I am writing to express my concern about the Assisted Dying Bill and ask you to vote against it.
I have thought about this letter so much, rewrote it, and rewrote it so much; the grooves of my mind ache. I have tried to put in order what I have seen, heard, what I know and knew before. I wanted to place my knowledge and experience in straightforward paragraphs. “What’s a good opening paragraph?” “A line that’ll snag on something within her?”
I have worn myself out and worn myself down in the process of trying. The problem is that I have too much skin in the game. I come from a line of disabled women in history who lost something of themselves because of the choices of others. I see and feel the past, present, and future here.
There is a quote from a film that has rather accidentally got into my bones as I move through life; it’s from You’ve Got Mail: “Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal.”
I cannot imagine anything more personal than this bill, and I wonder what words on a page will convince a stranger, though we have met briefly, to vote against it.
Should the words be plain and clean, stark but unimpassioned?
Here’s the simple truth: I have a constant, sickening ache in my gut, bile rising in my throat. But, I have always been taught to bite reaction and emotion down as I experience ableism – abuse.
I used to be pro-assisted dying. I used to believe it should be everyone’s right to choose. It’s such a superficial, shallow little sentiment that I barely want to own it. I didn’t think about how it would impact disabled people, and I have been disabled since the day I was born, nor how it would be controlled. I didn’t stop to think it through. What choice are disabled people going to have in a decade or more – or less? I’m a little older and wiser now, and the world is a little uglier.
So, here’s the staring-you-right-in-the-face experience.
I am a disabled woman now, and that comes with hard truths and responsibilities. It comes with an instinctive need to put everything into this fight because I have occupied the real world and social media in a disabled body and know what could happen. I have come to accept one simple truth: some non-disabled people think we’d be better off dead.
I have been told in the supermarket and on the street by strangers that if it happened to them: “They would off themselves.”
They would want to die.
People like me? We’re the scroungers, the scum – yet the sometimes Superhumans. Sometimes, I must move through the world with my head down, eyes forward, rigid. Sometimes, a non-disabled person will stop me as I go about my ordinary life, and I will silently, wordlessly, beg them not to say anything that will pummel me down further, not to touch me or move my body without permission as I plead “No”.
There’s a pulsating fear that comes with living in a disabled body now. I used to think that my startle reflex was solely the result of my disability. Now, I believe that the feral thing that sits in muscle also comes from experience.
Could you rely on the judgement of non-disabled strangers having gone through such events? It’s a dangerous time to change the law; it is too much to ask disabled people to trust in a system, in a set of safeguards, when we have seen, felt, and tasted the fear of such things and witnessed the Covid-19 response.
The Assisted Dying Bill states that only adults with a terminal illness who are expected to die within six months will be suitable for assisted death. The person must have the mental capacity to choose the end of their life and must have a “clear, settled, and informed” wish free from coercion and pressure.
But how can anyone believe that a system already under such strain could listen intimately and re-listen and re-listen, searching carefully for a fracture, for fear, in another’s voice, eyes, or posture?
I know this is a fight for disabled lives.
So, here are some stinging realities about these ugly things that are staring us right in the face.
We’ve already seen the widening of categories that are open to people wanting to have an “assisted” death. In Oregon, this includes ‘loneliness’ as a category. In the Netherlands, bases for seeking an assisted death include anxiety, depression, and alcoholism.
People who support assisted dying often assert that this broadening won’t happen here. But how can they be sure any safeguards will be hardy enough; that these are? How do they know? Non-disabled people too often make pinky promises with little care if they crack our fingers.
I feel for anyone who is suffering and in pain, and we need more support and understanding for those who work in end-of-life care, the dying, and their families. But we can’t trade one person’s pain for another’s, and we can’t promise the noose won’t ever tighten as we place it lightly around disabled people’s necks.
I am not opposed to assisted dying if safeguards are properly put in place thoughtfully. But while I still feel this pulsating ache, and bile still rises in my throat, while it all still feels so personal and impersonal – I hope you vote against it.
In the wake of the election — THE ELECTION, in capital letters and with strong emphasis — I have read many insightful and thoughtful assessments of how we have arrived at the point where Donald Trump was re-elected. I highly recommend the recent scathing essay by my colleague at Marxism-Leninism Today, Chris Townsend, on the crying need for an alternative to the two-party charade and the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party as a representative for working people.
But for every good analysis, there are a dozen awful commentaries that ultimately blame the voters’ judgment or endorse their worst fears.
However, if pressed for a simple explanation of the election results, one might consider the following:
Once again, offered the odious, devil’s choice between two candidates who are rich, elitist, and completely detached from “ordinary” people, the US voter chose a candidate who was rich, elitist, and completely detached from the lives and interests of most people.
Of course, people want to know why the voters chose this particular rich elitist at this particular time. That question calls forth both a specific, practical response and a far deeper, concerning answer.
Polls and disregarded economic data show that most voters have a profoundly negative and often painful relationship with their economic status– they are not doing well. They typically punish incumbents when under economic distress. This should come as no surprise. But the highly paid consultants of both parties– with approaching two billion dollars to spend– chose to press many other issues as well and deal with the economy only superficially.
But in the end, exit polls show that economic distress played a decisive role in shaping voters’ choices. Apparently, the pundits forgot how persistent, value-sucking inflation led to the election of Ronald Reagan forty-four years ago.
Again, like today, the 1970s were a period of realignment. The Democrats had lost the South to the Republicans over desegregation and the Civil Rights legislation. After the Nixonian scandals associated with the Watergate burglaries and other dirty tricks, the Democrats won over suburbanites disgusted with Republican chicaneries– a demographic thought by many functionaries to be the needed replacement for the lost South.
In 1976, the Democrats swept in with a squeaky-clean, untarnished candidate, James Carter. With the decade-long stagflation coming to a climax, the Carter regime was short-lived; despite a rightward turn on his part, Carter was beaten by an ultra-right movie star turned politician, Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the default choice for voters wanting change after a lost decade.
For those who like their history repeating from tragedy to farce, consider the transition from the self-righteous old red-baiter, Ronald Reagan, to the pompous, supercilious windbag, Donald Trump. History has a wicked sense of humor.
Few pundits acknowledge that Democratic Party strategists decided in the 1980s that the future of the party would be determined by the interests and concerns of metropolitan voters, especially those in the suburban upper-middle stratum who were “super voters,” economically secure, and attuned to lifestyle and identity liberalism. While they represented the legacy of “white flight,” the suburbanites contradictorily espoused the urbanity of tolerance and personal choice.
Coincident with the embrace of the suburban vote, Democratic Party strategists saw no need to attend to past central components of their coalition: the working class and multi-class Blacks. Loyal union leaders would corral the working-class vote and ascendant Black leaders would rally African Americans of all classes.
Besides, it was believed that neither had any other place to go besides the Democratic Party.
Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, revealed this thinking in 2016, when he said: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” Even before that careless remark, both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama– in moments of candor– revealed their contempt for working people outside of the metropolis.
This election stamped “paid” on this program, with nearly all the assumed components of the Democratic coalition drifting towards the Republicans.
The always insightful Adam Tooze, writing in The London Review of Books, concludes that the Democratic Party failings demonstrate “the high-achieving, insincere, vacuous incoherence that thrives at the top of the American political class.”
There is, however, a far deeper explanation of the Trump phenomenon seldom mentioned by mainstream commentators. Those who cite the specific issues of abortion rights, immigration, trans rights, crime, racism, etc.– issues that indeed played a role in the November election– neglect the fact that Trumpism is part of an international trend that infects the politics of such far-flung countries as India, Japan, and Argentina, as well as many European countries for often vastly different reasons. The rise of right populism in virtually all European countries– Orban’s Hungary, Meloni’s Italy, RN in France, AfD in Germany, Vox in Spain, Chega in Portugal, and similar parties in virtually every other European country– share one defining feature with the politics of India’s Modi and Argentina’s Milei: a rejection of centrist, traditional parties.
Right populism rises as a response to the ineffectiveness of the politics of normality. It reflects the dissatisfaction with business as usual.
For hundreds of millions throughout the world, the twenty-first century has brought a series of crises eroding, even destroying their quality of life. Ruling classes have stubbornly refused to address these crises through the indifference of traditional bourgeois political parties. Voters have punished these parties by turning to opportunist right-populist formations that promise to give voice to their anger. Of course, this often takes the form of ugly, reprehensible claims and slogans– appealing to the basest of motives.
But it is not enough to denounce these backward policies without addressing the desperation that unfortunately popularizes those policies. It is not helpful to righteously raise the alarm of “fascism” if we fail to offer an alternative that will answer the hopelessness and misery that serves as the fertile soil for reaction.
From the tragedy of the Reagan election to the farce of the Trump re-election, we have suffered from two sham parties taking turns representing the “people,” while neither did. Isn’t it time for an independent people’s party– a party of the working class majority– that addresses the twenty-first century economic crises and their aftermath, the acute environmental crisis, the broken public health and health care systems, the insidious impoverishment of inflation, the crumbling infrastructure, and a host of other urgent demands, a party dedicated to serving the working people of the US and not its wealthy and powerful?
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution — for the fourth time — in Israel’s war on Gaza, while Hezbollah demands a complete ceasefire and “protection of Lebanon’s sovereignty” in any deal with Israel. Amid the death and devastation, Joe Hendren reflects on his time in Lebanon and examines what the crisis means for a small country with a population size similar to Aotearoa New Zealand.
SPECIAL REPORT: By Joe Hendren
Since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon I can’t help but think of a friend I met in Beirut.
He worked at the Regis Hotel, where I stayed in February 2015.
At one point, he offered to make me a Syrian dish popular in his hometown of Aleppo. I have long remembered his kindness; I only wish I remembered his name.
At the time, his home city was being destroyed. A flashpoint of the Syrian Civil War, the Battle of Aleppo lasted four long years. He didn’t mention this of course.
I was lucky to visit Lebanon when I did. So much has happened since then.
Economic crisis and a tragic port explosion Mass protests took over Lebanese streets in October 2019 in response to government plans to tax WhatsApp calls. The scope of the protests soon widened, as Lebanese people voiced their frustrations with ongoing economic turmoil and corruption.
A few months later, the covid-19 pandemic arrived, deepening the economic crisis and claiming 10,000 lives.
On 4 August 2020, the centre of Beirut was rocked by one of the largest non nuclear explosions in history when a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut detonated. The explosion killed 218 people and left an estimated 300,000 homeless. The government of Hassin Diab resigned but continued in a “caretaker” capacity.
Tens of thousands of protesters returned to the streets demanding accountability and the downfall of Lebanon’s political ruling class. While some protesters threw stones and other projectiles, an Al Jazeera investigation found that security forces violated international standards on the use of force. The political elite were protected.
“The Lebanon financial and economic crisis is likely to rank in the top 10, possibly top three, most severe crises episodes globally since the mid-nineteenth century. This is a conclusion of the Spring 2021 Lebanon Economic Monitor (LEM) in which the Lebanon crisis is contrasted with the most severe global crises episodes as observed by Reinhart and Rogoff (2014) over the 1857–2013 period.
“In fact, Lebanon’s GDP plummeted from close to US$ 55 billion in 2018 to an estimated US$ 33 billion in 2020, with US$ GDP/capita falling by around 40 percent. Such a brutal and rapid contraction is usually associated with conflicts or wars.”
The Lebanon Poverty and Equity Assessment, produced by the World Bank in 2024, found the share of individuals in Lebanon living under the poverty line more than tripled, rising from 12 percent to 44 percent. The depth and severity of poverty also increased over the decade between 2012 and 2022.
To make matters worse, the port explosion destroyed Lebanon’s strategic wheat reserves at a time when the war in Ukraine drove significant increases in global food prices. Annual food inflation in Lebanon skyrocketed from 7.67 percent in January 2019 to a whopping 483.15 percent for the year ending in January 2022. While food inflation has since declined, it remains high, sitting just below 20 percent for the year ending September 2024. The World Bank said:
“The sharp deterioration of the Lebanese pound, which lost 98 percent of its pre-crisis value by December 2023, propelled inflation to new heights. With imports constituting about 60 percent of the consumption basket (World Bank, 2022), the plunging currency led to triple-digit inflation which rose steeply from an annual average of 3 percent between 2011 and 2018, to 85 percent in 2019, 155 percent in 2020, and 221 percent in 2023 . . .
“Faced with falling foreign exchange reserves, the government withdrew subsidies on medication, fuel, and wheat further fuelling rising costs of healthcare and transport (Figure 1.2). Rapid inflation acted effectively as a highly regressive tax, striking hardest at the poor and those with fixed, lira-denominated incomes.”
The ongoing crisis of the Lebanese economy has amplified the power of Hezbollah, a paramilitary group formed in 1982 in response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon.
“Hezbollah is famous for entrenching its power in an elaborate social infrastructure of Islamic welfare. The social grip of those structures and services is increased by the ongoing crisis of the Lebanese economy. When the medical service fails, desperate families turn to the Hezbollah-run health service,” says Adam Tooze
As banks imposed capital controls, many Lebanese lost confidence in the financial system. The financial arm of Hezbollah, the al-Quad al-Hassan Association (AQAH), experienced a significant increase in clients, despite being subject to US Treasury sanctions since 2007.
The US accuses Hezbollah of using AQAH as a front to manage its financial activities. When a 28-year-old engineer, Hassan Shoumar, was locked out of his dollar accounts in late 2019, he redirected his money into his account at AQAH: “What I care about is that when I want my money, I can get it.”
While Hezbollah portrays itself as “the resistance”, as a member of the governing coalition in Lebanon, it also forms an influential part of the political elite. Adam Tooze gives an example of how the political elite is still looking after itself:
“[T]he Lebanese Parliament in a grotesque act of self-dealing in January 2024 passed a budget that promised to close the budget deficit of 12.8 of GDP by raising regressive value-added tax while decreasing the progressive taxes levied on capital gains, real estate and investments.
“For lack of reforms, the IMF [International Monetary Fund] is refusing to disburse any of the $3bn package that are allocated to Lebanon.”
While the protest movement called for a “technocratic” government in Lebanon, the experiences of Greece and other countries facing financial difficulties suggest such governments can pose their own risks, especially when they involve unelected “experts” in prominent positions.
One example is the political reaction to the counterproductive austerity programme imposed on Greece by the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. This demonstrates how the demands of international investors can conflict with the needs of the local population.
Lebanon carries more than its fair share of refugees Lebanon currently hosts the largest number of refugees per capita in the world, despite its scarce resources. This began as an overflow from the Syrian conflict in 2011, with nearly 1.2 million ‘displaced’ Syrians in Lebanon registered with UNHCR by May 2015.
When I visited Lebanon in 2015, I tried to grasp the scale of the refugee issue. In terms of population, Lebanon is comparable to New Zealand, with both countries having just over 5 million people.
I imagined what New Zealand would be like if it attempted to host a million refugees in addition to its general population. Yet in terms of land area Lebanon is only 10,400 square kilometres — about the size of New Zealand’s Marlborough region at the top of the South Island.
Now, imagine accommodating a population of over 5 million in such a small space, with more than a fifth of them being refugees.
While it was encouraging to see New Zealand increase its refugee quota to 1500 places in July 2020, we could afford to do much more in the current situation. This includes creating additional visa pathways for those fleeing Gaza and Lebanon.
#BREAKING
United States VETOES Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and the release of all hostages
On top of all that – Israeli attacks and illegal booby traps Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the ongoing Israeli invasion of Gaza, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire across Lebanon’s southern border.
Israel makes much of the threat of rocket attacks on Israel from Hezbollah. However, data from US based non-profit organisation Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) shows Israel carried out 81 percent of the 10,214 attacks between between the two parties from October 7, 2023, and September 20, 2024.
These attacks resulted in 752 deaths in Lebanon, including 50 children. In contrast, Hezbollah’s attacks, largely centred on military targets, killed at least 33 Israelis.
Hezbollah continues to offer an immediate ceasefire, so long as a ceasefire also applies to Gaza, but Israel has refused these terms.
While the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) disputed these figures as an “oversimplification”, the IDF do not appear to dispute the reported number of Lebanese casualties. Hezbollah continues to offer an immediate ceasefire, so long as a ceasefire also applies to Gaza, but Israel has refused these terms.
In a further escalation, thousands of handheld pagers and walkie-talkies used in both civilian and military contexts in Lebanon and Syria suddenly exploded on September 17 and 18.
Israel attempted to deny responsibility, with Israeli President Isaac Herzog claiming he “rejects out of hand any connection” to the attack. However, 12 defence and intelligence officials, briefed on the attack, anonymously confirmed to The New York Times that Israel was behind the operation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later boasted during a cabinet meeting that he had personally approved the pager attack. The New York Times described the aftermath:
“Powered by just a few ounces of an explosive compound concealed within the devices, the blasts sent grown men flying off motorcycles and slamming into walls, according to witnesses and video footage. People out shopping fell to the ground, writhing in agony, smoke snaking from their pockets.”
The exploding devices killed 42 people and injured more than 3500, with many victims losing one or both of their hands or eyes. At least four of the dead were children.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikatri called the explosions “a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards”.
While around eight Hezbollah fighters were among the dead, most of those killed worked in administration roles and did not take partin hostilities. Under international humanitarian law targeting non-combatants is illegal.
Additionally, the UN Protocol on Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices also prohibits the use of “booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material”. Israel is a signatory to this UN Protocol.
Israel’s decision to turn ordinary consumer devices into illegal booby traps could backfire. While Israel frequently stresses the importance of its technology sector to its economy, who is going to buy technology associated with Israel now that the IDF have demonstrated its ability to indiscriminately weaponise consumer devices at any time?
International industry buyers will source elsewhere. Such a “silent boycott” could give greater momentum to the call from Palestinian civil society for boycotts, divestments and economic sanctions against Israel.
The booby trap pagers are also likely to affect the decisions of foreign airlines to service Israel on the grounds of safety. Since the war began in October 2023, the number of foreign airlines calling on Ben Gurion Airport in Israel has fallen significantly. Consequently, the cost of a round-trip ticket from the United States to Tel Aviv has risen sharply, from approximately $900 to $2500.
Israel targets civilian infrastructure in Lebanon Israel has also targeted civilian organisations linked to Hezbollah, such emergency services, hospitals and medical centres operated by the Islamic Health Society (IHS). Israel claims Hezbollah is “using the IHS as a cover for terrorist activities”. This apparently includes digging people out of buildings, as search and rescue teams have also been targeted and killed.
Israel accuses the microloan charity AQAH of funding “Hezbollah’s terror activities”, including purchasing weapons and making payments to Hezbollah fighters. On October 20, Israel attacked 30 branches of AQAH across Lebanon, drawing condemnation from both Amnesty International and the United Nations.
Ben Saul, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism maintains AQAH is not a lawful military target: “International humanitarian law does not permit attacks on the economic or financial infrastructure of an adversary, even if they indirectly sustain its military activities.”
Where the author ate his Za’atar man’ousheh – Pigeon’s Rock, Corniche, Beiruit. Image: Joe Hendren
On top of all that — an Israeli invasion In 1982, Israel attempted to use war to alter the political situation in Lebanon, with counterproductive results, including the creation of Hezbollah. In 2006, Hezbollah used the hilly terrain of southern Lebanon to beat Israel to a stalemate. Israel risks similar counterproductive outcomes again, at the cost of many more lives.
Yet on 1 October 2024, Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon, alongside strikes on Beirut, Sidon and border villages. The IDF confirmed the action on Twitter/X, promising a “limited, localised and targeted” operation against “Hezbollah terrorist targets” in southern Lebanon. One US official noted that Israel had framed its 1982 invasion as a limited incursion, which eventually turned into an 18-year occupation.
Israeli strikes have since expanded all over the country. According to figures provided by the Lebanese Ministry of Public Heath on November 13, Israel is responsible for the deaths of at least 3365 people in Lebanon, including 216 children and 192 health workers. More than 14,000 people have been wounded, and more than one million have been displaced from their homes.
Since September 30, 47 Israeli troops have been killed in combat in Southern Lebanon. Around 45 civilians in northern Israel have died due to rocket fire from Lebanon.
So, on top of an economic crisis, runaway inflation, unaffordable food, increasing poverty, the port explosion and covid-19, the Lebanese people now face a war that shows little signs of stopping.
Analysts suggest there is little chance of a ceasefire while Israel retains its “maximalist” demands, which include a full surrender of Hezbollah and allowing Israel to continue to attack targets in southern Lebanon.
A senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Mohanad Hage Ali, believes Israel is feigning diplomacy to push the blame on Hezbollah. The best chance may come alongside a ceasefire in Gaza, but Israel shows little signs of negotiating meaningfully on that front either.
On September 26, the Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah BouHabib summarised the mood of the country in the wake of the pager attack:
“[N]obody expected the war to be taken in that direction. We Lebanese—we’ve had enough war. We’ve had fifteen years of war. . . .We’d like to live without war—happily, as a tourist country, a beautiful country, good food—and we are not able to do it. And so there is a lot of depression, especially with the latest escalation.”
In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Māori phrase “Kia kaha” means “stand strong”. If I could send a message from halfway across the world, it would be: “Kia kaha Lebanon. I look forward to the day I can visit you again, and munch on a yummy Za’atar man’ousheh while admiring the view from the beautiful Corniche Beirut.”
Joe Hendren holds a PhD in international business from the University of Auckland. He has more than 20 years of experience as a researcher, including work in the New Zealand Parliament, for trade unions and on various research projects. This is his first article for Asia Pacific Report. His blog can be found at http://joehendren.substack.com
Where I ate my Za’atar man’ousheh – Pigeon’s Rock, Corniche Beiruit
COP29 was always going to be memorable, for no other reason than the hosting country, Azerbaijan, is a petrostate indifferent to the issue of emissions and scornful of ecological preachers. It has seen its natural gas supply grow by 128% between 2000 and 2021. Between 2006 and 2021, gas exports rose by a monumental 29,290%. A dizzying 95% of the country’s exports are made up of oil and gas, with much of its wealth failing to trickle down to the rest of the populace.
The broadly described West, as stated by President Ilham Aliyev in his opening address to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was in no position to be lecturing his country about cutting back on the use of fossil fuels. They were, he grandly claimed, “a gift from God”. In this, he should have surprised no one. In April 2024, he declared that, as a leader of a country “which is rich in fossil fuels, of course, we will defend the right of these countries to continue investments and to continue production.”
A few days later, Aliyev played the other side of the climate change divide, suggesting at a meeting with island leaders that France and the Netherlands had been responsible for “brutally” suppressing the “voices” of communities in such overseas territories as Mayotte and Curaçao concerned with climate change. (Aliyev himself is no stranger to suppressing, with dedicated brutality, voices of dissent within his own country.) This proved too much for France’s Ecological Transition Minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, who cancelled her planned attendance to the summit while attacking Baku for “instrumentalising the fight against climate change for its undignified personal agenda.”
On the second day of the summit, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, tried to turn the attention of delegates to the urgent matter at hand. “The sound you hear is the ticking clock – we are in the final countdown to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, and time is not on our side.” Others, however, heard the sound of money changing hands, with the fossil fuel industry lurking, fangs and pens at the ready, presided over by the good offices of a petrostate.
In the background lie assessments of gloomy inevitability. The Climate Change Tracker’s November 2024 briefing notes this year was one characterised by “minimal progress, with almost no new national climate change targets (NDCs) or net zero pledges even though government have agreed to (urgently) strengthen their 2030 targets and to align them with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.”
As easy as it is to rage against the opportunistic Aliyev, who crudely blends environmentalism with ethnic cleansing, few attending the summit in Baku come with clean hands. As with previous COP events, Baku offers another enormous event of emitters and emission, featuring tens of thousands of officials, advisors and minders bloviating in conference. That said, the 67,000 registrants at this conference is somewhat lower compared with the 83,000 who descended on Dubai at COP28.
The plane tracking website FlightRadar24 noted that 65 private jets landed in the Azerbaijani capital prior to the summit, prompting Alethea Warrington, the head of energy, aviation and heat at Possible, a climate action charity, to tut with heavy disapproval: “Travelling by private jet is a horrendous waste of the world’s scarce remaining carbon budget, with each journey producing more emissions in a few hours than the average person around the world emits in an entire year.”
COP29 is also another opportunity to strike deals that have little to do with reducing emissions and everything to do with advancing the interests of lobby groups and companies in the energy market, much of it of a fossil fuel nature. In the spirit of Dubai, COP29 is set to follow in the footsteps of the wily Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who chaired COP28 in Dubai. Prior to the arrival of the chatterati of climate change last year, the Sultan was shown in leaked briefing documents to the BBC and the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) to be an avid enthusiast for advancing the business of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). It was hard to avoid the glaring fact that Al Jaber is also the CEO of Adnoc.
The documents in question involve over 150 pages of briefings prepared by the COP28 team for meetings with Jaber and various interested parties held between July and October this year. They point to plans to raise matters of commercial interest with as many as 30 countries. The CCR confirms “that on at least one occasion a nation followed up on commercial discussions brought up in a meeting with Al Jaber; a source with knowledge of discussions also told CCR that Adnoc’s business interests were allegedly raised during a meeting with another country.”
The COP29 chairman, Samir Nuriyev, had already put out feelers as early as March this year that a “fair approach” was needed when approaching countries abundant with oil and natural gas, notably in light of their purported environmental policies. He went so far as to argue that Azerbaijan was an ideal interlocutor between the Global South and Global North. His colleague and chief executive of the COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, showed exactly how that process would work in a secret recording ahead of the conference in which he discusses “investment opportunities” in the state oil and gas company with a person posing as a potential investor. (The person in question purported to be representing a fictitious Hong Kong investment firm with a sharp line in energy.) “We have a lot of gas fields that are to be developed,” Soltanov insists. “We will have a certain amount of oil and gas being produced, perhaps forever.”
In many ways, the Baku gathering has all the hallmarks of a criminal syndicate meeting, held under more open conditions. Fair play, then, to the Azerbaijani hosts for working out the climate change racket, taking the lead from Dubai last year. Aliyev and company noted months in advance that this was less a case of being a theatre of the absurd than a forum for business. And so, it is proving to be.
Rick Perlstein’s 2020 bestseller Reaganland is a must read for many reasons. First and foremost this 900 or so pages book reads like a novel. Perlstein is that great a storyteller. He covers the rise of the right wing in our nation, focusing from Jimmy Carter’s 1976-1980 presidency to Ronald Reagan’s nomination in 1980. As one reads on it is apparent that Donald Trump copied more than just Reagan’s Make America Great Again campaign slogan. Amazing how after almost 50 years nothing has really changed in Amerika. This writer never realized, for instance, that the 1980 Republican platform almost took on making abortion illegal … period. The candid and somewhat humorous point here is that before the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling in 1973, a woman who had the money and connections could get a private abortion. It was just that the lower income women in our nation most likely did not have the sources or the financial resources to have it done. Roe leveled that field.
Carter’s administration behaved much like most of the Democratic presidencies to follow him. Translated: sucking up to Wall Street and the War Cabal to the detriment to working stiffs. If you wanted progressive politics, then get on HG Well’s time machine and go back to FDR’s presidency. Clinton and Obama, and now Biden could not cut the cord from the Military Industrial Empire. Factoring out the indigent, which Democrats always bandage a bit, the Two Parties remain closer than ever. In the 1950s, one third of private sector workers belonged to unions. Since that time it has declined to the 6.3 % it was as of 2023. Sadly, the Democrats, whenever in power, did squat to strengthen that. What both parties have done is to continue to increase military spending to the kazoo. Thus, phony wars like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq 1 and 2 and Afghanistan just took away the safety net and gave it to the War Economy.
Having said all of this, I sadly saw so many of my working stiff fellow citizens either not voting at all or pulling the lever for Trump and his reactionaries. I voted for and stood by the utterly flawed Democrats and watched their ship sink. Clinton’s support for the Welfare Reform Bill and Telecommunications Act, Obama’s life support for the Subprime bandit banks and insurance companies, and Biden’s handouts of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel and Ukraine, while working stiffs get stiffed. So, beginning in January of 2025 Welcome to Reaganland 2!
My name is Sam. I am 52. I am doubly disabled. I am Autistic and I have been disabled with long Covid since 15 March 2020.
There are two parts to my disability experience. The first part is the disability itself. That’s really bad. The second part is how society treats me and people like me. That’s much worse. The UK is in deep denial about long Covid and about all disabilities. Society both ignores and shames me.
My feeling of social abandonment is total.
One in four people in the UK are disabled and our numbers are growing. Around 4% of the UK have long Covid. A recent survey showed that one third of all health care workers have long Covid symptoms. 1% of all kids have long Covid.
Long Covid continues to grow because of the deep denial.
Labour is proving to be much worse than we thought
Being disabled under a Tory government was awful. I had no idea that it would be so much worse under the Labour Party. You know that saying sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. It’s not true.
Something has happened to the Labour Party. They have become obsessed with economic growth. To Labour growth is the only metric of prosperity and success. As a consequence, paid work is now the only unit of worth. As soon as the general election was over, Keir Starmer was talking about the need to get the long-term sick into work and most Labour ministers on the media round started talking about ‘economic inactivity’.
Economic inactivity is a rather derisory and inaccurate name for people on benefits. It’s inaccurate because I receive DWP PIP, and every single penny of my benefit money re-enters the economy. Not only has Labour become obsessed with economic growth, they keep talking about wealth creation, like something out of the 1987 film Wall Street. For Labour, wealth creation may only be achieved through paid work. I started feeling that for Labour worklessness is worthlessness.
Writing in the Telegraph Keir Starmer said “hand outs from the state do not nurture the same sense of self-reliant dignity as a fair wage”. In one stroke, Starmer denigrated stay-at home-parents, carers and people on benefits. It’s a deeply conservative position, and devalues half of all contributions to society.
Chronically ill and disabled people are not scroungers
On 17 July, I posted this on Twitter:
The New Labour Government has created 2 tiers of people, people who do paid work are of value, people who create wealth and economic growth are to be celebrated. Everyone else is completely worthless. That’s the story they are telling. I have never felt less valued.
To my mind, a kind and virtuous society cares about people out of work for their own sake, a kind and virtuous society acknowledges that those who do unpaid work are valuable contributors to society, a kind and virtuous society acknowledges and makes space for disabled people and where possible tries to make them better and give them the best care. Labour isn’t behaving like a kind of virtuous society.
Here’s the thing, people with long Covid want to work. They want their health back. We can’t do that without treatments and medication. At present, the Labour government is doing nothing to help.
Recently, respiratory physician David Joffrey wrote:
It is crucial that issues around plans for rehabilitation and return to work strategies appreciate that the vast majority of long Covid patients will never achieve anything close to their prior function.
As the year has gone on, Labour politicians have been drip feeding more and more scare stories to the media.
Gaslighting and re-traumatising people with long Covid
Talk of migrating of all benefits into Universal Credit, reducing PIP to vouchers, cutting the benefit bill down. It emerged recently that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) launched a consultation on disability benefit cuts. It did so despite failing to work out how many of us would get a job as a result of having our benefits removed.
I was getting more and more upset. If it wasn’t Wes Streeting pushing weight-loss drugs on the overweight unemployed, it was Liz Kendall sending work coaches to see the mentally ill in hospital.
My friend Dr Jenny Ceolta-Smith has long Covid. On 21 October, Jenny made a video on the stigmatising language of economic inactivity and long Covid for the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People. The video was to be my inspiration.
A brilliant video by Dr Jenny Ceolta Smith @JCeoltaSmith made for the GM Disabled People's Panel event 'Good Employment for Disabled People' on the stigmatising language of 'economic inactivity' and Long Covid@long_covid@workingwithLChttps://t.co/GNyvYrDKCN
— Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (@GMCDP) October 21, 2024
Jenny asks:
Will there be a pathway within our Social Security system for us to live well, if we cannot work? Economic inactivity rhetoric causes us harm. It is distressing, fear inducing and has led some of us to have suicidal ideation.
Jenny reminds us that many people became disabled with long Covid in the workplace due to inadequate safeguards. And it’s not just the workplace I don’t feel safe in. I am being cut off from feeling safe when I go to the shops, to the doctors, to visit family.
My friend Anne has long Covid and she is losing her job because she is no longer being allowed to work from home. On 22 October, I woke up in profound distress. I was in tears, which is incredibly rare for me as an Autistic person.
I made a video in an attempt to explain what I have been experiencing.
Worthless and invisible
There’s a book called The Body Keeps The Score: it’s about how our bodies absorb and retain trauma. That’s what my video is about. I suddenly realised that a combination of the social abandonment and the toxicity of the Labour Party rhetoric has been making me feel worthless and invisible:
Hi, my name is Sam. I am 51. I have been disabled with #LongCovid for 4 and a half years. I have made a video about how the Labour Party's language around Economic Inactivity has made me feel worthless. I am in tears in this video, which is very rare for me, an autistic person.… pic.twitter.com/DXcf8vVUZL
So much so, that I have been neglecting to look after myself in the most basic ways.
I have been able to carry on being of service to my family but not to myself. For example, I have been forgetting to keep myself clean, let alone perform any personal grooming.
I have absorbed the Labour Party message that I lack the “same sense of self-reliant dignity”.
I’m crying as I write this.
I made a vow to try to look after myself a bit better. Let me tell you the results: I have been in a Long Covid crash ever since. I don’t have the energy to look after myself and cook the dinner and walk the dogs. I have had to spend a lot more time in bed during the day. I’m more disabled than I thought.
I have continued to feel upset. The video seems to have meant a lot to everyone who’s seen it. I wish the Labour cabinet was brave enough to watch it. The best feedback is from clinical psychologist, Dr Jay Watts:
What Sam captures so powerfully, though, are the quieter, equally devastating effects on our everyday lives—the struggle to feel worthy of basic self-care, like moisturizing our skin or nourishing our bodies. How can we care for ourselves if no one cares for us? Our interdependence, whether working or not, is not just about survival; it’s essential to our humanity, to our drive to live. Sam reminds us of the real cost when we let policies assign value to human lives.
Long Covid: are out lives cheaper than everyone else?
As I finish writing this, life seems cheaper than ever.
The minister for public health, Andrew Gwynne, has confirmed that Labour hasn’t bought any of the much-needed alternative Covid vaccine Novavax. If you’re clinically vulnerable, or susceptible to vaccine injury, your only option is to pay for it and travel to wherever it’s available.
Sadistic DWP Secretary Liz Kendall still won’t reveal if PIP payments will be replaced with vouchers.
I am more disabled than I thought.
I am so glad I have written this article, and it has taken a terrible toll. It has dramatically worsened by Long Covid neurological symptoms, and made me feel really ill. If it causes a few people to rediscover their humanity and make space for me in the world, it will have been worth it.
HSBC’s recently-announced plan to split into four businesses from Jan. 1 offers the British multinational bank a chance to correct a wrong against tens of thousands of Hong Kongers in the UK and Canada who have been denied access to their retirement savings.
The reorganization will create four HBC businesses: Hong Kong, UK, Corporate and Institutional Banking, and International Wealth and Premier Banking.
In the announcement, HSBC wrote that the restructuring “will reduce the duplication of processes and decision making that are built into the current structure and will result in greater alignment and agility in serving our customers.”
HSBC did not mention increasing difficulty dealing with the human rights environment in places like Hong Kong as reason for the shake up.
Outside observers, however, noted that the shake-up comes as the bank with a deep history in Asia was struggling to navigate rising geopolitical tensions between China and the west.
People sit outside the headquarters of HSBC in Hong Kong on Feb. 21, 2024.
The Guardian reported that the overhaul of the company “reflects historical complications in its global banking model. The bank makes most of its profits in Asia, but it remains headquartered in London, giving western leaders an opportunity to exert pressure over its relationship with the ruling Communist party in China.”
The New York Times also emphasised how the “changes come as Europe’s largest lender looks to cut costs and navigate a diplomatic minefield between China and the West.”
Diaspora retirement savings
People working on human rights in Hong Kong and among the diaspora that has fled the city’s tough new security regime in the last half decade are seizing on the restructuring to press HSBC to address the problem of more than 120,000 recent Hong Kong exiles who have been cut off from their retirement savings since 2021.
Hong Kong Watch has found that Hong Kongers were being denied access to over £3 billion (US$3.8 billion) of money they paid into the city’s retirement scheme, known as the Mandatory Provident Fund.
The MPF is a compulsory retirement savings scheme for the people of Hong Kong. Ordinarily, once a Hong Konger proves that they have permanently departed from Hong Kong, they are entitled to the early withdrawal of the full amount of their MPF savings.
The letters “MPF” light up on the exterior of Hong Kong Bank, Nov. 28, 2000, as a reminder of the upcoming implementation of Hong Kong’s Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) pension system.
However, after the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that it would no longer recognise British National (Overseas) (BNO) passports used by tens of thousands of Hong Kongers who moved to the UK and Canada.
The move, in retaliation to the UK government launching the BNO visa scheme in January 2021, has caused approximately 126,500 Hong Kongers around the world to be blocked from accessing an estimated £3.26 billion (US$4.1 billion) of their MPF savings.
The declaration by the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities was conducted by fiat, with no laws or regulations in Hong Kong changed in regards to the operation of the MPF.
HSBC continues to be one of 12 MPF trustees complicit in preventing the release of BNO Hong Kongers’ hard-earned savings.
As the largest trustee of the MPF, HSBC oversees five MPF schemes and manages approximately 30 percent of the total MPF market, with assets totalling HK$371 billion (£37 billion).
From this, Hong Kong Watch has estimated that HSBC is denying Hong Kongers access to as much as £978 million worth of assets in MPF holdings.
‘Financial transnational repression’
This week 13 Parliamentarians from every major political party in the UK wrote new HSBC Group Chief Executive Georges Elhedery urging him to resolve the frozen funds issue.
“As Members of Parliament, we welcome information on how the restructuring of HSBC, specifically the creation of separate ‘Hong Kong’ and ‘UK’ businesses, will impact the more than 180,000 BNO Hong Kongers living across the UK who attempt to withdraw their MPF savings,” said the letter.
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a signatory to the letter, called on HSBC to make “meaningful changes” for the affected Hong Kongers during the restructuring.
“If HSBC has not yet taken into account how its reorganisation, specifically in regard to the split between the Hong Kong and UK markets, will affect Hong Kongers abroad, it should carefully consider how to protect its Hong Kong customers from further financial transnational repression,” wrote Patten, a patron of Hong Kong Watch.
It has been nearly four years since the UK government launched the BNO scheme, which is far too long for Hong Kongers to be blocked from the very savings that, for some, would unleash the path to their new life in Britain.
A man bids farewell to relatives and friends at the Hong Kong airport as he and his family prepare to leave the city for England, on May 21, 2021.
I continue to hear accounts of struggle as Hong Kongers long to adjust to their new lives in the UK, including a single mom who is again worried about not being able to afford heating this winter, as well as one family which cannot afford accessibility features in their home for their child with disabilities.
HSBC must seriously consider how it will handle Hong Kongers’ MPF savings as they rearrange the foundations of the company to split the Hong Kong and UK markets, as it is time for their funds to be rightfully released.
In addition, the new UK government should seek to further understand the issue, raise the freezing of BNO Hong Kongers’ savings in every bilateral meeting with China and Hong Kong, and take immediate action to issue guidance to MPF trustees regarding the use of BNO passports as valid, UK government-issued identity documents.
This would ensure that Hong Kongers who are part of the UK’s BNO community do not have to face another cold winter nor a sleepless night trying to figure out how they will provide for their family while still in the shadow of trauma from escaping political repression in Hong Kong.
Megan Khoo is policy director at the international NGO Hong Kong Watch. Khoo, based in London, has served in communications roles at foreign policy non-profit organizations in London and Washington, D.C.. The views expressed here do not reflect the position of Radio Free Asia.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Megan Khoo.
I probably won’t be the first person to say this, and I expect it won’t be the last time I say this, but if I was a gambler I would be taking my NatWest piggy bank (circa 1984) — containing £6.46 and a few hair bands — down to the nearest betting shop and putting every single penny on the next general election resulting in a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party. Just.
Sure, it’s a long way out. Both establishment parties could well have new leadership, and the occasional surge in popularity for Reform UK, the Lib Dems, the SNP, and the Green Party could well fall by the wayside.
Then we are left with the same two failed, broken parties offering the same failed, broken ideology going toe-to-toe once again.
Starmer versus Badenoch: that non-Einstein quote again
It may well be one of the most overused cliches of all time, particularly in the political arena and often wrongly attributed to Albert Einstein, but “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and getting the same result, but expecting a different one”, has been true of the brainwashed British electorate for as long as I can remember.
Failing Keir Starmer performing a U-turn on a U-turn, and using his large, undeserved parliamentary majority to deliver a fairer way of ensuring the seats in parliament are reflective of the votes cast, such as proportional representation, we are stuck with the corporate elites wet dream, neoliberal Labour or hard-right Conservatism under the stewardship of Kemi Badenoch and whatever is left of the Tory cabal following their humiliating demise, earlier this year.
I would imagine Badenoch will be delighted to see her Tories ahead of the Labour government in the first opinion poll since she was crowned leader of the opposition.
At the same time, Badenoch must realise that she is simply the current beneficiary of the general public’s deep and burning hatred for Keir Starmer and his more-of-the-same politics that he promised to “change”, when seeking the votes of the general public back in July.
It’s not much different to the way Labour gained power. Nobody was particularly enthused by the prospect of a Labour government under the leadership of Keir Starmer, but after fourteen years of utter carnage you could’ve pinned a red rosette on Philip Schofield’s chest and still returned a Labour majority.
The only real difference with this lot is it has taken less than fourteen weeks for the public to find Keir Starmer undeniably guilty of being a lying, freeloading hypocrite of the very highest order.
A perpetual doom cycle under Labour?
Are we really now in a perpetual cycle of the least hated party taking power, every five years? I’m sure you will tell me that’s roughly how democracy works, but I am saying the lesser of two evils, Tory or Labour, is still evil.
Would it really be too much to hope for a government that the people want to vote into power because they have got something to offer, rather than a government the people want to vote out of power because they are so blatantly corrupt, dangerously inept, and somewhat detestable?
There is absolutely no doubt that apathy plays a huge part in the outcome of our general elections. Without apathy we could change the direction of this miserable country overnight, but the ruling classes that continue to spoon feed neoliberalism to the British people rely on your apathy to remain in power.
I’m not sure what it is about quotes today, but “one of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors”, has just popped up in my head.
I think that was Plato, the Brazilian centre forward that plays for Arsenal. Never let it be said that I don’t know my Plato’s from my plateau’s.
Didn’t he also say “the price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men”? This Plato guy makes Nostradamus look like Mystic Meg!
Vocal Starmerites are… entertaining…
The Starmerites have been particularly vocal over the past few days. One of the popular complaints from the slavishly servile right-of-centre recovering FBPEites (yes editor, I know that’s not a word) is some old nonsense about the media misrepresenting their prime minister.
What? The media not being entirely honest? This has shocked me to my core. If only somebody warned them that this might happen, then perhaps Keir Starmer would be detested for the lying worm that he is, rather than the lying worm that the media claim he is.
I’m just eternally grateful we had the unswerving and unequivocal support of Keir Starmer’s bought-and-paid-for careerist carpetbaggers during the Corbyn years, rather than ultimately ineffective timed resignations, designed to remove the democratically-elected Islington North MP and return the Labour Party to the corporate elite that we see so deeply ingrained in the genuinely rancid Labour Party of today.
Keir Starmer’s own popularity continues to head south, which isn’t a great shock following his nauseating Trump backpedaling and the clumsy attempt to out-Clegg the Tories on tuition fees, which was a rather spectacular own goal, even by the Labour newbies appalling standards
Keir Starmer still has less favourable personal approval ratings than the Tory with the racist donors, Badenoch, and the racist with the Tory donors, Farage, which really is a staggering achievement when you consider the Tory and Reform UK leaders have the combined charm of a vicar, furiously masturbating graveside while some poor old soul — most likely a victim of Starmer’s Winter Fuel Allowance cuts — has their coffin lowered into the ground.
Labour: a one-term Tory under Starmer?
Does Starmer have the potential to be a one-term-Tory?
The early signs are not pointing in a positive direction for the Poundshop Cameron, Keir Starmer. If the man just had something that even slightly resembled a charisma he would have a Plan B to fall back on when all else fails.
Rishi Sunak had similar problems, and a Liz Truss speech always had me thinking of a Most Haunted Live Ouija board trying to spiritually connect with Margaret Thatcher, somewhere in the darkest pits of hell.
If one of the Labour cabinet’s private healthcare lobbyist donors can book Starmer in for some sort of charisma bypass, Labour may well have a sniff of a chance of a workable majority in 2029.
Keir Starmer, the one-term-Tory? I honestly wouldn’t bet against it. Stranger things have happened before, and even stranger things will happen in the future.
Myanmar’s military dictator, Min Aung Hlaing, returned from a five-day trip to China, his first since the February 2021 coup, with promises of further Chinese assistance, in a desperate attempt to shore up his flailing regime and bankrupt economy.
Min Aung Hlaing was invited to attend the 8th Greater Mekong Subregion Forum, and was kept confined to Kunming, the capital of neighboring Yunnan province.
Though he failed to get the legitimizing meeting with Xi Jinping that he had hoped for, he held talks with Prime Minister Li Qiang.
The junta chief had one overriding priority: securing additional Chinese military assistance.
The junta leader pledged that he was ready to sit down and talk peace with the opposition, but only “if they genuinely want peace” – i.e. stop fighting.
There were other matters on his agenda.
Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, left, shakes hands with China’s Premier Li Qiang during the Greater Mekong Subregion Summit in Kunming in China’s Yunnan province, Nov. 6, 2024.
Min Aung Hlaing met with the prime ministers of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. It was the first time since the coup that the State Administrative Council – as the junta is formally known – enjoyed such diplomatic legitimization.
The junta chief also met with Chinese businessmen and state-owned enterprises, promising an array of tax holidays in return for investments in energy, infrastructure or electric vehicle projects.
So desperate for investment, Min Aung Hlaing promised that all projects could be funded with yuan, rather than U.S. dollars. Despite traveling to China with a large contingent of military-backed businessmen, he returned home with no firm commitments of investment.
China continues to push for a ceasefire and has backed progress towards national elections.
At the same time, Beijing has stepped up support for the military, which may have been the justification for the Oct. 18 grenade attack at their consulate in Mandalay.
Anti-Chinese sentiment has never been higher among the opposition and citizenry.
Military personnel stand guard as hundreds of refugees crossed over the river frontier between Myanmar and Thailand in Mae Sot, Tak province, Thailand, April 2024.
Border trade, railway construction
Li Qiang had two inter-connected priorities in his meeting with Min Aung Hlaing.
The first was the reopening of border trade, which China had shut to pressure the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Three Brotherhood Alliance, who control almost all border crossings, to stop their offensive.
The second was the start of construction of the rail line and highway from the Chinese border town of Ruili to the Chinese concession in Kyaukphyu, where Chinese firms are constructing a special economic zone and deep-water intermodal port.
In the face of potential tensions with the United States, the Andaman Sea port is a strategic priority for Beijing that fears the U.S. ability to block the Strait of Malacca.
The KIA and the Three Brotherhood Alliance continue to defy China, despite the economic damage to the local population, which is highly dependent on border trade.
As of now only one of five official border posts, Mongla, is open. China has not restored electricity and internet service to many of the border towns as punishment.
Under Chinese pressure, the Myanmar National Defense Alliance Army (MNDAA), had to publicly distance themselves from the National Unity Government (NUG), the shadow opposition government.
And yet they continue to defy Beijing, both continuing their military operations and coordination with the NUG.
People walk though a market area on Sept. 10, 2024, as it’s being rebuilt in Lashio in Myanmar’s northern Shan state, after the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) seized the town from Myanmar’s military in August.
Since July, the KIA has captured 12 more towns and has started to establish administrative control over the entire border region, having taken the last border crossing after defeating a border guards force loyal to the junta in Chipwi.
Beyond the border region, the KIA continues operations around the jade mining town of Hpakant. It has also captured six towns in Sagaing and Northern Shan state.
Counter-offensive
The military has stepped up its counter-offensive in Northern Shan state. Communities have experienced intensified aerial bombing while there has been a growing ground offensive in Nawnghkio township, which is under the control of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).
Nawnghkio puts the TNLA in the artillery range of the symbolically important city of Pyin Oo Lwin, the home of the elite Defense Service Academy, where all officers are educated.
There are reports of the military regime building up their defenses around the city, including new trenches and increased checkpoints.
Despite the increased fighting, the military has had a rough time against well-dug-in MNDAA and TNLA forces.
The military has put more effort into retaking lost territory around Loikkaw in Kayah state, taking advantage of diminished stockpiles of ammunition among the opposition.
In western Myanmar, the Arakan Army continues their assault on Ann township, the headquarters of the Western Military Region, which began on Sept. 26.
While the town has not fallen, the military has had to mobilize a lot of reinforcements. In the process they lost one of their few Mi17 heavy lift helicopters to ground fire.
Chin resistance forces in neighboring Chin state have reportedly captured some retreating military forces.
The Arakan Army has not seized Kyaukphyu but holds all the surrounding territory. The force currently controls 10 of Rakhine state’s 17 townships.
The junta military is now stockpiling men and equipment in Gwa, the southernmost city in Rakhine, for a counter-offensive north along the coastal highway to retake lost territory and take off pressure from their beleaguered forces in Ann.
In early November, the Burma People’s Liberation Army (BPLA) and Karen National Liberation Army captured 17 soldiers and killed 14 more in skirmishes near Hpapun township in Karen state, after taking a military base on the Thai border the previous week.
Over-reliance on airpower
The brunt of the military’s operations has been in the ethnic majority Bamar heartland. With the BLPA expanding their footprint in the region, the military has acted with utmost barbarity, massacring civilians, arsoning homes, and leaving heads on stakes in Budalin village in Sagaing.
With improvements in their own drone technology, the junta’s forces are starting to grind back lost territory. Drones are now used in almost all operations, with improved effectiveness.
Despite the augmentation by conscripts, they are facing defections, surrenders with a growing number of people evading conscription altogether.
The regime’s number three, who is in charge of the conscription program, has publicly threatened punishments for those who evade mandatory service.
People gather around a destroyed building following an airstrike in Namhkham township in Myanmar’s northern Shan state, Sept. 6, 2024.
The military is increasingly reliant on air power, which has led to the death of over 540 civilians and 200 schools in the first 10 months of 2024, alone. The most recent strike targeted the ruby-mining town of Mogoke, which the TNLA seized in July.
But opposition gains have put those airbases in range. On November 5, a drone dropped a bomb at the airport in Naypyidaw soon after Min Aung Hlaing and his delegation departed for Kunming. On November 11, opposition forces fired rockets into the Shan Te airbase in Meiktila township.
Meiktila is a major military hub with several bases and defense industries, and the airbase is the hub of Air Force operations in northern Shan, Kachin, Sagaing and Sagaing regions.
There is now satellite evidence that the military is making improvements to a small airfield in Pakokku, just across the Irrawaddy River to the southwest of Myingyan, a major logistic and energy transit hub in Mandalay province where opposition forces have stepped up attacks.
The regime appears to be moving to smaller airfields in strongholds, which would allow it to save fuel in operations. It also suggests that they are increasingly reliant on riverine transportation to get jet fuel safely delivered.
Now in the dry season, the military sees a window of opportunity to regain territory lost since Operation 1027 began a year ago. Min Aung Hlaing has secured additional Chinese assistance, despite Beijing’s misgiving about his competence.
But that support may be insufficient across so many distinct battlefields, against an opposition that has demonstrated their refusal to kowtow to Beijing.
Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or Radio Free Asia.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Zachary Abuza.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state is likely to send a jolt of excitement to beleaguered democrats and opposition forces in Southeast Asia’s authoritarian states.
Over the past five or so years, Rubio has co-authored almost every congressional bill on human rights in Southeast Asia.
He co-introduced the Cambodia Democracy and Human Rights Act in 2022, stating at the time that “the Hun Sen dictatorship destroyed democracy in Cambodia and allowed the nation to be exploited by the Chinese Communist Party.” He reintroduced the bill in 2023.
In 2020, Rubio appealed to the State Department to designate Vietnam a “country of particular concern” for abuse of religious freedom, noting that “the only way to realize the full potential of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship is to press them to take serious steps to improve the human rights situation in Vietnam.”
A year earlier, he co-introduced the Vietnam Human Rights Sanctions Act to the Senate, which, had it passed, would have pressured the White House to impose “sanctions and travel restrictions on Vietnamese nationals complicit in human rights abuses.”
He was critical of the Obama administration’s rush to renormalize ties with Myanmar’s semi-military government in the early 2010s, and unabashed in saying the Burmese military orchestrated a “genocide” against the Rohingya.
Cambodia’s Senate President Hun Sen walks past an honor guard in Phnom Penh on April 3, 2024.
In 2021, he was one of six senators to call on the Biden administration to impose much tougher sanctions on the military junta that took power in Myanmar through a coup in February that year.
In 2017, he tried to introduce legislation to restrict the export of defense articles to the Philippines in response to then-President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal and illegal war on drugs. The same year, he challenged U.S. Secretary of State Nominee Rex Tillerson to pressure Duterte about his “human rights violations.”
China-hawk
Rubio is principally known as a China-hawk, and he has been blacklisted by Beijing in retaliation for U.S. sanctions on Chinese officials for the genocide against the Uyghur ethnic minority and for the crackdown in Hong Kong.
He has co-sponsored numerous bills against the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights violations, including the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Reauthorization Act and numerous Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Reauthorization Acts.
Last year, he introduced the Deterring Chinese Preemptive Strikes Act to strengthen American air bases in the Indo-Pacific region. He was the arch-campaigner against TikTok and Huawei, and for the past decade has fought resolutely to bring attention against Beijing’s genocide of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang region.
However, a blinkered China-hawk who perceives all foreign relations through the Beijing prism would not have sponsored resolutions condemning the Communist Party of Vietnam, which the “realists” in the Biden administration courting Hanoi treated as an ally beyond reproach.
Rubio’s actions indicate he knows that America cannot be indolent about the sins of its friends.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies at a Senate committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Jan. 31, 2024.
Perhaps he has tempered some of his views, but Rubio would appear to be instinctively interventionist and instinctively knows that America has a duty to not only promote global prosperity but also global liberty.
During Trump’s first term, Rubio co-sponsored legislation to make it harder for the U.S. to withdraw from NATO.
His more controversial comments about the Ukraine war – ”I’m not on Russia’s side, but unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement’ – can be read in multiple, not all isolationist, ways.
Promoting values
Even if the senator who has been outspoken on human rights has to temper his views while serving as the top U.S. diplomat, it will still be heartening to have a U.S. secretary of state who has spent as much time with Southeast Asian dissidents, exiles and opposition politicians as with government officials and chambers of commerce.
It will be positive to have an American foreign affairs chief who knows Cambodia is a “dictatorship,” who says Myanmar’s generals committed “genocide,” and who called out Duterte’s drug war for human rights violations.
At least since the Obama administration, there’s been a tendency to appoint senior Asia officials who spent considerable time in the region. This brought expertise, but it also brought a certain mindset from those who previously “had to get along with” the region’s tyrannical regimes.
Sen. Marco Rubio speaks to the media after a classified briefing for senators about the latest unknown objects shot down by the U.S. military, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Feb. 14, 2023.
If Trump was isolationist and transactional in his first term, there’s been a temptation by the Biden administration to single-mindedly focus on alliance building against China, without sufficient thought for the local inhabitants of those allies.
Indeed, it’s difficult to exaggerate not just how little the Biden administration did for human rights in Southeast Asia as his foreign policy pursued realpolitik goals.
Rubio’s record suggests he will remind U.S. leaders and diplomats why they are effectively fighting a new Cold War against China – it isn’t only about trade margins and tariffs and spheres of influence.
If he is able to temper Trump’s transactional instincts toward foreign leaders no matter how unsavory, Rubio is someone who could pursue a more muscular foreign policy against China without forgetting that key values are a factor in the rivalry.
David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. He writes theWatching Europe In Southeast Asianewsletter. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by David Hutt.
With the protest hīkoi from the Far North moving through Rotorua on its way to Wellington, it might be said ACT leader David Seymour has been granted his wish of generating an “important national conversation about the place of the Treaty in our constitutional arrangements”.
Timed to coincide with the first reading of the contentious Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill yesterday — it passed with a vote of 68-55, the hīkoi and other similar protests are a response to what many perceive as a fundamental threat to New Zealand’s fragile constitutional framework.
With no upper house, nor a written constitution, important laws can be fast-tracked or repealed by a simple majority of Parliament.
As constitutional lawyer and former prime minister Geoffrey Palmer has argued about the current government’s legislative style and speed, the country “is in danger of lurching towards constitutional impropriety”.
Central to this ever-shifting and contested political ground is te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi. For decades it has been woven into the laws of the land in an effort to redress colonial wrongs and guarantee a degree of fairness and equity for Māori.
There is a significant risk the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill would undermine these achievements, as it attempts to negate recognised rights within the original document and curtail its application in a modern setting.
But while the bill is almost guaranteed to fail because of the other coalition parties’ refusal to support it beyond the select committee, there is another danger. Contained in an explanatory note within the bill is the following clause:
The Bill will come into force if a majority of electors voting in a referendum support it. The Bill will come into force 6 months after the date on which the official result of that referendum is declared.
Were David Seymour to argue his bill has been thwarted by the standard legislative process and must be advanced by a referendum, the consequences for social cohesion could be significant.
The referendum option While the bill would still need to become law for the referendum to take place, the option of putting it to the wider population — either as a condition of a future coalition agreement or orchestrated via a citizens-initiated referendum — should not be discounted.
One recent poll showed roughly equal support for and against a referendum on the subject, with around 30 percent undecided. And Seymour has had success in the past with his End of Life Choice Act referendum in 2020.
He will also have watched the recent example of Australia’s Voice referendum, which aimed to give a non-binding parliamentary voice to Indigenous communities but failed after a heated and divisive public debate.
The lobby group Hobson’s Pledge, which opposes affirmative action for Māori and is led by former ACT politician Don Brash, has already signalled its intention to push for a citizens-initiated referendum, arguing: “We need to deliver the kind of message that the Voice referendum in Australia delivered.”
The Treaty and the constitution ACT’s bill is not the first such attempt. In 2006, the NZ First Party — then part of a Labour-led coalition government — introduced the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill.
That bill failed, but the essential argument behind it was that entrenching Treaty principles in law was “undermining race relations in New Zealand”. However, ACT’s current bill does not seek to delete those principles, but rather to define and restrain them in law.
This would effectively begin to unpick decades of careful legislative work, threaded together from the deliberations of the Waitangi Tribunal, the Treaty settlements process, the courts and Parliament.
would reduce the constitutional status of the Treaty/te Tiriti, remove its effect in law as currently recognised in Treaty clauses, limit Māori rights and Crown obligations, hinder Māori access to justice, impact Treaty settlements, and undermine social cohesion.
If this Bill were to be enacted, it would be the worst, most comprehensive breach of the Treaty/te Tiriti in modern times. If the Bill remained on the statute book for a considerable time or was never repealed, it could mean the end of the Treaty/te Tiriti.
Social cohesion at risk
Similar concerns have been raised by the Ministry of Justice in its advice to the government. In particular, the ministry noted the proposal in the bill may negate the rights articulated in Article II of the Treaty, which affirms the continuing exercise of tino rangatiratanga (self-determination):
Any law which fails to recognise the collective rights given by Article II calls into question the very purpose of the Treaty and its status in our constitutional arrangements.
The government has also been advised by the Ministry of Justice that the bill may lead to discriminatory outcomes inconsistent with New Zealand’s international legal obligations to eliminate discrimination and implement the rights of Indigenous peoples.
All of these issues will become heightened if a referendum, essentially about the the removal of rights guaranteed to Māori in 1840, is put to the vote.
Of course, citizens-initiated referendums are not binding on a government, but they carry much politically persuasive power nonetheless. And this is not to argue against their usefulness, even on difficult issues.
But the profound constitutional and wider democratic implications of the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill, and any potential referendum on it, should give everyone pause for thought at this pivotal moment.
I have no blindingly insightful analysis to offer about Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party and the establishment portion of the Republican Party but here’s my tentative take: The presidential election wasn’t a vote for fascism or even a vote for Trump. My sense is that a sizable number of voters were saying “I don’t like Trump and I know my life won’t be better under him — but I’m voting for him or not voting at all.”
White folks in rural Iowa, Black voters in Detroit and Puerto Ricans in nearly Allentown found an opportunity to, in the words of Professor Keeanga-Yamantta Taylor, to “give the finger, to thumb your nose at the status quo…” Even NYTimes David Brooks surprised me with his op-ed “Voters to Elite: Do You See Me Now?” And in a PBS interview, Brooks acknowledged that race and gender had receded in salience as class was on the rise.
It’s hard to say what part foreign policy played in the election but a pollster cited by Gabriel Winant in Dissent, found that younger voters believe that America is “a dying empire led by bad people.” We do know that if Harris had been elected we’d simply have a female face fronting the US role in genocide. This would not be unlike the female Golda “Palestinians Are Cockroaches” Meir leading the colonial setter state of Israel. And Harris would have continued the conflict in Ukraine, the U.S. proxy war provoked against Russia that could have been avoided. As of mid-September 2024, it’s estimated the one million people have have been killed or wounded in this war. This affirms what Mike Parenti once argued that what matters is not what’s between the loins but between the ears.
To be sure, the vote was not transactional but it was evidence that the poor and working class have simply stopped believing the mainstream media lies and have only contempt for politicians who hector and patronize them, calling them “deployables” and “garbage.” This disdain extends to the institutions of government that have lost their legitimacy. For Blacks, it includes the Black misleadership class like the condescending Obamas and the sell-outs in Congress like Clyburn and Jeffries who “go along to get along.” In Philadelphia, where over 50 percent of Black people are living in poverty, the Black mayor confidently predicted that 680,000 votes would be cast for Kamala Harris. She received 547,000.
Nationwide, some half of those of eligible voting age abstained from the process. Here I think that the astute political analyst Garland Nixon is on to something when he suggests that pollsters not only include “likely” voters but also “unlikely” ones. I’d wager that we’d find tens of millions of people who’ve given up on politics because they know it has nothing to offer them. I mention this because these data would not only honestly flesh out the national narrative but highlight the grievances of a segment of the population that could potentially alter the country’s future.
Those pulling the puppet strings of our duopoly fear rule by the people and because their first allegiance is to maintaining the capitalist system — the ultimate cause of our crisis — they have no answers, only more misdirection. After the tone-deaf, reality-denying Democrats finish their ritualistic circular firing squad, the DNC will begin looking to 2028. Perhaps this time they’ll settle on a Gavin Newsom or a Josh Shapiro. We can hope so because that will prefigure the final death knell of the Democratic Party.
We are entering an immensely dangerous period with the moral monsters of late-stage capitalism thrashing about in our midst. But this is also a time of great opportunity to begin creating a mass working class party. We can’t squander the chance.
There’s an old Republican saying: “A government strong enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take away everything you have.”
Donald Trump, now set to become the 47th U.S. president in January, may have won over small-government voters with a good deal of flummery, but his vision is in fact draconian.
And that vision is likely to apply to foreign relations, showing allies like Ukraine and Taiwan that a United States strong enough to give other countries what they want is strong enough to take away all they need.
In Southeast Asia, the Philippines could become another casualty of Trumpian uninterest and selfishness.
As one of the least trade-dependent states in Asia, the Philippines might not be as panicked as others by Trump’s proposal of a blanket 10-20% tariff on imports from all countries.
However, as a U.S. treaty ally that depends on American support in its increasingly tense confrontation with Beijing over the South China Sea, Manila is all too aware that it may now have to go it alone.
A Chinese coast Guard ship, left, collides with the Philippine Coast Guard ship BRP Teresa Magbanua near the Sabina Shoal in the South China Sea, Aug. 31, 2024.
Until January rolls around, one has to work on speculation about what Trump might do.
The conventional wisdom is that he will be a far more effective executive this time around, with more knowledge of how to navigate the corridors of power and unshackled from the “adults in the room” who tempered his basest instincts during his first term.
This should mean that he will get his way on economic promises, which reflect the fact that, as one veteran commentator put it this week, “Trump has no real economic agenda beyond clawing back jobs from Asia.”
Weakening economic growth
His proposed tariffs would certainly weaken economic growth in Southeast Asia, a region where the average trade-to-gross domestic product ratio is 90 percent, double the global average, according to the Hinrich Foundation.
Oxford Economics reckons “non-China Asia” could see exports fall by 3%.
On the other hand, there are people in the region who assume that because China would be Trump’s main target, the rest of Asia may benefit from Beijing’s troubles.
Even then, some countries, particularly Vietnam, have gotten away with allowing Chinese goods to be re-routed through its markets to be re-exported to the U.S. allowing Chinese exporters to bypass tariffs.
This is one reason for the massive trade surplus Vietnam has with the U.S. In 2019, Trump branded Vietnam the “worst abuser” of U.S. trade – at a time when its trade surplus with America stood at $55 million. It rose to $104 million last year.
BYD electric cars for export wait to be loaded onto a ship at a port in Yantai, in China’s Shandong province, April 18, 2024.
The apparent benefit of hedging between the U.S. and China is that it allows neutral Southeast Asian states space to react to changing events elsewhere.
This is, presumably, one of those moments.
However, the logic behind hedging is that both the United States and China are equally vying for influence. What happens if one actively tries to retreat?
Perhaps the mistake was to think that the first Trump presidency, not the Biden presidency, was the aberration of American statecraft in the 21st century.
Groveling and flattery
Still, we cannot pretend that American foreign policy showed any great success under the Biden administration. It will be best remembered for failing to deter not only U.S. rivals – Russia, China and Iran – but also its friend in Israel.
In Southeast Asia, Washington’s no-policy-at-all stance on Myanmar has allowed the civil war to escalate and China to become the only foreign actor with any real influence.
It allowed relations with Malaysia to sour over Gaza and let Hanoi dictate the trajectory of U.S.-Vietnam relations.
The U.S. failed to even show up to regional events in the latter years of Biden, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework offered to compete with China was a dud.
Arguably, the biggest achievement was a more productive relationship with the Philippines and clarity over defense in the South China Sea – but that was only because Ferdinand Marcos Jr. won the Philippine presidency in 2022, reset relations and gifted Washington a diplomatic victory.
Yet no Southeast Asian leader will look forward to having to grovel before Trump, hoping to win his attention through flattery and backslapping.
A man stands in a bomb crater at a camp for internally displaced people after junta airstrikes near Pekon township in Myanmar’s south Shan state on Sept. 6, 2024.
Malaysia and Indonesia will now have to expect a response from Washington when they accuse it of collaborating with alleged genocide in the Middle East.
Vietnam can no longer expect there to be sensible people in the State Department who understand why it adopts “bamboo diplomacy” of balancing ties with the U.S., China and Russia.
Singapore, the trusted interlocutor between the East and the West, will have a much more difficult time explaining local sensitivities to Trump’s cabinet.
Failure to prepare
One shouldn’t underestimate the disruption that Trump might wreck on Southeast Asia. But that ought not excuse governments in the region for failing to prepare.
Asia might have been a little more resilient against a second Trump presidency if Japan and South Korea weren’t facing their own political crises; if Beijing ran its economy with more agility; if Thailand wasn’t in a constant state of political turmoil; or if ASEAN aspired to a little more than just reaching joint statements.
Indeed, things would be less dire if there was a little more of the selflessness and internationalism that others rightly condemn Trump for lacking.
Japan’s idea of an “Asian NATO” is sensible but won’t happen because of “dichotomies and divergence in country interests,” as the Philippines’ defense chief Gilberto Teodoro put it recently.
Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, right, and China’s Premier Li Qiang hug as they pose for photos during a meeting in Hanoi on Oct. 13, 2024.
Why won’t Vietnam, for instance, call out Beijing when it threatens its neighbors’ interests?
Most epochs are defined by at least one existential anxiety.
In Southeast Asia, at least since the early 2010s, it has been defined by two: the rise of China’s power and the decline of America’s. Trump’s victory will accelerate the latter but, possibly, may also impede the former.
If there is a saving grace for countries imperiled by the threat of invasion or attack by Beijing, it is that Trump’s proposed 60% tariffs on all Chinese imports could so weaken China’s economy that war becomes less likely.
David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. He writes the Watching Europe In Southeast Asianewsletter. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by David Hutt.
As thousands take to the streets this week to “honour” the country’s 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, the largest daily newspaper New Zealand Herald says the massive event is “redefining activism”.
The Hīkoi mō te Tiriti has been underway since Sunday, with thousands of New Zealanders from all communities and walks of life traversing the more than 2000 km length of the country from Cape Reinga to Bluff and converging on the capital Wellington.
The marches are challenging the coalition government Act Party’s proposed Treaty Principles Bill, introduced last week by co-leader David Seymour.
The Bill had its first reading in Parliament today as a young first time opposition Te Pāti Māori MP, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, was suspended for leading a haka and ripping up a copy of the Bill disrupting the vote, and opposition Labour Party’s Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson was also “excused” from the chamber for calling Seymour a “liar” against parliamentary rules.
After a second attempt at voting, the three coalition parties won 68-55 with all three opposition parties voting against.
In its editorial today, hours before the debate and vote, The New Zealand Herald said supporters of Toitū te Tiriti, the force behind the Hīkoi, were seeking a community “reconnection” and described their kaupapa as an “activation, not activism; empowerment, not disruption; education, not protest”.
“Many of the supporters on the Hīkoi don’t consider themselves political activists. They are mums and dads, rangatahi, professionals, Pākehā, and Tauiwi (other non-Māori ethnicities),” The Herald said.
‘Loaded, colonial language’ “Mainstream media is often accused of using ‘loaded, colonial language’ in its headlines. Supporters of Toitū te Tiriti, however, see the movement not as a political protest but as a way to reconnect with the country’s shared history and reflect on New Zealand’s obligations under Te Tiriti.
“While some will support the initiative, many Pākehā New Zealanders are responding to it with unequivocal anger; others feel discomfort about suggestions of colonial guilt or inherited privilege stemming from historical injustices.”
“Seymour argues he is fighting for respect for all, but when multiculturalism is wielded as a political tool, it can obscure indigenous rights and maintain colonial dominance. For many, it’s an unsettling ideology to contemplate,” the newspaper said.
“A truly multicultural society would recognise the unique status of tangata whenua, ensuring Māori have a voice in decision-making as the indigenous people.
“However, policies framed under ‘equal rights’ often silence Māori perspectives and undermine the principles of Te Tiriti.
“Seymour’s proposed Treaty Principles Bill prioritises Crown sovereignty, diminishing the role of hapū (sub-tribes) and excluding Māori from national decision-making. Is this the ‘equality’ we seek, or is it a rebranded form of colonial control?”
Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke . . . led a haka and tore up a copy of Seymour’s Bill in Parliament. Image: TVNZ screenshot APR
Heart of the issue
The heart of the issue, said The Herald, was how “equal” was interpreted in the context of affirmative action.
“Affirmative action is not about giving an unfair advantage; it’s about levelling the playing field so everyone has equal opportunities.
“Some politicians sidestep the real work needed to honour Te Tiriti by pushing for an ‘equal’ and ‘multicultural’ society. This approach disregards Aotearoa’s unique history, where tangata whenua hold a constitutionally recognised status.
“The goal is not to create division but to fulfil a commitment made more than 180 years ago and work towards a partnership based on mutual respect. We all have a role to play in this partnership.
“The Hīkoi mō te Tiriti is more than a march; it’s a movement rooted in education, healing, and building a shared future.
“It challenges us to look beyond superficial equality and embrace a partnership where all voices are heard and the mana (authority) of tangata whenua is upheld.”
The first reading of the bill was advanced in a failed attempt to distract from the impact of the national Hikoi.
RNZ reports that more than 40 King’s Counsel lawyers say the Bill seeks to “rewrite the Treaty itself” and have called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and the coalition government to “act responsibly now and abandon” the draft law.
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
—James Madison
Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Unadulterated power in any branch of government is a menace to freedom, but concentrated power across all three branches is the very definition of tyranny: a dictatorship disguised as democracy.
When one party dominates all three branches of government—the executive, the legislative, and the judicial—there is even more reason to worry.
There’s no point debating which political party would be more dangerous with these powers.
This is true no matter which party is in power.
This is particularly true in the wake of the 2024 election.
Already, Donald Trump, who promised to be a dictator on “day one,” is advancing plans to further undermine the nation’s already vulnerable system of checks and balances.
To be fair, this is not a state of affairs that can be blamed exclusively on Trump.
America’s founders intended our system of checks and balances to serve as a bulwark against centralized power being abused.
As constitutional scholar Linda Monk explains, “Within the separation of powers, each of the three branches of government has ‘checks and balances’ over the other two. For instance, Congress makes the laws, but the President can veto them, and the Supreme Court can declare them unconstitutional. The President enforces the law, but Congress must approve executive appointments and the Supreme Court rules whether executive action is constitutional. The Supreme Court can strike down actions by both the legislative and executive branches, but the President nominates Supreme Court justices, and the Senate confirms or denies their nominations.”
Unfortunately, our system of checks and balances has been strained to the breaking point for years now, helped along by those across the political spectrum who, in marching in lockstep with the Deep State, have conspired to advance the government’s agenda at the expense of the citizenry’s constitutional rights.
By “government,” I’m not referring to the farce that is the highly partisan, two-party, bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.
This is exactly the kind of concentrated, absolute power the founders attempted to guard against by establishing a system of checks of balances that separate and shares power between three co-equal branches.
Yet as law professor William P. Marshall concludes, “The system of checks and balances that the Framers envisioned now lacks effective checks and is no longer in balance. The implications of this are serious. The Framers designed a system of separation of powers to combat government excess and abuse and to curb incompetence. They also believed that, in the absence of an effective separation-of-powers structure, such ills would inevitably follow. Unfortunately, however, power once taken is not easily surrendered.”
The outcome of the 2024 elections is not a revolutionary bid to recalibrate a government run amok. Rather, this is a Deep State coup to stay in power, and Donald Trump is the vehicle by which it will do so.
In fact, during Trump’s first term, the Department of Justice quietly trotted out and tested a long laundry list of terrifying powers to override the Constitution. We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die…
Bear in mind, however, that these powers the Trump Administration, acting on orders from the police state, officially asked Congress to recognize and authorize barely scratch the surface of the far-reaching powers the government has unilaterally claimed for itself.
Unofficially, the police state has been riding roughshod over the rule of law for years now without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts, the president, or the citizenry.
This is why the Constitution’s system of checks and balances is so critical.
Those who wrote our Constitution sought to ensure our freedoms by creating a document that protects our God-given rights at all times, even when we are engaged in war, whether that is a so-called war on terrorism, a so-called war on drugs, a so-called war on illegal immigration, or a so-called war on disease.
The attempts by each successive presidential administration to rule by fiat merely plays into the hands of those who would distort the government’s system of checks and balances and its constitutional separation of powers beyond all recognition.
Set in the year 2020, V for Vendetta (written and produced by the Wachowskis) provides an eerie glimpse into a parallel universe in which a totalitarian government that knows all, sees all, controls everything, and promises safety and security above all comes to power by capitalizing on the people’s fear.
Concentration camps (jails, private prisons and detention facilities) are established to house political prisoners and others deemed to be enemies of the state. Executions of undesirables (extremists, troublemakers and the like) are common, while other enemies of the state are made to “disappear.” Populist uprisings and protests are met with extreme force. The television networks are controlled by the government with the purpose of perpetuating the regime. And most of the population is hooked into an entertainment mode and are clueless.
In V for Vendetta, as in my novel The Erik Blair Diaries, the subtext is that authoritarian regimes—through a vicious cycle of manipulation, oppression and fear-mongering—foment violence, manufacture crises, and breed terrorists, thereby giving rise to a recurring cycle of blowback and violence.
Only when the government itself becomes synonymous with the terrorism wreaking havoc in their lives do the people to finally mobilize and stand up to the government’s tyranny.
V, a bold, charismatic freedom fighter, urges the British people to rise up and resist the government. In Vendetta, V the film’s masked crusader blows up the seat of government on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, ironically enough the same day that Trump won his landslide return to the White House.
Yet there the comparison ends.
So, while we are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs, this year’s electoral victory for Republicans was no win for the Constitution.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the Deep State works best through imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—who rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.
This story was co-published with In These Timeson Nov. 12, 2024.
It was a little after 1 a.m. when I left The Real News Network studio in downtown Baltimore.
Nervous optimism gave way to worry, worry gave way to disbelief, disbelief gave way to anger, anger gave way to fear—and then grief.
Our team spent the whole night there, anxiously watching the election results roll in. With each update — Republicans win a majority in the Senate, Trump wins North Carolina, then Georgia, then Pennsylvania — reality began setting in, hardening like concrete. Nervous optimism gave way to worry, worry gave way to disbelief, disbelief gave way to anger, anger gave way to fear — and then grief.
The race was still too close to call at the time, and as I got into my car, running through the remaining-but-rapidly-shrinking paths to victory that were still, for the time being, open to Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats, my phone dinged with a social media notification: “@maximillian.alvarez saved this post to laugh at you hahahaha hope you’re crying tonight. 2024 trump LFGGGG.”
The post this person was responding to was 32 weeks old—he’d been waiting a long time to get that dig in.
The post this person was responding to was 32 weeks old — he’d been waiting a long time to get that dig in. Doing so clearly meant something to him, and former President Donald Trump’s triumphal return to power gave him the flashing green light he’d been hoping for.
A familiar feeling bubbled up as I read that message and as I’ve read through other notifications, posts and comments on TRNN’s YouTube channel the past few days, one I remember feeling constantly during Trump’s first term. The exhausted, on-edge feeling that comes from having to confront the worst parts of people on a regular basis, the parts that Trump gives his supporters bacchanalian permission to indulge and find strength in. The ugliness, the orgiastic meanness, the cackling vitriol for social norms, the dark glee found in flouting them and in trolling and bullying people; the lust for retribution and soft targets.
Credit: BET
It’s all rushing back. It feels like it did eight years ago, but worse. First as farce, now as tragedy.
From 2015 to 2020, during the first stage of Trump’s political rise and the MAGA-morphosis of the Republican Party, an ungodly amount of ink was spilled and breath wasted by out-of-touch pundits fumbling to explain the Trump phenomenon and failing to understand the people who supported it.
Yes, racism has always played a giant role, misogyny too. Yes, white working class people (and working people in general) have been feeling the brutal squeeze and daily pangs of “economic anxiety.” And yes, a lot of folks out there are ignorant, misinformed rubes who have been duped by one of the biggest con men in history. But one of the most important qualities of Trumpism that the pundit class never fully grasped is the sense of social power Trump instills in people — and how valuable that is to them.
Most of us have had some exposure to the nastiness of people trying to exercise that power online, and you’ll be seeing more of it again flaming up in social media comments, video live chats, direct messages, etc. Although, this is not the same media ecosystem we had in 2015-16. The Twitter and Facebook of that time are long gone, the power and visibility dynamics on these multiplying and changing platforms have rearranged dramatically since then, the “public sphere” is way more fractured, and our shared digital spaces (and physical spaces) are decreasing. So maybe you won’t see as much of the online projections of Trumpian bile from trolling strangers as before, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t currently heating back up to full boil as we speak, and you won’t be able to escape it entirely. None of us will.
Supporters react as Fox News projects Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump is elected president during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center on November 06, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
But that sense of vindictive empowerment extends well beyond the online world. You know what it looks like. It was on full display in Madison Square Garden two weeks ago, it was written on the faces of delegates cheerfully waving “Mass Deportation Now” signs at the Republican National Convention.
Credit: POLITICO
You can feel it simmering in the ether when you read lines like this, published last week inThe New York Times: “A wave of racist text messages summoning Black people to report for slavery showed up on phones across the United States, prompting the scrutiny of the F.B.I.” You could see it in the sinister smirk of Covington Catholic High School students surrounding Nathan Phillips, an Indigenous man, in front of the Lincoln Memorial in January of 2019. You could watch it transform regular-seeming people into monsters who shout things at families in restaurants like “Trump’s going to fuck you. … You fuckers need to leave … fucking Asian piece of shit.” You could hear it on the playgrounds, as Lucia Islas, president of the Comité Latino de Baltimore, recently reminded me: “Even in the schools … the American or other kids — they were making fun of the [Latino] kids like, ‘Oh, the immigration is going to come for your family.’”
Credit: Guardian News
Here’s the thing: Leftists, progressives, community and labor organizers, social justice advocates, faith community leaders — we have all seen how beautiful of a thing it can be when regular people channel, build and exercise their power to effect change. And we all know how necessary that will be to fight back against what’s coming. But power is not a moral quantity on its own. It is a force to be harnessed — to achieve good and morally righteous ends, or dark and destructive ones. Right now, we are much, much closer to the latter scenario.
When it comes to controlling the levers of economic and political power, Trump cedes none of that ground. Quite the opposite: he seizes and consolidates real power like a CEO or a mad king, and he wields that power to serve himself and the interests of his fellow capitalist oligarchs.
But Trump has always understood that you have to give people a semblance of power too, and he has. (Since former President Barack Obama infamously dissolved his organized base of citizen-footsoldiers after his 2008 electoral victory, Democrats have stupidly and self-servingly demobilized their rank-and-file, hoping to replace that grassroots energy and readiness to make change with a vacuous faith that the “adults in the room” would take care of it; Trump, on the other hand, gives his base something to do. He invites them to feel like protagonists in the story, not just spectators).
Credit: CBS
Trump gives people a tangible feeling of power to turn the tide of the “culture wars,” which is, in part, why MAGA-pilled people and MAGA pundits, politicians, podcasters and posters have spent years trying to turn virtually everything into a “woke” vs “anti-woke” culture war issue. In doing so, they’ve effectively taken issues of non-concern, as well as issues that could channel people’s genuine concerns towards a larger, systemic critique of capitalist economics and politics, and woven those issues into a vast cultural conspiracy. This has the dual effect of moving people farther away from identifying the capitalist pillage of our society — led by the very billionaires, profiteers and grifters Trump’s policies actually serve—as the real problem, while, at the same time, moving people closer to feeling like they are fighting for and winning something.
Credit: NBC
For MAGA, “the personal is political,” too, but for very different reasons than it is for Left-minded people who have invoked that phrase in the past. Personal grievances are elevated to the level of political struggles against a perceived evil that lives in other people who are ruining America — not in the political or economic systems hollowing our country out from the inside and cooking our planet — and interpersonal interactions become the always-available terrain upon which Trump supporters can feel deputized to “take the fight” to … someone.
When working people live in a society that has made them feel like they have so little decision-making and decision-affecting power — as workers, as political constituents, as consumers, as debtors and renters — and when the conditions that make people feel empowered to pursue and attain a good life continue to deteriorate, the desire and demand for any other kind of power increases dramatically. Trump and the MAGA movement encourage people to reclaim that lost sense of power by finding ways to exert power over people they know (neighbors, family members, coworkers, acquaintances they’re still connected to on social media) and people they don’t know, online and in public.
Trump and the MAGA movement encourage people to reclaim that lost sense of power by finding ways to exert power over people they know (neighbors, family members, coworkers, acquaintances they’re still connected to on social media) and people they don’t know, online and in public.
It is a false, ugly, illusory kind of power, but it is power nonetheless. It is nothing compared to the power of, say, organizing and striking with your coworkers to get your boss to bend to your collective will, but it’s much easier to exert, opportunities to exercise it are in much greater supply, and it is much more immediately rewarding than any of the alternatives presented by liberals or the Left. Punching a person in the face is more instantly gratifying than scolding a faceless system.
The visible discomfort one can prompt in others just by wearing the red MAGA hat in public. The despicable rage and terror cowardly men can generate by saying shit like “Your body, my choice.” The “liberal tears” one can suck out of strangers by trolling them online. The change in corporate course one can contribute to by boycotting “woke” companies. The pain and fear and panic one can extract from one’s perceived enemies in vulnerable, dehumanized and marginalized communities (immigrants, trans people, “radical Left lunatics,” etc).
These are all tangible forms of social power that anyone in the MAGA movement can exercise anywhere to feel like they’re worth a damn and part of making change. And doing so bears localized but real results; it is a way for people who live in a world in which they have so little real power to experience firsthand the immediate, perversely intoxicating power of assaulting someone, affecting the feelings and actions of the people around you, disrupting their comfort, destroying their sense of safety, even violating their bodies.
Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Santander Arena on November 04, 2024 in Reading, Pennsylvania. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Trump makes that possible for a lot of people, and it means something to them. What’s worse, it is a renewable resource, an infinite well of dark energy to draw from, because there will always be more people to attack, more scapegoats to throw on the pyre, as conditions fail to improve for the non-rich. And the twisted, naive hope of the disciples of MAGA is that their loyalty will always secure their spot on the side of the attackers, even if it won’t, and that they will be the beneficiaries of the promised prosperity supposedly waiting for them on the other side.
The desire for some kind of power, and the dark joy that comes from the Trumpian permissibility to exercise power over other people, is a mobilizing force. It does not cater to “the better angels of our nature,” but to the worst, cruelest and most antisocial parts of us.
And the hard, terrifying truth from Election Day is that this force is strong enough to defeat a bankrupt Democratic Party, and it is certainly strong enough to crush and confound what exists of the Left in this country if we don’t take the threat seriously and mount a correspondingly serious, strategic and steadfast response.
We are entering an extremely dark period in our history. It won’t be the same as 2015-2020. The MAGA-morphosis is now complete — this is Trump’s GOP, and there is no room or tolerance for dissenters within the ranks. And that party, along with its bevy of billionaire backers and Christian nationalist networks of support, may end up controlling all three branches of government when all is said and done. It won’t be the same, and we can’t be either.
And the hard, terrifying truth from Election Day is that this force is strong enough to defeat a bankrupt Democratic Party, and it is certainly strong enough to derail and further confound what exists of “the Left” in this country.
But we can and must draw on the hard-won lessons we learned throughout the first Trump administration. One of the most crucial lessons, I think, is that fascism doesn’t just come from executive orders alone; the fascist creep comes from below, when a critical mass of people come to desire fascist solutions over the existing political alternatives, and when they feel empowered to play a role in bringing those “solutions” to fruition. For my entire life, establishment Democrats and Republicans have worked in their own shared and distinctly stupid ways to diminish people’s faith in the existing political options. “The Left” has not managed to provide a credible and viable political alternative, and that has enabled Trump to fill the void, channeling the naturally resulting malaise and unrest into fascistic desire.
A lot of people out there are ghoulishly delighted that the results of the election have given them that green light to shamelessly return to their worst selves. You are going to run into them more and more, and so will I. They may even make a point to seek you out. They have been waiting for this moment, all while their need for retribution has festered and the targets of that retribution have become more specific.
Don’t let your enemy dictate the terms of your fear. Just because there are more people in the world telling you to fear them right now doesn’t mean you should fear everyone — many are as scared as you are, they feel just as distrustful of strangers in this moment, but most don’t want to see hate win either.
Working people, together, organized, are our own best protection against bullies and fascist violence.
A lot of regular folks out there who have succumbed to the MAGA soul rot can still be brought back, especially if they are compelled to struggle together with other working people, face to face, outside of their small social circles, and if that struggle provides them with real-world alternatives to addressing their problems, not just conceptual or moral arguments for why the path they’ve chosen is bad. That can counter these forces at the heart of Trump’s dark appeal — I’ve seen it. But we won’t be able to reach everyone, some are way too far gone. The bloodlust has consumed them. We risk the safety of all and any chance of political success by failing to recognize the difference and protect ourselves.
Out of darkness, when all seems lost and emergency is our reality, when we are forced to struggle together for survival, we find the ties that truly bind us, and the artificial walls that divide us start to come down. And once we learn to keep building and fighting from that starting point, moving upward and outward from there, a portal to a better world opens up.
Until and unless people stop fighting, hope for that world is never lost.
If you ask me if there is hope now, my answer is the same as it always was: that depends on us and what we all do next.
“Congratulations President-elect Trump on your historic election victory. I look forward to working with you in the years ahead. As the closest of allies, we stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of our shared values of freedom, democracy and enterprise.”
Best wishes, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Okay, you’ve got me there, it wasn’t really the genocidal maniac, but sycophantic Starmer’s congratulatory grovelling message to the permatan fascist Trump, shortly after it became obvious a majority of the American electorate really do have shit-for-brains.
The human version of low fat semolina honestly believes the human version of period cramps is the slightest bit interested in “freedom” and “democracy”?
The new free trade: hand jobs for Trump across the pond
While a majority of the world is coming to terms with the immediate implications of another Trump presidency, Keir Starmer is offering Donald Trump a hand job from across the pond.
Of course, it’s not just Keir Starmer that is painfully deluded. Trump’s own campaign team recently described Keir Starmer’s Labour Party government as “far left”. No laughing at the back, please.
If predator Trump believes Keir Starmer — the freebie-loving, poor-hating, dog-whistling, granny-killing, student-stitching, ex-Trilateral Commission, Zionist fanboy — or just one single member of his bought-and-paid-for sellouts trying to wing it as a cabinet is any way “far left”, it’s not just Genocide Joe’s state of mind that should be in question.
Speaking of the cabinet, it has been painfully embarrassing to see the likes of David Lammy backtrack on their past statements about Trump.
Whilst Trump probably hasn’t got a clue who Rayner and Lammy are, the internet never forgets.
If I had a Pound for every time I’ve heard the cringey words “special relationship” from a Labour politician this past week, I would have just about enough to purchase my very own Labour politician for Christmas.
There is no special relationship. It’s a myth. Nobody believes that old nonsense now, do they?
Keir Starmer: isolated
Starmer now finds himself more isolated than any prime minister before him. A country in the continent of Europe that isn’t an active part of the European community and a new batshit US president that makes no secret of his wish to put “America first” puts Starmer in a very difficult and lonely position.
Labour desperately wanted and needed a victory for Kamala Harris. Starmer’s team had visions of the pair of them being the Thatcher and Reagan of today, imperiously strutting around on the global stage, continuing their self-appointed roles as the world’s police.
In reality, Starmer is going to have to bend over in various uncomfortable positions to accommodate Trump, although Kemi Badenoch’s laughable demand that would see Trump address the House of Commons should be filed under “f” for “fucking ludicrous suggestions”.
Trump already has a Commons mouthpiece in the shape of Nigel Farage, and you can be absolutely certain of Trump throwing his full weight behind a big push for Reform UK at the next general election.
Prime minister or deputy prime minister Farage? I wouldn’t rule it out.
Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch’s debut at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) was an absolute horror show from start to finish. The poor woman would be dangerously out of her depth in a fucking birdbath, let’s be honest.
Enter the bad Enoch
Sure, I wasn’t expecting anything special from the new Tory leader, but hasn’t she paid any attention whatsoever to what Keir Starmer has been getting up to during the past four tumultuous months?
To Badenoch’s credit, it takes some serious brass neck to bring back Priti Patel-Aviv to her shadow cabinet, considering we haven’t actually paid off the last civil servant she bullied out of their job.
It’s beginning to feel a lot like the only real opposition to Keir Starmer’s government is likely to come from the Independent Alliance of MPs, activists like Lowkey and Tory Fibs, and also genuinely independent publications such as our beloved Canary, openDemocracy, and Declassified, because you can be sure as hell that we won’t see Badenoch holding Starmer’s feet to the fire over the genocide of Gaza or the ongoing cost of living crisis anytime soon.
One of Badenoch’s most pressing issues, at least in the short term, will be to put some clear blue water between herself and Starmer, because right now, she doesn’t disagree with the disgraceful decision to force disabled people into unsuitable employment, she doesn’t disagree with Starmer’s broken pledge that will see tuition fees increased, and she certainly doesn’t disagree with putting members of the Knesset before the people of Britain.
What I think we are likely to see is Badenoch constantly attempting to position herself to the right of the Labour government, particularly on immigration. She’s a (blue) Tory, after all, and the Tory party will become more receptive to the possibility of a pact of some sort with Farage’s Reform UK extremists.
It’s the Palestinian people we should be thinking of
Despite being a deeply unpopular government, Keir Starmer does have a huge parliamentary majority, thanks to Johnson, Truss, Sunak, and an irreparably corrupted system of voting.
Does Badenoch believe she can overturn this majority, without the help of the Trump-backed Reform headbangers? What the new Tory leader says publicly to voters and privately to shadowy figures that are looking to creep their way into power through the back door are two very different things altogether.
My final words for the week belong to the people of Palestine, because they now not only have to deal with the verminous polyp upon the anus of humanity, Netanyahu, but also the devastating consequences of another Trump presidency.
Kamala Harris is already complicit in genocide. A victory for Harris meant nothing to the Palestinian people. But what will the conflicts in the Middle East begin to look like if we find Trump egging on Netanyahu to wipe Palestine off the map altogether?
Israel has already confirmed they have permanently displaced thousands and thousands of Palestinians in northern Gaza, this week. This is the very definition of ethnic cleansing, and just another foundation that has been laid in place for the creation of ‘greater Israel’.
Whoever you are and whatever you do, never stop talking about Palestine. Be on the right side of history and not on the side of Trump, Netanyahu, and their pathetic and utterly complicit Labour Party lap dogs.
“We will not sign our death certificate. We cannot sign on to text that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels.”
These were the words of Samoa’s Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster, speaking in his capacity as chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) at the UNFCCC COP28 in Dubai last year.
Outside, Pacific climate activists and allies, led by the Pacific Climate Warriors, were calling for a robust and comprehensive financial package that would see the full, fast, and fair transition away from fossil fuels and into renewable energy in the Global South.
This is our Pacific Way in action: state parties and civil society working together to remind the world as we approach a “finance COP” with the upcoming COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11-22 that we cannot be conveniently pigeonholed.
We are people who represent not only communities but landscapes and seascapes that are both vulnerable, and resilient, and should not be forced by polluting countries and the much subsidised and profit-focused fossil fuel industries that lobby them to choose between mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage.
Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) are the uncomfortable reminder for those who want smooth sailing of their agenda at COP29, that while we are able to hold the tension of our vulnerability and resilience in the Pacific, this may make for choppy seas.
I recently had the privilege of joining the SPREP facilitated pre-COP29 gathering for PSIDS and the Climate Change Ministerial meeting in Nadi, Fiji, to provide spiritual guidance and pastoral support.
This gathering took place in a spiritually significant moment, the final week of the Season of Creation, ending, profoundly, on the Feast Day of St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of the environment. The theme for this year’s Season of Creation was, “to hope and act with Creation (the environment).
Encouraged to act in hope
I looked across the room at climate ministers, lead negotiators from the region and the regional organisations that support them and encouraged them to begin the preparatory meeting and to also enter COP29 with hope, to act in hope, because to hope is an act of faith, of vision, of determination and trust that our current situation will not remain the status quo.
Pacific church leaders have rejected this status quo by saying that finance for adaptation and loss and damage, without a significant commitment to a fossil fuel phase-out that is full, fast and fair, is the biblical equivalent to 30 pieces of silver — the bribe Judas was given to betray Jesus.
Pacific Council of Churches general secretary Reverend James Bhagwan . . . “We are people who represent not only communities but landscapes and seascapes that are both vulnerable, and resilient, and should not be forced by polluting countries.” Image: RNZ/Jamie Tahana
In endorsing the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and leading the World Council of Churches to do the same, Pacific faith communities are joining their governments and civil societies to ensure the entire blue Pacific voice reverberates clearly into the spaces where the focus on finance is dominant.
As people with a deep connection to land and sea, whose identity does not separate itself from biodiversity, the understanding of the “groaning of Creation” (Romans 8:19-25) resonates with Pacific islanders.
We were reminded of the words of St. Saint Augustine that says: “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”
As we witness the cries and sufferings of Earth and all creatures, let righteous anger move us toward the courage to be hopeful and active for justice.
Hope is not merely optimism. It is not a utopian illusion. It is not waiting for a magical miracle.
Hope is trust that our action makes sense, even if the results of this action are not immediately seen. This is the type of hope that our Pasifika households carry to COP29.
Reverend James Bhagwan is general secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches. He holds a Bachelor of Divinity from the Pacific Theological College in Fiji and a Masters in Theology from the Methodist Theological University in Korea. He also serves as co-chair of the Fossil Fuel NonProliferation Treaty Campaign Global Steering Committee. This article was first published by RNZ Pacific.
Billions of dollars will buy almost anything anybody wants, and on November 5 billions of dollars bought the world’s leading climate-skeptical political administration, aka: the Trump Administration, which is anti-almost-everything, except for a free reign to the almighty market. Price determines policy, and it buys political office.
According to Americans for Tax Fairness, 150 billionaire families broke all campaign-spending records by a country mile, spending $2 billion in total to get a Republican majority with $1.36 billion going to Republicans versus $413 million to Democrats and the balance to specific causes, proof positive that billions of dollars can buy anything.
The System Regulating Campaign Financing Has Collapsed
“Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans. It is one of the most obvious and disturbing consequences of the growth of billionaire fortunes, as well as being a prime indicator that the system regulating campaign finance has collapsed,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director. “We need to rein in the political power of billionaire families by better taxing them and by effectively limiting their campaign donations. Until we do both, we can only expect the influence of the super-rich over our politics and government to escalate.” (Source: “Billionaire Clans Spend Nearly $2 Billion On 2024 Elections,” Americans for Fair Taxes, October 29, 2024)
America’s Climate Policy Cascading, into the dust bin.
It’s interesting that the Forbes’ article came out just before the most important election of all time for the future, or lack of future, for the planet’s habitability. The initial paragraph of the Forbes’ article contains a stark warning that is shared by many top-level scientists around the world: “A distinguished international team of scientists on Tuesday issued the starkest warning yet that human activity is pushing Earth into a climate crisis that could threaten the lives of up to 6 billion people this century, stating candidly: ‘We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered.”
Now the Trump Climate-skeptical administration is about to take control over the world’s leading democracy (maybe, but not). One can only wonder what impact this may have on scientists that claim we’re: “pushing our planetary systems into dangerous instability” with consequences this century of 6 billion threatened because of massive uninhabitable regions of the planet. Extreme heat and dwindling food supplies will prevail. The American electorate made this possible, winning the award for the Most Ill-Informed Ignorant People on the Planet, maybe of all time. As for demonstrated ignorance, all that’s required is to look at what’s happening to the climate system, weird, unprecedented stuff that doesn’t happen, ever, until now. And it’s broadcast on nightly news (1) atmospheric rivers flooding communities within minutes (2) Category Five hurricanes laying waste outside of normal hurricane season (3) tornadoes further North than ever before (4) hailstorms like golf balls destroying siding and roofs of buildings (5) home insurers dropping coverage in Florida and California (6) insurance premiums nearly doubling for homeowners. The list could go on and on, but the point is climate change is driving ordinary people out of homes and broke. The disasters are the result of human-generated fossil fuel CO2 bringing on an overheated haywire climate system that has exceeded the Paris ’15 climate conference agreement among all nations warning don’t go over +1.5°C pre-industrial by limiting CO2 emissions that blanket the planet and hold heat because it turns the climate system into an ogre of destruction, now in its early stages, worldwide. The proof is palpable on every continent, “2024 Will be World’s Hottest Year on Record, EU Scientists Say,” Reuters, Nov. 7, 2024.
And this is only the start, with the climate-skeptical new administration in place, “it’ll get much worse.” But “getting much worse” on top of a climate system that is already exploding in our faces is destined to create havoc, destruction, and darkness like nobody can imagine possible. Trump will rescind climate-related commitments by the US such as the Paris 2015 climate agreement. The US is out, count on it as the country dusts-off its hands and walks away from tackling the most rambunctious dangerous climate system in human history just as it’s starting to brutalize major life-sourcing ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest, drying up because of severe drought as the Mississippi River’s low depth severely diminishes barge traffic transport of crucial agricultural product: “For the third year in a row, extreme drought conditions in the Midwest are drawing down water levels on the Mississippi River, raising prices for companies that transport goods downstream and forcing governments and business owners to seek alternative solutions,” Governing, Oct. 18, 2024.
Bloomberg Green/Green Daily published an article entitled: “US Election 2024,” presented by IBM, What a Trump Victory Means for Energy: “The win empowers him to deliver on his campaign pledges to go after climate policies he’s dubbed the ‘green new scam’ while reorienting the federal government toward pumping more crude and building more power plants.”
He’ll end federal policies that encourage EV sales. The EPA regulation on tailpipe pollution, which penalizes gas-guzzlers, thereby favoring EVs will be a top target. An executive order to accomplish this has already been drafted. Additionally, going after California’s strict car pollution standards via changes to the Clean Air Act. Trump favors dirty air to stimulate more gas-powered vehicle sales.
From A-to-Z Trump will unleash the fossil fuel industry to full blast operations, including lower tax rates, literally taking off the gloves of any federal regulation. This will be comparable to the Wild West at the turn of the 19th century, no holds barred with plans to open America’s public lands for oil development. Go for it!
Offshore wind is another target for closure, impacting developmental work already underway of multi-billion-dollar wind farms up and down the US East Coast. Trump intends to target offshore wind on “day one” probably via a moratorium imposed administratively.
The Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, flush with hundreds of billions of dollars of loan-backed authority readily avaiblable for clean-tech thanks to Biden’s IRA, is at risk. “Trump will be under dueling pressure to either kill off the program, ending a major source of support for green-technology commercialization, or to keep it running, just with a decidedly pro-fossil-fuel bent. Advocates of the latter approach say the office has made billions of dollars in interest for the federal government and that its support can be used to back natural gas, carbon capture and nuclear energy ventures.” (Bloomberg Green)
Additionally, Trump will terminate a suite of EPA rules that inhibit power-plant pollution, for example coal burning plants. Trump believes AI needs twice the amount of electricity currently supplied to the US. A 2024 rule limiting emissions from existing coal plants and new gas-fired units will be a top focus for removal.
Millions of members (over 70 million voters in the 2024 election) of the Most Ill-Informed Ignorant People on the Planet have sealed the fate of an abrupt enormously destructive climate system that’s already started misbehaving in earnest because of excessive levels of greenhouse gases like CO<sub>2</sub> emitted by burning fossil fuels, thus slamming the climate system down onto the mat, defeated, for the worse. How will it get better?
Anger and fear have greeted the return to power of former US strongman Donald Trump, a corrupt far-white extremist coup plotter who is also a convicted felon and rapist, following this week’s shock presidential election result.
Ethnic tensions have been on the rise with members of the historically oppressed minority Black ethnic group reporting receiving threatening text messages, warning of a return to an era of enslavement.
In a startling editorial, the tension-wracked country’s paper of record, The New York Times, declared that the country had made “a perilous choice” and that its fragile democracy was now on “a precarious course”.
President-elect Trump’s victory marks the second time in eight years the extremist leader, who is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of using campaign funds to pay off a porn star he had cheated on his wife with, has defeated a female opponent from the ruling Democratic Party.
Women continue to struggle to reach the highest office in the deeply conservative nation where their rights are increasingly under attack and child marriage is widespread.
This has prompted traumatised supporters of Vice-President Kamala Harris, who had been handpicked to replace the unpopular, ageing incumbent, Joe Biden, to accuse American voters of racism to sexism.
“It’s misogyny from Hispanic men, it’s misogyny from Black . . . who do not want a woman leading them,” insisted one TV anchor, adding that there “might be race issues with Hispanics that don’t want a Black woman as president of the United States.”
Hateful tribal rhetoric
The hateful tribal rhetoric has also included social media posts calling for any people of mixed race who failed to vote for Harris to be deported and for intensification of the genocide in Gaza due to Arab-American rejection of Harris over her support for the continued provision of weapons to the brutal apartheid state committing it.
“Victory has many fathers but defeat is an orphan,” goes the saying popularised by former US President John F Kennedy, who was shot 61 years ago this month.
The reluctance to attribute the loss to the grave and gratuitous missteps made by the Harris campaign has mystified America-watchers around the world.
Harris and her supporters had tried to counter that by claiming that Trump would also be genocidal and that she would ameliorate the pain of bereaved families in the US by lowering the price of groceries.
However, the election results showed that this was not a message voters appreciated. “Genocide is bad politics,” said one Arab-American activist.
Worried over democracy
As the scale of the extremists’ electoral win becomes increasingly clear, having taken control of not just the presidency but the upper house of Congress as well, many are worried about the prospects for democracy in the US which is still struggling to emerge from Trump’s first term.
Despite conceding defeat, Harris has pledged to continue to “wage this fight” even as pro-democracy protests have broken out in several cities, raising fears of violence and political uncertainty in the gun-strewn country.
This could imperil stability in North America and sub-Scandinavian Europe where a Caucasian Spring democratic revolution has failed to take hold, and a plethora of white-wing authoritarian populists have instead come to power across the region.
However, there is a silver lining. The elections themselves were a massive improvement over the chaotic and shambolic, disputed November 2020 presidential polls which paved the way for a failed putsch two months later.
This time, the voting was largely peaceful and there was relatively little delay in releasing results, a remarkable achievement for the numeracy-challenged nation where conspiracy theorists remain suspicious about the Islamic origins of mathematics, seeing it is as a ploy by the terror group “Al Jibra” to introduce Sharia Law to the US.
In the coming months and years, there will be a need for the international community to stay engaged with the US and assist the country to try and undertake much-needed reforms to its electoral and governance systems, including changes to its constitution.
During the campaigns, Harris loyalists warned that a win by Trump could lead to the complete gutting of its weak democratic systems, an outcome the world must work hard to avoid.
However, figuring out how to support reform in the US and engage with a Trump regime while not being seen to legitimise the election of a man convicted of serious crimes, will be a tricky challenge for the globe’s mature Third-World democracies.
Many may be forced to limit direct contact with him. “Choices have consequences,” as a US diplomat eloquently put it 11 years ago.
Patrick Gathara is a Kenyan journalist, cartoonist, blogger and author. He is also senior editor for inclusive storytelling at The New Humanitarian. This article was first published by Al Jazeera and is republished under Creative Commons.
The Enemy Within, by Maire Leadbeater is many things. It is:
• A family history
• A social history
• A history of the left-wing in Aotearoa
• A chilling reminder of the origin and continuation of the surveillance state in New Zealand, and
• A damn good read.
The book is a great example of citizen or activist authorship. The author, Maire Leadbeater, and her family are front and centre of the dark cloud of the surveillance state that has hung and still hangs over New Zealand’s “democracy”.
What better place to begin the book than the author noting that she had been spied on by the security services from the age of 10. What better place to begin than describing the role of the Locke family — Elsie, Jack, Maire, Keith and their siblings — have played in Aotearoa society over the last few decades.
And what a fitting way to end the book than with the final chapter entitled, “Person of Interest: Keith Locke”; Maire’s much-loved brother and our much-loved friend and comrade.
In between these pages is a treasure trove of commentary and stories of the development of the surveillance state in the settler colony of NZ and the impact that this has had on the lives of ordinary — no, extra-ordinary — people within this country.
The book could almost be described as a political romp from the settler colonisation of New Zealand through the growth of the workers movement and socialist and communist ideology from the late 1800s until today.
I have often deprecatingly called myself a mere footnote of history as that is all I seem to appear as in many books written about recent progressive history in New Zealand. But it was without false modesty that when Maire gave me a copy of the book a couple of weeks back, I immediately went to the index, looked up my name and found that this time I was a bit more than a footnote, but had a section of a chapter written on my interaction with the spooks.
But it was after reading this, dipping into a couple of other “person of interest” stories of people I knew such as Keith, Mike Treen, the Rosenbergs, Murray Horton and then starting the book again from the beginning did it become clear on what issues the state was paranoid about that led it to build an apparatus to spy on its own citizens.
These were issues of peace, anti-conscription, anti-nuclear, de-colonisation, unemployed workers and left trade unionism and socialist and communist thought. These are the issues that come up time and time again; essentially it was seditious or subversive to be part of any of these campaigns or ideologies.
Client state spying
The other common theme through the book is the role that the UK and more latterly the US has played in ensuring that their NZ client settler state plays by their rules, makes enemies of their enemies and spies on its own people for their “benefit”.
Trade unionist and activist Robert Reid . . . “The book could almost be described as a political romp from the settler colonisation of New Zealand through the growth of the workers movement and socialist and communist ideology from the late 1800s until today.” Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
It was interesting to read how the “5 Eyes”, although not using that name, has been in operation as long as NZ has had a spying apparatus. In fact, the book shows that 3 of the 5 eyes forced NZ to establish its surveillance apparatus in the first place.
Maire, and her editor have arranged this book in a very reader friendly way. It is mostly chronological showing the rise of the surveillance state from the beginning of the 19th century, in dispersed with a series of vignettes of “Persons of Interest”.
Maire would probably acknowledge that this book could not have been written without the decision of the SIS to start releasing files (all beit they were heavily redacted with many missing parts) of many of us who have been spied on by the SIS over the years. So, on behalf of Maire, thank you SIS.
Maire has painstakingly gone through pages and pages of these primary source files and incorporated them into the historical narrative of the book showing what was happening in society while this surveillance was taking place.
I was especially delighted to read the history of the anti-war and conscientious objectors movement. Two years ago, almost to the day, we held the 50th anniversary of the Organisation to Halt Military Service (OHMS); an organisation that I founded and was under heavy surveillance in 1972.
We knew a bit about previous anti-conscription struggles but Maire has provided much more context and information that we knew. It was good to read about people like John Charters, Ormand Burton and Archie Barrington as well more known resisters such as my great uncle Archibald Baxter.
Within living memory
Many of the events covered take place within my living memory. But it was wonderful to be reminded of some things I had forgotten about or to find some new gems of information about our past.
Stories around Bill Sutch, Shirley Smith, Ann and Wolfgang Rosenberg, Jack and Mary Woodward, Gerald O’Brien, Allan Brash (yes, Don’s dad), Cecil Holmes, Jack Lewin are documented as well as my contemporaries such as Don Carson, David Small, Aziz Choudry, Trevor Richards, Jane Kelsey, Nicky Hager, Owen Wilkes, Tame Iti in addition to Maire, Keith and Mike Treen.
The book finishes with a more recent history of NZ again aping the US’s so-called war on terror with the introduction of an anti and counter-terrorism mandate for the SIS and its sister agencies
The book traverses events such as the detention of Ahmed Zaoui, the raid on the Kim Dotcom mansion, the privatisation of spying to firms such as Thomson and Clark, the Urewera raids, “Hit and Run” in Afghanistan. Missing the cut was the recent police raid and removal of the computer of octogenarian, Peter Wilson for holding money earmarked for a development project in DPRK (North Korea).
When we come to the end of the book we are reminded of the horrific Christchurch mosque attack and massacre and prior to that of the bombing of Wellington Trades Hall and the Rainbow Warrior. Also, the failure of the SIS to discover Mossad agents operating in NZ on fake passports.
We cannot but ask the question of why multi-millions of dollars have been spent spying on, surveilling and monitoring peace activists, trade unionists, communists, Māori and more latterly Muslims, when the terrorism that NZ has faced has been that perpetrated on these people not by these people.
Maire notes in the book that the SIS budget for 2021 was around $100 million with around 400 FTEs employed. This does not include GCSB or other parts of the security apparatus.
Seeking subversives in wrong places
This level of money has been spent for well over 100 years looking for subversives and terrorists in the wrong place!
Finally, although dealing with the human cost of the surveillance state, the book touches on some of the lighter sides of the SIS spying. Those of us under surveillance in the 1970s and 1980s remember the amateurish phone tapping that went on at that time.
Also, the men in cars with cameras sitting outside our flats for days on end. Not in the book, but I have one memory of such a man with a camera in a car outside our flat in Wallace Street, Wellington.
After a few days some of my flatmates took pity on him and made him a batch of scones which they passed through the window of his car. He stayed for a bit longer that day but we never saw him or an alternate again.
Another issue the book picks up is the obsession that the SIS and its foreign counterparts had with counting communists in NZ. I remember that the CIA used to put out a Communist Yearbook that described and attempted to count how many members were in each of the communist parties all around the world.
In NZ, my party, the Workers Communist League, was smaller than the SUP, CPNZ and SAL, but one year near the end of our existence we were pleasantly surprised to see that the CIA had almost to a person, doubled our membership.
We could not work out why, until we realised that we all had code names as well as real names and we were getting more and more slack at using the correct one in the correct place. Anyone surveilling us, counting names, would have counted double the names that we had as members! We took the compliment.
Thank you, Maire, for this great book. Thank you and your family for your great contribution to Aotearoa society.
Hopefully the hardships and human cost that you have shown in this book will commit or recommit the rest of us to struggle for a decolonised and socialist Aotearoa within a peaceful and multi-polar world.
And as one of Jack Locke’s political guides said: “the road may be long and torturous, but the future is bright.”
Robert Reid has more than 40 years’ experience in trade unions and in community employment development in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is a former general secretary the president of FIRST Union. Much of his work has been with disadvantaged groups and this has included work with Māori, Pacific peoples and migrant communities. This was his address tonight for the launch of The Enemy Within: The Human Cost of State Surveillance in Aotearoa New Zealand, by Maire Leadbeater.
Cambridge, UK — As the voting results started coming in here from Virginia at 4 am (GMT, which is five hours later than Eastern Time in the US), I went to bed, having seen enough to know that Kamala Harris’s crash campaign for the White House was failing.
I knew what was coming. I’d experienced it four times already. In 1968 I watched Richard Nixon, the notorious House version of Commie-hunter Sen. Joe McCarthy rouse what he dubbed the “Silent Majority” of right-wing white bigots and pro-Vietnam War super-patriots and defeated Hubert Humphrey (an earlier VP who the Democratic party chose as their nominee when their incumbent president after, Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek re-election).
There was a sense of hopelessness on the left the morning after Nixon’a election.
It happened again in 1980, with the surprise win by Republican Ronald Reagan, who defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter. That morning, I got up early and went down to Broadway from my 11th-floor apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Walking down the largely empty sidewalk like a zombie, I passed a few people headed the other way, their faces looking similarly shell-shell shocked, until a neighborhood friend, John Hess, a spritely, gray-bearded retiree N.Y. Times staffer, bounded up to me cheerfully. “Isn’t it great?” He said with a smile. “The Republicans also took the Senate!”
“What’s so great about that?” I asked, astonished that this radical leftist journalist would say such a thing.
“Because,” he explained, “If the Democrats control Congress, Reagan can’t blame all his disasters on them. Now he won’t have the ability to blame anyone but himself!”
Actually, in the event, Reagan managed to serve out two terms, and even accomplished some positive things including negotiating with House Majority Leader Democrat Tip O’Neill a rescue of the underfunded Social Security program and ending the Cold War and (at least temporarily) the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.
Then, of course, there was the Supreme Court which in 2000 stole the election for George W Bush by halting the vote counting in Florida, where it was clear that Democratic Vice President Al Gore, who had already won the popular vote, would also have won the state and its Electoral College total. Instead, the feckless top court gave the White House to Bush and Dick Cheney.
And finally there was the night Donald Trump stunned the pundits and himself by winning the White House and defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
So waking up Wednesday morning to see that Trump would be president for another nightmare four-term had for me a definite “Groundhog Da” feel to it — but without the guy-gets-girl happy ending to it).
Actually, this time Trump 2.0 is worse than those four earlier Republican wins. This time the Republican president will have solid control of both houses of Congress, with a Senate so overwhelmingly Republican that it will be able to pass almost any piece of legislation without Democrats blocking it, and will likely remain in Republican hands for Trump’s full term. This time around, the Supreme Court too is solidly controlled 6-3 by hard-right justices, and Trump has made it clear that every cabinet office and every government agency will be run by “loyal’ lackeys of his choosing, with even civil service employees either replaced or cowed into submission — including at such normally independent agencies as the Pentagon, CIA, Justice Department and EPA. Even the late irrepressible John Hess would have had a hard time finding a bright side to this Election Day outcome.
Nonetheless I’m going to give it a try.
First a reality check: What we see in the 2024 election result is that a majority of Americans — men and women, rich and poor, white and people of color, educated and uneducated, religious and atheist — are either ready to gamble on a self-involved sociopathic, racist and misogynist criminal billionaire with anger issues or are too concerned with just getting by with their daily lives to to worry about elections that never seem to change their lives for the better or that even make them harder. Analysis of the voting shows that a huge percentage of late voting younger people went for Trump. And a tidal wave of women voting for Harris didn’t materialize. More women voted than men, as usual, but plenty of them went for the pussy-grabbing rapist Trump. Trump also did better with Black men than he did in 2016 and 2024 and significantly improved his tally among Latinos (or as he calls them “Hispanics”). In the end Harris’s larger share of women voters was the same as Trump’s larger share of men, making the predicted gender war a wash-out.
Here in the UK, where I am living for the next nine months, I can see what the results of such so-called populist voting trends can be. British voters in 1979 elected a hard-right Prime Minister named Margaret Thatcher and allowed her and her Conservative Party to set off a seismic shift of the country’s politics away from social democracy and a rather classical conservatism into a two-party Neo-liberal dystopia where both parties accepted the notion that capitalism, unfettered markets, and a coddled business elite managing things was the best option for society.
This narrowed political playing field has led over the ensuing decades to a long period British economic doldrums, and to a turning away by Brits from the rest of Europe, as resentment and hostility towards outsiders, including eastern Europeans, and especially people from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean — all of them willing to work for less and to leave countries that had it even worse — availed themselves of the lack of borders across Europe to flock to the UK. This latter phenomenon led to the narrow victory of a referendum that resulted inBritain’s removing itself from the European Union. Called Brexit, this abrupt anti-immigrant “secession” has wreaked havoc on the nation’s economy and living standards, as well as the operation of key services like the country’s once vaunted National Health System.
Just this past July, British voters, frustrated with a country and government where “nothing works anymore,” turned out the Conservatives after 15 straight years of Tory rule and handed a landslide win to the Labour Party and its new Prime Minister Keir Starmer. How that new government will fare in its effort to right the ship of state and its stagnating economy, given the incredible decades-long disinvestment and privatization it is hoping to reverse, remains to be seen.
I suspect the US, under a second Trump administration, this time emboldened by a political realignment at least as profound as was Thatcher’s 1979 win in the UK, will soon be similarly strip-mined and privatized.
The one bright spot, however, if President-re-elect Trump, a shameless liar, can be taken at his word, would be if he actually were to brings an end to the decade of US military aid political brinksmanship in pushing Ukraine to break away from neighboring Russia’s sphere of influence and to join NATO, the US-led anti-Russian alliance created way back at the start of the Cold War of he 1950s. Trump says, quite logically, that US efforts to pull Ukraine into NATO, a mutual protection pact whose very existence is an existential threat to Russia, and the Ukraine government’s now ten-year old armed conflict with first its ethic Russian minority and then, when Russia responded by invading Ukraine, with Russia, a leading nuclear power, has led to a war in which Ukraine’s military is largely underwritten by US arms and financial banking interests. It is a war that the US knows poses a high risk of provoking a devastating and potentially world-ending nuclear conflict between ther world’s two nuclear superpowers.
During the just concluded election campaign, Trump promised to bring an end to that bloody military conflict immediately before even waiting for his second inauguration in January. He has also promised to end the one-sided slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, though without specifying how.
I am no fan of Trump, but I have to say should he successfully cut short those two bloody conflicts, or even ends the Ukraine war while at least not making things worse in Gaza, his new presidency would be off to a great start. He should follow that up by returning the US to the treaty relationship on nuclear weapons that his Republican predecessor Ronald Reagan worked out with former Soviet and Russia leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which effectively, if all too briefly, ended the two countries’ nuclear standoff and raised humanity’s hopes for an end to nuclear weapons altogether. Trump should also follow through with his prior effort to pull the US out of NATO, which long ago morphed into a cover for and participant in US global military actions around the world and simply serves as an excuse for ploughing over a trillion dollars a year into the coffers of the US arms industry.
Martin Luther King, a year to the day before the day in 1968 that he was assassinated (my birthday) he gave a speech at the Riverside Church in New York titled Beyond Vietnam:A Time to End the Silence.” In it he correctly identified the US, at that time conducting a bloody aggressive war in Indochina, as being “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” It has remained so, Indeed its endless wars and “interventions,” have reportedly killed well over 6 million people, mostly civilians, around the world in the eight decades since WWII.
Trump knows this and has talked of pulling US forces back from the hundreds of places they are based in foreign lands (though that idea was at one point linked by him to the idea of using them against American dissidents here at home — NOT a Great idea!).
He should pull them back and decommission them.
Trump has said on a number of occasions that he does not want wars — that as a businessman, he wants the US to do business with other nations, on a level playing field. That is a great sentiment, and it’s one that his base, those MAGA voters, some of whom I know and have had conversations with,. Trump should be held to that promise, and should downsize the US military to a size appropriate to a country that is not facing any threat of invasion and that stops meddling militarily in other countries and maintaining bases around the globe. That is a position a lot of Trump’s MAGA backers agree with.
For now though, all we have from President-elect Trump are promises like “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars,” and unless acted upon these cannot be taken seriously. But that said, I have to say the words themselves are welcome, and it’w a promise that I’ve never heard the likes of coming from any other president-elect of either party.. (Okay, Richard Nixon claimed during his first presidential race that he had a “secret plan’ for ending the war in Vietnam, but that “plan” turned out to be to massively carpet-bomb North Vietnam using B-52s. expand the war into Laos and Cambodia and to ship more US combat troops into the country. Once elected, he kept the war going until he resigned from office in disgrace.)
We on the left are facing an existential crisis with Trump’s election victory but also an opportunity
Supporting the Democrats and their chosen candidate Kamala Harris as a tactical move to preserve freedom to organize and to protest was clearly unsuccessful as her poorly performed campaign did worse than Hillary Clinton did against Trump eight years before. Indeed, she lost not just in the Electoral College tally but in the popular vote, which Clinton at least won. The Democratic Party has been shown once again to be a pathetic joke as a political opponent. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won a resounding re-election to the Senate in Vermont, identified right before Harris’s concession speech on Thursday, the party’s problem: It is owned by billionaires and moneyed consultants wedded to corporate interests, and is dismissive or even hostile to the interests of the working class.
But the pathetic showing of third party candidates in this, as in prior elections, has shown that building a third party is also a fool’s errand in a country where the political system is structured to prevent them.
That leaves us with the option of building a large movement outside of political parties focussed around broad popular issues that would bring working-class people together common goals like peace and demilitarization, significantly raising the minimum wage, improving and protecting Social Security, making Medicare universal for all ages, passing the Equal Rights Amendment and protecting every women’s right to control her own body and health and seriously addressing the climate crisis.
Trump has made it clear that he wants unrestrained power, without the hindrances of a Constitution or a Congress composed of members who might think for themselves and perform their intended constitutional role as a check and balance on the Executive Branch. Trump’s history of lying, criminality, racism and misogyny and his willingness to appeal to American citizens’ basest instincts are well known. But we are stuck with him. He cannot be defeated in the courts because he has a bunch of sycophants packing the Supreme Court and in the lower level federal courts. Impeachment cannot happen and is a waste of time and effort. The weakened Congressional Democrats can no longer even put on a impeachment committee hearing this time.
With a mass movement we can pressure Trump and his Congressional supporters to do what they promised. If they go back on those promises, we can work to peel away those people who just voted for him as a “change disrupter,” especially as they begin to discover he really doesn’t give a damn about them.
Meanwhile we need to do the hard work of organize]ing wide support for resisting Trump’s worst ideas — the ones that will harm the defenseless and that will grievously contribute to climate change. For example, we need to support a campaign to protect undocumented people living in the USA from brutal arrest, detention and forced deportation, especially in cases that break up families. We clearly need to build a mass movement to protect programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. A key here is that most of Trump’s own voting base depend on those programs and on the Affordable Care Act. Trump and his advisers know this. This is why Trump vowed during his campaign not to cut them. He needs to be held to that promise. And we need to call out every Trump effort to worsen climate change by the reversal of what climate saving measures have been introduced, and by trying to sack or silence those civil service employees responsible for measuring or ameliorating climate change.
Trump, by making this false promises he won’t keep in order to win the election has handed us what we need to organize this same people.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: As we continue to look at Donald Trump’s return to the White House, we turn now to look at what it means for the world, from Israel’s war on Gaza to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During his victory speech, Trump vowed that he was going to “stop wars”.
But what will Trump’s foreign policy actually look like?
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Fatima Bhutto, award-winning author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Runaways, New Kings of the World. She is co-editing a book along with Sonia Faleiro titled Gaza: The Story of a Genocide, due out next year. She writes a monthly column for Zeteo.
Start off by just responding to Trump’s runaway victory across the United States, Fatima.
Fatima Bhutto on the Kamala Harris “support for genocide”. Video: Democracy Now!
FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, Amy, I don’t think it’s an aberration that he won. I think it’s an aberration that he lost in 2020. And I think anyone looking at the American elections for the last year, even longer, could see very clearly that the Democrats were speaking to — I’m not sure who, to a hall of mirrors.
They ran an incredibly weak and actually macabre campaign, to see Kamala Harris describe her politics as one of joy as she promised the most lethal military in the world, talking about women’s rights in America, essentially focusing those rights on the right to termination, while the rest of the world has watched women slaughtered in Gaza for 13 months straight.
You know, it’s very curious to think that they thought a winning strategy was Beyoncé and that Taylor Swift was somehow a political winning strategy that was going to defeat — who? — Trump, who was speaking to people, who was speaking against wars. You know, whether we believe him or not, it was a marked difference from what Kamala Harris was saying and was not saying.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Fatima, you wrote a piece for Zeteo earlier this year titled “Gaza Has Exposed the Shameful Hypocrisy of Western Feminism.” So, you just mentioned the irony of Kamala Harris as, you know, the second presidential candidate who is a woman, where so much of the campaign was about women, and the fact that — you know, of what’s been unfolding on women, against women and children in Gaza for the last year. If you could elaborate?
FATIMA BHUTTO: Yeah, we’ve seen, Nermeen, over the last year, you know, 70 percent of those slaughtered in Gaza by Israel and, let’s also be clear, by America, because it’s American bombs and American diplomatic cover that allows this slaughter to continue unabated — 70 percent of those victims are women and children.
We have watched children with their heads blown off. We have watched children with no surviving family members find themselves in hospital with limbs missing. Gaza has the largest cohort of child amputees in the world. And we have seen newborns left to die as Israel switches off electricity and fuel of hospitals.
So, for Kamala Harris to come out and talk repeatedly about abortion, and I say this as someone who is pro-choice, who has always been pro-choice, was not just macabre, but it’s obscene. It’s an absolute betrayal of feminism, because feminism is about liberation. It’s not about termination.
And it’s about protecting women at their most vulnerable and at their most frightened. And there was no sign of that. You know, we also saw Kamala Harris bring out celebrities. I mean, the utter vacuousness of bringing out Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé and others to talk about being a mother, while mothers are being widowed, are being orphaned in Gaza, it was not just tone deaf, it seemed to have a certain hostility, a certain contempt for the suffering that the rest of us have been watching.
I’d also like to add a point about toxic masculinity. There was so much toxicity in Kamala Harris’s campaign. You know, I watched her laugh with Oprah as she spoke about shooting someone who might enter her house with a gun, and giggling and saying her PR team may not like that, but she would kill them.
You don’t need to be a man to practice toxic masculinity, and you don’t need to be white to practice white supremacy, as we’ve seen very clearly from this election cycle.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, Fatima Bhutto, if you look at what Trump represented, and certainly the Muslim American community, the Arab American community, Jewish progressives, young people, African-Americans certainly understood what Trump’s policy was when he was president.
And it’s rare, you know, a president comes back to serve again after a term away. It’s only happened once before in history.
But you have, for example, Trump moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. You have an illegal settlement named after Trump in the West Bank. The whole question of Netanyahu and his right-wing allies in Israel pushing for annexation of the West Bank, where Trump would stand on this.
And, of course, you have the Abraham Accords, which many Palestinians felt left them out completely. If you can talk about this? These were put forward by Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who, when the massive Gaza destruction was at its height, talked about Gaza as waterfront real estate.
FATIMA BHUTTO: Absolutely. There’s no question that Trump has been a malign force, not just when it concerns Palestinians, but, frankly, out in the world. But I would argue there’s not very much difference between what these two administrations or parties do. The difference is that Trump doesn’t have the gloss and the charisma of an Obama or — I mean, I can’t even say that Biden has charisma, but certainly the gloss.
Trump says it. They do it. The difference — I can’t really tell the difference anymore.
We saw the Biden administration send over 500 shipments of arms to Israel, betraying America’s own laws, the fact that they are not allowed to export weapons of war to a country committing gross violations of human rights. We saw Bill Clinton trotted out in Michigan to tell Muslims that, actually, they should stop killing Israelis and that Jews were there before them.
I mean, it was an utterly contemptuous speech. So, what is the difference exactly?
We saw Bernie Sanders, who was mentioned earlier, write an op-ed in The Guardian in the days before the election, warning people that if they were not to vote for Kamala Harris, if Donald Trump was to get in, think about the climate crisis. Well, we have watched Israel’s emissions in the first five months of their deadly attack on Gaza release more planet-warming gases into the atmosphere than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations release in a year.
So, I don’t quite see that there’s a difference between what Democrats allow and what Trump brags about. I think it’s just a question of crudeness and decorum and politeness. One has it, and one doesn’t. In a sense, Trump is much clearer for the rest of the world, because he says what he’s going to do, and, you know, you take him at his word, whereas we have been gaslit and lied to by Antony Blinken on a daily basis now since October 7th.
Every time that AOC or Kamala Harris spoke about fighting desperately for a ceasefire, we saw more carnage, more massacres and Israel committing crimes with total impunity. You know, it wasn’t under Trump that Israel has killed more journalists than have ever been killed in any recorded conflict. It’s under Biden that Israel has killed more UN workers than have ever been killed in the UN’s history. So, I’m not sure there’s a difference.
And, you know, we’ll have to wait to see in the months ahead. But I don’t think anyone is bracing for an upturn. Certainly, people didn’t vote for Kamala Harris. I’m not sure they voted for Trump. We know that she lost 14 million votes from Biden’s win in 2020. And we know that those votes just didn’t come out for the Democrats. Some may have migrated to Trump. Some may have gone to third parties. But 14 million just didn’t go anywhere.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Fatima, if you could, you know, tell us what do you think the reasons are for that? I mean, the kind of — as you said, because it is really horrifying, what has unfolded in Gaza in the last 13 months. You’ve written about this. You now have an edited anthology that you’re editing, co-editing. You know, what do you think accounts for this, the sheer disregard for the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza?
FATIMA BHUTTO: It’s a total racism on the part not just of America, but I’m speaking of the West here. This has been betrayed over the last year, the fact that Ukraine is spoken about with an admiration, you know, Zelensky is spoken about with a sort of hero worship, Ukrainian resisters to Russia’s invasion are valorised.
You know, Nancy Pelosi wore a bracelet of bullets used by the Ukrainian resistance against Trump [sic]. But Palestinians are painted as terrorists, are dehumanised to such an extent. You know, we saw that dehumanisation from the mouths of Bill Clinton no less, from the mouths of Kamala Harris, who interrupted somebody speaking out against the genocide, and saying, “I am speaking.”
What is more toxically masculine than that?
We’ve also seen a concerted crackdown in universities across the United States on college students. I’m speaking also here of my own alma mater of Columbia University, of Barnard College, that called the NYPD, who fired live ammunition at the students. You know, this didn’t happen — this extreme response didn’t happen in protests against apartheid. It didn’t happen in protests against Vietnam in quite the same way.
And all I can think is, America and the West, who have been fighting Muslim countries for the last 25, 30 years, see that as acceptable to do so. Our deaths are acceptable to them, and genocide is not a red line.
And, you know, to go back to what what was mentioned earlier about the working class, that is absolutely ignored in America — and I would make the argument across the West, too — they have watched administration after, you know, president and congressmen give billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine, while they have no relief at home.
They have no relief from debt. They have no relief from student debt. They have no medical care, no coverage. They’re struggling to survive. And this is across the board. And after Ukraine, they saw billions go to Israel in the same way, while they get, frankly, nothing.
AMY GOODMAN: Fatima Bhutto, we want to thank you so much for being with us, award-winning author of a number of works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Runaways and New Kings of the World, co-editing a book called Gaza: The Story of a Genocide, due out next year, writes a monthly column for Zeteo.
Coming up, we look at Trump’s vow to deport as many as 20 million immigrants and JD Vance saying, yes, US children born of immigrant parents could also be deported.
Surveying the wreckage of the US elections, here are some observations that have emerged:
Campaigns based on hope do not always defeat campaigns based on fear.
Having dozens of retired high ranking military and diplomatic officials warn against the danger Donald Trump poses to democracy (including people who worked for him) did not matter to many voters.
Likewise, having former politicians and hundreds of academics, intellectuals, legal scholars, community leaders and social activists repudiate Trump’s policies of division mattered not an iota to the voting majority.
Nor did Kamala Harris’s endorsement by dozens of high profile celebrities make a difference to the MAGA mob.
Raising +US$ billion in political donations did not produce victory got Harris. It turns out outspending the opponent is not the key to electoral success.
Incoherent racist and xenophobic rants (“they are eating the dogs, they are eating the cats”) did not give the MAGA mob any pause when considering their choices. In fact, it appears that the resort to crude depictions of opponents (“stupid KaMAla”)and scapegoats (like Puerto Ricans) strengthened the bond between Trump and his supporters.
‘Garbage can’ narrative
Macroeconomic and social indicators such as higher employment and lower crime and undocumented immigrant numbers could not overcome the MAGA narrative that the US was “the garbage can of the world.”
Nor could Harris, despite her accomplished resume in all three government branches at the local, state and federal levels, overcome the narrative that she was “dumb” and a DEI hire who was promoted for reasons other than merit.
It did not matter to the MAGA mob that Trump threatened retribution against his opponents, real and imagined, using the Federal State as his instrument of revenge.
“Standing up to Trump the duty of every public servant” . . . A New York Times edirtorial reoublished today in the New Zealand Herald.
Age was not a factor even though Trump displays evident signs of cognitive decline.
Reproductive rights were not the watershed issue many thought that they would be, including for many female voters. Conversely, the MAGA efforts to court “bro” support via social media catering to younger men worked very well.
In a way, this is a double setback for women: as an issue of bodily autonomy and as an issue of gender equality given the attitudes of Trump endorsers like Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate. Those angry younger men interact with females, and their misogyny has now been reaffirmed as part of a political winning strategy.
Ukraine, Europe much to fear
Ukraine and Western Europe have much to fear.
So does the federal bureaucracy and regulatory system, which will now be subject to Project 2025, Elon Musk’s razor gang approach to public spending and RFK Jr’s public health edicts.
In fact, it looks like the Trump second term approach to governance will take a page out of Argentine president Javier Milei’s “chainsaw” approach, with results that will be similar but far broader in scope if implemented in the same way.
So all in all, from where I sit it looks like a bit of a calamity in the making. But then again, I am just another fool with a “woke” degree.
Dr Paul G Buchanan is the director of 36th-Parallel Assessments, a geopolitical and strategic analysis consultancy. This article is republished with the permission of the author.
As many of the most mainstream mental health, autism, and learning disability charities praise the new Mental Health Bill – reforming the 1983 Mental Health Act – going to the House of Lords this week, it feels like there should be true cause for celebration in a way that many psychiatric survivors may not be experiencing.
Of course, there are aspects of the proposed reforms that are extremely important changes if they are done well – people in mental health crises should not be held in cells, and families and carers should have more rights and greater involvement. Most of the reform bill looks good on paper – but does it begin to go far enough?
Should the Mental Health Act reforms be celebrated?
There are currently 2,020 Autistic people and people with learning disabilities in inpatient mental health hospitals in England, with the average stay at 4.8 years (via National Autistic Society & NHS Digital). Many will be held unnecessarily or in inappropriate settings, and it is severely evident that something needs to be done.
However, it is also clear that the Mental Health Act reforms are likely not going to fix the issues at hand.
As an Autistic ex-inpatient, I should in theory be celebrating the changes to the reasons and ways Autistic people and people with a learning disability can be detained.
But is it right to celebrate that we will not be able to be detained long-term on the basis of our autism or learning disability, when we can be if we have a co-occurring mental health condition?
Why is it that it is still seen as appropriate to detain in inappropriate settings if someone has other mental health needs? And what about the thousands of people whose autism has gone undiagnosed (and often stays so throughout an inpatient stay), or who are misdiagnosed with a personality disorder?
It is extremely difficult to agree that this reform actually changes much for Autistic people or people with a learning disability when psychiatric spaces are so extremely hostile as a sensory and social environment – and even a 28 day section (section 2) can be a cause of severe trauma, let alone considering those who will still be held long-term.
Most units are extremely bright, loud, and do not have enough staff training on autism or learning disabilities to support us. We are more likely to experience physical or chemical restraint and seclusion due to biases and misunderstandings about our needs and communication.
Ignoring the real issues, here
Jon Sparkes, the Chief Executive of Mencap, said in their press release that the reforms are key to “placing new duties on commissioners to ensure the right community support is developed” – but there is little to no mention of community support in the release from the Department of Health and Social Care, especially concerning autism and learning disabilities.
Many reach crisis point because they have been consistently failed and unsupported, and there feels like there are no moves being made to change these inequalities in the home, in schools, or in communities.
Psychiatric units are not not set up to be spaces for proper recovery, they are for holding and policing. Incarceration often causes trauma and iatrogenic harm (harm experienced by patients during medical care) is rife, seen by many as part and parcel of the experience.
Many psychiatric units in the UK have little to no therapies or recovery-focused support in them, showing the lack of care for real recovery over simply holding people – and there’s no real notion that this would change under the reforms.
These are spaces with huge power structure issues, where levels of restraint, seclusion, and overmedication are extremely high, particularly amongst marginalised communities including Black people and Autistic people.
Although inequalities Black people face have been mentioned as an issue – being over three times more likely to be detained and 11 times more likely to receive Community Treatment Orders – there has been little to no discussion of what is actually being done around this as part of the reforms.
Little on community-based care
The way that the Mental Health Act and its potential reforms are about detainment and psychiatric inpatient care means changes are being made in a bubble not accounting for the significant lacking we see in community care.
Although there has been some commitment to crisis care in the budget, the National Survivor User Network notes how little notion we have of how this would look, and there is still little to no attention to preventative care, recovery-based support, or long-term community needs.
How do we truly change how mental health care looks when someone has to fall into crisis to get anywhere?
As an ex-inpatient I have spent years advocating for people to stop being unnecessarily detained or placed in psychiatric settings, but I have learnt that there are so few alternatives set up, and if hospital is inappropriate, people are abandoned and left to fall further into crisis.
We often see imprisonment, deaths by suicide, and families struggling to cope, ultimately begging for something, anything that would give them some support. Keeping people out of hospital is only the beginning, but it is seen by much of the system as the job complete.
We can pretend the Mental Health Act reforms will be enough, if you want
You cannot make it part of the law that all patients must have a proper care and treatment plan without committing to significant new levels of funding, nor can you when you are not doing anything to change the staffing crisis.
You cannot say that mental health patients will not be held in police cells when so many biases around addiction, psychosis, and ‘suspicious behaviour’ exist.
You cannot stop detaining Autistic people but not increase funding for sensory support, bespoke care, or neurodiversity-affirming supported living.
In the official press release about the reforms, Claire Murdoch, NHS national mental health director, said that this reform is a “once in a generation opportunity”.
If that is the case, it must go further and do more for psychiatric patients and survivors.
There must be a proper commitment to funding the changes, or this will be another set of reforms that never manifest themselves, with inequalities perpetuated for decades to come.
We can pretend that the reforms will be enough – but where is the true care for dignity or human rights?
Where is the real commitment to not leaving people locked up?
They attribute the famous quote ‘Let them eat cake’ to Marie Antoinette, Queen Consort of King Louis XIV of France. Apparently, she was told that the peasants did not have enough bread to eat. Her retort Let them eat cake, famous for all the Super Rich throughout history (and right smack dab into our present USA), shows the utter arrogance, indifference and lack of empathy for most of our low and middle income working stiffs. Last night’s disgraceful vote results to allow Trump back into power reveal just how far down the rabbit hole of immorality our nation has fallen! Why did this happen? The orchestrators of this scam called a ‘Two Party System’ have done a deed of no return towards our republic. Notice how I refuse to call what we have a democracy. To this writer a true democracy is when state power is vested in the people or the general population of that state. Sadly, what we have here in Amerika is moneyed interests AKA The Super Rich that control the ‘What and How’ people think.
One part of this scam calls itself Republicans or recently MAGA. They flood the media with half truths and outright lies to frighten the suckers… sorry, the voters. Fentanyl carrying illegal aliens AKA Brown skinned Latinos who wish to rob and rape our beautiful lily white women. Schools that groom little boys into becoming little girls. Librarians who stack those shelves with books promoting such behavior, along with anti white anger about not too important things like, duh, slavery. The other party, to these wonderful patriots, is nothing more than a bunch of Marxists and out and out Communists. Wow!
The equally reprehensible other half of the scam is the Democratic Party, once the party of FDR and progressive ideas. Not anymore. They have their own sponsors AKA donors who keep them on track to be ‘not so terrible’ as the other party. They say how terrible they feel for the low income and middle class as the Military Industrial Empire they too serve turns the screws. When it comes to issues like abortion rights and gay rights the Democrats are spot on. When it comes to workers and renters becoming Serfs in this new feudal miss mush they remain silent. Many times they actually agree on the basic crime of privatization of public means and services along with the party opposite. Isn’t democracy great?
Trump won because of a few main factors. Factor one is that most of the whites who voted for him just don’t like having blacks and browns living near them or attending school with their kids. Let’s just call a spade a spade, if you get my humor? Factor two is that his populist rhetoric received a warm reception, especially with so many working class whites who don’t have a pot to piss in. Imagine how he sold the illusion that HE was against the evil DEEP STATE, a place that he has made his home for his entire career! As this corporate empire keeps swallowing working stiffs up, one wonders how many MAGA non union workers (less than 10% of the private sector) will go to bed still thanking the Lord for Trump. Factor three are the millions of evangelical types (you know, the ones who think they own Jesus) who see abortion and LBGTQ as the first and second deadliest sins.
My query to all those seniors who voted for Trump and his party: When and If you become feeble and infirmed and need a nursing home, after the consistent cuts to Medicaid, will you have the $20k per MONTH to cover that cost? What if this new ‘Trump will fix it’ government decides to cut your Social Security and adds to your Medicare contribution? How about my query to those women who follow the leader Trump and his party: As abortion becomes either difficult or actually outlawed, what if you or your daughter or granddaughter goes out with a guy, has too many drinks and winds up becoming pregnant and he’s a ‘No show’? Now, as in the pre Rowe period, we know that a woman who had the money could always find a doctor who did the deed secretly. What if you are not that well off to afford such a fee, and it would be a pretty high one, because the doc has to be very very discreet? These are questions that need to be answered by you Trump (and Republican Party) supporters.
Finally, remember dear MAGA neighbors of mine, the old biblical saying: ” For they sow the wind and they will reap the whirlwind.”
Press freedom is a pillar of American democracy. But political attacks on US-based journalists and news organisations pose an unprecedented threat to their safety and the integrity of information.
Less than 48 hours before election day, Donald Trump, now President-elect for a second term, told a rally of his supporters that he wouldn’t mind if someone shot the journalists in front of him.
“I have this piece of glass here, but all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much,” he said.
A new survey from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) highlights a disturbing tolerance for political bullying of the press in the land of the First Amendment. The findings show that this is especially true among white, male, Republican voters.
We commissioned this nationally representative survey of 1020 US adults, which was fielded between June 24 and July 5 2024, to assess Americans’ attitudes to the press ahead of the election. We are publishing the results here for the first time.
More than one-quarter (27 percent) of the Americans we polled said they had often seen or heard a journalist being threatened, harassed or abused online. And more than one-third (34 percent) said they thought it was appropriate for senior politicians and government officials to criticise journalists and news organisations.
Tolerance for political targeting of the press appears as polarised as American society. Nearly half (47 percent) of the Republicans surveyed approved of senior politicians critiquing the press, compared to less than one-quarter (22 percent) of Democrats.
Our analysis also revealed divisions according to gender and ethnicity. While 37 percent of white-identifying respondents thought it was appropriate for political leaders to target journalists and news organisations, only 27 percent of people of colour did. There was also a nine-point difference along gender lines, with 39 percent of men approving of this conduct, compared to 30 percent of women.
It appears intolerance towards the press has a face — a predominantly white, male and Republican-voting face.
Press freedom fears This election campaign, Trump has repeated his blatantly false claim that journalists are “enemies of the people”. He has suggested that reporters who cross him should be jailed, and signalled that he would like to revoke broadcast licences of networks.
Relevant, too, is the enabling environment for viral attacks on journalists created by unregulated social media companies which represent a clear threat to press freedom and the safety of journalists. Previous research produced by ICFJ for Unesco concluded that there was a causal relationship between online violence towards women journalists and physical attacks.
While political actors may be the perpetrators of abuse targeting journalists, social media companies have facilitated their viral spread, heightening the risk to journalists.
We’ve seen a potent example of this in the current campaign, when Haitian Times editor Macollvie J. Neel was “swatted” — meaning police were dispatched to her home after a fraudulent report of a murder at the address — during an episode of severely racist online violence.
Trajectory of Trump attacks Since the 2016 election, Trump has repeatedly discredited independent reporting on his campaign. He has weaponised the term “fake news” and accused the media of “rigging” elections.
“The election is being rigged by corrupt media pushing completely false allegations and outright lies in an effort to elect [Hillary Clinton] president,” he said in 2016. With hindsight, such accusations foreshadowed his false claims of election fraud in 2020, and similar preemptive claims in 2024.
His increasingly virulent attacks on journalists and news organisations are amplified by his supporters online and far-right media. Trump has effectively licensed attacks on American journalists through anti-press rhetoric and undermined respect for press freedom.
In 2019, the Committee to Protect Journalists found that more than 11 percent of 5400 tweets posted by Trump between the date of his 2016 candidacy and January 2019 “. . . insulted or criticised journalists and outlets, or condemned and denigrated the news media as a whole”.
After being temporarily deplatformed from Twitter for breaching community standards, Trump launched Truth Social, where he continues to abuse his critics uninterrupted. But he recently rejoined the platform (now X), and held a series of campaign events with X owner and Trump backer Elon Musk.
The failed insurrection on January 6, 2021, rammed home the scale of the escalating threats facing American journalists. During the riots at the Capitol, at least 18 journalists were assaulted and reporting equipment valued at tens of thousands of dollars was destroyed.
This election cycle, Reporters Without Borders logged 108 instances of Trump insulting, attacking or threatening the news media in public speeches or offline remarks over an eight-week period ending on October 24.
Meanwhile, the Freedom of the Press Foundation has recorded 75 assaults on journalists since January 1 this year. That’s a 70 percent increase on the number of assaults captured by their press freedom tracker in 2023.
A recent survey of hundreds of journalists undertaking safety training provided by the International Women’s Media Foundation found that 36 percent of respondents reported being threatened with or experiencing physical violence. One-third reported exposure to digital violence, and 28 percent reported legal threats or action against them.
US journalists involved in ongoing ICFJ research have told us that they have felt particularly at risk covering Trump rallies and reporting on the election from communities hostile towards the press. Some are wearing protective flak jackets to cover domestic politics. Others have removed labels identifying their outlets from their reporting equipment to reduce the risk of being physically attacked.
And yet, our survey reveals a distinct lack of public concern about the First Amendment implications of political leaders threatening, harassing, or abusing journalists. Nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of Americans surveyed did not regard political attacks on journalists or news organisations as a threat to press freedom. Among them, 38 percent identified as Republicans compared to just 9 percent* as Democrats.
The anti-press playbook Trump’s anti-press playbook appeals to a global audience of authoritarians. Other political strongmen, from Brazil to Hungary and the Philippines, have adopted similar tactics of deploying disinformation to smear and threaten journalists and news outlets.
Such an approach imperils journalists while undercutting trust in facts and critical independent journalism.
History shows that fascism thrives when journalists cannot safely and freely do the work of holding governments and political leaders to account. As our research findings show, the consequences are a society accepting lies and fiction as facts while turning a blind eye to attacks on the press.
*The people identifying as Democrats in this sub-group are too few to make this a reliable representative estimate.
Note: Nabeelah Shabbir (ICFJ deputy director of research) and Kaylee Williams (ICFJ research associate) also contributed to this article and the research underpinning it. The survey was conducted by Langer Research Associates in English and Spanish. ICFJ researchers co-developed the survey and conducted the analysis.
The world is reeling with the news that the US has re-elected Donald Trump as president.
Over 71 million Americans have just said they want to put the superficial citrus-tanned billionaire, fascist, and fraudster over a Black woman in the Oval Office.
That is, the US just showed once more what an utter racist, misogynistic, white supremacist shithole it is. Not that it’s anything new for the axis of imperial plunder and terror.
Welcome to the US 2024, where two self-serving white male nepo-babies can climb to the highest office. A country where the president is a literal convicted felon and rapist. And yet, why is anyone surprised?
Trump re-election: return of the baby blimp anyone?
This is of course, the same whiny little Trump-baby who threw his toys out of the pram after the last election. The former and now re-elected president has indictment charges still hanging over his head over his post-election paddy. Specifically, these are charges for attempting to subvert the election results. Of course, his puerile disinformation campaign culminated in the January 2021 Capitol coup.
Trump was set to go on trial in March, but managed to delay it. Then, in July, the Supreme Court ruled that he had presidential immunity from prosecution for acts committed while in office. However, prosecutors filed revised indictment charges, broadly along the same lines in August. However, his trial hasn’t happened yet. Now he’s president, will it? The juries out – but we’re willing to bet he’ll now get the administration’s justice department to drop the case.
Did we mention he’s also facing charges for squirreling away classified documents at his residence in Mar-a-Lago?
Since the US failed to throw Trump out with the bath water, he can now follow through on his threat to throw out special counsel Jack Smith who’s bringing both the cases too. In October, Trump boasted in a radio interview that:
Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy … I would fire him within two seconds
So that’s that then.
A US first: a convicted felon in the Oval Office
However, he is already a convicted felon for other dodgy dealings. Most notably, in May, a New York court found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records.
It was over hush money he’d bunged to porn star Stormy Daniels.
However, Trump was set to face sentencing on 26 November. Now, at minimum, the sex pest’s new rise to the office of power will probably delay his sentencing until after his presidency. More likely, he’ll find a way to quash this too.
Another trial that judges will now have to delay? The Georgia election interference case. This revolves around Trump and his right-wing MAGA-mugs spreading lies about voter fraud in the state. Did he plot to send fake electors to Washington as well? Yes, he did. He and his 18 allies face charges for criminal enterprise over this.
Again though, the slippery billionaire bullshitter won’t be getting his comeuppance on this anytime soon. At least, not now he’s head honcho of this democratic farce once more.
Make it make sense. Trump – a convicted felon and pending indictment charges from trying to overturn the results of the previous election – could stand for president. Now he is president, he’ll make damn sure he won’t be facing justice for any of it.
A sexual predator for president
If being a fraudster and flag-shagging fascist felon weren’t enough to make you president, clearly being a literal rapist clinches it.
In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abusing columnist E. Jean Carroll, and fined him $5m.
And following this in August 2023, a judge ruled in a defamation trial that Carroll’s allegations Trump had raped her, were “substantially true”. In short, he’s a rapist – which tracks from the “grab em’ by the pussy” president.
But of course, where there’s the misogynistic man-baby, there’s sexual assault allegations in spades. In fact, 26 women have come forward with disgusting accounts of Trump’s sexual misconduct.
This includes his first wife, Ivana, who also made rape allegations in their divorce deposition and a former business partner who described his attempted rape.
The message Trump’s return to the Oval Office sends is that powerful men can get away with it. Women already know this and live this reality every day. However, now over 71 million Americans have told survivors of sexual assault that male violence against women and girls doesn’t matter to them.
System is set up by, and for, privileged white pricks like Trump
On the same day the electorate hit the booths, California voted to pass ‘Proposition 36’ which repealed a progressive abolitionary law. Proposition 47 had redirected funds away from the prison industrial complex and into drug and mental health treatment programmes, and homelessness prevention. But in passing Proposition 36, California is ‘trumping’ up criminal charges for drug possession and small theft. It will now also gut these community-based care programmes.
So, in the same country that just basically said a rich white male rapist and convicted criminal can be president, one state has simultaneously voted to lock up more poor, marginalised people crooked capitalists are exploiting. In fact, it was union-busting, wage thieving corporations like Walmart that sponsored the proposition. Say no more.
And speaking of exploitation, California looks like it might also have voted to continue the carceral practice of “involuntary servitude“. That is, forcing incarcerated people into mandatory work placements rather and eating up the time they could otherwise use for things that help their rehabilitation. It’s state-sanctioned slavery by any other name.
None of this is unrelated. The ‘Yes to Proposition 36’ campaign gave $1m to the Republicans a week before the election. Oh, and incarcerated people can’t vote by the way. Trump though? He can and (clearly) did put a cross in the box for his own smug Sunny D-stained mug. All while the US disenfranchises 4.4 million people with felony convictions.
This is the US writ large. Its criminal justice system, its constitution, its democratic machinery are all intrinsic vestiges of its colonial, racist slave past. The structural violence against women, and poor, disabled, Black, and Brown communities is a feature, not a flaw. Not by chance, but by design.
You don’t really have to wonder how so many US citizens could vote from Trump in this context. It’s because this patriarchal, white supremacist system was made to elevate his white, male, cishet ass. Protecting him from accountability is a function of this – and now, that’s precisely what it will do.
The exact cause of the Democrats’ catastrophic loss last night was, of course, no one thing. The leader of the incumbent party, Joe Biden, was deeply unpopular, with disapproval ratings of 56% on the eve of the election. The public felt inflation had eaten away at modest income gains. And, of course, shadowy billionaires spread false narratives and juiced social media.
Everyone is going to have their own reasons in the coming days—no doubt many based on their own priors and grievances. But one reason why the Harris campaign was bogged down from the outset, I will argue, was its moral and strategic refusal to break from the White House’s deeply unpopular position on arming and funding an ongoing genocide.
Not because the issue itself was dispositive, but because it played a central role in alienating the democratic base and compelling Harris to find votes elsewhere–a disastrous choice which appears to have lowered turnout and sowed cynicism.
As much as the pollsters and consultants in charge of Democratic campaigns may dislike the so-called “base,” the base remains an important part of social media reach, campaign volunteers, and canvassers—the evangelical core of any campaign. For Biden, when his campaign was terminal last summer, this element wasalmost entirelygone, and indeed, this fact was one of the motivating factors pushing to drive him out. But Harris—at least initially—made up a lot of ground in this regard, mostly through better vibes and slightly more sophisticated HR empathy-speak.
But feigned concern and vibes can only go so far. As the honeymoon of “brat summer” gave way to a codified campaign theme, it was clear not only was Gaza going to be ignored entirely as an issue—and the death machine would churn on without pause—but Team Harris would be leaning into a strategy of attempting to woo so-called “disaffected Republicans.” She made the centerpiece of her campaign Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney, the former vice president of George W Bush. To the Savvy Commentators this made sense—obviously, winning over fence-sitting Republicans was the right call. And few in our media questioned whether this strategy had any downsides.
Feigned concern and vibes can only go so far.
But, of course, it did. Going to the center has costs; it’s not a perpetual vote-getting machine. A campaign that embraces conservative themes and personalities, even while throwing out progressive policies here and there, is bound to alienate voters for whom politics isn’t just a platform for endless triangulation.
To be clear: The costs could have been worth it. The votes gained from sounding like 2012 Mitt Romney may be greater than those lost to non-voting or third-party voting among the base. But this calculus was never shown. The campaign and its major PAC allies driving the strategy, namely Anita Dunn and pollster David Shor, never had to show the math on how this gambit made sense. It was simply assumed to be true, obvious, and inevitable.
It wasn’t until there were two weeks left in the election that the New York Timeseven entertained the idea that, perhaps, a campaign theme built around the progeny of a deeply unpopular war criminal who, herself, had negative favorables, was not the free real estate Dunn & Co. made it out to be. “As Vice President Kamala Harris makes a broad play to the political center,” the Times would hand-wring, “some Democrats worry that she is going too far in her bid to win over moderates who are skeptical of former President Donald J. Trump. In private—and increasingly in public as Election Day fast approaches—they say she risks chilling Democratic enthusiasm by alienating progressives and working-class voters.”
It would be very convenient for me if what I ideologically supported—in this case, ending a genocide—also happened to be what was electorally advantageous for the campaign. The moral thing and the politically useful thing are not, of course, inherently aligned. But the inverse is also true: There’s no law of nature that says tacking right, and doubling down on a deeply unpopular and morally ruinous Gaza strategy, is the smart and savvy thing to do. The burden ought to have been on those running a $1.8 billion campaign to show how their approach made sense, but they never bothered doing this. It was just dogma—dogma few ever questioned.
One can’t really bank on activist energy, youth turnout, and base-mobilizing when those involved—while canvassing together, or running phone banks at each others apartments, or getting drinks afterwards—have to awkwardly address the fact of genocide and their candidate’s support for it.
But there’s a cruel reality behind the decision to track right: The campaign, once it hitched its wagon to Biden’s policy of unqualified support for genocide in Gaza, really had no other choice. In 2020, the Biden campaign tentatively rode the progressive wave of the George Floyd protests, anger about Trump’s racist border policies, COVID activism, and anti-war protests against Saudi Arabia’s destruction of Yemen to energize the Democratic Party base to defeat Trump. It was, in retrospect, mostly lip service, and certainly no one at the time thought Biden a firebrand progressive. But the broader theme of the campaign was that everyone would have a seat at the table, even if the plate would most likely end up being empty.
Harris made no such pretensions, because any strategy that played to similar themes would have had to address the elephant in the room: the Democratic Party’s “ironclad” support for Israel’s elimination of a people in whole or in part. And this simply would not have worked. One can’t really bank on activist energy, youth turnout, and base-mobilizing when those involved—while canvassing together, or running phone banks at each others apartments, or getting drinks afterwards—have to awkwardly address the fact of genocide and their candidate’s support for it. This isn’t to say there was no activist or youth energy in the campaign—clearly there was. But those in charge quickly decided against making this their central theme and vote-gathering strategy, given the uncomfortable questions that would naturally arise from campaigning in these spaces. So Liz Cheney and her negative-2 favorables it was.
Countless pro-Democratic Party pundits tried to warn Harris. Polls were commissioned. The Uncommitted Movement very politely, and well within the bounds of loyal party politics, begged Harris to change course. But she refused. The risk, to her, was worth sticking to the unshakable commitment to “eliminating Hamas” no matter how many dead Palestinian children it required, or the degree to which images and reports of these dead children would fuel cynicism and create an opening for Trump to win.
To the extent grassroots energy was maintained, and the awkward fact of Gaza didn’t ruin the vibes more than it ought to have, this was made possible by an elaborate responsibility-avoidance PR regime of compartmentalization built up over months by the Biden campaign and a compliant media. Key to this compartmentalization were supposed “ceasefire talks” that the White House and campaign were allegedly “working tirelessly to secure,” but could never, alas, get across the finish line. Liberals were also soothed by the vaguely true-sounding refrain that Trump “would be worse for Gaza.” Turning every party advocate into a dead-eyed trolley problem expert triaging which genocide was morally preferable may have made cold logical sense, but it was hardly an inspiring message. Making it less compelling was that, by and large, it was not a position emanating from Palestinians themselves, as virtually every major Palestinian organization and the sole Palestinian-American in Congress, Rashida Tlaib, refused to endorse Harris.
But to an unmovable contingent of liberals—motivated by a combination of self-delusion and genuine and understandable fear of a second Trump term—it didn’t matter. They just wanted not to think about Gaza. It didn’t matter that the White House could simply assert a ceasefire whenever it wished, and the whole basis for the supposed “negotiations” was equal parts fictitious and internally inconsistent. These pat lines mostly worked.
Mostly. Aside from foreclosing on a progressive track that tapped into the base and emphasized turnout over converting fence-sitting Republicans, the fact of genocide in Gaza continued angering and alienating many voters not fooled by the “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire” PR regime and patronizing I See You, I Hear You rhetoric from Harris. Further research is needed to measure the exact extent this bitterness, this enthusiasm-suppressing support for genocide played a role in losing potential Demcoratic voters, but one thing is clear: It rotted the campaign from the beginning, made going right more or less inevitable, and loomed over every brat summer selfie, phone bank interaction, and water cooler conversation. In late July when Harris took over the Biden campaign, she could have chosen to break from the White House, she could have chosen to follow international and US law, she could have chosen progressive energy and greater support from the base, she could have chosen life. Instead she chose genocide. And this was the inevitable outcome.
I fear that by the time I go to bed democracy in the United States will be imperilled by a man, the nature of which the Founding Fathers could never envisage when creating the protective elements of the constitution.
The risks will not be to Americans alone. The world will become a different place with Donald J Trump once again becoming president.
My trepidation is tempered only by the fact that no-one can be sure he has the numbers to gain sufficient votes in the electoral college that those same founding fathers devised as a power-sharing devise between federal and state governments. They could not have foreseen how it could become the means by which a fraction of voters could determine their country’s future.
Or perhaps that is contributing to my disquiet. No-one has been able to give me the comfort of predicting a win by Kamala Harris.
In fact, none of the smart money has been ready to call it one way or the other.
The New Zealand Herald’s business editor at large, Liam Dann, predicted a Trump win the other day but his reasoning was more visceral than analytical:
Trump provides an altogether more satisfying prescription for change. He allows them to vent their anger. He taps into the rage bubbling beneath America’s polite and friendly exterior. He provides an outlet for frustration, which is much simpler than opponents to his left can offer.
That’s why he might well win. Momentum seems to be going his way.
He is a master salesman and he is selling into a market that is disillusioned with the vague promises they’ve been hearing from mainstream politicians for generations.
Heightened anxiety
Few others — including his brother Corin, who is in the US covering the election for Radio New Zealand — have been willing to make the call and today dawned no clearer.
That may be one reason for my heightened anxiety . . . the lack of certainty one way or the other.
All of our major media outlets have had staff in the States for the election (most with some support from the US government) and each has tried to tap into the “mood of the people”, particularly in the swing states. Each has done a professional job, but it has been no easy task and, to be honest, I have no idea what the real thinking of the electorate might be.
One of my waking nightmares is that the electorate isn’t thinking at all. In which case, Liam Dann’s reading of the entrails might be as good a guide as any.
I have attempted to cope with the avalanche of reportage, analysis and outright punditry from CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. I have tried to get a more detached view from the BBC, Guardian, and (God help me) Daily Mail. I have made my head hurt playing with The Economist’s poll prediction models.
I am no closer to predicting a winner than anyone else.
However, I do know what scares me.
If Donald Trump takes up residence in the White House again, the word “freedom” will lose its true meaning and become a captured phrase ring-fencing what the victor and his followers want.
Validating disinformation
“Media freedom” will validate disinformation and make truth harder to find. News organisations that seek to hold Trump and a compliant Congress to account will be demonised, perhaps penalised.
As president again, Trump could rend American society to a point where it may take decades for the wound to heal and leave residual feelings that will last even longer. That will certainly be the case if he attempts to subvert the democratic process to extend power beyond his finite term.
I worry for the rest of the world, trying to contend with erratic foreign policies that put the established order in peril and place the freedom of countries like Ukraine in jeopardy. I dread the way in which his policies could empower despots like Vladimir Putin. By definition, as a world power, the United States’ actions affect all of us — and Trump’s influence will be pervasive.
You may think my fears could be allayed by the possibility that he will not return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Were Kamala Harris facing any other candidate, that would certainly be the case. However, Donald Trump is not any other candidate and he has demonstrated an intense dislike of losing.
I am alarmed by the possibility that, if he fails to get the required 270 electoral votes, Donald Trump could again cry “voter fraud” and light the touch paper offered to him by the likes of the Proud Boys. They had a practice run on January 6, 2021. If there is a next time, it could well be worse.
Sometimes, my wife accuses me of unjustified optimism. When I think of the Americans I have met and those I know well, I recall that the vast majority of them have had a reasonable amount of common sense. Some have had it in abundance. I can only hope that across that nation common sense prevails today.
I am more than a little worried, however, that on this occasion my wife might be right.
Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes the website knightlyviews.com where this commentary — written before the election results started coming in — was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.
(@CounsellingSam) 
