Months after the collision between a U.S. Army helicopter and a passenger jet that killed 67 people in Washington, D.C., Congress and federal aviation safety regulators are still investigating what happened.
In the immediate aftermath, as the Trump administration scrambled to blame the tragedy on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, authorities took swift action against two men they accused of leaking dramatic footage of the crash to CNN, which aired videos that appeared to come from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport’s security cameras.
The charges, filed by local authorities in Virginia, came as President Donald Trump and his allies vowed to crack down on journalists and their sources.
But on Wednesday, local prosecutors in Virginia dropped charges entirely against one of the men, Jonathan Savoy, who worked at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. The second MWAA employee, Mohamed Mbengue, indicated he would not contest the charges, according to court records, reportedly as part of a pretrial diversion agreement with prosecutors.
In early February, the MWAA announced that Mbengue and Savoy had been charged with “computer trespass,” a misdemeanor under a Virginia law, for making an “unauthorized copy” of airport records. An MWAA press statement issued on February 4 specified that Savoy was charged “following further police investigation” of the leak.
Weeks after both men were arraigned in Arlington County court, prosecutors dropped the charge against Savoy through a filing called a “nolle prosequi,” according to the court docket.
“Mr. Savoy is grateful for the complete dismissal of the criminal charge filed against him,” his attorney, Robert L. Jenkins Jr., wrote in an emailed statement to The Intercept. “It was clear from the facts that he never violated the law.”
The Arlington County Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment about why charges were dropped against Savoy.
Also on Wednesday, Mbengue entered a plea of no contest, which local media reported was part of a pretrial diversion agreement that will expunge the charge after a year of good behavior.
Mbengue’s attorney did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.
Since February, The Intercept has been trying to get arrest reports for both Savoy and Mbengue. The MWAA denied a public records request on the grounds that the records might interfere with the ongoing court proceedings against them.
On Thursday, the MWAA notified The Intercept that, since charges were dropped against Savoy, its “basis for withholding the records in full is no longer applicable,” and withheld records about Savoy would be processed.
“It appears that the case against Mr. Mbengue may also be concluded early next week, which would similarly affect the basis for withholding them in full,” an attorney for the MWAA wrote by email.
When I despairingly contemplate the horrors and cruelty that Palestinians in Gaza are being subjected to, I sometimes try to put this in the context of where I live.
I live on the Kāpiti Coast in the lower North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Geographically it is around the same size as Gaza. Both have coastlines running their full lengths. But, whereas the population of Gaza is a cramped two million, Kāpiti’s is a mere 56,000.
The Gaza Strip . . . 2 million people living in a cramped outdoor prison about the same size as Kāpiti. Map: politicalbytes.blog
I find it incomprehensible to visualise what it would be like if what is presently happening in Gaza occurred here.
The only similarities between them are coastlines and land mass. One is an outdoor prison while the other’s outdoors is peaceful.
New Zealand and Palestine state recognition Currently Palestine has observer status at the United Nations General Assembly. In May last year, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of Palestine being granted full membership of the United Nations.
To its credit, New Zealand was among 143 countries that supported the resolution. Nine, including the United States as the strongest backer of Israeli genocide outside Israel, voted against.
However, despite this massive majority, such is the undemocratic structure of the UN that it only requires US opposition in the Security Council to veto the democratic vote.
Notwithstanding New Zealand’s support for Palestine broadening its role in the General Assembly and its support for the two-state solution, the government does not officially recognise Palestine.
While its position on recognition is consistent with that of the genocide-supporting United States, it is inconsistent with the over 75 percent of UN member states who, in March 2025, recognised Palestine as a sovereign state (by 147 of the 193 member states).
NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon . . . his government should “correct this obscenity” of not recognising Palestinians’ right to have a sovereign nation. Image: RNZ/politicalbytes.blog/
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s government does have the opportunity to correct this obscenity as Palestine recognition will soon be voted on again by the General Assembly.
In this context it is helpful to put the Hamas-led attack on Israel in its full historical perspective and to consider the reasons justifying the Israeli genocide that followed.
7 October 2023 and genocide justification The origin of the horrific genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the associated increased persecution, including killings, of Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank (of the River Jordan) was not the attack by Hamas and several other militant Palestinian groups on 7 October 2023.
This attack was on a small Israeli town less than 2 km north of the border. An estimated 1,195 Israelis and visitors were killed.
The genocidal response of the Israeli government that followed this attack can only be justified by three factors:
The Judaism or ancient Jewishness of Palestine in Biblical times overrides the much larger Palestinian population in Mandate Palestine prior to formation of Israel in 1948;
The right of Israelis to self-determination overrides the right of Palestinians to self-determination; and
The value of Israeli lives overrides the value Palestinian lives.
The first factor is the key. The second and third factors are consequential. In order to better appreciate their context, it is first necessary to understand the Nakba.
Understanding the Nakba Rather than the October 2023 attack, the origin of the subsequent genocide goes back more than 70 years to the collective trauma of Palestinians caused by what they call the Nakba (the Disaster).
The foundation year of the Nakba was in 1948, but this was a central feature of the ethnic cleansing that was kicked off between 1947 and 1949.
During this period Zionist military forces attacked major Palestinian cities and destroyed some 530 villages. About 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres.
The Nakba – the Palestinian collective trauma in 1948 that started ethnic cleansing by Zionist paramilitary forces. Image: David Robie/APR
During the Nakba in 1948, approximately half of Palestine’s predominantly Arab population, or around 750,000 people, were expelled from their homes or forced to flee. Initially this was through Zionist paramilitaries.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in May this repression was picked up by its military. Massacres, biological warfare (by poisoning village wells) and either complete destruction or depopulation of Palestinian-majority towns, villages, and urban neighbourhoods (which were then given Hebrew names) followed
By the end of the Nakba, 78 percent of the total land area of the former Mandatory Palestine was controlled by Israel.
Genocide to speed up ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing was unsuccessfully pursued, with the support of the United Kingdom and France, in the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. More successful was the Six Day War of 1967, which included the military and political occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Throughout this period ethnic cleansing was not characterised by genocide. That is, it was not the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying them.
Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians began in May 1948 and has accelerated to genocide in 2023. Image: politicalbytes.blog
In fact, the acceptance of a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine) under the ill-fated Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1995 put a temporary constraint on the expansion of ethnic cleansing.
Since its creation in 1948, Israel, along with South Africa the same year (until 1994), has been an apartheid state. I discussed this in an earlier Political Bytes post (15 March 2025), When apartheid met Zionism.
However, while sharing the racism, discrimination, brutal violence, repression and massacres inherent in apartheid, it was not characterised by genocide in South Africa; nor was it in Israel for most of its existence until the current escalation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Following 7 October 2023, genocide has become the dominant tool in the ethnic cleansing tool kit. More recently this has included accelerating starvation and the bombing of tents of Gaza Palestinians.
The magnitude of this genocide is discussed further below.
The Biblical claim Zionism is a movement that sought to establish a Jewish nation in Palestine. It was established as a political organisation as late as 1897. It was only some time after this that Zionism became the most influential ideology among Jews generally.
Despite its prevalence, however, there are many Jews who oppose Zionism and play leading roles in the international protests against the genocide in Gaza.
Zionist ideology is based on a view of Palestine in the time of Jesus Christ. Image: politicalbytes.blog
Based on Zionist ideology, the justification for replacing Mandate Palestine with the state of Israel rests on a Biblical argument for the right of Jews to retake their “homeland”. This justification goes back to the time of that charismatic carpenter and prophet Jesus Christ.
The population of Palestine in Jesus’ day was about 500,000 to 600,000 (a little bigger than both greater Wellington and similar to that of Jerusalem today). About 18,000 of these residents were clergy, priests and Levites (a distinct male group within Jewish communities).
Jerusalem itself in biblical times, with a population of 55,000, was a diverse city and pilgrimage centre. It was also home to numerous Diaspora Jewish communities.
In fact, during the 7th century BC at least eight nations were settled within Palestine. In addition to Judaeans, they included Arameans, Samaritans, Phoenicians and Philistines.
A breakdown based on religious faiths (Jews, Christians and Muslims) provides a useful insight into how Palestine has evolved since the time of Jesus. Jews were the majority until the 4th century AD.
By the fifth century they had been supplanted by Christians and then from the 12th century to 1947 Muslims were the largest group. As earlier as the 12th century Arabic had become the dominant language. It should be noted that many Christians were Arabs.
Adding to this evolving diversity of ethnicity is the fact that during this time Palestine had been ruled by four empires — Roman, Persian, Ottoman and British.
Prior to 1948 the population of the region known as Mandate Palestine approximately corresponded to the combined Israel and Palestine today. Throughout its history it has varied in both size and ethnic composition.
The Ottoman census of 1878 provides an indicative demographic profile of its three districts that approximated what became Mandatory Palestine after the end of World War 1.
Group
Population
Percentage
Muslim citizens
403,795
86–87%
Christian citizens
43,659
9%
Jewish citizens
15,011
3%
Jewish (foreign-born)
Est. 5–10,000
1–2%
Total
Up to 472,465
100.0%
In 1882, the Ottoman Empire revealed that the estimated 24,000 Jews in Palestine represented just 0.3 percent of the world’s Jewish population.
The self-determination claim Based on religion the estimated population of Palestine in 1922 was 78 percent Muslim, 11 percent Jewish, and 10 percent Christian.
By 1945 this composition had changed to 58 percent Muslim, 33 percent Jewish and 8 percent Christian. The reason for this shift was the success of the Zionist campaigning for Jews to migrate to Palestine which was accelerated by the Jewish holocaust.
By 15 May 1948, the total population of the state of Israel was 805,900, of which 649,600 (80.6 percent) were Jews with Palestinians being 156,000 (19.4 percent). This turnaround was primarily due to the devastating impact of the Nakba.
Today Israel’s population is over 9.5 million of which over 77 percent are Jewish and more than 20 percent are Palestinian. The latter’s absolute growth is attributable to Israel’s subsequent geographic expansion, particularly in 1967, and a higher birth rate.
Palestine today (parts of West Bank under Israeli occupation). Map: politicalbytes.blog
The current population of the Palestinian Territories, including Gaza, is more than 5.5 million. Compare this with the following brief sample of much smaller self-determination countries — Slovenia (2.2 million), Timor-Leste (1.4 million), and Tonga (104,000).
The population size of the Palestinian Territories is more than half that of Israel. Closer to home it is a little higher than New Zealand.
The only reason why Palestinians continue to be denied the right to self-determination is the Zionist ideological claim linked to the biblical time of Jesus Christ and its consequential strategy of ethnic cleansing.
If it was not for the opposition of the United States, then this right would not have been denied. It has been this opposition that has enabled Israel’s strategy.
Comparative value of Palestinian lives The use of genocide as the latest means of achieving ethnic cleansing highlights how Palestinian lives are valued compared with Israeli lives.
While not of the same magnitude appropriated comparisons have been made with the horrific ethnic cleansing of Jews through the means of the holocaust by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Per capita the scale of the magnitude gap is reduced considerably.
Since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (and confirmed by the World Health Organisation) more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed. Of those killed over 16,500 were children. Compare this with less than 2000 Israelis killed.
Further, at least 310 UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) team members have been killed along with over 200 journalists and media workers. Add to this around 1400 healthcare workers including doctors and nurses.
What also can’t be forgotten is the increasing Israeli ethnic cleansing on the occupied West Bank. Around 950 Palestinians, including around 200 children, have also been killed during this same period.
Time for New Zealand to recognise Palestine The above discussion is in the context of the three justifications for supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians strategy that goes back to 1948 and which, since October 2023, is being accelerated by genocide.
First, it requires the conviction that the theology of Judaism in Palestine in the biblical times following the birth of Jesus Christ trumps both the significantly changing demography from the 5th century at least to the mid-20th century and the numerical predominance of Arabs in Mandate Palestine;
Second, and consequentially, it requires the conviction that while Israelis are entitled to self-determination, Palestinians are not; and
Finally, it requires that Israeli lives are much more valuable than Palestinian lives. In fact, the latter have no value at all.
Unless the government, including Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, shares these convictions (especially the “here and now” second and third) then it should do the right thing first by unequivocally saying so, and then by recognising the right of Palestine to be an independent state.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
After a two-week trial, a jury at Bradford Crown Court has acquitted members of the Bradford 4 Palestine Action activists of trumped-up burglary charges. However, due to the judge ruling out all legal defences, activists have still left the court with convictions for ‘criminal damage’.
Palestine Action Bradford 4: Teledyne weapons factory shut down on Nakba Day 2024
Activists had occupied the roof of the Teledyne weapons factory at Shipley near Bradford, on 15 May 2024 for several hours. They timed to action to commemorate Nakba Day. The group successfully scaled the roof of the weapons plant, and painted it with anti-Genocide slogans, breaking windows, and causing damage to the structure, including making a hole in the roof. The cost of damage to the factory, which they successfully shut down for the day, was put at £60,000.
The court began the trial a year after the action.
Activists have repeatedly targeted Teledyne because the company manufactures components that the Israeli military have used to genocidal effect against the Palestinian population of Gaza. Teledyne is known to have made shipments to Israel in November and December 2023. The company has received 28 weapons export licenses to Israel since 2021.
Products that Teledyne has manufactured include filters for Israeli-user missiles AGM-Harpoon, AIM 120 AMRAAM, and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles. They also produce components for Israel’s killer drone fleet, and for F35 jets. A Teledyne manager testified that it was “probable” the Israeli military were using Teledyne components in Gaza. However, he caveated this, saying that exports to Israel represented only 5% of Teledyne’s total.
Activists acquitted for burglary, but convicted for criminal damage
The jury acquitted three of the Palestine Action Bradford 4 activists of burglary, but convicted them of criminal damage. They convicted a fourth activist named Ricky on both counts.
Describing herself as a “Proud Bradfordian”, Serena Fenton was the first of the activists to give evidence. She told the Jury:
It’s terrifying to think that export licenses are being granted to export these missiles right here in Bradford.
Next to give evidence was Francesca Nadin, who refused to accept that they had broken the law by stopping production at Teledyne. She told the court:
Innocent people are being murdered every day, and that is thanks, in part, to the components made by Teledyne.
The final Defendant was Amareen, who stated in court that:
When the state fails to uphold international law, when the regulatory bodies look away, what are ordinary people supposed to do?
After the jury had heard all the evidence however, Judge Smith ruled out all defences in the case. These included defences like Necessity, Prevention of Intentional Cruelty, Preventing Crime Abroad, and Consent. Because of this, the defendants took a collective decision to discharge three of the four barristers.
Instead, they decided to address the jury themselves. By the time the court reached a verdict on Thursday, Israel had already killed 51 Palestinians in Gaza on that day
alone.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action stated:
The Bradford Four risked their liberties to attempt to prevent the flow of arms and the facilitation of genocide. Despite being stripped of these defences by the judge, they know that those aiding and abetting the massacres in Gaza should have been the ones in the dock. As the government continues to make record arms sales to Israel, direct action remains a necessary tool to resist this complicity.
A United Nations committee is being urged to act over human rights violations committed by illegal loggers in Papua New Guinea.
Watchdog groups Act Now! and Jubilee Australia have filed a formal request to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to consider action at its next meeting in August.
“We have stressed with the UN that there is pervasive, ongoing and irreparable harm to customary resource owners whose forests are being stolen by logging companies,” Act Now! campaign manager Eddie Tanago said.
He said these abuses were systematic, institutionalised, and sanctioned by the PNG government through two specific tools: Special Agriculture and Business Leases (SABLs) and Forest Clearing Authorities (FCAs) — a type of logging licence.
“For over a decade since the Commission of Inquiry into SABLs, successive PNG governments have rubber stamped the large-scale theft of customary resource owners’ forests by upholding the morally bankrupt SABL scheme and expanding the use of FCAs,” Tanago said.
He said the government had failed to revoke SABLs that were acquired fraudulently, with disregard to the law or without landowner consent.
“Meanwhile, logging companies have made hundreds of millions, if not billions, in ill-gotten gains by effectively stealing forests from customary resource owners using FCAs.”
Abuses hard to challenge
The complaint also highlights that the abuses are hard to challenge because PNG lacks even a basic registry of SABLs or FCAs, and customary resource owners are denied access to information to the information they need, such as:
The existence of an SABL or FCA over their forest;
A map of the boundaries of any lease or logging licence;
Information about proposed agricultural projects used to justify the SABL or FCA;
The monetary value of logs taken from forests; and
The beneficial ownership of logging companies — to identify who ultimately profits from illegal logging.
“The only reason why foreign companies engage in illegal logging in PNG is to make money,” he said, adding that “it’s profitable because importing companies and countries are willing to accept illegally logged timber into their markets and supply chains.”
ACT NOW campaigner Eddie Tanago . . . “demand a public audit of the logging permits – the money would dry up.” Image: Facebook/ACT NOW!/RNZ Pacific
“If they refused to take any more timber from SABL and FCA areas and demanded a public audit of the logging permits — the money would dry up.”
Act Now! and Jubilee Australia are hoping that this UN attention will urge the international community to see this is not an issue of “less-than-perfect forest law enforcement”.
“This is a system, honed over decades, that is perpetrating irreparable harm on indigenous peoples across PNG through the wholesale violation of their rights and destroying their forests.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New Zealand humanitarian aid for Gaza worth up to $29 million is being blocked by Israel on the border of the besieged enclave, says the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa.
PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement today that this aid was loaded on some of the 9000 aid trucks sitting ready on the border with Gaza to try to lift the Israeli created famine.
Israel cut off all food, medicine, fuel, and nearly all water supplies entering Gaza three months ago and the Gaza Health Ministry reports that the Palestinian death toll has now topped 54,000 since the war on the enclave began.
Minto said that since then — while Israel had refused to allow more than a trickle of aid into Gaza, and escalated its already horrific military onslaught — the only public statement by Peters had been to offer condolences for the shooting of two Israeli diplomats in Washington.
“Our government’s selective indifference to mass murder is making all of us complicit,” Minto said.
UN officials estimate 600 truckloads of aid a day are needed to feed the people in Gaza.
Gaza’s own local food production has been destroyed by Israel.
Some 70 percent of Gaza is already occupied by Israel or under Israeli evacuation orders.
NZ ‘must take lead again’
Minto said New Zealand had taken a lead in the past and must do so again.
“Our government should be advocating internationally for the enforcement of a protective no-fly zone over Gaza, and a multinational military protection for aid convoys so they can go into Gaza whether Israel approves them or not,” he said.
“At home we should be sending Israel an equally clear message. We must send the Israeli ambassador packing and immediately sanction Israel by ending all trade and other links.
“As each day passes with no concrete action from New Zealand, our government is linking us with the most massive and ongoing war crime of the 21st century.
“Our government will never live down it’s complicity but might salvage some credibility by acting now.”
I am saddened by the death of one of the most inspirational Pacific women and leaders I have worked with — Motarilavoa Hilda Lini of Vanuatu.
She was one of the strongest, most committed passionate fighter I know for self-determination, decolonisation, independence, indigenous rights, customary systems and a nuclear-free Pacific.
Hilda coordinated the executive committee of the women’s wing of the Vanuatu Liberation Movement prior to independence and became the first woman Member of Parliament in Vanuatu in 1987.
Hilda became director of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) in Suva in 2000. She took over from another Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) giant Lopeti Senituli, who returned to Tonga to help the late ‘Akilisi Poviha with the pro-democracy movement.
I was editor of the PCRC newsletter Pacific News Bulletin at the time. There was no social media then so the newsletter spread information to activists and groups across the Pacific on issues such as the struggle in West Papua, East Timor’s fight for independence, decolonisation in Tahiti and New Caledonia, demilitarisation, indigenous movements, anti-nuclear issues, and sustainable development.
On all these issues — Hilda Lini was a willing and fearless chief taking on any government, corporation or entity that undermined the rights or interests of Pacific peoples.
Hilda was uncompromising on issues close to her heart. There are very few Pacific leaders like her left today. Leaders who did not hold back from challenging the norm or disrupting the status quo, even if that meant being an outsider.
Banned over activism
She was banned from entering French Pacific territories in the 1990s for her activism against their colonial rule and nuclear testing.
She was fierce but also strategic and effective.
“Hilda Lini was a willing and fearless chief taking on any government, corporation or entity that undermined the rights or interests of Pacific peoples.” Image: Stanley Simpson/PCRC
We brought Jose Ramos Horta to speak and lobby in Fiji as East Timor fought for independence from Indonesia, Oscar Temaru before he became President of French Polynesia, West Papua’s Otto Ondawame, and organised Flotilla protests against shipments of Japanese plutonium across the Pacific, among the many other actions to stir awareness and action.
On top of her bold activism, Hilda was also a mother to us. She was kind and caring and always pushed the importance of family and indigenous values.
Our Pacific connections were strong and before our eldest son Mitchell was born in 2002 — she asked me if she could give him a middle name.
She gave him the name Hadye after her brother — Father Walter Hadye Lini who was the first Prime Minister of Vanuatu. Mitchell’s full name is Mitchell Julian Hadye Simpson.
Pushed strongly for ideas
We would cross paths several times even after I moved to start the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) but she finished from PCRC in 2004 and returned to Vanuatu.
She often pushed ideas on indigenous rights and systems that some found uncomfortable but stood strong on what she believed in.
Hilda had mana, spoke with authority and truly embodied the spirit and heart of a Melanesian and Pacific leader and chief.
Thank you Hilda for being the Pacific champion that you were.
Stanley Simpson is director of Fiji’s Mai Television and general secretary of the Fijian Media Association. Father Walter Hadye Lini wrote the foreword to Asia Pacific Media editor David Robie’s 1986 book Eyes Of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.
As part of our Memorial Day special, we speak with death row inmate Keith LaMar live from the Ohio State Penitentiary, after the release of The Injustice of Justice, a short film about his case that just won the grand prize for best animated short film at the Golden State Film Festival. “I had to find out the hard way that in order for my life to be mine, that I had to stand up and claim it,” says LaMar, who has always maintained his innocence. LaMar was sentenced to death for participating in the murder of five fellow prisoners during a 1993 prison uprising. His trial was held in a remote Ohio community before an all-white jury. On January 13, 2027, the state intends to execute him, after subjecting him to three decades in solitary confinement. LaMar’s lawyer, Keegan Stephan, says his legal team has “discovered a lot of new evidence supporting Keith’s innocence” that should necessitate new legal avenues for LaMar to overturn the conviction.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Fiji lawyer Nazhat Shameem Khan has been elevated to the top prosecutorial position at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
The Office of the Prosecutor at ICC has announced that deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan and Mame Mandiaye Niang have taken over leadership following chief prosecutor Karim AA Khan KC’s temporary leave of absence.
The ICC states the deputy prosecutors will continue to rely on the support and collaboration of the Rome Statute community, and all partners, in carrying the office’s mandate forward.
In 2014, Nazhat Khan was appointed Fiji’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and Vienna, and to Switzerland and took up the ICC post in 2021.
Pacific Media Watch notes that Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan had issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza, and also against three Hamas leaders who have been killed in the war on Gaza. In contrast to most of the world’s condemnation and a majority of UN members, Fiji supports Israel and its main backer, United States, in the war.
Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.
Samoan-Kiwi filmmaker Tuki Laumea checks in with indigenous communities in 10 Pacific nations for a new Al Jazeera documentary series, reports RNZ Saturday Morning.
As the Pacific region becomes a battleground for global power-play, many island nations are still fighting for basic sovereignty and autonomy, says Pacific filmmaker Tuki Laumea.
Pacific leaders are smart, well-educated and perfectly capable of making their own decisions, the Fight for the Pacific filmmaker told RNZ Saturday Morning, so they should be allowed to do that.
“Pacific nations all want to be able to say what it is they need without other countries coming in and trying to manipulate them for their resources, their people, and their positioning.”
Fight for the Pacific: Episode 1 – The Battlefield. Video: Al Jazeera
Laumea knew the Pacific was a “poor place” but filming Fight for the Pacific, he was shocked by the extreme poverty of New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak population.
While indigenous people generally have what they need in countries like Samoa and Tonga, it is a different story in Kanaky New Caledonia, Laumea says.
Laumea and fellow journalist Cleo Fraser — who produced the series — discovered that the country was home to two divided worlds.
In the prosperous French south, people sip coffee and smoke cigarettes and seem to be “basically swimming in money”.
Pacific filmmaker Tuki Laumea . . .Kanaky New Caledonia home to two divided worlds. Image: RNZ/Nine Island Media
Living in extreme poverty
But just over the hill to the north, the Kanak people — who are 172 years into a fight for independence from French colonisers – live in extreme poverty, he says.
“People don’t have enough, and they don’t have access to the things that they really needed.”
Kanak community leader Jean Baptiste . . . how New Caledonia has been caught up in the geopolitical dynamics between the United States, China and France. Image: AJ screenshot APR
“They’re so close to us, it’s crazy. But because they’re French, no-one really speaks English much.”
The “biggest disconnect” he saw between life there and life in NZ was internet prices.
“Internet was so, so expensive. We paid probably 100 euros [around NZ$190] for 8 to 10 gig of data.
“These guys can’t afford a 50-cent baguette so we’re not going to get lots and lots of videos coming out of Kanaky New Caledonia of what their struggle looks like. We just don’t get to hear what they’ve got to say.”
Over the years, the French government has reneged on promises made to the Kanak people, Laumea says, who just want what all of us want — “a bit of a say”.
Struggling for decades “They’ve been struggling for decades for independence, for autonomy, and it’s been getting harder. I think it’s really important that we listen now.”
With a higher rate of homelessness than any US state, the majority of dispossessed people on Hawai’i are indigenous. Image: RNZ/Nine Island Media/Grassroot Institute of Hawai’i
With a higher rate of homelessness than any US state, the majority of dispossessed people are indigenous, he says.
“You leave Waikiki — which probably not a lot of people do — and the beaches are just lined with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of homeless people, and they’re all sick, and they’re all not eating well.”
Indigenous Hawai’ians never ceded national sovereignty, Laumea says. During World War II, the land was “just taken” by the American military who still reign supreme.
“The military personnel, they all live on subsidised housing, subsidised petrol, subsidised education. All of the costs are really low for them, but that drives up the price of housing and food for everyone else.
“It’s actually devastating, and we all need to maybe have a little look at that when we’re going to places like that and how we contribute to it.”
Half of the Marshall Islands’ 50,000-strong population live in the capital city of Majuro. Image: Public domain/RNZ
Treated poorly over nuclear tests
Laumea and Fraser also visited the Marshall Islands for Fight for the Pacific, where they spoke to locals about the effects of nuclear testing carried out in the Micronesian nation between 1946 and 1958.
The incredibly resilient indigenous Marshall Islanders have been treated very poorly over the years, and are suffering widespread poverty as well as intergenerational trauma and the genetic effects of radiation, Laumea says.
“They had needles stuck in them full of radiation . . . They were used as human guinea pigs and the US has never, ever, ever apologised.”
Laumea and Fraser — who are also partners in life — found that getting a series made about the Pacific experience wasn’t easy because Al Jazeera’s huge international audience does not have much interest in the region, Laumea says.
“On the global stage, we’re very much voiceless. They don’t really care about us that much. We’re not that important. Even though we know we are, the rest of the world doesn’t think that.”
Journalist Cleo Fraser and filmmaker Tuki Laumea at work. Image: Matt Klitscher/Nine Island Media/RNZ
To ensure Fight for the Pacific (a four-part series) had “story sovereignty”, Laumea ensured the only voices heard are real Pacific residents sharing their own perspectives.
Sovereign storytellers
“We have the skills, we’re smart enough to do it, and the only thing that people should really be acknowledging are sovereign storytellers, because they’re going to get the most authentic representation of it.”
Being Pasifika himself, the enormous responsibility of making a documentary series that traverses the experiences of 10 individual Pacific cultures loomed large for Laumea.
Editing hundreds of hours of footage was often very overwhelming, he says, yet the drive to honour and share the precious stories he had gathered was also his fuel.
“That was the thing that I found the most difficult about making Fight for the Pacific but also probably the most rewarding in the end.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Democrats in the Senate are preparing to fight an attempt by Republicans to limit federal courts’ authority to block abuses of power by the Trump administration.
The looming showdown over the judiciary’s power to issue contempt orders stems from a single sentence tucked into the thousand-page budget bill, which passed the House of Representatives by a single vote on Thursday.
“This is a slap in the face to the concept of separation of powers,” said a spokesman for Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.).
If enacted, the provision — found on page 544 out of 1,082 — would restrict how federal judges can hold government officials or other litigants in contempt if they defy court-issued injunctions and restraining orders. Contempt is the primary enforcement mechanism available to courts, and in cases around the country judges have weighed whether to issue contempt findings against President Donald Trump’s deputies.
In April, one judge found there was probable cause for contempt after the administration transported dozens of Venezuelan men to a notorious prison in El Salvador despite an order temporarily blocking such deportations — a ruling that’s paused while a federal appellate court considers the issue.
Contempt is also on the table against White House officials in the fight to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, and just this week another judge floated possible contempt charges over deportation flights to South Sudan.
Frustrated at such judges’ gall and the proliferation of injunctions against the Trump administration’s actions on everything from immigration to transgender rights to federal staffing, Republicans now hope to use the budget bill to curb judicial power.
The provision passed by the House would prohibit judges from enforcing contempt orders unless they also require the litigants that sought the injunction in the first place to put up a security bond. Essentially this means requiring plaintiffs — whether individuals like Abrego Garcia or the unions, civil liberties advocates and watchdog groups that have filed suits challenging broader policies — to put down money in case an injunction is later found to be “wrongful.”
“Republicans are once again seeking to twist the rules to avoid accountability and advance their overtly political interests by attempting to shut down federal courts’ enforcement mechanism.”
“It would make no sense to require the plaintiffs in these suits to pay bonds to be able to have access to the federal courts,” explained Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of U.C. Berkeley School of Law, “and insisting on it would immunize unconstitutional government conduct from judicial review.” The relevant federal rule about security bonds and injunctions is generally relaxed when the lawsuit alleges illegal conduct by the government.
As written, the provision would be retroactive, which Chemerinsky warned would mean “hundreds and hundreds of court orders – in cases ranging from antitrust to protection of private tax information, to safeguarding the social security administration, to school desegregation to police reform – would be rendered unenforceable.”
Chemerinsky considers the provision in the budget bill fundamentally “anti-democratic” and also “unconstitutional as violating separation of powers.”
Before the bill went to the House floor, Democrats tried to take the provision out, but the Rules Committee voted along party lines to keep it.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee see the contempt provision as mere pretense to dilute judges’ authority, and they vowed to fight to remove it from the budget bill.
“As written, it would authorize outright defiance of every single injunction in effect across the country – not just nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in an emailed statement.
“Republicans are once again seeking to twist the rules to avoid accountability and advance their overtly political interests by attempting to shut down federal courts’ enforcement mechanism,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) in an emailed statement.
“This move is a disingenuous and dangerous effort to shield the Trump administration from legal challenges and consequences by attempting to make court orders unenforceable,” wrote Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) by email. “I’ll fight against this Republican power grab bent on destroying our democracy.”
Like many provisions in the bill sent to the Senate this week, the contempt restriction has no apparent link to fiscal matters, which makes it vulnerable to procedural challenge. Under the so-called “Byrd rule,” named for the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Congress cannot use the budget reconciliation mechanism to legislate about matters that are “extraneous” to the budget.
The contempt provision “clearly violates the Byrd rule,” Whitehouse wrote in his statement, and a Democratic committee aide similarly told The Intercept that there was a plan in the works “to challenge the provision as a violation of the Byrd rule.”
“This is about telling courts what to do, not about the budget,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director for federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, who has studied reconciliation and the Byrd rule, which is applied by the Senate’s parliamentarian. “Very unlikely to make it past Byrd.”
A spokesman for Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, implicitly conceded that the provision faces significant parliamentary hurdles in its current form.
“Chairman Grassley is considering approaches to address universal injunctions through reconciliation that comply with the Senate’s Byrd rule,” Grassley’s press secretary, David Bader, wrote in an email to The Intercept on Friday.
Protesting New Zealanders donned symbolic masks modelled on a Palestinian artist’s handiwork in Auckland’s Takutai Square today to condemn Israel’s starvation as war weapon against Gaza and the NZ prime minister’s weak response.
Coming a day after the tabling of Budget 2025 in Parliament, peaceful demonstrators wore hand-painted masks inspired by Gaza-based Palestinian artist Reem Arkan, who is fighting for her life alongside hundreds of thousands of the displaced Gazans.
The protest coincided with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon addressing the Trans-Tasman Business Circle in Auckland.
The demonstrators said they chose this moment and location to “highlight the alarmingly tepid response” by the New Zealand government to what global human rights organisations — such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — have branded as war crimes and acts of collective punishment amounting to genocide.
“This week, we heard yet another call for Israel to abide by international law. This is not leadership. It’s appeasement,” said a spokesperson, Olivia Coote.
“The time for statements has long passed. What we are witnessing in Gaza is a humanitarian catastrophe, and New Zealand must impose meaningful sanctions.
“Israel’s actions, including the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, forced displacement, and obstruction of humanitarian aid, constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of which we are signatories.”
A self-portrait by Palestinian artist Reem Arkan who depicts the suffering of Gaza – and the beauty – in spite of the savagery of the Israel attacks. Image: Insta/@artist_reemarkan
“This is an action that does nothing to protect the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza who face daily bombardment, siege, and starvation,” Coote said.
The protesters are calling on the New Zealand government to act immediately by:
Imposing sanctions on Israel; and
Suspending all diplomatic and trade relations with Israel until there is an end to hostilities and full compliance with international humanitarian law.
“This government must not be complicit in atrocities through silence and inaction,” Coote said. “The people of Aotearoa New Zealand demand leadership as the world watches a genocide unfold in real time.”
A street theatre protester demonstrates today against starvation as a weapon of war as deployed by Israel in its brutal war on Gaza. Image: APR
Six universities received letters from Congress in March asking them to turn over information on programs where Chinese students participate and work. Now, academic workers speaking through their unions are demanding that their schools reject calls to turn over information on the students and faculty.
The demand for information on Chinese students is part of a growing attack by the Trump administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill against universities in the U.S. The congressional focus on Chinese students in particular comes against the backdrop of rising of Sinophobia and racism against Chinese Americans under the guise of criticism of the Chinese government, said a scholar who focuses on science and technology in U.S.–China relationships.
“This issue has been weaponized by the national security establishment in the U.S. — an issue of civil liberties is being treated through the means and lens of a great power rivalry and the means and lens of national security,” said Yangyang Chen, a fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. “That is being further used to victimize the members of the same community in the name of protecting them.”
The letters demanding information about the Chinese students came from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, chaired by Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich.
Describing the student visa program as a “Trojan horse for Beijing,” the committee called on the universities to provide information on all the schools that Chinese students at their institution previously attended; sources of tuition funding; what kind of research Chinese students are conducting; a list of programs that include Chinese participants and their sources of funding; and a list of labs and research initiatives where Chinese students work.
The committee also requested a country-by-country breakdown of applicants, admittances, and enrollees at each university.
The letters were sent to Carnegie Mellon University, Purdue University, Stanford University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Maryland, and the University of Southern California. Universities have said that the letters did not request information on individuals but rather on aggregate statistics. Some schools have issued statements that they would act in accordance with privacy protections for students. (The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party did not respond to a request for comment.)
Chen, the Yale scholar, said, “This is an infringement of the Chinese students and scholars’ civil liberties.”
“A Dangerous Precedent”
While many universities — especially well-heeled elite institutions — have faced criticisms for failing to aid their international students, pushback against powerful forces in Washington continues to grow. In the case of the Chinese students, academic workers are hoping universities will show fortitude in staving off congressional Republicans.
On Wednesday, a coalition of 21 academic worker unions signed an open letter to executives and trustees at their schools raising concerns about the risks facing Chinese students and demanding that schools refuse to provide any information on Chinese students, faculty, or post-doctoral scholars to the House committee.
“Complying with these letters’ requests would not only contribute to demonizing Chinese nationals, but also set a dangerous precedent for victimizing any group arbitrarily labeled as a threat,” they wrote. “At a time when the Trump administration is targeting internationalfaculty, students, and academic workers, standing fast to strong principles of fairness, due process and academic freedom is more important than ever.”
“Blaming China has become a bipartisan strategy.”
“These letters are part of a broader escalation of anti-Chinese sentiment that has intensified with rising U.S.-China tensions,” said Valentina Dallona, political director for the nonprofit Justice Is Global, which helped organize the letter. “As U.S. policymakers grapple with what may be the end of the neoliberal order and the shifting balance of global power, blaming China has become a bipartisan strategy. This scapegoating not only fuels discrimination but also jeopardizes international research partnerships that are crucial for addressing global challenges.”
Schools have so far complied with the requests, according to statements from universities in response to inquiries from The Intercept and accounts from graduate students.
The University of Southern California downplayed the implications of the request, said Daniel Delgado, a historian at the school and member of a graduate student union organized under the auspices of the United Auto Workers. The school implied that the information requested in the letter is typical or publicly available, Delgado said.
“That doesn’t address the core problem, which is the targeting of Chinese students and use of this war-mongering to create fear and to target Chinese international workers,” he said. “That’s what I think they’re trying to basically ignore by downplaying the significance of this information request.”
The University of Maryland has not told students if the school will voluntarily provide information to government entities looking to target individuals, said Rose Ying, a graduate student at Maryland and an organizer with the university’s graduate student union.
Maryland administrators have said they won’t work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless they have a judicial warrant — which is signed by a judge based on probable cause indicating a crime, whereas administrative warrants are issued by ICE itself without a judge’s review.
“But we are trying to get them to talk about information requests more broadly,” she said. “If this committee comes back and says, ‘Hey, we actually want a list of individuals’ — would they give over that information?”
A spokesperson for the University of Maryland said they turned over information in accordance with federal and state law by the deadline of April 25. In a statement to The Intercept, university spokesperson Katie Lawson said, “It is our understanding that the request did not seek personally identifiable information.”
A spokesperson for Carnegie Mellon said the school had responded to the committee’s inquiry but did not answer questions about what kind of data it turned over.
In a March statement, Stanford said the committee had requested aggregate information not specific to individuals. “Stanford will continue working to support our students and also to fulfill our legal obligations in protecting individual student privacy,” the university said, noting that it would “assure the security and integrity of the research environment.”
In response to questions, Stanford University spokesperson Luisa Rapport pointed to the March statement and said the school had responded to the committee’s letter and would continue to “work cooperatively” with them.
A spokesperson for USC said the school was complying with the congressional request. “We are cooperating with the select committee’s inquiries,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Intercept, “and are following all applicable privacy laws and other legal protections, as we do for all matters.”
An Auckland University law academic says Samoa’s criminal libel law under which a prominent journalist has been charged should be repealed.
Lagi Keresoma, the first female president of the Journalists Association of Samoa (JAWS) and senior journalist of Talamua Online, was charged under the Crimes Act 2013 on Sunday after publishing an article about a former police officer, whom she asserted had sought the help of the Head of State to withdraw charges brought against him.
JAWS has already called for the criminal libel law to be scrapped and Auckland University academic Beatrice Tabangcoro told RNZ Pacific that the law was “unnecessary and impractical”.
“A person who commits a crime under this section is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding 175 penalty units or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months,” the Crimes Act states.
JAWS said this week that the law, specifically Section 117A of the Crimes Act, undermined media freedom, and any defamation issues could be dealt with in a civil court.
JAWS gender representative to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said Keresoma’s arrest “raises serious concerns about the misuse of legal tools to independent journalism” in the country.
Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson called on the Samoan government “to urgently review and repeal criminal defamation laws that undermine democratic accountability and public trust in the justice system”.
Law removed and brought back
The law was removed by the Samoan government in 2013, but was brought back in 2017, ostensibly to deal with issues arising on social media.
Auckland University’s academic Beatrice Tabangcoro . . . reintroduction of the law was widely criticised at the time. Image: University of Auckland
Auckland University’s academic Beatrice Tabangcoro told RNZ Pacific that this reintroduction was widely criticised at the time for its potential impact on freedom of speech and media freedom.
She said that truth was a defence to the offence of false statement causing harm to reputation, but in the case of a journalist this could lead to them being compelled to reveal their sources.
The academic said that the law remained unnecessary and impractical, and she pointed to the Samoa Police Commissioner telling media in 2023 that the law should be repealed as it was used “as a tool for harassing the media and is a waste of police resources”.
Tonga and Vanuatu are two other Pacific nations with the criminal libel law on their books, and it is something the media in both those countries have raised concerns about.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Journalists in Papua New Guinea are likely to face legal threats as powerful individuals and companies use court actions to silence public interest reporting, warns Media Council of PNG president Neville Choi.
As co-chair of the second Community Coalition Against Corruption (CCAC) National Meeting, he said lawfare was likely because Parliament had passed no laws to protect reporters and individuals from such tactics.
Choi said journalists were being left unprotected against Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) — legal actions used by powerful individuals or corporations to silence criticism and reporting.
“In Papua New Guinea right now, we don’t have any law to stop SLAPPs,” Choi said.
“Big corporations or organisations with more money can use lawsuits to silence people, civil society and the media. That’s the reality.”
SLAPPs are lawsuits filed not to win on merit, but to drain resources, silence critics, and stop public debate.
In some other countries, anti-SLAPP laws exist to protect journalists and whistleblowers. But in PNG, no such legal shield exists.
Legal pressure for speaking out
“We’ve seen it happen,” Choi added, referring to ACTNOW PNG’s Eddie Tanago, a civil society advocate who has faced legal pressure for speaking out.
“He’s experienced it. And we know it can happen to journalists too.”
Participants in the second CCAC National Meeting in Port Moresby . . . journalists are being left unprotected from corporate lawfare. Image: PNG Post-Courier
Despite increasing threats, journalists do not have access to legal defence funds or institutional protection.
Choi confirmed that there was no system in place to defend reporters who were hit with defamation lawsuits or other forms of legal retaliation.
“Our advice to journalists is simple. Do your job well. The truth is the only protection we have,” he said.
“If you stick to facts, follow professional ethics and report responsibly, you reduce your risk. But if you make a mistake, you leave yourself open to lawsuits.”
The Media Council, in partnership with Transparency International under the CCAC, are discussing the idea of drafting an anti-SLAPP law but no formal proposal has been put forward yet.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
A West Papua independence leader says escalating violence is forcing indigenous Papuans to flee their ancestral lands.
It comes as the Indonesian military claims 18 members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) were killed in an hour-long operation in Intan Jaya on May 14.
In a statement, reported by Kompas, Indonesia’s military claimed its presence was “not to intimidate the people” but to protect them from violence.
“We will not allow the people of Papua to live in fear in their own land,” it said.
Indonesia’s military said it seized firearms, ammunition, bows and arrows. They also took Morning Star flags — used as a symbol for West Papuan independence — and communication equipment.
The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda, who lives in exile in the United Kingdom, told RNZ Pacific that seven villages in Ilaga, Puncak Regency in Central Papua were now being attacked.
“The current military escalation in West Papua has now been building for months. Initially targeting Intan Jaya, the Indonesian military have since broadened their attacks into other highlands regencies, including Puncak,” he said.
Women, children forced to leave
Wenda said women and children were being forced to leave their villages because of escalating conflict, often from drone attacks or airstrikes.
ULMWP interim president Benny Wenda . . . “Indonesians look at us as primitive and they look at us as subhuman.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
Earlier this month, ULMWP claimed one civilian and another was seriously injured after being shot at from a helicopter.
Last week, ULMWP shared a video of a group of indigenous Papuans walking through mountains holding an Indonesian flag, which Wenda said was a symbol of surrender.
“They look at us as primitive and they look at us as subhuman,” Wenda said.
He said the increased military presence was driven by resources.
President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has a goal to be able to feed Indonesia’s population without imports as early as 2028.
Video rejects Indnesian plan
A video statement from tribes in Mappi regency in South Papua from about a month ago, translated to English, said they rejected Indonesia’s food project and asked companies to leave.
In the video, about a dozen Papuans stood while one said the clans in the region had existed on customary land for generations and that companies had surveyed land without consent.
“We firmly ask the local government, the regent, Mappi Regency to immediately review the permits and revoke the company’s permits,” the speaker said.
Wenda said the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) had also grown.
But he said many of the TPNPB were using bow and arrows against modern weapons.
“I call them home guard because there’s nowhere to go.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have begun waiting outside immigration courts in federal buildings across the country to arrest people immediately after judges dismiss their immigration cases. The ICE tactic appears to be a shift aimed at increasing the pace of deportations.
At New York’s Varick Immigration Court, ICE agents on Wednesday began checking the documents of everyone who left, according to a source present who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional retaliation. The court is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.
“They are indeed checking individuals off lists and attempting to detain them once they leave court,” they said.
According to the source, ICE detained at least two people after they left the courtroom.
In a statement to The Intercept, ICE said it issued guidance in January permitting its officers to conduct operations near courthouses “discreetly” and that doing so was in the interest of public safety.
“Arrests of illegal aliens in courthouses is safer for law enforcement and the general public because these criminals have gone through security and been verified as unarmed,” ICE spokesperson Marie Ferguson said in a statement to The Intercept. “ICE will make thoughtful decisions in each case and do whatever is most likely to keep the American people safe.”
“They’re basically circumventing due process.”
Camille Mackler — founder and executive director of Immigrant Arc, a group of legal advocates working on immigration issues — said she’d heard that ICE was conducting targeted operations in several jurisdictions across New York and other states, including Maryland, Arizona, California, Texas, and Illinois.
Reports began circulating on social media on Tuesday that ICE had begun efforts to get cases dismissed that had been pending for less than two years so that the agency could immediately apprehend immigrants and force them into an expedited removal process — effectively side-stepping the typical immigration court process.
“They’re moving to end those cases so they can move forward with a more aggressive form of deportation without the requirement to see a judge or request asylum,” Mackler said. “They’re basically circumventing due process.”
On Tuesday, immigration advocates said they saw ICE agents at immigration courts in Los Angeles detaining people after their cases were dismissed.
“There were two ICE officers inside the courtrooms who would notify the officers sitting in the hallway when a case was dismissed,” Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of legal advocacy group Immigrant Defenders Law Center, wrote on BlueSky.
A day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Department of Homeland Security issued a guidance allowing ICE officers to conduct arrests at “protected” areas, including courthouses. This reversed a Biden-era directive that limited arrests at sensitive locations. According to the guidance, officers must first receive approval from ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor to conduct arrests at courthouses. The guidance also instructs ICE to arrest people “discreetly” at non-public areas of the courts and to use the “non-public entrances and exits.”
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FBI arrested a judge in Wisconsin last month for “obstructing” an immigration arrest operation. According to the FBI’s criminal complaint, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan allegedly told an immigrant to use the “jury door” to exit the courtroom after agents working with ICE arrived to arrest him.
As the Trump administration vows to crack down on leakers, Republicans in Congress want to hand the Justice Department even more power to punish one extremely specific type of leak: unauthorized disclosures of tax records, which in recent years have exposed the creative accounting of the Trump family and wealthy allies like Elon Musk.
A provision tucked near the end of the GOP’s massive budget bill — at page 1,081 of the 1,082-page text circulated late Sunday — would double the maximum prison sentence for leaking tax returns to 10 years and increase possible fines from $5,000 to $250,000 per violation.
Boosting penalties for leakers may seem an odd fit for a budget bill, much like the “nonprofit killer” provision that was recently nixed without explanation. Because of their tenuous relationship to fiscal matters, the provisions potentially aren’t allowed under the rules for Congress’s budget reconciliation process.
Just don’t ask the main proponent of increasing the penalties for tax return leaks, Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, if these provisions were appropriate to include.
“Wish I could be helpful, but that’s a question for the Senate parliamentarian,” replied Smith’s communications director, J.P. Freire, by email.
Last session, Smith sponsored a stand-alone bill with identical proposed changes to the tax code that passed the House of Representatives last year but failed to advance in the Senate. Smith is one of President Donald Trump’s main surrogates on Capitol Hill for the budget bill and is also chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, which included his proposal about tax record leaks in its section of the budget bill.
Critics wonder whether increasing prison sentences for journalists’ sources is the best use of legislators’ time.
Critics wonder whether increasing prison sentences for journalists’ sources is the best use of legislators’ time as the White House works with House Republicans to push the budget toward the Senate. The proposal would also increase criminal penalties for those who “print or publish in any manner” leaked tax return information, although prosecutors looking to go after journalists and outlets directly would face constitutional hurdles under the Supreme Court’s First Amendment precedent.
“Of course, tax information is highly sensitive and there are legitimate reasons to protect financial privacy,” wrote Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, in an email. “But there are also times when it’s highly newsworthy — for example, when a president keeps secrets about his finances and business dealings abroad, or when powerful politicians and billionaires evade taxation.”
“There is no need to drastically heighten existing penalties, which, as far as I know, have been largely effective deterrents aside from cases where whistleblowers felt compelled by their consciences to expose impropriety.”
Republicans’ fixation on tax return leaks focuses on one person: Charles Littlejohn, who pleaded guilty in January 2024 to leaking Trump’s tax returns to the New York Times and a cache of tax return data for thousands of wealthy individuals to ProPublica.
In its report advancing Smith’s bill last summer, the Ways and Means Committee made Littlejohn the main character and Trump a pitiful victim. During Littlejohn’s trial, Republican members of the committee wrote to the federal judge to demand that he spend five years in prison, the maximum under the current statute, instead of 10 months as recommended by the federal sentencing guidelines.
Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden nominee, did as Republicans suggested and sentenced Littlejohn to the five-year maximum, which he is currently appealing.
But for many Republicans, Littlejohn got off too easy.
“Given the lack of deterrence created by the law as is, as well as the concern that such an unprecedented data breach could result in such a disproportionate charge and sentence, the Committee felt it was necessary to increase the penalties,” reads the committee report about Smith’s bill.
But 10 years is the kind of prison sentence beyond that given to many people convicted of crimes, like possessing child sexual abuse material and certain firearms offenses, said Christopher A. Wellborn, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
“Do we really need to have imprisonment for up to 10 years on something like this?” Wellborn asked.
“Lawmakers and judges should focus on stopping tax evasion by the rich and powerful.”
During his sentencing, Littlejohn’s attorneys argued that he leaked the tax return data “out of a deep, moral belief that the American people had a right to know the information and sharing it was the only way to effect change.” But just like the Espionage Act, the tax code’s leak provisions have no public interest defense.
“Leakers’ motives, and whether their disclosures serve the public good, should at least be a mitigating factor,” Stern said. “Whistleblowers should not be treated the same as malicious actors. Lawmakers and judges should focus on stopping tax evasion by the rich and powerful, not on disproportionate punishments for whistleblowers who expose how existing law is failing Americans.”
The proposals to stiffen penalties for tax return leakers are part of Republicans’ budget bill, which is currently advancing through the reconciliation mechanism. Under the so-called “Byrd rule,” named for the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, matters that are “extraneous” to the budget and fiscal matters cannot be enacted via reconciliation.
Earlier this month, the leaker provision was scored as having “negligible” impact on revenue by the Joint Committee on Taxation.
“That will hurt Republicans’ arguments” under the Byrd rule, predicted Bobby Kogan, senior director for federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, who has studied reconciliation and the Byrd rule, which is applied by the Senate’s parliamentarian.
In 2021, for example, the parliamentarian nixed Democrats’ attempt to increase the federal minimum wage in a reconciliation bill, ruling that any impact of the change on the federal budget was “merely incidental” to the underlying policy intent, which violates the Byrd rule.
All of the Republican budget bill’s proposals regarding tax leaks — to increase the maximum sentence, increase the maximum fine, and a third proposal that “clarifies” that each leak is a separate violation for each taxpayer whose information is disclosed — are likely “Byrdable,” according to Kogan, especially the increase in prison sentence.
“Slapping on a jail sentence is about punishment for offenses, not about changing dollars and cents coming in or out of the government,” Kogan wrote. “Of the three parts, I feel that this is least defensible under Byrd.”
“But if I were the Parliamentarian and doing my best to advise based on precedent, I would nix all three of these.”
How global power struggles are impacting in local communities, culture and sovereignty in Kanaky, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands and Samoa.
In episode one, The Battlefield, broadcast today, tensions between the United States and China over the Pacific escalate, affecting the lives of Pacific Islanders.
Key figures like former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani and tour guide Maria Loweyo reveal how global power struggles impact on local communities, culture and sovereignty in the Solomon Islands and Samoa.
The episode intertwines these personal stories with the broader geopolitical dynamics, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of the Pacific’s role in global diplomacy.
Fight for the Pacific, a four-part series by Tuki Laumea and Cleo Fraser, showcases the Pacific’s critical transformation into a battleground of global power.
This series captures the high-stakes rivalry between the US and China as they vie for dominance in a region pivotal to global stability.
The series frames the Pacific not just as a battleground for superpowers but also as a region with its own unique challenges and aspirations.
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report today it was “intolerable” that Israel had blocked any aid reaching residents for many weeks.
The UK, France and Canada have expressed their frustration, with the UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy telling Parliament the war in Gaza had entered a “dark new phase” and the UK was cancelling trade talks with Israel.
Although the situation had come about because of acts of terrorism by Hamas, for residents in Gaza it had become “intolerable”, Peters told Morning Report.
“We’ve had enough of this and we want the matter resolved and now.”
A full resumption of aid should have happened a long time ago and it was essential that the United Nations be involved in delivering it.
‘Had enough of it’
“… we’ve just simply had enough of it, utterly so [from Israel].”
The statement by the countries reaffirmed what had been said for a long time that Israel must make aid available.
New Zealand also opposed Israel’s latest expansion of military operations in Gaza, Peters said.
The Palestinian Authority and countries such as Egypt and Indonesia understood New Zealand’s position.
“We just want to sort this out and the long-term thing [Palestinians’ future alongside Israel] has got to be resolved as well.
“Israel needs to get the message very clear — we are running out of patience and hearing excuses.”
Asked if the Israeli ambassador should be called in so the message could be conveyed more clearly, he said it would be a symbolic gesture that would not help starving babies.
Israel already knew what this country’s stance was, he said.
It was an appalling situation that had started with “unforgivable terrorism” but Israel had gone “far too far” in its response, Peters said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Reading an NBC News report a couple of days ago about a Trump administration plan to relocate 1 million Gazans to Libya reminded me of a conversation between the legendary Warsaw Ghetto leader Marek Edelman and fellow fighter and survivor Simcha Rotem that took place more than quarter of a century ago.
In the conversation, first reported in Haaretz in 2023, Rotem said the Jews who walked into the gas chambers without a fight did so only because they were hungry.
Edelman disagreed, but Rotem insisted. “Listen, man. Marek, I’m surprised by your attitude. They only went because they were hungry. Even if they’d known what awaited them they would have walked into the gas chambers. You and I would have done the same.”
Edelman cut him off. “You would never have gone” [to the gas chamber.] Rotem replied, “I’m not so sure. I was never that hungry.”
Edelman agreed, saying: “I also wasn’t that hungry,” to which Rotem said, “That’s why you didn’t go.”
The NBC report claims that Israeli officials are aware of the plan and talks have been held with the Libyan leadership about taking in 1 million ethnically cleansed Palestinians.. The carrot being offered is the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Libya’s own money seized by the US more than a decade ago.
The Arabic word Sumud — or steadfastness — is synonymous with the Palestinian people. The idea that 1 million Gazans would agree to walk off the 1.4 percent of historic Palestine that is Gaza is inconceivable.
Equally incomprehensible
But then the idea that my great grandmother and other relatives walked into the gas chambers is equally incomprehensible. But we’ve never been that hungry.
The people of Gaza are. No food has entered Gaza for 76 days. Half a million Gazans are facing starvation and the rest of the population (more than 1.5 million people) are suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, according to the UN.
Last year, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was widely condemned when he suggested starving Gaza might be “justified and moral”.
The lack of outrage and urgency being expressed by world leaders — particularly Western leaders — after nearly 11 weeks of Israel actually starving the inhabitants of what retired IDF general Giora Eiland has called a giant concentration camp — is an outrage.
As far as I’m aware there’s been no talk of cutting off diplomatic relations, trade embargos or even cultural boycotts.
Israel — which last time I looked wasn’t in Europe — just placed second in Eurovision. “I’m happy,” an Israeli friend messaged me, “that my old genocidal homeland (Austria) won and not my current genocidal nation.”
A third generation Israeli, she’s one of a tiny minority protesting the war crimes being committed less than 100km from her apartment.
Sanchez had declared Israel a genocidal state and said Spain won’t do business with such a nation.
And peaking at a national famine commemoration held over the weekend Higgens said the UN Security Council had failed again and again by not dealing with famines and the current “forced starvation of the people of Gaza”.
He cited UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying “as aid dries up, the floodgates of horror have re-opened. Gaza is a killing field — and civilians are in an endless death loop.”
Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen argued in his 1981 book Poverty and Famines that famines are man-made and not natural disasters.
Unlike Gaza, the famines he wrote about were caused by either callous disregard by the ruling elites for the populations left to starve or the disastrous results of following the whims of an all-powerful leader like Chairman Mao.
He argued that a famine had never occurred in a functioning democracy.
A horrifying fact
It’s a horrifying fact that a self-described democracy, funded and abetted by the world’s most powerful democracy, has been allowed by the international community to starve two million people with no let-up in its bombing of barely functioning hospitals and killing of more than 2000 Gazans since the ban on food entering the strip was put in place. (Many more will have died due to a lack of medicine, food, and access to clean water.)
After more than two months of denying any food or medicine to enter Gaza Israel is now saying it will allow limited amounts of food in to avoid a full-scale famine.
“Due to the need to expand the fighting, we will introduce a basic amount of food to the residents of Gaza to ensure no famine occurs,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained.
“A famine might jeopardise the continuation of Operation Gideon’s Chariots aimed at eliminating Hamas.”
If 19-months of indiscriminate bombardment, the razing to the ground of whole cities, the displacement of virtually the entire population, and more than 50,000 recorded deaths (the Lancet estimated the true figure is likely to be four times that) hasn’t destroyed Hamas to Israel’s satisfaction it’s hard to conceive of what will.
But accepting that that is the real aim of the ongoing genocide would be naïve.
Shamefully indifferent Western world
In the first cabinet meeting following the Six Day War, long before Hamas came into existence, ridding Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants was top of the agenda.
“If we can evict 300,000 refugees from Gaza to other places . . . we can annex Gaza without a problem,” Defence Minister Moshe Dayan said.
The population of Gaza was 400,000 at the time.
“We should take them to the East Bank [Jordan] by the scruff of their necks and throw them there,” Minister Yosef Sapir said.
Fifty-eight years later the possible destinations may have changed but the aim remains the same. And a shamefully indifferent Western world combined with a malnourished and desperate population may be paving the way to a mass expulsion.
If the US, Europe and their allies demanded that Israel stop, the killing would end tomorrow.
Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and his Towards Democracy blog is at Substack.
Israel has been accused of “manipulation” and “cynical” circumvention of global decisions calling for unrestricted humanitarian aid access to the besieged Gaza enclave.
“In a clear act of defiance against international humanitarian obligations, the occupying state has permitted only nine aid trucks to enter the Gaza Strip — covering both the devastated north and south,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair Maher Nazzal.
“This paltry number of trucks represents a deliberate and cynical attempt to circumvent global decisions calling for unrestricted humanitarian access,” he said in a statement as Britain, France and Canada threatened Israel with sanctions and 22 other countries — including New Zealand — jointly condemned Israel over its siege.
“Under the guise of permitting aid, this token gesture is being used to claim compliance while continuing to suffocate more than two million Palestinians trapped under siege.
“It is a tactic designed to deflect international criticism and ease diplomatic pressure without meaningfully alleviating the catastrophic conditions faced by civilians.
“This is not aid — it is manipulation.”
Nazzal said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza demanded immediate, full, and unhindered access to food, water, medical supplies, and shelter for all areas of the Strip.
“The international community must see through these performative measures and act decisively,” he said.
“We call on governments, humanitarian agencies, and civil society around the world to intensify public and political pressure on the occupying state.
“It is imperative that world leaders hold it accountable for its ongoing violations and demand an end to the blockade, the siege, and these deceptive, life-threatening tactics.”
Every minute of delay cost lives, Nazzal said.
“Nine trucks are not enough. Gaza needs justice, not crumbs.”
UK, France and Canada threaten Israel with sanctions. Video: Al Jazeera
Time to expel ambassador
Letters to the editor in New Zealand newspapers have become increasingly critical of Israel’s war conduct and “atrocities”.
“The daily average number of those Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza is 90 plus, and the United Nations states that 70 percent are women and children,” she wrote.
“After 16 months of brutal onslaught, now including starvation, inside a walled enclave, isn’t it about time our government spoke up regarding this great atrocity of our time? At the very least, by demanding a ceasefire, applying sanctions and expelling the Israeli ambassador?
“That is the obvious route for a last-ditch attempt to be on ‘the right side of history’.”
In another letter, headed Standing by Helpless, Allan Bell or Torbay wrote:
“Countries stand by helpless as the Israelis bomb and shell Palestinians at will in Gaza.
“Rather than negotiate the peaceful return of the hostages, Israel has cynically used them to justify this slaughter.
“The use of starvation and destruction amounts to eradication and annihilation.
“We have protested through the United Nations (an organisation long ignored by the Israelis) to no effect. It’s time to send their ambassador home and close their embassy. A token gesture maybe, but at least we can say we did something.”
When a 25-year-old detonated a car bomb and himself outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, on Saturday, the local interim federal prosecutor, a Donald Trump appointee, was quick to accuse the bomber of harboring “anti pro-life” sentiment.
Well, in a sense, yes. But if the suggestion was that bomber Guy Edward Bartkus was primarily motivated by abortion rights, the accusation missed the point.
Barkus might be more accurately described not so much as anti-pro-life, but rather plain, old anti-life.
Bartkus subscribed to a fringe philosophy that opposes human life in every form.
Bartkus, it turned out, subscribed to a fringe philosophy, circulating primarily among a small group of online adherents, that opposes human life in every form.
Dubbed efilism — for “life” spelled backwards — or anti-natalism, supporters of the philosophy argue that people should avoid having children because human existence is too miserable to justify.
Bartkus appears to have taken the ideology a step further than most subscribers in dying by a suicide accompanied by a spectacular act of violence.
By his own account, Bartkus also suffered from mental health problems.
The Saturday bombing outside the reproductive health clinic left Bartkus dead and four other people injured, according to authorities. None of the clinic’s embryos were damaged since they are stored off-site, the clinic’s director said.
The American Reproductive Centers clinic offers services such as in vitro fertilization, egg freezing, and egg donation, according to its website. It does not offer abortion services.
In an online manifesto attributed to Bartkus, he dubbed his views “pro-mortalism.”
“All a promortalist is saying is let’s make it happen sooner rather than later (and preferably peaceful rather than some disease or accident), to prevent your future suffering, and, more importantly, the suffering your existence will cause to all the other sentient beings,” the apparent manifesto said, according to a copy reviewed by The Intercept. “The end goal is for the truth (Efilism) to win, and once it does, we can finally begin the process of sterilizing this planet of the disease of life.”
Bartkus elaborated in a 30-minute audio recording that his father told news outlets was authentic. Police sources told multiple media outlets that they are investigating the manifesto.
“Basically, it just comes down to, I’m angry that I exist,” Bartkus says in the audio attributed to him. “Nobody got my consent to bring me here.”
Elsewhere in the audio recording, Bartkus complained about IVF clinics, arguing with imagined critics of his views.
“Greatest Problem”
Bartkus’s website also pointed to a since-blocked group on Reddit called “Efilism.” The group’s description states that “EFILism is the belief that DNA, and the suffering of sentient consciousness, is the greatest problem in the universe.”
A more academic version of the philosophy called anti-natalism is primarily associated with the South African philosopher David Benatar, who has written extensively on the thesis.
“Although the good things in one’s life make one’s life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed,” according to the Oxford University Press summary of one of Benatar’s books. “Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence.”
While Benatar has been profiled in outlets such as the New Yorker, Bartkus pointed to more notorious or obscure figures in his online manifesto. Along with the writings of Sandy Hook, Connecticut, Elementary School shooter Adam Lanza, Bartkus also directed readers to the YouTube videos of an influential figure in the small online world of Efilism who goes by “inmendham.”
The YouTuber posted a video Sunday denouncing the bombing of the fertility clinic.
“The fact is that there’s people in the world who are lonely, and some that are crazy, and this that and the other thing,” inmendham said. “They have some reason to be despondent, and they have low investment in their existence, and those are dangerous people.”
Bartkus’s father told the New York Times that he had not seen his son in 10 years. Bartkus burned down the family’s house in 2009 when he was 9 years old, his father said.
Bartkus said on his website that he had borderline personality disorder. According to the Mayo Clinic, people with that mental health condition have “a pattern of unstable, intense relationships, as well as impulsiveness and an unhealthy way of seeing themselves.”
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline offers 24-hour support for those experiencing difficulties or those close to them, by chat or by telephone at 988.
An effort to empower President Donald Trump to target his ideological enemies in the nonprofit sector stalled when Trump’s sprawling, agenda-setting megabill faced opposition from far-right Republicans in the House.
Now, with an amended version of the longer bill inching toward approval, the push to target nonprofits appeared to suffer a major setback.
“For now it’s not in the text of the bill, and that’s an improvement from where we were at last week.”
The latest draft of the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” which passed the House Budget Committee on Sunday night, no longer includes a provision that critics have dubbed the “nonprofit killer.”
The measure, which has surfaced in several different forms over the past two years, would grant the secretary of the Treasury Department broad powers to strip nonprofits’ tax-exempt status by labeling them as a “terrorist supporting organization” — with little in the way of due process or evidentiary standards.
It was not immediately clear why the provision was absent from the latest draft of the bill, but a Democratic congressional aide said the removal was indeed a deliberate move by the GOP.
“Apparently Republican staffers removed it after hearing about it from stakeholders and working with leadership on a solution, but I’m not sure what the solution is,” the source told The Intercept.
The removal of the clause prompted cautious optimism from civil society advocates, according to Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“It’s possible they took it out to rewrite it in some way, because we know that this package is going to be amended,” Hamadanchy told The Intercept. “But for now it’s not in the text of the bill, and that’s an improvement from where we were at last week.”
Fits and Starts
The latest push to get the nonprofit-killer clause into law appeared on page 380 of a 389-page bundle of amendments put forward by the GOP-controlled House Ways and Means Committee last week and passed out of committee intact.
After far-right Republicans opposed to government spending stalled the megabill, the section on nonprofits appears to have been removed from an updated version put out Monday by the House Committee on Rules.
Proponents of the provision have been trying for well over a year to make it law, an effort that critics have described as an assault on free speech aimed in particular at pro-Palestine groups. First introduced in late 2023, an initial version of the bill passed the House with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans alike.
In the wake of Trump’s reelection victory, however, and in the face of a concerted campaign by the ACLU and other civil society groups, many Democrats changed their tune.
When the last version of the bill, H.R. 9495, was introduced in November, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, marshaled opposition to the measure and even managed to vote it down in one floor vote.
The Republican-controlled House, however, pressed on and the bill eventually passed with near-unanimous GOP support — and with the help of a handful of Democrats — but ultimately stalled in the Senate without becoming law.
The Big, Beautiful Bill passed a major hurdle over the weekend after an initial attempt by four hardline conservatives to block the package.
Opponents of the nonprofit killer clause are not counting it out just yet, Hamadanchy said.
“We are continuing to track things,” he said, “in case this thing comes back from the dead as it has numerous times.”
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the May 19, 2000, coup led by renegade businessman George Speight.
The deposed Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, says Speight’s motive had less to do with indigenous rights and a lot more to do with power, greed, and access to the millions likely to accrue from Fiji’s mahogany plantation.
On this day 25 years ago, the elected government was held hostage at the barrel of the gun, the Parliament complex started filling up with rebels supporting the takeover, Suva City and other areas in Fiji were looted and burnt, and innocent people were attacked just because of their race.
Chaudhry said indigenous emotions were “deliberately ignited to beat up support for the treasonous actions of the terrorists”.
He said the coup threw the nation into chaos from which it had not fully recovered even to this day.
Chaudhry said using George Speight as a frontman, the “real perpetrators” of the coup, assisted by a group of armed rebels from the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF), held Chaudhry and members of his government hostage for 56 days as they plundered, looted and terrorised the Indo-Fijian community in various parts of the country.
The Fiji Labour Party leader said that, as with current Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, who led the first two coups in 1987, so with Speight in May 2000, that the given reason for the treason and the mayhem that followed was to “protect the rights and interests of the indigenous community”.
Chaudhry said today that it was widely acknowledged that the rights of the indigenous community was not endangered either in 1987 or in 2000.
He added that they were simply used to pursue personal and political agendas.
Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka with former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry . . . apology accepted during the Girmit Day Thanksgiving and National Reconciliation church service at the Vodafone Arena in Suva. Image: Jonacani Lalakobau/The Fiji Times
The FLP leader said those who benefitted were the elite in Fijian society, not ordinary people.
Chaudhry said this was obvious from current statistics which showed that currently the iTaukei surveyed made up 75 percent of those living in poverty.
He said poverty reports in the early 1990s showed practically a balance in the number of Fijians and Indo-Fijians living in poverty.
Prisoner George Speight speaking to inmates in 2011 . . . he and his rogue gunmen seized then Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his government hostage in a 2000 crisis that lasted for 56 days. Image: Fijivillage News/YouTube screenshot
The former prime minister says it was obvious that the coups had done nothing to improve the quality of life of the ordinary indigenous iTaukei.
Instead, he said the coups had had a devastating impact on the entire socio-economic fabric of Fiji’s society, putting the nation decades behind in terms of development.
Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre coordinator Shamima Ali reflects on the 2000 coup.
Chaudhry said the sorry state of Fiji today — “the suffering of our people and continued high rate of poverty, deteriorating health and education services, the failing infrastructure and weakened state of our economy” — were all indicators of how post-coup governments had failed to deliver on the expectations of the people.
He said: “It is time for us to rise above discredited notions of racism and fundamentalism and embrace progressive, liberal thinking.”
Chaudhry added that leaders needed to be judged on their vision and performance and not on their colour and creed.
Republished with permission from FijiVillage News.
2000 attempted coup leader George Speight with a bodyguard and supporters during the siege drama in May 2000. Image: Fijivillage News
This story discusses graphic details of slavery, sexual abuse and violence
Pacific children as young as six are being adopted overseas and being made to work as house slaves, suffering threats, beatings and rape.
Kris Teikamata — a social worker at a community agency — spoke about the harrowing cases she encountered in her work, from 2019 to 2024, with children who had escaped their abusers in Auckland and Wellington.
“They’re incredibly traumatised because it’s years and years and years of physical abuse, physical labour and and a lot of the time, sexual abuse, either by the siblings or other family members,” she said.
“They were definitely threatened, they were definitely coerced and they had no freedom.
“When I met each girl, [by then] 17, 18, 19 years old, it was like meeting a 50-year-old. The light had gone out of their eyes. They were just really withdrawn and shut down.”
In one case a church minister raped his adopted daughter and got her pregnant.
Teikamata and her team helped 10 Samoan teenagers who had managed to escape their homes, and slavery — two boys and eight girls — with health, housing and counselling. She fears they are the tip of the iceberg, and that many remain under lock and key.
“They were brought over as a child or a teenager, sometimes they knew the family in Samoa, sometimes they didn’t — they had promised them a better life over here, an education and citizenship.
Social worker Kris Teikamata . . . “They were brought over as a child or a teenager, sometimes they knew the family in Samoa, sometimes they didn’t .” Image: RNZ Pacific
“When they arrived they would generally always be put into slavery. They would have to get up at 5, 6 in the morning, start cleaning, start breakfast, do the washing, then go to school and then after school again do cleaning and dinner and the chores — and do that everyday until a certain age, until they were workable.
“Then they were sent out to factories in Auckland or Wellington and their bank account was taken away from them and their Eftpos card. They were given $20 a week.
“From the age of 16 they were put to work. And they were also not allowed to have a phone — most of them had no contact with family back in Samoa.”
‘A thousand kids a year… and it’s still going on’ Nothing stopped the abusive families from being able to adopt again and they did, she said.
A recent briefing to ministers reiterated that New Zealanders with criminal histories or significant child welfare records have used overseas courts to approve adoptions, which were recognised under New Zealand law without further checks.
“When I delved more into it, I just found out that it was a very easy process to adopt from Samoa,” she said.
“There’s no checks, it’s a very easy process. So about a thousand kids [a year] are today being adopted from Samoa. It’s such a high number — whereas other countries have checks or very robust systems. And it’s still going on.”
As children, they could not play with friends and all of their movements were controlled.
Oranga Tamariki uplifted younger children, who were sometimes siblings of older children who had escaped.
“The ones that I met had escaped and found a friend or were homeless or had reached out to the police.”
Loving families
When they were reunited with their birth parents on video calls, it was clear they came from loving families who had been deceived, she said.
While some adoptive parents faced court for assault, only one has been prosecuted for trafficking.
Government, police and Oranga Tamariki were aware and in talks with the Samoan government, she said.
Adoption Action member and researcher Anne Else said several opportunities to overhaul the 70-year-old Adoption Act had been thwarted, and the whole legislation needed ripping up.
“The entire law needs to be redone, it dates back to 1955 for goodness sake,” she said.
“But there’s a big difference between understanding how badly and urgently the law needs changing and actually getting it done.
“Oranga Tamariki are trying, I know, to work with for example Tonga to try and make sure that their law is a bit more conformant with ours, and ensure there are more checks done to avoid these exploitative cases.”
Sold for adoption
Children from other countries had been sold for adoption, she said, and the adoption rules depended on which country they came from. Even the Hague Convention, which is supposed to provide safeguards between countries, was no guarantee.
Immigration minister Erica Stanford said other ministers were looking at what could be done to crack down on trafficking through international adoption.
“If there are non-genuine adoptions and and potential trafficking, we need to get on top of that,” she sad.
“It falls outside of the legislation that I am responsible for, but there are other ministers who have it on their radars because we’re all worried about it. I’ve read a recent report on it and it was pretty horrifying. So it is being looked at.”
A meeting was held between New Zealand and Samoan authorities in March. A summary of discussions said it focused on aligning policies, information sharing, and “culturally grounded frameworks” that uphold the rights, identity, and wellbeing of children, following earlier work in 2018 and 2021.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Seven European nations have called on Israel to “immediately reverse” its military operations against Gaza and lift the food and water blockade on the besieged enclave.
They have also called on all parties to immediately engage with “renewed urgency and good faith” for a ceasefire and release of all hostages.
The seven countries are Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Slovenia, and Spain.
They declared that they would be silent in the face of the man-made humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza that has so far killed more than 50,000 men, women and children.
Israeli forces continue bombarding Gaza yesterday, killing at least 125 Palestinians, including 36 in the so-called “safe zone” of al-Mawasi.
The intensified Israeli attacks have rendered all the public hospitals in northern Gaza out of service, said the Health Ministry.
The joint statement
The joint statement signed by the leaders of all seven countries said:
“We will not be silent in front of the man-made humanitarian catastrophe that is taking place before our eyes in Gaza. More than 50.000 men, women, and children have lost their lives. Many more could starve to death in the coming days and weeks unless immediate action is taken.
“We call upon the government of Israel to immediately reverse its current policy, refrain from further military operations and fully lift the blockade, ensuring safe, rapid and unimpeded humanitarian aid to be distributed throughout the Gaza strip by international humanitarian actors and according to humanitarian principles. United Nations and humanitarian organisations, including UNRWA, must be supported and granted safe and unimpeded access.
“We call upon all parties to immediately engage with renewed urgency and good faith in negotiations on a ceasefire and the release of all hostages, and acknowledge the important role played by the United States, Egypt and Qatar in this regard.
“This is the basis upon which we can build a sustainable, just and comprehensive peace, based on the implementation of the two-State solution. We will continue to support the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, and work in the framework of the United Nations and with other actors, like the Arab League and Arab and Islamic States, to move forward to achieve a peaceful and sustainable solution. Only peace can bring security for Palestinians, Israelis and the region, and only respect for international law can secure lasting peace.
“We also condemn the further escalation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, with increased settler violence, the expansion of illegal settlements and intensified Israel military operations. Forced displacement or the expulsion of the Palestinian people, by any means, is unacceptable and would constitute a breach of international law. We reject any such plans or attempts at demographic change.
“We must assume the responsibility to stop this devastation.”
The letter was signed by Kristrún Frostadóttir, Prime Minister of Iceland; Micheál Martin, Taoiseach of Ireland; Luc Frieden, Prime Minister of Luxembourg; Robert Abela, Prime Minister of Malta; Jonas Gahr Støre, Prime Minister of Norway; Robert Golob, Prime Minister of Slovenia; and Pedro Sánchez, President of Spain.
Gaza proves global system ‘incapable of solving issues’
Meanwhile, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, says the crisis in Gaza has once again demonstrated that “the pillars of the international system are incapable of resolving such issues”, reports Al Jazeera.
It also showed “that the fate of the [Middle East] region cannot and should not remain at the mercy of extra-regional powers”, he said during a speech at the Tehran Dialogue Forum.
“What is currently presented by these powers as the ‘regional reality’ is, in fact, a reflection of deeply constructed narratives and interpretations, shaped solely based on their own interests,” Iran’s top diplomat said.
He said these narratives must be redefined and corrected from within the region itself.
“West Asia is in dire need of a fundamental reassessment of how it views itself,” Araghchi said.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Last May, when Eurovision broadcast the musical competition’s semifinals, viewers at home noticed something strange. During rehearsals with a live audience earlier in the week, audience members loudly booed singer Eden Golan, the Israeli entrant whose participation stirred a controversy due to Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza.
When Golan performed live for television on May 9, 2024, however, viewers at home heard no audible boos at all. Had the audiences had a sudden change of heart over a few short days? Commenters online didn’t think so, and speculation ran rampant that the European Broadcasting Union, or EBU, which produces Eurovision, had censored boos from the live show.
There was booing during Golan’s May 9 television performance, with one audience member loudly shouting “Free Palestine!”
In statements at the time, EBU insisted it had not censored any audience reactions.
“Just like in all major TV productions with an audience, SVT” — the national broadcaster in Sweden, where the 2024 Eurovision was hosted — “work on the broadcast sound to even out the levels for TV viewers,” the EBU told HuffPost UK. “This is solely to achieve as balanced a sound mix as possible for the audience; and SVT do not censor sound from the arena audience.”
An analysis of the original broadcast audio feeds by The Intercept shows that there was indeed booing during Golan’s May 9 television performance, with one audience member loudly shouting “Free Palestine!” during the recording. While the cheers from the audience feed remain prominent in the broadcast mix of the audio, neither the booing nor the pro-Palestine slogan were audible in the version of the performance viewers heard at home.
Listen to clips of both audio feeds below. Enable closed captions for notations of audience reactions.
The EBU did not respond to a request for comment.
Golan’s run at Eurovision drew controversy as the death toll of Israel’s war on Gaza mounted. Despite a campaign to exclude Israel, Golan advanced to the finals with her pop song “Hurricane,” ultimately placing fifth. The isolated audience audio from that event was too glitchy to determine whether any boos were also suppressed in the final mix. The song, originally titled “October Rain,” was initially barred from Eurovision, prior to undergoing a title and lyric adjustment for violating the contest’s rules on political neutrality with its reference to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.
In an interview shortly after last year’s Eurovision competition, Golan was played an online video of booing during her live-audience rehearsal.
“Well, that happened in every single performance,” Golan said in response. “There were some days that were more extreme.”
Golan said she was prepared for a negative reaction and had hoped her in-ear monitors for live performances would block out the crowd noises.
“And I was very wrong,” she said, “because after the first rehearsal with the audience I remember not hearing myself, only hearing the boos and the screaming and the yelling.”
Nonpolitical?
Eurovision is the world’s premier international music competition. Under the auspices of their respective national broadcasters, artists from around the globe — originally Europe, but since expanded — come together for over-the-top performances watched by tens of millions of fans. Last year, some 160 million people watched the events on television.
Ahead of last year’s event, dueling letter campaigns and petitions supported and decried Israeli participation. More than 1,000 Swedish artists signed a letter urging Israel’s exclusion, while more than 400 Hollywood celebrities penned a letter supporting Israel.
In the end, the EBU said it conducted a review and decided Israel could be involved.
“The Eurovision song contest is a non-political music event and a competition between public service broadcasters who are members of the EBU,” Noel Curran, the EBU director general, told The Guardian at the time. “It is not a contest between governments.”
More than 56,000 people signed a petition calling for Israel to be banned from the current season of Eurovision, while 72 former Eurovision contestants signed a letter urging the EBU to exclude Israel and its broadcaster, KAN, from the competition. The EBU again decided Israel may participate.
The contest has, in the past, made exclusions based on circumstances apparently linked to geopolitics. In 2022, it barred Russia from competing in the song contest, stating that “in light of the unprecedented crisis in Ukraine, the inclusion of a Russian entry in this year’s Contest would bring the competition into disrepute.”
Last year, EBU published a list of frequently asked questions titled “FAQ: Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest 2024,” stating that Russia was suspended from Eurovision owing to unspecified allegations of “consistent breaches of membership obligations and the violation of public service media values.”
Audio Analysis
The Intercept was able to uncover the suppression of audible discontent with Israel at last year’s Eurovision by examining various feeds sent out by the competition organizers for broadcast across the globe.
When the local host country’s national broadcaster — in last year’s case Sweden and SVT, respectively — produce Eurovision, they collect multiple audio feeds: such as one for the performers, one for the audience, and one for announcer voices. The broadcaster then does a live mix of the three audio feeds into a single stereo mix.
The stereo mix is beamed up to a satellite using a multichannel format which Eurovision has been experimenting with since 2004. The video feed is also sent on a separate channel. The system allows a streamlined approach for local broadcasters around the globe to access the feeds and put the program on their stations.
Along with the final stereo mix and video feeds, however, the EBU also beams the raw audio feeds on different channels. Local broadcasters can then make their own mixes of the audio feeds — though in practice, local stations usually use the provided stereo feed.
Much like anyone can readily record over-the-air television broadcasts so long as they have equipment like an antenna and a recording device, so too can anyone record satellite signals if they have the requisite equipment. While many modern satellite feeds are encrypted, Eurovision appears to have opted for a format which is more readily compatible with older equipment, stating at a press briefing that “to send signal out to the juries during those shows and amongst our different members, technology differs in how modern it is.”
The Intercept was able to review the raw audio feeds from Golan’s performance and compare the isolated audience noise to the final stereo mix.
An audience member can be heard prominently shouting “Free Palestine!” The cry is not on the stereo broadcast mix.
The audio feeds were compared using the time encoding that allows broadcasters to sync up the sound and picture. On the audience feed, cheers swell up from time to time, along with whistles and other noises of audience approval. These swells and other noises correspond between the audience feed and the stereo mix.
Notes of crowd disapproval, however, are present on the audience feed but completely absent from the stereo mix. At one point in the feed at the start of Israel’s performance, scattered boos well up on the audience feed, while the corresponding timestamp in the stereo mix has no audience sound. Likewise, at the start of the performance, an audience member can be heard prominently shouting “Free Palestine!” The cry is not on the stereo broadcast mix.
This year’s performer representing Israel, Yuval Raphael, has said that she expected to be booed and practiced with distracting sounds play in the background. Conflicting news accounts of Raphael’s performance claimed alternatively that the show went on “relatively without a hitch,” in one case, and in another that footage shared on social media showed booing that was not audible in the broadcast.
A pro-Palestine demonstrator holds a “Free Mahmoud Khalil” sign at a protest in New York City on May 15, 2025.Photo: Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images
One of the top job requirements for attorneys in Donald Trump’s Justice Department seems to be an abundance of shamelessness.
A lot of legal professionals have to defend the indefensible as part of their jobs, but arguing that rampant lawlessness is legal — as government attorneys now do in many of the 240-plus lawsuits filed against the current Trump administration — requires a particular flair for impudence.
The effort to deport Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil offers a case in point. The Trump regime abducted Khalil, a green card holder, in the lobby of his New York apartment building in March, and has since held him in a sprawling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana.
Last week, the New Jersey judge hearing Khalil’s habeas corpus challenge against the government made a simple demand: Present the legal precedent. Against this most basic directive to do their jobs, the government’s attorneys filed a whiny formal objection.
The Trump administration complained that it was “misguided” to demand it swiftly present the legal basis for its extreme actions.
They should know the precedents because that is part of arguing the legality of a government action.
The government is trying to use an obscure provision under the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the secretary of state the power to deport people whose presence it deems to create “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio made just such a determination in his effort to deport Khalil, as well as Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, who is also a green card holder, and Tufts University Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk.
Judge Michael Farbiarz’s response to invocation of the obscure law seemed reasonable. Last Friday morning, he asked that the government provide examples of “other instances” of the provision’s use by 5 p.m. that day.
Were the government’s case anything but an authoritarian gambit, Justice Department attorneys would be able to present relevant precedent on demand.
They should know the precedents because that is, surely, part of arguing the legality of a government action. And the government has had plenty of time to construct this argument: Khalil’s attorneys filed the habeas petition the night he was detained by ICE, over two months ago.
Instead, the attorneys scrambled that day to produce a bare-bones response, and complained that “limited staff have been searching for records in response to the Court’s orders as well as managing competing litigation requests and other priorities.”
“The Government has made a good faith effort to comply with the Court’s most recent orders,” the attorneys wrote in the objection. “But the Government believes that those orders are misguided, and lodges this formal objection.”
They went on: “Government counsel has also appeared before the Court for conferences scheduled hours beforehand” — complaining that “those instances have adversely affected the Government and counsel’s work on other cases.”
The attorneys said that the judge asking for this extremely basic information about the case’s legal basis amounted to expedited discovery, which Khalil’s team, rather than the judge, should request.
“Give Me a Break!”
The objection means nothing for Khalil’s ongoing case, but it’s a telling example of the Justice Department’s churlish position when it comes to offering legal justifications for government actions.
Numerous judges have now scolded government attorneys in an array of cases, from attacks on law firms to deportation cases to student visa removals. Judges have berated “shoddy work,” “Kafkaesque” arguments, and “disrespectful” behavior from attorneys.
Legal work that leaves something to be desired may in part be due to a dearth of talent in government. Hundreds of attorneys have left the Justice Department since Trump’s return; the department’s civil rights division has seen a 70 percent reduction in attorneys through resignations and reassignments.
“The Trump administration has melted down the DOJ we once knew,” wrote journalist Piper French, “and used the raw material to forge a sleek machine with a unified purpose and total vision.”
Whether the department’s operations are always sleek is questionable: Attorneys have appeared unprepared or evasive and failed to defend Trump’s executive actions against full or partial blocks in courts at least 64 times since January.
“Give me a break!” scoffed one judge, an appointee of George W. Bush, when a Justice Department lawyer tried to argue that Trump’s attack on a major law firm was necessary to defend against racial discrimination. The judge blocked the order.
I don’t envy the job of defending illegal, unconstitutional dreck, but I don’t have to do it — and neither do these lawyers. They ought to save themselves the embarrassment and just quit.
French is right: The Justice Department is unwavering in its ideological backing of Trump’s fascistic agenda. And shamelessness when it comes to the work of defending shameful acts is no doubt a more useful quality than legal wisdom and respect for judicial processes.
The reason many of these lawyers haven’t left, however, is because they believe their own bullshit. Those who remain, along with new staff hired by Trump loyalist Pam Bondi commit themselves to the devil’s work. It offers only minimal comfort that they sometimes do it badly. The U.S. legal system is hardly immune from upholding repressive laws and violently discriminatory government actions.
In Khalil’s case, for example, the Justice Department attorneys are arguing for a gross violation of First Amendment protections, but that’s no assurance that they will lose.
While petulant, the attorneys did comply with the judge’s order. The lawyers proffered twoshort filings that listed seven examples of the law’s invocation — with two of the listed cases being Mahdawi and Öztürk.
The other five cases listed included Osama Bin-Laden’s brother; the leader of a paramilitary group in Haiti; a Palestinian deported in 1997 who, according to the government, “was a top leader of a designated foreign terrorist organization”; an “African national” the government said had contributed to “violent political activity” in Somalia; and the 1995 case of Mario Ruiz Massieu, a former assistant attorney general of Mexico.
Massieu was the only one to challenge his detention in court, in a case overseen by Trump’s older sister, the late federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Barry ruled the deportation provision unconstitutional, but that ruling was reversed on a technicality by none other than Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was then a 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge.
Ripe for Abuse
The “foreign policy” provision is ripe for abuse. It places all too much discretion in the hands of the secretary of state in a deportation system that had little in the way of due process even before Trump got ahold of it.
Yet even the previous cases listed by the government make clear that using the law to deport Khalil, Mahdawi, or Öztürk would be an unprecedented overreach.
Rubio has argued that Khalil should be removed for his role in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States” — a reprise of the spurious link between protesting Israel and antisemitism. A wealth of Khalil’s Jewish friends and fellow organizers have also spoken out in support of him.
Yet even if Rubio’s lies were true, deporting someone on those grounds alone would be an extraordinary expansion of the “foreign policy” provision’s application, and an unambiguous violation of the First Amendment.
Compared to the rare use of the provision in the last decades — one of which was found to be unconstitutional by a judge — the cases against Khalil, Mahdawi, and Öztürk appear risible additions to the list.
Based on the discretion granted to Rubio under the law, however, an immigration judge deemed Khalil deportable.
