific, Indo-Fijians are not classified as Pacific peoples in New Zealand; instead, they are listed under “Indian” and “Asian” on the Stats NZ website.

    Lasting impact on Fiji
    The Fiji Centre’s Nik Naidu, who is also a co-founder of the Whānau Community Centre and Hub, said that he understood Fiji was the only country in the Pacific where the British implemented the indentured system.

    “It is also a sad legacy and a sad story because it was basically slavery,” he said.

    “The positive was that the Fiji Indian community made a lasting impact on Fiji.

    “They continue to be around 30 percent of the population in Fiji, and I think significantly in Aotearoa, through the migration, the numbers are, according to the community, over 100,000 in New Zealand.”

    Organiser Nikhil Naidu
    Fiji Centre co-founder Nikhil Naidu . . . Girmit Day “is also a sad legacy and a sad story because it was basically slavery.” Image: Asia Pacific Report

    However, he said the discussions on ethnic classification “reached a stalemate” with the previous Pacific Peoples Minister.

    “His basic argument was, well, ethnographically, Fijian Indians do not fit the profile of Pacific Islanders,” he said.

    Then-minister Aupito William Sio said in 2021 that, while he understood the group’s concerns, the classification for Fijian Indians was in line with an ethnographic profile which included people with a common language, customs and traditions.

    Aupito said that profile was different from indigenous Pacific peoples.

    StatsNZ and ethnicity
    “StatsNZ recognises ethnicity as the ethnic group or groups a person self-identifies with or has a sense of belonging to,” Aupito said in a letter at the time.

    It is not the same as race, ancestry, nationality, citizenship or even place of birth, he said.

    “They have identified themselves now that the system of government has not acknowledged them.

    “Those conversations have to be ongoing to figure out how do we capture the data of who they are as Fijian Indians or to develop policies around that to support their aspirations.”

    Indentured labourers in Fiji Photo: Fiji Girmit Foundation
    Girmitiyas – Indentured labourers – in Fiji . . . shedding light on the harsh colonial past in Fiji. Image: RNZ Pacific/Fiji Girmit Foundation

    Naidu believes the ethnographic argument was a misunderstanding of the request.

    “The request is not to say, like Chinese in Samoa, they are not indigenous to Samoa, but they are Samoans, and they are Pacific Chinese.

    “So there is the same thing with Fijian Indians. They are not wanting to be indigenous.

    Different from mainland Indians
    “They do want to be recognised as separate Indians in the Pacific because they are very different from the mainland Indians.

    “In fact, most probably 99 percent of Fijian Indians have never been to India and have no affiliations to India because during the Girmit they lost all connections with their families.”

    However, Naidu told Pacific Waves the community was not giving up.

    “There was a human rights complaint made — again that did not progress in the favour of the Fijian Indians.

    “Currently from . . . Fiji Centre’s perspective, we are still pursuing that.

    “We have also had a discussion with Stats NZ about the numbers and trying to ascertain just why they have not managed to put a separate category, so that we can look at the number of Fijian Indians and also relative to Pacific Islanders.”

    Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka told RNZ Pacific that as far as Fiji is concerned, Fijians of Indian descent are Fijian.

    Question to minister
    Last year, RNZ Pacific asked the current Minister for Pacific Peoples, Dr Shane Reti, on whether Indo-Fijians were included in Ministry of Pacific Peoples as Pacific people.

    In a statement, his office said: “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is undertaking ongoing policy work to better understand this issue.”

    Meanwhile, the University of Fiji’s vice-chancellor is asking the Australian and British governments to consider paying reparation for the exploitation of the indentured labourers more than a century ago.

    Professor Shaista Shameem told the ABC that they endured harsh conditions, with long hours, social restrictions and low wages.

    She said the Australian government and the Colonial Sugar Refinery of Australia benefitted the most financially and it was time the descendants were compensated.

    While some community leaders have been calling for reparation, Naidu said there were other issues that needed attention.

    He said it had been an ongoing discussion for many decades.

    “It is a very challenging one, because where do you draw the line? And it is a global problem, the indenture system. It is not just unique to Fiji.

    “Personally, yes, I think that is a great idea. Practically, I am not sure if it is feasible and possible.”

    Focus on what unites, says Rabuka
    Fiji is on a path for reconciliation, with leaders from across the political spectrum signing a Forward Fiji Declaration in 2023, hoping to usher in a new era of understanding between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians.

    Rabuka announced a public holiday to commemorate Girmit Day in 2023.

    In his Girmit Day message this year, Rabuka said his government was dedicated to bringing unity and reconciliation between all races living in Fiji.

    “We all know that Fiji has had a troubled past, as it was natural that conflicts would arise when a new group of people would come into another’s space,” he said.

    “This is precisely what transpired when the Indians began to live or decided to live as permanent citizens.

    “There was distrust as the two groups were not used to living together during the colonial days. Indigenous Fijians did not have a say in why, and how many should come and how they should be settled here. Fiji was not given a time to transit.

    “The policy of indenture labour system was dumped on us. Naturally this led to tensions and misunderstandings, reasons that fuelled conflicts that followed after Fiji gained independence.”

    He said 146 years later, Fijians should focus on what unites rather than what divides them.

    “We have together long enough to know that unity and peace will lead us to a good future.”

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Trump Is Making America Constitutionally Literate—By Violating the Constitution

    Few modern political figures have done more to prompt spontaneous national discussions about the Bill of Rights and constitutional limits on government power than Donald Trump—if only because he tramples on them so frequently.

    Indeed, President Trump has become a walking civics lesson.

    Consider some of the constitutional principles that Trump can be credited with bringing into the spotlight unintentionally during his time in office.

    First Amendment (free speech, press, religion, protest, and assembly): Trump’s repeated confrontations with the First Amendment have transformed free expression into a battleground, making it impossible to ignore the protections it guarantees. From branding the press as “the enemy of the people” and threatening to revoke media licenses to blacklisting law firms, threatening universities with funding cuts for not complying with the government’s ideological agenda, and detaining foreign students for their political views, Trump has treated constitutional protections not as guarantees, but as obstacles.

    Second Amendment (right to bear arms): Trump has shown an inconsistent and, at times, authoritarian approach to gun rights, summed up in his infamous 2018 statement: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” At the same time, Trump has encouraged the militarization of domestic police forces, blurring the line between civilian law enforcement and standing armies—a contradiction that cuts against the very spirit of the amendment, which was rooted in distrust of centralized power and standing militaries.

    Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures): Trump’s expansion of no-knock raids, endorsement of sweeping surveillance tactics, sanctioning of police brutality and greater immunity for police misconduct, and the use of masked, plainclothes federal agents to seize demonstrators off the streets have revived conversations about privacy, unlawful searches, and the right to be secure in one’s person and property.

    Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments (due process and equal protection): Perhaps nowhere has Trump’s disregard been more dangerous than in his approach to due process and equal protection under the law. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that neither citizens nor non-citizens can be deprived of liberty without fair procedures. Yet Trump’s Administration has repeatedly floated or enacted policies that sidestep due process, from the suggestion that he could suspend habeas corpus to the indefinite detention of individuals without trial, and openly questioned whether non-citizens deserve any constitutional protections at all.

    Even the Sixth (right to a fair and speedy trial) and Eighth Amendments (protection against cruel and unusual punishment) have found new urgency: Trump has promoted indefinite pretrial detention for protesters and immigrants alike, while presiding over family separations, inhumane detention centers, and support for enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump has also doubled down on his administration’s commitment to carrying out more executions, including a push to impose the death penalty for crimes other than murder.

    Tenth Amendment (states’ rights): The Tenth Amendment, which preserves state sovereignty against federal overreach, has been tested by Trump’s threats to defund sanctuary cities, override state public health measures, and interfere in local policing and elections. His efforts to federalize domestic law enforcement have exposed the limits of decentralized power in the face of executive ambition.

    Fourteenth Amendment (birthright citizenship): No clause has been more aggressively misunderstood by Trump than the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. His push to strip citizenship from children born on U.S. soil to immigrant parents (birthright citizenship) ignores over a century of legal precedent affirming that citizenship cannot be denied by executive whim.

    Article I, Section 8 (commerce and tariffs): Trump’s use of tariff authority provides another example of executive power run amok. Although the Constitution assigns Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on allies and used them as political leverage. These actions not only undermine the constitutional balance between the branches but also weaponize trade policy for political ends.

    Article I, Section 9 (Emoluments Clause): Trump’s disregard for the Emoluments Clause—a safeguard against presidential profiteering—brought this obscure constitutional provision back into the public eye. Between continuing to profit from his private businesses while in office and his reported willingness to accept extravagant gifts, including a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari government, he has raised urgent ethical and legal concerns about self-dealing, corruption and backdoor arrangements by which foreign and domestic governments can funnel money into Trump’s personal coffers.

    Article I, Section 9 (power of the purse): Trump has trampled on Congress’s exclusive power over federal spending, attempting to redirect funds by executive fiat rather than operating within Congress’s approved budgetary plan. He has also threatened to withhold federal aid from states, cities, and universities deemed insufficiently loyal.

    Article II (executive powers): At the heart of Trump’s governance is a dangerous misreading of Article II, which vests executive power in the president, to justify executive overreach and the concept of an all-powerful unitary executive. He has repeatedly claimed “total authority” over state matters, wielded executive orders like royal decrees in order to bypass Congress, and sought to bend the Department of Justice to his personal and political will.

    Historical Emergency Powers and Legal Precedents: Trump has also breathed new life into archaic emergency powers. He invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify rounding up, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants without due process. He has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops domestically in order to deal with civil unrest, raising the specter of martial law cloaked in patriotic language.

    In routinely violating the Constitution and crossing legal lines that were once unthinkable, Trump is forcing Americans to confront what the Constitution truly protects, and what it doesn’t.

    Still, what good is a knowledgeable citizenry if their elected officials are woefully ignorant about the Constitution or willfully disregard their sworn duty to uphold and protect it?

    For starters, anyone taking public office, from the president on down, should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. And if they violate their contractual obligations to uphold and defend the Constitution, vote them out—throw them out—or impeach them.

    “We the people” have power, but we must use it or lose it.

    Trump may have contributed to this revival in constitutional awareness, but as we warn in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the challenge isn’t just knowing our rights—it’s defending them, before they’re gone for good.

    The post Trump Is Making America Constitutionally Literate—By Violating the Constitution first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Can Trump accept a luxury jet from Qatar?


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  • Can Trump actually lower prescription drug costs?


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  • New Caledonia riots one year on: ‘Like the country was at war’

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific presenter/bulletin editor

    Stuck in a state of disbelief for months, journalist Coralie Cochin was one of many media personnel who inadvertently put their lives on the line as New Caledonia burned.

    “It was very shocking. I don’t know the word in English, you can’t believe what you’re seeing,” Cochin, who works for public broadcaster NC la 1ère, said on the anniversary of the violent and deadly riots today.

    She recounted her experience covering the civil unrest that broke out on 13 May 2024, which resulted in 14 deaths and more than NZ$4.2 billion (2.2 billion euros) in damages.

    “It was like the country was [at] war. Every[thing] was burning,” Cochin told RNZ Pacific.

    The next day, on May 14, Cochin said the environment was hectic. She was being pulled in many directions as she tried to decide which story to tell next.

    “We didn’t know where to go [or] what to tell because there were things happening everywhere.”

    She drove home trying to dodge burning debris, not knowing that later that evening the situation would get worse.

    “The day after, it was completely crazy. There was fire everywhere, and it was like the country was [at] war suddenly. It was very, very shocking.”

    Over the weeks that followed, both Cochin and her husband — also a journalist — juggled two children and reporting from the sidelines of violent demonstrations.

    “The most shocking period was when we knew that three young people were killed, and then a police officer was killed too.”

    She said verifying the deaths was a big task, amid fears far more people had died than had been reported.

    Piled up . . . burnt out cars block a road near Nouméa
    Piled up . . . burnt out cars block a road near Nouméa after last year’s riots in New Caledonia. Image NC 1ère TV screenshot APR

    ‘We were targets’
    After days of running on adrenaline and simply getting the job done, Cochin’s colleagues were attacked on the street.

    “At the beginning, we were so focused on doing our job that we forgot to be very careful,” she said.

    But then,”we were targets, so we had to be very more careful.”

    News chiefs decided to send reporters out in unmarked cars with security guards.

    They did not have much protective equipment, something that has changed since then.

    “We didn’t feel secure [at all] one year ago,” she said.

    But after lobbying for better protection as a union representative, her team is more prepared.

    She believes local journalists need to be supported with protective equipment, such as helmets and bulletproof vests, for personal protection.

    “We really need more to be prepared to that kind of riots because I think those riots will be more and more frequent in the future.”

    Protesters at Molodoï, Strasbourg, demanding the release of Kanak indigenous political prisoners being detained in France
    Protesters at Molodoï, Strasbourg, demanding the release of Kanak indigenous political prisoners being detained in France pending trial for their alleged role in the pro-independence riots in May 2024. Image: @67Kanaky/X

    Social media
    She also pointed out that, while journalists are “here to inform people”, social media can make their jobs difficult.

    “It is more difficult now with social media because there was so [much] misinformation on social media [at the time of the rioting] that we had to check everything all the time, during the day, during the night . . . ”

    She recalled that when she was out on the burning streets speaking with rioters from both sides, they would say to her, “you don’t say the truth” and “why do you not report that?” she would have to explain to then that she would report it, but only once it had been fact-checked.

    “And it was sometimes [it was] very difficult, because even with the official authorities didn’t have the answers.”

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


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Indigenous Kanaks support New Caledonia’s 50-year ban on seabed mining

    By Andrew Mathieson

    New Caledonia has imposed a 50-year ban on deep-sea mining across its entire maritime zone in a rare and sweeping move that places the French Pacific territory among the most restricted exploration areas on the planet’s waters.

    The law blocks commercial exploration, prospecting and mining of mineral resources that sits within Kanaky New Caledonia’s exclusive economic zone.

    Nauru and the Cook Islands have already publicly expressed support for seabed exploration.

    Sovereign island states discussed the issue earlier this year during last year’s Pacific Islands Forum, but no joint position has yet been agreed on.

    Only non-invasive, scientific research will be permitted across New Caledonia’s surrounding maritime zone that covers 1.3 million sq km.

    Lawmakers in the New Caledonian territorial Congress adopted a moratorium following broad support mostly from Kanak-aligned political parties.

    “Rather than giving in to the logic of immediate profit, New Caledonia can choose to be pioneers in ocean protection,” Jérémie Katidjo Monnier, the local government member responsible for the issue, told Congress.

    A ‘strategic lever’
    “It is a strategic lever to assert our environmental sovereignty in the face of the multinationals and a strong signal of commitment to future generations.”

    New Caledonia’s location has been a global hotspot for marine biodiversity.

    Its waters are home to nearly one-third of the world’s remaining pristine coral reefs that account for 1.5 percent of reefs worldwide.

    Environmental supporters of the new law argue that deep-sea mining could cause a serious and irreversible harm to its fragile marine ecosystems.

    But the pro-French, anti-independence parties, including Caledonian Republicans, Caledonian People’s Movement, Générations NC, Renaissance and the Caledonian Republican Movement all planned to abstain from the vote the politically conservative bloc knew they could not win.

    The Loyalists coalition argued that the decision clashed with the territory’s “broader economic goals” and the measure was “too rigid”, describing its legal basis as “largely disproportionate”.

    “All our political action on the nickel question is directed toward more exploitation and here we are presenting ourselves as defenders of the environment for deep-sea beds we’ve never even seen,” Renaissance MP Nicolas Metzdorf said.

    Ambassador’s support
    But France’s Ambassador for Maritime Affairs, Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, had already asserted “the deep sea is not for sale” and that the high seas “belong to no one”, appearing to back the policy led by pro-independence Kanak alliances.

    The vote in New Caledonia also coincided with US President Donald Trump signing a decree a week earlier authorising deep-sea mining in international waters.

    “No state has the right to unilaterally exploit the mineral resources of the area outside the legal framework established by UNCLOS,” said the head of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), Leticia Carvalho, in a statement referring back to the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea.

    Republished from the National Indigenous Times.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Rep. Rashida Tlaib addresses Jewish Voice for Peace conference


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.