Category: Global

  • Ben Shapiro is sleeping with one eye open. Politico recently reported that members of a ‘Young Republicans’ group chat were caught making comments like “I love Hitler.” In response, many figures on the right came out to defend these alleged ‘youngsters’ (youngsters who range in age from 18 to 40, by the way).

    One commentator who isn’t defending the comments is Ben Shapiro:


    As Shapiro is a Jewish man, you can understand why he’d be reluctant to condone this behaviour. There’s a wrinkle in all this, however, which is that Shapiro has previously been happy to turn a blind eye so long as his bedfellows support Israel:

    Who could have predicted the racists would only become more racist if left unchallenged?

    Ben Shapiro receiving death threats

    In the video above, Shapiro said that while he suspected Politico had ulterior motives, the reporting:

    has led to, I think, a reactionary response on some parts of the right to say there should be no policing ever at all.

    No social consequences should ever attend to things that are said on the right. That it’s basically just pure my side versus your side. The problem I have is number one, I think that’s immoral. And number two, I don’t think that’s pragmatic. I don’t think that’s moral because I think that there are things that get said on the right that are really, really, really ugly and pretending those away doesn’t make them go away.

    I think that they’re rising. I think that they’re getting more common. I know that my death threats from that side are getting more common. I know I have more security because of that. And it’s not just from the left. I have lots of security from the left. And I also get lots of security from the right.

    Matt, I think a little bit earlier today, you tweeted that kind of your litmus test is the people who are trying to kill you. And I totally get that. I also have that litmus test. The difference is that I think that if somebody tries to kill Matt, there’s a good shot that it’s going to be a leftist. If somebody tries to kill me, it’s a Frickin’ Agatha Christie novel.

    I just don’t know which direction the bullet is coming from at this point.

    For context, Ben Shapiro is speaking to employees of his, including Matt Walsh, who has been offering an increasingly unhinged defence of the leaked group chats:

    Turning tide

    So, what’s changed between Shapiro’s Ann Coulter tweet and today?

    It’s not just the number of death threats; it’s the fact that his peers on the American right are increasingly anti-Israel:


    Zionist Shapiro could turn a blind eye when people hated him as a person but respected his ideology; now he’s sleeping with one eye open.

    While there’s obviously some degree of schadenfreude in all this, it’s clearly not good that there’s a growing wing of American antisemites who are prepping to fill the post-Trump vacuum.

    Featured image via Friendly Fire

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Responding to the increasing authoritarianism of Donald Trump, Americans have taken to the streets as part of the latest ‘No Kings’ protests. And once again, these protests have demonstrated that there’s overwhelming opposition to what Trump and his cronies are doing.

    Rather than disputing the claim that he thinks he’s a king, Trump posted the following AI slop video:

    While the user above describes it as ‘mud’, there’s a distinctly turd-like quality to what Trump is dropping. Given that, we suspect the AI prompt was ‘visualise the impact of Trump’s policies’.

    King Trump

    People had already turned out in massive numbers at the start of the day:

    The crowds only grew as the day went on:

    This sign was in response to Trump accusing the millions of people who hate him of being paid activists:

    Bernie Sanders was among those who spoke at the rallies:

    Authoritarianism

    As noted, Trump’s administration is increasingly authoritarian. The ways in which this is manifesting include:

    It’s worth knowing all this because several UK politicians want to emulate Trump.

    Kemi Badenoch, for example, wants her own ICE force (a force which has justifiably been described as a ‘Gestapo‘):


    Keir Starmer has cracked down on free speech and the freedom to protest:


    Nigel Farage, meanwhile, is just Donald Trump in a toad mask:


    No Kings

    Mass mobilisation is the only answer to people like Trump and Starmer who seek to roll back the rights we’ve had for centuries:

    Trump clearly thinks that he’s a king; and much like every other king, all the guy has to offer is shit.

    Featured image via whatever AI slop machine produced this video

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • By Teuila Fuatai, RNZ Pacific senior journalist, and Susana Suisuiki, RNZ Pacific Waves host

    The future of the Manawanui wreckage and potential compensation payments remain a major talking point in Samoa.

    The Royal New Zealand Navy vessel ran aground on a reef off the south coast of Upolu in October last year and sank.

    New Zealand paid NZ$6 million to the Samoan government over it — however communities are yet to see any money.

    Tafitoala village has been directly affected by the maritime disaster.

    Resident Fagailesau Afaaso Junior Saleupu said the New Zealand High Commission and Samoa government held a short meeting regarding potential compensation options this week.

    Three options were tabled around the distribution process. One involved the Samoa government being responsible for the distribution of payments among families and affected businesses. Another involved the district authority being responsible for distributing payments.

    The Samoa government has previously said it intends to finalise the compensation process once it passes a budget, which it reportedly intends to do at the end of this month.

    Tight timeframe
    Fagailesau said this week’s meeting, which involved representatives from Samoa’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, seemed to be on a tight timeframe.

    “It’s not enough time for us to raise questions and . . . give them our opinion about the problem.”

    He believed the Samoa government should be responsible for distributing the money directly to those affected and said many people were concerned that the wreckage remained on the reef.

    “I don’t think it’s good for us in the long run.”

    Fagailesau also said many locals feared the compensation amount — which equates to WST$10 million — simply was not enough to manage the long-term impacts of the wreckage on the environment.

    He also said families in Tafitoala had been severely limited by the 2km prohibition zone around the wreckage.

    “My village — we are fighting for a big amount for us because we are the . . .  people that are really affected.

    “The 2km zone — it covers the area that we access for fishing every day. We’re eating tinned fish.”

    More meetings
    Fagailesau also said the Samoa government told locals it intended to hold more meetings over compensation in the future.

    New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said he had not been aware of any locals eating tinned fish due to the wreckage.

    Peters spoke to RNZ Pacific Waves about the Manawanui. He reiterated that the Sāmoa government was leading the ongoing process around compensation and the wreckage, which included any discussion around its removal.

    He also denied there was any cover-up over the environmental impacts of the wreckage.

    To date, no environmental report on the impacts of Manawanui sinking has been made public.

    “It’s not a matter of being covert or secretive about it,” Peters said.

    “It’s analysing what we’re dealing with, and I think that probably better explains what’s happening here.”

    Open and transparent
    Peters said the New Zealand government had been open and transparent in it’s dealing and continued to work with the Sāmoa government over the Manawanui incident.

    “This terrible tragedy happened, which we massively regret — no one more than me.”

    But Samoa surf guide Manu Percival said the New Zealand government’s behaviour had not been good enough.

    For months, Percival had been in contact with the New Zealand High Commission about compensation for the boat fuel he used in the immediate aftermath of the disaster to assist with clean-up.

    “It’s real crazy. No one’s got any compensation.”

    He also said it had been difficult to get any concrete answers from the Sāmoa government over the future of the wreckage and compensation.

    “It’s kind of getting tossed between two different government departments.”

    Percival believed New Zealand should remove its wreckage and that the compensation amount paid to the Samoa government was “an absolute joke”.

    However, Peters said the NZ$6 million was the amount requested by the Samoa government.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Government Media Office in Gaza confirmed that Israel has committed 47 documented violations since the announcement of the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, resulting in the killing of 38 Palestinian civilians and the injury of 143 others, in a clear and explicit violation of the ceasefire resolution and the rules of international humanitarian law.

    Israel continues to violate the ceasefire

    In an official statement issued to the Canary on Saturday 18 October, the office explained that Israel’s violations included direct fire on civilians, deliberate shelling of residential neighbourhoods, and field arrests  of civilians, reflecting the occupation’s continued aggressive behaviour despite the cessation of military operations.

    The statement added that the Israeli occupation forces used their tanks and armoured vehicles stationed on the outskirts of cities, as well as mechanised cranes equipped with remote sensing and targeting systems, in addition to drones (quadcopters) that continue to fly over the Strip and fire bullets on residents in border areas.

    The media office stated that Israel’s violations covered all governorates of the Gaza Strip from north to south. It confirmed that the occupation did not actually comply with the ceasefire, but continued to commit its usual crimes of murder and intimidation against civilians.

    The Government Media Office held the Israeli occupation fully responsible for the continuing violations after the ceasefire agreement. It called on the United Nations, international organisations, and guarantors of the ceasefire to intervene urgently to compel the occupation to stop its attacks and ensure immediate and effective protection for unarmed civilians in the Gaza Strip.

    The statement concluded by emphasising that the continuation of these violations ‘puts the credibility of the international community at stake.’ It warned that any silence on the violations would be considered encouragement for the occupation to continue its crimes against the Palestinian people.

    Featured image via The Canary

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • In a move that probably shouldn’t surprise anyone, Donald Trump has pardoned the notorious fraudster George Santos. Santos wasn’t just any conman, either — he was a Republican congressman who lied his way to the top, then publicly crashed down to the bottom:

    Any normal politician would avoid pardoning a liability like Santos, but this is Trump we’re talking about. If anything, Trump might elevate him into an even greater position of prestige.

    “Have a great life!”

    Santos arguably only lied about one thing, but that ‘one thing’ was his life story. The lies, falsehoods, and swindles of Santos include:

    If you’re particularly repulsed by that last one, you should know that Trump also hates dogs. That said, we can’t definitively say that Santos ‘hates dogs’ — just that he really didn’t like that one (allegedly).

    Fast forward to today, and the disgraced Republican was serving an 87-month sentence for crimes including fraud and identity theft. As you’d expect, people had a lot to say:

    Liar liar

    The most unfortunate thing about Santos is this:


    As such, the entertaining Santos will almost certainly show up on Trump-friendly media in the future. Speaking of which, here he was in 2024:

    He also had his own podcast on YouTube called ‘Pants on Fire‘, but the views were notably up and down. In his last episode, he sought ‘prison advice’ in anticipation of his conviction. This was the fourth-best-performing video on the channel with 17k views; most episodes received less than a thousand watchers.

    We’re not sure where Santos will end up next, but in Trump’s America, the sky’s the limit for a fraudster like him.

    Featured image via George Santos (YouTube) / Gage Skidmore (Wikimedia)

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    The International Criminal Court has rejected Israel’s bid to appeal against arrest warrants for its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant over the Gaza genocide, reports TRT World News.

    In a ruling that made headlines worldwide, the ICC last November found “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bore “criminal responsibility” for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

    The warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant sparked outrage in Israel and in the United States, which later imposed sanctions on senior ICC officials.

    Netanyahu denounced the ruling as an “anti-Semitic decision,” while then-US President Joe Biden called it “outrageous.”

    Israel asked the court in May to dismiss the warrants while it pursued a separate challenge over whether the ICC had jurisdiction in the case.

    The court rejected that request on July 16, saying there was “no legal basis” to quash the warrants while the jurisdiction issue was pending.

    A week later, Israel sought permission to appeal the July ruling, but judges yesterday dismissed the bid, stating that “the issue, as framed by Israel, is not an appealable issue”.

    Broader challenge
    “The Chamber therefore rejects the request,” the ICC said in its 13-page ruling.

    ICC judges are still considering Israel’s broader challenge over the court’s jurisdiction.

    When the arrest warrants were first issued in November, the court simultaneously rejected an earlier Israeli objection to its authority.

    However, in April, the ICC’s Appeals Chamber ruled that the Pre-Trial Chamber was wrong to dismiss Israel’s challenge and ordered it to review the arguments in greater detail.

    It is not yet clear when the court will issue a final ruling on jurisdiction.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    A national advocacy and protest group has demanded that Foreign Minister Winston Peters condemn Israeli torture of Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti and failure to abide by the Gaza ceasefire.

    Co-chair John Minto of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) said Barghouti was Palestine’s equivalent to South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, jailed by the minority white regime for 27 years but who was elected president in 1994.

    As nationwide protests against Israeli genocide across New Zealand continued this weekend into the third year, Minto said in a statement Barghouti had been held by Israel in prison since 2002.

    Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti
    Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti . . . “equivalent” to South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, says PSNA. Image: AJ+ screenshot APR

    “He is revered as the most likely Palestinian to lead Palestinians out of occupation and apartheid. Though not affiliated to Hamas, he was top of their list of prisoners for Israel to release,” Minto said.

    “Israel refused. Instead, his jailers have kicked him unconscious and smashed his ribs.”

    Minto says this was the clearest message to the world that Israel had no interest in allowing anybody like Nelson Mandela to ever emerge as a Palestinian leader to “bring real peace and justice”.

    “Peters should be condemning this torture in the strongest terms.

    “He loudly complained that the protest movement in this country didn’t congratulate [US President Donald] Trump with his plan to outsource the occupation of Gaza to Tony Blair, Egyptian secret police and Turkish soldiers.

    “But now, when Israel continues to kill Palestinians in Gaza every day, Peters is silent.

    ‘We fear for my father’s life’: Marwan Barghouti’s son to Al Jazeera   Video: AJ+

    “Israeli snipers shot 35 Palestinians dead last Friday alone. Israel has also activated its al-Qaeda gangster gangs in Gaza to try to start of civil war.

    “There is no ceasefire.”

    Minto said that if Peters was to “atone for his completely mistaken optimism” about Trump’s peace plan, then he ought to be “hauling in the Israeli ambassador today for an official rebuke and then send the ambassador packing”.

    “Peters has been quick to impose sanctions on Iran. But, as usual, no action on Israel.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • A raft of new economic sanctions has been announced for Russia. Yet not a peep from the UK government about any punishment for genocide state Israel.

    Announced Wednesday as part of the UK’s Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, the sanctions target include oil firms, ports, tech companies, and individuals. The list also includes specific ships.

    The ships are part of what is being called the Russian ‘shadow fleet’. Reuters reports:

    The new sanctions target 51 ships within the shadow fleet, as well as individuals and entities across sectors including energy and defence.
    The shadow fleet has increasingly been the target of sanctions from Britain, the United States and the European Union since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
    It is a network of older tankers that officials say are used to avoid sanctions on Russian oil.
    Announcing the move, British Chancellor Rachel Reeves said “no place for Russia on global markets”.

    Sanctions on Russia, but any sanctions on Israel?

    UK sanctions on Israel have been minimal. When they have been placed they have mostly target settlers in the West Bank. That’s good. But on the whole, they ignore the active genocide in Gaza.

    June saw Foreign Secretary David Lammy announce asset freezes and other measures on far-right ministers Bezalel Yoel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir:

    In their personal capacity, Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are now sanctioned for their repeated incitement of violence against Palestinian civilians, effective immediately.

    In 2024, the UK government froze 30 arms export licences to Israel.

    However, it was reported that UK military sales to Israel had increased to a record value in 2025.

    Channel 4 FactCheck reported:

    Our analysis of Israel Tax Authority customs data finds that Israel imported nearly £1 million worth of UK munitions in the first nine months of the year.

    That’s more than double the amount received in any of the previous three years.

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been rightly condemned by everyone but a few marginal fantasists. Yet Israel, which is actively carrying out the worst crime of the 21st century, has received a mild rhetorical slap on the wrist while arms sales have INCREASED. The UK’s inability to be even-handed in its approach to international law can only be read as yet another sign of its decay and irrelevance.

    Featured image via The Canary

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Pakistan’s military has violently suppressed a large pro-Palestine protest marching from Lahore to the US embassy in Islamabad. The protest, which was led by the religiously conservative party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP). Demonstrators marched in solidarity with Palestinians and in opposition to the normalising of relations with the Israeli occupation. Earlier in the week the Pakistani military was engaged in a full-blown skirmish with Afghanistan after it targeted TLP leaders in Kabul before a ceasefire that came to effect yesterday.

    This protest and its violent suppression took place as Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was attending the Gaza ‘Peace Summit’ in Egypt, where he nominated Trump – a war criminal who is complicit in the Gaza genocide – for the Nobel Peace Prize for a second time. Sharif praised Trump, calling him a ‘man of peace’.

    Pakistan’s bloody pro-Palestine march

    While official accounts claimed at least five deaths, including a police officer, according to witnesses and activists the number of fatalities was much more. A number of people were also wounded by live ammunition, tear gas, and batons deployed by security forces against the protesters, while the government enforced road closures, internet blackouts, and mass arrests in affected cities such as Islamabad, Rawalpindi, and Lahore.​​

    The protesters’ route began in Lahore at the headquarters of TLP, and proceeded along the road towards Islamabad. Eventually, protestors were directed toward a location where they were trapped by barriers, forcing them to stage a sit-in. Although TLP leader Saad Rizvi requested negotiations to de-escalate tensions, these were rejected. Those sent to negotiate were arrested, and following authorisation to use lethal force, Pakistan’s military carried out a violent crackdown on protesters, resulting in many deaths and injuries. Videos circulated showing police vehicles attempting to run over demonstrators and shoot unarmed protesters while chasing after them. Rizvi was also shot and detained. The whereabouts of Rizvi and his brother Anas are currently unknown.

    Is this a new chapter in Pakistan’s uneasy relationship with Israel?

    Officially, Pakistan has refused to recognise the Israeli regime without a just resolution to the Palestinian issue based on pre-1967 borders and East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. But, the ongoing Abraham Accords – normalisation agreements – between the Israeli regime and several Muslim-majority countries since 2020 have reignited debate inside Pakistan. This attempt at normalisation follows a similar pattern where certain Gulf states have deepened ties with Israel. Given the fact that Pakistan depends economically and strategically on those Gulf states, the geopolitical pressure to align with Israel is severe.

    The Pakistani military’s closer alignment with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, including a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement signed in September 2025, adds pressure to engage with Israel, though formal recognition remains unlikely anytime in the near future.​

    The violent crackdown on TLP was intended to serve as a warning not to oppose these foreign policy shifts. Restrictions on funerals of the dead and raids on families’ homes also show that Pakistani authorities are attempting to suppress dissent. The government has also frozen TLP’s assets and sealed their offices and mosques to dismantle the group.

    The Pakistani government is moving towards normalisation with the Israeli occupation despite the widespread public and Islamist opposition, and this will only lead to a further increase in tensions and violence.  Authorities say they have detained more than 2,700 people as a result of this latest protest.

    Featured image via The Canary

    By Charlie Jaay

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • SPECIAL REPORT: By Romana Rubeo

    Hundreds of Palestinians released from Israeli prisons in recent days have described scenes of systematic torture, starvation, and humiliation.

    Their accounts, gathered by The Guardian, TRT, Al-Mayadeen, Quds News Network, and Palestine Online, among others, offer a rare glimpse into what human rights organisations call a “policy of abuse” targeting Palestinian detainees.

    According to the reports, many of the freed prisoners returned to Gaza emaciated, injured, and traumatised, some learning only after their release that their families had been killed during Israel’s war on the besieged Strip.

    In testimony published by The Guardian, 33-year-old Naseem al-Radee recalled the moment Israeli prison guards “gave him a farewell gift” before his release.

    “They bound his hands, placed him on the ground and beat him without mercy,” the report said, describing how Radee’s first sight of Gaza after nearly two years was “blurry,” the result of a boot to the eye.

    Radee, a government employee from Beit Lahia, was kidnapped by Israeli soldiers at a displacement shelter in Gaza in December 2023. He spent 22 months in detention, including 100 days in an underground cell, before being released alongside 1700 other Palestinians this week under the ceasefire agreement.

    “They used teargas and rubber bullets to intimidate us, in addition to constant verbal abuse and insults,” The Guardian cited Radee as saying regarding his time in Nafha prison in the Naqab desert.

    “They had a strict system of repression; the electronic gate of the section would open when the soldiers entered, and they would come in with their dogs, shouting ‘on your stomach, on your stomach,’ and start beating us mercilessly”, the testimony continued.

    According to the report, cramped and unsanitary cells, fungal infections, starvation, and routine beatings defined his captivity. Upon release, Radee tried to call his wife, only to learn that she and all but one of his children had been killed during his detention.

    “I was very happy to be released because the date coincided with my youngest daughter Saba’s third birthday,” he said.

    “I tried to find some joy in being released on this day, but sadly, Saba went with my family, and my joy went with her.”

    Sound torture
    Also speaking to The Guardian, 22-year-old university student Mohammed al-Asaliya described contracting scabies in prison and being denied treatment.

    “There was no medical care,” he said. “We tried to treat ourselves by using floor disinfectant on our wounds, but it only made them worse. The mattresses were filthy, the environment unhealthy, our immunity weak, and the food contaminated.”

    He recalled an area “they called ‘the disco,’ where they played loud music nonstop for two days straight.”

    The sound torture, he said, was combined with physical abuse: “They also hung us on walls, sprayed us with cold air and water, and sometimes threw chilli powder on detainees.”

    By the time of his release, Asaliya’s weight had dropped from 75 kg to 42 kg.

    ‘We died a thousand times a day’
    In testimony recorded by Palestine Online, journalist and former detainee Shadi Abu Sido described what he called “unimaginable torture”.

    “They used to say: ‘Take, eat.’ But I didn’t want anything for myself. About 1800 of us were released, and thousands are still inside,” Abu Sido recounted.

    “If you die once a day, we have died a thousand times a day, each day. We didn’t know the day, the hour, or even the date.

    “We forgot what sleep feels like, how food tastes. In the middle of the night, they would splash water on us, in our cells.”

    In another video posted by Palestine Online, Abu Sido added:

    “They torture and abuse us in every possible way, physically and psychologically. We don’t sleep; they threaten us about our children. ‘We killed your children, we killed your children. There is no Gaza’.”

    “I entered Gaza and I found a scene from the Day of Judgment,” he said.

    ‘I made this for my daughter’
    In a video published by Al-Mayadeen, another recently freed detainee collapsed in tears as he learned that his entire family had been killed. Holding a handmade toy he crafted in prison, he said:

    “My children are dead. I made this for my daughter. Her birthday was on October 18; my daughter was two years old. Bara is eight years old.

    “My beloved ones have been killed.”

    ‘They amputated my leg’
    Speaking to TRT World, Palestinian prisoner Jibril al-Safadi described the brutality that cost him his leg:

    “My leg was amputated in prison due to severe torture. The situation was tough: relentless suffering. There were savage beatings and horrible torture,” he said. “They transferred me to Sde Teiman.

    “There was no medical care. They amputated my right leg.

    We faced everything you can expect, even the dogs’ raping, torturing of detainees. Killing men is usual, like it’s an ordinary thing.”

    A system of abuse
    The Guardian report cited Palestinian medical officials in Gaza who confirmed that many detainees arrived “in poor physical health,” bearing “bruises, fractures, wounds, and marks from restraints that had bound their hands tightly.”

    Eyad Qaddih, the director of public relations at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, reportedly said many of the released prisoners had to be transferred to the emergency room.

    “The signs of beating and torture were clearly visible,” he told The Guardian.

    The report cited the Israeli NGO Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), as saying that about 2800 Palestinians from Gaza remain in Israeli prisons without charge.

    Most were detained under emergency laws amended after October 7, 2023, allowing for indefinite administrative detention of anyone deemed an “unlawful combatant”.

    PCATI’s executive director, Tal Steiner, said that “the amount and scale of torture and abuse in Israeli prisons and military camps has skyrocketed since October 7.”

    She described the escalation as “part of a policy led by Israeli decision-makers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and others.”

    Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister, has repeatedly bragged about providing Palestinian prisoners with “the minimum of the minimum” food and supplies.

    The Guardian reports: In total, 88 Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons and sent to the occupied West Bank on Monday – the other nearly 2000, a number that includes about 1700 Palestinians seized from Gaza during the war and held without charge, were sent back to Gaza, where a minority would travel on to neighbouring countries.

    Before Monday’s release, 11,056 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons, according to statistics from the Israeli NGO HaMoked in October 2025. At least 3500 of those were held in administrative detention without trial. An Israeli military database has indicated that only a quarter of those detained in Gaza were classified as fighters.

    Republished with permission from The Palestine Chronicle

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

    A controversial piece of legislation to postpone the date for New Caledonia’s crucial provincial elections passed its first hurdle in the French Senate on Wednesday.

    The vote was endorsed in the French Upper House by a large majority of 299-42.

    The day before, another piece of constitutional legislation was also tabled before the Council of Ministers as a matter of emergency just hours after Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s second Cabinet in a week was appointed.

    Earlier this month, the postponement of the polls was approved in principle by New Caledonia’s Congress.

    In the form of an “organic law”, it is part of the implementation process of the Bougival agreement text, which was signed on July 12 near Paris, and initially signed by all of New Caledonia’s parties, both pro-France and pro-independence.

    However, one of the main components of the pro-independence movement, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), denounced the agreement a few days later, saying it did not meet the party’s demands in terms of quick accession to full sovereignty.

    The FLNKS said their negotiators’ signatures were therefore now considered null and void.

    For the purposes of implementing the text, despite very tight deadlines, one part of its implementation should leave more time for negotiations and it was perceived one way to achieve this was to postpone the elections (which were scheduled to be held not later than November 30) until not later than end of June 2026.

    The move, if it succeeds, has to happen before November 2. It means that before then the same text has to be endorsed by the Lower House, the French National Assembly.

    If it fails, then the provincial elections’ date will have to be maintained at the original date and under the current voting restrictions.

    Before that, New Caledonia’s provincial elections were already postponed twice — initially scheduled to take place in May 2024, then re-scheduled to no later than December 2024 — mostly because of the civil unrest that shook New Caledonia after the deadly May 2024 riots.

    The riots were themselves the culmination of pro-independence protests and marches that escalated in response to a French government project to modify the conditions of eligibility for local elections and lift previous restrictions on the electoral roll.

    At the time, pro-independence opponents said this would have resulted in indigenous voters becoming a minority because their vote would be diluted.

    During debates in the Senate this week, what was presented as a “bipartisan” Bill also stressed the need to resolve current disagreements on the Bougival agreement and take more time to include FLNKS with the rest of New Caledonian parties.

    Opponents to the text, among others the French Greens (les Ecologistes) and the Communist Party, maintained that FLNKS had rejected the Bougival deal “in block”, because such agreement simply “doesn’t exist”.

    Passage en force
    They are accusing the French government of attempting to pass the text “by force”.

    The same text is scheduled to be tabled before the Lower House (National Assembly) next week on October 22.

    But in the Lower House, debates will be tougher and the final vote will be much more uncertain. The Lower House majority is not clear, MPs being split between the centre right, the far right, the centre left and the far left.

    While reactions from the pro-France politicians in Nouméa yesterday were mostly favourable to the latest Senate vote, the now-dominant component within FLNKS, the Union Calédonienne (UC), held a media conference to once again express its disapproval of postponing the local elections.

    Instead, it wanted the original dates — before November 30 — to be maintained, along with the current voting eligibility restrictions.

    Fresh talks with FLNKS?
    UC President Emmanuel Tjibaou told local media this did not exclude that further negotiations could be held after the local elections.

    But in reference to the May 2024 riots, Tjibaou said he feared that “the same mistakes of the past … The passage en force… are being made again”.

    He said discussions and debates must prevail on the Parliament floor.

    Tjibaou is flying to Paris at the weekend to take part in the National Assembly (of which he is one of the two elected MPs for New Caledonia) vote on 22 October 2025.

    “This is an alert, an appeal to good sense, not a threat,” UC secretary-general Dominique Fochi added.

    “If this passage en force happens, we really don’t know what is going to happen,” Fochi said.

    Another component of the pro-independence chessboard in New Caledonia, the PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party), usually described as more “moderate”, has also reacted on Thursday to the French Senate’s vote.

    “This is rather good news, because it is part of the Bougival timeframe and we support this,” PALIKA leader Charles Washetine said.

    PALIKA and UPM (Progressist Union in Melanesia) both decided to distance themselves from the FLNKS, of which they were both key members, at the end of August 2024.

    Since the Bougival agreement was signed, PALIKA and UPM have sided in support of the deal, which envisions the creation of a “State of New Caledonia”, of a French-New Caledonian dual nationality and the short-term transfer of key powers from France, such as foreign affairs.

    Those notions, amounting to a de facto Constitution for New Caledonia, are to be also later included to translate into appropriate legal terms in the French Constitution.

    This should be submitted to Parliament “by the end of this year”, Lecornu said during his maiden Parliament address on Tuesday, October 14.

    And sometime “this spring (2026)”, qualified citizens of New Caledonia would also have to vote on the text by way of a referendum dedicated to the subject.

    Bougival agreement ‘allows a path to reconciliation’ – Lecornu
    “The Bougival agreement allows a path to reconciliation. It must be transcribed into the Constitution”, Lecornu told the National Assembly.

    Also speaking in Parliament for the first time since she was appointed Minister for Overseas, Naïma Moutchou said that in her new capacity, she would be there “to listen” and “to act”.

    This, she said, included trying to re-engage FLNKS into fresh talks, with the possibility of bringing some amendments to the much-contested Bougival text.

    France's new Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou
    France’s new Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou . . .”We cannot do it without the FLNKS. And we will not do it without the FLNKS,” Image: Assemblée Nationale/RNZ

    “To translate Bougival into facts takes time”.

    She also admitted that a real consensus was needed.

    “We cannot do it without the FLNKS. And we will not do it without the FLNKS,” she said.

    She spoke in defence of the postponement of local elections.

    “To postpone elections does not mean to postpone democracy, it means giving it back solid foundations, it is to choose lucidity rather than precipitation”, she told MPs.

    Meanwhile, yesterday in Paris, PM Lecornu, who formed his cabinet last Sunday, survived his first batch of two simultaneous motions of no-confidence in the National Assembly.

    The first, filed by far-right Rassemblement National (RN), received the support of 271 MPs, not enough to reach the necessary 289 votes.

    The second, filed by far-left La France Insoumise (LFI, France Unbowed), received 144 votes.

    During the pre-censure vote debates, New Caledonian MP pro-France Nicolas Metzdorf took the floor for a few minutes telling MPs that if it could serve as an inspiration, in the French Pacific territory, local laws made it impossible for a government to be toppled less than 18 months after it was formed.

    Lecornu, who is very knowledgeable on New Caledonia’s affairs because of his two-year experience as French Minister for Overseas in 2020-2022, was all smiles.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ANALYSIS: By Elijah J Magnier

    Benjamin Netanyahu insisted, until just hours before Donald Trump’s arrival, that the war in Gaza would not stop. Then, standing in the Knesset before Israel’s hardline ministers, Trump announced that it had — and whisked a delegation of world leaders to Egypt to formalise the ceasefire before a global audience.

    The message was unmistakable: Israel’s prime minister could no longer block peace without suffering public humiliation. Facing ministers who, only a day earlier, had vowed to press on with the war, Trump imposed an abrupt reversal — one that only he could engineer.

    He came to Jerusalem not merely to speak, but to enforce the deal already reached and leave Netanyahu no choice but to comply or lose face.

    He then carried that spectacle to Sharm el-Sheikh, gathering heads of state and government from the Middle East, Asia, and Europe to witness and sign the cessation of war.

    The first phase — halting hostilities and exchanging prisoners — represented the sole ground on which both sides could agree. But the phases that follow are riddled with complications: a path of shifting sands, vague clauses, and undefined timelines, where the devil hides in every single point.

    Trump’s declaration, messages and summit
    Trump’s arrival in Israel was theatrical. He entered the Knesset, addressed lawmakers and ministers, praised Netanyahu’s wartime leadership, and then made a sweeping proclamation: the war was over.

    That was a bold reversal from the very ministers he faced only hours earlier, who had publicly affirmed their intention to continue the conflict.

    The symbolism mattered more than the logic. By announcing the end of the war in Israel’s Parliament, Trump cornered Netanyahu in front of his hardline allies and the world.

    If the Israeli leader dared to resume hostilities, he would be defying not only his own coalition but a global consensus. Trump also asked President Isaac Herzog — then present — to pardon Netanyahu from his ongoing corruption charges, invoking the president’s constitutional prerogative.

    The gesture fused diplomacy, domestic politics, and Israeli justice in a single, calculated act of theatre.

    From Israel, Trump flew to Egypt, where on 13 October 2025 many of the world’s leaders convened at the Sharm el-Sheikh Peace Summit to formalise the Gaza ceasefire.

    The event was co-chaired by Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The summit hosted delegations from approximately 27 countries, representing leaders from the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and international organisations.

    The guest list included Emmanuel Macron, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz, Pedro Sánchez, Mahmoud Abbas, António Guterres, António Costa, and the Arab League’s Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

    Notably absent were formal representatives of Hamas and Israel itself. Netanyahu had accepted the invitation initially but later declined, citing a conflict with a Jewish holiday and diplomatic pressure from certain participants.

    Many leaders refused to meet with him and declined the invitation for that very reason.

    At the summit, Trump, Sisi, the Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Erdoğan signed what was called the Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity — a symbolic document laying out commitments to maintain the ceasefire, support reconstruction, and discourage future conflict.

    By bringing so many leaders together in one place, Trump embedded the ceasefire into a global diplomatic architecture, making it harder for Netanyahu and his extremist ministers to reverse course without triggering international backlash.

    Israel’s unfulfilled objectives
    Despite the scale of destruction, Israel failed to achieve any of its declared military or political objectives in Gaza. The circumstances of this devastating war were unprecedented — and yet, even with such intensity, Israel failed to ethnically cleanse Gaza or alter its demographic reality.

    It did not eliminate Hamas or its leadership; it could not rescue its captives through force; it failed to dismantle the movement’s military infrastructure or install a new governing authority in the enclave.

    After months of bombardment, Israel still controlled only half of Gaza and faced renewed armed resistance in areas it claimed to have “cleared”. The campaign, designed to restore deterrence, instead exposed Israel’s limitations: overwhelming firepower, backed fully by the United States, but diminishing strategic capacity.

    Internationally, the assault deepened Israel’s isolation, eroded its moral legitimacy, and unified global opinion against it. What Netanyahu had promised as a decisive victory ended in a political and military stalemate — the very failure that forced Trump’s intervention.

    Many Arab leaders refused to meet with Netanyahu, and Trump himself failed to bring him to Sharm el-Sheikh.

    Why Trump intervened
    Netanyahu had long survived politically by delaying agreements, shifting blame, and keeping his options open. But this time, the war had devastated Gaza to such an extent that global public opinion — and even international institutions, including the United Nations — began to describe Israel’s actions as genocide.

    Israel’s reputation, and Netanyahu’s with it, lay in ruins.

    Trump’s intervention offered a lifeline. By casting himself as the architect of peace, he provided Netanyahu with an escape route — a political rescue disguised as diplomacy.

    Netanyahu’s coalition, under pressure from its far-right partners, had no credible argument left against a deal once it was validated by world leaders. Trump’s carefully staged ceasefire left Netanyahu with only two choices: resist and face international isolation and sanctions, or comply and survive politically.

    Trump also reminded Netanyahu, both publicly and privately, that Israel’s campaign had depended entirely on American weapons.

    “He called for different kinds of weapons all the time,” Trump said — a remark that exposed the scale of US complicity. The message was unmistakable: if Israel defied the ceasefire, the stream of arms that had sustained its war could be cut off.

    It was an implicit acknowledgment from Trump himself of Washington’s partnership in the devastation of Gaza — a conflict that killed and wounded more than 10 percent of the enclave’s population.

    The bombs that rained down on civilians had been supplied on a fast track, lavishly and without restraint, enabling the destruction that Trump now sought to end.

    The fragile structure of the deal
    The agreement Trump brokered was only the first stage. It prioritised the release of hostages and prisoners — a symbolic and political victory — but left withdrawal, reconstruction, governance, and disarmament undefined.

    Netanyahu accepted phase one, but the path ahead is laced with traps. He intends to resume operations against Hamas, undermine clauses he dislikes, and prevent the formation of a Palestinian authority capable of governing Gaza.

    Resistance groups are unlikely to lay down all arms; they may surrender heavy weapons like missiles while keeping small arms, ensuring that Israel remains vulnerable to renewed attacks.

    The result is de facto partition: Palestinians control parts of Gaza while Israel holds the rest. Each side asserts authority over its zone, and both will use pressure to influence the other.

    Netanyahu’s political calculus
    Domestically, Netanyahu faces a precarious balancing act. If President Herzog pardons him, it removes the legal threat but not the political cost of the failures of October 7.

    Critics will question why Israel did not negotiate a prisoner exchange earlier, when more hostages might have survived.

    Should his popularity fall, Netanyahu may dissolve his government and call snap elections — likely before October 2026 — to regain legitimacy. The far-right ministers in his coalition, such as Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, are unlikely to respect the ceasefire.

    Nevertheless, they, along with Netanyahu who shares the same objective, have no intention of conceding Palestinian statehood or allowing lasting peace. Trump’s deal restricts Netanyahu’s room for manoeuvre, but whether he abides by it or quietly undermines it remains to be seen.

    Trump positioned himself as the guarantor of the ceasefire. For the remaining three years of his mandate, Netanyahu will be constrained: he cannot break the agreement without triggering diplomatic consequences.

    But ending the Gaza campaign is not the same as resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which remains untouched. Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, remain in Israel to monitor Netanyahu and ensure he does not quietly restart hostilities.

    Their presence keeps pressure alive, but it cannot be permanent. Netanyahu, long known for exploiting ambiguities in past agreements, will test every margin.

    Public trust in him is weak — among Israelis, world leaders, and his own ministers. If he obstructs the deal, he risks splitting from Washington’s agenda and losing what remains of Israel’s legitimacy.

    Trump’s broader aim is to rehabilitate Israel’s global image. He believes halting the war helps Israel recover its reputation while giving Netanyahu a way to maintain power. But his gamble is that Netanyahu will accept limits; if he goes rogue, Trump may face the dilemma of confronting the ally he once defended.

    The absent West Bank and the end of the two-state illusion
    The West Bank was conspicuously absent from Trump’s discourse. The United States no longer recognises the two-state solution — the very framework established under the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, which Washington itself once sponsored to guarantee Palestinians the right to self-determination and statehood.

    By omitting any reference to it, Trump effectively buried what little remained of that diplomatic vision.

    This omission ensures that the conflict in Palestine will not end; it will only be renewed, sooner or later, and wherever resistance resurfaces.

    In the two years of war, Israel has constructed 22 new settlements on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, further erasing the territorial basis for a viable Palestinian state and dismantling the last vestiges of Oslo.

    What now remains is not peace but a state of permanent instability — a no-peace condition that guarantees the cycle of violence will continue.

    The unresolved core
    Trump’s ceasefire is a political theatre of control. It publicly enshrined a truce, placed Netanyahu under scrutiny, and allowed Trump to claim a diplomatic victory. But it did not resolve the Palestinian question.

    The ceasefire applies to Gaza, not to the broader occupation, the blockade, or the issue of self-determination. The two sides now operate within a precarious arrangement: Israel controls roughly half of Gaza, the Palestinian resistance remains armed in the other half, and both test the boundaries daily.

    Trump cannot hold his envoys indefinitely, and Netanyahu cannot be trusted to restrain himself. The US–Israeli alliance remains solid, but Trump’s personal intervention underscored a fundamental shift: unconditional support has limits when the costs to America’s reputation become too high.

    Trump’s strategy was to save Netanyahu and Israel from total isolation — to stop a war that had already killed more than 76,000 people, 82 percent of them civilians, including more than 20,000 children. He halted the destruction at the price of ambiguity: a ceasefire without a settlement, peace without reconciliation.

    The world leaders who gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh signed the end of a war, not the beginning of a solution.

    Elijah J Magnier is a veteran war zone correspondent and political analyst with over 35 years of experience covering the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). He specialises in real-time reporting of politics, strategic and military planning, terrorism and counter-terrorism; his strong analytical skills complement his reporting. His in-depth experience, extensive contacts and thorough political knowledge of complex political situations in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Syria provide his writings with insights balancing the routine misreporting and propaganda in the Western press. He also comments on Al Jazeera.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    Indonesian military forces have again bombed Kiwirok, the site of a massacre in 2021 that killed more than 300 West Papuan civilians, amid worsening violence, alleges a Papuan advocacy group.

    “While President Prabowo talks about promoting peace in the Middle East, his military is trying to wipe out West Papua,” said United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) leader Benny Wenda.

    “Evidence gathered by villagers in the Star Mountains shows the Indonesian military using Brazilian fighter jets to target houses, gardens, and cemeteries.”

    He said in a statement the village had been destroyed and more civilians had become displaced in their own land, adding to more than 100,000 internal refugees.

    The ULMWP website showed images from the attack.

    Wenda said the bombing showed again “how the whole world is complicit in the genocide of my people”.

    In 2021, Indonesia had used bombs and drones made in Serbia, China and France to kill civilians as revealed in the 2023 documentary Hostage Land: Why Papuan Guerrilla Fighters Keep Taking Hostages. 

    “Now, it is Brazilian jets that children in Kiwirok see before their homes are destroyed,” Wenda said.

    West Papua was being facing several “colonial tactics to crush our spirit and destroy our resistance”.

    “What is happening in Kiwirok is happening in different ways across West Papua,” Wenda said. He cited:

    • Riots and demos happening in Jayapura after a peaceful demonstration calling for the release Papuan political prisoners was violently crushed;
    • Indonesia occupying churches in Intan Jaya in violation of international law as they deployed soldiers for a new military base;
    • Indonesian military killing civilian Sadrak Yahome after anti-racism protests in Yalimo, which happenedfollowing Indonesian settlers racially abusing a Papuan student;
    • Militarisation happening across the Highlands, with more than 50 villages having being occupied by the TNI [Indonesian military] since August;
    • West Papuans being called “monkeys” by Indonesian settlers in Timika; and
    • A 52-year-old man being killed by police during a protest against the transfer of political prisoners in Manokwari.


    The documentary Hostage Land.                   Video: Paradise Broadcasting

    “It isn’t a coincidence that this escalation is happening while Indonesia is increasing environmental destruction in West Papua, trying to steal our resources and rip apart our forest for profit and food security,” Wenda said.

    “In Raja Ampat, Merauke, Intan Jaya, and Kiwirok, new plantations and mines are killing our people and land.”

    Wenda appealed to Pacific leaders to stand for West Papua as “the rest of the world stands for Palestine”.

    “The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) and Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) must respond to this escalation — Indonesia is spilling Pacific and Melanesian blood in West Papua.

    “They must not bow to Indonesian chequebook diplomacy.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘Gruesome’ Gavin Newsom is the governor of California. Famous for his war on homeless people, Newsom is a controversial figure, albeit one who exists within the mainstream of the modern Democrat Party (unfortunately):

    Newsom is also a beneficiary of funding from Israel, which spurred the following exchange:


    Malfunction

    In the video above, host Van Lathan Jr. asked Newsom about funding from AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee). Newsom responded:

    Interesting, you’re like the first to bring up AIPAC in years, which is interesting.

    Lathan clarified:

    I will not vote for a candidate that takes $1 from AIPAC.

    Following Israel’s genocide, this is an increasingly common opinion. It’s not just a left thing, either, with elements of the American right increasingly saying stuff like this:


    Back to Newsom, his malfunction continued:

    It’s interesting. I mean, it’s interesting. I haven’t thought about AIPAC. And it’s interesting. You’re like the first to bring up AIPAC in years, which is interesting.

    Asked “why”, Newsom said:

    It’s not relevant to my day-to-day life. Which is just interesting. It’s interesting you say that.

    We’re going to go out on a limb and suggest Newsom found this question ‘interesting’.

    Continuing, he noted:

    JPAC perhaps more, but AIPAC less and less.

    As people highlighted, JPAC is a regional equivalent of AIPAC:

    People also said stuff like the following:

    The tide is turning

    Newsom continued to waffle on about how interesting he found the question, but he didn’t – you know – pledge to stop taking money from a genocidal foreign power. He may have to eventually, of course, as all American politicians may have to. Israel has lost public support in the West, and even the most cynical politicians will have to recognise this reality if they want to keep the gravy train running.

    Featured image via Van Lathan

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • An exposé in Politico has drawn attention to young Republicans making some incredibly unseemly comments:

    Running the gambit from gross to genocidal, the leaked messages show that young Republicans aren’t much different to the Republicans of 1925.

    Young Americans

    Although they refer to themselves as ‘young’, these people range from 18 to 40. This is probably fair enough, however, given that the sitting Republican president is 79.

    As you can see below, a lot of the messages are seemingly ironic, using a similar tone to message boards like 4chan or 8chan:

    While ‘irony’ has long been used to excuse this sort of talk, it’s beyond apparent that these people want a world which matches their rhetoric.

    It’s not for nothing that these youngsters support a president who is black bagging citizens and banishing them to an El Salvadorian torture facility; a president who is clamping down on free speech and freedom of expression; a president who let Israel conduct a genocide for months before growing tired of the blowback and bringing Netanyahu to heel.

    Speaking on this same point, Politico interviewed Joe Feagin, a sociology professor who’s studied racism for the past 60 years. This is what he had to say:

    The more the political atmosphere is open and liberating — like it has been with the emergence of Trump and a more right wing GOP even before him — it opens up young people and older people to telling racist jokes, making racist commentaries in private and public.

    He added:

    It’s chilling, of course, because they will act on these views.

    Others have commented on the story too:

    A fish rots from the head

    It’s not surprising that Young Republicans would have opinions from the 1930s when this is their leader:


    While America gagged at the content of these chat logs, vice president JD Vance engaged in a bit of ‘whataboutism’:


    While the message Vance highlights is pretty bad, it’s hard to argue it’s worse than ‘I love Hitler’.

    You know – unless you also feel some sort of way about Hitler.

    This would make sense, I guess, given that Vance once compared Trump to Hitler, and now he’s the president’s yappiest lapdog.

    Although Vance has struggled to diminish the repulsiveness of these messages, he has made one thing clear; it’s not just the young Republicans who are comfortable with this sort of thing.

    Featured image via Politico

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • On 14 October, we reported that Donald Trump had once again humiliated Keir Starmer on the world stage:


    Now, we regret to inform you that Trump has once again ‘once agained’ our prime minster (as far as anyone can tell):


    “Weak ones”

    In this latest video, a journalist says to Trump:

    Some of those players, particularly Erdogan, they also help in the war between Russia and Ukraine.

    Trump responds:

    Yeah, Erdogan can. He’s respected by Russia. Ukraine I can’t tell you about, but he is respected by Putin. And he’s a friend of mine, yeah, you can see. I get along with the tough ones. I don’t get along with the weak ones.

    Following up, a journalist asks:

    Do you want to elaborate on the leaders you consider weak who are in that room?

    Trump responds:

    No, I won’t comment on that, but you know probably who they are.

    Echoing what most people are thinking, a journalist responds:

    I have an idea.

    We’re not sure who the journalist was, but it’s worth knowing that Trump has expanded the press pool to include outlets who are hyper-favourable to him, and she says “I have an idea” with a certain smugness that suggests she’s enthusiastically partial to the president’s opinions.

    Regardless, Trump confirms:

    There were a couple in the room.

    “Tough ones”

    Given that Trump lists Recep Tayyip Erdogan as one of the “tough ones”, it’s clear the sort of leaders he respects are ‘strong men’ – i.e. the would-be or are-now dictators. And believe us; we’re no fans of Erdogan, as Tom Anderson wrote for the Canary in 2023:

    On Sunday 28 May, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won Turkey’s presidential run-offs. His victory came amid allegations of violent intimidation of Kurdish voters and electoral fraud.

    Erdoğan has been in power for over 20 years. He took office as prime minister in 2003, and president in 2014. Since then, hungry for autocratic control, he has pushed for dictatorial powers for the presidency, built himself a $350m palace in Ankara, and replaced over 100 elected mayors in Bakur with state approved appointees. Bakur is the part of Kurdistan within the borders of Turkey. On top of this, Erdoğan has waged a constant war against Turkey’s Kurdish Freedom Movement, with at least 10,000 people currently imprisoned.

    Given that Trump is obviously praising ‘strong men’, you could criticise us for drawing attention to Trump humiliating Starmer. In doing so, you’d be missing our point. We aren’t bashing Starmer because of how Trump treats him; we’re bashing Starmer because of how he treats Trump.

    The guy snivels and begs for a shred of respect, and when he doesn’t get it he snivels and begs even harder.


    Worse than that, this spineless jellyfish of a man is selling us out to the Yanks to look like he knows what he’s doing.

    Pitiful

    We’re coming at it from a different angle to Trump, but we both think Starmer is weak for the same reason – because Starmer lets America walk all over him. And while Trump’s respect isn’t worth anything, it would be nice to have a prime minister who respects himself.

    Featured image via Heute / X/Twitter

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

    It’s bizarre how little mainstream attention is given to the fact that the President of the United States has repeatedly confessed to being bought and owned by the world’s richest Israeli, especially given how intensely fixated his political opposition was on the possibility that he was compromised by a foreign government during his first term.

    During a speech before the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) on Monday, President Donald Trump once again publicly admitted that he has implemented Israel-friendly policies at the behest of Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon, this time adding that he believes Adelson favours Israel over the United States.

    Here’s a transcript of Trump’s remarks:

    “As president, I terminated the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, and ultimately, I terminated Iran’s nuclear program with things called B2 bombers. It was swift and it was accurate, and it was a military beauty. I authorized the spending of billions of dollars, which went to Israel’s defense, as you know. And after years of broken promises from many other American presidents — you know that they kept promising — I never understood it until I got there. There was a lot of pressure put on these presidents. It was put on me, too, but I didn’t yield to the pressure. But every president for decades said, ‘We’re going to do it.’ The difference is I kept my promise and officially recognized the capital of Israel and moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem.

    “Isn’t that right Miriam? Look at Miriam. She’s back there. Stand up. Miriam and Sheldon [Adelson] would come into the office and call me. They’d call me — I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else, I guess. Look at her sitting there so innocently — got $60 billion in the bank, $60 billion. And she loves, and she, I think she said, ‘No, more.’ And she loves Israel, but she loves it. And they would come in. And her husband was a very aggressive man, but I loved him. It was a very aggressive, very supportive of me. And he’d call up, ‘Can I come over and see you? I’d say ‘Sheldon, I’m the president of the United States. It doesn’t work that way.’ He’d come in. But they were very responsible for so much, including getting me thinking about Golan Heights, which is probably one of the greatest things ever happened. Miriam, stand up, please. She really is, I mean, she loves this country. She loves this country. Her and her husband are so incredible. We miss him so dearly. But I actually asked her, I’m going to get her in trouble with this. But I actually asked her once, I said, ‘So Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more? The United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That means — that might mean Israel, I must say, we love you. Thank you, darling, for being here. That’s a great honor. Great honor. She’s a wonderful woman. She is a great woman.”

    Sheldon Adelson reportedly gave Trump and the Republicans more than US$424 million in campaign funding from 2016 up until his death in 2021. His widow Miriam continued her husband’s legacy and poured a further $100 million into Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

    On the 2024 campaign trail Trump also admitted to being controlled by Adelson cash.

    Here’s a transcript of those remarks:

    “Just as I promised, I recognize Israel’s eternal capital and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem. Jerusalem became the capital. I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

    “You know, Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there. And they were always after — and as soon as I’d give them something — always for Israel. As soon as I’d give them something, they’d want something else. I’d say, ‘Give me a couple of weeks, will you, please?’ But I gave them the Golan Heights, and they never even asked for it.

    “You know, for 72 years they’ve been trying to do the Golan Heights, right? And even Sheldon didn’t have the nerve. But I said, ‘You know what?’ I said to David Friedman, ‘Give me a quick lesson, like five minutes or less on the Golan Heights.’ And he did. And I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ We got it done in about 15 minutes, right?”

    Legitimising Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights and moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem were two of the most controversial moves Trump made in Israel’s favour during his first term, which have now been eclipsed by his backing of the genocide in Gaza and his bombings of Iran and Yemen.

    And here he is openly admitting that his billionaire Zionist megadonors have been using the access their donations bought them to push him to take drastic action in favour of Israel.

    Just imagine for a second if someone had leaked documents to the press proving that Trump and received extensive financial backing from a Russian oligarch to whom he doled out favors of immense geopolitical consequence.

    It would be the biggest scandal in the history of American politics, bar none. But because it’s an Israeli oligarch, he can admit to it openly and repeatedly without anyone batting an eye.

    During Trump’s first term his political rivals spent years pushing a bogus conspiracy theory that he was controlled by Vladimir Putin, despite his having spent that entire term aggressively ramping up cold war hostilities against Russia. Entire political punditry careers were birthed trying to create a scandal out of a narrative that could be plainly seen as false just by looking at the movements of the US war machine and Washington’s actions against Moscow.

    But here’s Trump openly admitting to bending over backwards to give an Israeli oligarch whatever she wants because she gave his campaign huge sums of money, while pouring weapons into Israel to facilitate its mass atrocities and engaging in acts of war on Israel’s behalf. And it barely makes a blip in mainstream Western politics or media.

    This is because mainstream Western politics and media understand that we are living in an unofficial oligarchic empire to which both the US and Israel belong. They never acknowledge it, they never talk about it, but all high-level politicians, pundits and operatives in the Western world understand that they serve a globe-spanning power structure run by a loose alliance of plutocrats and empire managers.

    They understand that states like Israel are a part of said power structure, while states like Russia, China and Iran are not. So they spend their time normalising the corruption and abuses of imperial member states while facilitating the empire’s efforts to attack and undermine the states which have successfully resisted being absorbed into the imperial power umbrella.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the only thing I like about Donald Trump is his infantile tendency to say the quiet part out loud. He advances the same kinds of abuses as his predecessors who were no less corrupt and controlled, but he exposes the underlying mechanics of those abuses in ways that more refined presidents never would.

    Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RNZ Pacific

    Pacific leaders believe climate experts are missing an opportunity to incorporate indigenous knowledge into adaptation measures.

    The call has been made as hundreds of scientists, global leaders, and climate adaptation experts around the globe gather at the Adaptation Futures Conference in Christchurch.

    At the conference’s opening session, Tuvalu’s Environment Minister Maina Talia explained how sea level rise was damaging agricultural land and fresh groundwater is becoming saline.

    “The figures are alarming, this is not just for Tuvalu and this is not a Tuvaluan problem, it’s not even a small island developing states problem, it’s a global economic bomb,” he said.

    Incorporating indigenous knowledge into climate adaptation has been a major focus of the event.

    Talia told RNZ Pacific he feels adaptation is generally presented in a Western lens.

    “We need to decolonise our mind, decolonise our soul, in order to integrate community-based adaptation measures.”

    Flagship adaptation projects
    The highest elevation in Tuvalu is only four and a half metres. A 2023 report from NASA found much of Tuvalu’s land would be below the average high tide by 2050.

    To combat rising seas the government has started reclaiming land, which is one of the island nation’s flagship adaptation projects.

    Talia said a “decolonisation approach” gave communities ownership of the work being done.

    “It’s all informed by our elders, informed by our youth, informed by our women in society, we cannot come with the idea that this is how your adaptation measures should look like.”

    Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) director-general Sefanaia Nawadra, on a similar line, said the “biggest difference” of incorporating indigenous-led solutions was giving people a sense of ownership.

    “It’s management by compliance rather than management by regulation, where you’re using a stick to say, ‘ok, if you don’t do this, you will be penalised’.”

    ‘Like a cheat code’
    Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change president Cynthia Houniuhi said those on the front line of the adverse effects of climate change are often indigenous people, which is almost always the case in the Pacific.

    “Who knows the place better than the ones that have lived there, so imagine that experience informs the solution, that’s the best way, it’s kind of like a cheat code.”

    United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) head of adaptation Youssef Nassef said it is not always clear how national adaptation plans included input from indigenous people.

    He also said climate knowledge is not always accessible to those who need it most.

    “We create knowledge, we put them in peer-reviewed publications but are the people who are actually needing it on the frontlines of climate change impacts really receiving that knowledge.”

    Pacific climate activists are coming off a high after a top UN court found failing to protect people from the adverse effects of climate change could violate international law.

    ICJ advisory opinion
    Houniuhi was one of the students who got the advisory opinion in July from the International Court of Justice.

    But she told those attending the conference it meant nothing if not acted upon.

    “We must continue this same energy, momentum and drive into the implementation of the ruling. As one of our mentors rightly said, ‘the law has now caught up to the science, what we now need is for policy to catch up to the law’.”

    Houniuhi said the advisory opinion provided “more weight to influence demands”. She expected the advisory opinion to be used as a negotiating tool by Pacific leaders at COP30 in Brazil next month.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • COMMENTARY: By Belén Fernández

    United States President Donald Trump had the time of his life on Monday at the Israeli Knesset, where he was welcomed as “the president of peace”. His captive audience showered him with applause, laughs and too many standing ovations to count.

    Two protesting lawmakers undertook a brief outburst in support of “Palestinian sovereignty” but were swiftly bundled out, earning the president more laughs and applause for his remark: “That was very efficient.”

    It was a typical stream-of-consciousness Trump speech although he mercifully refrained from rambling about escalators and teleprompters this time.

    I had initially hoped the fact that the US head of state was promptly due at a Gaza summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, might have kept the tangents to a minimum. Such hopes were dashed, but Trump did manage to devote a good bit of time to speculating about whether his summit counterparts might have already departed Egypt by the time he arrived.

    Trump’s Knesset appearance was occasioned by the ostensible end — for the moment — to the US-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has over the past two years officially killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Some scholars have suggested that the real death toll may be in the vicinity of 680,000.

    Obviously, the Palestinian genocide victims were of scant concern at the Knesset spectacle, which was essentially an exercise of mutual flattery between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a celebration of Israel’s excellence in mass slaughter.

    To that end, Trump informed Israel that “you’ve won” and congratulated Netanyahu on a “great job”.

    ‘Best weapons’
    As if that weren’t an obscene enough tribute to genocide, enforced starvation and terror in Gaza, Trump boasted that “we make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.”

    There were also various references to what he has previously called on social media the “3,000 YEAR CATASTROPHE”, which he fancies himself as having now resolved. This on top of the “seven wars” he claims to have ended in seven months, another figure that seems to have materialised out of thin air.

    But, hey, when you’re a “great president”, you don’t have to explain yourself.

    In addition to self-adulation, Trump had plenty of praise for other members of his entourage, including US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — who merited a lengthy digression on the subject of Russian President Vladimir Putin — and Trump’s “genius” son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was also in attendance despite having no official role in the current administration.

    During Trump’s first term as president, Kushner served as a senior White House adviser and a key player in the Abraham Accords, the normalisation deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, which essentially sidelined the Palestinian issue in the Arab political arena.

    Trump’s Knesset performance included numerous sales pitches for the Abraham Accords, which he noted he preferred to pronounce “Avraham” because it was “so much sort of nicer”. Emphasising how good the normalisation deals have been for business, Trump declared that the four existing signatories have already “made a lot of money being members”.

    To be sure, any expansion of the Abraham Accords in the present context would function to legitimise genocide and accelerate Palestinian dispossession. As it stands, the surviving inhabitants of Gaza have been condemned to a colonial overlordship, euphemised as a “Board of Peace” — which Trump has hailed as a “beautiful name” and which will be presided over by the US President himself.

    ‘Path of terror’
    This, apparently, is what the Palestinians need to “turn from the path of terror and violence”, as Trump put it — and never mind that the Palestinians aren’t the ones who have been waging a genocide for the past two years.

    Preceding Trump at the podium was Netanyahu, adding another level of psychological torture for anyone who was forced to watch the two leaders back to back. Thanking the US president for his “pivotal leadership” in supposedly ending a war that, mind you, Netanyahu didn’t even want to end, the Israeli prime minister pronounced him the “greatest friend that the State of Israel has ever had in the White House”.

    Netanyahu furthermore put up Trump as the first non-Israeli nominee for the Israel Prize and assured him he’d get his Nobel, too, soon enough.

    I didn’t time Trump’s own speech although I’d calculate that it was several aneurysms long. At one point in the middle of his discussion of some topic entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand, I wondered if my anguished cries at having to listen to him speak might elicit the concern of my neighbours.

    When Trump at long last decided to wrap things up, his final lines included the proclamation: “I love Israel. I’m with you all the way.”

    And while US affection for a genocidal state should come as no surprise to anyone, it’s also a good indication that “peace” is not really what’s happening at all.

    Belén Fernández is the author of The Darién Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas (Rutgers UP, 2025), Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Detention Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), and other books and has written widely for global news media. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • COMMENTARY: By Belén Fernández

    United States President Donald Trump had the time of his life on Monday at the Israeli Knesset, where he was welcomed as “the president of peace”. His captive audience showered him with applause, laughs and too many standing ovations to count.

    Two protesting lawmakers undertook a brief outburst in support of “Palestinian sovereignty” but were swiftly bundled out, earning the president more laughs and applause for his remark: “That was very efficient.”

    It was a typical stream-of-consciousness Trump speech although he mercifully refrained from rambling about escalators and teleprompters this time.

    I had initially hoped the fact that the US head of state was promptly due at a Gaza summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, might have kept the tangents to a minimum. Such hopes were dashed, but Trump did manage to devote a good bit of time to speculating about whether his summit counterparts might have already departed Egypt by the time he arrived.

    Trump’s Knesset appearance was occasioned by the ostensible end — for the moment — to the US-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has over the past two years officially killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. Some scholars have suggested that the real death toll may be in the vicinity of 680,000.

    Obviously, the Palestinian genocide victims were of scant concern at the Knesset spectacle, which was essentially an exercise of mutual flattery between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a celebration of Israel’s excellence in mass slaughter.

    To that end, Trump informed Israel that “you’ve won” and congratulated Netanyahu on a “great job”.

    ‘Best weapons’
    As if that weren’t an obscene enough tribute to genocide, enforced starvation and terror in Gaza, Trump boasted that “we make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.”

    There were also various references to what he has previously called on social media the “3,000 YEAR CATASTROPHE”, which he fancies himself as having now resolved. This on top of the “seven wars” he claims to have ended in seven months, another figure that seems to have materialised out of thin air.

    But, hey, when you’re a “great president”, you don’t have to explain yourself.

    In addition to self-adulation, Trump had plenty of praise for other members of his entourage, including US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — who merited a lengthy digression on the subject of Russian President Vladimir Putin — and Trump’s “genius” son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was also in attendance despite having no official role in the current administration.

    During Trump’s first term as president, Kushner served as a senior White House adviser and a key player in the Abraham Accords, the normalisation deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, which essentially sidelined the Palestinian issue in the Arab political arena.

    Trump’s Knesset performance included numerous sales pitches for the Abraham Accords, which he noted he preferred to pronounce “Avraham” because it was “so much sort of nicer”. Emphasising how good the normalisation deals have been for business, Trump declared that the four existing signatories have already “made a lot of money being members”.

    To be sure, any expansion of the Abraham Accords in the present context would function to legitimise genocide and accelerate Palestinian dispossession. As it stands, the surviving inhabitants of Gaza have been condemned to a colonial overlordship, euphemised as a “Board of Peace” — which Trump has hailed as a “beautiful name” and which will be presided over by the US President himself.

    ‘Path of terror’
    This, apparently, is what the Palestinians need to “turn from the path of terror and violence”, as Trump put it — and never mind that the Palestinians aren’t the ones who have been waging a genocide for the past two years.

    Preceding Trump at the podium was Netanyahu, adding another level of psychological torture for anyone who was forced to watch the two leaders back to back. Thanking the US president for his “pivotal leadership” in supposedly ending a war that, mind you, Netanyahu didn’t even want to end, the Israeli prime minister pronounced him the “greatest friend that the State of Israel has ever had in the White House”.

    Netanyahu furthermore put up Trump as the first non-Israeli nominee for the Israel Prize and assured him he’d get his Nobel, too, soon enough.

    I didn’t time Trump’s own speech although I’d calculate that it was several aneurysms long. At one point in the middle of his discussion of some topic entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand, I wondered if my anguished cries at having to listen to him speak might elicit the concern of my neighbours.

    When Trump at long last decided to wrap things up, his final lines included the proclamation: “I love Israel. I’m with you all the way.”

    And while US affection for a genocidal state should come as no surprise to anyone, it’s also a good indication that “peace” is not really what’s happening at all.

    Belén Fernández is the author of The Darién Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas (Rutgers UP, 2025), Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Detention Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), and other books and has written widely for global news media. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Donald Trump has once again said the quiet part out loud – this time on his support for Israel:


    Has there ever been a conman this honest?

    The most bought man in history

    In this latest shocker of a video, Trump says:

    every president for decades said, “We’re going to do it.” The difference is I kept my promise and officially recognised the capital of Israel and moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. Isn’t that right, Miriam?

    Look at Miriam. She’s back there. Stand up, Miriam. Stand up.

    Who is Miriam Adelson, you might ask, and who was her husband Sheldon Adelson? According to Al Jazeera:

    The Adelsons have long had significant influence among US conservatives.

    As committed Zionists and with links to right-wing figures and issues in the US, the Adelsons became Republican mega-donors in the 2010s, giving more than $600m to support Trump’s three presidential campaigns and to back other Republican candidates since 2015.

    They added:

    At a September campaign event, Adelson told Jewish voters they have a “sacred duty” to support Trump, “in gratitude for everything he has done and trust in everything he will yet do”.

    She also backed last year’s harsh crackdown on pro-Palestine student demonstrators, dismissing the protests in Forbes Israel as “ghastly gatherings of radical Muslim and Black Lives Matter activists, ultra-progressives, and career agitators — nothing short of street parties”.

    In the video, Trump continued:

    Miriam and Sheldon would come into the office. They’d call me. I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else I can think of. Look at her sitting there so innocently. She’s got $60 billion in the bank. $60 billion. And she loves, and she loves – I think she’s saying no more.

    It’s understandable why she’d say this; usually the guy you pay to do your bidding is smart enough to understand you’re also paying him to never admit that.

    Trump continued:

    And she loves Israel… and they would come in, and her husband was a very aggressive man, but I loved him. He was very aggressive, very supportive of me. And he’d call up, “Can I come over and see you?” I’d say, “Sheldon, I’m the President of the United States. It doesn’t work that way.”

    It certainly shouldn’t work that way, but then Trump says:

    He’d come in.

    He follows this with the sort of unintelligible noise president Joe Biden used to make.

    Getting back to the English language, he went on to say:

    I’m going to get her in trouble with this, but I actually asked her once, I said, “So Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more, the United States or Israel?” She refused to answer. That means, that might mean Israel, I must say.

    In response, the sound of nervous clapping.

    And this was all in the Israeli parliament by the way.

    Response

    As you can imagine, people had some interesting reactions to all this:

    Aaron Maté said:

    When ever I hear Trump flaunt how much he does the bidding of the Israel First oligarchs who fund his campaign, I think of all the time and energy wasted by Democratic Party leaders and media stenographers on their pet conspiracy theory that Trump is secretly compromised/funded by the Kremlin and Russian oligarchs.

    Why did every Russiagate cult member chase that mythical “foreign influence” over Trump and ignore this real one?

    Asa Winstanley suggested Adelson looked “uncomfortable” (she certainly looked like something):


    As many pointed out, Trump’s statement showed he’s basically just openly anti-Semitic, and his Zionist donors simply do not care:


    Unprecedented

    Responding to another recent video of Trump, Ryan Grim said “there’s never been anybody like this guy“. Unfortunately, having the personality of a sitcom alien who’s pretending to be human isn’t a positive when it comes to leading a country.

    On the plus side, he is making it impossible for the establishment to pretend it’s anything other than a front for oligarchy.

    Featured image via the Knesset

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Pacific Media Watch

    Pacific Media Watch supports the call by the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) for justice for the victims of crimes against journalists in Gaza, and its demand for immediate access to the Palestinian enclave for exiled journalists and foreign press.

    The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, confirmed on Friday, 10 October 2025, came after two years of unprecedented massacres against the press in Gaza.

    Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed nearly 220 journalists, including at least 56 slain due to their work.

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which has filed five complaints with the International Criminal Court, has called in a statement for justice for the victims, and the urgent evacuation of media professionals who wish to leave.

    The ceasefire agreement in Gaza under US President Donald Trump’s peace plan has so far failed to produce an end to the media blockade imposed on the besieged Palestinian territory.

    According to RSF information, several bombings struck the north of Gaza on the day the agreement was announced, 9 October. One of them wounded Abu Dhabi TV photojournalist Arafat al-Khour while he was documenting the damage in the Sabra neighbourhood in the centre of Gaza City.

    While the agreement approved by the Israeli government and Hamas leaders allows humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, it does not explicitly mention authorising access for the foreign press or the possibility of evacuating local journalists.

    ‘Absolute urgency’
    Jonathan Dagher, head of the RSF Middle East Desk, said in a statement: “The relief of a ceasefire in Gaza must not distract from the absolute urgency of the catastrophic situation facing journalists in the territory.

    “Nearly 220 of them have been killed by the Israeli army in two years, and the reporters still alive in Gaza need immediate care, equipment and support. They also need justice — more than ever.

    “If the impunity for the crimes committed against them continues, they will be repeated in Gaza, Palestine and elsewhere in the world. To bring justice to Gaza’s reporters and to protect the right to information around the world, we demand arrest warrants for the perpetrators of crimes against our fellow journalists in Gaza.

    “RSF is counting on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to act on the complaints we filed for war crimes committed against these journalists. It’s high time that the international community’s response matched the courage shown by Palestinian reporters over the past two years.”

    Since the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza in October 2023, the Israeli army has killed nearly 220 journalists in the besieged territory. At least 56 of these victims were directly targeted or killed due to their work, according to RSF, which has filed five complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the past two years, seeking justice for these journalists and end impunity for the crimes against them.

    In addition to killing news professionals on the ground and in their homes, the Israeli army has also targeted newsrooms, telecommunications infrastructure and journalistic equipment.

    Famine hits journalists
    Famine continues to afflict civilians in the Strip, including journalists, yet aid is barely trickling in and all communication services have been destroyed by two years of bombing.

    On October 9, Israeli authorities and Hamas leaders reached a 20-point ceasefire agreement in Cairo, Egypt’s capital, as part of Donald Trump’s plan to establish “lasting peace” in the region.

    This is the second ceasefire in Gaza since 7 October 2023, the first put in place at the beginning of the year and broken in March 2025, shortly after a strike killed the renowned Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat.

    Israel is ranked 112th among the 180 nations surveyed by the annual RSF World Press Freedom Index and Palestine is 163rd.

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

    As part of a never-ending rollercoaster of instability in French politics, the latest appointment of a Minister for Overseas has caused significant concern, including in New Caledonia.

    In the late hours of Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron approved the latest Cabinet lineup submitted to him by his Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu.

    A week earlier, Lecornu, who was appointed on September 9 to form a new government, made a first announcement for a Cabinet.

    But this only lasted 14 hours — Lecornu resigned on Monday, October 6, saying the conditions to stay as PM were “not met”.

    After yet another round of consultations under the instructions by Macron, Lecornu was finally re-appointed prime minister on Friday, 10 October 2025.

    The announcement of his new Cabinet, approved by Macron, came late on October 12.

    His new team includes former members of his previous cabinet, mixed with a number of personalities described as members of the civil society with no partisan affiliations.

    The new Minister for Overseas is a newcomer to the portfolio.

    Naïma Moutchou, 44, replaces Manuel Valls, who had worked indefatigably on New Caledonia issues since he was appointed in December 2024.

    Valls, a former Socialist Prime Minister, travelled half a dozen times to New Caledonia and managed to bring all rival local politicians (both pro-France and pro-independence) around the same table.

    The ensuing negotiations led to the signing of a Bougival agreement (signed on July 12, near Paris), initially signed by all local parties represented at New Caledonia’s Congress (Parliament).

    The text, which remains to be implemented, provides for the creation of a “State of New Caledonia” within France, as well as a dual French-New Caledonian nationality and the short-term transfer of such powers as foreign affairs from France to New Caledonia.

    However, one of the main components of the pro-independence movement, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) has since rejected the Bougival deal, saying it was not compatible with the party’s demands of full sovereignty and timetable.

    Since then, apart from the FLNKS, all parties (including several moderate pro-independence factions who split from FLNKS in August 2024) have maintained their pro-Bougival course.

    Manuel Valls, as Minister for Overseas, was regarded as the key negotiator, representing France, in the talks.

    Who is Naïma Moutchou?
    However, Valls is no longer holding this portfolio. He is replaced by Naïma Moutchou.

    A lawyer by trade, she is an MP at the French National Assembly and member of the Horizon party led by former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.

    She is also a former deputy Speaker of the French National Assembly.

    Unlike Valls, as new Minister for Overseas she is no longer a Minister of State.

    She took part in a Parliamentary mission on New Caledonia’s future status in 2021-2022.

    Valls’s non-reappointment lamented
    In New Caledonia’s political spheres, the new appointment on Monday triggered several reactions, some critical.

    Virginie Ruffenach, leader of the pro-France Rassemblement-Les Républicains (LR, which is affiliated to the National French LR), expressed disappointment at Vall not being retained as Minister for Overseas.

    She said the new appointment of someone to replace Valls, the main actor of the Bougival agreement, did nothing to stabilise the implementation of the deal.

    The implementation is supposed to translate as early as this week with the need to get the French cabinet to endorse the deal and also to put an “organic law” up for debate at the French Senate for a possible postponement of New Caledonia’s local elections from no later than 30 November 2025 to mid-2026.

    Referring to those short-term deadlines, FLNKS president Christian Téin, who is still judicially compelled to remain in metropolitan France pending an appeal ruling on his May 2024 riots-related case, sent an open letter to French MPs, urging them not to endorse the postponement of the local elections.

    Téin said such postponement, although already endorsed in principle by local New Caledonian Congress, would be a “major political regression” and would “unilaterally put an end to the decolonisation process initiated by the (1998) Nouméa Accord”.

    The pro-independence leader insists New Caledonia’s crucial local elections should be held no later than 30 November 2025, as originally scheduled.

    He said any other move would amount to a “passage en force” (forceful passage).

    An earlier attempt, during the first quarter of 2024, was also described at the time as a “passage en force”.

    It aimed at changing the French Constitution to lift earlier restrictions to the list of eligible voters at local elections.

    Following marches and protests, the movement later degenerated and resulted in the worst riots that New Caledonia has seen in recent history, starting on 13 May 2024.

    The riots caused 14 deaths, more than 2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion) in material damage, a drop of 13.5 percent of the French Pacific territory’s GDP and thousands of unemployed.

    “With the current national cacophony. We don’t know what tomorrow will be . . .  but the crucial issue for New Caledonia is to postpone the date of (local) elections to implement the Bougival agreement. Otherwise we’ll have nothing and this will become a no man’s land”, Ruffenach said on Monday.

    “Even worse, there is the nation’s budget and this is crucial assistance for New Caledonia, something we absolutely need, in the situation we are in today.”

    Wallisian-based Eveil Oceanien’s Milakulo Tukumuli told local public broadcaster NC la Première one way to analyse the latest cabinet appointment could be that New Caledonia’s affairs could be moved back to the Prime Minister’s office.

    New Caledonia back to the PM’s desk?
    Under a long-unspoken rule installed by French Prime Minister Michel Rocard (after he fostered the 1988 historic Matignon Accord to bring an end to half a decade of quasi-civil war), New Caledonia’s affairs had been kept under the direct responsibility of the French PM’s office.

    This lasted for more than 30 years, until the special link was severed in 2020, when Lecornu became Minister for Overseas, a position he held for the next two years and became very familiar and knowledgeable on New Caledonia’s intricate issues.

    “Lecornu is now Prime Minister. Does this mean New Caledonia’s case will return to its traditional home, the PM’s office?”, Tukumuli asked.

    During an interview on French public service TV France 2 last week, Lecornu described New Caledonia as a “personal” issue for him because of his connections with the French Pacific territory when he was Minister for Overseas between 2020 and 2022.

    “Some 18,000 kilometres from here, we have an institutional situation that cannot wait”, he said at the time.

    A moderate pro-France politician, Philippe Gomès, for Calédonie Ensemble, on social networks, published an emotional public farewell letter to Valls, expressing his “sadness”.

    “With you, (the French) Overseas enjoyed a consideration never seen before in the French Republic: that of a matter of national priority in the hands of a Minister of State, a former Prime Minister”,” he said.

    Gomès hailed Valls’s tireless work in recent months to a point where “those who were criticising you yesterday were the same who ended up begging for you to be maintained at this position”.

    Valls reacts during handover ceremony
    “Your eviction from the French cabinet, at a vital moment in our country’s history, at a time when we need stability, potentially bears heavy consequences, especially since it now comes as part of a national political chaos for which New Caledonia will inevitably pay the price too”, Gomès said.

    In recent days, as he was still caretaker Minister for Overseas, Valls has published several articles in French national dailies, warning against the potential dangers — including civil war — if the Bougival agreement is dropped or neglected.

    Lecornu also stressed, during interviews and statements over the past week, that New Caledonia, at the national level, was a matter of national priority at the same level as passing France’s 2025 budget.

    Speaking on Monday during a brief handover ceremony with his successor Moutchou, Valls told public broadcaster Outremer la Première that he was “very sad” not being able to “complete” his mission, including on New Caledonia, but that he did not have any regrets or bitterness.

    He said however that he would make a point of “continuing to discuss” with the FLNKS during the month of October to possibly prepare some amendments “without changing the big equilibriums of the Constitutional and the organic laws”.

    Race against time
    As part of the Bougival text’s implementation and legal process, a referendum is also scheduled to be put to New Caledonia’s population no later than end of February 2026.

    Lecornu is scheduled to deliver his maiden speech on general policy before Parliament on Wednesday, October 15 — if he is still in place by then.

    On Monday, two main components of the opposition, Rassemblement National (right) and La France Insoumise (left) have already indicated their intention to each file a motion of no confidence against Lecornu and his new Cabinet.

    Following consultations he held last week with a panel of parties represented in Parliament, Lecornu based his advice to President Macron on the fact that he believed a majority of parties within the House were not in favour of a parliamentary dissolution and therefore snap elections, for the time being.

    Following a former dissolution in June 2024 and subsequent snap elections, the new Parliament had emerged more divided than ever, split between three main blocks — right, left and centre.

    Since last week’s developments and the latest Cabinet announcement on Sunday, more rifts have surfaced even within those three blocks.

    Some LR politicians, who have accepted to take part in Lecornu’s latest Cabinet, have been immediately excluded from the party.

    On the centre-left, the Socialist Party has not yet indicated whether it would also file a motion of no confidence, but this would depend on Lecornu’s position and expected concessions on the very controversial pension scheme reforms and budget cuts issue.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Democracy Now!

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

    As we’ve reported, the Gaza ceasefire deal is in effect. Phase one of the US.-backed 20-point plan is underway. Hamas has released all 20 living captives. Israel has released almost 2000 Palestinians in Ramallah and now in Khan Younis in Gaza.

    Yesterday, President Trump addressed the Israeli Knesset and then co-chaired a so-called peace summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not among the 20 or more world leaders who attend. He was invited but said he was not going.

    For more, we’re joined by the Israeli historian, author and professor Ilan Pappé, professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter and the chair of the Nakba Memorial Foundation. Among his books, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, almost 20 years ago, and Gaza in Crisis, which he co-wrote with Noam Chomsky. His new book, Israel on the Brink: And the Eight Revolutions That Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence.

    We thank you so much for being with us. Professor Pappé, if you could start off by responding to what has happened? We’re watching, in Khan Younis, prisoners being released, Palestinian prisoners, up to 2000, and in the occupied West Bank, though there families were told if they dare celebrate the release of their loved ones, they might be arrested.

    And we saw the release of the 20 Israeli hostages as they returned to Israel. Hamas says they’re returning the dead hostages, the remains, over the next few days. Israel has not said they will return the dead prisoners, of which it’s believed there are nearly 200 in Israeli prisons.

    Your response overall, and now to the summit in Egypt?

    ILAN PAPPÉ: Yes. First of all, there is some joy in knowing that the bombing of the people in Gaza has stopped for a while. And there is joy knowing that Palestinian political prisoners have been reunited with their families, and, similarly, that Israeli hostages were reunited with their families.

    But except from that, I don’t think we are in such an historical moment as President Trump claimed in his speech in the Knesset and beforehand. We are not at the end of the terrible chapter that we have been in for the last two years.

    And that chapter is an Israeli attempt by a particularly fanatic, extremely rightwing Israeli government to try and use ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza to downsize the number of Palestinians in Palestine and impose Israel’s will in a way that they hope would be at least endorsed by some Arab governments and the world.

    So far, they have an alliance of Trump and some extreme rightwing parties in Europe.

    And now I hope that the world will not be misled that Israel is now ready to open a different kind of page in its relationship with the Palestinians. And what you told us about the way that the celebrations were dealt with in the West Bank and the incineration of the sanitation center shows you that nothing has changed in the dehumanisation and the attitude of this particular Israeli government and its belief that it has the power to wipe out Palestine as a nation, as a people and as a country.

    I hope the world will not stand by, because up to now it did stand by when the genocide occurred in Palestine.

    AMY GOODMAN: We have just heard President Trump’s address to the Israeli Knesset. He followed the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu. I’m not sure, but in listening to Netanyahu, I don’t think he used the word “Palestinian.” President Trump has just called on the Israeli president to pardon Netanyahu.

    Your thoughts on this, and also the possibility of why Netanyahu has not joined this summit that President Trump is co-chairing? Many are speculating for different reasons — didn’t want to anger the right, that’s further right than him. Others are saying the possibility of his arrest, not on corruption charges, but on crimes against humanity, the whole case before the International Criminal Court.

    ILAN PAPPÉ: It could be a mixture of all of it, but I think at the center of it is the nature of the Israeli government that was elected in November 2022, this alliance between a very opportunistic politician, who’s only interested in surviving and keeping his position as a prime minister, alongside messianic, neo-Zionist politicians who really believe that God has given them the opportunity to create the Greater Israel, maybe even beyond the borders of Palestine, and, in the process, eliminate Palestinians.

    I think that his consideration should all — are always about his chances of survival. So, whatever went in his mind, he came to the conclusion that going to Cairo is not going to help his chances of being reelected.

    My great worry is not that he didn’t go to Cairo. My greatest worry is that he does believe that his only chance of being reelected is still to have a war going on, either in Gaza or in the West Bank or against Iran or in the north with Lebanon.

    We are dealing here with a reckless, irresponsible politician, who is even willing to drown his own state in the process of saving his skin and his neck. And the victims will always be, from this adventurous policy, the Palestinians.

    I hope the world understands that, really, the urgent need of — and I’m talking about world leaders rather than societies. You already discussed what is the level of solidarity among civil societies. But I do hope that political elites will understand — especially in the West — their role now is not to mediate between Israelis and Palestinians.

    Their role now is to protect the Palestinians from destruction, elimination, genocide and ethnic cleansing. And nothing of that duty, especially of Europe, that is complicit with what happened, and the United States, that are complicit with what happened in the last two years — nothing that we heard in the speeches so far in the — in preparation for the summit in Egypt, and I have a feeling that we won’t hear anything about it also later on.

    There is a different way in which our civil societies refer to Palestine as a place that has to be saved and protected, and still this irrelevant conversation among our political elites about a peace deal, a two-state solution, all of that, that has nothing to do with what we are experiencing in the way that the Israeli government thinks it has an historical moment to totally de-Arabise Palestine and eliminate and expunge the Palestinians from history and the area.

    AMY GOODMAN: Ilan Pappé, I want to thank you for being with us, Israeli historian, professor of history, director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter, chair of the Nakba Memorial Foundation. His new book, Israel on the Brink: And the Eight Revolutions That Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    Two leftwing opposition members of the Knesset protested in the middle of US President Donald Trump’s historic and rambling speech praising the Gaza ceasefire and his administration in West Jerusalem today.

    MK Ayman Odeh, a lawyer and chair of the mainly Arab Hadash-Ta’al party, was escorted out of the Knesset plenum after holding up a protest sign calling on Trump to “recognise Palestine”.

    It was a day filled with emotion as Hamas released the 20 last living Israeli captives and the Israeli military began freeing 2000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them held without charge.

    Lawmaker Odeh is a strong advocate for Palestinian statehood, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyaho’s government opposes.

    Ofer Cassif, the party’s only Jewish MK, also tried to hold up a protest sign and was removed from the chamber.

    After the interruption, President Trump quipped: “That was very efficient” — and then carried on with his speech.

    Previously, Odeh posted on his X account: “The amount of hypocrisy in the plenum is unbearable.

    ‘Crimes against humanity’
    “To crown Netanyahu through flattery the likes of which has never been seen, through an orchestrated group, does not absolve him and his government of the crimes against humanity committed in Gaza, nor of the responsibility for the blood of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian victims and thousands of Israeli victims.

    “But only because of the ceasefire and the overall deal am I here.

    “Only ending the occupation, and only recognising the State of Palestine alongside Israel, will bring justice, peace, and security to all.”

    The brief interruption did not deflect from Trump’s speech that was effusive in its praise for Israel, the country’s leadership, the hostages and their families, and its military and so-called “victory” in Gaza.

    Trump claimed the region was poised for a “historic dawn of a new Middle East” and referred to Palestinians, without addressing their decades-old fight for self-determination and statehood.

    “The choice for Palestinians could not be more clear,” the US president argued.

    “This is their chance to turn forever from the path of terror and violence — it’s been extreme — to exile the wicked forces of hate that are in their midst, and I think that’s going to happen,” Trump said.

    Palestinians welcome the release of prisoners
    Palestinians welcome the release of prisoners. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    Tear gas fired
    An Israeli armoured vehicle fired tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinians gathered near Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, where hundreds had assembled to await the release of prisoners,

    Earlier, the Israeli military, in a post on X, reported that the International Red Cross had transferred the final 13 captives held by Hamas to Shin Bet forces in the Gaza Strip, after an earlier group of seven had been released.

    Al Jazeera Arabic, citing Palestinian sources, also reported that the handover of all 20 living captives had now been completed.

    Al Jazeera’s Nour Adeh reported from Amman, Jordan, because Al Jazeera is banned from reporting from Israel and the Occupied West Bank, that the Israeli Broadcasting Authority had confirmed that the Red Cross had received the remaining 13 living Israeli captives.

    “They will soon be handed over to the custody of the Israeli military, which, of course, is still present in 53 percent of Gaza,” she said.

    “That means that we are in the process of concluding the release of all living Israeli captives, and that is all happening as US President Trump arrived in Israel.

    “These are important developments, and the choreography is not coincidental.”

    Remaining in Gaza were the bodies of 28 Israeli captives, and it was not clear how many of them will be released today.

    As part of the ceasefire, the Israeli military were releasing almost 2000 Palestinian prisoners — including 1700 who had been kidnapped from Gaza, and 250 Palestinians serving life or long sentences.

    President Trump was due to fly to the Sharm el-Sheikh respirt in Egypt later today for a summit aimed at advancing Washington’s plans for Gaza and the region.

    Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons in harsh conditions
    Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons in harsh conditions. Graphic: Al Jazeera/Creative Commons

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    Within hours of being named the Nobel Peace laureate for 2025, María Corina Machado called on President Trump to step up his military and economic campaign against her own country — Venezuela.

    The curriculum vitae of the opposition leader hardly lines up with what one would typically associate with a Peace Maker.  Nor would those who nominated her, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and recent US national security advisor Mike Waltz, both drivers of violent policies towards Venezuela.

    “The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace, to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness,”  said the Nobel Committee statement.

    Let’s see if María Corina Machado passes that litmus test and is worthy to stand alongside last year’s winners, Nihon Hidankyo, representing the Japanese hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “honoured for their decades-long commitment to nuclear disarmament and their tireless witness against the horrors of nuclear war”.

    Machado supports Israel, would move embassy
    Machado is a passionate Zionist and supporter of both the State of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu personally.  She has not been silent on the genocide; indeed she has actively called for Israel to press ahead, saying Hamas  “must be defeated at all costs, whatever form it takes”.

    >If Machado achieves power in Venezuela, among her first long-promised acts will be the ending of Venezuela’s support for Palestine and the transfer of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

    Machado is a signatory of a cooperation agreement with Israel’s Likud Party.

    The smiling face of Washington regime change
    The Council on American-Islamic Relations, US’s largest Muslim civil rights organisation, called Machado a supporter of anti-Muslim fascism and decried the award as “insulting and unacceptable”.

    2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado
    2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado . . . “It is really a disaster. It’s laying the groundwork and justifying greater military escalation,” warns a history professor. Image: Cristian Hernandez/ Anadolu Agency

    Venezuelan activist Michelle Ellner wrote in the US progressive outlet Code Pink:

    “She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatisation, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.

    “Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help ‘liberate’ Venezuela with bombs under the banner of ‘freedom.’

    She has demanded sanctions, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations.”

    Legitimising US escalation against Venezuela
    Ellner said she almost laughed at the absurdity of the choice, which I must admit was my own reaction.  Yale professor of history Greg Grandin was similarly shocked.

    “It is really a disaster. It’s laying the groundwork and justifying greater military escalation.”

    What Grandin is referring to is the prize being used by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration to legitimise escalating violence against Venezuela — an odd outcome for a peace prize.

    Grandin, author of America, América: A New History of the New World says Machado “has consistently  represented a more hardline in terms of economics, in terms of US relations. That intransigence has led her to rely on outside powers, notably the United States.

    “They didn’t give it to Donald Trump, but they have given it to the next best thing as far as Marco Rubio is concerned — if he needs justification to escalate military operations against Venezuela.”

    The Iron Lady wins a peace prize?
    Rubio has repeatedly referred to Machado as the “Venezuelan Iron Lady” — fair enough, as she bears greater resemblance to Margaret Thatcher than she does to Mother Teresa.

    This illogicality brought back graffiti I read on a wall in the 1970s: “Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity”.  Yet someone at the Nobel Committee had a brain explosion (fitting as Alfred Nobel invented dynamite) when they settled on Machado as the embodiment of Alfred Nobel’s ideal recipient — “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

    Machado, a recipient of generous US State Department funding and grants, including from the National Endowment for Democracy (the US’s prime soft power instrument of regime change) is praised for her courage in opposing the Maduro government, and in calling out a slide towards authoritarianism.

    Conservatives could run a sound argument in terms of Machado as an anti-regime figure but it is ludicrous to suggest her hard-ball politics and close alliances with Trump would in any way qualify her for the peace prize. Others see her as an agent of the CIA, an agent of the Monroe Doctrine, and as a mouthpiece for a corrupt elite that wants to drive a violent antidemocratic regime change.

    She has promised the US that she would privatise the country’s oil industry and open the door to US business.

    “We’re grateful for what Trump is doing for peace,” the Nobel winner told the BBC. Trump’s recent actions include bombing boatloads of Venezuelans and Colombians — a violation of international law — as part of a pressure campaign on the Maduro government.

    Machado says she told Trump “how grateful the Venezuelan people are for what he’s doing, not only in the Americas, but around the world for peace, for freedom, for democracy”.  The dead and starving of Gaza bear witness to a counter narrative.

    Rigged elections or rigged narratives?
    Peacemakers aren’t normally associated with coup d’etats but Machado most certainly was in 2002 when democratically elected President Hugo Chavez was briefly overthrown.  Machado was banned from running for President in 2024 because of her calls for US intervention in overthrowing the government.

    Central to both Machado’s prize and the US government’s regime change operation is the argument that the Maduro government won a “rigged election” in 2024 and is running a narco-trafficking government; charges accepted as virtually gospel in the mainstream media and dismissed as rubbish by some scholars and experts on the country.

    Alfred de Zayas, a law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy who served as a UN Independent Expert on International Order, cautions against the standard Western narrative that the Venezuelan elections “were rigged”.

    The reality is that the Maduro government, like the Chavez government before it, enjoys popularity with the poor majority of the country.  Delegitimising any elected government opposed to Washington is standard operating procedure by the great power.

    Professor Zayas led a UN mission to Venezuela in 2017 and has visited the country a number of times since. He has spoken with NGOs, such as Fundalatin, Grupo Sures, Red Nacional de Derechos Humanos, as well as people from all walks of life, including professors, church leaders and election officials.

    “I gradually understood that the media mood in the West was only aiming for regime change and was deliberately distorting the situation in the country,” he said in an article in 2024.

    I provide those thoughts not as proof definitive of the legitimacy of the elections but as  stimulant to look beyond our tightly curated mainstream media. María Machado is Washington’s “guy” and that alone should set off alarm bells.

    Michelle Ellner: “Anyone who knows what she stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics.”

    “Beati pacifici quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God”. Matthew 5:9.

    Amen to that.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Pacific Media Watch

    The global peak journalism body has condemned the targeting, harassment, and censorship by lobby groups of Australian journalists for reporting critically on Israel’s war on Gaza.

    The Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Australian affiliate, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), said in a statement they were attempts to silence journalists and called on media outlets and regulatory bodies to ensure the fundamental rights to freedom of expression and access to information were upheld.

    In a high-profile case, Australia’s Federal Court found on June 25 that Lebanese-Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf was unlawfully dismissed by the national public broadcaster, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), for sharing a social media post by Human Rights Watch relating to violations by Israel in Gaza, reports IFJ.

    Lattouf was removed from a five-day radio presenting contract in Sydney in December 2023, with the judgment confirming her dismissal was made to appease pro-Israel lobbyists.

    On Seotember 24, the ABC was ordered to pay an additional $A150,000 in compensation on top of A$70,000 already awarded.

    In a separate incident, Australian cricket reporter Peter Lalor was dropped from radio coverage of Australia’s Sri Lanka tour by broadcaster SEN in February after he reposted several posts on X regarding Israeli attacks in Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

    “I was told in one call there were serious organisations making complaints; in another I was told that this was not the case,” said Lalor in a statement.

    Kostakidis faces harassment
    Prominent journalist and former SBS World News Australia presenter Mary Kostakidis has also faced ongoing harassment by the Zionist Federation of Australia, with a legal action filed in the Federal Court under Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act for sharing two allegedly “antisemitic” posts on X.

     

    Kostakidis said the case failed to identify which race, ethnicity or nationality was offended by her posts, with a verdict currently awaited on a strikeout order filed by Kostakidis in July.

    The MEAA said: “MEAA journalists are subject to the code of ethics, who in their professional capacity, often provide critical commentary on political warfare.

    “These are the tenets of democracy. We stand with our colleagues in their workplaces, in the courtrooms, and in their deaths to raise our voices against the silence.”

    The IFJ said: “Critical and independent journalism in the public interest is more crucial than ever in the face of incessant pressure from partisan lobby groups.

    “IFJ stands in firm solidarity with journalists globally facing harassment and censorship for their reporting.”

    Journalist killed in Gaza City

    Killed Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi
    Killed Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi . . . gained prominence for his videos covering Israel’s two-year war on Gaza Image: Abdelhakim Abu Riash/AJ file

    Meanwhile, gunmen believed to be part of Israeli-linked militia, have killed Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi, south of Gaza City, after the ceasefire, reports Al Jazeera.

    Social media posts showed people bidding farewell to the 28-year-old who had been bringing news about the war over the last two years through his widely watched videos, the channel said.

    Several people accused of attacking returnees to Gaza City by colluding with Israeli forces were killed during clashes in the area where Aljafarawi was shot dead, sources told Al Jazeera.

    Al Jazeera said that more than 270 Palestinian journalists had been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • COMMENTARY: By Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh

    A temporary ceasefire and release of some Palestinians in a prisoner exchange is not a “peace agreement” and it is far from what is needed — ending colonisation; freedom for the >10,000 political prisoners still in Israeli gulags (also tortured, nearly 100 have died under torture in the last two years); return of the millions of refugees; and accountability for genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

    That is why this global uprising (intifada) will not stop until freedom, justice, and equality are attained.

    Here are brief answers I gave to questions about the agreement for Gaza:

    Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh
    Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh during his visit to Aotearoa New Zealand last year . . . “what is needed — ending colonisation, freedom for the >10,000 political prisoners still in Israeli gulags , return of the millions of refugees, and accountability for genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Image: David Robie/APR

    1. How has life in the West Bank changed for you and your community during the past two years of conflict?
    The West Bank has been illegally occupied since 1967 (ICJ ruling) but it was not merely an occupation but intensive colonisation and ethnic cleansing. The attacks on our people accelerated in the last two years with over 60,000 made homeless in the West Bank and denial of freedom of movement (including hundreds of new gates installed in these two years separating the remaining concentration camps/ghettos of the West Bank ).

    2. What is your assessment of the new peace deal that brought an end to the fighting in Gaza?
    It is not a peace deal. It is an agreement to pause the genocide which will not work because the belligerent occupier — “Israel” — has not respected a single agreement it signed since its founding. Even the agreement to join the United Nations was conditional on respecting the UN Charter and UN resolutions issued before and after 1949.

    This continued to even breaking the signed ceasefire agreement of last year. I have 0 percent confidence that this latest agreement would be respected even on the simple aspect of “pausing” the genocide and ethnic cleansing going on since 1948.

    3. In your view, why did war drag on for two years despite multiple ceasefire attempts?
    Simply put because colonisation can only be done with violence. And the war on our people has gone on not for two years but for 77 years without ending (sustained by Western government support). Israel as a colonisation entity is the active face of colonisation. The USA for example broke similar agreements for “pauses” in colonisation with natives in North America and broke every single one of them.


    Israeli military occupation on the environment.        Video: Greenpeace

    4. What kind of humanitarian and environmental toll has the conflict taken on Palestinian society?
    It is now well documented from UN agencies, human rights groups (like Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, even the Israeli group B’Tselem). In brief it is genocide, ecocide, scholasticide, medicide,
    and veriticide. (More at: ongaza.org )

    5. Why do you think it took the IDF so long to rescue all the hostages?
    The terrorist organisation that deceptively calls itself “IDF” (Israeli Defence Forces) was not interested in rescuing their captives (not “hostages”) and they only got people back via exchange of prisoners (not rescue).

    The IGF (Israeli Genocide Forces) actually killed many of their own soldiers and civilians
    on 7 October 2023 by activating the Hannibal directive to prevent their capture. The resistance was aiming to capture colonisers (living on stolen Palestinian lands) to exchange for some of the more than 11,000 political prisoners illegally held in Israeli jails. (Again see ongaza.org )

    6. How significant was international involvement — particularly from the US — in reaching the final agreement?
    This is the first genocide in human history that is not executed by one government. It is executed by a number of governments directly supporting and aiding (participating). This includes the USA, UK, France, Egypt, Germany, Australia etc. Many of these countries have governments dominated or highly influenced by the Zionist agenda.

    Under the influence of a growing popular protest against the genocide around the world, some of those countries are trying to wiggle out from pressure in an effort to save
    “Israel” from growing global isolation. Trump was blackmailed via videos/files collected by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghiseline Maxwell (Mossad agents). He is simply a narcissistic collaborator with genocide!

    7. What concrete steps do you think are necessary now to turn this peace deal into a sustainable, lasting solution?
    Again not a “peace deal”. What needs to be done is apply boycotts, divestments, sanctions (BDS) on this rogue state that violates the international conventions (Geneva Convention, Conventions against Apartheid and Genocide). BDS was used against apartheid South Africa and needs to be applied here also. (For more: bdsmovement.net )

    8. How do you see the Palestine Museum of Natural History contributing to rebuilding and healing efforts in the aftermath of war?
    Our institute (PIBS, palestinenature.org) which includes museums, a botanic garden, and many other sections is focused on “sustainable human and natural communities” Our motto is respect: for ourselves (empowerment), for others (regardless of religious or other background), and for nature.

    Conflict, colonisations, oppression are obviously areas we challenge and work on in JOINT struggle with all people of various background.

    9. Looking ahead, what gives you optimism—or concern—about the future relationship between Palestinians and Israelis?
    What gives me optimism first and foremost is the heroic resilience and resistance (together making sumud) of our Palestinian people everywhere and the millions of other people mobilising for human rights and for justice (including the right of refugees to return and also environmental justice).

    What gives me concern is the depth of depravity that greedy individuals in power go to destroying our planet and our people and profiting from colonisation and genocide.

    About 8.5 million Palestinians are refugees and displaced people thanks to Zionism and Western collusion with it. A collusion intent on transforming Palestine from multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multireligious, and multilingual society to a racist Jewish state (monolithic).

    Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Bedouin in cyberspace; a villager at home; professor, founder and (volunteer) director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University, Occupied Palestine.

    Notes:
    World Court Findings on Israeli Apartheid a Wake-Up Call: International Court of Justice Makes Clear Call for Reparations

    The 7 October 2023 reminded us of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

    7 October 1944! Prisoner Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau

    The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize as before was not given to the any of the hundreds of deserving nominees but given instead to rightwing pro-genocide María Corina Machado. She dedicated her prize to Donald Trump and had previously aligned with the worst rightwing parties throughout Latin America as well as the genocidal regime of Netanyahu (and even asked them for help to topple her own elected government).

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • COMMENTARY: By Sara Awad

    On October 10, a ceasefire in Gaza was officially announced. International news media were quick to focus on what they now call “the peace plan”.

    US President Donald Trump, they announced, would go to Cairo to oversee the agreement signing and then to Israel to speak at the Knesset.

    The air strikes over Gaza, they reported, have stopped.

    KIA ORA GAZA
    KIA ORA GAZA

    The bombs have indeed stopped, but our suffering continues. Our reality has not changed. We are still under siege.

    Israel still has full control over our air, land and sea; it is still blocking sick and injured Palestinians from leaving and journalists, war crimes investigators and activists from going in.

    It is still controlling what food, what medicine, and essential supplies enter.

    The siege has lasted more than 18 years, shaping every moment of our lives. I have lived under this blockade since I was just three years old. What kind of peace is this, if it will continue to deny us the freedoms that everyone else has?

    ‘Deal’ overshadowed flotilla kidnap
    The news of the ceasefire deal and “the peace plan” overshadowed another, much more important development.

    Israel raided another freedom flotilla in international waters loaded with humanitarian aid for Gaza, kidnapping 145 people on board — a crime under international law. This came just days after Israel attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla, detaining more than 450 people who were trying to reach Gaza.

    These flotillas carried more than just humanitarian aid. They carried the hope of freedom for the Palestinian people. They carried a vision of true peace — one where Palestinians are no longer besieged, occupied and dispossessed.

    Many have criticised the freedom flotillas, arguing that they cannot make a difference since they are doomed to be intercepted.

    I myself did not pay much attention to the movement. I was deeply disappointed, having lost hope in seeing an end to this war.

    But that changed when Brazilian journalist Giovanna Vial interviewed me. Giovanna wrote an article about my story before setting sail with the Sumud Flotilla. She then made a post on social media saying: “for Sara, we sail”. Her words and her courage stirred something in me.

    Afterwards, I kept my eyes on the flotilla news, following every update with hope. I told my relatives about it, shared it with my friends, and reminded anyone who would listen how extraordinary this movement was.

    ‘Treated like animals’ – NZer activists detained by Israeli forces arrive home

    ‘She became the light’
    I kept wondering — how is it possible that, in a world so heavy with injustice, there are still people willing to abandon everything and put their lives in danger for people they had never met, for a place, most of them had never visited.

    I stayed in touch with Giovanna.

    “Until my last breath, I will never leave you alone,” she wrote to me while sailing towards Gaza. In the midst of so much darkness, she became the light.

    This was the first time in two years I felt like we were heard. We were seen.

    The Sumud Flotilla was by far the biggest in the movement’s history, but it was not about how many boats there were or how many people were on board or how much humanitarian aid they carried. It was about putting a spotlight on Gaza — about making sure the world could no longer look away.

    “All Eyes on Gaza,” read one post on the official Instagram account of the flotilla. It stayed with me, I read it on a very heavy night when the deafening sound of bombs in Gaza City was relentless. It was just before I had to flee my home due to the brutal Israeli onslaught.

    Israel stopped flotillas, aid
    Israel stopped the flotillas. They abused and deported the participants. They seized the aid. They may have prevented them from reaching our shores, but they failed to erase the message they carried.

    A message of peace. A message of freedom. A message we had been waiting to hear for two long, brutal years. The boats were captured, but the solidarity reached us.

    I carry so much gratitude in my heart for every single human being who took part in the freedom flotillas. I wish I could reach each of them personally — to tell them how much their courage, their presence, and their solidarity meant to me, and to all of us in Gaza.

    We will never forget them. We will carry their names, their faces, their voices in our hearts forever.

    To those who sailed toward us: thank you. You reminded us that we are not alone.

    And to the world: we are clinging to hope. We are still waiting — still needing — more flotillas to come. Come to us. Help us break free from this prison.

    The bombing has stopped now, and I can only hope that this time it does not resume in a few weeks. But we still do not have peace.

    Governments have failed us. But the people have not.

    One day, I know, the freedom flotilla boats will reach the shore of Gaza and we will be free.

    Sara Awad is an English literature student, writer, and storyteller based in Gaza. Passionate about capturing human experiences and social issues, Sara uses her words to shed light on stories often unheard. Her work explores themes of resilience, identity, and hope amid war. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Anthea Grape in Manila

    Media and Information Literacy (MIL) is vital to nation-building. It empowers Filipinos to make informed decisions by fostering critical thinking, strengthening media awareness and encouraging responsible digital use.

    This call was echoed last week when United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and MediaQuest’s THINKaMuna campaign representatives came together for a small but meaningful gathering.

    The event underscored their shared commitment, with discussions centering on projects to push MIL forward in the Philippines.

    “Most young people today turn to social media as their first source of news,” said UNESCO Jakarta director Maki Katsuno-Hayashikawa.

    “With AI making it harder to tell what’s fake from what’s true, it’s even more important for all generations to think critically and share information responsibly.”

    They are making this happen in several ways.

    Explainer videos
    The UNESCO-THINKaMuna partnership has rolled out three of six digital episodes so far —  Cognitive Biases in July, Critical Thinking in August and Tech Addiction in September.

    Each is short, visually appealing and easy to understand, perfect for audiences with short attention spans.

    “Most MIL materials are very academic because they were made for schools,” shared MediaQuest corporate communications consultant Ramon Isberto.

    “We want ours to be different — playful and something people can casually talk about in their neighbourhoods.”

    This approach has brought the digital episodes closer to audiences, helping them reach nearly five million views.

    “In the Philippines, MediaQuest is our first media partner piloting media literacy in different ways and integrating it,” added UNESCO Jakarta program specialist Ana Lomtadze.

    “Our mission is really about reaching out in new, innovative ways and showing audiences how and why they should discern information and check their sources.”

    Taking MIL to classrooms
    While UNESCO provides guidance, Katsuno-Hayashikawa noted that implementation depends on local, on-the-ground initiatives.

    THINKaMuna recognises this, which is why they are distributing 1000 MIL journals to schools across the country.

    “A substantial percentage of grade school and high school students are not functional readers – they can read, but don’t fully understand what they’re reading,” explained Isberto.

    To address this, the journals are filled with visuals to ensure the message comes across. Workshops for senior journalists and the MILCON 2025 are also in the works to complete the offline component of the collaboration.

    “Society exists because we communicate and learn from each other,” Isberto said.

    “Today, media and information literacy is our way of continuing that conversation.”

    Anthea Grape is a Philippine Star reporter.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.