Black Lives Matter had sprung up almost four months earlier after the events in Ferguson, Missouri. The remnants of Occupy Wall Street immediately latched onto this Movement as if it were life support.
Our plan that night was to stage a “die-in” inside Saks Fifth Avenue during the holiday shopping crush. Dozens of “activists” (of all ethnicities) entered the posh department store and pretended to be shoppers.
When we got the signal, we were supposed to plop down onto the floor and pretend to be dead (see my photo below).
This was (somehow) supposed to represent all the people of color being killed by law enforcement. I opted to not lie down because I wanted to get photos to document the action and well… I’d already had my fill of almost being arrested in this particular venue.
We perform such futile, dishonest exhibitionism because the hive mind keeps telling us: American police are hunting down black men in an epidemic of “lynchings.”
I’m not being hyperbolic.
In 2020, for example, pundits of the woke kind declared that cops are hunting black people (particularly black men).
LeBron James himself tweeted: “For Black people right now, we think you’re hunting us.” Some folks unselfconsciously call it an “epidemic.”
The media picks up these quotes and runs with them as clickbait stories — without any pretense of fact-checking. Opinions are manufactured and thus, narratives are created and sides are drawn.
BLM was founded on this deception.
I took this photo in Times Square, in January 2015.
Do you know how many unarmed black people were actually killed by U.S. law enforcement in 2020, the Year of George Floyd?
I would not blame anyone if, based on public rhetoric, they guessed hundreds if not thousands. But here’s the breakdown:
There are roughly 60 million interactions between police and civilians (age 16 and older) each year.
In 2020, during those 60 million interactions, 1,021 people were killed by police.
Of that number, 55 were unarmed.
Of that number, 24 were white while 18 were black.
Yes, proportional to population demographics, unarmed blacks are indeed being killed at a higher rate than unarmed whites. But please allow me to repeat:
In 2020, 18 unarmed black people were killed by law enforcement agents.
Is that 18 too many? Yes.
Is it equivalent to “hunting,” an “epidemic,” or being “systematically targeted for demise”? Of course not.
However, an organization called Black Lives Matter opted to make this its focus. In the process, they ignore (for example) that the top cause of death for black men under 44 is homicide. Those murders are obviously not being committed by cops.
Could you instead imagine concerned citizens holding a “die-in” in the name of finding ways to prevent even more victims of gang activity, drug dealing, and other crimes?
Can you imagine pro athletes and members of Congress kneeling to honor those victims?
Sure, it would still be virtue signaling, but at the very least, they’d be trying to live up to a name like “Black Lives Matter.”
If anyone is smugly enjoying this takedown of the woke crowd, I suggest you take a good look around. The “truth” movement and “medical freedom” movement can be just as deluded and deceptive in their own way.
The longstanding “activist” blueprint is a delusion.
Let’s learn to be more discerning and embrace independent thought before we embark on journeys to free others. And remember:
I have written ad nauseam about experts’ predictions of one form or another of Doomsday later this century, less than three generations away.1 I have made appeals for super rich people whose wealth was not ill-begotten to fund my comprehensive strategy to end war and human misery while emphasizing that I had no financial interest and would play the role of a non-paid consultant in the background. This brief article shares with readers the deafening and deadening silence that met me.
Spurned by the Super Rich
I got the idea to beg the super-rich from Ralph Nader’s book promoting that very supplication.2 Well, Mr. Nader, we were both hoodwinked!
Warren Buffett: I mailed one of my books and a plea for funding to this investor. No reply.
Bill Gates: Ditto for this internet whiz.
Elon Musk. Ditto for this creative genius.
Patriotic Millionaires. Ditto for this group who would probably not know the true definition of patriotism if it walked into their office: “My country, please do right and no wrong.”
Spurned by “No Good Organizations”
I once wrote an article describing my THOROUGH research of non-governmental organizations, or NGOs for short. I concluded that they existed to get “hush money” from our government members of the corrupt corpocracy.3
Apparently because of my wishful thinking and despite the damming evidence from my own research, this last April 1 I contacted three NGOs I had hoped would join in a consortium to replace the corpocracy with a true democracy:
Code Pink, World Beyond War (WBR), and USS Liberty Veterans
Here are excerpts from my proposal:
A PROPOSAL FOR LAUNCHING THE U.S. DEMOCRACY CORPS AND ITS LEGIONNAIRES
WHY?
TO SAVE HUMANITY FROM DOOMSDAY!
THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS WARNING US!
THE POWER ELITE OF AMERICA’S CORPOCRACY ARE LEADING HUMANITY TO DOOMSDAY LATER THIS CENTURY IF NOT SOONER.
WHAT?
THE USDC AND ITS LEGIONNAIRES WOULD BE A VIRTUAL ORGANIZATION.
THERE WOULD BE A CHAIRPERSON, A STEERING COUNCIL, A STRATEGIC PLAN WITH A BUDGET, AND RECRUITED MEMBERS DRAWN FROM AT LEAST 17 SEGMENTS OF AMERICA’S DISSIDENTS AND FROM EXISTING NGO’S DEDICATED TO ENDING WAR AND POVERTY.
HOW?
BY PEACEFULLY REMOVING THE MANY “PROPS” THE POWER ELITE RELY ON TO KEEP AND STRENGTHEN THEIR POWER.
YOU?
ARE YOU READY TO START?
IF SO, PLEASE DO SO!
REFERENCE
ACHILLES HEEL OF PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1
BY GARY BRUMBACK, KDP, JUNE 25, 2021
My 1st e-mail to you was on April Fools’ Day, strictly a coincidence. My proposal is deadly serious about a deadly matter.
Some examples of what one or more wealthy benefactors could do:
Buy out a small war contractor and turn swords into ploughshares.
Buy out or create for mainstream media a major newspaper, a TV network, etc. to give Americans the true history and current events.
Buy millions of WBW’s billboards and erect everywhere.
Buy and distribute millions of Code Pinks posters such as the brilliant “Arms are for hugging”).
Buy millions of positive, beneficial items from “smile. amazon.com that benefits USS Liberty Veterans organization.
Buy out the major sports organizations such as the NFL.
Fund and institute Contract for American Renewal to create and support a new, winnable and honest political party [see p 41 and 78 in my book, Achilles Heel of Public Enemy No. 1. KDP, June 25, 2021).
These three organizations never even gave me the courtesy of a reply!
In Closing
Humanity will someday go to Hell. Unfortunately, only a minuscule portion will deserve to go there! And you know whom I mean!
Cops have arrested a woman in Croydon, south London, for not paying her bus fare. People have been kicking off on social media, and rightly so – not least because the woman had actually paid, but also because the cops’ response was disproportionate in the extreme. A number of officers tussle with the woman, yanking her, and ignoring her pleas. Her young son is visibly distressed, crying loudly at the treatment of his mother.
You’d be forgiven for asking, what the fuck is wrong with the police? Why did they feel the need to be this heavy-handed over a bus fare – one that had actually been paid? But of course. There’s nothing wrong with the police. They’re functioning exactly how they’re supposed to: as anti-Black, racist, and misogynist thugs.
Moreover, we’re hearing the same old tropes about an “abusive” Black women who didn’t STFU when she was told to.
The Met: arresting a Black woman for paying her bus fare
On Friday 21 July, cops arrested the woman. The video of the incident is being widely shared on social media. However, the Canary is choosing not to include it in our reporting. The state and its actors are often shown brutalising Black women. We think repeating those violent images doesn’t serve the people being harmed – so, we’re not going to share it.
Keep crime low and reduce fear of crime on the surface transport network
Reduce road collisions…
Investigate the most serious KSI (Killed or Seriously Injured) collisions with their specialist investigation skills
Carry out cycle safety events
However, nowhere on TfL’s site does it say that RTPC nicks people for skipping bus fares – which is what its cops did to this woman. Even in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, the Met makes no mention of this being part of the remit. The British state has truly lost the plot in focusing its time and energy on catching bus fare-skippers like some jumped-up school teacher. How does harassing a woman and her son over a little bus fare serve the community?
TfL’s good little bitches: ignorant in the extreme
The cop’s good little bitch from TfL, a bus worker called Joe, defended the police’s actions. He alleged to LBC‘s right-wing gobshite Nick Ferrari that after a ticket inspector in Croydon asked for the woman’s bus pass, she became “abusive”:
And when the police asked her to show the pass, she started abusing the police as well. She could have just shown the pass and walked away – and that would have been the end of the matter.
Yes, that old chestnut: a Black person defends themselves, therefore they must be abusive. As one Twitter usercommented, these:
responses of ‘she should have stopped,’ ‘just cooperated,’ ‘abusive’ are… unsurprising. Those responses come from those who, from a young age, have not witnessed their loved ones manhandled without dignity, whose body does not stiffen in fear of being accused because of what their skin colour represents to others, who are not adultified… as children, who have to ensure they print a receipt for a bottle of milk to show to a uniformed person in the supermarket…
Institutionalised misogynoir – ingrained prejudice against Black women and girls – came to the fore when Met police officers shared selfies with the dead bodies of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.
Day after day, cops show what they think of Black women. They systemically disrespect and dehumanise them. Then, the foot soldiers of white supremacy (in this instance, TfL) run along to defend the biggest gang in London: the Met Police.
Misogynoir: alive and well in the UK
So, you know – against a backdrop of cops murdering women, institutionalised racism, and prejudice pervading every corner of UK society, and misogyny and misogynoir thrown into the mix too – maybe, just maybe, the woman on the bus was, as one Twitter usersaid, ‘triggered into a reaction’ that TfL lackeys and the cops then ‘used against her’. As Zeze Millz wrote for Marie Claire, Black women “feel suffocated by the misogynoir, disregard and disrespect in UK society”:
Imagine continuously seeing people that look like you, your friends or your family being killed, murdered by the very people entrusted to serve and protect you. Imagine the fatigue that is deeply embedded in our very psyche from being continuously gaslit for feelings that we know are real. Imagine seeing constant content that confirms, and affirms, the feelings and notion that Black women are at the bottom of the barrel.
Not that the racist and misogynistic Met Police (nor their sidemen at TfL) would recognise any of this. The police’s excuse for officers’ ridiculous response to the woman was the usual bullshit: she “became abusive“, the video on social media doesn’t “show the full interaction“, blah, blah, blah.
Black women are, as Millz wrote, at the “bottom” of UK society. When racism and misogynoir pervade your waking life, it must be exhausting. So, being at first indirectly, and then directly, accused of criminality when there was none was clearly too much for the woman in Croydon. And who can blame her?
Police and TfL staff did. They did nothing to dispel the idea that the UK is systemically racist and filled to its very core with misogynoir.
The cycle repeats
But the saddest part of this story is that the young boy was witness to cops’ treatment of his mother – and with institutional change unlikely, society will allow this cycle to repeat itself throughout his life also. If this is how police treat Black adults, how are young Black children supposed to feel safe around them? This child witnessed police brutalising his mother – and then, days later, it was revealed another Black man has died after contact with cops, also in Croydon.
That is, of course, the point of the police. They’re not there to ‘protect and serve’. The state puts them there to make Black people feel unsafe, paint them as dangerous, and dehumanise them – just like they did to this woman in Croydon.
You may have detected a note of sarcasm in the headline. If not, you’re either very angry with us for going against our left-wing credentials – or you’re a gullible Labour spin doctor who thought that the spin had somehow landed. Obviously the Tories’ current unpopularity isn’t evidence that Labour needs to emulate the Tories. Yet that seems to be the lesson Keir Starmer has taken away from the recent by-elections:
— Reverend&TheMakers (@Reverend_Makers) July 23, 2023
To beat the Tories, you must…
Both Labour and the Lib Dems had allegedly very good results this week; the Tories, not so much. The three by-elections resulted in the following (as reported by the BBC):
In political terms, these results are ‘banonkers’ good for the Tories’ political opponents – but only if you’re willing to ignore the dire turnouts of between 44-46%, showing most voters really don’t give a shit any more.
As the BBC reported, Labour “made history, overturning a 20,137 majority to take the North Yorkshire seat of Selby and Ainsty”. They achieved this despite their candidate being a briefcase-wielding political Stepford child who makes plastic ‘Ken’ Starmer look like a flesh-and-blood human being:
Any normal person would look at these results and think – ‘ah yes, so the Tories are very unpopular right now – therefore we should do our very best to be as unlike them as possible‘. Not Ken Starmer, though – this guy looked at the results and thought ‘how can I use this to justify our ongoing lurch to the right?‘
It is a reminder that in an election, policy matters.
We are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet.
We’ve got to face up to that and to learn the lesson.
The second sentence is so bad you almost miss the first – but let’s start with that.
Starmer is a creature of the Labour right – a group of unlovable wonks who are famous for their avoidance of clear and/or beneficial policies. Realising that the Labour right is about as popular as Wuhan bat meat, Starmer fought for the Labour leadership by making it seem like he had an actual policy platform – a platform he’s worked hard to jettison ever since.
Given that, the correct way to read this sentence is that Starmer is trying to justify the avoidance of appearing like he supports anything which remotely resembles a policy lest someone somewhere take offence to it.
This thing called ‘politics’
This leads us neatly to the next sentence – a sentence which is so abysmal that we’re going to quote it again to confirm it’s real and not some sort of stress-induced hallucination:
We are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet.
We don’t know if Starmer is aware of this, but there’s this thing called ‘politics’, and in this thing called ‘politics’ there are people who compete against one another to realise competing outcomes. Unfortunately, ‘politics’ is also what’s known as a ‘dirty business’, and as a result it’s chiefly conducted by people who don’t mind getting their hands dirty – getting them filthy, in fact.
One way these muck-flinging politicos en-filthen themselves is by using techniques such as ‘disinformation’ and ‘pure bullshit’ to spin the objectives of their opponents in an unflattering light. This is actually very easy to do – much like when Labour promised free internet in 2019 and the media labelled it “broadband communism” to make people think it was one step away from a Stalinist purge.
How then should a politician counteract the effects of ‘politics’?
There are two main options:
Get good at politics maybe? Maybe fling a bit of shit back in the opposite direction? Maybe stand up for what you believe in and make a case for it?
Give up immediately and just emulate all of your opponent’s policies so they can’t criticise you.
We all know which one Starmer favours.
ULEZ-vous?
As stated, the Tories are deeply unpopular right now, so Labour should be doing everything it can to stand apart – not trying to stand slightly to the right and in front.
Starmer is specifically drawing attention to the issue of Tory voters in Uxbridge being turned off by the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) – a scheme which means Southerners have to pay to drive around London in their little Southern cars.
We’ll be perfectly frank in saying that we think ULEZ is a dogshit half-measure which primarily punishes ordinary people – a measure which is doomed to failure without simultaneously enacting the actual solution – i.e. massively expanding public transport and making it free to all users. Starmer isn’t making the argument that ‘ULEZ doesn’t go far enough’, though – Starmer is arguing ‘ULEZ goes somewhere at all, and we won’t be having that!’
Despite its ULEZ policy, Labour came within two percentage points of taking Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Uxbridge and fucking Ruislip. Do you realise how inherently Tory-leaning this area is? Formerly just ‘Uxbridge’, the Tories have only lost it twice since 1885, and given that, it’s hardly the best indicator of how the nation at large will vote (and even then – as stated – Labour nearly fucking won it anyway). That’s how deeply unpopular the Tories are.
No Labour, No Danger
Starmer wants us to know that come the next election, we won’t find anything in his manifesto that a Tory would object to. In other words, it will be a Tory Manifesto in everything but name. That is unless Starmer does the one thing Tony Blair never had the balls to do and rebrands Labour the ‘New Conservative Party’ – something he’s kind of already hinted at:
— George O – #NHS15Rise, Centralism is a myth! (@George0rw3ll) July 20, 2023
In the 1997 election, the Conservatives famously used the slogan ‘New Labour, New Danger’.
At the next election, they could realistically change this to ‘No Labour, No Danger’. ‘No Danger’ to the Tories’ billionaire backers, anyway – but an absolute menace to the rest of us.
“Rebuilding our Melanesia for our future” is the theme chosen by the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) for their 7th Melanesian Arts and Cultural Festival (MACFEST) this year.
Vanuatu hosted the event in Port Vila, which opened last Wednesday and ends next Monday.
The event was hosted by the MSG, which includes Fiji, New Caledonia’s Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS), Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
This action — Indonesian exclusion — alone spoke volumes of the essence and characteristics of what constitutes Melanesian cultures and values.
This event is a significant occasion that occurs every four years among the Melanesian member countries.
The MSG’s website under the Arts and Culture section says:
The Arts and Culture programme is an important pillar in the establishment of the MSG. Under the agreed principles of cooperation among independent states in Melanesia, it was signed in Port Vila on March 14, 1988, and among other things, the MSG commits to the principles of, and holds respect for and promotion of Melanesian cultures, traditions, and values as well as those of other indigenous communities.
A screenshot of a video of a MACFEST2023 and Melanesian Spearhead Group solidarity display showing Papuans daubed in their Morning Star flag colours – banned in Indonesia. Image: @FKogotinen
MACFESTs
1998: The first MACFEST was held in the Solomon Islands with the theme, “One people, many cultures”.
2002: Vanuatu hosted the second MACFEST event under the theme, “Preserving peace through sharing of cultural exchange”.
2006: “Living cultures, living traditions” was the theme of the third MACFEST event held in Fiji.
2010: The fourth MACFEST event was held in New Caledonia with the theme “Our identity lies ahead of us”.
2014: Papua New Guinea hosted the fifth MACFEST, with the theme “Celebrating cultural diversity”.
2018: The Solomon Islands hosted the sixth edition of MACFEST with the theme “Past recollections, future connections”.
2023: Vanuatu is the featured nation in the seventh edition, with the slogan “Rebuilding our Melanesia for our future”.
Imagery, rhetorics, colours and rhythms exhibited in Port Vila is a collective manifestation of the words written on MSG’s website.
MSG national colours mark MACFEST2023. @WalakNane
There have been welcoming ceremonies united under an atmosphere of warmth, brotherhood, and sisterhood with lots of colourful Melanesian cultural traditions on display.
Images and videos shared on social media, including many official social media accounts, portrayed a spirit of unity, respect, understanding and harmony.
West Papuan flags have also been welcomed and filled the whole event. The Morning Star has shone bright at this event.
The following are some of the images, colours and rhetoric displayed during the opening festive event, as well as the West Papua plight to be accepted into what Papuans themselves echo as the “Melanesian family”.
When stars aligned,
It’s time.
Melanesia has to make a stand to safe West Papua and the entire region. Bring West Papua back to the Melanesian family. pic.twitter.com/ilTZDNlW8Z
Wamena – West Papua on 19 July 2023 For West Papuans, July 2023 marks a time when the stars seem to be aligned in one place — Vanuatu. July this year, Vanuatu is to chair the MSG leaders’ summit, hosting the seventh MACFEST, and celebrating its 43rd year of independence. Vanuatu has been a homebase (outside of West Papua) supporting West Papua’s liberation struggle since 1970s.
Throughout West Papua, you will witness spectacular displays of Melanesian colours, flags, and imagery in response to the unfolding events in the MSG and Vanuatu.
Melanesian brethren also displayed incredible support for West Papua’s plight at the MACFEST in Port Vila — a little hope that keeps Papuan spirits high in a world where freedom has been shut for 60 years.
This support fosters a sense of solidarity and offers a glimmer of optimism that one day West Papua will reclaim its sovereignty — the only way to safeguard Melanesian cultures, languages and tradition in West Papua.
Although geographically separated, Vanuatu, West Papua and the rest of Melanesian, are deeply connected emotionally and culturally through the display of symbols, flags, colours, and rhetoric.
Emancipation, expectation, hope, and prayer are high for the MSG’s decision making — decisions that are often marked by “uncertainty”.
A contested and changing Melanesia
The Director-General of MSG, Leonard Louma, said during the opening:
The need to dispel the notion that Melanesian communities only live in Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu and acknowledge and include Melanesians that live elsewhere.
I am reminded that there are pockets of descendants of Melanesians in the Micronesian group and the Polynesian group. We should include them, like the black Samoans of Samoa — often referred to as Tama Uli — in future MACFESTs.
In the past, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Australia, and Taiwan were invited to attend. Let us continue to build on these blocks to make this flagship cultural event of ours even bigger and better in the years to come.
MSG leaders may perceive their involvement in defining and redefining the concept of Melanesia, as well as addressing date postponements and criteria-related matters, as relatively insignificant.
Similarly, for MSG members, their participation in the Melanesian cultural festival could be considered as just one of four events that rotate between them.
For West Papuans, this is an existential issue — between life or death as they face a bleak future under Indonesian colonial settler occupation — in which they are constantly reminded that their ancestral land will soon be seized and occupied by Indonesians if their sovereignty issues do not soon resolve.
The now postponed MSG’s leaders’ summit will soon consider an application proposing that West Papua be included within the group.
Regardless of whether this proposal is accepted by the existing member countries of the MSG, the obvious international pressures that impel this debate, must also prompt us to ask ourselves what it means to be Melanesian.
United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim chair Benny Wenda being interviewed by Vanuatu Television during MACFEST2023. Image: VBTC screenshot APR
Decisions around unity?
Does the primacy of maintaining good relations with a powerful country like Indonesia, the West and China supersede Melanesian solidarity, or are we able to transcend these pressures to redefine and “rebuild our common Melanesia for our future”?
The Melanesian people must decide whether we are sufficiently united to support our brothers and sisters in West Papua, or whether our respective cultures are too diverse to be able to resist the charms offered by outsiders to look the other way.
The imminent decision to be made by the MSG leaders in Port Vila will be a crucial one — one that will affect the Melanesian people for generations to come. Does the MSG stand for promoting Melanesian interests, or has it become tempted by the short term promises of the West, China and their Indonesian minions?
What has become of the Melanesian Way — the notion of the holistic and cosmic worldview advocated by Papua New Guinea’s Bernard Narakobi?
The decision to be made in Port Vila will shine a light on the MSG’s own integrity. Does this group exist to help the Melanesian people, or is their real purpose only to help others to subjugate the Melanesian people, cultures and resources?
The task of “Rebuilding our Melanesia for our future” cannot be achieved without directly confronting the predicament faced by West Papua. This issue goes beyond cultural concerns; it is primarily about addressing sovereignty matters.
Only through the restoration of West Papua’s political sovereignty can the survival of the Melanesian people in that region and the preservation of their culture be ensured.
Should the MSG and its member countries continue to ignore this critical issue, “Papuan sovereignty”, one day there will be no true Melanin — the true ontological definition and geographical categorisation of what Melanesia is, (Melanesian) “Black people” represented in any future MACFEST event. It will be Asian-Indonesian.
Either MSG can rebuild Melanesia through re-Melanesianisation or destroy Melanesia through de-Melanesianisation. Melanesian leaders must seriously contemplate this existential question, not confining it solely to the four-year slogan of festival activities.
The decisive political and legal vision of MSG is essential for ensuring that these ancient, timeless, and incredibly diverse traditions and cultures continue to flourish and thrive into the future.
One can hope that, in the future, MSG will have the opportunity to extend invitations to world leaders who advocate peace instead of war, inviting them to Melanesia to learn the art of dance, song, and the enjoyment of our relaxing kava, while embracing and appreciating our rich diversity.
This would be a positive shift from the current situation where MSG leaders may feel obliged to respond to the demands of those who wield power through money and weapons, posing threats to global harmony.
Can the MSG be the answer to the future crisis humanity faces? Or will it serve as a steppingstone for the world’s criminals, thieves, and murders to desecrate our Melanesia?
Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Nothing much changed in a 1News Verian poll released last Monday. However, some commentators treated the boring results as a blank canvas on which to express their creativity.
“It is just under three months until the election and Labour seems to have been dented by a series of ministerial distractions,” he said as he introduced the story at the top of the bulletin.
Despite that effort to dress up the poll as a tough verdict on the government, it was mostly notable for how un-notable it was.
Few parties moved more than the margin of error from the last 1News poll in May, which also showed National and Act with the numbers to form the next government — just. National and Labour both dropped the same amount: 2 percent.
You might have thought the damp squib of a result would put the clamps on our political commentators’ narrative-crafting abilities.
Instead, for some it proved to be a blank canvas on which they could express their creativity.
‘Centre-right surge’
At Stuff, chief politics editor Luke Malpass called the poll a “fillip for the right” under a headline hailing a “centre-right surge”.
One issue with that: the poll showed a 1 percent overall drop for the right bloc of National and Act.
“Fillips” generally involve polls going up not down. Similarly, a drop in support doesn’t traditionally meet the definition of a surge in support.
The lack of big statistical swings wasn’t enough to deter some commentators from making big calls.
On Newstalk ZB, political editor Jason Walls said Labour was plunging due to its disunity.
“All [Chris Hipkins] has been really able to talk about is what’s happening within the Labour Party — be it Stuart Nash, be it other ministers who are behaving badly. Jan Tinetti. Voters punish that. And we’ve seen that from the Nats in opposition. They punish disunity.”
It’s uncertain what National’s equivalent 2 percent drop was down to. Perhaps voters punish unity as well.
Wider trends context
Mutch-McKay’s own commentary was a bit more nuanced, placing the poll in the context of wider trends.
On TVNZ’s Breakfast the day after the poll’s release, she said some people inside Labour couldn’t believe the results hadn’t been worse for the party.
Perhaps that air of disbelief also extended to the parliamentary press gallery.
After all, the commentators are right: Labour has had a terrible few months, with high-ranking ministers defecting, being stood down, being censured by the parliamentary privileges committee, facing allegations of mistreating staff, or struggling with the apparently near-impossible task of selling shares in Auckland Airport.
Maybe a sense of inertia propelled some of our gallery members to keep rolling with the narrative of the last few months, in spite of the actual poll result.
Or maybe part of the issue is that hyping up the significance of these polls is a financial necessity for news organisations which pay a lot to commission them.
“You’ve got to squeeze the hell of it. You’ve paid $11,000 or $12,000 for a poll, it’s got to be the top story. It’s got to be your lead. It’s got to have the fancy graphics,” Stuff’s political reporter and commentator Andrea Vance said recently on the organisation’s daily podcast Newsable.
‘Manufacturing news’
“It just feels like we’re manufacturing news. We’re taking a piece of information that’s a snapshot in time and we’re pretending that we know the future,” she said.
Vance went on to say these kinds of snapshot polls don’t actually tell us all much — but she said long-term polling trends are worth paying attention to.
It’s probably no coincidence then that the most useful analysis of this latest poll focused on those macro patterns.
In a piece for 1News.co.nz, John Campbell noted the electorate’s slow drift away from the centre, with Labour losing 20 percent of the electorate’s support since 2020 and National failing to fully capitalise on that drop-off.
He quoted Yeats line, “the centre cannot hold”, before asking the question: “What do Labour and National stand for? Really? Perhaps, just perhaps, this is a growing section of the electorate saying — you’re almost as bad as each other.”
That sentiment has been echoed by other commentators. In his latest column for Metro magazine, commentator and former National Party comms man Matthew Hooton decried the major parties’ lack of ambition.
“At least Act, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori aren’t insulting you with bullshit. Instead they offer ideas they think will make your life better, even if they’ll never happen. So here’s a better idea than falling for the big scare from National or Labour.
‘Reward ideas-based parties’
“How about using your ballot paper to tell them to f*** off and reward one of the three ideas-based parties with your vote instead?” he wrote.
And on his podcast The Kaka, financial journalist Bernard Hickey and commentator Danyl McLauchlan criticised our major parties for their grey managerialism.
“You kind of have to go back to the mid-1990s when so many people just hated the two major parties because they didn’t trust them,” he said.
“We seem to be going through a similar phase now. The two major parties are just these managerial centrist parties. They don’t have much to offer by way of a vision.”
Maybe it’s a little shaky to say anyone’s surging or flopping on the basis of a couple of percentage points shifting in a single poll.
But if you zoom out a bit, at least one narrative does have a strong foundation — voters saying, to quote Shakespeare this time — “a plague on both your (untaxed) houses”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Suva lawyer Richard Naidu is a free man after the Suva High Court ruled this week that no conviction be recorded against him.
High Court judge Justice Daniel Goundar ruled on Tuesday that the charge of contempt scandalising the court against Naidu be dismissed.
He said summons to set aside the judgment that had found Naidu guilty in November last year was by consent and was dismissed as he did not have jurisdiction.
Justice Gounder ordered the parties to bear their own costs.
While delivering his judgment, Justice Gounder said while mitigation and sentencing were pending, a new government had come into power and a new Attorney-General had been appointed.
He said that after the change of government [FijiFirst lost the general election last December], Justice Jude Nanayakkara, who had been previously presiding over the case, had resigned as a Fiji judge and left the jurisdiction without concluding proceedings.
Justice Gounder said the new Attorney-General, Siromi Turaga had taken a different position regarding the proceedings, which he had expressed in an affidavit filed in support of the summons to dismiss the proceedings.
Ruling set aside
Turaga stated that his view was that the proceedings should never have been instituted against Naidu in the first place.
In the affidavit, Turaga said he had conveyed to Naidu that his view was that the ruling of 22 November 2022 ought to be set aside and the proceedings dismissed.
He added that Naidu had confirmed he would not seek to recover any costs he had incurred in defending the proceedings.
Justice Gounder said the Attorney-General played an important function as the guardian of public interest in contempt proceedings which alleged conduct scandalising the court.
Lawyer Richard Naidu’s conviction ruled not to be recorded and the charge of contempt dismissed. Video: Fijivillage.com
He said the position of the Attorney-General had shifted and he was not seeking an order of committal against Naidu.
The judge said Turaga dkid not support the findings that Naidu was guilty of contempt scandalising the court.
He said it had not been suggested that the present Attorney-General was acting unfairly as the representative of public interest in consenting to an order setting aside the judgement.
Facebook posting
Naidu was found guilty in November last year by High Court judge Justice Jude Nanayakkara for contempt scandalising the court.
Naidu posted on his Facebook page a picture of a judgment in a case represented by his associate that had the word “injunction” misspelt [as “injection”], and then made some comments that he was pretty sure the applicant wanted an injunction.
The committal proceeding was brought against Naidu by the then Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.
Naidu was represented by Jon Apted while Feizal Haniff represented the Attorney-General.
Rashika Kumaris a Fijivillage reporter. Republished with permission.
The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) could soon become a corporate partner with one of the world’s leading professional bodies for sustainability. As previously reported, the Canary received a tip off that the UK Ministry of Defence-sponsored nuclear weapons company is seeking membership with the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA).
The thing is, arms companies, and militaries more broadly, can’t greenwash away their industry’s mass murder. The idea of a “green military” is a farcical oxymoron. How many green initiatives add up to the countless people killed by the military industrial complex? Trick question – they never could.
AWE is set to join a who’s who of corporate criminals. IEMA’s partner directory hosts a compendium of some of the worst companies for polluting the planet, violating human rights, and risking the safety of workers en masse.
It’s also no surprise then that AWE wouldn’t be the first arms manufacturer to receive membership. IEMA includes military and aerospace companies BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, and Babcock Group in its corporate partner directory. Additionally, a range of contractors and outsourcing businesses which offer services to defence projects also hold membership.
That some of the biggest companies – profiteering off of a trade in killing people – have a corporate badge of sustainability, epitomises everything that’s wrong with green capitalism. Crucially, it brings the harms of the military-industrial-complex – on both people and the planet – into sharp relief.
Yet what it all comes down to is: this is an industry that simply should not exist. No amount of green flourishes or reductions in carbon emissions can take away from this fact. Nor is it possible to extricate the climate and biodiversity crises from their inherent origin in colonial fossil fuel capitalism.
It’s about more than emissions
Even so, in early July, Reutersreported on a new campaign to hold world militaries accountable for their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Environmental groups Tipping Point North South and the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS) have teamed up with scientists from multiple UK universities. The coalition is pushing for greater transparency and reporting of military GHGs.
One 2019 study estimated that if the US military was a country, its fuel usage alone would place it ahead of 140 other nations for carbon emissions. However, information on the true scale of the US’s GHG emissions is patchy. CEOBS has highlighted that for many countries, there is a “military emissions gap”. This refers to a nation’s omission in the reporting of their military’s GHG output.
As a result, militaries around the world have evaded scrutiny on their greenhouse gas emissions. Highlighting the inordinate scale of their climate-wrecking fossil fuel consumption is therefore laudable work.
But it misses the bigger picture. Calling for militaries and arms companies to ‘green’ and decarbonise will simply offer a new layer of vindication for an industry that deals in death and devastation. In other words, it is an exercise in greenwashing for a murderous and ecocidal industry.
Decarbonising doesn’t deal with the environmental aftermath of heavy artillery. Nor does it address the unjust devastation of communities. Moreover, the environmental pollution and harms of war can continue to hurt marginalised people for years after. There can be nothing ‘sustainable’ about this industry – nor should we try to sustain it in a world where we avert the worst climate futures.
Carbon neutral isn’t morally neutral
For its six cents, AWE has promoted its efforts to reduce its carbon footprint and hit “net zero”. Setting aside the issues with “net zero” as a concept, this only covers its scope 1 and 2 emissions. These are GHGs just from its operations – not, for example, from emissions generated by its end products. Of course, like most corporations and governments across the globe it’s also enamoured with the likely too little, too late 2050 target.
Conversely, some military establishments have set more ambitious targets. Yet, this is still greenwashing for an unconscionable industry. For instance, in 2021 the UK’s RAF announced plans to reduce its carbon emissions. It pledged to meet “net zero” by 2040. This is a decade earlier than the UK’s legal countrywide climate target. It primarily plans to achieve this through converting its air fleet to greener fuels. This involves a mixture of ethanol, waste oil-based sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), and synthetic fuels for its aircraft.
In effect then, ‘green’ militaries will swap out a fossil fuel-powered fighter jet with a death plane that flies on vegetable juice or dead animal fat, and pat themselves on the back for being carbon neutral. Meanwhile, that plane will continue to rain down destruction on already marginalised people in the Global South. Naturally, arms manufacturers will capitalise on the opportunity to devise these greener munitions of mass murder and misery.
Climate plans that consolidate power
Author Amitav Ghosh has argued that climate denialism is no longer the main barrier to climate action. In his book The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, he suggests that military nations have long accepted the scientific basis of the climate crisis. However, what they do not welcome is the necessary relinquishment of their geopolitical influence and monetary power. In short, they make a political choice to not envisage an end to the era of fossil fuels.
Moreover, Ghosh has pointed out that extreme climate-exacerbated weather disasters have become a new source of militarisation. Everything from the military intrusion into disaster relief, to the racist borderisation of many aspects of society are, in effect, climate plans. They just happen to be climate strategies that maintain the military’s role in upholding colonial and capitalist dynamics of power.
The militarised border policies of fortress Europe and the racist racist policing of Black and Brown communities throughout the UK are part and parcel of the right-wing response to an intensifying climate crisis. As climate-fuelled disasters force people from their homes in search of safety, military nations like the UK have doubled down on sickening immigration policies. This is all intentional.
As Ghosh succinctly put:
The job of the world’s dominant military establishments is precisely to defend the most important drivers of climate change—the carbon economy and the systems of extraction, production, and consumption that it supports. Nor can these establishments be expected to address the unseen drivers of the planetary crisis, such as inequities of class, race, and geopolitical power: their very mission is to preserve the hierarchies that favour the status quo.
It’s also no secret that world powers from the Global North have started wars for oil. To overlook this well-documented connection is to give the military-industrial-complex a free pass. Moreover, it also makes IEMA complicit in its crimes. Badging arms manufacturers and the UK’s Ministry of Defence with its corporate partnership pours fuel on the climate fire.
And that’s the rap. Suiting up weapon-makers and warmongers in ostentatious displays of supposed sustainability – be it membership of leading environmental bodies, or grandiose pledges to convert entire munitions to greener technologies – cannot hide one key fact: so long as the military-industrial-complex continues to exist, so too will the systems of economic dominance and ecological ruin destroying the planet. There can be no climate justice without its abolition.
Feature image via Sgt Pete Mobbs/Wikimedia, resized and cropped to 1910 by 1000, licensed under OGL v1.0
Journalist and critic of Israeli apartheid Antony Loewenstein wrapped up his New Zealand tour with another damning address in Auckland last night but was optimistic about a swing in global grassroots sentiment with a stronger understanding of the plight of the reoressed 5 million Palestinians. He says that for more than a half century the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable military experience in “controlling” a population.
By Antony Loewenstein
The Israeli defence industry inspires nations across the globe, many of which view themselves as under threat from external enemies.
The Taiwanese foreign minister, Joseph Wu, recently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that: “Every aspect of the Israeli fighting capability is amazing to the Taiwanese people and the Taiwanese government.”
Wu explained that he appreciated how Israel protected its own country because, “basically, we [Taiwan] have barely started. The fighting experiences of Israel are something we’re not quite sure about ourselves. We haven’t had any war in the last four or five decades, but Israel has that kind of experience”.
Wu also expressed interest in Israeli weapons, suggesting his country had considered their usefulness in any potential war with China.
“Israel has the Iron Dome,” he said, referring to Israel’s defence system against short-range missiles. “We should look at some of the technology that has been used by the Israelis in its defence. I’m not sure whether we can copy it, but I think we can look at it and learn from it.”
It isn’t just Taiwan imagining itself as akin to Israel. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in April 2022 that his vision for his nation was to mimic “the Jewish state“.
Two months after Russia’s illegal invasion of its territory, Zelensky, who is a long-time supporter of Israel, argued that “our people will be our great army. We cannot talk about ‘Switzerland of the future’ — probably, our state will be able to be like this a long time after. But we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”
Zelensky went on to explain that what he meant was the need in the future to have “representatives of the armed forces or the national guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas; there will be people with weapons.”
The Women’s Bookshop’s Carole Beu with author Antony Loewenstein at his book signing in Auckland last night. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
The Palestine laboratory This admiration for Israel is both unsurprising and disturbing. The praise for Israel almost always completely ignores its occupation of Palestinian territory — one of the longest in modern times — and the ways in which this colonial project is implemented.
When Taiwan, Ukraine or any other country looks to Israel for innovation, it’s a highly selective gaze which completely disappears the more than five million Palestinians under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
The Palestine Laboratory . . . uncovers how Israel has used the occupied Palestinians as the ultimate guineapigs.
The appeal of the Palestine laboratory is endless. I’ve spent the last years researching this concept and its execution in Palestine and across the globe.
My new book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, uncovers how Israel has used the occupied Palestinians as the ultimate guineapigs when developing tools of repression, from drones to spyware and facial recognition to biometric data, while maintaining an “enemy” population, the Palestinians, under control for more than half a century.
Israel has sold defence equipment to at least 130 countries and is now the 10th biggest arms exporter in the world. The US is still the dominant player in this space, accounting for 40 percent of the global weapons industry.
Washington used its failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a testing ground for new weapons. During the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war has been a vital “beta test” for new weapons and sophisticated forms of surveillance and killing.
But Israel has a ready-made population of occupied Palestinians over which it has complete control. For more than five decades, Israeli intelligence authorities have built an NSA-level system of surveillance across the entire occupied Palestinian territories.
In the last decade, the most infamous example of Israeli repression tech is Pegasus, the phone hacking tool developed by the company NSO Group. Used and abused by dozens of nations around the world, Mexico is its most prolific adherent.
I spoke to dissidents, lawyers and human rights activists in Togo, Mexico, India and beyond whose lives were upended by this invasive, mostly silent tool.
Israeli state and spyware However, missing from so much of the western media coverage, including outrage against NSO Group and its founders who were Israeli army veterans, is acknowledgement of the close ties between the firm and the Israeli state.
NSO is a private corporation in name only and is in fact an arm of Israel’s diplomacy, used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Mossad to attract new friends in the international arena. Despite being blacklisted by the Biden administration in November 2021, the company still hopes to continue trading.
Unregulated Israeli spyware . . . a global threat.
My research, along with that of other reporters, has shown a clear connection between the sale of Israeli cyberweapons and Israel’s attempts to neuter any potential backlash to its illegal occupation.
From Rwanda to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to India, Israeli spyware and surveillance tech are used by countless democracies and dictatorships alike.
Beyond Pegasus, many other similar tools have been deployed by newer and lesser-known Israeli companies, though they’re just as destructive. The problem isn’t just Pegasus — it could close down tomorrow and the privacy-busting technology would transfer to any number of competitors — but the unquenchable desire by governments, police forces and intelligence services for the relatively inexpensive Israeli tech that powers it.
Perhaps the most revealing was the deep relationship between apartheid South Africa and Israel. It wasn’t just about arms trading, but an ideological alignment between two states that truly believed that they were fighting for their very existence.
In 1976, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin invited South African Prime Minister John Vorster, a Nazi sympathiser during the Second World War, to visit Israel. His tour included a stop at Yad Vashem, the country’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
Israel’s then President Reuven Rivlin (right) welcomes his Philippine counterpart Rodrigo Duterte at the presidential compound in Jerusalem on 4 September 2018. Image: MEE/AFP
When Vorster arrived in Israel, he was feted by Rabin at a state dinner. Rabin toasted “the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence”. Both nations faced “foreign-inspired instability and recklessness”.
Israel and South Africa viewed themselves as under attack by foreign bodies committed to their destruction. A short time after Vorster’s visit, the South African government yearbook explained that both states were facing the same issue: “Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.”
A love of ethnonationalism still fuels Israel today, along with a desire to export it. Some arms deals with nations, such as Bangladesh or the Philippines, are purely on military grounds and to make money.
Israel places barely any restrictions on what it sells, which pleases leaders who don’t want meddling in their actions. Pro-Israel lobbyists are increasingly working for repressive states, such as Bangladesh, to promote their supposed usefulness to the West.
Israel and the global far right But Israel’s affinity with Hungary, India and the global far right, a group that traditionally hates Jews, speaks volumes about the inspirational nature of the modern Israeli state. As Haaretz journalist Noa Landau recently wrote, while explaining why Netanyahu’s government defended the latest arguably antisemitic comments by Elon Musk about George Soros:
A Palestinian flag at the Auckland venue for author Antony Loewenstein’s address about his new book The Palestine Laboratory last night. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
“The government’s mobilisation in the service of stoking antisemitism is not surprising. It is the fruit of a long and consistent process in which the Netanyahu government has been growing closer to extreme right-wing elements around the world, at the expense of Jewish communities it purports to represent.”
It’s worth pausing for a moment to reflect on this undeniable reality. Israel, which claims to represent global Jewry, is encouraging an alignment between itself and a hyper-nationalist, bigoted and racist populism, regardless of the long-term consequences for the safety and security of Jews around the world.
Israel has thrived as an ethnonationalist state for so long because the vast bulk of the world grants it impunity. European nations have been key supporters of Israel, willing to overlook its occupation and abuse of Palestinians.
According to newly declassified documents from the files of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, between 1967 and 1990 it’s clear that West Germany was becoming more critical of Israel’s settlement project in Palestine, but the main concern was protecting its own financial interests in the region if a regional war broke out.
In a document written on 16 February 1975 to the deputy director of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Western Europe, Nissim Yaish, before Israel’s Foreign Minister Yigal Allon’s visit to West Germany, Yaish explained the thinking in his country’s diplomatic bureaucracy:
“There is unanimity that this time such a war will have a far-reaching impact on all its affairs internally and externally and that it could wreak a Holocaust on the German economy. Based on this attitude, West Germany is interested in rapid progress toward a [peace] agreement.”
Western silence But there has rarely been any serious interest in pursuing peace, or holding Israel to account for its blatantly illegal actions, because the economic imperative is too strong. Even today, when another Nakba against Palestinians is becoming more possible to imagine, there’s largely silence from Western elites.
Germany has banned public recognition of the 1948 Nakba and criminalised any solidarity with the Palestinian people. Germany is also keen to buy an Israeli missile defence system, confirming its priorities.
This is why Israeli apartheid and the Palestine laboratory are so hard to stop; countless nations want a piece of Israeli repression tech to surveil their own unwanted populations or election meddling support in Latin America or Africa.
Without a push for accountability, economic boycotts and regulation or banning Israeli spyware — the EU is flirting with the idea — Israel can feel comfortable that its position as a global leader in offensive weapons is secure.
This article was first published in the Middle East Eye.
My daughter came into the kitchen early today to tell me her friends were downtown in Auckland at Britomart, the transit hub of New Zealand’s biggest city, and that a construction worker had just run past them saying a man with a gun was shooting people.
I immediately swept all the online news media and saw nothing and was in the process of suggesting to her that maybe her friends were pranking her when it broke on Breakfast TV.
I know the area this shooting occurred in well — I was there a few days ago; most Aucklanders will know it as it is a vital entry point to downtown Auckland. To have a mass shooting event there is utterly outside the norm for Aucklanders.
As the reverberations and shock ease, there will of course be immediate political fall out.
Before all that though, first, let us acknowledge the uncompromising courage of our New Zealand police and emergency services. We all saw them sprint into that building knowing someone was armed and shooting people.
I am the first to be critical of the NZ Police, but on this day, their professionalism and unflinching bravery was one of the few things we can be grateful for on such a poisoned morning.
Let us also pause and mourn the two who were killed and 10 wounded. These were simply good honest folk going about their day of work and not one of them deserved the horror visited upon them by 24-year-old Matu Tangi Matua Reid.
Now let’s talk about Matu.
Troubling pump-action shotgun access The media have already highlighted that he was on home detention for domestic violence charges and was wearing an ankle bracelet. This is of no surprise nor shock, many on home detention have the option of applying for leave to work — we do this because those on home detention still need to pay the rent, far more troubling was his access to a pump-action shotgun he didn’t have a gun licence for.
We know he had already been in a Turn Your Life Around Youth Development Trust programme.
Political partisans will try and seize any part of his story to whip into political frenzy for their election narrative and we should reject and resist that.
The banality of evil always tends to be far more basic than we ever appreciate.
There is nothing special about Matu; he is simply another male without the basic emotional tools to facilitate his anger beyond violence. In that regard Matu is depressingly like tens of thousands of men in NZ.
His background didn’t justify this terrible act of violence today and his actions can’t be conflated to show Labour are soft on crime.
Another depressing violent male
Matu is just another depressing male whose violence he could not control. There are tens of thousands like him and until we start focusing on building young men who have the emotional tools to facilitate their anger beyond violence, he won’t be the last.
He has shamed himself.
He has shamed his family.
He has shamed us all.
Today isn’t a day for politics, it is far too sad for that, the politics will come and everyone will be screaming their sweaty truth, but at its heart this is about broken men incapable of keeping their violence to themselves.
Suspended Papua Governor Lukas Enembe, who is detained in Indonesia on corruption charges, was supposed to go on trial yesterday but this did not go ahead as he is gravely ill and could not attend.
Upon realising the governor’s health had deteriorated, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) tried to transport him to Gatot Subroto Army Central Hospital (RSPAD) last Saturday.
However, the governor refused due to what he said was KPK’s “mishandling” of the legal case.
A member of the Governor’s legal team, Petrus Bala Pattyona, said he had been contacted by the KPK prosecutor on Sunday.
Bala Pattyona was asked by the prosecutor to convince Enembe to be taken to the hospital. Enembe had not eaten for two days, was vomiting, nauseous, and dizzy, reports Odiyaiwuu.com.
The Governor is currently in an intensive care unit — suffering from a serious life-threatening illness.
Jakarta’s ‘legal mishandling’ of Governor
Governor Enembe was on trial a week ago on July 10, but public prosecutors failed to bring witnesses to the hearing.
After the trial was adjourned for another week until yesterday, he was taken to a KPK prison cell despite being seriously ill.
Prior to these two failed trial hearings, the Governor appeared in court on June 24.
However, the hearing wqs suspended after a panel of judges rejected Governor Enembe’s appeal for the charges to be waived.
Given the governor’s ill health, the judges ruled to prioritise his health and grant his request to suspend proceedings until he was medically fit to stand trial.
On June 12, an anticipated and highly publicised trial was scheduled to take place in Jakarta’s District Court. However, the trial was not held due to KPK’s mishandling of the ordeal.
To date, a total of nine attempts have been made to deliver a satisfactory closure of the Governor’s legal case since he was “kidnapped” from Papua in January 2023.
New August date set
The trial is now rescheduled for early August 2023. However, there is no guarantee that this will be the last hearing over what critics describe as a tragic and disgraceful mishandling of the case concerning a respected tribal chief and Governor who is fighting for his life.
For the government of Indonesia, KPK and judges, every moment that is mismanaged, mishandled, or delayed might mean just a delay in justice, but for the Governor and his family it means life and death.
According to the governor’s family, KPK are already waiting to bring this sick man back from hospital and lock him up in a KPK prison cell again.
The Governor’s family ask how could this “cruel treatment be happening”?
Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic/activist who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
New psychology research shows maltreatment in childhood is linked to alexithymia in adulthood. Its etymology comes from Ancient Greek. The word is formed by combining the alpha privative prefix ἀ- (a-, meaning ‘not’) with λέξις (léxis, referring to ‘words’) and θῡμός (thȳmós, denoting ‘disposition,’ ‘feeling,’ or ‘rage’). The term can be likened to “dyslexia” in its structure.
Hang on now. In this Anglo American culture, in this 1492 culture, in this Manifest Destiny Culture, a trail of tears is that history, compounded by the rapidity of media and lies and secrecy and propaganda, and patriotism and a country of war war war abroad.
The idea is we are collectively held by the toxic glue of retail disease, consumer society, throw-away philosophy — land theft, cultural appropriation, gunboat diplomacy, xenophobia, and after generations, we are here, in this moment, 2023, but it is so much worse.
Maybe there were some discussions on a national level when the US fire bombed (napalmed) Tokyo, murdering civilians in our patriotic pyre. We knew which cities had ancient building practices of wood and paper and lacquer. Maybe there was some moral outrage over the murders at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Ahh, even now, the caveats — Over 50% of Tokyo’s industry was spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods; firebombing cut the whole city’s output in half. Some modern post-war analysts have called the raid a war crime due to the targeting of civilian infrastructure and the ensuing mass loss of civilian life.
It was the night of March 9 to 10, 1945. Most of Tokyo was asleep. This was despite the present risk of bombs dropping from the sky —after all, Japan had by then been engaged for four years in the conflict that became known as World War II.
While in the midst of an uneasy slumber, the city’s residents were suddenly awoken. Flames engulfed their homes, shelters and streets. Panic set in. People sought cover where they could, many jumping into rivers in a bid to escape the savage heat.
Some 100,000 people died that night, including children. Many burnt alive where they slept. The cause? Incendiary devices were used in the raid, and Tokyo — a city largely made of wood and paper at the time — ignited like a massive bonfire.
Later, the world learned of Operation Meetinghouse, the code name of that night’s firebombing attack by the United States Army Air Forces on Tokyo.
Look, I am around a lot of people, and I observe as well as talk and probe. Over time, say, since I was starting as a beat reporter at age 18, oh, in 1974, I have learned the collective trauma of victims outside the USA — Vietnam, Cambodia, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Belize, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras. And inside this place, all the domestic trauma, including on several reservations where I called aunts and uncles of friends my aunties and uncles.
My mom was born in British Columbia, so I know personally that place’s extruded trauma on original peoples.
Over time, just as a city reporter, beat cop reporter, and then more probing assignments, I saw and absorbed the trauma this society — this country’s ugly history has been laid bare but covered up well — and just getting under the nails of Memory of Fire in Latin America lends pause to the entire project of the Newest Project on the Latest American Century.
In his book, Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (Nation Books; May 25, 2009), Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano tells a history of the world through 600 brief stories of human adversity, focusing on people often ignored by history. Several passages of the book were read. The guest interviewer was John Dinges. They also discussed Mr. Galeano’s 1971 book, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, which Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez gave to President Obama during the Fifth Summit of the Americas in April 2009. They talked about Mr. Galeano’s life and career, including military regimes, book bans, and repression — Video.)
All the winds of hell unleashed by the Anglo Franco American Germanic forebearers, well, here we are, halfway done with 2023, and we have a society so bad, so broken, so distracted, so traumatized, so checked out, so vapid, so dumbdowned, so heartless, so disconnected, so xenophobic, so patriotic, so miseducated, so misled, so screwed up by the snake oil of our times, and so propagandized and polluted physically, intellectually and spiritually, that a psychological descriptor for traumatized individuals fits the entire society (minus a few million).
Alexithymia has been associated with various impairments, including difficulties in emotional processing, identifying facial expressions, and understanding and relating to the emotions of others. It is also considered a risk factor for psychopathologies such as affective disorders, self-injury, personality disorders, and eating disorders.
Individuals with alexithymia often experience challenges in their interpersonal relationships, exhibiting limited socioaffective skills, decreased empathy, and a tendency to avoid close social connections. (The paper, “Child Maltreatment and Alexithymia: A Meta-Analytic Review,” was authored by Julia Ditzer, Eileen Y. Wong, Rhea N. Modi, Maciej Behnke, James J. Gross, and Anat Talmon.)
I’ll run another couple of paragraphs describing this research, and, yes, it focuses on child maltreatment, but to be honest, maltreatment is beyond the family and close relatives. Maltreatment is in the K12 school/prison system. The school to prison pipeline is one avenue of the mistreatment. But then, the school to Ivy League is another trauma. School to MBA program. School to military pipeline.
It can be in the backgrounds of Blinken or Obama or Bush or Clinton or Trump or Biden, or for their children — maltreatment is the lies these men and their women have flooded our world with. The outright open killing and murdering of people we sanction, those we disturb because we do not like their governments, they are in a dulled and numbed emotional spectrum.
Young adults going to war, sure, complex PTSD, but what about the destruction of war on the target countries, and the collective hell each generation that follows a war-torn country, what do they face?
The victims are in trauma, and so are the victimizers’ citizens, the so-called electorate here which pays taxes for these killings are also in the trauma zone.
Emotional abuse and emotional neglect are found to be the strongest predictors of adult alexithymia. These types of maltreatment, which are often more implicit and harder to recognize than physical or sexual abuse, can hinder the development of secure attachment between caregivers and children. Parlay this to the collective, the society at large, you know, it takes a society-village to raise a child. Look at this village, man, just look at the horrors unleashed in this VILLAGE.
“Child maltreatment encompasses more than physical and sexual abuse; it also includes emotional abuse and neglect, which have profound and enduring consequences,” Ditzer told PsyPost. “Through my research, I found that difficulties identifying and expressing emotions are most likely in adults who experienced emotional abuse and neglect. This highlights the critical importance of how we communicate with children.”
“I hope that readers are inspired to be more mindful of the messages we convey to our children through our words and the way we say them, as emotional abuse and neglect prevention can make a significant difference in children’s emotional well-being long-term. Generally, I hope to bring more attention to the topic of child maltreatment and its consequences.”
Look, I was at a grand opening of a small wine tasting business in my small town yesterday. I met the woman opening it a year ago, and she told me her story — in foster youth, abused there big time, and then in an abusive relationship for 17 years, and she got her real estate license and she made some good moves and so she owns a duplex here which she rents and one in Tulum which she rents and she has this business.
So, a 68-ish woman and I got into it waiting for the doors to open. I was talking to someone who asked what I was doing and what I was working on. I told them my work with homeless folk, civilians and veterans alike.
This vacationing woman said she was a retired parole officer, and she point blank told me, “I have no sympathy for druggies. It was their choice. It is all their fault.”
Talk about a trauma drenched and giving woman. I told her that was absurd, that every female veteran I worked with had been sexually assaulted by their own men in boot camp or sometimes overseas on duty. That many had injuries from absurd 20 mile hikes with 100 pound rucksacks on. Torn ligaments, protruding discs, and bad hip joints from parachuting.
And she blithely said, “I guess it was time for me to retire. I have no empathy.”
Retire, man, on our dime, and how long did she serve (sic) as a parole or probation officer, and how long did she just despise those criminals?
Where do they get this attitude, and this is not an anomaly? Believe me, I have duked it out with people my entire late teens and through all of my adult life. This retrograde, this trauma flooded society, again, collectively, we can call it Stockholm Syndrome, relating and empathizing with your captor. Valorizing them. We do that daily.
But this is emotional stunting, emotional victimizing, and eventually, a blindness to our humanity. And here we are, in 2023:
The United States will be sending depleted uranium munitions (DU) to Ukraine, reported The Wall Street Journal on June 13. This was written three months after Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder stated March 21 that to his knowledge the U.S. would not do so. (Los Angeles Times, March 21)
The announcement about sending DU munitions comes despite voluminous documentation about the devastating consequences of breathing in the radioactive dust caused by these weapons.
So, wherever I go, this emotional deadness, literally translated as “no words for emotions” is the major virus of the world now. And it keeps growing, attacking man, woman and child. Numb, dead, well, it is deeper than that. Our government and our corporations and our churches and religious leaders, all the marketers, all the armies of cops and code inspectors and fine levelers and repossession experts and tax men and eviction experts and on and on, they have killed our collective emotional souls whereupon this new Tokyo fire bombing is now Ukrainian DU bombing.
China has translated “Metal of Dishonor-Depleted Uranium,” a groundbreaking book compiled 25 years ago by the International Action Center (IAC) warning of the devastating consequences of deploying DU munitions. It couldn’t be more timely.
The preface to the Chinese edition warns:
Depleted uranium weapons are not only harmful to their targets, but also harmful to the soldiers who operate the weapons, civilians around depleted uranium — and even their descendants. It caused bodily harm and threatened the future natural environment [in countries where it was used].
At the same time, this book calls for the joint boycott and abolition of depleted uranium weapons and the realization of interactive exchanges and peaceful coexistence on a global scale.
There is so much disconnection to participatory and angry and direct action democracy that we have story after story telling us we can’t govern ourselves … until we are about to start a war in Venezuela, Cuba, China, and then into Russia. We are sick collectively:
He should be shot, of course, because he is a rabid rat. Beyond repair. A serial killer on the loose, but because of the deadened heart and brain of the collective Westerner, this guy just appears as yet another abuser, to be respected, regarded well and listened to: Individuals with alexithymia often experience challenges in their interpersonal relationships, exhibiting limited socioaffective skills, decreased empathy, and a tendency to avoid close social connections.
“Years or even decades later, they can kill adults and children who stumble on them.”
Think about this, and you will understand how murdering Koreans in the 1950s was okay, then in Vietnam, then in Cambodia, then in Iraq, and then, well, name the country, and the USA has its hands on the killing machine and coup creating throttle. All that is okay, right? With Kissinger at 100 getting his next year of fame in interview after interview (sic — they are not real journalistic interviews, I have you know), how can a society collectively even move forward with a war criminal now giving sage advice?
This is 2023, and even children are not respected in this so-called Shining City on the Hill:
An aged Native-American chieftain was visiting New York City for the first time in 1906. He was curious about the city and the city was curious about him. A magazine reporter asked the chief what most surprised him in his travels around town.
“Little children working,” the visitor replied.
Child labor might have shocked that outsider, but it was all too commonplace then across urban, industrial America (and on farms where it had been customary for centuries). In more recent times, however, it’s become a far rarer sight. Law and custom, most of us assume, drove it to near extinction. And our reaction to seeing it reappear might resemble that chief’s — shock, disbelief.
But we better get used to it, since child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously inhibited) the possibility of exploiting children.
Take a breath and consider this: the number of kids at work in the U.S. increased by 37% between 2015 and 2022. During the last two years, 14 states have either introduced or enacted legislation rolling back regulations that governed the number of hours children can be employed, lowered the restrictions on dangerous work, and legalized subminimum wages for youths.
Iowa now allows those as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries. At age 16, they can take jobs in roofing, construction, excavation, and demolition and can operate power-driven machinery. Fourteen-year-olds can now even work night shifts and once they hit 15 can join assembly lines. All of this was, of course, prohibited not so long ago. (source)
Do you need to go back into Anglo Saxon history? Dickens anyone?
Do you need a lesson on capitalism and exploitation? Now, this history, this collective thinking and collective subconsciousness, this alternative way of being a human being, it is part of the abuse, from cradle to school to job to grave:
Hard work, moreover, had long been considered by those in the British upper classes who didn’t have to do so as a spiritual tonic that would rein in the unruly impulses of the lower orders. An Elizabethan law of 1575 provided public money to employ children as “a prophylactic against vagabonds and paupers.”
By the eighteenth century, the philosopher John Locke, then a celebrated champion of liberty, was arguing that three-year-olds should be included in the labor force. Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, was happy that “children after four or five years of age could every one earn their own bread.” Later, Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, would opt for four, since otherwise, society would suffer the loss of “precious years in which nothing is done! Nothing for Industry! Nothing for improvement, moral or intellectual.”
American “founding father” Alexander Hamilton’s 1791 Report on Manufacturing noted that children “who would otherwise be idle” could instead become a source of cheap labor. And such claims that working at an early age warded off the social dangers of “idleness and degeneracy” remained a fixture of elite ideology well into the modern era. Indeed, it evidently remains so today.
When industrialization began in earnest during the first half of the nineteenth century, observers noted that work in the new factories (especially textile mills) was “better done by little girls of 6-12 years old.” By 1820, children accounted for 40% of the mill workers in three New England states. In that same year, children under 15 made up 23% of the manufacturing labor force and as much as 50% of the production of cotton textiles. (source)
Here we are, in constant upheaval, constant fight-flight-freeze-cower-forget-trauma-fear-hate-disappear. The emotions, that is, after two, four, six generations have disappeared on the normal human spectrum. No words for emotions, man.
[Photo: This is what fascism and brown shirts look like.}
Zelensky returned home with five Azov commanders, who were initially taken prisoner by Moscow during a months-long battle to defend the port city of Mariupol.
Today it is still a challenge for the European Union and Spain in particular to carry out effectively the management of sub-Saharan migration, as promised. It is necessary that its humanitarian projection be comprehensive and safe.
A study published in the Informing Humanitarians Worldwide, deconstructs the vision of Africa as a continent of mass displacement and international migration.
The report explains that the largest migratory flow in Africa is between countries on the same continent. According to the International Agency for Migrations IOM, only 14 percent of the planet’s migrants were born in Africa. 53 percent of African migration is within the same continent, only 26 percent goes to Europe. Africa, then, is characterized more by being a continent of internal refugees than international migration.
The World Bank says nearly 80% (560 million) of the 700 million people who were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020 due to COVID policies were from India. Globally, extreme poverty levels increased by 9.3 per cent in 2020.
The lack of drinking water in Montevideo, “the first case in the world of a capital city that reached such a situation of collapse”. The daily dilemmas in the metropolitan area: what is said in the street and at the fair. The difference between the “water emergency” announced by President Lacalle Pou, and the ongoing environmental, sanitary and economic crisis. The impacts on people at risk, and on inequality among those who cannot afford the essentials. With fresh water reserves at 2%, with no drinking water at the taps, the chronicler says: “We crossed day zero without knowing it.”
“Coffee with water without salt, coffee with fresh water”, shouted the street vendor at the Tristán Narvaja fair on Sunday. (source)
It is so much, so much maltreatment, in the womb, then carried through the air, both the digital waves and air ways. It is the pain of the rich shitting on us, and after generations of this, we are seeing more and more people unable to conjure up what should be ire, disrepect, hate, disgust, denigration, murderous thoughts heaped upon those killers of the likes of a (F)uckerberg or Fink or any number of millions of millionaires and all the 3,000 billionaires. This is how these people beat the populations down:
While advocating for police abolition in his philanthropic efforts, Zuckerberg takes a different stance when it comes to his personal security.
Meta corporate disclosures show that the Facebook parent company has provided extraordinary levels of personal security protections for its leading officers. Zuckerberg received $13.4 million in personal security costs in 2020, then $15.1 million in 2021, followed by $14.8 million last year, for a total of $43.4 million in security costs over the last three years.
The funds, the disclosure noted, are used for “security personnel” guarding Zuckerberg and the “procurement, installation, and maintenance of certain security measures for his residences.”
So, his schizophrenia (it is about messing with the sheeple’s minds) just leaves most young people pummeled.
The tech tycoon’s company has spent more than $40 million on Zuckerberg’s personal security over the past three years — while at the same time his family-run foundation has donated millions of dollars to groups that want to defund or even abolish the police.
Since 2020, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has donated $3 million to PolicyLink, the organization behind DefundPolice.org, according to investigative reporter Lee Fang.
The anti-cop group boasts on its website that it funds efforts to “diminish the role of policing in communities, and empower alternative visions for public safety,” though it fails to list what those substitutes may be.
CZI, which Zuckerberg founded with wife Priscilla Chan, has also donated more than $2.5 million to Solidaire, Fang reported, which seeks to do away with policing.(source)
If you recognize this in yourself, a friend, a loved one, then you get what is coming: affective disorders, nonsuicidal self-injury), personality disorders, and eating disorders. Moreover, the consequences of alexithymics’ emotional deficits extend beyond intrapersonal difficulties. Alexithymia interferes with individuals’ interpersonal relationships as they exhibit shortcomings in understanding and relating not only to their own emotions but also to the emotions of others. (source)
On 14 July, Swedish police said they had granted permission for a protest which would include burning holy texts outside the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. The controversial protest, which has raised concerns around respect for religious beliefs, is scheduled for Saturday 15 July. It comes just weeks after a man set fire to pages of the Quran outside Stockholm’s main mosque.
So far, there seems to be little information on who has organised Saturday’s protest. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP):
The demonstration would include a burning of the Torah and the Bible… in response to the Koran burning protest and would be an expression in support of freedom of speech, according to the application to police.
But I don’t need to know who’s organising this ‘protest’, or why, in order to know that it is not only misguided but utterly deplorable.
Religious belief: the freedom to be
Being a religious minority living in the West is a grinding experience. This is particularly the case for Muslims. The constant superiority of Western mores and laws wears you down to the point where faith itself becomes an act of defiance. Few issues reflect a supposed ‘clash of civilisations’ between the West and Islam more so than the conflict between religious belief and freedom of expression.
The trope that Muslims’ desire for respect towards their religion violates Western ‘freedom of expression’ constantly remains under the surface. It also rears its ugly head periodically. We saw it with the Rushdie Affair, with the Danish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, with the Charlie Hebdo debacle. And now we see it with the burning of the Quran in Sweden.
Proponents of free speech will say that freedom of speech includes ‘freedom to offend’. What they don’t realise, however, is that for people of faith, degradation of their religion and its associated symbols goes far beyond mere ‘offence’.
For those who adhere to a religion, it forms a part of their identity. It’s not simply something they believe – rather it constitutes an integral part of who they are. Freedom of religion, therefore, isn’t just the freedom to be religious. It is the freedom to be. The freedom to affirm what you believe to be true, and to live your life accordingly.
I don’t expect non-religious people to understand the pain felt by a person of faith when seeing their faith being humiliated. However, the issue here is not respect for beliefs, but respect for human beings. What we are asking for is not reverence towards the Quran, the Torah, or the Bible. It is basic human empathy.
Hierarchy of freedoms
Stockholm police stressed that in line with Swedish legislation, they granted permits for people to hold public gatherings and not the activities conducted during them. Carina Skagerlind, press officer for Stockholm police, said:
The police does not issue permits to burn various religious texts – the police issues permits to hold a public gathering and express an opinion.
What an absurd rationalisation. Following the Quran-burning, Swedish authorities said they had opened an investigation against the perpetrator over “agitation against an ethnic group”. Which begs the question: if they know the desecration of religious texts constitutes “agitation against an ethnic group”, and they know the protest they approved involves this action, why are they approving it?
The behaviour of authorities in these situations demonstrates a truth I’ve come to know all too well: freedom of expression is only protected for those agitating against marginalised and oppressed groups of people.
Meanwhile, people from marginalised groups must stick together. It is for this reason, and also due to being a person of faith, that I will always condemn the desecration of sacred texts. If you can’t make your point in a way that shows empathy, especially for marginalised groups, then I have no interest in what you have to say.
UK defence secretary Ben Wallace has railed against the idea that the UK is an Amazon shopping service for weaponry. His comments were aimed at Ukraine, whose officials he said once confronted him with a shopping list of arms.
But there’s a problem with his claim that the UK isn’t simply Amazon for arms and ammunition. It’s that the UK sort of … is Amazon for arms and ammunition.
Even a brief investigation shows that the UK would sell lethal military hardware to anyone, including your nan if she had the money. This includes people with appalling human rights records, and I don’t mean your nan there. In fact, customers include nations on UK human rights watchlists and states which are long-term rivals.
Ukraine summit
Wallace was speaking ahead of a G7 summit to discuss Ukraine joining NATO. He told reporters he wanted to see more gratitude from Ukraine for British support. He also said he had told Ukraine before that their demands for arms in their war with Russia must be carefully framed:
You know, my counsel to the Ukrainians is sometimes, ‘Look, you are persuading countries to give up their own stocks and yes, your war is a noble war and we see it as you waging a war not just for yourselves but for our freedoms’.
And he said of British contributions to the war effort:
We are not Amazon… I told them that last year, when I drove 11 hours to be given a list
Arms emporium
One can spend all day debating the Ukrainian approach to lobbying for support. But one thing is clear: if Ben Wallace doesn’t want the UK to be treated like arms and ammunition Amazon, it could try being be less like Amazon.
UK military support for Ukraine has been belligerent from the start of the war. The Canary has reported on the dangers and risks inherent to the government’s commitment to arming Ukraine. In fact, we only recently reported on arms giant BAE System’s nefarious plans to turn post-war Ukraine into an arsenal.
Then, we must consider that arms licences to Saudi Arabia and Israel since 2015, for example, come to £8.2bn and £472m respectively. This is despite serious human rights concerns about both countries. Interestingly, UK governments have also approved £103m in arms sales to Russia and £304m to China since 2008. This is despite the latter two being long-term power rivals of the UK and its allies.
And we note that all the countries mentioned here (and many others the UK has licenced arms to) feature on the government’s own human rights priority list. You can use Campaign Against the Arms Trade’s (CAAT) export data tracker to compare.
So, Wallace might not like the UK being seen as a sort of weaponry Amazon by Ukrainian leaders, but in reality, that’s what it is. This country is nothing more than a Supermarket Sweep for dictators, albeit with Ben Wallace rather than Dale Winton urging eager shoppers around dank aisles of exploding death.
Investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein . . . author of The Palestine Laboratory. Image: AL website
Asia Pacific Report: Locations Monday, July 17: Christchurch
Public meeting, 7pm
Knox Centre, Cnr Bealey Avenue & Victoria street, Christchurch (books available) https://www.facebook.com/events/813719740268177/
Thursday, July 20: Auckland
Public Meeting, 7pm
The Fickling Centre, 546 Mt Albert Road (The Women’s Bookshop will be at the meeting to sell books) https://www.facebook.com/events/285795137317711/
A few days ago, the President and CEO of global reproductive justice organization, IPAS, Dr Anu Kumar was in conversation with Honorary Associate Professor Sally Moyle from the ANU’s Gender Institute. The pair discussed the impact of Roe v. Wade on the gains of 50 years and the assault on women’s and girls’ rights today.
Dr Kumar penned her reflections on the issues discussed at the event for BroadAgenda. She throws down the gauntlet, calling on Australia to “…step onto the world stage to champion abortion rights and access for all.”
I am a reproductive justice warrior. I have been for nearly all my adult life, and for the past 21 years, I’ve been in a leadership role at Ipas, a global reproductive justice organization that works to increase access to abortion care, contraception, and sexual and reproductive rights around the world. I’ve seen a lot of success in this area — since the 1970s, over 100 countries have liberalized their abortion laws including Ireland, Benin, Nepal, and Argentina.
Ipas, working with partners, has been a part of many of these victories and, importantly, translating those legal changes into actual services. There is one very notable exception to this progressive trend: the United States.
I came to Australia to see how the progressive, human rights-oriented Australian government was reacting to a “new world order” on reproductive justice.
While here for two weeks, I met with a range of government officials and members of civil society. I found an eagerness to understand the global ramifications of a post-Roe world, coupled with uncertainty on what Australia’s role in this new landscape should be. Some described a foreign affairs apparatus that was suffering from PTSD from a previous regime of anti-rights politicians. Others said that health security was of paramount importance in a post-Covid world, while still others felt that Australia does its share by supporting several sexual and reproductive health and rights groups already.
What I did not hear was anyone grappling with what the demise of abortion access in a global superpower means for the world. Admittedly, the United States has not been a leader in this area for decades with foreign policies like the Helms amendment firmly in place since 1973, and the Global Gag Rule swinging back and forth depending on which political party is in power. And yet the U.S. government remains the largest family planning donor globally and hugely influential in humanitarian relief work, global health, multilateral organizations, and more.
India, which has had legal abortion since the 1970s, saw its first ever anti-choice march in New Delhi. In Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia, anti-abortion groups point to the fall of Roe as justification for their activities. And in Ethiopia and Kenya, some health professionals have stopped providing abortion care.
Dr Anu Kumar is a a reproductive justice warrior. Picture: Supplied
In the face of such an aggressive anti-rights movement, we need all the help we can get, including from the richest country in the Pacific and one of the richest countries in the world. As Australia has decriminalized abortion across the country and is looking to bridge gaps in access, the time is ripe to step onto the world stage to champion abortion rights and access for all.
I heard that a new international development policy will be released soon and yet no one expects it to mention sexual and reproductive health, much less contraception and abortion. Let me clear: there is ample data to show that family planning is an excellent investment, as well as critical to enabling women and girls to pursue education, employment, and healthy lives. It is a cornerstone of development.
Reproductive rights are also foundational to gender equality, a theme that is expected to be part of future Australian aid efforts, though so far it has not included sexual and reproductive health and rights.
What should Australia do?
Say the word abortion in official documents and speeches. President Biden used the word once in a press statement 224 days into his term when the abortion ban in the state of Texas went into effect and then said it again after 468 days in office when the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe was leaked. People noticed. Words matter and hiding behind vague language about rights just leaves the matter unresolved.
Create space in the aid apparatus to address this issue head on. There are many who would assist and support the Australian government in this. You are not alone.
Direct Australia’s diplomats around the world, including those in charge of bilateral aid programs, to include sexual and reproductive health and rights, including abortion, in their programs and dialogs with governments. There is widespread fear that this will be perceived as a “Western agenda.” In fact, there are local feminist organizations everywhere that need to be nurtured and supported.
Be part of the global movement for reproductive justice—align efforts to broaden access to abortion domestically and globally. A major flaw in the U.S. reproductive rights movement is how insular it is. Australia can learn from the experience of other countries and contribute to important global lessons.
Assert Australian values. On multiple occasions, Minister Penny Wong has affirmed Australia’s commitment to gender equality including through the new international development policy. There can be no gender equality if women cannot control their bodies.
Connect the dots on what anti-rights groups are doing. It’s not just about abortion or LGBTQI+ rights or comprehensive sexuality education; it’s about all human rights—the core of democracy itself. We can’t cower in the face of bullies. Let’s stand strong and united and push back.
At Ipas, we have been working on abortion access for 50 years because it is a matter of public health and human rights. Sadly, women and girls continue to die needlessly from unsafe abortion and millions are injured. It doesn’t have to be this way. I urge all Australians to join us in the fight for reproductive justice.
Picture at top: Washington, DC USA May 3 2022: Protesters gather at the US Supreme Court after a report that the count will overturn Roe vs Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion. Picture: Drew Petrimoulx/Shutterstock
A keen observer of the ex-military gravy train, I’ve been entertained by the likes of Johnny Mercer and the Captain Tom phenomenon for years. There are no normal weeks in the weird politics of British veteranhood, but this one has been especially unhinged.
Johnny Mercer is a man whose whole brand and, in fact, personality is based on a job he no longer does: that of army officer. This week, the self-appointed veterans champion got rightly panned. On this occasion (it happens quite a bit) it was for saying foodbank use was down to poor personal budgeting.
Around the same time, Captain Tom’s daughter landed in hot water again. Business ‘guru’ Hannah Ingram-Moore has been ordered to tear down a pool and spa built in Tom’s name, allegedly with charitable donations, but apparently for private use only.
Commando Alan Partridge
Mercer’s latest idiocy came during a heated interview with Kay Burley. It’s not for nothing I refer to him as ‘Commando Partridge’. He tried to blither and contort that foodbank use among military personnel was a matter of personal choice:
#KayBurley – Is there any need for military personnel to be using food banks?
Johnny Mercer – "These are personal decisions around the way people are budgeting every month… I don't want to see anybody using food banks, but being in the military still affords you a good wage.." pic.twitter.com/ju0E1Lo43G
This led to censure from, among other people, TV maths genius Carole Vorderman. Vorderman also helpfully tweeted Johnny Mercer’s own personal burden on the taxpayer:
NEWS@JohnnyMercerUK thinks food bank use is "a personal decision" He's wrong. I grew up in poverty, mum had 5 jobs, nearly killed her. It was NOT a choice
FACT Total cost to taxpayer of Mercer is £373,663 Wife works in his office Their total taxpayers' salary is approx £120,000 pic.twitter.com/chAg4KeUXR
Now, three entirely mediocre, hyper-privileged people arguing about poverty is probably a net good on the face of it. What interests me is how each individual demonstrates the militarisation of our culture and politics. Mercer trades off his association with the military, clearly. But so do the other two.
Vorderman, for her part, has been fully engaged in military cosplay for years. The honorary group captain and RAF ambassador likes nothing more than cutting around in uniform for a photo op:
Meanwhile, Thomas has clearly been parachuted (he is actually parachute-trained) into Plymouth to unseat Mercer because of his military credentials. This is a policy entirely in line with Keir Starmer’s flag-shagging strategy. I note that his endorsements page is filled with sycophantic comments about the candidate’s military service.
In our militarised democracy, all parties labour under the delusion that military service equals credibility, leadership ability, and morality.
Captain Tom’s Daughter – again…
Then, onto the new Captain Tom debacle. Hannah Ingram-Moore was already under investigation by the charity commission when the latest story broke. In this new twist, she has been ordered to demolish a pool and spa.
As the BBC has it:
It has emerged the Ingram-Moores requested planning permission for a “Captain Tom Foundation Building”, which was “for use by occupiers… and Captain Tom Foundation”, according to documents submitted to Central Bedfordshire Council in August 2021.
Then in February 2022, revised plans were submitted:
The plans included a spa pool, toilets and a kitchen, which the Design & Access and Heritage Statement said was “for private use”.
The specifics are not entirely clear. This led to questions around whether charitable funds were being used to build what appears to be a personal suite of nice things.
Either way, the Captain Tom Foundation has now announced it has ceased taking donations for the time being. Plus, the new facilities have been ordered to be demolished by the council.
It’s what he would have wanted…
Captain Tom Moore came to prominence during the first year of the pandemic. The elderly veteran raised funds for the NHS by walking up and down his garden. For some, he captured the heart of the nation with his selfless efforts.
A closer look suggests that his story was used for far more nefarious ends. My opinion is that the Captain Tom story was a way of draping the Union Jack over the Tories’ appalling – and, for many, deadly – Covid-19 response, with the added bonus of framing the NHS as a charitable cause.
These latest events further advance my theory that large parts of the British public are so inured by an imperial fantasy of Britain that they would marry a river turd if you put it in a beret and pinned some medals on it.
British military identity has become a truly strange thing. We are expected to praise and admire the military institution above all others. Yet at the same time it has become a cheap corporate and political brand. Even tenuous associations with Britain’s war machine can now bestow authority and credibility.
The fact that this is the case should be of concern to us all. Military worship is based on emotion, not reason. As a result, using it to grift people is easy.
As a veteran myself, that could never be me. Instead, you can buy my latest book – with chapters on Captain Tom and Johnny Mercer – here.
The BBC has platformed the views of fossil fuel giant Shell’s boss in the latest shocking example of media bias on the climate crisis. In an article titled Oil giant Shell warns cutting production ‘dangerous’, the BBC interviewed Shell chief executive Wael Sawan. At the time of writing on 6 July, the public service broadcaster had the article featured on the front page of its online news site.
The BBC’s bias makes it a fossil fuel industry mouthpiece
The interview with Sawan appears to have come as a result of Shell’s recent announcement of its plans to maintain its oil and gas production levels until 2030. The BBC stated that Sawan had:
angered climate scientists who said Shell’s plan to continue current oil production until 2030 was wrong.
In response to these criticisms, the BBC article uncritically amplified Sawan’s view that:
What would be dangerous and irresponsible is cutting oil and gas production so that the cost of living, as we saw last year, starts to shoot up again.
Of course, the article failed to mention that oil and gas companies have been remorselessly profiteering during the “cost of living” crisis.
As the Canaryreported, Shell raked in record profits of $42.3bn last year alone. The BBC itself broke the story in February with the headline Shell reports highest profits in 115 years.
Given this, campaigners and politicians have been highlighting the incongruity between these record corporate profits and long-marginalised communities in the UK facing starker energy poverty.
A just transition for who?
Then, without a shred of irony, the BBC amplified Sawan’s appeals for a “just transition”.
Commenting on the “international bidding war for gas” in 2022, the outlet noted how:
poorer countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh unable to afford liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments that were instead diverted to Northern Europe.
The article then quoted Sawan feigning concern for citizens in Pakistan and Bangladesh by saying:
They took away LNG from those countries and children had to work and study by candlelight,
The BBC continued to uplift Sawan’s call for a just transition without challenge, quoting his argument that:
If we’re going to have a transition it needs to be a just transition that doesn’t just work for one part of the world.
As I have previously reported, it was, in fact, the fossil fuel corporations themselves that caused these mass blackouts in places like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Companies such as Italian oil and gas firm Eni purposely defaulted on their energy contracts when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices soaring. Capitalising on the opportunity, fossil fuel firms broke these contracts so that they could profit from the new demand from higher-paying customers in Europe.
Fossil fuels drive climate chaos
Moreover, this isn’t even to mention fossil fuel companies’ role in driving the climate crisis which has already been causing extreme weather disasters in the Global South. Of course, the BBC allowed Sawan to invoke the blackouts in Pakistan, without even a cursory reference to the climate-exacerbated floods that have devastated those same communities.
Naturally, the BBC also facilitated Sawan’s barefaced ploy to shamelessly invoke marginalised children in these climate-vulnerable nations to bolster his own, unrelated argument for maintaining oil and gas production.
Moreover, fossil fuel companies like Shell have known about climate change for decades but have been engaged in a suite of unscrupulous tactics to delay the transition to greener technologies.
Again, another BBC article from September 2022 detailed a study which found that transitioning to renewable power could save the world $12tn in energy costs. Study author professor Doyne Farmer said that the research:
shows ambitious policies to accelerate dramatically the transition to a clean energy future as quickly as possible are, not only, urgently needed for climate reasons, but can save the world trillions in future energy costs, giving us a cleaner, cheaper and more energy secure future.
Climate bias not a thing of media past
The interview with Sawan showed that BBC bias over the climate crisis is very much alive and well. Journalist Amy Westervelt has extensively documented the corporate press’s weaponisation of ‘false equivalence’ for climate coverage.
‘False equivalence’ refers to the media practice of giving both sides of an argument equal weight. In climate terms, this has often meant platforming the views of deniers against the peer-reviewed research of climate scientists.
For example, a 2019 study in the journal Nature Communicationsfound that American news outlets gave 49% more coverage to climate science deniers than to climate scientists.
Furthermore, back in 2014, even the parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee criticised the BBC’s blatant bias in its coverage of the climate crisis. It stated that:
BBC News teams continue to make mistakes in their coverage of climate science by giving opinions and scientific fact the same weight.
Nearly a decade later, little has changed. At a time when climate experts have announced the global hottest day ever recorded, and the UN human rights chief declared that the climate crisis threatens a “truly terrifying” future, of course the BBC would shill for the fossil fuel industry.
Feature image via Mike Mozart/Wikimedia, cropped and resized to 1910*1000, licensed under CC BY 2.0
As China’s influence rises in the Pacific Islands, PNG Prime Minister James Marape is worried that the China-Solomon Islands Security Agreement will lead to the Solomon Islands surpassing PNG’s dominant position in Melanesia.
So the Marape government decided to negotiate separately with the US and Australia on two separate agreements they wished to conclude last May.
The US rapidly resolved negotiations and the PNG-US Defence Cooperation Agreement was officially signed before Australia had even concluded its draft Bilateral Security Treaty.
Marape has defended the US-PNG agreement several times in Parliament, while raising some constitutional concerns on an Australia-PNG treaty during his meeting with Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles.
PNG has chosen the US to be the first defence partner, although Australia is PNG’s closest neighbour and long-time partner.
Advance draft of treaty
To its advantage, the US had acquired an advance draft of the Bilateral Security Treaty and knew Australia intended to be PNG’s first security partner.
The US discovered that PNG would not cooperate with other countries in the Pacific Islands security area without Australia’s approval.
So the US then made adjustments to the Defence Cooperation Agreement, revising or deleting articles that concerned PNG in order to settle the agreement ahead of its treaty with Australia.
It was planned that the negotiation between Australia and PNG would be finished in April, but the US intervened and asked PNG to pause the talks with Australia and work on its own Defence Cooperation Agreement first.
The US made commitments during the negotiation with PNG to step up its security support and assistance and cover shortfalls in assistance that Australia had not fulfilled.
Marape and his cabinet had arrived at the belief that Australia was not fully committed to assisting PNG develop its defence force.
There was apparently an internal report revealing that Australia’s intent was not to enhance and elevate some areas of security cooperation but to ensure PNG continued to rely on Australia for all its security needs.
Australia’s process paused In its negotiation, considering that Australia was trying to prevent US dominance in the Pacific Islands region, the US asked PNG not to share the Defence Cooperation Agreement with Australia.
As a result, Australia’s negotiation process with PNG was paused.
The PNG government, frustrated by empty promises, considered the PNG Defence Force would never be developed in cooperation with Australia, so decided instead to work with a more powerful partner.
PNG knows that its own geopolitical position is becoming of increasing importance, but believes Australia has never respected its position. So PNG decided to use this opportunity to reduce its dependence on Australia.
It also seems the US has supported the Marape government in stifling opposition in PNG to assure the Defence Cooperation Agreement can be implemented smoothly.
For example, Morobe Governor Luther Wenge was initially opposed to the agreement but joined Marape’s Pangu Party and supported it after Marape gave K50 million to his electorate development fund.
Wenge later publicly criticised Australia, saying it did not want PNG to develop its own defence force.
Long mutual history
Australia is PNG’s long-term partner and closest neighbour and we have a long mutual history in economic, political and security cooperation.
My colleagues and I believe that Marape should not betray Australia because it has been tempted by the US, which seems to have intervened to dilute or even ruin our bilateral relationship.
Even though Marape explained to Australia that the Defence Cooperation Agreement would not affect the bilateral relationship, there is no doubt that the relationship with the US will have priority.
So Marape has tightened his control over the mainstream media, social media posts have been deleted for no reason and voices opposing the Defence Cooperation Agreement cannot be heard.
We hope some influential media and Australian friends will help us to protect PNG’s national interest and our bilateral relationship with Australia.
This correspondent’s anonymous article was first published by Keith Jackson’s PNG Attitude website and is republished here with permission.
An Indonesian court hearing was held at Tipikor Court, Jakarta, last week when suspended Papuan Governor Lukas Enembe was arraigned before a panel of judges on allegations of bribery and gratification over the Papua provincial infrastructure project.
The panel of judges refused Enembe’s exception, or memorandum of objection, to the charges after finding sufficient evidence to reject the governor’s arguments.
However, given the governor’s ill health, the judges ruled to prioritise his health and grant his request to suspend proceedings until he is medically fit to stand trial.
The governor’s request to have his son’s Melbourne-based university student bank account unblocked to continue his studies was not granted, and his legal case is pending.
The following three points were determined by the judges last Monday week (24 June 2023):
1. Granted the access request of the defendant/the defendant’s legal advisory team;
2. Ordered the Public Prosecutor at the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to object to the detention of Lukas Enembe from 26 June to 9 July 2023; and
3. Ordered the Public Prosecutor at the commission to report on the progress of the defendant’s health to court.
Abandoned in Indonesia’s military hospital
Governor Lukas Enembe is now being held in Indonesia’s military hospital (Gatot Soebroto Army Hospital) in Jakarta.
The governor repeatedly informed the Indonesian authorities that he was in need of medical treatment and needed to be monitored in Singapore by his regular medical specialists. These requests, however, have been rejected to date.
Psychologically, his treatment in Singapore is completely different from that in Jakarta. The governor is constantly being monitored by KPK, treated by KPK’s appointed doctors in military-controlled hospitals.
It is highly unlikely that these environments are ideal for his recovery. The hospital where he is currently being held is named after a national hero of Indonesia, Gatot Soebroto.
The ailing accused Papua Governor Lukas Enembe in a wheelchair and handcuffed . . . his defence lawyers and family accuse Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency of ill treatment. Image: Odiyaiwuu.com
In 1819, the hospital was established as the main hospital for the Indonesian Army. The hospital also provides limited services for civilians. Papua’s governor, the head of the Papuan tribes, is now being held in this military hospital.
The governor’s family complains about the ongoing inhumane treatment.
The governor’s family admits that it was difficult for them to care for him while he was abandoned at Gatot Subroto Army Central Hospital, as determined by a panel of judges from the Jakarta Corruption Court (Tipikor).
Restrictions imposed
Governor Enembe’s family said the detention officers imposed restrictions on them.
Elius Enembe, the governor’s brother, and family spokesperson, said: “KPK Detention Centre regulations allow us to visit Mr Lukas only on Mondays. It was only for two hours.”
According to Elius, the family feels that two hours of treatment a week are not adequate and not optimal for treatment, reports Odiyaiwuu.com.
Governor Enembe is currently under the custody of the judicial system, not KPK. Thus it is the judge, and not the KPK, who has the authority to determine when and how long the family is allowed to visit Enembe.
“But why are we restricted by KPK detention officers now?” Elius said.
Even in the courtroom, the judge explained that Mr Lukas’ treatment at the hospital follows standard hospital operating procedures and not KPK detention procedures.
Moreover, the KPK prosecutor was present in the courtroom and was able to hear the judge’s statement that Lukas Enembe’s delivery followed hospital procedures, not those at the KPK detention facility.
Family objections
Because of this, Elius said, the family strongly objected to the restrictions placed by KPK detention officers on the days and hours of Enembe’s visit.
According to Elius, Lukas Enembe’s ongoing trial would undoubtedly be a unique legal cases both in Indonesia and internationally.
Lukas Enembe, who suffers from various serious health conditions, such as chronic kidney disease — stage 5, suffered four strokes, and has hepatitis, and is being abandoned at Gatot Soebroto Hospital. His physical condition is very poor, and his legs are swollen.
He is the only defendant who has appeared before the court barefoot and wearing training pants. As well as being the only defendant accompanied by a lawyer in the defendant’s seat, he was also the only defendant whose defence memorandum was not read by himself or by a lawyer.
Governor Lukas Enembe has difficulty speaking after suffering the strokes and needs to use the bathroom frequently.
“This will undoubtedly be a historical record in itself, a citizen of this country [with senior official roles] . . . ranging from the Deputy Regent of Puncak to the two-term Governor of Papua, and yet has been treated as a criminal,” said Enembe’s younger brother in Jakarta, reports Kompas.com.
KPK continues to issue new accusations and allegations, which are being widely reported by Indonesia’s national media.
Case takes new turn
The corruption case against Governor Lukas Enembe, however, took a new turn when allegations of misappropriation of the Papuan Regional Budget (APBD) funds emerged, according to Busnis.com.
The governor’s senior lawyer, Professor O C Kaligis, challenged KPK’s new allegations as “tendentious and misleading”, reports Innews.co.
KPK is now investigating a massive sport, cultural, and recreational complex built under Lukas Enembe’s administration and named the Lukas Enembe Stadium.
The governor has only been given until July 6 to get some treatment for his deteriorating health.
There is an element of brutality, savagery, and mercilessness in Jakarta’s treatment of this Papuan leader.
The once highly acclaimed Papuan tribal chief, governor, and leader not just of his people, but of Indonesians and Melanesian as well many people, is being locked up and tortured in Jakarta as if he is a “dangerous terrorist’.
As his family, Papuans, lawyers, and he himself have warned, if he dies the KPK would be responsible for his death.
Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic/activist who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Although they never fail to take us aback, French riots have followed the same distinct pattern ever since protests broke out in the eastern suburbs of Lyon in 1981, an episode known as the “summer of Minguettes”: a young person is killed or seriously injured by the police, triggering an outpouring of violence in the affected neighbourhood and nearby.
Sometimes, as in the case of the 2005 riots and of this past week’s, it is every rough neighbourhood that flares up.
Throughout the past 40 years in France, urban revolts have been dominated by the rage of young people who attack the symbols of order and the state: town halls, social centres, schools, and shops.
An institutional and political vacuum That rage is the kind that leads one to destroy one’s own neighbourhood, for all to see.
Residents condemn these acts, but can also understand the motivation. Elected representatives, associations, churches and mosques, social workers and teachers admit their powerlessness, revealing an institutional and political vacuum.
Of all the revolts, the summer of the Minguettes was the only one to pave the way to a social movement: the March for Equality and Against Racism in December 1983.
Numbering more than 100,000 people and prominently covered by the media, it was France’s first demonstration of its kind. Left-leaning newspaper Libération nicknamed it “La Marche des Beurs”, a colloquial term that refers to Europeans whose parents or grandparents are from the Maghreb.
In the demonstrations that followed, no similar movement appears to have emerged from the ashes.
At each riot, politicians are quick to play well-worn roles: the right denounces the violence and goes on to stigmatise neighbourhoods and police victims; the left denounces injustice and promises social policies in the neighbourhoods.
In 2005, then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy sided with the police. France’s current President, Emmanuel Macron, has expressed compassion for the teenager killed by the police in Nanterre, but politicians and presidents are hardly heard in the neighbourhoods concerned.
We then wait for silence to set in until the next time the problems of the banlieues (French suburbs) and its police are rediscovered by society at large.
Lessons to be learned The recurrence of urban riots in France and their scenarios yield some relatively simple lessons.
First, the country’s urban policies miss their targets. Over the last 40 years, considerable efforts have been made to improve housing and facilities. Apartments are of better quality, there are social centres, schools, colleges and public transportation.
It would be wrong to say that these neighbourhoods have been abandoned.
On the other hand, the social and cultural diversity of disadvantaged suburbs has deteriorated. More often than not, the residents are poor or financially insecure, and are either descendants of immigrants or immigrants themselves.
Above all, when given the opportunity and the resources, those who can leave the banlieues soon do, only to be replaced by even poorer residents from further afield. Thus while the built environment is improving, the social environment is unravelling.
However reluctant people may be to talk about France’s disadvantaged neighbourhoods, the social process at work here is indeed one of ghettoisation – i.e., a growing divide between neighbourhoods and their environment, a self-containment reinforced from within. You go to the same school, the same social centre, you socialise with the same individuals, and you participate in the same more or less legal economy.
In spite of the cash and local representatives’ goodwill, people still feel excluded from society because of their origins, culture or religion. In spite of social policies and councillors’ work, the neighbourhoods have no institutional or political resources of their own.
Whereas the often communist-led “banlieues rouges” (“red suburbs”) benefited from the strong support of left-leaning political parties, trade unions and popular education movements, today’s banlieues hardly have any spokespeople. Social workers and teachers are full of goodwill, but many don’t live in the neighbourhoods where they work.
This disconnect works both ways, and the past days’ riots revealed that elected representatives and associations don’t have any hold on neighbourhoods where residents feel ignored and abandoned. Appeals for calm are going unheeded. The rift is not just social, it’s also political.
A constant face-off With this in mind, we are increasingly seeing young people face off with the police. The two groups function like “gangs”, complete with their own hatreds and territories.
In this landscape, the state is reduced to legal violence and young people to their actual or potential delinquency.
The police are judged to be “mechanically” racist on the grounds that any young person is a priori a suspect. Young people feel hatred for the police, fuelling further police racism and youth violence.
Older residents would like to see more police officers to uphold order, but also support their own children and the frustrations and anger they feel.
This “war” is usually played out at a low level. When a young person dies, however, everything explodes and it’s back to the drawing board until the next uprising, which will surprise us just as much as the previous ones.
But there is something new in this tragic repetition. The first element is the rise of the far right — and not just on that side of the political spectrum. Racist accounts of the uprisings are taking hold, one that speaks of “barbarians” and immigration, and there’s fear that this could lead to success at the ballot box.
The second is the political and intellectual paralysis of the political left. While it denounces injustice and sometimes supports the riots, it does not appear to have put forward any political solution other than police reform.
So long as the process of ghettoisation continues, as France’s young people and security forces face off time and time again, it is hard to see how the next police blunder and the riots that follow won’t be just around the corner.
No government likes to be called out for human rights abuses and it’s uncomfortable to do so, particularly when the abuser is either a friend or a country with which we have strong economic links.
In our relations with China, this is a difficult issue for us.
However, we should always expect our government to speak out for human rights and the case can be made that Chris Hipkins was too soft on his visit to China last week. The impression was of a laid-back Prime Minister failing to convey any of the serious concerns expressed by credible and principled human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
It seems New Zealand is leaving the heavy lifting on human rights to Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta who, in her own words, had a robust discussion with China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs on these issues earlier this year.
An Australian report said she was “harangued” from the Chinese side, although this was denied by Mahuta.
Hipkins, as Prime Minister, has our loudest voice and he should have publicly backed up our Foreign Minister.
If we want to be regarded as a good global citizen, we have to speak out clearly and act consistently, irrespective of where human rights abuses take place. This is where New Zealand has fallen down repeatedly.
Looking the other way
We have been happy to strongly condemn Russia and announced economic and diplomatic sanctions within a few hours of its invasion of Ukraine but we look the other way when a country guilty of abuses is close to the US.
In regard to the longest military occupation in modern history, Israel’s occupation of Palestine, we have been weak and inconsistent over many decades in calling for Palestinian human rights.
It hasn’t always been like that.
In late 2016, the National government, under John Key as prime minister, co-sponsored a United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSC2334 – NZ was a security council member at the time) which was passed in a 14–0 vote. The US abstained.
The resolution states that, in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli settlements had “no legal validity” and constituted “a flagrant violation under international law”. It said they were a “major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace” in the Middle East.
Video shows the moment journalists said they were directly fired at by Israeli soldiers whilst they were covering the raid in Jenin refugee camp pic.twitter.com/OBQ5aS5c0A
Because Israel has elected a new extremist government that has declared its intention to make illegal settlement building on Palestinian land its “top priority”. Early this week it announced plans for 5000 more homes for these illegal settlements, which a Palestinian official described as “part of an open war against the Palestinian people”.
Israel shows world middle finger
Israel is showing Palestinians, and the world, its middle finger.
At least nine people have been killed and scores wounded in the latest Israeli military attack on Palestinians in what is being described as a “real massacre” in Jenin refugee camp.
UNSC 2334 didn’t just criticise Israel. It called for action. It also asked member countries of the United Nations “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967″.
In practical terms, this means requiring our government and local authorities to refuse to purchase any goods or services from companies (both Israeli and foreign-owned) that operate in illegal Israeli settlements.
A map showing the location of the Jenin refugee camp in Israeli Occupied Palestine . . . 5.9 Palestinian refugees comprise the world’s largest stateless community. Map: Al Jazeera/Creative Commons
This ban should also be extended to the 112 companies identified by the UN Human Rights Council as complicit in the building and maintenance of these illegal Israeli settlements.
The government should be actively discouraging our Superannuation Fund and KiwiSaver providers from investing in these complicit companies but an analysis earlier this year showed the Super Fund investments in these companies have close to doubled in the past two years.
Some countries have begun following through on UNSC 2334 but New Zealand has been inert. We have not been prepared to back up our words at the United Nations with action here.
West Papua deserves our voice
Following through would mean we were standing up for human rights for everyone living in Palestine. We could expect our government to face false smears of anti-semitism from Israel’s leaders and their friends here but we would receive heartfelt thanks from a people who have suffered immeasurably for 75 years.
Palestinians are the largest group of refugees internationally — 5.9 million — after being driven off their land by Israeli militias in 1947-1949. Every day, more of their land is stolen for illegal settlements while we avert our gaze.
The Indonesian military occupation of West Papua and Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara also deserve our voice on the side of the victims.
Standing up for human rights is not comfortable when it means challenging supposed friends or allies. But we owe it to ourselves, and to those being brutally oppressed, to do more than mouth platitudes.
These peoples deserve our support and solidarity. Let’s not look the other way. Let’s act.
John Minto is national chair of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article was first published in The New Zealand Herald but is republished with the permission of the author.
Pride month ended last week, and I cannot tell you how many social media posts I’ve seen reminding us in the queer community to take care of ourselves, especially in these times. As a queer person, it feels like my heart is forever sinking in my chest because another book has been banned in the US.
We may be in Australia, but we’re not as separate from America as we like to think; many of our cultural cues are imported from the US, and as I’ll explain, Australia has its share of book bans too.
Over the last two and a half years, a constant stream of new laws across the US have targeted the queer community, in particular transgender people, including access to healthcare, drag shows, and education within schools. A specific example of these sorts of attacks is book banning, which is the removal or restriction of access to certain books in schools and libraries.
While not a new phenomenon, school districts in the US have been experiencing alarmingly high rates of ‘challenges’ against a range of books, often depicting stories representing the LGBTQIA+ community, immigrants, and people of colour. The practice of ‘challenging’ a book results from an objection to the book’s content, and triggers a systematic review process to discern whether the book is deemed appropriate by librarians, teachers, and administrators.
Professor Mary Lou Rasmussen, an expert in gender, sexuality, and education from the Australian National University, believes that they can at times be politically motivated towards a certain cause. “I think that cause often involves children…and [is] about evoking children as a figure that needs to be saved.”
Professor Mary Lou Rasmussen. Picture: supplied
Many of the challenges to books have been from a minority, sometimes even a single person, lodging a complaint directly to school boards and administrators. For instance, the Florida Citizens Alliance has lodged many of the complaints in their state responsible for book bans.
Yet, their official Facebook page is followed by approximately 1.3% of Florida’s total population (3 thousand out of 22 million). Other conservative groups, such as Moms for Liberty and the Concerned Parents of the Ozarks, are no different.
Despite those small numbers, lack of access to any queer books can still affect the LGBTQIA+ community. “Books are powerful. They can teach empathy, but they can also teach self-awareness,” says queer writer and author Karis Rogerson. “I might have realised who I was sooner if I’d read a broader selection of books as a teen.” Karis isn’t the only person who struggled with a lack of diversity in books.
Trans and queer writer Robin Gow, founder and director of Transcendent Connections, released a novel in 2022 exploring the story of two transgender teens and their relationship. “With my verse novel, A Million Quiet Revolutions, I wanted to write a story I would have wanted to gift myself as a young person grappling with my gender who was without the language or resources to explain my experience.”
Just like Karis, Robin, and many other queer people, discovering queer stories changed my understanding of who I was as a teenager.
Between July and December of last year, the state of Texas banned 438 books, a 28% increase from the previous six months. This huge number of bans is partially due to books being immediately removed once challenged, despite the American Library AssociationandNational Coalition Against Censorship recommending that challenged books should remain accessible during review. In some instances, school boards have been overwhelmed with a high number of challenges submitted together, dragging out the review processes.
We’ve seen this in Australia too. Throughout the 20th century, many literary classics, such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, were banned or restricted in Australia, often vaguely citing “obscene content” as the cause. As recently as March this year, Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer (which is also currently the book with the highest number of bans in the US) was removed from a Queensland public library after a complaint from a member of the public. Progressives have used book bans as well; two years ago, several Dr Seuss books were permanently pulled from publication due to racist stereotyping.
What makes the current book bans in the US so frustratingly painful are the type of books being banned and why.
Many of the books being challenged are accused of containing sexual content. While some do include implicit sex scenes, plenty do not. First published in 2001, Susan Meyers’ Everywhere Babies was included in the 2021 “Objectionable Materials” report (written by the Florida Citizens Alliance and often known by its inflammatory name, the “Porn in Schools” report), which listed 58 books as sexually inappropriate.
Each book in the report has a link to an individual review, requiring the reader to actively open them – and the Everywhere Babies review states that there is no ‘objectionable content’. It is listed as an LGBTQIA+ book, due to some images that show two same-sex people looking after a baby. The complete absence of sexual content in the book makes it clear that LGBTQIA+ themes have been sexualised and deemed ‘age-inappropriate’ in the report (to see a video read-through of Everywhere Babies, click here).
The popular Heartstopper books, written and illustrated by Alice Oseman, have also been challenged and banned in several school districts. The series primarily follows Nick and Charlie, two young teens navigating their feelings for each other, and later, their blossoming relationship. Having personally read these books, I can attest to the distinct lack of sexual content throughout the entire series.
I only recently reread the series, and I wholeheartedly agreed with journalist Gary Nunn when he told me that it “particularly stings” that Heartstopper has been part of the book bans. Even more so when considering that Oseman actively counteracts narratives of hypersexuality throughout the series, focusing on other aspects of Nick and Charlie’s relationship.
Nick and Charlie in the upcoming second season of Heartstopper. Picture: Netflix
“It’s rare to have such an innocent depiction of same-sex romantic affection,” continued Gary. In a previous article discussing the ambiguous grief Heartstopper stirred in him, Gary stated that Heartstopper depicts “an innocence that a whole generation of gay men like me were denied.”
So, why are we seeing books such as Heartstopper and Everywhere Babies being banned for non-existent sexual content?
PEN America’s 2023 banned books report found that of the 874 book titles banned in various US school districts between July and December last year, 26% (roughly 227) contained queer characters or themes. People of colour were also being targeted, with 30% (approximately 262) containing characters of colour or themes of race and racism.
The 2021 “Objectionable Materials” report specifically attacks same-sex parents and couples by insisting that novels portraying same-sex parents “undermine Florida Constitution that marriage is between [a] man and a woman” (Florida’s Constitution has not had its marriage section removed, first adopted in 2008, despite the legalisation of same-sex marriage back in 2015).
While some intentions behind the book bans might not be political or biased, homophobia and transphobia are, regardless, playing a large role. We all know that our teenage years can be a time of figuring out our identity, and books can be an important tool in discovering ourselves as individuals. Reading has always been a source of comfort and guidance in my life, and to think that others will not always have this opportunity is both frustrating and devastating.
“The stories we consume matter,” says author Melissa Blair. “The first way we learn is through story, and therefore the stories we read, even fictional ones, impact how we see our world.” What is just as important is the books we don’t read.
Banning and removing books that represent real people tells us that we will not be accepted as who we are, if who we are is outside of a white, heteronormative and cisnormative identity.
Professor Rasmussen, who we heard from earlier, worked in the US during the 1990’s as a queer activist. She dealt with book bans at the time. “In some ways, I think that the symbolism of the bans is more pronounced now that it was then,” Professor Rasmussen said. “LGBTQIA+ people already often feel like they’re not welcome, and these cement that.”
When discussing the impact on health and wellbeing, Professor Rasmussen voiced her concern that these book bans would “do nothing” for the mental, social, and economic wellbeing of the LGBTQIA+ community, especially young people with limited independence and choice in where they go to school. “The issues on them are compounded because of a lack of autonomy associated with the bans, which makes them all the more onerous.”
Working as a bookseller myself in a part-time job, I have witnessed the moments of joy and pride that teens especially experience when they see books that represent themselves. As a reader myself, I have come to value the experience of not only critically engaging with books, but expanding my worldview through reading. Inclusive and hopeful books such as Heartstopper are especially critical – as Gary argued, “it ought to be compulsory reading for all schools to tackle homophobia, promote equality and nourish empathy via the imagination.”
Access to a range of books, especially those reflecting our diversity, is joyful and essential. Removing that representation takes away a chance to see ourselves be understood and truly embraced, even if it’s just through fictional characters.
In 1988, our National Housing Commission declared, “New Zealand does not have the huge, insoluble problems of homelessness and substandard housing which confront many other nations.”
This was the final report of the then disestablished commission, which to that point had reported detailed data every five years to keep the country and policy-makers informed about what we had once considered the foundation of stable society — a home for New Zealanders to call their own.
I was born six years after that report, and in those years and across my lifetime, deliberate political choices — specifically, political choices by people sitting in Parliament — have shredded that once-guaranteed housing dignity and stability.
They traded it for a game of Monopoly, which, the pecuniary interests register tells us, also happens to disproportionately benefit around half of the “representatives” in there with interests in more than one property (notably, approximately just 2 percent of the general population are landlords).
This dire situation is the direct consequence of political decisions, and it is disproportionately hurting the 1.4 million renters in this country that our Parliament, by majority, and as an overwhelming majority of comfortable homeowners, continues to structurally disempower.
In spite of this, we have made some slow progress. In 2017, the Greens worked with Labour to introduce Healthy Homes Standards and a slate of amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act, removing no-cause evictions and allowing renters to take claims to the Tenancy Tribunal anonymously.
Some standards, we obviously agreed, were better than nothing. A set of rules means it’s clear how a game should be played, but those rules become pretty meaningless if there’s no consistent referee monitoring and enforcing them.
Compliance not tracked
Unfortunately, that’s what the Healthy Homes Standards have become. My parliamentary written questions last year showed the government isn’t tracking how many private rentals are compliant.
It doesn’t know how many landlords and property managers have decided to self-exclude their properties from compliance. It has no tabs on the cottage industry of companies that have cropped up to verify these standards, let alone the variance in their approaches.
This leaves the third of New Zealanders who rent left to shoulder the burden of enforcing these basic rules which are supposed to protect them.
It’s a funny thing that whenever the Greens mention renters, we’re immediately shouted down and told that the problem is, somehow, that landlords aren’t given enough free rein. That the solution is more commodification of basic human rights.
Ironically, this is exactly what the National Housing Commission warned against back in 1988, that shifting of responsibility from the state to the private sector would, “add little to the total housing supply while allowing private landlords and property speculators to make even higher charges for a non-expanding supply of housing… rais[ing] the purchase price of land and rented property”.
We now know, viscerally, how right they were. Whatever metric you choose, we have the most expensive housing in the world.
The Accommodation Supplement, once rationalised in the state-housing sell-off to help support lower income New Zealanders pushed into the private sector, is now paid out to the tune of $2 billion a year with evidence showing it primarily serves to just bid up rental prices and effectively subsidise private landlords.
Special tax preferential
We remain one of the only countries in the developed world that continues to provide special tax treatment and preference to properties, incentivising the flow of capital into unproductive property speculation, or what University of Auckland researchers called, “a politically condoned, finance-fuelled casino”.
In less than 40 years, political decisions have not only made housing one of the major drivers of poverty and inequality in this country, but one of the major determinants of both physical and mental health, not to mention education achievement and school attendance.
So, who pays the cost?
Most immediately, it’s the 1.4 million renting New Zealanders, who Statistics New Zealand tells us spend more of their income on older, smaller, mouldier, lower quality housing.
Renting is no longer a transient state — unless you’re talking about the literal transience which sees renters in this country maintaining their tenancies for, on average, just 16 months at a time.
Almost all of us will know families with children and friends in their 30s and 40s who are flatting. A quarter of retirees don’t own their own home.
This didn’t happen overnight. It happened within a generation of political decisions that sold our human right to housing to the highest bidder.
As depressing as that may be, it makes clear that the status quo is not an inevitability. It can and must change if we want any hope of a fairer society.
Chlöe Swarbrick is the Green Party MP for Auckland Central. This article was originally published in The New Zealand Herald and is republished here with the author’s permission.
What do trophy hunting and biodiversity credits have in common? It sounds like the start of some crass joke. Only, the punchline isn’t funny: both will destroy the planet.
Biodiversity credits
Unexpected links between the pro-trophy hunting lobby and advocates for an emerging market in biodiversity credits have highlighted the bullshit capitalist agenda at the heart of Global North solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises. Biodiversity credits place a monetary value on conservation efforts that protect or restore natural environments. Companies, governments or individuals can then buy these credits to ‘offset’ the environmental harm of their own projects and activities.
You might think the biodiversity credits and trophy hunting couldn’t have less in common and, in many ways, you’d be right. One is about the preservation of wildlife, ascribing a financial worth to ecosystems and species in order to galvanise companies and governments to protect them. The other is a gratuitously violent practice, enabling wealthy individuals from the Global North to murder ‘charismatic’ creatures for their own sick and egotistic pleasure.
In spite of these seeming contradictions, a prominent scientist from the Global North has been championing the case for both.
Indeed, the pro-trophy hunting lobby and advocates of the still-nascent biodiversity credit market might seem like odd bedfellows. However, the same socio-economic ideology underpins both practices. Much like all the Global North’s ‘solutions’ to the twin climate-nature crisis, the answers are cooked in the crucible of profiteering capitalist and colonial interests.
Commodification of Nature
I recently reported for the Canary about the new Hunting Trophies (Imports Prohibition) bill. A number of scientists oppose the bill and argue that it will damage conservation efforts. However, as the Canary’s Tracy Keeling has also noted, some of these very same scientists have close ties to organisations that prominent hunting industry groups have funded.
Professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Oxford, Amy Dickman, was among the scientists that the Times previously identified as having links to the trophy hunting industry.
Dickman was lead author of a letter to the journal Science criticising the new trophy hunting bill. Recently, she penned an article for the Tory party’s blog site Conservative Home. In it, she argued against the import ban.
On 12 June, she also wrote a piece for Prince William’s Earthshot Prize blog. The blog post called for the scaled implementation of biodiversity credits.
Crucially, this connection epitomises all that’s wrong with Global North ‘solutions’ to rapid species loss. Each positions the commodification of nature as the way out of the twin climate and biodiversity crises. In essence, it’s a conservation ideology that monetises the natural world in a supposed bid to save it.
“Lion Carbon” and “Phantom credits”
In the Earthshot blog, Dickman introduced two existing carbon credit schemes with biodiversity dimensions. Notably, she detailed the ‘Lion Carbon’ initiative. The scheme is a partnership carbon credit programme between Dickman’s Lion Landscapes conservation organisation and Zambian-based forest carbon offset company BioCarbon Partners (BCP).
The initiative uses two large-scale Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) projects to provide carbon credits to corporate clients. Global nations established REDD+ at the COP19 climate summit in Warsaw in 2013. The UN explains that attending nations at COP19 created REDD+ so that:
developing countries can receive results-based payments for emission reductions when they reduce deforestation. This serves as a major incentive for their efforts.
The Lion Carbon REDD+ projects operate by avoiding deforestation that the programme claims would otherwise have occurred in their absence. Dickman cited Lion Carbon as a model example of the effectiveness of financial incentives for conserving wildlife. The world’s most widely used carbon offset standard, Verra, has certified the projects.
However, a 2023 Guardian investigation found that 90% of Verra’s rainforest carbon offsets are likely ‘phantom credits’. Essentially, these are worthless credits which do not represent actual provable reductions in deforestation.
Moreover, nonprofits have documented multiple accounts of REDD+ projects that have violated rights and enacted harm against Indigenous and local communities.
Recent criticisms of carbon offsets have highlighted the need for such schemes to be accountable, transparent and equitable.
Ironic then, that she failed to mention the problems with one of Lion Carbon’s core REDD+ projects. Namely, Greenpeace Italy and an Italian news broadcaster have both revealed that the project’s claims to have prevented deforestation is tenuous. In short, the project had overinflated its emissions reductions.
In addition, Greenpeace found that the project had also excluded neighbouring communities living outside the designated area from accessing the forest and its resources. Moreover, the report highlighted that the project also restricted inhabitant communities from harvesting forest produce.
Further to this, Greenpeace suggested that the de facto enclosure of forest land could create food and income insecurity for nearby communities. Significantly, this would expose them to greater vulnerability during extreme drought or flood.
Much as is evident in the established carbon credit market, biodiversity credits have the potential to facilitate corporate colonisation via land grabbing and resource dispossession.
Ecological greenwashing
Naturally, bogus results notwithstanding, it hasn’t stopped multinational corporations from claiming these credits towards their Net Zero pledges.
Fossil fuel majors ENI and TotalEnergies, as well as vehicle manufacturers AUDI and Volkswagen, have all purchased carbon credits from the Luangwa Community Forests Project’s REDD+ initiative.
Carbon Pulsehas also highlighted the role of a prominent business group in the new biodiversity credit market. EDF, Engie, TotalEnergies, L’Oreal, and HSBC, among other large corporations, are members of the Business for Positive Biodiversity Club (B4B+ Club) forum.
It’s evident that biodiversity credits are simply another performance in ecological greenwashing. Polluting industries can pat themselves on the back for setting aside a scrap of forest, probably somewhere in the Global South, and sparing it from their extractive, ecocidal crusade. Meanwhile, elsewhere, they’ll continue to mete out no-holds-barred ecological devastation.
To Global North conservationists like Dickman, subordinating nature to the capitalist market is the only way to protect it. However, it’s clear who the commodification of nature serves – and it sure isn’t the Indigenous and working-class communities or wildlife it claims to save.
Feature image via Thomas Furhmann/Wikimedia, cropped and resized to 1910 by 1000, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
The NHS is fast approaching its 75th Anniversary. So, what better way to celebrate that milestone than with a bone-headed article from the media’s shallowest thinker Laura Kuenssberg? The article in question is titled Love it or hate it, the NHS is here to stay, and somehow the piece only gets worse from there.
What?
Many people’s jaws hit the floor when they read the article’s title:
Who hates it??? It’s a vital public service that has been vilified in the unnecessary and hateful pursuit of profit. No one hates it unless they are in a position to profit from others’ ill health.
The British have a love-hate relationship with the NHS.
Do we? Because no one I’ve ever met has hated it (although, then again, I don’t spend my life surrounded by Oxbridge media freaks and right-wing policy wonks). If you’re worried this opening gambit goes unexplained, fear not. Although the explanation is somehow worse than the statement:
Kuenssberg’s statement is like saying that people have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with boats because they love sailing but they hate being shipwrecked.
It’s like saying people have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with the environment because they love long walks but they hate that Canada is on fire.
It’s like saying people have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with the concept of homes because they like having somewhere warm to sleep but they hate paying their landlord £2,000 a month for the pleasure.
Her statement is so monumentally stupid that it’s forced us to reevaluate our entire operation here at the Canary.
We’ve been reporting on Kuenssberg’s idiocy for years, and if even we didn’t realise she was this colossally vacant, what does that say about us? Before everyone else caught up and saw Kuenssberg for the establishment stooge she is, we were regularly slammed for our strident criticism of her. Now it seems like we were giving her too much credit if anything; that we were overestimating her abilities.
As the NHS approaches its 75th anniversary, politicians are falling over themselves to praise the service.
But when the cameras aren’t rolling, the message you hear can be a very different one. Just like us, politicians have a love-hate relationship with the NHS.
Oh good lord, here we go again.
She can’t be for real, can she?
Anyone with a modicum of common sense understands that the greedy little piggies in charge have nothing but contempt for their golden goose.
Kuenssberg’s statement is like saying that poachers have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with elephants because they love their tusks but they hate them being alive.
It’s like saying fast fashion brands have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with sweatshop workers because they love poverty wages but they hate health and safety laws.
It’s like saying mainstream British journalists have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with the truth because they love selling themselves as truth-tellers but they hate actually telling it:
The NHS has practically universal support in British society.
Only a tiny fringe of right-wing head bangers want to scrap the NHS.
So why does the BBC think it's justified to suggest NHS is like Marmite in public opinion?https://t.co/aVDFqWjJv3
Kuenssberg says “The British have a love-hate relationship with the NHS” – what?!
And then peddles a series of unnamed (mainly Tory) figures expressing their frustration at discussing… alternatives. ie – pitch-rolling privatisation. https://t.co/pQ6JMqRcoq
— Dr Mike Galsworthy (@mikegalsworthy) July 1, 2023
My Mother has worked in the NHS for over thirty years. I know people whose lives have been saved by our NHS.
To a person the majority of people love the NHS & are proud of it
But the Tory mouthpiece Laura Kuenssberg here is trying to persuade you otherwise
— Mirabel:Calling Out Bollocks (@LunaSpencer16) July 1, 2023
The British Bollocks Corporation
Would you believe me if I said the rest of Kuenssberg’s article was just random letters, as if she’d repeatedly banged her head against the keyboard? That’s not true, but it might as well be given that she reported things like this (largely from politicians she afforded the privilege of anonymity, of course):
A former minister says rather than go for bold reforms after the pandemic “we have gone straight back to the voodoo land of heroic pointless commitments that will never get met because as a country we are so ill”.
Another suggests ministers are actually scared of telling the public hard truths about increasing cost pressures in the health service. “The public has unrealistic expectations of what we can deliver – the government is frightened of that,” they say.
The only ‘hard truth’ you need to know is this. The NHS isn’t unaffordable, and neither are public services in general. What’s happening is these vital institutions suffer yearly funding decreases while the wealth of the rich just keeps growing. Ever heard of ‘trickle down economics’? It’s like that, except the wealth is flooding upwards. What’s going down, though, are all the services that said wealth used to fund.
There’s a reason why Kuenssberg’s article is filled with quotes from anonymous politicians but not regular members of the public. That’s because she’s never spoken to the latter. If she had, she’d maybe have a view of the world that wasn’t shaped by the whisperings of the nation’s most notorious bullshitters. Then again, maybe not. She really doesn’t have much going on upstairs.
Really, what we need moving forwards is a ‘love-hate relationship’ with billionaires – one in which we hate the fact they exist, but we love re-directing their undeserved wealth back into the public sector.
The Green Party made waves recently when it proposed to tax net wealth more than NZ$2 million for individuals and $4 million for couples. As part of a broad range of actions, the policy aims to “end poverty”.
Reactions ranged from endorsement to accusations it was fuelled by envy, but the debate signalled what could become a major election issue: the wealth gap and how to fix it.
The claim it amounts to an “envy tax” assumes all wealth has been fully earned and fully taxed in the first place. But we know that’s not the case.
A good portion of the wealth accumulated at the top is attributable to fortunate circumstances generating significant tax-free gains.
Inland Revenue’s recent survey of the wealthiest 311 New Zealand families revealed an average net worth of $276 million. At the same time, we know many households are struggling with the rising cost of living.
According to Stats NZ, around 155,000 households feel their incomes aren’t sufficient to meet everyday basic needs. Foodbanks report ever-rising numbers of families unable to feed themselves.
The major source of this lopsided wealth is the housing market. New Zealand has seen the biggest housing boom in the Western world. Property owners have ridden the wave to make large tax-free capital gains, while others languish in substandard emergency housing or are forced to live in garages and cars.
Far too much of our scarce labour, building materials, imported fixtures and land have been diverted to unproductive high-end housing, leaving too little to meet the real housing need. Because it isn’t taxed properly, investing in housing has been encouraged as a way to accumulate wealth.
Right now, there is enough money tied up in untaxed wealth to lift every single family in this country out of poverty.#nzpolpic.twitter.com/f3ODNOK9hH
The trouble with a wealth tax While the Greens’ wealth tax is a useful start to a wider discussion about inequality, it inevitably creates obstacles that in the end may be too difficult to overcome.
Probably the biggest hurdle is that this kind of tax can be incredibly complex and would provoke endless debate about what should be included.
The Greens’ proposal, for example, would capture business assets, shares, art above a certain value, and cars above $50,000. But what if you have two cars worth $49,000 each — why should they be excluded when one valued at $80,000 is included?
And how is debt factored into calculations of net wealth? House mortgages may be straightforward, but what about credit card debt, car finance or borrowing to finance overseas travel?
Not a capital gains tax For all these reasons, it’s time to get away from debating notions of a confiscatory wealth tax and make the issue simply one of treating all income the same for tax purposes.
Instead of a complicated net wealth tax on everything, let’s start with the biggest culprit — housing. This would address the under-taxation of income from holding housing as an asset.
This is not the same as a capital gains tax — those days are over. Numerous tax working groups have failed over 30 years to make headway on this. Politically it is a dead duck.
Besides, the real problems — inequality and misallocation of resources — wouldn’t be touched by a capital gains tax. Such a tax can only apply to gains made on houses sold in the future, not the accumulated gains over many years, and it will always exempt the family home.
How a house tax works Instead, let’s take the total value of all housing held by each individual, subtract registered first mortgages, and allow a $1 million exemption to reflect that everyone is entitled to a basic family home.
Then we treat this net equity as if it was in a term deposit generating a taxable interest return. When houses are held in trusts and companies, in most cases the income would be taxed at the trust or company rate with no exemption.
Calculated annually and pegged to the capital value of properties, this effective income would be taxed at the person’s marginal tax rate. It would affect those with second homes, multiple rentals, high-value properties — but without significantly affecting the great majority of homeowners who have much less than $1 million of net equity.
Thus a couple living in a $3 million house with a $1 million mortgage would fall under the threshold.
This approach would help put investment in housing, after a basic home, on the same footing as money in the bank or in shares. Better choices for the use of scarce housing resources should follow.
Landlords would no longer need expensive accountants to minimise taxable rental income. And it would reduce the blight of “ghost houses” and residential land-banking.
A circuit breaker The simplicity of this income approach means the government can build on the existing tax system. It lives up to the mantra of a “broad base, low rate” tax system and affects only the very wealthy and those whose tax rates are highest.
Moreover, it is possible to implement quickly, using existing property valuations and registered mortgages, unlike a net wealth tax where the devil is in the contentious detail.
The effect should be positive for those struggling in the housing market, as more housing for sale or rent is opened up. Good landlords should welcome the greater simplicity.
In the longer term, the extra taxable income could produce revenue for redistribution and social investment. Critically, however, it would start to give the right price signals to reduce the over-investment in luxury housing and real estate held for capital gain.
The approach is essentially a circuit breaker that can simply and quickly address the accumulation of wealth by a small group of people.
Crucially, it has a sound economic rationale. By taking the first step and including luxury and investment housing returns that are currently under the radar, it reduces the advantages of holding housing rather than more productive investments.
David Ignatius, a long-time Washington Post columnist on military intelligence topics, probably never dreamed his newspaper would fill over three full pages serializing his latest work of thrilling fiction, “The Tao of Deception.” On June 28, 2023, the “Breaking news and latest headlines” in the A section of the paper featured the first installment. Part II appeared today, Friday, June 30th.
What’s occurring at the WashingtonPost, the New York Times and big regional daily newspapers is a flight toward stupefying their material in a desperate plunge to retain readers – print and online. Maybe surveys show a tsunami of aliteracy from the rising iPhone generations.
To adjust to digital age readers, the New York Times has replaced much of its content with gigantic photographs, graphics and other visuals, not just in its regular sections on style/arts, sports and food, but also in the daily news departments as well as the Sunday Business and Opinion sections.
The influential New York Times Editorial Page – once featuring some fifteen or more editorials a week – is now down to three editorials a week. Moreover, this space is now largely taken up by a handful of regular opinion columnists, many predictably redundant and tired. Imagine a historic newspaper intentionally diminishing its editorial advice to this country. There is no precedent.
It gets worse. Various forms of its daily features – entertainment, sports and style/arts – are given enormous space, while coverage of daily local and national civic activity is severely restricted. What used to be reported about the findings, litigation, lobbying and regulatory advocacy of national citizen groups in the nineteen sixties and seventies – leading to major betterment of consumer, worker and environmental health and safety – now is sharply curtailed. As a result, good members of Congress, seeing virtually no news coverage of vital citizen concerns, become indifferent to necessary public hearings and legislation essential to addressing the needs of the public.
Right-wing politicians have learned to game the vulnerable-to-sensationalism New YorkTimes and WashingtonPost. Trump led the way in 2015-2016 with his presidential run. Most of his outrageous lies, deceptions and defamations were showcased by these two august newspapers. The Times would even reprint his tweets with their CAPITAL LETTERS verbatim without giving the falsely accused any right of reply. (Belated corrections by columnists could not keep up.)
This chronic tragedy has gotten worse in the last year. The Times can hardly resist making crazy politicians into Big Acts. The antics of switcheroo J.D. Vance was a regular news story, with huge photographs, while his Democratic opponent in prime position for the pivotal Ohio Senate race last year, Rep. Tim Ryan, was of little interest to the Times.
In 2021, the Times devoted eleven pages over three days to a mini-biography of Fox’s Tucker Carlson. As well, the Times seems strangely drawn to the profane and violent rhetoric of the ignorant junior Representative from rural Georgia, putting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on the cover of its Sunday New York Times Magazine, in addition to more frequent daily coverage of her outrages.
What’s wrong with this journalism? First, it does not give space to serious political opponents whose positions, by the way, are closer to the editorial stances of the Times. Second, these “in-depth” profiles, as well as regular columns, do not lay a glove on the featured miscreants who rush to use these articles in their publicity and fundraising. Third, the trivial crowds out more important, serious subjects with material that is mostly vacuous since it is about vacuous people that the Times grants greater celebrity status. (TV and radio pick up such coverage from the Times).
I remember years ago when members of Congress, working with civic leaders on important legislation, would drop their more expressive denunciations for fear that the Times and the Post would not cover them because they might appear too extreme. It is exactly the opposite today with crazed right-wing, political corporatists bellowing themselves into prime time.
The Washington Post Live podcasts long ago crossed the barrier between news and advertisers. The tilt toward corporatism, away from the liberal civic community, is pronounced. One example of many is Grover Norquist, the avatar of no-tax super-rich and corporations, who gets a big photo alongside the announcement of his interview by the Washington Post Live’s podcast while the paper ignores inviting civic leaders like Robert Weissman of Public Citizen, Jordan Davis or Marilyn Carpinteyro of Common Cause or Karen Friedman of the Pension Rights Center. Why? Because corporate advertisers do not find these people congenial to their sponsored topics. Sponsors get to approve or veto the participants, as with the participants in the recent Post podcast “Chasing Cancer: Equity and Disparities,” brought to us by the giant drug company AstraZeneca. You can be assured the discussion will not cover outsourcing cancer drugs to a single troubled corporation in India, now causing serious shortages in our country and risking people’s lives.
Both the Post and the Times reporters did report about the cancer drug crisis in their news pages, but didn’t deal with the question of why U.S. drug companies outsource such categories of drugs, which includes outsourcing virtually all antibiotic production to China and India. This is a national security risk if there ever was one. The Washington Post did, however, run an op-ed by Ezekiel J. Emanuel on this topic.
Business ads in newspapers have been around forever, but until recent years, such ads did not openly and brazenly sponsor, engage and shape the content of the “news side” of the papers.
Unfortunately, journalistic critics of these concessions are few, whether in the publications at journalism schools or in liberal magazines. Certainly, the media critics for NPR and PBS do not see this as part of their beat, with very few exceptions. In-house critics or an ombudsman are long gone from the Times and the Post.
Would that their editors have a greater estimate of their own significance to the unrepresented peoples of the United States. People deserve the empowering right to know about what the foundational civil society struggles daily to accomplish, at the local, national and international levels. (See, Reporters Alert).
Coverage of active citizenry from the neighborhoods on up might even increase circulation.
General Seth Rumkorem and Jacob Prai declared it, defended it, and received official recognition. Dakar, Senegal, was among them, the first international diplomatic office opened by OPM shortly after the declaration.
As Papuans resisted the invasion, they sought refuge in the Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Sweden, Australia, and Greece. All joined, at least in spirit, under the name OPM.
Its spirit of revolution that bonded West Papua and Vanuatu with those across Europe, Oceania, and Africa. This was a time of decolonisation, revolution, and a Cold War.
The decolonisation movement back then was more conscious in heart and mind of humanity than now.
Rex Rumakiek’s ‘sacred connection’
Rex Rumakiek (now aged 78), a long time OPM fighter alongside others, established this sacred connection in 1978.
In Papua New Guinea, Rumakiek met with students from Vanuatu studying at the University of Papua New Guinea and shared the OPM’s revolutionary victory, tragedy, and solution.
These students later took prominent roles in the formation of the independent state of Vanuatu — became part of the solution — laid a foundation of hope.
A common spirit emerged between the OPM’s resistance to Indonesian colonisation and Vanuatu’s struggle for freedom from long-term European (French and English) confederation rule.
A brutal system of dual rule known as Condominium — critics called it “Pandemonium” (chaos and disorder).
West Papua, a land known as “little heaven” is indeed like a Garden of Eden in Milton’s epic Paradise Lost poem.
To restore freedom and justice to that betrayed, lost paradise was the foundation of Vanuatu and West Papua’s relationship. For more than 40 years Vanuatu has been a beacon of hope.
Deep connections
Both shared deep religious metaphysical, cultural, and political connections.
On a metaphysical level, Vanuatu became a place of hope and redemption. Apart from supporting the West Papua freedom fighters, Vanuatu played a critical role in the reconciliation of Papuans who split off in various directions due to internal conflicts over numerous issues, including ideologies and strategies.
A tragedy of internal disputes and conflicts that placed a long-lasting strain on their collective war against Indonesian occupation.
This can be seen from Vanuatu’s decades-long effort to invite two key leaders of the West Papuan Provisional Parliament — General Seth Rumkorem and Jacob Prai.
In 1985, Vanuatu brought the two conflicting leaders of OPM, Mr. Jacob Prai and Gen. Seth Rumkorem, to Vanuatu and ended their differences so that they could work together (p. 217).
In 2000, Vanuatu invited the OPM leaders and Papua’s Presidium Council (PDP) to sign a memorandum of understanding. The year 2008 was also a year of reconciliation, which led to the formation of the West Papua Nation Coalition of Liberation (WPNCL).
In 2014, there was another big reconciliation summit in Port Vila, which led to the formation of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP).
Melanesian identity
Culturally, Vanuatu and West Papua share a deep sense of Melanesian identity — a common bond from shared experiences of colonisation, racism, mistreatment, dehumanisation, and slavery.
This bond, however, is strengthened far beyond these European and Indonesian atrocities as Barak Sope, one of Melanesia’s key thinkers and prominent supporters of West Papua put it in 2017, Papuans and Vanuatu and all Melanesians in Oceania have deep ancient roots. There are deep Melanesian links that connect our ancestors. Europeans came and destroyed that connection by rewriting our history because they had the power of written language, and we did not.
Our connections were recorded in myths, legends, songs, dances, and culture. It is our duty now to revive that ancient link (Conversation with Yamin Kogoya in Port Vila, December 2017).
Politically, Vanuatu and West Papua also share a common sense of resistance to both European and Indonesian colonisations.
Father Walter Lini, founder of Vanuatu and MSG, later became Prime Minister. Following its renaming as the Vanua’aku Pati in 1974, Lini’s party pushed hard for independence — the Republic of Vanuatu was formally established in 1980.
The OPM and Black Brothers helped shape this new nation and were part of a force that created a pan-Melanesian identity through music.
“Vanuatu will not be completely free until all Melanesia is free from colonialism” is Walter Lini’s famous saying, which has been used by West Papua and New Caledonian Kanaks in their struggle for liberation against Indonesian and French colonisation.
A just world
During this long journey, a profound bond and sense of connection and a shared cause, and destiny for a just world was born between Vanuatu and West Papua and the greater Oceania. A kind of Messianic hope developed with name Vanuatu that Papuans a hope that deliverance would come from Vanuatu.
Papuans can only express their gratitude in social media through their artistic works and heartfelt thanksgiving messages.
Ahead of the upcoming MSG summit, the Free West Papua Campaign Facebook page has posted the following image showing a Papuan with Morning Star clothing crossing a cliff on the back of a larger and taller figure representing Vanuatu.
In politics, it is all about diplomacy, networks, and cooperation, as the famous PNG politicians’ mantra in their foreign policy, “Friend to all and enemy to none.” This is such an ironic and tragic position to be in when half of PNG’s country men are “going extinct”, and they know how and why?
Sometimes it is necessary to confront such an evil head on when/if innocent lives are at risk. The notion of being friends with everyone and enemies with nobody has no virtue, value, substance, or essence.
In the real-world, humans have friends and enemies. The only question is, we must not only choose between friends and foes but also understand the difference between them.
No human, whether realist, idealist, traditionalist, or transcendentalist, who sincerely believes, can make a neutral virtue less stand — where right and wrong are neither right nor wrong at the same time. Human agents must make choices. Being able to choose and know the difference and reasons why, is what makes us human — this is where value is contested, for and against.
Stand up for something
In the current world climate, someone must stand up for something — for the oppressed, for the marginalised, the abused, the persecuted, the land, for the planet and for humanity.
This tiny island country, Vanuatu has exhibited that warrior spirit for many years. In March, Vanuatu spearheaded a UN resolution on climate change. Nina Lakhani in The Guardian wrote:
“The UN general assembly adopted by consensus the resolution spearheaded by Vanuatu, a tiny Pacific island nation vulnerable to extreme climate effects, and youth activists to secure a legal opinion from the international court of justice (ICJ) to clarify states’ obligations to tackle the climate crisis — and specify any consequences countries should face for inaction.”
More than 60 years ago, when West Papua was kicked around like a football by the imperial West and East, Indonesia, the Netherlands, the United Nations and the illegal UN-sponsored sham referendum of 1969, no one on this planet dared to stand up for West Papua.
West Papua was abandoned by the world.
The Dutch attempted to safeguard that “sacred trust” by enlisting West Papua into the UN Decolonisation list under article 73 of the UN charter. The Dutch did the right thing.
The sacred trust, however, was betrayed when West Papua was transferred to the United Temporary Executive (UNTEA) following the infamous New York Agreement on 15 August 1962.
This sacred trust was to be protected by the UNTEA but it was betrayed when it was handed over to Indonesia in May 1963, resulting in Indonesia’s invasion of West Papua.
This invasion instilled fear throughout West Papua, paving the way for the 1969 referendum to be held under incredible fear and gunpoint of the already intimidated 1025 Papuan elders.
In 1969, instead of protecting the trust, the UN betrayed it by being complicit in the whole tragic events unfolding.
OPM’s answer to the illegal referendum — The Act of Free Choice
OPM’s proclamation on 1 July 1971 was the answer to the (rejection of that illegal and fraudulent) referendum, known as the Penentuan Pendapat Rakyat-Pepera in 1969.
In protest, out of fear, and in resistance to one of the most tragic betrayals and tragedies in human history, an overwhelming number of Papuans left West Papua during this period. Several countries opened their arms to West Papua, including Vanuatu.
A major split occurred in OPM camps due to internal conflict and disagreement between the two key founding members. The legacy of this tragedy has been disastrous for future Papuan resistance fighters.
Papuans are partly responsible for betraying that sacred trust as well. This realisation is critical for Papuan-self redemption. That is the secret, redemption, and genuine reconciliation.
Every time a high-profile figure from Vanuatu or any Melanesian country engages internationally, Papuans feel extremely anxious. Amid the historical betrayals, Papuans wonder, “Will they betray us or rescue us?”
This tiny doubt eats at the soul of humankind. It is always toxic, a seed that contaminates and derails human trust.
In such difficult times, it is crucial for Papuans to reflect sincerely and ask, “where are we?” Are we doing, okay? What’s going on? Are we making the right decisions, are our collective defence systems secure?
Vanuatu historic visit to Jakarta
Jotham Napat, the Foreign Minister of Vanuatu, visited Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi on 16 June 2023. The main topic of discussion was bilateral relations between the two countries.
It is the first visit by a Vanuatu foreign minister to Indonesia in more than a decade. This marks an important milestone.
According to Retno, “I am delighted to hear about Vanuatu’s plan to open an embassy in Indonesia, and I welcome the idea of holding annual consultations between the two countries,” in her statement.
At Monday’s meeting, Napat expressed urgency to build a sound partnership between Vanuatu and Indonesia and expressed his eagerness to recover trust. The minister also expressed his country’s eagerness to create a technical cooperation agreement between the two countries and to establish sister city and sister province partnerships, which he said could begin with Papua.
Welcoming DPM/FM Jotham Napat of Vanuatu on his 1st official visit to Indonesia – the 1st visit of FM in more than a decade
An important milestone in our bilateral relations, based on respect to sovereignty, territorial integrity & principles of mutual interests & benefits pic.twitter.com/Y8GkpwxvQC
— Menteri Luar Negeri Republik Indonesia (@Menlu_RI) June 16, 2023
During a joint press conference with Indonesian Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin, Napat expressed his commitment to the “Melanesian way”.
Vanuatu’s Napat meets Indonesian Vice-President
In response to Minister Napat’s visit to West Papua, Benny Wenda of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) said he welcomed the minister’s remarks on the “Melanesian Way”. Though it isn’t really clear what the Melanesian way is all about?
“Melanesian Way” is a complicated term. Although intuitively, everyone in the Melanesian context assumes to know it. Bernard Narakobi, the person who coined the term refused to define it. It has been described by Narakobi as being comparable to Moses asking God to explain who God was to him.
“God did not reveal himself by a definition, but by a statement that I am who I am,” wrote Narakobi.
Because God is the archetypical ultimate, infallible, eternal, omnipresent, alpha and omega. Narakobi’s statement about the God and Moses analogy is true that God cannot be defined by any point of reference; God is the point of reference.
For Melanesians, however, we are not God. We are mortal, unpredictable, flawed, with aspects of both malevolence and goodness. Therefore, to state that “we are who we are” could mean anything.
Continuing his search for a path for Melanesia, Narakobi wrote:
“Melanesian voice is meant to be a force for truth. It is meant to give witness to the truth. Whereas the final or the ultimate truth is the divine source, the syllogistically or the logical truth is dependent on the basic premises one adopts. The Melanesian voice is meant to be a forum of Melanesian wisdom and values, based on Melanesian experience.”
It seems that these truths and virtues as outlined by this great Melanesian philosopher do not have a common shared value system that binds the states of the MSG together.
‘Bought for 30 pieces of silver’
Following the rejection of ULMWP’s membership bid in Honiara in 2016, Vanuatu’s then Deputy Prime Minister, Joe Natuman, stated,
“Our Prime Minister was the only one talking in support of full membership for West Papua in the MSG, the Solomon Islands Prime Minister couldn’t say very much because he is the chairman.
“Prime Minister Charlot Salwai was the only one defending Melanesians and the history of Melanesian people in the recent MSG meeting in Honiara.
“The MSG, I must repeat, the MSG, which I was a pioneer in setting up, was established for the protection of the identity of the Melanesian people, the promotion of their culture and defending their rights. Right to self-determination, right to land and right to their resources.
“Now it appears other people are trying to use the MSG to drive their own agendas and I am sorry, but I will insist that MSG is being bought by others.
“It is just like Jesus Christ who was bought for 30 pieces of silver. This is what is happening in the MSG. I am very upset about this, and we need to correct this issue.
“Because if our friends in Fiji and Papua New Guinea have a different agenda, we need to sit down and talk very seriously about what is happening within the organisation.”
Principles or a facade?
Whatever agenda Minister Napat had in mind when he travelled to Jakarta on June 16 — in a capital of rulers whose policies have resulted in fatalistic and genocidal outcomes for West Papuans for 60 years — these wisdoms from Melanesian elders will either be his guiding principle, or he will use the term “Melanesian Way” as a facade to conceal different intents not in agreement with these Melanesian values.
These are the types of questions that are at stake for West Papua, Vanuatu, and Melanesians, particularly in a world which is rapidly changing, including ourselves and our values.
In an interview with Island Business published on 3 February 2023, Minister Napat stated his priority for the 100-day work plan.
“Vanuatu has, like other Pacific countries, too often in the past been seen in the international limelight as a subservient associate to others’ interests and agendas, this must change if Vanuatu is to take its rightful place as an equal partner in the international arena.
“The creation and implementation of a new National Foreign Policy must take into account current global geopolitical trends”.
Minister Napat continued:
“The global geopolitical environment has and will continue to change. Our government must implement foreign policy directions which will have as its first priority, the best interests of the nation and people of Vanuatu.
“Since the original foreign policy directions after independence, Vanuatu’s foreign policy approaches in the last 30 years have been at times unclear, ad hoc, and reactive to circumstances and influences. It is time we set our own course and become proactive at all times”.
Vanuatu only support
The minister did not rule out West Papua as one of the countries that influences Vanuatu’s engagement with the world. As anyone familiar with West Papua’s plight knows, Vanuatu is the only sovereign UN member country that has publicly supported West Papua.
There is no indication as to whether those “other interests” and “agendas” pertain to West Papua, Indonesia, MSG, the USA, China, or Australia.
If the minister’s trip to Jakarta was demonstrative of his pragmatic words and West Papua is one of the external interferences the Minister has implied, then Papuans can only hope for the best, that new developing relationships between Jakarta and Port Vila will not be another major betrayal for Papuans.
Minister Napa’s pragmatic approach to adapting to an unpredictable changing world is crucial for the country. Especially since Oceania is becoming increasingly similar to the New Middle East as China and the United States continue to compete, contest, revive or renew their engagement with island nations.
There is also another major player in the region, Indonesia, which has its own interests.
The government and the people of Vanuatu have a duty and responsibility to ensure they must be ready to face these vulgar threats, they pose as stated by the Minister. For persecuted Papuans, their only wish is: Please don’t betray us — the Sacred Trust.
West Papua will always remain a lingering issue — a unresolved murder mystery that has been swept under the rug. For a long time, the Vanuatu government and its people have decided to resolve this issue.
Vanuatu’s Wantok Blong Yumi Bill – Sacred Trust
On 19 June 2010, this sacred trust was protected when the notion regarding West Papua was passed by Vanuatu’s Parliament. The purpose of the “Wantok blong yumi” Bill was to allow the government of Vanuatu to develop specific policies regarding the support of West Papua’s independence struggle.
Then, both the government under the late Prime Minister Edward Natape and his opposition leader, Maxime Carlot Korman, united and sponsored the motion to be drafted by one of the young proponents of West Papua’s cause, Ralph Regevanu, on behalf of the people of Vanuatu and West Papua.
In fact, this was a historic and extraordinary event. It was called a “Parliament extraordinary session” — a sacred session. This Act is an analogy to the declaration of war by tiny young ancient Jews against the giant Goliath and his fearsome army. With a slingshot, David defeated Goliath, not with a giant weapon, bomb, or money, but with courage, bravery and faith.
The Wantok Bill was Vanuatu’s slingshot to fight against and defeat the might of pandemonium warlords and Goliath armies that tortured Papuans everyday while scavenging the richness of this paradise land that has been continuously betrayed.
After the success of the motion, the prime minister promised to sponsor the issue of West Papua at the MSG and PIF meetings.
This promise was partially fulfilled when West Papua was granted observer status in the MSG in 2015. Tragically, this courageous figure passed away on 28 July 2015 (aged 61) just a few days after West Papua was granted observer status by the MSG on June 26.
Furthermore, West Papua has seen some positive developments at an international level. In September 2016, seven Pacific Island countries raised the plight and struggle of the West Papuan people at the UN General Assembly.
A resolution was passed by the PIF in 2019 regarding West Papua.
During the ninth ACP summit of heads of state and government, Ralph Regevanu and Benny Wenda succeeded in convincing the group to pass a resolution calling for urgent attention to be paid to the rights situation in Indonesia-ruled Papua.
Vanuatu also made it possible for Pacific leaders to request that the UN Human Rights Commissioner visit West Papua in 2019. Ralph Regevanu, then Vanuatu’s Foreign Minister, drafted the wording of the PIF’s Communique.
Edward Natape also said his government would apply to the UN Decolonisation Committee for West Papua to be relisted so the territory could undergo the due process of decolonisation.
West Papuans still wait for the UN’s promised decolonisation A long time OPM representative from West Papua, Dr John Otto Ondawame, and Andy Ayamiseba, were among those who witnessed and assisted in this victory. Sadly, both of them have since died.
Dr Ondawame died in 2014 and Andy Ayamiseba in 2020.
Both of these figures, as well as others, were long-time residents of Vanuatu since the 1980s. With their Vanuatu, Melanesia, and Oceania Wantoks, they had tirelessly fought for the rights of West Papua.
The people of West Papua continue to look towards Vanuatu and Melanesia and pray, just as the exiled diaspora of persecuted Jews looked towards Jerusalem and prayed. Vanuatu remains a beacon of hope for West Papua
Papuans’ greatest task, challenge and responsibility is to determine where to go from here.
This spirit of revolution was ignited by the OPM elders, and many brave young men, women, and elderly are fighting for it in West Papua today.
On 30 June 2023, the MSG Foreign Ministers Meeting (FMM) concluded successfully with members approving the outcomes of the MSG senior officials meeting (SOM) at the MSG secretariat in Port Vila, Vanuatu. A traditional welcome ceremony was conducted for the delegates.
A progress report by the MSG Director-General was presented to the SOM, along with the secretariat’s annual reports for 2020 and 2021, a calendar of events for 2023, a proposal to establish MSG supporting offices in member countries and a draft of the MSG secretariat’s work programme and budget for 2023.
The same people who were seen in Jakarta dancing, singing and propagated imageries of gestures, symbols, images, and rhetoric are the ones driving this MSG meeting. Indonesia’s delegation with the red and white flag is also seen sitting inside the MSG’s headquarters — the sacred place, sacred building, of the Melanesian people.
The test for Vanuatu is so high at the moment — reaching a climactic decision for West Papua. Hundreds of Free West Papua social media campaigns groups are inundated with so much optimistic images, symbols, cartoon drawing, words, prayers.
Giving this connection and high emancipation with the upcoming MSG summit, Minister Jotham Napat’s visit to Jakarta was indeed a huge shock for Papuans.
For Papuans, this is a stressful time for such a visit. Pressures, anticipation, prayers, and anxiety for MSG is too high.
Adding to this, this year the Chairmanship and Leaders’ Summit of the MSG are being entrusted to Vanuatu and Vanuatu is also the home base of MSG.
One of the moments West Papua have been waiting for
In the upcoming MSG games, Vanuatu had all the best cards at her disposal to achieve something big for Papuans. Vanuatu was one of key founding fathers of MSG, the MSG embeds Vanuatu’s spirit and values.
It would be “THE” long-awaited moment for Papuans to enter into MSG as Papuans have been insisting that their Melanesian family has been left out for decades.
Social media images and small videos of Vanuatu’s delegation, MSG’s leader and Papuans who support the Indonesian occupation of West Papua dancing and singing during the visit was indeed disheartening for Papuans.
The imagery and propaganda of the visit spread through the media. They intended to dim Vanuatu’s dawn Morning Star. A sacred beacon of light where tortured West Papuans look to, every morning, and pray for deliverance.
Vanuatu’s “Messianic hope” for West Papua in a world where almost no nations, empires, kingdoms, and institutions such as the UN offer refuge, to listen to and seeing such propaganda imageries spread through social media is dispiriting.
Whatever the reason for this visit might be, Papuans who simply just want their freedom from Indonesia, seeing such a visit and display of their trusted friend at the headquarters of their tormentors prompts immediate questions: What happened and why?
“Bring West Papua back to the Melanesian family”. Image: West Papua-Melanesia Facebook
‘Liklil Hope Tasol’ (Little Hope At All)
Dan McGarry, former media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post, writes:
“One of the more popular songs Ayamiseba wrote for the Black Brothers is ‘Liklik Hope Tasol’, a ballad written in Tok Pisin whose title translates as ‘Little Hope At All’. Its narrator lies awake in the early morning hours, the victim of despair.
The vision of the Morning Star and a songbird breaking the pre-dawn hush provide the impetus to survive another day. The song, with its clear political imagery and simplistic evocation of strength in adversity, is clearly autobiographical. It is, arguably, the anthem which animated Ayamiseba’s lifelong pursuit of freedom.”
Such an extravagant display of rhetoric and imagery in the capital of the Pandemonium army that has mercilessly been hunting down “Papuans” on “their ancient timeless land”, New Guinea, as PNG philosopher Narakobi described it, or “little heaven” as Papuans referred to it, can only mean two things: either destroy that “little hope” or “rescue it”.
Only God knows the answer to this question as well of the real intent of the visit and what outcome will emerge from it — will it bring disappearance or hope for Papuans.
The late Pastor Allen Nafuki, a key figure in Vanuatu responsible for bringing warring factions of Papuan resistance groups together in Port Vila in 2014, which helped precipitate much of the ULMWP’s international success, left his last message on West Papua before he died: “God will never sleep for West Papua.”
Vanuatu is a sovereign independent country and as a sovereign nation, Vanuatu has every right to choose to whom she wants to be friends with, visit and sign any treaties and agreements with.
However, when the sacred trust of hope for the betrayed, rejected, persecuted nation like West Papuans is entrusted to them either by choice, force, or compassion, then the choice is clear: You either betray that trust, compromise it, or protect it.
The seed of the sacred bond planted by legendary OPM freedom fighters when the nation of Vanuatu was founded, before MSG was founded, will be either dimmed, betrayed, or resurrected.
The 2010 “Wantok Blong Yumi” Bill should be resurrected and protection given for the “Sacred Trust” (The Sovereignty of West Papua) that has been betrayed for more than 60 years.
The United Nations was the place that the Sacred Trust was betrayed and Vanuatu as a new Guardian of this Trust should restore that trust in the same institution. The statement by the former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, during the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Summit in Auckland stated: “West Papua is an issue; the right place for it to be discussed, is the Decolonisation Committee of UNGA”.
Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Vanuatu Deputy Prime Minister Jotham Napat and the MSG Director-General while visiting the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium and meeting with representatives of the Indonesian soccer team companied by the Indonesian foreign affairs minister. Image: Jubi/Twitter.
as if it were life support.
#NHS15Rise, Centralism is a myth! (@George0rw3ll) 
at the official opening of the 7th Melanesian Arts & Culture Festival (MACFEST). 
(@Haggis_UK) 
(@FredThomasUK) 
– the 1st visit of FM
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