The G7 summit has ended in Cornwall. It is, of course, no surprise that as the world’s richest leaders cosied up together, they achieved absolutely nothing.
Charities and NGOs are expressing their deep disappointment that Johnson, Biden, Merkel and others didn’t deliver on either their plans to vaccinate the world, or to stop the planet from burning. But really, what did we expect? Do we learn nothing, year after year? When will we actually realise that the richest countries won’t ever let go of their wealth, or their grip on power? That their deals mean nothing, and their words are empty?
The G7 summit was protected by more than 6,000 police, and created severe disruption for locals. The skies were filled with terrifying Chinook helicopters and drones, while the red arrows shot through the air to massage the macho egos of the world leaders. Meanwhile, the tranquil Cornish coast was littered with police and military vessels.
While more than 15 million people in the country live in poverty, the UK spent more than £70 million on policing alone for the three-day summit.
Internationalist resistance
But each time summits are held, whether it’s the G7, G20, NATO or COP, they do unwittingly achieve one thing. And that is the coming together of activists to resist them. It is at protest camps where connections are made, bonds are strengthened, and where we get the courage and will to fight for a world beyond capitalism.
This G7 was no different. From anarchists to XR, activists descended on Cornwall in their droves and occupied three different protest camps for three days of protest. Because of Covid, there weren’t the usual numbers joining us from mainland Europe. But this year, Kashmiri, Palestinian and Tigray communities travelled from all over the UK to make their voices heard, making it possibly the most internationalist resistance we have ever seen in this country. Others spoke about revolutionary resistance in Kurdistan, and the war on Yemen.
Kashmiri and Palestinian activists gather to resist the G7 on 12 June
Kashmiri and Palestinian activists gather to resist the G7 on 12 June
A Kurdistan solidarity activist protests the G7’s support for the Turkish state
One Kashmiri activist told the crowd:
Who supplies the arms to Israel? America, Britain, which kill innocent people in Palestine. Many British supplies are armed to India, which kills people in Kashmir. France supplies arms to India, which kill people in Kashmir. In Kashmir, we have 900,000 Indian soldiers. They’ve been occupying Kashmir since 1947. This is a British legacy. Britain left us under occupation. We said to successive British governments, help us with the issue of Kashmir, but no help is coming. All they do is sell arms to India.
He went on to say:
Narendra Modi was going to come here to this G7 meeting. He was going to buy arms. In India, people are dying under the coronavirus. Yet Narendra Modi is going round to the world buying arms. Do Indian people need arms? Do they need food or medicine? So this is the question we are asking these so-called leaders.
All ages came out to resist
It was also possibly the most diverse age range of people we’ve ever seen at a summit. On day one, Fridays for Future, alongside Cornwall Youth Climate Alliance marched on the streets of Falmouth in a youth-led climate strike. And on the final day of the summit, hundreds of activists, young and old, barricaded the G7 media centre. They prevented journalists from entering or leaving as they protested the Policing Bill that is set to become law in this country.
Kill The Bill Cornwall said that it targeted the media centre because:
Approved journalists from the billionaire press are spinning the G7. An exclusion zone has been set up to report the essential news of what the world leaders and their spouses are wearing.
The group went on to say:
Six billionaires own or have majority share control of the majority of the UK press. These media moguls have a vested interest in protecting the interests of the rich. This includes protecting climate-destroying corporations, arms traders and the Tory government.
This also means supporting clamping down on effective protest. They don’t want to see us taking effective action. Because effective action challenges their wealth and challenges their power. We’ve seen this is the way they’ve reported Kill The Bill protests. They repeated the police lies when they falsely claimed police officers were hospitalised at the Kill The Bill demos in Bristol. They described protesters as violent mobs when the cops attacked them. Police hit protesters on the head with the sides of their shields while they were sitting on the floor with their hands in the air. But the billionaire press claimed that it was the protesters who were the violent thugs.
Kill The Bill Cornwall explained why we must keep resisting the draconian Bill:
The policing bill is the biggest attack on the right to protest that we’ve seen in a generation. If passed, the police will be able to impose conditions on protests they see as too noisy. Meanwhile, if your protest causes serious annoyance, then you could face ten years in jail for taking to the streets. It threatens to criminalise trespass – in a country where we’re denied access to 92% of the land because it’s privately owned. It threatens the basic right to exist for Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities – outlawing their way of life.
The streets are where we won our rights and built solidarity – and it’s on the streets that we’ll fight to defeat this bill.
Fridays For Future Climate Strike at the G7 summit
Surveillance state
It’s clear that the British state was twitchy. Anxious police sat outside the gates of the protest camps, surveilling those going in and out. Animal Rebellion’s camp was particularly targeted. It was raided by at least 60 police with dogs, and fifteen people were arrested. More were arrested when attempting to return to camp. According to the group, a total of 22 of their activists have been charged with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
Meanwhile, at every opportunity, police intelligence gathering teams filmed activists both on the streets and on the beach, as surveillance drones followed people through town. Minibuses were stopped by police and delayed from getting to protests.
Police surveillance teams film activists at the G7 summit on 13 June
A police drone surveils Kill The Bill activists protesting outside the G7 media centre in Falmouth on 13 June
The resistance to this summit shows that things are changing in the UK. Activists who previously wouldn’t have worked together are now linking up in collective resistance. Whether we are from Palestine, Yemen, Kurdistan, Tigray, Kashmir or the UK, we know that we must unite to fight capitalism and fight our megalomaniac leaders. As Kill The Bill Cornwall says: “If they come for one of us they come for all of us”.
While I am always happy to celebrate any accolades my country and city might garner on the international stage, seeing Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau awarded the top ranking in a recent “most liveable cities” survey left me somewhat flummoxed.
In particular, I would argue that many Māori whānau in Auckland do not enjoy the benefits of this supposed “liveability”.
This is important, given Māori comprised 11.5 percent of the Auckland population in the 2018 Census. Roughly one in four Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand are living in the greater Auckland region.
The survey was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sister company of The Economist, and looked at 140 world cities. Auckland was ranked 12th in 2019, but took top spot this year for one obvious reason:
Auckland, in New Zealand, is at the top of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Liveability rankings, owing to the city’s ability to contain the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic faster and thus lift restrictions earlier, unlike others around the world.
Most cities in Europe plunged in the rankings this year as the EIU’s liveability index incorporated new indicators related to covid-19 https://t.co/8555hY1f2U
— The Economist Data Team (@ECONdailycharts) June 9, 2021
Alternative liveability criteria
Each city in the survey was rated on “relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure”.
Overall rankings depended on how those factors were rated on a sliding scale: acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable, intolerable. Quantitative measurements relied on “external data points”, but the qualitative ratings were “based on the judgment of our team of expert analysts and in-city contributors”.
The methodology, particularly around culture and environment, seems somewhat subjective. It’s predicated on the judgement of unnamed experts and contributors, and based on similarly undefined “cultural indicators”.
To better understand the living conditions of Māori in Auckland, therefore, we might use more robust “liveability” criteria. The New Zealand Treasury’s Living Standards Framework offers a useful model.
This sets out 12 domains of well-being: civic engagement and governance, cultural identity, environment, health, housing, income and consumption, jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, time use, safety and security, social connections and subjective well-being.
Inner-city housing in Auckland: an average price increase of NZ$140,000 in one year. Image: www.shutterstock.com
The Māori experience
Applying a small handful of these measures to Māori, we find the following.
Housing: According to recent reports, Auckland house prices increased by about NZ$140,00 on average in the past year. That contributed to Auckland being the fourth-least-affordable housing market, across New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and Hong Kong.
Next to that sobering fact, we can point to estimates that Māori made up more than 40 percent of the homeless in Auckland in 2019. We can only assume this rapid increase in house prices has made homelessness worse.
Poverty: Alongside housing affordability is the growing concern about poverty in New Zealand, and particularly child poverty. While there has been an overall decline in child poverty, Māori and Pacific poverty rates remain “profoundly disturbing”.
Employment: As of March 2021, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recorded a Māori unemployment rate of 10.8 percent, well above the national rate (4.9 percent). This is particularly high for Māori youth (20.4 percent) and women (12.0 percent).
Health: Māori life expectancy is considerably lower than for non-Māori, and mortality rates are higher for Māori than non-Māori across nearly all age groups. Māori are also over-represented across a wide range of chronic and infectious diseases, injuries and suicide.
The digital divide: The Digital Government initiative has found Māori and Pasifika are among those less likely to have internet access, thus creating a level of digital poverty that may affect jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, safety and security, and social connections.
Making Auckland liveable for all Taken together, these factors show a different and darker picture for far too many Māori than “liveable city” headlines might suggest.
I say this as someone who has lived in Auckland for the majority of the past 60 years. It is a city I love, and I acknowledge the grace and generosity of the mana whenua of Tāmaki Makaurau, with whom I share this beautiful whenua and moana.
I am also part of a privileged group of Māori who enjoy job security, a decent income, a secure whānau and strong social networks.
But, until we address and ameliorate the inequities and disadvantages some of our whānau face, we cannot truly celebrate being the “most liveable city in the world”.
The swearing in of a new Israeli Prime Minister after 12 years of appalling anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism from former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not good news.
Appalling attitudes
Bennett has, if anything, even more appalling attitudes:
His comment to a Palestinian representative in the Israeli Parliament “…when you were still swinging from trees, we had a Jewish state here.”
Bennett is on record as advocating the murder of Palestinians taken prisoner. The former Israeli Defence Force officer said: “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life and there’s no problem with that.”
“The establishment of a Palestinian state based on the ’67 borders is impossible.” He said there will never be a Palestinian state on his watch. “It’s just not going to happen.”
He supports illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, the continuation of the siege on Gaza, and laws and institutions which perpetuate Jewish superiority and the marginalisation of the Palestinian citizens.
Bennett’s number two on his Yamina Party list, and predicted to be the new Israeli Interior Minister, Ayelet Shaked, has to be seen to be believed.
She has posted on Facebook, saying “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and justifies its destruction, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.”
‘Little snakes’
She calls for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.”
Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s new right-wing firebrand … destructive statements by a self-declared fascist. Image: PSNA
She is a self-declared fascist. Here is a recent Ayelet Shaked election campaign video. It is not a spoof – it’s her actual election video.
In Israeli, it is business as usual in the racism, apartheid and brutality meted out against Palestinians.
And it is business as usual for the international solidarity movement which is building the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against apartheid Israel just as we did against apartheid South Africa.
John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
It was announced yesterday that Australian actress Rose Byrne will star as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in an upcoming movie about the response to the Christchurch mosque terror attacks of 15 March 2019, titled They Are Us.
The movie will be directed by New Zealand’s Andrew Niccol. The movie’s focus is apparently going to be on the positive impact of a strong leader in the wake of tragedy.
Let’s take a moment to unpack that oversized baggage of white nonsense.
The 51 people who were killed and the 40 who were wounded were specifically targeted for their Muslim faith. Those families are still traumatised and recovering from injuries, mourning and missing their loved ones.
They are still painfully experiencing firsts without their loved ones: first day of school, first grandchild being born, first jobs, university graduations and so much more. Their wounds have barely had time to scab over.
Witnesses fighting for ACC support
Uninjured witnesses to the horrific shootings are still fighting for support from the ACC for their mental injuries.
A survivor of the attacks, whose own father was killed that day, reported as recently as Friday that he encountered racist abuse outside his workplace, with no bystander intervention to help.
The Christchurch mosque attacks destroyed the lives of entire families and confirmed the worst fears of the Muslim community in New Zealand: that we aren’t safe anywhere. Not here. And certainly not if we’re Rohingya, not if we’re Uyghur, not if we’re Palestinian, not if we’re in our places of worship or even just crossing the street.
Somebody explain to 9-year-old Fayez Afzaal how to feel any other way as he recovers in a hospital in Ontario, the sole surviving member of his family after his parents, sister and grandmother were murdered by yet another white supremacist terrorist with Islamophobic views.
This attack in Canada happened just this week. You probably didn’t hear about it. Because white women like Rose Byrne and Jacinda Ardern will dominate the headlines while our communities are suffering.
This movie purports to centre a white woman character and her role in the aftermath of a heinous tragedy instead of focusing on the stories of the victims and survivors. It’s being directed by a white man. Hollywood will make money off this. Rose Byrne will be paid a pretty penny.
Remember that there were people in that mosque who literally put their bodies in the firing line and died to protect others, but apparently it’s the white saviour’s story that’s worth telling instead.
Where is the Muslim community?
Where is the Muslim community that was most impacted in this?
And I am not mollified by some “consultation with several members of the mosque”. I’m not naïve enough to believe the scope or depth of that consultation process would have been anywhere near adequate.
How is it okay for others to profit off our pain? How is it okay for Muslims to be de-centred from a story about their suffering? How can we celebrate this tragedy as something that was ultimately a triumph because someone got a pretty photo of Ardern in a hijab and it inspired some graffiti art and a light show in Dubai?
The banning of assault weapons, while important, did nothing to address the core issues of Islamophobia and racism festering in our societies under a thin façade of tolerance.
Similarly, this movie will achieve nothing for the community that was attacked either. It’s exploitative. It’s in bad taste.
USC Annenberg recently published a study on Muslim representation in popular film. It found that in popular films between 2017 – 2019, 181 of 200 films had no Muslim characters at all. Of the nearly 9000 characters in these films, only 1.6 percent of the speaking roles were Muslims.
Not only are we grossly under-represented, but when we’re represented at all it’s either as the victims or perpetrators of violence. And Muslim women are all but invisible on screen. The incredibly diverse ethnic backgrounds of Muslims are also erased in favour of the stereotypical portrayal of a Muslim as being either Middle Eastern or North African.
The film will focus 0n the week following the 15 March 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks with Australian actrss Rose Byrne set to play New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, according to US media. Image: RNZ/AFP
The film will focus the week following the 15 March Christchurch mosque attacks with Australian actrss Rose Byrne set to play New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, according to US media. Photo: RNZ / AFP
Can we have any confidence?
Given that, how can we have any confidence of this story being told with any sensitivity, nuance or even truthfulness?
If the Christchurch attacks are the subject of a movie, how can we be certain the violence won’t be glorified? That it won’t give hope to would-be attackers that their hateful actions would bring them the notoriety they seek?
That’s not to say we shouldn’t talk about the attacks, but there are at least 91 people I can think of who I would rather see as the subject of any such movie rather than our Prime Minister. Those 91 people and their families are mostly immigrants and refugees, of all ages, racial backgrounds, genders, working across so many industries. I promise you that any one of their stories would be more interesting, and worthy, of immortalising on film.
But Muslims also don’t want to be depicted only as the victims or aggressors of violence. Believe it or not, most of us can get through our entire lives without having thrown, or being on the receiving end, of a punch. We exist outside this context of tragedy too.
However, no one wants to know us on our terms. “They are us” plays nicely in a soft liberal speech, works well as a caption. What does it mean, in practical terms, if we can’t even be seen as the heroes of our own stories.
Saziah Bashir is a freelance journalist commenting on issues of social justice, race and gender. She completed an LLB, BCom and LLM from the University of Auckland.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s office clarified that neither she nor the government have any involvement in the film.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
While spending some rather unpleasant months writing about fascists as fictional characters in a new mystery novel, American Fascism, it was necessary to get inside their heads, to imagine how people with their understanding of the world might react to certain events.
The book ends when Donald Trump is no longer president, but the threat to democracy remains real.
Informed by the research that went into the novel, I’ve come up with a quick fascism worry checklist. Consider this penance for trying to write believable (and therefore somewhat sympathetic) extreme right-wing characters. It is based on a definition (see below *) of fascism by historian Robert Paxton as well as the experience of living with some very worrying people inhabiting my imagination and real life.
Fascism Checklist
The loyalty of the police in defending all people, democracy and the rule of law is in question, at least in part because the far right has significant support inside their ranks. True or false?
A popular political party pushes the idea that a “successful” strong man, often a billionaire, is needed to lead the nation against its enemies, foreign and domestic. True or false?
This country glorifies the military. Everyone is expected to react with an unquestioning patriotism no matter what it does. True or false?
Those who profit from waging war have created powerful lobby groups. Their self-interest is to define rivals as enemies who must be “defended” against, justifying ever increased spending. True or false?
While external “enemies” are used to promote militarism, internal minority groups have become targets of hate campaigns to warrant paramilitary militias who are supposedly “defending” the nation and its values. True or false?
Specialists who have been trained in the “art” of propaganda targeting other country’s affairs and in overthrowing “unfriendly” governments are available for hire by domestic politicians. True or false?
A mass movement to oppose “socialism” can be easily mobilized by the wealthy to defend their “property” against increased taxes or efforts to reduce inequality and provide better social services. True or false?
Verifiable, objective truth is ignored by growing numbers of people. Instead, they believe “Big Lies” or conspiracy theories, which are becoming more common. True or false?
A political movement has been created in which loyalty to a leader above all else is the critical test of party membership. True or false?
Many “important” people, especially the wealthy, plus those in the military and police, no longer trust democracy or believe in elections and are willing to manipulate results to get their way. True or false?
If you answered “true” to four or less questions, you live in an ordinary, but likely severely unequal, 21st century capitalist country.
If you answered “true” to five and up to seven questions, be worried about the potential for fascism in your country.
If you answered “true” to eight or more questions, good luck. And seriously consider joining with other activists in the antifa movement.
* “Fascism is a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
Social media posts by two outspoken Suva-based lawyers have been raised in Parliament over a critical culture “that has been created”.
Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum told Parliament the lawyers, Jon Apted and Richard Naidu, were from a law firm that specialised in commercial law.
“But talking about confidence, let me read out these two Twitter or Facebook posts, I think: this one says, ‘Oh, well, who are we li’l folks to com-plane’.
“The next one says, ‘May be it could do a fly-past of the Minister of Economy to symbolise their strategy which, as far as I can see, is hope and prayer’.
“If we have principals of these types of law firms who Honourable Prasad [opposition National Federation Party leader Biman Prasad] and them get the advice from, they used to be the former lawyers of NFP on record, what is the hope of instilling confidence in the private sector?
“I think, I was told that they may have pulled this down after that, we got screenshots of it, but Mr Speaker, Sir, this is the kind of culture that has been created.
“We need to be able to refocus, if you really are concerned about the future, to be able to ensure that we are focused on the future, be able to provide the assistance to the people who require it now, but only God knows what is going to happen in six months’ time.
“Is there going to be another fourth, fifth, seventh, eighth variant? What are you going to do then? So, Mr Speaker, Sir, we cannot just simply think about it here and now.”
Besides being a leading Fiji lawyer, Richard Naidu, is a former award-winning journalist and widely regarded as a social justice and media commentator.
Last month, he was the keynote speaker by Zoom for the Auckland-based Coalition for Democracy in Fiji’s Dr Timoci Bavadra memorial lecture in honour of Fiji’s 1987 prime minister who was deposed in the first coup.
Pacific Media Watch says that the minister should be more concerned with Fiji’s spiralling covid infection crisis than spending time criticising social media posts.
After over a year of disrupted learning, the already large disadvantage gap in UK education has blown apart.
As a result, educators and policy makers have been left scrambling for a solution to help less privileged pupils catch up with their peers.
Sir Kevan Collins, formerly in charge of education recovery plans, quit last week. He said the announced £1.4bn plan would be nowhere near enough to help pupils catch up.
However, instead of depriving pupils and teachers of their free time, it’s time to recognise the UK education system is deeply in need of reform.
The original proposals
Collins had originally drawn up proposals for a £15bn education recovery plan. It included lengthening the school day, increasing small group tutoring, and additional teacher training.
The extra time would have been aimed at disadvantaged students who have been more impacted by the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
The government instead announced it would spend £1.4bn, giving young people up to 100m hours of free tuition.
However, even plans that spend more money and take measures like extending the school day have their drawbacks.
According to a recent University of Cambridge study, extending school hours may have little effect on progress. The study analysed five years’ worth of data from nearly 3,000 schools. And it found that even “substantial” increases in learning time only saw minimal improvements.
Several education unions stated their opposition to Collins’ proposals. They said the government must consider the trade-offs of a longer school day.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said:
The marginal gains that might be possible through extending the school day must be weighed against the costs of such a strategy, including the impact on pupils’ mental health, reduced family time and less time for extra-curricular activities.
The government could end up doing more harm than good by adding more classroom hours to children’s school day.
Similarly, sixth formers who spoke toBBC News said they’d rather just have some certainty than spend extra hours in the classroom.
A broken system
While the pandemic has undoubtedly exacerbated inequality in schools, the problems go much further back. The gap between the richest and poorest A-Level students was at least three grades even before the pandemic began.
Furthermore, the Education Policy Institute (EPI) reported in 2018 that there was evidence the school system had become “less equitable” since 2010. Its analysisof Ofsted data found that schools which were performing better were less likely to admit disadvantaged pupils.
Meanwhile, teachers and pupils are increasingly likely to report that their workload is harming their mental health and wellbeing.
As such, unions are arguing its time for change. In Scotland, the NASUWT has called upon its new education secretary to take the opportunity for reform.
Dr Patrick Roach, NASUWT general secretary, said:
The Covid crisis and the associated fallout around assessment and qualifications has emphasised the fault lines that have grown in the education system in Scotland.
… we have seen an increase in assessment of pupils which has driven teaching to the test, swamping teachers in increasing bureaucracy and workload and putting pupils under additional stress.
The alternative
The reliance on standardised testing and performance metrics is creating an unequal education system that overworks both students and teachers. The UK system relies on a narrow curriculum that forces teaching to test and examines a very small range of ability in pupils.
There are, however, alternative approaches. In Estonia, children rank above English pupils in both science and reading. Yet Estonia’s primary schools avoid the formal testing the UK does, instead focusing on making children “school-ready”.
In Finland, children are consistently at the top for worldwide reading and maths scores. However, standardised tests are a rarity in Finnish schools until the final years of education. According to an OECD survey, Finland has the smallest gaps in the world between its strongest and weakest students.
Finnish teachers emphasise that their education system isn’t about learning to take a test. Moreover, homework is minimal and children aren’t rushed into school before they’re ready.
Making the system more equal
The UK has a much larger reliance on compulsory national curriculum testing than many other countries. The overemphasis on test results and school rankings creates a system where disadvantaged students are more likely to become concentrated in less ‘desirable’ schools.
As such, this education recovery could be the opportunity to scale back our dependence on constant standardised testing and instead focus on improving pupils’ learning habits.
Relaxing the rigidity of the national curriculum would allow teachers to tailor their classes to their pupils, assessing and encouraging progress in ways that don’t just involve learning how to answer an exam paper.
Not constantly publishing testing data could help to slow the system where some schools become ‘undesirable’, and therefore unattended by privileged pupils.
Looking at the success of other countries, it’s obvious our education system is wildly imperfect. Instead of extending school hours and tutoring for a system that was already perpetuating inequality, this is the time for real change.
Moving the reigning monarch’s birthday celebration to another day began with George II back in 1748 who was born in November and thought it was too cold in his kingdom to party outdoors that time of year.
So that’s why the Queen’s official birthday bash is usually held on a Saturday in June when it’s warmer in the UK.
Except… it’s colder in New Zealand.
This year it’s officially June 13.
Except… not in New Zealand which is also known as Aotearoa
Except… you won’t find our country called Aotearoa in our Constitution Act (1986) despite the fact that te reo Māori is one of our three official languages.
A Constitution?
We have a Constitution?
Yes we do.
Except… it’s not a written one like in the United States.
Ours sets out a framework of governance in a law, because it arguably makes it easier to change all our other laws to match our beliefs about what’s right and wrong as they change over time.
Except.. some people say this is not a good idea.
Be that as it may, Queen Elizabeth II is our current Head Of State.
Except…she was 95 last April and she did say once she was going to step down when she reached that age and hand over to Charles.
Except.. she’s changed her mind.
Some say that when her reign is over we should become a republic.
Except… if the Crown no longer existed how would that affect the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi rights?
Mmm…
.. maybe that’s why the British sing “God Save the Queen!” so loudly at official events.
Except… which god are they talking about, given the UK is now a multicultural country in which the majority say they no longer believe in the existence of the omnipresent, omniscient, punishing (yet loving) masculine God of the Bible?
Oh… but what the hey …
It’s a holiday!
Enjoy! Relax !
Except… of course, if you are working.
Like me.
Asia Pacific Report republishes occasional commentaries by journalist and documentary maker Bryan Bruce with permission. This commentary was first published by The Daily Blog.
Content warning: this article contains a video and descriptions of police violence that some readers may find distressing.
In a few days the G7 world leaders will arrive in Cornwall. Alongside them, 5,000 extra cops from all over the country will arrive in the region. The summit is taking place a short drive from my house. And as I’ve written before, local people are in for a nasty surprise when this operation gets fully underway.
Devon and Cornwall police are on a PR offensive. The force is claiming that people shouldn’t worry as they’ll be controlling the operation. And they want us to believe that they aren’t like other police forces. Yes, apparently Cornwall cops are all fluffy and lovely; they’re welcoming of protesters and just want to engage with us.
While some protest groups, such as the Resist G7 coalition, have very strong messaging on policing, others, unfortunately, appear to have fallen for the police’s propaganda.
But anyone who believes this is dangerously naive. It’s also dangerously offensive to all of us, myself included, who have experienced violence at the hands of Devon and Cornwall Police.
And it’s really important that both everyone in the local community and everyone who’s planning to protest knows the reality of what this supposedly fluffy police force is really like.
Systemic racism
Institutional racism is rife within Devon and Cornwall police. Statistics from 2020 show that if you’re Black in Cornwall you’re 12 times more likely to be stopped and searched than if you’re white. This is higher than the national average where Black people are 9 times more likely to be stopped and searched. Black people are also 9.5 times more likely than white people to be subjected to force by the police in Devon and Cornwall. And 2.8 times more fixed penalty notices for breach of Covid regulations were handed out to Black people.
Simeon Francis, a Black father, died in police custody in May 2020 in a Torquay police station. His family have also accused Devon and Cornwall Police of using excessive force during an arrest in 2019 in Exeter.
He can be heard in the video saying he couldn’t breathe and accusing the police of racism:
Personal experience
I’m lucky. I’m a white woman who doesn’t have to face oppressive and violent policing because of the colour of my skin. I am incredibly privileged in my dealings with the police and recognise that privilege.
But that doesn’t always stop the violence. In 2010, I was arrested on a warrant that should never have been issued for failing to attend court. I’d been to the doctor and had a letter stating that I wasn’t fit to travel. This is the account that I wrote about what happened at a Cornish police station:
At Camborne police station I refused to get out of the car. Nothing violent, nothing dramatic, just a quiet refusal to accept their authority, a refusal to co-operate with what was happening. Several officers dragged me into a cell where male officers held me down while I was stripped of my clothes. No explanation was given – the first I knew about it was when they started pulling down my trousers. They left me, naked on the floor, with a grey paper suit to wear.
No attempt was made to assess my fitness to travel despite being in possession of a doctor’s letter stating I wasn’t. I saw a nurse briefly. She entered my cell accompanied by a male cop who refused to leave, giving me no privacy to discuss my health. I told her why I was on medication, but she didn’t listen, wanting only to work through her checklist of possible illnesses. Later I saw she had marked me down as epileptic despite having told her my tablets were mood stabilisers. Either way, I was not given my medication.
During this ‘examination’, the custody sergeant entered yelling at me, telling me I didn’t have any rights. When I argued back, he threatened to cause me pain before forcing me to the floor in a wrist lock. I wasn’t allowed to speak to my solicitor until the following morning.
The incident was deeply traumatic and contributed significantly to a subsequent breakdown I had a year later. I made a complaint and was told that I couldn’t be as traumatised as I claimed because I had written articles about policing:
Eventually, I received an apology and compensation. But no action was taken against any of the officers involved:
Don’t believe the bullshit
The bottom line: please don’t fall for the bullshit. The messaging put out by the police is nothing but spin and lies. It is deeply offensive to communities experiencing racist policing and every single person who’s experienced violence at their hands.
Anyone going on a protest needs to be prepared for the reality of summit policing. They need to be prepared for harassment, intimidation, arrests, and violence. I really hope this won’t happen. I really hope I’m wrong. But I’d much rather that everyone in the area goes into the next week with their eyes wide open and with informed consent about what could happen. Because believing and repeating the police propaganda is dangerously naive and puts everyone at risk.
Another cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians has been announced ending another round of violent assault on the latter. The settler-colonial Jewish government in Israel killed 275 Palestinians, 248 of them in the Gaza Strip, 26 in the West Bank and Jerusalem, 1 inside Israel, including 66 children in Gaza, and at least 6,200 others injured. Israel reported 13 deaths from the more than 4000 homemade and unguided rockets launched by Hamas, the Islamic Movement governing the Gaza Strip since it won elections in 2006. Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza destroyed more than 1,000 homes, 5 residential towers, 3 mosques, media office buildings, unknown number of businesses, damaged 17 hospitals and clinics and dozens of schools, wrecked Gaza’s only critical COVID-19 health infrastructure, and cut off its sewer, electricity, and water services.
It’s important to realize that this latest round of deadly Israeli onslaught on Palestinians is merely an instance of a 73 years long project of settler colonialism carried out systematically by the Jewish supremacist state of Israel with full backing of the imperial US state. The US and Israeli official narratives aim to obscure this essential fact. They use propaganda to shift the US public’s perception away from focusing on Israel’s illegal occupation and its ongoing slow ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to instead a focus on Palestinian resistance deliberately mischaracterized by them as terrorism and anti-Semitism. They have succeeded in persuading most people in the US that Israel’s quarrel with the Palestinians is not about territory, but terror.
However, several historical factors are at work that may help undermine the US-Israeli official narrative and open up a rare possibility for US activists for Palestinian justice and self-determination to exert greater pressure from below on Washington to adopt a more evenhanded approach to Israel/Palestine.
First, the various geographically separated and colonized Palestinian communities acted together in resisting the latest round of vicious Jewish supremacist Israeli settler colonial assault on Palestinians. Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank, Jerusalem, inside Israel, and in diaspora joined the call in the month of May to “save Shaikh Jarrah” in Jerusalem from further forced ethnic displacements of Palestinian families and to respond to Israeli violations of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest place, during the last 10 days of the month of Ramadhan, observed by Muslims worldwide as a time of fasting, prayers, reflection, and community.
This synchronistic unity of Palestinian resistance makes the US and Israeli planners nervous as it threatens to undermine their long-lasting, and hitherto successful, attempts to divide, control and colonize the Palestinians. If sustained, it also presents a new deterrence on the side of the Palestinian resistance insofar as it compels Israel to think twice about the cost of launching another deadly air campaign on Gaza, what it calls “mowing the lawn.” This development bodes ill as well for the Israeli arms industry. So much of the marketing of Israel’s armaments abroad hinges on their effectiveness in crushing Palestinian resistance, especially in the Gaza Strip, used by Israel as a testing laboratory for its high-tech weaponry. Already the fact that the last deadly assault on Gaza in 2014 was unable to crush Palestinian resistance has led to questioning the effectiveness of Israel’s armaments. And reportedly, the stocks of Israeli arms industry have shown no rebound in the aftermath of the latest 11-day Israeli onslaught and the Palestinian resistance it evoked in May 2021.
Second, we have witnessed the historic rise of anti-racial supremacism in the US. Millions in the US have developed a sensibility and a deeper awareness of racial supremacism thanks to the massive Black Lives Matter protests, especially in the aftermath of the lynching of George Floyd by racist policing. It isn’t surprising to see Black liberation activists in the US opposing Jewish supremacism in historical Palestine as they have white supremacism here at home. This cannot but raise the rare possibility of greater solidarity for the Palestinian struggle for justice among larger segments of the US public hitherto inactive or indifferent to the Palestinian suffering. This development too makes the US and Israeli planners nervous as the only public they care about is the US one, since the latter’s awareness and activism only can lead to a shift in Washington policy away from its blind support for Israeli Jewish supremacism and settler colonialism.
Third, we are witnessing the mainstreaming of terms like ‘apartheid’ and ‘Jewish supremacy.’ Two reputable and mainstream human rights organizations, one in Israel and the other in the US, published damning reports calling Israel an apartheid state and accusing it of seeking Jewish supremacy over the entire area of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
On 12 January 2021, B’Tselem in Israel issued its report titled “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.” It argued that the “entire area” alluded to in its title “is organized under a single principle: advancing and cementing the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.”
On 27 April 2021, Human Rights Watch in the US issued its comprehensive report titled “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.” It too asserted that across Israel and the occupied territories
…in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. (Italics added)
Of course, Palestinians and their allies have for long argued that Israel is an apartheid settler colonial state, but to no avail. Evidently, it takes mainstream western organizations accusing Israel of Jewish supremacy and crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution for anyone that matters here to take notice. Regardless, the mainstreaming of these terms is welcome news as it would raise badly needed awareness in the US about the structural nature of the violence Palestinians face on a daily basis. That Palestinian voices did not (and still do not) matter is surely unsurprising. Silencing the voices of those subjected to imperial violence is a routine matter. The challenge now is to not fall back on seeing Palestinians once again as objects of sympathy and as victims, but as a people endowed with agency and steadfast in seeking justice and self-determination.
Fourth, Israel is losing the battle of images again. In the western world and especially in the US, Palestinians were viewed as refugees until the 1960s when they organized an armed resistance to Israeli expansionism and settler colonialism, after which they were looked upon as violent terrorists driven by anti-Semitism and hatred of the Jews. But the gruesome images of the massacre of some 2,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during the 1982 war in Lebanon created sympathy for Palestinians, even in the US media. Israel responded by pushing the narrative that the struggle was over terrorism, not territory. 9/11 helped Israel to win the battle of narratives and impose its “war on terror” discourse.
However, since the cruel siege of Gaza in 2006, Israel has launched several brutal assaults on the captured Gazans. The images from these deadly assaults have reached millions and made it increasingly difficult for the US and Israeli narrative managers to maintain the fiction that Israel only reacts to Palestinian terrorism – the core of Israeli propaganda and one repeated ad nauseum in the phrase “Israel has the right to defend itself.”
Let’s…
It is crucial that activists for Palestinian justice and self-determination expose with greater urgency apologetics for Israel’s colonization of Palestine and point out several elementary observations about the Palestinian struggle.
Let’s point out that Israel’s own “war on terror” lens willfully distorts reality just as the US version has since 9/11. Like the US, Israel is not motivated foremost by security concerns for its population. In fact, ever since the early 1970s, Israel has pursued expansionism at the expense of security and has done so fully aware of the deleterious consequences of such an orientation for the Palestinians it rules over as well as for the Israeli politics and society that has moved steadily rightward in its politics and cultural sensibilities. For example, 72% of Israelis opposed the recent cease-fire.
Let’s remember that Israeli expansionism violates international laws and makes impossible even the creation of a non-contiguous Palestinian state in a fragment of historical Palestine for a fragment of the Palestinian people. How else are we to interpret the continued building of illegal “settlements” on Palestinian lands for Israeli Jews only and the ongoing Judaization of Arab East Jerusalem? By now Israel has transferred some 700,000 Jewish settler colonists into the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Depopulating historical Palestine of Palestinians and repopulating it with Jewish settler colonists has been going on for 73 years and is the core of the Zionist project of establishing an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine and of engineering a Jewish demographic majority ever since. This necessarily involves the use of force and of ethnic cleansing of the native population. The elimination of the indigenous population is the very logic or the DNA of Zionism. Contrary to the early Zionist claim, Palestine was not “a land without a people for a people without a land.” It was in fact the most densely populated region of the Eastern Mediterranean with an Arab population that had lived there for centuries in villages and towns and had developed agriculture and an economy. It would have developed in similar ways as had other Arab communities elsewhere had it not been for the rise of Zionism and the backing of British and later the US imperial states for the dispossession and forced expulsion of the inhabitants of historical Palestine.
Let’s not forget what is Gaza. Gaza is where 2 million Gazans live in a tiny land area, with perhaps the highest population density anywhere in the world. It is the world’s largest open-air prison, a laboratory for testing high-tech Israeli weaponry, facing a cruel blockade Israel has imposed since 2006 with Egyptian complicity and backing from the US. Israel regularly bombs Gaza in operations its officials refer to as “mowing the lawn.” The Gazans are a people without any rights, political or civil, and are subject to frequent drone attacks, assassinations, and even restrictions on their caloric intake by sadistic Israeli officials in charge of the siege of the enclave, and who refer to it as “putting Gaza on a diet.” When they protest peacefully as they did most recently during the massive “Great March of Return” protests in 2018-2019, they were viciously assaulted by Israeli IDF snipers who killed 214 unarmed Palestinians, including 46 children, journalists and medical staff, and injured over 36,100 others, including nearly 8,800 children, over 8,000 of whom were hit by live ammunition, while only one Israeli soldier was killed and seven others injured.
How long will “liberal” opinion in the US tolerate a Sparta Israel shamelessly oppressing and murdering the Palestinians? The Biden administration approved $735 million in arms funding for Israel as it was killing Palestinians during its latest attacks on Gaza and East Jerusalem. How much longer will Washington be able to replenish the deadly arsenal of Israel’s military as it assaults Palestinians to crush their resistance?
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that it’s mainly the ruling elites of settler-colonial states of North America, Europe, Canada and Australia who are the most ardent backers of Israeli state terrorism. Here is a clue: the real “shared values” among them, are not the professed ones of democracy, freedom, pluralism, respect for human rights, and the rule of law.
Let’s also debunk the myth of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East. A Jewish supremacist, settler-colonial state can aspire at best for a closed utopia, a “democracy” for the privileged based solely on their Jewishness, an ethno-religious characteristic. In 2018, Israel passed the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People. Among its “Basic Principles” we find the following: “Exercising the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.” It also asserts that “The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and will act to encourage it and to promote and to consolidate its establishment.” You can’t have a democracy when nearly one half of the inhabitants of the land – the Palestinians – from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea are subjected to crimes of apartheid and persecution. Israel is an ethnocracy, not a democracy.
Let’s point out that though some Palestinians react violently, most do so peacefully. Think BDS movement, the call of Palestinian civil society since 2005 to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel, demanding an end to the occupation, equal rights for Palestinians, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes or compensation for their loss. Or, take the Great March of Return during 2018-2019 that was met with brutal, criminal and deadly response from Israel with total silence in the US.
Let’s remind everyone that the violence of Palestinian resistance is that of the oppressed and the occupied and as such will cease when the violence of the oppressor and the occupier ceases. Equating the two is a false equivalency.
Let’s not forget that the violence of the occupier is the violence of apartheid and settler colonialism as well as the spectacular violence of Israeli state terrorism, like the frequent deadly bombings of the Gazans.
Let’s point out the utter hypocrisy of Israel’s claim of self-defense when it violently tries to crush those who resist its terrorism and colonization. Such a claim amounts to a right to occupy and oppress, an absurdity. Indeed, it’s the Palestinians who have the right to resist by all means Israel’s violent and systematic dispossession of their land, homes, and rights as well as the erasure of their history and presence in historical Palestine.
An occupying power has only one crucial obligation: to leave.
International reporting has hardly been a strong feature of New Zealand journalism. No New Zealand print news organisation has serious international news departments or foreign correspondents with the calibre of such overseas media as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
It has traditionally been that way for decades. And it became much worse after the demise in 2011 of the New Zealand Press Association news agency, which helped shape the identity of the country for 132 years and at least provided news media with foreign reporting with an Aotearoa perspective fig leaf.
It is not even much of an aspirational objective with none of the 66 Voyager Media Awards categories recognising international reportage, unlike the Walkley Awards in Australia that have just 34 categories but with a strong recognition of global stories (last year’s Gold Walkley winner Mark Willacy reported “Killing Field” about Australian war crimes in Afghanistan).
Aspiring New Zealand international reporters head off abroad and gain postings with news agencies and broadcasters or work with media with a global mission such as Al Jazeera.
Consequently our lack of tradition for international news coverage means that New Zealand media tend to have many media blind spots on critical issues, or misjudge the importance of some topics. Examples include the Samoan elections in April when the result was the most momentous game changer in more than four decades with the de facto election of the country’s first woman prime minister, unseating the incumbent who had been in power for 23 years.
The recent Israel-Palestine conflict in May was another case of where reporting was very unbalanced in favour of the oppressor for 73 years, Israel. Indonesian’s five decades of repression in the Melanesian provinces of West Papua is also virtually ignored by the mainstream media apart from the diligent, persistent and laudable coverage by RNZ Pacific.
There is a deafening silence about the current brutal and draconian attack on West Papuan dissidents in remote areas with internet unplugged.
No threat to status quo
As national award-winning cartoonist Malcom Evans wrote in a Daily Blog column on the eve of last week’s Voyager Media Awards that whoever won prizes, “it’s a sure bet that, he or she, won’t be someone whose work threatens the machinery that manufactures our consent to a perpetuation of the status quo”.
He continued:
“There will be no awards for anyone like Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, but none either for our own Nicky Hager or Jon Stephenson, who exposed war crimes committed in Afghanistan by New Zealanders, and none for Chris Trotter, Bryan Bruce or Susan St John whose writings have consistently exposed the criminal outcomes wrought on New Zealanders by neo-liberalism.”
Evans also cited “Indonesia’s rape of West Papua and East Timor” and the “damning Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians” as examples of lack of media exposure of “New Zealand duplicity and connivance”.
Palestinian protesters target NZ media “bias” at the first Nakba Rally in Auckland last month. Image: David Robie/APR
Hanan Ashrawi, the first woman member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), told Middle East Eye in the wake of the conflict that left 256 Palestinians — including 66 children — and 13 Israelis dead that it was illogical to expect Israel to be both the “gatekeeper and to have the veto”.
“Israel has never implemented a single UN resolution at all, since its creation [in 1948]. And Israel has always existed outside the law. So why do you expect Israel suddenly to become a state that will respect others, human rights, international law and the multilateral system.
“Israel is the country, the only country that legislated a basic law that says only Jews have the right to self-determination in this land which is all of historical Palestine.
“Israel has destroyed the two-state solution.
When Israel opens up …
“Only when Israel opens up, when this system of discrimination, repression, apartheid is dismantled, only then will you begin to see that there are opportunities of equalities and so on.”
However, Ashrawi was complimentary about the new wave of youth leadership and support for the Palestinian cause sweeping across the globe. She was optimistic that a new political language, new initiatives for a solution would emerge.
RNZ Mediawatch’s Hayden Donnell was highly critical over the lack of news coverage of the “newsworthy and historic” Samoan elections on April 9, commenting: “For nearly two days, RNZ was the only major New Zealand news website carrying information about the election results, and analysis of the outcome.”
As he pointed out, since 1982, the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) had been in power and the current prime minister, Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi (now caretaker), had been prime minister since 1998.
“It’s very monumental that we’ve had a political party [opposition FAST Party led by Fiame Naomi Mata’afa] come through so quickly within 12 months to challenge the status quo in many different ways.”
Fiame has a slender one seat majority, 26 to 25, in the 51-seat Parliament, and was sworn in as government in still-disputed circumstances. But the New Zealand media coverage has still been patchy in spite of the drama of the deadlock.
“Tension high in Samoa stand-off” – New Zealand Herald on 26 May 2021. Image: APR screenshot
Woke up to Samoa crisis
The New Zealand Herald, for example, finally woke up to the crisis and splashed the story across its front page on May 24, but then for the next three days only published snippets on the crisis, all drawn from the RNZ Pacific coverage. For the actual election result, the Herald only published a single paragraph buried on its foreign news pages.
“Democracy in crisis” – New Zealand Herald on 25 May 2021. Image: APR screenshot
As for West Papua, the silence continues. Not a single major New Zealand newspaper has given any significant treatment to the current crisis there described by The Sydney Morning Herald as a “manhunt for 170 ‘terrorists’ slammed as a ‘licence’ to shoot anyone”.
Singapore-based Chris Barrett and Karuni Rompies reported that “Indonesian forces are chasing 170 members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement [OPM]. The crackdown has reportedly displaced several thousand people.
“Tensions have been high since the separatists’ shooting in April of two teachers suspected of being Indonesian spies and the burning of three schools in Beoga, Puncak.”
This is the worst crisis in West Papua since the so-called Papuan Spring uprising and rioting in protest against Indonesian racism and repression in August 2019.
The Jakarta government was reported to have deployed some 21,000 troops in the Melanesian region, ruled since the fiercely disputed “Act of Free Choice” when 1025 people handpicked by the Indonesian military in 1969 voted to be part of Indonesia. The latest crackdown followed the killing in an ambush of a general who was head of Indonesian intelligence on April 25.
Indonesian police carry a body in the current crackdown near Timika, Papua. Image: seputarpapua.com
Discrimination against Papuans This latest round of strife marks widespread opposition to Indonesia’s 20-year autonomy status for the region which is due to expire in November and is regarded by critics as a failure.
Interim president Benny Wenda of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) denounces Indonesian authorities who have variously tried to label Papuan pro-independence groups “separatists”, “armed criminal groups”, and “monkeys” (this sparked the 2019 uprising).
“Now they are labelling us ‘terrorists’. This is nothing but more discrimination against the entire people of West Papua and our struggle to uphold our basic right to self-determination,” he says.
Wenda has a message for the United Nations and Pacific leaders: “Indonesia is misusing the issue of terrorism to crush our fundamental struggle for the liberation of our land from illegal occupation and colonisation.”
The West Papua issue is a critical one for the Pacific, just like East Timor was two decades ago in the lead-up to its independence. Why is our press failing to report this?
Words slip out of our mouths to surprise us. Thoughts slip into our minds to shock us. Dreams slip into our nights to sometimes slip into our waking thoughts to startle us. And, as the wonderful singer/songwriter Paul Simon, sings, we are always “slip sliding away,” a reminder that can be a spur to courage and freedom or an inducement to fear and shut-upness.
Slips are double-edged.
It is obvious that since September 11, 2001, and more so since the corona virus lockdowns and the World Economic Forum’s push for a Fourth Industrial Revolution that will lead to the marriage of artificial intelligence, cyborgs, digital technology, and biology, that the USA and other countries have been slipping into a new form of fascist control. Or at least it should be obvious, especially since this push has been accompanied by massive censorship by technology companies of dissenting voices and government crackdowns on what they term “domestic terrorists.” Dissent has become unpatriotic and worse – treasonous.
Unless people wake up and rebel in greater numbers, the gates of this electronic iron cage will quietly be shut.
In the name of teleological efficiency and reason, as Max Weber noted more than a century ago in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, capitalist elites, operating from within the shadows of bureaucratic castles such as The World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Health Organization WHO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The World Bank (WBG), The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Google, Facebook, the National Security Agency (NSA), the CIA, etc., – run by people whose faces are always well hidden – have been using digital technology to exert increasing control over the thoughts and actions of people worldwide. They have been doing this not only by diktats but by manufacturing social habits – customary usages – through which they exert their social power over populations. This linguistic and ideational propaganda is continually slipped into the daily “news” by their mainstream media partners in crime. They become social habits that occupy people’s minds and lead to certain forms of behavior. Ideas have consequences but also histories because humans are etymological animals – that is, their ideas, beliefs, and behaviors have histories. It is not just words that have etymologies.
When Weber said “a polar night of icy darkness” was coming in the future, he was referring to what is happening today. Fascism usually comes on slowly as history has shown. It slips in when people are asleep.
John Berger, commenting on the ghostly life of our received ideas whose etymology is so often lost on us, aptly said:
Our totalitarianism begins with our teleology.
And the teleology in use today is digital technology controlled by wealthy elites and governments for social control. For years they have been creating certain dispositions in the general public, as Jacques Ellul has said, “by working spells upon them and exercising a kind of fascination” that makes the public receptive to the digital life. This is accomplished slowly in increments, as permanent dispositions are established by slipping in regular reminders of how wonderful the new technology is and how its magical possibilities will make life so free and easy. Efficient. Happiness machines. A close study of the past twenty-five years would no doubt reveal the specifics of this campaign. In The Technological Society, Ellul writes:
… the use of certain propaganda techniques is not meant to entail immediate and definite adhesion to a given formula, but rather to bring about a long-range vacuity of the individual. The individual, his soul massaged, emptied of his natural tendencies, and thoroughly assimilated to the group, is ready for anything. Propaganda’s chief requirement is not so much to be rational, well-grounded, and powerful as it is to produce individuals especially open to suggestion who can easily be set into motion.
Once this softening up has made people “available,” the stage is set to get them to act impulsively. Ellul again:
It operates by simple pressure and is often contradictory (since contradictory mass movements are sometimes necessary). Of course, this dissociation can be effective only after the propaganda technique has been fused with the popular mores and has become indispensable to the population. This stage may be reached quickly, as, for example, in Germany in 1942, after only ten years of psychic manipulation.
The end result, he argues, is the establishment of an abstract universe, in which reality is completely recreated in people’s minds. This fake reality is truer than reality as the news is faked and people are formed rather than informed.
In today’s computer driven world, one thing that people have been told for decades is to be vigilant that their computers do not become infected with viruses. This meme was slipped regularly into popular consciousness. To avoid infection, everyone was advised to make sure to have virus protection by downloading protection or using that provided by their operating systems, despite all the back doors built in which most have been unaware of.
Now that other incredible “machine” – the human body – can get virus “protection” by getting what the vaccine maker Moderna says is its messenger RNA (mRNA) non-vaccine “vaccine” that functions “like an operating system on a computer.” First people must be softened up and made available and then “set in motion” to accept the solution to the fearful problem built in from the start by the same people creating the problem. A slippery slope indeed.
But slipping is also good, especially when repetition and conventional thought rules people’s lives as it does today in a digital screen life world where algorithms often prevent creative breakthroughs, and the checking of hourly weather reports from cells is a commonplace fix to ease the anxiety of being trapped in a seemingly uncontrollable nightmare. It seems you now do need computer generated weather reports to know which way the wind blows.
In our culture of the copy, new thoughts are difficult and so the problems that plague society persist and get rehashed ad infinitum. I think most people realize at some level of feeling if not articulation that they are caught in a repetitive cycle of social stasis that is akin to addiction, one that has been imposed on them by elite forces they sense but don’t fully comprehend since they have bought into this circular trap that they love and hate simultaneously. The cell phone is its symbol and the world-wide lockdowns its reality. Even right now as the authorities grant a tactical reprieve from their cruel lockdowns if you obey and get experimentally shot with a non-vaccine vaccine, there is an anxious sense that another shoe will drop when we least expect it. And it will. But don’t say this out loud.
So repetition and constant change, seemingly opposites, suffuse society these days. The sagacious John Steppling captures this brilliantly in a recent article:
So ubiquitous are the metaphors and myths of AI, post humanism, transhumanism, et al. that they infuse daily discourse and pass barely noticed. And there is a quality of incoherence in a lot of this post humanist discourse, a kind of default setting for obfuscation….The techno and cyber vocabulary now meets the language of World Banking. Bourgeois economics provides the structural underpinning for enormous amounts of political rhetoric, and increasingly of cultural expression….This new incoherence is both intentional, and unintentional. The so called ‘Great Reset’ is operationally effective, and it is happening before our eyes, and yet it is also a testament to just how far basic logic has been eroded….Advanced social atomization and a radical absence of social change. Today, I might argue, at least in the U.S. (and likely much of Europe) there is a profound sense of repetitiveness to daily life. No matter one’s occupation, and quite possibly no matter one’s class. Certainly the repetitiveness of the high-net-worth one percent is of a different quality than that of an Uber driver. And yet, the experience of life is an experience of repetition.
A kind of flaccid grimness accompanies this sensibility. Humor is absent, and the only kind of laughter allowed is the mocking kind that hides a nihilistic spirit of resignation – a sense of inevitability that mocks the spirit of rebellion. Everything is solipsistic and even jokes are taken as revelations of one’s personal life.
The other day I was going grocery shopping. My wife had written on the list: “heavy cream or whipping cream.” Not knowing if there were a difference, I asked her which she preferred. “I prefer whipping,” she said.
I replied, “But I don’t have a whip nor do they sell them at the supermarket.”
We both laughed, although I found it funnier than she. She slipped, and I found humor in that. Because it was an innocent slip of the tongue with no significance and she had done the slipping, there was also a slippage between our senses of humor.
But when I told this to a few people, they hesitated to laugh as if I might be revealing some sado-masochistic personal reality, and they didn’t know whether to laugh or not.
It’s harder to laugh at yourself because we get uptight and are afraid to say the “wrong” things. Many people come to the end of their lives hearing the tolling for their tongues that never spoke freely because of the pale cast of thought that has infected them. Not their own thoughts, but thoughts that have been placed into their minds by their controllers in the mass media.
Freud famously wrote about slips of the tongue and tried to pin them down. In this he was a bit similar to a lepidopterist who pins butterflies. We are left with the eponymous Freudian slips that sometimes do and sometimes don’t signify some revelation that the speaker does not consciously intend to utter.
It seems to me that in order to understand anything about ourselves and our present historical condition – which no doubt seems very confusing to many people as propagandists and liars spew out disinformation daily – we need to develop a way to cut through the enervating miasma of fear that grips so many. A fear created by elites to cower regular people into submission, as another doctor named Anthony Fauci has said: “Now is the time to just do what you are told.”
But obviously words do matter, but what they matter is open to interpretation and sometimes debate. To be told to shut up and do what you’re told, to censor differences of opinion, to impose authoritarian restrictions on free speech as is happening now, speech that can involve slips of the tongue, is a slippery slope in an allegedly democratic society. Jim Garrison of JFK fame said that we live in a doll’s house of propaganda where the population is treated as children and fantasies have replaced reality. He was right.
So how can we break out of this deeply imbedded impasse?
This is the hard part, for digital addiction has penetrated deep into our lives.
I believe we need to disrupt our routines, break free from our habits, in order to clearly see what is happening today.
We need to slip away for a while. Leave our cells. Let their doors clang shut behind. Abandon television. Close the computer. Step out without any mask, not just the paper kind but the ones used to hide from others. Disburden our minds of its old rubbish. Become another as you go walking away. Find a park or some natural enclave where the hum and buzz quiets down and you can breathe. Recall that in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four the only place Winston Smith can escape the prying eyes and spies of Big Brother, the only place he can grasp the truth, was not in analyzing Doublethink or Crimestop, but “in a natural clearing, a tiny grass knoll surrounded by tall saplings that shut it in completely” and bluebells bloomed and a thrush sang madly. Here he meets his lover and they affirm their humanity and feel free and alive for a brief respite. Here in the green wood, the green chaos, new thoughts have a chance to grow. It is an old story and old remedy, transitory of course, but as vital as breathing. In his profound meditation on this phenomenon, The Tree, John Fowles, another Englishman, writes:
It is not necessarily too little knowledge that causes ignorance; possessing too much, or wanting to gain too much, can produce the same thing.
I am not proposing that such a retreat is a permanent answer to the propaganda that engulfs us. But without it we are lost. Without it, we cannot break free from received opinions and the constant mental noise the digital media have substituted for thought. Without it, we cannot distinguish our own thoughts from those slyly suggested to us to make us “available.” Without it, we will always feel ourselves lost, “shipwrecked upon things,” in the words of the Spanish philosopher Ortega Y Gasset. If we are to take a stand against the endless lies and a world-wide war waged against regular people by the world’s elites, we must first take “a stand within the self, ensimismamiento,” by slipping away into contemplation. Only then, once we have clarified what we really believe and don’t believe, can we take meaningful action.
There’s an old saying about falling or slipping between the cracks. It’s meant to be a bad thing and to refer to a place where no one is taking care of you. The saying doesn’t make sense. For if you end up between the cracks, you are on the same ground where habits hold you in learned helplessness. Better to slip into the cracks where, as Leonard Cohen sings, “the light gets in.”
It may feel like you are slipping away, but you may be exploring your roots.
It’s ironic that Republicans in Texas are so committed to abolishing abortion.
Abortion is their primary modus operandi.
Abortion is basically their chief reason for being.
Every election season, Republicans try to abort voting rights, especially for Texans of a different complexion. And as much weeping and gnashing of teeth Republicans do about late-term abortion, they would gleefully abort the results of the last presidential election. An inordinate number of Texas Republicans tried on January 6. They can’t help themselves.
While the United States of America was established by the descendants of immigrants, the Republic of Texas was largely founded by actual immigrants. The only two native Texans who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence were Jose Francisco Ruiz and Jose Antonio Navarro; so, besides the original founders without Spanish surnames, Republicans are fierce opponents of immigration and naturalization. Republicans would abort immigration altogether if they could, but, in recent years they’ve had to settle for separating immigrant children from their parents and placing them in cages along our border. It’s sad, but at least the victims are brown.
Texas Republicans aren’t real keen on persons of color in general—immigrant or no—unless they’re carrying a football. Which brings to mind another white conservative conundrum. It’s difficult for Texas Republicans to think highly of themselves and their forebears if the facts about Texas independence and the countless atrocities committed against persons of color are widely propagated. Truth-telling, therefore, must be aborted. It’s a constant priority. But—to their tremendous benefit—the only thing more powerful than white fragility in Texas these days is conservative white political agility.
When Texas Republicans aren’t obsessing over ways to disenfranchise persons of color, they go after women. Texas Republicans have a perpetual, Viagra-charged hard-on for aborting women’s reproductive rights, and also fight against fair pay for Texas women. It’s no wonder there are less and less Republican babies around.
And there’s the real rub.
White women have the most abortions. If women of color were the largest demographic utilizing birth control or terminating their pregnancies, Texas Republicans would make birth control and abortion kits available at the drive-thru of every Whataburger in the state.
I’m not trying to be funny.
There’s no reason to mince words. Their record is clear.
Texas Republicans initially aborted the insurance exchange clause of Obamacare here in the Lone Star State to poison the proverbial well. It denied millions of folks affordable health care and, ultimately, killed Texans just to score political points. More recently, Texas Republicans aborted the right to protest Big Oil and regularly abort clean air and clean water measures, poisoning millions of Texans, destroying animal habitats and restricting access to precious natural resources. And Texas Republicans are currently working to abort reasonable gun control efforts, abort real reforms of the Texas power grid (which killed Texans during the ice storm this last February) and abort the homeless (instead of mitigating the conditions that create them).
Oh, and they get away with all this because Republicans aborted the FCC Fairness Doctrine back in 1987, ushering in a media environment where a propaganda machine like Fox News could brainwash conservative voters, convincing them to self-abort theretofore long-standing notions of honesty, conscience and human decency.
In a word, Texas Republicans are more of a miscarriage than an abortion—of justice, of intellect, of forethought and of reasonable governance. But abortion is the means by which they simultaneously make Texas a laughingstock and a menace.
As the number of Fiji’s covid-19 positive cases continues to rise, there is obvious discomfort and great concern among many Fijians.
This is to be expected. When you consider the recent easing of border restrictions in strategic areas around the country, there will be some sense of trepidation.
We may fall back on the advice and reassurance of the Ministry of Health and Medical Services, however, it is still difficult for many people to accept the recent turn of events. The rising numbers are worrying.
They are a major concern. Interestingly, in the face of the rising numbers sits questions on adherence to physical distancing rules, and common sense.
There will be issues hovering around public transportation for instance, social gatherings, and funerals.
We learn that public service vehicle (PSV) operators are saying people need to adhere to covid-19 restrictions and social distancing requirements.
This reaction comes in the wake of concerns raised about crowding on PSVs in the Lami, Suva and Nausori containment zone.
It is frightening to note the rise in numbers. However, we can be buoyed by the fact that we know what to do to keep the virus away.
Fiji Bus Operators Association president Nisar Ali said information on social distancing protocols has been widely disseminated and people should follow them.
It was everybody’s responsibility, he pointed out, to ensure that when travelling on public service vehicles, they maintained social distancing.
Drivers, he said, could only tell the travelling public to distance themselves and enforcement was done by the Land Transport Authority and the Ministry of Health and Medical Services.
Fiji Taxi Association president Raben Singh said the same protocols introduced when covid-19 first came applied to taxis.
He said no one would be allowed into taxis without a mask and passenger numbers were now limited.
“Drivers are even selling masks to help facilitate their travel, but people should not be moving around unnecessarily.”
In the face of all these rules, police spokeswoman Savaira Tabua said they would continue to restrict movements of people despite the uplifting of borders.
“Our officers are manning checkpoints to ensure restrictions are followed,” she said.
“We would also like to encourage the public to be responsible. We will not be everywhere, therefore, their support is needed.”
The onus really is on us as individuals to make sound decisions daily. It is unfortunate that many people are not adhering to physical distancing rules when they board buses and cabs. The question is how do we ensure this is done though!
This certainly isn’t the time to be living dangerously. It’s clear that the cluster that attended a funeral recently came off as a major spreader of the virus.
It is a tough ask, but we can only hope that Fijians consider this when farewelling loved ones moving forward.
It is frightening to note the rise in numbers. However, we can be buoyed by the fact that we know what to do to keep the virus away.
The challenge is to be vigilant. Thousands of Fijians depend on us all making the right decisions daily.
The Fiji Times editorial, 3 June 2021. Republished with permission.
Samoa’s Court of Appeal (CA) ruled yesterday that Article 44(1A) of the Constitution requires that six women should sit in Parliament. With all due respect, I believe that the CA’s decision was incorrect.
This is on the grounds that the CA has overreached its powers by encroaching on the law-making powers of Parliament and has made an unpragmatic (or impractical) decision that has now prolonged and further complicated Samoa’s constitutional crisis.
While the CA’s decision is final and cannot be appealed, I believe that it is still important that this decision be critiqued because the decision has set a dangerous precedent for future judges interpreting the Constitution — a precedent which essentially signals to them that they can disregard the clear and unequivocal words of the Constitution and insert their own words as they see fit.
To be clear, nothing in this critique should be taken as my disapproval or dissatisfaction with the fact that more women are now required to sit in Parliament.
It goes without saying that having only six women in a Parliament with 51 seats is shameful for any country and is representative of a deeply entrenched gender inequity problem in Samoa that must be addressed.
Fuimaono Dylan Asafo … “it’s important for all Samoans to understand both the dangerous precedent that’s been set by the CA and the wider implications.” Image: RNZ
However, I believe that it is important for all Samoans to understand both the dangerous precedent that has been set by the CA and the wider implications of the decision on Samoa’s constitutional crisis.
Accordingly, I set out three reasons here why I believe that that the CA’s decision was incorrect:
1. The CA encroached on the law-making powers of Parliament by ignoring the explicit wording of Article 44 of the Constitution As stated in the Supreme Court’s judgment, the court’s function is to “give primary attention to the words used, and the Court does not have the power and ability to go beyond the clear and unequivocal words used”. This function was made clear in three previous landmark Court of Appeal cases on constitutional interpretation: Attorney-General v Saipaia Olomalu, Mulitalo v Attorney General, and Jackson & Ors v Attorney General.
This statement of the court’s function recognises the fundamental importance of the doctrine of separation of powers in any democracy. The doctrine of separation of powers follows that it is only for the democratically elected Parliament to make and amend the law (including the Constitution) and the courts, as the unelected independent body, should only interpret and apply the law as Parliament intended and not make or amend the law themselves.
In this case, the “clear and unequivocal words” of Article 44(1A)(a) that the Court of Appeal had to apply are: “…women Members of the Legislative Assembly shall: (a) consist of a minimum of 10 percent of the Members of the Legislative Assembly specified under clause (1) which for the avoidance of doubt is presently 5”.
Therefore, the CA’s decision to ignore the explicit wording of Article 44(1A) demonstrates that it consciously chose not to take the correct approach to interpret the Constitution that has been laid down in key landmark cases.
In the CA’s judgment, they state that “there is a principled way to resolve the two ideas which are presently before the court…guided by well-established principles of interpretation from earlier rulings of this Court”.
In my view, the CA’s approach to constitutional interpretation was not at all “principled”, but bizarre and dubious in a way that hopefully would not be adopted by any courts after them. This dubious approach was supported and encouraged by the arguments submitted by counsel for the appellants, that in my view, were insincere and unduly motivated by political gain.
In adopting this dubious approach, the CA deliberately ignored the great (if not determinative) significance of the passing of the Constitution Amendment Act 2019. This 2019 Act amended Article 44 to increase the number of seats in Parliament from 49 to 51 specifically for the “2021 general elections”
The wording of Article 44 in the Samoan Constitution.
If they gave proper consideration to the impact of the 2019 Act, the CA would have recognised that if Parliament wanted to increase the minimum number of seats for women to six, they would have changed “five” to “six” while amending Article 44 for the “2021 general elections” when they had the chance. However, Parliament did not do this, and the courts are not authorised to do this for them.
Parliament’s choice to leave “five” in Article 44(1A)(a) untouched while amending other parts of the Article 44 specifically should be taken as a clear indication that they intended the minimum number of women to remain “five” and not “six” for the “2021 general elections”. Again, it should be emphasised that under the doctrine of the separation of powers, only Parliament can amend the Constitution as the democratically elected body – not the unelected judiciary.
In an attempt to reason or justify their disregard for the clear and unambiguous wording of the Constitution, the CA looked to the overall purpose of Article 44(1A) and said that: “We consider that Article 44 1A [of the constitution] is ambiguous as to the ideas it promotes and that primacy should be given to whichever of the competing ideas best promotes the establishment of human rights practice in Samoa.”
However, the CA knew, or should have known, that it is not for them, as a body of unelected apolitical justices, to consider political matters like what “best promotes the establishment of human rights practice in Samoa”. It is only for Parliament to do so as the democratically elected body which has been chosen by the people of Samoa to debate and legislate on these political issues.
This particular separation of powers is in place for a very good reason — Parliament is the only body that has the capabilities, time and resources to consider submissions from people in Samoa, (including experts and groups specialising in the relevant issues) in order to make the best laws possible that represent the will of the people. In contrast, the courts do not have the capabilities, time and resources to fully consider matters of great importance before making or amending the law (including the Constitution).
More fundamentally, judges and justices of the courts have not been elected by the people or appointed by elected officials based on their political views or sensibilities as MPs have. In fact, they have the constitutional mandate to act apolitically and objectively when interpreting and applying the law.
Therefore, I believe that the CA’s decision sets a dangerous precedent for other courts to possibly follow, where they have signalled to other judges and justices who’ll interpret the Constitution that they’re permitted to disregard clear and unequivocal words of the Constitution and insert their own words as they see fit.
2. The CA has encroached on the law-making powers of Parliament by creating its own process for Article 44(1A)
Another major part of the CA’s decision is the finding that a sixth woman can only be added only after all petitions and potential byelections have been completed.
For reasons similar to the ones I have given above, I argue that the CA’s creation of a process for Article 44(1A) was an overreach of their powers because it is only for Parliament to design and explicitly set out this process in the Constitution or any relevant legislation (i.e. the Electoral Act).
This was rightfully respected by Justice Tuatagaloa and Justice Vaai in the Supreme Court, who observed in their joint judgment that Parliament needed to provide:
“Some clarity as to the ‘process’ to be followed when Article 44(1A) is activated. There is no process provided in regards to a woman candidate appointed pursuant to Article 44(1A). Section 84 of the Electoral Act refers to successful candidates or elected candidates. Section 2 of the Electoral Act defines the word ‘election’ means the election of a Member in a general election or byelection to represent a constituency. The woman candidate coming in through Article 44(1A) is (in our view) not ‘elected’.”
Here, Justice Tuatagaloa and Justice Vaai acknowledge that Parliament (in 2013 and 2019) unfortunately did not provide a clear process for the activation of Article 44(1A). However, both justices chose not to go beyond their constitutional powers to engineer and create this process themselves.
Instead, they appreciated that it is only appropriate for Parliament to create this process lawfully and transparently after they have taken the time to fully consider the merits of different options and ideas.
Unfortunately, the CA did not show such respect for Parliament and the separation of powers and decided to engineer and create their own process for Article 44(1A) in less than three days.
In my view, the CA should have simply interpreted the clear and unambiguous words of Article 44(1A) as mentioned above, and stated that it was therefore unnecessary for them to discuss the process as this was a matter for Parliament to determine.
While the CA attempted to design their process with some regard to the practical realities surrounding election petitions, counter petitions and potential byelections — it was still wrong for them to create this process in the fraught context of a dispute in which arguments from parties, namely the appellants, are motivated by political gain.
Therefore, it would not be surprising if the rushed and unprincipled manner in which the CA created the process provides even more confusion, ambiguity, conflict and controversy in the near or distant future. In any case, it is hoped that the new Parliament takes the time needed to fix the problems with Article 44(1A), before designing a new process following its activation, fairly and democratically.
3. The CA’s process for Article 44 is unpragmatic for prolonging and further complicating Samoa’s constitutional crisis
Aside from the issues with the CA’s problematic interpretation of the Constitution, the CA’s decision should also be criticised as being unpragmatic (or in other words, impractical) for having the effect of prolonging and further complicating Samoa’s constitutional crisis.
The CA’s finding that a sixth woman can only be added after all petitions and potential byelections have been completed (and there are still only five women MPs), means that the addition of another woman MP could be several months away. This is due to the sheer volume of petitions that the courts are due to consider next week, a reality the CA was no doubt aware of.
While the courts are not necessarily required to be influenced by what is pragmatic and best for the general wellbeing and smooth running of the country, it is hoped that they at least do not go out of their way to make decisions that would create further uncertainty and delay in a country suffering from an already drawn out constitutional crisis.
Of course, there is already a degree of uncertainty around which party would hold the majority of seats due to the unprecedented number of petitions that have been filed and are yet to be heard,
However, adding the potential activation of Article 44(1A) to the mix does not help things at all. This has already been seen by how both the leaders of the FAST party and the HRPP have interpreted the CA’s decision to mean that their parties hold the majority in judgement and should be able to govern until the election petitions and any potential by-elections are completed.
In my view, had the CA interpreted Article 44(1A) in the correct, honest and principled manner (to find that the minimum number of seats for women is “five” and not six) this would not be a legitimate dispute as the leader of the HRPP would not have any real reason to believe that a sixth woman MP could be added as a 52nd seat in parliament in their favour.
FAST would then have a clearer path for transitioning into the government — a path which I believe they legitimately have because in my view, their convening of parliament was legitimate and constitutional in the extraordinary circumstances Samoa was facing. [NOTE: Although the constitutionality of FAST’s swearing-in on 24 May 2021 is another matter due to be heard by the courts on Friday, I have argued in a previous opinion piece that their swearing-in was constitutional and that the courts should declare this when they do rule on this case — most likely sometime next week.]
Another practical problem the CA could have (and should have) avoided was the risk of creating an even-numbered hung Parliament of 52, with each party having 26 seats. When Article 44(1A) was introduced in 2013, the parliament of that day (and any day up to the 2021 general election) didn’t foresee that its activation could lead to an even-numbered hung parliament which could create major issues in the future. For example, a hung 52 seated parliament (with 26 seats for both parties) could lead the Head of State to use their powers under Article 63 to dissolve parliament and call for a new general election on the grounds that the office of the Prime Minister has vacant beyond a “reasonable period” of time (Article 63(2)) or that the Prime Minister does not command the majority in parliament (Article 63(3)). With due respect, it can only be hoped that this wasn’t the underlying motivation behind the CA’s decision.
In any case, there is an urgent need for a government to come into power to govern Samoa. This is not only because Samoa is in a global pandemic, but also because the government should have already set and announced its annual budget by this time in the year. Therefore, the CA’s decision shows an unfortunate lack of pragmatism for which the people of Samoa will continue to bear the costs.
A case of ‘judicial activism’? Some might celebrate and defend the CA’s decision as a case of “judicial activism” because it was apparently decided in the interests of gender equality and human rights in Samoa.
“Judicial activism” is a term that refers to when judges go outside their apolitical and objective roles to become “activists” in the courtroom pursuing their political agendas. They do this by interpreting and applying laws in a way that is obviously incorrect and contrary to established legal principles because they believe that the outcome would be morally unacceptable and unjust according to their political beliefs if they did not.
One key instance of “judicial activism” in New Zealand was in the 1985 case of Finnigan v New Zealand Rugby Football. In this case, the Court of Appeal of NZ disregarded well established legal principles in order to prevent the All Blacks from touring South Africa during the nation’s apartheid era.
It is well known now that the justices hearing this case were influenced not only by anti-apartheid protests outside the courtroom but by their own values and beliefs against South Africa’s racist system.
Of course, anyone committed to anti-racism (and the fundamental human right to freedom from discrimination) would not question or fault the Court of Appeal of NZ for being judicial activists in the Finnigan case. However, in my view, the CA’s decision should not be seen or understood as a legitimate and justified case of “judicial activism” like that in Finnigan.
Some may disagree and argue that the need to have six women (rather than five) in Parliament is a critically urgent and important human rights and social justice issue that is analogous or comparable to the moral dilemma the NZ justices faced in the Finnigan case.
However, if anything, this litigation has shown that Article 44(1A) is a deeply flawed mechanism for ensuring the representation of women in Parliament and upholding Samoa’s obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). In my view, instead of further complicating a deeply flawed mechanism during a constitutional crisis, the CA should have upheld the observations of Justice Tuatagaloa and Justice Vaai in the Supreme Court to allow Parliament (and the people of Samoa whose voices they represent) to improve Samoa’s deeply entrenched gender inequity issue in the fair and transparent manner that is expected of a democratic state.
In terms of what a new gender-based quota system for Samoa would look like, it is clear that the new Parliament will need to pay closer attention to the laws and experiences of other democratic countries that have introduced similar gender-based quota laws, such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark who have since achieved an average of 40 percent women in their parliaments.
It’s also important that the new Parliament tackle deeply entrenched gender inequity in Samoan politics more broadly. A 2015 report on “Political Representation and Women’s Empowerment in Samoa” by the Centre for Samoan Studies at the National University of Samoa (NUS) found that Article 44(1A) would “not address what this research found to be the core issue: the barriers to women’s equal participation in local government” and that Samoa does not have gender parity laws and candidate pre-selection mechanisms that other countries like France, Timor-Leste, Senegal and Rwanda have introduced to increase the number of women in their parliaments.
Similarly, Kiki Matire has commented that while Article 44(1A) would increase the representation of women in Samoa’s parliament, “much more needs to be done to address the cultural and tangible obstacles to women as political leaders”.
Fuimaono Dylan Asafo is a law lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Auckland. He holds a Master of Laws from Harvard University and a Master of Laws (First Class Honours) from the University of Auckland.
On Friday 30 May, defendants appeared at Bristol Magistrates’ Court on charges which included riot and violent disorder.
They were arrested following the 21 March #KilltheBill demonstration in Bristol, against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
The demonstration on 21 March ended in a confrontation with the police outside Bristol’s Bridewell police station, after mounted police charged the crowd and attacked them with batons. The night ended with the a thousand strong crowd besieging Bridewell, and at least three police vehicles were set alight
Politicians, police, and the mainstream media have been baying for blood ever since. The establishment will be desperate to see those in court given long prison sentences. That’s why its of paramount importance that we stand with those who’ve been arrested and give them as much strength as we can.
And that’s exactly why the authorities are so desperate to put up as many barriers as possible to our solidarity.
I attended Bristol Magistrates’ Court on 28 May as a supporter of the defendants and as a journalist. When I arrived, I saw that other supporters were being told that only one person per defendant could enter the court. We were told that this restriction was because of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. However, these kind of restrictions have not been in place at other courts I have attended during the pandemic.
I entered the court as a journalist, but was told that I could not sit in the courtroom where the hearing was taking place. Instead myself and the others were told to sit in an adjacent courtroom and watch the proceedings over a video-link.
Banned from taking notes
A little later, me and several other members of the public were told that we couldn’t take notes. I protested that we had a right to take notes. Court security told me that I would be thrown out if I continued writing. I carried on regardless, and the security officer responded by standing between me and the screen showing the video link.
The court’s insistence that members of the public should not take notes flies in the face of a recent court ruling which states:
There can be no objection to note taking in the public gallery unless it is done for a wrongful purpose; for example to brief a witness who is not in court on what has already happened.
There was no suggestion that people were suspected of taking notes for a ‘wrongful purpose’. The court staff’s actions were an oppressive abuse of power intended to place a barrier in the way of effective support for the defendants.
Judge closes public gallery with a wave of the hand
Not content with the petty abuse of power to prevent note-taking, the judge then decided to shut the public gallery completely, complaining that people had been taking notes and using laptops.
Court staff then ushered supporters out into the waiting area.
— Bristol Defendant Solidarity (@BristolDefenda1) May 28, 2021
After the public gallery had been closed, another member of staff denied that the closure was anything to do with taking notes, instead citing coronavirus regulations as the reason for the restriction. It felt like staff were weaponising the pandemic as a way to restrict public access to proceedings.
I was eventually allowed back into the court after showing my journalist credentials. But others were left waiting outside the courtroom, despite a complaint being made to the court.
The Canary contacted Bristol Magistrates Court for a comment on this article. We had not received a reply by the time of publication.
We need to defy attempts to put barriers in the way of our solidarity
Those arrested on 21 March in Bristol have the odds squarely stacked against them. After previous UK riots the courts doled out incredibly harsh sentences for minor offences. For example, after Palestine solidarity demonstrators clashed with the police in 2009, the courts went to town handing out politically motivated sentences to the mostly Muslim defendants. I witnessed one 19-year-old being given a year in prison for throwing a single plastic bottle in the direction of the police. I also saw several defendants being threatened with deportation proceedings on conviction, despite having lived in the UK all their lives.
The story was the same in 2011 following the summer of rioting after the UK police’s killing of Mark Duggan. Defendants were sentenced to a total of 1,800 years in prison. One mother of two – for example – was jailed for five months after she accepted a pair of shorts as a gift which turned out to have been looted. Another woman was sentenced to six months for stealing a case of bottled water worth just £3.50.
We need to stand with our comrades, as they prepare to face a biased and deeply politicised court system. It’s of paramount importance that we defy all attempts to put barriers in the way of our solidarity.
Tom Anderson is part of the Shoal Collective, a cooperative producing writing for social justice and a world beyond capitalism. Twitter: shoalcollective
Samoa’s 59th Independence Day has come and gone, without the usual fanfare and intense patriotism we have grown accustomed to from previous years.
What we’ve seen for the last few weeks and indeed months has tested the strength of our democracy at the highest of levels and the lowest of lows.
Our Independence document, our Constitution, set out the supreme law for self-governance. The preamble outlines what Samoa stands for as a sovereign nation.
IN THE HOLY NAME OF GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, THE EVER LOVING WHEREAS sovereignty over the Universe belongs to the Omnipresent God alone and the authority to be exercised by the people of Samoa within the limits prescribed by God’s commandments is a sacred heritage. WHEREAS the Leaders of Samoa have declared that Samoa should be an Independent State based on Christian principles and Samoan custom and tradition AND WHEREAS the Constitutional Convention, representing the people of Samoa, has resolved to frame a Constitution for the Independent State of Samoa WHEREIN the State should exercise its powers and authority through the chosen representatives of the people WHEREIN should be secured to all the people their fundamental rights WHEREIN the impartial administration of justice should be fully maintained AND WHEREIN the integrity of Samoa, its independence, and all its rights should be safeguarded NOW THEREFORE, we the people of Samoa in our Constitutional Convention, this 28th day of October 1960, do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution.
The founding document of our government has undergone the toughest stress test it has ever had to go through, with poking and prodding and pulling and tugging from legal minds, concerned citizens, inquisitive media and the endless electioneering of politicians.
All while the silent backdrop of a global pandemic and economic recession keeps us wary of possibly greater perils.
So what is there to feel proud of this Independence Day?
Well, despite the challenges and political instability, we have not descended in to chaos or a state of anarchy. The people of this country continue to keep the engines moving, whether they are the struggling private sector or threatened public service.
While the question of Parliamentary majority remains unknown with an appeal pending before the Courts, and both the Faatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) and Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) staking their claims on the executive government, Samoa has remained peaceful and mostly respectful of each other.
Where we find deficiencies in leadership, we take the reins and steer our own families and communities towards peaceful accord.
There may be passionate differences of opinion, but for the most part we are still in this rocky boat together.
As we have seen with the unusual sight of protests in recent weeks, our people are able to defy cultural norms and use their constitutional rights to protest peacefully.
The Samoa Solidarity International Group (SSIG) protests were led by a woman. The Women Empowerment march was led by women. These are the pae and auli of our families and communities. They are generally seen to be the background advisors and soothsayers. And yet there they were, front and center on the national stage, speaking up for what they believe.
This year’s Independence may be a muted affair, but its significance is great as we remember the rights and privileges that come with being citizens of a sovereign nation.
All citizens have the right to freedom of speech and expression; to assemble peaceably and without arms; to form associations or unions and to move freely throughout Samoa and reside in any part.
We have seen this exemplified in recent weeks and months with the people of this country using their right to assemble and listen to election campaigning, to form supporter groups and debate one another on the merits of their chosen political affiliations.
This newspaper has also used its privilege to bring to light issues that best reflect its values and adherence to journalism standards and ethics.
All people are equal before the law and entitled to equal protection under the law. We have seen this in action as our Police have done their best to provide protection and lawful interventions across the board during this political crisis.
The Head of State’s Independence Address calls for a return to Christian values as a way to solve the political impasse. He called on the people of Samoa to reflect and remember our ancestors and those who fought for Samoa’s freedom, whose sacrifices enabled us to live as an independent nation.
This was his first public statement in over a week; since his proclamation to suspend an earlier call for Parliament to convene. He called on all leaders – church, government, private sector, political – and every citizen to seek guidance from God to solve the current political impasse.
The carefully worded speech by the Head of State acknowledges that our crisis will take all of us to fix. His reference to youth is also noteworthy.
“On this day, the youth of Samoa should feel the special pride of being citizens of a free nation; let us ensure this is a legacy they will be proud to pass on,” he said.
At this very moment in our history, the impasse is not a legacy anyone should be proud to pass on. But the peacefulness of our people, in this crisis, most definitely is.
Last year’s announcement of a muted national celebration, without a parade and the singing and dancing of villages assigned the honour of entertaining our dignitaries and our country, was met with disappointment. But we accepted the decision due to concerns over the coronavirus.
This year, a call to have another virtual ceremony to mark our 59th Independence, appears to be less about public health concerns and more about our political instability.
After all, how would you host an official celebration with two prime ministers staking their claim on this country?
So we are grateful for the resilience and independent spirit of our people, who took it upon themselves to host their own celebrations.
As shown in our Tuesday edition, Samoa Primary held their own Independence Day fete on Monday with tributes to Samoan tradition such as artwork displays, dancing and singing, the preparation and serving of Samoan food. They even had a float parade.
“Every year’s celebration is remembering our forefathers who have fought for the independence of Samoa and for that we give the opportunity to the students to expand their minds and research former leaders and also those who were fighting for the sake of our country,” said principal Anne Leauga.
On Independence Day itself, we witnessed a few community events starting with Falelauniu, where the Church of Nazareth braved the rain and put on a parade in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Pastor Toeleiu Alatise told this newspaper that he hoped the youth find the spirit of Independence, despite there not being any national celebrations.
“It took two weeks to prepare this event for the children as we had received news that there will be no Independence celebrations, so we prepared this,” he said.
The Marist Old Pupils Association also came together and hosted their own Independence parade, flag raising and celebrations.
The keynote address was given by the Association’s Patron, 81-year-old Tuala Tom Annandale.
“I am happy to see each and every one of our Marist brothers participating in the celebration of the 59th independence day of Samoa,” he said.
“We leave politics aside and focus on the celebration itself as we are all one; we are all called the children of Mother Mary.
“Once you enter the gate, whatever title you have will stay behind gates. We are known as one.”
In whatever way you celebrated Samoa’s 59th Independence Day, we hope you did so in the spirit of appreciation for the great privilege we have been given, to live freely and to choose our own paths as individuals and as a nation.
The Samoa Observer editorial on 2 June 2021. Republished with permission.
An independent news site has revealed shocking comments Tory peers made about their disabled colleagues. They laced their views with offensive comments and discrimination – not that that’s shocking from the Tories. But at the heart of the story is also a staggering irony.
Debating democracy
John Pring, editor of Disability News Service (DNS), tweeted:
The Conservative party has refused to act after four of its peers delivered an “extremely alarming” and disablist “barrage of attack” on disabled members of the House of Lords.https://t.co/WJ6lNoqd7P
— Disability News DNS (@johnpringdns) May 28, 2021
As Pring reported, the House of Lords was debating:
the use of remote participation and so-called hybrid sittings in the Lords that some of the measures introduced during the pandemic – which include online voting and allowing some peers to take part in debates virtually – should continue when the crisis ended.
Some peers were arguing that the adjustments should stay. Crossbench peer baroness Jane Campbell said the:
capacity to join in remotely has swept away many of the barriers that some of us encounter daily
a relief to watch debates at home on my night-time ventilator and to vote. It improved my focus, decision-making and health.
All this would seem logical and reasonable to many people. In the same way remote working for non-disabled people is now becoming the norm, surely this should extend to parliament? Well, not if you’re a Tory peer.
Disability discrimination
As Pring reported, four Tory peers launched an “extremely alarming” “barrage of attack” on disabled peers. Former Tory Party treasurer lord Farmer said:
for the sake of the public who are paying our way, personal infirmity should not provide grounds for exemption from normality… parliamentary participation is for those able to bring vitality to proceedings.
He added:
if infirmities of mind or body make that vital contribution impossible, any permanently lowered bar to participation serves peers’ interests, not those of the public. The previous norm should be reinstated: those of us who cannot come to the House cannot contribute.
‘Infirmities’? Farmer appears to have taken us back to the early 20th century. No, really. Because he may as well have said that disabled people should not be peers. His Tory mates lord Howard of Rising and baroness Noakes said similar.
Trenchard: Disability discrimination? Hold my pint.
But if you thought that was bad, enter viscount Trenchard with someone holding his pint to take the abuse one step further.
those with disabilities, in poor health or pregnant should be allowed to continue to participate remotely.
He added that it’s:
an unfortunate fact that if a noble Lord’s condition or circumstances prevent his or her attendance and ability to participate fully, it is hard to argue that that member is fully capable of exercising his or her functions as a legislator
So now, disabled and pregnant people shouldn’t be peers, either. Thank god we’ve got rich, old white men to make up the numbers, hey?
Pring asked the Tory Party and the government for comment. Neither responded to him. Meanwhile, disabled peers reacted angrily. Lib Dem baroness Sal Brinton toldDNS the Tory peers’ comments were:
an extraordinary barrage of attack on disabled peers and those with underlying conditions that puts them on the clinically extremely vulnerable list.
Back in the real world
Back in the real world, and this kind of discrimination is not really shocking. For example, a 2019 study found 24% of employers wouldn’t hire a disabled person. This is despite such discrimination being illegal. Moreover, the system itself serves to do little more than entrench discrimination and inequality for disabled people. For example, the UN accused successive UK governments of “grave” and “systematic” violations of sick and disabled people’s human rights, much of it under the guise of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) reform.
But to flip the Tory peers’ comments on their heads, as my partner Nicola Jeffery tweeted:
Well, it's very clear to these Tory peers that politically there is no place for disability & as "unfortunate" as that is it's just not "normal". That's being #Disabled working from home or pregnant btw, so should anyone who is disabled or pregnant be forced to work by the DWP..?
She’s referring to the ‘fit for work’ scandal, where the DWP was assessing sick and disabled people and telling them they were well enough to look for, or carry out, a job. As The Canary previously reported, between 2014 and 2017 10 people a day were dying after the DWP put them in the Work-Related Activity Group (WRAG) of Employment and Support Allowance. As we wrote, the WRAG is:
the part of ESA where the DWP places people aged 16-64 who it deems can start moving towards work.
Ironically, there are disabled people who can’t work even with provision, but the government is making them work anyway. Yet the peers being discriminated against by their Tory colleagues are capable of working, but the same Tory colleagues are trying to stop them from getting adequate provision. The whole thing stinks – but also shows the sickening irony at the heart of the Tory Party.
Throughout his time as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn was subjected to a vicious, politically motivated smear campaign. This was based in large part on the claim that Labour had seen a dramatic increase in antisemitism amongst its membership during Corbyn’s leadership.
However, as The Canary has previously argued, of the respective leaders of the UK’s two major political parties during the 2019 general election, it was in fact Boris Johnson that had far more to answer for in terms of antisemitism. Now, that reality has been confirmed by Johnson’s latest guest at Downing Street. And this, in turn, raises the question of whether Jeremy Corbyn should be given another chance to face Johnson at the next general election.
A member of the new Eurofascist movement
On 28 May, Viktor Orbán arrived in London to meet with the British prime minister. The visit was ostensibly to discuss UK-Hungary relations following the UK’s exit from the European Union. Government ministers have defended the meeting as a legitimate exercise in relationship-building following Brexit. Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, for example, described it as “completely reasonable”.
But others have been quick to point out that hosting Orbán lends credibility to his far-right agenda and controversial stances. In particular, his characterization of migrants as “a poison” and comments about so-called “Muslim invaders” have drawn criticism. Orbán has been widelycharacterized as far-right. And along with other Eastern European leaders such as Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki, he’s part of an emerging ultra-nationalist political trend. One that that arguably borders on fascism.
Establishment double standards on antisemitism
But from a UK perspective, Orbán’s most salient characteristic is his well-documented antisemitism. According to Politico, during Hungary’s 2017 parliamentary elections Orbán “promoted anti-Semitic imagery of powerful Jewish financiers scheming to control the world”. It added that his government’s “anti-migrant rhetoric endangers all minorities, including Jews, and its comparisons with the 1930s are unmistakable”. Orbán has also been accused of attempting to minimize Hungary’s role in the Nazi Holocaust.
The fact that the Conservatives are presumably willing to overlook all of this reveals how their and their backers’ charge of antisemitism against Corbyn was a cynical ploy all along. After all, if Corbyn had met with an actual antisemite, we would have never heard the end of it. But because of the UK media’s well-documented right-wing slant, Johnson largely gets a free pass.
Part of a long history
And it’s far form the first time he has either. As The Canary has previously reported, before becoming prime minister Johnson wrote a novel with some suspiciously antisemitic tropes. He was also part of a group of MPs who were present at the unveiling of a statue of Nancy Astor. Astor was an MP who openly held antisemitic beliefs.
Clearly, this is another flagrant example of the double standards the UK media and establishment apply to political figures according to their ideological orientation. As academic Norman Finkelstein explained to The Canary in an exclusive interview in 2019:
British elites suddenly discovered ‘we can use the antisemitism card in order to try to stifle genuine… leftist insurgencies among the population’. And so what used to be a kind of sectarian issue waged by Jewish organisations faithful to the party line emanating from Israel vs critics of Israel, now it’s no longer sectarian because the whole British elite has decided they’re going to use this antisemitism card to stop Jeremy Corbyn and the political insurgency he represents.
Perhaps it’s time the Labour membership came to terms with the fact that the 2019 election wasn’t a clean fight. And that Corbyn should be reinstated as Labour leader.
As Israel’s latestmassacre in Gaza has unfolded over the last few weeks, international outrage has injected a surge of energy into the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Over the past few years, BDS has emerged as one of the most vibrant and promising tools in working towards ending Israeli apartheid and the occupation of Palestine.
In an exclusive interview with The Canary earlier in May, Prof. Ilan Pappé (himself an Israeli Jew) described BDS as “an excellent organization that galvanizes and knows how to use solidarity in the most effective way”. Naturally, figures on the political right have been aggressively mobilizing to discredit BDS and its supporters. And the hackneyed charge of antisemitism forms a large part of their toolkit. This is obviously ridiculous, not least because a significant amount of BDS supporters are themselves Jewish – including members of Jewish Voice for Peace.
There is, however, a more sophisticated criticism levelled by opponents of BDS. And that is the charge of hypocrisy towards those who support sanctions against Israel yet oppose sanctions against US adversaries such as Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Now this may be more superficially persuasive than the facile antisemitism smear. But a more nuanced analysis shows that there is, in fact, no contradiction here.
Cutting to the chase
Examples abound of right-wing commentators alleging a hypocritical stance. Take for instance a January 2019 article for the Washington Examiner. It complains that Democratic Party congressmember Ilhan Omar is “deeply opposed to sanctions — unless they’re against Israel”. It points, in particular, to comments Omar had made condemning US sanctions against Iran, and laments:
Sanctions against Iran, an antagonistic regime that has persecuted Christians and Sunni Muslims, slaughtered pro-freedom protesters, and promoted terrorism in the Middle East and abroad, doesn’t deserve sanctions [according to Omar]. But [for her,] Israel, a U.S. ally, does?
Notice that the author seems to think the most important factor about Israel is that it’s a US ally. In other words, it’s a case of ‘support our friends, right or wrong’. By extension, therefore, Israel’s track record of aggression is irrelevant to the Washington Examiner. This includes:
Israel’s persecution of people of other religions (not to mention ethnicities).
And its frequent and flagrant committal (rather than just promotion) of extensive acts of state terror.
But dwelling on this would be too easy. The larger point of whether those who support sanctions against Israel yet oppose them in other cases are being hypocritical does merit a serious response. But a more nuanced analysis shows that this argument is ultimately a clear-cut case of false equivalence.
Putting things into context
First of all, we must consider the context. As The Canary has reported on severaloccasions, Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US aid since World War II. So any harm to Israel has to be contrasted with the fact that it’s already received huge benefits from the richest,most powerful country in the world for decades. And the vast majority (since at least 2000) has gone to military forces rather than any kind of social spending. In 2019, for example, the US funneled over $3.8bn in foreign aid to Israel. Of this, only $8.5m (just 0.2%) went toward non-military spending.
One criticism against sanctions is that they would harm Israel’s civilian population. However, given its huge military budget, sanctions might have the effect of simply forcing Israel to redirect military spending towards helping its citizens. Moreover, targeted sanctions could single out Israel’s arms and military spending, rather than affecting public services and social investment.
Most importantly, in the case of sanctions against Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, these harm the very people they’re intendedto help. But sanctions against Israel are intended to help people in the West Bank and Gaza strip. Israel’s government provides such little social spending to this population that European governments have had to step in with humanitarian aid. Moreover, the vast majority of what Israel does spend on the occupied territories is spent harming rather than helping them.
Motivation matters
Another important consideration is the issue of motivation. The purpose of sanctioning Israel would be to punish its behavior. Whereas this is patently not the motivation behind US sanctions against Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Washington doesn’t sanction these countries because of anything they actually do. Rather it’s because the US disapproves of their governments/ economic systems and wishes to impose ‘regime change’ upon them. During the Trump era, Washington’s foreign policy establishment (which, incidentally, is bipartisan in nature) was surprisingly openabout this reality.
And anti-imperialists should welcome this as a refreshing expression of honesty compared with what came before. Trump’s predecessors preferred to dishonestly hide their true motivations behind bogus concerns about human rights or democratic deficits.
The historical precedent and the legacy of South Africa
There’s also a historical precedent worth remembering. The international community used sanctions as a way of isolating and expressing their disapproval of apartheid in South Africa. And so it should do again with the most flagrant practitioner of ethnic apartheid in the current era. Especially since the international campaign against South Africa was ultimately successful. It’s now widely accepted that international pressure played a key role in the collapse of that country’s brutal system of racial oppression.
We must be unequivocal: along with boycotts and divestment, calling for sanctions is a perfectly legitimate tool. One with which Palestinian solidarity activists can resist the murderous actions of apartheid Israel and its violent occupation of Palestine. And therefore, we must equally push back at attempts to smear our movement with the facile false equivalence attributed to support for sanctions. The alternative would be to allow BDS to wither against a dishonest campaign waged by the propagandists for Israel’s crimes.
Samoa found itself in a constitutional crisis this week when the caretaker Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) government locked the doors to Parliament in an attempt to stop prime minister-elect Fiame Naomi Mata’afa being sworn in to office following her FAST party’s one-seat election win.
Samoa now finds itself in the position of having “two governments” claiming a mandate to rule, and the United Nations is urging the party leaders to find a solution through discussion.
Saturday Morning host Julian Willcox (Ngāpuhi, Te Arawa), broadcaster and Te Reo orator deputising for RNZ presenter Kim Hill, talks to Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson. She is the Apia-based editor of Pacific Environment Weekly and has been covering events surrounding Samoa’s election.
Jackson also talks about the abuse faced on line by her and other Pacific journalists when reporting unwelcome facts and says it is part of the territory of being a journalist.
I do not condone offensive name-calling, purposeful embarrassment, threats of physical violence, online harassment and insinuations of sexual harassment on my Tweets through comments and/or in the sharing of content on Samoa election. They are still Chiefs Keep to topic!
— Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson (@lagipoiva) May 28, 2021
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
COMMENT:By Fred Wesley, editor-in-chief, The Fiji Times
Bula.
The big announcement last night must be a very firm reminder for us all in Fiji about what we are dealing with. Permanent Secretary for Health and Medical Services Dr James Fong confirmed 46 new cases.
That must inch out some concern if it hasn’t already done so. It must force a rethink of what we do today and moving forward. So what were the key takeaways from this latest announcement?
Aside from the staggering figure, it has to be the fact that people are still engaging in unsafe behaviour! They are still attending large gatherings.
Understandably there are emotional aspects to consider, however, the fact remains, the virus moves when we move!
Think about what Dr Fong said: “This increase was not unexpected, but it should serve to show how easily this virus is transmitted and why restrictions are in place.”
This was Fred Wesley’s editorial yesterday before the announcement of 46 new cases.
EDITORIAL:Doing this together
In his announcement at 5.14pm yesterday [Friday], the Permanent Secretary for Health and Medical Services Dr James Fong confirmed 22 new cases of covid-19.
By 7.31pm, there were six more new cases added to this number, taking the total to 28 new cases yesterday.
Breaking down the cases in the earlier announcement, one was a resident of Kinoya with no links to other cases at the early stage of investigation, two were connected to the Queen Elizabeth Barracks cluster, seven were connected to the Navy cluster and 12 were residents of Vunivivi in Nausori.
They were connected through a common exposure event — a funeral!
In the late announcement, four cases were connected to the Muanikoso cluster and two to the Vunivivi cluster.
The rising number is surely going to attract interest.
In fact, it is going to raise concern as well.
There will be a great sense of apprehension, uncertainty, great fear, doubt, insecurity, frustration and anger.
It is not unusual that Fijians will look up to the powers that be for reassurance.
They will seek that and hope the powers that be are accommodating.
They will look to them for guidance, and to give them confidence to move forward.
They will need to be reassured enough to not panic in the face of the rising numbers daily.
So lest we forget though, let’s not panic right now.
Understandably it would be encouraging to get some semblance of order first up.
However, perhaps we can be buoyed by the fact that with the exception of one, all the other cases are actually connected to known clusters.
Whatever your take is on the growing numbers, we may take comfort in the fact that the outbreak right now is in the Suva-Nausori area.
Most of the new cases in recent days were discovered through contact tracing investigations for known cases.
This, according to Dr Fong, is an indicator that our contact tracing efforts are effective.
Now for the serious bit! The revelation that significant escalations in daily case numbers have been largely driven by the fact that recent cases have been linked to large households or workplace groups, funeral gatherings and the associated grog sessions in big groups is obviously a major concern.
Then there is the connection to a common exposure event — a funeral!
There can be no doubts about what we must do moving forward.
There can be no social gathering! In fact we should just stay home, within our little safe bubbles.
The virus will not move if we stay still. Thousands of Fijians are already doing their bit for the greater good of our nation. They are staying home.
They are staying within their bubbles. They are adhering to physical distancing rules. Together we must stay on course.
The Fiji Times editorial, 28 May 2021.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Amid a mountainload of work this week in the [Samoan] Attorney-General’s Office – as the caretaker government’s lawyers look over the constitution for ways to “delegitimise” Monday’s Parliament swearing-in of Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party members – Attorney-General Savalenoa Mareva Betham-Annandale still finds time to issue another press release accusing the Samoa Observer of misinformation and “attempting to control the narrative”.
The story reported on plans by the Attorney-General’s Office to go to the Supreme Court to stop the transition of the new government, as the office was of the view that the swearing-in ceremony of FAST party members conducted outside the Parliament chamber, but within its precinct, on Monday afternoon is illegal.
However, the Attorney-General said the story is misconstrued and her Office didn’t seek an interim order to stop “new government transition”.
Instead, Savalenoa, says her Office filed two applications in the Supreme Court on Monday and Tuesday this week to declare that “the FAST purported swearing in as unconstitutional and unlawful”, and an ex-parte notice of motion is “seeking interim orders to stay and suspend the legal effect of FAST purported swearing-in as it is unconstitutional and unlawful”.
So can an English teacher tell us the difference between our article reporting on “plans by the Attorney-General’s Office to go to the Supreme Court to stop the transition of the new government” and the overall goal of the two Supreme Court applications which the Attorney-General specifically makes reference to in her press release?
Isn’t the ultimate objective of both the Attorney-General’s office-filed applications for declaratory orders and an ex-parte notice of motion about stopping the FAST party headed by Fiame Naomi Mata’afa from forming government?
It is incredulous seeing Savalenoa getting so worked up over a newspaper article – when the judiciary of which she is part and partial of and swore an oath to protect – continues to be ridiculed and kicked around like a football by the very people she continues to report to and represent in Court.
At the end of the press release, the Attorney-General claims that the “misinformation” by the Samoa Observer is this newspaper’s “attempt to control the narrative of what is actually happening”.
The charge by Savalenoa that this newspaper is attempting to “control the narrative” of this week’s events is ridiculous, especially when millions around the world, thanks to social media and Samoa’s mainstream media (including this newspaper), saw how the caretaker government locked the Parliament in breach of the Supreme Court orders, in an attempt to stop the swearing-in of the XVII Legislative Assembly.
Can the Attorney-General tell us where she stands on the decision by the Head of State, His Highness Tuimaleali’ifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, to overlook the Supreme Court’s orders in relation to the convening of the Parliament on Monday?
And was the Attorney-General privy to the decision by the Head of State to breach the order of the Supreme Court by suspending the convening of the XVII Parliament on Monday?
The honourable thing for Savalenoa to do a week or two ago, when it became obvious that the caretaker Prime Minister Tuila’epa Dr Sa’ilele Malielegaoi and Head of State would disregard the orders of the Supreme Court, was to resign, to not only protect the integrity of her office but to show citizens and the world that as a lawyer she cares about the rule of law and our democratic foundations.
But it has become obvious in the last week or so that she has chosen to walk a path which has coincided with the trampling of Samoa’s 59-year-old constitution – the very document that gives breath and life to her title and office as the Attorney-General of Samoa – and in the same vein witnessed the attacks on the Supreme Court and breaching of its orders without lifting a finger.
Attorney-General: how much more damage do our institutions that are key in the administration of justice in Samoa have to sustain before you step in and start upholding the constitution and the values it stands for in line with the responsibilities of your office?
But then we remind ourselves that we are not within the “secret whisper” circle with the caretaker Prime Minister, to afford ourselves the privilege of making judicial appointments such as the Chief Justice, and then turn around and cry wolf every time a court ruling goes against us and our interests.
Remember him talking during his press conference the other day of bringing in foreign judges because he didn’t trust the locally-constituted bench and accused them of favouritism?
It makes you wonder how much more does this country of under 200,000 people have to dance to Tuila’epa’s music simply because he didn’t like a court judgement.
There is no doubt that this constitutional crisis has left our judiciary battered and the long term-effect of the loss of public confidence in our courts and the rule of law will not augur for the future of this nation.
It is why the memo sent out by the Samoa Law Society on Wednesday –- which reminded all lawyers who are members of the society of their “fundamental duties” as practitioners of the law and as barristers and solicitors of the Supreme Court –- could not have come at a better time for the legal profession.
On the last page of the memo, the Samoa Law Society states in one of the paragraphs: “The danger of course, is that when the public is misinformed (inadvertently or otherwise) about the efficacy and value of the judicial process, the respect for the institution of the courts and the rule of law is lessened, and we are one step closer to anarchy and lawlessness.”
We continued to be in awe of the steadfastness of the Chief Justice, His Honour Satiu Sativa Perese and his justices as well as the judges of all levels of the courts in the face of adversity.
But the responsibility of upholding the rule of law does not just belong to His Honour and his justices as well as the judges and lawyers, but everyone who swore an oath to this nation, including the caretaker Prime Minister, the Head of State and the Attorney-General.
The Samoa Observer editorial on 28 May 2021. It has been republished here with permission.
As the focus of Samoa’s political crisis shifts to the courtrooms of our Supreme and District Courts, and with Monday, 24 May 2021, going down in the history books as a tale of alternate realities, we are left wondering if there is something missing.
Wherever you stand and whoever you support, surely there can be some common ground to be found among all Samoans, in the simple question of – where is the Head of State?
The Head of State, Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, has for all intents and purposes, gone AWOL.
The country has not heard from His Highness since the weekend, when issuing his Saturday night proclamation to suspend his Friday afternoon proclamation for Parliament to convene on Monday morning.
A promise to provide reasons for suspending the Friday proclamation was made, but four days later and the country is still waiting for answers as we uncoil ourselves from fetal positioning, after Monday’s events.
For the uninitiated: an ad-hoc Parliament was convened under a marquee outside Samoa’s hallowed Maota Fono. This was due to the fact that the doors of the Maota were locked and the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly’s refusal to adhere to a Supreme Court ruling.
The Head of State and the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly and staff were not in attendance for the late afternoon sitting of Parliament. Also conspicuously absent were the 25 elected MPs from the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP), including their leader and caretaker Prime Minister Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi.
That the HRPP was not in attendance came as no surprise, because Tuila’epa had made it clear that they would not be attending.
That they would stoop to such levels to stop the convening of the 17th Parliament is reprehensible, but frankly, unsurprising.
Tuilaepa’s reach is long, and the Head of State’s absence from Monday’s convening, shows just how long.
So the majority of Parliament’s elected members (26) – all from Faatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) – went ahead with their own swearing-in ceremony, swore their oaths and signed in as legislators of the 17th Parliament using collapsible tables, stackable plastic chairs and Chinese mats.
It was a woeful sight; and yet perfectly emblematic of what Samoa’s democracy has been reduced to.
OPINION: The Head of State’s previous edicts to delay Parliament denied 26 constituencies their right to see their elected members sworn-in and seated in our Maota Fono on Monday. It has added to the destructive trail on our already battered Constitution. https://t.co/mhUMY3XaBI
The Head of State’s absence from that watershed Parliament sitting on Monday may perhaps debunk any wholesale belief that his role is merely in title alone.
We say this because only he could have changed the course of Monday’s events, had he shown up and flouted the HRPP leader’s declaration that there would be no convening of Parliament.
By following his own Friday afternoon proclamation and allowing the 17th Parliament to convene, and by conducting the swearing-in of new members of the Legislative Assembly inside the Maota Fono, His Highness could have set our current political path back to where it should be.
And that is with the installation of our next government, which would have been FAST-led.
Whatever else that was set to come, such as petitions, would see their day in court and the outcome could have been dealt with accordingly.
Considering the significant number of election petitions filed with the courts, the final lineup of government could have changed over time.
Well, that was what we believe should have happened.
Whether that fits with a caretaker government’s timeline or party politics is irrelevant. That is what is enshrined in our constitution and the process we have always followed.
Stepping back and allowing another party to take the wheel, as the courts make their way through the petitions, may not be a desirable outcome for the HRPP, but that’s not their call to make.
How is it that a political party can stop the swearing in of another political party? The answer is they can’t.
Government is involved, to be sure, as we saw with the non-attendance of the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly, the locking of the Assembly doors and of course – the missing Head of State.
His absence has added to the destructive trail on our already battered constitution.
The Head of State’s previous edicts to delay Parliament denied 26 constituencies their right to see their elected members sworn-in and seated in our Maota Fono on Monday.
His absence leaves us with the caretaker government at the helm, refusing to step away; led by the caretaker Prime Minister, who appears to move seamlessly between his role as caretaker PM and HRPP party leader, as he continues to fulfill the duties of both, often simultaneously.
His absence leaves us with a Prime Minister-elect, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, who was sworn-in under unprecedented circumstances.
What could have been a simple timeline moving from general elections to the swearing in of our complete Legislative Assembly has veered off in to uncharted territory.
We are now in the ugly position of having two parties claiming to be government.
Our supreme law is there to guide us in these times, and so our beacon of hope remains with the judiciary.
Any questions requiring the interpretation of law should never be left to the court of public opinion nor in the hands of politicians, because that is not their purview.
No one person should ever be judge, jury and executioner. This is pertinent when considering the current actions of the caretaker leader, who has levelled serious accusations at his political opponents and the judiciary.
The separation of these powers is what makes a democracy, and keeps everyone accountable.
When you attempt to circumvent that path by altering an electoral timeline that has been tried and true over previous elections and by undermining the integrity of the judiciary and denying elected Members of Parliament from being sworn in as others have been sworn for decades, we have to ask if there is something amiss in the house of HRPP. Or are all members of the party as complicit as their leader?
The sitting of our new Parliament, and adherence to the electoral process where petitions would ultimately decide the final makeup of seats in the Assembly should have been the path we follow.
A journalist was recently fired from one of the largest and most well-known media organizations in the world over her criticism of Israel. We shouldn’t be surprised, though. This is hardly the first time and probably won’t be the last either given the last few years have seen multiple journalists lose their positions at mainstream media outlets following their criticism of Israel’s actions. And this highlights both these outlets’ increasing inability to cover the conflict in Palestine effectively and the need for independent media like The Canary to fill the gap in reporting that is left in the wake of that failure.
Fired for tweets made while a university student!
On 19 May, a reporter for the US-based newswire Associated Press was fired from her position for violating the company’s social media policy. Emily Wilder began working for the organization – which is the largest and oldest news agency/wire service in the US – just 16 days before her sacking. Reports say that the action was taken over Twitter posts she had made while a student at Stanford University in California. Wilder, who is herself Jewish, is said to have belonged to pro-Palestinian campus groups Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine while at Stanford.
Wilder has said that her sacking was prompted by a smear campaign launched by Stanford College Republicans, a right-wing student group at the university that described her on Twitter as an “anti-Israel agitator”. Far-right news outlets including Fox News and the Washington Free Beacon subsequently ran stories with headlines such as AP Hires Anti-Israel Activist as News Associate. AP’s Objectivity in Question Amid Revelations it Shared Office Space with Hamas.
I am one victim to the asymmetrical enforcement of rules around objectivity and social media that has censored so many journalists – particularly Palestinian journalists and other journalists of color – before me.
“objectivity” feels fickle when the basic terms we use to report news implicitly stake a claim. using “israel” but never “palestine,” or “war” but not “siege and occupation” are political choices—yet media make those exact choices all the time without being flagged as biased
Wilder is correct that she is not the first person to have been sacked by a mainstream news outlet for criticizing the actions of the Israeli government. In February, the Guardianfired British-American journalist and academic Nathan J. Robinson over a purportedly “antisemitic” Twitter post about US military aid to Israel. The tweet suggested that there is a US law that every spending bill must include aid to Israel within its text in order to pass through Congress.
The Guardian demanding loyalty to Israel…
Not only was the comment clearly meant as sarcasm, Robinson even posted a disclaimer in a reply tweet making clear that no such law actually exists and that he was simply making a point about US aid to Israel. And given that this was when US lawmakers had given millions more to Israel right around the same time as it passed a miserly and insufficient coronavirus (Covid-19) relief bill, the tweet was making an important point about the US’s warped priorities – especially since Israel is already the largest cumulative recipient of US aid since World War II.
Nonetheless, he received an email from Guardian US’s editor in chief John Mulholland accusing him of both antisemitism and of spreading “fake news”. Mulholland demanded that Robinson immediately delete the tweet and apologize. He complied on both counts, apologizing specifically for “doing anything that could be construed as compromising the integrity of the paper”. Mulholland responded by thanking him for his “swift reply, and action” and indicated that the working relationship would continue. However, apparently, Robinson had been lied to. After a few weeks of his editor failing to respond to his pitches, his editor at the Guardian terminated his column following pressure from Mulholland and explained Robinson couldn’t pitch freelance articles either.
…and not for the first time
Writing in Common Dreams, Jonathan Cook, who had also fallen foul of the Guardian’s unwritten guidelines on Israel, was clear about its motivation:
The unspoken Guardian rule we broke was to suggest one of the following: that there might be inherent contradictions between Israel’s claim to be a democracy and its self-definition in exclusivist, chauvinist, ethnic terms; or that Israel’s self-declared status as a militaristic, ethnic, rather than civic, state might be connected to its continuing abuses and crimes against Palestinians; or that, because Israel wishes to conceal its ugly, anachronistic ethnic project, it and its defenders might act in bad faith; or that the US might be actively complicit in this ethnically inspired, colonial project to dispossess Palestinians.
Robinson, Cook, and Wilder are not the only ones to face dismissal for criticizing Israel either. In November 2018, CNNfired longtime contributor Marc Lamont Hill following comments he made during a speech at the United Nations. Hill, who is also a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, had stated that he supports a “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” As was the case with Wilder, pro-Israel groups applied pressure to fire him and the right-wing media, including Fox News, put their weight behind the effort.
A tried and trusted tactic of pro-Israel groups
In an essay discussing his dismissal from the Guardian, Robinson described how this process works:
The Center for Constitutional Rights has shown that “Israel advocacy organizations, universities, government actors, and other institutions” have targeted pro-Palestinian activists with a number of tactics “including event cancellations, baseless legal complaints, administrative disciplinary actions, firings, and false and inflammatory accusations of terrorism and antisemitism” and concludes that there is a “Palestine exception to free speech.”
Clearly, mainstream media outlets like the Associated Press and the Guardian can’t be trusted to tell the truth about Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians and its increasing degeneration into an outright apartheid state. After all, how can they when they actively penalize their own staff for violating its ironclad commitment to shielding Israel and its US backers from criticism? A large responsibility, therefore, falls to independent media outlets like The Canary to push back against this organized effort to silence those who stand up for truth and Palestinian rights.
On 24 May, hundreds of local people joined a demonstration outside an Israeli arms company in Leicester. The protest was in support of a six-day long rooftop occupation of the factory by campaigners calling for the factory to be closed down.
Demonstrators were met by lines of police in riot gear:
Police swarm in riot gear to protect Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, who test their weapons on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. #ShutElbitDownpic.twitter.com/J0dVUFe2ef
Undaunted, the crowd tried to prevent the police from arresting the people who had been occupying the factory:
The resistance continues! Brave supporters have managed to hold the site and blockade the removal of arrested activists for over 6 hours. And it isn’t stopping until we #ShutElbitDownpic.twitter.com/LSUnlRkcrn
The factory occupation began on 19 May in response to Israel’s aerial assault on the Gaza Strip, which killed 247 Palestinians, including 66 children, in 11 days. A ceasefire was announced on 21 May.
While the Leicester occupation was ongoing, thousands demonstrated around the UK marking a day of action on 22 May. Up to 180,000 people marched in London.
What if the hundreds of thousands of people who have taken to the streets across the UK could turn their attention to the factories providing weapons to fuel Israel’s attack? What if the scenes last night outside Elbit’s Leicester factory could be repeated at Elbit’s ten sites across the UK?
We need “more and more” action
Palestinians have been calling for international solidarity as they rise up against Israel’s brutal occupation. Just listen to this speech by Shahd Abusalma, a Palestinian woman in Gaza who lives in Sheffield:
Another Palestinian woman – speaking from the occupied West Bank – told The Canary:
We thank the solidarity campaigners for their activities but it is not enough. What is happening in Gaza – the destruction and killing of people in cold blood needs more and more action. Even if the war ends, what is next? Shall we wait for another war, for more crimes before we organise and call again for a free Palestine?
Evidence of drones
During the factory occupation in Leicester, campaigners managed to enter the factory and photograph drones being manufactured there:
Activists in #Leicester entered Israel's arms factory & saw the body of a military drone. The police then entered the building, removed the drone and are currently guarding it. #ShutElbitDownpic.twitter.com/SNlXiqgQu8
They had also threw red paint at the walls of the factory, symbolising the blood of the Palestinians killed by equipment manufactured by Elbit.
Over the weekend campaigners in Bristol daubed Elbit’s registered office with red paint, and wrote Save Sheikh Jarrah across its walls, in solidarity with the struggle for survival of Palestinians living in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah:
#SaveSheikhJarrah, Free Palestine! Elbit’s offices in Bristol targeted
The night after the arrests in Leicester – on the morning of 25 May – campaigners occupied the roof of another Elbit factory, this time in Tamworth.
Years of campaigning
In response to Israel’s brutal occupation – and to the massive Israeli attack on Gaza in 2009 – Palestinian civil society groups called for a two way arms embargo of Israel in 2011. This two-way embargo demanded that states cease selling weapons to Israel, and also refrain from buying armaments from Israeli companies.
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) calls for global campaigns against Elbit, Israel’s largest arms company,
Demands for the closure of Elbit’s UK sites snowballed during the last full-scale attack on Gaza in 2014. Direct actions against Elbit’s factories increased in momentum as Israel attacked Gaza, campaigners occupied the roof of Elbit’s Shenstone factory, and blockaded its gates with lock-ons at the company’s Kent premises.
In 2015, Elbit unsuccessfully applied for a high court injunction against protests at its Shenstone factory
In 2020, the Palestine Action campaign group was formed, and since then it has further intensified the struggle against Elbit, holding repeated occupations of Elbit sites, break ins at the company’s factories, and demonstrations outside Elbit’s office in London. The campaign has also been targeting the company which owns Elbit’s London office, LaSalle Investment Management. Campaigners are calling for LaSalle to evict Elbit.
Taking the fight to their doorsteps
The demonstration in Leicester in support of the rooftop occupiers was the largest demonstration outside a UK Elbit factory in this long history of campaigning. The support for Palestine on the streets right now shows that we can repeat what happened in Leicester at Elbit’s sites across the UK. We owe it to our Palestinian comrades to make sure that happens.
Featured Image via Palestine Action/Vudi Xhymshiti
Tom Anderson is part of the Shoal Collective, a cooperative producing writing for social justice and a world beyond capitalism. Twitter: shoalcollective
New battlelines in Samoa’s ongoing political crisis were drawn this week. After an evening swearing-in ceremony on the lawn of Parliament house, Samoa now has two governments claiming a mandate to rule.
What comes next will have vast ramifications for the Pacific nation, its region and for democracy globally.
On Monday, May 24, Fa’atuatua I Le Atua Samoa Ua Tasi (FAST) Party members, led by Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, arrived at Parliament house to be sworn into office following their one-seat election win on April 9.
They found the doors locked by order of Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, who has been prime minister for the last 23 years. By late afternoon, with the building still locked, the marquee swearing-in ceremony took place outside.
This was the 45th day since the election, the last date on which the newly elected parliament could sit according to Samoa’s constitution.
A constitutional arm wrestle The unprecedented delay was due to a series of extraordinary maneuvres aimed at keeping Tuila’epa’s Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) in power after losing its first election in 40 years.
By forcing the clock to run out on the 45-day limit for a new Parliament to convene, the HRPP would propel Samoa into uncharted constitutional waters, providing justification for another election.
The Head of State, Tuimaleali’ifano Va’aleto’a Sualauvi, had declared the April 9 election results void and that a second election be held May 21. On May 17, the Supreme Court deemed that declaration illegal, upholding FAST as the victors of the vote and ordering parliament to convene on May 24.
Then, on May 22, the Head of State abruptly announced Parliament was suspended until further notice. Fiame described this latest development as a “coup”.
In response, the Supreme Court held an urgent hearing on May 23. It again overruled the Head of State and ordered Parliament to sit on May 24.
A “thank you” ceremony in Apia yesterday for the supporters of the FAST party. Image: APR screenshot
Court and church lend legitimacy The makeshift swearing-in ceremony gave Prime Minister-elect Fiame’s government legitimacy. The presence of the revered former Head of State, Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Efi, aided the optics. The current Head of State, who has shocked many with his actions, was said to have left the capital, Apia, for a distant village.
Also legitimising the Fiame government’s swearing-in was the chairman of the Congregational Christian Church, Reverend Elder Iosefa Atapana Uilelea, who led the opening prayers. Until that point, the immense moral force of church leadership had not been activated to support either side.
Incumbent Prime Minister Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi … naked power grab after his HRPP lost an election for the first time in 40 years. Image: APR screenshot
More ominous was his accusing FAST of “stealing” his authority and “treason”.
Tuila’epa’s strategy to retain power has relied on an interpretation of powers of the head of state that have no basis in law or precedent. When these moves have been blocked by the Supreme Court, he has denounced it as illegitimate and ignored its decisions.
By contrast, Fiame (who was Tuila’epa’s deputy until late 2020) and her FAST members have exhibited professionalism, restraint, and faith in Samoa’s constitution, courts and the people who put them in power.
Now, new battlelines will be drawn over which government is the legitimate one and who adjudicates that critical point. This will entail more direct confrontation between the Head of State and Supreme Court, which will extend the deadlock.
How will the crisis be resolved? Without a military, Samoa cannot resolve its crisis like neighbouring Fiji, where the army has staged multiple coups since 1987. In Samoa, the police occupy a pivotal role, but to date have acted peacefully and in accordance with the courts.
But since May 17, another factor has come into play. Samoa has attracted regional and world attention because Fiame is the first female leader of the country, and one of few in the region.
Samoa is a microcosm of US President Joe Biden’s recent description of the struggles between democracy and the autocratic political regimes favoured by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Samoa moved closer to China under Tuila’epa but that may now be reversed under Fiame.
So far, New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne, have made cautious statements about their faith in Samoa’s democratic institutions.
In the coming days, New Zealand and Australia, the US, Japan, Britain, the European Union and the main regional body, the Pacific Islands Forum, must actively support Samoa’s democratically elected government in any way requested by Fiame.
Supportive words may soon be inadequate as Tuila’epa makes his next moves in what looks now like a naked power grab.
Fiame Naomi Mata’afa taking the oath of office to govern Samoa seven weeks after being elected is an event of generational, regional, and international significance.
Today and for her conduct since April 9, we congratulate Fiame. We wish her ability to form a workable administration proceeds and the very best in government, as the leader of a nation whose fate is twinned with Samoa’s own.
There will, of course, be legal challenges. But the symbolism of Monday’s event was an assertion of power by the rightful winner of the election. It was necessary, not only to uphold the constitution but to remind many in Samoan politics that they exist to serve the people, not powerful interests.
The proper place for the occasion of Fiame’s swearing-in was inside our chamber of democracy — the people’s house; the Parliament.
But it was not to be. Instead, Fiame and the Faatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party had to hold an unprecedented ad-hoc swearing-in, something they were forced to do to ensure that a constitutional requirement that Parliament meets 45 days after a national election was met.
Perhaps we should have expected that the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP), having played political games and thumbed its nose at the rule of law since it lost its majority at last month’s election, was not about to face up to reality and honour democracy.
It is clear that they continue to intend to play the spoiler’s role after not showing up to Monday’s swearing-in and stating that the absence of the Head of State had rendered the event invalid.
The Head of State’s attempts to cancel Monday’s court-ordered Parliamentary sitting were quashed; this was the fourth ruling against HRPP attempts to prevent the forming of a new government all in one week.
EDITORIAL: The rambling, shambling circus that has continued on now for seven weeks since last month’s election; it was really resolved within seven days. https://t.co/aGjvUftIlj
Having exhausted legal avenues they resorted to the cheap tactic of simply locking the doors to the people’s house. The party has no right to make this nation hostage while they continue to cook up last-ditch schemes to hold onto power.
The rambling, shambling circus that has continued on now for seven weeks since last month’s election; it was really resolved within seven days.
In the interim, it began as a tantrum by a leader who could not stand up to the truth came close to ending with him pulling out every stop to derail proper government.
The actions of Tuila’epa Dr Sa’ilele Malielegaoi and those who aided and abetted him brought dishonour upon this nation.
These were the actions of someone who expects others to submit to his power; is unaccustomed to hearing “no”; and forgotten his office only derives its authority from the legitimacy provided by people.
When the history of this country is written, these actions will largely define their legacy: refusing to place the value of the nation above their own self-interest.
Many descriptors have been reached for by observers seeking to capture the magnitude of the events that have gripped this nation.
None proved hyperbolic in the end. It was only at the last minute and by the intervention of a man who acted in accordance with the high principles that befit his office: His Honour, Chief Justice Satiu Simativa Perese.
If anything captured the crisis of Samoan democracy, it was the image of Justice Satiu, dressed in full judicial regalia approaching the front doors of the Legislative Assembly with his judicial colleagues only to find them locked before humbly turning on his heel and walking away.
And so it has been. The party that has ruled over Samoa for decades has played games with the law in the weeks after its election loss. Even on Monday night as Tuila’epa was invoking threats of legal action he was simultaneously – yet again – trashing the courts and casting doubt on their independence.
Perhaps his frustrations are starting to show with his failure to get his way via the judiciary.
Fiame has shown humility, calm, and wisdom as all around her has turned chaotic. Not once has she given off any sign of panic. Nor has she sought to stoke public discontent as a political tactic.
She has more than earned her position as this nation’s new Prime Minister.
Last week alone, on four separate occasions the party was handed four separate losses in court over attempts to scrap the election of forestalling the forming of a new government.
Already under attack from Tuila’epa while in office, the judiciary has shown remarkable poise throughout this political crisis and served as the defining line between chaos and order.
But given the tenor of Tuila’epa’s press conference on Monday, we can expect there to be no end to the games.
He disputes the legitimacy of Fiame’s signing in.
As he notes, the Head of State was not, as the constitution requires, present for the swearing-in of her Faatuatua ile Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party MPs.
But similarly, the Head of State was fast taking Samoa down a path of lawlessness. If no swearing-in had taken place on Monday then the government would be in breach of the law of the land. Samoa would truly be in uncharted and lawless territory. What would have happened to the nation then?
We anticipate Fiame’s swearing-in it to be challenged, ridiculed and diminished by Tuila’epa. But we also believe his voice is now consigned to slowly fade into the background, having done incalculable damage to his own once-proud political legacy.
Ultimately though ugly political disputes are resolved by the exercise of law and order, a low point that civil society should never reach.
We have seen a recent upsurge in divisive rhetoric among the people of Samoa, dogmatically backing one party or the other as the true winners of the April 9 election.
It is our sincere hope that, whatever transpires, these words do not translate into real unrest.
But it was heartening to see the Police Commissioner, Fuiavailiili Egon Keil, escorted Justice Satiu on his unsuccessful walk.
It was not his officers who had the building locked.
But when asked for comment on what role the police would take, stating that he considered it the force’s job to uphold the rule of law, which, he said, included the constitution — the ultimate legal document.
“This is what we do every day,” he told reporters. “We’ll continue down that road until this thing ends.”
It is our sincere hope that the commissioner does not have to become involved to further mar what should be a proud moment in our democratic history. But he has made a clear signal of intent that he is on the side of the rule of law: its provisions on whether an election can be voided or a swearing-in can be voided in breach of constitutional provisions has been made painfully clear this month.
But another element of legitimacy is popular acceptance.
Rulers ultimately derive their authority from being recognised by the public as those in charge.
We call on the public to put this sorry saga behind us and to unite behind a new Prime Minister.
Fiame has shown humility, calm, and wisdom as all around her has turned chaotic. Not once has she given off any sign of panic. Nor has she sought to stoke public discontent as a political tactic.
She has more than earned her position as this nation’s new Prime Minister.
This is Samoa. We do not need force to be exercised to make a swearing-in law. We have already spoken at the ballot box, nearly two months ago. In the meantime, we have seen disgraceful attempts to flout and undermine the rule of law.
Whatever happens next we must never forget that politicians – and the people they appoint – serve only with authority that comes from us and us alone – the people. Ultimately we set the standards for their acceptable conduct and are the ultimate arbiters of what is politically right.
Published by the Samoa Observer on 25 May 2021. Republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.
I lived in Gaza from 2011, through the attack of 2014, and for one year after. I am not Palestinian, but some of the things I remember will be relevant in the coming months.
The bombardment was shattering. There followed a winter of soul-destroying neglect by donor states. Tens of thousands of Gazans remained in UNRWA shelter-schools. Many more families shivered in remnant housing, on tilting slabs of concrete, in rooms with three walls and a blanket hung in lieu of a fourth, persistently cold and wet.
Recovery? America sold Israel $1.9 billion in replacement arms. The World Bank assessed Israel’s bomb damage to Gaza at $4.4 billion. Of the $5.4 billion that donors pledged to reconstruct Gaza, in that critical first year the International Crisis Group calculated that the donor states actually came up with a paltry $340 million.
Aid is an insufficient place-holding response, but it is needed now. This time, it cannot happen the same way.
Having bombed, Israel is allowed to carry on the assault by slow strangulation.
In the workaday business of delivering the material needed to rebuild, the blockade allows Israel to choose the chokepoints of reconstruction. Having bombed, Israel is allowed to carry on the assault by slow strangulation.
In 2014 they were allowed to impose a farcical compliance regime for the cement that was needed to rebuild the 18,000 homes they had damaged or destroyed. UNRWA engineers were required to waste their days sitting next to concrete mixers.
International staff spent hours of each day driving between them to count — unbelievably — sacks of cement. 100,000 people were homeless and cement was permitted to reach them like grains of sand through an eye-dropper. Not a single home was built through the remainder of 2014.
Choking off the supplies
Perhaps this time Israel will choke off the supplies needed to re-pave the tens of thousands of square meters of road they have blown up; it will be something. We have watched an attack on the veins and arteries of modern civilian infrastructure.
If the crossings regime is allowed to remain in place, we will be leaving the Israeli government to decide unilaterally whether Gazans will be permitted to live in the modern world.
This time, it simply cannot go the same way.
I was as frightened by the way the bombs changed us. 1200 hours of incessant terror and violence had re-wired our brains. The lassitude, the thousand-yard-stares, the woman from Rafah who clutched her midsection as if she could hold her twelve lost relatives in place. I and my team of Gazan over-achievers struggled to finish any task on time.
Eight months later I found research on the anterior midcingulate cortex to help us understand how bombardment can alter the finishing brain. Every step seemed to be so steeply uphill.
Even more un-Gazan, we often struggled alone. The very essence of Gaza is its density. In its urban streets you know the passersby with smalltown frequency. Gaza coheres with the intentional social glue of resistance.
After the bombardment, people seemed to float alone with their memories. The human heart returns to the scene of unresolved trauma, and our hearts were stuck in many different rooms.
Good people suffering
The good people who listened and cared as professionals or as neighbours, were themselves suffering. Parents compared notes through those months: how many of their children still slept beneath their beds in case the planes came back?
Over everyone’s heads hung the knowledge that there had been no substantial agreement beyond a cessation of firing.
I felt I was watching people reach for each other, and for meaning. Young Gazan men stood for hours, waving Palestinian flags over the rubble of Shuja’iyya while residents crawled over the rubble landscape in search of something familiar. Bright pennants sprouted across the bombed-out windows of apartments.
Not everyone found meaning. Suicide and predatory behaviour also rose. Hamas cracked down on dissent violently, while more-radical groups made inroads among young people who may have felt they had no other agency.
The aftermath was all these things at once. When I left Gaza in late 2015, it felt poised between resuming and despairing. Since then, it has gone on for another six years. This bombardment picked up where the last one left off: in 2014 the destruction of apartment blocks was Israel’s final act and this time, it was their opening salvo.
This time, we cannot let it go the same way.
I had to learn to harness my sadness and outrage. If we are to make it different this time, we need to do that.
Reclaimed rubble sea wall, Gaza City … “this isn’t over [yet for Palestine and Gaza] and we will not let it go the same way.” Image: Marilyn GarsonRaging at the blockade
In the first weeks after the 2014 bombing, I could only rage at the blockade wall but the wall stood, undented. I didn’t know how to look further, and as a Jew I was afraid to look further. I began to read books on military accountability. Those principles helped to focus my gaze beyond the wall.
Now as then, we have witnessed a barbaric action, comprised of choices. Individuals are accountable for each of those choices. It is neither partisan nor, must I say it, antisemitic to call them to account ceaselessly.
Accountability takes the side of civilian protection. If one belligerent causes the overwhelming share of the wrongful death and damage, then that party has duly earned the overwhelming share of our attention. Call them out.
Loathe the wall but rage wisely at its structural supports: expedient politics, the arms trade that profits by field-testing its weapons on Gazan Palestinians, any denial of the simple equality of our lives, the hand-wringing or indifference of the bystander. Those hold the wall up.
Prior to this violence, Donald Trump had been busily normalising Israel’s diplomatic relations – good-bye to all that. Normalise BDS, not the occupation of Palestine. Apply sustained, peaceful, external pressure as you would to any other wound.
BDS firmly rejects an apartheid arrangement of power, until all people enjoy equality and self-determination.
Palestinians as a single nation
“See and reject the single system that classifies life ethnically between the river and the sea. When you recognise a single systemic wrong, you have recognised Palestinians as a single nation.
A statement by scholars of genocide, mass violence and human rights last week described the danger: “[T]he violence now has intensified systemic racism and exclusionary and violent nationalism in Israel—a well-known pattern in many cases of state violence—posing a serious risk for continued persecution and violence against Palestinians, exacerbated by the political instability in Israel in the last few months.”
In other words, this isn’t over and we will not let it go the same way.
The risk to Gaza now is the risk of our disengagement before we have brought down the walls. That is the task; nothing less. This time, Gaza must go free.
Marilyn Garson writes about Palestinian and Jewish dissent. This article was first published by Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices and is republished with permission. The original article can be read here.
The past two years have been disproportionately difficult for students, with GCSE and A-Level students in particular feeling the brunt. The Tory government has not only not done anything to aid the NHS in fighting coronavirus (Covid-19), it has left GCSE and A-Level students with a cloud of uncertainty and lack of clarification. After initially promising exams were cancelled, it then imposed “mini-assessments” – essentially exams with a different name – on students instead. And the impact on students has been massive.
I am one of those students who was due to take their GCSEs this summer. I have friends who are suffering more panic attacks this year than any other year. I am one of those people, too. There comes a certain point where we need to demand accountability from the government and that time is now. We have passed the point of this being just a mistake the government has made; this is a clear misuse of power by a government with an obvious unsympathetic and callous attitude towards the future voices of this country.
Broken promises
In January 2021, prime minister Boris Johnson announced that it is “not possible or fair for all exams to go ahead this summer as normal”. Since then, the country has witnessed a succession of broken promises. Students listened while their teachers told them their classwork would be the primary source of their teacher assessed grades. It has been a scary road adapting to a completely unfamiliar system to get the grades they deserve.
Then in February 2021, education secretary Gavin Williamson announced:
Young people have shown incredible resilience over the last year, continuing with their learning amidst unprecedented challenges while the country battles with this pandemic. Those efforts deserve to be fairly rewarded.
Disguising this new system as “fair” is an utterly unjust use of words. Especially given a further announcement in February that schools would also be allowed to set optional “mini exams”.
On 22 April, students in my school were told that the very exams they thought they would not be sitting were, in fact happening and starting the following week. What were originally disguised as “mini-assessments” are now formal exams – some of which will take place in exam halls – which schools have to rearrange timetables to make space for.
Impact
Exams going ahead will mean that a considerable number of pupils will be at a disadvantage. The current system – teacher assessed grades (TAG) – was first announced on 25 February, alongside optional mini-exams. This created a two-tier system: some schools based their grades on ongoing assessments, where teachers could grade students through a portfolio of evidence, such as coursework, classwork and past mock exams. Meanwhile, othersopted to take exams.
In reality that has meant in the past week many students have been sitting formal exams, with teachers acting as invigilators and students who need support given transcribers and readers. Many have been sat in classrooms in exam conditions; however, due to exam board regulations requiring schools to sit the exam as a whole year group, some will be sat in sports halls and gymnasiums.
The point of cancelling exams in the first place was to relieve pupils of the stress normal exams would cause. So why, now, is the government still going ahead with formal exams?
Students are tired of explaining to the government that they cannot carry on as normal. Missing a year of school in the middle of GCSE and A-Level curriculum has left many fighting for the bare minimum grades. Young people should not have to explain to the government why they cannot sit their exams as normal in the midst of a world pandemic where millions of people have died. But not only does the government think this is acceptable behaviour, it seems to believe this is an equitable system. Students deserve more than this.
I’m ashamed and embarrassed of our country
To be honest, I’m ashamed and embarrassed of our country. I’m not even shy to admit this anymore. I grew up in a community of people committed to loving the Queen and her “service” to the country. We had street parties for the Jubilee, for every birthday and every kind of celebration you can think of. My uncle, before he died, was a sergeant in the Air Force. I grew up under the impression that being patriotic was a good thing. But I’m long past being patriotic. By the time in my life that I eventually broke free of that, I was instantly happier. I was tired of supporting people who couldn’t give a shit about me.
This country is not something to be proud of. This country is one that prioritises middle and upper class citizens and persecutes the poor. This country refuses to feed children in poverty but will fork out £200m for a dead imperial colonialist who spent his life using his whiteness to stain poorer countries. This country is proud of the trauma it has inflicted on war-torn countries, it is proud of imposing poverty on the very people it swore to protect. We are in shambles, and those in power don’t care.
They don’t care about working class people, they don’t care about the climate crisis, they don’t care about minorities, and they certainly don’t care about the students of this country. They have failed us. It’s time to fight back.
Don’t believe the bullshit
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