Israel’s military assault on Gaza is not just a humanitarian disaster but also generating massive amounts of planet-heating emissions and exacerbating the climate crisis. The carbon emissions from Israel’s bombs, tanks, fighter jets and other military activity in the first two months of the war were higher than the annual carbon footprints of 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby
Soldiers and police were jointly patrolling the streets of the Papua New Guinea capital Port Moresby today as the country takes stock of yesterday’s unprecedented looting and rampage by hooligans and rioters.
Prime Minister James Marape confirmed that the National Executive Council had met and approved the army to be called out to assist police restore law and order after a day of total chaos in the capital city.
Five people were killed in Waigani while several more were injured and admitted to the Port Moresby and Gerehu hospitals.
Business leaders called the day the “darkest day” in the history of PNG where millions of kina in property and goods were lost.
As buildings lay smouldering in ruins last night, Police Commissioner David Manning confirmed that an additional 50 police officers from Lae had been flown to Port Moresby.
These police will provide backup for security personnel that have been on duty for extended periods, and will increase force strength if tensions increase, Manning said.
“Cabinet has approved a call-out of PNGDF personnel, and they are working with police to restore calm.”
Parkop calls for ‘normalcy’
NCD Governor Powes Parkop appealed for normalcy to be restored and for looting to stop.
He said: “What has happened is unacceptable, unforgivable, and unjustified under any circumstances.
Violent riots in PNG leave 16 people dead, as PM declares state of emergency for 14 days https://t.co/AzxcX2MUXP
— The Pacific Newsroom (@newsroom_the) January 11, 2024
“We cannot afford to allow this turmoil to persist another night or day. We must uphold our pledge to safeguard the people and the state. Let us restore order and stability in our city with the support of the PNGDF.”
What started as a simple standing down from duties because of pay cuts by disgruntled security personnel in the city turned into mayhem and chaotic scenes as opportunists ransacked shops and assaulted innocent bystanders.
A group of security personnel was seen descending into Parliament House demanding to see Prime Minister Marape. Several more personnel were also seen throwing
stones at the Central Government Office, breaking the gate and eventually burning the guard house at Manasupe Haus where PM Marape was holding a press conference.
In Konedobu, multiple gunshots could be heard outside the Post-Courier newspaper office after looters broke into Desh Besh supermarket.
The Port Moresby General Hospital CEO Dr Paki Molumi yesterday confirmed receiving the first wave of cases that included casualties of two chest, one thorax, one multiple wounds in shock and nine limb and abdomen wounds.
Razed by looters
In Gerehu, at Rainbow, the Stop and Shop was looted, while the main shopping centre near the market was razed. Waigani’s Stop and Shop also razed by looters.
Patients at Gerehu Hospital were also evacuated and taken to Port Moresby General Hospital amid the chaotic scenes.
Across the city reports of widespread looting of shops were coming in from Gerehu, Waigani, Tokarara, Konedobu, Manu Auto-Port, Badili, Hohola, Gordons and other areas.
St John Ambulances were called to many of the locations with multiple emergency calls relating to shootings and monitoring a number of fire incidents in the city.
Police vehicles drove by looters and rioters, some even giving a thumbs up and telling them to continue what they were doing.
The chaos yesterday was sparked by a simple technical glitch on the government’s Alesco Payroll System which paid public servants on a previously rescinded tax regime which resulted in workers including police and defence forces receiving heavily reduced pay packets.
This angered police to stand down from their duties and soldiers and police to march on the Parliament demanding answers to their pay cuts.
Strikers demand answers
At 10am, security personnel descended onto Unagi Oval in Gordons demanding answers as to why some of them were receiving 100 to 350 PNG kina (US$26-$80).
Minister for Internal Security Peter Tsiamalili Jr was shouted down with a thrown plastic container missing the minister as he left the oval.
The personnel drove into Parliament, and also shouted at acting Governor-General Job Pomat that they wanted to speak to PM Marape.
By 3pm, frustrated with the lack of response, the attention was now on Manasupe House. A vehicle and the guard house was destroyed and burned.
At 5pm, Assistant Commissioner of Police-NCD and Central Anthony Wagambie Jr confirmed that the PNGDF had been called on to support the police as they worked to bring peace and order in the city.
Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent; Finau Fonua, RNZ Pacific journalist; and Kelvin Anthony, RNZ Pacific lead digital and social media journalist
At least 10 people are dead and dozens injured after 24 hours of looting in Papua New Guinea, during which several buildings were torched.
Chaos broke out in Port Moresby as looters and opportunists took advantage of a protest by the country’s police and military.
People have been ordered to leave the streets of the capital after yesterday’s violent riots, and have been warned authorities will use “live rounds”.
Looting has spread to at least four other towns, including Kavieng, reports the PNG Post-Courier.
Footage and images circulating on social media show crowds of people leaving shops with looted goods — everything from merchandise to soft drinks to freezers — as the National Capital District (NCD) descended into chaos overnight.
The national daily newspaper PNG Post-Courier labelled the events the “Darkest day in our city” and NCD Governor Powes Parkop appealed to the looters to stop.
Port Moresby General Hospital say eight people have been killed, and another two have been confirmed dead by police central command in Lae, the country’s second biggest city.
‘My heart goes out’
“The cost of the ensuing looting and destruction is substantial, and my heart goes out to all the businesses in the city that have been affected,” Parkop said according reports.
Unverified videos have also emerged of bodies of several men allegedly shot dead who were involved in the unrest on Wednesday and children and women wailing around them in Port Moresby.
RNZ Pacific is trying to verify the footage.
Police and the PNG Defence Force reinforcements have been called from outside the capital to restore order.
Emergency service providers have been working overnight attending to high numbers of people injured in the violence at various locations.
“The ambulance service has received a large number of emergencies calls in the National Capital District relating to shooting incidents and persons injured in an explosion,” St. John Ambulance Service said on their Facebook page.
“The ambulance operations centre are prioritising high-priority emergencies only at this point.”
Stretched to limit
The Papua New Guinea Fire Service has had its resources stretched to its limits as it struggled to contain fires in multiple locations.
The Port Moresby General Hospital had to close overnight while a smaller hospital at the Gerehu suburb, evacuated its patients as a nearby shop was set on fire.
Large businesses suffered big losses in just a few hours.
The City Pharmacy Limited (CPL) group, which owns one of the biggest supermarket and pharmacy chains in Port Moresby, had most its shops raided and burned overnight.
Looters also stole electronic appliances from warehouses and shops owned by the Brian Bell group of companies.
Police Commissioner David Manning called on all people in Port Moresby that to clear the streets and go home.
Mobile squad called in
Last night, additional police from the Highlands Mobile Group (HMG) were flown in from from Lae to help restore order.
The government also issued a call out for the military to assist police.
The events began on Wednesday morning local time, after about 200 police and the military personnel gathered at the Ungai Oval to protest over pay deductions from their wages.
They wanted answers from authorities about the “tax” in their most recent pay period, but a government minister who addressed them could not convince them why the deductions had been made.
The tax office said the issue caused by a “glitch” in the accounting system.
What triggered the chaos
In the last fortnight pay cycle, several service members saw a reduction in their pay, ranging from $100 PNG kina to $350 PNG kina (US$26-US$80).
It was not clear whether it was due to a tax, or a glitch in the system.
Many of them were told later, through a statement from the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC), and the prime minister’s office that there was a glitch in the payrolls system.
That triggered a gathering of about 200 policemen and women, military personnel and correctional services personnel in Port Moresby. They demanded an answer from the government, saying a “glitch” wasn’t a satisfactory answer.
They then moved from Unagi Oval to Parliament house, opened the gates of Parliament, and the Police Minister Peter Siamali Jr tried to address them. The security personnel then withdrew their services, and the city descended into chaos overnight.
Initially it was sporadic looting in various suburbs of Port Moresby. In the Gerehu suburb one shop was burned, and a few kilometres down to Waigani there was a shop that was burnt, and over the next three to four hours it became worse and several more shops were looted because there was no police presence there.
Policemen were there, but nothing could be done to the looters, so it has degenerated to a point where there is widespread looting.
The Finance Department and prime minister have tried to explain the so-called “glitch”, saying it was being fixed, but that has not gone down well with the service members.
The Northern Mobile Group, a mobile squad unit from out of Port Moresby which looks after one part of the region, has been flown into Port Moresby, and is expected to restore order.
The military has been called out to assist police.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent; Finau Fonua, RNZ Pacific journalist; and Kelvin Anthony, RNZ Pacific lead digital and social media journalist
At least 10 people are dead and dozens injured after 24 hours of looting in Papua New Guinea, during which several buildings were torched.
Chaos broke out in Port Moresby as looters and opportunists took advantage of a protest by the country’s police and military.
People have been ordered to leave the streets of the capital after yesterday’s violent riots, and have been warned authorities will use “live rounds”.
Looting has spread to at least four other towns, including Kavieng, reports the PNG Post-Courier.
Footage and images circulating on social media show crowds of people leaving shops with looted goods — everything from merchandise to soft drinks to freezers — as the National Capital District (NCD) descended into chaos overnight.
The national daily newspaper PNG Post-Courier labelled the events the “Darkest day in our city” and NCD Governor Powes Parkop appealed to the looters to stop.
Port Moresby General Hospital say eight people have been killed, and another two have been confirmed dead by police central command in Lae, the country’s second biggest city.
‘My heart goes out’
“The cost of the ensuing looting and destruction is substantial, and my heart goes out to all the businesses in the city that have been affected,” Parkop said according reports.
Unverified videos have also emerged of bodies of several men allegedly shot dead who were involved in the unrest on Wednesday and children and women wailing around them in Port Moresby.
RNZ Pacific is trying to verify the footage.
Police and the PNG Defence Force reinforcements have been called from outside the capital to restore order.
Emergency service providers have been working overnight attending to high numbers of people injured in the violence at various locations.
“The ambulance service has received a large number of emergencies calls in the National Capital District relating to shooting incidents and persons injured in an explosion,” St. John Ambulance Service said on their Facebook page.
“The ambulance operations centre are prioritising high-priority emergencies only at this point.”
Stretched to limit
The Papua New Guinea Fire Service has had its resources stretched to its limits as it struggled to contain fires in multiple locations.
The Port Moresby General Hospital had to close overnight while a smaller hospital at the Gerehu suburb, evacuated its patients as a nearby shop was set on fire.
Large businesses suffered big losses in just a few hours.
The City Pharmacy Limited (CPL) group, which owns one of the biggest supermarket and pharmacy chains in Port Moresby, had most its shops raided and burned overnight.
Looters also stole electronic appliances from warehouses and shops owned by the Brian Bell group of companies.
Police Commissioner David Manning called on all people in Port Moresby that to clear the streets and go home.
Mobile squad called in
Last night, additional police from the Highlands Mobile Group (HMG) were flown in from from Lae to help restore order.
The government also issued a call out for the military to assist police.
The events began on Wednesday morning local time, after about 200 police and the military personnel gathered at the Ungai Oval to protest over pay deductions from their wages.
They wanted answers from authorities about the “tax” in their most recent pay period, but a government minister who addressed them could not convince them why the deductions had been made.
The tax office said the issue caused by a “glitch” in the accounting system.
What triggered the chaos
In the last fortnight pay cycle, several service members saw a reduction in their pay, ranging from $100 PNG kina to $350 PNG kina (US$26-US$80).
It was not clear whether it was due to a tax, or a glitch in the system.
Many of them were told later, through a statement from the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC), and the prime minister’s office that there was a glitch in the payrolls system.
That triggered a gathering of about 200 policemen and women, military personnel and correctional services personnel in Port Moresby. They demanded an answer from the government, saying a “glitch” wasn’t a satisfactory answer.
They then moved from Unagi Oval to Parliament house, opened the gates of Parliament, and the Police Minister Peter Siamali Jr tried to address them. The security personnel then withdrew their services, and the city descended into chaos overnight.
Initially it was sporadic looting in various suburbs of Port Moresby. In the Gerehu suburb one shop was burned, and a few kilometres down to Waigani there was a shop that was burnt, and over the next three to four hours it became worse and several more shops were looted because there was no police presence there.
Policemen were there, but nothing could be done to the looters, so it has degenerated to a point where there is widespread looting.
The Finance Department and prime minister have tried to explain the so-called “glitch”, saying it was being fixed, but that has not gone down well with the service members.
The Northern Mobile Group, a mobile squad unit from out of Port Moresby which looks after one part of the region, has been flown into Port Moresby, and is expected to restore order.
The military has been called out to assist police.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Finau Fonua, RNZ Pacific journalist, and Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent
Shops have been set on fire or looted in parts of Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby as unrest broke out during a police and military strike.
The protest over unexplained pay deductions to salaries of police, military, and correctional services has triggered sporadic looting in Port Moresby.
About 200 Papua New Guinea police and military personnel abandoned work for a day to protest.
At 10am (local time) yesterday, police and military personnel gathered at Port Moresby’s Unagi Oval in protest over what they say are hefty “tax” deductions in the most recent pay period.
According to service members, the deductions over the last fortnight range between US$26 and US$80 (K100 and K300).
The police union demanded answers from the government at the gathering and by 11am, a large group proceeded to Parliament where they demanded answers from the Prime minister and members of the cabinet.
The deductions come as Papua New Guineans experienced a noticeable rise in the cost of goods and services in the last three months.
Working to resolve issue
The Internal Revenue Commissioner released a statement saying that the government was working as quickly as possible to resolve the issue.
Prime Minister James Marape released a statement calling for calm while stating that the deductions were caused by a glitch in the government payroll system.
An earlier RNZ Pacific report said that Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Wagambie addressed the protesters at Unagi Oval.
“Frustrations boiled over so they got into their vehicles and stormed Parliament . . . they opened the gates and went into Parliament,” reported Scott Waide.
“There was no real resistance to stop them . . . it was a rowdy crowd, the defence minister had attempted to speak to them outside of Parliament before they walked in.”
Police Association president Lowa Tambua demanded an answer about why there had been deductions.
‘Immediate answer’ demand
“We want an immediate answer from the Minister of Police and the Prime Minister,” Tambua said.
“We we’re all caught by surprise . . . come and address my members as to why this has happened.
“Don’t hide between the Parliament House . . . come over here and address our police men and women.”
IRC commissioner-general Sam Koim said “there has been no tax increase” to their salaries.
In a short statement, Koim said: “There was a technical glitch on the Alesco payroll configurations and hence the deductions.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report
Reporting Israel’s war on Gaza has become the greatest credibility challenge for journalists and media of our times. The latest targeted killing of an Al Jazeera photojournalist yesterday while documenting atrocities has prompted a leading analyst to appeal to global journalists to “take a stand” to protect the profession.
The killing of Hamza Dahdoud, the 27-year-old eldest son of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, along with freelancer Mustafa Thuraya, has taken the death toll of Palestinian journalists to 109 (according to Al Jazeera sources while global media freedom watchdogs report slightly lower figures).
Emotional responses and a wave of condemnation has thrown the spotlight on the toll faced by reporters and their families.
Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son on October 25 in an earlier Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in. After mourning for several hours, Dahdouh senior was back on the job documenting the war.
Just under 20 months ago, Al Jazeera’s best known correspondent, Shireen Abu Akleh, was fatally shot by an Israeli sniper while reporting on the Occupied West Bank on 11 May 2022 in what Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned by saying this “systematic Israeli impunity is outrageous.”
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists protested about the killing of Hamza Dahdoud and Thuraya, saying it “must be independently investigated, and those behind their deaths must be held accountable”.
But few journalists would accept that this is anything other a targeted killing, as most of the deaths of Palestinian journalists in the latest Gaza war have been – a war on Palestinian journalism in an attempt to suppress the truth.
‘Nowhere safe in Gaza’
Certainly, Al Jazeera’s Palestinian-Israeli political affairs analyst and Marwan Bishara, who was born in Nazareth, has no doubts.
Speaking on the 24-hour Qatari world news channel, with at least 22,835 people killed in Gaza – 70 percent of them women and children — he said: “Nowhere is safe in Gaza and no journalists are safe . . . That tells us something.
“Killing the messenger”: Marwan Bishara’s interview with Al Jazeera — more tampering over the message? There is nothing “sensitive” in this clip.
“It is understood they are war journalists. But still the fact that more than 100 journalists were killed within three months is breaking yet another record in terms of killing children, and destruction of hospitals and schools, and the killing of United Nations staff.
“And now with 109 journalists killed this definitely requires a certain stand on the part of our colleagues around the world. Not just in a higher up institution.
“I am talking about journalists around the world – those who came to cover the World Cup in Doha for labour rights, or whatever. Those who are shedding tears in the Ukraine, those who are trying to cover Xinjiang in China [persecution of the Uyghur people], those who are claiming there are genocides happening right, left and centre – from China to Ukraine, to elsewhere.
“The same journalists who see in plain sight what is happening in Gaza should – regardless if we disagree on Israel’s motives, or Israel’s objectives in this war – must agree that the protection of journalists and their families is indispensable for our profession. And for their profession,” Bishara said.
“Journalists, and journalism associations and syndicates around the world – especially in those countries with influence on Israel, as in Europe, or the United States; journalists need to take a stand on what is going on in Gaza.
‘Cannot go unanswered’
“This cannot continue and go on unanswered. What about them?
“They’re going to be from various media outlets deploying journalists in war-stricken areas. They will have to call for the defence of journalists and their lives and their protection.
“This cannot go on like this unabated in Gaza,” Bishara added, as Israeli defence officials have warned the fighting could go on for another year.
The South African genocide case filed against Israel in the International Court of Justice seeking an interim injunction for a ceasefire and due for a hearing later this week could pose the best chance for an end to the war.
Bishara has partially blamed Western news networks for failing to report the war on Gaza accurately and fairly, a criticism he has made in the past and his articles about Israel are insightful and damning.
His call for a stand by journalists has in fact been echoed in some quarters where “media bias” has been challenged, opening divisions among media groups about fairness and balance that have become the most bitter since the climate change and covid pandemic debates when media “deniers” and “bothsideism” threatened to undermine science.
In November, more than 1500 journalists from scores of US media organisations signed an open letter calling for integrity in Western media’s coverage of “Israeli atrocities against Palestinians”.
Israel has blocked foreign press entry, heavily restricted telecommunications and bombed press offices. Some 50 media headquarters in Gaza have been hit in the past month.
Israeli forces explicitly warned newsrooms they “cannot guarantee” the safety of their employees from airstrikes. Taken with a decades-long pattern of lethally targeting journalists, Israel’s actions show wide scale suppression of speech.
In the United Kingdom, eight BBC journalists wrote an open letter in late November to Al Jazeera accusing the British broadcaster of bias in its coverage of Gaza.
A 2300-word letter claimed that the BBC had a “double standard” and was failing to tell the Israel-Palestine conflict accurately, “investing greater effort in humanising Israeli victims compared with Palestinians, and omitting key historical context in coverage”.
In Australia, another open letter by scores of journalists and the national media union MEAA called for “integrity, transparency and rigour” in the coverage of the war and joined the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), RSF and others condemning the Israeli attacks on journalists and journalism.
Leading Australian newspaper editors of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and the Nine network hit back by banning staff who had signed the letter. According to the independent Crikey, a senior Nine staff journalist resigned and readers were angrily cancelling their newspaper subscriptions over the ban.
Crikey later exposed many editors and journalists who had made junket trips to Israel and is currently keeping an inventory of these “influenced” media people — at least 77 have been named so far.
In The Daily Blog, editor Martyn Bradbury has also questioned how many New Zealand journalists have also been influenced by Israeli media massaging. Bradbury wrote:
“If Israel has sunk that much time and resource charming Australian journalists and politicians, the question has to be asked, [has] the pro-Israel lobby sent NZ journalists and politicians on these junkets and if they have, who are they?”
He wrote to the NZ Press Gallery, the “journalist union” and media companies requesting a list of names.
Pacific journalists ought to be also added to the list.
I have just returned from a two-month trip in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Australia. After a steady diet of comprehensive and well backgrounded reporting from global news channels such as TRT World News and Al Jazeera (which contrasted sharply in quality, depth and fairness with stereotypical Western coverage such as from BBC and CNN), I was stunned by the blatant bias of much of the Australian news media, particularly News Corp titles such as The Australian and The Advertiser in Adelaide.
Some examples of the bias and my commentaries can be seen here, here, here, here, here and here.
A pithy indictment of much of the Western reporting — including in New Zealand — can be read in the Middle East Eye and other publications.
Exposing much of the Israeli propaganda and fabricated claims since October 7 (and even from time of The Nakba in 1948), award-winning columnist Peter Osborne wrote:
“I am haunted by one other consideration. It is not just that Western commentators, columnists and chat show hosts often don’t know what they are talking about. It’s not even that they pretend they do.
“It’s the comfort of their lives. They sit in warm, pleasant studios where they earn six-figure sums for their opinions. They take no risks and convey no truths.”
A polar opposite from the Gaza carnage and the risks that courageous Palestinian journalists face daily to bear witness. They are an inspiration to the rest of us.
Dr David Robie is editor and publisher of Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ French Pacific correspondent
A former New Caledonia-based High Commissioner, Patrice Faure, has been appointed Chief-of-Staff of French President Emmanuel Macron.
Faure is described as an expert on French overseas territories, particularly New Caledonia.
The 56-year-old prefect was France’s representative (High Commissioner) in New Caledonia between 2021 and 2023, a period marked by the covid pandemic, but also the last two of three referendums held over the French Pacific territory’s possible independence.
He was also tasked to organise the first attempts to bring together pro-France and pro-independence political parties to talk and make suggestions on New Caledonia’s political and institutional future.
Faure was replaced in Nouméa by Louis Le Franc in early 2023.
French daily Le Monde suggests that Faure’s appointment would enable French President Macron to have a close adviser on New Caledonia’s developments in the coming months.
While French Home Affairs and Overseas minister Gérald Darmanin has travelled half a dozen times to New Caledonia throughout 2023, France’s efforts to foster bipartisan and simultaneous talks have not yet come to fruition.
UC refuses to join talks
One political party wjich is a member of the pro-independence umbrella (FLNKS) — the Union Calédonienne (UC) — is still refusing to join those talks.
French PM Elisabeth Borne gave New Caledonia’s political parties until 1 July 2024 to come up with collective suggestions on the sensitive subject.
Borne also announced over Christmas that her government would table a Constitutional amendment to “unfreeze” New Caledonia’s electoral roll and enable French citizen residing there for over 10 years to vote in local elections.
While Darmanin is scheduled to come back to New Caledonia early in the year, Finance Minister Bruno Lemaire will also visit again to supervise a far-reaching reform plan to solve New Caledonia’s “critical” situation in the nickel mining industry.
In February 2024, Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti will also travel there to provide more details about the construction of a new French-funded prison at an estimated cost of €498 million (NZ$873 million).
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.
The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.
Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.
Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.
Thuraya also died.
Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.
Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.
Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.
He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.
Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.
Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.
“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.
“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”
An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.
Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.
It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Human rights in North Korea are currently in the spotlight. In addition to a recent conference on North Korean human rights held in Honolulu, there’s also a new documentary, Beyond Utopia, about North Korean defectors that is receiving Oscar buzz. We can expect to hear more about North Korea human rights in 2024, the 10-year anniversary of the United Nations Report of the Commission of Inquiry on…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Pentagon just failed its 6th financial audit in a row, and they can’t account for BILLIONS of dollars that they’ve spent. This comes as President Biden is prepared to ask for nearly $900 billion for the agency next year. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so […]
The post The Pentagon Fails ANOTHER Financial Audit appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.
This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire Network.
BACKGROUNDER: By Stefan Armbruster
On 1 December each year, in cities across Australia and New Zealand, a small group of West Papuan immigrants and refugees and their supporters raise a flag called the Morning Star in an act that symbolises their struggle for self-determination.
Doing the same thing in their homeland is illegal.
This year is the 62nd anniversary of the flag being raised alongside the Dutch standard in 1961 as The Netherlands prepared their colony for independence.
Formerly the colony of Dutch New Guinea, Indonesia controversially took control of West Papua in 1963 and has now divided the Melanesian region into seven provinces.
In the intervening years, brutal civil conflict is thought to have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives through combat and deprivation, and Indonesia has been criticised internationally for human rights abuses.
The Morning Star will fly in Ronny Kareni’s adopted hometown of Canberra and will also be raised across the Pacific region and around the world.
“It brings tears of joy to me because many Papuan lives, those who have gone before me, have shed blood or spent time in prison, or died just because of raising the Morning Star flag,” Kareni, the Australian representative of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) in Australia told SBS World News.
‘Our right to self-determination’
“Commemorating the anniversary for me demonstrates hope and also the continued spirit in fighting for our right to self-determination and West Papua to be free from Indonesia’s brutal occupation.”
Indonesia’s diplomats regularly issue statements criticising the act, including when the flag was raised at Sydney’s Leichhardt Town Hall, as “a symbol of separatism” that could be “misinterpreted to represent support from the Australian government”.
“It’s a symbol of an aspiring independent state which would secede from the unitary Indonesian republic, so the flag itself isn’t particularly welcome within official Indonesian political discourse,” says Professor Vedi Hadiz, an Indonesian citizen and director of the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne.
“The raising of the flag is an expression of the grievances they hold against Indonesia for the way that economic and political governance and development has taken place over the last six decades.
“But it’s really part of the job of Indonesian officials to make a counterpoint that West Papua is a legitimate part of the unitary republic.”
The history of the Morning Star
After World War II, a wave of decolonisation swept the globe.
The Netherlands reluctantly relinquished the Dutch East Indies in 1949, which became Indonesia, but held onto Dutch New Guinea, much to the chagrin of President Sukarno, who led the independence struggle.
In 1957, Sukarno began seizing the remaining Dutch assets and expelled 40,000 Dutch citizens, many of whom were evacuated to Australia, in large part over The Netherlands’ reluctance to hand over Dutch New Guinea.
The Dutch created the New Guinea Council of predominantly elected Papuan representatives in 1961 and it declared a 10-year roadmap to independence, adopted the Morning Star flag, the national anthem – “Hai Tanahku Papua” or “Oh My Land Papua” – and a coat-of-arms for a future state to be known as “West Papua”.
The West Papua flag was inspired by the red, white and blue of the Dutch but the design can hold different meanings for the traditional landowners.
“The five-pointed star has the cultural connection to the creation story, the seven blue lines represent the seven customary land groupings,” says Kareni.
The red is now often cited as a tribute to the blood spilt fighting for independence.
Attending the 1961 inauguration were Britain, France, New Zealand and Australia — represented by the president of the Senate Sir Alister McMullin in full ceremonial attire — but the United States, after initially accepting an invitation, withdrew.
Cold War in full swing
The Cold War was in full swing and the Western powers were battling the Russians for influence over non-aligned Indonesia.
The Morning Star flag was raised for the first time alongside the Dutch one at a military parade in the capital Hollandia, now called Jayapura, on 1 December.
On 19 December, Sukarno began ordering military incursions into what he called “West Irian”, which saw thousands of soldiers parachute or land by sea ahead of battles they overwhelmingly lost.
Then 20-year-old Dutch soldier Vincent Scheenhouwer, who now lives on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, was one of the thousands deployed to reinforce the nascent Papua Volunteer Corps, largely armed with WW2 surplus, arriving in June 1962.
“The groups who were on patrol found weapons, so modern it was unbelievable, and plenty of ammunition,” he said of Russian arms supplied to Indonesian troops.
He did not see combat himself but did have contact with the local people, who variously flew the red and white Indonesian or the Dutch flag, depending on who controlled the ground.
“I think whoever was supplying the people food, they belonged to them,” he said.
He did not see the Morning Star flag.
“At that time, nothing, totally nothing. Only when I came out to Australia (in 1970) did I find out more about it,” he said.
Waning international support
With long supply lines on the other side of the world and waning international support, the Dutch sensed their time was up and signed the territory over to UN control in October 1962 under the “New York Agreement”, which abolished the symbols of a future West Papuan state, including the flag.
The UN handed control to Indonesia in May 1963 on condition it prepared the territory for a referendum on self-determination.
“I’m sort of happy it didn’t come to a serious conflict (at the time), on the other hand you must feel for the people, because later on we did hear they have been very badly mistreated,” says Scheenhouwer.
“I think Holland was trying to do the right thing but it’s gone completely now, destroyed by Indonesia.”
The so-called Act Of Free Choice referendum in 1969 saw the Indonesian military round up 1025 Papuan leaders who then voted unanimously to become part of Indonesia.
The outcome was accepted by the UN General Assembly, which failed to declare if the referendum complied with the “self-determination” requirements of the New York Agreement, and Dutch New Guinea was incorporated into Indonesia.
“Rightly or wrongly, in the Indonesian imagination, unlike East Timor for example, Papua was always regarded as part of the unitary Indonesian republic because the definition of the latter was based on the borders of colonial Dutch East Indies, whereas East Timor was never part of that, it was a Portuguese colony,” says Professor Hadiz.
“The average Indonesian’s reaction to the flag goes against everything they learned from kindergarten all the way to university.
Knee-jerk reaction
“So their reaction is knee-jerk. They are just not aware of the conditions there and relate to West Papua on the basis of government propaganda, and also the mainstream media which upholds the idea of the Indonesian unitary republic.”
In 1971, the Free Papua Movement (OPM) declared the “republic of West Papua” with the Morning Star as its flag, which has gone on to become a potent binding symbol for the movement.
The basis for Indonesian control of West Papua is rejected by what are today fractured and competing military and political factions of the independence movement, but they do agree on some things.
“The New York Agreement was a treaty signed between the Dutch and Indonesia and didn’t involve the people of West Papua, which led to the so-called referendum in 1969, which was a whitewash,” says Kareni.
“For the people, it was a betrayal and West Papua remains unfinished business of the United Nations.”
Raising the flag also raises the West Papua issue on an international level, especially when it is violently repressed in the two Indonesian provinces where there are reportedly tens of thousands of troops deployed.
“It certainly doesn’t depict Indonesia in very favourable terms,” Professor Vedi says.
“The problem for the West Papua [independence] movement is that there’s not a lot of international support, whereas East Timor at least had a significant measure.
‘Concerns about geopolitical stability’
“Concerns about geopolitical stability and issues such as the Indonesian state, as we know it now, being dismembered to a degree — I think there would be a lot of nervousness in the international community.”
Australia provides significant military training and foreign aid to Indonesia and has recently agreed to further strengthen defence ties.
Australia signed the Lombok Treaty with Indonesia in 2006 recognising its territorial sovereignty.
“It’s important that we are doing it here to call on the Australian government to be vocal on the human rights situation, despite the bilateral relationship with Indonesia,” says Kareni.
“Secondly, Australia is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum and the leaders have agreed to call for a visit of the UN Human Rights Commissioner to carry out an impartial investigation.”
Events are also planned across West Papua.
“It’s a milestone, 60 years, and we’re still waiting to freely sing the national anthem and freely fly the Morning Star flag so it’s very significant for us,” he says.
“We still continue to fight, to claim our rights and sovereignty of the land and people.”
Stefan Armbruster is Queensland and Pacific correspondent for SBS News. First published by SBS in 2021 and republished by Asia Pacific Report with minor edits and permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Billionaires from Google, Hyatt Hotels, and venture capital firms have all been hit with subpoenas as part of a lawsuit looking at how JP Morgan helped Jeffrey Epstein for years and years. Also, the Pentagon has restarted their propaganda department – and that isn’t hyperbole. Last year, the federal government ramped up their production of […]
The post Investigation Targets Epstein Enabling Billionaires & Pentagon Ramps Up Pro US Propaganda appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.
This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire Network.
Protesters were out in force at 17 centres around Aotearoa New Zealand — from Rawene in the north to Invercargill in the south — this weekend calling for a “ceasefire now!” in the War on Gaza.
“This is the largest number of centres ever taking action as New Zealanders express their abhorrence at Israel’s genocidal rampage against Palestinians in Gaza,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chair John Minto.
“People are stepping up where our political leaders are showing anti-Palestinian racism.”
A four-day “pause” came into force on Friday with the first two exchange batches of Hamas hostages and Palesinian prisoners held by Israel taking place over two days.
“But this pause is just a tea break in the ongoing genocide against Palestinians,” said Minto. “We are demanding our political leaders call for Ceasefire Now!”
Images from today’s Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland rally in Aotea Square by David Robie.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
REVIEW: By David Robie
Just months before the outbreak of the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza after the deadly assault on southern Israel by Hamas resistance fighters, Australian investigative journalist and researcher Anthony Loewenstein published an extraordinarily timely book, The Palestine Laboratory.
In it he warned that a worst-case scenario — “long feared but never realised, is ethnic cleansing against occupied Palestinians or population transfer, forcible expulsion under the guise of national security”.
Or the claimed fig leaf of “self defence”, the obscene justification offered by beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his two-month war of vengeance, death and destruction unleashed upon the people of Palestine, both in the Gaza Strip and the Occupied West Bank that has killed at least 14,850 Gazans — the majority of them women and children — and more than 218 West Bank Palestinians.
As Loewenstein had warned in his 265-page exposé on the Israeli armaments and surveillance industry and how the Zionist nation “exports the technology of occupation around the world”, a catastrophic war could trigger an overwhelming argument within Israel that Palestinians were “undermining the state’s integrity”.
That catastrophe has indeed arrived. But in the process as part of growing worldwide protests in support of an immediate ceasefire and calls for a “free Palestine” long-term solution, Israel has exposed itself as a cruel, ruthless and morally corrupt state prepared to slaughter women and children, attack hospital and medical workers, kill journalists and shun international norms of military conflict to achieve its goal of destroying Hamas, the elected government of Gaza.
Interviewed by Al Jazeera today after a four-day temporary truce between Israel and Hamas took effect, author Loewenstein described the conflict as “apocalyptic” and the most devastating in almost 80 years since the Second World War.
He also blamed the death and destruction on Western countries that had allowed the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) to “get away with things that no other country could because of total global impunity”.
‘Genocide Joe’
The United States, led by a feeble and increasingly lame duck President Joe Biden – “genocide Joe”, as some US protesters have branded him — and several Western countries have lost credibility over any debate about global human rights.
As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says, the US and the West have enabled the ethnic cleansing and displayed a double standard by condemning Hamas for its atrocities on October 7 while giving Israel a blank cheque for its crimes against humanity and war crimes in both Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.
In fact, as Erdoğan has increasingly condemned the Zionists, he has branded Israel as a “terror state” and says that Israeli leaders should be tried for war crimes at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
It has also been disturbing that President Biden has publicly repeated Israeli lies in the conflict and Western media has often disseminated these falsehoods.
Media analysts say there is systemic “bias in favour of Israel” which is “irreparably damaging” the credibility of some news agencies and outlets considered “mainstream” in the eyes of Arabs and others.
Loewenstein warned in his book before the conflict began that “an Israeli operation might be undertaken to ensure a mass exodus, with the prospect of Palestinians returning to their homes a remote possibility” (p. 211).
Many critics fear the bottom line for Israel’s war on Palestine, is not just the elimination of Hamas — which was elected the government of Gaza in 2006 — but the destruction of the enclave’s infrastructure, hence the savage assault on 25 of the Strip’s 32 hospitals (including the Indonesian Hospital) and bombing of 49 percent of the housing for 2.3 million people.
Loewenstein reports:
“In a 2016 poll conducted by [the] Pew Research Centre, nearly half of Israeli Jews supported the transfer or expulsion of Arabs. And some 60 percent of Israeli Jews backed complete separation from Arabs, according to a study in 2022 by the Israeli Democracy Institute. The majority of Israeli Jews polled online in 2022 supported the expulsion of people accused of disloyalty to the state, a policy advocated by popular far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir (p. 211).
Dangerous escalation
Loewenstein saw the reelection in November 2022 of Netanyahu as Prime Minister and as head of the most right-wing coalition in the Israel’s history as ushering in a dangerous escalation of existential threats facing Palestinians.
The author cites liberal Israeli columnist and journalist Gideon Levy in Haaretz reminding his readers of “an uncomfortable truth” after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Levy wrote that the long-held Israeli belief that military power “was all that matters to stay alive , was a lie” (p. 206). Levy wrote”
“The lesson Israel should be learning from Ukraine is the opposite. Military power is not enough, it is impossible to survive alone, we need true international support, which can’t be bought just be developing drones and drop bombs.”
Levy argued that the “age of the Jewish state paralysing the world when it cries “anti-semitism” was coming to a close.
The daily television scenes — especially on Al Jazeera and TRT World News, arguably offering the most balanced, comprehensive and nuanced coverage of the massacres — have borne witness to the rogue status of Israel.
Turkey’s President Erdoğan has been one of the strongest critics of Netanyahu’s war machine, warning that Israel’s leaders will be made accountable for their war crimes.
His condemnation has been paralleled by multiple petitions and actions seeking International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutions against Israeli leaders, including an arrest warrant for Netanyahu himself.
Toxic laboratory
According to Loewenstein, Israel’s “Palestine laboratory” and its toxic ideology thrives on global disruption and violence. As he says:
“The worsening climate crisis will benefit Israel’s defence sector in a future where nation-states do not respond with active measures to reduce the impacts of surging temperatures but instead ghetto-ise themselves, Israeli-style. What this means in practice is higher walls and tighter borders, greater surveillance of refugees, facial recognition, drones, smart fences, and biometric databases (p. 207).”
By 2025, Loewenstein points out, the border surveillance industrial complex is estimated to become worth US$68 billion, and Israeli companies such as Elbeit Systems are “guaranteed to be among the main beneficiaries.”
Three years ago Israel spent $US22 billion on its military and was is 12th biggest military supplier in the world with sales of more than $US345 million.
The potency of Palestine as a laboratory for methods of controlling “unwanted people” and a separation of populations is the primary focus of Loewenstein’s book. The many case studies of Israeli apartheid with corporations showcasing and profiting from the suppression and persecution of Palestinians are featured.
The book is divided into seven chapters, with a conclusion, headed “Selling weapons to anybody who wants them,” “September 11 was good for business,” “Preventing an outbreak of peace,” “Selling Israeli occupation to the world,” “The enduring appeal of Israeli domination,” “Israel mass surveillance in the brain of your phone,” and “Social media companies don’t like Palestinians.”
How Israel has such influence over Silicon Valley — along with many Western governments — is “both obvious and ominous for the future of marginalised groups, because it is not just the Jewish state that has discovered the Achilles heel of big tech”.
‘Real harm’ against minorities
Examples cited by Loewenstein include India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi successfully demanding that Facebook remove posts critical of his government’s handling of the covid pandemic of 2020, and evidence of Facebook posts causing “real harm against minorities” in Myanmar and Russia as well as India and Palestine.
The company’s global policy team argued that they risked having the platform shutdown completely if they did not comply with government requests. Profits before human rights.
Loewenstein refers to social media calls for genocide against the Muslim minority having “moved from the fringes to the mainstream”. Condemning this, Loewenstein remarks: “Leaving these comments up, which routinely happens, is deeply irresponsible” (p. 197).
He argues that his book is a warning that “despotism has never been so easily shareable with compact technology”. He explains:
“The ethnonationalist ideas behind it are appealing to millions of people because democratic leaders have failed to deliver. A Pew Research Centre survey across 34 countries in 2020 found only 44 percent of those polled were content with democracy, while 52 percent were not. Ethnonationalist ideology grows when accountable democracy withers, Israel is the ultimate model and goal” (p. 16).
The September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington “turbocharged Israel’s defence sector and internationalised the war on terror that the Jewish state had been fighting for decades” (p. 49).
War against journalists
Along with health workers (200 killed and the total climbing), journalists have suffering a heavy price for reporting Israel’s relentless bombardment with at least 48 dead (including media workers in Lebanon, the death toll has topped 60).
The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters without Borders has accused Israel of seeking to “eradicate journalism in Gaza” by refusing to heed calls to protect media workers.
“The situation is dire for Palestinian journalists trapped in the enclave, where ten have been killed in the past three days, bringing the total media death toll in Gaza since the start of the war to 48. The past weekend was the deadliest for the media since the war between Israel and Hamas began.”
RSF also said Gaza from north to south had “become a cemetery for journalists”.
Of the 10 journalists killed between November 18-20, at least three were killed in the course of their work or because of it. They were: Hassouna Sleem, director of the Palestinian online news agency Quds News, and freelance photo-journalist Sary Mansour who were killed during an Israeli assault on the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November 18.
According to RSF, they had received an online death threat in connection with their work 24 hours prior to them being killed.
Journalist Bilal Jadallah was killed by an Israeli strike that hit his car directly as he was trying to evacuate from Gaza City via the district of Zeitoun on the morning of November 19.
He was a prominent figure within the Palestinian media community and held several positions including chair of the board of Press House-Palestine, an organisation supporting independent media and journalists in Gaza.
Killed with family members
Most of the journalists were killed with family members when Israeli strikes hit their homes, reports RSF.
It is offensive that British and US news media should refer to Hamas “terrorists” in their news bulletins, regardless of the fact that the US and UK governments have declared them as such.
As a former journalist with British and French news agencies for several years, I wonder what has happened to the maxim that had applied since the post-Second World War anticolonialism struggles — one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. Thus “neutral” descriptions were generally used.
As President Erdoğan, has already pointed out, Hamas are nationalists fighting against 75 years of Zionist Israeli colonialism and apartheid. Palestine is the occupied territory; Israel is the illegal occupier.
Loewenstein argues in his book that Israel has sold so much defence equipment and surveillance technologies, such as the phone-hacking tool Pegasus, that it had hoped to “insulate itself” from any political backlash to its endless occupation.
However, the tide has turned with several countries such as South Africa and Turkey closing Israeli embassies and recalling their diplomats and as demonstrated by the UN General Assembly’s overwhelming vote last month for an immediate humanitarian truce.
There is a shift in global opinion in response to the massive price that the Palestinian people have been paying for Israeli apartheid and repression for 75 years. While Iran has long been portrayed by the West as a threat to regional peace, the relentless and ruthless bombardment of the Gaza Strip for seven weeks has demonstrated to the world that Israel is actually the threat.
However, Israel is on the wrong side of history. Whatever it does, the Palestinians will remain defiant and resilient.
Palestine will become a free, sovereign state. It is essential that international community pressure ensures that this happens for a just and lasting peace.
• The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world, by Antony Loewenstein. Scribe Publications, 2023. Reviewer Dr David Robie is editor and publisher of Asia Pacific Report.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
ANALYSIS: By Mouin Rabbani
In the early hours of November 22, Qatar formally announced that an agreement had been reached for an Israeli-Palestinian exchange of captives — and it came into force today.
The available details suggest it largely reflects the proposal offered by Hamas several weeks ago that was initially rejected by Israel.
Тhe announcement was made just a week after Israeli tanks and soldiers stormed into the al-Shifa Hospital compound in Gaza City, causing international outrage.
Israel had claimed that there was a Hamas command centre there and repeatedly vowed to destroy it. As it happened, the only facility to be found within the compound was a hospital.
The United States fully supported Israel’s violation of al-Shifa’s sanctity and even claimed it had independent intelligence about a Palestinian Pentagon beneath it but produced no evidence in support of this assertion.
At the time, this led to speculation that these events may have been the product of an informal US-Israeli agreement: The Biden administration would support Israel’s seizure of al-Shifa and would cover for this war crime politically and diplomatically with lies of its own, thus allowing an Israeli military with few achievements since October 7 to have its “Iwo Jima moment” atop “Mount Shifa”.
But once it would become clear that there was nothing of military significance within the premises, the US would proceed to finalise a deal with Hamas and Israel would have to agree to its implementation.
Deal largely the Hamas offer
It does indeed appear to be the case that in exchange for US support for Israel’s systematic destruction of the health sector in the Gaza Strip, a deal with Hamas has been reached.
The agreement is significant in several respects. Perhaps most importantly, the US and Israel, which repeatedly vowed to eradicate Hamas, are now negotiating with the Palestinian movement and reaching agreements with it.
Qatari-Egyptian mediation, while indispensable, is ultimately a formality. The US and Israel are not negotiating with Egypt and Qatar but with Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and architect of the October 7 attacks.
The tenor of Israeli press reports in recent days has been that Hamas is desperate for a respite, however brief and at almost any price, from the ferocious Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip.
Yet the available reports about the deal suggest otherwise:
Why are so many Palestinians imprisoned?
This is quite close to the deal initially offered by Hamas several weeks ago, and it appears the bulk of its demands have been conceded by Israel and the US.
If the adage that negotiations reflect reality on the ground rather than overturning it applies, Hamas — in contrast to the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip, which has been Israel’s main target — seems far from desperate.
Instead, it appears sufficiently confident to stick to its priorities until these are accepted by the US and Israel.
US, Israel forced to concede
“Pursuant to the agreement, Hamas has also forced the US and Israel to consent to the supply of large amounts of essential humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip.
In other words, Hamas has in one fell swoop achieved exponentially more on the humanitarian front than the much-vaunted US diplomacy to secure humanitarian relief for Gaza’s Palestinian civilians during the past month.
This confirms that the entire US effort was in essence a circus — a diversionary charade to enable Israel to continue with its mass killings and transform the Gaza Strip into a wasteland and a killing field.
It bears repeating that Hamas has forced the US and Israel to allow significant quantities of food, water, medicine and fuel to reach the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.
Yet Hamas is the anointed terrorist organisation in this equation while Israel is the light unto nations with the world’s most “moral army” and the US is the world’s greatest democracy dedicated to spreading freedom and human rights to the rest of the planet.
What happens next is difficult to assess. According to reports, only Israeli and dual nationals are to be released, presumably to help the Israeli leadership swallow this very bitter pill and to allay Israeli concerns that the release of foreign nationals would be privileged in negotiations with Hamas.
Yet by insisting on this formula, Israel has ensured that further negotiations to release foreign citizens would continue, potentially leading to an extension of the truce.
War in Israeli PM’s interests
At the same time, it is difficult to believe that the Israeli leadership can accept a temporary truce that metamorphoses into an indefinite one. It is clearly in the Israeli premier’s personal and political interest to keep this conflict going while the security establishment is also desperate to wipe away the stain of October 7.
Other members of Israel’s governing coalition partners see this war as a golden opportunity to unleash the apocalypse and want it to escalate further rather than wind down.
Although the Gaza Strip has been substantially destroyed, Hamas has yet to be significantly degraded, and the Israeli army has yet to kill more Hamas commanders than United Nations staff.
If Israel is confident it can once again flout US policy without consequences, it will. This could take the form of sabotaging the truce or resuming hostilities to ensure it is not extended. Farther afield, the Israeli-Lebanese front also seems to be rapidly heating up.
So further escalation is likely, but it is also possible that the implementation of this deal could cause Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to collapse under a combination of public pressure and internal conflicts among leaders who mutually detest and distrust each other.
The US leadership is also a question mark. With respect to the impact of this crisis on US interests in the region and beyond and particularly the question of regional escalation, US President Joe Biden appears not to care, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appears not to know while CIA Director William Burns and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin look mortified.
Which faction gains the upper hand remains an open question.
The one conclusion that can already be drawn is that the various “day after” scenarios produced by the Washington echo chamber can be safely discarded because they uniformly require the eradication of Hamas and not negotiated agreements with it.
Mouin Rabbani is a co-editor of Jadaliyya and non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Doha, Qatar.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
The Department of Defense relies on hundreds, if not thousands, of weapons and products such as uniforms, batteries, and microelectronics that contain PFAS, a family of chemicals linked to serious health conditions. Now, as regulators propose restrictions on their use or manufacturing, Pentagon officials have told Congress that eliminating the chemicals would undermine military readiness. PFAS…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Department of Defense relies on hundreds, if not thousands, of weapons and products such as uniforms, batteries, and microelectronics that contain PFAS, a family of chemicals linked to serious health conditions. Now, as regulators propose restrictions on their use or manufacturing, Pentagon officials have told Congress that eliminating the chemicals would undermine military readiness. PFAS…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.
This month, in collaboration with The New Yorker, the ProPublica Films team published an animated documentary called “The Night Doctrine.” The film follows the investigative journey of reporter Lynzy Billing as she pieces together what happened to her own family members when they were murdered in Afghanistan 30 years ago. During her reporting, Billing began to learn of a series of other killings of Afghan civilians committed by the Zero Units, elite Afghan special forces groups backed by the U.S. That investigation, called “The Night Raids,” was published late last year.
The accompanying film weaves together Billing’s personal story, the recent history of Afghanistan and the hauntingly recurrent nightly raids carried out by the Zero Units. I spoke with ProPublica visual journalist Mauricio Rodríguez Pons about the production of “The Night Doctrine,” which has so far been selected for screening by more than a dozen film festivals, including the Tribeca Film Festival, HollyShorts, the New Hampshire Film Festival and BIAF, among others. It is an incredible feat of animated journalism, and I encourage you to watch the 16-minute piece on our site or on YouTube. Now, on to the discussion, which has been edited for clarity and length.
Watch “The Night Doctrine” How did the idea to create an animated short documentary based off of this investigation come to be?In the beginning, our plan was to create a three-minute video explainer. But when we started to work at the beginning with video that Lynzy [Billing] and another photographer, Kern Hendricks, took in Afghanistan, we saw the potential to create the story around it. Then we decided, OK, let’s do a nine-minute animated video about a single raid through the perspectives of a family and a soldier. And as we kept working with Lynzy, and with Tracy [Weber, ProPublica managing editor], and with Almudena Toral, ProPublica’s executive producer and co-director of the film, we discovered that Lynzy’s story was really, really hard — and really connected with the families, the Zero Units and the story of Afghanistan itself. So we started asking questions: What if we created a film that connects the three stories into one while trying to explain what happened in Afghanistan?
Part of the style of the film is the idea that everything is connected. It’s like an infinite journey. We wanted to create a journey that never ends — mimicking Afghanistan’s cycle of violence, loss and no accountability.
The transitions really are some of the biggest elements in the film. It’s not necessarily cuts between scenes; it’s fluid, you sort of slide into one scene and then another.A phrase that we wrote on a storyboard is “infinite nightmare,” and we asked ourselves how we can represent that. I came up with this idea of creating an infinite sequence that connects with each sequence, and the whole film is like a connection. It’s like you’re always navigating the stories and the journey. I mean, Lynzy’s journey and Afghanistan’s journey is at the end of the day the same, right?
How would you describe the film’s style and what informed your decision to animate in the way you did?Of course, the night is kind of the main thing here. In the night, the darkness is important. We wanted to again create that infinite nightmare — and the mood, the colors, everything is connected with the night, the shadows, the blue color is also kind of like a nightmare. Everything was driven by that idea.
From the technical perspective, it’s hard to create differences in black.That’s why we wanted some light elements present like the candle at the beginning that the little kid has next to his bed, and the lanterns, and the lights of a car.
I know you mentioned that Lynzy is a photographer as well, and the film incorporates real video footage and photographs. How did you make that decision to include the source of real elements? And how did you want those elements to relate to the animation?The security of our sources was important for us. And the access was impossible — especially after the Taliban took over Afghanistan again. We also really wanted to add some elements to communicate that this is a true story. And that’s why we decided to add real footage elements.
For example, the image that everybody saw when the United States left Afghanistan was that plane … so we wanted to use that to remind people: Remember this image? These are the stories that were around that image you saw. And at the end we show the main characters of the piece in their actual, modern environment. It’s to give some kind of truth; that this is a true story. It’s not just a fiction animated piece. We didn’t invent this.
What are your thoughts on how visuals and animation can fill in gaps of what isn’t officially recorded? And how did you think about that as you made the film?I think the animation gives you the power not just to fill the gaps, but to fill the gaps creatively. That creativity, that freedom that the animation gives you, allows you to present not just the facts but also the sentiments that people felt. It’s something that not only animation can do, but it’s also kind of like its main role. Especially here in ProPublica, a place where we really care about facts, and with what happened and what didn’t happen, animation is a powerful tool to represent not just what happened with the families but to represent how the families felt and how Lynzy felt.
Were there any inspirations that you drew on while you were working on the piece?The main inspiration for me came from a soundtrack that Milad Yousufi, the musician we worked with, shared with me. It was like a soundtrack of Afghan old movies and the instruments include the main instruments, the rabab and piano, we used in the film. It was really, really dark. And I played that all day for days. I don’t remember how many months; maybe eight months. I would work with that music on and kind of allowed myself to feel that darkness and the suffering of the story, of the Afghan people. I mean, how many families suffered there? For me, that’s the main thing. It’s the main inspiration.
What do you hope viewers will take away from the film?I hope viewers take away the story, and I hope they think about what the United States is doing in places like Afghanistan, and about accountability. Like Lynzy said in the film, it happened in Afghanistan, it happened in Vietnam, it happened in Iraq. That’s why I said at the beginning that this is a never-ending story. You just can’t imagine all the sad stories that are destroying families right now. I guess I just want people to consider the families that are affected. That’s the intention of the film. That’s what we wanted to represent. And I hope we can put another voice out there to try to make change.
This post was originally published on Articles and Investigations – ProPublica.
Some of the biggest pharmacies in America are facing lawsuits over the placement of non-FDA approved homeopathic medicines. Then, the CIA has launched a new podcast to help spread propaganda about the agency. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio: Some of […]
The post Lawsuits Claim Pharmacies Are Selling Non-FDA Approved “Meds” & CIA’s New History Whitewash Strategy appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.
This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire Network.
Hamas has used weapons sourced from North Korea and Iran to target Israel, the Israeli military said, supporting Radio Free Asia’s earlier report on the alleged arms connection between the North and Hamas.
Hamas used Iranian-made mortar rounds and North Korean rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) in its attack against Israel on Oct. 7, the Israeli military stated during an official media tour Thursday, as reported by AFP.
“I think about five to 10 percent of the weapons here [were] made in Iran,” an Israeli military official, who asked for the condition of anonymity, was cited as saying. “And 10% [are] North Korean. The rest of it was made inside the Gaza Strip.”
“I think the most surprising thing was the amount of weapons that they brought inside Israel,” the official added.
Earlier this month, RFA reported on the potential use of North Korean weapons by Hamas militants. RFA’s thorough analysis was based on a video that displayed a man holding what seemed to be North Korean-made rocket launchers.
Following the report, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed the findings, with its intelligence indicating a military connection between North Korea and Hamas.
The latest confirmation from Israel followed as Pyongyang has been issuing statements, blaming the United States in the Middle East conflict. The conflict was a “tragedy created entirely by the United States,” North Korea’s official Korea Central News Agency said on Monday, claiming that Washington “has turned a blind eye to Israel, its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, continuous armed assaults, civilian casualties, and the expansion of Jewish settlements.”
The move is widely seen as the North’s attempt to bolster its anti-American coalition, which could potentially strengthen its leverage against the U.S. and its allies. Over the past few weeks, North Korea’s foreign policy has shown signs of a larger strategy at play. From supporting Hamas to bolstering ties with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, Pyongyang appears keen on crafting a united front against Washington.
The strategy appears to bear results by aligning those opposed to U.S. policy. Last week, a portrait of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was displayed at an anti-U.S. protest in the West Bank, underscoring the deep sentiments of the Palestinian people against the U.S.
The Oct. 7 attack, in which North Korean and Iranian weapons are used, killed over 1,400 individuals in Israel, primarily civilians, according to an official figure. In response, Israel has launched airstrikes that have led to approximately 7,000 deaths from the Palestine side, with the majority also being civilians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Casualties are anticipated to increase on both sides as Israel’s military announced on Thursday that it had conducted a ground operation in the Gaza Strip. The Israel Defense Forces reported that its tanks and infantry units “struck numerous terrorist cells, infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch posts” before withdrawing to Israeli territory.
Edited by Elaine Chan and Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lee Jeong-Ho for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This blog post was first published by The Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Association (AWGSA), the leading organization representing researchers, academics, and students in the fields of Women’s Studies and Gender Studies in Australia. Read the original here.
Feminist research is increasingly intersectional, yet the way in which intersecting aspects of identity – like gender, race, and sexuality – are experienced in secret institutions is less understood. It’s also multiply problematic, with challenges layered and obscured by the lack of transparency.
Over the last three years, my colleague Professor Susan Harris Rimmer and I have spent time researching the impact and experiences of diverse groups in the intelligence sector. Spanning a broad spectrum of institutions, the intelligence community (IC) is at the forefront of everything from tactical and strategic intelligence to criminal intelligence, domestic and international intelligence, civilian and military intelligence, and strategic assessments on political, economic and social threats to security. Think: spies and analysts, counterterrorism, espionage, and foreign interference.
Secret institutions like in the IC both replicate challenges in other forms of government and the private sector while (re)producing unique constraining environments minoritized groups.
Yet, the intelligence sector is not the only one experiencing these same trends. Broader national security institutions or general government agencies can often be highly secretive and obscured by layers of classification, as can religious institutions, secret societies, and cults.
There are a few compounding factors when it comes to understanding women and minoritized groups’ representation and experiences, not to mention impact, in secret institutions. From our study of the IC, mechanisms such as security classifications can create an environment of obscurity and non-transparency, where even non-classified information may be withheld from the public gaze. This contributes to a classification halo-effect which limits what is and can be known about people’s experiences in intelligence – from recruitment to retention, leadership and representation, harassment, power, resourcing and more.
It can also take decades for data to declassify and even then, some parts can remain classified. Moreover, the gendered rules and experiences of intelligence were seldom written down – so declassification may not reveal much if data and experiences were not documented. Challenges in sourcing accurate and timely data therefore skews our understanding of how diverse people experience secret institutions, favouring historical analyses, one-off biographies, and the odd popular work of fiction that does little to help institutions know what is and is not working.
How this lack of transparency ultimately impacts organisations and individuals is threefold: it can amplify inequalities; obscure progress and regression; and impede accountability.
It can also ultimately impact on organisational operability, and in the case of the IC and national security institutions at least, result in critical vulnerabilities stemming from an inability to understand and create diverse, inclusive, and strong teams. These impacts include everything from narrow threat detection and threat analysis gaps to excessive groupthink, not to mention high ‘churn’ rates and loss of retention which ultimately costs organisations and fails to support individuals.
Australia’s new Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Closing the Gender Pay Gap) Bill provides one way to think about the impact transparency can have on reducing inequalities. Honing in on the issue of the gender pay gap, the Amendment is designed to allow the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to publish the gender pay gaps of organisations over 100 staff in size.
Transparency is seen to encourage better accountability to employers and stakeholders, as well as potentially promoting competition between employers to improve their workplace conditions relative to their peers. It also helps individuals know what they are signing up for when they join an organisation or industry.
Another way to think about (a lack of) transparency is its impact on research: what is – and can be – known about diversity in these sectors. Methodologies for researching the IC for instance are not well-established, mostly relying on decades-old datasets, biographical accounts (where available), and ‘insiders’ who can give insights to the true state of affairs. Insider accounts can be particularly beneficial for research.
Yet, they remain challenging to achieve in practice due to ethical approval processes (which may be additionally demanding, particularly in researching national security institutions), high levels of secrecy, a lack of transparency, the prevalence of backlash, and a lack of whistleblower protections. Depending on the secret institution in question, there may be additional barriers that impede understanding, and therefore action around problematic trends. This can be an aim of some secret institutions in itself – to cover up, obfuscate, and ultimately remain unchanged.
Ultimately, government in particular requires a social license to operate. In Australia, this relies on accountability and transparency to establish and maintain trust between institutions and constituents. As Professor Susan Harris Rimmer and I argue in our research, these institutions often have access to huge resources, hold significant and very special privileges, immunities, and duties under the law, and carry significant status in state societies.
Whilst I remain hopeful that institutions take it upon themselves to revisit just how much – or how little – is known about diversity in secret institutions, it is also critical that citizens and constituents advocate for their own right to know. Gone are the days of operating in a black box. Understanding, researching and building practices and policies for diversity is critical across all institutions – secret or not.
The post Intersectional feminism and diversity in secret institutions appeared first on BroadAgenda.
This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.
This opinion piece was first published by the Australian Financial Review and is reposted here with permission. Read the original here.
As a Jewish Australian, whose professional and personal life focusses on protecting the rights of individuals in Australia and abroad, it has been a devastating week. Having long advocated that our Constitution, drafted by a narrowly representative cohort of white men in the 1890s, was sorely in need of change, I was hoping we could begin with a constitutional amendment to finally recognise First Nations Australians in a meaningful way. It would have demonstrated that we have the power to update our Constitution as it was always envisaged and lighted a path to further renewal of a document in profound need of further change.
The sadness associated with this lost opportunity for Australia and its First Nations’ people is mingled with the horror surrounding events in Israel that began a week before the Voice to Parliament referendum.
Many Jewish Australians were actively supporting the Voice to Parliament and the links between First Nations Australians activism and the Jewish community run deep. In December 1938 William Cooper, a Yorta Yorta man, on hearing the news of Kristallnacht wrote, “We protest wholeheartedly .. the cruel persecution of the Jewish people. Our people have suffered much cruelty, exploitation and misunderstanding as a minority at the hands of another people…the Nazi government has a consulate here on our land. Let us go there and make our protest known.’ And he did.
It is hard to imagine any Jewish person in the world, not being profoundly affected as the horrors of Saturday 7th October unfolded. It would not only have surfaced memories linked to the experiences William Cooper was protesting against, but of stories of earlier pogroms in Russia and Poland that led to immigration to Australia at the end of the 19th and early 20th century, including of one of my ancestors.
Events in Israel were also close to home for the non-Jewish Australian academics who joined me in January 2023 visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories. We have a photograph standing on the border of Israel and Gaza from Kibbutz Kfar Azza, the scene of such suffering on 7th October. A mother who showed us children’s classrooms built as bomb shelter protection, gazed through the barbed wire fences saying: ‘I am sure there are women in their homes over there who yearn for peace as much as I do.’
Indeed, many women are members of the 45,000 plus Women Wage Peace (WWP) movement. Founded in the aftermath of the Gaza War of 2014, WWP’s approach to the conflict, and its resolution, is through a gendered lens.
Non-partisan, the group works to empower women from diverse communities to build trust across divides, to achieve a unified demand for diplomatic negotiation, with full representation of women, to end the conflict.
It is hard to know where that trust now lies. Vivian Silver, a Canadian Israeli peace activist, one of the founders of WWP, is believed to have been taken captive on October 7th following the Hamas invasion of her Kibbutz. One of her colleagues wrote to me “knowing Vivian, I just know that if she is alive, she is providing reassurance and structure to her fellows in captivity.” Vivian’s son, in the spirit of his mother’s lifelong work is advocating —‘vengeance is not a strategy’.
No matter how one views the Palestinian Israel conflict, the response in Australia to the events in Israel leaves one uneasy. Calling out the brutality of Hamas has not been a given in all cases and critics of Israel have been quick to refocus away from the atrocities to Israel’s response — justifying hypothetically ex post facto unspeakable atrocities committed against innocents.
There are some issues, that must and should rise above party political ends. Constitutional referendums should not be partisan and, when it came to the Voice, so much effort was expended over many years to prevent it. So too, the reaction to outright terrorism, and the events on October 7th in Israel. These should be beyond politics. They demand rather a multi-partisan human response to the impact on ordinary human beings; those Israelis on the ground whose lives are forever changed, and those Palestinian families yearning for peace in Gaza and captive to Hamas control that strikes at Israeli citizens and exposes them to any retaliatory consequences.
I read last Saturday morning Marcia Langton’s response to outgoing race discrimination commissioner Chin Tan’s call for the need for a national anti-racism strategy following the referendum campaign. Acknowledging it as a rational response to the overwhelming surge in race hate and antisemitism during the referendum, including Neo Nazis spreading vile falsehoods in videos and memes, she stated ‘if he’s talking about bipartisanship in overcoming racial discrimination, he is dreaming.’ Shockingly, awareness of the existence of antisemitism in Australia has only grown since the recent events in Israel. As an advocate for citizenship rights, peaceful protests are key to our liberal democratic underpinnings, but not in a manner undermining the safety and well-being of others. Members of the Australian Jewish and Palestinian communities should try to stand in each other’s shoes, praying for a means to have the captives returned safely and for Palestinian civilians lives to be valued.
I have received so many messages of support from friends and colleagues over this past week. One that we should all remember is to ‘spare some time to do something nice every day that reminds you of what the world could be – the just and feminist world we’re working towards, despite these dark times.’ This we must do, continuing to work towards reconciliation at home and a speedy peace overseas, ‘where nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.’
Picture: Broken glass on the background of the explosion in the Israel city. Image created with generative AI. Picture: Adobe
The post Yearning for peace and reconciliation appeared first on BroadAgenda.
This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.
Veterans’ groups are suing the Department of Defense for covering up the chemical exposure that our troops are subjected to at an overseas military base. Thousands of soldiers have reported illnesses and cancers, but the military refuses to tell our troops what they’ve been exposed to. Plus, the Biden Administration has sided with drug companies […]
The post DOD Sued For Exposing Veterans To Deadly Toxins & Biden Official Sides With Big Pharma appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.
This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire Network.
China’s military may be more aggressive than ever before, but economic woes could force some tough spending decisions that slow its continued rise, two U.S. defense officials said Monday.
Speaking at the Atlantic Council about the Pentagon’s latest China Military Power Report, an annual evaluation of Beijing’s military power mandated by Congress, the officials said China’s economic troubles coincided with higher costs of military modernization.
“They are getting into areas that are more expensive and more technologically complex,” said Michael Chase, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, Taiwan and Mongolia.
Chase said Beijing relied more on the People’s Liberation Army “as an instrument of advancing his foreign policy objectives” than ever before, and that an economic slowdown would not likely change that.
But U.S. officials, he said, were watching “whether a slowing economy imposes some trade offs between different projects that are important components of PLA modernization.” He listed the building of aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons and foreign bases as big-ticket items.
“We’re probably beginning to see some of that evidence, and I think we’ll see more of it over time,” he said. “They’re becoming increasingly technologically sophisticated and, therefore, increasingly pricey.”
Nuclear threat
Released last week, the China Military Power Report says Beijing last year continued to build its nuclear weapons arsenal and may even be considering building missiles capable of reaching the United States.
It also reiterated last year’s report that said China is the U.S. military’s “top pacing challenge” and the “the only competitor with the intent and increasingly the capability to reshape the international order.”
Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security, told the Atlantic Council on Monday that despite that assessment, he agreed that China’s economic issues had thrown a spanner in the works – both for the military and for its regular diplomacy.
“We may be seeing some of those trade-offs already,” Ratner said. “We have seen for instance, over the last couple of years, Belt and Road investments by [China] dropping dramatically around the world.”
The Belt and Road Initiative was “one of the top priorities for the leadership in Beijing” when it was launched 10 years ago, he said, but “because of their economic slowdown, you see them less able and less willing to be supporting those kinds of investments overseas.”
“So even things that are high priorities are getting cut in the face of this economic slowdown, and the PLA will be no different over time.”
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
RNZ MEDIAWATCH: By Colin Peacock, RNZ Mediawatch presenter
Major media organisations all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch has asked BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it — even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government.
“Palestinian health officials in Gaza say hundreds of people have been killed in an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. They’re blaming an Israeli strike on the hospital.
“But the Israel DefenCe Forces said an initial investigation shows the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket launch.”
That was how RNZ’s news at 8am last Tuesday reported the single deadliest incident of this conflict so far — and likely to be the deadliest one in all of the five times Israel and Hamas have fought over Gaza so far.
The Israeli Defence Force also singled out Islamic Jihad for the atrocity — but the absence of hard evidence put the media reporting it in a difficult position.
“It’s still absolutely unclear. There are varying bits of information that are coming out for now. I don’t think anybody can quite say . . . it’s most likely to have been Israel,” the BBC Middle East editor Sebastian Usher told RNZ on Wednseday night.
“They said it seems like it might be a misfired rocket,”
Huge anger on streets
“We can’t say for now, but I don’t think — in terms of the mood in the Arab world and the Middle East — that that really matters. People out on the streets are showing huge anger and they will reject any investigation, any Israeli claim, to say that Israel is not responsible,” he said.
Reporting those claims and counterclaims creates confusion among the audience. It’s also stoked the anger of those objecting to reporters’ choice of words.
CNN’s Clarissa Ward, for example, was criticised heavily on social media for mentioning the Israeli Defense Force claims — and then expressing doubt about them at the same time.
A video showing a pro-Palestinian protester calling Clarissa Ward “a puppet” has gone viral on social media. So did another falsely accusing her of faking a rocket strike.
The longer version of the video of Egyptian podcaster Rahma Zein confronting CNN reporter Clarissa Ward at the Rafah crossing. It’s raw, sincere, and powerful. Much respect for Rahma, she expressed our collective pain at the Western media’s dehumanization of the Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/yfB7zFYPwe
— Amro Ali (@_amroali) October 20, 2023
Her CNN colleague Anderson Cooper was also criticised online for referring to a huge civilian loss of life during the live report from Tel Aviv in Israel and repeating himself, but then without the word “civilian”.
Among those who, alongside expert investigators, tried to sift the available evidence and cut through the information war was Alex Thompson, correspondent for UK broadcaster Channel Four
“Israel and Hamas can tweet what they like. The truth of what happened here requires independent expert investigation — not happening,” was Alex Thompson’s bleak conclusion.
‘A fierce information war’
“Any doubt is due to a fierce information war that in truth matters little to the victims of the Gaza hospital tragedy,” another British correspondent — ITV Jonathan Irvine — said on Newshub at 6 last Tuesday.
At times, broadcasters have used the wrong words and given audiences the wrong idea.
Last week the BBC’s main evening news bulletin made a rapid apology for describing pro-Palestine protests in the UK as “pro-Hamas”.
“We accept that this was poorly-phrased and was a misleading description,” the presenter told viewers just before the end of the bulletin.
And earlier this month, people protested outside the BBC News headquarters in London about the BBC’s long-standing policy of not labeling any group as “terrorists”.
“You don’t seem to be particularly interested. If the BBC seems to refuse to call terrorists even though the British Parliament has legislated them terrorists — that is a question I haven’t heard the BBC answer yet,” UK government Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC radio flagship news show Today.
“Have you not seen any of the coverage on the BBC of the atrocities, the dead, the injured, the survivors?” the startled presenter asked him.
“How can you say that we’re not interested?” she replied, when Shapps said he had.
An obligation to audiences
The BBC’s deputy chief executive of news Jonathan Munro was at Sydney’s South by Southwest festival this week to talk about how the BBC delivers news from and about conflict zones.
“We’ve already seen journalists lose their lives in this country, working for organisations who are also facing the same dilemmas as we are,” said Munro, who is also the BBC’s director of journalism.
“We’ve got an obligation to audiences to explain what’s going on and that involves lots of people on the ground as witnesses to events, but also the analysis that comes with expert knowledge,” he told Mediawatch.
“Expertise is just invaluable. People like Jeremy Bowen (former Middle East editor and current international editor of BBC News) and our chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and correspondents who are based in that region,” he said.
“But the main story here is the catastrophic loss of life and the appalling conditions that people are living in and that the hostages are being held in — the humanity of that,” he said.
A lot of reporting people will see, hear and read will come from Israel. Reporting from Gaza itself is difficult and dangerous — and access to Gaza at the border is restricted by Israel.
“We have a correspondent in Gaza, but he’s moved from Gaza City to Khan Yunis in the south of the strip, a safer option. But he can’t report 24 hours a day, and he is looking after his family which is paramount.
Need for transparency
“So we do have to add to that [with] reporting from Israel and from London by people who know Gaza very well,” he said.
“We have to be transparent about that and tell the audience and then the audience knows that wherever it’s coming from, and you still hold editorial integrity.”
A lot of what people will be seeing from Gaza is amateur footage and social media content that’s very difficult to verify.
The BBC recently launched BBC Verify, dedicated to checking out this kind of material and vetting its use.
“There’s a huge amount of video out there on social media we can all find at the touch of a button. The brand of BBC Verify is a signpost that the material . . . has been checked by us using methods like geolocation and looking at the metadata,” he said.
Even when verified, there are still ethical dilemmas.
For example, BBC Verify used facial recognition software to analyse images of an individual in the Hamas surprise attacks on October 8. It identified one gunman as a policeman from Gaza.
Independently verifying claims
“It’s case-by-case — but something shouldn’t go out on the BBC without us knowing it’s true. There are occasions we would broadcast something and we would tell the audience that we’ve not been able to independently verify a claim . . . and we need to caveat our coverage of the reaction to it with the fact that we do not have our own verification of source material,” he said.
Major media outfits all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch asks BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it – even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government https://t.co/gm8Fyv4ar1
— Mediawatch (@MediawatchNZ) October 21, 2023
Even before the Al Ahli hospital catastrophe amplified emotions, intense scrutiny of reporters’ work was adding to the stress of those reporting from the region.
“Every word you say is being scrutinised so closely and is likely to be contested by one side or the other more or both — and that definitely adds to the pressure,” Channel Four correspondent Secunder Kermani told the BBC’s Media Show last week from Gaza.
“In the Israel Gaza situation it is critical. Every word can be checked and rechecked and double checked for any implication which is either inferred or implied by accident.
“Because our job is to be impartial, tell the reality of the story, and most importantly, share the witnessing of that story by our correspondents,” Jonathan Munro told Mediawatch.
“That’s why we’ve got a significant number of correspondents in Israel and back in the newsroom in London are adding explanations and leaning into that scrutiny on language,” he said.
Adjectives ‘can be dangerous’
“We’re using expertise, our knowledge as an organisation and we’re making sure that at every stage of that every sentence, every paragraph is reflective of what we know to be true.
“But adjectives can be dangerous, because they may imply something which is more emotive than we mean. We have to be quite clean in our language in these circumstances,” he said.
“Of course, people can come on the BBC and express their views in language of their choice. All of those things help to keep our coverage straight and honest and ensure that correspondents on the ground aren’t in danger by slips or mistakes that are made in good faith elsewhere in the BBC output.”
Last week at its annual conference, senior members of the Conservative Party — which is in power in the UK — heavily criticised the BBC for alleged bias and elitism. Some — including home secretary Suella Braverman and former prime minister Liz Truss made a point of praising GB News — the new right-wing TV channel backed by billionaire Brexiteers — for disrupting the news.
“The criticism of the BBC from politicians is as old as the BBC itself. Just because they’re habitual critics doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but we’ve got a well developed set of editorial guidelines which have stood the test of time over many, many difficult stories,” Munro told Mediawatch.
“The editorial guidelines are robust and public. You can go online and look at them. All of our journalism abides by those guidelines and if you have guidelines that you believe in as an organisation, that’s a significant defence to some of the less well-founded attacks that we sometimes find ourselves on the end of,” he said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
ANALYSIS: By M. Muhannad Ayyash, Mount Royal University
American President Joe Biden is among the latest Western politicians to land in Tel Aviv in a show of support to Israel.
As Israel’s primary backer, the United States has sent two aircraft carriers to the region and indicated it could deploy 2000 American troops to Israel.
Biden was also set to meet Palestinian and Arab leaders in the Jordanian capital Amman. But Jordan cancelled the meeting after a reported airstrike on October 17 killed about 500 people at a Gaza hospital.
In the days after Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel, European and North American governments (with few exceptions) were quick to provide a unified and consistent message of support for Israel.
That message contains at least four interconnected elements:
Palestinians erased
There are a few important features of this message, but I want to focus on two that highlight the West’s double standards.
First, is the advancement of anti-Palestinian racism in the West. It is critical to underscore a salient feature of anti-Palestinian racism: the silencing of the Palestinian critiques of Zionism and Israel.
This is a dynamic which has its roots in the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) and erases Palestinian voices, history, presence, aspirations and identity from public discourse.
Political, media and educational institutions in the West regularly sideline and silence Palestinians and their supporters. This is not just an issue among the right-wing or even centrists, but occurs across the political spectrum.
Left-wing politics, including progressive spaces, that purport to be anti-racist often remain hostile to Palestinian voices
Here in Canada, a statement by progressive Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow painted a rally in support of Palestinians as allegedly supporting violence and as a threat to the safety and security of Canadian Jews. That statement is still up on her X account.
This is precisely the anti-Palestinian narrative that has permeated in the West for years: that all support for Palestine is inherently violent and driven by antisemitic hatred of all Jews. Thus, in the name of anti-racism, Palestinians and their supporters are denounced and even criminalised.
Gaza| The City Of War And Love. #GazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/naiFWgYS1G
— PALESTINE ONLINE
(@OnlinePalEng) October 20, 2023
Differing reactions to civilian death
Second, the double standard is on display in the reactions we have seen to the killing of Israeli civilians and the reactions — or lack thereof — to the killing of Palestinian civilians. Many are rightly highlighting Western hypocrisy by drawing comparisons to how the West responded to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
We need to look at how Western governments have responded to the killing of Israeli civilians versus the killing of Palestinian civilians. For the Israeli state and Israeli victims, political, military, economic, cultural and social institutions have fully mobilised to provide support.
The same is entirely absent for the Palestinians. For the Palestinians, there are no evacuations. Aircraft carriers are not sent to provide military support. Mainstream political and cultural discourse does not humanise Palestinian life and mourn Palestinian death.
Aid relief is withheld and used as a bargaining counter. Economic support is not forthcoming. Institutions do not send Palestinians messages of support.
In some ways, this silence is not surprising. No one expressing support for Israel risks losing their livelihood. Many who have voiced solidarity with Palestinians have lost their jobs, been rebuked, suspended and faced doxing.
More than 400 congressional staffers signed a letter urging Congress to back a cease-fire in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/WT99B79n4f
— PALESTINE ONLINE
Western self-interest
States are not moral entities, but act purely in self-interest. Palestinian freedom and liberation does not align with the interests of the US-led West.
Therefore, Western institutions repeat the increasingly weak talking point that “terrorism” is the cause of all the violence. This talking point is used to provide Israel with the green light to unleash uninhibited violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jerusalem.
The idea that Western governments and institutions are horrified by violence against civilians rings hollow because of their silence when it comes to violence against Palestinian civilians and other groups around the world.
For decades, Palestinians have been expelled from their land, killed and maimed in great numbers, including in mass atrocities and many well-documented cases of sexual violence and torture in Israeli prisons.
This only scratches the surface of the violence that Palestinians continuously experience, and have experienced, since well before Hamas was formed.
I’m confused. When Ukrainians attacked back after Russia’s invasion, the US celebrated them. When Palestinians do the same against Israeli occupation, they’re condemned.
Filter the propaganda through this lens: the US empire will always choose sides based on its own interests.
— Bianca Graulau (@bgraulau) October 8, 2023
Palestinians continue to suffer what Palestinian scholars Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha have called an ongoing Nakba and genocide of the Palestinian people. Yet, when Palestinians suffer, as they are now in Gaza, what Israeli historian and expert on genocide Raz Segal has called “a textbook case of genocide,” Western governments remain silent.
There was no Western outrage when Israel ordered more than a million Palestinians to leave their homes in 24 hours. In February, Israeli settlers went on an hours-long rampage in the Palestinian town of Huwara after two settlers were shot by a Palestinian.
Western condemnations of the rampage were muted or non-existent.
Hundreds of scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies are now sounding the alarm about the possibility of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The stories of Palestinian lives that end with the sudden drop of a bomb are not told. Palestinian voices that explain the settler colonialism they suffer remain sidelined. And Palestinian aspirations for decolonised liberation are denied.
The West’s institutional reaction is not just hypocritical, it is an expression of where Western governments stand on the question of Palestine. The West is an active participant in the erasure of Palestine, and when moments of intensified violence like this happen, the West’s true position becomes clear for all to see.
However, people power across the world, including in the US, provide reason for hope. Increasingly, many in the West are disgusted and ashamed by the erasure of Palestine and the killing of Palestinian civilians.
More people are joining the protests and calling for the siege on Gaza to be lifted once and for all. More people power is needed to demand that governments do everything they can to resolve this issue, which can only begin to move towards peace and justice when the Palestinian people are free.
M. Muhannad Ayyash is professor of sociology, Mount Royal University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
The United States predicts that China will have over 1,000 operational nuclear warheads in seven years, developing militarily at a pace that surpasses the Pentagon’s projections, according to its annual assessment report of Chinese military prowess in 2022.
The Congress-mandated 2023 China Military Power Report said that last year, China’s capability building exceeded previous U.S. projections in some areas.
The Department of Defense (DoD) “estimates that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] possessed more than 500 operational nuclear warheads as of May 2023,” up from 400 last year and more than was predicted by U.S. military planners.
“DoD estimates that the PRC will probably have over 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030,” the 200-page report said.
The pace is striking even if China’s nuclear stockpile is still much smaller than those of Russia or the United States.
Moreover, the PRC “may be exploring development of conventionally armed intercontinental range missile systems that would allow the PRC to threaten conventional strikes against targets in the continental United States.”
“What we would highlight about that is it would give them a conventional capability to strike the U.S. for the first time … to threaten targets in the continental U.S. and Hawaii and Alaska,” said a senior U.S. defense official speaking on background, hence remaining anonymous.
American strategists already identified China as their number one challenge.
The 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy named Beijing as “the only competitor with the intent and increasingly the capability to reshape the international order.” The Pentagon also identified the PRC “as the department’s top pacing challenge.”
Coercion in the Indo-Pacific
“In 2022, the PRC turned to the PLA as an increasingly capable instrument of statecraft, adopting more coercive actions in the Indo-Pacific region against the United States and U.S. allies and partners,” the report said.
“PLA coercive and risky operational activities targeting foreign aircraft and maritime vessels throughout 2022 included: lasing; reckless maneuvers; close approaches in the air or at sea; high rates of closure; discharging chaff or flares in close proximity to aircraft; and ballistic missile overflights of Taiwan,” it added.
One day before the launch of the report, the DoD also released photos and video clips documenting 15 of more than 180 cases of what it calls China’s “coercive and risky operational behavior” against U.S. aircraft in the East China and South China seas in the last two years.
Beijing is believed to aim “to restrict the U.S. from having a presence in China’s immediate periphery and limit U.S. access in the broader Indo-Pacific region.”
Throughout 2022, the PRC conducted large-scale joint military exercises focused on training to deter further U.S. and allied operations in the region.
It also amplified diplomatic, political, and military pressure against Taiwan, the report said, adding that the PLA is continuing to prepare for “a contingency to unify Taiwan with the PRC.”
The findings of the report were accurate, said a Taiwanese senior analyst, but should be seen in the context of China’s domestic politics.
“In 2022 the Communist Party of China held its 20th Congress in which Xi Jinping needed to reassert his power and ensure a third term as China’s paramount leader,” said Shen Ming-Shih, acting deputy chief executive officer at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), a government think-tank.
“I expect the PLA’s approach for 2023 will be less vocal but more realistic in terms of military maneuvers around Taiwan,” he added.
Looking ahead
China already has numerically the largest navy in the world with an overall battle force of over 370 ships and submarines, compared to the U.S.’s 293 ships and submarines. It also has the largest coast guard fleet in the world, besides a powerful maritime militia.
The report was compiled over the last year, before the latest Israel-Hamas war.
Analysts say ongoing developments in Ukraine and the Middle East may embolden China’s actions in the Indo-Pacific region.
“I think they are watching to see what the U.S. is doing in both Ukraine and now the Middle East, and from Beijing’s perspective, they are hoping that the U.S. support for both Israel and Ukraine will leave them weakened and unable to support allies in the Indo-Pacific,” said Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
“So I’d see Beijing continue to employ provocations, and potentially ramp those up if the U.S. becomes more and more committed to supporting a fast developing war in the Middle East, which could become quite large in geographic scope – well beyond the Gaza strip – quite quickly,” he said.
“I suspect that Beijing will be disappointed though, as the U.S. is very cognizant of its responsibilities and the risks posed by Chinese actions, so I don’t see the U.S. de-prioritizing Indo-Pacific issues in favor of Europe and Middle East challenges,” the analyst said.
At a press briefing this week, the Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Navy Adm. John Aquilino said, despite the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, “as it applies to the Indo-Pacific and my responsibilities … I haven’t had one piece of equipment or force structure depart.”
“The United States is a global power. That means we can deliver effects and execute our deterrence responsibilities across the globe,” he said.
The Indo-Pacific Command has two aircraft carriers at sea at the moment – the forward-deployed USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Carl Vinson which left for a deployment last week.
They are, “along with a large portion of the Joint Force, executing deterrence missions in my theater,” said Adm. Aquilino.
The admiral also said that his requests to speak with Chinese counterparts in the last two and a half years have been refused.
There are unconfirmed reports that Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden may meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco next month.
Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
By Selwyn Manning, editor of Evening Report
As we prepared for this podcast, representatives of Arab states have presented a united front at the United Nations, criticising the UN Security Council of doing nothing to protect civilians from Israeli bombing and missile attacks on Gazan civilians and locations.
Since then, the UN Security Council has considered two resolutions, the latter calling for a pause in hostilities to allow a humanitarian effort to enter Gaza to assist civilians.
The United States vetoed that Security Council resolution.
Al Jazeera has detailed that Israel forces have targeted and bombed civilian facilities include hospitals, schools, residential areas resulting in the deaths of thousands of people, civilians – around one-third of the deaths are children.
It remains contested by all sides in this conflict as to who, or what, is responsible for the deadly attack on Gaza Hospital, resulting in the deaths of at least 471 people.
Additional to this, Israel has sealed the borders of Gaza while it prevents food, water and medical supplies from reaching civilians — in breach of international law requirements and laws of conflict.
Israel ordered Gazan civilians, who wish to get to safety, to get out of North Gaza and move toward the south, to the border with Egypt.
Heavy bombing, sealed border
But as people fled south toward what appeared to be safety, Israel bombed the southern Gaza region killing more civilians and sealing off that corridor for others who sought refuge.
As a consequence of the bombing, Egypt responded by sealing the Gaza-Egypt border.
Humanitarian aid now sits on trucks, waiting, on the Egypt side of the border, while United Nations officials implore Israel and Egypt to allow medical supplies, food and water to get through to those who are injured and dying.
The Israel Defence Force strikes followed a surprise-attack on Israeli citizens by soldiers operating under the Hamas banner.
Civilians were slaughtered and others taken hostage, only to be used as bargaining chips and leverage against their enemies.
Even Palestinian advocacy groups like the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa suggested that breaches of international humanitarian Law, crimes against civilians, have been committed by those Hamas-aligned fighters.
But they are clear, as others are too, that crimes against humanity, war crimes, have been committed by Israel, without consequence, as we all give witness to its response which is disproportionate, brutal, and disregarding of the thousands of Palestinian lives that have already been taken.
The View From Afar podcast on Gaza.
Getting worse
That is the grave current situation and it is likely to get much worse.
In this episode, Selwyn Manning and global security and geopolitics analyst Dr Paul Buchanan discuss the crisis yesterday:
Watch this episode of A View from Afar
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Aubrey Belford, Stevan Dojcinovic, Jared Savage and Kelvin Anthony in an OCCRP investigation
Until recently, Aiyaz Mohammed Musa Umarji was — in public at least — a pillar of Fiji’s business community.
With ownership of a Pacific-wide pharmacy network, Umarji and his family were significant donors to the party that repressively ruled the country until it lost power in elections last December. He was also a major figure in sports, serving as a vice president of the Fiji Football Association and as a committee member in soccer’s global governing body, FIFA.
And he did it all as an internationally wanted drug trafficker.
Umarji’s fall finally came in August this year, after he ended a period of self-imposed exile in India and surrendered himself to authorities in New Zealand to face years-old charges. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison for importing at least NZ$5-$6 million (US$2.9-3.5 million) worth of pseudoephedrine — a precursor for methamphetamine – into the country.
His sentencing was hailed by Fijian police as a blow against a “mastermind” whose operations stretched across the region.
But behind the conviction of Umarji, 47, lies a far murkier story of impunity, a joint investigation by an Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), The Fiji Times, The New Zealand Herald and Radio New Zealand has found.
Umarji was able to thrive for years amid a failure by senior officials of Fiji’s previous authoritarian government to confront a rise in meth and cocaine trafficking through the Pacific Island country.
And when New Zealand authorities finally issued an international warrant for his arrest, Umarji was able to flee Fiji under suspicious circumstances.
Reporters found that Umarji and his family donated at least F$70,000 (US$31,000) to the country’s former ruling party, FijiFirst, in the years after he was first put under investigation. This included F$20,000 (US$8,700) given to the party ahead of last December’s election — roughly three years after he was first charged.
The party’s general secretary, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, was Fiji’s long-serving attorney-general and justice minister at the time.
Reporters also found that the Umarji family’s business network has continued to expand despite his legal troubles, and currently operates in three Pacific countries. The newest of these pharmacy companies, in Vanuatu, was founded just last year.
Fiji’s Minister for Immigration and Home Affairs, Pio Tikoduadua, told OCCRP an investigation has been opened into how Umarji was able to flee the country.
He said authorities are also investigating donations Umarji and his family made to FijiFirst, and any “potential connections” he may have had to top officials in the former government, including Sayed-Khaiyum and the now-suspended Police Commissioner, Sitiveni Qiliho.
“Certainly, I am deeply concerned about the potential influence of drug traffickers in Fiji, especially over officials and law enforcement,” Tikoduadua said.
“The infiltration of these criminal elements poses a significant risk to our society and institutions.”
Umarji declined a request for an interview and did not respond to follow-up questions. His Auckland lawyer, David PH Jones, said a request from reporters contained “numerous loaded questions which contain unsubstantiated assertions, a number of which have little or nothing to do with Mr Umarji’s prosecution”.
Sayed-Khaiyum and Qiliho did not respond to written questions.
‘A hub of the Pacific’
The rise in drug trafficking through Fiji is just one part of a booming trans-Pacific trade that experts and law enforcement say has become one of the world’s most profitable.
In Australia, the most recent data shows that drug seizures have more than quadrupled over the last decade, and Australians now consume 4.7 tonnes of cocaine and 8.8 tonnes of meth a year. In much smaller New Zealand, drug users strongly prefer meth to cocaine, consuming roughly 720 kilograms a year.
Consumers in both countries pay some of the highest prices on earth for cocaine and meth, much of it exported from the Americas. Lying in the vast blue expanse between the two points are the Pacific Islands.
“Fiji is a hub of the Pacific. You’ve got the ports, you’ve got the infrastructure, and you’ve got the ability to come in and out either by [water] craft or by airplane,” said Glyn Rowland, the New Zealand Police senior liaison officer for the Pacific.
“So that really leaves Fiji quite vulnerable to be in that transit route off to New Zealand and off to Australia.”
Fiji has long been eyed by international organised crime for its strategic location close to Australia and New Zealand’s multi-billion dollar drug markets.
In the early 2000s, for example, an international police operation took apart a “super lab” in Fiji’s capital, Suva, run by Chinese gangsters with enough precursor chemicals to produce a tonne of meth.
But after early successes, Fiji in recent years went cold on the fight against hard drugs.
The previous government of Voreqe Bainimarama, who first took power in a 2006 coup, showed little interest in tackling meth and cocaine trafficking, according to current and former law enforcement officers from Fiji and the US. Despite recent signs that trafficking was increasing, the police force under Bainimarama’s hand-picked commissioner, Qiliho, seemed to overlook the problem, the officers told OCCRP.
Bainimarama did not respond to questions.
Ernie Verina, the Oceania attaché for US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), said his agency had become worried about trafficking through Fiji.
In mid-2022, HSI assigned an agent to be based in the country. But when the agent raised the issue of meth with top officials from Bainimarama’s government, he was met with total pushback, Verina said.
“Categorically, like, ‘There is no meth’,” Verina said of the Fijian response.
“That’s what they told the agent.”
A lot of influence
Despite high-level denials, Fiji’s narcotics police were very much aware of the country’s drug trafficking crisis. In fact, they had long had Umarji in their sights. But he was a difficult target.
As far back as 2017, Umarji was identified as “one of the tier one” suspected traffickers in the country, said Serupepeli Neiko, the head of the Fiji Police’s Narcotics Bureau.
While the drug trade through Fiji is also the domain of transnational organised crime groups, Umarji was suspected of having carved out a niche for himself by using his network of pharmacies, Hyperchem, to legally import pseudoephedrine and divert it onto the black market, Neiko said.
In early 2017, Umarji and one of his colleagues were charged with weapons possession after scores of rifle bullets were found on his yacht, moored in his hometown of Lautoka. But the charges were “squashed in court,” Neiko said.
“So that gave a red flag to us that a [drug trafficking] case against Umarji would have been challenging as well.”
A former senior Fijian officer, who declined to be identified because he is not authorised to speak to the media, put it more bluntly: “Umarji had a lot of influence with the previous government.”
Reporters found no evidence that any senior Fijian officials intervened against investigations into Umarji. But the perception that he had influence was powerful, current and former police officers said.
Indeed, since the fall of Bainimarama’s government last year, multiple senior officials have faced charges that they abused their positions, but none have been convicted.
The suspended police commissioner, Qiliho, and the former prime minister, Bainimarama, were both acquitted by a court on October 12 of charges that they had illegally interfered in a separate police investigation.
Former Attorney-General Sayed-Khaiyum is also currently facing prosecution in another unrelated abuse of office case.
Despite becoming a top-level police target, Umarji continued to expand his influence in Fiji.
Company records show that, in 2015, he and his wife, Zaheera Cassim, opened Hyperchem companies in Fiji, Solomon Islands, and a now-defunct branch in Samoa.
In May 2017, Umarji opened a new company, Bio Pharma, in New Zealand.
Ahead of elections the following year, Umarji and his relatives donated a total of at least F$50,000 to the FijiFirst party, declarations from the Fiji Elections Office show.
Umarji also made a name for himself in soccer, getting elected a vice-president of the Fiji Football Association in December 2019.
Pills and cash
By 2019, it was clear that avenues for a Fijian investigation were closed. So police in New Zealand stepped in instead. Reporters were able to reconstruct what happened next via court records and interviews.
While seconded that year to Fiji’s Transnational Crime Unit, New Zealand detective Peter Reynolds heard whispers about Umarji’s alleged criminal activity from his local colleagues. On returning to New Zealand, he decided to take things into his own hands.
Digging through police files, Reynolds found a lucky break in a case from nearly two years prior.
In late 2017, an anonymous member of the public had reached out to an anti-crime hotline with a tip that a businessman, Firdos “Freddie” Dalal, had a suspicious amount of money in his home in suburban Auckland.
Acting on a warrant, police made their way inside and found NZ$726,190 in cash and 4000 boxes of Actifed, a cold and flu medicine that contains pseudoephedrine.
Known as Operation Duet, the investigation that led to Dalal’s conviction provided the information that Reynolds needed to go after Umarji. It turned out that Dalal, who owned an Auckland-based freight forwarding company, was also listed as the director of Umarji’s New Zealand company, Bio Pharma.
Reynolds soon figured out how it all worked. Using his Pacific-wide Hyperchem network, Umarji ordered Actifed pills to be delivered from abroad to his pharmacies in Fiji and Solomon Islands. The shipments were set to transit through New Zealand, where Dalal’s forwarding company was responsible for the cargo.
While the drugs sat in a restricted customs holding area, Dalal simply went inside and swapped them out for other other medicine, such as anti-fungal cream, which was then sent on to their island destinations. The purloined pseudoephedrine was sold on New Zealand’s black market.
Dalal did not respond to questions.
In just three shipments between January and October 2017, Umarji’s operation brought in an estimated 678,000 Actifed pills containing about 40.7 kilograms of pseudoephedrine, Auckland District Court would later find.
But if deciphering Umarji’s operation was straightforward, arresting him would prove anything but.
New Zealand Police filed charges against Umarji in December 2019, but Reynolds told the Auckland court that he believed they faced little chance of getting Umarji to voluntarily fly to Auckland and show up in court.
“If the summons were to be served it would likely result in Umarji fleeing [Fiji] to a country that has no extradition arrangements with New Zealand,” the detective said in an affidavit.
So New Zealand authorities decided to go through the arduous process of requesting extradition. In November 2021, a Fijian court agreed to the request, and New Zealand Police issued an Interpol red notice.
Despite all the effort, within days Fiji Police had to contact their New Zealand counterparts with an embarrassing admission: Umarji had fled the country, and was in India.
New Zealand Police’s Pacific liaison, Rowland, declined to comment on how Umarji was able to flee Fiji, but added: “The reality is, sometimes corruption isn’t about what you do. Sometimes corruption is about what you don’t do, or turn a blind eye to.”
Despite his legal troubles, Umarji remained a respectable public figure in Fiji, thanks in part to a restrictive media environment that made it difficult for reporters to look into him in detail.
In May 2021, while Umarji was still in Fiji and his extradition case was pending, he was elected to FIFA’s governance, audit and compliance committee. He kept the position even after his flight abroad later that year, and was re-elected unopposed as Fiji Football Association vice president this June. He only resigned both positions on August 7, two days before his sentencing.
FIFA and the Fiji Football Association did not respond to questions.
Umarji also made little effort to hide during his exile in India. At one stage last year, he recorded an online video testimonial for a stem cell clinic outside of Delhi where he said he was getting treatment for diabetes.
His family’s second round of donations to FijiFirst, F$20,000 ahead of last December’s elections, were similarly made while Umarji was on the run.
But the drug trafficker eventually tired of exile.
In early 2022, he first contacted his high-powered Auckland lawyer, Jones, to arrange his surrender to New Zealand Police. He pleaded guilty to the Auckland court earlier this year and was allowed to return to Fiji to sort his affairs before handing himself in for sentencing.
New focus
With Umarji now in prison, Fijian authorities say they are continuing to investigate his operations.
Umarji’s pharmaceutical business continues to run with his wife, Cassim, at its head. Cassim has for years been a significant public face for the businesses, including publicising its charitable work. She declined to respond to reporters’ questions.
OCCRP visited Umarji’s companies in Lautoka in late June, during the period in which he was allowed by the New Zealand court to briefly return to Fiji. Reporters found a bustling network of businesses, including a well-staffed warehouse and office on the edge of town for Hyperchem.
Reporters contacted Umarji by phone from the warehouse’s reception area, but he declined to come out for an interview and referred reporters to his lawyer.
Homeland Security Investigations’ Verina said the new government of Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has since removed roadblocks to investigating these sort of trafficking operations.
“We have started to see enforcement operations and arrests and holding individuals accountable for the methamphetamine smuggling,” Verina said.
An Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) investigation. Additional reporting by Lydia Lewis (RNZ) and George Block (New Zealand Herald). This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Te Pāti Māori wants the incoming and outgoing governments of Aotearoa New Zealand to use the country’s strong international voice to insist on an urgent ceasefire between Israel and Gaza.
And they say the government should be prepared to “kick the Israeli ambassador out” if the fighting does not stop and humanitarian aid corridors into Gaza are not opened.
“I’d like anyone in the government to come out loud and clear in the condemnation of the killing of thousands of innocent people in Palestine,” Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told RNZ Morning Report today.
“We’ve got a history in Aotearoa of indigenous people in a colonial context and I am deeply upset as Te Pāti Māori on the absolute failure of our [country’s] leadership and our foreign policy which talks about a values-based approach.
“We talk about supporting a peace-based approach and the two-state solution but we have failed horrifically to do anything proactive since the beginning.
“And we have seen the contradiction in [contrast to] how we have been with Afghanistan and Ukraine in the recent past.
“What we need to see is Aotearoa take a strong stance on the killing of innocent people.
‘Not two-sided’
“It is not a two-sided situation here [in the war on Gaza]. We only have one side living under military occupation and we need to be much stronger on what we have called for — absolute peace and allowing humanitarian aid in.”
Outgoing Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta declined RNZ’s request for an interview, citing the constraints of the current caretaker government provisions.
While National — which also said no to our request to speak to their foreign policy spokesperson Gerry Brownlee — referred to Prime Minister-elect Christopher Luxon’s statement that the government should be speaking for all New Zealanders on the situation.
Pacific Media Watch reports at least 3785 people have been killed in the bombing of Gaza and 81 in the Occupied West Bank and 12,493 have been wounded — including 2000 children and 1400 women.
Since the surprise Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, at least 1403 people have been killed, including 306 soldiers and 57 police.
Hamas is reported to be holding 203 civilian and military hostages.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.