Palestine protesters in Aotearoa New Zealand celebrated an unprecedented 150 weeks of continuous Gaza genocide rallies in the heart of Auckland today and were told by a human rights advocate they were the “rainbow people — offering hope”.

Kathy Voyles, who describes herself as a global citizen dividing her time between New Zealand and The Netherlands, said Gaza was “standing at a knife’s edge” and sometimes hope seemed far away.

“And then I remember the late, great Susi Newborn, who said, ‘You can’t sink a rainbow.’

• READ MORE: Resident in Israeli-besieged Qusra home in Palestine says food and water running low
• Other Gaza protest reports

“We are that rainbow people. We are that hope.”

She warned that the Israeli leaders would face justice for their horrendous crimes and atrocities, and spoke of a former head of state who had eventually paid a price.

“I will never forget that day in June 2001 when the former Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, who was responsible for so many deaths in the former Yugoslavia who came to The Hague to be put in prison.”

Voyles remembered so many people who had worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

“The ICC, ICTY and other tribunals have tried 200 people from all around the world. The Serbian government got him to The Hague despite his followers objecting.”

Breached Genocide Convention
Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006 before the genocide trial could conclude, but the ICC separately found him guilty of breaching the Genocide Convention.

Another former leader, ex-Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, is currently in The Hague awaiting trial for crimes against humanity or murder and attempted murder over mass killings during the eight-year so-called “war on drugs”.

The ICC also wants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on arrest warrants for the alleged war crimes of starvation, and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

“Now we know that Israel and the US are doing their best to close down the ICC — and that must not happen,” said Voyles.

“They are doing that because they are scared.

“One thing that I did learn while working in that field in The Hague is that national governments hate to be shamed and embarrassed, no matter how strong they think they are.

“We have signed up to various [human rights] conventions even though our government is doing its best to forget that.

“So let’s keep reminding them.”

Message of hope
Voyles reminded the protesters of her initial message today of hope.

“So I say there is hope. And for our own mental health we must continue to do what we do.

“Every week until there is a rainbow and hope for the people left in Gaza and the Occupied Territories, for Sudan, for the Congo, for Yemen, for West Papua, for the people of Myanmar and so many others.

“We cannot forget them ever.”

One way of taking action was to get everyone enrolled to vote in New Zealand and “then we change this inept government”.

“Out with Chris Luxon, Winston Peters and David Seymour. We want leaders who are us, not the I.”

Honour to speak
Voyles said it was an honour to speak for the people of Palestine – Gaza and the Occupied Territories. At least 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in the genocide and more than 1200 people since the so-called “ceasefire” declared in October 2025.

She challenged the crowd to keep “endlessly, ceaselessly talking, tweeting and emailing about it.”

The kaikōrero for the rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square, Lamees Elthiny, paid tribute to the crowd for their resilient 150 weeks of protest.

Everyone had been “fighting the battle of Palestine in their own way”, she said.

“Everyone is standing for humanity, but doing it differently. And we decided to keep coming over and over again here to Britomart and our voices will be heard until Palestine is free.”

Adnan Swaid, a Nakba victim, son of Palestinian refugee parents and freedom activist who had lived for 50 years as a stateless human being, spoke of Israel’s ever-growing Zionist crimes.

“Since the establishment of the Zionist idea in the 18th century, the Zionist lying machine was established as well for producing and spreading of Zionist lies,” he said.

Compelling poems
Jacqueline “Jax” Taylor of the Stand With Palestine Waiheke community group recited two compelling poems.

“All the world’s best poets have a little drinkie to help when the words won’t flow,” she said introducing one of her poems that she had compiled in dedication to the ‘150 Weeks’!”

Ihumatao and Rocket Lab protester Brendan Corbett praised a Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa-backed lawsuit that was filed in the High Court at Wellington this week seeking a judicial review of the New Zealand government approval for the launching of BlackRock spy satellites that are alleged to be complicit with the Gaza genocide.

“The lawsuit is charging that our Ministers of Space, Judith Collins, and the latest one, Chris Penk, and now Paul Goldsmith, who is yet to be selected, but he has got the job,” Corbett said.

“These people had signed a launch certificate to allow Rocket Lab to launch BlackSky satellites that have a contract to act with the IDF to target across Israel, across Palestine.

“The research after months and months has resulted in the lawyers being super confident that they can get a conviction — so well done to these lawyers.”

Maritime intelligence firm Kpler counted 13 vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday.

The number is small. But the number is not the story.

The story is that nine of those 13 took the Iranian-approved route. The route American warned ships against using.

• READ MORE: Trump says he will declare Hormuz US territory ‘pretty soon’
• Other war on Iran reports

Now the question is: Trump says the strait is “under our control”. So whose instructions are the ships following?

The answer is in the arithmetic. Sixty-nine percent of them ignored the American warning and entered Iran’s lane.

That is not a statement. Not a claim. That is a vote.

And the vote was cast by people with hundreds of millions of dollars floating on that water.

Plain language
CNN put it in plainer language. They wrote that the figure does not reflect Trump’s repeated insistence this week that the strait is “open” and under American control.

But today’s article will not only be about counting ships. Because Iran has done something on paper as well, and it has barely been discussed.

In May, Iran created an institution — the Persian Gulf Strait Authority.

According to a report by the US Congressional Research Service, Iran declared that no vessel may pass through the Strait of Hormuz without a valid passage permit issued by this authority.

Notice what that is. It is not a threat. It is administration.

A threat can stop a ship, but build a permit system and you never need to stop one. The ship comes to you and asks for permission.

And this is where Iran’s strategy becomes visible. Early in the war, Iran attacked vessels. That was a display of strength, but it carried a cost — every attack drained away the world’s sympathy.

A legal face
Now Iran attacks less and sells permits instead. Same result, but the face of it is legal.

There is one more line in the CRS report, and it is the foundation of this strategy. Iranian leaders claim it was the June memorandum of understanding that granted them the right to administer shipping through this strait.

Which is Iran saying:”We did not seize this power. You signed it over to us on paper.”

And what Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on June 23 is now coming true. He said “management of the strait will never return to the way it was before the war”.

But, yes, there is a big “but” here. And it would be unjust not to say it.

That same CRS report notes that Iran’s claim runs counter to geographic reality, because the Strait of Hormuz comprises the territorial waters of both Iran and Oman.

Which means Iran is not legally the sole owner of this strait. On paper, Iran’s claim is weak.

Iran’s lane followed
But paper and water are not the same thing. Whatever the law says, on Thursday nine ships followed Iran’s lane.

Now to America’s answer.

On Friday, the US Treasury issued new sanctions. The targets were Iran’s Shahr Bank, along with individuals, exchange houses and companies spread across several countries, accused of helping Iran move hundreds of millions of dollars clandestinely.

The Treasury said itself that this was its eighth set of sanctions in 2026 against Iran’s alleged shadow-banking system.

Eighth. Eight times in one year.

Now the question is: if seven did not work, why would the eighth?

That is the problem with sanctions. The first one lands a blow. The second raises the pressure. But what does the eighth do?

The eighth only announces that the previous seven did not work.

The new normal
And the strangest thing of all is the oil price. CNN reported that despite no sign of the war ending, and despite traffic through the strait staying low, oil prices are falling.

So you can see for yourselves. The market is no longer listening to war news. The market has decided this is the new normal.

And once something becomes “normal”, the urgency to change it fades.

Meanwhile, on Thursday evening, Abu Dhabi’s state oil company ADNOC said two of its vessels were attacked while transiting Hormuz. No injuries.

Who attacked them? ADNOC did not say. No group claimed responsibility.

Since the war began, 15 ADNOC vessels have been attacked in total. One crew member killed, 20 injured.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is an American ally. And the ally’s ships are burning every week.

Now a word on something that touches South Asian countries too.

Floating Iranian oil
Early in this war, America adopted a tactic — temporarily lifting sanctions on roughly 140 million barrels of Iranian oil already floating at sea, so that supply would rise and prices would fall.

America’s Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, told Fox News at the time that this oil had previously gone mainly to China. Now it could go elsewhere. He named the places — such as India, Bangladesh or elsewhere

He added that sanctions on the banks would remain in place, so Iran would not see a cent of that money.

Think about what that means. Iran’s oil gets sold, South Asian countries get to buy it, and Iran does not get the money.

Developing countries are offered cheap oil as bait while Iran’s own asset is released onto the market, and the proceeds stay locked inside the American banking system.

That is not trade. That is imperial accounting.

Here I will not quote anyone else. I will give you my own opinion.

Paper ‘control’ v ships moving
The shape of this war is becoming clear now. Everything Trump is doing is on paper. Sanctions, Truth Social posts, declarations of “total control”.

Everything Iran is doing is on the water. Which route, whose permission, which ship and when.

In March, Trump called on China, France, Japan, South Korea and Britain to send ships, “let us open the strait together”. Nobody answered.

Five months on, America has drawn a route through that same strait, and the ships are avoiding it and choosing Iran’s.

Control written on paper, or ships moving on water — which of the two is real power?

Let me finish with the number I started with.

Thirteen ships. Nine on Iran’s route.

Trump says the strait is ours. The ships’ captains are saying something else.

And at sea, the captain has the last word.

Republished from Iran International under Creative Commons.

Today, we mark an extraordinary milestone: 42 years of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC).

As we reflect on this journey, we are reminded of the countless lives that have intersected with our work since 1984. Over the past four decades, 168,145 survivors have accessed the services of FWCC and its branches throughout Fiji.

These include survivors of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, sexual harassment, child abuse, and other forms of violence and abuse.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre reports

Yet numbers alone can never tell the full story.

Statistics cannot capture the fear of a woman escaping violence in the middle of the night. They cannot describe the courage it takes to disclose rape for the first time.

They cannot measure the resilience of survivors who rebuild their lives after trauma, nor reflect the determination of women who refused to give up despite experiencing violence, discrimination, and inequality.

Every individual who walked through our doors came seeking safety, support, and dignity. Many arrived carrying experiences that no one should ever have to endure. Many came believing they were alone. Our role was, and continues to be, to ensure they know they are not.

Principles of feminism
Throughout our history, FWCC’s work has remained firmly grounded in the principles of feminism, women’s human rights, human rights, dignity, equality, and justice. These principles have guided our response to violence against women and girls, shaped our advocacy, informed our research and training, and strengthened our commitment to building a society where all women and girls can live free from violence, discrimination, and inequality.

While our primary focus has been addressing violence against women and girls, our services have always recognised the diversity of the communities we serve. Over the past 42 years, we have worked with women in all their diversity, including women from rural and urban communities, women with disabilities, young women, older women, women from different ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds, and women of different sexual orientations and gender identities.

We have also supported men and boys affected by violence and abuse, as well as members of the LGBTQI+ community who have sought counselling, support, information, and protection.

Looking back, the impact of FWCC extends far beyond the people who directly accessed our services. It can be seen in the women who found safety and rebuilt their lives. It can be seen in the police officers, health workers, teachers, community leaders, faith leaders, and advocates who received training and developed a deeper understanding of violence against women and women’s human rights.

It is reflected in laws, policies, and public conversations that have been influenced by decades of advocacy, research, and evidence-based work. It is reflected in generations of women and girls who now know that they have rights, that violence is never their fault, and that support is available.

Centre’s leadership
No reflection on the journey of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre would be complete without acknowledging the leadership of our coordinator, Shamima Ali. For more than four decades, she has been the most influential voice for women’s human rights in Fiji and the Pacific. Her unwavering commitment to ending violence against women and girls, advancing gender equality, and holding institutions accountable has helped shape not only the direction of FWCC but also the national conversation on women’s rights and human rights.

Under her leadership, FWCC has grown from a small feminist organisation into a nationally and internationally respected centre for crisis intervention, advocacy, research, training, and feminist leadership. Through times of political uncertainty, social resistance, and changing public attitudes, she has remained steadfast in speaking out against injustice and ensuring that survivors’ voices and experiences remain at the centre of our work.

Some people witness history and others help shape it. Shamima Ali has done both. Thank you, Sham.

We also acknowledge with gratitude the staff, counsellors, trainers, volunteers, trustees, supporters, allies, donors, partners, and communities who have stood with us over the last four decades. Your dedication, commitment, and belief in this work have made these achievements possible.

We also extend our sincere appreciation to the Australian government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and the New Zealand government through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), for their longstanding partnership and support. Their contributions have strengthened efforts to advance women’s human rights and respond to violence against women and girls in Fiji and across the Pacific.

As we reflect on 42 years, we are also mindful of those whose experiences remain unseen and unheard. Their stories remind us that violence against women remains one of the most urgent human rights challenges facing our nation.

That is why our work remains as important today as it was in 1984.

We do not mark anniversaries simply to celebrate longevity. We mark them to honour feminist persistence and resilience.

Our dream has always been to work ourselves out of business. Until that day comes, the work continues.

Republished from the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre website, 13 August 2026.

By Ibrahim Othman

New Zealand’s government is facing a historic lawsuit before the High Court at Wellington, with activists and lawyers seeking to overturn judicial reviews and licences granted by the Ministry of Space to US geospatial intelligence company BlackSky, alleging that its technologies have been used by the Israeli military during its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

The lawsuit, which was filed yesterday, has three plaintiffs: Palestinian-New Zealand engineer Yasser Abdel Aal, information technology expert Maher Nazzal, and Māori-Tongan doctor Timoti Te Moki.

According to the statement of claim, a copy of which was obtained by The New Arab, the lawsuit is based on the plaintiffs’ direct harm from Israel’s genocidal war.

• READ MORE: Palestinian Kiwis, Māori doctor file claim against NZ govt over Gaza spy satellites
• Justice For Palestine welcomes legal challenge to govt approval of BlackSky spy satellite launches from NZ
• Other Rocket Lab reports

Abdel Aal lost more than 85 members of his extended family due to Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. His two sisters and their families are currently living in tents lacking the most basic humanitarian necessities in the Al-Mawasi area of the Strip.

Maher Nazzal, head of the Palestine Forum of New Zealand and one of the plaintiffs, told TNA that he was taking part in the case because he believed that “New Zealand bears a moral and legal responsibility for what is happening, and it is not acceptable to ignore the possibility that technology launched from our territory is being used to support military operations that lead to more suffering and killing of Palestinians”.

“I have seen the suffering of Palestinians myself, including members of my family who were displaced during the 1967 Naksa. What is happening today in Gaza and the West Bank is not something we can stand by and do nothing about,” he said.

“This case is not about opposing the space or technology sector but about holding the government accountable for its decisions and its duty to ensure that what is launched from New Zealand is not used to provide information or capabilities that could help target Palestinians.

“We are not asking our government to do the impossible. We are asking it to assume its responsibility, act in accordance with New Zealand’s obligations under international law, and put the protection of human rights above commercial or political interests.

“I am proud to be part of this legal action, and I hope this case will lead to greater transparency and accountability and send a clear message that New Zealand will not turn a blind eye when there is a possibility that its capabilities or territory could be used to support serious violations against the Palestinian people,” he said.

“Silence is not a neutral position when people’s lives and rights are at stake.”

Allegations of ‘deliberate disregard’
The legal action is supported by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), which had formally raised its concerns with former Space Minister Judith Collins in November 2024 over Israel’s use of data from these satellites.

The network’s spokeswoman, Rinad Tamimi, described the ministry’s position as “deliberate disregard”, stressing that the minister and officials at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) raised no questions about whether Israel was an end user of the services when the permits were granted in December 2023.

“All the minister had to do was pick up the phone and ask whether the Israelis were part of the deal, but they feared getting an answer they did not want,” Tamimi added in a statement.

These concerns are supported by reports published by French magazine Intelligence Online in July 2024, which revealed the existence of a secret $150 million contract under which Israel was the “main foreign client” of BlackSky, providing it with high-resolution and frequently updated images and analysis of the Gaza Strip.

International obligations, national interest
On the legal side, Sam Vincent, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement on Tuesday that the case against the former minister and the government centred on the failure to consider New Zealand’s obligations under the Genocide Convention and international human rights law when approving the launch of those space payloads through Rocket Lab from the New Zealand launch site at Mahia.

“It is no secret that Israel systematically relies on geospatial intelligence to identify its military targets, and there is a strong possibility that it has used and continues to use these satellites for this purpose,” he added.

Lawyer Ruby Hazin, for her part, cited reports by the independent UN Commission of Inquiry and international organisations such as Amnesty International, all of which concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

“Since January 2024, the International Court of Justice has formally notified all states of their duty to act to prevent genocide, and New Zealand is legally bound to meet this obligation,” she added.

Pattern ‘unravelling’
Groups supporting the case linked the legal action to a recent ruling by the Federal Court of Australia that ordered the Australian defence minister to disclose information on arms exports and F35 aircraft spare parts to Israel.

Commenting on the linking, Rinad Tamimi said, “There is a general pattern of secrecy surrounding Western arms exports and military services to Israel, but this pattern is now unravelling; complicity has been exposed, and our government is unfortunately part of this systematic deception“.

Through the case, the plaintiffs are seeking a historic court ruling that would reshape the standards for granting space licences in New Zealand and force authorities to review and scrutinise the end-user lists of technology companies to ensure that New Zealand territory is not used as a launch point to facilitate the commission of international war crimes.

This article was first published by The New Arab and is translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari.

Lawyers for two Palestinian advocates with strong family ties to the Nakba in Gaza and a Māori medical doctor critical of the “colonial violence” in the occupied territories have filed a lawsuit today against New Zealand government support for BlackSky spy satellite launchings from the Rocket Lab site in Māhia.

Their lawsuit seeks a judicial review of government policy, arguing that the satellites risk supplying Israeli military forces with targeting data in attacks on the population of the besieged Gaza Strip.

New Zealand-founded space company Rocket Lab is BlackSky’s primary launch provider, says a statement by the Palestine Solidarity Media Network (PSNA) that is supporting the lawsuit filed at the Wellington High Court.

• READ MORE:  Justice For Palestine welcomes legal challenge to govt approval of BlackSky spy satellite launches from NZ
• Other Rocket Lab reports

Rocket Lab launched a BlackSky satellite from Māhia in March, with further launches recently approved by the Minister for Space.

The three plaintiffs bringing the lawsuit are New Zealanders — Christchurch engineer Yasser Abdulaal; Auckland-based information technology professional Maher Nazzal; and Dr Timoti Te Moke (Ngāti Rangitihi, Tapuika and Tonga), a medical doctor.

Abdulaal’s family sought refuge in Gaza when Zionist militia inflicted the Nakba (the “Catastrophe”) in 1948 and have suffered the devastation of Israel’s air strikes on Gaza since October 2023.

“More than 85 of my extended family have been killed in multiple air strikes by Israel, Abdulaal said. “My two sisters have had to live in terrible conditions with their families in tents in the Al Mawasi area for more than two years now.

Israel still bombing, killing
“Israel is still bombing and killing in Gaza. We hope that we will stop these satellite launches.”

Nazzal’s parents were displaced from their homes during the 1967 Naksa (the “Setback”), when Israel occupied the West Bank.

“I have seen firsthand the struggles Palestinians face, including members of my own family,” he said.

“They continue to endure severe oppression and displacement in the West Bank and Gaza.

“I am proud to be part of this legal action. We are asking our government to take meaningful action in support of Palestinian rights and to uphold its obligations under international law.”

Dr Te Moke said he was joining this case because he felt a strong affiliation with the Palestinian people.

“Tangata whenua and Palestinians have both suffered colonial violence and so have a powerful connection with each other,” he said.

Independent candidate
He is an independent candidate in the Māngere electorate for the 2026 general election in November.

The lawsuit, laid under the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Act 2017, challenges former Space Minister Judith Collins’ approval of four launches, in spite of protests at BlackSky’s links to Israel.

The proceedings are also filed against new Space Minister Chris Penk, who in April approved 26 more satellite launches, which the plaintiffs hope to halt.

The pleadings note that former Space Minister Collins and MBIE knew, when they approved the launch of BlackSky’s spy satellites in late 2023, that BlackSky’s satellites had been used by Israel.

At the time, air strikes by Israel over Gaza had killed nearly 20,000 people. To total has since risen to more than 73,000 killed — mostly women and children — and at least 173,000 wounded.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa raised its concern over Israeli military use for BlackSky satellites with Collins in November 2024.

PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said in a statement the result was “wilful ignorance”.

No questions on Israel
“Neither Collins nor MBIE questioned, when they were deciding to grant BlackSky’s payload permit in December 2023, whether the Israeli military was a current end-user of the satellites.

“All Collins or her ministry needed to do was pick up the phone and ask whether the Israelis were part of the deal. But it’s most likely they feared they would get an answer they didn’t want.”

Collins refused all PSNA requests to reconsider her approval of the satellite launches.

France-based publication Intelligence Online reported in July 2024 that Israel was BlackSky’s “main foreign customer” with a secret US$150 million contract.

A recent Federal Court outcome in Australia requires the Australian Defence Minister to release information on Australian arms exports to Israel.

Australia-based Palestine advocacy organisations say they sought the information so they could assess whether these exports, such as F35 aircraft spare parts, could be used to commit human rights abuses, or were contrary to Australia’s international obligations or commitments.

“Right throughout the Western world there is a pattern of secrecy about arms exports to Israel. It’s now unravelling,” Tamimi said

Complicity exposed
“Complicity with genocide is being exposed. Our government is part of that duplicity and now exposure.”

Sam Vincent, one of the lawyers acting for the plaintiffs, said BlackSky was well known for the sophistication of its geospatial data.

“It is no secret that Israel has systematically relied on geospatial intelligence, such as BlackSky provides, for its targeting.

“The case against the former space minister is that she did not take into consideration New Zealand’s obligations under the Genocide Convention nor broader international human rights law when she approved these satellite launches,” he said.

“This was despite the likelihood that Israel was using these satellites, and would continue to use them for military targeting.

“Against protestations, the four BlackSky satellites Judith Collins approved are now in space.”

“There are 26 more BlackSky satellites now approved for launch by the new minister — while Israel continues to strike Gaza. We are seeking an order that will quash the minister’s approval and direct that he inquire into BlackSky’s likely supply of data to Israel.”

UN commission found genocide
Another of the lawyers acting for the plaintiffs, Ruby Haazen, said the UN’s independent commission of inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel had found Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

“Many scholars, such as Omar Bartov, and international organisations such as Amnesty International, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have also found Israel has committed genocide in Gaza,” Haazen said.

“In January 2024, the International Court of Justice found it plausible that Israel’s military operations in Gaza risked irreparable harm to Palestinians rights under the Genocide Convention, putting all states on notice of their duty to act to prevent genocide.

“New Zealand is obliged to live up to that duty.”

How Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese built an unelected censorship apparatus for Jillian Segal without a vote, a bill or a debate, while the Coalition demanded more was covered in Part One. It ended with a question polite Australia refuses to ask. Today, in Part Two is the answer. Andrew Brown reports for Michael West Media.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

The architecture would be scandal enough on paper. It did not stay there. Antisemitism Commissioner Jillian Segal took an oath at a Royal Commission.

Segal conceded regulators had found little inaccuracy in ABC and SBS reporting on Israel and Gaza. The journalism was true.

Her objection was that the truth made Israel look bad. Her remedy was another oversight body and more positive stories about the amazing startup nation

• READ MORE: The Segal State 1 – the public office Australia never voted for
• The Segal State 2 – the mask, the children, the money and the answer

A taxpayer-funded official told a Royal Commission, under oath, that accurate reporting is a problem the state should fix with pressure for flattering coverage.

Under oath, the mask came off
Show the starving children of Gaza if you insist, then cut to a cheerful Israeli tech segment for balance.

There are countries where officials talk like that. None of them are democracies. And the Prime Minister kept her in office anyway.

Then she reached for the children

University students, Segal observed, are relatively fixed in their ideas. Younger children are more open. Education, she said, is a tool for building ideas, cohesion and culture.

An advocate surveyed the population, identified the audience least capable of arguing back, and proposed to begin there.

She unveiled a National Centre for Education Against Antisemitism to train government, business and police at scale and capture the hearts and minds of Australians. Her phrase.

The Gonski taskforce runs from early childhood to university. Something in the curriculum, Segal mused, might have to come out.

Jewish history and the Holocaust belong in every classroom. So do Islamophobia, anti Palestinian racism, the frontier massacres and the stolen generations.

A curriculum organised around one contested political definition does not teach children to think. It teaches them which conclusions are safe. Australians have a name for a state programme built to capture the hearts and minds of other people’s children. It is not education.

The $50,000 question
Twelve days before Segal’s appointment, Henroth Investments, directed by her husband, gave $50,000 to Advance Australia. The same Advance that torched the Indigenous Voice for being too much power for one group of Australians.

Segal denies involvement. The Klaxon documented the couple’s record of joint donations, down to a photograph beside a plaque naming both as donors.

Perhaps she knew nothing of a $50,000 gift from her own household’s company on the eve of her elevation. Any other appointment, this donation triggers an inquiry by Friday. This one drew a shrug. Albanese is not neutral. He benefits from the question never being asked.

The answer
Now the question you carried overnight. Why one form of racism and not the others?

In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody delivered 339 recommendations. Both parties let them rot for three decades while the death toll passed 590 First Nations people. No envoy. No machinery.

In 2025, Segal delivered 49 actions. The Commonwealth adopted every one within months, put her in charge, and stood a $130 million Royal Commission behind her. Muslim Australians, mosques attacked, got an envoy for show.

Palestinian Australians burying entire families got lectures about tone.

So ask the questions underneath. Which cause has a professional, funded, decades old lobby behind it, and which buried its peak body by Act of Parliament? Which flatters the US alliance, and which indicts the Crown? Which form of justice costs the Treasury nothing, and which costs it the continent?

And that lobby did not merely ask. After October 2023, it campaigned, through ECAJ, AIJAC and the Murdoch press behind them, and Anthony Albanese capitulated.

Then he kept capitulating.

He adopted the plan entire. He kept Segal in office after her testimony. He will not touch the donation. For this Prime Minister, capitulation is not a moment. It is a method.

Follow those questions to the end and you reach the ugliest truth in Australian public life. This state does not fight racism. It prices it.

The cheap kind gets a ministry. The expensive kind gets an anniversary. That hierarchy of harm is now official Commonwealth policy. Nobody voted for it. Nobody was asked. It was imposed. And Segal is that policy made flesh.

The lobby’s president turned the nation’s umpire.

Minns, the enforcer
The state tier belongs to Chris Minns. His government rammed hate speech and protest laws through Parliament, with Coalition votes, while the Dural caravan was waved at a frightened public. Police then established the plot was a fabricated criminal con. A premier who legislates on a hoax and keeps the laws when it collapses has told you what they were for.

Segal’s definition, Minns’s truncheon, opposition applause. A pincer on political expression, built in 18 months, and not one voter asked.Tear it out

This is Australia in 2026. Speech graded in Canberra. Protest policed in Sydney. Children next. An open society has one rule that cannot bend. No unelected hand on the levers of speech. Segal’s office breaks it by existing.

Albanese built this office, hid its costs, ignored the donation on its doorstep and shielded its occupant. Every excess is his. So is the precedent. The apparatus does not dissolve when Segal departs. It sits waiting for the next government, and the Coalition is not planning to dismantle it. It is waiting for the keys.

End Segal’s appointment. Abolish the office.

Repeal the NSW laws passed on a hoax. Open a parliamentary inquiry into its creation, its costs and its occupant’s household donations. Replace the wreckage with one national rights framework protecting every Australian from every form of racial and religious hatred, equally.

No envoys. No favourites. No exceptions.

So make it the question of the next election. Put it to every candidate, of every party, at every doorstop, until they answer. Will you vote to abolish the Segal State? Watch who squirms. Vote accordingly.

Australia needs protection from racism.

All of it, for all of us, or it is not protection. It is patronage. And Australia does not need the Segal State.

The Cook Islands goes to the polls this week for its four-yearly general election.

Like all countries in the region, the Cooks has had its fair share of challenges due to global shocks in recent years, and there’s a sense that voters are looking for some stability, particularly around the cost of living

The prime minister and leader of the Cook Islands Party, Mark Brown is in no doubt about the priority for people in this election.

• READ MORE: Two-way battle — no clear majority as Cook Islands prepares for polls
• Other Cook Islands elections reports

He said for his party it is about consolidating the country’s growth and economic recovery since reopening borders four years ago when the Cooks emerged the covid pandemic.

“Now, that strong economic growth has allowed us to catch up, if you like, with pay increases that were halted or paused during the covid period,” he said.

“It’s allowed us to increase our welfare payments, to old age pensions, child benefit, and these are all things that we’re gearing up to try and meet the challenges of cost of living.”

Water charges
Water utility charges are another issue in this campaign.

The leader of the Cook Islands Democratic Party, who is also the Leader of the Opposition, Tina Browne, said if elected, her party would push to remove water use tariffs for residential and agricultural users on Rarotonga.

“And we will review the present structure of [water utility] To Tatou Vai,” she said.

“Of course, water infrastructure costs money. The real question is how that cost should fairly be met. I do not accept that another household bill should automatically be the first answer.”

For the United Party, “free water for all” is one of its main campaign points.

Leader Teariki Heather said his party would remove residential water tariffs should they form government.

“Absolutely, we will revoke whatever legislation is against that for the water tariffs,” he told RNZ Pacific.

His party’s position is “water is a basic human right” and families shouldn’t receive more bills during a cost-of-living crisis.

“On top of electricity, on top of this water tariff, the increase in cost in that, government should absorb that.

“Budget of the government is really looking at priority areas, especially this one.

“I believe that the government can assist and accommodate for the people of the Cook Islands at this particular time.”

But Mark Brown pointed out infrastructure maintenance was not free.

“The question is not whether water should be free. The question is actually who’s going to pay for it, because we’ve upgraded all of our water intakes, 10 of them, around the island in the hills of Rarotonga, and they all need to be maintained,” he said.

Brown said households received 38,000 litres free of charge per month, while churches, schools and agricultural spaces have no limit restrictions. Charges are currently only being imposed on commercial users.

“Most of these are, of course, in the tourism industry with hotels, Airbnbs, resorts, that sort of thing, and it’s only fair that they contribute to the upkeep and maintenance of our water systems.”

Progressive Party leader Te Tuhi Kelly said the free allocation for households is more than enough.

“If you can’t manage that 38,000 litres, there’s something quite wrong there because that’s a lot of water — a huge amount of water, but if you go over that, I’m sorry, but you should be paying for that.”

But he also thinks there are other ways government could cover water infrastructure costs.

“The water that we get from God is free; we don’t pay for that. But God never put in place a delivery system for us. We have to do that ourselves. Someone has to pay for that.

“Now, while I’m for user pays, I think there is probably a number of other options that we can look at.”

Seabed minerals
Another issue Cook Islanders are thinking about is whether the country should continue the current government’s direction towards more seabed mining activity.

Teariki Heather said he would push for a referendum on seabed mining if the United Party came to power.

While he acknowledged that exploration activities underway were potentially encouraging for generating long-term wealth in the country, he said it was so critical to protect the future health of the country, that the question of whether to progress seabed mining should be put to the people.

“But the one that we will do is put a referendum to ask the people of this country, whether this yes or no, so it’s up to the people of this country [to] actually decide. That’s number one that [we] will put out [to] a referendum when elected to be government.”

Tina Browne agreed that a referendum is the way to go, even if science proves there would be no negative environmental impact.

“Extraction should only be considered if the evidence demonstrates that it can be done safely and in the genuine interests of the Cook Islands people. Before extraction occurs, our policy is that Cook Islanders should have the final say through a referendum.”

But Te Tuhi Kelly said there was simply not enough scientific information to make a call yet.

“We’re neither for, nor we’re against it.

“The issue for us as a party is that the science doesn’t provide me with any enthusiasm. It’s young. The data is not there.”

Mark Brown reiterated that the Cook Islands was only conducting exploration and research currently.

“It’s important that we gain the knowledge and understanding of our deep sea before we make any decisions on whether we move to extraction or the harvesting of minerals.”

When asked if the Cook Islands Party would consider a referendum, Brown said the science needed to be complete first.

“Well, it’s a serious question, and again, letting people decide — first we must be able to provide the facts.

“We need to know the facts before we can make a decision, and that’s why it’s important that we conduct the exploration and research phase now thoroughly, in a way that ensures that, when we do ask questions of our people, our people are fully informed.”

Foreign affairs
The country’s relationship with New Zealand is a lingering issue too, at least in the eyes of the big parties.

This relationship came under strain after Wellington suspended some funding as a consequence of a deal that Brown’s government forged with China early last year.

Funding has been recently restored, and both governments say the relationship is back on track.

But Teariki Heather suggests there is a lot of work still to do to restore the healthy relationship

“New Zealand is a special one for us, and what we have discussed for this one, soon as becoming government, soon as forming the government, we make a trip, to show New Zealand how deep this relationship is.”

Tina Browne also believes the relationship is all-important and needs nurturing.

“The Cook Islands should have constructive relationships with New Zealand, China, Australia, the United States, and our Pacific neighbours. We do not strengthen ourselves by unnecessarily choosing between friends.”

But Mark Brown sees the situation as proof that the Cook Islands is able to “stand on their own two feet”.

“We have diplomatic relations with over 70 countries around the world, including some of the biggest economies around the world. We have a foreign policy that is an independent foreign policy for the benefit of Cook Islanders.

“The fact that we can negotiate with large international countries, and the fact that we signed off on our new security and defence agreement with New Zealand on our own standing, and our own footing, on our terms, is something that people now respect for the Cook Islands and the government, the stand that we’ve taken.”

Issues can be talked about all day, but it doesn’t mean much without connecting to voters.

All of the parties realise that having a good ground game, engaging with people in their community, is the key to success.

Te Tuhi Kelly said this is particularly the case with young people

“There are a lot of kids [who] don’t want to go to those political rallies because they find them boring. So what do you do if you want to get them into politics? You take politics to them.

“And what you do is you use a medium that they’ve grown up with, and it’s a thing called social media.”

The polls open at 8am Wednesday, 12 August, local time (Thursday, 13 August, New Zealand time).

The preliminary count for each constituency is expected to be released throughout the same night.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

When is it possible to declare that a society has moved from liberal democracy, however imperfectly realised, to authoritarian rule?

Is there a moment when it is suddenly obvious the change has occurred? Does authoritarianism announce its arrival?

Or is it a process that gradually unfolds, where restraints on executive power are dismantled piece by piece until the tide cannot be reversed?

• READ MORE: Other Jonathan Cook articles
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Is the turn to authoritarianism something that can only be understood after the event, when all opportunities to halt the slide have been missed?

And how do we admit to ourselves that we have been stripped of our most basic and cherished freedoms — of speech, assembly and protest — when we are no longer free to speak, meet or protest?

The unpalatable truth is that Britain is already far down this path. And if you are unaware of the earthquake that has been taking place, that may be because — just as you might expect when authoritarianism comes calling — the very first to be smothered are the voices sounding the alarm.

A media owned by billionaires and the state — the parties that, in an age of growing popular discontent, have most to gain from the accretion of executive power and the silencing of dissent — have no reason to illuminate the encroaching darkness.

Foot work for authoritarianism
An ostensible Labour government under the outgoing Keir Starmer has done much of the foot work to usher in the new, ominous political climate.

It was precisely Starmer’s credentials as a human rights lawyer that provided the British state with the cover story it needed for an unprecedented assault on the freedoms fought for by earlier generations.

There are few signs that his successors, whether it be a new figurehead in the genocide-supporting Labour Party or Nigel Farage’s immigrant-bashing Reform, will change direction.

The logic driving Britain’s slide towards authoritarianism is being set not just by politicians, but by a British establishment that needs to sell its collusion in genocide and illegal wars abroad and to find easy scapegoats — immigrants — to blame for its failures at home.

The job of the main political parties, reliant on billionaire donors who also own the corporate media, is to shore up these narratives.

It was Starmer’s Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who incautiously gave the clearest expression to the British state’s vision of our future.

In a speech in January she laid out her ambition to harness new developments in AI to create an all-powerful, all-seeing “Big Brother” surveillance state of the kind foretold by George Orwell in his dystopian novel 1984.

‘Panopticon’, the perfect prison
Mahmood even compared this future to the “panopticon” — a reference to 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s perfect prison: a central watchtower (the state) surrounded by a circle of windowed cells where the inmates (the public) would be visible at all times.

Bentham understood that this was not just about physical control. As he observed, the sense of being constantly observed would be a “new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind”. The inmates would police their own behaviour to avoid punishment.

Starmer’s successor, Andy Burnham, is reportedly keen to keep Mahmood a key figure in his government. But this isn’t about a single government minister.

Mahmood is the symptom of a deeper malaise, not its cause. The architecture of the new systems of control, as well as the erosion of freedoms and the cultural traditions that supported them, were already well advanced when she was appointed to the Home Office.

Whoever holds the reins of power in the months and years to come will be able to exploit these existing powers to the maximum, and then extend them further.

Once the spirit of authoritarianism takes hold, it becomes ever harder to stuff it back into the box. Only concerted mass protest can remind the state where ultimate power resides. And it is precisely this kind of protest that is being demonised and criminalised one step at a time.

If it is possible to identify a single moment when the new authoritarianism moved out of the shadows, it was some 15 years ago. That was the moment the state launched its protracted campaign against Julian Assange to vilify and incarcerate him.

Incensed US over war crimes
The founder of the whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks had incensed the United States and its loyal British sidekick by publishing details of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq both wanted to be kept secret.

It was probably no coincidence that, at the time, Starmer was head of the Crown Prosecution Service and making repeated trips to meet Washington’s most senior law officers. Contrary to protocols, records of these discussions were destroyed by his officials.

We will never know what instructions Starmer was given by the US regarding Assange. But a possible clue survived the further, and highly irregular, destruction by Starmer’s department of related correspondence between UK and Swedish prosecutors from that time.

One of the few surviving emails is revealing. It shows that Sweden was considering dropping an investigation into Assange for lack of evidence, as he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London fearful of what lay in store.

Starmer’s staff, who were supposed to be neutral arbiters between Sweden and Assange’s legal team, angrily told the Swedes: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”

In another email, the same CPS official told Swedish counterparts: “Please do not think this case is being dealt with as just another extradition.”

Later, with the active connivance of the UK and its courts, the US showed its true hand. Washington began extradition proceedings on the preposterous grounds that Assange had committed “espionage” by publishing details of its war crimes.

Caged in prison
Assange was caged in a high-security prison in London for years, often unable to meet his lawyers, his health failing, on a trumped-up, nakedly political charge.

This was a terrifying, unprecedented assault on the right of journalists to publish evidence of state wrongdoing in the public interest. And yet the billionaire-owned media could barely stifle their yawns.

There was a two-fold gain from Assange’s decade-long abuse and the trampling of his legal rights.

First, it established a very visible precedent in which the rule of law was turned on its head. The roles of victim and victimiser were reversed.

Assange, who had published incontrovertible evidence of US and British war crimes, was the one behind bars. British officials who approved and hid those crimes not only evaded justice but were free to hound and smear Assange.

This has been the theme ever since, as the British state has intensified its curbs on speech and protest, with Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians often serving as the testing ground for authorising this new crackdown.

In the second half of the 2010s, Jeremy Corbyn — Starmer’s predecessor as Labour leader — found himself and his supporters roundly vilified as “antisemites”.

Forewarning of the future
Why? Because they tried to bring attention to Israel’s criminal actions — a forewarning of what was to come, as Israel unleashed what legal experts, Holocaust scholars, human rights groups and United Nations investigators have all concluded is a genocide in Gaza.

In a properly functioning democracy, those who smeared Corbyn and other critics of Israel would have been permanently discredited.

Instead, UK officials — the same officials colluding in Israel’s current crimes by shipping arms to Israel, by carrying out surveillance flights to guide Israel’s bombing campaigns against Gaza’s civilians, and by offering diplomatic cover — simply stepped up the demonisation campaign.

As millions of Britons took to the streets, the Starmer government — and the British state behind it — not only labelled them as antisemites but radically rewrote the statute books to criminalise opposition to Israel’s genocide.

Direct action group Palestine Action, which had been targeting Israeli arms factories operating on UK soil, was proscribed as a “terrorist” group equivalent to al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

Holding placards protesting the genocide, as thousands of respectable British citizens did, became “support for terrorism”, risking a jail term of up to 14 years.

Reality was once again inverted.

UK supports state terrorism
Britain continues to actively support Israeli state terrorism.

But it was those ringing the alarm — those trying to stop these shipments, those opposed to British collusion in Israeli state terrorism, or those simply appalled by the undermining of basic rights to protest — who were arrested and charged as “terrorists”.

Meanwhile, documents show Elbit Systems continues to enjoy unrestricted access to British government officials.

Second, in stigmatising and isolating Assange for publishing details of US and UK war crimes, the British state was able to draw its own fake distinction between “good” and “bad” journalism — a distinction the billionaire-owned media was only too happy to embrace.

Assange, whose independent platform WikiLeaks had held Washington and London’s feet to the fire for committing war crimes, had in the process shamed the establishment media for their unwillingness to do likewise.

He exposed the extent to which corporate journalists, dependent on access to the rich and powerful for stories, conspire in the covert, unaccountable ways power is exercised by the state.

The media are not watchdogs; they are lap dogs, representing the interests of the billionaire class.

Independent media not tolerated
The British state — and its security services — made clear they would not tolerate truly independent or critical media that could expose their hypocrisies or bring them to book.

In response, the billionaire-owned media not only hung Assange out to dry. It joined the government in a chorus of claims that independent outlets were either peddling “fake news” or serving as “Kremlin assets” spreading “disinformation“.

It amplified the pressure from politicians on social media platforms, the billionaires’ new plaything, to tighten their algorithms to hide independent journalists, and stymie these dangerous new competitors in the battle for truth.

Similarly, corporate media cheerled the government’s decision to ban Russia Today, the Russian state’s news channel. It quickly became all but impossible for UK audiences to hear Russia’s version of events in the mainstream media, as Britain and European states built the case for permanent confrontation with Moscow.

The European Union imposed an even more draconian ban — upheld last month by the EU’s Court of Justice — that makes it a criminal offence to repeat any information reported by RT, and other banned outlets, even if demonstrably true. The law’s purpose is to supposedly “protect public order and safety”.

In recent weeks, two prominent US commentators, Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, have been denied entry to the UK over their criticisms of Israel. Uygur was due to speak at an Oxford University debate.

In this new authoritarian climate, truth is defined as whatever the state wants their citizens to know. Meanwhile, disinformation — “Russian propaganda” or “antisemitism” — is whatever those same states insist their citizenry must not hear.

Brazen reversal of Enlightenment
This is a brazen reversal of 350 years of the Western Enlightenment, with its professed belief both in the primacy of reason and that ideas must be tested through debate and critical scrutiny.

Now it matters not what is being said, but only who is saying it.

And unsurprisingly, the billionaire-owned, Western media has endorsed this new regime. After all, its voice — representing the interests of the super-rich — is guaranteed a hearing.

No surprise, then, that this same privileged media corps has continued to meekly accept its exclusion from Gaza by Israel as the biggest crime in modern history unfolds — even now, in the midst of a supposed ceasefire that Israel keeps breaking.

Because what matters is who is allowed to speak: Israel, not Gaza’s Palestinians, whether what Israel says is true or, as invariably turns out to be the case, a lie.

In line with this precept, the billionaire-owned media has barely raised a murmur as Israel has slaughtered Gaza’s journalists in unprecedented numbers — killing more of them than in two world wars, Vietnam, the Yugoslav wars and Afghanistan combined.

The lives of Palestinian journalists — like the reporting they have had to do alone under Israeli bombardment — count for nothing in the Western media because of who they are.

Genocide ‘erased as a crime’
Genocide — the what — has been erased as a crime because it is we — the West — who are helping to carry it out.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, reportedly facing a political and donor backlash, scrapped last year its annual Global Impunity Index — which measured where journalists are murdered with impunity — after it became clear Israel would top the rankings.

Now the same committee is being accused of caving in to these pressures by raising doubts about who counts as a journalist in Gaza — doubts that will serve to embolden Israel, which claims that Palestinian journalists, indeed all Palestinians, are terrorists in disguise.

The who has to be rewritten because the what cannot be denied.

The same story is unfolding in the UK, where independent British journalists have been detained at the airport or had their homes raided at dawn by counterterrorism police for “wrong-think” about the Gaza genocide and British complicity in it. They too face up to 14 years in jail.

That has sent a chilling message to other journalists, those that lack the protection of a billionaire patron or the state, about what can be said.

None of this is, or will be, confined to Gaza. The upending of Enlightenment values, as should be clear by now, is part of a much bigger political project to normalise and entrench this creeping authoritarianism.

Hard to reverse precedent
The proscription of Palestine Action and placard-holding has paved the way for the British state to designate any opponent — challenging its lawbreaking or contesting its right to dictate truth — as a criminal or a supporter of terrorism. A precedent has been set, and now approved by the UK courts, that will be hard to reverse.

The state has many tools at its disposal, some of which it is already wielding, again to no protest from billionaire-owned media “watchdogs”.

A particularly powerful one is “debanking”: forcing individuals or groups who disrupt the narrative of Western state moral and legal authority out of the financial system, driving them into a kind of purdah that makes it near-impossible for them to function in the modern, Western world.

Notably again, Assange and WikiLeaks were an early victim of the use of debanking as a political weapon. Washington imposed sanctions in late 2010, shortly after WikiLeaks exposed US and British war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, cutting off almost all of its donor revenue.

Sanctions — what some describe as a “financial death penalty” — have already been imposed on several judges and staff of the International Criminal Court over the issuing of an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for committing crimes against humanity in Gaza.

UN legal expert Francesca Albanese, at the forefront of highlighting Western complicity in Israel’s genocide, has also been debanked.

In Britain, Palestinian and Islamic-run charities have long faced harsh restrictions on their ability to operate financially, usually on the basis of claims that they may be funnelling donations to proscribed groups.

But this has gradually expanded to mainstream Palestine solidarity organisations and to individuals caught up in the ban on Palestine Action.

The Canary debanked
In an even more disturbing, if predictable, development, Lloyds Bank has now debanked The Canary, a leftwing publication whose criticisms of Labour’s capture by Big Business have long proved a thorn in the party bureacracy’s side. The Canary can no longer pay staff, and its news operation is in jeopardy.

This is the same Canary that the Labour Together project led by Morgan McSweeney — who propelled Starmer to power on behalf of the billionaire-friendly, pro-genocide Labour right — identified early on as a threat. His mantra was reportedly: “Destroy The Canary or The Canary destroys us.”

As investigative journalist Paul Holden sets out in his book The Fraud, which documents Labour Together’s covert, law-breaking operations, McSweeney almost succeeded in destroying The Canary. He created an astroturf group, Stop Funding Fake News, that lobbied advertisers to boycott the publication.

Labour Together under McSweeney’s successor, Josh Simons, would then launch a smear campaign on Holden and refer him to British security services as a supposed Kremlin asset.

Like a bad penny, Simons has turned up again, this time giving up his Makerfield seat for Andy Burnham to return to Westminster. Simons is now one of Burnham’s political advisers.

This systematic assault on the right to scrutinise the British state’s actions has been extended to the legal profession too.

Last month, Dan Kovalik, a respected US human rights lawyer and professor, was detained at Liverpool airport by counterterrorism police and questioned over his criticisms of Western foreign policy in Gaza and Iran.

Detained by police
Fahad Ansari, a British human rights lawyer, was detained by police last year on return to the UK from a family holiday in Ireland under Schedule 7 of the draconian Terrorism Act of 2000.

Both men had their electronic devices seized, despite protests that this was unlawful and violated their privileged lawyer-client communications.

Ansari’s detention appears to be a blatant act of political retaliation and intimidation. He had made legal representations challenging a Home Office decision in 2021 to expand the proscription of Hamas to its political wing. Hamas has never launched a military operation in Britain.

For the submission, Ansari had assembled a group of experts to argue that the expanded proscription — long desired by Israel — was having a profoundly chilling effect on the work of lawyers, scholars, human rights groups and journalists in documenting and discussing Israeli crimes in Gaza.

Five UN legal experts wrote protesting the abuse of Ansari’s rights as a lawyer, warning that “such measures threaten to criminalise, stigmatise and have chilling effects against lawyers and legal associations carrying out lawful work in national security and counter-terrorism matters”.

That seems to be precisely the point. Harassing lawyers is a feature, not a bug, of Britain’s new authoritarianism.

An even more visible victim of this new assault on the legal profession is the highly respected barrister Rajiv Menon.

Key human rights cases
He has worked on some of the most important human rights cases of modern times, challenging failures and abuses of power by the state in relation to the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, the deaths of nearly 100 Liverpool football fans at Hillsborough, and the 72 victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.

He is currently facing contempt of court proceedings after making a closing speech in January that persuaded a jury not to convict six Palestine Action defendants of any of the charges brought by the British state against them. In 2024, the six had targeted an Elbit factory.

It is believed to be the first time that a lawyer has been prosecuted for contempt of court over a closing speech. Garden Court Chambers, where Menon has practised for three decades, said the proceedings had sent “shock waves through the legal profession”.

It warned of a severe chilling effect on barristers, who might be more reluctant to mount a strong defence, especially in politically charged trials, for fear of reprisals.

All of this should be seen in the context of the government’s equally unprecedented moves to erode the cornerstone legal principle of the right to trial by jury.

Authoritarian states permit no meaningful restraints on their ability to impose their will. Independent-minded lawyers and juries are just such a brake.

But perhaps the most sustained assault by the British state has been on the rights to protest and assembly, making it increasingly dangerous to express a view in the public space.

2 million in street power
Since some two million people took to the streets to oppose Britain’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, new ways have been sought to restrict the ability of ordinary citizens to raise their voice against the abuse of governmental and state power.

Recent legislation allows police to ban protests because they are “too noisy” or cause “serious unease”. Disruption has been redefined to now include hindrance to any daily activity. Protests can be barred if they have a “cumulative” impact.

These are all inherent features of protest. The mass demonstrations against Britain’s illegal attack on Iraq were noisy, disruptive and repeated — as have been the marches against Britain’s collusion in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

By judging the legality of protest according to these selective and largely subjective criteria, the state has given the police huge latitude to decide which protests should be criminalised and which allowed. It is hardly surprising then that the police are currently concentrating their efforts on the anti-genocide marches, which highlight British collusion in Israel’s crimes.

Facial recogition technology — pioneered by Israel against Palestinians — is being rolled out too, normalising the Panopticon state so beloved by Mahmood.

Where is all of this leading? The answer is to a new piece of legislation that was hurried through Parliament by the Home Secretary.

The National Security (State Threats) Act gives the state unprecedented powers to proscribe groups, as it did with Palestine Action, but now without having to claim to have evidence of a terrorist threat.

Claiming a ‘hostlle’ group
The Home Secretary can make such a designation unilaterally, without any parliamentary oversight, simply because he or she claims the group is a “hostile” foreign state actor that poses a threat to national security or public safety.

Mahmood has already done so with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), effectively Iran’s military.

Further, anyone who works with or receives a “material benefit” — defined to include “information” — from a proscribed group can be jailed for up to 14 years. That includes expressing support for the group or sharing information it has provided.

Simply hosting an event where someone expresses support for the group could open one to prosecution, as could posting something on social media that the British state claims is a hostile foreign state “talking point” — whether or not the information is true.

Once again, this is an assault on the most fundamental of Enlightenment values.

In the National Security Act, it matters only who is passing on the information, not what the information is, or whether it is truthful. There is no public interest defence, such as exposure of criminality by the British state or its allies.

There is no exemption for journalists, lawyers, scholars or human rights groups. It will be impossible for them to do the most essential part of their job: digging out information, testing claims from one side against the other’s, and allowing audiences to determine the truth.

Baring of journalists
Assuming Hamas is declared a hostile foreign actor, as seems all but certain, journalists will be barred from collecting details of Palestinian casualties from Gaza’s Health Ministry or speak to doctors there. Why? Because the Hamas government runs the Health Ministry and hospitals.

Worse, it would be impossible for journalists to visit Gaza to investigate Israeli crimes — something that will delight Israel — because such a visit would need to be organised through the Hamas government. To do so would risk 14 years in jail.

The same will be true for reporting from Iran or Russia, if the Home Secretary so decides.

The only apparent carve-out will be for journalists who get approval from the British government beforehand.

That should ensure that only the most compliant, access-driven journalists, belonging to state and billionaire-owned media, will be able to engage with “hostile” foreign actors — in ways the British state can be sure will best represent its interests.

Under this new law, the search for truth, and potentially the truth itself, will be criminalised.

The National Security Act systematises all the other developments we noted earlier. It gives the state carte blanche to criminalise anyone who scrutinises or challenges its moral or legal authority.

Search for the truth
Who should be in uproar over this monstrous legislative assault on the right to search for truth, to hold the state accountable, to act as a watchdog on the abuse of power?

If the billionaire-owned media did any of the above, news outlets would be leading the pushback. As it is, they are mostly silent — because they do none of these things.

It will be independent journalists, commentators, lawyers and human rights activists who will be picked off one by one, sending a message to everyone else to keep their heads down.

Starved of real information and critical scrutiny of the British state’s actions, the public, so it is hoped, will become more ignorant, more docile, more passive as their rights are steadily stripped away.

As the climate crisis intensifies, as resource wars accelerate, as austerity at home bites deeper, the finger will be pointed not at the real culprits — the super-rich, their media and the captured state — but at earlier victims of the West: those fleeing from the wars we initiated, from an increasingly unstable climate our inflated consumption provoked, and from a paucity of resources following centuries of colonial theft.

While we are encouraged to blame “the immigrants”, or “the Muslims”, or “the left”, or “the Israel haters”, the state is in a race to erect a scaffolding of control to protect itself before we wake up to the deception.

Time is running out on all fronts. The lack of urgency to address these crises is not because the crises don’t exist, but because our passivity has been engineered. The truth is we are already in the Panopticon, and our minds are already deeply fashioned for obedience.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published by Middle East Eye and republished from the author’s Substack with permission.

An exclusive poll reveals a tight election with no clear winner, as the surging Cook Islands United Party (CIUP) challenges the governing Cook Islands Party (CIP) while cost-of-living concerns dominate voter focus.

With just two days to go before the country heads to the elections on Wednesday (Thursday NZ time), a Cook Islands News election poll shows no clear winner, indicating a coalition will be required to form the next government.

None of the political parties contesting the election achieved a majority in a sample of voters — representing just over one percent of those registered to vote — polled across the country.

• READ MORE: Other Cook Islands elections reports

The governing CIP, which is seeking a fifth consecutive term, holds a narrow baseline lead with 30.5 percent popular support but faces a fierce challenge from the surging CIUP at 26.7 percent.

The Democratic Party, which lost ground in the 2022 general election, has slumped further in the polls to 8.6 percent — tying with the Independents.

With more than a quarter of the electorate (25.7 percent) still undecided and Independents capturing over 20 percent of votes in the Pa Enua (outer islands), no single party currently possesses a clear, unassisted path to a 13-seat parliamentary majority.

CIP leader and caretaker Prime Minister Mark Brown said they were grateful to be in front, which matched what their candidates were hearing at the doors — “a lot of quiet support for a team that has delivered”.

Taking ‘nothing for granted’
“But a lead is not a result, and we take nothing for granted,” Brown told Cook Islands News. “With a field this wide, every vote has to be earned, and we intend to keep earning them right up to election day.

“The only poll that counts is the one on August 12, and that one belongs entirely to our people.”

Compared to previous electoral baseline, Teariki Heather-led Cook Islands United Party has experienced a major surge and has effectively displaced the Democratic Party as the primary challenger to the incumbent CIP.

Heather welcomed the poll, saying they were “grateful” for the surge in support and adding, “we [moved] at least from a minority party to a major party now”.

He said he expected this level of support and foresaw becoming a major challenger to the governing CIP.

Democratic Party leader Tina Pupuke-Browne said they took the poll result “seriously”.

“Of course I would like to see the Democrats polling higher, but I am not going to dismiss a poll simply because one part of it is uncomfortable,” Pupuke-Browne said.

25.7 percent undecided
She noted that 25.7 percent of those polled remain undecided.

“That tells me many people are still weighing up their choices and looking closely at what each party and candidate is offering,” Pupuke-Browne said.

“I do not believe any political party is entitled to anyone’s vote, including people who want a change of government. We have to earn their support.”

She said the Democrats would continue to do that by talking about the issues people raise with them every day, “the cost of living, support for families and pensioners, opportunities for our young people, the Pa Enua, better public services, and accountable government”.

“We are putting forward a serious alternative. Ultimately, it is for the voters, not politicians, to decide who they trust to form the next government.”

Brown said he respected undecided voters.

“In a serious election, weighing it up carefully is exactly what a thoughtful voter should do, and I would never take their vote for granted,” he said.

‘Look at the record’
“My message to them is simple: look at the record, and look at the plan. Over 10 years we rebuilt the economy after covid, halved the government’s debt, lifted pensions, the Child Benefit and the minimum wage, and kept the buses free.

“Our manifesto carries that forward with five clear promises.

“For us it’s important that we keep working to prove to those undecided voters that we are the government of choice.”

United Party’s Heather asked the undecided voters to “reconsider and work with the United Party, because definitely we need change”.

“Obviously, there is quite a number of those who are not sure who they would decide — that’s what the poll says, but honestly, I believe, the people will vote on the 12th for United Party … the people just sitting on the fence and not coming out loud, but on the 12th, they will come out loud and you will have the absolute figures then.”

Incumbent Mark Brown is the preferred prime minister at 35.2 percent followed by Heather at 19 percent and Pupuke-Browne trails at 5.7 percent.

A majority — 50.5 percent — of respondents across the Pa Enua and Rarotonga identified the cost of living and inflation — including fuel prices, water and power bills, housing, transportation and consumer goods — as their primary concern.

Republished from the Cook islands News with permission.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Andrew Brown

Remember the referendum in which Australians voted to create a Voice to Parliament for Israel?

You don’t. It never happened. We got one anyway.

In 2023, 60.06 percent of Australians rejected a constitutionally recognised Voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. A body that could make representations only on matters concerning the people whose ancestors have been here 60,000 years.

• READ MORE: Reports on the Bondi Royal Commission

Too much, the No campaign shrieked. Division. Privilege. Special treatment.

Nine months later, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese handed Jillian Segal what the Voice never dreamed of asking for. Not a right to be heard. Power. No election. No parliamentary vote. No hearing.

A three-year commission reporting personally to the Prime Minister, with a mandate reaching into every campus, newsroom, classroom, gallery, charity, arts contract and visa file in the Commonwealth.

Australia has never seen an office like this. Not once in 125 years.

We have been here before and we said no. In 1951, Robert Menzies asked Australians for power to outlaw communism and police political belief. Even Menzies put it to a referendum, because a democracy does not seize control of ideas by fiat.

A frightened people refused him.

That refusal became a founding settlement of this country. The state does not decide what citizens may think.

A captain’s call
Albanese tore up that settlement with a press release. No referendum. No bill. No debate. One man appointed one advocate, and the checkpoint went up.

An open society grants authority over its citizens three ways — election, appointment ratified by Parliament, or a court, ruling in public, subject to appeal.

Segal’s power arrived by none of them. The word for that is illegitimate. Not unlawful. Worse. Lawful, and

authorised by nobody but one man.

Do not look to the opposition for rescue. The Coalition demanded a national antisemitism crackdown before Labor delivered one, and its only complaint since is that the checkpoint is too small and the universities let off too lightly.

Resistance has come from the crossbench alone. When both major parties agree on machinery this size, the voters have been deleted from the equation. Neither will ask whether Segal’s authority is legitimate, because both intend to use it. That is imposition.

That is Australia in 2026.

Say it plainly. Antisemitism is real. It is sometimes murderous. Jewish Australians deserve safety, delivered without mercy by police, courts and criminal law against anyone who menaces a synagogue or a schoolchild.

Safety does not require a private advocate enthroned above the speech of 27 million people. That is not protection. That is capture.

The wrong person, chosen on purpose
Segal ran the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. She chaired the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce. Israel lobby groups.

Advocacy for Israel is her right as a private citizen. It is also the precise reason no honest government would put her near an office ruling on the boundary between antisemitism and criticism of Israel. Albanese did not blunder into the conflict. He shopped for it.

Her selection sits buried under Freedom of Information redactions. Up to $16.9 million was approved for the Envoy offices. You were not asked. You were not told. You are paying her a reported $1070 a day, and Home Affairs refuses to tell you her salary.

The machinery of a small authoritarian state
Jillian Segal produced a 20-page plan. Thirteen recommendations. Forty nine actions. And behind them, nothing. No published evidence base. No consultation paper. No regulatory impact statement.

Not one piece of credible research showing any of it would prevent a single antisemitic incident. For all the rigour on display, the plan might as well have been drafted at her Point Piper kitchen table. In December 2025, the government swallowed it whole anyway, named it a programme of work led by Segal, and pledged action on every recommendation, unquestioned.

Read the list and ask which country you are living in. Media monitoring. A university report card. Withholding university funding. Terminating academic grants. Stripping charities of their status. Screening visa applicants for their opinions. Ideological training for the public service. Cancellation clauses so arts grants can be ripped back from artists who say the wrong thing about the wrong state.

The fig leaf is that Segal cannot personally cancel anything. Her office helps define the offence, grades the accused and recommends the sentence.

Ministers supply the muscle and the deniability. Prosecutor, judge and probation service in one unelected body, answerable only to the man who created it. Build this for any other subject and Australians would name it instantly.

A censorship ministry.

A rigged definition, wired into everything
At the centre sits the contested IHRA definition, whose own lead drafter has protested its use as an enforcement weapon. The ABC, SBS, Amnesty International and hundreds of scholars warn its Israel-related examples can melt criticism of a state into hatred of a people. Segal bolts it into government regardless.

From January 2027, universities must define antisemitism under an enforceable national standard. Then Segal’s report card marks whether the definition is appropriate, while her plan demands IHRA everywhere. Choice, the way a loan shark offers choice.

No vice-chancellor will need to be ordered to censor.

They will censor themselves in advance.

That is only the architecture. Then Segal took an oath and showed what it is for.

And hold one question in your head overnight, the one polite Australia refuses to ask. Why does one form of racism summon a ministry, a report card and $130 million, while First Nations families waited 30 years and 590 deaths in custody for recommendations nobody implemented?

Why machinery for one hatred and a media release for the rest? You are not supposed to ask. Ask anyway.

• Part 2: the mask off under oath. The plan for your children. The $50,000 nobody will investigate. And the question answered.

Andrew Brown is a Sydney businessman in the health products sector, former Deputy Mayor of Mosman and Palestine peace activist. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission.

The Free Palestine Party is now an official list party and will be on every ballot paper for New Zealand’s general election on November 7.

The Free Palestine Party is the only party in this election dealing with the most pressing economic, political and moral issue facing Aotearoa and the world today, said a statement by the party.

This crisis is caused by the “apartheid colony of Israel backed by US military power destabilising the Middle East”.

• READ MORE: ‘Triple tap’ in Gaza, Iran and the Hind Rajab atrocities condemned at Stop Wars rally
• Other Gaza genocide reports

More than 60 percent of the people of Aotearoa believe that the New Zealand government should sanction Israel for its human rights abuses, this rises to 68 percent among 18-29 year olds.

The only way to bring peace to the Middle East, stop a global depression and end the holocaust of our time, is to put an end to the apartheid state of Israel, just like apartheid South Africa.

The people of Aotearoa helped fight for the end of the apartheid state of South Africa and thousands of Kiwis today have joined the ongoing protests against the crimes of Israel.

“It is time for Kiwis and Aotearoa to be leaders in the struggle against Zionism and Israel, as we were in the anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid movements,” said the Free Palestine Party statement.

Centre of NZ politics
“The party has become registered with the Electoral Commission to push this issue to the centre of New Zealand politics “where it should be”.

Protesters over the Gaza genocide have held weekly demonstrations at multiple venues across New Zealand for 149 weeks — the longest continuous protests on an issue in New Zeakand’s history.

Six main principles in the party’s platform would help in the fight against apartheid and would stop New Zealand from being complicit in the crimes against humanity of Israel and the United States, said the statement:

The principles are:

• The right of Return for all Palestinians;
• The primacy of international law and UN resolutions;
• Upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in relation to Zionist abuses;
• Single State Solution for the whole of Palestine;
• Unconditional support for all forms of Palestine resistance; and
• Independent NZ foreign policy and withdrawal from military and security alliances with US.
• More information on the Free Palestine Party

When you hear “Iran” and “Strait of Hormuz” in the same sentence, what comes to mind?

Tensions? Threats? Chaos? …That’s exactly what the MSM news media want you to think with their headlines.

• READ MORE: Trump says US only ‘semi-negotiating’ with Iran; Israel rejects Gaza plan
• Oil prices climb as Iranian demands cloud outlook for Strait of Hormuz
• Other War on Iran reports

But here’s what they don’t tell you:

Iran let the world sail through that waterway for free for more than 40 years — no tolls, no fees. No questions asked.

Meanwhile, other nations have been charging billions from ships using their strategic routes and nobody bats an eye.

So why the sudden outrage against Tehran? And more importantly, what changed?

Cashing in big time
Meanwhile, what about other nations? They’re cashing in big time:

Suez Canal — billions in fees yearly
Panama Canal — charges for ships of up to $1 million per passage
Turkish Straits — toll booths are alive and well

So when Western powers point fingers at Tehran, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has one simple question:

“Why are we the only ones painted as the ‘bad guys’ when we’ve been the most generous?”

He’s not denying tensions. He’s not dodging responsibility.

He’s just asking for a fair debate, not a one-sided blame game.

Iran didn’t just wake up one day and decide to flex its muscles.

Weakening a nation
The United States has:

• Attacked Iran illegally and without justification;
• Imposed crippling sanctions;
• Sent warships to their doorstep;
• Tried to cut off their oil lifeline; and
• Worked to shrink Iran’s influence in the region.

When you spend 47 years trying to weaken a nation, don’t be surprised when they use what they have to push back.

Every sanction, every threat, every military move — the hostile campaign didn’t break Iran.

It reminded the country of 93 million people how powerful their position really is.

The Strait of Hormuz isn’t just water.

It’s 20 percent of the world’s oil supply passing through daily (before that US-Israel attack on Iran on February 28). And when you corner a country that controls Hormuz,
it will start charging politically, not just financially.

Iran isn’t collecting tolls because they want to. They’re collecting because the US gave them leverage by trying to break them.

If you spent years poking a lion, why are you shocked when it roars and starts charging admission?

There are some conversations a nation keeps postponing because they are uncomfortable. Changing Fiji’s flag is one of them.

We came close to having that conversation in 2015 and 2016. A nationwide design competition was launched, thousands of submissions poured in, opinions were fierce, and for a brief moment it felt as though Fiji was genuinely asking itself who it wanted to be. Then the conversation stalled.

After Fiji’s historic victory in rugby sevens at the 2016 Rio Olympics, the government announced that the flag would remain unchanged. Since then, the issue has largely disappeared from public debate.

• READ MORE: Two dates, one wound: What Girmit Day means for Fiji’s future
• Other Fiji flag reports

But postponing a conversation does not resolve it. If anything, it only leaves unfinished business for another generation. I believe that generation is ours.

I say this not because I dislike our current flag. Quite the opposite. Like millions of Fijians, I have watched it rise at schools, sporting events, military ceremonies and international competitions. I have sung the national anthem beneath it. I have seen athletes wrap themselves in it with tears streaming down their faces.

Those memories are real and meaningful. But memories belong to people, not pieces of cloth. Our love for Fiji does not live inside the Union Jack stitched into the corner of our flag. It lives in us.

The truth is simple. Fiji has been an independent nation since 1970 and a republic since 1987. For almost four decades we have chosen our own governments, written our own laws and determined our own future.

Someone else’s empire
Yet our national flag still carries the most recognisable symbol of the British Empire. I often ask myself a question that has never left me: If we truly believe we stand proudly as an independent republic, why does the first thing the world see on our flag belong to someone else’s empire?

For me, this question is deeply personal.

I am the descendant of girmitiya. My ancestors did not come to Fiji as tourists searching for opportunity. They came under the indenture system established by the British colonial administration after the abolition of slavery.

Between 1879 and 1916, more than 60,000 Indians were transported to Fiji under contracts that promised hope, but too often delivered exploitation, broken families, harsh labour and lives shaped by extraordinary sacrifice.

Many never saw India again. They built roads, cleared fields, harvested sugar cane and helped lay the foundations of the country we now call home. Their suffering was not an accident of history. It happened under the authority of the very empire represented by the Union Jack.

Every Girmit Day, May 14, Fiji rightly remembers those sacrifices. We honour resilience. We celebrate survival. We tell our children that our ancestors endured unimaginable hardship so future generations could stand taller than they ever could.

Yet we continue to fly a flag that still carries the emblem of the colonial power responsible for creating that very system. I have struggled to reconcile those two truths. Pride and pain cannot occupy the same symbol forever.

History never felt distant
Growing up in Kashmir, Lautoka, history never felt distant. It lived in conversations with elders, in temple gatherings, in stories shared over cups of tea, in the Fiji Hindi that flowed so naturally through our home.

I did not fully understand the scale of girmit as a child, but I understood sacrifice. I saw grandparents who measured wealth not by money, but by education. I watched parents work tirelessly because they believed their children deserved opportunities they never had.

Looking back now, I realise those values were inherited from people who had every reason to give up, but refused to. When I see the Union Jack on our flag today, I do not think first of constitutional history or Commonwealth ties. I think of those ancestors. I think of what they endured. And I wonder why their descendants should still carry the symbol of the empire that once denied them dignity.

Some people argue that the Union Jack no longer represents colonialism. They say it now represents history, friendship or tradition. I understand that perspective.

History cannot and should not be erased. Britain’s influence on Fiji is undeniable. Our legal institutions, parliamentary traditions and many aspects of our public administration evolved through that relationship. The Commonwealth continues to play an important role in Fiji’s international engagement.

None of that changes because a flag changes. Britain remains part of our history whether or not its flag appears on ours.

That is precisely the point.

Not about rejecting history
Changing the flag is not about rejecting history. It is about placing history where it belongs — in our museums, our classrooms, our books and our collective memory — not at the centre of our national identity. Mature nations are capable of acknowledging every chapter of their past without allowing one chapter to define them forever.

My own life has only strengthened that belief. I was born in Fiji. I migrated to Auckland in December 2011. Since then I have lived and taught in New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and now Japan. Every country has reminded me of where I come from.

Whenever someone asks me where home is, my answer is still Fiji. Not because I have lived there continuously, but because identity is built from childhood. It is the taste of chicken chop suey from Don’s Restaurant after family outings. It is buying futaa barfi for 20 cents. It is listening to Navtarang’s Top 100 Countdown while polishing black Bata school shoes.

It is Children’s Park in Lautoka, Ram Samy Reddy Rd, laughter with cousins, temple bells, tropical rain and neighbours who somehow knew everyone else’s business. None of those memories have anything to do with an empire. They belong entirely to Fiji.

Our flag should too.

I also reject the false choice that often dominates this conversation. Supporting a new flag does not mean disrespecting those who served beneath the current one. Soldiers who defended peacekeeping missions, athletes who won Olympic gold, teachers who stood before classrooms, nurses who cared for patients and ordinary citizens who loved Fiji under this flag deserve nothing, but gratitude.

Their achievements are not diminished because a future generation chooses a different symbol. The courage belonged to them, not to the fabric they carried.

Learn from the mistakes
If we do revisit this conversation, we must also learn from the mistakes of the last attempt. Too many people felt the process became about selecting attractive designs rather than discussing national identity.

A flag cannot simply be beautiful. It must be meaningful. It should emerge from genuine consultation with iTaukei communities, Indo-Fijians, Rotumans, Banabans, descendants of Pacific Islanders, Chinese-Fijians and every community that calls Fiji home.

It must reflect our ocean, our resilience, our cultures, our environment and our future — not because we want to erase difference, but because we want every child to recognise themselves within it.

I often think about the children I teach. One of the greatest privileges of being an educator is watching young people ask questions adults are often afraid to ask. They understand instinctively that symbols matter. School emblems matter. Family names matter.

National flags matter. They tell stories before anyone speaks a word. What story do we want Fiji’s flag to tell the next generation? That we are still defined by colonial inheritance? Or that we honour our history while confidently writing the next chapter ourselves?

Some will accuse people like me of reopening old wounds. I would argue the opposite. Healing begins when we acknowledge why certain symbols continue to hurt. As the descendant of indentured labourers, I cannot look at the Union Jack without remembering the empire that uprooted my ancestors from India and placed them into a system built on coercion and exploitation.

That history shaped my family. It shaped my language. It shaped my existence. I refuse to pretend that symbol is emotionally neutral simply because time has passed.

Fiji bigger than powers
Fiji has always been bigger than the powers that once ruled it. Bigger than coups. Bigger than politics. Bigger than race. Bigger than the labels that have too often divided us. We are the children of chiefs and farmers, of girmitiya and sailors, of island communities stretching across hundreds of islands, of people who chose Fiji and people whose ancestors had no choice.

Somehow, through hardship and hope, we built one nation together.

Our flag should finally reflect that truth.

Changing it will not solve poverty. It will not lower food prices, improve schools overnight or fix every political disagreement. Symbols alone never transform nations. But symbols tell nations who they believe themselves to be. After nearly 40 years as a republic, Fiji has earned the right to carry a flag that speaks first and foremost of itself.

Not because we reject our past.

But because we are finally confident enough to stand on our own.

Ashneel Jaynesh Prasad is a Fiji-born New Zealand citizen working as a teacher in Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan. This article was first published by The Fiji Times and is republished with permission.

United States unilateral sanctions, the kind being imposed on Cuba today, are deadlier for children than war according to a major piece of research published in The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal.

Totally ignored by the mainstream media, the report has bombshell findings that should call into question the use of sanctions to impose punishments on entire populations for the actions of their governments.

A staggering 500,000 civilians die annually due to US and EU unilateral sanctions that many Western countries help enforce.

• READ MORE: ‘To play God’: How US pressure has shattered Cuba’s healthcare
• Other sanctions reports

Sanctions are ‘more tremendous than war’
The report by Professor Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón and Mark Weisbrot vividly underscores US President Woodrow Wilson’s comment that sanctions were “something more tremendous than war.”

“Effects of international sanctions on age-specific mortality: a cross-national panel data analysis” data-mined major studies covering the years 1971-2021. Its primary source was the Global Sanctions Database (GSDB), internationally the most comprehensive aggregator of global datasets on sanctions.

Analysing research covering the years 1971-2021 across 152 countries, the researchers found that unilateral sanctions (such as those imposed on Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Yemen and Iraq) were “associated with an annual toll of 564,258 deaths, similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict.” Imagine that: every year, for decades, sanctions (primarily US and EU sanctions) have taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians — and that rate has accelerated, not declined, because American use of sanctions has exploded in recent years.

According to the Global Sanctions Database (GSDB), 25 percent of all countries have been put under US, EU, or UN sanctions in the 2010–22 period! That’s a massive leap from 8 percent in the 1960s. For this short article I will focus on Cuba but the same lessons apply to whatever countries are targeted for unilateral sanctions.

Saving the babies of Cuba
Professor Francisco Rodriguez, an economist at Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies is the lead author of the study. He says: “Our findings reveal that unilateral and economic sanctions, particularly those imposed by the USA, lead to substantial increases in mortality, disproportionately affecting children younger than 5 years.”

Some Americans are fighting every day to save the babies of Cuba. Others, like the President and the Secretary of State, are doing everything they can to kill Cuban babies and thousands of others of the most vulnerable citizens of the besieged Caribbean island.

This is not hyperbole; it is policy that is playing out on our watch.

Medea Benjamin, the great American activist from the CodePink peace organisation, recently visited Cuba to bring medicines and medical supplies to Cuba’s pediatric hospitals.

She is now under investigation for doing so — for breaking US unilateral sanctions.

“Basically, we want to help save babies, and that, according to Trump, is something that must be investigated. Because ‘How dare we want to help the Cuban people? How dare we love the Cuban people?’ If indeed the charge is that we love the Cuban people — ‘Guilty!’ I want my government to leave the Cuban people alone, not to be strangling them by keeping oil from the island, by sanctions that are so brutal. I want them to stop threatening to invade Cuba. I want them to listen to the global world opinion that every single year at the United Nations overwhelmingly says: lift the blockade.”

Sanctions: the modern ‘Siege Engine’
Why the silence from the mainstream media about the report’s findings? Why did they choose to ignore what in a sane and decent world would have been earth-shaking revelations?

Dr Josephine Varghese of the University of Canterbury suggests this is because the West puts great effort into burying inconvenient truths. She specialises in the intersections of colonialism, capitalism and structural violence and told me this week: “The United States has openly admitted that the purpose of the sanctions is to create conditions so bad that the people in Cuba will turn against their own government.”

Cuba’s entire electricity grid collapsed last week, driving millions of Cubans to the brink — just what the US wants.

“At the ground level, sanctions have a deadly impact,” Dr Varghese says. “Cuba had such impressive achievements in health, for example, in lowering infant mortality.

“The current sanctions and punishments are targeting this. We are seeing nurses and doctors having to manually operate ventilators and incubators for premature babies.”

Luis Ernesto Morejón Rodríguez, Cuba’s ambassador to Wellington, New Zealand, reinforced this message when he told me of the human impact of the blockade:

“I think about children fighting cancer whose chances of survival have been devastated because the chemotherapy drugs and other essential medicines they need are simply not available.

“Years ago, around 65 percent of these children could expect to survive. Today, because treatments are interrupted or cannot be provided at all, that figure has been tragically reversed: as many as 85 percent may not survive.

“I think about the parents waiting for a phone call that never comes because more than 100,000 Cubans — including over 12,000 children — are still waiting for surgery.

“Cuba once had one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the Americas. Today that rate has more than doubled, rising from around four to more than nine deaths per thousand live births.

“These are not just numbers. They are children who should still be alive, families carrying unbearable pain, and healthcare professionals forced to make impossible choices every day.

“Political differences should never be settled at the expense of ordinary people, and certainly never at the expense of children.”

Now that we know that sanctions have effects on the health and mortality of civilian populations similar in magnitude to those of armed conflict, what should we do about it? Will we continue to shrug and look the other way out of fear of the US or indifference to human suffering?

Will we have the courage to at last recognise the inconvenient truth that the US and the EU have killed civilians on a scale, albeit at a slower pace, greater than the German government of the 1940s?

Isn’t it time to find the courage to oppose this? The reform of the entire sanctions framework must be a global priority. Unilateral secondary sanctions (forcing other countries to implement sanctions) is already illegal under international law.

Such is the power of the US and the EU — controlling as they do a large portion of the levers of international trade and finance — that most countries bow down and comply. For the sake of children suffering now and millions more not yet born, that must end and a new era which restrains and reforms the use of sanctions must be ushered in.

As the great Brazilian educator Paulo Freire said: “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and hosts solidarity.co.nz

“Triple-tap” attacks by Israeli and US forces against Palestine, Iran and Lebanon were condemned today at a Stop Wars Aotearoa rally against the atrocities in the Middle East in Auckland’s Aotea Square.

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters was also criticised in satirical theatre over accusations of racism and insults against immigrants.

Thanking people for showing their support and solidarity with the people of Iran — “who have had American and Israeli missiles raining down on them for five months” — a New Zealand Afghan speaker said this “new wave of aggression” had started on February 28 with a demonic US attack on Minab elementary girls’ school in southeastern Iran.

• READ MORE:  ‘High-level’ approval still pending from Iran on Oman Hormuz deal
• Winston Peters refuses to apologise for ‘racist’ comments after meeting with PM
• We must name racism when it happens
• Other Stop Wars and Gaza reports

“A triple-tap attack against children in their classrooms,” said Bibi Amena of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). Rescue officials reported 175 people had been killed — most of them young schoolgirls, with 32 of the victims recently being buried in a mass funeral.

“A triple-tap attack is a tactic used to ensure there are no survivors, and to kill anyone responding to the initial attack, in particular it aims to kill any rescue workers and journalists who arrive at the scene after the first strike,” she said.

This was the same tactic used by the “demonic Israeli Occupation Forces in Palestine”.

In August 2025, Israeli forces carried out a triple-tap attack on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing 22 civilians, including 3 journalists who arrived minutes after the initial attack.

Shameful Hind Rajab killing
Amena also highlighted the shameful killing of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, along with 6 other family members, as they fled in a car from Israeli bombs in northern Gaza.

“They were all shot, 335 times by Israeli occupation forces. Two paramedics were sent to rescue Hind. A double tap attack followed, deliberately timed to kill the paramedics,” she said.

The shocking tragedy was told in a documentary, The Voice of Hind Rajab, featuring the actual sound track of Hind’s pleas for her life as she lay wounded and talked to rescue dispatchers.

This film was screened to packed cinemas for the third — and final time in Auckland — at the 2026 NZ International Film Festival yesterday.

A Palestinian community and justice advocate, Maher Nazzal, posted on social media this week the following response:

“It is heartbreaking beyond words.
“If you are a human being with even the smallest sense of compassion, this film will change you. After watching it, life can never, ever absolutely never go back to ‘life as usual’.”

“We all know her name and her story,” said Amena. “we all know the story of Gaza, and the story of Palestine. And we also know the story of Iran.

“Because their stories are not new to us. We have been witnessing Israeli and American political violence, aggression, torture, terrorism and illegal wars for most of our lives.”

‘Illegal, immoral war’
She said the months-long attack in Iran had been an “illegal, illegitimate, immoral and senseless war, started by the world’s biggest aggressors, America and Israel”.

Over the past 5 months, Iran has had its schools, hospitals, power plants, bridges and other civilian infrastructure deliberately targeted and destroyed.

Amena said this was not new.

The Islamic Republic of Iran had been facing American and Israeli aggression since their Islamic Revolution of 1979.

For 47 years, Iran had been “relentlessly threatened, sanctioned and violently attacked by the American and Israeli regimes”.

“Why? Because the Islamic Republic of Iran fought for sovereignty and independence, and broke free from the clutches of Western imperialism.”

Ironically, as she spoke a counter-protest of Iranian monarchists and supporters who back the claim of dissident and Zionist US-exiled former crown prince Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, tried to drown out the speakers at the Stop War protest.

392 military interventions
Between 1776 and 2019, the US carried out over 392 military interventions worldwide.

“From my home country Afghanistan, to Cuba, to Korea, to the Philippines, Venezuela, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Vietnam, Iraq and beyond.”

Currently, America had more than 600 military bases in at least 63 countries worldwide, Amena said.

“And these are conservative figures, others estimate over 1000 military bases and installations in over 150 countries,” she said.

“Many of us here in Aotearoa who are immigrants, are here because of America’s military interventions in our home countries. And as much as I love Aotearoa, which has been the only home I know for most of my life, no one wants to be a refugee.

“It is not a life of luxury, to leave your home, your ancestral lands, your whānau, your hapu and iwi. No one wants to risk their lives to get on a boat, and travel in inhumane conditions, to a foreign land where they are stripped from all that’s familiar to them, and all that’s sacred to them.

“No, they immigrate because they are escaping American and Israeli bombs. They are escaping poverty caused directly by America’s economic terrorism.”

‘Educate yourself’ on immigration
Amena appealed to people in Aotearoa who had a problem with immigrants and refugees, “please educate yourself as to why and how we came to be here”.

“We are reliant on immigrants to sustain our economy and our public services.

“As a healthcare worker, I can tell you from first hand experience that our healthcare system is falling apart because we don’t have enough healthcare workers.”

The protesters also held a mock trial of an effigy character representing Foreign Minister Winston Peters over his anti-immigrant and racist statements inside and outside Parliament over recent weeks and failure to take a stand over the Gaza genocide.

The crowd acted as the “jury” and delivered a resounding “guilty” verdict on his “shameful” behaviour.

Among several other speakers at the rally was Iranian Kiwi Seyed Derhamy, who also spoke about the Minab schoolgirls atrocity and the injustice of the unjustified war on Iran, saying that Iranians were essentially peace loving people who did not like war.

As he spoke, he held aloft photographs in memory of two of the Minab schoolgirls “brutally killed” in the US-Israel attack — 10-year-olds Maryam Bazarak and Asra Zahari.

NSW Police have dropped charges against the remaining climate protesters from Rising Tide’s 2024 People’s Blockade of Newcastle Harbour — the site of the world’s largest coal port.

Climate Defenders Australia, which represented 117 of the arrestees, had repeatedly petitioned police to withdraw anti-protest charges after they failed to prosecute test cases, and were required to pay A$73,000 in costs.

• READ MORE: Police drop charges against 125 Rising Tide protesters two years after Newcastle port blockade
• Rising Tide climate activists say they feel ‘vindicated’ after more than 100 charges are dropped
• Other Rising Tide protest reports

Another 100 arrestees remain charged from the 2025 Rising Tide protest — the backlog for police and courts is another measure of the failure of Premier Chris Minns’ draconian anti-protest laws.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

Apparently antisemitism simply fell from the sky. Fully formed. Immaculately conceived.

Entirely unrelated to anything happening in Gaza.

That is the finding Australia has pre-purchased for $131.1 million, confirmed at Senate Estimates in February, with $91 million alone for staffing, property, lawyers and security.

• READ MORE: Other Bondi Royal Commission reports

Every single dollar buys theatre.

Measure the obscenity. The banking royal commission, which gutted an entire industry’s misconduct, cost $75 million. Aboriginal Deaths in Custody cost $50.2 million.

This inquiry outspends both combined. Meanwhile there is no royal commission into the domestic violence killing a woman most weeks, none into Islamophobia, now soaring.

Australia found $131 million for the one inquiry designed never to ask an obvious question.

Blame where it belongs. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote the answer into the question.

His Letters Patent instruct the Commission to find the drivers of antisemitism in extremism and radicalisation, the war deleted from the terms of reference before Commissioner Virginia Bell was even sworn in.

The Albanese government wrote the verdict into the terms of reference, then spent more than the banking royal commission to have a judge read it back. Here is what the money is buying.

Commissioning an alibi
Albanese promised the inquiry would deliver, in his own words, the right outcome. A Prime Minister announcing the right outcome in advance is commissioning an alibi.

This is the government that will gesture at recognising Palestine while refusing to utter the word genocide, that ships F35 components into the supply chain of the slaughter, that sanctions two Israeli ministers and calls it courage.

It needed a grand national explanation for collapsing social cohesion that never once mentions its own complicity.

For $131 million, it has bought one.

The process delivered. In the first three days of hearings, 23 of 36 witnesses characterised criticism of Israel, opposition to Zionism or Palestine advocacy as antisemitic.

Jewish organisations opposed to Zionism were refused leave to appear. Palestinian voices were excluded for lacking a direct and substantial interest.

The accused were barred from the courtroom so the prosecution could run unopposed at public expense.

The grievance parade
And the substance? A grievance parade.

The ABC and SBS hauled in to answer for Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal’s strong perception, her phrase, that their Gaza coverage lacks balance, then interrogated for declining the contested IHRA definition Bell waved through as uncontroversial.

Keffiyehs, flags, watermelon art, chants of Free Palestine, student encampments and fundraisers for maimed children tendered as exhibits of hate. Protest. Tents. Journalism.

Every place an ordinary Australian expressed solidarity with a people being exterminated, recast at public expense as a crime scene. Australians are not being investigated for hating Jews.

They are being investigated for objecting to a genocide.

The complainants were welcomed like royalty. Alex Ryvchin of the ECAJ, who called the anti-Israel movement indistinguishable from neo-Nazism, testified at length while his silk objected to opposing counsel merely uttering the word genocide, a finding the International Court of Justice considered plausible back in January 2024.

Robert Gregory of the self-appointed Australian Jewish Association, which the ECAJ itself calls unrepresentative, told the Commission the government egged on antisemitism, fresh from blaming Bondi on visas for Palestinians fleeing the bombs.

Sky’s the limit
Sky News completes the circuit, wheeling Gregory out to demonise protesters, then feeding its own segments back into the panic as evidence.

The outcomes are as predetermined as the terms.

Come December 14, expect IHRA stamped across the public service and pushed onto civil society, work Segal has begun.

Expect ABC oversight its own ombudsman rejected. Expect protest reframed as policing, and regulators monitoring speech the way AHPRA already does, having admitted under oath it watches nurses and doctors for criticism of Israel after Segal’s pressure.

Expect everything blamed but the war.

And expect antisemitism not to fall, because you cannot cure what you refuse to diagnose. Every recommendation will manufacture the resentment it claims to fight, and Labor will call the wreckage cohesion.

For almost three years the world has watched a genocide live-streamed by a state claiming to act in the name of the Jewish people, while its Australian cheer squad defended, excused or denied every atrocity.

Now they ask why anger grows.

None of this excuses antisemitism. Not one word of it. The Bondi gunmen murdered Jews for being Jews, and the law should fall hard on every bigot who follows them.

Fifteen dead Australians deserved a fearless inquiry. They got a pantomime, their graves deployed as a shield for a foreign state and the government that armed it.

The elephant is blocking the doorway and eating $131 million of paperwork, yet everyone keeps peering around it, declaring there is nothing to see.

This Commission will not defeat antisemitism. It will deliver the most expensive whinge in Australian history, commissioned by a government purchasing its own absolution with public money.

Andrew Brown is a Sydney businessman in the health products sector, former Deputy Mayor of Mosman and a Palestine peace activist.

With the victory of progressive Dr Abdul El-Sayed over Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic primary this week, prepare yourself to hear enormous quantities of bullsh*t in the United States about the Democratic Party now being “taken over” by “Democratic Socialists”.

Or as the reliably establishment New York Times described what’s at stake, “can an insurgent candidate, with unabashedly left-wing positions, win in a moderate state?”

Oh, p-l-e-a-s-e.

• READ MORE: How Abdul El-Sayed’s ‘extraordinary’ win stunned pro-Israel establishment

Michigan Democrats didn’t choose Dr El-Sayed because he’s “unabashedly left wing” or a Democratic Socialist (in fact, he’s not).

They chose him because he’s a fighter — at a time when America needs fighters willing to stand up to the worst tyrant who has ever occupied the Oval Office.

Corporate Democrats– such as Haley Stevens, along with Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries — aren’t up to the task because they won’t bite the corporate hands that feed them campaign money.

They won’t criticise the billionaire class. They refuse to see how big money has corrupted America.

Billionaires backing neo-fascism
Yet it’s big corporations and the billionaire class that are supporting Trump’s neo-fascism.

They’ve sucked up to Trump for corporate welfare, giant tax cuts, tariff exemptions, antitrust acquiescence, and war contracts. They’ve given Trump hundreds of millions for his inauguration, his ballroom, his 250th birthday, his superPAC.

Jamie Dimon and Wall Street; Elon Musk and his billionaire bros; Brad Carp and his corporate lawyers; Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Ellisons — all have sold their integrity for huge profits.

They’ve created media empires that won’t criticise Trump, financial empires that feed Trump’s crypto, energy empires that feed off Trump’s war, and legal empires that allow Trump to ride roughshod over the rule of law.

Which is why America desperately needs people in Congress who will fight against Trump and his sycophants.

The Democratic Party isn’t being taken over by Democratic Socialists. There’s no civil war between progressives and moderates. We aren’t witnessing an ideological battle between the “left” and the “center”.

We’re seeing America wake up to the tyranny that’s engulfed us, and to a crisis of affordability that’s causing most Americans to struggle financially while fueling the biggest stock market rally in history.

Tyranny is handmaiden of money
When corporate America and Wall Street are unleashed — when the President of the United States has made an implicit deal with the moneyed interests to back him and his authoritarian regime in exchange for tax cuts, deregulation, monopolisation, and pay-to-play corruption — of course prices soar and wages stagnate.

Tyranny is the handmaiden of the moneyed interests.

The Democratic Party’s mega-donor class may be horrified by the rising tide of progressive populism overtaking more than a few primaries this cycle. It spent tens of million of dollars on Stevens — making the Michigan primary one of the most expensive in American history.

Too bad. It’s time that the Democratic Party’s mega-donor class recognises that its real choice is between democracy and tyranny, between an economy that works for all or one that works for a small sliver at the top.

If the mega-donor class chooses the latter, it may be acting in its narrow self-interest, but it will also be acting against the future of this nation.

Robert Reich is a US professor, former Secretary of Labour, co-founder of Inequality Media and writes at robertreich.substack.com

Israel and Iran are unique for starkly different reasons — Israel has less of a right to exist than any other country, while Iran is the only country that has stood up against the assault on international law by the US, Israel and their allies.

That is according to Craig Mokhiber’s comments on The Electronic Intifada Livestream.

Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience. He served as director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights until he resigned in October 2023 over the world body’s failure to act against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

• READ MORE: Why Israel has no right to exist, with Craig Mokhiber
• Other War on Iran reports

“This action of self-defence taken by Iran is the first truly consequential action by a member state,” Mokhiber said of Iran’s response to the US and Israeli aggression it has been facing.

Mokhiber also pointed to resistance by “students on their college campuses, by flotillas, by people’s tribunals, by demonstrations, by the resistance in Palestine, the resistance in Lebanon, by Ansarullah in Yemen”.

‘A formidable state’
“But this is a state,” he said of Iran. “This is a formidable state with real military, diplomatic and political capacities that has stood up and said: ‘No more.’”

By contrast, Mokhiber said, every other country had either been directly complicit or looked away while the US, Israel and their allies committed serial aggression, livestreamed genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Contributing editor Jon Elmer reports on several days’ worth of Iranian attacks on US military assets in the region during the previous week, which caused extensive damage.

Republished from The Electronic Intifada with permission.

Why Israel has no right to exist.         Video: The Electronic Intifada

Many of you have seen on social media globally what happened in Gaza this week.

Why has the world remained silent? Why have the mainstream media remained silent?

We, the people on social media, are the ones posting about it across different platforms.

• READ MORE: Gaza holds mass funeral for 112 people killed in Israel’s 2023 Sabra attack
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Thousands of people gathered in Gaza City for the mass funeral of 112 people killed in the Sabra massacre by Israel in 2023 while the world watched in silence.

The dead were members of two families — Al-Hasayneh and Abu Sharia — whose remains were pulled from the rubble of homes destroyed earlier by Israeli airstrikes.

The funeral came during one of the deadliest stretches of Israeli bombardment in recent days, proof that the Gaza genocide‌ has not ended despite ceasefire and deal announcements.

Israel’s plan has not changed since 1948 — the mass expulsion of Palestinians and the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Recovered bodies
Rescue teams recently recovered the bodies of the two families from the site of the Israeli attack in the Sabra neighbourhood on 22 November 2023.

The attack killed 308 members of the two families, including 40 children, 30 women and seven people with disabilities.

The bodies were wrapped in white shrouds. Mourners wept in grief and sorrow while the world looked on without taking action.

So I ask: does US President Donald Trump know about this? Has he been informed?

If he does know, and still doesn’t care, then what is the difference between this and the actions he has accused other countries of committing?

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for some Israeli leaders, yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still traveling to different countries, including the US, and continues to be seen alongside world leaders.

There have been no strong sanctions, and the international pressure has not been as great as many expected.

Heartbreaking world
I cannot describe the kind of world we are living in.

The world is silent. The media are silent. World leaders are silent.

Does this mean the world is unable to do anything to stop leaders accused of committing atrocities?

Where is the international community when it is needed most?

What is the purpose of international law if it is applied only against the weak?

It is truly heartbreaking.

A citizen journalist’s response to the Gaza mass funeral republished from Presstv.ir.

“New Zealand is not a monotonous garden where every flower is the same; it is a garden where the diversity of the blooms enriches the view,” Winston Peters declared in his maiden speech, 47 years ago.

If you were looking for an image to illustrate the diversity today’s Minister of Foreign Affairs was celebrating, way back in 1979 you’d be hard pressed to find a better one than the screenshot, above, of Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan giving his maiden speech last year.

Xu-Nan, dressed in a traditional Chinese shirt, is delivering the speech with his caucus colleagues, the proudly Māori Tamatha Paul, and US transplant Julie Anne Genter sitting behind.

• READ MORE: ‘You’re a liar! You’re a liar!’ NZ foreign minister Peters insults Gaza flotilla torture survivor in Parliament
• Other Winston Peters reports

Up in the right-hand corner there’s a sign language interpreter.

Last week Peters, leader of the New Zealand First Party, was hogging the headlines, not with a renewed celebration of cultural diversity but for telling the China-born Xu-Nan he wasn’t welcome here.

“I know you just came here five minutes ago. Go back to your own country.

“That’s where they lie like a flatfish, but they don’t lie like that here, all right? This is called democracy. This is called democracy, unlike what you’re used to.”

Xu-Nan, who was born seven years after Peters first entered Parliament, moved to New Zealand in 1994.

Riled up Peters
The MP, who the Sunday Times revealed last month had spoken the most words of any MP in Parliament this term, had riled up Peters with an interjection asking if he was vaccinated.

The 81-year-old, pinstripe suit-wearing Peters had himself pictured on horseback in the run-up to the last election, such is his fondness for the metaphor “this isn’t my first rodeo”.

And last week’s outburst wasn’t the first time he has attacked Asians in an election year.
In the run-up to the 1996 election, Peters gave what came to be known as his Asian Invasion speech.

It was condemned by politicians from across the spectrum: the then National Party trade negotiations minister Philip Burdon described it as “a crude appeal to base prejudices”; the deputy leader of the leftwing Alliance, Matt Robson, said Peters was fomenting “ugly, racist attitudes which he hopes will transfer into votes”; and Labour’s Chris Carter said he was trying to “capitalise on economic envy”.

And this past week Peters has again been condemned from left to right. Former prime minister Helen Clark and former National Party and Act Party leader Don Brash have called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to sack him.

Luxon described the comments as racist and outrageous but said Peters continued to have his confidence as Foreign Minister.

Brash downplayed the insults to Xu-Nan and focused on the damage Peters’ comments could do to the New Zealand–China relationship.

“It’s one thing to make a comment in the House about a flippant remark. But to go on about the China government itself is, is….” Stuff reported, a seemingly lost-for-words Brash as saying.

Chair of China bank NZ branch
Brash — a rightwing libertarian and staunch advocate of privatisation — is the chair of the New Zealand branch of the world’s largest (state-owned) commercial bank: the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

The former Reserve Bank governor wasn’t alone in focusing primarily on the hurt caused to New Zealand’s relationship with its largest trading partner rather than his attack on Xu-Nan and the wider migrant community.

With an election in under 100 days, Peters’ outburst could just be him taking another ride on the bucking bronco of nativist dog-whistle politics, but the attack on the Chinese government was out of character.

It is a trope among New Zealand’s political journalists to comment on the two Winston Peters: the rough-and-tumble populist at home and the dignified hard-working statesman on the world stage.

Last Wednesday’s performance was more frothing at the mouth than “flippant remark”, and with his words reported around the world his image as a hard-working statesman is, surely, tarnished beyond repair.

His attack on Xu-Nan’s lack of understanding of democracy based on his country of birth was as ironic as it was ignorant, arrogant and just plain dumb.

In his maiden speech, Xu-Nan noted that the word democracy came from the Greek root demos — people — and kratos – power.

‘Empowering the people’
“We don’t get to say that we are democratic by asking the nation to tick a couple of boxes every three years; it is something that we, as parliamentarians, have to prove every day, something our people demand of us every day, and something we should empower the people to do every single day.”

Xu-Nan, whose PhD thesis dealt with ancient Egypt, then went on to reflect on the influence of both Egyptian and Chinese ideas on his thinking.

In an interview with the Asia NZ Foundation before the 2020 election, Xu-Nan said he was seeing casual racism “coming out as a more active form of racism towards not just Asian communities, but all migrant communities, our Pasifika community and our indigenous Māori community.”

But, sadly, that active form of racism isn’t new and it never went away. Writing on E-Tangata, Mengshu Fu recalls arriving as a child from China in the year Peters gave his Asian Invasion speech.

They explain that the Mandarin community nicknamed Peters “Lao Pi.” Lao is old and Pi both a shortened version of Pete and the word for skin. It’s not necessarily an insulting name but is an informal one.

“Lao Pi is like that grumpy neighbour everyone knows is a problem,” they write.

“Except he’s not a random neighbour. He is the Foreign Affairs Minister and former deputy prime minister. He represents New Zealand on the global stage, and he’s in a position to make decisions for this country. He’s in a position to embolden racial abuse and violence, a violence many of us first met as children.”

Awful advert for democracy
Winston Peters may be the longest-serving MP in Parliament but he’s an awful advert for democracy. His New Zealand First Party is a personality cult that attracts outsized corporate donations on one hand and actively courts a grab bag of the angry and disgruntled: from the gun lobby and anti-245T hunting groups to those animated by the full gamut of cultural war issues.

Last month when asked whether local gas exploration company Greymouth Petroleum had influenced the party’s $1 billion gas exploration promise, NZ First deputy leader Shane Jones declared: “no one influences such matters that go into our manifesto — only Winston and I”.

It’s an extraordinary comment, not because of the denial that Greymouth Petroleum — a major player in an industry whose representatives regularly lobby the leadership of the party — had any influence on it, but the admission that its own members also had none whatsoever.

The “drill baby drill” policy — and other “such matters” — it seems are Winston and Shane’s alone.

The Winston Peters of his maiden speech — nearly five decades ago — had some prescient thoughts on the energy crisis kicked off by the Iranian revolution of 1979.

“I am aware that the energy crisis is a matter of grave concern to us all, but, despite the problems of rising fuel prices, we have some advantages. Let us emphasise the advantages we do have. We are blessed with a temperate climate. Our country is compact, so that we do not have to travel long distances between our cities.

“Of the less obvious advantages, our coastline is extensive, and the harnessing of the tides to create power is a feasible proposition. Solar and wind power are also developments to which Kiwi ingenuity will have the opportunity of applying itself. I can foresee no problems that the country cannot solve; yet the gloom merchants have been peddling their wares.”

A visionary statement
Excluding the odd claim that New Zealand with a landmass larger than the UK and population of less than one tenth is compact, it was a visionary statement more in line with the thinking of today’s Green Party than the fossil fuel future being peddled by NZ First now.

That was then and this is the age of culture wars. From Trump’s MAGA and Nigel Farage’s Reform to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and Winston Peters’ New Zealand First, the transition to renewable energy is condemned as woke.

Windmills and solar panels have joined (brown) immigrants on the list of things threatening our way of life.

Jones, who often sports a Make New Zealand Great Again cap — came to his leader’s defence in the blowback from his attack on Xu-Nan by declaring that he and Winston are both “historical foundation New Zealanders. And he [Xu-Nan] should know his place.”

It’s a disturbing phrase and one that historian Scott Hamilton has pointed out has similarities to the term “heritage Americans” popular among the nationalist white right in the US.

Presumably, in Jones’ mind Māori and the Pākehā descendants of the original settlers are “foundation New Zealanders” with greater rights than those of more recent migrants.

“We are going to campaign that all migrants must be citizens and must be here in this country for a long period of time before they can be politicians,” he said.

Suggests a curated garden
It suggests a garden, to evoke Winston Peters’ metaphor, where the blooms are stringently curated by a head gardener: more Versailles than a flourishing botanical garden celebrating both native and exotic blooms.

If the 34-year-old Winston Peters who gave that maiden speech had been able to see the Aotearoa of 2026 he might have been pleasantly surprised to see that new renewable energy sources were finally being embraced and that our Parliament was far, far more diverse.

Xu-Nan opened his maiden with a song his maternal grandmother used to sing him in Mandarin Chinese. He ended his speech with its translation:

Ain’t scented like a flower
Ain’t tall like a tree
I’m just a blade of grass that nobody knows
But I ain’t ever lonely
I ain’t ever worried
Look my companions are all around the globe
Spring wind, o spring wind
You make me greener
Sunshine, o sunshine
You shine your light on me
Rivers, o valleys
You have nourished me
Great earth, o mother
You embrace me tightly.

There’s a humility and commitment to — well — democracy, Papatuanuku and solidarity that we should all embrace.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by his Substack Towards Democracy.

The West Papua National Committee (KNPB) says it will stage another round of coordinated demonstrations next week to mark the anniversary of the New York Agreement.

Protests are planned across all 36 of the organisation’s regional commands throughout the Land of Papua.

KNPB spokesperson Ogram Wanimbo announced the plan following the group’s “Papua: Military and Humanitarian Emergency” rally in Jayapura City on Monday.

• READ MORE: Indonesian forces hunt West Papuan militants who killed construction workers
• Five workers killed by insurgents in Highland Papua, manhunt ongoing
• Other West Papua reports

The New York Agreement, signed by Indonesia and the Netherlands at the United Nations headquarters on 15 August 1962, provided for the transfer of the then-Netherlands New Guinea (West Irian/Papua) to the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority (UNTEA) before administration was handed over to Indonesia.

Wanimbo said Monday’s nationwide protest served as an initial mobilisation ahead of the larger coordinated demonstrations planned for August 15.

He also referred to the ongoing armed conflict between the West Papua National Liberation Army–Free Papua Movement (TPNPB-OPM) and Indonesian security forces.

Reports say Indonesia’s security forces have launched a joint operation to pursue TPNPB-OPM fighters who are alleged to have killed five “road construction workers” in Papua’s Highland province on Sunday.

Civilian casualties
According to Wanimbo, civilian casualties would continue if there was no ceasefire between the two sides.

“As a people’s movement, KNPB will continue to organise public demonstrations calling for mediation. We also urge the Indonesian government to withdraw military forces from conflict-affected areas,” he said.

He said KNPB was also calling on the Indonesian government to pursue a concrete peace process by bringing representatives of the Indonesian government and TPNPB-OPM to the negotiating table.

Wanimbo argued that if the armed conflict continued and civilians continued to bear the consequences, Papuans would continue to resist through armed groups, political movements, Indigenous communities, and supporters.

“Respect the Indigenous people who live on this land. Every piece of land from Sorong to Merauke has its customary owners. Do not use military force to suppress the people, kill civilians, and then take control of customary land,” he said.

Meanwhile, Jayapura City Police Chief Senior Commissioner Fredrickus Maclarimboen said authorities had deployed 1432 joint personnel from Jayapura City Police and the Papua Regional Police to secure Monday’s KNPB demonstration within the city’s jurisdiction.

“Today we saw that public activities, including schools and health services, were disrupted. However, the overall security and public order situation remained stable and under control,” Maclarimboen said.

Republished from Jubi Media with permission.

The BBC recently interviewed an Israeli settler who said that all the Palestinians in four surrounding villages should be exterminated to avenge an Israeli who was killed while terrorising a Palestinian village last month, adding that just a single Jewish life is worth 10 million Palestinian lives.

“I think now after they kill one Israeli people, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,” lawyer Yehuda Shimon told the BBC.

“It sounds like you’re saying one Jewish life is worth hundreds or thousands of Palestinian lives,” replied the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in the interview.

• LISTEN: A reading by Tim Foley

“Million,” Shimon corrected her. “One Jewish life, it’s 10 million, okay?”

“That just sounds racist,” Williamson responded, to which Shimon replied, “Yes, I know, I know. But this is the truth.”

The interaction has been going viral on social media as people react to the blatant display of the extremist ideology held by the settlers who are working to gradually squeeze Palestinians off their land in the West Bank.

And while it is true that Shimon’s comments are extremely evil and racist, that’s not what I personally found interesting about the interview. What I found interesting was Williamson’s response.

I mean, it is a bit rich watching a BBC reporter act shocked and offended by somebody saying they think Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives. After all, the premise that Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives has coloured every aspect of Western news media reporting on Israel and Palestine for generations.

That’s why the Western press expressed disproportionately more shock and horror at October 7 than the far more egregious Israeli abuses which led up to it and the far more egregious Israeli abuses which followed.

It’s why you saw howling outrage at the Bondi shooting in Sydney last year when the same number of Palestinians getting killed on any given day in Gaza never even makes a blip in the news.

On 26 March 2025, 15 Palestinians were killed by the IDF during a ceasefire in Gaza. On the December 14 that same year, 15 people were killed at Bondi Beach in Sydney in a mass shooting by ISIS members directed at Jewish Australians.

All mainstream Western institutions view Palestinian lives as worthless   Video: Caitlin Johnstone

Two instances of mass murder. Same exact number of victims. But you only heard about one of them.

Why did you only hear about one of them? Because only one of them made the news.

The mainstream press spent weeks urgently reporting on the Bondi shooting, frenetically working to falsely associate an ISIS terrorist attack with pro-Palestine demonstrations by uniformly repeating the line “This is what globalise the intifada looks like” in news outlets throughout the Western world.

Report after report after report was published about how Jews are being attacked, how Jews are feeling unsafe, and what new laws and free speech restrictions must be rolled out in order to stomp out pro-Palestine sentiment to protect the Jews.

Nothing remotely similar happened on the 26 March 2025. As far as the Western press were concerned, 15 Palestinians getting killed in Gaza was just another Wednesday.

This is because all mainstream Western media outlets hold the same racist opinions about Palestinians as those that were voiced by Yehuda Shimon.

So do all mainstream Western political parties. So do all other mainstream Western institutions. So do all supporters of the state of Israel. They all believe Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives, as evidenced by the policies they support and the news stories they pay attention to.

The BBC has a well-documented history of extensive pro-Israel bias, with its own reporters complaining that they’ve been performing PR for the Israeli government and its own editor losing a libel lawsuit against a journalist who exposed his pro-Israel slant.

They spent years running cover for an active genocide with “Hamas-run health ministry says” headlines and passive-language verbal gymnastics to protect Israeli information interests, so you know that when Lucy Williamson objects “That sounds racist!” to an Israeli settler claiming Jewish lives are worth far more than Palestinian lives, she’s not actually upset at his belief system.

She just knows you’re not supposed to say such things out loud.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

COMMENTARY: By John Hobbs

A friend who lives in Gaza, just posted the following:

“From the sea of Gaza, I do not look out . . . I stand on the edge of the world, shouting in a direction that does not hear, and I know that between me and them there is not just a sea, but a silence that is skilled at betrayal.”

The New Zealand government has remained silent on the issue of genocide by Israel against the peoples of Gaza, despite numerous other countries publicly condemning Israel’s actions as genocide.

From time to time, the government might call for a “two-state solution”, join allies to issue protestations that the harm inflicted on the Palestinian people must stop, demand a ceasefire, or take part in various resolutions at the United Nations calling for an end to atrocities.

But all the while, the Israeli government rapidly expands its illegal settlements and continues to allow settlers to kill Palestinians under the watch of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Israel is doing everything it can to drive the remaining Palestinian people out of their villages and cities in Occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The gap between the government’s insincere words and its willingness to take real action mirrors the coalition’s approach to Māori. Here at home, it claims to uphold, honour, and respect the Treaty relationship, all while rolling out policies to dismantle the rights owed to Māori as Treaty partners.

Just as it’s important to hold the government to account for domestic policy, it’s equally important to hold it to account for foreign policy. It’s erroneous to think that the two aren’t intimately connected.

Disgraceful foreign policy
The government’s disgraceful foreign policy approach to Gaza and Palestine was shown up recently during a visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territories by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark and the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson.

The women were there on behalf of “The Elders,” an independent group of global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela, working for peace, justice, human rights, and a sustainable planet. They stated: “We believe that the policies of the current Israeli government are leading to Palestine disappearing in plain sight.”

STATEMENT | “Palestine must not disappear.”

Following their visit to the Middle East, Mary Robinson, Graça Machel, @HelenClarkNZ and Hina Jilani call on leaders to act now to stop the disappearance of Palestine at the hands of the Israeli government.

Read the full statement… pic.twitter.com/3crFe2bFnk

— The Elders (@TheElders) July 17, 2026

The evidence for this comes from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In its Humanitarian Situation Report of June 19, 2026, it noted:

“6200 Palestinians, including more than 3000 children, have been forcibly displaced because of settler attacks and related access restrictions across 119 communities. Of these, more than 3,600 people were displaced from 46 communities that have effectively been erased, meaning they were completely emptied of their residents. In 2026 alone, as of mid-June, Israeli citizens, armed and backed by the army, have expelled 2200 Palestinians.”

This is what the person living in Gaza describes as the “silence that is skilled at betrayal”.

Just as it does with Māori, New Zealand uses laudable language to give the appearance of care and decency, but it is a veneer that masks deep insincerity and an unwillingness to take concrete steps to actively protect rights.

There is no doubt the coalition government has “betrayed” the Palestinian people of Gaza, the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. But in fact they’ve done worse. They have potentially made New Zealand complicit in the act of genocide.

Not fulfilled obligations
It is likely that New Zealand has not fulfilled its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948, which requires that “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.”

Chris Sidoti is an international human rights lawyer, an expert on national human rights institutions, and a member of The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In a recent address in Wellington, he argued that, in addition to not committing genocide, states had an obligation to prevent it.

“States shall act to prevent the commission of genocide and shall punish the commission of genocide. New Zealand has an international legal obligation to act to prevent the commission of genocide.

“That does not require that genocide actually occur. My prime minister, from Australia, is very keen on saying we can’t say whether this is genocide or not. We’re waiting for the International Court of Justice to decide that issue, which may be in the next five or 10 years.

“That’s not the obligation. The obligation is to act to prevent genocide. It is a prior obligation, and it’s an obligation that is designed to ensure that genocide never exists. So it is an obligation in advance.

“In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued what are called provisional measures, which is like an injunction under your law and ours. And in issuing provisional measures, the Court said that there is a risk that the rights of Palestinians under the Genocide Convention are being or will be infringed. Now, you cannot get a more authoritative case. As of January 2024, all parties to the Genocide Convention have been under an obligation to act to prevent. And the question therefore is, what have you done?”

I recently sought access, through the Official Information Act, to the advice received by the government on New Zealand’s complicity under the Genocide Convention. The government’s decision to withhold the information was reviewed by the Office of the Ombudsman, which in turn supported the government’s right to withhold the advice under legal privilege, as in their view it was not outweighed by the public interest in releasing that information.

How could it not be in the public interest to understand New Zealand’s obligation to act, or otherwise, to prevent genocide?

Labour’s principled stance
Recently, Labour’s foreign policy spokesperson, Vanushi Walters, visited Canberra and met with Noura Saleh, Chargé d’Affaires for the State of Palestine. She is the Palestinian ambassador responsible for the diplomatic relationship between Palestine and Australia and New Zealand.

The last time New Zealand had one-to-one diplomatic engagement with the Canberra-based Palestinian Authority ambassador to New Zealand and Australia was in 2022, when Izzat Salah Abdulhadi visited Wellington at the invitation of former foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta.

That the current government has had no engagement with the ambassador speaks volumes. It’s another example of silence, and silencing.

Sure, New Zealand engages diplomatically at the UN and through its ambassadors in Türkiye and Egypt, but this is all done behind closed doors. The absence of any effort to build a relationship with the Palestinian Authority closer to home is another dimension of betrayal.

What is particularly important as a result of Vanushi Walters’ engagement with Noura Saleh is that she articulated the Labour Party position on Palestine heading into the 2026 election.

Walters stated that Labour was clear about what it would have done if in government now: “We would have recognised Palestine. We would have sanctioned Israel. We would have looked to join South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ. We would have ensured that New Zealand complies with the ICJ opinion on the Occupied Territories.”

This is similar to the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori positions. Both parties have consistently called out Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, and criticised the government for failing to prohibit New Zealand entities from engaging with illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Illegal engagement
Such engagement is illegal under international law, as reflected in a UN Security Council resolution (UNSC 2334), which New Zealand co-sponsored in 2016. The resolution states that nations must cease engagement with settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Successive New Zealand governments have ignored this requirement and continue to do so.

Last year, the Green Party championed a private member’s bill, which sought to apply sanctions against Israel for its illegal occupation and rapid expansion of settlements in the Palestinian territories. The bill, modelled on the Russia Sanctions Act 2022, which imposed sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine, was supported by Labour and Te Pāti Māori, but the coalition government opposed it.

It is time to support those political parties that more accurately reflect the values of compassion, kindness, and human decency, as expressed through tikanga Māori.

John Hobbs has been a career public servant, working for various government departments and ministers. He has a Master of Commerce (Hons) in Economics from the University of Auckland and a Master of Arts (Thesis) with Distinction in Peace and Conflict Studies, from the University of Otago. He is currently undertaking a PhD at Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa, The National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies — Te Tumu School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, Otago University.

This article was first published by E-Tangata and is republished with the author’s permission.

On June 6, I published a Political Bytes post criticising the mis-named “Free Speech Union” (FSU) for opposing the exercise of free speech, in the context of fulfilling his duty of care for student wellbeing, by Otago University vice-chancellor Grant Robertson when raising a personal concern: Opposing free speech in practice.

In my words:

“The self-styled Free Speech Union has complained to Otago University over its vice-chancellor Grant Robertson both expressing his personal views on a NZ First parliamentary bill seeking to define what is a woman and what is a man and for his assessment on the 2026 Budget as it impacted universities.”

• READ MORE: Martyn Bradbury says he faces prison over blog posts; Free Speech Union ‘not across’ it
• The Daily Blog: We have secretly been taken to court and I’m facing 6 months in prison: We can’t tell you who, how, why or what
• The Daily Blog: Why I am willing to go to prison tomorrow for Free Speech — Martyn Bradbury

I concluded the post as follows:

“Attacking Grant Robertson for exercising his duty of care for student wellbeing crassly exposes the cloak of hypocrisy that the Free Speech Union hides beneath.

“It would be the honest thing for the Free Speech Union to rename itself as the ‘Selective Free Speech Union’ or the ‘Free Speech for the Political Right Union’. Just saying!”

Sinister FSU attack on investigative journalist
As sceptical as I was about the credibility of the FSU’s claimed commitment to genuine free speech, I never expected nearly two months later its sinister attack on an investigative journalist for being investigative in her questions to Health Minister Simeon Brown.

The attack was reported (paywalled) by The Post deputy editor Luke Malpass (July 28):  FSU attacks reporter for asking health minister questions.

The context was what I have previously described in my health systems blog Otaihanga Second Opinion (July 2) as a purging of the Medical Council leadership: Health minister purges Medical Council leadership.

At the heart of the issue
At the heart of the issue was the minister’s express ideological opposition to the council’s recognition of the importance of doctors understanding “cultural competence” or “safety” when caring for and treating patients.

But it went further. Brown is proposing a law change requiring the Medical Council and the other health regulatory authorities, such as the Nursing Council, to carry out government policies.

In other words, end the arms-length independent relationship between health practitioner regulatory authorities and government by enabling political interference in their work thereby undermining their prime statutory purpose of ensuring public safety.

Daring to ask questions
Luke Malpass reports that the day before publication of his article (Monday, July 27) The Post’s national affairs editor Andrea Vance emailed a series of questions to the Health Minister about his appointment of Dr Manoja Kalupahana to the Medical Council.

This had been announced on the Beehive website earlier that day (gazetted the previous Friday).

In his words:

“Before an answer was received and within three hours of the query going to the minister, the Free Speech Union issued a press release attacking Vance for even asking the questions.”

Vance’s questions were about the process of the appointment, rather than the suitability or political views, of Dr Manoja Kalupahana.

Again in his words:

“They focused on the appointment process: whether Brown was aware of her previous public profile before appointing her to the Medical Council; whether officials, Health New Zealand or the council were consulted; whether any concerns were raised about public confidence; and whether the minister had discussed the appointment with the Free Speech Union.”

These were all good questions by a quality investigative journalist. Consequently it was surprising that later the same day the FSU, to whom the minister’s office had promptly forwarded her questions, released a media statement stridently attacking her for her action.

Malpass described FSU’s attack as accusing Vance of an attempt to put Dr Kalupahana’s “lawful political views” on trial and warning against ideological tests for public appointments.

However, none of Vance’s questions involved Dr Kalupahana’s political views. They were about the appointment process, including a suspicion about FSU involvement.

For context, in 2023, Dr Kalupahana’s social media activity became the subject of a workplace complaint and media scrutiny.

A Stuff reporter had contacted her seeking comment about her online posts and their relevance to her role as a doctor. However, no story was published.

Nevertheless Malpass reports that the controversy “…became a cause célèbre for the FSU, which argued it showed health professionals could face consequences for expressing lawful opinions outside their clinical roles”.

Also published on July 28 was Andrea Vance’s own paywalled piece on the issue providing further context and background: Doctor at centre of ‘free speech’ row appointed to Medical Council.

Dr Kalupahana was, in fact, one of four new announced ministerial appointments to the council. As it turns out, she is a member of the FSU. Another doctor appointed to the council, Dr Roderick Mulgan, is on the FSU governing board and former president.

The fallout from the controversy over the Health Minister’s appointment process and FSU’s defence of it continued in Stuff (as the owner of The Post) later the same day with an article by senior political reporter Anneke Smith: Health minister accused of using ‘personal troll farm’ to attack reporter.

And there is more
The FSU got it badly wrong. Andrea Vance is not one for being intimidated into silence.

On July 29, she followed up with another paywalled article that revealed political intrigue (arguably scheming) into the escalating controversy: FSU lobbies health minister over regulating doctors.

In her words:

“A former chairperson of the Free Speech Union (FSU) — who lobbied Health Minister Simeon Brown over proposed changes to how doctors are regulated — has been appointed to the Medical Council.

“Roderick Mulgan, who remains a board member of the FSU, was one of four new members appointed to the council by Brown last week. That includes senior Auckland anaesthetist Manoja Kalupahana, whose anonymous social media activity became the focus of a high-profile FSU campaign. The others are Derek Sherwood and Andie Cook.

“The appointments come as Brown moves to give ministers greater powers over how doctors are regulated and the rules they must follow. He has also overhauled the Medical Council, declining to reappoint its chairperson and deputy in June.

“In May 2025, Mulgan and Kalupahana met with Brown in Auckland as part of an FSU delegation to discuss concerns about freedom of speech and conscience rights in healthcare, including cases involving doctors facing disciplinary action.

“A Health Ministry briefing prepared for the meeting identified Mulgan as FSU chairperson at the time. It recorded that the organisation wanted to discuss its correspondence with the Minister, the Government’s consultation on health workforce and patient prioritisation, and cases before the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal.

“The group argues health regulators have moved beyond their role by requiring practitioners to engage with particular views on issues such as Māori health inequities, colonisation and gender.

“The meeting was requested by the FSU and included then chief executive Jonathan Ayling, and liaison adviser Stephanie Martin.”

Spilling the ideological beans

Spilling the beans is an often used idiom for when secret information is released, usually inadvertently.

In a paywalled article published in NZ Doctor (July 28) health journalist Alan Perrott reports a possibly hyped FSU spilling its own ideological beans.

Perrott attributes this “bean-spilling” (my word, not his) to the above-mentioned Dr Mulgan (former FSU president and current board member) as follows:

“Stating that Māori are ‘disadvantaged because of systemic biases in the system’ represents a ‘well-known hard-left view’, says specialist GP and newly appointed Medical Council member Roderick Mulgan.

“Such a view holds ‘that there are nebulous biases in the world and in the health system that somehow or other undermine the welfare of Māori just because they are Māori,’ Dr Mulgan says.

“Dr Mulgan made the comments to The Platform host Sean Plunket on 25 March while discussing three draft consultation documents on cultural safety and competence and hauora Māori released by the Medical Council. 

“Dr Mulgan, also a lawyer and international director of the Free Speech Union, is one of four new appointments confirmed yesterday by Health Minister Simeon Brown, six weeks after Mr Brown changed the authority’s leadership. 

“On the consultation documents, Dr Mulgan says: ‘Whether or not these perspectives [as laid out in the documents] are valid or reasonable, it is highly contested. 

“’So, there are plenty of people who will say yes they are, and there will be plenty of people saying no they’re not, and it is not for regulatory bodies to pick sides in a contested ideological debate and mandate that its members, by reason of being members, must support these perspectives.’ ”

Dr Mulgan is at the very least as ideological as those he criticises are. The fact that he used the hard rightwing The Platform to make his claims is indicative.

Linking colonialisation in different ways to Māori health inequities is not confined to a  “hard-left” (whatever that means), well-known or otherwise.

While this link is certainly not a unanimous view, it is a view shared by many well-beyond the “hard left”, including those of “soft-left”, liberal and compassionate conservative opinions.

Perrott includes a response to Dr Mulgan from another specialist GP, Dr Rawiri McKree Jansen:

“…the statements made by his colleague are ‘troubling and disturbing’ and in denial of systemic biases within healthcare. 

“We need better representation on the Medical Council than the ideological perspective he brings.” 

Where does the FSU stand on a threat to real free speech?
There are many issues raised in the above discussion, particularly the threat to patient safety by the political undermining of the statutory health practitioner regulatory authorities.

However, that is more appropriate for my health system blog Otaihanga Second Opinion.

In this post I focus on the hypocrisy and political tactics of the FSU. Regardless of its name, an organisation that attacks an investigative journalist for investigating a subject that is contrary to the organisation’s political ideology is itself an opponent of free speech.

Instead, it is nothing more than a mask for hard-rightwing trolls. But now an opportunity presents itself for FSU to partly (ever so slightly) redeem itself.

“Bomber” Bradbury is the prolific editor of the leftwing The Daily Blog. On August 2 he reported a particularly vicious legal threat: Secretly threatened with potential six months imprisonment. [Disclosure: The Daily Blog republishes with permission my blog posts]

His blog has been served legal directives under pain of six months imprisonment or a $5000 fine to censor four blog posts. He describes the intimidatory threat this way:

“We can’t tell you who is doing this.

“We can’t tell you why it’s being done.

“We can’t tell you how it’s being done.

“And we can’t tell you what has been censored.”

Bradbury is constrained by legal secrecy but hopes that all these matters can be exposed in an Auckland District Court hearing scheduled for August 4. A ruling allows media to cover this in the courtroom.

Bomber Bradbury is not noted for quietness. In fact, few can surpass him for noise. But now something has; the deafening silence of the Free Speech Union over this nasty threat to free speech makes the editor of The Daily Blog mute by comparison.

Why is this so? Is it simply because the FSU is a hard rightwing troll organisation? Or is it something even more sinister? Just asking.

Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

Independent candidates are replacing traditional political parties in the Cook Islands, argues a veteran former politician — a claim rejected by a party leader who dismisses independents as a significant election threat.

Former Cook Islands Parliament speaker, deputy prime minister and cabinet minister Norman George weighs in on the political landscape as the nation prepares to head to the voting booths on Wednesday, 12 August.

According to George, who served as an MP for almost three decades, political parties appear to have lost their “attraction, drawcard and magic touch”.

• READ MORE: Other Cook Islands elections reports

“Normally one refers to the dying out of certain plants or animals as extinction; one can extend that to organisations surrounding social human interactions. Plants and animals disappear when humans eat them out of existence,” George said.

“Political parties are not eaten up, but ignored, written off or completely abandoned.

“In its place come individuals on their own, independent candidates! The power of one!”

In this year’s general election, independent candidates represent about a fifth of the 63 total candidates competing for 24 seats in Parliament.

One already retained
One independent, Agnes Armstrong, has already retained her Ivirua seat unopposed, leaving 23 seats up for contest.

The governing Cook Islands Party (CIP) fields the largest candidate slate (20), followed by the Cook Islands United Party (14) and the Democratic Party (12). The Progressive Party and the newly formed Independent-Enuamanu field two each, alongside one candidate from the new Independence Party.

Cook Islands United Party leader Teariki Heather disagrees with George.

He said the nation was too small to accommodate independent candidates.

Heather said he is feeling confident in going forward into the election, and believes independent candidates pose no threat to the Cook Islands United Party.

The Cook Islands News has contacted CIP leader and caretaker Prime Minister Mark Brown and Democratic Party leader Tina Pukuke-Browne for comment.

While Pupuke-Browne had earlier ruled out any pre-coalition agreements — including with independent candidates — the CIP, which has formed successive governments with the help of independents, is counting on that “continued support” as it seeks a fifth consecutive term.

Three party banners
George, who served as an MP over two stints — from 1983 to 2004 and 2006 to 2014 — under three different political party banners, says it is now important for candidates to have powerful personalities.

“They have to be smart, intelligent, respectful and persuasive; male or female, makes no difference,” he said.

“Public speaking ability is a must; if unpolished, stand in front of the mirror over and over again, low key, high key, face adjustments, practice makes perfect.

“If you cannot handle public speaking, forget it.”

George says it is essential for candidates to create their own support teams.

“You cannot operate on your own; you will need a group around you, like a committee.

“You normally gather family and friends to make up your committee and while there could be a chair, secretary and treasurer, you will need a campaign manager. They will be your coach and chief adviser.”

Successful candidates
He said they would be the people who would accompany successful candidates to form the next government.

“Everyone has something to gain if you win; if you become a minister, then again, those people around you will become your aids and executives.

“This is how it works and there is nothing new about it.”

George said a critical tool of any political campaign was the policies.

“What you are going to do for your electorate, the services you will offer, what you will fight for, what you will build and the benefits your electors will gain if you make it into government.

“Candidates on their own cannot hide behind any political party because there will be none, there will be no place to hide.

“This is a clear advantage for election as these candidates have to declare what they will offer their electorate voters.

“It is not mission impossible and good luck to you all.”

Republished from the Cook Islands News with permission.

Trump’s Iran “deal” isn’t a deal. It’s hos third retreat in four months.

April 2026: 48-hour ultimatum, then a two-week delay.

July: “13 straight days of strikes,” then a pause “to give peace talks some space.”

August 1: a fresh wave of attacks cancelled — the one he had just threatened — citing “the perimeters of a deal”.

• READ MORE: Trump cancels planned attacks on Iran, calls for a deal to be made rapidly
• Other Lim Tean articles

The pattern never changes. Maximalist threat first, loud and absolute. Then an unsigned framework — no enforcement, no timeline, no verification.

Hormuz is still not open. Iran’s IRGC hit tankers under US “aerial escort” the Friday before this latest climbdown.

This is the Paper Shield exposed in real time. ABC’s own sourcing flags depleting Patriot interceptor stocks as a live constraint on further strikes.

Riyadh called Trump directly to caution against escalating. That’s not strength — that’s a president being managed by his own logistics tail.

Bluster works once. By cycle three, Tehran and Riyadh have both priced it in.

Iran will keep hitting tankers for exactly as long as it costs Washington nothing but words.

Malaysia stands firm
Meanwhile, Malaysia has just shown the world something rare — a government that won’t be bought.

An Israeli-American dual national was found at a tech retreat in Johor. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s answer was immediate: the dual nationality Israeli was asked to leave. Malaysia does not recognise Israel — full stop.

Washington’s response? The US summoned Malaysia’s ambassador. Eight members of Congress gave Kuala Lumpur 15 days to reverse course or lose military education funding.

Anwar’s answer: “That will not deter us.”

This is what I call the Legitimacy Principle in action — a government’s strength isn’t measured by how much force it can project, but by whether its people, and the wider world, believe it’s doing the right thing.

Anwar has just bet that standing firm on Palestine is worth more than Washington’s money.

Watch closely: this is the same logic that slowly made apartheid South Africa unsustainable — not one act, but the accumulation of states refusing to pay the price of complicity.

Small states rarely get to write the rules. Every so often, one gets to show what happens when it refuses to be governed by them.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.

It’s a commonly repeated statistic that the US military is the world’s largest institutional polluter, but what exactly does that mean?

The quest to find a real answer to that question led journalist and documentary filmmaker Abby Martin and her husband and co-director Mike Prysner on a five-year journey from defence contractor conferences and international climate gatherings to the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) military training exercises and the fight against the construction of a military base in Okinawa that would fill in its iconic Oura Bay.

The result is Earth’s Greatest Enemy, released last year — but just screened in Australia and New Zealand over the past month — independently through Martin and Prysner’s own Empire Files, with editing by Taylor Gill and an original score by Anahedron.

• READ MORE: The Pentagon is the biggest polluter on the planet — ABC Late Night Live

The film uses personal narrative, research, investigative reporting, interviews, and live footage to detail all the ways in which the Pentagon poisons the planet, including greenhouse gas emissions, the ecocide of war, and the toxins left behind long after the fighting has stopped.

“When you combine all of this, it is completely undeniable that this force that is upheld by extreme violence is the greatest threat to all living things on Earth,” Martin told Common Dreams.

World’s largest polluter?
Toward the beginning of the film, Martin sets out to explain how the Pentagon can count as the world’s largest institutional polluter, and why the numbers behind that fact actually undersell its impact.

It turns out, Martin told Common Dreams, that this statement is only based on the amount of oil the US military purchases on paper, which comes to 270,000 barrels per day. This puts its emissions at 55 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, more than 150 countries.

This itself is a staggering amount of carbon pollution.

As Martin explains in the film: “It would take the average American driver over 40 years to burn as much fuel as a single flight of a Boeing Pegasus. The US flies more than 600 of these tankers.”

But it’s also only the tip of the melting iceberg. Through an interview with scientist Stuart Parkinson, Martin reveals how that 55 million keeps ballooning when considering life cycle emissions from military equipment and from the equipment purchased by NATO allies, projected to reach 295 million metric tons by 2028, or more than half of all countries. And that figure excludes the use of military equipment in war, or the emissions from reconstructing cities leveled by US-made bombs.

In one particularly candid interview, a major-general tells Martin that it’s great to develop alternative energy sources, “but let’s not walk away from what fuels today’s national security, which is oil. You have to have it.”

And until something is developed that can completely replace oil, “I think you need to keep the alternatives in check,” he says.

Statements like these give the lie to the idea that the US can have a “green military empire,” Martin said.

They also show how difficult it is to separate the US military’s carbon footprint from that of the fossil fuel industry itself.

“Everything has really been wrapped up into securing the fossil fuel, building the infrastructure for fossil fuel, and maintaining that infrastructure empire in order to maintain a fossil fuel economy,” she told Common Dreams.

“So you have to look at the military as actually the institution that’s actually keeping the fossil fuel infrastructure in place through brutality and violence.”

‘Human detritus’

The film also makes clear that carbon pollution isn’t the only kind of pollution the military generates.

“Once you get into the research, you realise every stone unturned is an entire other documentary because it’s not just emissions, it’s the totality of pollution that the military is emitting on a daily basis, the dumping of toxic waste, the legacy contamination, that alone is still killing people every day,” Martin said.

The film spends much of its run time digging into the landfill of military waste, from melted down pucks of plastic dumped off Navy boats and unused munitions exploded in the desert to decades of water contamination at Camp Lejeune, the 26 million marine mammals the US Navy is permitted to harm or kill over five years of training, and the more than 250,000 bullets left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan for every person killed.

Martin said that almost every fact or anecdote she unearthed surprised her.

“No matter what you think you know, it’s worse. It’s actually worse because of how big it is and how every face is a story, every victim is a story,” she said.

One of the most devastating stories comes at the film’s beginning, as viewers spend time with Lavon Johnson, an Iraq War veteran who once starred in a US Army commercial and is now living on Veterans Row, a stretch of tents bearing American flags lined up outside the Veterans Affairs hospital in Brentwood, Los Angeles.

“My life is so fucked!” he declares as he lifts his hands from the piano he furiously plays despite the nerve damage caused by exposure to hydraulic fluid while in the Army.

In the next scene, viewers see the camp being demolished by police, juxtaposed with images of war, pollution, and environmental destruction, such as soldiers breaking down doors or dumping trash off of boats, oil pump jacks working, and beachside homes collapsing into a rising tide.

Martin said she was inspired to open the film with Johnson because of a letter that late Iraq War veteran Tomas Young wrote to former President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney before he died, referring to himself and other victims of the invasion as “human detritus your war has left behind”.

“That always stuck with me, that line, ‘the human detritus,’” Martin told Common Dreams. “And that is exactly what they do to veterans. That is exactly what they do to veterans… they’re churned up and spit out. They’re the cannon fodder of the system. And for what?”

Prysner is an Iraq veteran who spoke out against the war, and Martin is very clear that veterans are not the target of the pairs’ critique.

“This isn’t about service members,” she said. “This isn’t about hating the military. This is about accountability and justice for them. We’re fighting for service members and every living person on Earth, because we are all victims of this.”

The demolition of Johnson’s camp cut through with clips of war and weather disaster illustrates this point, and could serve as a sort of thesis for the film, showing that the US military ultimately turns everything it touches into detritus, including, if it’s not stopped, the planet itself.

“Everything on Earth is in Lavon’s tent,” Martin said.

A movie and a movement
This sense of connection is ultimately why Martin decided to keep Earth’s Greatest Enemy as a two-hour feature documentary rather than pivoting to a documentary series, despite the fact that, the more she dug, the more she realised “it could be 10 documentaries.”

She also ran into roadblocks when seeking Hollywood distribution. While environmentalist distributors would praise the film and compare it to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, they also said frankly, “You’re never going to be able to get anyone to buy this stuff.”

But, Martin said, “I was so committed to making a movie because movies were what radicalised me,” citing inspiration from films like The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, War Made Easy, and Michael Moore’s filmography.

Ultimately, her stubbornness paid off.

“It shows that everything from ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to Gaza to the climate, that everything is connected,” she said. “Veterans, soldiers, the Indigenous people on the receiving end of this.

“If you care about cold water and good air, you can’t walk away from this not being impacted. And that was the goal. The goal is to lock people in and explain the totality and to bring you down to the depths of hell.”

She added: “We have to understand those depths, and you can’t get that with a 20-minute segment. You just can’t. You have to go through the pain of all the victims in this community and come out the other side empowered with the truth and the resolve that we have to change this.”

Change is a large part of Martin’s motivation for making the film, by educating people about the scope of the military’s destructive force and connecting them into a broader coalition.

Martin speaks in the film about coming to political consciousness and beginning her career as a journalist during the Iraq War, meeting Prysner through their shared opposition to war and empire, and developing “profound climate anxiety” following the birth of the pair’s first child.

She lamented that the climate and anti-imperialist movements have been largely siloed over the past two decades, though that is beginning to change.

Through local screenings, she said she wanted to “try to build the environmental movement with the anti-war movement together because… even though the consciousness is expanding, it’s not happening fast enough. And we are simply out of the luxury of time.”

The sense of urgency has only increased with US President Donald Trump’s second term. While the film does not cover this period, it points to many developments that have shaped the past 12 months, including Trump’s claim that he attacked Venezuela for oil, his imperialist push to control Greenland, and his deployment of ICE to terrorise US cities.

‘Big plan for climate crisis’
Toward the end of the movie, Martin includes a segment on the militarisation of US policing and warns that “this is our system’s big plan for the climate crisis.” She also films a panel on “Domain Awareness and Air Superiority in the Arctic” in which the generals speaking tell US companies they have an “open invitation” to experiment in Alaska.

“We know what they want the Arctic for, and it’s to pillage every last drop,” Martin said. “So if environmental organisations are not thinking this together, we have to do it for them. We have to do it for them quickly.”

So far, she has seen encouraging signs, with several Sierra Club chapters stepping up to host screenings and enthusiasm from the mainstream environmental groups, parks departments, and other city officials she has invited to attend.

But education is not her only goal.

“After we educate everyone, I hope to decommission the military empire,” Martin said.

For Martin, that doesn’t mean not having a military for self-defence, but rather decommissioning the 800 or so bases the US military maintains around the world and transforming the infrastructure into something that could help local communities in a climate-friendly way.

It also means accountability for harm caused and redirecting military spending toward basic needs like housing and healthcare, and certainly not giving the Pentagon another $600 billion as Trump desires.

While that may seem like an impossible task given the current political climate, Martin maintains a sense of revolutionary optimism, encouraged by the global mobilisation against the genocide in Gaza and the way that people are increasingly seeing the links between the multiple crises and struggles around the globe.

“There’s so many of us,” Martin told Common Dreams. “We care about the planet. We have a vested stake in life. And that’s our vision.”

“It’s like they have a vision of death and destruction for profit,” she continued. “Our vision is life, and we have to fight for it with every fibre of our being. And let this movie assist you however you can do that.”

• Earth’s Greatest Enemy, directed by Abby Martin and Mike Prysner, The Empire Files, 120min.

Olivia Rosane is the opinion editor and a staff writer for Common Dreams. This article is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

• For more information about Abby Martin’s documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy go to earthsgreatestenemy.com or email theempirefiles@gmail.com

• If your activist group wants to organise a community screening of this documentary in Aotearoa New Zealand, contact World Beyond War’s Liz Remmerswaal: lizrem@gmail.com

The Chinese Ambassador to New Zealand was typically restrained, dignified but crystal clear when he responded to Foreign Minister Winston Peter’s racist outburst in Parliament this week.

Wang Xiaolong said on X: “We have absolutely no interest in being dragged into the domestic politics of other countries. Suffice it to say, sometimes, a statement says more about the person that makes it than anything or anybody else.” Boom.

On Wednesday, Green Party MP Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan heckled the Foreign Minister about his vaccination status during a debate in Parliament. The notoriously thin-skinned Peters shouted: “I know you just came here five minutes ago. Go back where you come from, you loud mouth!”

• READ MORE: ‘There’s a game going on here’: Luxon asks for votes in response to Peters’ immigrant comments
• Winston Peters ‘inviting a sacking’ with attack on Chinese-born MP, says Helen Clark

We have absolutely no interest in being dragged into the domestic politics of other countries. Suffice it to say, sometimes, a statement says more about the person that makes it than anything or anybody else.

— Wang Xiaolong (@AmbChina2NZ) July 29, 2026

For the record Dr Xu-Nan, born in Tianjin, China, arrived in New Zealand as a child in the 1990s. He is the Green Party’s first Chinese MP and says he “hopes to create bridges across various tauiwi [ethnically diverse] communities and bring together the collective wisdom of these communities to find solutions to the bigger challenges facing Aotearoa [New Zealand].” Exemplary.

In contrast, in the space of 30 seconds, the undiplomatic Foreign Minister racially insulted a fellow MP, derided the Chinese government, cast slurs on immigrants and rehearsed talking points better suited to a MAGA rally in Eastern Kentucky than the New Zealand Parliament.

In response to criticism, including from Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, the Foreign Minister doubled down, flaming the Chinese system of government.

“We live in a democracy that includes free speech and rights — those two values that certain other countries not only limit, but do so with force. If that offends the pearl clutchers and the communist shills labelling it as ‘dangerous’ — welcome to New Zealand,” the country’s top diplomat said.

The Chinese Ambassador’s comments have just proven the point I made in the House yesterday.

No amount of pearl clutching and faux outrage is going to change it.

We live in a democracy that includes free speech and rights – those two values that other certain countries not…

— Winston Peters (@winstonpeters) July 30, 2026

Revealing US poll
It is worth pointing out that, according to polling, as reported by the conservative US outlet Newsweek, the overwhelming majority of people living in China (83 percent) say they live in a democracy whereas only 43 percent of people in the United States say the US is a democracy.

Why a Foreign Minister would do this is baffling. News outlets across Asia, including The Straits Times and South China Morning Post, carried news of the slurs against China dished out by the New Zealand minister. It made news in France and as far away as Kenya.

Peters likes using spicy language but his insult to the ambassador and the Chinese system of government is gratuitous and will not be welcome in Beijing where New Zealand’s share price has been dropping sharply since the Luxon government ramped up both anti-China rhetoric and moved rapidly to more deeply integrate with the US military. Ludicrously, the PM simultaneously says he wants to double trade with China!

Bianca Ranson of Anti War Aotearoa, which advocates for a more respectful engagement with China, said Peter’s comments were deliberately insulting to China and the Chinese people.

“He’s not fit to be foreign minister. At a time when tensions are heightened around immigrants and racism, we have Winston Peters reaching for the far-right playbook, emboldening racists and giving them an example of how to treat others. New Zealand’s support for Israel has already damaged our standing in the world and this just underlines that something has gone seriously wrong.”

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which New Zealand ratified in 1972, says that signatory states and their officials commit “to engage in no act or practice of racial discrimination against persons, groups of persons or institutions and to ensure that all public authorities and public institutions, national and local, shall act in conformity with this obligation.”

Dog-whistling to his base
Peters was clearly dog-whistling to his primary base — those older white New Zealanders who lean into rather than away from anti-Māori, anti-immigrant, and anti-Chinese invective. With elections coming up in November, the Foreign Minister would rather damage relations with both China (our greatest trading partner) and the hundreds of thousands of New Zealand citizens of Chinese ethnicity in order to pull in a few extra votes.

His New Zealand First Party regularly race-baits, with one MP telling non-white MPs to “show some gratitude” and talking about a “butter chicken tsunami” at the time of the recent visit to New Zealand of India’s PM Narendra Modi.

“We have a PM who is so weak that he fails to show any kind of leadership in protecting our most important trading partnership,” Bianca Ranson says.

“He allows the minister of foreign affairs to insult other nations and peoples. It’s actually quite weird to have a foreign minister trotting out this old white boy racist stuff like this. If Luxon doesn’t act, that too will speak volumes.”

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He also contributes to Asia Pacific Report and he hosts solidarity.co.nz

“When you’re speaking in Parliament you may think you have a hat on as NZ1st leader but….offshore you are going to be seen as foreign minister. The statements you make will either give credit to your country or they won’t. We know what the case is here.” https://t.co/Tyw5t3Zjdy

— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) July 31, 2026

In the run-up to the 1975 New Zealand election, the Labour, National, Social Credit, and Values parties all committed to the target of spending 1 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, with 70 percent of that coming from the government.

If we had met that target, the government would have spent $3 billion this year rather than the $1.2 billion — or 0.27 percent of GNP — allocated to foreign aid.

That 0.7 percent figure was not plucked out of thin air. In 1970, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling on wealthy nations to commit that amount annually to Official Development Assistance (ODA).

• READ MORE: NZ government’s climate strategy: Let it burn
• Other Jeremy Rose articles

Three years later, Prime Minister Norman Kirk committed the country to the 0.7 percent target with the aim of reaching it by 1976. By the time Labour was voted out of office in 1975, it had reached 0.524 percent.

Kirk was clear: wealthy countries had an obligation to help poorer ones, and they needed to get on with it.

In the run-up to the last election, the National, Labour, and Green parties all committed to meeting the country’s climate change commitments under the Paris Agreement — an international treaty aimed at keeping global temperature rise well below 2 degrees.

No surprises there. The Paris Agreement was signed by the John Key National government in 2015, and Jacinda Ardern had been elected on making climate change her generation’s “nuclear-free moment”.

Stressed importance
The then leader of the opposition, Christopher Luxon, had stressed the importance of climate change action in his maiden speech in March 2021.

Luxon said he was proud that Air New Zealand had become a foundation member of the Climate Leaders Coalition during his tenure as CEO of the company.

“I understand, of course, that a country is not a company,” he said. “However, New Zealanders look to the government to get things done. It’s not good enough saying you’re going to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but not do it.”

Coming up to the end of Prime Minister Luxon’s first term in office, emissions reductions are falling at less than half the rate required to meet our Paris targets, according to the Climate Change Commission’s latest report.

The economy has stalled, petrol prices are at record highs, manufacturing is in crisis, consumption levels are well down, renewable electricity generation levels are at record highs, and yet the dial on carbon emissions has barely moved.

The reason for that can be summed up in a word: “zero.” Not as in the net zero carbon emissions by 2050 promised by the Paris Agreement, but zero action or commitment to reducing carbon emissions.

As Newsroom’s Marc Daalder has argued, the coalition government’s strategy amounts to: “Let it burn“.

Mitigation spend ruled out
And in the run-up to October’s election, Prime Minister Luxon has ruled out spending the $5 billion Treasury has estimated it would cost to meet the country’s Paris Agreement with offshore mitigation.

That $5 billion shortfall — or about 84 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent — covers the decade from 2021 to 2030. So, about $500 million a year.

Add that figure to New Zealand’s current spend on ODA and it comes to close to 0.4 percent of GNP — significantly less than was being spent in 1975 and well below the 0.7 percent target.

Climate change mitigation under the Paris Agreement and overseas aid are not the same thing. Countries that miss their Paris targets domestically can simply purchase certified carbon credits in other countries to make up their shortfalls.

But as Switzerland, the first country to enter into bilateral mitigation agreements under Article 6 of the agreement, has shown, they can be.

To date, Switzerland has signed 17 bilateral agreements with countries in South America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Pacific.

In Vanuatu, it has funded off-grid solar power projects; in Thailand, electric buses; in Chile, battery storage and electric transit; and, in Senegal, biogas digesters to prevent deforestation by reducing reliance on firewood.

Switzerland meeting obligations
Switzerland is meeting its Paris obligations and improving the lives of tens of thousands of people in the process.

We can choose climate justice over preparing for war

The great Māori statesman Sir Apirana Ngata argued that the Māori contribution in the two world wars was the “price of citizenship”.

It was surely one of the saddest sentences spoken in the history of Aotearoa. The idea that young Māori men who were shipped to Europe in the First World War to kill and be killed for “God, King and Empire” — as the memorials have it — had a debt to pay to a settler colonial state that had brutally dispossessed their parents and grandparents is tragic.

But it’s not surprising that, faced with the reality of building a liveable future in that state, the Māori world divided between those like Ngata who sought accommodation and acceptance with those in power and those like Princess Te Puea Herangi who rejected the war and actively opposed conscription.

A generous interpretation of the coalition government’s decision to increase the country’s military spend by $1.58 billion — to $5.9 billion — this year is that they think it is the price of international citizenship.

More likely, they know it’s the cost of being accepted by the powerful. It is nearly 60 years since Martin Luther King described the USA as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”.

Hard to reconcile
And it is as true now as it was then. It’s hard to reconcile a commitment to a “rules-based order” with cosying up to a US regime that is not only trashing the rules but committed to destroying the courts that adjudicate them.

Their lack of public condemnation of the US’s attacks on sovereign states, the murder of school children, assassinations and kidnapping of world leaders, extrajudicial killings of alleged drug runners, and the funding of a genocide suggests our government is more interested in being close to power than supporting those attempting to uphold international law.

And no doubt the government hopes that it will be a boon for the country’s fledgling arms industry. Rocket Lab — now a supplier to the Pentagon — has shown the stratosphere is the limit when it comes to the military-industrial complex, and New Zealand’s anti-nuclear legislation is no obstacle.

The one type of stimulus right-of-centre governments approve of is military Keynesianism.

There was no real public debate over whether prioritising spending on the likes of MH-60R Seahawk helicopters, at a cost of more than $2 billion, over the existential threat of climate change — to not only New Zealand and its Pacific neighbours but the world — is the right thing, or most cost-efficient thing, to do.

That increase in the military budget alone is close to what New Zealand spent on ODA for 2026 plus the $500 million Paris annual shortfall.

The $5.49 billion being spent on the military — with the aim of making New Zealand’s military interoperable with the US and its allies — is money not being spent on transitioning New Zealand and its Pacific neighbours to renewable energy and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Ecological catastrophe and nuclear war are the two existential threats facing the world.

Choosing to prioritise military spending over international aid and climate change mitigation brings us closer to both.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by his Substack Towards Democracy.

The people won. The environment won. The Lyttelton port remains in public hands. For now.

Please join the protest tomorrow. There is more on the table. And the battle for the port is far from over.

The DP World deal being dropped can be attributed to rousing support and brilliant speakers who moved hearts and minds at a public meeting in Lyttelton two weeks ago. Thanks to these people and organisations the proposed deal with DP World (yes, that predator company with a shocking track record) has been turned down.

• READ MORE: Christchurch City Holdings rejects DP World-backed proposal to take over Lyttelton Port
• Capitalism. Colonialism. Why the DP World money trail leads to destruction — Saige England
• A tale of power being taken from the people and handed to predator companies
• Other Lyttelton Port reports

The people united and they were not defeated!

One of the public meeting speakers, environmental campaigner Sara Campbell, says: “While this is a win in the fight for public control of public assets … the fight is far from over.”

A protest outside CCHL offices tomorrow will go ahead as planned. At those offices, the CCHL will be deciding on LPC’s $800 million proposal to expand the port, which includes further land reclamation.

“We are demanding that LPC-CCHL does not proceed without full public scrutiny, consultation and partnership with mana whenua,” says Campbell.

The official ‘back down’
This is the official press release from the Christchurch City Holdings Limited (CCHL) backing down from the proposed DP World deal:

“Christchurch City Holdings Limited (CCHL) have declined to proceed with a proposal to lease operations at the port.

“The unsolicited proposal from Tōnui Consortium, representing DP World and three Runanga: Ngāti Wheke, Ngāi Tūāhuriri, and Te Taumutu, was received by CCHL in June.

“The consortium proposed acquiring a majority interest in a long-term lease of the operating entity of LPC.

“CCHL Chair, Bryan Pearson, acknowledged the effort by the Tōnui Consortium in considering the future of Lyttelton Port and preparing the proposal. ‘Lyttelton Port is a strategic asset for the city and region, and there are diverse groups within our community with interests in its future,’ says Bryan Pearson.

“’Our assessment of the proposal, as presented, is it does not meet the threshold for ongoing consideration and is not sufficiently compelling to warrant further detailed investigation by CCHL, or additional consultation with Council given its Letter of Expectation.’

“CCHL is mindful of the LPC workforce and the breadth of community interest in the port’s operation.Christchurch City Council’s 2026/2027 Letter of Expectation to CCHL is explicit in its direction, which does not support leasing the port and encourages retention of a directly employed workforce.

“CCHL reached its conclusion specifically considering LPC’s improving operational and financial performance, as well as input provided by LPC on the resilience of its infrastructure and the leadership required to maintain a culture of safety and efficiency.

“Bryan Pearson says ‘CCHL maintains full confidence in the LPC board and management and their operation of the port, and continues to work closely with LPC in considering the port’s long-term development and associated investment.'”

My view on this is that this is one victory and full credit goes those who spoke against this deal, who rallied and organised and spoke against the devious bid: NZDE — New Zealanders for a Democratic Economy; the Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) Lyttelton branch secretary Gerard Loader; the Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU) Lyttelton Port branch secretary Mark Wilson; environmental campaigner Sara Campbell; human rights and Keep Our Assets campaigner John Minto; Marney Ainsworth and the Māori people who spoke up — and all the people who signed the petition against this potential travesty.

In these times when there seems to be few gains — when so much is taken out of public hands — it is great to see people move change.

The change came because the people spoke out. They used their hearts and minds.
The people won but it is a temporary win.

This was a close call. Too close. Predator companies still loom large and secret meetings are still being held behind closed doors.

It’s not the end. The battle continues. We need to keep our port clean and safe for the people and the environment.

KOA welcomes ‘victory’
Keep Our Assets convenor Murray Horton said KOA was pleased that Christchurch City Holdings Ltd (CCHL) had rejected the unsolicited proposal from the Tōnui Consortium (comprising DP World and three runanga) to acquire a long term lease of Lyttelton Port Company’s (LPC) operations.

“This is a victory for common sense. Lyttelton Port is a vital strategic asset for Christchurch, Canterbury, the South Island and, indeed, the whole country. So, it is vital that it remains in public ownership and control, subject to democratic accountability through the elected Christchurch City Council,” he said.

”KOA congratulates the port unions and grassroots community groups who have successfully campaigned to keep our port public.

“It would have been particularly egregious if DP World, 100 percent state-owned by the United Arab Emirates, had got its sticky fingers on Lyttelton’s revenue stream. The UAE is a highly dodgy state indeed.

“We savour the victory but know that we can’t relax our vigilance. Lyttelton is an attractive target for transnational corporations and their local allies. This is not the first time a move has been made on our port. Twenty years ago a similar unsuccessful bid was made, involving a Hong Kong corporation. There well be another ‘unsolicited offer’ in the future.”

And KOA was fully aware that, behind closed doors, CCHL was conducting a review of Enable, the broadband company, and another of CCHL’s portfolio of publicly-owned companies. There remained a threat to sell that, said Horton.

“Time and again the people of Christchurch have made it very clear that they want the city’s publicly-owned assets to remain exactly that. This decision by CCHL recognises that reality.”

And the last word goes to MUNZ’s Gerard Loader: “We thank the people of Lyttelton and greater Christchurch getting in behind this campaign as it was all for our next generations and what we leave for them.

“From the bottom of our hearts.

“Now we have crossed the DP World hurdle our focus now turns to keeping ‘Enable’ in the hands of future generations, so the fight continues.’

“See you all at the march tomorrow.”

In solidarity.

Saige England is a humanitarian journalist and activist for community and the environment. She was present at the Lyttelton public meeting last week in support of community action. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

• Tomorrow’s protest rally outside the CCHL offices 8-10am

Christchurch City Holdings Limited (CCHL) has declined to proceed with a controversial proposal to lease operations at the port, the company announced today after recent public meetings denounced the proposal.

The unsolicited proposal from Tōnui Consortium, representing DP World and three Runanga: Ngāti Wheke, Ngāi Tūāhuriri, and Te Taumutu, was received by CCHL in June, said CCHL in a statement.

The consortium proposed acquiring a majority interest in a long-term lease of the operating entity of LPC.

• READ MORE: Capitalism. Colonialism. Why the DP World money trail leads to destruction — Saige England
• A tale of power being taken from the people and handed to predator companies
• Other Lyttelton Port reports

CCHL chair Bryan Pearson acknowledged the effort by the Tōnui Consortium in considering the future of Lyttelton Port and preparing the proposal.

“Lyttelton Port is a strategic asset for the city and region, and there are diverse groups within our community with interests in its future,” said Pearson in the statement.

“Our assessment of the proposal, as presented, is it does not meet the threshold for ongoing consideration and is not sufficiently compelling to warrant further detailed investigation by CCHL, or additional consultation with council given its Letter of Expectation.”

CCHL was mindful of the LPC workforce and the breadth of community interest in the port’s operation, the statement said.

Explicit direction
Christchurch City Council’s 2026/2027 Letter of Expectation to CCHL was explicit in its direction, which did not support leasing the port and encouraged retention of a directly employed workforce.

CCHL reached its conclusion specifically considering LPC’s improving operational and financial performance, as well as input provided by LPC on the resilience of its infrastructure and the leadership required to maintain a culture of safety and efficiency.

Pearson said: “CCHL maintains full confidence in the LPC board and management and their operation of the port, and continues to work closely with LPC in considering the port’s long-term development and associated investment.”

A packed public meeting in Lyttelton earlier this month opposed the takeover attempt by DP World of Lyttelton Port.

The meeting was organised by New Zealanders for A Democratic Economy.

Wednesday: The United States signs a civil nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. A “decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership,” Washington calls it.

Thursday: The President Trump logs onto social media and reneges — unilaterally slapping on a new condition that was never part of the deal he just signed.

The condition is that Saudi Arabia must sign on to the Abraham Accords and recognise Israel.

• READ MORE: Is the US-Saudi nuclear deal on, or in limbo?
• Other Lim Tean articles

No phone call to Riyadh first. No consultation. Just a Truth Social post, blindsiding the very partner he’d shaken hands with 24 hours earlier.

And here’s the part Washington seems not to grasp: this precondition is dead on arrival.

MBS has said it again and again, most recently as an official rejection just weeks ago — no normalisation with Israel without an independent Palestinian state, East Jerusalem as its capital, full stop.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry has called it “non-negotiable”. Trump is demanding surrender to a position Riyadh has never once wavered from.

Not statecraft
This is not statecraft. This is not deterrence. This is a superpower treating a sovereign signature as a rough draft — and then attaching a condition it knows, or should know, will never be met.

Ask Kyiv. Ask Tehran. Ask now Riyadh: what is an American signature actually worth?

The Legitimacy Principle is simple — power without consistency is not strength, it is liability.

A state that cannot honour its own agreements within a day, and cannot read its own partner’s red lines, cannot lead a rules-based order. It can only bully one, until the world stops showing up to sign.

Washington is agreement incapable.

Trump’s undercutting of the nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia shortly after it was signed by adding the requirement that the Saudis recognize Israel (they won’t) signals everyone including the Iranians that you can’t trust a deal with Trump. https://t.co/8QoDnZdBNF

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 26, 2026

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.