Her son had been upstairs playing with his granddad while his mother talked to the strange lady who he’d never met before.
Clearly, his patience had run out.
She wanted to tell him to be quiet, but I asked her to bring her son down instead.
I had never met Syed, but had seen pictures of him.
Spitting image
Mohammad is a spitting image of his father.
He sat in Amna’s lap as she explained to him she was telling me about his “Baba”.
And then she told him is Baba is in heaven, “he’s in the best place” she told him to repeat.
Since Syed’s death Amna has completed two diplomas, travelled alone with her three children and is planning to start an IT career.
Syed Jahandad Ali holding his son Mohammad Yousuf Ali. Image: RNZ
Ironically, her graduation ceremony is on March 15, and she planned to receive her diploma in person.
Even as she looked back at the most painful years of her life she didn’t shed a single tear.
On the other hand, I found it hard to fight the lump in my throat.
He was a foodie
After the interview, she had an elaborate morning tea on the kitchen counter — I was surprised how this mum of three young children found the time to prepare so much beautiful food.
Syed was a foodie she told me, he loved her cooking.
Just hours earlier I had left Auckland, like every other year it was time to do a story about the mosque attacks.
But this anniversary was going to be different I told myself. I had planned to meet survivors and families and talk about their achievements.
I had no idea their resilience and strength would be so overwhelming.
Most of the people in the mosques on the day of the attacks came from countries where terrorism isn’t rare.
Over the past five years many people have asked me, with no malice at all, why the Christchurch attacks left such a deep impact on the survivors and families.
Best answer?
Perhaps, survivor Faisal Abbas has the best answer.
Al Noor Mosque . . . in memory of the 51 who lost their lives at two Christchurch mosques on 15 March 2019. Image: RNZ/Nate McKinnon
He was in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2014 when terrorists gunned down hundreds of teachers and students at the Army Public School massacre.
It was his school and he wanted to send his children there.
The principal who died saving her students had been his teacher.
To him, it was a final nail in the coffin. He told me he did not want to be where even his school wasn’t safe, so he picked the safest country he could find and moved to New Zealand.
For Faisal, he says, it’s his first hand experience of terrorism and choosing to get away from it that made the Christchurch attacks even harder to process.
‘Going with the flow’
Before the attacks, he said, he meticulously planned everything, but now he prefers to “go with the flow”.
He trusts in Allah’s plan and he knows whatever will happen is for the best.
And then he repeated a verse from the Quran where God tells Prophet Mohammad “Verily with hardship comes ease”.
I share the same religion as the survivors, but I pray my faith in God becomes as strong as theirs.
One of the toughest thing as a journalist is to decide what makes the final cut.
Farid Ahmed made headlines around the world for choosing to forgive the attacker who killed his wife.
Farid Ahmed holds a picture of his family . . . being in a wheelchair hasn’t stopped him from spreading the message of love and forgiveness. Image: YouTube screenshot
When I interviewed him for my story on this trip he was in hospital fighting an infection — a detail that I didn’t put in the story.
Message of love, forgiveness
Being in a wheelchair hasn’t stopped him from spreading the message of love and forgiveness.
I told him perhaps now would be a good time to slow down and rest. He just smiled and said there was no time, otherwise it would be a disservice to his wife who died saving others.
One of my favourite parts of the trip was visiting Temel Atacocugu. Despite nine bullets and some 30 surgeries, his sense of humour is intact.
Temel Atacocugu’s three pet goldfish . . . their Turkish names are Pakize, Serafettin and Abuziddin. Image: RNZ/Mahvash Ikram
He has three pet goldfish all of whom he’s given Turkish names. Pakize — the pure one, Serafettin — the good boy and Abuziddin, Temel says that’s just a traditional name.
I didn’t imagine I would come back feeling so moved.
Five years ago, the survivors and families I met told me they would rebuild their lives. Every year they inched closer to that goal.
This time they seemed to have delivered on that promise.
I can only marvel at the miracle of their strength and resilience which is beyond my understanding.
And the only words that help me make any sense of it all are: “Verily with hardship comes ease”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The below is an opinion piece from the Jeremy Corbyn-founded Peace and Justice Project.
The Tory Party has corrupted our politics, says the Peace and Justice Project – pandering to hate and increasing division as a last-ditch attempt to reduce the damage it is predicted to face at the next General Election.
At the beginning of the week, Lee Anderson joined Reform UK, the latest incarnation of UKIP just weeks after he was in post as Conservative Party vice-chair, and on Monday 11 March it was revealed that Diane Abbott was racially abused by a major Tory donor for being a black woman in public life.
We can’t let the politics of hate and division take hold in this country, especially during a general election year.
Peace and Justice Project: eliminate racism
Saturday 16 March is the UN’s Day for the Elimination of Racism.
Thousands will come together in central London to call out this government’s rhetoric and policies that systematically discriminate against people of colour, whether that be through demonisation of refugees seeking a place of safety, police violence against black communities or the numerous systematic challenges that disproportionately impact migrants in the UK:
The Peace and Justice Project is proud to be supporting this demo alongside campaigning trade unions like the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers (RMT), National Education Union, (NEU), and Bakers, Food, and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), as well as community organisations including Muslim Council of Britain, Jewish Socialist Group, and Disabled People Against Cuts.
Unite to stop hate
Join our founder Jeremy Corbyn, Public and Commercial Services (PCS) Union general secretary Fran Heathcote, John McDonnell MP, Shami Chakrabati, NEU General Secretary Daniel Kebede, and more for the rally and march organised by Stand Up To Racism and the Trades Union Congress.
After the march there will be an anti-racist music event dubbed House Against Hate in Whitehall with speakers, DJs, and special guests.
And if you can’t wait until Saturday, join the pre-rally gig at Grow in Hackney on Friday 15 March – find out more and get your tickets here.
Let’s come together to tell our politicians that we stand against racism in all its forms and we will unite to stop the hate – now and always.
Voters don’t believe prime minister Rishi Sunak’s claims that “mob rule” and extremists have taken over Britain. Instead, swathes of the public think the Tories are the ones fuelling hatred and undermining democracy. That’s the verdict of new polling commissioned by Byline Times/Byline Supplement.
Of course, the problem is that while the public aren’t buying Sunak’s nonsense, they aren’t buying into Labour’s either – meaning this year’s general election is likely to be a democratic washout.
Sunak: on the offensive
Following George Galloway’s thunderous election victory in Rochdale, Sunak went on the offensive. In a preposterous address outside Downing Street, he urged the country to “face down the extremists who would tear us apart”. He was specifically taking aim at pro-Palestine protesters.
As the Canary recently reported, the Tories are now trying to change the extremism definition – essentially to anyone who doesn’t support the right-wing, capitalist status quo.
Now an exclusive new poll conducted by WeThink for Byline Times/Byline Supplement suggests the British public isn’t buying into Sunak’s rhetoric. Moreover, voters appear to have major concerns over the Tory Party‘s increasingly Islamophobic and authoritarian stance. You can read the full report here.
The public aren’t buying it
The polling found that:
45% of British voters believe that the Conservative Party is actively “undermining democracy”. This rises to 64% when including only those with a view (that is, excluding the ‘don’t knows’). Only around 25% of those polled see the party as protecting or strengthening democratic values.
There was a rough 50/50 split between voters who perceive the party as contributing to extremism as much as those who see the Tories as reducing it.
38% of voters disagree with the PM’s characterisation of Britain being under ‘mob rule’ due to recent protests. This was versus 31% who agreed with him.
58% of voters say they would not be confident they’d be treated fairly by the police if they took part in a public demonstration.
43% of the public believes the Conservative Party is making anti-Muslim hatred worse. This rises to 72% when you take out the don’t knows. Only 17% believe the party is making the situation better.
Notably, even among 2019 Conservative voters a larger proportion sees the party as exacerbating the problem rather than helping.
Let the mob speak at the general election
The WeThink poll for Byline Supplement was conducted on the 7 March, involving 1,186 adults polled online across Britain, and weighted.
Perhaps Rishi Sunak’s fears over ‘mob role’ in fact represent something simpler. This multi-millionaire’s idea of a ‘mob’ – the increasingly irate public at large – is well and truly against him. He is tied to a party that is veering dangerously towards the hard Right. From his party’s GB News bunker, it is everyone else that looks extreme. At some point this year however, the mob will get to have their say at last.
Of course, the concern is that with both the Tories and Labour not actually resonating with voters – the latter only winning some by-elections because people didn’t turn out to vote – whoever wins the next election will get in by default, not on an actual mandate. As the Canary wrote in a recent editorial:
The risk for Labour is that while many voters decide they can no-longer vote Tory, they simultaneously don’t vote Labour.
Throw in the wildcard that is Boris Johnson, and this election could end very differently than current polling predicts.
So, while Byline Supplement‘s polling shows voters don’t believe the Tories – it’s likely they don’t believe Labour, either. That’s no kind of democracy to be living in.
Whither China? was the name of a widely circulated pamphlet authored by the respected Anglo-Indian Marxist author, R. Palme Dutt. Writing in 1966, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the throes of the “Cultural Revolution,” the pamphlet sought to shed light on the PRC’s tortured road from liberation in 1949 to a vast upheaval disrupting all aspects of Chinese society as well as foreign relations. To most people — across the entire political spectrum — developments within this Asian giant were a challenge to understand. To be sure, there were zealots outside of the PRC who hung on every word uttered by The Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao, and stood by every release explaining Chinese events in the People’s Daily, Red Flag and Peking Review. A few Communist Parties and many middle-class intellectuals embraced the Cultural Revolution as a rite of purification. Yet for most, as with Palme Dutt, the paramount question remained: Where is the PRC going?
Today, forty-five years later, the question remains open.
I wrote the above thirteen years ago. I contend that the question remains open today. Much has changed, however. In 2011, China-bashing was widespread especially where jobs had disappeared in manufacturing, but largely tempered by a Western business sector anxious to exploit low wages and the Chinese domestic market.
But almost simultaneously with the 2011 posting, the Obama administration made official its “pivot to Asia,” directed explicitly at Peoples’ China. As the Brookings Institute ‘diplomatically’ put it, “Washington is still very much focused on sustaining a constructive U.S.-China relationship, but it has now brought disparate elements together in a strategically integrated fashion that explicitly affirms and promises to sustain American leadership throughout Asia for the foreseeable future.” More explicitly, they intend “to establish a strong and credible American presence across Asia to both encourage constructive Chinese behavior and to provide confidence to other countries in the region that they need not yield to potential Chinese regional hegemony.”
To be sure, the officially declared Obama administration hostility to the PRC was neither a reaction to job loss nor to deindustrialization. The Administration showed no interest in recreating lost jobs or restoring the industrial cities in the Midwest. The real purpose is revealed in the simple phrase “Chinese regional hegemony.” Clearly, by 2011, ruling circles in the US had decided that the PRC was more than an economic cherry ready to be plucked. Instead, it had developed into an economic powerhouse, a true, even the true, competitor in global markets; indeed, it had become a robust threat to U.S. hegemony.
With the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the anti-PRC campaign continued, though conducted in an accelerated, cruder fashion, employing sanctions, threats, ultimatums, and even legal chicanery (the detention of one of Huawei’s executives, the daughter of the company’s founder).
The subsequent Biden administration pursued the same approach, adding another level of belligerence by stirring conflict in the South China Sea and reigniting the Taiwan issue. To anyone paying attention, successive administrations were intensifying aggression against the PRC, a process fueled by the eagerly compliant mainstream media.
It has become commonplace on the left to explain the growing hostility to the PRC by the U.S. and its NATO satellites as the instigation of a new Cold War, a revival of the anti-Communist crusades strengthening after World War II. In the past, I have suggested as much. But that would be grossly misleading.
The original Cold War was a struggle between capitalism and socialism. Whether Western critics will concede that the Soviet alternative was really socialism is irrelevant. It was a sharp and near-total alternative, and the West fought it as such. The Soviet Union did not organize its production to participate in global markets, it did not compete for global markets, nor did it threaten the profitability of capitalist enterprises through global competition. In short, the Soviet Union offered a potent option to Western capitalism, but not the threat of a rival for markets or profits. Moreover, Soviet foreign policy both condemned capitalism and explicitly sought to win other countries to socialist construction.
The same cannot be said for the Western antagonism to the PRC. The West courted Peoples’ China assiduously from the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution through the entire Deng era. Western powers saw the PRC as either an ally against the Soviet Union, a source of cheap labor, an investment windfall, or a virgin market. But with China’s success in weathering the capitalist crisis of 2007-2009, the U.S. and its allies began to look at the PRC as a dangerous rival within the global system of capitalism. Chinese technologies more than rivaled the West’s; its share of global trade had grown dramatically; and its accumulation of capital and its export of capital were alarming to Western powers bent on pressing their own export of capital.
In contrast to the actual Cold War, even the most ardent defender of the “Chinese road to socialism” cannot today cite many instances of PRC foreign policy strongly advocating, assisting, or even vigorously defending the fight for socialism anywhere outside of China. Indeed, the basic tenet of PRC policy — the noninterference in the affairs of others, regardless of their ideologies or policies — has more in common with Adam Smith than Vladimir Lenin.
What the Soviet Union took as its internationalist mission — support for those fighting capitalism — is not to be found in the CPC’s foreign policy. Nothing demonstrates the differences more than the Soviet’s past solidarity and aid toward Cuba’s socialist construction and the contrasting PRC’s commercial and cultural relations and meager aid.
Accordingly, the PRC’s commercial relations with less developed countries can raise substantial issues. Recently, Ann Garrison, a highly respected solidarity activist, often focusing on imperialism in Africa, wrote a provocative article for Black Agenda Report. In her review of Cobalt Red, How the Blood of the Congo Powers our Lives — an account of corporate mining and labor exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo– Garrison makes the following commentary guaranteed to raise the ire of devotees of the “Chinese road to socialism”:
[The author of Cobalt Red] explains battery technology and the global dominance of battery manufacture by South Korean, Japanese, and, most of all, Chinese industrial titans. Huge Chinese corporations so dominate Congolese cobalt mining, processing and battery manufacture that one has to ask why a communist government, however capitalist in fact, doesn’t at least somehow require more responsible sourcing of minerals processed and then advanced along the supply chain within its borders. I hope that Kara’s book has or will be translated into Chinese. (my emphasis)
Predictably, rejoinders came fast and furious. In both an interview and responseposted on Black Agenda Report, Garrison’s critics struggled to explain why PRC-based corporations were not contributing to the impoverishment and exploitation of Congolese workers. They cited Chinese investments in infrastructure and in modernization; they noted huge increases in productivity wrought by Chinese technology; they reminded Garrison of the corruption of the DRC government and local capitalists, and even blamed capitalism itself. How, one critic asked, could the PRC be singled out, when other (admittedly capitalist) countries were doing it as well?
Yet none even made a feeble attempt to explain how the extraction of one of the most sought-after minerals in modern industry could leave the people of the mineral-rich DRC with one of — if not the lowest — median incomes in the entire world. This striking fact points to the enormous rate of exploitation engaged in cobalt, copper, and other resource extraction in this poverty-stricken African country (for a Marxist angle on this question, see Charles Andrews’s article, cited by Garrison, but seemingly misunderstood by her).
In their zeal to defend the PRC’s Belt and Road initiative, these same defenders of the penetration of Chinese capital in poor countries often cite the frequent Chinese concept of “win-win” — the idea that Chinese capital brings with it victory for both the capital supplier and those ‘benefitted’ by the capital. Theorists of the non-class “win-win” concept are never clear exactly who the beneficiaries are — other capitalists, corrupt government officials, or the working class. Nevertheless, within the intensely competitive global capitalist system, this “win-win” is not sustainable and is contrary to both experience and the laws of capitalist development. Theoretically, it owes more to the thinking of David Ricardo than Karl Marx.
The PRC’s vexing relationship to capitalism has produced contradictions at home as well as globally. The ongoing collapse of the largely private construction/real-estate industry is one very large example. Once a major factor in PRC growth, overproduction of housing is now a substantial drag on economic advance. Monthly sales of new homes by private developers peaked late in 2020 at over 1.5 trillion yuan and fell to a little more than .25 trillion yuan at the beginning of 2024.
With the private real estate sector on the verge of bankruptcy and a huge number of residential properties unsold or unfinished, the PRC leadership is caught in a twenty-first-century version of the infamous scissors crisis that brought the Soviet NEP — the experiment with capitalist development of the productive forces — to a halt. If the government allows the private developers to fail, it will have harsh repercussions throughout the private sector, with banks, and foreign investors. If the government bails out the developers, it will remove the market consequences of capitalist excess and put the burden of sustaining capitalist failure on the backs of the Chinese people.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the government, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is considering placing “the state back in charge of the property market, part of a push to rein in the private sector.” The WSJ editors construe this as reviving “Socialist Ideas” — a welcome thought, if true.
The article claims that in CCP General Secretary Xi’s view, “too much credit moved into property speculation, adding risks to the financial system, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and diverting resources from what Xi considers to be the ‘real economy’ — sectors such as manufacturing and high-end technology.…”
Putting aside the question of how the private real estate sector was allowed to create an enormous bubble of unfinished and unsold homes, the move to return responsibility for housing to the public sector should be welcome, restoring price stability and planning, and eliminating speculation, overproduction, and economic disparities.
Unfortunately, there will be uncertain consequences and difficulties for banks, investors, and real estate buyers who purchased under the private regimen.
It is worth noting that no Western capitalist country or Japan has or would address a real estate bubble by absorbing real estate into the public sector.
Under Xi’s leadership, the direction of the PRC’s ‘reforms’ may have shifted somewhat away from an infatuation with markets, private ownership, and foreign capital. The former “enrich yourselves” tolerance for wealth accumulation has been tempered by conscious efforts at raising the living standards of the poorest. Xi has made a priority of “targeted poverty alleviation,” with impressive success.
Western intellectuals harshly criticize the PRC’s ‘democracy’ because it rejects the multi-party, periodic election model long-favored in the West. These same intellectuals fetishize a form of democracy, regardless of whether that particular form earns the trust of those supposedly represented. The mere fact that a procedure purports to deliver democratic or representative results does not guarantee that it actually makes good on its promise.
If China-critics were truly concerned with democratic or popular outcomes, they would turn to measures or surveys of public confidence, satisfaction, or trust in government to judge the respective systems. On this count, the PRC is always found at or near the top in public trust (for example, hereand here). Moreover, Chinese society shows high interpersonal or social trust, another measure of success in producing popular social cohesion by a government.
It’s telling that with the Western obsession with democracy, there is little interest in holding bourgeois democracy up to any relevant measure of its trust or popularity. When it is done, the U.S. fares very poorly, with a six-decade decline in public trust, according to Pew. As recently as February 28, the most recent Pew poll shows that even people who do respect “representative democracy” are critical of how it’s working. Their answer to their skepticism may be found “if more women, people from poor backgrounds and young adults held elective office”, say respondents. Those elites who so glibly talk of “our democracy,” in contrast to those including the CCP that they call “authoritarians,” might pause to listen to the people of their own country.
The PRC has shocked Western critics with the breakneck pace of its adoption of non-emission energy production. In 2020, the Chinese anticipated generating 1200 gigawatts of solar and wind power by 2030. That goal and more will likely be reached by the end of 2024. Overall, the PRC expects to account for more new clean-energy capacity this year than the average growth in electricity demand over the last decade and a half. This means, of course, that emissions have likely peaked and will be receding in the years ahead– an achievement well ahead of Western estimates and Western achievements, and a victory for the global environmental movement.
At the same time, the PRC’s successful competition in the solar-panel market makes it the target of global competitors, a brutal struggle that undermines the espoused “win-win” approach. Despite the benign tone of “win-win,” market competition is not bound by polite resignation, but aggression, conflict, and, as Lenin affirmed, ultimately war. That is the inescapable logic of capitalism. PRC engagement with the market cannot negate it.
Western leftists too often simplify the ‘Chinese Question’ by making it a parlor game revolving around whether China is or is not a socialist country, an error confusing a settled, accomplished state of affairs with a contested process.
As long as capitalism exists and holds seats of political power, the process of building socialism remains unstable and unfinished.
The 1936 Soviet constitution declared in Article One that the USSR was “a socialist state of workers and peasants,” a status that was under great duress over the subsequent following decades. The 1977 constitution stated even more boldly that the USSR was “a socialist state of the whole people…,” a state without classes and, by implication, class struggle. A decade and a half later, there was no USSR. Building socialism is a fragile process and one prone to reversals and defeats.
Thus, we should follow Palme Dutt’s sage advice and observe developments in the PRC with vigilance and a critical eye. If building socialism is a dynamic process, we should attend to its direction, rather than pronouncing its summary success or failure. The PRC is a complex creation with a complex — often contradictory — relationship with other countries as well as the socialist project. The cause of socialism is ill served by either ignoring or exaggerating both missteps and victories in the PRC’s revolutionary path.
Papua New Guinea and Indonesia have formally ratified a defence agreement a decade after its initial signing.
PNG’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko and the Indonesian ambassador to the Pacific nation, Andriana Supandy, convened a press briefing in Port Moresby on February 29 to declare the ratification.
The agreement enables an enhancement of military operations between the two countries, with a specific focus on strengthening patrols along the border between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
According to Tkatchenko as reported by RNZ Pacific citing Benar News, “The Joint border patrols and different types of defence cooperation between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea of course will be part of the ever-growing security mechanism.”
“It would be wonderful to witness the collaboration between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, both now and in the future, as they work together side by side. Indonesia is a rising Southeast Asian power that reaches into the South Pacific region and dwarfs Papua New Guinea in population, economic size and military might,” added the minister.
In recent years, Indonesia has been asserting its own regional hegemony in the Pacific amid the rivalries of two superpowers — the United States and China.
Indonesia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi reiterated Indonesia’s commitment to bolster collaboration with Pacific nations amid heightened geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific region during the recent 2024 annual press statement held by the minister for foreign affairs at the Asian-African Conference in Bandung.
Diverse Indigenous states
The Pacific Islands are home to diverse sovereign Indigenous states and islands, and also home to two influential regional powers, Australia and New Zealand. This vast diverse region is increasingly becoming a pivotal strategic and political battleground for foreign powers — aiming to win the hearts and minds of the populations and governments in the region.
Numerous visible and hidden agreements, treaties, talks, and partnerships are being established among local, regional, and global stakeholders in the affairs of this vast region.
The Pacific region carries great importance for powerful military and economic entities such as China, the United States and its coalition, and Indonesia. For them, it serves as a crucial area for strategic bases, resource acquisition, food, and commercial routes.
For Indigenous islanders, states, and tribal communities, the primary concern is around the loss of their territories, islands, and other vital cultural aspects, such as languages and traditional wisdom.
The crumbling of Oceania, reminiscent of its past colonisation by various European powers, is now occurring. However, this time it is being orchestrated by foreign entities appointing their own influential local pawns.
With these local pawns in place, foreign monarchs, nobility, warlords, and miscreants are advancing to reshape the region’s fate.
The rejection by the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) to acknowledge the representation of West Papua by the United Liberation for West Papua (ULMWP) as a full member of the regional body in August 2023 highlights the diminishing influence of MSG leaders in decision-making processes concerning issues that are deemed crucial by the Papuan community as part of the “Melanesian family affairs”.
Suspicion over ‘external forces’
This raises suspicion of external forces at play within the Melanesian nations, manipulating their destinies. The question arises, who is orchestrating the fate of the Melanesian nations?
Is it Jakarta, Beijing, Washington, or Canberra?
In a world characterised by instability, safety and security emerges as a crucial prerequisite for fostering a peaceful coexistence, nurturing friendships, and enabling development.
The critical question at hand pertains to the nature of the threats that warrant such protective measures, the identities of both the endangered and the aggressors, and the underlying rationale and mechanisms involved. Whose safety hangs in the balance in this discourse?
And between whom does the spectre of threat loom?
If you are a realist in a world of policymaking, it is perhaps wise not to antagonise the big guy with the big weapon in the room. The Minister of Papua New Guinea may be attempting to underscore the importance of Indonesia in the Pacific region, as indicated by his statements.
If you are West Papuan, it makes little difference whether one leans towards realism or idealism. What truly matters is the survival of West Papuans, in the midst of the significant settler colonial presence of Asian Indonesians in their ancestral homeland.
West Papuan refugee camp
Two years ago, PNG’s minister stated the profound existential sentiments experienced by the West Papuans in 2022 while visiting a West Papuan refugee community in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
During the visit, the minister addressed the West Papuan refugees with the following words:
“The line on the map in middle of the island (New Guinea) is the product of colonial impact. These West Papuans are part of our family, part of our members and part of Papua New Guinea. They are not strangers.
“We are separated only by imaginary lines, which is why I am here. I did not come here to fight, to yell, to scream, to dictate, but to reach a common understanding — to respect the law of Papua New Guinea and the sovereignty of Indonesia.”
These types of ambiguous and opaque messages and rhetoric not only instil fake hope among the West Papuans, but also produce despair among displaced Papuans on their own soil.
The seemingly paradoxical language coupled with the significant recent security agreement with the entity — Indonesia — that has been oppressing the West Papuans under the pretext of sovereignty, signifies one ominous prospect:
Is PNG endorsing a “death decree” for the Indonesian security apparatus to hunt Papuans along the border and mountainous region of West Papua and Papua New Guinea?
Security for West Papua Currently, the situation in West Papua is deteriorating steadily. Thousands of Indonesian military personnel have been deployed to various regions in West Papua, especially in the areas afflicted by conflict, such as Nduga, Yahukimo, Maybrat, Intan Jaya, Puncak, Puncak Jaya, Star Mountain, and along the border separating Papua New Guinea from West Papua.
On the 27 February 2024, Indonesian military personnel captured two teenage students and fatally shot a Papuan civilian in the Yahukimo district. They alleged that the deceased individual was affiliated with the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNB), although this assertion has yet to be verified by the TPNPB.
Such incidents are tragically a common occurrence throughout West Papua, as the Indonesian military continue to target and wrongfully accuse innocent West Papuans in conflict-ridden regions of being associated with the TPNPB.
Two West Papuan students who were arrested on the banks of Braza River in Yahukimo . . . under the watch of two Indonesian military with heavy SS2 guns standing behind them. Image: Kompas.com
These deplorable acts transpired just prior to the ratification of a border operation agreement between the governments of the Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
As the security agreement was being finalised, the Indonesian government announced a new military campaign in the highlands of West Papua. This operation, is named as “Habema” — meaning “must succeed to the maximum” — and was initiated in Jakarta on the 29 February 2024.
Agus Subiyanto, the Indonesian military command and police command stated during the announcement:
“My approach for Papua involves smart power, a blend of soft power, hard power, and military diplomacy. Establishing the Habema operational command is a key step in ensuring maximum success.”
Indonesian military commander General Agus Subiyanto (left) with National Police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo (centre) and Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto while checking defence equipment at the TNI headquarters in Jakarta last Wednesday. Prabowo (right) is expected to become President after his decisive victory in the elections last week. Image: Antara News.
The looming military operation in West Papua and its border regions, employing advanced smart weapon technology poised a profound danger for Papuans.
A looming humanitarian crisis in West Papua, PNG, broader Melanesia and the Pacific region is inevitable, as unmanned aerial drones discern targets indiscriminately, wreak havoc in homes, and villages of the Papuan communities.
The Indonesian security forces have increasingly employed such sophisticated technology in conflict zones since 2019, including regions like Intan Jaya, Yahukimo, Maybrat, Pegunungan Bintang, and other volatile regions in West Papua.
Consequently, villages have been razed to the ground, compelling inhabitants to flee to the jungle in search of sanctuary — an exodus that continues unabated as they remain displaced from their homes indefinitely.
On 5 April 2018, the Indonesian government announced a military operation known as Damai Cartenz, which remains active in conflict-ridden regions, such as Yahukimo, Pegunungan Bintang, Nduga, and Intan Jaya.
The Habema security initiative will further threaten Papuans residing in the conflict zones, particularly in the vicinity of the border shared by Papua New Guinea and West Papua.
There are already hundreds of people from the Star Mountains who have fled across to Tumolbil, in the Yapsie sub-district of the PNG province of West Sepik, situated on the border. They fled to PNG because of Indonesia’s military operation (RNZ 2021).
According to RNZ News, individuals fleeing military actions conducted by the Indonesian government, including helicopter raids that caused significant harm to approximately 14 villages, have left behind foot tracks.
The speaker explained that Papua New Guineans occasionally cross over to the Indonesian side, typically seeking improved access to basic services.
The PNG government has been placing refugees from West Papua in border camps, the biggest one being at East Awin in the Western Province for many decades, with assistance from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
How should PNG, UN respond? The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007, article 36, states that “Indigenous peoples, in particular those divided by international borders, have the right to maintain and develop contacts, relations and cooperation with their own members as well as other peoples across borders”.
Over the past six years, regional and international organisations, such as the Melanesian Spearheads groups (MSG), Pacific islands Forum (PIF), Africa, Caribbean and Pacific states (ACP), the UN’s human rights commissioner as well as dozens of countries and individual parliaments, lawyers, academics, and politicians have been asking the Indonesian government to allow the UN’s human rights commissioner to visit West Papua.
However, to date, no response has been received from the Indonesian government.
What does this security deal mean for West Papuans? This is not just a simple security arrangement between Jakarta and Port Moresby to address border conflicts, but rather an issue of utmost importance for the people of Papua.
It concerns the sovereignty of a nation — West Papua — that has been unjustly seized by Indonesia, while the international community watched in silence, witnessing the unfurling and unparalleled destruction of human lives and the ecological system.
There is one noble thing the foreign minister of PNG and his government can do: ask why Jakarta is not responding to the request for a UN visit made by the international community, rather than endorsing an ‘illegal security pact’ with the illegal Indonesia colonial occupier over his supposed “family members separated only by imaginary lines”.
Ali Mirin is a West Papuan from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands that share a border with the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He graduated last year with a Master of Arts in International Relations from Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.
Military strategists, foreign policy experts, and Russian dissidents have analyzed the Russian invasion of Ukraine for Western audiences. How accurate are pundits who always introduce a slight slant to please a specific audience? Read between the lines, choose the best fit and two years of Putin’s “special military operation” looks like this…to me.
Initially, Russia sought to extend its borders to the Dnipro River, a natural dividing line, that would have incorporated Kyiv, Kharkiv, and possibly Odessa into the motherland.
The initial thrust brought a caravan of Russian tanks to the gates of Kyiv. Special forces entered Kyiv and Kharkiv to ascertain defensive strengths and civilian and military resistance to invasion. Moscow learned that the urban street-to-street fighting would be merciless. Unlike Mariupol, which is a heavily industrialized city with some Russian cultural artifacts, Kyiv and Kharkiv are associated with Russia’s cultural heritage and historical founding. Capturing the cities, as seen later from the fighting in Mariupol, would destroy the cities and inflict excessive casualties on both sides. Administrating the area would be difficult. The predicted number of casualties did not warrant the onslaught. Putin and his general staff took a step back and developed an alternative strategy — surround both cities, move in slowly, infiltrate, and hope that a starving and isolated population would eventually capitulate. Out in the open and facing deadly attacks, Russian soldiers died and began to surrender. Extending Russia to the Dnipro was not viable. The Russian forces retreated.
Technically, the Russians did not retreat; they realized an offensive was futile and stopped it at an incipient stage. Their forces vacated and moved to a strategic position — behind the lines of the Donbas battles and close to Russian territory. With the new strategy came a new goal — liberating the entire Donbas region, uniting southeastern Ukraine from Crimea to Zaporhizhia, and incorporating the Azov Sea coast from Rostov to Crimea. Most of those objectives had been accomplished before Ukraine started a counteroffensive that regained Kherson and halted the Russian advance in the south.
The Russian military built a defensive perimeter that allowed recapture of limited territory, stalled the Ukraine counteroffensive, caused heavy casualties to the Ukrainian military, and decisively injured the morale of Ukraine soldiers and civilian population.
Forming a defensive line requires more cooperation from military units than does starting an offensive. A stalled offense in one area may not affect an offensive in another area. Any weakness in the defenses affects the total defense. Prigozhin’s mercenary army’s offensive move and intent to occupy ground with troops rather than with mines endangered the defense line. Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff, acted decisively and removed the mercenary army from the battlefront.
With Ukraine weakened by its failed offense, Russia seized the offensive and made minor gains in the Donbass. Ukraine withdrew its forces from Avdivka and the Kremlin claimed control of the city. Its Defense Ministry said, “Capturing Avdivka would push the front line of the war farther from Donetsk city, making it more difficult for Ukraine to stage attempts to reclaim the regional capital.”
Summarizing the two years after Russian forces invaded Ukraine and we have:
(1) Russia has almost accomplished the objectives of its secondary strategy.
(2) Both nations realize that huge offensives to gain large territory are no longer feasible.
(3) Sanctions against Russia have failed to stifle the economy or diminish Putin’s willingness to continue the war. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts Russia’s Gross domestic product to rise by 2.6 percent in 2024.
(4) Ukraine’s ability to mount another offensive and regain territory is doubtful.
(5) Civilian populations seem tired of the war and are operating as if there is no war.
The Future
The aggressive war with mass casualties has ended. The Russians want a little more of the Donetsk region and will extend their reach only if they know the battle will be successful and not incur excessive casualties. All is not quiet on the Eastern Front, but the war has a virtual armistice in which invisible lines are set by invisible contestants. Each side knows where it can walk without being challenged. Only the stubbornness of the leaders of the two nations prevents a formal armistice. Putin can claim victory and will remain President of Russia; not so, with President Volodymyr Zelensky. The war made Zelensky an internationally admired figure and brought attention to Ukraine. Zelensky has worn out his appearance, and without a war, he cannot lead. Expect his replacement in the near future.
The undeclared armistice will continue until the two nations realize that an undeclared armistice allows their soldiers and civilians to remain open to attack. Better to have a formal armistice and end hostilities. Several years later, a new Ukraine government will sense it is better to bite the bullet than face the bullet. The present battle lines will become territorial lines and Ukraine will pledge neutrality.
The nuclear threat will subside and the world will breathe easier until the next intrusion upon the free-loving people of the universe.
Former home secretary Priti Patel this week slammed the UN for daring to try to defend Shamima Begum, amid the latter losing her appeal against the state stripping her citizenship.
This Tory fundamentalist arch villain is surely not Boris Johnson, as lamentable as his politics is. In her tenure at the Home Office, Priti Patel was clearly and decisively heading for fascist status, triangulating policy to attack the most vulnerable.
Priti Patel: from the throne of hell to the Home Office
A political paradox: spontaneously but according to plan, as if to repudiate the idea and ideal of rational policy making, we Brits – a multicultural tapestry borne aloft by our blood, sweat, and dreams – seem to generate absolute hatred in the shrivelling heart of Priti Patel, hatred distilled in her cruel, reactionary policies targeted at vulnerable minorities.
At an immigration raid, I remember her crowing glee as she watched the lives of a vulnerable group of people ruined; destined to land in a Serco run carceral unit that stands juxtaposed to the spirit of goodwill in human rights law.
She spent her entire tenure repeatedly emerging from the throne of hell with a – frankly fascist – agenda, reconstituted into palatable form for people who still watch and trust the news. Fuhrer Patel’s hate mongering we have no time for, appealing to and unleashing and pandering to the worst aspects of humanity.
A ‘creature incapable of pity’
There is her persecutory, dehumanising mistreatment of refugees for a start. Then she presided over deeply oppressive policing and protest legislation, a veritable clusterfuck of attacks on peaceful assembly, essentially illegalising it; a counterstrategic manoeuvre to neutralise the threat of Extinction Rebellion to the carbon-wed establishment.
A grueling flight to Rwanda to facilities whose safety has not been determined awaits those whose cultural heritage is not deemed compatible with the mythic, illusionary “British” identity, an insincere neo-Tory attempt to exhume one nation conservatism. Rich immigrants, however, are safe from extradition. The pattern seems to be: no poverty, no ostracism. Persecution for persecutions sake.
An authentic testimony to the cruelty of Priti Patel is the data on her on Wikileaks, a repository of information which has a reputation for 100% accuracy.
The Wikileaks data confirms she is a creature incapable of pity but capable of vast terror. Tragically for the reputation of Britain on human rights, she welcomed sponsorship for the 2012 Olympics from Dow Chemical, the inventors of agent orange and white phosphorus, she tacitly endorsing the human rights atrocities they provide ammunition for.
The ‘will of the people’ she surely isn’t
It must be this that accounts for our basis of appraising Priti Patel, the dirty deals done through exposure to, sympathy for, and allyship with corrupt corporate lobbyists.
There used to be, at one point, meaningful influence for UK voters over parliamentary representatives and public policy. Lobbyists, while sometimes ethical, are largely corrosive to democracy and dominate the public policy process. The register of political discourse is banal rhetoric, inscribed with duplicity.
There used to be, if you remember, government and legislation with a popular mandate, parliament as an embodiment of “the will of the people” based on the electorate’s choices at the ballot box, a time before politics as high drama, a perpetual trainwreck driven by carousing mega-egos into dystopia.
The force of the UK press recently has been largely focused on scrutinising the malfeasance of Boris Johnson in his blatant, nauseating contempt for parliament and the British public. In this atmosphere, the arguably more dangerous – if that’s possible- Priti Patel has largely evaded scrutiny.
Priti Patel: a closer scrutiny is needed
A perfunctory glimpse at the data Wikileaks have on her suggests we henceforth scrutinise her more closely. The data revealed that some Labour grandees did act with due diligence and focus on the Dow deal in their quest for accountability and transparency at the time, but this signal was mistaken for mere noise and so the dodgy deal was not widely acknowledged.
As a citizen journalist it is my responsibility to document the hidden realities of power that are purposefully kept secret, to honour first amendment ethics and staunch the foundations of the fourth estate, the future of which is thwart with peril in the wake of the prosecution of Julian Assange for basic journalism.
Priti Patel is only the beginning of my campaign. Until I am silenced I will continue to shine a light on corruption wherever it breeds. It starts here.
Tonga has been locked in a political standoff between the country’s King Tupou VI and Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni Hu’akavameiliku which erupted into a heated row in Parliament this week with two MPs being suspended. Here Kaniva News editor Kalino Latu gives his recent reaction to an ultimatum by the Tongan nobles.
EDITORIAL:By Kalino Latu, editor of Kaniva Tonga
Tonga’s nobles have demanded the Prime Minister and his Minister of Foreign Affairs resign immediately in order to assuage King Tupou VI’s disappointment with their ministerial roles.
The letter, which was purportedly signed by Lord Tu’ivakanō, described Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku’s refusal to accept the King’s show of power as very concerning and intimidating the peace of the country.
“We are the king’s cultural preservers (‘aofivala). Therefore, we propose that you and your government respect the king’s desire,” the letter read in Tongan.
“The king has withdrawn his confidence and consent from you as Defence Minister as well as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Tourism Fekitamoeloa ‘Utoikamanu.
“We urge you to resign immediately from the Ministry of Defence as well as Fekitamoeloa ‘Utoikamanu to resign from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Tourism”.
The letter demanded a response from the Prime Minister no later than February 27.
The letter came after the King said earlier this month in a memo that he no longer supported Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku as the Minister for His Majesty’s Armed Forces and Hon. Fekitamoeloa Katoa ‘Utoikamanu as the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Tourism.
PM still confident
Responding, the government said the Prime Minister was still confident in the Minister of Foreign Affairs and that the King’s wish clashed with the Constitution.
While the King’s nobles are free to express their opinion on the issue, some people may think that the lack of references to the Constitution to support their argument in their letter was more provoking and inciting than what they allege Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku has done.
This is because the Prime Minister said he was responding according to what the related clause in the Constitution said about His Majesty’s concerns. It is the Constitution which ensures that those who make decisions are making them on behalf of the public and will be held accountable to the people they serve.
Some people may see that the nobility’s departure from the constitution and citing the Tongan practice of faka’apa’apa’i e finangalo ‘o e tu’i (respecting the King’s wish) means the nobles are urging us to dump Tonga’s Constitution and live by the law of the jungle in which those who are strong and apply ruthless self-interest are most successful.
Our Tongan tradition of faka’apa’apa (respect the King no matter what) has no clear system of rules, limits and boundaries for us to follow, which leaves the door open for the powerful to practice immorality and unlawful activities.
Since the King’s memo was leaked to the public, some have argued that it was explicitly unconstitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution to say that the King has to show that he gives his consent or has confidence in a ministerial nominee proposed by the Prime Minister before he appoints them.
Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku . . . under royal pressure. Image: Kaniva News
However, some argued that there was nothing wrong with the King expressing his wish as he did to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The problem with this kind of attitude is that it urges the King to publicly show his disagreement with the Constitution whenever he wants.
Breaching royal oath?
The King could be seen in such a situation to be breaching his royal oath which, according to the Constitution, clause 34, says: “I solemnly swear before Almighty God to keep in its integrity the Constitution of Tonga and to govern in conformity with the laws thereof.”
The word “integrity” included in the Constitution is worth mentioning here.
It is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as: “The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles that you refuse to change”.
Some people may believe that for the King to have integrity in the constitution, he must have a strong sense of judgment and trust in his own accord.
To keep the Constitution honest the King must desist from saying things to the public which are not written in the Constitution and may cause concern and confusion.
The best example was his memo. It has caused a stir among the public but what was most concerning is that no one knows what was the reason behind the King’s withdrawal of his consent and confidence in the Prime Minister and his Minister of Foreign Affairs.
We have previously seen His Majesty make several wrong decisions which are said to have been influenced by his Privy Councillors or his nobility members, including Lord Tu’aivakanō’s abortive advice to dissolve the government in 2017.
Do the right thing
The nobility must do the right thing and advise the King according to the Constitution and not our old fashioned cultural practices.
It was the Tu’ivakano government which hired Commonwealth Legal Consultant Peter Pursgloves to review our 2010 constitution, which he said was the “poorest written Constitution” among all Commonwealth countries.
The Tu’ivakanō government vowed to follow Pursglove’s report and made significant changes to the Constitution which was said to have been agreed by the King in 2014.
When the ‘Akilisi Pohiva government ousted the Tu’ivakanō government in late 2014 they processed the Pursglove report and submitted it to Parliament through six new bills to be approved. However, it was the same people in the Tu’ivakanō government who strongly opposed the submission from the Opposition bench. They went further and falsely accused Pōhiva of secretly trying to remove some of the King’s powers.
Critics argued that this was because of the nobility’s long-time hatred against Pōhiva because of his tireless campaign to remove the executive power of the King and give it to a democratic government.
The nobles later apologised and withdrew their accusation against Pōhiva in the House after months of debates and public consultations. They finally said they wanted to support the submission after Pōhiva revealed in the House his government has lodged an application for a judicial review of the decision made by Lord Tu’ilakepa to block the new bills.
That submission has yet to be approved by the House and the nobility has a duty to push for it to be approved. This would bring Tonga a more democratic system that would help keep the King and the government at peace.
The nobles must refrain from using cultural practices to resolve our constitutional issues as that would send us back to the dark ages.
This editorial was published by Kaniva Tonga on February 29 and is published by Asia Pacific Report with permission.
Conservative Baroness Jacqueline Foster has paid damages and apologised to a doctoral student. Foster claimed Melika Gorgianeh and her team’s cuddly octopus mascot on University Challenge was antisemitic. This in itself is perhaps the most ludicrous psy op to date.
Baroness Foster: that octopus is antisemitic!
The psy op is part of a longstanding wider campaign to shut down free speech and expression on Israel and Palestine. But it’s clear this campaign is reaching bizarre new heights. For instance, Labour’s Keir Starmer continues to target left-wing Jewish people for alleged antisemitism.
Antisemitism is a real issue and octopuses have been use in antisemitic posters. But the weaponisation of antisemitism to try and scare the public in to silence is also a problem. Context is everything – it’s literally a cuddly toy with zero antisemitic setting. And this was upheld in the courts.
The false allegation of antisemitism has had a profound and deeply damaging impact on my life. I was a student appearing on my favourite TV quiz show. All of a sudden, lies told about me, and only me, led to me receiving death threats and to my mental health deteriorating.
Backing the government’s pro-genocide position
Tory peer Foster is openly backing the Tory government in its support of Israel’s in-motion genocide in Palestine. She does this while accusing a Muslim student of antisemitism for a soft toy Octopus mascot.
On top of this, the Conservatives are still licensing arms sales to Israel while the International Court of Justice has said there is a case the state is committing genocide in Gaza. Exporting arms when there’s a risk they could be used to violate international law is against the UK’s own law.
Foster accused countries supporting the genocide investigation as having a ‘financial interest in South Africa’, which led the case.
Shutting down free speech
The corporate media, from the Guardian to the Mail, participates in the campaign to shut down free speech and expression. Academics at the Media Reform Coalition found the corporate media to have presided over a “disinformation paradigm” when it reported on alleged antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.
The case study found 29 outright false statements, 66 clear distortions and overwhelming source imbalance in favour of those attacking the Corbyn-led movement. They analysed 250 articles and televised news segments.
Additionally, the Guardian has fired numerous employees for criticising Israel.
Baroness Foster: ludicrous
Baroness Foster supports the government’s position on the genocide of brown people in Palestine. Then she accuses a Muslim student of antisemitism for a cuddly toy octopus. The double standard is earth shattering and racist.
This accusation is part of a psy op campaign that now looks nothing short of hysterical. And it represents how ridiculous the weaponisation of antisemitism has become.
Interview by Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist
The man being touted by the opposition as the next leader of Papua New Guinea says the first thing his administration would do is put more focus on law and order.
East Sepik governor Allan Bird is being put forward as the opposition’s candidate for prime minister with a vote on a motion of no confidence likely in the last week of May.
Bird is realistic about his chances but he said it is important to have such a vote.
“I think the first thing we would do is just restructure the Budget and put more focus on things like law and order, bring that right to the top and deal with it quickly,” he said.
He spoke about what he aspires to do if he gets the chance.
Don Wiseman: Mr Bird, you had been delegated to look at the violence following the 2022 election, and it is clear that resolving this will be a huge problem.
AB: Not necessarily. It’s currently confined to the upper Highlands part of the country, but it is filtering down to Port Moresby and other places. I guess the reluctance to deal with the violence is that I’d say 90 percent of that violence stems from the aftermath of the elections.
From our own findings, we know that many leaders in that part of the world that run for elections actually use these warlords to help them get elected. And obviously, they’ve got like four years of downtime between elections, and this is how they spend their spare time. So, it’s hardly surprising.
I think our military and our police have the capability to deal with these criminal warlords and put them down. How shall I say it – with extreme prejudice. But you get a lot of interference in the command of the police and the Defence Force. I suspect that changes the operational orders once they get too close to dealing with these terrorists.
DW: Police have been given the power to use lethal force, but a lot of commentators would say the problems have more to do with the the lack of money, the lack of opportunity, the lack of education.
AB: The lack of education, opportunity, and things like that will play a small part. But again, as I said, I come from a province where we don’t have warlords running around heavily armed to the teeth. I mean, you have got to remember an AR-15, or a 4M, or anything like that. These things on the black market cost around 60,000 to 70,000 kina (NZ$20,000-25,000).
The ordinary Papua New Guinean cannot afford one of those things and guns are banned in public use — they’ve been banned for like 30 years. So how do these weapons get in? Just buying a bullet to operate one of these things is hard enough. So you got to ask yourself the question: how are illiterate people with perhaps no opportunity, able to come into possession of such weapons.
DW: The esteemed military leader Jerry Singarok compiled, at the request of the government about 15 years ago, a substantial report on what to do about the gun problem. But next to nothing of that has ever been implemented. Would you go back to something like that?
AB: Absolutely. I have a lot of respect for Major-General Singarok. I know him personally as well. We have had these discussions on occasions. You’ve got smart, capable people who have done a lot of work in areas such as this, and we just simply put them on the backburner and let them collect dust.
DW: The opposition hopes to have its notice for a motion of no confidence in the Marape government in Parliament on 28 or 29 May, when Parliament resumes. It was adjourned two weeks ago when the opposition tried to present their motion, with the government claiming it was laden with fake names, something the opposition has strenuously denied. Do you have the numbers?
AB: Obviously we’re talking with people inside the government because that’s where the numbers are. Hence, we’ve been encouraged to go ahead with the vote of no confidence. The chance of maybe being Prime Minister per se, is probably like 5 percent. So it could be someone else.
I say that because in Papua New Guinea, it’s really difficult for someone with my background and my sort of discipline and level of honesty to become prime minister. It’s happened a couple of times in the past, but it’s very rare.
DW: You’re too honest?
AB: I’m too honest. Yes.
DW: We’ve looked at the law and audit issue. What else needs fixing fast?
Well, we’ve got a youth bulge. We’ve got a huge population problem. We’ve got to start looking at practical ways in terms of how we can quickly expand opportunities to use your word. Whatever we’ve been doing for the last 10 years has not worked. We’ve got to try something new.
My proposal is actually really keeping with international management best practice. You go to any organisation this is what they do. I think New Zealand does it as well, and Australia does, which is you’ve got to push more funds and responsibilities closer to the coalface and that’s the provinces.
If I could do one thing that would change the trajectory of this country, it’s actually to push more resources away from the centralised government. We actually have a centralised system of government right now.
The Prime Minister [Marape] has so much control to the point where it’s up to him to authorise the building of a road in a particular place worth, say, 5 million kina. The national government is the federal government, if you like, is looking after projects that are as low as say, 2 to 3 million New Zealand dollars in value all the way up to projects that are $500 million in value.
So the question is: there’s got to be better separation of powers, better separation of responsibilities and, of course, clearly demarcated roles and responsibilities. Right now, we’re all competing for the same space. It’s highly inefficient with duplicating a lot of things and there’s a lot of wastage of resources. The way to do that is to decentralise.
DW: What concerns do you have about MPs having direct control over significant amounts of these funds that are meant to go to their electorates? Should they?
AB: Well, I don’t think any of us should have access to direct funding in that regard. However, this is the prevailing political culture that we live in. So again, coming back to my idea about ensuring that we get better funding at the sub-national levels is to strengthen the operational capability of the public servants there, so that once they start to perform, then hopefully over time, there’ll be less of a need to directly give funds to members of parliament because the system itself will start functioning.
We’ve killed the system over the last 20 or 30 years and so now the system is overly dependent on one individual which is wrong.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
On Tuesday 5 March, mainstream media outlets wereablazewith the news of an arson attack that brought Tesla factory in Grünheide, Germany, owned by multi-billionaire Elon Musk to a grinding halt. A group of climate activists claimed responsibility for the sabotage of a nearby electricity pylon which caused the shut-down.
Musk branded the Vulkan – Volcano – Group who carried out the sabotage as “eco-terrorists”. Yet, the perpetrators of social and environmental violence against communities and nature are the true criminals – and Musk is no exception.
He’s is no climate hero
Naturally, the usual clamour of climate tech bros, Muskrats, and Musketeers – whatever Elon stans are calling themselves these days – rallied behind him on X. Seemingly, they were incensed that activists would attack the electric vehicle factory of the self-professed climate visionary.
But let’s be real: Elon Musk is no climate hero.
Firstly, the factory in question. Yes, it does manufacture parts for electric vehicles (EVs), and yes, these are better for the climate. EVs do produce less in greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum combustion vehicles. However, as I have previously pointed out, EVs are also not a panacea to the climate transport problem.
There’s still the not so small matter that producing vehicles to replace the entire existing petroleum fleet will generate a lot of emissions. On top of this, you have the pollution and ecological destruction of extracting the multitude of critical minerals required for their manufacture. Not to mention the labour violations, rights abuses, and land-grabbing linked to mining for these materials.
Incidentally, Musk knows all about these unconscionable crimes too. In its statement about the action, the Vulkan group catalogued a comprehensive, yet notably non-exhaustive, rap-sheet of Musk’s misdeeds.
In Indonesia, Survival International has tied Tesla supply chains to the endangerment of an uncontacted Indigenous tribe. The company and its suppliers haveviolated workers’ rights in multiple countries. It sources battery materials from mining behemoth Glencore – twice topping the list for human rights abuses in the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre’s transition minerals allegations database.
Musk’s Tesla factory expansion
None of this is to even mention that the factory in Grünheide itself has posed no shortage of issues. The plant’s expansion will use up 1.4m cubic metres of water in a heavily drought-prone part of Germany. This equates to the water consumption of more than 30,000 people.
And that’s not all. A local water utility has accused the factory of polluting Berlin’s drinking water. It has alleged that Tesla has been exceeding its permits by six times the levels of hazardous pollutants.
Alongside this, a separate activist group has been fighting plans to raze a nearby forest for the expansion. Meanwhile, an undercover investigation by German outlet Stern revealed that the factory had put workers’ safety at risk. Employees have sustained severe injuries, including amputation and burns from the site.
In February, the local community overwhelmingly rejected plans for its expansion. Yet, the vote was non-binding, so the local authority will get the final say.
Sanctity of climate tech and profit
Any climate justice activist worth their salt knows that we don’t solve this intensifying crisis by replicating the same systems that instigated it in the first place. Elon Musk’s trail of green capitalist harms should be a damning indictment of this model.
What’s more, aside from being a serially exploitative human being, coloniser, and profiteer – Musk’s climate credentials are also highly questionable.
First up, there’s SpaceX. It’s not rocket science to recognise that a multi-billion dollar space tourism endeavour will come with stonking climate costs in emissions terms.
Then, there’s his reluctance to support improvements to public mass transit systems. Arguably, accessible public transit amenities are the just transport solution governments should be investing in to tackle the climate crisis. Alas, these don’t feature in Musk’s blueprint for the future.
Instead, his The Boring Company plans to build a network of private tunnels to – supposedly – alleviate traffic congestion. A snazzy-sounding side-hussle for the owner of the foremost EV business in the world. Unsurprisingly, his pet tunnel project hasn’t gotten anywhere fast. Musk’s pioneer bravado simply hasn’t matched reality: by the close of 2023, his company had built just 2.4 miles of tunnels.
Elsewhere, Musk has upheld the sanctity of so-called climate tech through and through.
For example, he has flung his philanthropic funds towards nascent climate solutions like carbon capture and storage (CCS). Increasingly, it’s clear that the technology is largely a smokescreen for the fossil fuel industry. Ultimately, CCS has simply thrown oil and gas majors a handy lifeline to continue their parade of environmental destruction, while sucking up and storing emissions mostly ineffectively.
Let’s also not forget about the climate shitshow that is now X, formerly Twitter. Climate denier accounts have been flourishing on the platform, spreading disinformation wide-scale.
Given all this, Vulkan Group’s action makes total sense from a resistance perspective against climate injustice.
Hitting capitalists like Musk where it hurts
Of course, Elon Musk’s reaction was laughably predictable. He took to X to decry the saboteurs as “the dumbest eco-terrorists on Earth” and “puppets of those who don’t have environmental goals”.
Contrary to Musk’s puerile response however – there was nothing “dumb” about an action that hit the forerunning fat cat of the billionaire capitalist class where it hurts – in the wallet.
The company has estimated that the outage will run losses into the hundreds of millions of euros. Of course, that’s a drop in the ocean for one of the richest humans on Earth.
What’s more, it pales in comparison to losses he’s suffered from his own self-inflicted business blunders. The tech and business extraordinaire wiped $25bn off his fortune in a single year thanks to his Twitter takeover, and managed to lose $41bn of Tesla shares – in just two weeks.
But ostensibly, the action’s power is not in pursuit of Musk’s profit loss alone, temporary or otherwise.
Andreas Malm’s scintillatingly titled book “How to Blow up a Pipeline” articulates how appealing to the institutions of power to protect people and the planet above profit is evidently failing. In that way, he argues that depriving the violent and environmentally unjust state and private forces of their capital is, in fact, a proportionate response.
Drawing on the works of American social history scholar R.H. Lossin, Malm argues that since governments will not be willing to forfeit profit, sabotage of property is necessary to “break the spell”:
A refinery deprived of electricity, a digger in pieces: the stranding of assets is possible, after all. Property does not stand above the earth; there is no technical or natural or divine law that makes it inviolable in this emergency. If states cannot on their own initiative open up the fences, others will have to do it for them. Or property will cost us the earth.
Moreover, he explains that:
the states have fully proven that they will not be the prime movers. The question is not if sabotage from a militant wing of the climate movement will solve the crisis on its own – clearly a pipe dream – but if the disruptive commotion necessary for shaking business-as-usual out of the ruts can come about without it. It would seem foolhardy to trust in its absence and stick to tactics for normal times.
In the footsteps of resistance to injustice
Of course, Vulkan Group also aren’t the first to implement more radical tactics. The Tesla action follows in the footsteps of brave activists who have taken non-violent direct action against other polluting projects. A major example is the Dakota Access Pipeline in the US. In that instance, activists quite literally turned off the taps to the fossil fuels by directly sabotaging an oil pipeline.
For that, the courts handedout harsh prison terms to the saboteurs. Meanwhile, of course, fossil fuel companies can spill oil, leak emissions, poison communities, and wipe out ecosystems without consequences. As such, it’s a supremely fucked up system when the people protecting the planet are locked behind bars, while ecocidaires are free to wreak their devastation upon the world.
Naturally, climate activists are also not the first or only group to employ the destruction of property to fight issues of extreme social injustice. Resistance to apartheid, export of genocidal arms, women’s suffrage, and Black Lives Matter are just a handful of the movements that have used similar tactics.
For many of these, activists targeted the infrastructure and source of oppression: capitalism itself. Indeed, in the Tesla factory’s case, activists aimed at shutting down an enterprise harming local communities and nature in the name of capitalist greed.
As ever then, the reality is that the capitalists killing the planet are the true criminals and extremists. The activists resisting the merchants of death are, and always will be my climate heroes. Especially those sticking it to the likes of a whiny ecocidal nepo baby like Elon Musk.
Featured image via Daniel Oberhaus/Wikimedia, cropped and resized to 1200 by 900, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
The following article is an opinion piece from Just Stop Oil.
We need a revolution. What’s the plan. Just Stop Oil may have an answer.
This system is fucked, politics is failing us, and we need a revolution – or we really do face rule by ‘the mob’?
Just Stop Oil: we have to continue civil resistance
As we pass through 1.5C of heating to 2C and then the predicted 3C in the lifetime of many alive today, we will lose all we cherish and value. Our treasured landscapes, the rule of law, education, healthcare, pensions – and yes the people we love. We will not be able to feed ourselves and those who rule us do not care. Look at Gaza, this is what they are prepared to let happen. Genocide is now acceptable.
In response, nonviolent civil resistance to a harmful state will continue, with coordinated, radical actions that reach out to new people and capture the attention of the world. Alongside this, a new political project will be set up. This will run local assemblies and will support and stand candidates to shape the electoral debate. A coordinating structure known as Umbrella, will support these projects and this will be the heart of our community of resistance.
New demands and a new group
Just Stop Oil will continue to be the major focus until we win, but we have a new three part demand: No New Oil, Revoke Tory Licences and Just Stop Oil by 2030.
In addition to disrupting high-profile cultural events and continuing our Stop Tory Oil campaign, focussing on MP’s and those in power, this summer Just Stop Oil will commence a campaign of high-level actions at sites of key importance to the fossil fuel industry – airports.
In addition to Just Stop Oil, young people and students will be taking action in a new campaign that will demand an end to genocide – both in Palestine, and globally, from the continued drilling and burning of oil and gas. .
Umbrella will launch Assemble, a democracy project that will mobilise hundreds of people by running local assemblies on issues of concern to communities across the country and giving them pathways to action. The goal is to create a “People’s House” to parallel the House of Commons as the first step towards having permanent legally binding citizens assemblies- a democratic revolution.
Umbrella will be the hub for fundraising, mobilisation and directing resources to a range of new campaigns and groups, including Robin Hood, a major new campaign based around a demand to properly fund our public services by taxing the richest in society.
Just Stop Oil: unfuck the system
Each of these campaigns will share the values of nonviolence and accountability.
The system is fucked. You know it, everyone knows it. Don’t just sit around and watch everything collapse. Build what comes next: a revolution in politics, economics – our entire way of life.
New Zealand has taken another shameful act in its tone deaf approach to Israel’s War on Gaza this week by declaring Hamas a “terrorist entity” at a time when millions are marching worldwide for an immediate ceasefire and a lasting peace founded on an independent state of Palestine.
It would have been more realistic and just to condemn Israel for its genocidal war and five months of atrocities.
Instead, it has been corralled into the Five Eyes clique with an increasingly isolated United States as it continues to support the war with taxpayer funded armaments and providing the cloak of diplomacy.
It was really unwise of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s coalition government to declare the Hamas political wing as terrorist, after already having declared the military wing terrorist in 2010.
Many argue around the world with increasing insistence that actually Israel is a rogue terrorist state.
Also, it is very unlikely that Benjamin Netanyahu will succeed in his aims of “destroying” the Hamas movement, whatever the final outcome of the war.
As John Minto points out, Palestinian resistance movements have the right under international law to take up arms to fight against their colonial occupiers just as the African National Congress (ANC) had the right to take up arms to fight for freedom in apartheid South Africa.
Hamas represents an ideal, an independent Palestinian state and that can never be defeated.
Factions meet for unity
The various factions of the Palestinian resistance and political movements, including Fatah and Hamas, have been meeting in Moscow this week to settle their differences and stitch together a framework for a “Palestinian government of unity” as a basis for the future political architecture of independence.
Meet Gaza’s 11-year-old war reporter Sumayya Wushah, who says she was inspired by Shireen Abu Akleh to tell Palestine’s stories. pic.twitter.com/a7vB99nkqa
This includes the right to choose their own representatives, including Hamas, a nationalist independence movement defending their illegally occupied territory, not a “terrorist” movement that the US and Israel try to have the world believe.
They are still very likely to be in the post-war line-up ending the status quo after five decades of illegal military occupation of Palestinian lands and the rash of illegal Israeli settlements.
American economist and public policy analyst Professor Jeffrey Sachs . . . “Israel is a criminal. Israel is in non-stop war crime status. Image: Judging Freedom
American economist and public policy analyst Professor Jeffrey Sachs summed up the reality over Israel’s colonial settler project in an interview this week by describing the Netanyahu government as a “murderous gang” and “zealots”, warning that “they are not going to stop”.
“Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. Starved. I am not using an exaggeration.
“I’m talking literally starving a population,” said the director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at New York’s Columbia University.
‘Israel is criminal’
“Israel is a criminal. Israel is in non-stop war crime status. Now, I believe, it is in genocidal status, and it is without shame, without remorse, without truth, without insight into what it is doing.
“But what it is doing is endangering Israel’s fundamental security because it is driving the world to believe that the Israeli state is not legitimate.
“This will stop when the United States stops providing the munitions to Israel. It will not be by any self-control in Israel. There is none in this government.
“This is a murderous gang in government right now. These are zealots. They have some messianic vision of controlling all of today’s Palestinian lands. They are not going to stop.
“They believe in ethnic cleansing, or worse, depending on whatever is needed. And it is, again, the United States, which is the sole support. And it our mumbling, bumbling president and the others that are not stopping this slaughter.”
In addition, to the growing massive protests around the world against the Israeli extremism, a growing number of countries and organisations, inspired by two International Court of Justice cases against Israel — one by South Africa alleging genocide by Israel and the other by the UNGA seeking a ruling on the legality of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine — have introduced lawsuits.
A Dutch court last month ordered the government to block all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel following concern that the country may be violating international laws such as the Genocide Convention.
Follow-up lawsuit
South Africa is preparing a follow-up lawsuit against the US and the UK for “complicity” in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. South African lawyer lawyer Wikus Van Rensburg said: “The United States must now be held accountable for the crimes it committed.”
Nicaragua is suing Germany at the ICJ for funding Israel – its export of weapons and munitions to the country has risen ten-fold since the Hamas deadly attack on Israel last October 7 — and cutting aid to the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), the major humanitarian agency in Gaza.
It has called for emergency measures that would force Germany to cease military aid to Israel, and restart funding to the UNRWA.
Nicaragua lawyers said in their lawsuit that the action was necessary because of Germany’s “participation in the ongoing plausible genocide and serious breaches of international humanitarian law” in Gaza.
“Would it be OK for you if they killed me?” . . . placard with child in pram at the Palestine solidarity rally in Auckland on Saturday. Image: David Robie/APR
Instead of joining the US-led coalition in the Red Sea operation against the Houthis, who are targeting US, UK and Israeli-linked ships to disrupt maritime trade in support of the Palestinians, New Zealand would have been more constructive by joining the South African case against Israel in The Hague.
Nicaragua lawyers said in their lawsuit that the action was necessary because of Germany’s “participation in the ongoing plausible genocide and serious breaches of international humanitarian law” in Gaza.
No time to be ‘neutral’
This is no time to be “neutral” over the War on Gaza, there are fundamental issues of global justice and human rights at stake. As various global aid officials have been saying, every day that passes without a ceasefire and a step towards an independent Palestine as a long-term solution means more children dying of starvation or from the bombing.
The death toll is already a staggering more than 30,000 — mostly women and children. The war is clearly directed at the people of Gaza, collective punishment.
“At least be real with yourself that by refusing to pick a position you are licking the boot of a nuclear-armed ethnostate that is backed by the most powerful empire the world has ever seen.”
For years news media bosses warned the creaking business model backing journalism would fail at a major local outlet. It finally happened this week when Newshub’s owners proposed scrapping it. Then TVNZ posted losses prompting warnings of more cuts to come there. Can TV broadcasters pull a crowd without news? And what might the so-far ambivalent government do?
After Warner Bros Discovery top brass broke the bad news to staff on Wednesday, Newshub at 6 that night became a news event in itself.
After Warner Bros Discovery top brass broke the bad news to staff on Wednesday, Newshub at 6 that night became a news event in itself.
In her report, political reporter Amelia Wade reminded viewers more than 30 years of TV news and current affairs — spanning the entire period of commercial TV here — could come to an end in June.
Before TV3 launched in 1989, state-owned TVNZ had been the only game in town.
But for most of its recent history, TV3’s parent company MediaWorks was owned by private equity funds and it was hamstrung with debts.
There were periodic financial emergencies too which seemed to signal the end.
In 2015, the boss Mark Weldon axed the current affairs shows Campbell Live and 3D and replaced them with ones that didn’t pull in more viewers or pull up many trees with their reporting.
“Reports of our death at 6pm have been greatly exaggerated”, host Hilary Barry responded to reports 3 News might be for the chop the following year.
But Weldon persuaded the owners to stump up a significant sum to launch Newshub instead.
When the huge global company Discovery bought MediaWorks loss-making TV channels in December 2020, many in the media were pleased a major media outfit was now in charge.
Using the Official Information Act, Newsroom later reported the Overseas Investment Office fast tracked Discovery’s application and sought no guarantees of a commitment to local news.
“Tova O’Brien breaking stories on CNN NZ at 6pm, before an evening of local reality TV souped up by global budgets and distribution — with major sports and drama rights for good measure,” was one scenario.
“It could also swing the other way, with the New Zealand linear asset seen as too small and obscure,” he warned.
After losses including a $35 million one last year, the owners now “propose” to slice out the entire on-screen and online news operation. New Zealand could lose more than 15 percent of its full-time journalists in one go.
Beginning of the end?
Current affairs journalist Eugene Bingham . . . “this was a moment we’ll look back on as a watershed moment in democracy and journalism.” Image: RNZ
“Oh, the irony, right? When those so-called ‘vulture funds’ had it, the operation still continued, albeit always run on the smell of an oily rag. Then a big media organisation was the one which axed it,” long-serving TV3 current affairs journalist Eugene Bingham told Mediawatch.
“I’ve been around long enough to see death by a thousand cuts over the years. But this was a moment we’ll look back on as a watershed moment in democracy and journalism,” Bingham said.
Former MediaWorks executive Andrew Szusterman told RNZ’s Morning Report the next day this decision would also ripple out to local drama and entertainment.
“We’re going to start to see how this is going to impact the production sector. Irrevocably, possibly,” said Szusterman, now the chief executive at production company South Pacific Pictures.
Does Newshub’s demise also kill off Three?
Mediaworks chief news officer Hal Crawford . . . “The loss of the newsroom represents the loss of the ability to respond to any event in real time.” RNZ
There’s been no shortage of people this week pointing out the appetite for TV news — and linear TV in general — is not what it was. That’s the main reason for the ad revenue slump cited by WBD.
Some who do tune in to Three (and WBD’s other channels) for The Block, Married at First Sight and free movies may not miss the news shows from June 30. So maybe Three will be fine?
“The loss of the newsroom represents the loss of the ability to respond to any event in real time. That is the heart and soul of a traditional TV broadcaster,” Hal Crawford — chief news officer at MediaWorks (and effectively Newshub’s boss) until early 2020 — told Mediawatch.
“When the Queen dies you can send a team to London, you can have someone in the studio talking about it, you can interact in a way that makes people feel like it is alive and a real human entity.”
Warner Bros Discovery executives Glen Kyne (left) and Jamie Gibbons fronting up on Newshub at 6pm last Wednesday. Image: Newshub at 6 screenshot/RNZ
Channels without the live element news brings are effectively just “content databases”, Crawford told Mediawatch.
“News is the one programme that runs 365 days a year . . . which the schedule is going to rely on to lead into prime time. So the rest of your schedule is going to dwindle. Ratings are gonna fall off and everything is going to go to pieces.
“It really is going to dwindle as a cultural entity in New Zealand because you’re not going to be able to justify the funding from NZ on Air if you aren’t getting audiences. It’s hard for me to see a way out of Three basically going away as a cultural force in New Zealand.”
But TV-style news and current affairs is also now being done online.
After Eugene Bingham’s TV3 show 3D was axed in 2016, four members formed the Stuff Circuit investigative team. Its video documentary productions won awards until it was axed by Stuff late last year.
“Of course, there have been changes in viewing habits . . . but there’s still a reason that the ‘1’ and the ‘3’ on remotes around the country are worn down. Hundreds of thousands of people at six o’clock flip the channel. Without a TV bulletin there, doesn’t (Three) just become like Bravo, where there’s just programmes running and you either switch on or you don’t?”
In the end, journalists have to confront the fact that not quite enough people these days care about what they do — including executives at media companies, politicians not inclined to intervene and members of the public.
Most New Zealanders are happy to use services like Netflix or Google search or Facebook that carry news and local content but contribute almost nothing to it.
“But I don’t think people quite understand the depth of the problem facing media and the implications. That certainly came through to me watching the broadcasting minister saying, well, people can still watch programmes like Sky for news,” Bingham said.
The National Party went into the last election without a media or broadcasting policy or any specific manifesto commitments.
What should/could the government do?
Media minister Melissa Lee . . . a case of a private company taking action because “their business model actually wasn’t working”. Image: RNZ/Angus Dreaver
While Wednesday’s announcement shocked the 300-odd staff, the local chief executive Glen Kyne — close to tears on Newshub at 6 — told Newshub’s Michael Morrah he had known about the possibility since January.
The government also got a heads-up earlier this week.
Media minister Melissa Lee told reporters WBD made no requests for help, prompting Glen Kyne to tell Newshub WBD did ask both the current and previous government for assistance, such as a reduction in the multi-million dollar fee paid to state-owned transmission company Kordia.
Lee later clarified her comment but was firm that the government had no role to play because this was a case of a private company taking action because “their business model actually wasn’t working.”
On Morning Report, Andrew Szusterman disagreed.
“Channels 7,9 and 10, SBS, ABC, and Fox in Australia all run news services. I don’t think their government would let the last commercial free-to-air news broadcaster just walk away. The fact the broadcasting minister hasn’t fronted . . . it’s quite shameless,” he told RNZ’s Morning Report.
Stuff’s Tova O’Brien — who famously turned on her former employer MediaWorks on air in real time last year when it closed Today FM — called the minister’s response “cold and tone-deaf” and accused the government of a “glib shrug”.
That was partly because Lee’s first response to the Newshub announcement was to tell reporters: “There’s Sky as well, there’s a whole lot of other media about.”
Sky contracts Newshub to produce its 5.30pm free-to-air news bulletin — and Sky subscribers won’t find any locally-made news on Sky TV’s pay channels.
Lee should have known that. She was a programme-maker before she was an MP and was National’s spokesperson on broadcasting for years in opposition.
Lee declined all interview requests this week — including from Mediawatch — but did tell reporters at Parliament: “I wasn’t as articulate as I could have been. But I am taking this seriously.”
The PM told Stuff he is expecting an update at Cabinet on Monday. The media will be watching that space with pens and cameras poised.
There is legislation currently before a select committee which could compel the big online tech platforms to pay local producers of news for it.
In opposition, Lee opposed it and called it “literally a shakedown” in Parliament. (This weekend Facebook’s owner Meta announced it would not do any more deals with media under Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, prompting a likely confrontation with the government there.)
“The government’s position on this will obviously take into account these latest developments in terms of the wider media landscape. This government is committed to working with the sector on ways to ensure sector sustainability, while still preserving the independence of a fourth estate and avoiding market interference,” Lee said in Parliament on Thursday when questioned.
The government already heavily intervenes in the market by overseeing the state-owned broadcasters and agencies — including TVNZ — and putting over a quarter of a billion dollars every year onto broadcasting, programmes and other content.
The former government also put $80 million over two years into Māori media content, partly in the expectation there might also be a new public media entity to broadcast it.
His chief executive also urged the government to intervene. AM show host Duncan Garner switched the studio lights off as an on-air stunt.
Crawford is now a digital media consultant based in his native Australia. The broadcasting funding agency in NZ On Air hired him in 2021 to review its own spending of public money on the media.
“It’s not a good idea for governments to knee jerk and sponsor particular commercial companies in some sort of bailout,” he said.
“To give money to the people who are in financially the worst position is the most ineffective and unfair use of public money that I can think of. If the market is telling you that something isn’t wanted and needed, you have to listen to that.
“But it doesn’t mean that you have to always listen to the market and do things that have never been done before.”
He cites the Public Interest Journalism Fund which put $55 million into new content and created new jobs for cash-strapped news media companies.
Crawford’s fact-finding report on the planned PIJF in 2021 records media managers feared cuts and possible closures to come.
“Many of our interviewees believed that if an organisation could show that cuts were imminent, they should be able to apply for funded roles under the PIJF. Many saw the dangers in this non-incremental funding, but argued for exceptions in extreme circumstances. Although these arguments are compelling, Funding could evaporate quickly trying to keep the newsrooms of big commercial companies afloat if this became the primary aim of the fund.”
“Around the world and in New Zealand, there’s ample evidence that public funding of journalism is becoming more essential. There has to be a way there, because what we’re seeing with the the planned closure of Newshub is the end result of the factors that we’ve known about for at least a decade,” Crawford told Mediawatch.
“Direct subsidy from the government to a commercial newsroom isn’t going to work. The government has to find a way to sensibly finance news and structure it so that it doesn’t become a political football.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Despite the carnage, United Nations resolutions and international court rulings, Israel’s war in Gaza has the potential to get much worse. Unless Hamas frees all Israeli hostages by March 10, Israel may launch an all-out offensive in Rafah, a city of 1.5 million people, cornered against the border with Egypt.
The US has continued to block UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire. But President Joe Biden has cautioned Israel against a Rafah ground assault without a credible plan to protect civilians.
To its credit, New Zealand, along with Australia and Canada, added its voice in a joint statement on February 15:
A military operation into Rafah would be catastrophic […] We urge the Israeli government not to go down this path […] Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas.
New Zealand also reiterated its commitment to a political settlement and a two-state solution. Given how hard some other countries are pushing for a ceasefire and peace, however, it is fair to ask whether the National-led coalition government could be doing more.
NZ absent from a crucial case So far, New Zealand’s most obvious contribution has been to deploy a six-member defence force team to the region to deter Houthi rebel attacks on commercial and naval shipping in the Red Sea.
This collaboration with 13 other countries is on the right side of international law. But the timing suggests it is more about preventing the Israel-Gaza situation from spreading and destabilising the region than about protecting international waterways per se.
Furthermore, there is a risk of New Zealand’s response appearing one-sided, considering its relative silence on other fronts.
For example, following the interim ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the application of the Genocide Convention to Israel’s devastation of Gaza, a second opinion is being sought from the court over the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki told the court his people were suffering “colonialism and apartheid” under Israeli occupation. It was the latest round in a monumental debate central to any lasting peace process.
More than 50 countries presented arguments at the ICJ last week, the most to engage with any single case since the court was established in 1945. But New Zealand was not present in the oral proceedings.
This absence matches New Zealand’s abstention at the United Nations General Assembly vote that referred the case to the ICJ. A country that prides itself on an independent foreign policy seems to have lost its voice.
Doctors Without Borders warns that Gaza’s whole healthcare system is collapsing as Israel continues to intensify its attacks.
An even-handed foreign policy New Zealand does call for the observance of international humanitarian law in Gaza. It has been less vocal, though, about calling for accountability for war crimes, no matter which side commits them.
The International Criminal Court, New Zealand’s permanent representative to the UN has said, is “a central pillar in the international rules-based order and the international criminal justice system”.
Directly supporting that sentiment would mean calling for independent investigations of all alleged crimes in the current Israel-Gaza conflict.
Given countries it considers friends and allies do more to register their disapproval of the situation, New Zealand needs to consider whether its own current sanctions system is adequate.
The White House has begun to sanction individual Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories, accusing them of undermining peace, security and stability. Britain has also placed sanctions on a small number of “extremist” settlers. France has recently identified and sanctioned 28 such individuals.
This prompts an obvious question: if sanctions can be applied to both Russia and Iran for their actions, should New Zealand now follow the lead of its allies and take active measures to express its disapproval of what is happening in Gaza and the occupied territories?
Greece‘s All Workers Militant Front (PAME) has said the Greek national strike on Wednesday 28 February was the “biggest strike in recent years, with rivers of workers flooding Athens”.
Tens of thousands of people… joined protests in Greece, with strike action bringing the country to a standstill, on the first anniversary of a deadly train crash blamed on decades of poor railway management.
As church bells tolled in memory of the 57 men and women who lost their lives in an accident deemed entirely preventable, protesters gathered in major cities to demand justice for the victims.
In Athens, where clashes erupted outside parliament, 20,000 marched through the city centre before convening outside the central offices of Hellenic Train. Many chanted “their profits, our lives”, referring to a utility acquired by the Italian state at the height of Greece’s sovereign debt crisis.
The below article is a piece from PAME, guest-posted on the Canary.
Flooding Athens with workers
The biggest strike in recent years with rivers of workers and youth flooding Athens, Thessaloniki, Larissa, Heraklion, Patras, Ioannina and dozens of cities across the country, sent a message of disobedience and conflict by putting forward the slogan “their profits or our lives”:
One year after the crime in Tempe, the anger is growing. Double to the relatives of the 57 dead, the country paralysed to make it clear that any attempt at a cover-up will not pass, no one will go unpunished, demanding that all political and criminal responsibility for the crime be held immediately.
No cover-up, no cover-up attempted by the government will be tolerated.
Today’s strike sent a strong message of condemnation of the policy that is crushing the lives of the people. The complete freeze of factories and workplaces and the large participation in the strike rallies surpassed all previous mobilisations because the cup has overflowed in the sectors and workplaces.
Greek strike: the escalation will continue
We continue. The strike with a record number of strike decisions of the Workers’ Regional Union Centres and Federations and the hundreds of public and private sector unions is a milestone. A station of a great struggle and a station of a new escalation.
Escalation that comes with the daily mobilisations in the workplaces for the signing of collective agreements with wage increases, for the protection of the right to work, for work and life with rights. Escalation with a new National strike on 17 April:
Basically, the only “union” organisation that did not participate in this huge strike of 28 February was the ETUC member in Greece, GSEE.
With our action to become the worst nightmare of all those who dread the struggles that put forward the needs of the workers, who go against profits and exploitation, who question the politics of profit, of wars, of the involvement of our country in the wars, of the “fiscal balance” of poverty for the many.
In these struggles the workers can and must come together with the popular strata of the city and village, with the students and pupils, against their common enemies, the business groups and their governments.
Papers advancing critical race theory (CRT) had brought to light the historical intersection of race, society, and law. They also documented the benefits of Whites at the expense, suffering and death of most minorities. However, most conservatives and all right-of-center politicians denied that systemic racism exists. On top of that, the mainstream opinion was that everybody, who wants to work hard, has an opportunity to do well.
But now things started to change in almost all socio-economic areas. Articles appeared describing the statistics on a wide range of inequalities for Blacks and Latinos when compared to the majority of Whites and Asians. The focus was on insufficient healthcare, lower earnings, and lack of leadership, coupled with appeals to somehow rectify these shortcomings. On a more encouraging note, images of successful Blacks appeared on magazine covers, Hispanics and Blacks were now more often featured in national ads, streaming companies offered movies related to political and socio-economic concerns of Blacks, and universities established new administrative positions for equity programs. Millions of dollars were donated to historically black colleges, talks about reparations resurfaced, and government officials called for some reforms in crucial areas. In general, Blacks welcomed the renewed awareness of the plight of poor minorities and appreciated the outpouring of some financial support as well as talks about possible reforms.
However, in order to achieve any substantial and lasting changes in the key areas of education, healthcare, housing, nutrition, and equal opportunities, it is necessary to go beyond lists of demands, sporadic financial support, insightful essays, and helpful local programs. Specifically, serious joint efforts of government, industry and minority communities have to tackle the prevailing problems from the bottom up, ie, family-by-family, village-by-village, town-by-town, city-by-city, and state-by-state. Government has to provide the financial support with strict regulations concerning schooling, healthcare, and nutrition. Service and manufacturing industries have to set up shops and provide training programs leading to decent jobs in low-income areas. Most importantly, and quite challenging, are the required contributions from poor people and communities of color. Clearly, massive assistance from influential Black national leaders is necessary.
To get started, it would be imperative to follow the recommendations of courageous Black celebrities, calling for sound family structures and a demand to refrain from involvement with drugs while seeking help for addictions, and pursuing education as a top priority.
The prevailing problem is that awareness of past and present wrongdoings, the empty suggestions for reforms, and the flight of banks, markets and companies have largely immobilized minorities and their leaders alike. They seem to feel the only thing to do right now is to just wait for beneficial changes to arrive.
However, such changes will not occur if the third element of the three-pronged approach to greatly reduce racial and class inequities is not fully in place. Without nationwide collaboration of poor minorities, governmental and industrial efforts may generate at best a few local success stories. They may only last for a little while, implying that future statistics concerning the evidence of ingrained inequality and racism will be very much the same as today. The obvious reasons are that without the collaboration of individuals, families and groups in poor communities, financial resources will be squandered, schools will decay, and shops will be closed. Unfortunately, not making demands towards significant changes in poor families and communities is safe and politically correct; thus, inadvertently prolonging forever the miseries of today.
The rational for a serious three-pronged approach is that it will reduce inequality and discrimination, which will result in significant social-economic gains. To assure success, public spending has to be sufficient and controlled; private investments have to be secure and profitable; and participation of minorities has to be honest and diligent. Nevertheless, three forces may torpedo lasting success of this comprehensive joint plan. An unwillingness of industry and/or the poor to participate rigorously. A lack of public support, typically achieved via manufactured consent. The massive absorption of financial resources by the military and the national security apparatus, while pushing for the goal of global dominance, overrides the support for basic domestic needs.
A Cabinet-level branch, with representatives from government, industry and poor minorities, has to be established in order to liberate financial resources and secure a unified drive to implement and maintain the suggested reforms.
The New Zealand government is shortly to announce whether it will designate Hamas a “terrorist” group in response to the October 7 attack on Israel in which Hamas was involved.
The US and most of the Western world calls Hamas “terrorists” but so far New Zealand has only designated the armed wing of Hamas as a terrorist group.
More importantly, the United Nations — along with most of the rest of the world — has not taken this step and neither should New Zealand.
It is for Palestinians to decide which groups they support in their struggle for self-determination but it’s important here to respond to the incessant, hysterical lies told about Hamas by Israel and the pro-Israel lobby around the world.
There are probably more lies spoken about Hamas than any other organisation in the world.
One of these is the lie that the Hamas Charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews worldwide. (For example, this was claimed in an opinion piece in The Post newspaper recently by Israeli diplomat and former ambassador to the United Kingdom Daniel Taub — in response to which the newspaper declined to print any letters)
The truth is that in the latest Hamas charter from 2017, the organisation says
“Hamas reiterates that its conflict is with the Zionist project and not with the Jews based on their religion.”
“Hamas is not fighting against the Jews because they are Jews, but against the Zionists who are occupying Palestine.”
“Hamas rejects the persecution of people or the undermining of their rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian ground.”
Hamas accepts Israel with 1967 borders
In fact, their new charter goes further and Hamas accepts the state of Israel based on 1967 borders — precisely the same policy as the New Zealand government along with the US, the UK and most of the world!
It is clear to everyone that war crimes were committed in the October 7 attack on Israel.
Killing civilians and taking civilian hostages are war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention and should be condemned.
These crimes should be investigated by the International Criminal Court as were crimes in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Those investigations resulted in arrest warrants issued against Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
The same process should be followed for the October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s genocidal response. For example, arrest warrants should be issued by the ICC against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and at least half his cabinet for war crimes and crimes against humanity — including the crimes of genocide and apartheid.
As things stand there were eight Palestinian resistance groups involved in the October 7 attack on Israel and we simply do not know yet which groups and leaders were responsible for war crimes.
Palestinian resistance groups have the right under international law to take up arms to fight against their colonial occupiers just as the African National Congress (ANC) had the right to take up arms to fight for freedom in apartheid South Africa.
Aotearoa New Zealand must respect this right and not pander to the deep-seated racism and cheap political sloganeering of the pro-Israel lobby.
A knee-jerk reaction from New Zealand to designate Hamas a terrorist group would be a further step backwards from an independent foreign policy.
John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7 came after Israeli settlers had stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and after a record number of Palestinians had been killed by Israel at that point in 2023.
The besieged Gaza Strip . . . Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7 came after Israeli settlers had stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and after a record number of Palestinians had been killed by Israel at that point in 2023. Image: Al Jazeera
Remember Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film Schindler’s List? In it Oskar Schindler, an ambitious Czech businessman, has his epiphany in Krakow, Poland during the German occupation. Schindler came to Krakow to make his fortune using Jewish labor at a factory he opened. Schindler worked the system to get unpaid Jewish workers by bribing the German Army contacts he had made. At that point in his life, Oskar just had the philosophy ofvgoing along to get along. As he got to see and understand what was going on regarding how the Germans treated the Jews, Schindler quickly got a conscience. From that point on, he did all that he could to aid those Jewish workers in his factory, without getting the authorities to stop his efforts. It was a tightrope that he had to walk. By the end of the film we see how Oskar Schindler, after his epiphany, had saved so many lives.
The karmic turnaround now faced by so many of the Jewish faith (of which this writer is but 12.5%) is what has been occurring in Gaza. Imagine if Oskar Schindler, the man who had his epiphany, was now an Israeli Jew. Imagine if he had, some time earlier, opened a factory in Gaza for whatever self-centered reasons he may have had. Perhaps the fact of securing cheap labor and low costs to run his factory made this businessman plan such an operation. As in the Spielberg film and what Oskar Schindler saw and heard in that Krakow ghetto, so too this Israeli Oskar Schindler would have woken up to the current reality. One must surmise that this present-day Oskar Schindler would do his best to stand up for the Palestinians being terrorized and murdered by his countrymen. Unfortunately, the Oskar Schindler from Krakow had to do it alone. Perhaps it is time for more and more Israeli Jews to become like an Oskar Schindler for Gaza.
Two studies – ME, long Covid ones – have been projected into the spotlight thanks to the corporate media. Both studies claim to be groundbreaking in terms of research. However, the reality is both are little more than junk science promoted by people with hidden agendas, and lapped up by churnalists.
Meanwhile, it’s left to chronically ill and disabled patients to call the studies out for what they are – at worst, potential scientific fraud. Sadly, this is nothing new. However, the implications of this trash research could still be far-reaching.
A new ME study from the US
A new intramural study into myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) was recently published in the US, and the results published in Nature. As it reported:
In 2016, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched an initiative to study ME/CFS. The NIH Division of Intramural Research developed an exploratory clinical research program to perform deep phenotyping on a cohort of PI-ME/CFS participants and healthy volunteers (HV) as controls.
Prior to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, this study recruited a cohort of well-characterized PI-ME/CFS patients and applied modern broad and deep scientific measures to describe their biophenotype compared to HVs. The aim was to identify relevant group differences that could generate new hypotheses about the pathogenesis of PI-ME/CFS and provide direction for future research.
Over 75 scientists and clinicians across 15 of the 27 institutes that comprise the NIH contributed to this multi-disciplinary work.
Wow. That sounds impressive, right? “Deep scientific measures”; ‘generating new hypotheses’; “over 75 scientists”, and ‘future research’. Exciting stuff – except it really wasn’t, especially when you put a price tag of around $8m on it.
Increased heart rate in PI-ME/CFS participants throughout the course of a day suggests comparatively increased sympathetic activity… Considered together, these data suggest that there is an alteration in autonomic tone, implying central nervous system regulatory change.
Yes, that’s generally called postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and dysautonomia – which we already know both exist with ME.
Moreover, the study failed to link the sympathetic overactivity with fatigue – instead boxing the latter off as in some cases being down to:
Effort preference, the decision to avoid the harder task when decision-making is unsupervised and reward values and probabilities of receiving a reward are standardized…
And:
dysfunction of integrative brain regions that drive the motor cortex
That is, the brain is telling the body something is going to be more tiring than it actually will be therefore don’t do it – ergo, when you do it it feels more tiring; if you can believe that. This was the central takeaway from the NIH ME study: that neurological dysfunction is causing people’s fatigue.
Of course, previous studies into diseases like dementia have already hinted at the role the brain plays in exercise – or, vice-versa. Therefore, in the NIH ME study correlation still doesn’t mean causation.
David Tuller is a senior fellow in public health and journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and expert on ME. He told the Canary that:
Besides having a tiny sample, the study has obvious significant and even disastrous flaws – a spectacularly misguided focus on something called “effort preference” rather than post-exertional malaise (PEM) and the decision to put patients through a one-day but not two-day cardio pulmonary exercise test (CPET) regimen, for example.
At the same time, the study placed immune system disruptions and related factors at the root of the cluster of illnesses we’re calling ME/CFS and dismissed the notion that psychiatric and psychological conditions are causal factors. Hopefully the “effort preference” debacle and other legitimate concerns will not obscure that important message.
Building on Tuller’s pertinent points, the issue of the two-day CPET test is crucial.
Where’s the second CPET?
In previous studies, ME patients have shown reduced physiological results and tolerance to exertion on the second day of a CPET test versus the first. The point being – ME patients’ brains aren’t disrupting how fatigued they get (therefore, they involuntarily ‘choose’ less-tiring tasks). Their bodies literally cannot sustain repeated exertion – that is, PEM.
Moreover, the authors assert that the ME group have deconditioning when the control group doesn’t, due to the CPET results. If they had bothered to perform a second day CPET test, this would have shown the ME group did not have deconditioning – they had PEM.
Therefore, the NIH study’s failure to do a two-day CPET undermines its findings surrounding the brain’s role in fatigue and the whole idea of “effort preference”.
Overall, the NIH study was, as a sum of its parts, pointless. As Tuller noted, there were important points surrounding some biomechanical/immune aspects of the disease. However, these findings are not particularly revelatory, nor many of them new – and the catastrophic failings in other areas leave the NIH study a waste of money and pointless exercise.
With the wide variance in severity and type of symptoms experienced by people with ME, no clinically significant conclusions can be drawn from a population of 17. It therefore feels like a missed opportunity given the funding and resources available for this particular study.
However, if the NIH study wasn’t good, then a recent piece of so-called research into long Covid was disastrous – for both patient populations.
REGAIN study into long Covid
The Rehabilitation Exercise and psycholoGical support After covid-19 InfectioN’ (REGAIN) study was looking at long Covid. You’d be forgiven for thinking the title looks like the text of a Twitter meme from ten years ago. Quite apt, really – given the study itself gave results which are eerily reminiscent of the previous decade.
The 485 study subjects, who had been discharged three months earlier from hospital stays for Covid-19, were divided into two groups. One group of 287 people had a one-on-one session in which the general advice for coping was given. The intervention group of 298 also had an hour-long session, but it was devoted to planning an individual, self-paced approach to eight-week group sessions of psychological counseling and exercises.
These exercises included:
steps and squats for some and chair-based movements for others, supervised by a trained physiotherapist or exercise physiologist, and supported by health psychologists. The goal was to help improve muscle strength and endurance, cardiovascular fitness, coordination, and balance — and to build confidence to engage in physical activity.
Now, given that PEM is not just a symptom of ME but also of long Covid – and given this article previously discussed clinically what that is – why the hell would the REGAIN study think exercise would be a good thing?
A ‘step backwards’ for long Covid patients
Campaign group Long Covid Advocacy told the Canary:
The REGAIN exercise trial and uncritical press coverage is a step backwards for people with Long Covid.
They promote a model of exercise & psychological interventions that has caused devastating harm to people with ME/CFS for decades. 50% of people with Long Covid meet ME/CFS criteria.
This limited & low-quality study will have negative consequences for people with Long Covid – in social perceptions & treatment.
There are many poor factors in REGAIN; it is based on subjective outcomes; considers a non-typical subset; is not blinded; mixes mental and physical symptoms, which means it is subject to significant bias. Many of these mistakes were made in the CBM of ME/CFS, leading to NICE classifying the research for exercise and psychological interventions as very low or low. Long Covid researchers should be learning from, not repeating history.
Indeed, one of the main issues with the REGAIN study was that it included a limited patient cohort: those that had been hospitalised with coronavirus and then went on to have long Covid. Studies have already shown that the majority of long Covid patients only had mild initial infections and were not hospitalised. Therefore, the REGAIN study was in no way representative of the actual patient population it sought to research.
Moreover, the study’s authors failed to screen the patients for PEM – like ME, one of the symptoms which sets it aside from other diseases. Plus, the full participation rate for the cohort selected was just 47%. This should have been a major Married At First Sight-style red flag to the authors. It shows there was a major problem for the patients with what they were doing.
To avoid repetition, in short – much like the NIH ME study – the REGAIN long Covid study was, as a sum of its parts, pointless too.
“Long Covid patients deserve better”
Long Covid Advocacy told the Canary that, off the back of the REGAIN study:
Our primary concerns for people with Long Covid are:
They will now self-treat and become worse.
Friends, family, and medical professionals will encourage them to exercise.
Long Covid clinics will continue to misinterpret pacing and push activity as a treatment without treating the underlying biological mechanisms.
That an inappropriate online scalable program will be seen as a cost-effective way to treat Long Covid.
Vulnerable children and young people will be more at risk from forced, inappropriate intervention.
These factors can cause disability & deterioration because of post exertional symptom exacerbation (PESE). 89% of people with Long Covid have PESE.
Long Covid patients deserve better.
So, both ME long Covid studies were severely flawed – but there were other similarities between them, too.
First, there was a common denominator with both the NIH ME study and the long Covid REGAIN one. It was the Science Media Centre.
There was no critical coverage of either studies in any of the corporate media. This is, of course, how its ecosystem works.
As I previously wrote, the Science Media Centre is essentially a corporate industry spin doctor – promoting the views of people who really don’t have society’s best interests at heart. PA does similar – and then corporate media often follow suit. You only have to look at the situation with PACE trial and its proponents to realise this.
The centre has a history of promoting what can only be described as junk science. Intentionally so, given its links to proponents of the biopsychosocial model of health, and the psychologisation of physical illness. You can read more about that here.
So, it is of little wonder the Science Media Centre had its hands all over these ME, long Covid studies.
Long Covid Advocacy told the Canary:
We deserve due diligence from the media, and we need to assess the impact ‘churnalism’ can have.
The Science Media Centre has a distinct bias towards a cognitive behavioural model of post-acute viral illness. This is shown in their expert option for REGAIN. It promotes only a supportive narrative for the study. There is no counter argument from experts in Long Covid about the risk of harm from exercise. This leads to bias press reporting and misrepresentation.
ME long Covid: bastardising science for other agendas
However, the most dangerous thing about both these studies is how some medical professionals will use them moving forwards.
It is highly likely the NIH ME study’s nonsense around “effort preference” and the brain causing ME patients’ fatigue will reinforce the sham idea that the disease is somehow psychiatric – albeit probably under the equally sham, but currently trendy, banner of ‘neuropsychiatry’.
The long Covid REGAIN study will clearly help certain medical professionals to continue to push the flawed and fraudulent idea that exercise is good in post-viral illness – ergo, this will also go full circle and impact ME patients.
All this is without the fact that researchers have wasted millions of pounds on this junk. This could have been spent on actual research – not a bunch of clowns herding patients under the big top of science and then metaphorically slamming multiple custard pies painfully into their faces while telling them ‘they taste good, though – don’t they?’.
It almost feels like a waste of time and energy even reporting on them. However, maybe not.
There are already mutterings that both the NIH and REGAIN studies may – much like PACE trial before them – be cases of scientific fraud, due to researchers’ methods and bias. It begs the question, nearly 13 years after the Lancet published the PACE trial, why are we here again? Because of all the reasons in this article, and more.
But there’s hope to be had, in that PACE trial has now been exposed as a sham, and that in 2024 the ME and long Covid communities are becoming even more organised and vocal.
Patients won’t tolerate this gaslighting. Now, we just need to stop it happening in the first place.
At my relatively old age or state of maturity there are many things about which to dream. As a youth much of this nocturnal secretion necessarily extends beyond conscious experience. Hence we can easily believe that dreams are fantasy, in the sense of words describing what we could not have witnessed or done, at the very least from the bed in which we lay. Since all that is accessible or assessable from what we call dreams are the words — if we have them — to describe, dreams might be called covert verbalization. The only detectable difference is that we attribute this activity to a prior state called sleep. Now I could extend my appreciation to a definition of sleep as a condition and for dreams. However my point here is to focus on the verbal activity, especially supposing a condition of dormancy, whether by day or night.
Perhaps the dreams I have, that is those about which I can give an account, are extensive because I spend most of my waking hours in verbal activity, e.g. writing and talking (even to myself). It occurred to me that I have been doing both, using a pen and my tongue for nearly sixty years, since shortly after my father bought me my first desk at the age of four.
Sometimes my dreams comprise conventional activities, doing things in my sleep that I could do awake. However in the past couple of years my sleep reports are debates and lectures I give as if I were still teaching. In fact my formal teaching career was short and frequently interrupted. I had never sought or obtained more than a temporary teaching license. The profession had only annoyed me until an advanced age and unemployment induced me to seek substitute teaching posts to pay my bills. At university it was said of those in the education college, formerly the normal school, that “those who can’t, teach”.
In the course of my itinerant pedagogical practice I found that this is indeed true. However, like many generalizations, this truism requires qualification. The objection implied was easy enough to find. Many teachers I have met or whom I knew as colleagues would have been interchangeable with any clerk in the lower ranks of the civil or military service. The fact that they spent hours standing before pupils or students was indistinguishable from that of someone who had sat sorting file folders on his desk or marching platoons up and down the square. They were history teachers who knew nothing more than was in the textbooks their pupils had to read. They were science teachers devoid of curiosity or doubt. They were language teachers that neither read nor wrote more than a lesson plan.
All that was testimony to the regrettable truth of young people addicted to school (especially its work calendar and benefits) but with no interest in learning. At the same time there was another kind of person, albeit rare in my experience. That was the person who through teaching overcame what he can’t do to become someone who can.
I write this after waking from a dream discussing teaching and the relationship between teacher and taught. On one hand taught designates the substance a teacher is employed to instruct. On the other the term applies to those whose role is to respond to the teacher by learning. This invisible process has always been implicitly compared to the effect of what has only been available in the past three decades, namely local wireless transmission, e.g., WLAN. Naturally other metaphors or metaphysics were applied before humanity’s invasion by compulsive computation and the ludicrous comparison of humans with digital machines.
My interest, at least as assessment of my nocturnal articulation, was the difference between the teacher who believes in the transmission of the taught to the taught and the teaching situation in which those who can’t become those who can. In the same era in which this question became very important to me any observer could detect the increasing frequency and intensity with which “competency” has dominated the rhetoric of all forms of pedagogy. Competency means the ability to do something properly. It also means the authority necessary to do something. For reasons that can be explained but are usually omitted or concealed, the “competency-based” learning widely propagated only addresses the ability to do something but not the authority. This intentional defect is inherent in the rhetoric of schooling as indoctrination- the main reason schools are run. Competency is a euphemism for the reduction of teaching and learning to mastery of test batteries. It is an insincere slogan for intensifying the brainwashing throughout with high density, depleted data. (The analogy to DU munitions made for atomic waste disposal is intentional.)
In my dream the teacher was a person able to do many things. At the same time there were many things the teacher could not (yet) do. The controversy in my sleep was about the performance in the classroom. Does the teacher perform as the source from which the taught must drink? Do the taught have preference in defining what they will learn and hence the content and style of the teacher’s performance? I was bothered by this dichotomy especially because both questions really addressed the power of the classroom and not the pedagogical core questions at all.
As I lay dreaming I argued that the power question must be faced in order to distinguish its exercise. The classroom or analogous space shapes the charges that are detonated within it. Inert materials can be used with explosive effect. However one must ask, should teaching and learning be approached as controlled demolition or the firing of armor-piercing projectiles into captured targets, regardless of the side pulling the trigger?
As I lay sleeping I wandered between the rows and aisles of this classroom like many in which I had once worked. I remembered the lessons I had begun without knowing their ends. Then there was a class I assigned to memorize a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson- admitting that I was actually rather poor at memorizing. I also recalled being asked how I could teach something that was not in the book. To which I replied, the book tells a story, you can believe or not. But it can tell you no more than you find in print. I can tell you a story and if what I say is not clear or you want to know more than I said, well I am in front of you, you can ask me. Then came the retort. How do we know what you say is true?
At this point an apparent paradox arises. The learner is confronted with an artifact and a live action. Which is true, that which I read or that which I see and hear with my own eyes? There is no way to resolve this in the classroom. Therefore the determination of truth cannot be the competency to which professional educators so often refer. On the contrary, the practice of being a pupil or student is to become in a sense “incompetent”. That is to learn how to abandon rigidly prescribed dogma or doctrine or ready assessments if sensual experience — if necessary to become capable as a human being endowed with intellectual authority. There is no standardized test to measure that. No certificate can guarantee that either has been achieved.
Having said that I found myself arguing with a figure indistinct about the necessity of anarchy in education. Although that term was not used in my sleep, the opposition to whom I was speaking was defending the abolition of teacher authority in favor of some higher ethical concepts, like anti-racism, anti-isms of all sorts. My opponent insisted that if nothing else schools or education should assure diversity, inclusion and equity. Knowledge had to be imbued with such moral integrity that pupils and students could have no mistake about the right ways to behave.
I replied without irony — sleep is a literal condition — that I knew of no time when knowledge was exclusively coincident with prevailing morals and therefore had reason to doubt that such an era lay before us. In that great theatrical prop of Western monotheism the beginning of mankind was when two human beings through divine deceit acquired what has been called the “knowledge of good and evil”. One has to ask what knowledge had they before their tragedy? This notion that knowledge- at least that of “good and evil” — was so crucial (also as in crucifixion) to the exclusion of any other faculty is peculiar. If there was no prior knowledge of this sort then what of importance was known “before the fall”? Perhaps this so-called knowledge was not of something “moral” but of life itself. Certainly the untold centuries or millennia since the alleged event have failed to exhibit much practical knowledge. Instead what one finds is “competency”: the ability to perform tests and the certification of such performance. Perhaps that was the seminal demonstration for the mystification of knowledge that continues in contemporary pedagogy.
As I woke my discussion continued. I had my breakfast trying to bring it to a useful end. So I began to write that which I now conclude-for the waking moment. The teacher is a necessary role in the creation of real knowledge. The pupil role is just as important. In the classroom both roles are performed separately by people who are or at least try to be awake. The texts and other physical materials used are theatrical properties on this stage. While it is desirable that they be useful, it is not essential that they crystallize truth or morals. The world beyond the classroom is neither pure nor crystalline. The most important quality of the pedagogical performance its integrity derives from the skill and commitment with which both roles are played. For more than a millennia moral purity in the classroom has merely concealed the destructive power of those who would prevent a proper performance. The aggressive attacks on pedagogical stages throughout the West‘s educational institutions purport to purify history, arts and sciences. In fact they are heavily funded campaigns of spiritual terrorism directed at destroying knowledge and the capacity of teaching and learning people to produce it. By destroying the human pedagogical theaters, these fanatics are preparing the replacement of human intellectual and cultural production, that is natural human life itself, for those whose dreams comprise nothing — nothing but the destruction they euphemistically denote as “artificial.” Artificial suggests that it is something made, the product of artifice. However therein lies the term’s deceit. The dream of artificial intelligence is a dream without intelligence or knowledge. It is the dream of death by the killers who never sleep.
Presently it is very likely that Donald Trump will be the nominee of the Republican Party. Joe Biden will represent the Democrats as the DNC had refused to groom over the last four years or so a much more appealing candidate. This blunder is just one in a series of even more significant failures of past democratic presidents and their powerful associates to avoid the rise of Mr. Trump and his cultish appointees.
While it is very easy, based on documents, to declare Mr. Trump to be a neo-fascist and/or a criminal, historical events indicate that the Democratic Party failed over the last five decades to protect and support, and then expand, the middle class. DP presidents accomplished occasionally some improvements that benefitted workers; however, only token changes were attempted in key areas. Overall, the goals were and are to look good in the public eye without upsetting the elites in the economic and financial sectors.
As a result, large blocks of blue-collar white workers and disenfranchised low-income employees were and are voting for Mr. Trump. Quite surprisingly, Mr. Trump managed to attract evangelists and college-educated conservatives as well.
How did such abysmal changes happen? One has to recall the Lewis Powell Memo of 1971 that had triggered a major shift by large corporations from producing affordable and useful goods towards policies of excessive market control and profit maximization. The other major change was the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in 2010 legalizing political bribery. Effectively right-wing billionaires could block anything most Americans wanted to see implemented, eg, basic health care, public education, living wages, job security, and affordable housing. Clearly, enormous money accumulation begets power which yields influence. Practically, the new money-power-influence (MPI) class became very active in banishing unions, buying off politicians and judges, manipulating the media, and using their endowments to direct policies at think tanks and universities. New laws and policies were introduced with the assistance of lobbyists to achieve deregulation and major tax cuts. Audit firms failed to prevent every major financial crisis of the last 40 years and the IRS was underfunded to avert collecting huge revenues from the very rich. Other money-generators were private equity firms and hedge funds. Under the disguise of improving ailing companies, they acquired such companies and managed to accumulate real wealth for a few by dismissing workers, cutting services, and reducing product quality. The new era of neo-economics had descended.
A wide public acceptance of the new MPI class and their actions was attained via propaganda emanating from think tanks and manipulated media. Instead of fighting the new class of MPIs and the drawbacks of globalization and neo-capitalism, top Democrats embraced the rich and famous to be part of the elite, to attract donations, and to collect kudos. As a result, the establishment of the Democratic Party stopped serving the common good, leaving room for investment firms and companies to privatize key sections of the public domain for profit, ranging from military weapons production/distribution, health care, the housing market, the prison system, and education. In order to gain high monetary returns from such privatized entities, the work force had to be reduced, services cut, and enrollments increased. New corporate-favored laws and deregulations as well as immunity of large corporations in case of their meltdowns solidified the new developments.
For example, the military-industrial-congressional complex, under the umbrella of “national security” is annually close to a one-trillion-dollar enterprise. Such amazing multi-departmental expenditures are justified by propagating fear of foreign aggressions and the necessity to maintain or regain the global Number One status in all economic, military and public categories. As a result, major arms contractors greatly influence foreign policies; constantly pushing for wars and conflicts. Expenditures for the broader health care system comes in second for two main reasons. The obvious one is the refusal to introduce universal health care. The second one is the lack of payback to the public from pharmaceutical (and high-tech) companies which sell costly drugs (and devices) that were initially invented and developed with taxpayers money at universities and departments of the U.S. government. At the end, taxpayers and consumers foot the bills generated by those who game the system and hence contribute to the wacky income inequality between CEO and the average of wages workers of their company.
So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that those suffering from economic hardships and miserable working conditions voted in 2016 for an entertaining celebrity who had promised to return the country back to greater times. While President Trump’s four years in office proved that he is a con-artist when dealing with domestic issues and an embarrassment on the international stage, he still has a chance to beat Biden this November. Why? Because none of the fundamental goals of the working class, eg, universal health care, affordable housing, free education, living wages and job security, have been addressed — let alone reached.
And why are college-educated conservatives potential voters for Mr. Trump? They feel that the Democrats are mishandling cultural issues, foreign affairs, and immigration. They still worry about an ever-increasing national debt and possible taxation of the wealthy. In order to justify the support of a dubious character like Mr. Trump, they have to dismiss all criminal charges as being unfair or not worse than misdeeds of predecessors. And those evangelists who support Mr. Trump? They should take time out and reread Christian scripture on what is right and what is wrong.
Will there be by November 2024 an alert and knowledgeable citizenry who will save us from new disasters?
So much of the Israeli propaganda which is driving the massive assault on the Palestinians of Gaza has been unravelling quickly but this is not being reported to the public in Western countries such as New Zealand.
Political analyst Marwan Bishara analyses the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. Video: Al Jazeera
But despite the initial claims being widely reported by New Zealand media, we are not aware of any corrections, apologies or reporting of the truth to New Zealanders.
The New Zealand media has been as complicit as most of the media across the Western world in amplifying Israeli lies and racist propaganda while sidelining Palestinian viewpoints.
Protests this weekend
The protests this week continue to demand that our government:
Condemn the Israeli slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians;
No attack on Rafah;
Reinstate funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians;
Call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza;
Withdraw from the war on Yemen; and
Close the Israeli Embassy
“See no genocide” . . . a graphic condemning the US stance over Palestine and the ongoing support for the genocidal war on Gaza. Image: Visualising Palestine (cc)
Details of protest events across the country are on the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa Facebook event page.
John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).Republished with permission from The Daily Blog.
US blocks ceasefire again
Asia Pacific Report: The United States this week vetoed another United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Israel’s war on Gaza, blocking a demand for an immediate ceasefire.
This was the third US veto against humanitarian ceasefire resolutions in the UNSC over the war in Gaza. The United Kingdom abstained, but all other 13 countries — including the three other permanent members China, France and Russia — voted for it.
In introducing the resolution on Tuesday, Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s ambassador to the UN, said:
“This resolution is a stance for truth and humanity, standing against the advocates for murder and hatred. Voting against it implies an endorsement of the brutal violence and collective punishment inflicted upon them [the Palestinians].”
On February 28, unionized workers will stage walkouts impacting transport, health, hospitality, public administration, construction, and telecommunications sectors. Striking workers could stage pickets in major urban centers near institutional buildings and transport hubs.
The below article is a piece from PAME, guest-posted on the Canary.
Greek strike remembers the victims of Tempe
Now that the workers are suffering from inflation, now is the time and the need to come forward, to organise the struggle with militant initiatives in every sector, in every region, and in the workplaces.
28 February marks one year since the crime train crash in Tempe that claimed the lives of 57 people, most of them students and young children, causing untold grief throughout the country and a lasting open wound to dozens of families. Tears have become rage.
One year later we are making our promise a reality. The crime will not be forgotten. Those responsible must be punished.
We have a duty on 28 February to flood the streets of all the major cities of our country, as we did a year ago.
The attempted cover-up by Hellenic Train and OSE, the EU itself, the ND government and the other ruling parties, SYRIZA and PASOK, must not be allowed to pass. They want the crime to be forgotten because they are all guilty.
Co-opted trade union bosses
That is why their representatives in the leaderships of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) and the Civil Servants’ Confederation (ADEDY) fought in every possible way against the effort to decide to strike on 28 February. They said “we will not strike for the Tempe”, they proposed other dates in March and April.
It did not pass. The main thing they seek is to cover up the fact that the crime in Tempe was not due to “bad timing” but was predetermined with causes and culprits. They are trying to cover up the criminal policy of the EU and all the governments that implemented it. The policy that measures everything by the profit of the capitalists, even sacrificing human lives.
Work accidents and employer crimes are on the increase. More than 160 workers did not return home in 2023, and every two days we count one worker dead. The policy that treats human life and the safety of the people as a cost, that wants us defenseless in the face of natural disasters, and the protection of our health – proposing again a lot of “individual responsibility” – must get a militant response.
Inflation: out of control
Inflation is sweeping away wages and the people’s income.
Inflation is getting worse and the working-people’s income is not enough to cover the needs for basic necessities, food, electricity, bills, and expenses.
We are watching prices on basic commodities increase daily.
The price of olive oil has shot up by 58.5%, while the price of fruit (15%) and vegetables (14%), food, water, soft drinks and fruit juices have risen by double digits. Similarly, heating oil (13.7%) is moving non-stop, while significant increases are recorded in pharmaceuticals (11.8%), airline tickets (10.2%), and transport in general. The price of a kilowatt hour has doubled compared to 2020. Rents and loan instalments have increased by 30%.
The purchasing power of workers has fallen by 15% in the last two years.
The government: backing big business
At the same time, the 500 largest business groups in Greece have secured huge profits, breaking record after record, especially the business groups of supermarkets, energy, transport, and banking.
The measures that the government is taking to deal with the waves of price rises are a mockery on the one hand – since they do not cover the needs – and on the other hand they reproduce the causes of the price rises, since neither product prices are being reduced, nor are workers’ wages being increased, nor are taxes being abolished for the people, which would be a great and immediate relief.
The policy defended by the New Democracy government and the parties that support the system of exploitation allows the business groups, which pull the strings in setting prices and controlling the markets, to increase prices whenever and as much as they want to multiply their profits.
The process of adjusting the minimum wage, where any small increase given by the government will be wiped out by the price increases, is part of this process.
Workers suffering
At the same time, people of labor are losing their lives and their homes having to face the full range of repressive mechanisms. There are thousands of auctions of people’s houses for the benefit of the investment funds, banks and various predators.
Farmers sell cheap yet we buy very expensive in supermarkets. Thousands of farmers in our country and across Europe are facing problems of survival. That’s what they are fighting for: their bread and their rights. They are demanding compensation for the income lost due to the reduction in production caused by by weather and disease. They are fighting against the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy which leads to a big increase in production costs!
Healthcare and education decimated
Health and education at the mercy of the profitability of the few.
In healthcare, despite the great shortages in hospitals and primary health care doctors and nurses are resigning en masse when a multitude of hospital workers are on fixed term contracts, medicines have become very expensive.
In education, commercialisation is growing with the privatisation of universities and the imposition of entrance exams in all grades of high school. Thus the popular family will groan to be able to find a place for their child as for the many there will be multiple exams and “cut-offs” for admission, while for the few who can afford it, the doors of university studies will open with a blast.
No engagement and no participation in the war
While critical infrastructure and important personnel in health, education and social services are lacking, the government chooses to pay €7bn a year for NATO armaments and war missions that involve our country even more deeply in the imperialist plans of the USA – NATO – EU.
Such is the dangerous decision of the government of the New Democracy, to take over the command of the war operation in the Red Sea through the Larissa General Headquarters, with the participation of our country’s military – naval forces 2,000 kilometers away from the borders. At the same time the genocide of the Palestinian people continues unabated by the murderous state of Israel with the danger of a generalised conflict in the entire Middle East.
So, on 28 February we are fighting for all our lives – in Greece and beyond.
Greek strike: workers, come out in the open
It’s time for the workers to come out in the open. To respond with a militantly assertive struggle to the wall that is rising in front of us. To overtake the trade union forces in the GSEE and ADEDY who are trying to impose silence.
These forces have chosen the opposite camp from the workers. They talk about the Recovery Fund, cultivating the notion that the sums that come in and out of it can be used for people’s needs and wages.
The leadership of the GSEE tells us that the inflation is due to the lack of controls by the competition commission and that workers must sacrifice their rights so that the business groups can profit. That is why, moreover, for 12 years now it has handed over the institution of the National General Collective Labour Agreement to the business groups and the state.
By putting the brakes on the strike action, they are giving the government time and space to pass crucial anti-people legislation in the next two months.
All unions in the battle to organise the Greek strike
We call on all trade unions to get together in the workplaces, to discuss at the start of shifts, at breaks, at work with workers. To call for meetings, General Assemblies, to listen to the workers’ anxieties and concerns, their demands. To speak their minds and step forward for their own lives. To build the ground for the uplift of struggle, to throw away once again the law of the government that wants the unions to be controlled by it and the strikes canceled by the courts.
The strike is put forward as a necessity. We all have a place in this strike front. All of us who recognise that the situation is getting worse for workers.
The strike mobilisations of trade unions in a number of workplaces and sectors, the diverse mobilisations of the farmers and their blockades, the student occupations and demonstrations, the rallies of pensioners, show the path we must take. A workers’ and peoples’ river of demands against the policies of the government, the EU, and the business groups must be built up.
“Their profits or our lives”
Now we must take the fight for wages and collective agreements in our hands, the struggle against inflation and the unpopular policy that counts our needs as costs. No Federation, no Regional Union Centre, no trade union can be left out of this struggle.
No one alone. Decisive strike uprising with the slogan:
Their profits or our lives.
Greek strike: the demands
We demand:
Substantial wage increases. Abolition of anti-worker laws and restoration of collective bargaining in the unions.
Increase the minimum wage to €900. A clause to adjust wages according to inflation. Universal reintroduction of triennials incorporating the period 2012 – 2023. Restoration of the principle of the most favourable contract, post-employment, etc.
Restoration of Christmas and Easter bonuses for civil servants. Unemployment benefit at 80% of the minimum wage for all unemployed.
Fixed work with rights, seven hours – five days – 35 hours. No tolerance for flexible forms of employment and unpaid overtime. Cheap electricity for the people. With the abolition of indirect taxes (VAT, Special Consumption Tax) and a cap on energy and fuel prices. Abolition of the Energy Exchange. Abolition of VAT and a cap on the prices of consumer goods such as food, baby products, personal hygiene products, etc. Tax-free limit of €12,000 plus €3,000 for each child. Abolition of presumptions of living.
Abolition of ENFIA for working households. Do not pass the reactionary bill on private universities, no thought of revising article 16. Exclusively public and free modern studies, guarantee free food and accommodation for students.
Guarantee by the state of free, full and unhindered health care and hospitalisation for all. Free of charge all medical, diagnostic, laboratory, preventive examinations, all medicines, and vaccines. No department, clinic, hospital or health centre should be closed or merged. To fully reopen the hospitals, all the structures that were closed due to cuts. No to NATO spending – no involvement of Greece in the imperialist wars. Decisive strengthening of state funding for Health, Education, Welfare, social policy services of municipalities, for protection from natural disasters. Massive recruitment of permanent staff in all these critical sectors.
Stop here and now the disgraceful auctions of people’s homes. Rent subsidies by broadening the inclusion criteria and increasing the subsidy.
Some people are literally making a killing in Enga.
Yes, they really are.
Hired gunmen are getting rich by the day and picking up women and girls as payments as well, leaving deaths and destruction in their wake in what is apparently becoming a booming industry.
The news is disturbing, to say the least, for a province that has got so much going at the moment.
As the illegal industry takes root by the day, we do not see this deadly business which is already stretching the limits of tolerance and the resources of the law and justice sector, ending soon.
Police Commissioner David Manning promised more manpower will be deployed into the province to assist those on the ground to curb the tribal fighting.
At the same time, he is asking for help from the provincial leaders to get down to their communities to stop the fighting and killing.
Grabbed world attention
The recent massacre in Wapenamanda has grabbed world attention again and this time the Australian government, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese describing the event as “very disturbing”, promising more technical aid to PNG to address this madness.
Tribal fighting has always been a curse in Enga for years. What started as bow and arrow affairs in the past have now gone high-tech with the deployment of drones, Google maps and high-powered guns, resulting in the high number of deaths
Genocide is the word to describe what is happening.
Horror . . . the bodies of tribesmen killed in Wapenamanda piled up alongside the Highlands Highway. Image: PNG Post-Courier
Powerful tribes are eliminating the weak, and leaving the disciplinary forces helplessly watching by the roadsides as the massacre continues to go.
There is no concern for the lives killed, the injuries or the plight of the hundreds of mothers and children caught up in this mayhem.
In the words of Provincial Police Commander, Superintendent George Kakas, businessmen, educated elites and well-to-do people fund these activities, hire gunmen and purchase firearms and ammunitions.
We would like to add politicians to the list because we suspect that they procured the weapons and left them with their supporters during the elections and these guns are now coming out.
How could they sleep peacefully?
How could these people find the peace to sleep peacefully in the night when their money, the technology, the guns and bullets they supplied are killing in big numbers and the murderers are uploading images of the dead bodies online for the world to see?
Prime Minister James Marape recently promised new legislation to curb domestic terrorism and we wait to see whether this law will ever get passed by Parliament.
This law is needed now to make the facilitators and the killers account for their actions.
In the interim, the government must declare a State of Emergency in Enga to deploy the full force of the law into the fighting zones to deal with the perpetrators.
They are known to the police, the leaders and even the Prime Minister.
What is stopping the police from arresting these culprits? Are they above the law? Are they protected species, vested with the power to end lives of other people in this manner?
Entire tribes wiped out
What are we waiting for?
To see entire tribes wiped out from the face of Enga before we move in to collect the bodies, take the women and children to care centres and keep watching from the roadsides.
Enough is enough. Declare the SOE in Enga. Enact the domestic terrorism legislation. Arrest those that facilitate and kill.
So much is going for Enga today and if nothing is done to end this ugly disease, Enga is doomed.
This PNG Post-Courier editorial was originally published under the title “Genocide in Enga” on 21 February 2014. Republished with permission.
Unfortunately there was no discussion of foreign policy during Aotearoa New Zealand’s general election last year. Aside from the odd obligatory question in a TV debate it barely got a mention.
Our international relations tend to be glossed over because most policy is shared by Labour and National at least.
It wasn’t always this way. Back in the 1970s there was a palpable feeling of pride across the country as the Norman Kirk Labour government sent a New Zealand frigate to protest against French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
A similar community pride surrounded developing our anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s and relief as well when New Zealand did not buckle to US pressure and stayed out of the infamous invasion of Iraq in 2003 while the rest of the Western world fell for the huge propaganda blitz about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction”.
It has been an awful surprise to see New Zealand give up that independence so easily in the last two years.
We rightly joined the condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because while there were clear reasons for Russia’s action there was no justification.
But then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her successor Chris Hipkins just gave up even the pretence of independence.
Fast downhill ride
Both attended belligerent NATO meetings and it’s been a fast downhill ride since. Our new National-led coalition government is continuing the same political momentum.
Nevertheless, it still came as a shock last month when Prime Minister Christopher Luxon — flanked by Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins — announced we were sending military personnel to join the US-led bombing of Yemen.
There was no United Nations mandate for war and it was supported only by the tiniest minority of Western countries.
The Houthi group in Yemen have attacked Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea to pressure Israel to end its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
Yemeni groups have done this because the Western world has turned its back on the people of Gaza and refuses to condemn Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians.
Shouldn’t we be speaking strongly for an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza like most of the world rather than joining in bombing one of the world’s poorest countries?
A ceasefire in Gaza would end the attacks on Red Sea shipping and dramatically reduce tensions across the Middle East.
That’s what an independent New Zealand would have done.
A protesting Palestinian family at the ceasefire solidarity rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square today. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Shame, instead of pride
Instead of pride, most of us feel shame as the world now looks on us as a small, obsequious appendage to the US empire — an empire which has blocked three UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The killing of civilians and the taking of civilian hostages is a war crime under the fourth Geneva convention and must always be condemned, no matter who the perpetrator.
We were right to condemn the killing of Israeli civilians, but our government’s refusal to condemn the killing of more than 28,000 Palestinians, including more than 12,000 children, or even call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — until it belatedly did so this week — leaves an indelible stain on our reputation.
Our lack of independence was on display again last month when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found a plausible case exists that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Instead of backing up the court ruling with demands Israel end the killing of Palestinians New Zealand has been all but silent with the Prime Minister blundering his way through question time in Parliament without a clue about our international responsibilities.
While all but ignoring the genocide ruling by the ICJ, Luxon was quick to halt New Zealand funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency over Israeli allegations that 12 of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees had been implicated in terrorism. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
While all but ignoring the genocide ruling by the ICJ, Luxon was quick to halt New Zealand funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency over Israeli allegations that 12 of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees had been implicated in terrorism.
A classic diversion by Israel to avoid the dreadful truth of their killing of Palestinians in Gaza. New Zealand happily joined the diversion.
Why are Israeli attacks on UNRWA so much more important for the Prime Minister than genocide committed against the Palestinian people?
The simple truth is we are swimming against the great tide of humanity which stands with Palestinians.
Our government has pushed us into the dark shadow of US/Israeli policies of oppression and domination. We need to be back out in the sun.
John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).Republished with permission from The Daily Blog.
The following is an opinion article from Darren Lewis & Grzegorz Lepiarz.
On Tuesday 27 February 2024, the Employment Tribunal will begin wading through a catalogue of errors to ascertain if they agree with our belief – that after 25 years of collective service, we were unfairly and unlawfully dismissed by Trades Union Congress (TUC) in August 2022 after nine months of torturing suspension.
We were denied access to vital evidence, key witnesses and documents.
We have donated hundreds of pounds and incalculable personal time to deserving causes and yet we were dismissed based on what we believe to be TUC manufactured allegations against us which led to our dismissals for supposed gross misconduct.
We are jointly suing TUC for unfair and wrongful dismissal. We believe that even if there was a genuine case against us, the sanction is disproportionate. Additionally Darren is suing TUC for race discrimination, breach of contract and holiday pay but we believe this case is beyond just those charges. Hopefully it will show root problems inside the TUC which led us to this moment.
TUC must respond positively
Our fight at the Employment Tribunal is for anyone who believes in trade unions and expects to be represented with fairness by their union. If members cannot reasonably rely on our trade unions in our hour of greatest need, what is the point of being fee-paying members – especially at the TUC – the home of the trade union movement?
John McDonnell MP has written to support us. He said:
I can only hope that even at this late stage the TUC responds positively to resolve your case.
We are confident that the Employment Tribunal will make a right judgement, but it is vital that you join us for the open to public hearing as our fight is your fight!
Just watched a 2020 documentary entitled Dirty Money that covered a slew of scams perpetrated on American consumers. The segment on Scott Tucker really got my goat. Here’s a bit of a background on this character and his disgusting shenanigans:
In 1991, Tucker was convicted for his illegal activities, including mail fraud, associated with a bogus lending company he operated, Chase, Morgan, Stearns & Lloyd, which he falsely claimed was associated with each of the four major banks whose names he included in the name of the company. He served one year in prison.
In 2001, Tucker founded an online business, AMG Services, that made payday loans even in states where these high-interest, low-principal loans were restricted or illegal. The business, which generated over $3.5 billion in revenue from just 2008 to June 2013,[1] ultimately made loans to at least 4.5 million Americans.[1] When state regulators tried to shut down his operations, Tucker made deals with Native American tribes to claim ownership of his business and invoke sovereign immunity from state courts.[2] In February 2016, Tucker was arrested and indicted on federal criminal charges filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in relation to his ownership and controlling role in various payday lending operations that were found to have charged illegal interest rates in violation of RICO and TILA statutes.[3][4] Tucker was convicted of making illegal payday loans and of racketeering in October 2017; he is currently serving a sentence of 16 years and 8 months in federal prison.[1]
In the documentary the director interviewed Tucker while he was awaiting trial, while still in his multimillion dollar home. When asked if he considered himself Moral Tucker paused and then answered “I’m a businessperson”. When the filmmaker interviewed that chief of the Indian tribe in Oklahoma about the deal they made with Tucker to use their name and status, he showed NO remorse and added “We didn’t do anything illegal.” This is the essence of why our current capitalist system is so skewed and downright EVIL! All of those poisoned by this so called “Free Market” seem to adhere to the famous words from the Godfather films “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.” So, what Tucker and his minions did was nickel and dime loans (average $ 300) to over 4 million consumers who were desperate for the cash, and then charge them higher interest than even a street corner loan shark. He had a myriad of lackeys working as office staff to handle the tens of thousands of customer phone complaints from 2001 to 2013. Having been a “Phone man” myself, I have a great animus for those Judases who obviously knew what was going on in the scam. You see, most underhanded schemes like Tucker’s can never succeed without an army of collaborators. Disgraceful how some working stiffs can do such a thing to earn a living.
This writer knew people I once called friends that sold their souls to scam artist businesses. I recall a guy I worked under at ADP ( Automatic Data Processing) in the late 1980s. With all its faults at least ADP played by the rules and did not have their sales force play such games. Yet, my sales manager, as straight an arrow as can be, confessed to me how, in a previous sales life as a “Tin man” ( aluminum siding sales) he bent the rules and took advantage of low income home owners. He actually laughed when he told me how he and his coworkers would lie and outright gouge the customer with higher prices. He used the old Godfather retort of it not being personal… just business. Another old friend got himself into the subprime mortgage loan business as a salesman during the housing boom of the mid 2000s. Once again, they preyed upon low income and low credit rated customers, knowing that there was NO way the new homeowner would be able to pay off that mortgage at those rates etc. He himself got so tied into the whole boom that he began doing what I personally abhor, that being ‘ Flipping houses’. He was doing so well right before the 2008 bust that he leased himself a $600 a month BMW coupe and travelled to Russia to find himself a wife through one of those mating services. The bust came, he got evicted from his own home and saw his lovely blonde haired young wife skip out on him.
Modern day capitalism has become a joke. For every tale of well run Mom and Pop small business there are hundreds about corporate predators choking Main Street America. Then you have the outliers whereupon low level hustlers do psychic damage to straight and true Mom and Pops by their antics against consumers/customers. If only our present local, city, state and federal governments would follow the adage of the late, great Mark Twain that the purpose of government is to protect us from the crooks and scoundrels. Nuff said!
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
William Shakespeare; Richard II
Great Britain, Grande Bretagne, Rule Britannia.
Were Shakespeare to be reborn, hopefully in one of the NHS hospitals with a safe maternity unit, would he grow up to write these same words again? Those of an unquestioningly patriotic disposition toward the UK should skip this article.
‘Great’ Britain: a continuing insouciance towards humanity
Great Britain is no longer truly great, or the envy of less happier lands. Perhaps it never really was. The UK is the remnant of an empire whose significant wealth and global prestige has been built on battle, blood, conquest, sweat, enterprise, ingenuity, exploitation, and no shortage of abject human misery.
When the words of the iconic, ironic, and patriotic sing along, Rule Britannia were being penned almost three-hundred-years ago, a ditty still sung alongside Land of Hope and Glory at the finale of the Proms each year, Britain was one of the most active slave trading nations on the face of the earth.
Its insouciance toward humanity exceeded only marginally by Portugal. And in truth, the forced transport of slaves and their subsequent exploitation was to the privileged entitled and ruling classes of the time, merely a logical extension to the treatment of their own lower classes.
The indentured conditions of the poor and disenfranchised who worked in many of Britain’s coalmines, especially those in Scotland that were owned by the English nobility, were a legitimised form of slavery in all but name. Whilst the wilfully blind middle and upper classes might have found it rousing to sing that Britons never, never, never would be slaves, in reality many Britons already were.
Slavery and exploitation have never been selective.
Engels and Marx: turning in their graves?
In 1845 as a direct result of seeing the horrendous conditions in which the English working classes lived and worked in Manchester in the early Nineteenth Century, Friedrich Engels published his seminal and shocking work The Condition of the Working Class in England. The book had a huge influence on the thinking of Karl Marx and the development of what became known as Marxism.
The communist manifesto itself, the literary blue touch paper that lit the flames of some of the most seismic radical global socio-political bonfires in recent history, was conceived, created, and written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
If British entrepreneurialism created the steam engine and gave birth to the industrial revolution, unrestrained amoral British capitalist greed supplied the narrative that fuelled the creation of communism. Britain is a nation with an incredible and interesting past and an uncertain future. We have a lot to dwell on and still more to work out.
In recent times the collective mental health of our country has been so battered by the artificially generated demands of modern-day life that this sceptered isle is now one of the few nations on Earth that boasts a Minister for Suicide Prevention; and that was before the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis. It’s a staggering state of affairs that things have gotten so undeniably bad for some amongst this happy breed, that we have a minister whose job it is to stop us killing ourselves.
Can you get your head around that?
The state of the NHS, and UK, in 2024
We have more foodbanks and charities per capita than any other country in mainland Europe. The certainty of constant improvement and a better future that was so forcefully sold to us and that we once took for granted, has evaporated. We are the birthplace in which the great railways of the world were first created, yet now we seem unable to even run them on time.
It increasingly feels as if the very physical and emotional infrastructure of Britain is eroding.
Our public services [including the NHS] are crumbling and imploding around us.
The institutions of the state are morally bankrupt.
Parliament is an amoral muddy pool of mendacity, filled with vacuous self-serving bottom feeders more interested in their second incomes than their constituents’ concerns.
Our elections are tampered with by foreign powers while the House of Lords plays host to the offspring of Russian Oligarchs and former KGB officers.
The venal and corrupt occupy and abuse the offices of power they hold and think nothing of plundering the public purse in the midst of a global pandemic for their own gain.
The democracy we were once told we could be so proud of is openly, brazenly, self-interestedly, and unashamedly rotting to its core. So much so that Roberto Saviano, a journalist, screenwriter, and one of the world’s leading authorities on the mafia cited the UK as one of the countries and economies most open to corruption and bribery.
And even before the arrest and eventual prosecution of the serial rapist David Carrick in January 2023, less than one in ten women had full faith in our Police and Crown Prosecution Services.
The land of smoke and mirrors
But what we on this island of hope and glory do remain genuinely great at, the arena in which we shine and excel, the craft we seem to have perfected, is the art of telling ourselves and every other nation how great we are at everything.
The land of smoke and mirrors is most definitely a great and glorious public relations triumph. Which other nation would have the chutzpah to strut the global stage so visibly when its own arse is showing through the threadbare seat of its pants and the very developments it brought to the rest of the world are falling into decay within its own boundaries?
We are like the child that’s been moved to a new school who tells everyone that the tired decrepit flat they are living in is just a temporary second home, and their dad is never around to pick them up from the playground because they are working abroad on an important and well-paid adventure, when in reality, they are serving a sentence in Millom Prison for petty theft.
In the course of my life and work [some for the NHS] I have travelled the length and breadth of the United Kingdom and though there is undoubtedly a great deal to be proud of, to be curious about, to marvel at, and to celebrate, there is also a great deal to feel sad about. Our past successes are no guarantee of our future flourishing. And whatever history, glorious and otherwise, we might have will not heal the ills that currently beset us.
Nostalgia will not pay the bills. An uneven economy and an increasingly unjust society is eroding our humanity, and a booming economy will not make us whole.
No wealth but life: how the NHS, and society, should be
But what might greatness and great look like if we were to define them now?
How should the greatness of a nation, a society, a civilization be defined in the 21st century, and by whom?
If a nations ambition is a reflection and therefore an extension of the ambitions of its people, shall we continue to stoke the perception of greatness at the individual level as greed, indifference, striving, and the constant selfish insatiable appetite for more and more material growth? Or can we begin to value kindness, tolerance, patience, curiosity, understanding, and emotional intelligence, over excess and affluence?
Is a great nation a healthy nation and if so, what might a healthy population [and NHS] look like?
Is it an absolute measure, a relative measure, and again, who decides?
Presumably, a nation’s health is nothing more than the aggregate sum of the health, wellness, and wellbeing of all its citizens. And our health and wellbeing and how we feel about it is as unique as our fingerprints and DNA.
If there is no wealth but life, and the purpose of our lives is for each one of us to decide, then the only legitimate role of the state and its institutions is to create the conditions in which options, choice, and opportunity are available to all and in which we can be healthy and well enough to capitalise on them.
This article was reworked from the first chapter of Tom’s book, No Wealth But Life – What’s Gone Wrong with Healthcare in Britain & How We Can Save the NHS. You can purchase it via Amazon here, or via Tom’s own website, here. Read more about the NHS from the Canaryhere.
Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape made his historic address to the Australian Federal Parliament in Canberra today.
Following Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s welcome address, Marape highlighted with gratitude the historical ties between the two nations and made special reference to the continuous support given to PNG by Australia since independence in 1975.
“We thank Australia for the profound work that has gone into the setting up of key institutions that remain the anchor of this free vibrant democracy of PNG,” said Marape.
Speaking during his address to senators and members of the Australian federal Parliament, Marape described the relationship between the two countries as being “joined to the hips” and “locked into earth’s crust together”, referring to the Indo-Australian tectonic plate.
He emphasised the efforts of Australia as being a “huge pillar of support” in terms of infrastructural development for Papua New Guinea.
Marape also made reference to former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam and Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare as the “forefathers who made independence possible” and described Australia as being a big brother or sister that had nurtured PNG into adulthood.
Today’s a historic day in PNG Australia relationships.
On this day, January 8, 2024, in Canberra, a son of Kondom Agaundo, the legendary Papua New Guinean warrior chief, will address the Australian Federal Parliament.
This simple act will fulfill the prophecy of Chief Kondom of Wandi, Chimbu province. His prophecy titled “my sons will come” has become a rallying call for Papua New Guineans to set forth and explore the world of globalism in education, business, sports, foreign policy, tourism and politics.
It was in Canberra that Kondom, a member of the PNG Legislative Council, felt humiliated when he tried to address an Australian audience. His lack of English proficiency irritated the audience who responded with laughter.
Chief Kondom, the son of a powerful warrior chief, felt slighted.
He thought maybe, if not for his poor English, then maybe it was the insinuation of his name.
While he felt insulted, he was a warrior and would not show any weakness. He held fast to his belief that payment for an offence now would be fulfilled later.
He was determined to prove his leadership skills. He was determined to tell the white “mastas” that their time in Papua and New Guinea would end.
He responded with the famous lines: “In my village, I am a chief among my people but today, I stand in front of you like a child and when I try to speak in your language, you laugh at my words.
“But tomorrow, my son will come and he will talk to you in your language, this time you will not laugh at him.”
And that the sons and daughters of Chief Kondom, well educated, very confident, fluent and sophisticated, cultured, tasteful, elegant and vibrant have descended on Australia in the last 50 years.
Former politicians and knights Sir Yano Belo and Sir Nambuka Mara are in Canberra with Prim Minister Marape.
It was the wisdom of people like Chief Kondom, Sir Yano, Sir Nambuka, Sir Peter Lus and many other political warriors that inspired Chief Sir Michael Somare to demand political independence from Australia.
The memory of Chief Kondom lives on in Chimbu and across the country. His legacy is written on buildings and schools.
In 1965, Kondom Agaundo was the Member for Highlands region. He also became a kiap, the first local to embrace Western civilisation.
He was the first president of Waiye Rural LLG 1959 and the first Chimbu man to own and ride horses.
He is remembered as the man who fostered coffee in the Central highlands. Sadly, chief Kondom died in a car crash at Daulo Pass in August 1966.
It is said that the funeral and burial ceremony lasted weeks and over 100 pigs were slaughtered for the man who reminded the Australians his sons would come.
Today, Prime Minister completes the evolution of the legend of Chief Kondom Agaundo, under the watchful gaze of two of Chief Kondom’s surviving peers.
Follow our LIVE coverage: 
