radiofree.asia

Category: Opinion

  • It’s not surprising that one of the worst sex offenders in Britain is a Met police officer

    A Metropolitan Police officer has pleaded guilty to at least 29 sexual offences, including 14 rape charges. David Carrick was an armed police officer, serving in the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command. He joined the Met in 2001 after leaving the army, and his attacks span a period of 18 years. The police force admitted that there are likely to be more victims who are too scared to come forward, and other women who couldn’t face the ordeal of a trial. Carrick used his position in the police to terrify women into staying silent.

    Inaction by the Met over Carrick

    The Met suspended Carrick in October 2021. However, Sky News has reported that:

    the Met Police confirmed Carrick “had come to the attention of the Met and other forces on nine occasions prior to October 2021” but had not been charged over those allegations against him.

    They included allegations of rape, domestic violence, and harassment between 2000 and 2021.

    Barbara Gray, the Met’s assistant commissioner, said:

    We should have spotted his pattern of abusive behaviour and because we didn’t, we missed opportunities to remove him from the organisation.

    However, the force chose to ignore multiple complaints. It didn’t miss them, as Gray claimed. Not only did the police force do nothing about the allegations, it even armed Carrick, giving him a gun in 2009. He even passed another vetting procedure in 2017, despite the force knowing about the allegations.

    This shows, once again, how disgustingly misogynist the Metropolitan Police is. It has such little regard for women’s safety that it ignored multiple complaints, and rewarded Carrick by promoting him up the ranks into an elite armed unit.

    Rampant misogyny

    It is hardly surprising that one of the worst sex offenders in Britain could be allowed to thrive in the Metropolitan Police. The Canary has extensively reported on the rampant misogyny in the Met. It took the brutal murder of Sarah Everard for the Met to announce that it would investigate all cases of sexual misconduct or domestic abuse allegations against its officers. Sarah was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by then-serving Metropolitan Police officer, Wayne Couzens, in March 2021. He even remained an officer after police arrested him that month, and was only sacked in July, over a month after he pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping her.

    Just months after Sarah’s murder, Cressida Dick – who was then the Metropolitan Police Commissioner – was accused of “presiding over a culture of incompetence and cover-up”. Dick resigned in April 2022 after she was criticised for her handling of racist, misogynist, and homophobic messages shared by a group of officers based at Charing Cross police station. The men sent WhatsApp and Facebook messages to each other, making multiple references to rape and violence against women. One officer was even referred to as “mcrapey raperson” because of rumours that he had brought a woman to a police station to have sex with her.

    It’s also important not to forget the Met’s handling of the murders of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, who were stabbed to death in a park in Wembley in June 2020. Their family had to search for the women themselves after the Met didn’t immediately respond to their calls for help. When the police did finally turn up, officers took selfies of themselves next to Bibaa and Nicole’s dead bodies. Their mother, Mina Smallman, said at the time:

    If ever we needed an example of how toxic it has become, those police officers felt so safe, so untouchable, that they felt they could take photographs of dead black girls and send them on. It speaks volumes of the ethos that runs through the Metropolitan Police.

    Thousands of women have been murdered or abused by the police

    In 2021, a report found that at least 194 women have been murdered by the police and prison system in England and Wales. In 2022, freedom of information requests from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that 82% of police officers who were accused of domestic abuse kept their jobs. The Guardian reported that:

    1,080 out of 1,319 police officers and staff who were reported for alleged domestic abuse during a three-year period were still working.

    The Guardian continued:

    The conviction rate of police officers and staff for domestic abuse is 3.4%, lower than the 6.3% in the general population.

    Institutional violence

    This being the case, it’s little consolation when the Met yet again sheds crocodile tears, apologising that one of its elite officers, Carrick, has been raping women for two decades. Gray said:

    We are truly sorry that being able to continue to use his role as a police officer may have prolonged the suffering of his victims.

    The Met will go on looking after their own, thriving on a culture of violence, racism, and misogyny. Its officers will, no doubt, continue to abuse and terrify women. These officers will be loose on the streets, arresting and traumatising women, children and Black communities with brutal and humilitating strip searches, while their undercover police officers will continue to invade women’s lives.

    Meanwhile, the state will continue to play its part, having passed a succession of new laws giving some of the country’s most violent men – police officers – inexhaustible new powers.

    The Met will start the process of sacking Carrick on Tuesday 17 January. Far too little, too late.

    Featured image via Guardian News/screen grab, resized to 770*403

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Labour has teamed up with the Sun AGAIN – this time to help burn the planet

    The Labour Party under Keir Starmer clearly doesn’t give two shits about a) the victims of the Hillsborough disaster, b) working-class people, and now c) the planet. This is because shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has teamed up with right-wing shitrag the Sun. However, it’s not the first time Starmer and his team have endorsed the right-wing tabloid.

    Labour: giving the Sun exclusives

    As the Sun itself reported, Reeves has ‘backed’ calls to freeze fuel duty for motorists. The tabloid marked the article as an ‘exclusive’. This means that the party has given the Sun first dibs on the story. It noted that:

    Reeves is demanding Jeremy Hunt spares drivers from an increase at the pumps in his next Budget.

    She points to official analysis showing motorists face a 12p per litre hike if Ministers raise the petrol levy by inflation and end the temporary 5p cut.

    The Sun quoted Reeves as saying:

    With so many families and businesses reliant on their cars, the government must rule out yet another fuel duty rise at the Budget to ease some of those pressures and prevent yet another shock to our economy.

    The tabloid also quoted the founder of campaign group FairFuelUK, Howard Cox, who called Reeves’ announcement:

    gobsmacking political about-face that will secure votes for Labour…

    The traditional party of lower taxation, the Tories, are being trumped by Keir Starmer’s common sense and surprising new support for drivers.

    Of course, the Sun failed to mention that an investigation by openDemocracy found that Cox has a financial interest in lobbying for lower fuel tax. This is because he:

    owns a business that markets a fuel additive called Ultimum5, for which he owns the trademark.

    Cross the floor, Starmer, and be done with it

    So, Labour has not only happily given exclusives to the Sun but has also (maybe inadvertently) been backing a right-wing lobby group in the process. If you need reminding why the party should not be anywhere near this tabloid, the Canary‘s Joe Glenton wrote:

    The Sun‘s reporting of the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster led to the newspaper being despised and boycotted in the city. Following the disaster, in which 96 people died, the Sun made false claims, including that fans pickpocketed the bodies of victims.

    On top of all this, Labour has also shoved its climate crisis-fighting credentials up its own arse. This is because fuel duty is one way of limiting carbon emissions. As DeSmog wrote:

    According to analysis by Carbon Brief, the [freezing of fuel duty] policy has led to road transport emissions being as much as 16 percent higher (or 5 percent across the whole economy) than they would have been, had the last Labour government’s fuel duty “escalator”, which upped the levy by slightly more than inflation each year, been maintained.

    Lose-lose all round for the Labour Party, then. On top of this, as Glenton previously wrote, Starmer has already written for the Sun as Labour leader. Moreover, he allowed the shitrag to be at the party’s 2021 conference. There is nothing ‘Labour’ about endorsing a lying tabloid to win votes – but then, Starmer and his motley crew would be more at home in the Tory Party anyway.

    Featured image via Wikimedia, resized to 770×403 pixels, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 and Wikimedia 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • A year on, we know why the Tongan eruption was so violent – it’s a spectacular wake-up call

    ANALYSIS: By Shane Cronin, University of Auckland

    The Kingdom of Tonga exploded into global news on January 15 last year with one of the most spectacular and violent volcanic eruptions ever seen.

    Remarkably, it was caused by a volcano that lies under hundreds of metres of seawater. The event shocked the public and volcano scientists alike.

    Was this a new type of eruption we’ve never seen before? Was it a wake-up call to pay more attention to threats from submarine volcanoes around the world?

    The answer is yes to both questions.

    The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano was a little-known seamount along a chain of 20 similar volcanoes that make up the Tongan part of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”.

    We know a lot about surface volcanoes along this ring, including Mount St Helens in the US, Mount Fuji in Japan and Gunung Merapi of Indonesia. But we know very little about the hundreds of submarine volcanoes around it.

    A map of the Pacific Ring of Fire
    Scientists have good understanding of land-based volcanoes along the Pacific Ring of Fire, but far less so about seamounts. Image: Getty Images/The Conversation

    It is difficult, expensive and time-consuming to study submarine volcanoes, but out of sight is no longer out of mind.

    Tongan eruption breaks records
    The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption has firmly established itself in the record books with the highest ash plume ever measured and a 58km aerosol cloud “overshoot” that touched space beyond the mesosphere. It also triggered the largest number of lightning bolts recorded for any type of natural event.

    The injection of large amounts of water vapour into the outer atmosphere, along with “sonic booms” (atmospheric pressure waves) and tsunami that travelled the entire world, set new benchmarks for volcanic phenomena.

    The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption has firmly established itself in the record books with the highest ash plume ever measured.

    Covid hampered access to Tonga during the eruption and its aftermath, but local scientists and an international scientific collaborative effort helped us discover what drove its extreme violence.

    Eruption creates a giant hole
    A team from the Tongan Geological Services and the University of Auckland used a multi-beam sonar mapping system to precisely measure the shape of the volcano, just three months after the January blast.

    We were astonished to find the rim of the vast submarine volcano was intact, but the formerly 6km diameter flat top of the submarine cone was rent by a hole 4km wide and almost 1km deep.

    The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai crater and caldera before and after the eruption
    The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai crater and caldera before and after the eruption. Graphic: Sung-Hyun Park/Korea Polar Research Institute, CC BY-SA

    This is known as a “caldera” and happens when the central part of the volcano collapses in on itself after magma is rapidly “pumped out”. We calculate over 7.1 cubic kilometres of magma was ejected. It is almost impossible to envisage, but if we wanted to refill the caldera, it would take one billion truck loads.

    It is hard to explain the physics of the Hunga eruption, even with the large magma volume and its interaction with seawater. We need other driving forces to explain especially the climactic first hour of the eruption.

    Mixed magmas lead to chain reaction
    Only when we examined the texture and chemistry of the erupted particles (volcanic ash) did we see clues about the event’s violence. Different magmas were intimately mixed and mingled before the eruption, with contrasts visible at a micron to centimetre scale.

    Isotopic “fingerprinting” using lead, neodymium, uranium and strontium shows at least three different magma sources were involved. Radium isotope analysis shows two magma bodies were older and resident in the middle of the Earth’s crust, before being joined by a new, younger one shortly before the eruption.

    The mingling of magmas caused a strong reaction, driving water and other so-called “volatile elements” out of solution and into gas. This creates bubbles and an expanding magma foam, pushing the magma out vigorously at the onset of eruption.

    This intermediate or “andesite” composition has low viscosity. It means magma can be rapidly forced out through narrow cracks in the rock. Hence, there was an extremely rapid tapping of magma from 5-10km below the volcano, leading to sudden step-wise collapses of the caldera.

    The caldera collapse led to a chain reaction because seawater suddenly drained through cracks and faults and encountered magma rising from depth in the volcano. The resulting high-pressure direct contact of water with magma at more than 1150℃ caused two high-intensity explosions around 30 and 45 minutes into the eruption. Each explosion further decompressed the magma below, continuing the chain reaction by amplifying bubble growth and magma rise.

    After about an hour, the central eruption plume lost energy and the eruption moved to a lower-elevation ejection of particles in a concentric curtain-like pattern around the volcano.

    This less focused phase of eruption led to widespread pyroclastic flows – hot and fast-flowing clouds of gas, ash and fragments of rock – that collapsed into the ocean and caused submarine density currents. These damaged vast lengths of the international and domestic data cables, cutting Tonga off from the rest of the world.

    This map shows the sites of ongoing venting after the eruption.
    This map shows the sites of ongoing venting after the eruption. Graphic: Marta Ribo/AUT, CC BY-ND

    Unanswered questions and challenges
    Even after long analysis of a growing body of eyewitness accounts, there are still major unanswered questions about this eruption.

    The most important is what led to the largest local tsunami — an 18-20m-high wave that struck most of the central Tongan islands around an hour into the eruption. Earlier tsunami are well linked to the two large explosions at around 30 and 45 minutes into the eruption. Currently, the best candidate for the largest tsunami is the collapse of the caldera itself, which caused seawater to rush back into the new cavity.

    This event has parallels only to the great 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia and has changed our perspective of the potential hazards from shallow submarine volcanoes. Work has begun on improving volcanic monitoring in Tonga using onshore and offshore seismic sensors along with infrasound sensors and a range of satellite observation tools.

    All of these monitoring methods are expensive and difficult compared to land-based volcanoes. Despite the enormous expense of submarine research vessels, intensive efforts are underway to identify other volcanoes around the world that pose Hunga-like threats.The Conversation

    Dr Shane Cronin is professor of earth sciences, University of Auckland.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • American Healthcare System

    I have a newly-discovered health problem, where during the day, my blood pressure readings are quite normal, or we might even say somewhat on the low side, 105-65. During the night, when I am sleeping, however, the very same indicators are just too high, 168-92.

    My doctor, a very dedicated physician and caring human being has no idea why. She has asked around, but the responses have been few, and certainly not very encouraging. To be honest, most doctors don’t know the answer, and as far as the patients, how many of them do you know, that measure and record their blood pressure readings while they are asleep? We have tried different types of blood pressure medication, and I have rejected some for their harsh side-effects (skin bruises or cancer). The results have not been any different. Both myself and my doctor are aware that, unless we achieve some success, the final result could be a heart attack or a stroke for me, which neither one of us wants.

    What should we do to find the answer? Quite obvious, further research, consultation, and testing. 

    The problem is our physicians are often overworked and have no more time than 15 minutes (or 20 per patient), for the really good ones. In order to satisfy the neo-liberal system’s appetite for more profits, they are every day given a bigger list of patients assigned to them. To the blood-thirsty CEOs of insurance companies and healthcare outfits, their earnings are never sufficient. In my case, I volunteered to do some further research on my own, but my physician has already indicated to me that she will not be able to satisfy her quota, if we continue down the same path, and I don’t blame her. It’s her job that’s on the line.

    What I described to you is just one of the destructive aspects and outcomes of this neo-liberal system of “profits before the people”. Each aspect is alone capable of bringing the system down to its knees. There are many more components that define the characteristics of the broken system. From the greed and desires of the drug companies for a bigger bottom-line, to the victimization of the public every year in order to sign them up, often for no reason at all, with a different insurance network — we are all set up for the big fall. Yes, the invisible hand of the neo-liberal capitalism might eventually adjust itself, but when and at what price? Just look at the healthcare industry’s statistics on COVID-19: number of people lost, the private sector’s profits.

    No worries, down the road to perdition, but is America going to be great again!?

    The post American Healthcare System first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • New Zealand doesn’t offer tenure to academics, but the AUT employment dispute shows it’s more than a job perk

    ANALYSIS: By Jack Heinemann, University of Canterbury

    Late last year, the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) initiated a process to eliminate 170 academic jobs to cut costs. The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) found AUT’s approach breached its collective employment agreement with staff and their union and ordered it to withdraw the termination notices.

    Tertiary education runs on an insecure labour force in New Zealand and elsewhere. The AUT decision illustrates that even traditionally secure positions are becoming less so.

    Tenure is the traditional protection for academics in the tertiary sector, but New Zealand does not have tenure at its universities.

    Tenure is more than a perk

    A common argument against tenure is that it leads to a complacent, under-motivated university professor. These concerns are hypothetical — evidence that tenure causes productivity differences is lacking.

    In fact, one of few large studies on the subject found the opposite. Good administrators should be able to manage any actual productivity issues as they do in all other workplaces.

    On the other hand, lack of tenure creates risks for free societies. Tenure is common practice in other liberal democracies. UNESCO says:

    Security of employment in the profession, including tenure […] should be safeguarded as it is essential to the interests of higher education.

    Tenure is important, if not indispensable, for academic freedom. Academic freedom is essential to a university’s mission, and this mission is a characteristic of a democracy. As University of Regina professor Marc Spooner put it:

    A country’s institutional commitment to academic freedom is a key indicator of whether its democracy is in good health.

    Scholarship is not piecework
    The ERA said AUT misunderstood terminology in the collective employment agreement.
    The clash term was “specific position”. AUT’s position was that specific positions are identified by professional ranks (from lecturer to professor) and the numbers of each role across four particular faculties.

    The ERA did not agree and concluded an essential component for identifying specific positions is the employee, being the person who is the current position holder or appointee to a position.

    AUT’s assertion would be like the air force using the rank of “captain” to adjust its number of pilots. The number of captains does not tell you what each captain does, be it to fly planes or fix them.

    Without tenure, a standard less than this minimum established by the ERA can be used to eliminate academics who have legitimate priorities that do not align with the administrative staff of the day, or are the victims of any other concealed discrimination. The ERA clarification makes it more difficult to inhibit intramural criticism, the right to criticise the actions taken by managers and leaders of the university.

    The authoritative review of freedom of speech and academic freedom in Australian universities singles out the importance of academic freedom for this purpose, saying:

    It […] reflects the distinctive relationship of academic staff and universities, a relationship not able to be defined by reference to the ordinary law of employer and employee relationships.

    The ERA clarification helps to prevent the firing of academics who are teaching, researching or questioning things administrators, funders or governments don’t want them to. But it is a finger in a leaking dyke. Tenure is a tried and tested general solution.

    Health of the democracy
    We only need to observe the events in the United States to recognise the importance of tenure. This benchmark country has a proud tradition of tenure. Nevertheless state governments are dismantling tenure to impose political control on curriculums. Our liberal democracy is not immune to this.

    We need more than tenure-secured academic freedom to enable universities to do the sometimes dreary and at other times risky work of providing societies alternatives to populist, nationalist or autocratic movements. But as the Douglas Dillon chair in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, Darrell M. West, wrote, academic freedom is a problem for these movements.

    Recognizing the moral authority of independent experts, when despots come to power, one of the first things they do is discredit authoritative institutions who hold leaders accountable and encourage an informed citizenry.

    In a system with tenure, a university would have a defined stand-down period preventing reappointment to vacated positions. For example, if an academic program and associated tenured staff that teach it were eliminated at the University of Arkansas for financial reasons, the program could not be reactivated for at least five years. The stand-down inhibits whimsical or agenda-fuelled restructuring as a lazy option to manage staff.

    If a similar trade-off were to be applied to how AUT defined specific positions, then no academics could be hired there for five years. It is very different to be prevented from hiring academics than it is to, say, not re-establishing a financially struggling department or program.

    Herein lies the true value of tenure. It is greater than a protection of the individual. It protects society from wasteful or ideologically motivated restructuring as an alternative to poor management. Tenure is security of the public trust in our universities.The Conversation

    Dr Jack Heinemann is professor of molecular biology and genetics, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • US-China War Is No Longer Unthinkable

    China offers a threatening alternative model of development that is non-capitalist, non-Western, and non-colonial. As such, it undermines the West’s neocolonial domination of the Third World and its debt-trap-based forced underdevelopment of subverience and exploitation.
    — K.T. Noh1

    If the United States were to posit that it could eliminate the economic challenge from China by launching an atomic war, there is no evidence that the U.S. would not do so.
    — John Ross2

    A Sino-American war is no longer unthinkable. As we approach a very dangerous period, possibly including WWIII and nuclear catastrophe, I fully expect a rise in frenzied sinophobia, threat inflation, vile lies about China, and further efforts to limit advanced technology to Beijing.

    Here, I’m fantasizing that if blessed with the talent to write a dystopian, geopolitical, political thriller (with an edge-of-your seat movie to follow) I’d pitch a prospectus along the following lines:

    In the not too distant future, the fears of the U.S. bourgeoisie are borne out when a multipolar, poly-centric international political system takes shape. China has become a global economic player, its Belt & Road Initiative won massive appeal throughout the global South and Beijing’s call for respecting the rights of all people to choose their own economic and political system has won many friends. A formidable Front of the South is clearly on the horizon. China has also taken the lead in fighting climate change and despite the U.S. best efforts, its computer chips are among the best in the world. In short, “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” will has proven its superiority to neoliberal capitalism.

    As K.T. Noh writes, “China has demonstrated that it has developed an alternative, non-Western, capitalist, model of development without wars, invasion, colonization, slavery, regime change, primitive accumulation — that the world can emulate and follow.”1 Clearly, the U.S. ruling class cannot allow this 21st century threat of a good example to come to fruition and will use any means available to prevent it.

    A win-win world future is inconceivable to the ruling class. They are unwilling for the United States to become just another normal country even though that would be inestimably better for ordinary citizens. As background, a two-pronged strategy emerged: first with Obama’s “pivot to Asia” in 2011 and then, in 2014, the U.S. manipulated coup d’etat and Minsk agreement in Ukraine which overthrew a democratically elected president and installed a puppet regime. Washington then baited and provoked Russia into military intervention in Ukraine in 2022.3

    U.S. military planners pursued their medium term objective of weakening and even dismembering Russia in order to deny China its key geopolitical ally and force it to face the US on its own. The proxy war that the U.S. launched against Russia in Ukraine and fought to the last Ukrainian and mercenary, showed the world that Washington was willing to engage a Great Power — but the conflict ended in a stalemate. As the Pentagon anticipated, Russia was weakened but regime change was not achieved and Putin remains in power. China, even with its extended Covid pandemic, pledged a “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination” with Moscow.

    Given its military supremacy and with a vast array of bases and well over 100,000 military personnel encircling China, Washington is sorely tempted to use its military to compensate for its inexorable economic decline and to halt China’s development — before it’s too late. An ominous unknown is what Russia will do if a war with China should “go nuclear.”

    American officials publicly accuse China of repeatedly violating the “ruled-based international order” but behind the scenes these same officials are heard to say, “We are an empire, albeit a benign one, and this is an American linguistic instrument designed to preserve us as a global hegemon.” She added that the rules protect US interests as its power wanes relative to China.” Besides, as another official candidly explains, “This is not about nations following rules but the one indispensable nation is making and imposing certain rules on behalf of safeguarding the free world.”4

    The mass media begins amping up its China bashing and accuses the Chinese president of being evil incarnate, another Hitler. Slowly by slowly this drumbeat of propaganda succeeds in manufacturing consent for a war on China.

    The likely flashpoint for military confrontation is the South China Sea and a Gulf of Tonkin-type incident is concocted by the CIA and the Pentagon. This is followed by U.S. B21’s and anti-ship missiles destroying a substantial portion of China’s maritime shipping assets. Because the U.S. is overextended in terms of military supply lines, its efforts to block Chinese trade routes and disrupt oil imports are only partially successful but U.S. submarines do manage to sink several ships attempting to sneak in and out of Chinese ports. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) retaliates by attacking American warships and bases in Guam, South Korea and Okinawa, causing tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel to perish.

    A protracted military conflict ensues and in the fog of World War III, a “red line” is crossed when the Washington initiates the use of battlefield tactical nukes. The national security establishment counts on Beijing not having a survivable nuclear deterrent after absorbing a U.S. first strike. Thus, Washington’s credible nuclear threat (6,500 warheads) will prevent further escalation and compel China’s subjugation to U.S. global supremacy. However, due to hubris and miscalculation, a thermonuclear exchange results in which cities in both China and the United States are vaporized. Firestorms cause radioactive fallout unfurling in a massive plume extending some 60 miles from the blast sites. Both sides lose this geopolitical conflagration and in Washington, the long knives are out and recriminations begin.

    India, which steadfastly refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, turned to Moscow as its largest oil supplier and rejected a Western world order, ascends to global leadership.

    Bearing the above in mind, we know my book proposal will remain stillborn. However, that was not the fate of a speculative fiction novel appearing last year with the intriguing title, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, by Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis (New York: Penguin Press, 2021). It quickly rose to New York Times Bestseller list and received generally positive reviews across the mainstream political spectrum. Efraim Habers, former head of Israel’s Mossad, praised the book and described China as a “Great Threat” to the United States. And both former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and General James “Mad Dog” Mattis call the book a “realistic cautionary tale for our times.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the Netflix film is already in the casting stage.

    As you’ve undoubtedly surmised, here the wily, arrogant Chinese Communist Party instigates war with the United States. Beijing uses its vastly superior cyber warfare dominance to lure an American battleship into an ambush. China then sinks a flotilla of 37 US warships in order to gain a goal “generations in the making,” — unfettered control of the South China Sea. Meanwhile, Iran seizes an F-35 out of the sky — again, using superior technology — and the pilot is taken hostage. China then sets about annexing Taiwan.

    As long as Beijing refrains from engaging with ICBMs, the U.S. president orders a “limited,” multi-pronged attack on the Chinese mainland including striking the Chinese port of Zhanijing with a 150 kiloton “tactical” nuclear weapon. A “red line” is crossed. China responds by creating radioactive wastelands of San Diego and Galveston and the US president (a female) retaliates by vaporizing Shanghai in a mass murder (not other term suffices) of 30 million people. The authors write that the devastation in Shanghai “exceeded capacity for comprehension.” The book ends with India intervening as the peacemaker with the New Delhi Peace Accords. The price of the war had been staggering to both countries and in its wake, India becomes the world’s ascendant political and economic juggernaut and Iran also emerges in a highly advantageous position.

    Dr. Sandeep “Sandy” Chowdhury, the US deputy national security adviser, despairs that Reagan and Kennedy’s vision of a “city on a hill” might now perish but reassures himself with the thought that “America was an idea and ideas very seldom vanish…” American was a nation of “freemen” and he fervently hopes that this spirit of America has “yet to abandon the place.”

    The authors blame defeat of the storied “city on a hill” on enormous deficiencies America’s technological war fighting readiness which must be shored up before its too late. The fact that the U.S. does not prevail is meant to rattle readers (and officials) out of their complacent stupor. And related, the question hangs in the air whether the U.S. can vanquish the China threat without resort to nuclear weapons? The authors also muse whether the U.S. public will waver in its support for war after hostilities begin?

    It would never occur to the authors, publishers, reviewers or indeed, the American people, that the US would be the aggressive party and initiate military conflict with China. As one of book’s characters muses, “American didn’t use to start wars. It used to finish them.” And in a recent interview, the book’s authors reveal their American exceptionalism bias when they assert that “The history of America is us striving to create a more perfect union — to hit that ideal… the essence of America is that enduring ideal, and worth investing in and it has brought us much more good than harm to this world.”5

    In the novel, China is portrayed as seeking to replace the U.S. as the globe‘s most powerful country. In testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March of 2021, Admiral Phil Davidson echoed this message when he said that China might attempt a military takeover over Taiwan in the next six years and this is “just one step along the way to supplanting the United States and its leadership in a rules-based international order.” Taiwan only bookends a larger war. Davidson added that China will militarily “attempt unilaterally changing the status quo.”6 And the Pentagon’s 2022 China Military Report to Congress, meant to convince that body to grant the largest defense budget ever, warns that China may challenge the U.S. in the global arena.

    In lieu of a final conclusion, I think of a quotation attributed to Albert Einstein that “The world is dangerous not because some people do evil but because some people see it and do nothing” and bookend it with Howard Zinn’s that our problem is too much civil obedience.

    However, I’m not sanguine about enough disobedient forces rising up in the United States in time to take up the gauntlet of Einstein’s “something.” And I must confess that, at times, I find myself on the edge of despondency as I sense the morbid symptoms in our midst that foreshadow WWIII, even before the climate Apocalypse.

    Along with others on the left, I’ve often cited Gramsci’s injunction about “pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will” as the only answer for those committed to struggle for justice in the world.

    That is, I’m convinced that we must look at the United States as it actually exists, with no illusions about the future. Noam Chomsky terms this RECD or “really existing capitalist democracy — which in its basic nature is a death sentence.” In the face of this reality, Chomsky has consistently reminded us that a moral person has only two choices: To do nothing to stop evil in the form of our belligerent warmongers who are bent on initiating war with China. This choice guarantees the worst will occur. Or we must do whatever we can to stop the Merchants of death “which is not much of choice, so we should be able to easily make it.” This course may not prove cathartic but it will put us more in touch with our humanity and that’s no small thing.

    1. K.J. Noh, “The U.S. Is Set on a Path to War with China. What is to be Done?”
    2. John Ross, “What is Propelling the United States into Increasing International Military Aggression,” Monthly Review, April 24, 2022. And see, Wi Yu, “What the Pentagon Doesn’t Want You to Know About China,” Common Dreams, Dec 20, 2022; Deborah Veneziale, “Who Is Leading the United States to War?”
    3. Benjamin Abelow, How the West Brought War to Ukraine (Great Barrington, MA: Siland Press, 2022).
    4. Paraphrased from quote by the invariably astute political analyst Kim Petersen, “What is the Rules-Based Order.”
    5. Ethan Rocke, “‘2034’ Authors talk about World War III, Nuclear Conflict and America’s Future,” Coffee or Die, April 14, 2022. 2034: A Novel of the Next War. The authors are Elliot Ackerman, author of several novels, spent eight years in the Marine Corps and was with elite covert CIA units in the Middle East and southwest Asia, including Afghanistan and Iraq. Retired Admiral James Stavridis former supreme commander of NATO and former Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
    6. USNI News, March 9, 2021.
    The post US-China War Is No Longer Unthinkable first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Yamin Kogoya: Arrest of Papuan governor Enembe condemned as illegal Jakarta ‘kidnap’

    ANALYSIS: By Yamin Kogoya

    Following months of legal limbo and a health crisis, Papua Governor Lukas Enembe was arrested this week by the country’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in a dramatic move condemned by critics as a “kidnapping”.

    At noon on Tuesday, January 10, Governor Enembe was dining in a local restaurant near the headquarters of Indonesia’s Mobile Brigade Corps, known as Brimob.

    After the arrest the Brimob transported him directly to Sentani Theys Eluay airport — an airport named in honour of another prominent Papuan leader who was callously murdered by the same security forces in 2002, not far from where the governor was arrested.

    Governor Enembe was immediately flown to Jakarta to arrive at the Army Central Hospital (RSPAD), Gatot Soebroto, Central Jakarta, reports Kompas.com.

    In what seems to be a cautiously premeditated arrest, Jakarta targeted Governor Enembe while he was alone and without the support of thousands of Papuans who had barricaded his residence since September last year.

    Once the news of his arrest was leaked, supporters attempted to gather in Sentani at the airport, but they were outnumbered by heavy security forces. A few protesters were shot, and several were injured, with one protester dying from his injuries.

    1 shot dead, several wounded
    Papua Police Public Relations Officer Kombes Ignatius Benny Prabowo said when contacted by Tribunnews.com in Jakarta: “Yes, it is true that someone was shot dead on Tuesday.”

    Among those who were shot were Hemanus Kobari Enembe (dead), Neiron Enembe, Kano Enembe, and Segira Enembe.

    Surprisingly, they share the same clan names of the governor himself, indicating that only his immediate family were informed of his arrest.

    Hemanus Kobari Enembe paid the ultimate price at the hand of Jakarta’s calculated planning and arrest of Papua’s governor.

    The crisis began in September 2022, when Governor Enembe was named a suspect by the KPK and summoned by Brimob after it accused him of receiving bribes worth 1 million rupiah (NZ$112,000). This amount was then escalated into a rush of accusations against the governor, including a new allegation that the governor had paid US$39 million to overseas casinos, disclosing details of his private assets such as cars, houses, and properties.

    Governor Lukas Enembe arrested
    Governor Lukas Enembe . . . ill, but heavily guarded by the BRIMOD police after his arrest. Image: CNN/APR

    Voices of prominent Papuan figures
    A prominent Papuan, Natalius Pigai, Indonesia’s former human rights commissioner, was interviewed on January 11 by an INews TV news presenter regarding these extra allegations.

    “If that’s the case,” Pigai replied, “then why don’t we use these wild extra allegations to investigate all the crimes committed in this country by the country’s top ministerial level, including the children of the president, as a conduit for investigating some of the crimes committed by his office in this country?

    “Are we interested in that? Why just target Governor Lukas?”

    Papuan Dr Benny Giay
    Papuan Dr Benny Giay . . . his view is that the arrest of Governor Lukas Enembe serves the “interests of the political elite” in Jakarta. Image: Jubi screenshot APR

    Papuan public intellectual Dr Benny Giay was seen in a video saying that the arrest of Governor Enembe by the KPK in Jayapura was to serve the interests of Jakarta’s political elite, whom he described as “hardliners” in relation to the power struggle to become number one in Papua’s province.

    According to him, Governor Lukas Enembe was a victim of this power struggle.

    Dr Socrates Yoman, president of the West Papua Fellowship of Baptist Churches, described the arrest as a “kidnapping”. He said the governor had been arrested illegally, without following any legal procedures — and neither the governor nor legal counsel was informed of his arrest.

    According to Dr Yoman, Governor Enembe is ill and in the process of recovering from his illness. Thus, this pressure exerted by the state through the military and police violated Governor Enembe’s basic rights to health and humanity.

    The behaviour of the state through BRIMOB constituted a crime against humanity or a gross violation of human rights because the governor was arrested during lunchtime without an arrest warrant and while he was unwell, he said.

    “The governor is not a terrorist — he was elected Governor of Papua by the Papuan people.

    “This kidnapping shows that the nation or country has no law. The country is controlled by people who have lost their humanity, opting instead for animalistic rage and a senseless lust for violence.

    “Our goal is to restore their humanity so that they can see other human beings as human beings and become whole human beings,” said Dr Yoman.

    The governor’s health
    The governor’s health has deteriorated since he was banned from traveling to Singapore for regular medical aid since September last year.

    The November 2022 letter from the Singaporean doctors appealing for Governor Enembe's medical evacuation
    The 23 November 2022 letter from the Singaporean doctors appealing for Governor Enembe’s medical evacuation . . . ignored by the Indonesian authorities. Image: APR screenshot

    Last October, Governor Enembe received two visits from Singapore medical specialists who have been treating him for a number of years.

    Despite these visits, his health has continued to deteriorate, which led Singapore’s medical specialists to send a letter in November to authorities in Indonesia requesting that the governor be airlifted to Mount Elizabeth hospital.

    The letter from Royal Healthcare in Singapore said:

    “We have treated Governor Lukas remotely with routine blood tests, regular zoom consults and monitoring of his glucose and blood pressure levels since November 1, 2022. However, his condition has deteriorated rapidly the last week. His renal function is at a critical range (5.75mg/dl), and he may require dialysis sooner than later. His blood pressure is hovering 190-200/80-100 increasing his risk of morbidity and mortality. He has been advised on immediate evacuation to Singapore with direct admission to Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital.”

    The letters were ignored, and the sick governor was arrested and taken to a hospital in Jakarta, where he had previously refused to go.

    Governor Enembe had previously written to KPK requesting that he receive urgent medical treatment in Singapore. Papuan police chiefs and KPK members were asked to accompany him, but this did not happen.

    On November 30, 2022, Firli Bahuri, Chairman of KPK, visited the governor at his barricaded residence in Koya Jayapura, Papua, in what appeared to be a humane approach.

    But what happened on Tuesday indicates that KPK had already decided to arrest him and take him to the Indonesian capital of Jakarta — almost 4500 km from his home town.

    Many Papuan figures who go to Jakarta return home in coffins. Papuan protesters did not want their leader to be taken out of Papua, partly due to this fear.

    Despite these protests, letters, and requests, Jakarta completely disregarded the will of the people and of the governor himself.

    The plot to kidnap Governor Enembe appears to have been well planned over a period of four months since September, providing enough space for the situation in Papua to calm down and allowing the governor to leave his barricaded house alone without his Papuan “special forces”.

    It was during the lunch hour of noon on Tuesday that KPK targeted him in a cunningly calculated manner.

    Governor’s image in social media
    Governor Enembe is portrayed in the Indonesia’s national narrative as a representative of the so-called “poor and backward” majority of Papuans, while portraying him as a man of a lavish lifestyle, owning properties and cars, and with great wealth.

    Comments on social media are flooded with a common theme — portraying Papua’s governor as a “criminal”, with some even calling for his “execution”.

    Some social media comments emerging from those fighting for West Papua’s liberation are echoing these themes by claiming that Governor Enembe’s case has nothing to do with the Free Papua Movement– his problem is with Jakarta only as he is a “colonial puppet ruler”.

    It is true that Lukas Enembe is governor of Indonesian settler colonial provinces. However, Papuans have failed to understand the big picture — the ultimate fate of West Papua itself.

    What would happen if West Papua remains part of Indonesia for the next 20-50 years?

    Our failure to see the big picture by both Papuans and Indonesians, as well as the international community, is a result of Jakarta fabrication that West Papua is merely a national sovereignty issue for Indonesia. That is the crux of that fatal error.

    The isolation of the governor from the rest of the Papuans as a “corruptor” and other dehumanising labels are designed to destroy Papuans’ self-esteem, stripping them of their pride, dignity, and self-respect.

    The images and videos of the governor’s arrest, deportation, handcuffing in Jakarta in KPK uniform, and his admission to the military hospital while surrounded by heavily armed security forces are psychologically intimidating to Papuans.

    Through brutal silence, politically loaded imagery has been used to convey a certain message:

    “See what has happened to your respected leader, the big chief of the Papuan tribes; he is no longer a person. Jakarta still has the final say in what happens to all of you.”

    Papuans are facing a highly choreographed state-sponsored terror campaign that shows no signs of abating.

    For Papuans, the new year of 2023 should be a time of hope, new dreams, and new lives, but this has been marred once again by the arrest and kidnapping of a well-known and popular Papuan figure, as well as the death of a member of the governor’s family on Tuesday.

    As human miseries continue to unfold in the Papuan homeland, Jakarta continues to conduct business as usual, pretending nothing is happening in West Papua while beating the drum of “development, prosperity, and progress” for the betterment of the backward Papuans.

    With such prolonged tragedies, it is imperative that the old theories, terminologies, and paradigms that govern this brutal state of affairs be challenged.

    A new paradigm is needed
    The very foundation of our thinking between West Papua and Indonesia must be re-examined within the framework of what Tunisian writer, Albert Memmie, described as “coloniser and colonised”, when examining French treatment of colonised Tunisians, who emerged concurrent with Franz Fanon, the leading thinker of black experience in white, colonised Algeria.

    The works of these thinkers provide insight into how the world of colonisers and colonised operates with its psychopathological manipulations in an unjust racially divided system of coloniser control.

    These great decolonisation literature treasures will help Papuans to connect the dots of this last frontier to a bigger picture of centuries of war against colonised original peoples around the world, some of which were obliterated (Tasmania), able to escape (Algeria), or escaped but are still trying to reorganise themselves (Haiti).

    Therefore, the coloniser and colonised paradigm is a useful mental framework to view Jakarta’s settler colonial activities and how Papuans (colonised) are continuously being lied to, manipulated, dissected, remade and destroyed — from all sides — in order to prevent them from uniting against the entity that threatens their very existence.

    The real culprits in West Papua and proper Papuan justice
    Most ordinary Papuans are unable to gain access to information regarding who exploits their natural resources, how much they are making, who receives the most benefits and how or why.

    But Jakarta is too busy displaying Governor Enembe’s personal affairs and wild allegations in headline news — his entire existence is placed on public display, as an object of humiliation, just as the messianic Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross in order to convince Galilean followers that their beloved leader failed.

    Let us not forget, however, that it was this publicly humiliated and crucified Jesus who forever changed the imperial world order and human history.

    If true justice is to be delivered to colonised Papuans, then Papuans must put the Dutch on trial for abandoning them 60 years ago, and then hold the United Nations and the United States responsible for selling them, to Indonesia, 60 years ago.

    In addition to arresting all international capitalist bandits that are exploiting West Papua under the disguise of multinational corporations, Indonesia should also be arrested for its crimes against Papuans, dating back over 61 years.

    However, the question remains… who will deliver this proper justice for the colonised Papuans? Jakarta has certainly set itself on a pathological path of arresting, imprisoning, and executing any figure that appears to be a messianic figure to unite these dislocated original tribes for its final war for survival.

    Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic/activist who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • UK government’s attempts to block Scottish self-ID continue – and broaden in scope

    On Thursday 22 December, the Scottish parliament passed its Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) bill with a vote of 86-39. Now, the Tory-led UK parliament is in a frantic and spiteful scrabble to block the bill from becoming law.

    The GRR bill introduces what is commonly termed ‘self-ID’, allowing Scottish trans people to receive a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) with a simple self-declaration. This is in contrast to the current UK process, which requires either a gender dysphoria diagnosis or a lengthy period of living under one’s declared gender.

    Blocking and wrecking

    Despite the bill having been been proposed six years ago, and having faced lengthy public and parliamentary debate, the actual vote itself was still fraught. Over 150 amendments were proposed, delaying the passing of the bill by two whole days. In the end, seven Scottish National Party (SNP) members voted against their party whip, two abstained, and Ash Regan MP quit.

    However, although the GRR bill passed with a wide majority in Holyrood, it has not yet become law. The Times reported that Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government intended to block it if at all possible. To this end, there are three possible interventions that the UK government could make:

    • It can use s.104 of the Scotland Act to pass regulations clarifying whether Scottish GRCs will be valid in the rest of the U.K.
    • It can use s.33 of the Scotland Act to refer the bill to the UK Supreme Court to assess whether the bill is within the competence of the Scottish Parliament.
    • It can use s.35 of the Scotland Act to make an order vetoing the bill, regardless of whether it is within competence, because it adversely affects the law relating to the reserved matter of equal opportunities

    Indeed, within hours of the bill passing in Holyrood, Scottish secretary Alister Jack threatened to invoke Section 35. He stated:

    We will look closely at that, and also the ramifications for the 2010 Equality Act and other UK-wide legislation, in the coming weeks – up to and including a section 35 order stopping the bill going for royal assent if necessary.

    The powers afforded to Westminster by Section 35, essentially dismissing a bill despite Holyrood’s assent, have never been invoked. This would risk causing a constitutional crisis at a time when the union between Scotland and the UK has never been more fraught. Such a clear demonstration that Scottish parliament is only permitted to make its own laws at Westminster’s decree could be a disastrous move.

    Enter Badenoch

    A statement from Stonewall has stressed that the UK government should not try to block the bill. The LGBTQ+ advocacy group said that:

    It will be yet another example of hampering progress on LGBTQ+ rights & undermine the PM’s pledge to govern with compassion.

    The UK Government already recognises equivalent birth certificates from all EU/EEA countries, including countries which have a de-medicalised model of legal gender recognition.

    As if in response, Kemi Badenoch – the anti-equality Tory equalities minister – has announced a review of the list of gender certificates from overseas that the UK will recognise.

    As things stand, individuals from a list of 41 countries don’t need to provide a dysphoria diagnosis to the UK government when applying for a GRC. This is on the proviso that their gender was previously affirmed by one of these other countries. Of these 41 countries, eight have a self-ID process not unlike the one Holyrood just passed.

    Badenoch stated that she would “make sure it does not compromise the integrity of the Gender Recognition Act”:

     There are now some countries and territories on the list who have made changes to their systems since then and would not now be considered to have equivalently rigorous systems.

    It should not be possible for a person who would not satisfy the criteria to obtain UK legal gender recognition to use the overseas recognition route to obtain a UK Gender Recognition Certificate.

    This would damage the integrity and credibility of the process of the Gender Recognition Act.

    Badenoch’s statement didn’t mention Scotland, but the link between the current public scrutiny of self-ID and the reactionary backlash against countries with the law already in place is clear.

    The catch

    The list of recognised countries was last updated in 2011. This was three years prior to Denmark – which features on the list – becoming the first country in Europe to allow self-ID in 2014. We should note the fact that it is now 2023, nine years after this landmark move for trans equality, and there has been no fatal compromise of the UK’s GRC process.

    But there’s another flaw in Badenoch’s logic – one which has been conveniently missed by a great deal of the debate around self-ID in the UK. In most cases, a UK resident applying for a GRC needs to fulfil the following criteria:

    • you’re aged 18 or over
    • you’ve been diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the UK
    • you’ve been living in your affirmed gender for at least 2 years
    • you intend to live in this gender for the rest of your life

    However, there’s also another set of criteria available for people without a dysphoria diagnosis. It requires the fulfilment of all of the following:

    • you currently live in England, Wales or Scotland
    • you were in a marriage or a civil partnership on 10 December 2014 and living in England or Wales, or on 15 December 2014 and living in Scotland
    • you had been living in your affirmed gender for at least 6 years before those dates, and you have evidence of that
    • you have had gender affirmation surgery

    The fact that this secondary set of criteria requires surgery means that it is by no means de-medicalised. However, it does expose the fact that the UK’s gender recognition process isn’t reliant on the diagnosis of gender dysphoria. It also shows that the length of time living in one’s affirmed gender that is considered satisfactory is completely arbitrary. Here, it varies between two and six years.

    Delay, delay, delay

    During the self-ID debate in Scotland, the Times  was quick to point out – using its own commissioned YouGov poll – that the majority of Scots wanted to keep a requirement for gender dysphoria diagnosis. However, as we’ve seen, even the UK government itself doesn’t strictly require an actual diagnosis.

    Instead, its requirement is much more mundane. It’s reflected in the six-year discussion around the GRR bill, the three-day debate before it finally passed, and the spiralling waiting times for transgender healthcare created by government cuts.

    In the end, what the UK government requires above all else is delay. Whether it’s six years, or two, or going through the whole process of obtaining a GRC again after moving country, the system is designed to put trans lives on hold.

    A GRC does little beyond updating a birth certificate and allowing trans people to get married and die with dignity. That’s it. There is no good reason why these basic acts of respect should take years.

    The GRR bill would reduce this wait to just three months. It is this fact which is truly intolerable to the transphobes in power.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Open Government License 3, resized to 770*403

    By Alex/Rose Cocker

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Martin Luther King Day: Every Day is On!

    Of course, King was murdered by the Deep State on Steroids:

    Both the Jowers and the Wilson allegations suggest that persons other than or in addition to James Earl Ray participated in the assassination. Ray, within days of entering his guilty plea in 1969, attempted to withdraw it. Until his death in April 1998, he maintained that he did not shoot Dr. King and was framed by a man he knew only as Raoul. For 30 years, others have similarly alleged that Ray was Raoul’s unwitting pawn and that a conspiracy orchestrated Dr. King’s murder. These varied theories have generated several comprehensive government investigations regarding the assassination, none of which confirmed the existence of any conspiracy. However, in King v. Jowers, a recent civil suit in a Tennessee state court, a jury returned a verdict finding that Jowers and unnamed others, including unspecified government agencies, participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King. (source)

    I know King would be with class criticizing this sort of 2023 Black Un-Activism: Here’s What Black Celebrities Wore To The 2023 Golden Globes

    Boy, what would King Say — WWKS?

    “Volodymyr Zelensky Talks Hopes of War Ending During Golden Globes Video Message: ‘There Will Be No Third World War. It is not a trilogy,’ the Ukraine president said in his impact video message.”

    Think of that Goebbels-Mengele-Hitler moment, would you? I had a friend who was watching these multimillionaire frauds, the beautiful people (sic) would laugh at her and at me — she’s going through domestic violence hell, divorce hell, with systems that make the victim feel and be guilty. Me? I can write circles around most of those Holly-Dirt frauds, but alas, I am a communist, so, those frauds wouldn’t touch me with a social distancing stick of a thousand yars while all masked up and girdled up with a ZioAzovNaziLensky blue and yellow half assed flak jacket.

    Imagine, how many Goyim, Gentiles, even Christians (not all UkroNazi’s are hard-core Nazis and Satanists) are not dead and wounded in the latest meat grinder the little dictator Zelensky is heading up? And he spoke to the Golden Shower Award Recepients while they, 12,000 were KIA-ed and another 13,000 wounded? Some of the UkroNazi soldiers had frostbite on many many feet and toes and fingers, while the multimillionaire war monger, Zelensky, spoke to the cocaine and 12-step Botox folk.

    You think King would be angry?

    No message of peace from Julian Assange’s wife or father? No real heroes of peace and reconciliation speaking at the dumb-down awards. No heroines of journalism at the awards, uh?

    “A major effect of junk politics — its ceaseless flood of patriotic, religious, macho and therapeutic fustian — is to pull position after position loose from reasoned foundations,”  writer BenjaminDeMott noted (Hedges and Hedges).

    And so, all the creeps in politics, all the heads of corporations, the heads of universities, even military generals, and of course, the Press, Media, they are all two-bit actors, like ZioAzovNaziLensky. (Note: I went to the story on Golden Globes ZioLensky appearance, and it is absolutely disgusting. Sean Penn said the most ludicrous thing, and ZioAzovLensky said nothing, really, pure tripe. Read at your onw risk, and, of course, WWKD — What Would King Do?

    And that my kind readers, I know for a fact, would be putting steam under King’s collar if he were around today to see this complete blasphemy of humanity actually entertaining nuclear war, limited strikes, and more war here, there, and everywhere. And a mixed race woman, as VP!

    Here, enough of these fascists and perversions of humanity.

    King:

    The following (scroll down a bit) ran today, Jan. 11, in the little twice-a-week rag out here on the Central Oregon Coast —

    It’s mellow for me, not exactly milquetoast, but still the reality if this USA and Canada are racist countries based on Anglo Saxon invasions and pogroms of genocide and land theft and subjugation and insanity. Get those Puritans and Smith Colony and Pilgrims and Mayflower folk here so the City of London to this day can hold it’s genocidal sway over much of the world, even in this post/new colonialism.

    From Zinn’s People’s History of the United States: In that first year of the white man in Virginia, 1607, Powhatan had addressed a plea to John Smith that turned out prophetic. How authentic it is may be in doubt, but it is so much like so many Indian statements that it may be taken as, if not the rough letter of that first plea, the exact spirit of it:

    I have seen two generations of my people the…. I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country. I am now grown old, and must the soon; my authority must descend to my brothers, Opitehapan, Opechancanough and Catatough-then to my two sisters, and then to my two daughters-I wish them to know as much as I do, and that your love to them may be like mine to you. Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that 1 can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, diey all cry out “Here comes Captain Smith!” So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all the in the same manner.

    When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indigenous peoples. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created the excuse to take Indigenous land by declaring the area legally a “vacuum.” The Indians, he said, had not “subdued” the land, and therefore had only a “natural” right to it, but not a “civil right.” A “natural right” did not have legal standing.

    The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”

    *****

    Heroes — A million of them, but for now, Paul Robeson, King and Malcolm X (NPR, be careful):

    King would be proud of this hero,

    Ana Belen Montes has repeated history by saying what she said during her trial 21 years ago: the US government’s policies against Cuba are very harsh and she behaved according to her conscience rather than the law. She added: “I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it.”

    If alive, King would be protesting and getting jailed for this hero:

    The U.S. imperialists “want Alex Saab like they want Julian Assange to suffer,” charges human rights and international law expert Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, who the United Nations’ Human Rights Council appointed to serve as a special rapporteur.

    What is the great “crime” Alex Saab is accused of committing, that caused this South American diplomat to be physically pulled off of a jet while refueling at a remote African island, imprisoned, and reportedly tortured there for about a year before being kidnapped to the U.S.A.?

    The U.S. has no extradition treaty with Cabo Verde. Saab was simply seized and flown to Miami without any notification to his lawyers or family. (Source)

    And, King, if he were alive, what might he have been doing to free and condemn USA-UK-Sweden-Australia-The World for this hero? Assange.

    King would be holding this book, and thousands of others, exposing the cruelty of Capitalism and USA:

    Part One of review and discussion of Linda G. Ford’s Women Politicals in America: Jailed Dissenters from Mother Jones to Lynne Stewart (Part Two)

    I was born a protester … My mother had to go to the school a lot and talk to the principal.— Dorli Rainey

    I am being jailed because I have advocated change for equality, justice, and peace. … I stand where thousands of abolitionists, escaped slaves, workers and political activists have stood for demanding justice, for refusing to either quietly bear the biting lash of domination or to stand by silently as others bear the same lash.— Marilyn Buck, at her 1990 sentencing (epigram in Linda Ford’s book, Women Politicals in America)

    Yeah, I sure do miss King as a topic in schools, as a centerpoint to our thinking about war and materialism and predatory and parasitic capitalism! Here, today’s Op-Ed in our small rural county, Lincoln County!

    A Day On, Not a Day Off

    MLK Jr. 56 years ago stated a point more relevant today than a half century ago: The systemic flaws of America have incubated the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”

    This MLK Jr. Day was so deemed by Congress in 1994 to mark the holiday as “a national day of service.” Martin Luther King was born Jan. 15, 1929. I’ve done plenty of service-in-service-community service projects with students over the 29 years of the day’s relevance: river clean-ups, working in food kitchens, getting blankets and tents to homeless folk, cleaning up graffiti, and having teach-ins and drive-by photo shoots of neighborhoods.

    Here’s this German-Irish white guy (me) today writing about the power of not just King and his activism, but the power of so many people in the civil rights and anti-racist movement who transformed my point of view on so many global and national social justice issues.

    In addition, King, for me, would not be so vaunted without my study of Malcolm X. Or Paul Robeson, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, and so many activists in the Black Liberation Movement.

    For this county [with  89.1% white, .09 percent African American, 1.5 percent Asian, and then 4.1 percent American Indian and Alaska Native], the concept of not just celebrating King, but drilling down deeply into what he represents/-ed might fall on deaf ears. Putting him into historical context, i.e. learning about those around him before he rose to fame and afterward, adds to the value of King’s prominence.

    I had a father who was shot in Korea as a 19 year old and then in Vietnam as a 36 year old. He was in two branches of military as a regular uniformed soldier; for 32 years total. He was always supportive of my journalism, my teaching, my college pursuits, but more importantly, he backed me on my activism. He was a student of history, and the history I embraced wasn’t what mainstream historians were delving into.

    For example: Cesar Chavez and his work —  National Farm Workers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers labor union. John Trudell, son of a Santee Dakota father and a Mexican mother, who was a poet, song writer, performer and activist.

    In this county and in other places, just what does it mean to a majority of the country to give pause around King’s work? The “I Have a Dream” speech will be played in parts, over and over. I have emphasized his letter to clergy and other white leaders, in his jailhouse essay titled, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” written in longhand April 15, 1963.

    King’s letter: “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known.”

    He also penned from the jail, “The Negro is Your Friend.”

    This third Monday in January marks the birth of Dr. King Jr. We need to go beyond a few lines played back from the “Dream” speech or some of the black and white images of his 1963 march on Washington

    Throughout my college teaching – in heavily military populated El Paso, Tucson, Las Cruces, and Spokane, including instruction on military bases and posts – I got students to think deeper about King’s life, work, and teachings. Having students read, analyze and discuss his April 4, 1967 speech against the Vietnam War, delivered at New York’s Riverside Church a year to the day before he was assassinated, I ended up rallying sophisticated critiques of King’s impact on the USA.

    It was the Vietnam War in King’s time,  but my students were facing the Panama Invasion, Grenada, Kuwait, Iraq, contras in Nicaragua, dirty US-backed wars in Guatemala, Afghanistan, and so many other so-called interventions and these proxy wars. Some were Vietnam and Korea combat veterans.

    This speech was eviscerated by mainstream Press, including the New York Times and dozens of large daily newspapers. That was the point of having this speech and the Jail speech looked at and parsed – self-critique as a people, as a nation.

    King’s first point in drawing the connection between ending racism at home and curbing militarism abroad had to do with the waste of precious resources:

    “I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.”

    My father was his soldiers’ advocate, having verbally defied some of the businesses in the South that refused to serve his fellow uniformed men in the Big Red One (Latino and Black Americans).

    I never got to challenge my CW4 father with so much of history I absorbed. For instance, Costs of War Project at Brown University estimates that the United States is militarily still engaged in 85 countries, enabling or prosecuting wars in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and beyond. Maintaining over 750 overseas military bases have unfortunately spun spending for military purposes out of control, more than at the height of the Vietnam or Korean Wars.

    If Dr. King were alive today, he would be expounding against the state of our foreign and domestic policies, and would despair at all this war mongering, especially now with China in America’s sights. An arms race with China is anathema to King’s hopes and dreams of a socially, economically and culturally just world.

    King was the antiwar preacher, and he is so right about those triplets – militarism, materialism and racism.

    The post Martin Luther King Day: Every Day is On! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • Moral Injury: An Epidemic Fueled by Political Economy

    “When COVID swept the planet, a moral injury crisis arose as ethically wrenching dilemmas became the new normal.” “In an atmosphere of rationed care, doctors, nurses and other health care workers must admit a few patients and turn many away,” to die.

    Moral injury is a specific and devastating trauma that arises when people face situations that deeply violate their core values. Such violations of morality can result in shame, guilt, and hopelessness, raising the risk of substance abuse, depression, and suicide. When society allows the uncontrolled spread of a deadly virus, millions are afraid they may become infected and transmit the virus to their family.

    How did we arrive at this point of moral degradation?

    For thousands of years, physicians took oaths to always act in the patient’s best interest when providing care. At the heart of medical ethics, this moral code was passed down through the centuries and reaffirmed by The World Medical Association (WMA) in 1949 and again in 2006. Additionally, the WMA specified:” A physician shall not allow his/her judgment to be influenced by personal profit or unfair discrimination,” and “shall not receive any financial benefits or other incentives solely for referring patients or prescribing specific products”.

    Ethics ran headlong into The HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) Act of 1973.

    The passage of this act set the stage for the undermining of long-established medical ethics. The HMO Act was designed specifically to reduce costs, by charging patients a monthly fee for a set package of health care.  The Act was passed with the knowledge that there had been no systematic analysis done to show that it would not negatively impact health care.  Nonetheless, the Government gave millions of dollars in direct financial assistance to develop the HMO which was designed to be a profit-making business.

    This HMO economic arrangement put physicians and other healthcare providers’ financial interests into conflict with the needs of their patients. The monthly pot of money must provide for profit, salaries, wages, and health care.  If too much is spent on the patients, there is less available for profit and wages. So began the Health Insurance, Corporate Medicine assault on medical ethics. By 1980 this Wall Street strategy had crystallized into a worldwide approach to health care.

    In 1980 the World Bank Acts

    Publishing a new healthcare sector policy in 1980, the World Bank advocated reducing public health infrastructure and opening the door to rampant privatization of health services and pharmaceutical supply.

    This policy was adopted by the US government. The Federal Government’s share of public health expenditures plummeted from 60% in 1968 to 10% in 1983, where it has remained for forty years. This silent war on our Public Health Infrastructure carried out under both Democratic and Republican administrations has drained hundreds of billions of dollars from our Public Health Services, jeopardizing the health, safety, and welfare of the population. Since 2009 alone, some $150 Billion has been defunded, along with the loss of some 60,000 jobs.

    Tragically the Medical Profession succumbed to the rise of Corporate Health Care by betraying their core medical ethic and became complicit “stewards” of an economic system that puts profits before people. The AMA’s (American Medical Association) Principles of Medical Ethics:V11, gives the following ethical guidelines for physicians: “Mitigate possible conflicts between physicians financial interests and patient interests by minimizing the financial impact of patient care decisions and the overall financial risk for individual physicians.”

    We have experienced four decades of HMO’s negative effects on health care while they became the darlings of Wall Street earning billions of dollars for investors as health care was rationed by: denial of service, restricted benefits, cost cutting, patients dumping, overworked and underpaid staff, and plunging physician’s incomes.

    The author D.H. Lawrence (1880-1930) appears to have anticipated these horrors, when he wrote: “The mosquito knows full well, small as he is he’s beast of prey. But after all he only takes his bellyful, he doesn’t put my blood in the bank.”

    Fast Forward to the ACA (Affordable Care Act) of 2010

    One of its chief goals was to “reduce the cost of health care” by giving “financial incentives” to providers for the “Value” they provide in health care. A value-based payment incentive was to be established by bundling payment for certain types of care. Forbes magazine, advertised as ‘The Capitalist Tool’ stated, “Bundled payments are just price controls by another name—and as such will yield subpar care by encouraging insurers and providers to put their own financial interests above the medical needs of patients.”

    The ACA was passed with very little known about its effectiveness or risks to Patient Care.

    Once again it is all about cost-cutting. But now with the so-called “Value-Based Purchasing”, it is no longer about making profits for corporations, but spending less government money — it is about getting more for the Governments shrinking dollars going to health care spending for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security Disability. The politicians want to “save” money, which in reality means to redistribute money, but the economics is similar. With some ten trillion dollars in tax cuts for the rich over the last two decades, the US treasury has less available for social services as politicians continue to redirect a trillion dollars per year to the military — war industry without concerns that it is “costing the government too much.”

    The Tax Reform Act of 12/2017 will suck an estimated thirty billion dollars out of Medicare. Bundled payments will shrink and the giant vice of shrinking payments, combined with rising costs (hospital profits, rising prices for supplies, drugs, medical equipment, etc.) will inevitably squeeze the lifeblood out of both the patients and the healthcare providers.

    Tragically, this became a reality in 2020 with Covid-19, when the elderly were allowed to die as the state of Arizona rationed health care using “Crisis Standards of Care,” to decide who lives and who dies.

    This policy was founded upon the ethics promoted in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

    JAMA called for “A Framework for Rationing Ventilator and Critical Care Beds during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” JAMA accommodated itself to this brutal betrayal of the people’s health. The journal advocated a policy to ration and deny care that will fall most heavily on those over 60 years of age. The JAMA article of March 27, 2020, recommends who should be DENIED care:

    1)     Those least likely to survive treatment.  Statistics show that the death rate increases over the age of 60. (the elderly, with a higher risk for minorities)

    2)     Those with other medical conditions. More common over age 60. (the elderly, with a higher risk for minorities)

    3)     Those who are working and “intrinsically more worthy” will be given priority and those who are retired will be denied. (the elderly)

    4)     Those who are younger will be given priority and the elderly will be denied.

    The exsanguination of medical ethics has helped bring us to this dangerous moment in history.

    We have witnessed a craven transformation of medical ethics when physicians and other health providers are clamoring to sign up for “Value-Based Bundled Care.” The AMA has betrayed their ancient oath as healers, in service to an economic system that puts profits before people.

    The Covid pandemic President Biden declared was over, and the lifting of all restrictions against its spread, have killed a quarter of a million US citizens in 2022, 95% are age 65 and older. Our parents and grandparents continue to die, while vaccine-evasive and transmittable Covid variants constantly emerge as the pandemic has become one of the leading causes of death in the US. Moral injury continues to spread across the land. We have been led into a partnership with Dracula.

    How do we escape from this public health catastrophe of Moral Injury?

    “Unless your employer hires more staff or supplies more resources, chances are you’ll have to keep making decisions that violates your ethics, compounding your trauma.” The causes of Moral Injury require “systemic solutions on a much broader level.”

    This is the road to cure and prevention.

    The post Moral Injury: An Epidemic Fueled by Political Economy first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why Pacific Islanders are staying put even as rising seas flood their homes and crops

    ANALYSIS: By Merewalesi Yee, The University of Queensland; Annah Piggott-McKellar, Queensland University of Technology; Celia McMichael, The University of Melbourne, and Karen E McNamara, The University of Queensland

    Climate change is forcing people around the world to abandon their homes. In the Pacific Islands, rising sea levels are leaving communities facing tough decisions about relocation.

    Some are choosing to stay in high-risk areas.

    Our research investigated this phenomenon, known as “voluntary immobility”.

    The government of Fiji has identified around 800 communities that may have to relocate due to climate change impacts (six have already been moved). One of these is the village on Serua Island, which was the focus of our study.

    Coastal erosion and flooding have severely damaged the village over the past two decades. Homes have been submerged, seawater has spoiled food crops and the seawall has been destroyed.

    Despite this, almost all of Serua Island’s residents are choosing to stay.

    We found their decision is based on “vanua”, an Indigenous Fijian word that refers to the interconnectedness of the natural environment, social bonds, ways of being, spirituality and stewardship of place. Vanua binds local communities to their land.

    Residents feel an obligation to stay
    Serua Island has historical importance. It is the traditional residence of the paramount chief of Serua province.

    Waves submerge a house
    A house on Serua Island is submerged by seawater. Image: A Serua Island resident/The Conversation

    The island’s residents choose to remain because of their deep-rooted connections, to act as guardians and to meet their customary obligations to sustain a place of profound cultural importance. As one resident explained:

    “Our forefathers chose to live and remain on the island just so they could be close to our chief.”

    Sau Tabu burial site
    Sau Tabu is the burial site of the paramount chiefs of Serua. Image: Merewalesi Yee/The Conversation

    The link to ancestors is a vital part of life on Serua Island. Every family has a foundation stone upon which their ancestors built their house. One resident told us:

    “In the past, when a foundation of a home is created, they name it, and that is where our ancestors were buried as well. Their bones, sweat, tears, hard work [are] all buried in the foundation.”

    Many believe the disturbance of the foundation stone will bring misfortune to their relatives or to other members of their village.

    The ocean that separates Serua Island from Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu, is also part of the identity of men and women of Serua. One man said:

    “When you have walked to the island, that means you have finally stepped foot on Serua. Visitors to the island may find this a challenging way to get there. However, for us, travelling this body of water daily is the essence of a being Serua Islander.”

    The ocean is a source of food and income, and a place of belonging. One woman said:

    “The ocean is part of me and sustains me – we gauge when to go and when to return according to the tide.”

    The sea crossing that separates Serua Island from Viti Levu
    The sea crossing that separates Serua Island from Viti Levu is part of the islanders’ identity. Image: Merewalesi Yee/The Conversation

    Serua Islanders are concerned that relocating to Viti Levu would disrupt the bond they have with their chief, sacred sites and the ocean. They fear relocation would lead to loss of their identity, cultural practices and place attachment. As one villager said:

    “It may be difficult for an outsider to understand this process because it entails much more than simply giving up material possessions.”

    If residents had to relocate due to climate change, it would be a last resort. Residents are keenly aware it would mean disrupting — or losing — not just material assets such as foundation stones, but sacred sites, a way of life and Indigenous knowledge.

    Voluntary immobility is a global phenomenon
    As climate tipping points are reached and harms escalate, humans must adapt. Yet even in places where relocation is proposed as a last resort, people may prefer to remain.

    Voluntary immobility is not unique to Fiji. Around the world, households and communities are choosing to stay where climate risks are increasing or already high. Reasons include access to livelihoods, place-based connections, social bonds and differing risk perceptions.

    As Australia faces climate-related hazards and disasters, such as floods and bushfires, people living in places of risk will need to consider whether to remain or move. This decision raises complex legal, financial and logistical issues. As with residents of Serua Island, it also raises important questions about the value that people ascribe to their connections to place.


    Serua Island is one of about 800 communities in Fiji being forced to consider the prospect of relocation.

    A decision for communities to make themselves
    Relocation and retreat are not a panacea for climate risk in vulnerable locations. In many cases, people prefer to adapt in place and protect at-risk areas.

    No climate adaptation policy should be decided without the full and direct participation of the affected local people and communities. Relocation programs should be culturally appropriate and align with local needs, and proceed only with the consent of residents.

    In places where residents are unwilling to relocate, it is crucial to acknowledge and, where feasible, support their decision to stay. And people require relevant information on the risks and potential consequences of both staying and relocating.

    This can help develop more appropriate adaptation strategies for communities in Fiji and beyond as people move home, but also resist relocation, in a warming world.The Conversation

    Merewalesi Yee, PhD candidate, School of Earth and Environment Sciences, The University of Queensland; Dr Annah Piggott-McKellar, research fellow, School of Architecture and Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology; Dr Celia McMichael, senior lecturer in geography, The University of Melbourne, and Dr Karen E McNamara, associate professor, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

  • Wes Streeting’s NHS plans are typical of this charlatan

    Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has enraged healthcare workers and activists with his latest NHS proposals. His comments came in the Rupert Murdoch-owned the Times – and it’s pretty obvious why he’s coming up with the Tory-lite plans he has.

    Streeting: greedy GPs getting ‘money for old rope’

    The Times published its interview with Streeting on Friday 6 January. Amid a swathe of commentary on the NHS (and the predictable ‘I’m just like you!” anecdotes about growing up on a council estate), Labour’s shadow health secretary proposed some bold plans for GPs (general practitioners). The Times wrote that:

    With a record two million people waiting more than a month to see a GP, the shadow health secretary says: “I think we need to completely rethink what primary care looks like.” GPs should no longer be “the sole gatekeeper” to the NHS, he says. “I’m convinced that pharmacy has a big role to play. This is where competing interests among providers might not always work in the interests of patients. I can well understand why there are GPs who look with anxiety at pronouncements from politicians that community pharmacies should be doing more vaccination or more prescribing, but that’s because they’re thinking about their own income and their own activity. Vaccinations are money for old rope, and a good money spinner, and not unreasonably GP partners are thinking about the finances of their own practice. That’s totally reasonable but what matters to the patient is fast, accessible care, wherever that is.”

    Straight out of the blocks, people pointed out numerous problems with Streeting’s idea that GPs were thinking about “their own income”:

    Streeting also wants to make GPs salaried NHS workers – which one GP took issue with:

    Self-referral chaos?

    Then, Streeting wants patients to be able to self-refer to specialists, and not have to go through their GP. He stated:

    Sometimes it’s pretty obvious that you don’t need to see the [family] doctor. I had a lump on the back of my head, during the pandemic. I needed to see a dermatologist but in order to get an appointment with a dermatologist, I had to go through the GP. What a waste of my GP’s time. I think there are some services where you ought to be able to self refer.

    The lump could have been a tumour for all Dr Google knows, Wes – and you would have wasted a dermatologist’s time when the GP would have referred you to oncology straight away. Streeting’s nonsense about self-referral has also been heavily dragged on social media:

    Streeting: feathering his own nest?

    So, if Streeting doesn’t want GPs to do vaccinations, doesn’t want them to always have to refer patients, and thinks they’re only feathering their own nests, what the hell does he want them to do? Well, he has another bold plan, as the Times noted:

    Instead of GP surgeries he wants modern health centres with a wider range of facilities “where you will have your family doctor, but you’ll also see nurses, you’ll see physiotherapists, you might go for a minor injury or a scan…

    Mate, this LITERALLY already exists. In Beckenham, South London, for example, there’s a GP surgery with (shock) nurses, GPs, physios, extended appointment hours, and even minor surgery – and it’s accepting patients. This likely isn’t the case everywhere, but the point is that Streeting isn’t making some revelatory statement. His model already exists.

    What Streeting is really doing with his plans is quite obvious to some people. As Dr Julia Grace from campaign group Every Doctor UK pointed out on Twitter:

    Of course, Streeting’s position on the NHS comes with the caveat he’s accepted donations from a hedgefund manager with investments in private healthcare companies. Go figure.

    If Streeting was so concerned about patients, why not commit to properly funding the NHS? He could aim to improve care for chronically ill and disabled people – an area where the NHS falls down. However, Streeting instead decides to attack GPs. Labour’s shadow health secretary is a charlatan of the highest order – and it didn’t take much to show this, either.

    Featured image via STV News – YouTube and Sky News – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • John Mitchell: Media freedom, public interest and The Fiji Times

    By John Mitchell in Suva

    In any true democracy, the role of journalists and the media outlets they represent is to inform the people so that they can make educated and well-informed choices.

    The role of politicians is to represent those who elected them.

    They are to make decisions that best serve the public interest and to ensure that the concerns of citizens are heard, considered, and, where appropriate, acted upon.

    In such a political system, the journalist and the politician must both serve the people but in peculiarly differing ways.

    Journalists act on behalf of citizens by exploring and covering issues that concern the people and in doing so they include a diversity of voices and political opinions that offer different viewpoints and opinions.

    The bottom line of their job is ensuring that politicians do their job transparently, with accountability and through better public service delivery.

    In the end, journalism enhances, encourages meaningful dialogue and debate in society.

    On the other hand, politicians use the media to reach the masses, make them understand their policies and through this — get acceptance and approval from the public.

    Politicians love media spotlight
    Politicians naturally love the media spotlight for without reporters nobody knows their policies and their good deeds, no matter how grand they may be.

    Politicians love talking to reporters so they can get publicity.

    Reporters like politicians too because they provide them with stories — there goes the long story of the symbiotic relationship between the press and powerful members of the legislature.

    What a perfect relationship.

    Absolutely wrong!

    Some say the relationship is one of “love and hate” and always hangs in the balance.

    This liaison of sorts is more than meets the eye and the truth is simple.

    Like the legislature, the media has a prominent and permanent place in national leadership and governance (known as the Fourth Estate).

    Critical components of democracy
    Both are critical components of a democracy.

    Because of their democratic mandate, the media and politicians cannot be fulltime bedfellows.

    And as the saying goes, they will have their moments.

    However, in past years The Fiji Times has always been seen as the “enemy of the state”.

    This had nothing to do with the media’s work as a watchdog of society or the Fourth Estate, but rather with the way in which the former government muzzled the media and created an environment of fear through draconian media laws that stifled freedom of expression and constricted media freedom.

    Simply put, a newspaper and any truly independent media outlet must be fair and in being fair, its content must reflect the rich diversity of views and opinions that exists in the public sphere, as well as the aspirations, fears and concerns of the varied groups that exist in the community.

    Experts, academics or anyone outside of government is welcomed to use this forum of information exchange, dissemination and sharing.

    Politicians, if they have nothing to hide, can use it too, provided what they have to say is honest, sincere and accurate.

    Listening to pluralistic ‘voices’
    A responsible government deliberately chooses to listen attentively to pluralistic “voices” in the media although these expressions may put it in an uncomfortable position.

    A responsible government also explores avenues in which valid ideas could be propagated to improve its own practices and achieve its intended outcome.

    In other words, a newspaper exists to, among other reasons, communicate and amplify issues of concern faced by citizens.

    This includes voicing citizens’ complaints over any laxity in government’s service delivery, especially people in rural areas who often do not enjoy the public services that we so often take for granted in towns and cities.

    So whenever, people use the mainstream media to raise concerns over poor roads, water, garbage disposal, education and inferior health services, the public does so with the genuine yearning for assistance and intervention from government.

    And in providing this platform for exchange, the media achieves its democratic goal of getting authorities to effectively respond to taxpayers’ needs, keep their development promises and deliver according to their election manifestos.

    Remember, a responsible newspaper or media does not exist to act as government’s mouthpiece.

    Retaining media independence
    If media outlets give up their independence and allow themselves to be used by politicians for political parties’ own political agenda and gains, then citizens who rely on the media as an instrument for meaningful dialogue, discussion and discourse will be denied their participatory space and expressive rights.

    A responsible and autonomous newspaper like The Fiji Times does not exist to make government feel good.

    For if this ever occurs, this newspaper will compromise its ability to provide the necessary oversight on government powers and actions, without which, abuse of power and corruption thrive to the detriment of ordinary citizens.

    If media organisations and journalists who work for them operate in the way they should, then for obvious reasons, all politicians in government will “sometimes” find the media “upsetting” and “meddlesome”.

    Copping the flak from ministers and those in positions of authority is part and parcel of the media’s work.

    It is a healthy sign that democracy works.

    This newspaper was instrumental in calling on the SVT (Soqosoqo Vakavulewa ni Taukei) government and its then prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, (now Fiji’s Prime Minister again under the People’s Alliance Party-PAP/National Federation Party (NFP) and Sodelpa coalition) to account for the enormous financial loss which caused the collapse of the National Bank of Fiji in the 1990s.

    Our pages can prove that.

    This newspaper also scrutinised many of the policies of the coalition government under the leadership of Mahendra Chaudhry and Laisenia Qarase, during whose time, this newspaper was the common foe.

    Our pages can prove that.

    Last government ‘vindictive, authoritarian’
    But no government was as vindictive and authoritarian as the last government.

    Today, early in the days of the PAP/NFP and Sodelpa coalition government, we are seeing the good old days of media freedom slowly coming back.

    We can now doorstop the Prime Minister and call the Attorney-General at 9pm for a comment and get an answer.

    The openness with which ministers talk to the press is encouraging.

    We hope things stay that way and the government accepts that we will sometimes put out stories that it finds positive and there will be times when we will make its life difficult and uneasy.

    At the end of the day, it is the people that we both work hard to serve.

    Sometimes we will step on some people’s toes, be blamed for provoking disquiet and seem unpopular among powerful politicians.

    That is to be expected and embraced.

    Safeguarding press freedom
    But we will continue to play a prominent role in safeguarding the freedom of the press so that all Fijians can enjoy their own rights and freedoms.

    With the best intentions, our journalists will continue to forge forward with their pursuit of truth and human dignity, regardless of the political party in power.

    As we rebuild Fiji and regain what many people think we’ve lost in 16 years, this newspaper will play a pivotal role in allowing government to reach the people so that they make informed choices about their lives.

    We must face it — Fiji is heavily in debt, many families are struggling, the health system is in a poor state, thousands are trapped in poverty and the most vulnerable members of society are hanging in the balance, taking one day at a time.

    It is in this environment of uncertainty that the media and politicians must operate in for the common good.

    And as a responsible newspaper, we will listen to all Fijians and provide a safe space to express their voices.

    That is our mandate and our promise.

    John Mitchell is a senior Fiji Times feature writer who writes a weekly column, “Behind The News”. Republished with permission.

  • Are the New Congressional Progressives Real?

    What follows is an encore for a column I wrote in 2018 for the new progressive Democrats elected to the House of Representatives. The Democratic Party won control of the House in 2018, and again barely in 2020. There was no response nor adoption of any of these power-enhancing suggestions from any of the novice legislators in those two election cycles.

    I am now sending to the entering class of 2022 these helpful tools to strengthen both their efforts and those of the citizen groups in the halls of Congress.

    The rapidity with which the Democratic Party’s political cocoon wraps itself around newly elected legislators, who arrive in Washington determined to change the culture and output of our premier branch of government, is beyond astonishing. Unlike the red-line-drawing so-called “Freedom-Caucus” among the House Republicans, who topple their leadership, or at least are power factors, the Democrats toe the line and surrender to their dictatorial leadership.

    Until the quieted progressives form their own voting bloc, the national citizen groups will remain as powerless as the dominant corporate Democrats in Congress want them to be.

    We shall soon know who, if any, of the progressives in the class of 2022 are serious about their pre-swearing-in determinations and strive to measure up to the yardsticks for empowerment.

    *****

    Are the New Congressional Progressives Real?
    Use These Yardsticks to Find Out

    In November, about 25 progressive Democrats were newly elected to the House of Representatives. How do the citizen groups know whether they are for real or for rhetoric? I suggest this civic yardstick to measure the determination and effectiveness of these members of the House both inside the sprawling, secretive, repressive Congress and back home in their Districts. True progressives must:

    1. Vigorously confront all the devious ways that Congressional bosses have developed to obstruct the orderly, open, accessible avenues for duly elected progressive candidates to be heard and to participate in Congressional deliberations from the subcommittees to the committees to the floor of the House. Otherwise, the constricting Congressional cocoon will quickly envelop and smother their collective energies and force them to get along by going along.

    2. Organize themselves into an effective Caucus (unlike the anemic Progressive Caucus). They will need to constantly be in touch with each other and work to democratize Congress and substantially increase the quality and quantity of its legislative/oversight output.

    3. Connect with the national citizen organizations that have backers all around the country and knowledgeable staff who can help shape policy and mobilize citizen support. This is crucial to backstop the major initiatives these newbies say they want to advance. Incumbent progressives operate largely on their own and too rarely sponsor civic meetings on Capitol Hill to solicit ideas from civic groups. Incumbent progressives in both the House and the Senate do not like to be pressed beyond their comfort zone to issue public statements, to introduce tough new bills, or even to conduct or demand public hearings.

    4. Develop an empowerment agenda that shifts power from the few to the many – from the plutocrats and corporatists to consumers, workers, patients, small taxpayers, voters, community groups, the wrongfully injured, shareholders, consumer cooperatives, and trade unions. Shift-of-power facilities and rights/remedies cost very little to enact because their implementation is in the direct hands of those empowered – to organize, to advocate, to litigate, to negotiate, and to become self-reliant for food, shelter and services (Citizen Utility Boards provide an example of what can come from empowering citizens).

    5. Encourage citizens back home to have their own town meetings, some of which the new lawmakers would attend. Imagine the benefits of using town meetings to jump-start an empowerment agenda and to promote long overdue advances such as a living wage, universal health care, corporate crime enforcement, accountable government writ large, renewable energy, and real tax reform.

    6. Regularly publicize the horrendously cruel and wasteful Republican votes. This seems obvious but, amazingly, it isn’t something Democratic leaders are inclined to do. Last June, I urged senior Democrats in the House to publicize a list of the most anti-people, pro-Wall Street, and pro-war legislation that the Republicans, often without any hearings, rammed through the House. The senior Democrats never did this, even though the cruel GOP votes (against children, women, health, safety, access to justice, etc.) would be opposed by more than 3 out of 4 voters.

    7. Disclose attempts by pro-corporate, anti-democratic, or anti-human rights and other corrosive lobbies that try to use campaign money or political pressure to advance the interests of the few to the detriment of the many. Doing this publicly will deter lobbies from even trying to twist their arms.

    8. Refuse PAC donations and keep building a base of small donations as Bernie Sanders did in 2016. This will relieve new members of receiving undue demands for reciprocity and unseemly attendance at corrupt PAC parties in Washington, DC.

    9. Seek, whenever possible, to build left/right coalitions on specific major issues in Congress and back home that can become politically unstoppable.

    10. Demand wider access to members of Congress by the citizenry. Too few citizen leaders are being allowed to testify at fewer Congressional hearings. Holding hearings is a key way to inform and galvanize public opinion. Citizen group participation in hearings has led to saving millions of lives and preventing countless injuries over the decades. Authentic Congressional hearings lead to media coverage and help to mobilize the citizenry.

    Adopting these suggestions will liberate new members to challenge the taboos entrenched in Congress regarding the corporate crime wave, military budgets, foreign policy, massive corporate welfare giveaways and crony capitalism.

    The sovereign power of the people has been excessively delegated to 535 members of Congress. The citizens need to inform and mobilize themselves and hold on to the reins of such sovereign power for a better society. Demanding that Congress uphold its constitutional obligations and not surrender its power to the war-prone, lawless Presidency will resonate with the people.

    Measuring up to these civic yardsticks is important for the new members of the House of Representatives and for our democracy. See how they score in the coming months. Urge them to forward these markers of a democratic legislature to the rest of the members of Congress, most of whom are in a rut of comfortable incumbency.

    The post Are the New Congressional Progressives Real? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • BLM, OWS and the Folly of Street “Activism”

    We begin this long and winding ode on August 7, 2012 — a classic hot-and-humid Big Apple summer day. I was taking part in a demonstration called “Occupy Saks” and I came within an eyelash of being arrested by seven cops. I’ll get to that shortly.

    For now, I’ll explain that the protest was ostensibly against a man named Carlos Slim who, despite such a cinematic moniker, is not a James Bond villain.

    Slim is one of the world’s wealthiest humans with a fortune amassed by exploiting the poorest of the poor in Mexico through his telephone monopoly. For a short while, he was the only “richest man in the world” ever from a developing nation.

    Slim was born in Mexico but is of Lebanese descent. He loves baseball, possesses at least 12 mansions across the globe, and owns part of the New York Times. At the time of the aforementioned protest, Slim was also the largest shareholder in Saks Fifth Avenue.

    One of Carlos Slim’s dozen or so mansions. This one is in Manhattan. Slim purchased it for $44 million. 

     
    So, there we were. Occupy Wall Street, working with groups like Two Countries, One Voice, to spread “awareness” about Slim’s crimes. We had music and chanting and costumes and puppets and all that. We followed the well-worn script. This included handing out fliers to “educate” the masses.

    Needless to say, most passers-by justifiably treated us as if we were just another NYC sidewalk nuisance. This brings me to reason #1 why current modes of street activism are counterproductive:

    1. Street activism reinforces the negative public perception. To the average person, an activist is a fringe character. A fanatic. A wild-eyed zealot who sees the world in black-and-white terms. This perception exists for two primary reasons. Firstly, the corporate media works relentlessly and effectively to portray activism in a negative light. Secondly, many dissidents are wild-eyed zealots who see the world in black-and-white terms.

    For example, I can remember (several times) standing out in sub-zero temperatures with a handful of others, protesting something or other. We’d felt so proud of ourselves. It was so dedicated of us to be risking our own health “for the cause.” When I’d share photos later (see reason #2) I’d use self-serving and self-deluding captions like: “This is what commitment looks like.”

    Meanwhile, the people walking past such “protests” would look at us like we were, well, wild-eyed zealots. Some even yelled stuff like: “Get a life!” and “What’s wrong with you people?” I can see now how ridiculous we must’ve looked and how grandiose it was to assume we were doing anything even remotely productive. Multiply my experiences by thousands of events for thousands of “issues” across the country every single day and you have a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.

     
    Back to Saks: As the rally progressed, there were rumors of a protest flash mob soon to happen inside the store — which was ringed not only by Saks Fifth Avenue security but also by a large contingent of increasingly aggressive police.

    (For the uninitiated, a flash mob is “a large public gathering at which people perform an unusual or seemingly random act and then disperse, typically organized by means of the internet or social media.”)

    The cops and security in front of Saks were under strict rules to not let any “demonstrators” into the store. The legality of such a decree is questionable but hey, I’ve personally witnessed far more dubious “laws” made up on the spot during my activism days. Anyway, I wanted to get some photos of whatever might happen inside so I wandered around the corner to find a different entrance.

    About halfway down 49th Street, I opened a door and walked inside — noticing two cops a few steps behind me. The entrance landed me in the hyper-expensive jewelry department. The saleswomen looked at me in my cargo shorts, sleeveless t-shirt, and backward Yankee cap and began surreptitiously signaling to me that I was being followed.

    I regretted surrendering to my urge to get photos but I knew I could not do anything sudden at this point. So, I decided to walk casually but directly to the other side of Saks and exit ASAP.

    The crowd of store detectives and cops following me grew with each step I took. I’d committed no crime but I knew this fact would not deter the NYPD. So, I stayed calm, enjoyed some air conditioning on a hot day, and began making my way through the eerie silence. As luck would have it, my “99%” button became unfastened from the small bag I had slung over my shoulder.

    The pin dropped to the floor with a sonorous clang — echoing through the quiet section of the cavernous first floor. I reached down slowly, picked it up, and allowed myself a look around as I did. I was fully surrounded.

    A uniformed cop — the shortest of the group by far — screamed at me: “Give me one fuckin’ reason why I shouldn’t take you in right now?” Some of the sales staff audibly gasped.

    “Um,” I cooly replied, “because I haven’t given you any justification to do so. (pause) Besides I was just heading out anyway.”

    I walked slowly — very slowly — toward the exit. The store detectives went back to looking for “demonstrators” while the seven cops stayed with me. The short cop got closer to me and barked: “Are you a demonstrator?”

    “No,” I lied. “I just came inside to get some AC before I walked to the subway.”

    “Why are you carrying a camera?”

    “It’s New York City. Lots of people walk around taking photos.”

    I had made it to the door without being stopped so I stepped back outside into the August humidity. All seven cops followed me. The one cop who had so far done all the talking positioned himself in front of me to block my way. I marveled at how emotionally committed he was to this performance.

    “Are you a demonstrator?” he tried again. I shook my head “no” so he pointed to my bag.

    “What’s in the bag?”

    Never fluctuating from a non-threatening monotone, I replied: “You know as well as I do that I don’t have to tell you or show you.”

    The cop did not like that legally-accurate reply. His hands balled into fists as he began shifting his weight from one foot to the other. I braced myself to be punched but he instead drilled me with a verbal barrage:

    “What’s your button say? Are you a demonstrator? You know demonstrators are not allowed in here! Don’t bullshit me, I know why you’re here and what you’re up to. Are you a demonstrator?”

     
    I did some quick thinking. In my youth, I’d dealt with many a cop and always managed to talk my way out of trouble — once when I was already in the back seat of a squad car! I glanced around at the other six cops and then back to Napoleon. They were all younger than me and relatively fit. But in my sleeveless shirt, I was clearly in better shape than any of them.

    It struck me that I looked a lot more like the angry bro’s surrounding me than “the other” they are conditioned to fear, loathe, and oppress. So I decided to slip into the character I sometimes play while working in gyms.

    “You know what,” I said with an exaggerated NYC accent, “you’d be bored if you looked in my bag anyway. I’ve got a towel because it’s so friggin’ hot out here, some water to stay hydrated, and a couple of power bars to keep my energy up.” (All true.)

    Napoleon unfurled his fists and began to nod. “You mean, like nutrition and all?”

    “Yeah,” I said. “You know how hot the subway platforms are? It can drain you.”

    All seven cops were nodding now… trying to look like gym rats in the face of my spiel.

    “So yeah,” I continued. “I’m not looking for any problems and I’ve got nothing to hide in my bag. You wanna look?”

    “Nah,” Napoleon replied, “but just get moving.” The other cops lost interest in me as I walked off — without looking back.

    Would I have evaded zip-ties if I were not a middle-aged white male? Yeah, right. But my entire interaction highlights reason #2 why current modes of street activism are counterproductive:

    2. Street activism is more about cops, “symbolic” arrests, and social media. One of the more unfortunate yet enduring activist tendencies is to focus way more time and energy on challenging cops than challenging the dominant culture those cops are serving and protecting. So to all you “radicals”: If you really wanna goad cops into arresting you and/or scream “fuck the police,” please recognize that such gestures will do absolutely nothing to bring about serious, sustainable social change or to help lure more folks into activism. But it does lead to “epic” social media posts. A whole new breed of virtual “heroes” measure their “effectiveness” not by, um, being effective but instead by Facebook shares, Instagram likes, Twitter retweets, and donation page tallies.

    For me, this silly game went on for a couple more years before I finally identified and rejected the cognitive dissonance. In those ensuing years, I ended up inside Saks Fifth Avenue once again when “Black Lives Matter” first became a thing. (Of course, the remnants of Occupy had lined up under the BLM banner and we did our best to virtue signal our way into your hearts and minds.)

    It was December 2014 and the plan was to stage a “die-in” inside Saks during the holiday shopping crush. Dozens of activists (of all ethnicities) entered the store and pretended to be shoppers. When we got the signal, we were supposed to plop down onto the floor and pretend to be dead (see my photo above).

    This was (somehow) supposed to represent the people of color who have been killed by law enforcement. I opted to not lie down because I wanted to get photos to document the action and well… I’d already had my fill of almost being arrested in this particular venue

    Also, on some level, I could already recognize the ineffectually performative nature of this entire exercise. It would take a little while longer before I’d start saying this out loud and well… instantly, I lost about 90 percent of my “comrades.” The curtain had been pulled back and suddenly, the farce was exposed for what it is. This brings me to reason #3 why current modes of street activism are counterproductive:

    3. Street activism gives us the illusion of being a threat. If street activism posed any threat to the status quo, they wouldn’t sell us permits to perform it. It’s all part of the wink-wink-nudge-nudge facade of the Land of the Free™. The elites snicker as they agree: Let the silly activists chant and sing. It’ll create the impression we tolerate and even appreciate dissent. Then we can smirk and haughtily remind folks that “this isn’t allowed in many other countries, you know?” And if the protests appear like they may catch on, we release the big illusion.

    What’s the big illusion, you ask? Surely you know. We all know and we’re all complicit: It’s when the cops are told to viciously crack down on the hapless protestors. The disproportionate brutality of their response will appear to send a tacit message to the ineffectual activists: “You’re scaring us so we’re shutting you down.” Of course, this isn’t even close to true — but tell a group of social media-pumped sign holders that they’re dangerous, and you can be damn sure they won’t ever try tactics that might actually work. Why risk everything by escalating when our puppets and V for Vendetta masks have the State in a panic, right?

    In the end, everyone imagines they’ve won:

    • The activists have a slew of epic new arrest photos to share — “proof” that their tactics are threatening to the powers-that-shouldn’t-be
    • The cops get to live out their video game fantasies by bashing their enemies in public with no repercussions
    • The top 1% remain untouched, unfazed, unchallenged

    Coda: The most recent time I went near Saks Fifth Avenue was in 2019 — not to go inside but to photograph their “iconic” holiday decorations.

    The post BLM, OWS and the Folly of Street “Activism” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “Invest” in the Future: GMOs, Round-Up Ready Babies!

    Oh, the fun of these major Mafia Corporations, and the fun of the paid-off media, and the fun of the Polluted Press, and the fun of the Colonized Public, and the Fun of Billionaires like Gates who have invested billions into genetically modified germs and seeds and Round-Up Ready Death.

    Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease involving several protein mutations in glycine-rich regions with limited treatment options. 90-95% of all cases are non-familial with epidemiological studies showing a significant increased risk in glyphosate-exposed workers. In this paper, we propose that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup®, plays a role in ALS, mainly through mistakenly substituting for glycine during protein synthesis, disruption of mineral homeostasis as well as setting up a state of dysbiosis. Mouse models of ALS reveal a pre-symptomatic profile of gut dysbiosis. This dysbiotic state initiate a cascade of events initially impairing metabolism in the gut, and, ultimately, through a series of intermediate stages, leading to motor neuron axonal damage seen in ALS. Lipopolysaccharide, a toxic by-product of dysbiosis which contributes to the pathology, is shown to be statistically higher in ALS patients. In this paper we paint a compelling view of how glyphosate exerts its deleterious effects, including mitochondrial stress and oxidative damage through glycine substitution. Furthermore, its mineral chelation properties disrupt manganese, copper and zinc balance, and it induces glutamate toxicity in the synapse, which results in a die-back phenomenon in axons of motor neurons supplying the damaged skeletal muscles. (source)

    It’s the gut, baby, the entire shooting match is tied to the biome of the stomach, intestines, a la hormones, that endrocrine system, but, heck, why not pour more Velveta on those Doritos and wash it down with that Pepsi while having that Blue Tooth inserted with all those 4, 5, 6 G EMF’s moving around the world? New cancers in the salivary glands? Right, the world does get better with super living with chemistry and forever chemicals.

    Doritchos...my latest creation. Just put Doritos on a plate, put cheddar cheese on top and melt ...

    Again, too much information is a downer, and this post-doc level writing is for the birds, or nerds. That’s the sickness of our times — more and more speciliazation at the sub-atomic level, and more and more general malaise and muddled brains. Whew.

    The question is too much for the corporations: “Does Glyphosate Acting as a Glycine Analogue Contribute To ALS?” Here are the keywords:  Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; Glyphosate; Glycine; Fructose; Superoxide dismutase; Mitochondria; Motor neurons; Stress granules; RNA binding proteins

    Here, the subheadings: Glyphosate acting as a Glycine Analogue; Evidence of a Link between Pesticides and ALS; Metabolic Disturbances; Gut Dysbiosis; Sulfur Dysbiosis; Mineral Imbalances; Progressive Neuromuscular System Failure; Muscle Failure; Glutamate Excitotoxicity in Synapses; LPS, SALS and Protein Disruption; GGGGCC Repeat Expansion; Collagen in ALS; ALS as an Autoimmune Disease; A Role for Epigenetics.

    Ahh, the metabolic disturbances caused by the toxins in the food system, in the frying pans, in the elements used in vaccines and experimental shots. All the Gut dysbiosis, and all the sugars, all the heavy metals, all the brain-guy disturbances, all the leaky gut sydrome sufferers, all the IBS and Chron disease sufferers, all the fatty liver sufferers.

    You would think this would be a global multiple headed Hydra of pandemics. From sperm, to egg, to fetus, to child, to teen, to adult, to old person, the amazing connection of those better living through chemistry profits, and our collective health. Nah, it pays to not know:

    In the fall of 2014, as voters in Oregon and Washington were poised to vote on whether genetically engineered foods should be labeled, industry allies grew worried about Monsanto’s plan to feature scientists in ads for the anti-labeling campaign. “I’m a little skeptical that a letter with a lot of scientist signatures will be enough to counter the flood of fear mongering,” Val Giddings, the former vice president of the biotechnology trade association, wrote to Monsanto’s Lisa Drake.[1] Giddings suggested the company instead consider creating “TV spots featuring attractive young women, preferably mommy farmers” to persuade voters to vote against labeling requirements. Drake shot down that idea: “Doesn’t poll as well as credible third party scientists,” she told Giddings. “I know [it is] hard to believe but I have seen the poll results myself … and that is why the campaigns work the way they do.”[2]

    Monsanto’s PR helpers strategize about how to defeat GMO labeling:

    Indeed, the “voices of authority” — especially academic experts — receive the highest marks on trust, according to global surveys.[3] In this context, the growing private-sector influence over universities, and land grant institutions in particular, is concerning. From 1970 to 2014, public funding to land grant universities for agricultural research and development grew by just 20 percent, while private funding grew by 193 percent to $6.3 billion, according to an analysis from the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center.[4] Today, hundreds of millions of dollars flow from agribusiness, including pesticide companies, into land grant universities in the United States. This funding is used to sponsor buildings,[5] endow professorships and pay for research, according to an analysis from the public interest group Food and Water Watch.[6] “The influence this money purchases is enormous,” the Food and Water Watch analysis concluded. “Corporate money shifts the public research agenda toward the ambitions of the private sector, whose profit motivations are often at odds with the public good.” (source)

     

    It’s only 103 pages with 579 citations/footnotes. Come on, people, this is your baby’s future, your fetus’s future, your own future! Too much information is too much anxiety, so we are here, now, GAD, general anxiety disorder, and then, the merchants of propaganda, the Goebbels, Bernays, Mengele, the entire dirty culprits in the Faustian Bargain and the Eichmann Trap.

    This is a powerful army of tanks — The report also exposes the dirty pesticide industry propaganda industry:

    • Seven front groups named in Monsanto’s documents spent $76 million in a five-year period pushing corporate disinformation, including attacks on scientists.
    • Six industry trade groups named in Monsanto’s documents spent more than $1.3 billion over the same five years, including for PR and lobbying to influence regulation over glyphosate. (source)

    Do you kind reader need a recap on all the dirty souls in political office, then in the revolving door to the corporate boardrooms, and then into lobbying groups, and then into media, and then into academia, and even into the courts, including the highest corrupt courts of the land, SCOTUS? Come on, do your due deligence and see the who’s who of corporate crime in and out of public office.

    Do you need English and Planning Majors like me to be the town crier? Come on, you smart Yankees and Confederates, do some justice to the k12 education you supposedly got (snicker). All you college grads, do some deep ethical thinking about the courses and matriculations you have taken and achieved (snicker snicker, follow the money).

    Again, every single millionaire and billionaire is a public-private welfare queen of the highest order: Read, Public Research, Private Gain!

    I’ve talked about literacy, about functional illiteracy, then of course, there are those who fail to read, and then the atrophied minds of those who fail to use even one percent of the brain matter. Consumo Pethicus Sapiens . . . .! The idiots in Congress, the Senate, the Revolving Uniparty Administrations! When you hate truth, when you hate “the government of, for, by the people,” we are here, in 2023!

    Do you need charts and graphics to get it that the USA is run by a Corporate Fascist Monster?

    You want just one school, on the agricultural Mafia Money Pipeline, in chart form?

    You want to check out how many majors in the undergraduate realm get hush and PR and marketing money from the Fortune 5000? Imagine, University of Washington, where I did some union organizing (with many slammed doors in my face):

    1. University of Washington

    Location: Seattle, Wash.
    30,672 undergraduates
    Number of majors: 227

    Most popular majors:

    • – Speech Communication and Rhetoric
    • – Psychology
    • – Biology

    Oh, dudes and dudettes, believe you me, here, a ranking of the top 20 colleges in USA with the most majors: Source! Just how man provosts and deans and institutional managers want students and faculty alike to shut their traps when researching anc criticizing this bribery racket, and it is a racket that also is funneled through these Fortune 5000 thieves’ non-profit, philanthropy, giving offshoots.

    Then you have this scam, US News and World Report’s Best Universities of 2022. Here, the graduate schools and their top majors: Marketing Junk!

    Oh, those Ivory Towers:

    Then, of course, those vaunted eight continuing criminal organizations, the League of Ivy:

    So, what’s it take? A master’s degree in science communications? An engineering degree? A PhD with post-doc work? Ten professional journal publications? A hundred? Common sense? Understand the precautionary principle? Getting systems thinking under your belt by age 16, or 20? Do no harm, the oath for doctors, tatooed on your forearm if you are in the medical field? Repetition of the so-called scientific principles of ALWAYS questioning hypothesis? Or, what about just following the money and understanding what outside influences are in any profession?

    And that paper you are going to read? Just realize that ALS is just ONE outfall of this dirty toxin, glyphosate, which is so close to the progenitor, Agent Orange:

    A Real-life Toxic Avenger — She lost (sic) four children in a very suspicious fire on their property when she was delivering bread to a neighbor.

    From her book, A Bitter Fog, what those sprays do to people:

    Where the road skirted the riverbank, overhanging shore and water, they directed their hoses into the water, inadvertently spraying the four children fishing down below. The truck moved on, leaving the children gasping in a wet mist that clung to their skin and clothing. With smarting skin, tearing eyes, burning mouths, throats and noses, they stumbled home. By nightfall, all four were sick.

     

    If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed whether by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.
    — Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, p 13

    Or go here, DV again: “Agrochemical Apocalypse: Interview with Environmental Campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason” by Colin Todhunter, Check out other articles where Rosemary is quoted: HERE.

    So, yep, what does it take for us ALL to get involved with what is vitally important – our own health, our children’s health, friends’ and family members’ health? Jan. 6 hearings? Pelosi bowing out? Zelensky and his Soft Shoe Show? What is it that will move the needle in this time of multiple plagues? Again, this is just ALS:

    We have shown how a cascade beginning with gut dysbiosis, progressing to liver disease, muscle failure, and, finally, wide-spread damage to motor neurons in the spinal column, can lead to a diagnosis of ALS after several decades of chronic exposure to glyphosate. Other NDG diseases have considerable overlapwith ALS in terms of the characteristic feature of misfolded pro-teins accumulating in inclusion bodies in nervous tissues. We believe that glyphosate is a strong factor in the alarming rise inmultiple NDGs well beyond ALS. Especially given the insidious and destructive effects that glyphosate can be expected to induce through substitution for glycine during protein synthesis, regulatory agencies should seriously consider banning glyphosateusage to control weeds or for any other purpose.

    Lois Gibbs and Love Canal. Karen Silkwood? Rachel Carson? What’s it going to take? US Marines? “Semper Fidelis or Das Kapital Uber Alles: From Eisenhower to Trump!” (DV)

    Studies have shown that water contamination at Camp Lejeune has been linked to these injuries:

    Bladder Cancer
    Cardiac Birth Defects
    Kidney Cancer
    Kidney Disease
    Leukemia
    Liver Cancer
    Multiple Myeloma
    Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma
    Parkinson’s Disease
    Systemic Sclerosis/scleroderma

    Additional injuries that may be linked to the water contamination are:

    Breast Cancer
    Esophageal Cancer
    Hepatic Steatosis
    Brain/CNS Cancers
    Pancreatic Cancer
    Prostate Cancer

    Rectal Cancer
    Female Infertility
    Lung Cancer
    Miscarriage
    Aplastic Anemia and other Myelodysplastic Syndromes
    Neurobehavioral Effects

    End Note: The news about this poison just keeps coming out: “Glyphosate pathways to modern diseases VI: Prions, amyloidoses and autoimmune neurological diseases”

    Usage of the herbicide glyphosate on core crops in the USA has increased exponentially over the past two decades, in step with the exponential increase in autoimmune diseases including autism, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, type 1 diabetes, coeliac disease, neuromyelitis optica and many others. In this paper we explain how glyphosate, acting as a non-coding amino acid analogue of glycine, could erroneously be integrated with or incorporated into protein synthesis in place of glycine, producing a defective product that resists proteolysis. Whether produced by a microbe or present in a food source, such a peptide could lead to autoimmune disease through molecular mimicry. We discuss similarities in other naturally produced disease-causing amino acid analogues, such as the herbicide glufosinate and the insecticide L-canavanine, and provide multiple examples of glycine-containing short peptides linked to autoimmune disease, particularly with respect to multiple sclerosis. Most disturbing is the presence of glyphosate in many popular vaccines including the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, which we have verified here for the first time. Contamination may come through bovine protein, bovine calf serum, bovine casein, egg protein and/or gelatin. Gelatin sourced from the skin and bones of pigs and cattle given glyphosate-contaminated feed contains the herbicide. Collagen, the principal component of gelatin, contains very high levels of glycine, as do the digestive enzymes: pepsin, trypsin and lipase. The live measles virus could produce glyphosate-containing haemagglutinin, which might induce an autoimmune attack on myelin basic protein, commonly observed in autism. Regulatory agencies urgently need to reconsider the risks associated with the indiscriminate use of glyphosate to control weeds.

    ** This one is a 32-page article with only 201 endnotes. More happy reading!

    The post “Invest” in the Future: GMOs, Round-Up Ready Babies! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Remodeled Shipping Containers, Boxcars Could Be Solutions for Expanding Homeless Shelters

    Whatever Arizona’s new governor Katie Hobbs does with over 3,000 steel, 40’x8’x8.6,’ four-ton shipping containers — still arriving to wall off Mexico for 10 miles of the San Rafael Valley — is yet to be revealed.

    Her predecessor, Republican Doug Ducey, in the last months of his regime was ramrodding containers into place on a 60’ strip of desert as part of former president Trump’s border wall. His executive-ordered crash project cost nearly $100 million to buy, truck in, bolt containers together and weld sheet metal over three-foot gaps from roller-coaster terrain.

    A few days ago, a federal lawsuit now forces the state to remove them because they rest on federal land. Costs are estimated to be $70 million.

    Previously, Hobbs has said she might move the containers and repurpose them as affordable housing. So she’s got the right idea. So have others. In the last two years the trend for buying used containers has increased for temporarily sheltering the homeless. They join tiny-house villages, RV and campsite communities, storage units, motels, and vacant factory and office buildings.

    Too, the railroads are selling off their 50-foot boxcars which could double container capacity for “affordable” housing. A boxcar’s average age is 30 years, however, explaining why prices range from $2,000 to $4,000, half the cost of a container ($8,300 for 40-footers).

    Hobbs even may be aware of a model for a container community: the two-year-old architectural prize-winning pair of three-floor temporary shelters for 232 of the homeless in Los Angeles’ Chinatown: the Hilda L. Solis Care First Village owned by Los Angeles county.

    Looking like New Orleans’ balconied apartments, the orange and yellow shelters face each other on 60,000 square feet of the former LA sheriff’s parking lot. Built in less than six months for $57 million , workers stacked and bolted three floors of 66 containers together for the two main buildings. They overlook 20 one-story modular wooden housing units. Each end of the two buildings has wide staircases, and an exterior prefabricated elevator at each floor’s midpoint.

    Interiors of the 135 square-foot rooms and 8.6-foot ceilings—including a bathroom — have four-panel vertical windows with blinds. Each room was drywalled and painted, followed by air-conditioner and heating units, a half-refrigerator and sink. Furnishings were monastic: a bed, table, microwave, and shelving. Landscaping is a grassy courtyard between the two buildings, raised planters of herbs, and a tree at each end of the turf.

    A sizable modular administration building houses offices for intakes, case records, counseling and healthcare services, as well as a laundry, commercial kitchen, and dining room. It has 24-hour security. The only drawback is that the four-acres are contaminated requiring an onsite treatment plant to “manage” the soil underneath the complex.

    Before apartment builders rush to apply the Solis model for expanding units with extra containers, a few caveats need to be weighed against bargain-basement cost, availability, and transport. Many containers have been found to be toxic , their plywood flooring prone to fires. Inside temperatures could reach 135ºF with an AC breakdown. Lifespan is 10 to 15 years even with regular maintenance.

    So Hobbs can convert containers—probably for permanent, low-income housing—into a Solis-like suburb. Or buy and remodel boxcars (and cabooses) for the homeless. Both are a vast improvement over packed, vermin-infested, crime-ridden shelters and the inhumane outdoor measures taken by at least two major cities—LA and Portland, OR. They are beset by sidewalk squatters, tent encampments, and RV settlers, all drawn to the West Coast’s mild, year-round temperatures, and social services. Current homeless populations: LA, at least 40,000; Portland, 5,228 and 800 encampments.

    They’re scarcely alone. Last year, 326,126 were homeless, New York City leading with 102,656 packed in shelters and uncounted thousands on streets or subways. All cities with a “homeless problem” are being pressured by complaints from owners of small and large downtown businesses about doorways blocked by transients, trash, and toileting. Echoing Malthus’ “final solution,” they want the homeless gone forever, driven to residential neighborhoods or beyond the city limits. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

    In Los Angeles, the ACLU of Southern California issued a report last year about police and sheriff’s deputies first harassing the homeless, then bulldozing encampments and seizing belongings. If victims persisted in living on the streets, they were banished by threats of citations to the Mojave Desert near Lancaster and Palmdale in unincorporated, East Los Angeles County.

    LA’s new mayor, Karen Bass declared at her inauguration that her “first act as mayor will be to declare a state of emergency on homelessness.” Heavy emphasis was laid on sheltering 15,000 by the end of her first year. During her campaign, she mused to the Los Angeles Times: “There’s a big chunk of land in Palmdale and maybe we could create a village out there.” Her vice mayor added that LA owns “thousands of acres in Palmdale.”

    Lancaster (pop: 176,892) is only nine miles down the highway from Palmdale (pop: 172,790), and the first to revolt against Bass (local newspaper headline: “Homeless ‘Invasion’ is coming”). Its outraged city council just voted unanimously to declare a state of emergency to protect it from “an incursion” of LA’s homeless. Palmdale’s council probably won’t be far behind.

    Up in Portland meantime, its city council was voting to spend $27 million chiefly to fund Mayor Ted Wheeler’s resolution that within 18 months the city would set up three, two- to four-acre sanctioned campsites. Each would eventually contain 100 tents and 250 people and perhaps expansion to three additional sites. Local channel KGW’s Blair Best reported that: “Residents will have access to food, case managers and mental health and substance-abuse treatment, and…on-site and perimeter [neighborhood] security.” Some $750,000 is allocated for private-security forces in designated neighborhoods.

    Once the campgrounds are open, Wheeler warned that like New York City, the police will do street sweeps and arrest the homeless refusing to leave unless they either agreed to use city shelters or moved to the camps—no matter what the Constitutional ramifications are. Multnomah County which encompasses Portland, spent $2 million , two years ago to distribute 22,700 tents and 69,514 tarps to the homeless. Under Wheeler’s policy, most probably will wind up in landfills.

    A major factor in this tragic dilemma is the fury of many neighbors where these complexes and campsites are to be located. The chief complaint against the homeless aside from unsightliness is the alleged increases in crime, drug use, garbage, and hygiene. Most of all, it’s the suspicion that any kind of congregate housing lowers property values and steals their taxpayer dollars.

    A middle-class Portland resident typified that stereotypic view: “I live in this neighborhood, and I think it’s a very nice neighborhood. I would not want to have a large group of homeless around here. I think you would have the crime go up, that’s the main thing.”

    And a news release from the city of Lancaster addressed Mayor Bass’s plans for neighboring Palmdale:

    A large homeless population in one area could lead to increased crime and safety concerns and potential damage to property values. This could be a major concern for residents and businesses in the area, and it’s an issue Lancaster has already been struggling to support with its existing unhoused population. There are also serious health concerns for the homeless population who would be moved from a climate ranging from 60-80 degrees annually to the high desert which experiences extreme weather highs and lows.

    But this view of homeless communities is not necessarily true at all, considering that, say, sober houses instantly boot troublemakers and backsliding alcoholics/addicts from the premises. There’s rarely noise nor traffic congestion. Can that be said for fraternity and sorority houses in residential neighorhoods? Too, Solis-type facilities offer only temporary housing, social services, and security to move residents into productive lives.

    Those experiencing eviction because of layoffs, business bankruptcies, or acquisitions can readily identify with the plight of the homeless in those settings. Fortunately, many speak up in their defense at public meetings or in neighborhood informational canvassing—or take the time and make the effort to reach out on their behalf.

    CounterPunch writer Desiree Hellegers set such myth-makers straight a few days ago: “Never mind that the Pacific Northwest is choc-o-bloc with models of tent cities and tiny- house communities that are democratically run, generally with elected councils: Dignity Village, Right 2 Dream 2, SHARE-WHEEL, etc. None of them is perfect, but they are safer and infinitely more empowering, humane, healing, and effective, and less likely to violate the Geneva Conventions than what Wheeler & Co. have in mind.”

    And a Los Angeles tiny-house resident reminded the fearful or judgmental about shelter living: “For people who get their noses up in the air, this can happen to anybody.” That’s certainly true for many of the 3.8 million living paycheck to paycheck and either are about to be evicted because the American Rescue Plan’s rent-moratorium has expired , or the 8.5 million behind on rent, as well as those facing significant rent increases. Add to those figures the 1.5 million estimated to lose their jobs because the Federal Reserve’s continuing interest-rate hikes mean small and large companies can’t afford to expand operations, nor are startups able to raise capital.

    Perhaps it’s time to educate “NIMBYs” (“Not in My Backyard”) and the general public about who most of the homeless are in those enclosures by WPA-like posters (“We’ve Been Downsized or Evicted, But Are Leaving Shortly!”) spread around affected neighborhoods.

    Facing the prospect of a nation of Hoovervilles drawing violent reactions from local residents, a frightened President Biden’s team just launched a plan to reduce homelessness by 25 percent in 2025: the All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness . Unfortunately, nothing was said about funding or what would happen to the remaining 75 percent.

    That’s because the plan was just a heavily researched “blueprint” for state and local governments to use as models “for addressing homelessness in their communities.” Said Biden: “ it is not only getting people into housing, but also ensuring they have access to the support, services, and income that allow them to thrive.”

    Forget any Executive Order to finance a New Deal for jobs and housing, as president Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) did to help solve the Great Depression of the 1930s.

    At bottom, the major question involving the overall homeless situation is almost never asked because it involves the responsibility of corporate America: What good is housing if people lack jobs to make rent or mortgage payments? To say nothing of buying basics.

    FDR’s WPA (Works Progress Administration) did both. It hired and trained 8.5 million of the unemployed for past and new federal programs. They ranged from infrastructure and environment to park systems and artists/writers projects. His FHA low-cost home-buying loans have housed 44 million since 1934, spurring massive house construction and providing capital for 4.8 million rental units—not counting residential care facilities, hospitals, and manufactured houses.

    Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure program could have done the same. But he farmed it out to private interests. They might add and train a few thousand new employees, yet hardly on a WPA scale. If he were an FDR, he would have had the courage to shift part of the Pentagon’s FY2023 $858 billion budget allocation to civilians—as did Trump to spend more than $12 billion on his porous wall—to provide thousands of construction jobs and affordable housing for the homeless.

    For the Pentagon, this tactic also might stifle increasing public opposition about its bloated, unaudited budget by showcasing its contribution to “domestic tranquility,” as the Constitution’s preamble puts it. Some $152 billion of next year’s funding—a 20 percent increase—goes for construction and veterans. That’s how those 750 overseas bases and at home were built by its engineers, equipment and supplies, and continue to be maintained. It doesn’t specify constructing what so the door is wide open to building affordable houses or rent-controlled apartment buildings for America’s homeless.

    Using Trump’s rationale that his wall would defend the nation from an invasion of illegals, Biden now has precedent to declare such a neoWPA jobs-and-housing project would “provide for the common defense” of this nation and stop any domestic upheaval. After all, a major recession could trigger a massive uprising dwarfing today’s major strikes. So could climate-change migrations around the states.

    As the Poor People’s Campaign co-chair Liz Theoharis reminds us: “In the coming years, movements dedicated to democracy and our economic flourishing need to invest time and resources in building permanently organized communities to help meet the daily needs of impacted Americans, while offering a sense of what democracy looks like in practice, up close and personal.”

    To this, add the famous admonition to us by that man born into homelessness and persecution: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

    The post Remodeled Shipping Containers, Boxcars Could Be Solutions for Expanding Homeless Shelters first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Martyn Bradbury’s 17 editorial ‘no go’ zones for the NZ media

    COMMENTARY: By Martyn Bradbury

    The Daily Blog gongs
    THE DAILY BLOG’S 2022 INFAMOUS MEDIA GONGS

    Last month The Daily Blog offered its New Year infamous news media gongs — and blasts — for 2022. In this extract, editor and publisher Martyn Bradbury names the mainstream media “blind spots”.

    Graham Adams over at The Platform made the argument this year that the failure of mainstream media to engage with the debates occurring online is a threat to democracy.

    With trust in New Zealand media at an all time low, I wondered what is the list of topics that you simply are NOT allowed to discuss on NZ mainstream media.

    Here is my list of 17 topics over 30 years in New Zealand media:

    1. Palestine: You cannot talk about the brutal occupation of Palestine by Israel in NZ media. It’s just not allowed, any discussion has to be framed as “Poor Israelis being terrorised by evil angry Muslims”. There is never focus on the brutal occupation and when it ever does emerge in the media it’s always insinuated that any criticism is anti-Semitism.
    2. Child Poverty NEVER adult poverty: We only talk about child poverty because they deserve our pity. Adults in poverty can go screw themselves. Despite numbering around 800,000, adults in poverty are there because they “choose” to be there. The most important myth of neoliberalism is that your success is all your own, as is your failure. If an adult is in poverty, neoliberal cultural mythology states that is all on them and we have no obligation to help. That’s why we only ever talk endlessly about children in poverty because the vast majority of hard-hearted New Zealanders want to blame adults in poverty on them so we can pretend to be egalitarian without actually having to implement any policy.
    3. The Neoliberal NZ experiment: You are never allowed to question the de-unionised work force that amputated wages, you can never question selling off our assets, you can never criticise the growth über alles mentality, you are never allowed to attack the free market outcomes and you can’t step back and evaluate the 35-year neoliberal experiment in New Zealand because you remind the wage slaves of the horror of it all.
    4. Class: You cannot point out that the demarcation line in a capitalist democracy like New Zealand is the 1 percent richest plus their 9 percent enablers vs the 90 percent rest of us. Oh, you can wank on and on about your identity and your feelings about your identity in a never ending intersectionist diversity pronoun word salad, but you can’t point out that it’s really the 90 percent us vs the 10 percent them class break down because that would be effective and we can’t have effective on mainstream media when feelings are the currency to audience solidarity in an ever diminishing pie of attention.
    5. Immigration: It must always be framed as positive. It can never be argued that it is a cheap and lazy growth model that pushes down wages and places domestic poor in competition with International student language school scams and exploited migrant workers. Any criticism of Immigration makes you a xenophobe and because the Middle Classes like travelling and have global skills for sale, they see any criticism of migrants as an attack on their economic privileges.
    6. Hypertourism: We are never allowed to ask “how many is too many, you greedies”. The tourism industry that doesn’t give a shit about us locals, live for the 4 million tourists who visit annually. We are not allowed to ask why that amount of air travel is sustainable, we are not allowed to ask why selling Red Bull and V at tourist stops is somehow an economic miracle and we are certainly not allowed to question why these tourists aren’t directly being taxed meaningfully for the infrastructure they clog.
    7. Dairy as a Sunset Industry: We are never allowed to point out that the millisecond the manufactured food industry can make synthetic milk powder, they will dump us as a base ingredient and the entire dairy industry overnight will collapse. With synthetic milks and meats here within a decade, it is time to radically cull herds, focus on only organic and free range sustainable herds and move away from mass production dairy forever. No one is allowed to mention the iceberg that is looming up in front of the Fonteera Titanic.
    8. B-E-L-I-E-V-E victims: It’s like How to Kill a MockingBird was never written. People making serious allegations should be taken seriously, not B-E-L-I-E-V-E-D. That’s a tad fanatical Christian for me. It’s led to a change in our sexual assault laws where the Greens and Labour removed the only defence to rape so as to get more convictions, which when you think about it, is cult like and terrifying. Gerrymandering the law to ensure conviction isn’t justice, but in the current B-E-L-I-E-V-E victims culture it sure is and anyone saying otherwise is probably a rape apologist who should be put in prison immediately.
    9. The Trans debate: This debate is so toxic and anyone asking any question gets immediately decried as transphobic. I’ve seen nuclear reactor meltdowns that are less radioactive than this debate. I’m so terrified I’m not going to say anything other than “please don’t hurt my family” for even mentioning it.
    10. It’s never climate change for this catastrophic weather event: Catastrophic weather event after catastrophic weather event but it’s never connected to global warming! It’s like the weather is changing cataclysmically around us but because it’s not 100 percent sure that that cigarette you are smoking right now is the one that causes that lump inside you to become cancer, so we can’t connect this catastrophic weather event with a climate warming model that states clearly that we will see more and more catastrophic weather events.
    11. Scoops: No New Zealand media will never acknowledge another media’s scoop in spite of a united front being able to generate more exposure and better journalism.
    12. Te Reo fanaticism: You are not allowed to point out that barely 5 percent of the population speak Te Reo and that everyone who militantly fires up about it being an “official language” never seem that antagonistic about the lack of sign language use. Look, my daughter goes to a Māori immersion class and when she speaks Te Reo it makes me cry joyfully and I feel more connected to NZ than any other single moment. But endlessly ramming it down people’s throats seems woke language policing rather than a shared cultural treasure. You can still be an OK human being and not speak Te Reo.
    13. Māori land confiscation: Māori suffered losing 95 percent of their land in less than a century, they were almost decimated by disease and technology brought via colonisation, they endured the 1863 Settlements Act, they survived blatant lies and falsehoods devised to create the pretext for confiscation, and saw violence in the Waikato. Māori have lived throughout that entire experience and still get told to be grateful because Pākehā brought blankets, tobacco and “technology”.
    14. The Disabled: Almost 25 percent of New Zealand is disabled, yet for such a staggeringly huge number of people, their interests get little mention in the mainstream media.
    15. Corporate Iwi: You can’t bring up that that the corporate model used for Iwi to negotiate settlements is outrageous and has created a Māori capitalist elite who are as venal as Pākehā capitalists.
    16. Police worship: One of the most embarrassing parts about living in New Zealand is the disgusting manner in which so many acquiesce to the police. It’s never the cop’s fault when they shoot someone, it’s never the cop’s fault when they chase people to their death, it’s never the cop’s fault for planting evidence, it’s never the cops fault for using interrogation methods that bully false confessions out of vulnerable people. I think there is a settler cultural chip on our shoulders that always asks the mounted constabulary to bash those scary Māori at the edge of town because we are frightened of what goes bump in the night. We willingly give police total desecration to kill and maim and frame as long as long as they keep us safe. It’s sickening.
    17. House prices will increase FOREVER! Too many middle class folk are now property speculators and they must see their values climb to afford the extra credit cards the bank sends them. We can never talk about house prices coming down. They must never fall. Screw the homeless, scre the generations locked out of home ownership and screw the working poor. Buying a house is only for the children of the middle classes now. Screw everyone else. Boomer cradle to the grave subsidisations that didn’t extend to any other generation. Free Ben and Jerry Ice Cream for every Boomer forever! ME! ME! ME!

    You’ll also note that because so many media are dependent on real estate advertising, there’s never been a better time to buy!

    Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury is a New Zealand media commentator, former radio and TV host, and former executive producer of Alt TV — a now-defunct alternative music and culture channel. He is publisher of The Daily Blog and writes blogs at Tumeke! and TDB. Republished with permission.

  • Tony Fala: Pelé – a tribute from Aotearoa and Oceania

    ANALYSIS: By Tony Fala

    Edson Arantes do Nascimento passed away at the age of 82 after a brave battle with colon cancer in Brazil on 20 December 2022. Known as “O Rei”, “The Black Pearl”, and “Pelé”, he was an ambassador, businessperson, community worker to the world, cultural force, leader, soccer player, and politician.

    In this article, I write about why I admired Pelé as a child.

    Writing as an adult and activist, I also pay tribute to Pelé and articulate why “O Rei” remains an important teacher of decoloniality and decolonisation in contemporary Oceania.

    Pelé in my childhood in the 1970s
    I caught brief glimpses of Pelé’s soccer genius in sports highlights on Aotearoa television news as a child in the 1970s.

    I did not grasp the tactical, technical, or strategic intricacies of professional soccer when watching Pelé play for the New York Cosmos as a child. But I did see Pelé’s genius with a soccer ball on television. I remember seeing him play with creativity, joy, and imagination.

    Pelé brought joy into my difficult childhood.

    Like other Pacific Islanders of his generation, my father was a born-again rugby supporter who did not rate football as a sport. But even he would marvel at O Rei’s exploits on Aotearoa television when Pelé appeared.

    Pacific people recognised Pelé’s genius — just as they recognised the extraordinary gifts of Muhammad Ali in the boxing ring.

    Years before the formation of the English Premier League, I grew to love watching the great British players representing the mighty first division English clubs. Aotearoa television would play a weekly English first division match, and we always received televised, free- to-air coverage of FA Cup Finals in the 1970s and 1980s.

    I came to love Division One English club football in the 1970s and 1980s.


    An Al Jazeera tribute to Pelé.

    Historically, Aotearoa has always had a strong affinity with British football. Despite loving the English game, I saw that Pelé played soccer in a radically unique way.

    In later years, I would understand that Pelé played an Afro-Brazilian style of football known as “jogo bonito”, or, the beautiful game — characterised by creativity and improvisation by individual players; off the ball movement; one touch passing; samba like team rhythm and tempo, and superlative dribbling, passing, and attacking movements on the ground and in the air by the entire team.

    I watched documentaries about Pelé as a child and a teen when they appeared on Aotearoa television. But I was too young to see the televised, in-colour spectacle of “jogo bonito” performed by Alberto, Gerson, Jairzinho, Pele, or Rivellino at Mexico City when Brazil beat Italy 4-1 to win the 1970 World Cup. I would only watch these mighty players in the 1970 World Cup after Sky TV played classic matches.

    Pelé, Brazil, and ‘jogo bonito’ in 1982
    But I did witness the “jogo bonito” performed by the 1982 Brazilian side that featured Eder, Falcao, Junior, Socrates, and Zico. Although this side did not win the 1982 World Cup, they remain the greatest sporting team I have ever witnessed — they performed art and played soccer simultaneously.

    Aotearoa’s mighty All Whites played this Brazilian side in the group stages of the 1982 tournament. The team also got to meet Pelé in person when O Rei visited the Aotearoa team changing room before the match.

    I was too young to understand that the 1982 side played a style of Afro-Brazilian soccer that continued the legacy of the beautiful game begun by Didi, Garrincha, Pelé, and Jairzinho long years before. Pelé was one of the innovators of this style of play in Brazil.

    Engaging with Pelé as an adult
    As an adult, I developed a fuller understanding of Pelé, his life, and his historical context.

    1. Pelé was born only 53 years after the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888 into an Afro-Brazilian family who often struggled to put food on the table. (Pelé writes about his childhood and the hardships he endured in his 2007 autobiography.)
    2. The Black Pearl’s Afro-Brazilian people occupied the lowest socio-economic positions in Brazilian society.
    3. Even today, Afro-Brazilians face discrimination in employment, the justice system, and day-to-day life in Brazil. The Brazilian police still target Afro-Brazilian male youth for violence even today.
    4. Opposing team’s fans made monkey noises — whether Pelé played in Brazil or around the world with his club, Santos. Despite his popularity, Pelé was a target of racism.
    5. Pelé’s Brazilian government prevented him from playing soccer in Europe by making him a “national treasure”. In consequence, Pelé could not sell his labour to European clubs. Critics have stated that this would never have happened to a white Brazilian.
    6. Brazilians accused Pelé of getting too close to figures in the Brazilian dictatorship of 1964-1985 — such as General Medici.
    7. Pelé’s former national teammate, Paulo Cesar Lima, said in the 2021 documentary Pelé that he loved Edson, but Lima also said he felt Pelé functioned as a “submissive Black man” during the height of the dictatorship repressions in 1969. Lima felt a statement by Pelé against the dictatorship in the late 1960s would have “gone a long way”.
    8. Brazilian journalist Juca Kfouri stated that Pelé did not have a guarantee that the Brazilian regime would not torture him if he did speak out.
    9. In Africa, ordinary people treated Pelé as a son when O Rei playing there in the late 1960s. Pelé remains a figure of Trans-Atlantic Black unity in Africa, the US, and in other parts of the Black Diaspora.
    10. Apartheid security forces prevented Pelé from leaving an airport when he visited South Africa in the 1960s. Pelé swore he would never return until South Africa was free from Apartheid. He did return in the 1990s — to spend time with Nelson Mandela.
    11. Pelé was a Goodwill Ambassador for the Rio De Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992.
    12. He was a Minister for Sport in Brazil.
    13. He was an ambassador for the UN, UNICEF, and UNESCO during his lifetime — always seeking to forge relationships with children.
    14. He endured business failures.
    15. He refused to recognise a daughter born out of wedlock.
    16. Pelé was a significant cultural force in Brazil — for good and for bad.
    17. He was a football genius. Football journalists such as Tim Vickery have spoken of Pelé’s soccer skills — Edson’s ability with both feet; acceleration; skills in the air; passing talents; unselfishness; football intelligence, and his psychological strength.

    Pelé’s passing in the media
    Since his untimely passing, television news networks such as Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Television New Zealand have all honoured Pelé’s cultural, historical, political, and sporting legacy.

    Similarly, print media in Aotearoa, Australia, Brazil, Britain, France, and South Africa have represented Pelé as a “cultural icon”, “hero”, “innovator”, “giant of sport”, an “artist”, a “genius”, and a “fine, humble, and warm human being”.

    Print media sources in France and the US have also expressed criticism of Pelé for not doing more against the Brazilian dictatorship.

    Sources in Brazil have criticised Pelé for not taking more of a public stand against racism in Brazil and the world.

    Pelé’s aesthetics
    Brazilian star Neymar wrote a moving tribute for O Rei after the great man died. In one part of his tribute, Neymar stated that Pelé transformed soccer into art. I agree with Neymar’s insight.

    If one watches Pelé on film today, one sees a kinetic aesthetics of balance, gesture, grace, intelligence, power, speed, rhythm, and style — whether Pelé was in the air, in space, or in a crowd of players. One observes Pelé performing an aesthetics of creativity, joy, and improvisation. I have no doubt Pelé’s parents, coaches, friends, and teammates in Brazil all nurtured his aesthetics.

    Simultaneously, I am in no doubt that Pelé’s aesthetic genius was a gift given him by his ancestors and by his historical experience of being Afro-Brazilian.

    I am not Afro-Brazilian and do not pretend to understand the language of decoloniality and decolonisation Pelé performed in living motion on a soccer field. But I am convinced Pelé performed an aesthetics of Afro-Brazilian being, decolonisation, decoloniality, living, and expressing in his every movement on the soccer field.

    Pelé performed the history of his ancestors on the soccer stage.

    Pelé’s lessons for Oceania
    In conclusion, Pelé taught me five things as a Pacific person in Aotearoa.

    1. struggle to embrace joy and freedom in your life,
    2. always extend solidarity to those engaged in the Black struggle,
    3. remember the struggle for justice in Aotearoa, the Moana, Palestine, or West Papua are one with the struggle Black people face around the world,
    4. always look for the talents and potential in your own Moana peoples, and
    5. never be ashamed of your Oceanian ancestors, your genealogy, or your history.

    Despite his handful of personal failings, Pelé remains one of my great teachers in decolonial Oceania.

    The author, Tony Fala, acknowledges the lives of Brazilian football greats Garrincha, Pelé, and Socrates as the inspiration for this article. He also pays tribute to Pacific peoples across Oceania who believe in soccer as a sport that embraces emancipation, participation, struggle, and unity.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Steven Ratuva: What an election in Fiji – some reflections, lessons

    ANALYSIS: By Professor Steven Ratuva

    The highly anticipated 2022 election last month was a very close, emotionally charged and highly controversial affair.

    All that is behind us now and it is time to reflect on it critically and learn some important lessons as we welcome the dawn of 2023.

    Despite the Supervisor of Elections’ prediction of a low percentage turnout of around the 50s, the actual turnout of 68.29 percent was surprisingly reasonable given the inconvenient December 14 date and other restrictions such as married women being required to change their names to the birth certificate ones, voting restrictions to one polling station and other legislative and logistical issues.

    The postal ballot votes had the highest turnout rate of 75.92 per cent and the others in descending order were: Northern Division (73.88 per cent); Eastern Division (69.98 per cent); Western Division (68.82 per cent); and Central Division (65.6 per cent).

    Victim of own PR system
    This may sound ridiculous but it all came down to 658 voters, the equivalent of 0.14 percent of the votes, which enabled Sodelpa to stay above the 5 percent threshold.

    It was this small number of voters who made the difference by giving Sodelpa the ultimate power broker position which enabled the People’s Alliance Party (PA)-National Federation Party (NFP) coalition to edge out the FijiFirst party (FFP) by a very slim margin after hours of horse trading followed by two rounds of voting.

    However, this is what the voting calculus is all about — every vote counts and even one vote can make a substantial difference.

    This is even more so in our Proportional Representation (PR) system, which was originally meant to encourage small parties to gain votes and be competitive against the dominant ones when it was first conceived in Europe in the early 1900s.

    Theoretically, the idea is to shift the centre of power gravity from dominant parties to diverse groups to ensure that representation was more dispersed and democratic.

    Thus, most countries with PR systems (there are different variants) have coalition governments.

    New Zealand, which has two electoral systems merged into one (Mixed Member Proportional or MMP), consisting of the PR and First-Past-the-Post (FPP), has a history of coalitions since the PR component was introduced.

    Other countries with coalition governments
    Other countries which use the PR system are Israel, Columbia, Finland, Latvia, Sweden, Nepal and Netherlands, to name a few, and they all have coalition governments.

    But why didn’t this coalition electoral outcome happen in Fiji during the first two elections in 2014 and 2018 although these were held under the PR system?

    The reason is because the FFP was able to effectively deploy what political scientists refer to as the “coattail effect” — the tactic of using a popular political leader to attract votes.

    So in this case, statistics show that there has been a direct correlation between coattail votes for Voreqe Bainimarama, the FFP leader, and the electoral fortunes of the FFP.

    For instance, Bainimarama was able to attract 40.79 percent of the total votes during the 2014 election and this enabled FFP to secure around 59.17 percent of the total national votes. Bainimarama’s votes went down to 36.92 percent during the 2018 election and this reduced the FFP voting proportion by 9.12 percent to 50.02 percent.

    The decline in Bainimarama’s votes to 29.08 percent during the 2022 election also reduced the FFP’s votes to 42.55 percent, well below the 50 plus 1 mark needed by the party to remain in power.

    The total decline of 11.71 percent of Bainimarama’s votes and 16.62 percent of the FFP votes between 2014 and 2022 is a worrying sign and if the trend continues, they may be hitting the 30 percent mark at the time of the 2026 election.

    By and large, the swing of votes away from FFP was around 10 percent or so, with a shifting margin of around 3 to 4 percent.

    The long Bainimarama coattail has slowly withered away over time.

    Before the election I warned in a Fiji Times interview early in 2022 that given the diminishing trend of the FFP electoral support, together with other data, the party would be lucky to survive the 2022 election and thus would need a coalition partner.

    I also said that the PA, NFP, Sodelpa and other parties would need to form a national coalition to be able to rule.

    The writing was on the wall and it appeared that the FFP was going to be victim of the PR electoral system they introduced in an ironically Frankensteinian way.

    “Wasted votes” and weakness of the PR system
    The results of the 2022 election shows that the power gravity has shifted significantly and in future we are going to see governments in Fiji formed on the basis of coalitions and thus elections will need to be fought on the basis of party partnership.

    This means that smaller parties, which have no hope of getting over the 5 percent threshold will need to make critical assessments and the only survival option is to join bigger parties which have more chances of winning.

    Herein lies one of the weaknesses of our version of the PR system where the votes by the smaller parties, which cannot get over the 5 percent threshold, are considered “wasted”.

    This is in contrast to the Alternative Voting (AV) system under the 1997 Fiji Constitution, which provided for losing votes to be recycled and used by other parties based on preferential listing. In the 2022 election, 35,755 votes were “wasted”, which equated to 4.81 percent of the total votes.

    By Fiji standard, this was a relatively large number indeed.

    However, the idea of “wasted votes” is a contentious one because, while from an electoral calculus point of view, these votes may serve no purpose and are deemed useless, from a political rights perspective, the votes represent people’s inalienable moral and democratic rights to make political choices, whatever the outcome, and thus must be respected and not condemned as wasted.

    The new era of transformation
    The small margin of 29 to 26 seats and indeed the intriguing 28-27 voting in Parliament should be reason for the Coalition government to be on its toes and not be complacent about the sustainability of the three-party partnership.

    They must try as much as possible to maintain a united synergy through a win-win power sharing arrangement.

    They have started this so far with the co-deputy prime ministership and portfolio sharing and this needs to deepen to other areas so that it is not seen as a marriage of convenience but a genuine attempt at nation building and transformation.

    To keep their momentum going and mobilise more support and legitimacy, they need to use the diverse expertise and wide range of professional skills at their disposal to bring about meaningful, consultative, transparent and transformative policy changes for the country.

    Part of the process will be to reverse some of the FFP’s fear-mongering, vindictive, controlling and authoritarian style of policymaking and leadership, which have left many victims strewn across our national landscape and which weakened support for the FFP.

    While there are still flames of anger and vengeance burning in some people’s hearts as a result of victimisation by the previous regime, it is imperative now to listen to Nelson Mandela’s advice after he was released from jail — allow the mind to rule over emotions and move on with dignity.

    We must break the cycle of political vengeance and vindictiveness, which became part of our political culture since 2006 and as prominent lawyers Imrana Jalal and Graham Leung have advised, it is important to ensure that changes are within the law and not driven by destructive emotions, or else we will be following the same path as the previous regime.

    These will take a high degree of levelheadedness and moral restraint, qualities already displayed by the coalition leadership so far.

    For the FFP, it is time to go back to the drawing board, rethink about their overreliance on coattail approach, re-strategise and reflect on why voters are deserting them.

    They will no doubt be sharpening their daggers to get inside the coalition armour and target the weak links and vulnerable spots.

    They will try all the tricks in the book to make the coalition partnership as shortlived as possible through destabilisation strategies and vote poaching by winning over an extra Sodelpa vote to add to the single mysterious vote, which went FFP way during the parliamentary vote for the Speaker and PM.

    Sodelpa may need to warn the person concerned and if the betrayal does not stop after the next round of parliamentary vote then they may need to invoke Section 63(h) of the Constitution, which specifies that a parliamentarian can lose his or her seat if the person’s vote is “contrary to any direction issued by the political party…”

    This will then open the door for Ro Temumu Kepa, who is next on the SODELPA party list, to take the vacant seat and help stabilise the coalition’s parliamentary position a bit more.

    Some electoral lessons for the future
    The intense political horse-trading, high pressure power manoeuvring and stressful competition for coalition partnership in the hours after the election has taught us a few lessons.

    Firstly, political parties should now start thinking about forging partnerships because future elections can only be won through coalition.

    PAP and NFP made a great move by getting into a coalition early and this worked out well for them.

    The coalition government now has a head start.

    Secondly, political parties should learn to be humble, not burn their bridges when they part with their old comrades nor should they feel super and invincible by trying to do things on their own. Old grievances can come back to haunt you if they are not addressed early

    Thirdly, small parties need to pay attention to the electoral calculus and engage with parties, which have potential to propel them above the 5 percent threshold or join together as small parties to form larger political groupings before the election.

    Fourth, voters will need to be smart and strategic about their votes to ensure that they are not wasted.

    These “wasted” votes do make a difference in the end when the results are tallied.

    Fifthly, given the need for partnerships, especially when margins are narrow, forging positive relationship and goodwill with other political parties early before elections can be rewarding political capital while vindictiveness and ill will can be destructive and regrettable political liabilities.

    There is still time — about 48 months away before the next election.

    Steven Ratuva is distinguished professor and pro-vice chancellor Pacific at the University of Canterbury and chair of the International Political Science Association Research Committee on climate security and planetary politics. This article was first published in The Fiji Times and is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Can NATO and the Pentagon Find a Diplomatic Off-Ramp from the Ukraine War?

    Photo credit: Economic Club of New York

    NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, known for his staunch support for Ukraine, recently revealed his greatest fear for this winter to a TV interviewer in his native Norway: that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a major war between NATO and Russia. “If things go wrong,” he cautioned solemnly, “they can go horribly wrong.”

    It was a rare admission from someone so involved in the war, and reflects the dichotomy in recent statements between U.S. and NATO political leaders on one hand and military officials on the other. Civilian leaders still appear committed to waging a long, open-ended war in Ukraine, while military leaders, such as the U.S. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, have spoken out and urged Ukraine to “seize the moment” for peace talks.
     
    Retired Admiral Michael Mullen, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair, spoke out first, maybe testing the waters for Milley, telling ABC News that the United States should “do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing.” 
     
    Asia Times reported that other NATO military leaders share Milley’s view that neither Russia nor Ukraine can achieve an outright military victory, while French and German military assessments conclude that the stronger negotiating position Ukraine has gained through its recent military successes will be short-lived if it fails to heed Milley’s advice.
     
    So why are U.S. and NATO military leaders speaking out so urgently to reject the perpetuation of their own central role in the war in Ukraine? And why do they see such danger in the offing if their political bosses miss or ignore their cues for the shift to diplomacy?
     
    A Pentagon-commissioned Rand Corporation study published in December, titled Responding to a Russian Attack on NATO During the Ukraine War, provides clues as to what Milley and his military colleagues find so alarming. The study examines U.S. options for responding to four scenarios in which Russia attacks a range of NATO targets, from a U.S. intelligence satellite or a NATO arms depot in Poland to larger-scale missile attacks on NATO air bases and ports, including Ramstein U.S. Air Base and the port of Rotterdam.
     
    These four scenarios are all hypothetical and premised on a Russian escalation beyond the borders of Ukraine. But the authors’ analysis reveals just how fine and precarious the line is between limited and proportionate military responses to Russian escalation and a spiral of escalation that can spin out of control and lead to nuclear war. 
     
    The final sentence of the study’s conclusion reads: “The potential for nuclear use adds weight to the U.S. goal of avoiding further escalation, a goal which might seem increasingly critical in the aftermath of a limited Russian conventional attack.” Yet other parts of the study argue against de-escalation or less-than-proportionate responses to Russian escalations, based on the same concerns with U.S. “credibility” that drove devastating but ultimately futile rounds of escalation in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other lost wars.
     
    U.S. political leaders are always afraid that if they do not respond forcefully enough to enemy actions, their enemies (now including China) will conclude that their military moves can decisively impact U.S. policy and force the United States and its allies to retreat. But escalations driven by such fears have consistently led only to even more decisive and humiliating U.S. defeats. 
     
    In Ukraine, U.S. concerns about “credibility” are compounded by the need to demonstrate to its allies that NATO’s Article 5—which says that an attack on one NATO member will be considered an attack on all—is a truly watertight commitment to defend them.
     
    So U.S. policy in Ukraine is caught between the reputational need to intimidate its enemies and support its allies on the one hand, and the unthinkable real-world dangers of escalation on the other. If U.S. leaders continue to act as they have in the past, favoring escalation over loss of “credibility,” they will be flirting with nuclear war, and the danger will only increase with each twist of the escalatory spiral.  
     
    As the absence of a “military solution” slowly dawns on the armchair warriors in Washington and NATO capitals, they are quietly slipping more conciliatory positions into their public statements. Most notably, they are replacing their previous insistence that Ukraine must be restored to its pre-2014 borders, meaning a return of all the Donbas and Crimea, with a call for Russia to withdraw only to pre-February 24, 2022, positions, which Russia had previously agreed to in negotiations in Turkey in March.
     
    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Wall Street Journal on December 5th that the goal of the war is now “to take back territory that’s been seized from [Ukraine] since February 24th.” The WSJ reported that “Two European diplomats… said [U.S. National Security Adviser Jake] Sullivan recommended that Mr. Zelenskyy’s team start thinking about its realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.”
     
    In another article, the Wall Street Journal quoted German officials saying, “they believe it is unrealistic to expect the Russian troops will be fully expelled from all the occupied territories,” while British officials defined the minimum basis for negotiations as Russia’s willingness to “withdraw to positions it occupied on February 23rd.”
     
    One of Rishi Sunak’s first actions as U.K. Prime Minister at the end of October was to have Defence Minister Ben Wallace call Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for the first time since the Russian invasion in February. Wallace told Shoigu the U.K. wanted to de-escalate the conflict, a significant shift from the policies of former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

    A major stumbling block holding Western diplomats back from the peace table is the maximalist rhetoric and negotiating positions of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government, which has insisted since April that it will not settle for anything short of full sovereignty over every inch of territory that Ukraine possessed before 2014.
     
    But that maximalist position was itself a remarkable reversal from the position Ukraine took at cease-fire talks in Turkey in March, when it agreed to give up its ambition to join NATO and not to host foreign military bases in exchange for a Russian withdrawal to its pre-invasion positions. At those talks, Ukraine agreed to negotiate the future of Donbas and to postpone a final decision on the future of Crimea for up to 15 years.
     
    The Financial Times broke the story of that 15-point peace plan on March 16, and Zelenskyy explained the “neutrality agreement” to his people in a national TV broadcast on March 27, promising to submit it to a national referendum before it could take effect. 
     
    But then U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened on April 9 to quash that agreement. He told Zelenskyy that the U.K. and the “collective West” were “in it for the long run” and would back Ukraine to fight a long war, but would not sign on to any agreements Ukraine made with Russia. 
     
    This helps to explain why Zelenskyy is now so offended by Western suggestions that he should return to the negotiating table. Johnson has since resigned in disgrace, but he left Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine hanging on his promises. 
     
    In April, Johnson claimed to be speaking for the “collective West,” but only the United States publicly took a similar position, while France, Germany and Italy all called for new cease-fire negotiations in May. Now Johnson himself has done an about-face, writing in an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal on December 9 only that “Russian forces must be pushed back to the de facto boundary of February 24th.”
     
    Johnson and Biden have made a shambles of Western policy on Ukraine, politically gluing themselves to a policy of unconditional, endless war that NATO military advisers reject for the soundest of reasons: to avoid the world-ending World War III that Biden himself promised to avoid. 
     
    U.S. and NATO leaders are finally taking baby steps toward negotiations, but the critical question facing the world in 2023 is whether the warring parties will get to the negotiating table before the spiral of escalation spins catastrophically out of control.

    The post Can NATO and the Pentagon Find a Diplomatic Off-Ramp from the Ukraine War? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • Tucker Carlson and the JFK Allegations

    On December 15, the night that the Biden administration released some of the remaining JFK files while withholding others with another half-assed excuse, Tucker Carlson, the most-watched cable news television host, delivered a monologue about the JFK assassination.  It garnered a great deal of attention.

    Although I don’t watch Carlson’s television show, I received messages from many friends and colleagues, people I highly respect, about his monologue’s great significance, so I watched that episode. And then I watched it many more times.

    Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a man whom I hold in the highest esteem, tweeted that it was “the most courageous newscast in 60 years.  The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered.”

    While I completely agree with his second sentence, I was underwhelmed by Carlson’s words, to put it mildly.  I thought it was clearly “a limited hangout,” as described by the former CIA agent Victor Marchetti:

    Spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting, sometimes even volunteering, some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.

    Or listens carefully.

    Carlson surely said some things that were true, and, as my friends and many others have insisted, he was the first mainstream corporate journalist to say that “the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.”

    But “involved” is a word worthy of a lawyer, a public relations expert, or the CIA itself because it can mean something significant or nothing.  Or a little of both.  It is a weasel word.

    And the source for Carlson’s claim was an anonymous source, someone who he said “had access” to the JFK files that were never released.  We know, of course, that when the New York Times and its ilk cite “anonymous sources,” claiming that they have told them this or that, this raises eyebrows. Or should.  Anyone who closely follows that paper’s claims knows that it is a CIA conduit, but now, those who know this are embracing Tucker Carlson as if he were the prophet of truth, as if a Rupert Murdock-owned Fox TV host who is paid many millions of dollars, has become the Julian Assange of corporate journalism.

    In a 2010 radio interview, Mr. Carlson said, “ I am 100 % his bitch.  Whatever Mr. Murdoch says, I do.”

    The obvious question is: Why would Fox News allow Carlson to say now what many hear as shocking news about the JFK assassination?

    So let me run down exactly what Carlson did say.

    For five minutes of the 7:28 minute monologue, he said things that are obviously true: that Jack Ruby killed Oswald and that the claim that both acted alone is weird and beyond any odds; that the Warren Commission was shoddy; that the CIA weaponized the term “conspiracy theory” in 1967 according to Lance De Haven-Smith’s book Conspiracy Theory in America; that the CIA’s brainwashing specialist psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West visited Jack Ruby in jail and declared him insane, contrary to all other assessments of Ruby’s mental state; and that the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that there was probably a conspiracy in the president’s assassination.

    All of this is true but not news to those knowledgeable about the assassination.  Nevertheless, it was perhaps news to Carlson’s audience and therefore good to hear on a corporate news site.

    But then, the next few minutes – the key part of his report, the part that drew all the attention – got tricky.

    Carlson said that just that day – December 15, 2022 – when all the JFK documents were due to be released but many were withheld, “we spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents.”  Who would have such access, and how, is left unaddressed, but it is implied that it is a CIA source, but maybe not.  It is strange to say the least.

    Carlson then said he asked this person, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy?”  And the answer was “I believe they were involved.”  Carlson goes on to say, “And the answer we received was unequivocal.  Yes, the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.”

    Note the words “hand,” “believe,” “involved,” and then “unequivocal.”

    “Hand” can mean many things and is very vague.  For example, in front of his wife, a man tells his friend, “I had a hand in preparing Christmas dinner.”  To which his wife, laughing, replies, “Yes, he did, he put the napkins on the table.”

    To “believe” something is very different from knowing it, as Dr. Martin Schotz, one of the most perceptive JFK assassination researchers, has written in his book, History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy

    On Belief Versus Knowledge

    It is so important to understand that one of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance that is.

    And the American people are more than willing to be held in this state because to know the truth — as opposed to only believe the truth — is to face an awful terror and to be no longer able to evade responsibility. It is precisely in moving from belief to knowledge that the citizen moves from irresponsibility to responsibility, from helplessness and hopelessness to action, with the ultimate aim of being empowered and confident in one’s rational powers.

    “Involved,” like the word “hand,” can mean many things; it is vague, slippery, not definitive, and is used by tabloid gossip columnists to suggest scandals that may or not be true.

    “Unequivocal” does not accurately describe the source’s statement, which was: “I believe.” That is, unless you take someone’s belief as evidence of the truth, or you wish to make it sound so.

    Note that nowhere in Carlson’s report does he or his alleged source say clearly and definitively that the CIA/National Security State murdered President Kennedy, for which there has long been overwhelming evidence.  Such beating-around-the-bush is quite common and tantalizes the audience to think the next explosive revelation will be dispositive.  Yet no release of documents is needed to confirm that the CIA killed Kennedy, as if the national security state would allow itself to be pinned for the murder.

    Waiting for the documents is like waiting for Godot; and to promote some hidden smoking gun, some great revelation is to engage in a pseudo-debate without end.  It is to do the killers’ bidding for them.  And it is quite common. There are many well-known “dissident” writers who continue to claim that there is not enough evidence to conclude that the CIA/national security state killed the president.  And this is so for those who question the official story.  Furthermore, there are many more pundits who maintain that Oswald did the deed alone, as the Warren Report concluded and the mainstream corporate media trumpet.  This group is led by Noam Chomsky, whose acolytes bow to their master’s ignorant conclusions.

    Maybe we’ll know the truth in 2063.

    While it is true that some people change dramatically, Tucker Carlson, the Fox Television celebrity, would be a very unlikely candidate.  He defended Eliot Abrams and praised Oliver North; supported the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua; went to Nicaragua to support those Contras; smeared the great journalist Gary Webb while defending the CIA; supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq; and much more.  Alan MacLeod chronicled all this in February of this year for those who have known nothing of Carlson’s past, including his father’s work as a U.S. intelligence operative as director of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the body that oversees government-funded media, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio and TV Martí and Voice of America – all U.S. propaganda outlets.

    Now we are being asked to accept that Carlson is out to show how the CIA is “involved” in the murder of JFK.  Why would so many fall for such rhetoric?

    No doubt any crumb of national news coverage about the CIA and the assassination by a major corporate player elicits an enthusiastic response from those who have tried for many years to tell the truth about JFK’s murder.  One’s first response is excitement. But such reactions need to tempered by sober analyses of exactly what has been said, which is what I am doing here. I, too, wish it were a breakthrough but think it is more of the same. Much ado about nothing. A way to continue to foster uncertainty, not knowledge, about the crime.

    I see it as a game of false binaries in the same way the Democrats and Republicans are portrayed as mortal enemies.  Yes, there are some differences, but all-in-all they are one party, the War Party, who agree on the essential tenets of U.S. imperial policy. They both represent the interests of the upper classes and are financed by them. They both work within the same frame of reference. They both support what Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst, rightly calls the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT).

    If one asks a dedicated believer in the truthfulness of the New York Times Corporation or NPR, for example, what they think of Tucker Carlson, they will generally dismiss him with disdain as a right-wing charlatan. This, of course, works in reverse if you ask Carlson’s followers what they think of the Times or NPR. Yet for those who think outside the frame – and they are all non-mainstream – a different picture emerges. But sometimes they are taken in by those whose equivocations are extremely lawyerly but appeal to what they wish to hear. This is exactly what a “limited hangout” is. Snagged by some actual truths, they bite on the bait of nuances that don’t mean what they think they do.

    Left vs. right, Fox TV  vs. the New York Times, NPR, etc.: Just as Carlson’s father Dick Carlson ran the CIA-created U.S. overseas radio propaganda under Reagan and George H. W. Bush, so too the present head of National Public Radio, John Lansing, did the same under Barack Obama. See my piece, Will NPR Now Change its Name to National Propaganda Radio. Birds of a feather disguised as hawks and sparrows in a game meant to confuse and create scrambled brains.

    Lastly, let me mention an odd “coincidence.” On December 6 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., nine days before the partial JFK files release and Tucker Carlson’s monologue, the Mary Ferrell Foundation, an organization devoted to JFK research, gave a presentation showcasing what was advertised as explosive new information about the Kennedy assassination. The key presenter was Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and prominent JFK assassination researcher who has sued the CIA for documents involving Lee Harvey Oswald and CIA operative George Joannides.

    On November 22 Morley had published an article titled “Yes, There is a JFK Smoking Gun.” It was subtitled: It will be found in 44 CIA documents that are still “Denied in Full.” The documents he was referring to allegedly concern contacts between Oswald and Joannides in the summer and fall of 1963 in New Orleans and in Mexico City. “They [the CIA] were running a psychological warfare operation, authorized in June 1963, that followed Oswald from New Orleans to Mexico City later that year,” wrote Morley.

    Well, the “smoking gun” documents were not released on Dec 15, although on November 20 and then again at The National Press Club on December 6, Morley spoke of them as proving his point about the CIA’s involvement with Oswald, which has been obvious for a long time.  Although he said he hadn’t seen these key documents but was awaiting their release, he added that even if they were not released that will still prove him correct.  In other words, with this bit of legerdemain, he was saying: What I don’t know, and may not soon not know, supports what I’m claiming even though I don’t know it.  And even if the files were released, he writes, “As for the conspiracy question, the massive withholding of documents makes it premature to draw any conclusions. The undisclosed Oswald operation was not necessarily part of a conspiracy. It might indicate CIA incompetence, not complicity. Again, only the CIA knows for sure.” So the smoking gun is not a smoking gun and the waters of uncertainty roll on and on into the receding future.

    CIA incompetence, not complicity. Of course. It ain’t necessarily so. Or it is, or might be, or isn’t.

    Morley is one of  many who still cannot say that the CIA killed the president. Tucker Carlson can speak of its “involvement” just like Morley. We need more information, more files, etc. But even if we get them, we still won’t know.  Maybe by 2063.

    My question for Tucker Carlson: Who was your anonymous source? And did your source see the documents that were never disclosed? What specific documents are you referring to? And do they prove that the CIA killed Kennedy or just suggest “involvement”?

    Finally, as I said before, even as there has long been a mountain of evidence for the CIA’s murder of JFK (and RFK as well, although that is never mentioned), many prominent people continue to play as if there is not.  Listen to this video interview between Chris Hedges and former CIA officer John Kiriakou.  It is all about the nefarious deeds of the CIA.  Right toward the end of the interview (see minutes 32:30-33:19), Hedges says, “So I have to ask [since he has to answer] this question since I know Oliver Stone is convinced the CIA killed JFK … I’ve never seen any evidence that backs it up …”  and they both share a mocking laugh at Stone as if he were the village idiot when he knows more about the JFK assassination than the two of them put together, and Kiriakou says he too has not seen such evidence. It’s a disgusting but typical display of arrogance and a “limited hangout.” Criticize the CIA only to make sure you whitewash them for one of their greatest achievements: the murder of President John F. Kennedy. This is straight from Chomsky’s playbook.

    Beware double-talkers and the games they play. They come in different flavors.

    The post Tucker Carlson and the JFK Allegations first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Marape government encourages ‘honest debate, dissent’, says Juffa

    RNZ Pacific

    The Governor of Oro province in Papua New Guinea, Gary Juffa, says Prime Minister James Marape encourages “honest debate” and discussion within his government.

    The PNG coalition government is made up of 17 parties in an 118-seat Parliament. There are now only nine opposition MPs, after recent switches to government benches.

    With so few opposition MPs, concerns have been raised that the opposition cannot effectively hold the government to account.

    But Juffa disagrees, telling RNZ Pacific that disagreement and debate are encouraged between government MPs.

    “There are MPs who monitor what is happening within government and do hold the government to account, there is a lot of debate and discussion in the government caucus,” he said.

    “If the government makes a decision that the other members feel it’s not in the best interest of the country or the people they will voice their concerns.

    “And that is actually a very — in my opinion — positive [feature] about the Marape government, the Marape government encourages dissent within his government.

    Voicing their concerns
    “Our prime minister has allowed people and members of Parliament within the government to be critical, to voice their concerns.

    “The past O’Neill government was very harsh towards any criticism, whereas the government of Marape allows criticism, and he has encouraged free media. He has allowed the media or he has encouraged the media to report. We do want the media to report factually.

    “If they do report on critical concerns about the government then it is based on facts rather than rumour or rhetoric.

    “Well, you know, I was in the opposition for seven years and nothing stopped me from speaking up. There were times when there were only five or four of us, but we still spoke up.

    “You know, I think there are some good opposition MPs who were very vocal, and I don’t think it’s everyone joining the government-type situation. I think there are vocal active opposition MPs in Papua New Guinea,” he said.

    Juffa, who founded the People’s Movement for Change party, of which he is the sole Member of Parliament, also commented on the government’s response to the violence which erupted during the 2022 election.

    “The government has formed a parliamentary committee, chaired by Governor Allan Byrd, and it’s reached out to the Institute of National Affairs and other organisations. I believe they will also be working with the Commonwealth observers and other institutions, organisations that were critical of the elections,” he said.

    Most violent election
    The poll was described as the most violent in the country’s 47 years of independence, with dozens of people losing their lives.

    “So there have been immediate steps taken, I understand that the committee will be funded. It has the support of the executive government and the Prime Minister.

    “And efforts are well underway to address and conduct a review of not just these elections, but previous elections and look at ensuring that the 2027 elections are a far more transparent, well-run well managed election than the ones we have seen in the past.”

    RNZ Pacific’s correspondent in Papua New Guinea, Scott Waide, said that during polling that the violent extremes reflected wider public frustration in a poorly planned and managed election.

    Juffa said unfortunately the reality was that there was a lot yet to be done in many parts of Papua New Guinea, “violence is very much prevailing”.

    “Still, during these types of situations, we want to address them, and I believe the prime minister, the police minister and other members of Parliament charged with the responsibility are doing the best they can,” he said.

    During the 2022 general election, Papua New Guinea police and electoral authorities were on the verge of declaring failed elections in some parts of the country at one stage where violence had all but halted the electoral process.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • John Minto: Israel’s new leadership demands NZ reassess its Middle East policy

    COMMENTARY: By John Minto

    The swearing in of the extremist leadership in Israel demands the Aotearoa New Zealand government reassess its policy towards the Middle East.

    New Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared his top priority is to build more illegal Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

    This policy declares the leadership’s intention to:

    “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel – in the Galilee, Negev, Golan Heights, and Judea and Samaria”. (These are the Biblical names for the occupied Palestinian West Bank)

    New Zealand has bipartisan support for UN Security Council resolution 2334 of 2016 which was promoted by the former John Key National government. It declares Israeli settlements on Palestinian land as “a flagrant violation under international law” and says all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, must “immediately and completely cease.”

    With the announcement of its intention to escalate these flagrant violations of international law, Israel is giving us the middle finger.

    If our support for international law and United Nations resolutions is to have real meaning, then our government must urgently reassess its relationship with Israel.

    The new Israeli leadership includes several extreme racists and supporters of anti-Palestinian terrorism such as Itamar Ben-Gvir as Minister of National Security. Ben-Gvir has expressed support and admiration for Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish Israeli man who killed 29 Palestinians in a shooting at Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994.


    Israeli protests against the most rightwing government in history. Video: France 24

    Just a few weeks before his swearing in as Minister of National Security, Ben-Gvir described as a hero an Israeli soldier who shot to death a young Palestinian at point blank range — widely described as an assassination.

    We have had our own deadly terrorist attack on a mosque in Christchurch in which 51 New Zealanders (including six Palestinian New Zealanders) were killed. Why would we have relations with a government whose senior leadership includes Ben-Gvir who for many years had a picture of the terrorist Goldstein on his living room wall?

    Alongside Palestinian groups, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s largest and most respected human rights group, B’Tselem, have all declared Israel to be an apartheid state.

    Because the new Israeli leadership has declared its intention to accelerate its apartheid policies against Palestinians, we should suspend our relationship with Israel and finally recognise a Palestinian state.

    John Minto is a political activist and commentator, and spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

    Disappearing Palestine
    Alongside Palestinian groups, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s largest and most respected human rights group, B’Tselem, have all declared Israel to be an apartheid state. Image: TDB

  • ‘Lots of information isn’t secret, it’s just hard to find’ – Nicky Hager on one of NZ’s most famous whistleblowers

    BOOK CHAPTER: By Nicky Hager

    Whistleblower Owen Wilkes was a tireless and formidable researcher for peace and disarmament. Before the internet, he combed publicly available sources on weapons systems and defence strategy.

    In 1968, he revealed the secretive military function of a proposed satellite tracking station in the South Island, and while working in Sweden he was charged with espionage and deported after photographing intriguing but publicly visible installations.

    In a new book about his life, Peacemonger, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby, Nicky Hager writes about Wilkes’ research techniques:

    Owen Wilkes was an outstanding researcher, a role model of how someone can make a difference in the world by good research. But how did he actually do it? Owen managed to study complex subjects such as Cold War communications systems, secret intelligence facilities and foreign military activities in the Pacific.

    There are many important and useful lessons we can learn from how he did this work. The world needs more public interest researchers, on militarism and other subjects. Owen’s self-taught research techniques are like a masterclass in how it is done.

    Lots of information isn’t secret, just hard to find
    Owen worked for many years, sitting at his large desk at the Peace Movement office in Wellington, researching the military communications systems set up to launch and fight nuclear war. How was this possible?

    We are a bit conditioned currently to imagine the only option would be leaked documents from a whistleblower. The first secret of Owen’s success is that he had learned that large amounts of information on these subjects can be found and pieced together from obscure but publicly available sources.

    The heart of his research method was long hours spent poring over US government records and military industry magazines, gathering the precious crumbs of detail like someone panning for gold.

    Behind the large desk were shelves and shelves of open-topped file boxes, each with a cryptic title. These boxes were full of photocopied documents and handwritten notes from his researching. This may all sound very pre-internet; indeed it was largely pre-digital.

    International peace researcher Owen Wilkes
    International peace researcher Owen Wilkes . . . an inspirational resource person for a nuclear-free Pacific and many other disarmament issues. Image: Peacemonger screenshot

    But what Owen was doing would today be called “open source” research and his work is far superior to that carried out by many people with Google and other digital tools at their fingertips. Probably his favourite source of all was a publicly available US defence magazine called Aviation Week and Space Technology. The magazine (now online) is written for military staff and arms manufacturers, keeping them informed about developments in weapons, aircraft and “C3I” systems, which stands for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence systems: one of Owen’s main areas of speciality.

    The magazine also covered Owen’s speciality of “space based” military systems, such as military communication and surveillance satellites. In Owen’s files, which can be viewed at the National Library in Wellington, Aviation Week and Space Technology appears often. In a file box called USA Space Systems is a clipping from 1983 about the US Air Force awarding a contract for a ballistic missile early warning system (nuclear war-fighting equipment). The article revealed that the early warning system would be based at air force bases in Alaska, Greenland and Fylingdales, England — three clues about US foreign military activities.

    By reading and storing away details from numerous such articles, spanning many years, Owen built up a more and more detailed understanding of military and intelligence systems.

    The other endlessly useful source Owen used was US Congress and Senate hearings and reports about the US military budget. This is where each year the US military spells out its military construction plans, new weapons, technology programmes and the rest; often with figures broken down to the level of individual countries and military bases.

    Senior military officials appear at hearings to explain the threats and strategies that justify the spending. As with the military magazines, Owen systematically mined these reports year after year for interesting detail.

    He was especially keen on the US Congress’ Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Military Construction Appropriations. His files on US antisatellite weapons, for instance, contain a document from this subcommittee about new Anti-Satellite System Facilities (project number 11610) based at Langley Air Force base, Virginia. It had been approved by the president in the renewed Cold War of the mid-1980s to target Soviet satellites. Details like this were pieces in a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle.

    When he was based at the Peace Movement Aotearoa office in Wellington, from 1983 until about 1992, Owen spent long hours at the US Embassy library studying the Military Construction Appropriations and other US government documents. Each year the library received copies of the documents as microfiche (microphotos of each page on a film). Owen was a familiar visitor, hunched over the microfiche reader making notes and printing out interesting pages.

    Many times this gave the first clue of construction somewhere in the world, pointing to that country hosting some new US military, nuclear or intelligence activity. The annual US military appropriation information is available to a researcher today. In fact it is now more easily accessed since it is online. But, if anything, Owen’s pre-digital techniques make it clearer how this research is done well. It’s a good reminder that the best sources of information are most often not in the first 10 or 20 hits of a Google search, the point where many people stop looking.

    Experience and persistence
    An important ingredient in all these methods is persistence. The methods usually work best if, like Owen, a researcher sticks at them over time. Sticking at a subject means you start to recognise names and places in an otherwise boring document, appreciate the significance of some fragment of information and understand the big picture into which each piece of information fits.

    Someone who reads deeply and studies a subject over a number of years can in effect become, like Owen, an expert. They may, like him, have no formal university qualifications. But they can know more about their subject than nearly anyone else, which is a good definition of an expert. They recognise the names and places and appreciate the significance of new evidence.

    A textbook example of this was when Owen returned to New Zealand in the early 1980s and went to see a recently discovered secret military site near the beach settlement of Tangimoana in the Manawatu.

    Owen, who had spent years studying secret bases around the world, was the New Zealander most likely to know what he was looking at. There, on one side of the base, was a large circle of antenna poles: a CDAA circularly-disposed antenna array. It instantly told him the Tangimoana facility was a signals intelligence base. It had the same equipment and was part of the same networks as the bases he had studied in Norway and Sweden.

    Ensuring his research was noticed
    The purpose of Owen’s work was to make a difference to the issues he researched. A final and vital part of the work was getting attention for the findings of his research. Owen often spoke in the news and he wrote about the issues he was studying. Research, writing and speaking up are essential ingredients in political change. The part of this he probably enjoyed most was travelling and speaking in public to interested groups.

    During the 1980s, he had major speaking tours to countries including Japan, the Philippines, Australia and Canada (and often around New Zealand). During these trips he would present information about military and intelligence activities in those countries. A 1985 trip to Canada, which he shared with prominent Palau leader Roman Bedor, was typical. He was in Canada for seven weeks, speaking in most parts of the country and numerous times on radio and television.

    One of the things he emphasised was that Canadians, as residents of a Pacific country, should be thinking about what was going on in the Pacific. One of Owen’s recurrent themes was the importance of being aware of the Pacific.

    The final ingredient of a good researcher is caring about the subjects they are working on. This can be heard clearly in everything Owen wrote about the Pacific. He described the Pacific being used for submarine-based nuclear weapons and facilities used to prepare for nuclear war. He talked about the big powers using the Pacific as the “backside of the globe”, epitomised by tiny Johnston Atoll west of Hawai’i where the US military does “anything too unpopular, too dangerous and too secret to do elsewhere”.

    He talked about things that were getting better: French nuclear testing on the way out; chemical weapons being destroyed. But also the region being used as a site for great power rivalry; and, under multiple pressures, the small Pacific countries being at risk of becoming “more repressive, less democratic”. He cared, and that was at the heart of being a public-interest researcher for decades.

    Many of the problems he described are still occurring today. More research, more good research, on these issues and many others is crying out to be done.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • 2022 Pacific political upheavals eclipse Tongan volcano

    2022 PACIFIC REVIEW: By David Robie

    The Pacific year started with a ferocious eruption and global tsunami in Tonga, but by the year’s end several political upheavals had also shaken the region with a vengeance.

    A razor’s edge election in Fiji blew away a long entrenched authoritarian regime with a breath of fresh air for the Pacific, two bitterly fought polls in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu left their mark, and growing geopolitical rivalry with the US and Australia contesting China’s security encroachment in the Solomon Islands continues to spark convulsions for years to come.

    It was ironical that the two major political players in Fiji were both former coup leaders and ex-military chiefs — the 1987 double culprit Sitiveni Rabuka, a retired major-general who is credited with introducing the “coup culture” to Fiji, and Voreqe Bainimarama, a former rear admiral who staged the “coup to end all coups” in 2006.

    It had been clear for some time that the 68-year-old Bainimarama’s star was waning in spite of repressive and punitive measures that had been gradually tightened to shore up control since an unconvincing return to democracy in 2014.

    And pundits had been predicting that the 74-year-old Rabuka, a former prime minister in the 1990s, and his People’s Alliance-led coalition would win. However, after a week-long stand-off and uncertainty, Rabuka’s three-party coalition emerged victorious and Rabuka was elected PM by a single vote majority.

    Fiji Deputy PM Professor Biman Prasad (left) and Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka
    Fiji’s new guard leadership . . . Professor Biman Prasad (left), one of three deputy Prime Ministers, and Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka share a joke before the elections. Image: Jonacani Lalakobau/The Fiji Times

    In Samoa the previous year, the change had been possibly even more dramatic when a former deputy prime minister in the ruling Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP), Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa, led her newly formed Fa’atuatua I le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party to power to become the country’s first woman prime minister.

    Overcoming a hung Parliament, Mata’afa ousted the incumbent Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, who had been prime minister for 23 years and his party had been in power for four decades. But he refused to leave office, creating a constitutional crisis.

    At one stage this desperate and humiliating cling to power by the incumbent looked set to be repeated in Fiji.

    Yet this remarkable changing of the guard in Fiji got little press in New Zealand newspapers. The New Zealand Herald, for example, buried what could could have been an ominous news agency report on the military callout in Fiji in the middle-of the-paper world news section.

    Buried news
    “Buried” news . . . a New Zealand Herald report about a last-ditched effort by the incumbent FijiFirst government to cling to power published on page A13 on 23 December 2022. Image: APR screenshot

    Fiji
    Although Bainimarama at first refused to concede defeat after being in power for 16 years, half of them as a military dictator, the kingmaker opposition party Sodelpa sided — twice — with the People’s Alliance (21 seats) and National Federation Party (5 seats) coalition.

    Sodelpa’s critical three seats gave the 29-seat coalition a slender cushion over the 26 seats of Bainimarama’s FijiFirst party which had failed to win a majority for the first time since 2014 in the expanded 55-seat Parliament.

    But in the secret ballot, one reneged giving Rabuka a razor’s edge single vote majority.

    The ousted Attorney-General and Justice Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum – popularly branded as the “Minister of Everything” with portfolios and extraordinary power in the hands of one man – is arguably the most hated person in Fiji.

    Sayed-Khaiyum’s cynical “divisive” misrepresentation of Rabuka and the alliance in his last desperate attempt to cling to power led to a complaint being filed with Fiji police, accusing him of “inciting communal antagonism”.

    He reportedly left Fiji for Australia on Boxing Day and the police issued a border alert for him while the Home Affairs Minister, Pio Tikoduadua, asked Police Commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho, a former military brigadier-general to resign over allegations of bias and lack of confidence. He refused so the new government will have to use the formal legal steps to remove him.

    Just days earlier, Fiji lawyer Imrana Jalal, a human rights activist and a former Human Rights Commission member, had warned the people of Fiji in a social media post not to be tempted into “victimisation or targeted prosecutions” without genuine evidence as a result of independent investigations.

    “If we do otherwise, then we are no better than the corrupt regime [that has been] in power for the last 16 years,” she added.

    “We need to start off the right way or we are tainted from the beginning.”

    However, the change of government unleashed demonstrations of support for the new leadership and fuelled hope for more people-responsive policies, democracy and transparency.

    Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, academic Dr Sanjay Ramesh commented in an incisive analysis of Fiji politics: “With … Rabuka back at the helm, there is hope that the indigenous iTaukei population’s concerns on land and resources, including rampant poverty and unemployment, in their community will be finally addressed.”

    He was also critical of the failure of the Mission Observer Group (MoG) under the co-chair of Australia to “see fundamental problems” with the electoral system and process which came close to derailing the alliance success.

    “While the MoG was enjoying Fijian hospitality, opposition candidates were being threatened, intimidated, and harassed by FFP [FijiFirst Party] thugs. The counting of the votes was marred by a ‘glitch’ on 14 December 2022 . . . leaving many opposition parties questioning the integrity of the vote counting process.”

    Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and his wife Sulueti Rabuka with their great grandson Dallas
    Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and his wife Sulueti Rabuka with their great grandson, three-year-old Dallas Ligamamada Ropate Newman Wye, in front of their home at Namadi Heights in Suva. Image: Sophie Ralulu/The Fiji Times

    Rabuka promised a “better and united Fiji” in his inaugural address to the nation via government social media platforms.

    “Our country is experiencing a great and joyful awakening,” he said. “It gladdens my heart to be a part of it. And I am reminded of the heavy responsibilities I now bear.”

    The coalition wasted no time in embarking on its initial 100-day programme and signalled the fresh new ‘open” approach by announcing that Professor Pal Ahluwalia, the Samoa-based vice-chancellor of the regional University of the South Pacific — deported unjustifiably by the Bainimarama government — and the widow of banned late leading Fiji academic Dr Brij Lal were both free to return.


    Paul Barker, director of the Institute of National Affairs, discussing why the 2022 PNG elections were so bad. Video: ABC News

    Papua New Guinea
    Earlier in the year, in August, Prime Minister James Marape was reelected as the country’s leader after what has been branded by many critics as the “worst ever” general election — it was marred by greater than ever violence, corruption and fraud.

    As the incumbent, Marape gained the vote of 97 MPs — mostly from his ruling Pangu Pati that achieved the second-best election result ever of a PNG political party — in the expanded 118-seat Parliament. With an emasculated opposition, nobody voted against him and his predecessor, Peter O’Neill, walked out of the assembly in disgust

    Papua New Guinea has a remarkable number of parties elected to Parliament — 23, not the most the assembly has had — and 17 of them backed Pangu’s Marape to continue as prime minister. Only two women were elected, including Governor Rufina Peter of Central Province.

    In an analysis after the dust had settled from the election, a team of commentators at the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre concluded that the “electoral role was clearly out of date, there were bouts of violence, ballot boxes were stolen, and more than one key deadline was missed”.

    However, while acknowledging the shortcomings, the analysts said that the actual results should not be “neglected”. Stressing how the PNG electoral system favours incumbents — the last four prime ministers have been reelected — they argued for change to the “incumbency bias”.

    “If you can’t remove a PM through the electoral system, MPs will try all the harder to do so through a mid-term vote of no confidence,” they wrote.

    “How to change this isn’t clear (Marape in his inaugural speech mooted a change to a presidential system), but something needs to be done — as it does about the meagre political representation of women.”

    Julie King with Ralph Regenvanu
    Gloria Julia King, first woman in the Vanuatu Parliament for a decade, with Ralph Regenvanu returning from a funeral on Ifira island in Port Vila. Image: Ralph Regenvanu/Twitter

    Vanuatu
    In Vanuatu in November, a surprise snap election ended the Vanua’aku Pati’s Bob Loughman prime ministership. Parliament was dissolved on the eve of a no-confidence vote called by opposition leader Ralph Regenvanu.

    With no clear majority from any of the contesting parties, Loughman’s former deputy, lawyer and an ex-Attorney-General, Ishmael Kalsakau, leader of the Union of Moderate Parties, emerged as the compromise leader and was elected unopposed by the 52-seat Parliament.

    A feature was the voting for Gloria Julia King, the first woman MP to be elected to Vanuatu’s Parliament in a decade. She received a “rapturous applause” when she stepped up to take the first oath of office.

    RNZ Pacific staff journalist Lydia Lewis and Port Vila correspondent Hilaire Bule highlighted the huge challenges faced by polling officials and support staff in remote parts of Vanuatu, including the exploits of soldier Samuel Bani who “risked his life” wading through chest-high water carrying ballot boxes.

    Tongan volcano-tsunami disaster
    Tonga’s violent Hunga Ha’apai-Hunga Tonga volcano eruption on January 15 was the largest recorded globally since the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. It triggered tsunami waves of up to 15m, blanketed ash over 5 sq km — killing at least six people and injuring 19 — and sparked a massive multinational aid relief programme.

    The crisis was complicated because much of the communication with island residents was crippled for a long time.

    As Dale Dominey-Howes stressed in The Conversation, “in our modern, highly-connected world, more than 95 percent of global data transfer occurs along fibre-optic cables that criss-cross through the world’s oceans.

    “Breakage or interruption to this critical infrastructure can have catastrophic local, regional and even global consequences.”

    “This is exactly what has happened in Tonga following the volcano-tsunami disaster. But this isn’t the first time a natural disaster has cut off critical submarine cables, and it won’t be the last.”

    Covid-19 in Pacific
    While the impact of the global covid-19 pandemic receded in the Pacific during the year, new research from the University of the South Pacific provided insight into the impact on women working from home. While some women found the challenge enjoyable, others “felt isolated, had overwhelming mental challenges and some experienced domestic violence”.

    Rosalie Fatiaki, chair of USP’s staff union women’s wing, commented on the 14-nation research findings.

    “Women with young children had a lot to juggle, and those who rely on the internet for work had particular frustrations — some had to wait until after midnight to get a strong enough signal,” she said.

    Around 30 percent of respondents reported having developed covid-19 during the Work From Home periods, and 57 percent had lost a family member or close friend to covid-19 as well as co-morbidities.

    She also noted the impact of the “shadow pandemic” of domestic abuse. Only two USP’s 14 campuses in 12 Pacific countries avoided any covid-19 closures between 2020 and 2022.

    Pacific climate protest
    Pacific Islands activists protest in a demand for climate action and loss and damage reparations at COP27 in Egypt. Image: Dominika Zarzycka/AFP/RNZ Pacific

    COP27 climate progress
    The results for the Pacific at the COP27 climate action deliberations at the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh were disappointing to say the least.

    For more than three decades since Vanuatu had suggested the idea, developing nations have fought to establish an international fund to pay for the “loss and damage” they suffer as a result of climate change. Thanks partly to Pacific persistence, a breakthrough finally came — after the conference was abruptly extended by a day to thrash things out.

    However, although this was clearly a historic moment, much of the critical details have yet to be finalised.

    Professor Steven Ratuva, director of Canterbury University’s Macmillan Brown Pacific Studies Centre, says the increased frequency of natural disasters and land erosion, and rising ocean temperatures, means referring to “climate change” is outdated. It should be called “climate crisis”.

    “Of course climate changes, it’s naturally induced seen through weather, but the situation now shows it’s not just changing, but we’re reaching a level of a crisis — the increasing number of category five cyclones, the droughts, the erosion, heating of the ocean, the coral reefs dying in the Pacific, and the impact on people’s lives,” he said.

    “All these things are happening at a very fast pace.”

    A Papuan protest
    A Papuan protest . . . “there is a human rights emergency in West Papua.” Image: Tempo

    Geopolitical rivalry and West Papua
    The year saw intensifying rivalry between China and the US over the Pacific with ongoing regional fears about perceived ambitions of a possible Chinese base in the Solomon Islands — denied by Honiara — but the competition has fuelled a stronger interest from Washington in the Pacific.

    The Biden administration released its Indo-Pacific Strategy in February, which broadly outlines policy priorities based on a “free and open” Pacific region. It cites China, covid-19 and climate change — “crisis”, rather — as core challenges for Washington.

    Infrastructure is expected to be a key area of rivalry in future. Contrasting strongly with China, US policy is likely to support “soft areas” in the Pacific, such as women’s empowerment, anti-corruption, promotion of media freedom, civil society engagement and development.

    The political and media scaremongering about China has prompted independent analysts such as the Development Policy Centre’s Terence Wood and Transform Aqorau to call for a “rethink” about Solomon Islands and Pacific security. Aqorau said Honiara’s leaked security agreement with China had “exacerbated existing unease” about China”.

    The Pacific Catalyst founding director also noted that the “increasing engagement” with China had been defended by Honiara as an attempt by the government to diversify its engagement on security, adding that “ it is unlikely that China will build a naval base in Solomon Islands”.

    However, the elephant in the room in geopolitical terms is really Indonesia and its brutal intransigency over its colonised Melanesian provinces — now expanded from two to three in a blatant militarist divide and rule ploy — and its refusal to constructively engage with Papuans or the Pacific over self-determination.

    “2022 was a difficult year for West Papua. We lost great fighters and leaders like Filep Karma, Jonah Wenda, and Jacob Prai. Sixty-one years since the fraudulent Act of No Choice, our people continue to suffer under Indonesian’s colonial occupation,” reflected exiled West Papuan leader Benny Wenda in a Christmas message.

    “Indonesia continues to kill West Papuans with impunity, as shown by the recent acquittal of the only suspect tried for the “Bloody Paniai’” massacre of 2014.

    “Every corner of our country is now scarred by Indonesian militarisation . . . We continue to demand that Indonesia withdraw their military from West Papua in order to allow civilians to peacefully return to their homes.”

  • The New York Times Is Diminishing Itself

    Give the New York Times its due. Its teams of reporters produce more investigations of wrongdoing by entrenched vested interests than does the entire recess-rich, Tuesday-to-Thursday U.S. Congress with all its Committees and Subcommittees. The Times should promptly publish some of its exposes as small books. Their on-the-ground series on the burning Amazon Forest and their series on expanding sports gambling corruption and addiction exemplify great reporting.

    However, in the last decade, the Times has freaked out over the decline in print subscriptions, loss of advertisements and the rise of the Internet with its many aliterate users. Though a little late, the Times now has responded with a thriving Internet presence of about 10 million national and worldwide online subscribers, in addition to new businesses offering information and travel services. Unfortunately, their changes to the print edition – which produces important content – have exhibited an accelerating stupefaction.

    Huge photos replace what was serious content on its Sunday Business and Opinion Pages, formerly the Weekly Review. Repeatedly, the entire valuable front pages of those Sections are filled with photographs or graphic artwork. That space used to contain great investigative columnists like Gretchen Morgenson. The inside of these sections is not much better – with too many photos and soft articles replacing first-rate columnists on consumer rip-off cases and the abuses of airline passengers.

    As one long-time reader, about to cancel his subscription, just told me – parts of the supposedly serious sections (apart from the vast entertainment sections) come across like People Magazine.

    The Times has really gone overboard in diluting its storied editorial and op-ed pages. From as many as nearly 20 concise, meaty editorials, the Editorial Page is down to about three a week. This space is often being occupied by mediocre columns such as the lengthy superficial exchanges between “liberal” Gail Collins and “conservative” war hawk Bret Stephens who are supposed to disagree with one another but often engage in not so witty repartee.

    As for the Editorial Page, the kinds of enlightening op-eds which were submitted by outsiders over the years now are preceded by the Time’s regular columnists – ok – but also by a stable of countless designated “contributing opinion writers.” With photos or graphics even on this page, outside freelancers and thought leaders are mostly left to drift away without so much as a courteous email acknowledgement of their receiving these op-ed submissions.

    Young people – bereft of history – should realize that those two pages used to be considered the most important spaces in American journalism. This self-inflicted stupefaction intensified in the 2021-2022 years without the Times informing serious readers as to why the changes were made.

    During the Trumpian era, the Times developed a bizarre obsession with over covering political extremists in ways that made them into big acts and gave them material for more fund-raising. Apart from their award-winning continual critical coverage of the Trump Dump, the Times constantly published his slanderous tweets and pejorative nicknames for others without affording the libeled a right of reply.

    Its long features on e.g., J.D. Vance, Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene were so biographical as to unwittingly serve to advance their careers. They loved the coverage in the “liberal” Times. Without a balanced profiling of counterparts, readers might think that very little is going on within the progressive community. (See, e.g., a totally unreported, aggregated effort on winningamerica.net during the mid-term elections).

    Unfortunately, one print section remains the same. The much-read letters-to-the-editor take up just one-third of one page in this huge newspaper. That leaves out articulate letters. That in turn discourages readers from writing serious letters. The Washington Post at least adds an entire page of letters each Saturday. Why is so little space available for letters in the Times which has a larger readership?

    Also, unlike the Times, the Washington Post covers local baseball team games and prints box scores for major league games and scorecards for major professional sports.

    Aspiring for a global reach, the deciders at the Times pay too little attention to its hometown. While they have a sizable Metropolitan desk, the coverage largely ignores the thousands of citizen groups striving to improve the neighborhoods and boroughs of the city often in brave and creative manners, (See NYPIRG.) and its work on the refunded New York state stock transfer tax – in the billions of dollars annually.

    I’ve suggested in vain that the Times have one weekly section on this large civic community in the city and state – as it has a daily section on the Arts and additional regular entertainment style sections. There are advertisers available for such a section. (The Times has special sections with no or very few advertisers.)

    One of the Times’ innovations is a section on page two titled “The Story Behind the Story.” It affords reporters an opportunity to share with readers, some personal details, and the background of their more difficult reportage.

    Perhaps some of the above-noted management decisions also deserve “The Story Behind the Story” for puzzled New York Times readers.

    Lo the newspaper whose editors are not up to the talents and recommendations of their exceptional reporters.

    The post The New York Times Is Diminishing Itself first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A knife-edge election in Fiji sees power shift – and a chance to bring back real democracy

    ANALYSIS: By Steven Ratuva, University of Canterbury

    When the final election results were announced around 4pm on Sunday, many Fijians, at home and around the world, breathed a collective sigh of relief: the government of coup-maker Voreqe Bainimarama looked like it had finally been defeated at the ballot box.

    Could it be that the militarised political culture, pervasive in Fiji since the 1987 coups, was finally being effectively challenged — peacefully?

    Bainimarama’s FijiFirst Party (FFP) collected 42.55 percent of votes, well short of the majority needed to return to power. The closest rival, the People’s Alliance Party (PAP), led by 1987 coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka, won 35.82 percent, followed by the National Federation Party (NFP) on 8.89 pecent and the Social Democratic Liberal Party (Sodelpa) with 5.14 percent of the votes.

    Total voter turnout was 68.28 percent, less than the 71.92 percent at the 2018 election. With the Unity Fiji and Fiji Labour parties not reaching the required 5 percent threshold to gain seats under Fiji’s proportional representation system, the maths indicated a dead heat –– and some anxious coalition horsetrading.

    The vote shares mean FFP will have 26 seats in the new 55-seat Parliament, the PAP 21, NFP 5 and SODELPA 3. The PAP and NFP had already signed a pre-election agreement to form a coalition, meaning they are tied with the FFP on 26 seats.

    Led by Viliame Gavoka, Sodelpa was suddenly thrust into the role of kingmaker. Given its fraught history with both FFP and PAP, the stage was set for some hard bargaining on all sides this week.

    Family ties
    The PAP, in fact, is a breakaway faction of Sodelpa. The divorce was bitter and littered with bruised souls. A faction within Sodelpa wanted nothing to do with Rabuka and the PAP.

    On the other hand, Sodelpa’s relationship with FijiFirst has been equally strained. The founding leader of Sodelpa, the late prime minister Laiseni Qarase, was deposed, arrested and jailed following Bainimarama’s 2006 coup.

    But there is a personal link between Sodelpa and the FFP, whose secretary general (as well as Attorney-General and Minister for the Economy in the previous government) is Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. An Indo-Fijian Muslim, Sayed-Khaiyum is the son-in-law of Sodelpa leader Viliame Gavoka, an indigenous Fijian (Taukei).

    Sodelpa party leader Viliame Gavoka
    Sodelpa party leader Viliame Gavoka . . . his son-in-law is the outgoing Attorney-General and Minister for the Economy  Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, an Indo-Fijian Muslim. Image: RNZ Pacific

    While this multiracial connection may have its political advantages, the reality is that many in Sodelpa vehemently oppose Sayed-Khaiyum for what they view as his imposing and arrogant style.

    Return of Rabuka
    There were early indications that Sodelpa might go with the PAP and NFP partnership to form a grand coalition, and that played out as by Friday the party’s management board had carried out two votes, both giving a very narrow margin in support of the grand coalition (16-14 then 13-12). Ideologically and politically, Sodelpa and PAP share the same basic vision and strategies regarding indigenous Fijian issues — after all, they were once the same party.

    Gavoka and Rabuka are similar in various ways. They both have ethno-nationalist tendencies and embrace fundamentalist evangelical Christian doctrines. Gavoka has advocated setting up a Fijian embassy in Jerusalem, and Rabuka has been known as an admirer of Israel since he was commander of Fijian peacekeepers in the Middle East in the 1980s.

    Furthermore, Sodelpa has been under pressure from its international and local branches (which fund the party) not to entertain any FFP coalition proposals. The message coming through from supporters is that their votes for Sodelpa were also votes against FFP.

    There have also been fears that an alliance between Sodelpa and FFP could provoke old grievances and escalate into wider political instability.

    Lastly, “non-negotiables” laid down by Sodelpa include enacting policies that promote indigenous Fijian interests (including the reinstatement of the Great Council of Chiefs (which Bainimarama abolished), forgiving scholarship debt and setting up a Fiji embassy in Jerusalem.

    These are similar to the PAP policies in the party manifesto but quite different from the FFP positions.

    Culture change
    If the election sees FijiFirst finally leave power, there is the potential for democratic progress. One of the major challenges for an incoming new government will be reform of the country’s civil service, judiciary, education and health systems, and the economy in general.

    Over the years, Fiji society has been configured in ways that suit the narrow ideological interests and centralised control of the FFP. Security, public order and media laws have been used to undermine democratic debate, free expression and public engagement.

    Democratising the institutions of state and making them more relevant will be a huge task. It will require significant financial, political and intellectual resources. It also has ramifications in the wider Pacific region, given Fiji’s role as an economic, communications and political hub.

    Many Pacific leaders, including in Australia and New Zealand, have been unhappy with Fiji under the Bainimarama-Kaiyum axis. Actions such as the government’s refusal to release more than FJ$80 million in funding for the University of the South Pacific — creating a major crisis at the regional institution — only reinforce such perceptions.

    This time, Rabuka and Bainimarama — both former military leaders and coup makers — have used the democratic electoral system rather than guns and force to try to win to power. But behind them sits a culture of command and control that will be difficult to dislodge.

    This is subtly woven into various aspects of the 2013 Constitution, such as the role of the military as the nation’s constitutional security watchdog. But there is growing confidence that the chances of another military coup following this election are virtually nil.

    Fiji’s civil service and operations of state have incorporated micromanagement, authoritarianism and coercion as part of the institutional culture. The test will be to ensure that a coalition of parties can rule together in a way that expands political participation and enhances democracy.The Conversation

    Dr Steven Ratuva is director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

  • Foreign Affairs are of Virtually No Interest to American Voters

    Foreign affairs, including national security, don’t show among the 14 types of issues in the recent Gallup article, “Government Remains Americans’ Top Problem in 2022”: all of the 14 issue-areas that did show were the top issue for at least 3% of Gallup’s respondents in 2022, and all of them were domestic issues, not international— not foreign-affairs issues. However, one of them was “Immigration,” which was #6 and was the top issue for 6% of the respondents. Though not an international issue, it’s a border issue, and therefore borders on being an international one.

    Here are the 14 issues, and the % for each of them:

    Government 19%
    High cost of living/Inflation 16%
    Economy in general 12%
    Immigration 6%
    Unifying the country 5%
    COVID-19 4%
    Race relations 4%
    Crime 4%
    Gas prices 3%
    Judicial system 3%
    Poverty/Hunger/Homelessness 3%
    Abortion 3%
    Ethics/Morals 3%
    Environment 3%

    *****

    And here, as reported on November 9th, by the Washington Post, were “How different groups are voting according to exit polls and AP VoteCast”:

    Network exit poll

    Abortion (27%)
    76% [Democrat]
    23% [Republican]
    Inflation     (31%)
    28%
    71%
    Crime (11%)
    41%
    57%
    Immigration     (10%)
    25%
    73%
    Gun policy (11%)
    60%
    37%

    About 3 in 10 voters said inflation was the most important issue in their vote according to the exit poll, and roughly 7 in 10 of those voters supported Republicans. Almost as many voters said abortion was their most important issue and those voters supported Democrats by an even wider margin. About 1 in 10 voters each said crime, immigration and gun policy were their most important issues.

    *****

    The reason why abortion was only 3% in the Gallup polling but was 27% (nine times higher) in the election is that whereas the Gallup number was an average throughout the entire year of Gallup’s sampling American public opinion, the election happened less than six months after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that had ended the national and state laws that had banned abortions; this was a shocker because all of the ‘Justices’ had promised in their confirmation-hearings that they’d respect and adhere-to existing longstanding Supreme-Court precedents, including that one. Apparently, Democratic women became increasingly fearful of the impact that the overturning-decision would have, as Election Day drew closer and news-reports about the decision’s results were published; and, so, election forecasters underestimated the electoral impact that this court-ruling would have. The Republican Donald Trump had done the most of any President to enable Roe to become overturned, and when it was, millions of American women became increasingly terrified and determined to vote.

    But, anyway, the U.S. Government can do virtually anything in international affairs and not have any need to worry that it will significantly affect electoral outcomes. Perhaps none of the U.S. Presidential and congressional elections since 1945 would have had any different outcomes if U.S. foreign policies had been different. If foreign affairs are important — and they do constitute (including nation ‘defense’ in all federal Departments, not only the ‘Defense’ Department) the vast majority of the U.S. Government’s discretionary spending — then they nonetheless are quite beyond the reach of whatever democracy might possibly exist in America (which is little-to-none, in any case). Whatever their actual importance may be, the U.S. public doesn’t care, to any significant extent, about such issues. 

    The post Foreign Affairs are of Virtually No Interest to American Voters first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The moral panic around drag makes even less sense in the UK’s pantomime season

    The moral panic around drag queens currently sweeping America has arrived in Britain. Conservative and homo/transphobic reactionaries are working themselves into a froth around the idea of (usually, not necessarily) a man in a dress entertaining children. The problem? It makes zero sense in a country with a proud tradition of… a man in a dress entertaining children. Of course, there’s no way a bigot would let a little cognitive dissonance stop them.

    An American malady

    The US is currently getting itself all het up about drag acts. Sometimes, the opposition is supposed to be specifically against children watching drag. Often, it’s simply about the idea of drag, full stop. Whatever the focus, it’s part of a much broader assault on the existence and rights of all LGBTQ+ people in America and elsewhere.

    The effects of the anti-drag movement have been wide-ranging. In Texas, legislator Bryan Slaton made moves to introduce legislation barring children from watching drag. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, suggested that child protective services should be called on parents who allow children to attend a drag show. Meanwhile, in Canada, libraries were threatened simply for hosting drag queen storytellers.

    Increasing attacks

    However, the bigotry has by no means been confined to the idea of minors seeing drag. Individuals carrying Nazi banners gathered at a fundraiser for the non-profit Rose Dynasty, run by drag queen Momma Ashley Rose.  A donut shop in Oklahoma was firebombed after it hosted a drag-themed event. More recently, five people were killed in an attack on Club Q, Colorado, which was hosting a drag event. Since then, the attempts at intimidation have only intensified.

    A study by Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) stated that the US had seen:

    124 incidents in 2022 of anti-LGBTQ protests and threats targeting specific drag events.

    Reporting on the GLAAD study, Them noted that the attacks came:

    after encouragement from Republican politicians, far-right pundits, or social media feeds like Libs of TikTok, who have increasingly labeled transgender people and drag queens as “groomers” who are dangers to children.

    Panic in the UK

    With a depressing inevitability, the moral panic around drag has made its way to Britain. The Canary has previously reported on the fascist organisation Patriotic Alternative protesting outside a drag event in Cornwall. A homophobic mob have attempted to arrest a queen performing at a library in Reading. Multiple threads on the reactionary parenting site Mumsnet are calling for an end to drag events for young audiences.

    All of the protests above focus on an organisation called ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’, which provides family-friendly readings in local libraries and other venues. The Drag Queen Story Hour website gives the motivation for the concept:

    Drag Queen Story Hour UK wants to show the world that being different is not a bad thing, and by providing imaginative role models for children to look up to, we can change the world book by book!

    The events aim to increase the acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities in the next generation – and to prevent the perpetuation of exactly the kind of bigotry that is directed at them.

    A history lesson!

    As we gear up for Christmas, it’s high time to remember that the UK historically has been fine with the idea of men wearing dresses, big makeup, and wigs as children’s entertainment. In fact, we’ve built a whole bloody tradition around it. Oh yes we have!

    The origins of the pantomime tradition are murky, but it seems to stem from the much older c16th Italian Commedia dell’arte performances. The use of stock characters and elaborate costumes grew into a form of Victorian theatre. It’s use of stage magic, quick changes and trap doors delighted British audiences. In particular, the over-egged, melodramatic plots proved popular with working-class patrons.

    Today, children and families still crowd out theatres to join in with the traditional Christmas pantomime. And, as part of that, they’ll see the pantomime dame – usually played by a man wearing over-the-top makeup and feminine garb. The dame provides comic relief, and is arguably the most recognisable aspect of the panto. She’s also often played by a well-known celebrity – this year, Ian McKellen is taking to the stage as the titular Mother Goose.

    So what’s the difference?

    So, you might ask, what is it about a cross-cast dame on stage telling fairy stories that’s fine and dandy, when a drag queen telling fairy stories in a library has people up in arms?

    It couldn’t be the fact that drag is closely associated with queer culture, could it? It definitely couldn’t be that drag queens are most often queer men? Or even the fact that Drag Queen Story Hour is seeking to reduce bigotry against queer and gender-diverse children?

    Absolutely not! If that was the difference, it would mean that this whole moral panic is just a hastily repackaged homophobia. It even plays on exactly the same hateful tropes as every other moral panic around gayness. Like Section 28 before it, it is rooted in the fear that if children are shown that it is OK to be queer, they might grow to accept the queer people living in the world around them.

    But that couldn’t be it, right? Not a clumsy import from the American far right that makes absolutely no sense in the cultural context of the UK, no sir. But if you can think of a better difference between the drag queen and the dame, I’m all ears.

    Featured image by Wikimedia Commons/Roogi, via CC 2.0, resized to 770×403

    By Alex/Rose Cocker