An alleged bizarre swinging punch towards an academic from a senior management figure at the top of the University of the South Pacific (USP) is underscoring a deepening crisis in the regional organisation.
While it was not vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia who threw the punch, its plain the one time Fiji deportee is spectacularly failing USP. With falling student roles, and running out of already badly spent money, the once model of regional cooperation and dreams is heading toward a Fiji road smash.
Much of it will have been Professor Ahluwalia’s fault, but inaction on the part of the current pro-chancellor Dr Hilda Heine carries a burden of liability too.
USP’s vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia . . . under fire again. Image: Twitter/APR
Professor Ahluwalia has gone into a kind of cone of silence, neither calling the “senior management team” (SMT) for several months, nor dealing with urgent issues.
To those inside the Suva campus, the place seems on remote control. Money is allegedly disappearing, and the institution is struggling again to pay its bills. Nothing decisive is happening to rescue the organisation founded in 1968.
While tensions between senior academic staff in any university is not unknown, inside USP it has become deeply hostile. Various allegations are made about staff, and the place has descended into a kind of madhouse.
Professor Ahluwalia occasionally issues emails to criticise those who he thinks is bringing him down. He now directs who gets what jobs and where.
Management ‘explosion’
This seems to have been behind an explosion at one of the last SMTs where a top figure is said to have screamed “bastard” and swung a punch at another academic head. Another senior figure had to break it up.
Professor Ahluwalia took no action and the man who swung the punch has been told his place is safe. Consequently Professor Ahluwalia has a new loyalist in SMT.
The latest events at USP have deep political implications in host nation Fiji, where a new government says it is going to pay its USP dues of F$86 million. The previous FijiFirst government led by Voreqe Bainimarama refused to pay, claiming Professor Ahluwalia and other senior figures in USP were corrupt.
Professor Ahluwalia was kicked out of Fiji and took refuge in USP regional offices in Nauru and Samoa.
With Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka in power in Suva, Professor Ahluwalia has been allowed back.
It may only be a coincidence, or not, that Bainimarama has subsequently been arrested and faces a charge of abuse of office. The charge specially cites his role over USP.
‘Colonial’ research deal
Now it is emerging that some in USP are party to a research deal with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (signed in Papua New Guinea) that has a decently colonial feel to it, an endorsement of transferring Pacific resources to India.
It is not what universities are supposed to be doing, especially those set up to advance Pacific people.
While Professor Ahluwalia and Dr Heine — former President of the Marshall Islands who in 2016 made history as the first woman leader of a Pacific Islands independent nation — might hope to cope with the new tsunami hitting them, the reality is that the big donors, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the European Union and the United Nations, are going to get pretty weary of this endless, destructive childishness at USP.
Michael Field is an independent journalist and author, and co-editor of The Pacific Newsroom. This article from “On The Wire” is republished with his permission.
The signing of the memorandum of understanding between the University of the South Pacific’s vice-chancellor and president, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, and the Indian government’s National Centre for Coastal Research, Ministry of Earth Sciences, in March for the setting up of a Sustainable Coastal and Ocean Research Institute (SCORI) has raised serious questions about leadership at USP.
Critics have been asking how this project poses significant risk to the credibility of the institution as well as the security of ocean resources and knowledge sovereignty of the region.
The partnership was formally launched last week by India’s High Commissioner to Fiji, Palaniswamy Subramanyan Karthigeyan, but the questions remain.
Regional resource security threat
Article 8 of the MOU regarding the issue of intellectual property and commercialisation
states:
“In case research is carried out solely and separately by the Party or the research results are obtained through sole and separate efforts of either Party, The Party concerned alone will apply for grant of Intellectual Property Right (IPR) and once granted, the IPR will be solely owned by the concerned Party.”
This is a red flag provision which gives the Indian government unlimited access to scientific data, coastal indigenous knowledge and other forms of marine biodiversity within the 200 exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and territorial waters of sovereign countries in the Pacific.
More than that, through the granting of IPR, it will claim ownership of all the data and indigenous knowledge generated. This has potential for biopiracy, especially the theft of
local knowledge for commercial purposes by a foreign power.
No doubt this will be a serious breach of the sovereignty of Pacific Island States whose
ocean resources have been subjected to predatory practices by external powers over the
years.
The coastal indigenous knowledge of Pacific communities have been passed down
over generations and the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organisations (WIPO) has developed protocols to protect indigenous knowledge to ensure sustainability and survival
of vulnerable groups.
The MOU not only undermines the spirit of WIPO, it also threatens the knowledge sovereignty of Pacific people and this directly contravenes the UN Convention of Biodiversity which attempts to protect the knowledge of biodiversity of indigenous
communities.
In this regard, it also goes against the protective intent of the UN Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which protects resources of marginalised groups.
This threat is heightened by the fact that the Access Benefit and Sharing protocol under the Nagoya Convention has not been developed in most of the Pacific Island Countries. Fiji has developed a draft but it still needs to be refined and finalised and key government departments are made aware of it.
Traditional knowledge of coastal eco-systems of Pacific people are critical in mitigation and adaptation to the increasing threat of climate change as well as a means of collective survival.
For Indian government scientists (who will run the institute), masquerading as USP
academics, claiming ownership of data generated from these knowledge systems will pose
serious issues of being unethical, culturally insensitive, predatory and outright illegal in
relation to the laws of the sovereign states of the Pacific as well as in terms of international
conventions noted above.
Furthermore, India, which is a growing economic power, would be interested in Pacific
Ocean resources such as seabed mining of rare metals for its electrification projects as well
as reef marine life for medicinal or cosmetic use and deep sea fishing.
The setting up of SCORI will enable the Indian government to facilitate these interests using USP’s regional status as a Trojan horse to carry out its agenda in accessing our sea resources across the vast Pacific Ocean.
India is also part of the QUAD Indo-Pacific strategic alliance which also includes the US, Australia and Japan.
There is a danger that SCORI will, in implicit ways, act as India’s strategic maritime connection in the Pacific thus contributing to the already escalating regional geo-political contestation between China and the “Western” powers.
This is an affront to the Pacific people who have been crying out for a peaceful and harmonious region.
The 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, signed by the leaders of the Pacific, tries to guard against all these. Just a few months after the strategy was signed, USP, a regional
institution, has allowed a foreign power to access the resources of the Blue Pacific Continent without the consent and even knowledge of the Pacific people.
So in short, USP’s VCP, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, has endorsed the potential capture of the sovereign ownership of our oceanic heritage and opening the window for unrestricted exploitation of oceanic data and coastal indigenous knowledge of the Pacific.
This latest saga puts Professor Ahluwalia squarely in the category of security risk to the region and regional governments should quickly do something about it before it is too late, especially when the MOU had already been signed and the plan is now a reality.
Together with Professor Sushil Kumar (Director of Research) and Professor Surendra Prasad (Head of the School of Agriculture, Geography, Ocean and Natural Sciences), both of whom are Indian nationals, he has to be answerable to the leaders and people of the region.
Usurpation of state protocol
The second major issue relates to why the Fiji government was not part of the agreement,
especially because a foreign government is setting up an institute on Fiji’s territory.
This is different from the regular aid from Australia, New Zealand and even China where state donors maintain a “hands-off” approach out of respect for the sovereignty of Fiji as well as the independence of USP as a regional institution.
In this case a foreign power is actually setting up an entity in Fiji’s national realm in a regional institution.
As a matter of protocol, was the Fiji government aware of the MOU? Why was there no
relevant provision relating to the participation of the Fiji government in the process?
This is a serious breach of political protocol which Professor Ahluwalia has to be accountable for.
Transparency and consultation
For such a major undertaking which deals with Pacific Ocean resources, coastal people’s
livelihood and coastal environment and their potential exploitation, there should have been
a more transparent, honest and extensive consultation involving governments, regional
organisations, civil society and communities who are going to be directly affected.
This was never done and as a result the project lacks credibility and legitimacy. The MOU itself provided nothing on participation of and benefits to the regional governments, regional organisations and communities.
In addition, the MOU was signed on the basis of a concept note rather than a detailed plan
of SCORI. At that point no one really knew what the detailed aims, rationale, structure,
functions, outputs and operational details of the institute was going to be.
There is a lot of secrecy and manoeuvrings by Professor Ahluwalia and academics from mainland India who are part of a patronage system which excludes regional Pacific and Indo-Fijian scholars.
Undermining of regional expertise
Regional experts on ocean, sustainability and climate at USP were never consulted, although some may have heard of rumours swirling around the coconut wireless. Worse still, USP’s leading ocean expert, an award-winning regional scholar of note, was sidelined and had to resign from USP out of frustration.
The MOU is very clear about SCORI being run by “experts” from India, which sounds more like a takeover of an important regional area of research by foreign researchers.
These India-based researchers have no understanding of the Pacific islands, cultures, maritime and coastal environment and work being done in the area of marine studies in the Pacific. The sidelining of regional staff has worsened under the current VCP’s term.
Another critical question is why the Indian government did not provide funding for the
existing Institute of Marine Resources (IMR) which has been serving the region well for
many years. Not only will SCORI duplicate the work of IMR, it will also overshadow its operation and undermine regional expertise and the interests of regional countries.
Wake up to resources capture
The people of the Pacific must wake up to this attempt at resources capture by a big foreign power under the guise of academic research.
Our ocean and intellectual resources have been unscrupulously extracted, exploited and stolen by corporations and big powers in the past. SCORI is just another attempt to continue this predatory and neo-colonial practice.
The lack of consultation and near secrecy in which this was carried out speaks volume about a conspiratorial intent which is being cunningly concealed from us.
SCORI poses a serious threat to our resource sovereignty, undermines Fiji’s political protocol, lacks transparency and good governance and undermines regional expertise. This
is a very serious abuse of power with unimaginable consequences to USP and indeed the
resources, people and governments of our beloved Pacific region.
This has never been done by a USP VC and has never been done in the history of the Pacific.
The lack of consultation in this case is reflective of a much deeper problem. It also manifests ethical corruption in the form of lack of transparency, denial of support for regional staff, egoistic paranoia and authoritarian management as USP staff will testify.
This has led to unprecedented toxicity in the work environment, irretrievable breakdown of basic university services and record low morale of staff. All these have rendered the university dysfunctional while progressively imploding at the core.
If we are not careful, our guardianship of “Our Sea of Islands,” a term coined by the
intellectually immortal Professor Epeli Hau’ofa, will continue to be threatened. No doubt Professor Hau’ofa will be wriggling around restlessly in his Wainadoi grave if he hears about this latest saga.
This article has been contributed to Asia Pacific Report by researchers seeking to widen debate about the issues at stake with the new SCORI initiative.
Finbar Cafferkey, Dmytro Petrov, and Cooper Andrews were revolutionaries from Ireland, Russia, and the US. All three of them joined the military defence of Ukraine, against Russian aggression. All three of them fell together on 19 April during the Russian offensive against Bakhmut.
It’s a sad fact that parts of the European left have shown little solidarity with the people of Ukraine, instead making apologies for Russian militarism and colonialism.
Finbar, Dmitry, and Cooper’s sacrifice should remind us what it means to be a revolutionary, and to support struggles against oppression everywhere.
Supporting anti-authoritarian resistance against Russia
Solidarity Collectives (SC) is an organisation supporting around 100 anti-authoritarian comrades fighting against the Russian invasion. When the Canary spoke to Anton, a member of SC about their work, they said:
our work is related to the logistics to bring them all that is needed and that the army could not provide, to assure their safety as well as their effectiveness in combat. Our work consists as well in supporting relatives and comrades affected by the war, meaning if one comrade gets killed or injured in combat, we would help economically and in any form of support we could provide. Our work continues with the care to relatives in [their] understanding of the engagement of the comrades, sometimes with explaining the choices of the comrades.
SC has published statements about each of the three fallen internationalists so that people can remember them and understand their struggles better.
Finbar Cafferkey: From County Mayo, to Raqqa, to Bakhmut
Finbar Cafferkey was from Ireland. He was involved in the eco-defence campaign against Shell’s natural gas pipeline in County Mayo in the mid-2000s. Later, he volunteered to help defend the Rojava revolution in North and East Syria, and participated in the liberation of Raqqa from Daesh (ISIS) in 2017. Finbar went on to participate in Rojava‘s armed defence against the Turkish invasion of Afrin in 2018 as part of the YPG (People’s Defence Units). He was given the name Çîya, meaning ‘mountain’, by his Kurdish comrades.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Finbar began to organise support. He worked with ACK Galicja and the XVX Tacticaid to bring humanitarian support from Poland to the front lines in Ukraine comrades said:
When asked why he did that, Çîya always answered: “Because I have time and I can be useful here.”
Later he decided to join a fighting unit with three comrades, supported by SC. According to SC’s statement:
Finbar taught others to look, listen, and learn carefully – and valued seeing with one’s own eyes. He moved easily through a complex world, comfortably with different people, competently in difficult situations, and calmly amid chaos.
They continued:
With his character, he defended the coasts of his homeland from pillaging corporations. With his understanding, he fought in the battle for Raqqa and showed compassion to everyone he met in the Rojava Revolution against Daesh and the Turkish regime. With his commitment, he embraced and served the Ukrainian resistance as it is.
Finbar’s comrades in the anti-Shell struggle posted a recording of him singing his rebel song about the campaign to defend County Mayo, which you can listen to here.
Cooper Andrews: ‘there is a world to win and a fight which requires great sacrifice’
Cooper Andrews, aka Harris, became politicised at a young age. He soon became involved in struggles as a Black autonomist, organising against the police murders of Tamir Rice & Tanisha Anderson. Cooper was also involved in anti-fascism, mutual aid organising, and self-defence training.
Cooper believed passionately in self-defence. He joined the US Marines to gain the skills he would need as an internationalist fighter. Then, in March 2022, he joined with other anti-authoritarians in the struggle against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Cooper wrote a letter to his comrades a month before he died in Bakhmut. It said:
In our hands there is a world to win and a fight which requires great sacrifice. For us and everybody else who faces the shadow of fascist aggression, there is only victory or death. Love and struggle.
Before he departed he had conversations about Spain and fascism and history, and he made it clear that he was going to Ukraine because of the humanitarian needs of the people there to his mother.
Willow Andrews, Cooper’s mother, wants to carry on his legacy. She has set up a memorial fund to support the causes he was passionate about. The money will go to several mutual aid projects in Cleveland. You can donate to the fund here.
Dmytro Petrov: Russian anarchist fighter against Putin’s invasion
He participated in the defense of the Bitsa Park in Moskow, in “Food not bombs”, fought against infill development and against building of incinerators, for the rights of workers in the ranks of the Anarchist union MPST and against police brutality.
He participated in the antifascist movement and fought Nazis on the streets of Moscow and other places.
In 2014 Dmytro decided to join and learn from the Rojava revolution. His comrades wrote:
As [a] revolutionary, Dima was internationalist. He fought against the atrocity of oppression everywhere he saw it, borders did not stop him. Besides activities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus he went to Rojava and trained there, took part in the liberation struggle of the Kurdish people.
Dmytro was one of the founders of the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK). BOAK has carried out widespread sabotage operations in opposition to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. One of their focuses has been disabling train lines and other infrastructure inside Russia.
Dmytro realised that it was too dangerous to stay in Russia, and he moved to Kyiv. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he joined the military resistance. He gave interviews where he called on leftists from all over the world to support the struggle of Ukrainian people. Before he died, he was trying to organise an anti-authoritarian fighting unit.
Leshyi always rejected any kind of nationalism, he based his actions solely on anti-authoritarian values and ideals. And his personal qualities immediately made everyone fall in love with him, even those who had nothing to do with anarchism.
They continued:
Today everyone is remembering Dmytro. He is really impossible to forget. But we also encourage you not to forget his legacy. The ideas he believed in. Never give in to the mainstream and always be on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors.
We are here neither to defend any neoliberal policies or any state structures. We are here to defend this society which defends itself against the aggression, and against elimination and enslavement. Are we tired, of course yes! We are exhausted by this year, but still we think that we are obliged to gather all the forces that we have to continue this struggle, and we also call you to combine your forces together to support us.
The deaths of Finbar, Cooper, and Dmytro in Bakhmut are a huge loss for anti-authoritarians everywhere. Their memory and their revolutionary spirit should be treasured by all of us. All three of them were people who fought in many different ways against oppression, for liberation, and in defence of the natural world. Their internationalist spirit shows how strong we can be as revolutionaries, and how our struggles for freedom are intertwined globally.
Their deaths are a devastating blow, but their ideas, dedication, and commitment are a legacy which will inspire many more to continue fighting.
Featured image via Solidarity Collectives (with permission)
Many casualised staff have felt increasingly let down by the University and College Union (UCU) over the last year. Casualised staff – that is, staff on zero-hours, fixed-term insecure contracts – made up 33% of academic staff in 2021/22. In December, general secretary Jo Grady leaked the indefinite strike action plan via Twitter. This alarmed members and gathered support for her alternative plan of scattered days of action throughout Spring.
In January, a winter marking and assessment boycott was called off at the last minute. Then, in February, members heard on a Friday evening that strike action beginning on the following Monday was cancelled.As the Canary reported at the time, many members were left scrambling over the weekend to prepare their classes.
Those that didn’t attend the reinstated classes told me that they couldn’t rearrange childcare, they couldn’t come to classes unprepared because of disabilities, and they couldn’t afford last-minute travel costs. These are the same reasons that staffcouldn’t manage a last-minute pause of strikes.
Bosses at the universities and the union enjoyed two weeks of ‘calm’. Meanwhile, anxious members desperately needed progress on the pay and conditions dispute, but saw none. The issue wasn’t just the chaotic strategy, but the framing of a proposal that offered next to nothing to casualised members as a ‘win’.
Is union membership worth it?
On top of this, UCU membership fees are high. Perhaps that’s fair: a permanent lecturer earning £58,000p.a. might easily afford the £27.75 per month UCU charges. But is a temporary lecturer at the bottom of the same pay bracket in the same boat?
Don’t get me wrong, £40,000 is a high salary, but a temporary lecturer earning that could take home about £2,200 per month for a few months, and then be unemployed again. They may be justifiably bitter about paying the same £27.75 per month as a permanent staff member, especially when it’s paid to a union which has failed to protect them from their impending unemployment.
Further down the payscale, the trade-off looks similarly miserable. A member earning a salary of only £22,000 (before tax) will be paying UCU nearly £20 (£19.91) per month. For contrast,Unite ask for £9.32 from members earning £21,500 (after tax), and £14.95 for members earning more.
Let’s look at one example to see the scale of the problem. The University of Sheffield is imposing 100% pay deductions from 19th June – 7th July. Any staff member who has boycotted marking and assessment work, regardless of the other work they do, will be paid nothing between those dates. A full-time staff member participating in the boycott is likely to lose over £1000.
If UCU’s fund covered all of that lost pay, then they’d run out of money after reimbursing fewer than 1000 staff. There areover 120,000 UCU members in total, andnearly 2000 at Sheffield alone. Not all members will have marking assigned, but if more than 0.01% of UCU’s total members participate, the fund cannot fully support them.
Now, UCU are not offering to cover all lost pay. Members can claim up to £50 per day, or £75 if they earn under £30,000p.a., for up to 20 days of action since November. Staff have already had 15 days of strikes, and could previously claim for 11. As such, they might get nine days of new lost pay reimbursed from the fund. Ultimately, this cap means that more members could receive this partial support, but it would still be a tiny proportion of said members.
Chaotic communications
Throughout March, UCU exhausted members with endless e-ballots (sometimes on decisions that had already been made). Division escalated when it asked members if they supported:
voting on the proposals that have been negotiated in both disputes, and pausing strike action.
Many members wanted to get a vote on the proposals without pausing strike action or abandoning one of the disputes:
This is a terribly worded question, @ucu. I support voting on the proposals, and I oppose pausing the strike. The question is making me choose one of those over the other. pic.twitter.com/nwheyZLUPI
It's slightly difficult to vote when the question is worded so badly. If I vote 'no' does that mean I'm rejecting the offer and want to continue with striking? Or does 'no' mean that I'm happy for the decision to be made without formal consultation of members?
This was the moment myself and my colleagues felt the balance had shifted among casualised members. They moved from broad support of the union, to widespread anger and distrust. Members of colour and disabled members have long been critical of UCU’s lack of support of the members who need a union the most, but in February to March 2023 masses of their colleagues realised that faith in UCU was misguided.
Members were particularly unhappy about celebrations of pension wins, without mention of the pay and conditions dispute:
Great, but how do I pay my rent? I have four contracts and they all end in June, I am not classed as 'real staff' so don't get sick pay or redeployment, let alone any other benefits, and on top of this I'm supposed to get my PhD finished. What win do I get to celebrate?
Amazing victory on zero hours contracts in the @ucu proposal to members:
No more zero hours contracts, unless an institution fancies them for some reason or another. At which point they may or may not consult the union if they feel like it. https://t.co/T3nTs8o0bX
Three months after the chaos in February and promises of “significant progress”, members have yet to see progress on zero-hour contracts, casualisation, workload, pay cuts, or race, gender, and disability pay gaps. The blame lies with university bosses (the Universities and Colleges Employers Association) but members also feel sold out by their union painting small wins on pensions as ‘job done’.
Fortunately, UCU hasn’t given up the dispute yet, and the boycott is having an impact. However, the union needs to promise more than a £750,000 fighting fund if they’re hoping to win back the support of their casualised members.
UCU has a reputation as a union for permanent lecturers. The last few months have done little to shift that perception, and when UCU leadership say ‘we have your backs,’ it’s very difficult for the rest of us to find a reason to believe them.
The author is a UCU member and member of staff at a UK University on a fixed-term contract.
Are the voters responsible for the corruption in the country?
Papua New Guinea’s Health Minister and Member for Wabag, Dr Lino Tom, seems to think so and he is partly right in his public statement on the matter in the PNG Post-Courier last month.
Unlike in the past, when our people were more self-reliant and attended to their own problems or meet every community obligation on their own, the generation today vote in their Members of Parliament to fix their personal problems and not the country.
And that’s a fact.
Our people think that their MPs are automatic teller machines (ATMs), like the ones deployed by the commercial banks that dispatches cash on demand that they have abandoned our honourable and historical self-reliant way of life.
We agree with our Health Minister that MPs spend too much time and resources managing their voters than on projects and programmes in their electorates for public benefit and development of the country.
The office occupied by MPs does not restrict them to electoral duties only, but as legislators they also have a country to run, and their performances are badly affected when their time is taken up by minute matters from their voters.
On the flip side, the MPs have themselves to blame for creating the culture they are dealing with in the contemporary PNG we are living in.
The structural and legislative reforms to the governance and accountability mechanisms in the public service, combined with the funding of key government programmes that they themselves initiated for self-preservation, is fueling this culture of corruption.
Thus, the blame for corruption must be shared by the politicians too because they are in control of so much money that is going into the districts right now.
The root of corruption . . . “The blame for corruption must be shared by the politicians too because they are in control of so much money that is going into the districts right now.” Image: PNG Post-Courier screenshot APR
For instance, the District Development Authority (DDA), the District Service Improvement Programme (DSIP) and the Provincial Service Improvement Programme (PSIP) are all scams that have directly contributed to the unprecedented rise in the expectations and demands from the voters.
Under the DSIP and PSIP alone, K2.4 billion is channeled to the districts every year, controlled by the both the provincial governors and the open electorate members. That is a lot of cash. How else do you expect our people to behave?
Corruption is a very serious challenge confronting PNG at the moment and we agree with our good minister that our people must stop placing these demands on their MPs. Our people must return to our old ways and that is to work hard to enjoy better lives and meet our life goals.
However, to totally rid corruption in the public sector, we also have to abolish all government programmes that legitimise corruption.
In the current situation, the people are colluding with their Members of Parliament to plunder this nation of its hard-earned cash without putting any thing tangible on the ground to generate more money and to grow the economy.
Otherwise, if the MPs really want to retain their multibillion kina DSIP and PSIP and at the same time kill corruption, they have the solution on their hands.
They only have to apply the funds honestly in their electorates to empower our people to become financially independent so that they leave their MPs alone to focus on development and the economy.
That is the way to go and the most honourable way.
This PNG Post-Courier editorial was published under the title “Corruption- who is to blame?” on 24 May 2023. Republished with permission.
When I was growing up in Kiribati, then known as the Gilbert Islands, New Zealand divers came to safely detonate unexploded munitions from World War II.
Decades on from when US Marines fought and won the Battle of Tarawa against Japan, war was still very much a part of everyday life.
Our school bell was a bombshell. We’d find bullet casings.
In fact, my grandmother’s leg was badly injured when she lit a fire on the beach, and an unexploded ordnance went off. There are Japanese bunkers and US machine gun mounts along the Betio shoreline, and bones are still being found — even today.
Stories are told . . . so many people died . . . these things are not forgotten.
That’s why the security and defence pacts being drawn up around the Pacific are worrying much of the region, as the US and Australia partner up to counter China’s growing influence.
You only have to read Australia’s Defence Strategic Review 2023 to see they are preparing for conflict.
The battle is climate change which is impacting their everyday life. The bigger powers will most certainly go through the motions of at least hearing their voices.
— Barbara Dreaver
Secret pact changed landscape
While in the last few years we have seen China put big money into the Pacific, it was primarily about diplomatic weight and ensuring Taiwan wasn’t recognised. But the secret security pact with the Solomon Islands changed the landscape dramatically.
There was a point where it stopped being about just aid and influence — and openly started to become much more serious.
Since then, the escalation has been rapid as the US and Australia have amped up their activities — and other state actors have as well.
In some cases, lobbying and negotiating have been covertly aggressive. Many Pacific countries are concerned about the militarisation of the region — and whether we like it or not, that’s where it’s headed.
Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister Simon Kofe said he understands why his country, which sits between Hawai’i and Australia, is of strategic interest to the superpowers.
Worried about militarisation, he admits they are coming under pressure from all sides — not just China but the West as well.
“In World War II, the war came to the Pacific even though we played no part at all in the conflict, and we became victims of a war that was not of our making,” he said.
Important Pacific doesn’t forget
“So it’s important for the Pacific not to forget that experience now we are seeing things that are happening in this part of the world, and it’s best we are prepared for that situation.”
Academic Dr Anna Powles, a long-time Pacific specialist, said she was very concerned at the situation, which was a “slippery slope” to militarisation.
She said Pacific capitals were being flooded with officials from around the region and from further afield who want to engage.
Pacific priorities are being undermined, and there is a growing disconnect in the region between national interest and the interest of the political elites.
Today in Papua New Guinea, we see first-hand how we are on the cusp of change.
They include big meetings spearheaded by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, another one by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a defence deal that will allow US military access through ports and airports. In exchange, the US is providing an extra US$45 million (NZ$72 million) in funding a raft of initiatives, some of which include battling the effects of climate change.
Equipment boost
The PNG Defence Force is also getting an equipment boost, and there’s a focus on combatting law and order issues — which domestically is a big challenge — and protecting communities, particularly women, from violence.
There is much in these initiatives that the PNG government and the people here will find attractive. It may well be the balance between PNG’s national interest and US ambitions is met — it will be interesting to see if other Pacific leaders agree.
Because some Pacific leaders are happy to be courted and enjoy being at the centre of global attention (and we know who you are), others are determined to do the best for their people. The fight for them is not geopolitical, and it’s on the land they live on.
The battle is climate change which is impacting their everyday life. The bigger powers will most certainly go through the motions of at least hearing their voices.
What that will translate to remains to be seen.
Barbara Dreaver is TV1’s Pacific correspondent and is in Papua New Guinea with the New Zealand delegation. Republished with permission.
Stan Grant, a well-known Aboriginal journalist and soon-to-be former host of Q+A, has made a stand against racist abuse, saying he is “stepping away” from the media industry. Grant said he has paid a heavy price for being a journalist and has been a media target for racism.
As authors of a recent Media Diversity Australia report investigating online abuse and safety of diverse journalists, we’re not surprised.
Grant was one the few diverse journalists employed in the Australian media industry. Yet his story of relentless racial abuse is one shared by other journalists who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, culturally and racially marginalised, LGBTQIA+ and/or living with disability.
I want no part of it. I want to find a place of grace far from the stench of the media. I want to go where I am not reminded of the social media sewer.
ABC management has finally condemned the racist abuse directed at Stan Grant and apologised to him, but it has come far too late.
ABC staff have taken matters into their own hands, walking out in support of Grant.
Since the King’s coronation, I have seen people in the media lie and distort my words. They have tried to depict me as hate filled. They have accused me of maligning Australia.
When Elizabeth II died, many Indigenous journalists and newsreaders were targeted for not sharing the same grief many non-Indigenous people expressed. Narelda Jacobs was one of many Aboriginal journalists who received abuse across social media and was also targeted by mainstream media.
Grant called the ABC’s lack of support an “institutional failure”, saying:
I am writing this because no-one at the ABC — whose producers invited me onto their coronation coverage as a guest — has uttered one word of public support.
In response to Grant’s column, a statement was issued from the ABC’s Director News, Justin Stevens, conceding Grant has, over many months, been subject to grotesque racist abuse, including threats to his safety.
The ABC’s Bonner Committee has recommended a full review into the ABC’s responses to racism affecting staff and how they can better support their staff.
What our research found Our report, Online Safety of Diverse Journalists, commissioned by Media Diversity Australia and released this month, focused on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, culturally and racially marginalised, LGBTQIA+ and/or people living with disability.
This new research followed a 2022 Media Diversity Australia report, Who Gets to Tell Australian Stories 2.0, which detailed significant under-representation of diverse journalists in the industry, particularly Indigenous people and those from culturally and racially marginalised groups.
Our new report focused more on online safety and the high cost for diverse journalists who are often not supported or protected in the workplace. It found 85 percent of participants had experienced either personal or professional abuse online.
As one participant said:
It’s so ingrained within all parts of society, all the pillars within society, all professions, which includes the media, and I think women, particularly women of colour and from Indigenous backgrounds, they receive the most horrific and vile abuse.
The report has not yet gained interest from the Australian media other than Fourth Estate which expressed alarm at the findings.
One of the key findings from this research was that diverse journalists often accepted that online harassment and abuse from the public was “just part of the job”. Many reported they were working in what they considered “hostile work environments”.
One participant expressed:
As soon as you say you are a journalist, the response is: you are asking for it.
It was concerning to find the normalisation of online harassment and abuse, and many diverse journalists were reluctant to report their experiences for fear of being considered a problem. Many felt if they raised the issue it would impact any chance of career progression.
A participant commented:
I am cautious revealing my struggles because I don’t want people to think I can’t handle my job.
Aboriginal people learn to tough it out. That’s the price of survival.
Organisations have a duty of care to their employees. Online harassment and abuse of diverse journalists is a work health and safety issue and needs to be urgently treated as such.
The impact and cost to diverse journalists is high, and many make the same choice as Grant — to leave the industry to protect themselves and their health. Many spoke about how harassment and abuse was not only online; 39 percent reported the abuse moved offline.
The racist attacks on Stan Grant are sickening and sad. All of us in the media must play our part in helping quell the stench of the sewer. I am so sorry Stan. @walkleyshttps://t.co/TfUANxk3Ny
When it comes to thinking about who gets to tell Australian stories or who gets to have a career as a journalist free of harassment and abuse, the Media Diversity Australia report evidences the hostility of the media industry for those who are not white, able bodied, and/or cis-gender and/or heterosexual.
The report also shows, as Grant points out, that online harassment and abuse actively and incessantly targets Indigenous journalists. Although many of the participants stated they were unofficially warned by their workplace to expect online violence, they said they received little support to protect and defend them from racial harassment and abuse.
I started to see exactly what I’d been warned about (…) But there was no mechanism to flag that to say that you had received a racist email to send it somewhere where that person could be put on a watch list or whatever it is, you know, where they’re going to become a serial offender.
Grant echoes the experiences of many participants when he says:
Barely a week goes by when I am not racially targeted.
The research report also reveals that workplace and online harassment in media industry involves fairly predictable culprits. As one participant highlighted, they come from a similar demographic — white men.
Grant’s resignation is a huge loss to Australian journalism. He and other diverse journalists nationally are crying out for action on the part of media bodies and organisations.
There are many other diverse journalists who have left the profession prior to Grant’s departure. One of our interviewees contacted us to say:
If a serious and well respected journalist feels the best thing to do is leave and has had no support from work — what does that mean for the rest of us?
Let’s hope the media industry is finally paying attention.
I never intended to be a single mum. Indeed, when I turned 38 and had notched up 10 years without a partner, I investigated having a baby by myself and very quickly decided not to. It wasn’t the medical intervention or cost that put me off, it was the knowledge that trying to raise a child alone would be horrendously difficult and expensive and would almost certainly mean giving up my career for less demanding work that I could fit around being a full time, solo mum. I also wasn’t at all sure I was up to meeting the emotional needs of a child on my own. So no: not for me, I reluctantly decided.
As it turned out I met a wonderful man just after my 39th birthday and, a couple of years later, we were married with a beautiful baby girl. My late life miracle was just that for six years or so – a miracle of unexpected joy and family life. And then my husband began to get very sick.
He’d warned me when we met. He was a “bad bet”, he said, having barely survived childhood cancer and the treatment that, back in the 1980s, was almost as brutal as the disease. Massive doses of radiation had left him with significant damage to his heart valves, vascular system and other key organs. He survived on a cocktail of medication. His health was never good in all the time we were together, but secondary cancer was defeated while I was pregnant, and a quadruple bypass and heart valve replacement were successful when our daughter was just six months old. We had a good half decade after that.
But in early 2020, during Melbourne’s first pandemic lock down, my beloved entered a spiral of ill health that saw him spend at least 70 % of his time in hospital over the next three years – a hospital we were unable to visit due to the necessary protocols around Covid-19. His multiple, complex health problems began to cascade, and he lost a foot, then a lower leg, to amputation, and then the use of his other leg due to a blood clot which caused massive nerve damage.
He fought on, in a cycle of months spent in hospital and a couple of weeks at home before every next challenge. In the middle of a once in a century pandemic, his immune system struggled with the slightest infection. Last July his heart began to fail again and only experimental surgery pulled him through.
Finally, after five unexpected months at home with us over summer, he developed sepsis from a relatively innocuous skin infection and, despite fighting valiantly again to stay with us, he died of a massive brain haemorrhage in early February this year.
It was four days before his 51st birthday.
Our daughter is nine years old.
Being a single mother to a young child is, as I had suspected all those years ago, incredibly challenging. It crept up on me over the years my husband was ill and absent for weeks and months at a time, so it’s not a sudden shock to not have him here to help. Nor is it “hard” because I have so much love and gratitude for our daughter. But it’s very, very difficult.
A nine year old child can’t be left alone for a moment, obviously. I can’t pop out to the shops if I’m out of milk. I can’t make casual plans outside school hours. I can’t stay back at work unexpectedly if needed. Interstate, overnight work travel has become virtually impossible.
There’s no-one else to read stories at bedtime or help with homework or take her to swimming lessons or weekend activities.
Our income has been cut in half but the mortgage has not, so there’s no money for cleaners or regular babysitters. I have no time for anything other than work, parenting and domestic labour. I am constantly exhausted and emotionally drained. I’m worried about money and every interest rate rise requires a new calculation of what needs to be cut from our already much changed lives. And there’s no-one to share the emotional load – no-one who loves her as I do, who shoulders half the worries or shares the many joys and milestones.
And, of course, we are grieving. We will always be grieving.
Yet I’m lucky. I have a well paid job, with heaps of flexibility. I work long hours but I can do a lot of them after my daughter goes to bed or while she’s at weekend or after school activities (I’m pretending to watch every basketball shot while secretly writing this essay in the notes function on my phone). I can work from home a couple of days so she’s not in before- and after-school care for up to 20 hours a week. I can do all this because I established a career before I became a mum.
Believe me, I count my blessings.
Because most single mums aren’t so lucky. A few become sole parents by choice, but more often it’s through abandonment or bereavement. Most have their kids at a much younger age than I did, so they haven’t established a career they have some control over, with an above-average salary: they’re juggling casual shifts at minimum wage jobs that they must fit around their kids’ needs. Most are living in private rental accommodation with ever-escalating costs and no security. It’s hard enough to be a sole parent without struggling in grinding poverty.
So the Albanese Government’s decision this week to restore Parenting Payment Single to sole parents until their youngest child turns 14 was the element of this budget that made me weep with relief.
I’m not on the payment myself – I wouldn’t still have a mortgaged home if I were – but for around 57,000 sole parents, 52,000 of whom are women, and 110,000 kids whose households will be moved off JobSeeker, the increase of over $175 a fortnight is life-changing and long overdue.
It largely reverses a policy enacted by John Howard in 2006 as part of his disastrous Welfare to Work programme. As part of this punitive approach to social security, and at the same time as increasing family tax benefit for households with a stay-at-home-mum, Howard decreed that single parents would be “incentivised” to look for paid work when their youngest child turned 6, and pushed onto the much lower unemployment benefit and when that child turned 8. In typical Howard style, he masked the impact of this cruel and ideological policy by “grandfathering” the payment for anyone already in receipt of the PPS. It was nakedly ideological: if you “choose” to have a baby without a man, from now on you’ll be punished.
It was perhaps the greatest mistake and betrayal of women by the Gillard Government when, in pursuit of a fabled budget surplus, it ended the grandfathering of the PPS changes and pushed tens of thousands of single parent families into abject poverty overnight – infamously, on the same day she gave her lauded misogyny speech to the Parliament.
Then-cabinet minister Anthony Albanese was rumoured to be so incensed by this decision that he considered quitting the front bench. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that now-Prime Minister Albanese, famously raised by a single mother on sickness benefits, has moved in his first full budget to fix that mistake.
It’s undoubtedly the centrepiece of what is arguably the most women- friendly budget in Australian history.
Single parenting just got a little bit easier for those on income support payments. Picture: By Jelena Stanojkovic
As well as an increase in their fortnightly income support payments, single parents moving off JobSeeker and onto the PPS will be able to earn an extra $569.10 per fortnight, plus an extra $24.60 per additional child, before their payment stops.
Alongside this decision is the move to scrap the punitive ParentsNext program that forced the mothers of pre-school children to engage in meaningless activities to demonstrate that they “deserved” income support. Good riddance to such a nasty, ineffective program.
All these measures will make a material difference to the lives of Australian women – especially single mums. That’s not to say that life as a sole parent on income support will become easy: the PPS itself is still a payment below any measure of the poverty line. But combined with increased rent assistance, cheaper childcare, the removal of some punitive welfare measures and a significant lift in the amount they can earn before losing benefits – coupled with better paid job prospects in the care economy – this is a budget that has deliberately stopped punishing single mothers and their kids, and restored meaningful support to help them build better futures.
All in all, the outcome of the 2023 budget means it’s just possible than even single mums without the great privileges I have will also, finally, be able to start to count their blessings.
Emma with her late husband, David. Picture: Supplied
The last fortnight has seen a series of brutal, deliberately provocative Israeli attacks on Palestinian worshippers at Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Needless to say, Israel had no business interfering in Muslim worship at Al Aqsa, the third holiest shrine for Muslims after Mecca and Medina, and an area which is not under their authority or control.
Despite this, Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa have intensified in recent years as the apartheid state strives to undermine all aspects of Palestinian life in Jerusalem. It is applying ethnic cleansing in slow motion.
Inevitably missile attacks on Israel from Gaza and Southern Lebanon followed and Israel has reveled in once again trying to portray itself to the world as the victim.
There is an excellent 10-minute video in which former Palestinian spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi more than held her own against a hostile BBC interviewer here.
WATCH | A masterclass by @DrHananAshrawi illuminating the everyday violence & aggression Palestinians endure at the hands of Israel’s occupation, the inevitable local resistance to it & Israel’s ongoing impunity while also fending off @BBCWorld‘s spurious line of questioning. pic.twitter.com/eTpvXV7QbI
There is also an excellent podcast produced by Al Jazeera which backgrounds the increase in violence in the Middle East.
Inside Story: What triggered the spike in violence? Video: Al Jazeera
Nour Odeh – Political analyst and former spokeswoman for the Palestinian National Authority.
Uri Dromi – Founder and president of the Jerusalem Press Club and a former spokesman for the Israel government.
Francesca Albanese – United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Further background on the politics around Al Aqsa is covered in this Al Jazeera podcast.
I strongly condemn Israel’s excessive use of force against Palestinian Muslims praying at #AlAqsaMosque during Ramadan, & its breaches of the #StatusQuo. This recklessness risks bringing further devastation to both sides of the Green Line.
Full statement: https://t.co/ys58j0bIzthttps://t.co/mWfJiHSVaT
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) April 6, 2023
Initially reporting here in New Zealand was reasonable and clearly identified Israel as the brutal racist aggressors attacking Palestinian civilians at worship. However, within a couple of days media reporting deteriorated dramatically with the “normal” appalling reporting taking over — painting Palestinians as terrorists and Israel as simply enforcing “law and order”.
At the heart of appalling reporting for a long time has been the BBC which slavishly and consistently screws the scrum in Israel’s favour. The BBC does not report on the Middle East – it propagandises for Israel.
Journalist Jonathan Cook describes how the BBC coverage is enabling Israeli violence and UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, called out the BBC’s awful reporting in a tweet.
Renewed violence against Palestinian worshippers at #AlAqsaMosque on yet another Ramadan turned into suffering,must be condemned,investigated & accounted for.
Misleading media coverage contributes to enabling Israel’s unchecked occupation & must also be condemned/accounted for https://t.co/JI6YzNgCju
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) April 5, 2023
It’s not just the BBC of course. For example The New York Times has been called out for deliberately distorting the news to blame Palestinians for Al Aqsa mosque crisis.
It’s not reporting — it’s propaganda!
Why is BBC important for Aotearoa New Zealand? Unfortunately, here in Aotearoa New Zealand our media frequently and uncritically uses BBC reports to inform New Zealanders on the Middle East.
Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand, our state broadcasters, are the worst offenders.
For example here are two BBC stories carried by RNZ this past week here and here. They cover the deaths of three Jewish women in a terrorist attack in the occupied West Bank.
The media should report such killings but there is no context given for the illegal Jewish-only settlements at the heart in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s military occupation across all Palestine, the daily ritual humiliation and debasement of Palestinians or its racist apartheid policies towards Palestinians — or as Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem describes it “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid”.
Neither are there Palestinian voices in the above reports — they are typically absent from most Middle East reporting, or at best muted, compared to extensive quoting from racist Israeli leaders.
The BBC is happy to report the “what?” but not the “why?”
Needless to say neither Radio New Zealand, nor TVNZ, has provided any such sympathetic coverage for the many dozens of Palestinians killed by Israel this year — including at least 16 Palestinian children. To the BBC, RNZ and TVNZ, murdered Palestinian children are simply statistics.
RNZ and TVNZ say they cannot ensure to cover all the complexities of the Middle East in every story and that people get a balanced view over time from their regular reporting.
This is not true. Their reliance on so much systematically-biased BBC reporting, and other sources which are often not much better, tells a different story.
For example, references to Israel as an apartheid state — something attested to by every credible human rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — are always absent from any RNZ or TVNZ reporting and yet this is critical to help people understand what is going on in Palestine.
Neither are there significant references to international law or United Nations resolutions — the tools which provide for a Middle East peace based on justice — the only peace possible.
Unlike their reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, RNZ and TVNZ reporting on the Middle East leaves people confused and ready to blame both sides equally for the murder and mayhem unleashed by Israel on Palestinians and Palestinian resistance to the Israeli military occupation and all that entails.
John Minto is a political activist and commentator, and spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article is republished from the PSNA newsletter with the author’s permission.
“Divide and Dominate” . . . how Israel’s apartheid policies and repression impact on Palestinians. Image: Visualising Palestine
The world is filled with adorable and adoptable bunnies who are looking to give you love year-round. Unfortunately, bunny rescues and shelters see an increase in surrendered bunnies who were adopted for some springtime fun, only to be returned after the season is over. Bunnies are also the most exploited animal species in the world: they are used in food and clothing production, tested on, overbred, and commodified. Even more frightening, an estimated 8 million rabbits are killed for meat annually. Animal advocate and professional photographer Tara Baxter co-founded the Rabbit Advocacy Network (RAN) with members of rescue organization SaveABunny to better fight the exploitation of rabbits and, in 2015, she was instrumental in pressuring Whole Foods Market to stop selling rabbit meat in its stores. Baxter—who lives with four rescued rabbits from SaveABunny—believes they make perfect companions for animal advocates. Indeed, bunnies are social and smart, as well as devoted companions who crave affection and activity. Here are six fun facts about these furry creatures you’ll want to know.
Tara Baxter
1 They’re not just a cute face.
Bunnies are smart and are easily litter box trained. They are also fastidiously clean, both in their surroundings and their own fur. They groom themselves, and if you ask any person who lives with and loves bunnies, they would go on and on about the sweet smell of their rabbit’s fur—especially that warm fluffy bit on their necks. Bunnies like to dig and chew, so bunny-proofing their surroundings is recommended. You can usually protect your own stuff by giving the bunny willow baskets or cardboard tunnels to munch on.
Tara Baxter
2They love making friends.
Bunnies can get along with cats and dogs, but a slow and supervised introduction is recommended. Rabbits enjoy the company of other bunnies, but, just like us, they prefer to choose their own companions. Most rabbit rescues have bunny match-making services to help your bunny find a friend. When adopting, consider taking home a pair, as this will save you the trouble of finding a friend for your bunny down the line. They are devoted to you, their human friend, just as they are devoted to their bunny companion.
Tara Baxter
3They snuggle on their own terms.
Because bunnies are prey animals, they typically do not like to be picked up or held. Once all four of their feet leave the ground, they panic and respond as if they are being taken by a predator, such as a hawk. They can kick and bite, and humans usually respond to this by dropping them. Their bones are especially fragile and they are easily hurt. They do love to snuggle, but on their own terms. Bunnies also prefer a quiet environment free of exuberant children and loud adults.
Tara Baxter
4They love being spoiled.
Spaying and neutering, yearly vet exams, fresh greens and hay, nail trims, administering medicine, combing their fur, litter box maintenance … this all adds up. Bunnies love to be spoiled and require your commitment and responsibility for around a decade.
Tara Baxter
5 They prefer to roam free.
How many times have you heard the myth that bunnies are mean and they bite you? This may be true of bunnies left to languish in a cage—the all-too-common, yet incredibly cruel housing choice for most pet rabbits. You would be grumpy, too, if you spent your life in a space the size of an airplane seat. This is what it’s like for bunnies in cages and hutches. On the contrary, they thrive as free-roaming indoor house pets, just as cats and dogs do. Some people think that bunnies enjoy life outdoors, but domestic bunnies are not the same as wild rabbits. There are too many dangerous factors to house a bunny outside safely. They also can’t survive for very long on their own in the wild, so “setting them free” usually means a death sentence.
Tara Baxter
6They are loyal companions.
Like most prey animals, rabbits need to establish trust in order to approach and befriend you. When they do, they are very loyal companions. They enjoy social interactions with people. Ask anyone who shares their lives with bunnies and they will tell you that each rabbit has a very distinct personality. They can be shy, nervous, outgoing, playful, ornery, inquisitive, hilarious, and opinionated. They love toys and mental stimulation. And they love to have their heads pet. This mimics the affection bunnies show each other and they can sit and be pet for hours. They are crepuscular, which means they are most active in the mornings and evenings, making them a great companion for working adults. Come 8pm, your bunny is usually ready to party with you.
This post was originally published on VegNews.com.
The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel laureate and tireless campaigner against South African apartheid, once observed: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
For decades, the BBC’s editorial policy in reporting on Israel and Palestine has consistently chosen the side of the oppressor — and all too often, not even by adopting the impartiality the corporation claims as the bedrock of its journalism.
Instead, the British state broadcaster regularly chooses language and terminology whose effect is to deceive its audience. And it compounds such journalistic malpractice by omitting vital pieces of context when that extra information would present Israel in a bad light.
BBC bias — which entails knee-jerk echoing of the British establishment’s support for Israel as a highly militarised ally projecting Western interests into the oil-rich Middle East – was starkly on show once again this week as the broadcaster reported on the violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Social media was full of videos showing heavily armed Israeli police storming the mosque complex during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Police could be seen pushing peaceful Muslim worshippers, including elderly men, off their prayer mats and forcing them to leave the site. In other scenes, police were filmed beating worshippers inside a darkened Al-Aqsa, while women could be heard screaming in protest.
What is wrong with the British state broadcaster’s approach — and much of the rest of the Western media’s — is distilled in one short BBC headline: “Clashes erupt at contested holy site.”
Into a sentence of just six words, the BBC manages to cram three bogusly “neutral” words, whose function is not to illuminate or even to report, but to trick the audience, as Tutu warned, into siding with the oppressor.
Furious backlash Though video of the beatings was later included on the BBC’s website and the headline changed after a furious online backlash, none of the sense of unprovoked, brutal Israeli state violence, or its malevolent rationale, was captured by the BBC’s reporting.
To call al-Aqsa a ‘contested holy site’, as the BBC does, is simply to repeat a propaganda talking point from Israel, the oppressor state, and dress it up as neutral reporting
The “clashes” at al-Aqsa, in the BBC’s telling, presume a violent encounter between two groups: Palestinians, described by Israel and echoed by the BBC as “agitators”, on one side; and Israeli forces of law and order on the other.
That is the context, according to the BBC, for why unarmed Palestinians at worship need to be beaten. And that message is reinforced by the broadcaster’s description of the seizure of hundreds of Palestinians at worship as “arrests” — as though an unwelcome, occupying, belligerent security force present on another people’s land is neutrally and equitably upholding the law.
“Erupt” continues the theme. It suggests the “clashes” are a natural force, like an earthquake or volcano, over which Israeli police presumably have little, if any, control. They must simply deal with the eruption to bring it to an end.
And the reference to the “contested” holy site of Al-Aqsa provides a spurious context legitimising Israeli state violence: police need to be at Al-Aqsa because their job is to restore calm by keeping the two sides “contesting” the site from harming each other or damaging the holy site itself.
The BBC buttresses this idea by uncritically citing an Israeli police statement accusing Palestinians of being at Al-Aqsa to “disrupt public order and desecrate the mosque”.
Palestinians are thus accused of desecrating their own holy site simply by worshipping there — rather than the desecration committed by Israeli police in storming al-Aqsa and violently disrupting worship.
The History of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Video: Middle East Eye
Israeli provocateurs The BBC’s framing should be obviously preposterous to any rookie journalist in Jerusalem. It assumes that Israeli police are arbiters or mediators at Al-Aqsa, dispassionately enforcing law and order at a Muslim place of worship, rather than the truth: that for decades, the job of Israeli police has been to act as provocateurs, dispatched by a self-declared Jewish state, to undermine the long-established status quo of Muslim control over Al-Aqsa.
Events were repeated for a second night this week when police again raided Al-Aqsa, firing rubber bullets and tear gas as thousands of Palestinians were at prayer. US statements calling for “calm” and “de-escalation” adopted the same bogus evenhandedness as the BBC.
The mosque site is not “contested”, except in the imagination of Jewish religious extremists, some of them in the Israeli government, and the most craven kind of journalists.
True, there are believed to be the remains of two long-destroyed Jewish temples somewhere underneath the raised mount where al-Aqsa is built. According to Jewish religious tradition, the Western Wall — credited with being a retaining wall for one of the disappeared temples – is a place of worship for Jews.
But under that same Jewish rabbinical tradition, the plaza where Al-Aqsa is sited is strictly off-limits to Jews. The idea of Al-Aqsa complex as being “contested” is purely an invention of the Israeli state — now backed by a few extremist settler rabbis — that exploits this supposed “dispute” as the pretext to assert Jewish sovereignty over a critically important piece of occupied Palestinian territory.
Israel’s goal — not Judaism’s — is to strip Palestinians of their most cherished national symbol, the foundation of their religious and emotional attachment to the land of their ancestors, and transfer that symbol to a state claiming to exclusively represent the Jewish people.
To call Al-Aqsa a “contested holy site”, as the BBC does, is simply to repeat a propaganda talking point from Israel, the oppressor state, and dress it up as neutral reporting.
‘Equal rights’ at Al-Aqsa The reality is that there would have been no “clashes”, no “eruption” and no “contest” had Israeli police not chosen to storm Al-Aqsa while Palestinians were worshipping there during the holiest time of the year.
This is not a ‘clash’. It is not a ‘conflict’. Those supposedly ‘neutral’ terms conceal what is really happening: apartheid and ethnic cleansing
There would have been no “clashes” were Israeli police not aggressively enforcing a permanent occupation of Palestinian land in Jerusalem, which has encroached ever more firmly on Muslim access to, and control over, the mosque complex.
There would have been no “clashes” were Israeli police not taking orders from the latest – and most extreme – of a series of police ministers, Itamar Ben Gvir, who does not even bother to hide his view that Al-Aqsa must be under absolute Jewish sovereignty.
There would have been no “clashes” had Israeli police not been actively assisting Jewish religious settlers and bigots to create facts on the ground over many years — facts to bolster an evolving Israeli political agenda that seeks “equal rights” at Al-Aqsa for Jewish extremists, modelled on a similar takeover by settlers of the historic Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
And there would have been no “clashes” if Palestinians were not fully aware that, over many years, a tiny, fringe Jewish settler movement plotting to blow up Al-Aqsa Mosque to build a Third Temple in its place has steadily grown, flourishing under the sponsorship of Israeli politicians and ever more sympathetic Israeli media coverage.
Cover story for violence Along with the Israeli army, the paramilitary Israeli police are the main vehicle for the violent subjugation of Palestinians, as the Israeli state and its settler emissaries dispossess Palestinians, driving them into ever smaller enclaves.
This is not a “clash”. It is not a “conflict”. Those supposedly “neutral” terms conceal what is really happening: apartheid andethnic cleansing.
Just as there is a consistent, discernible pattern to Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, there is a parallel, discernible pattern in the Western media’s misleading reporting on Israel and Palestine.
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are being systematically dispossessed by Israel of their homes and farmlands so they can be herded into overcrowded, resource-starved cities.
Palestinians in Gaza have been dispossessed of their access to the outside world, and even to other Palestinians, by an Israeli siege that encages them in an overcrowded, resourced-starved coastal enclave.
And in the Old City of Jerusalem, Palestinians are being progressively dispossessed by Israel of access to, and control over, their central religious resource: Al-Aqsa Mosque. Their strongest source of religious and emotional attachment to Jerusalem is being actively stolen from them.
To describe as “clashes” any of these violent state processes — carefully calibrated by Israel so they can be rationalised to outsiders as a “security response” — is to commit the very journalistic sin Tutu warned of. In fact, it is not just to side with the oppressor, but to intensify the oppression; to help provide the cover story for it.
That point was made this week by Francesca Albanese, the UN expert on Israel’s occupation. She noted in a tweet about the BBC’s reporting of the Al-Aqsa violence: “Misleading media coverage contributes to enabling Israel’s unchecked occupation & must also be condemned/accounted for.”
Bad journalism There can be reasons for bad journalism. Reporters are human and make mistakes, and they can use language unthinkingly, especially when they are under pressure or events are unexpected.
It is an editorial choice that keeps the BBC skewing its reporting in the same direction: making Israel look like a judicious actor pursuing lawful, rational goals
But that is not the problem faced by those covering Israel and Palestine. Events can be fast-moving, but they are rarely new or unpredictable. The reporter’s task should be to explain and clarify the changing forms of the same, endlessly repeating central story: of Israel’s ongoing dispossession and oppression of Palestinians, and of Palestinian resistance.
The challenge is to make sense of Israel’s variations on a theme, whether it is dispossessing Palestinians through illegal settlement-building and expansion; army-backed settler attacks; building walls and cages for Palestinians; arbitrary arrests and night raids; the murder of Palestinians, including children and prominent figures; house demolitions; resource theft; humiliation; fostering a sense of hopelessness; or desecrating holy sites.
No one, least of all BBC reporters, should have been taken by surprise by this week’s events at Al-Aqsa.
The Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, when Al-Aqsa is at the heart of Islamic observance for Palestinians, coincided this year with the Jewish Passover holiday, as it did last year.
Passover is when Jewish religious extremists hope to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque complex to make animal sacrifices, recreating some imagined golden age in Judaism. Those extremists tried again this year, as they do every year — except this year, they had a police minister in Ben Gvir, leader of the fascist Jewish Power party, who is privately sympathetic to their cause.
Violent settler and army attacks on Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank, especially during the autumn olive harvest, are a staple of news reporting from the region, as is the intermittent bombing of Gaza or snipers shooting Palestinians protesting their mass incarceration by Israel.
It is an endless series of repetitions that the BBC has had decades to make sense of and find better ways to report.
It is not journalistic error or failure that is the problem. It is an editorial choice that keeps the British state broadcaster skewing its reporting in the same direction: making Israel look like a judicious actor pursuing lawful, rational goals, while Palestinian resistance is presented as tantrum-like behaviour, driven by uncontrollable, unintelligible urges that reflect hostility towards Jews rather than towards an oppressor Israeli state.
Tail of a mouse Archbishop Tutu expanded on his point about siding with the oppressor. He added: “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
This week, a conversation between Ben Gvir, the far-right, virulently anti-Arab police minister, and his police chief, Kobi Shabtai, was leaked to Israel’s Channel 12 News. Shabtai reportedly told Ben Gvir about his theory of the “Arab mind”, noting: “They murder each other. It’s in their nature. That’s the mentality of the Arabs.”
This conclusion — convenient for a police force that has abjectly failed to solve crimes within Palestinian communities — implies that the Arab mind is so deranged, so bloodthirsty, that brutal repression of the kind seen at Al-Aqsa is all police can do to keep a bare minimum of control.
Ben Gvir, meanwhile, believes a new “national guard” — a private militia he was recently promised by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — can help him to crush Palestinian resistance. Settler street thugs, his political allies, will finally be able to put on uniforms and have official licence for their anti-Arab violence.
This is the real context — the one that cannot be acknowledged by the BBC or other Western outlets — for the police storming of Al-Aqsa complex this week. It is the same context underpinning settlement expansion, night raids, checkpoints, the siege of Gaza, the murder of Palestinian journalists, and much, much more.
Jewish supremacism undergirds every Israeli state action towards Palestinians, tacitly approved by Western states and their media in the service of advancing Western colonialism in the oil-rich Middle East.
The BBC’s coverage this week, as in previous months and years, was not neutral, or even accurate. It was, as Tutu warned, a confidence trick — one meant to lull audiences into accepting Israeli violence as always justified, and Palestinian resistance as always abhorrent.
Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net. This article was first published at Middle East Eye and is republished with the permission of the author.
Corporate diversity and inclusion have become more about profits than about recognising the rights of women and minorities, argues ousted Te Whatu Ora chair Rob Campbell.
COMMENTARY:By Rob Campbell
Just as we are making some progress on diversity and inclusion policies in business governance and management my perverse mind is starting to have doubts.
Initially around gender diversity I was an enthusiastic camp follower. It seemed a relevant part of progressive social change.
As Te Whatu Ora chair, I was an advocate and supporter of a much stronger role for Māori in health governance and management. I was a strong promoter of inclusion in all my roles such as at Summerset, Tourism Holdings and Sky City.
I was recognised for this when awarded Chair of the Year a few years back, and the Beacon Award from the Shareholders’ Association at about the same time.
I think that we have made progress at business board and senior management level — by no means complete but barriers have been reduced and seats filled more appropriately.
I confess that even while I and many others were advocating and implementing this, my doubts crept in as the narrative morphed from one primarily about rights into one more based on demonstrated benefits, for example, to profitability.
Then the prize-giving started, the “champions” preened, and one could not help but wonder what interests were really being served. It really was not all that difficult or radical in its impact as after all — the replacements were from the same class and education and non-cis gender characteristics as the old.
Long overdue
It is a good thing rather than bad of course, long overdue and still far from complete.
But the old hierarchies and principles of business control, practice and ownership have not been that much affected. We have more women in influential roles but the roles and expectations of those in the roles have not changed very much. Higher gender representation is a step on the way to gender equity in the workplace but not a final goal.
My perception is that ethnic diversity is facing an even harder road. There has been some progress but it seems that neither the will nor the availability of “suitable” candidates is as strong as it is on gender.
Of course this tells us something — our perception about what is “suitable” is limited and excludes all but a few from non-Pākehā communities. It is not that such communities do not have highly capable leaders but that the capability does not readily match the ways business expects its governance and management to be.
You could be kind and call this a cultural difference. Similar issues may hold back business governance diversity in terms of non-cis gender differences and neuro differences. Maybe what business wants is not real and far reaching diversity but “acceptable or non-disruptive” diversity.
Welcome to the boardroom and the executive floor on the terms that have always prevailed.
So this makes me think about “inclusion” too. There is an increasing range of inclusion programmes, training and schemes. My inclination is to welcome and support these and, as with gender, I have seen and celebrated individuals step up within such processes and succeed.
Cue more prizes, awards and media releases.
Common theme
But I see a common theme as we progress. Business is making pathways some for people from other cultures to become acceptable or suitable — on the terms of business. Colonialism has always done this politically and we can see this commercially as well.
These are adaptable social systems well capable of changing appearance without changing substance.
Companies co-opting or paying mere lip service to diversity and inclusion? It’s almost universal.
I admire the people who take these opportunities. They often have to change a lot, to take on more than their peers at work, to model and represent. But business inclusion is inclusion into the world of business not business changing to match another culture, other than quite superficially.
I wonder if these processes are not more akin to “assimilation” than genuine diversity and inclusion. That is, always on the terms of the boss. Welcome to our club, on our terms. This assumes superiority of culture.
Just like assimilation sought to obscure and diminish the outside, the minority, the different in order to seem to include. Ultimately assimilation was seen for the destructive force in social policy that it was — a steamroller to flatten diversity not to encourage it.
Like assimilation, I don’t think, now that my thoughts have run to this point, that our “D&I” policies, appointments and programmes, will really be much of a force for change.
That does not make them bad, but lets not pretend they are more than they are. The same people still mainly fill the same roles according to the same rules, doing the same things, as they did before.
I welcome anyone who can convince me otherwise. I don’t like being the grumpy, cynical old man.
Rob Campbell is chancellor of AUT University and chairs NZ Rural Land Co and renewable energy centre Ara Ake. He is a former chair of health agency Te Whatu Ora, the Environmental Protection Authority, SkyCity Casino, Tourism Holdings, WEL Networks and Summerset. He trained as an economist and originally worked as a unionist before eventually becoming a professional director. This article was first published by Newsroom and is republished with the author’s permission.
Last week the third largest party in the Turkish parliament, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), announced that it would run in the elections on 14 May under the umbrella of a new party, the Green Left Party (YSP).
They are up against the fascisticPeople’s Alliance – led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which is allied with the extreme right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), amongst others. Erdoğan – in office since 2002, and president since 2014 – is the People’s Alliance’s presidential candidate. He called a referendum in 2017, in a successful move to massively increase his presidential powers, and has been widely criticised as a dictatorial, authoritarian ruler.
Erdoğan’s biggest rival is the Nation Alliance. This is a six-party bloc which includes the Republican People’s Party (CHP). The CHP is Turkey’s second-largest electoral party. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu of the CHP will be the Nation Alliance’s presidential candidate.
There is every likelihood that Erdoğan could lose substantially in the elections. Turkey is in the midst of a massive recession. Additionally, many people in Turkey blame Erdoğan for not taking more steps to help those affected by this year’s earthquake. In fact, the media has linked Erdoğan and his cronies to corruption in the construction industry that compromised building safety.
What makes the Green Left Party different?
The YSP isn’t your average parliamentary party. It’s part of a movement that wants to overcome the nation-state itself. The party seeks to lay the groundwork to decentralise state power in Turkey. Further to this, they want to enable local communities to build structures of radical democracy.
The new party is just the latest electoral manifestation of the radical ideology of the Kurdish Freedom Movement. The HDP is by no means the first political party the Turkish state has criminalised, and the practice of refounding institutions under a new name to avoid repression has a long history.
The HDP is running under the YSP’s ticket out of necessity. The Turkish state has imprisoned at least 6000 HDP members since 2015. The state is trying to close down the party, in order to prevent them from being able to take part in the elections.
The HDP has been successful in local elections in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast. In response, the Turkish state has forcibly replaced the HDP’s elected mayors with state appointees, known as ‘kayyums’.
The party insists on the principle of co-leadership, and co-mayorship. This anti-patriarchal practice means that no man can hold a position of power on his own. The HDP has faced legal challenges from the Turkish state as a result of demanding co-leadership. In fact, the state has criminalised the practice of co-mayorship.
Part of a movement demanding radical democracy
Since its foundation in 2012, the HDP has played an essential part in a movement for radical democracy. The democracy they demand is much broader than the sham offered by modern-day nation-states. In Bakur (the part of Kurdistan that lies within southeast Turkey), the HDP played a key role in the Democratic Society Congress (DTK). The DTK, now criminalised by the Turkish state, linked neighbourhood and village assemblies together with women’s organisations, trade unions, and ecological alliances in a region-wide confederation.
In the west of Turkey, the movement established the People’s Democratic Congress (HDK). The HDK is currently still legal, and is part of the Labour and Freedom Alliance.
These assemblies are attempts at bringing together Turkey’s left-wing and people’s movements. They want to create a base of power that is independent of the institutions of the state. For example, the DTK established a network of co-ops in an attempt to establish a non-capitalist cooperative economy in Bakur. These co-ops, however, were soon expropriated by the state.
‘The contrasting paradigm of the oppressed’
The ideological inspiration for both the HDK and DTK is democratic confederalism. This is a paradigm of the Kurdish Freedom Movement, stemming from the prison writings of Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) co-founder Abdullah Öcalan. The Turkish state has held Öcalan in solitary confinement for over 24 years
the foundation of a state does not increase the freedom of a people.
He continued:
nation states have become serious obstacles for any social development. Democratic confederalism is the contrasting paradigm of the oppressed people. Democratic confederalism is a nonstate social paradigm. It is not controlled by a state.
And added:
democratic confederalism is the cultural organizational blueprint of a democratic nation.
Öcalan puts forward the concept of the ‘democratic nation‘ as a viable alternative to the all-encompassing power of the nation-state. In a democratic nation all the groups that make up society are guaranteed their own autonomy. They are represented within a directly democratic system.
A Democratic Republic is possible with a Democratic Nation. The Democratic Nation is the democratic expression of a society in which all ethnic, cultural and religious identities coexist equally and freely and their existence is constitutionally guaranteed.
The Green Left Party wants to decentralise Turkey, in order to enable people to make decisions at a local level.
Additionally, Uçar said that the party wants to rewrite the Turkish constitution:
We are ready to write a new democratic constitution in accordance with Turkey’s multi-identity, multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-lingual structure, to write a constitution for all society with democratic participation and social negotiation!
Co-leader İbrahim Akın said that the YSP wants to transfer authority, so that the people can be involved in managing themselves through local assemblies. He said:
We are coming to build a strong local democracy in which the separation of powers is extended to the local level, the transfer of authority and resources to local governments is secured, and local participation mechanisms function.
We will strengthen local governments based on democracy and equal representation with the will of the people participating in management and decision-making processes through assemblies, city councils, platforms, professional organisations and democratic mass organisations.
The YSP’s statement says that the party stands in opposition to the state’s militaristic foreign policy, against male domination, and with LGBTI+ people, workers, and disabled people. It will continue the practice of co-leadership, and will act to defend nature and combat poverty. According to Uçar:
We will build a new life where ecological assets are protected against the domination of nature and gender by the male-dominated capitalist system
A brave stand against fascism
There is much that those of us who are outside Turkey can learn from the movement that the YSP is part of. It is a movement that has chosen to engage in electoral politics, but one that has never let go of its revolutionary vision, or its critique of the state.
One thing is for sure – Erdoğan and Turkey’s fascist right will fight tooth and nail against these ideas. That fight has already seen thousands of people imprisoned, and many have lost their lives too. Against this backdrop, the stand taken by the YSP is a brave one.
Please note that the quotes from İbrahim Akın and Çiğdem Kılıçgün Uçar are taken from an unofficial translation.
Featured image – HDP campaigning in London in 2018, via Philafrenzy/Wikimedia Commons (cropped to 770x403px)
Last Friday, 31 March, marked another international Trans Day of Visibility. However, as the Canary tweeted, trans people aren’t struggling for visibility right now. What they *are* struggling for is a non-hostile mainstream press and politicians that aren’t happy to throw them under the bus. Kier Starmer – we’re looking at you.
Happy Trans Day of Visibility everyone! Saying that, trans people aren't struggling for visibility right now – what they *are* struggling for is a non-hostile mainstream press, and politicians that aren't willing to throw them under the bus
With the above in mind, lets take a quick look at what everybody’s favourite opposition leader has been up to.
Starmer in the Times
Well, as a true man of the people, Starmer is once again speaking to his public from behind a Times paywall. The Times ran with the headline “Keir Starmer: Trans rights can’t override women’s rights”. But to give the man his due, he doesn’t control the headline – let’s have a look at what he actually says.
Most of the article isn’t about trans people or women. It’s a hollow puff piece about moving on from Jeremy Corbyn and reforming the party. However, in the relevant portion, on the definition of ‘woman’ Starmer did manage to squeak out:
For 99.9 per cent of women, it is completely biological . . . and of course they haven’t got a penis.
So, first up, his maths is a bit faulty there. The 2022 census told us that there are 30,420,202 women in England and Wales. About 48,000 of those are trans women. So that’s closer to 99.84% of women being cis. But that’s not the worst of it.
‘Safeguarding’
The truly bloody stupid bit comes later. It was in reference to a recent piece of ‘research’ from right-wing think tank Policy Exchange which criticised the fact that some schools don’t routinely inform a child’s parents if they choose to socially transition at school. Here, ‘social transition’ means using a different name, pronoun, or presentation.
Look, of course I’d want to know. I say that as a parent. I would want to know and I think the vast majority of parents would want to know. That’s why we have to have national guidance on it and they should try to make it cross-party, because it’s not helpful to parents or schools to have this as just a toxic divide when what’s needed is practical, common sense advice.
I fear that ‘common sense’ is sadly lacking here. Although Starmer got the ‘cross-party’ bit correct – his answer is remarkably similar to Rishi Sunak’s:
we will make sure that we publish guidance for schools so that they know how to respond when children are asking about their gender.
These are really sensitive areas, it’s important that we treat them sensitively, and that parents know what’s going on, and we’ll make sure that that happens.
So, that’s the PM and the leader of the opposition in agreement, isn’t it? Except there are two problems here. Firstly, we already have guidance on this issue. It’s just being ignored because bullying trans kids is the mainstream media’s flavour of the day.
And second – and I can’t believe I need to say this – outing queer kids to their parents is potentially incredibly dangerous.
Existing guidance
Only last year, in September 2022, the Department of Education (DoE) issued the last update of its guidance on pupil safeguarding. As a general guideline, the DoE stated that:
Where there is a safeguarding concern, governing bodies, proprietors and school or college leaders should ensure the child’s wishes and feelings are taken into account when determining what action to take and what services to provide.
Further than this, the document included more specific guidelines for queer children. It recognised that the danger for them is often magnified:
Risks can be compounded where children who are LGBT lack a trusted adult with whom they can be open. It is therefore vital that staff endeavour to reduce the additional barriers faced and provide a safe space for them to speak out or share their concerns with members of staff
So, far from Policy Exchange’s framing, schools are not failing in their so-called duty to inform parents of their child being trans. Instead, if a child has chosen – for whatever reason – not to come out to their parents, then that wish must be respected. If a child knows that speaking to staff members automatically means that their parents will be informed, then they lose a vital point of trust and contact. The enforced outing of children would therefore breed more secrecy, not less.
The dangers
This brings us to the second issue. If a child is choosing not to come out to their parents, they probably have good reason for that. In a best-case scenario, this might be because they are simply unready to do so. This, in itself, should be enough.
But it could also be the case that the child believes they would be unsafe if they came out to their parents. This belief is borne out in statistics. Research from the Albert Kenny Trust suggests that:
LGBT young people are disproportionately represented in the young homeless population. As many as 24% of young homeless people are LGBT
69% of homeless LGBT young people had experienced violence, abuse or rejection from the family home
77% state that their LGBT identity was a causal factor in them becoming homeless
So, work with me for a second here. A trans child thinks that they will be beaten or thrown out of their home for coming out. However, they think their school will be more accepting. They choose to use a different name at school. Then, their school is compelled to out the child to their parents – that is if Policy Exchange, Starmer, and Sunak get their way.
This is a clear safeguarding risk. What’s more, it should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of care for the children they’re speaking of. But apparently this goes out the window where trans kids are concerned.
Hollow man
To provide the benefit of the doubt, it could be the case that people imagine a set of loving parents who simply want to know what is happening to their child. But, as many queer adults know to their detriment, this is far, far from a guarantee. Schools cannot, and should not, make this assumption.
Starmer, I’m at least vaguely sure, is not a fool. I struggle to think that it has not occurred to him that the forced outing of vulnerable children will put them in danger. The man was a lawyer, for Christ’s sake. Yet this doesn’t seem to matter one jot.
Our leader of the ‘opposition’ is a man who will happily parrot conservative talking points like Sunak’s. He will accept – without criticism – the framing used by right-wing thinktanks like Policy Exchange. He’ll join in monstering the mainstream media’s demon of the day and dress it up as concern.
I genuinely can’t tell what Starmer believes in, if anything. He’s not a leader of the opposition. He’s barely even a Labour politician. That right there is just a Tory with a ten second delay.
Words matter when telling the story of West Papua’s continuing struggle for independence.
Recently, New Zealand media carried reports of the kidnapping of a New Zealand pilot by a militant West Papuan group allied to the independence struggle.
Phillip Mehrtens, a pilot for Susi Air, was abducted by independence fighters from the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, at a remote highlands airstrip on February 7.
Unfortunately, the language used by mainstream media reports has been falling into line with Indonesian government depictions of the Free Papua Movement.
While The Guardian and Al Jazeera referred to them as “independence fighters,” they also used the term rebels.
So did RNZ and Reuters, which also used the word “separatists”. “Independence fighters” or “freedom fighters” should have been the preferred terms.
We do not condone violent action, but the West Papuans are fighting for their freedom from decades of brutal Indonesian occupation. They deserve recognition for what they are, not what Indonesia deems them to be.
Dr Philip Cass is convenor of the Catholic Church’s International Peace and Justice Committee in Auckland and editor of Whāia te Tika newsletter.
Ramadan, a month of fasting and spiritual purification, began on 23 March for many Muslims in the UK and around the world. This year, though, Muslims in London celebrated the start of the month with a first-of-its-kind display of lights in Piccadilly Circus.
On one level, in a country plagued with Islamophobia, the Ramadan lights in London are a welcome bit of positive news. However, it’s still important to carefully consider what this gesture means in the grand scheme of things – in a social sense as well as a spiritual one.
Sure, some might argue that it’s important to celebrate the wins. My main reservation, however, is whether a fancy display of lights inspired by Christmas decorations is a win at all.
Ramadan lights: ‘Celebrating diversity’
London mayor Sadiq Khan switched on the lights in a formal ceremony on Tuesday 21 March. The following day, Khan tweeted:
London is now the first major city in Europe to host a spectacular light display to mark Ramadan.
People like Khan are hailing the lights as a landmark moment in history. But while these lights are an opportunity to ‘celebrate diversity’, it begs the question: are they anything more than that?
There is indeed a fundamental difference between ‘diversity and inclusion’ work and anti-racism. The former, in effect, allows institutions to appear to be doing something about racism without actually addressing it in a way that might cause those in power any great discomfort. Surface-level diversity or representation doesn’t necessarily, or maybe even frequently, lead to greater social justice.
Ultimately, the lights are a gesture that is both pretty and politically safe. While they may rile up some overtly Islamophobic people, they don’t punch up in any way. They don’t call for accountability from a ruling party that’s institutionally Islamophobic.
Their depoliticised nature is the very reason for their appeal. Meanwhile, if Muslims were to put up banners calling on the UK to stop enabling war in Yemen in the same Piccadilly square, the reaction would be very different. That’s despite the fact that this would be a valid expression of their faith, and more aligned with the spirit of Ramadan.
The magic of Ramadan
Middle East Eye shared its coverage on Twitter of the Ramadan lights coming on. This included interviews with some of the initiative’s main organisers and funders:
London's Ramadan Lights were installed at London’s Piccadilly and Leicester Square last night, illuminating the street with a large “Happy Ramadan”
The project brought together members of London's diverse Muslim population, in it's planning stage and last night's celebration pic.twitter.com/Cr1o08RYnW
One prominent theme from the organisers and supporters seems to be that these lights are an opportunity to ‘bring the magic of Ramadan’ to Muslims in London. Having grown up in Dubai, and witnessing these lights year on year, maybe I’ve become desensitised to this interpretation of the magic Ramadan has to offer.
For decades, gulf countries have put up extravagant light displays during Ramadan. I’m old enough now to realise that these aren’t an expression of faith so much as an ostentatious display of wealth. You won’t find anything at the same level in poor Muslim countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. – and it’s not a reflection of their appreciation for Ramadan.
Growing closer to God
That’s not to say that I don’t miss observing Ramadan in a Muslim country. I miss the calls to prayer resounding from multiple mosques in the same vicinity at iftar time. I miss the accommodations in schools and workplaces for people who were fasting. The core aim for Muslims during Ramadan should be to grow closer to God. We strive to re-orient our lives towards a centring of God in everything we do, and observing it in a Muslim country made this that much easier.
But that doesn’t require ‘spectacular displays’ or any sort of outward performance. Yes, there is space for joy as a community in the shared observance of Ramadan, especially as the world turns increasingly dark. But we must also be mindful of what our expressions of joy reflect (Christmas lights and oil wealth?) as well as who they might exclude.
On the bright side, the lights in Piccadilly Circus will hopefully ensure people stop calling it ‘Ramadam’ henceforth. And they show a space for British Muslims in a way that possibly hasn’t been seen before. If we want to eliminate British Islamophobia at the highest levels, though, we still have a long, long way to go.
Monday’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has given a “final warning” to avert global catastrophe. Pacific cabinet ministers call on all world leaders to urgently transition to renewables.
COMMENT:By Ralph Regenvanu and Seve Paeniu
The cycle is repeating itself. A tropical cyclone of frightening strength strikes a Pacific island nation, and leaves a horrifying trail of destruction and lost lives and livelihoods in its wake.
Earlier this month in Vanuatu it was two category 4 cyclones within 48 hours of each other.
The people affected wake up having nowhere to go and lack the basic necessities to survive.
International media publishes grim pictures of the damage to our infrastructure and people’s homes, quickly followed by an outpouring of thoughts, prayers and praise for our courage and resilience.
We then set out to rebuild our countries.
The Pacific island countries are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and Vanuatu is the most vulnerable country in the world, according to a recent study. Our countries emit minuscule amounts of greenhouse gases, but bear the brunt of extreme events primarily caused by the carbon emissions of major polluters, and the world’s failure to break its addiction to fossil fuels.
The science is clear: fossil fuels are the main drivers of the climate crisis and need to be phased out rapidly, as the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report once again confirms. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has shown that ending the expansion of all fossil fuel production is an urgent first step towards limiting warming to 1.5C.
Driven by greed
The climate crisis is driven by the greed of an exploitative industry and its enablers. It is unacceptable that countries and companies are still planning to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels that the world can withstand by 2030 if we are to limit warming to 1.5C, a limit Pacific countries fought hard to secure in the Paris agreement.
As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly declared, fossil fuels are a dead end. Governments must pursue a rapid and equitable phase-out of fossil fuels.
Countries cannot continue to justify new fossil fuel projects on the grounds of development, or the energy crisis. It is our reliance on fossil fuels that has left our energy infrastructure vulnerable to conflict and devastating climate impacts, left billions of people without energy access, and left investment in more flexible and resilient clean energy systems lagging behind what is needed.
Transitioning away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy is crucial to mitigating the impacts of climate change and ensuring a sustainable future for Pacific island countries and the world.
This requires ambitious collective effort from governments, businesses and individuals around the globe to transition towards renewable energy systems that centre the needs of communities and avoid replicating the harms of fossil fuel systems, while supporting those most affected by the transition.
Transitioning to clean energy and battling climate change is also a human rights and justice issue. This is why our countries will soon be asking the UN General Assembly to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the obligations of states under international law to protect the environment and the climate.
We urge all countries to support us in that endeavour.
Last week, Pacific ministers and international partners met in cyclone-stricken Vanuatu to chart our collective way forward. We have affirmed a new commitment to work tirelessly to create a fossil fuel free Pacific, recognising that phasing out fossil fuels is not only in our best interest to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe — it is also an opportunity to promote economic development and innovation that we must seize.
By investing in renewable energy sources, we can build resilient, sustainable economies that benefit our people and the planet; and momentum for this shift is already building.
Last year at Cop27 in Egypt, more than 80 countries supported the phasing out of all fossil fuels. We must drive this new ambition around the world. Pacific nations will continue to spearhead global efforts to achieve an unqualified, equitable end to the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.
We will raise our collective voices at Cop28 and through leading initiatives such as the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
We know what needs to be done to keep 1.5C alive, and are aware of the small and shrinking window which we have left to achieve it. We are doing our part and urge the rest of the world to do theirs.
Ralph Regenvanu is Vanuatu’s Minister of Climate Change, Adaptation, Meteorology and Geohazards, Energy, Environment and Disaster Risk Management. Seve Paeniu is the Minister of Finance for Tuvalu. This article was first published by The Guardian and has been republished with the permission of the authors.
Just watching the two major parties ruthlessly claw at and attempt to malign and delegitimize each other, then seeing people now excitedly lining up on one side or the other like opposing Ninja turtle teams is both amusing and frightening. We can count on the talking heads and modern media to regurgitate a story line familiar to devotees of Saturday morning cartoon shows to give substance to our political competitions and aspirations. Unfortunately, the narrative is insultingly simple-minded and mostly a distraction.
With the nation divided into red and blue states, the news robots now have the solemn and putatively critical duty to keep us up to date on any shifting of allegiances and rebalancing of the color scheme, milking any incremental addition of a splotch of blue or dash of red for whatever drama they can generate, before cutting to a commercial break.
What has this got to do with the mounting crises we find ourselves in?
Here is a short list of profound challenges confronting the world:
Potential for nuclear war and the annihilation of the planet.
Climate change.
Resource depletion.
Desertification of shrinking tracts of farm land.
Diminishing fresh water supplies.
Acidification of the oceans and overfishing.
Antibiotic-resistant diseases.
Accelerating species extinction.
Human trafficking and enslavement.
Here is a short list of critical challenges just to our nation:
Destruction of democracy and rule by an oligarchy.
Historical levels of wealth inequality.
Loss of privacy and basic constitutional rights to the surveillance state.
Corporate tyranny and plutocratic control of the economy.
Crumbling of infrastructure and crippling of our social institutions.
Militarization of society and seizure of power by the military-industrial complex.
Police brutality and murder of innocent citizens.
Pundits and politicos in service to their oligarchic masters can generate all the wonderful spin they can. But America’s economy has been hollowed out from the inside, and due to a fanatic allegiance to a defective and extremely destructive ideology, the vital needs of everyday citizens have been ignored. Anger and frustration mount. Signs of decline and decay are all around us, behind the glitter and the glitz. Worst of all, the U.S. as a world power is losing the mantle of leadership. Its policies have inflicted so much chaos, destruction and death on the rest of the planet, the U.S. is losing its legitimacy and is successfully being challenged by Russia, China, and the non-aligned countries of the South. Of course, with the myopia and desperation that characterizes a dying empire, what’s America’s answer? More chaos, destruction and death. We are involved in a very serious war right now and the specter of World War IIIlooms frighteningly on the horizon.
Everything comes back to what we as a people do to reverse this disastrous course.
Isn’t it time to put away the gang colors and actually begin to solve some problems?
Is it possible? I don’t know.
I do know it’s absolutely necessary.
Our survival as a country and even as a species depends on it.
The aims of Peace Action: Struggles for a Decolonised and Demilitarised Oceania and East Asia as stated by the editor, Valerie Morse, are “to make visible interconnections between social struggles separated by the vast expanse of Te Moana Nui-A-Kiwi [the Pacific Ocean] … to inspire, to enrage and to educate, but most of all, to motivate people to action” (p. 11).
It is an opportunity to learn from the activists involved in these struggles. Published by the Left of the Equator Press, there are plenty of clues to the radical ideas presented. The frontispiece points out that the publisher is anti-copyright, and the book is “not able to be reproduced for the purpose of profit”, is printed on 100 percent “post consumer recycled paper”, and “bound with a hatred for the State and Capital infused in every page”.
By their nature, activists take action and do things rather than just speak or write about things, as is the academic tradition, so this is an important, unique, and rare opportunity to learn from their insights, knowledge, and experience.
Twenty-three contributors representing some of the diverse Peoples of Aotearoa, Australia, China, Hawaii, Japan, New Caledonia, Samoa, Tahiti, Tokelau, Tonga, and West Papua offer 13 written chapters, plus poetry, artworks, and a photo essay. The range of topics is extensive too, including the history of the Crusades and the doctrine of discovery, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist movements, land reclamation movements, nuclear resistance and anti-racist movements, solidarity and allyship.
Both passion and ethics are evident in the stories about involvement in decolonised movements that are “situated in their relevant Indigenous practice” and anti-militarist movements that “actively practice peace making” (p. 11).
Peace Action … the new book. Image: Left of the Equator
While their activism is unquestioned, the contributors come with other impressive credentials. Not only do they actively put into practice their strong values, but many are also researchers and scholars. Dr Pounamu Jade Aikman (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Wairere, Tainui, Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Te Rangi, Te Arawa and Ngāti Tarāwhai) holds a Fulbright Scholarship from Harvard University. Mengzhu Fu (a 1.5 generation Tauiwi Chinese member of Asians Supporting Tino Rangatiratanga) is doing their PhD research on Indigenous struggles in Aotearoa and Canada-occupied Turtle Islands. Kyle Kajihiro lectures at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and is a board member of Hawai’i Peace and Justice. Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic from the Yikwa-Kogoya clan of the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands. Ena Manuireva is an academic and writer who represents the Mā’ohi Nui people of Tahiti. Dr Jae-Eun Noh and Dr Joon-Shik Shin are Korean researchers in Australian universities. Dr Rebekah Jaung, a health researcher, is involved in Korean New Zealanders for a Better Future.
Several of the authors are working as investigators on the prestigious Marsden project entitled “Matiki Mai Te Hiaroa: #ProtectIhumātao”, a recent successful campaign to reclaim Māori land. These include Professor Jenny Bol Jun Lee-Morgan (Waikato, Ngāti Mahuta and Te Ahiwaru), Frances Hancock (Irish Pākehā), Carwyn Jones (Ngāti Kahungunu), Qiane Matata-Sipu (Te Waiohua ki te Ahiwaru me te Ākitai, Waikato Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Pikiao), and Pania Newton (Ngāpuhi, Waikato, Ngāti Mahuta and Ngāti Maniapoto) who is co-founder and spokesperson for the SOUL/#ProtectIhumātao campaign.
Others work for climate justice, peace, Indigenous, social justice organisations, and community groups. Jungmin Choi coordinates nonviolence training at World Without War, a South Korean antimilitarist organisation based in Seoul. Mizuki Nakamura, a member of One Love Takae coordinates alternative peace tours in Japan. Tuhi-Ao Bailey (Ngāti Mutunga, Te Ātiawa and Taranaki) is chair of the Parihaka Papakāinga Trust and co-founder of Climate Justice Taranaki.
Zelda Grimshaw, an artist and activist, helped coordinate the Disrupt Land Forces campaign at a major arts fair in Brisbane. Arama Rata (Ngāruhine, Taranaki and Ngāti Maniapoto) is a researcher for WERO (Working to End Racial Oppression) and Te Kaunoti Hikahika.
Some are independent writers and artists. Emalani Case is a writer, teacher and aloha ‘āina from Waimea Hawai’i. Tony Fala (who has Tokelauan, Palagi, Samoan, and Tongan ancestry) engages with urban Pacific communities in Tāmaki Makaurau. Marylou Mahe is a decolonial feminist artist from Haouaïlou in the Kanak country of Ajë-Arhö. Tina Ngata (Ngäti Porou) is a researcher, author and an advocate for environmental Indigenous and human rights.
Jos Wheeler is a director of photography for film and television in Aotearoa.
Background analysis for this focus on Te Moana Nui A Kiwi, provides information about the concepts of imperial masculinity, infection, ideas from European maritime law Mare Liberum, that saw the sea as belonging to everyone. These ideas steered colonisation and placed shackles, both figuratively and physically, on Indigenous Peoples around the world.
In the 17th century, Japan occupied the country of Okinawa, now also used as a training base by the US military. European “explorers” had been given “missions” in the 18th century that included converting the people to Christianity and locating useful and profitable resources in far-flung countries such as Aotearoa, Australia, New Caledonia and Tahiti.
In the 19th century, Hawai’i was subject to US imperialism and militarisation.
In the 20th century, Western countries were “liberating other nations” and dividing them up between them, such as the US “liberation” of South Korea from Japanese colonial rule. The Dutch prepared West Papua for independence 1960s after colonisation, but a subsequent Indonesian military invasion left the country in a worse predicament.
However, the resistance from the Indigenous Peoples has been evident from the beginnings of imperialist invasions and militarisation of the Pacific, despite the arbitrary violence that accompanied these. Resistance continues, as the contributors to Peace Action demonstrate, and the contributions reveal the very many faces and facets of non-violent resistance that works towards an eventual peace with justice.
Resistance has included education, support to help self-sufficiency, medical and legal support, conscientious objection, human rights advocacy, occupation of land, coordinating media coverage, visiting sites of significance, being the voice of the movement, petitions, research, writing, organising and joining peaceful marches, coordinating solidarity groups, making submissions, producing newsletter and community newspapers, relating stories, art exhibitions and installations, visiting churches, schools, universities, conferences, engaging with politicians, exploiting and creating digital platforms, fundraising, putting out calls for donations and hospitality, selling T-shirts and tote bags, awareness-raising events, hosting visitors, making and serving food, bearing witness, musical performances, photographic exhibitions, film screenings, songs on CDs.
In order to mobilise people, activists have been involved in political engagement, public education, multimedia engagement, legal action, protests, rallies, marches, land and military site occupations, disruption of events, producing food from the land, negotiating treaties and settlements, cultural revitalisation, community networking and voluntary work, local and international solidarity, talanoa, open discussions, radical history teaching, printmaking workshops, vigils, dance parties, mobile kitchens, parades, first aid, building governance capacity, sharing histories, increasing medical knowledge.
Activist have been prompted to act because of anger, disgust, and fear. The oppressors are likened to big waves, to large octopuses (interestingly also used in racist cartoons to depict Chinese immigrants to Aotearoa), to giants, to a virus, slavers, polluters, destroyers, exploiters, thieves, rapists, mass murderers, war criminals, war profiteers, white supremacists, racists, brutal genocide, ruthless killers, subjugators, fearmongers, demonisers, narcissistic sociopaths, and torturers.
The resisters often try to “find beauty in the struggle” (Case, p. 70), using imagery of flowers and trees, love, dancing, song, braiding fibers or leis, dolphins, shark deities, flourishing food baskets, fertile gardens, pristine forests, sacred valleys, mother earth, seashells, candlelight, rainbows, rays of the rising sun, friendship, alliance, partners, majestic lowland forests, ploughs, watering seeds, and harvesting crops.
Collaboration in resistance requires dignity, respect, integrity, providing safe spaces, honesty, openness, hard work without complaint, learning, cultural and spiritual awareness. The importance of coordination, cooperation and commitment are emphasised.
And readers are made aware of the sustained energy that is needed to follow through on actions.
The aim of Peace Action is to inspire, enrage, educate and motivate. These chapters will appeal mostly to those already convinced, and this is deliberately so.
In these narratives, images we have guidance as to what is needed to be an activist. We admire the courage and bravery, we are educated into the multitude of activities that can be undertaken, and the immense amount of work in planning and sustaining action.
This can serve as a handbook, providing plans of action to follow. Richness and creativity are provided in the fascinating and informative narratives, storytelling, and illustrations.
I find it difficult to criticise because its goal is clear, there is no pretence that it is something else, and it achieves what it sets out to do. It remains to be seen whether peace action will follow. But that will be up to the readers.
Dr Heather Devereis former director of practice, National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, and chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN). This review is published in collaboration with Pacific Journalism Review.
Australian climate emergency protester Deanna “Violet” Coco last week won her appeal ato the delight of supporters. A 15-month jail sentence imposed on her for blocking one lane on the Sydney Harbour Bridge with a truck was quashed. Instead, Coco, 32, was issued with a 12-month conditional release order last Wednesday after district court judge Mark Williams heard she had been initially imprisoned on false information provided by the NSW police. She told reporters she would pursue compensation against the police after spending 13 days in prison. Here investigative journalist Wendy Bacon reports for City Hub on the NSW police withdrawing the false ambulance accusation that led to Coco’s jailing.
ANALYSIS: By Wendy Bacon in Sydney
New South Wales police withdrew a false allegation that four climate change protesters who had stopped traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge last year blocked an ambulance.
Police included this false allegation in a statement of the so-called “facts” that police prepared on the day of the arrests. The false allegation was designed to paint a hostile image of four peaceful protesters and to successfully argue for onerous bail conditions, including severe restrictions on their movements, and tough sentences.
The documents drawn up on the day of the protest stated: “The actions today have not only caused serious disruption to peak-hour traffic, but this imposition to traffic prevented an ambulance responding to an emergency under lights and sirens as it was unable to navigate through the increased heavy traffic as previously mentioned. This imposition to a critical emergency service has the potential to result in fatality.”
An unprecedented tough sentence was given to Violet Coco who had already spent 84 days “imprisoned” at home between her arrest in April 2022 and her appearance before Magistrate Alison Hawkins in December.
Hawkins referred to the blocking of the ambulance in her remarks when she sentenced Coco to 15 months in prison and refused bail. After spending 10 days in prison, Coco was released on bail by District Court judge Timothy Gartelmann.
Her appeal against sentence was heard on March 15 when the matter of the false allegations was raised.
The new information emerged during the sentencing hearing against two of Coco’s co-defendants Alan Glover and Karen Fitz-Gibbon who appeared for sentencing earlier this month.
They pleaded guilty to charges arising from blocking one lane of the Harbour Bridge for 30 minutes in April last year. Magistrate Daniel Reiss sentenced both to 18 months Community Correction Orders with a fine of $3000 each.
Sydney protesters demonstrating against the anti-protest laws and harsh sentences imposed on climate emergency activists. Image: City Hub
Compared to previous sentences for peaceful protesters, these are harsh sentences. Their lawyer told the court that they regretted causing inconvenience.
Outside the court, Glover, a comedian and actor who has been a firefighter for 40 years, told the media, “I’m very unhappy and angry. I think the judgement is wrong and I’m going to appeal.”
Asked whether he thought the tactics were appropriate, he said, “I’m a firefighter and what do I have to do to make sure firefighters have the resources to do the job properly. I want the government to recognise that we are already in the midst of climate change problems…We’ve got people dying from smoke inhalation from bushfires that are bigger than anything we’ve ever seen.”
Asked by a journalist if he still agreed with his lawyer’s statement in court that he recognised the action was “inappropriate”, he said, “I do, I thought it was inappropriate at the time but we have to do something to get the government to act now now.. a few minutes delay is nothing compared to the massive disruption that will occur if we do not get action on climate change.”
Greens spokesperson and NSW Upper House MP Sue Higginson who has appeared for hundreds of environmental protesters wrote on Facebook: “I nearly fell off my chair when the Magistrate handed down his sentence — a conviction, an 18 month community corrections order and a $3000 fine. I have represented hundreds of environmental protesters and this sentence is just so wrong. He should not be punished this way. I hope he appeals.
“On the upside, the case today put to rest the dangerous false shrill claims that an ambulance was obstructed during the protest. It wasn’t! When you have a state government and an opposition in lock step in an anti-protest draconian stance and a legal intolerance to dissent and civil disobedience we fail our democracy, our climate, our environment and our communities.”
Greens Senator David Shoebridge agreed and wrote on Facebook: ”The police went into court and REPEATEDLY lied that this had blocked an ambulance — all to try to get a harsher penalty for a climate protector!
Magistrate Daniel Reiss noted that Glover’s two co-accused “Violet” Deanna Coco and Jay Larbalestier had both been sentenced on the “false ambulance assertion” and that “no emergency vehicles were obstructed”.
This could open the way for Larbastier to appeal on his sentence. Police acknowledged that they had taken no steps to inform him that the evidence used against him was partly false.
If it wasn’t for the publicity, he would not know about the ambulance lie.
The cases of the Harbour Bridge protesters were among the first to take place after the LNP government’s draconian anti-protest laws were passed with NSW Labor’s support in April last year.
CCL condemns disproportionate sentences of climate protesters
The NSW Council for Civil Liberties is one of scores of organisations calling for the repeal of the laws. Its president Josh Pallas described the case as “an outrageous” example of “police misstating the facts which have been consequential in the sentences of others.
“The police have offered no justification for this misstatement of facts. They must be held accountable and at the very least, explain how they got this so wrong.
“Climate protesters are being increasingly and disproportionately subjected to punitive legal action by Australian authorities and this has taken that legal action to a new extreme,” he said.
Pallas described this period as “some of the darkest times our members have seen for protesters,” since CCL started advocating for protest rights in 1963.
“We have fought the slow repression of police and the state in cracking down on protest every step of the way. But the fight is hard when the government is protecting mining and business interests and when the mainstream media side with government and large corporates with vested interests to stifle the right to protest,” he said.
“These cases provide yet another example of why everyone should be concerned about increasing repression of public assemblies and protests in NSW and elsewhere around the country. The right to protest and public assembly is an essential democratic right.
“Stifling protest stifles freedom of expression. Enough is enough, the government and the police must respect the right to protest and be accountable for their actions.”
Magistrate focused on ambulance in Coco case
The non existent ambulance featured in the first sentencing hearing against Coco.
The police referred Magistrate Alison Hawkins to the “fact” that Coco had prevented an ambulance with lights and sirens indicating an emergency. Coco’s barrister did not dispute that the ambulance “may have been” on the bridge but warned the magistrate against drawing implications from that or overblowing its significance.
Magistrate Hawkins disagreed asking why she would be going too far to accept that “impeding an ambulance under lights and sirens might be something that potentially has the potential to cause harm to some other person? Why is that a stretch too far?.”
She accepted the existence of the ambulance and the sirens as relevant “facts”.
She then applied these facts in her sentencing saying, “You have halted an ambulance under lights and siren. What about the person in there? What about that person and their family? What are they to think of you and your cause?”
Because Hawkins accepted the ambulance as fact, she felt free to accept that inside the ambulance was a very real person whose life was in danger. This was part of the basis for her referring to the protest as a “childish” and “dangerous” stunt.
She then justified her harsh and angry stance on the basis that this “dangerous behaviour… deserves “condemnation from not only the courts but the community” because Coco had not only illegally protested but she had done so in a manner to cause a “significant level of distress to the community”.
Because of the seriousness of the situation, Hawkins said she had no other option than to impose a full-time jail sentence.
Protester uses body cam footage to prove innocence
One of the effects of the anti-protest laws is to make it less likely that protesters will plead not guilty. This is because the laws are framed so that, for instance, you are either on a road or off a road. You do not have to be given a direction to move.
If an accused pleads not guilty and is then found guilty, there is a risk that a sentence could be even harsher.
When people plead guilty, there is less likelihood that police version of the facts will be tested in cross-examination. This means that there is more latitude for police to create their own facts — in other words, fabricate evidence.
In another case this week, climate activist Richard Boult was found not guilty of all charges brought by NSW Police for stepping onto a road during a climate protest in Sydney last June.
Boult who is part of the Extinction Rebellion drumming group was charged under NSW road rules with obstructing traffic and causing a traffic hazard arising from his participation in Blockade Australia’s call for stronger climate action.
Green Left reported that after attending the protest, he attended a media conference. When he left the conference, police followed him to his car and laid charges alleging he left the footpath and stepped onto the road.
Boult pleaded not guilty, saying his movement from the footpath was at a point in the road designated as a closing point. Significantly, he used body camera evidence that validated his claims. So it was not just his word against the police version of events.
He also rejected a plea deal, which would have dropped one charge but retained another. The court upheld Boult’s plea of not guilty and dropped the charges.
Wendy Bacon was previously the professor of journalism at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and is supporting the Greens in the NSW election. One of the reasons, she supports the Greens is because they are the only party committed to repealing the protest laws. Wendy Bacon’s investigative journalism blog.
On 10 March, Canada’s National Post headlined “Regime change in Moscow ‘definitely’ the goal, Joly says,” and reported that “Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly raises the possibility of regime change in Moscow. … ‘The goal is definitely to do that, is to weaken Russia’s ability to launch very difficult attacks against Ukraine. We want also to make sure that Putin and his enablers are held to account,’ she said. ‘I always make a difference between the regime and the people of a given country, which is fundamental.’”
On 26 March 2022, Bloomberg News bannered “Joe Biden Calls for Regime Change in Moscow as He Likens Invasion to Ww2 Horrors,” and reported that, “Joe Biden directly appealed to the Russian people with comparisons between the invasion of Ukraine and the horrors of the Second World War as he called for Vladimir Putin to go. ‘For God’s sake this man cannot remain in power,’ the US president said, calling for regime change in Moscow during a speech from Poland on Saturday. He told Russians they are not ‘our enemy’.”
Contrary to U.S.-and-allied propagandists, that war in Ukraine wasn’t started on 24 February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, but back in February 2014 when U.S. President Barack Obama’s Administration had started by no later than June of 2011 to plan, and by no later than 1 March 2013 inside the U.S.’s Ukrainian Embassy to execute the plan, and then on 20 February 2014 to culminate the U.S. coup that overthrew and replaced Ukraine’s democratically elected neutralist President, and replaced him and his Government with the U.S. selected leaders of the new, and rabidly Russia-hating, U.S.-controlled, Ukrainian regime.
And, now, on 17 March 2023, NBC News headlines “International Criminal Court issues arrest warrant for Putin over alleged Ukraine war crimes” and reports that the U.S.-and-allied regimes are starting a case in the International Criminal Court — which has no jurisdiction over Russia and over Ukraine and over the United States, all three of which nations refused to ratify and therefore are not subject to that Court’s jurisdiction (since it’s not a “Universal” court like the U.N.’s International Court of Justice is) — initiating this purely propaganda case against Russia. Why did they not do that against America and the UK, when those regimes invaded and destroyed Iraq on the basis only of lies (which Russia certainly did not do in the case of the now U.S.-controlled Ukraine)?
Wikipedia makes this elementary fact about that Court quite clear, by saying:
It lacks universal territorial jurisdiction and may only investigate and prosecute crimes committed within member states, crimes committed by nationals of member states, or crimes in situations referred to the Court by the United Nations Security Council.
The U.S. and its allies are bringing this case as a propaganda-vehicle, but the Court itself, by ‘investigating’ this case that falls outside its jurisdiction, is destroying whatever pitiful international credibility that it had. Any court that ever serves a purely-propaganda function cannot ever again be taken seriously by any serious person. It is groveling to someone. It is simply embarrassing itself. The U.S. and its allies are contemptuous not only of the public but of this Court, to do this.
Furthermore: the U.S.-and-allied allegations that regime-change is being sought only against a country’s leadership, and not against the country’s people, is ludicrous, because those aggressor-countries’ long histories of imposed regime-changes against Governments they wanted to topple — such as Chile, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and all the rest — have always been from bad to worse against the targeted countries’ publics. Moreover, the U.S. regime has repeatedly made explicitly clear that, though all of the devastation that its invasion and continued occupation and massive thefts from Syria have brought hell upon its people, the U.S. Government absolutely refuses to allow any reconstruction to occur in Syria unless the U.S. is controlling that country.
A rogue landlord and a negligent local council are being blamed for the death of a man in a fire in a Tower Hamlets flat. However, the tragic incident also points to the institutional racism that pervades UK society – and particularly the housing sector.
In the early hours of 5 March, a fire so severe it took 30 firefighters two hours to control it broke out in the Maddocks House estate in Shadwell, east London. Its source was a flat that had only two bedrooms yet housed 18 people, mostly Bangladeshi students and delivery drivers (it’s suspected the trigger was a faulty e-bike battery). Between them, the men paid around £8,000 a month for the privilege of being packed into bunk beds in mouldy, airless bedrooms. One of them, 41-year-old Mizanur Rahman, died in hospital from his injuries. It’s a miracle the others all survived.
In short, a landlord was exploiting these people. Tower Hamlets council had investigated the property in 2022. As the Guardian reported, resident organisation Maddocks House Support Group is claiming that both the council and the London Fire Brigade (LFB) knew the landlord was dangerously overcrowding the flat.
Other residents of Maddocks House had made complaints about the flat to Tower Hamlets Homes (THH), representatives from the Council and to other agencies, about leaks and other problems resulting from its dangerous overcrowding and poor state of repair for years, since 2019 at least. The Residents Association has for a long time struggled with THH’s poor management of the estate and lack of attention to residents calls for attention to the poor conditions on the estate. The Residents Association is currently preparing a report about the fire summarising this history of complaints, poor repairs and negligence on the part of the Council and its managing agent THH.
We are concerned about the criminal investigation being led by the London borough of Tower Hamlets, who are in effect investigating themselves. We are worried about them deflecting blame when senior officials from the borough and Tower Hamlets Homes bear responsibility.
All of this has echoes of Grenfell. The situation is also similar in terms of council negligence to a recent fire in Haringey. There, residents had also been warning of the council’s failures, this time over fire safety. However, in Tower Hamlets the landlord’s horrific attitude, and the council’s negligence, sum up the institutionally racist housing sector in the UK.
Meanwhile, just 2% of white British households are overcrowded. This has a lot to do with the types of properties people live in. Social housing landlords are disproportionately overcrowding Black and brown people, as are private landlords:
Landlords squeezing too many people into one property is also an issue of class for Black and brown people. The poorest people were the most overcrowded:
Of course, none of this is new. Poor Black and brown people’s experiences of housing in the UK have barely improved since at least the 1960s. Moreover, as Kevin Gulliver wrote for the London School of Economics, other institutionalised racism then intersects with housing:
Over-concentration of BAME households in the most deprived neighbourhoods in Britain’s cities, linked to poor housing conditions and lower economic status (some of Marmot’s ‘social determinants’) ensure negative impacts on health, culminating in lower life expectancy and higher morbidity rates among ethnic minorities.
welfare reforms [are] disproportionately impacting ethnic minorities. The roll-out of Universal Credit is having greater effects on the living standards of BAME people since a larger percentage experience poverty
How many more times?
The fire in Shadwell is a microcosm of all this. The landlord’s entire MO was racist: exploiting brown people to the tune of thousands of pounds a month while dehumanising and degrading them. Tower Hamlets council’s response was then institutionally racist. It ignored residents’ and local people’s concerns when the vast majority of them are Bangladeshi. We’ve seen this level of institutional racism before – it recently led to the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in Rochdale, from exposure to extreme mould and damp.
The death of Mizanur Rahman was completely and utterly preventable. It was a result of the criminal activity of the landlord that he died, but just as equally due to the negligence of the licencing authority, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and the housing management organisation, Tower Hamlets Homes, which has just gone back into control of Tower Hamlets Council.
However, all this leads back to the racism against Black and brown people that’s still entrenched in UK society. As the Canary‘s Maryam Jameela previously wrote:
This rotting society is only as good as its most vulnerable people. What does that make the UK? A country that has unending sympathy and generosity of spirit for whiteness in all its guises, and a vicious disdain for brown people.
Mizanur Rahman’s death on the watch of his rogue landlord and Tower Hamlets council only serves to underline this.
Likewise, an incompetent, historically ignorant, politically naive, diplomatically challenged, shallow, impulsive, narcissistic reality show host elected by a conned citizenry to the highest office in the land can occasionally get a few things right as well.
I won’t get into a spitting contest over whether the election was rigged to an extent necessary to “steal” it from Trump. Every election is rigged, to varying degrees. To deny that is to be out of touch with how fundamentally corrupt our electoral system is at all levels, and what an abysmal state our last-gasp democracy is in. Recall that on one occasion, election rigging wasn’t up to the task, so a president was elected by judicial fiat.
Nor will I come anywhere near Trump’s motives or level of involvement in the shambolic insurrection that took place on January 6.
The important thing he got right was this: We should throw every last bum out of our legislative branch, both House and Senate. I didn’t say assassinate or torture them, although a good case could be made for “disappearing” the entire lot — for good! And for the good of the nation. At least barring them from public life. I include everyone, even Sanders, AOC, the rest of the squad, all of the virtue-signaling mannikins now in Congress who spend more time raising money for their reelection campaigns and their corrupt corporate-oligarchy political parties, than taking care of the business of governing and caring for the people.
A clean sweep.
A fresh start.
Yes, there have been a few promising initiatives. But overall, there is no evidence that any of the people in power, and I also include Biden, Harris, and just about everyone in the collection of self-serving mediocrities which populate this and past administrations, know or care the first thing about serving everyday citizens and “promoting the general welfare”.
I’m sure I’ll get a barrage of comments defending these lacklustre sock puppets of the ruling elite. Let me just recommend in advance: I’m not talking about measuring these phonies by the vapid standards we’ve become accustomed to. The bar has been lowered so many times, it’s not a bar anymore. It’s a broken pipe laying in the mud. Reach deep inside, folks. Use your imagination. Recall the dreams and idealism of your youth. Imagine what the U.S. could be instead of trying to decide how much humiliation and misery we should tolerate.
I don’t have to defend the necessity of a revolution. I don’t have to defend the necessity of an occasional revolution. As you can see from the above quote, Thomas Jefferson did it for me.
Even John F. Kennedy recognized that when confronted with extreme abuse of power, we are left with no alternative.
What he said was unambiguous. If the system isn’t able to self-correct, then the system gets a big bloody nose. In extreme cases, we skip the left hook to the nose and go right for a decapitation. I hear Chanel makes a nice line of designer guillotines. How timely.
Let’s be clear. At no time in recent history has the need to replace those in power been so urgent and obvious. Real democracy is dead in the U.S. and the country is ruled by oligarchs. Not very smart oligarchs. Not oligarchs with a shred of decency. But money talks. The ruling elite have the money. Most everyday people are scrambling to survive. There’s no contest.
As much as many of us prefer to ignore or deny, Donald Trump got a few things right. Unfortunately, he suffered from a debilitating case of ADHD. He’d say the right thing, then either contradict himself in action or appoint opponents of his ideas to key positions, who then went on to sabotage whatever occasional flash of brilliance he had. Plus he was an unbroken stallion, and the Deep State realizing they couldn’t control him, deep-sixed his presidency. Most of us are grateful for that but we have to keep in mind that the cure in the long term might be worse than the disease. Turning more power over — perhaps the entire control of our nation — to the invisible autocrats of our intelligence agencies and the untouchable puppet masters of technocratic tyranny is not a very smart idea. If that’s our strategy, we might as well just get it over with and take a blow torch the Constitution. How about during half-time at the next Super Bowl.
In some incredibly twisted way, Trump was the voice of the people — at least some people — probably not the kind of people anyone here would want to hang out with. But he had (and still has) a lot of followers. His campaign was the first time in a long time that it was publicly acknowledged that a lot of regular folks were tired of getting screwed by a rigged system. Yes, Trump couldn’t have been a worse bearer of this torch. But at least we got a fleeting glimpse of the flames.
Now we’re back to the default setting: Guys like Biden and gals like Harris spouting slogans that are ear candy and brain anesthetics, woke gender-blenders like Buttigieg striking poses to get a third-leg up on the next presidential election, fake progressives cheerleading their walk-in-place approach to solving the most serious problems in history, and hapless, hopeless, pathetic voters looking at fake radicals like the Squad as the flickering pilot lights for real change. What all of this screams is form without substance. We get fooled again. New boss is the old boss with a focus-group tested bumpersticker on his BMW.
The sad thing about January 6 — and everybody knows what I’m referring to because the Alice in Wonderland narratives around are still being milked by pundits and politicians alike — is that it had both sides working to make sure it flopped, that instead of representing an actual challenge to power or a wake-up call to the public or a warning label for the buffoons and criminals now holding office, it was a huge embarrassment, an unfunny joke, a reminder that politics is Pro Wrestling, only without sexy ring girls.
Joe Biden calls January 6: “The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
Liz Cheney — talk about strange bedfellows, Cheney and Biden — claimed the forces behind January 6 “represent a threat America has never seen before.” Which is certainly easy to say if you’ve never picked up a history book in your life.
The Congressional resolution which established the investigation of January 6 called the mob assault “one of the darkest days of our democracy.”
The Democratic Party elites are calling January 6 the domestic equivalent of the 9-11 attacks.
Did all of these people get their education watching Saturday morning cartoons?
What are these pathetic snowflakes going to do when some tech-savvy insurrectionist strolls onto the national mall carrying a suitcase nuke and turns DC into a caramelized crater?
For better or worse, the whole thing was pure spectacle — that’s the way Trump and the MAGA crowd see the world — a pathetic attempt at symbolism wrought by morons. The government was in no danger of being overthrown by such a disorganized, ragtag bunch of urban hillbillies. The real danger lay in the weaponization and politicalization of this non-event by the Democratic Party and the intelligence agencies, which had a number of embedded provocateurs, on the scene as the PR stunt devolved to its disastrous denouement.
Granted, I can’t prove this. It’s impossible in an era of fake news and fake justice to prove anything. But if a little logic and common sense are applicable here, it’s axiomatic that our internal intelligence agencies knew exactly what was going to happen, and if they didn’t actively engineer this embarrassment, then they let it unfold knowing they could use it against their current and future enemies — that would be the American people. This is a classic, well-established, and usually effective drill.
Where is this headed? A bill authored by truly one of the most lacklustre congressmen in our history, Adam Schiff, will open a second war on terror, this one targeting domestic terrorism. More surveillance, more eavesdropping, more curtailing of free speech and dissent, more false flags, more fear, more anxiety, the final nails in the coffin of what was once for the world the beacon of civil liberties and respect for human rights. Yes, it’s 9-11 all over again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
With friends like these, who needs enemies? With people representing us like Adam Schiff, who needs a foreign enemy to destroy our democracy and turn our citizens into slaves?
Put the right label on it: MADE IN AMERICA! The destruction from within of our country, its ideals, its constitution, its promise of government by the people, its self-anointed role in the world as defender of human rights, guardian of human dignity, promoter of democracy.
There’s only one remedy:
A clean sweep.
A fresh start.
Maybe these “extreme” ideas are starting to make more sense?
But you ask: “What will happen? Congress has all sorts of protocols and procedural precedents, established rules and guidelines for committee assignment and processing of legislation. What about all that legislative infrastructure?”
Exactly! What about it, folks? How about throwing out the babies AND the bathwater? Is any of it serving “we the people”? Sometimes you have to completely raze a building and start from scratch. YES, THAT IS WHAT I’M RECOMMENDING!
It’s either that or a constitutional convention or … uh-oh … we’re back to what Jefferson and Kennedy said.
Here’s a pop quiz. Do these words ring a bell? If they do, do they resonate?
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
If that’s too arcane and brainy, then tune into something more street hip, if somewhat less precise.
The BBC’s racism wasn’t only on display in its decision to suspend Gary Lineker from Match Of The Day last week. The broadcaster’s pledge to impartiality came into question again when the Guardianrevealed that they had chosen not to air an episode of the new Attenborough series that began on 12 March.
The Canary has regularly pointed out that the BBC has a track record of pandering to the right. Of course, that’s hardly surprising when a Conservative party donor is its chair. There’s clear hypocrisy censoring both Lineker and Attenborough while platforming the likes of Andrew Marr.
The BBC said that it had never intended to air the sixth episode of Attenborough’s Wild Isles. It claimed it was a standalone project by charity partners World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). However, the Guardian highlighted that this episode’s content addressed the woeful state of nature in the UK.
In fact, the choice not to air this episode – despite giving the green light to some of Attenborough’s previous documentaries – brings BBC bias into even sharper relief. It also shows that the broadcaster is happy to engage in climate and biodiversity ‘whataboutism’ to shield the rich and powerful. It will readily platform Attenborough when he points the finger of blame at overpopulation in Global South communities for global biodiversity loss. Meanwhile, the BBC doesn’t dare hint at the Tories’ complicity in the ecological emergency at home.
Attenborough isn’t even that political…
Attenborough documentaries haven’t exactly been known for holding powerful corporate and political actors to account. In 2018, Guardian journalist George Monbiot criticised both the Blue Planet 2 and Dynasties documentary series for failing to highlight the causes of wildlife destruction and those responsible: corporations.
The Conversationremarked in 2019 that, following this criticism, Attenborough ramped up efforts to platform these issues. He spoke damningly of the potential collapse of civilisation to world leaders at the UN climate summit and at the World Economic Forum in Davos. At the summit, he called on world leaders to act, saying:
Leaders of the world, you must lead. The continuation of civilisations and the natural world upon which we depend is in your hands.
But the problem is that Attenborough’s documentaries often fall short of calling out the true culprits of ecological collapse. In the UK’s case, the Tories have time and again given corporate profiteers the license to continue wreaking destruction.
The government is to blame for the biodiversity crisis
It’s just a few months into 2023, and already the Tories are failing the nature of these ‘wild isles’. In January, the government’s own environment watchdog highlighted that it had made no progress on preventing the decline of UK wildlife, as set out by its 25-year plan in 2018.
Given that the Tories currently permit extremely destructive activities like bottom-trawling in the vast majority of MPAs in UK waters, the UK badly needs HPMA designations here. In 2020, a Greenpeace investigation found that supertrawlers had been fishing for nearly 3,000 hours in UK MPAs throughout 2019. Supertrawlers are vessels over 100m long, capable of catching vast quantities of fish. They cause significant damage to populations of critical marine life.
Worse still is the government’s plans to rip up crucial EU environment laws through its Retained EU Laws Bill. This could drop key laws that protect both people’s health and the natural world. For example, it could drop the EU Water Framework and the Bathing Waters directives. This would put the state of UK waterways at even greater risk. That is no mean feat, given that UK rivers and seas are already in dire ecological condition due to rampant pollution. There are also no rivers or lakes that are considered ‘safe’ for bathing.
Population isn’t the problem, racism and the rich are
In this context, it’s not surprising to see a Tory-captured BBC reticent to air this episode on primetime TV. The programme reportedly exposes the dismal state of UK nature. The decision to drop it suggests that the BBC may have considered it a failure of its supposed impartiality. Yet they have previously aired Attenborough series that promote right-wing racist overpopulation tropes.
In his 2020 documentary A Life on Our Planet, Attenborough highlighted the changes he’s seen in his lifetime. Prominent in his message was the idea that humans had ‘overrun’ the Earth. Attenborough contended that curbing population growth is key to solving the climate and biodiversity crisis. The BBC will platform this type of racism without issue.
Attenborough is also a long-time patron of Population Matters, an NGO that campaigns to control population growth. The charity’s work over the years looks right at home with this expressly racist, classist Tory government. In 2013 and 2014, it published articles on its website stating that the UK should not accept any refugees from Syria. It also promoted policy proposals before the 2015 general election calling for the new government to scrap child benefits.
Only, population growth here and abroad isn’t the problem – billionaires are. A report by Oxfam in 2022 found that just one among the 125 richest billionaires has a million times the average carbon footprint of a person in the world’s bottom 90%. They, of course, make this obscene wealth through the industries at the forefront of ecological destruction.
Racism gets the greenlight, Tory accountability the red card
Sewage pollution could be at the crux of why the Tories wouldn’t want the episode to air. In 2020, they voted down an important amendment to the Environment Bill. The amendment would have placed a duty on water companies to reduce the amount of sewage they were dumping into rivers. This runaway sewage dumping has had terrible effects on UK wildlife.
The nation’s public broadcaster calling the Tories out on their shit is not a good look. Ironically enough, in August 2022, the BBC home and foreign news editor accused Gary Lineker of breaching ‘impartiality’ after he tweeted his MP about the sewage scandal.
When it comes to the climate and ecological emergency on our doorstep, the Tories know that racist scapegoating won’t fly. After over a decade of Tories in office, the state of nature in the UK continues its decline. Cutting the Attenborough episode can’t hide this. But it does reveal that the BBC has more than just an impartiality problem.
Attenborough calling for population control to solve the climate and ecological crisis is deemed impartial. But exposing the shameful state of UK biodiversity and wild places? A step too far to the left. The BBC couldn’t possibly be seen to be holding the rich and powerful to account now, could it?
To ’embrace equity’ this International Women’s Day, what we really needed was a world without fossil fuel companies. Unfortunately, they still exist and they always have something patronising to say.
Oil and gas company Shell has come a long way since its shameless International Women’s Day stunt in 2020. After justified backlash when it rebranded a petrol station in California to ‘She’ll’, the company has stepped back its PR purplewash. The silence of its official social media accounts this International Women’s Day was refreshing. That’s one less corporate voice in the sea of companies crowding out women on a day that should be all about uplifting their voices. Shell has maybe even begun to realise that appropriating calls for social justice doesn’t actually help their public image. Well, maybe not quite.
There’s always one subsidiary or branch social that slips through the net. Shell Deer Park Chemicals, the Twitter account for Shell’s refinery operations in Texas, tweeted:
This #IWD we #EmbraceEquity across our workforce. From production, to safety, IT, maintenance, and technology these women play a vital role throughout our organization. pic.twitter.com/AyeL8hA7tN
— Shell Deer Park Chemicals (@ShellDeerPark) March 8, 2023
It was seemingly ignorant of the blatant hypocrisy of its urging to ’embrace equity’. While it celebrates the women in its own workforce, women in communities at the receiving end of Shell’s projects continue to suffer.
Embracing equity in the Niger Delta?
Shell can spew out empty platitudes to ‘embrace equity’ on social media, but can it tell that to the women farmers and fishers of the Niger Delta? There, oil spills and gas flaring are devastating livelihoods and endangering the health of women breadwinners in pastoral and agricultural communities across the region. 13,000 people from those communities are now taking Shell to court.
The Niger Delta in Nigeria is the site of perhaps one of the most infamous cases of fossil fuel human rights abuse. In 1995, the Nigerian government executed nine activists who were opposing Shell’s operations in the delta. This included writer and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. For decades, widowers of the Ogoni Nine – the men who were arbitrarily detained and executed without fair trial – have been fighting for justice. They took Shell to court, claiming that the company was complicit in the death of their husbands. However, in March 2022, a district court in the Hague dismissed the case due to insufficient evidence to prove Shell’s role.
Shell has repeatedly denied any involvement in the execution of the Ogoni 9. However, in 2009, it settled out of court with the Saro-Wiwa estate, relatives of members of the Ogoni 9, and others who faced human rights violations at the hands of the company for a sum of $15.5m.
Landgrabs and lies
As campaign group ShellsLies has pointed out, land-grabbing by fossil fuel projects disproportionately impacts women in land-based communities:
Women are disproportionately harmed by land-grabbing of #FossilFuel companies that destroy natural resources & women’s livelihoods. In Uganda, where #LandRights typically go to men, 100s of women have been internally displaced in refugee camps. #DayOfRuralWomen#StopEACOPhttps://t.co/6FBcTgo2Lx
The group gave the example that in some places like Uganda, women’s land tenure rights are lacking. Likewise, an investigation by the Canary recently revealed the impact of a solar park part-owned by Shell on communities in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Shell owns 250MW of the Rewa solar park through a subsidiary company. In consultations for the project, one of the major concerns women raised was the loss of their agricultural livelihoods. Large-scale projects like the solar park at Rewa can disproportionately impact women from rural communities. Landless and marginalised women rely on agricultural labour for their employment. In other words, projects like Rewa take the agricultural land of farm employers and jeopardise these critical jobs.
Gender pay gap and greed
Moreover, Shell Deer Park’s words ring hollow when you consider its gaping gender pay gap (GPG). Shell’s GPG – which is the difference between men and women’s average hourly earnings (excluding overtime) – was 18% in 2020. This was greater than the UK average, which stood at 15.5%.
Worse still, campaign group Global Witness has revealed that Shell’s outgoing CEO took home £9.7m in 2022. This is nearly 300 times the UK’s median salary. Meanwhile, households across the UK are in the grip of a class war driven by a Tory government pandering to this very kind of corporate greed.
Alice Harrison from Global Witness highlighted the disparity:
Shell’s CEO earned in one year what a typical UK worker would earn in six lifetimes.
She also said:
It’s a sign of just how broken our energy system is that Shell and other fossil fuel companies have made record-breaking profits from an energy crisis that’s forcing families to choose between heating their homes and putting food on the table.
Of course, marginalised communities feel the effects of this crisis most profoundly. Women are unsurprisingly disproportionately impacted by the spiralling cost of living. A study by the Fawcett Society said that the impact is the result of factors like lower take-home pay and the compound pressures of insecure work and care commitments.
Some groups are fighting back against the cost of living crisis. The Warm this Winter campaign – a coalition of over 40 of the UK’s leading charities – delivered a petition to Parliament. It called on the government to meet its four key demands:
Provide emergency financial support for those in poverty.
In his recently published article “Sea of many flags”, the head of the ANU National Security College Rory Medcalf makes the case for why Pacific Island states should regard the deep regional involvement of a Western coalition of powers, “quietly” led by Australia, as an effective and attractive “Pacific way to dilute China’s influence”.
Although presented as a new proposal, the increased regional engagement of this Western coalition is already well advanced, in the form of proposed new military bases and joint-use facilities, new security treaties, increased aid programmes, new embassies, as well as a new regional institution, Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP).
Medcalf’s main task is not to persuade Canberra of the merits of this approach, but rather to demonstrate to a sceptical Pacific audience that this Western coalition’s Indo-Pacific strategy is compatible with the Blue Pacific strategy of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).
Medcalf argues that an Indo-Pacific strategy of containing China supports the broad concept of human security embraced by Pacific Island leaders in their 2018 Boe Declaration, which includes the key demand for climate change action.
He also argues that the strategy would support the Blue Pacific emphasis on Pacific Island sovereignty by countering Chinese attempts to dominate the region. Thus he moves beyond the argument (made for example by Sandra Tarte) that there are some meeting points between these two world views and posits their complete compatibility.
Medcalf proposes a model of security governance dominated by a Western coalition of interests operating through institutions like the Quad, AUKUS and PBP, where Pacific Islander influence is marginal or non-existent. Australia is seen as the “hub” for Western alliance management of the Pacific, acting as a “guide and informal coordinator”, ensuring that investments are organised efficiently and “in line with what Pacific communities want”.
PBP aid projects deployed
PBP aid projects would be deployed in support of the objectives outlined in the Boe Declaration as well as PIF’s 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.
The problem here is that, at best, this security model operates on behalf of Pacific interests, but not under the control of Pacific governments or regional institutions created for that purpose.
The argument for compatibility between the Indo-Pacific and Blue Pacific strategies does not consider key aspects of the Pacific vision for the future, such as urgent climate action, where there are clear discrepancies, especially regarding limiting emissions. Asking Island leaders to curtail China’s regional role requires them to compromise their long-standing foreign policy ethos of “friends to all and enemies to none”.
Nor is it clear that Medcalf’s approach would support Island sovereignty, when the major threats seem to come from Western actors, including increased military activity in Micronesia, the undermining of regional institutions by external initiatives such as PBP, continuing colonial rule in French Polynesia and New Caledonia, and ongoing American control (and deepening militarisation) of Guam.
[Pacific Media Watch adds that this includes continuing colonial rule by Indonesia in the expanded five provinces that make up the West Papua region].
Australian military plans to allow US stationing and storage of nuclear weapons in north Australia appear to violate the terms of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, and Japan’s proposal to release into the ocean nuclear waste from the Fukushima power plant meltdown is causing considerable consternation in the region.
Medcalf’s argument that adoption of the Indo-Pacific mental map could bring together Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean islands to discuss common challenges misses the 30-year history of such collaboration within the Alliance of Small Island States.
Unhelpful characterisation of China
Another problem with this analysis is its frankly unhelpful characterisation of China’s Pacific engagement. According to Medcalf, China “has a rightful place in the Pacific, just not a right to dominate”.
However, he provides no evidence that China does in fact seek regional hegemony, and cites no examples where its behaviour in the Pacific Islands might be regarded as “bullying” or “coercive”.
The 10 island countries that recognise Beijing have signed up to participate in the much-maligned Belt and Road Initiative without any apparent coercion.
Nor does Medcalf provide Pacific examples of the debt-for-equity argument often levelled at China’s lending practices in the Global South. When Tonga had difficulty servicing Chinese loans, Beijing agreed to extend their terms. Even the claim that China seeks to establish a military base in the region, a central plank in Western narratives, remains unsubstantiated.
Recent studies by the RAND Corporation (funded by the US military) provide some useful perspective by ranking Fiji and Papua New Guinea of “medium desirability” but “low feasibility” for Chinese military initiatives. Other Pacific locations, including Solomon Islands and Kiribati, are not seen as feasible.
To describe Beijing’s engagement as “neocolonial” is to invite comparisons with the activities of the Western coalition, key members of which retain actual colonies in the region. Nor is Australia in a strong position to accuse others of manipulative behaviour.
For example, Canberra’s efforts to protect its coal industry by working to weaken PIF statements about climate change mitigation are well documented, date back to the beginning of the COP negotiations, and continue today.
Self-determination issue at heart Ultimately Medcalf’s central argument falls because it does not consider the issue of self-determination which is at the heart of the Blue Pacific strategy. Although Medcalf calls for “a premium on self-awareness, inclusion, and genuine diplomacy”, his proposal effectively devalues Pacific agency and marginalises Pacific decision makers.
“Sea of many flags” claims to promote strategic equilibrium in the Pacific, yet it really aims to create the conditions for continuing Western hegemony. It claims to counter geopolitical competition and militarisation while shoring up and expanding Western military domination.
It claims to act in the interests of Pacific peoples, yet seems designed to moderate opposition to recent anti-China initiatives established under the auspices of the Indo-Pacific strategy and without meaningful consultation.
By allowing some role for China, albeit a limited one, Medcalf is advocating a softer form of strategic denial than that imposed by Western powers during the Cold War. But his warnings to island states about the dangers of economic engagement with Beijing seem hollow indeed, given Australia’s massive trade dependence on China.
In advocating “a Pacific kind of leadership”, the author (perhaps inadvertently) evokes the principles guiding Pacific leaders in the early days of independence. But it is worth remembering that the essence of the Pacific Way advanced by Ratu Mara and others was Pacific control and regional self-determination.
In contrast, what Rory Medcalf is advocating would subsume all of this under the control of the Western alliance, led quietly (or not so quietly) by Australia.
Dr Greg Fry is honorary associate professor at the Department of Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University, and adjunct associate professor at the University of the South Pacific. Dr Terence Wesley-Smith is professor emeritus at the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, and a former director of the center. Republished under a Creative Commons licence.
Asia Pacific Media Network’s chair Dr Heather Devere, deputy chair Dr David Robie and Pacific Journalism Review editor Dr Philip Cass last month made a submission on Papua New Guinea’s draft national media development policy in response to PNG journalists’ requests for comment. Here is part of their February 19 submission before the stakeholders consultation earlier this month.
ANALYSIS:By Heather Devere, David Robie and Philip Cass
An urgent rethink is needed on several aspects of the Draft National Media Development Policy. In summary, we agree with the statement made by the Community Coalition Against Corruption (CCAC) on 16 February 2023 criticising the extraordinary “haste” of the Ministry’s timeframe for public consultation over such a critical and vitally important national policy.
However, while the ministry granted an extra week from 20 February 2023 for public submissions this was still manifestly inadequate and rather contemptuous of the public interest.
In our view, the ministry is misguided in seeking to legislate for a codified PNG Media Council which flies in the face of global norms for self-regulatory media councils and this development would have the potential to dangerously undermine media freedom in Papua New Guinea.
The draft policy appears to have confused the purpose of a “media council” representing the “public interest” with the objectives of a government department working in the “national interest”.
If the ministry pushes ahead with this policy without changes it risks Papua New Guinea sliding even further down the RSF World Press Freedom Index. Already it is a lowly 62nd out of 180 countries after falling 15 places in 2021.
Some key points:
• Article 42 of the Papua New Guinea Constitution states that “Every person has the right to freedom of expression and the right to receive and impart ideas and information without interference, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” (Our emphasis)
• Article 43 of the Constitution further states that “Every person has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the freedom to manifest and propagate their religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”
• These provisions in the Constitution reflect the importance of media freedom in Papua New Guinea and the commitment to a free, diverse, and independent media environment. There are existing laws in PNG that support these principles.
• In September 2005, Pacific Journalism Review published a complete edition devoted to “media ethics and accountability” which is available online here. In the Introduction, the late Professor Claude-Jean Bertrand, a global expert in M*A*S (Media Accountability Systems) and media councils and free press in democracies, wrote: “Accountability implies being accountable, accountable to whom? To the public, obviously. [i.e. Not to governments]. While regulation involves only political leaders and while self-regulation involves only the media industry, media accountability involves press, profession and public.” The PJR edition cited published templates and guidelines for public accountability systems.
• On World Press Freedom Day 2019, António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, declared: “No democracy is complete without access to transparent and reliable information. It is the cornerstone for building fair and impartial institutions, holding leaders accountable and speaking truth to power.”
• On 12 November 2019, the Melanesia Media Freedom Forum (MMFF) was established and it declared: “A better understanding is needed of the role of journalism in Melanesian democracies. Awareness of the accountability role played by journalists and the need for them to be able to exercise their professional skills without fear is critical to the functioning of our democracies.”
• The Forum also noted: “The range of threats to media freedom is increasing. These include restrictive legislation, intimidation, political threats, legal threats and prosecutions, assaults and police and military brutality, illegal detention, online abuse, racism between ethnic groups and the ever-present threats facing particularly younger and female reporters who may face violence both on the job and within their own homes.” The full declaration is here.
• Media academics who were also present at this inaugural Forum made a declaration of their own in support of the journalists, saying that they “expressed strong concerns about issues of human rights, violence, and freedom of expression. They also expressed concerns about the effect of stifling legislation that had the power to impose heavy fines and prison sentences on journalists.” (Our emphasis). The full statement is here.
APMN proposals regarding PNG’s Draft Media Policy:
• That the Ministry immediately discard the proposed policy of legislating the PNG media Council and regulating journalists and media which would seriously undermine media freedom in Papua New Guinea;
• That the Ministry extend the public consultation timeframe with a realistic deadline to engage Papua New Guinean public interest and stakeholders in a meaningful dialogue;
• That the Ministry ensures a process of serious consultation with stakeholders such as the existing PNG Media Council, which do not appear to have had much opportunity to respond, journalists, media organisations and many other NGOs that need to be heard; and
• That the Ministry consult a wider range of media research and publications and take guidance from media freedom organisations, journalism schools at universities, and an existing body of knowledge about media councils and systems.
• Essentially journalism is not a crime, but a fundamental pillar of democracy as espoused through the notion of a Fourth Estate and media must be free to speak truth to power in the public interest not the politicians’ interest.
Dr Heather Devere, formerly Director of Practice for the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies; Dr David Robie, founding Professor of Pacific Journalism and director of the Pacific Media Centre, convenor of Pacific Media Watch and a former Head of Journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea; and Dr Philip Cass, a PNG-born researcher and journalist who was chief subeditor of the Times of Papua New Guinea and worked on Wantok, and who is currently editor of Pacific Journalism Review.
Football presenter Gary Lineker is in hot water for comparing UK government refugee policy to that of German fascism. He was commenting on a Twitter video of home secretary Suella Braverman’s plans to reduce the number of refugees in Britain:
There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?
To Lineker’s credit, he has refused to delete his tweet so far. There’s some truth in what he says. Tory refugee policy is vile, racist, and costs lives. But there needs to be caution here, because saying that which is nasty is fascist is a mistake.
Britain isn’t a fascist regime. These policies have been produced in a liberal democracy. And democracies are perfectly capable of doing terrible things. Violence, racism, colonialism, and exploitation are the bedrock upon which they are built.
Like most centrists, Lineker doesn’t really understand what fascism is, where it comes from, or why it is distinct. And wielding Nazi and fascist comparisons lightly is a mug’s game, because those words mean something other than just things we don’t like or which are bad.
Obscuring fascism and its threat by calling policies or people fascist says absolutely nothing about fascism, but a lot about the person making the accusation. To confront fascism, which is certainly alive around the world, we need to be able to distinguish it from plain old racist authoritarian capitalism. And we also need to understand the relationship between them.
Dodgy analogies
One of the worst trends going on social media and in political discourse is the half-cocked Nazi comparison. As Historian Edna Friedberg has it:
Nazis seem to be everywhere these days. I don’t mean self-proclaimed neo-Nazis. I’m talking about folks being labeled as Nazis, Hitler, Gestapo, Goering — take your pick — by their political opponents.
The practice even has its own name:
American politicians from across the ideological spectrum, influential media figures, and ordinary people on social media casually use Holocaust terminology to bash anyone or any policy with which they disagree. The takedown is so common that it’s even earned its own term, reductio ad Hitlerum.
Even worse is when people default to saying things which are absolutely not the Holocaust, are somehow like the Holocaust:
The Holocaust has become shorthand for good vs. evil; it is the epithet to end all epithets.
As Friedberg points out:
This oversimplified approach to complex history is dangerous. When conducted with integrity and rigor, the study of history raises more questions than answers.
The use of Nazi or Holocaust slurs simply to attack opponents or stir up supporters is cheap and dangerous. It’s a juvenile and lazy practice which reduces an immense crime to a political football.
Real, existing fascism
That is not say the Tory Party hasn’t had fascists in it. In the same way, the Labour Party has socialists in it from time to time. For example, in 2022, Tory councillor Andy Weatherhead was forced out of the Conservative Party after it emerged he admired Italian fascist leader Mussolini.
But fascism today is distinct from what we can call the ‘classical’ fascism of the 1930s. Philosophy professor Santiago Zabala said:
The main difference between the classical and contemporary incarnations of fascism is that the version we observe today is operating within democratic systems rather than outside them.
He added:
Proponents of 20th-century fascism wanted to change everything from above; Mussolini defined it as “revolution against revolution”. But fascism today aims to transform democratic systems from within.
That is not to say that modern fascism doesn’t still involve boot-boy street violence or a pursuit of an imagined “other”. We saw this recently in Liverpool where fascists organised local people in anti-refugee protests. Certainly, the Tories whip up and weaponise anger against minorities, and use some of the same rhetoric. But this, again, is opportunistic. Fascism is radical and revolutionary. It doesn’t want the status quo, which is what the Tories are trying to shore up with their own attacks on refugees, trade unionists, and minority groups.
Trump and co
One of the reasons the term fascism has become so over- and mis-used in recent years is Donald Trump. Again, there are certainly fascists in his base. But the question of whether Trump himself is a fascist is an important one, because we need to be able to see fascism clearly.
As a 2018 Vox interview with Yale philosopher Jason Stanley argued, different ends of the spectrum throw the word around and attach different meanings to it:
Liberals see fascism as the culmination of conservative thinking: an authoritarian, nationalist, and racist system of government organized around corporate power. For conservatives, fascism is totalitarianism masquerading as the nanny state.
But Stanley still calls for a certain amount of nuance around Trump:
I wouldn’t claim — not yet, at least — that Trump is presiding over a fascist government, but he is very clearly using fascist techniques to excite his base and erode liberal democratic institutions, and that’s very troubling.
In light of 2020’s Capitol riots, however, where far-right Trump supporters stormed government buildings in Washington DC, it might be worth reviewing Stanley’s assessment. The main takeaway is that fascism remains a fluid, adaptable creed which defies easy definition. It can accompany conservative or nationalist movements, while still being distinct from them.
Complexity
The key point in all this is this that fascism is a complex set of ideas – and those need to be engaged with carefully. Analogies and comparisons can be useful, but they should never be made flippantly. This is because they can obscure fascism where it actually exists.
In the UK there are fascists, for example, but they are not organised into a powerful movement. Rather, they spend their time trading off fear whipped up about refugees and protesting drag queens in an attempt to influence popular discourse. The fact Tories and even centrists also do this at times does not make them fascists too.
What we are dealing with is an aggressive racialised capitalism, in a country with a violent imperial past and present, and we need to see that for what it is. Not least, that is, so that we can recognise fascists when they do appear in numbers.
Fascist group Patriotic Alternative (PA) has been mobilising around the UK, and anti-fascists are increasingly organising counter demonstrations.
Campaigners are organising against PA in their local areas, and it’s clear that anti-fascism is strongest when it’s rooted in local communities. It’s also clear that PA are mobilising racists from around the UK to travel to wherever demos are happening. So anti-racists need to be ready to travel too, to back people up.
Black-bloc
Ten days ago, PA held a demonstration in Falmouth, targeted at a local hotel, where refugees were being housed. But local group Cornwall Resists got there first, and occupied the space around the hotel for the duration of the day.
Cornwall anti-fascists organised themselves on the day as a ‘black bloc’.
Cornwall Resists were serious about the identities of people on the demonstration. The day before the protest, the group tweeted a list of what to bring, and what not to bring – including a mask, and dark unidentifiable clothing:
Getting ready for the demo tomorrow? Here's what to bring, what NOT to bring, and what to wear
Stay safe, look after yourself, and most important take care of each other. Solidarity is our strength against their hatred and division. See you on the streets! pic.twitter.com/8J6gOyZy1A
A statement from one person who joined the black bloc explained why they felt they needed to protect their identity. The statement came after fellow anti-racists levelled criticism at them for covering their faces. They said:
there has… been criticism from some… campaigners, who’ve questioned why we wore masks and complained that it made us look threatening. But while the far-right refuse to accept that communities will come together and resist their vile nonsense, it feels important to set out clearly for otherswhy we dressed the way we did and concealed our identities.
The anti-fascist continued, explaining that wearing a mask is a way to protect yourself from organised racists, who often harass and attack their opponents. They gave the example of the threats made against Cornwall politician Nicole Broadhurst:
Firstly anti fascism, particularly militant anti-fascism, is dangerous. There are some very nasty violent racists around who spend a lot of time trying to find out our identities. The threat when they do this is very real. In 2021 we saw this locally when Penzance mayor Nicole Broadhurst received racist threats and had to have a panic alarm installed in her house. We live in our communities, some of us have children or live with vulnerable people. We will not, and should not be expected to, put our safety or the safety of our loved ones at risk.
Surveillance
The statement explained how wearing a mask is a good way to protect yourself against police surveillance, too. Both as a protection against overt filming by police, and more covert intelligence gathering tactics:
we hide our identities to resist police surveillance. Police surveillance takes many forms – from obvious police filming, to drones to body worn cameras to the [insidious] tactics of Police Liaison Officers (PLOs) who were out in force on Saturday. PLOs are intelligence gatherers, masquerading as the friendly face of policing (no such thing!)…Clear messaging from Cornwall Resists before and during the protest aimed to alert those attending to their presence.
The antifascist’s statement went on to argue that masking up is all the more important in the context of the ever-increasing repressive state legislation that targets us when we organise on the streets:
New protest legislation is criminalising many forms of protest. Anti-fascists are labeled aggravated activists by the police, and you don’t need to have a criminal record to be added to a police database. Simply associating with a known person and going to several protests is enough to justify an entry. This information has, in the past, been used by the police to harass and intimidate campaigners.
No-one should face police intimidation for standing up to fascists. Meanwhile, when the Public Order Bill comes into force, protesters who haven’t even committed an offence, can be issued with Serious Disruption Prevention Orders. These are essentially banning orders that will prevent people from attending protests, stop them seeing named people, prevent them from organising online and can even be enforced by electronic tags.
Not organising with the cops ‘is a red line’
Cornwall Resists also took a stance of not negotiating with the police prior to their counter demonstration. The antifascist said that if the group had liaised with the cops, then their organisers could have been targeted. The Public Order Act allows the police to charge ‘official’ protest organisers who don’t comply with police restrictions. However, if no-one comes forward as organisers, the police can’t do this.
The campaigner insisted:
We will not allow the police to set the terms or the boundaries of our resistance – and we will not allow them to target and threaten named organisers as a result. And let’s face it, had [our] protest been organised by a group that had negotiated with the cops, it wouldn’t have happened in the same way.
They also argued that:
Not liaising with police is a red line. It keeps every one safe. And it is this collective solidarity that keeps our movements strong
Solidarity
Another anti-fascist – who attended the demo in Falmouth – told the Canary how empowering it was to be part of the black bloc:
I knew I was protected and in a team with people I can trust because of us all in bloc. It made me feel so much safer knowing who was on my side.
They spoke about the feeling of solidarity that they felt with the people who joined them to protest:
Solidarity. That’s the biggest thing. Obviously solidarity with people we’re protecting, our fellow humans who deserve love and protection, but also solidarity in black bloc with comrades.
Finally, they emphasised the importance of getting out on the streets and confronting the fascists in person.
I needed to tell the fash what’s what, and that we won’t stand for them on our streets . Fuck, there’s more of us than them (fash and state) and we need to prove that in person
We need to be prepared to defend each other
This new wave of demonstrations by PA, which is hot on the heels of the group’s bigoted response to the Drag Queen Story Hour tour last year, is a challenge for our anti-racist movements.
We know from the past that if we don’t protect our identities, then we are vulnerable to being targeted by fascists. In fact, PA even targeted the Canary‘s Steve Topple online for reporting on the counter demonstration in Falmouth.
Wearing a mask on demonstrations, and refusing police attempts to control us, are just some of the steps we can take, so that we are more prepared to defend ourselves and each other.
Its important to recognise that not everyone can hide their identities so easily on demonstrations. Its much harder for people of colour to stay anonymous (assuming the crowd is majority white), and it can be very difficult for people who have an easily distinguishable body shape, or physical disabilities too.
Crucially, people of colour are vulnerable to racism all the time. Not just during fascist demonstrations. And the answer to tackling fascism isn’t just to confront Patriotic Alternative when they mobilise. Its to build a strong permanent left wing and anti-racist presence in all of our communities. One that is rooted at the local level, but with connections across regions. We need to develop networks of solidarity – based on real personal connections – that can defend themselves should they need to.
Featured image via Cornwall Resists (with permission)
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