The Supreme Court of New South Wales has struck down the state’s draconian anti-protest laws, ruling they impose an “impermissible burden” on political communication and are invalid.

In a landmark decision yesterday, the court declared key provisions of the anti-protest laws introduced after the Bondi terrorist attack unconstitutional, finding they gave police sweeping powers to shut down protests across large parts of Sydney without sufficient justification.

“The impugned provisions infringe the implied freedom of political communication,” the court found.

• READ MORE: Other Australian anti-protest laws reports

The court held that the laws were “not compatible with the maintenance of the constitutionally prescribed system of representative and responsible government.”

Not constitutionally legitimate
“It is not a constitutionally legitimate purpose to seek to discourage all forms of public assembly across a nominated geographical area to preserve social cohesion, on the grounds that the very act of holding public assemblies is apt to cause tension and division in the community,” the court found.

The challenge centred on a suite of laws rushed through on Christmas Eve under the Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2025 (NSW), in the aftermath of the Bondi attack that killed 15 people.

The laws allowed the NSW police commissioner to issue sweeping “public assembly restriction” declarations across broad areas.

Once in force, those declarations effectively shut down protests by preventing them from being authorised under the Summary Offences Act 1988 (NSW), cancelling existing approvals and enabling police to disperse gatherings using expanded powers under the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002 (NSW).

In its reasoning, the court stated:

“peaceful protest is indispensable to the exercise of political sovereignty by the people of the Commonwealth”

and the laws imposed “substantial burden” to this right.

It rejected the government’s argument that the measures were necessary to preserve “social cohesion”, finding the scheme was disproportionate.

The system of government “does not permit the state … to impose such a sweeping and indiscriminate restriction on all public assemblies,” the court said.

The constitutional challenge was brought on behalf of Blak Caucus, Palestine Action Group and Jews Against the Occupation ’48.

‘A big win for everyone’
Josh Lees, a spokesperson for Palestine Action Group Sydney, said the ruling was “a big win for everyone who cares about the right to protest”.

“These laws were terrible. They were so wide-ranging, and that is what the court has found today, that they unfairly and disproportionately burdened our rights to political communication,” he said.

Lees said the laws had been used by NSW Premier Chris Minns to violently suppress protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and called for Minns to “take accountability” and resign.

The challenge came against the backdrop of heavily policed protests in early 2026, including the violent crackdown on the Sydney Town Hall protest against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Enabled police violence
Nick Hanna, solicitor for the plaintiffs, said the laws had enabled “the most violent crackdown … against protesters in decades”.

“Today’s decision makes clear that, in my view, it is inevitable that prosecutions of every single person who attended that protest will be unsuccessful, and they will be found not guilty if they proceed to hearing,” he said.

“The maintenance of these prosecutions is untenable, and it’s time for police to do the right thing and discontinue them.”

Hanna is currently representing a number of protesters who were arrested during the Herzog protest.

Chris Minns responsible
NSW Greens MP Sue Higginson said the ruling raised serious questions about police conduct during those protests.

“What we saw … was police brutality on a scale we have not seen for decades in this state,” she said.

“I hold Chris Minns responsible for that violence because it was his unconstitutional laws upon which the police acted.”

Higginson said the state could now face “tens of millions of dollars in civil liability claims” arising from the policing of protests under the invalid laws.

It is the people of the Global South, not governments, who must resist this subversion of the concepts of the “nation’ and of non-alignment.

The Indian government’s position on the US-Israeli war against Iran shows an unbelievable degree of pusillanimity.

India attended the recent meeting of about 50 countries called by the United Kingdom where Iran was strongly criticised for closing the Strait of Hormuz, but not a word was uttered against the US-Israeli aggression on Iran.

• READ MORE: Iran war’s big winners: Wall Street, weapons firms, AI and green energy
• ‘Vengeance for all’: How Iran’s Lego videos won narrative war against Trump
• Iran hasn’t survived decades of hostile sanctions, assassinations and sabotage by accident – it’s by strategy
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Likewise, India was one of the sponsors of a resolution at the UN General Assembly which criticised Iran for attacking other countries in the Gulf (though Iran was attacking only the American military bases located in those countries). Yet again, not a word was uttered in that resolution condemning the US-Israeli aggression on Iran.

It is also noteworthy that India took several days before expressing any grief over the assassination Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several weeks before expressing any shock over the brutal killing of 175 innocent schoolgirls in Minab.

Such pusillanimity, however, is not confined to India: as many as 135 countries were co-sponsors of the dishonest and duplicitous UNGA resolution mentioned above, afraid that they would otherwise offend the Americans.

In fact, apart from a handful of countries in the entire world, none has had the gumption to condemn unambiguously the blatantly illegal and immoral war unleashed by the US-Israeli combine against Iran.

Extreme concern
This is a matter for extreme concern, for the attack on Iran abrogates the concept of sovereignty of nations that had been the core concept in the struggle for decolonisation and had underlain the entire post-colonial order. It destroys, in other words, the very rationale for decolonisation.

This pusillanimity on the part of Third World countries is also a matter of great puzzlement. After all, these are countries that have had long and arduous anti-colonial struggles to achieve the status of independent and sovereign states; how can they remain silent when this very sovereignty is being violated in the case of a fellow Third World state by the armed might of US imperialism?

The answer to this question, no doubt complex, must nonetheless incorporate recognition of at least two fractures that neoliberalism has introduced into our world. One is the fracturing of the concept of the “nation” whose coming into being had been accomplished by the anti-colonial struggle.

This concept of the “nation” had differed fundamentally from the European concept that had developed in the wake of the Westphalian Peace Treaties in at least three ways: first, it was inclusive and did not identify any “enemy within”; second, unlike European nationalism it shunned any imperial ambitions of its own, in the sense of having designs over the resources of distant lands; and third, it did not apotheosise the nation as standing above the people whose “duty” supposedly was to serve it.

The coming into being of this inclusive concept of the “nation” was in turn a reflection of the fact that the anti-colonial struggle was a multi-class struggle; and the dirigiste economic regime that was erected after independence, though it promoted capitalist development, also sought to put curbs on rampant capitalism in the name of achieving “national” development.

This was in the interests of preserving its multi-class support base, which even the monopoly capitalists were not averse to at that time, since they had wanted a trajectory of development where the state exercised relative autonomy vis-a-vis imperialism. The existence of a large public sector was a part of this trajectory.

Further, the policy of non-alignment pursued by these dirigiste regimes had complemented this quest for development in relative autonomy from imperialism. Michal Kalecki, the Polish Marxist economist, had erred in calling such regimes “intermediate regimes” and suggesting that the middle classes held decisive power in such regimes; but he had been right in identifying state capitalism (public sector) and non-alignment as the two most distinctive features of these regimes.

Monopoly bourgeoisie
With globalisation of capital, however, things changed. The domestic monopoly bourgeoisie integrated itself with globalised capital and abandoned its agenda of pursuing a development trajectory that was relatively autonomous of the metropolis.

Sections of the upper professional and bureaucratic segments of society, keen to send their children to study and settle down in the metropolis, joined in as supporters of the neoliberal regime that emerged under the aegis of this globalised capital.

The landed rich too sought their fortunes within this new neoliberal order, which not only promoted rampant unrestrained capitalism, but came down heavily against workers, peasants, agricultural labourers, petty producers and the lower salariat. A schism was effected within the class alliance that had been forged in the course of the anti-colonial struggle.

It was no longer the “nation” against the metropolis that was in focus, but big capital including multinational capital against those social groups which stood in the way of instituting rapid “development” defined exclusively in terms of GDP growth-rates.

The interest of big capital was, by a sleight of hand, identified as “national interest”, and the duty of all classes was to promote it.

This shift in the meaning of the term “nation” meant in effect a fracturing of the “nation” whose coming into being was the desideratum of the anti-colonial struggle. Freedom of the “nation” from imperialist domination, far from being the over-riding objective, was no longer even a desired or a relevant objective for the government within a neoliberal setting.

This is the first instance of “fracturing” referred to above. Because of this fracturing, the criterion on the basis of which the government of a neoliberal regime takes decisions is not whether a particular stance defends national sovereignty, but whether it promotes the material interests of big capital which are considered identical with those of the “nation” in its new meaning.

Deafening silences
Siding with the US-Israeli alliance appears, on balance, more advantageous than standing with Iran, the victim of aggression, from the point of view of the interests of big capital in countries of the Global South. This would go some way to explain the deafening silences, mentioned earlier, in the UNGA and other resolutions.

There is also a second “fracture” brought about by the neoliberal regime. While the neoliberal regime is “sold” to the Global South as ushering in export-led growth that would bring about a higher GDP growth-rate for all countries compared with the earlier dirigiste regime, this claim is completely false.

Since the growth rate of aggregate world demand does not increase when more countries pursue an export-led growth strategy, the neoliberal regime that generalises this strategy among all countries is, in effect, forcing them to engage in Darwinian competition against one another, that is, to pursue a “beggar-thy-neighbour” strategy.

Some countries’ higher growth-rate than before under the export-led growth strategy, it follows, must be at the expense of other countries that now experience lower growth-rate than before.

Countries engaged in a race to outdo one another can scarcely be said to be “co-operating” with one another. The effect of a general pursuit of the neoliberal strategy, therefore, is a de facto abandonment of non-alignment, of a trajectory where countries of the Global South stood with one another to face up to imperialism.

Now, countries of the Global South, each obsessed with achieving higher GDP growth and hence, within the neoliberal paradigm, obsessed with drawing in larger metropolitan investment for this purpose, would rather curry favour with imperialism in order to outdo their neighbours.

This leads to a fracturing of the non-aligned movement, which is the second fracturing we mentioned earlier.

The silence of most countries of the Global South in the face of the US-Israeli aggression on Iran, which may appear puzzling at first sight, is not so puzzling after all.

Subverting both ‘nation’, ‘non-alignment’
Neoliberalism has been at work for quite some time in subverting both the concept of the nation and the concept of non-alignment, abandoning the anti-imperialist core that characterised these concepts, and substituting in their place alternative concepts that prioritise the task of currying favour with imperialism over everything else.

The outcome of this process is what we see today.

Capitalism is invariably hostile to any collective praxis against it, even if this collective praxis takes the form of just trade union action. It believes in atomising economic agents.

Neoliberal capitalism, which represents a return to unrestrained and uncontrolled capitalism once more, brings to the fore this tendency toward the atomisation of economic agents, through a break-up of the class alliance that had participated in the anti-colonial struggle, and through a subversion of the non-aligned movement that had stood for collective opposition by countries of the Global South to imperialist hegemony.

It is for the people of the Global South, not the governments currently promoting the interests of the ruling big bourgeoisie, to extend solidarity to the people of Iran. The struggle of Iran against the US-Israeli alliance is of crucial importance for recovering the sovereignty of the Global South.

Dr Prabhat Patnaik is professor emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views are personal. This article is republished from Newsclick.

I don’t mind admitting that I hope the US and Israel suffer a crushing, devastating defeat in Iran.

I hope this war collapses the entire US empire. My only loyalty is to humanity, and being on Team Human in today’s world means being against the US empire and against Israel.

I hope the empire falls. I hope the apartheid state of Israel is dismantled.

• LISTEN:  A reading by Tim Foley

I hope humanity is able to pry the steering wheel from the fingers of the ghouls who currently rule our world, so that we can create a healthy planet and a harmonious future together.

I hope the US loses and other notes              Video: Caitlin Johnstone

YouTube has banned the channel that’s been creating viral AI Lego music videos criticising the US war on Iran. The Google-owned platform claims the Lego videos somehow constituted “violent content”, but we all know it was to facilitate the US propaganda effort by shutting down effective propaganda for the other side.

Silicon Valley is a crucial arm of US imperial control.

It chooses to advance the interests of the empire at every significant juncture. It’s a branch of imperial soft power in the same way the military is a branch of imperial hard power.

Iran-linked accounts are circulating a new LEGO-style propaganda video portraying U.S. and Israeli leaders as corrupt elites tied to the “Epstein files,” part of a broader online campaign aimed at undermining support for the war.

The animation depicts President Donald Trump… pic.twitter.com/PdjcJGrjuy

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) April 9, 2026

❖

The US and Israel have so normalised the assassination of national leaders that the mainstream press now discuss it as a standard military tactic. The other day The Washington Post ran an article by Marc Thiessen arguing that the US should “carry out a final barrage of leadership strikes, eliminating the Iranian officials who had been spared for the purpose of negotiations”.

“Iran’s leaders must be made to understand that their lives literally depend on reaching a negotiated settlement to Trump’s liking. If they refuse to do so, they will be killed,” Thiessen writes.

At some point one of America’s enemies is going to assassinate a US official and my replies are going to be full of shrieking, outraged Americans acting like I’m the bad guy when I say Washington had it coming.

❖

Even if the US wasn’t directly responsible for the Strait of Hormuz situation, it would still be the last country on earth with any business whining about it. They’re openly imposing a fuel blockade on Cuba while complaining that nobody should be allowed to block shipping lanes, for Christ’s sake.

❖

The Democratic National Committee voted to reject a resolution denouncing the influence of AIPAC in US politics. Eighty percent of Democrats have a negative view of Israel today. The DNC’s main function is to keep the Democratic Party and its representation on the ballot from reflecting the will of the public.

❖

pic.twitter.com/K0kNiJYbKs

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 14, 2026

Dear Trump supporters, send me all of your money. I have a plan to make America great again. I will end all the wars and drain the swamp. Don’t worry if it looks like I’m not doing any of those things, I’m playing 4d chess, trust the plan. Send me your life savings right now.

❖

It’s important not to let them pin this all on Trump, in the same way it’s important not to let them pin Israel’s crimes on Netanyahu. Everything we are seeing with this disastrous Iran war is the product of the entire power structure which gave rise to it, not one guy’s dopey decisions.

The warmongers in the DC swamp have been pushing war with Iran for decades. Trump is just the guy who was chosen by Zionist oligarchs and bloodthirsty empire managers to carry out the deed. He happens to be the face on the operation, but if it wasn’t him it would have been someone else.

American warmongering insanity didn’t start with Trump, and it isn’t going to end with him either. Don’t direct your rage merely at the fleeting puppets who come and go from the imperial stage as the US murder machine trudges onward. Direct it at the empire itself.

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.

The war on Iran is not only being fought on the battlefield, reports France24 — it is also playing out online.

Iran’s state media recently took a leaf out of the White House’s own social media playbook, mocking US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an AI-generated propaganda video styled like a LEGO animation.

The clip suggested that Trump launched the conflict to distract from scrutiny over his links to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

• READ MORE: Iran slams YouTube ban on pro-Iranian group’s Lego-style AI videos
• Trump says war on Iran ‘close to over’; Israel pounds Lebanon
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

The video quickly circulated online, highlighting how artificial intelligence is being used as a tool of political messaging and satire in modern conflicts.

A massive Stop Wars Aotearoa coalition rally and march on the US Consulate took place in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau last Saturday, 11 April 2026.

“We’re going to stand up for the people of Iran, stand up for the people of Palestine, stand up for the people of Lebanon, stand up for the people of Venezuela, stand up for the people of Cuba, stand up for this fight against the American empire,” declared organiser Joe Carolan.

US and Israeli imperialism was strongly denounced by political, civil society, human rights and migrant speakers.

Protesters staged a “die-in” on the street in front of the consulate to mark the targeted slaughter of 168 children at the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in the southeastern Iranian city of Minab by US bombs. This tragedy took place on February 28, the opening day of the illegal and unprovoked US-Israel war on the Islamic Republic.

Photographs: David Robie

• See other images and video clips
• Full story — Protesters rally across Aotearoa in condemnation of Israel, US ‘warmongering’ and ‘shameful’ NZ

Stop Wars Aotearoa

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The Fiji military has warned that individuals responsible for “any attempt to destabilise national security” and those who aid “individuals engaged in criminal activity” have been “put on notice”.

It comes after the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) confirmed just last Friday that “unknown individuals” had made “unsuccessful” attempts to access its installations.

To allay public anxiety, the RFMF assured that “there is no threat to public safety arising from the incident”.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji military security reports

However, in a statement on Monday night, the military said it had initiated joint security operations with the Fiji Police Force as “a deliberate and measured approach to recent unacceptable challenges to security, including threats to infrastructure and isolated acts of violence against civilians and officers in the line of duty”.

While pointing out its constitutional responsibility to “ensure the security, defence and wellbeing of Fiji and all Fijians”, the RFMF said it would not take these matters lightly.

“Therefore, we put on notice that any attempt to destabilise national security or endanger the wellbeing of citizens will be met with firm, lawful and proportionate action.”

According to the statement — authorised by the military commander — the enhanced security measures are expected to “continue for as long as necessary”.

“Members of the public are reminded that providing shelter, assistance, or support to individuals engaged in criminal activity is an offence and directly undermines national security.”

The Fiji Military is encouraging the public to remain vigilant and report suspicious activities to the relevant authorities.

‘Alarming’ development – Labour Party
The Fiji Labour Party (FLP) has reacted to the developments by questioning the current state of national security in the country.

“As a party that has twice been the victim of military coups — in 1987 and 2000 — we understand only too well how fragile national security can become when well-organised elements with ill intent are allowed to operate,” it said in a statement on Sunday.

It said the unauthorised access to RFMF installations “is particularly alarming when set against the backdrop of rising drug-related activities and seizures across Fiji in recent times”.

“The emergence of sophisticated, well-coordinated criminal elements poses a direct threat to public safety and national stability,” the party said in a statement.

“Even though the RFMF has confirmed that no weapons, ammunition, or equipment were compromised, the very fact that such attempts were made sends a dangerous signal: our defence installations may not be as impenetrable as we have been led to believe.”

FLP is demanding clear answers and concrete action to strengthen safeguards across all military and strategic installations.

Meanwhile, Fijians are set to head to the polls later this year.

The general elections can be held anytime between August 7 (earliest) and 6 February 2027 (latest).

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

The planning and policy committee of New Zealand’s largest city today voted decisively to review its procurement policies to ensure it is in step with the UN Human Rights Council which has listed companies complicit with illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestine Territory.

Auckland Council is the local body governing a “super city” with a population of more than 1.8 million people — almost a third of the country’s total population.

The council’s policy, planning and development committee voted 14 to 2 with 4 abstentions to call for a review report by July about sanctioning UN-listed companies over illegal Israeli settlements.

• READ MORE: NZ’s third-largest city sanctions Israel over illegal Palestine settlements
• Other Occupied Palestine reports

“Israel has been stealing Palestinian land and moving Israeli settlers onto the land in defiance of international law,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair Maher Nazzal.

“The local Palestinian community and our supporters sincerely thank the Auckland councillors who today have voted for steps to refuse to procure goods or services from any of the companies involved in building and maintaining these settlements,” he said in a statement.

“Auckland ratepayers deserve to know their rates are not being used to support Israeli war crimes, as designated by the UN General Assembly, Security Council, international conventions and the International Court of Justice.

Councillor Julie Fairey moved the resolution calling for the report “on the alignment of Auckland Council policies and practices with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334”.

She rejected the arguments of councillors who opposed it by arguing that the council should “stick to its knitting”.  She responded that decisions should be made so that “the needles and the wool don’t have blood on them”.

Six local bodies have acted
The resolution was seconded by councillor Sarah Peterson-Hamlin.

Councillor Maurice Williamson voted against the resolution.

However, as a cabinet minister of the Key/English National government at the time, he stated he had supported New Zealand co-sponsorship of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 in 2016, calling Israeli settlements “a flagrant breach of international law”.

Williamson then went on to attack the UN Human Rights Council, falsely claiming it was chaired by Iran, when in fact its current president is Indonesian Ambassador Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro.

PSNA’s Kathy Ross presented a submission in support of the motion.

“Already six different local bodies have taken this step — it’s good to see Auckland following along the same path,” Nazzal said.

New Zealand’s third-largest city, Christchurch, voted to sanction Israel in October 2024.

A strong contingent of supporters for the Auckland resolution were present for the debate and delighted with the result.

As an Iranian living in New Zealand, I wake up every morning to the quiet green hills and the calm sea, but my mind is always thousands of kilometres away in Iran.

The news from home hits differently when you are far away. You feel helpless, but you sometimes also see things more clearly.

For years, I have watched the same old story from Washington and Tel Aviv: they want to change the regime in Iran. Not because they care about Iranian freedom, but because they want more power in the Middle East, control the oil routes, control the region, control everything.

• READ MORE: Diplomatic efforts to revive US-Iran talks intensify amid Hormuz blockade
• Iran a hugely ‘friendly’ country behind the sabre-rattling
• Other Eugene Doyle Solidarity articles

They tried it openly in the 12-Day War last year. They bombed, they threatened, they hoped the whole system would collapse. It didn’t. And now they are trying again, waiting for the Iranian people to rise up and do their job for them.

But it is not happening, and it will not happen.

From my small house here in New Zealand, I talk to family back home almost every day. They are tired, yes. Life is hard with sanctions, constant threats and bombings.

But Iran isn’t run by stupid people. The authorities in Iran have planned for this for a long time. If top figures are targeted, there is a chain ready to continue. It is not a secret. They have built it step by step.

Americans, Israelis don’t understand
The Americans and Israelis don’t seem to understand this because they do not know the religious and cultural soul of Iran. Without that knowledge any plan is blind. You cannot bomb a country and expect surrender when the children in every school learn about resistance from the first grade.

Take Imam Hussein, for example. Most people in New Zealand and other countries have probably never heard the name, so let me explain it simply. Imam Hussein was the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

In the year 680, in what is now Iraq, he and just 72 of his loyal companions including women and children stood in the desert of Karbala against an army of tens of thousands sent by a tyrannical ruler. They were cut off from water for days. They knew they would be killed.

Yet Imam Hussein refused to swear loyalty to a corrupt leader. He chose death with dignity over a life of submission. Every year during the month of Muharram, Iranians mourn this event not as a defeat but as the ultimate symbol of resistance.

We cry, we march, we tell the story to our children: standing for justice is worth any price.

That lesson is not ancient history. It is taught in schools today as a living example of how a small group can defy an empire. How do you expect a nation raised on that story to give up when missiles fall?

We have many such examples from the revolution to the war with Iraq to every pressure since. According to many political analysts, this is exactly why the West keeps making the same mistake.

They don’t see the culture
They look at Iran through their own eyes. They see maps and weapons and money. They do not see the culture that turns every attack into fuel for survival.

The diaspora is another story. When I first came to New Zealand years ago, the Iranians overseas were split into two main groups. One part supported the Islamic Republic, the other part, mostly louder in the West, wanted the return of the monarchy and backed the king in exile. They argued online, but at least the lines were clear.

Now everything is different. The attacks on Iran have created real splits and even anger among those who used to be against the regime. Some of them trusted Trump and Netanyahu. They said on social media and in interviews that the bombs would bring freedom.

Instead, the bombs are bringing destruction, dead civilians, ruined houses, fear in the streets.

Now you see fights breaking out in the comments, in the Persian TV channels, even in family online group chats. The ones who still wave the old flag blame the Islamic Republic for every death.

But many others who once hated the government are saying, “This isn’t freedom. This is an attack on our country.” They feel betrayed. They realise the “liberators” they cheered for only wanted a weaker Iran they could control.

And the war does not look like it will end soon. I speculate it will drag on in this strange way that gets tighter then loosens a bit, then tightens again. Iran will keep using its asymmetric tools: missiles that reach far, drones that are cheap, friends in the region who act when needed.

The system will not fall
The economy will suffer, people will suffer more, but the system will not fall. The Iranian people have closed ranks around the idea of independence. Those in the diaspora who hoped for quick regime change will stay disappointed. The ones who begged for American and Israeli action are now watching their own relatives bury the dead and should be asking themselves what “freedom” really means when it comes with foreign bombs.

Living here in New Zealand, I sometimes feel guilty for the safety I have. I go to work without air-raid sirens. But every time I see the news, I remember why Iran will not break.

It isn’t because the government is perfect. Far from it. It is because the alternative they are being offered is not freedom. Instead, it is humiliation and loss of dignity.

The Americans and Israelis think they are playing chess. They do not realise they are fighting a nation that has turned resistance into a religion, a culture, a memory passed from mother to child for centuries.

I do not know how long this round will last. Maybe months, maybe years of shadow war. But one thing is clear from my quiet corner in New Zealand: regime change from outside will not come.

The Iranian people have decided, consciously or not, that they will decide their own future, even if it is painful. The planners in Washington and Tel Aviv should study Karbala again. They might understand then why their plans keep failing.

Kaveh is an Iranian who has been living in New Zealand for many years. Having travelled across many different countries, he takes great pride in contributing to various communities through his professional work and community activities in New Zealand. Republished with permission from Eugene Doyle’s Solidarity website.

This US naval blockade is meant to strangle the Iranian economy by preventing it from exporting oil — the economic lifeline of Iran. It will do nothing of the sort.

Please study the infographics below. Before the war started, Iran was furiously loading tankers with oil at 3 times the normal rate and sending them off to the Far East, with the ultimate destination being China.

China buys 90 percent of Iranian oil, with many of its private refineries — known colloquially as “tea pot” refineries — depending on Iranian crude.

• READ MORE: Trump claims Iran wants a deal ‘very badly’ as US blockade begins in Hormuz
• Iran threatens retaliation over Gulf ‘piracy’ in Trump’s naval blockade
• Global Sumud Flotilla heads from Barcelona to break Gaza blockade
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

There are presently at least 158 million barrels of Iranian oil sitting in some 96 tankers anchored near the Malaysian state of Johor. There, ship-to-ship transfers take place, before the shipments go off to their final destinations in China.

So this naval blockade will cost the Americans billions of dollars to maintain, but the only thing it will achieve is to make countries dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf such as Australia, Britain, Europe, Japan, South Korea, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh cry.

American voters will get mad at Trump for the surging prices at the pump and give the Republicans a shellacking in the mid-terms.

Iran rolling in cash
Iran will be rolling in cash from the sale of these 158 million barrels of oil already at sea and far away from any naval blockade, and the Iranians will be laughing at the stupidity of the Americans.

Isn’t this the classic illustration of the saying  “closing the stable door after the horse has bolted”?

Let us see how long Trump can afford to keep up with this charade.

You would think that American intelligence would have the wherewithal to better advise their President what a harebrained idea his naval blockade is.

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.

AMY GOODMAN: Ship traffic has halted again in the Strait of Hormuz after President Trump ordered the US military to begin a naval blockade of all Iranian ports and coastal areas starting on Monday.

Iran denounced Trump’s move as an illegal act amounting to “piracy”. Iran has threatened to strike Gulf ports in retaliation.

Trump ordered the blockade after the US and Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war following 21 hours of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The negotiations marked the highest-level talks between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. US Vice-President JD Vance headed the U.S. delegation, which included US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Iranian negotiators had flown to Pakistan on a plane they called “Minab 168” as a tribute to the 168 people killed in a US missile strike on an elementary school in the city of Minab on February 28. The plane carried images of the dead schoolchildren, along with blood-stained school bags recovered beneath the rubble.

Global oil prices jumped after Trump announced the blockade.

We’re joined now by Ervand Abrahamian, professor emeritus of history at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the author of several books, most recently, Oil Crisis in Iran: From Nationalism to Coup d’État. His forthcoming book is 1979: An Inevitable Revolution.

So, your response to what transpired in Pakistan, the deal that was not reached between Iran and the United States, and what this means, Professor?

Trump orders naval blockade of Iran            Video: Democracy Now!

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, I think both sides actually presented, basically, ultimate demands which the other side couldn’t accept, so it was a false start. But the implications of the failure is going to be actually quite drastic on the United States, because Trump’s main concern has been to actually put a limit, a lid, on the oil prices going up, and they’ve already jumped from $88 a barrel to over $100. They’re going to increase more with the present crisis, with the embargo on the Strait of Hormuz.

And as the crisis escalates, I think the US will start bombing Iranian oil installations. Iran will retaliate by bombing the Gulf’s oil installations, gas installations. The oil prices then could really zoom up.

Some people expect it to reach $200 a barrel. In that case, you know, it will have long-term implications for Wall Street and the whole American economy, not to mention the world economy. So, things that Trump has tried to avoid, he has got, actually, himself into the major crisis, economic crisis.

AMY GOODMAN: You have Robert Malley, who had previously been involved with talks with Iran, saying, “Twenty-one hours was 20 hours too many if the goal was to reiterate a demand Iran had already rejected. It was many hours too few if the goal was to negotiate.” Your response?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: He’s exactly right. And I think, I mean, what Iran sees as the present crisis is an existential one, because although the talk has been regime change, the Israeli policy, clearly, in the last 10 years has been more than regime change. It’s basically been the destruction of the Iranian state, Iranian nation. So Iran sees this as an existential threat.

There was a speech that Trump made when he launched the attack on Iran a couple of weeks ago. It was actually quite an interesting speech. He talked about various ethnic minorities being oppressed in Iran, and they were dying to be liberated from Iranian control. And he listed obvious ethnic groups, but then there was one ethnic group that, really, I’d never heard of.

So I scratched my head. What is this group? And I did what most people do: You google. And lo and behold, this ethnic group actually exists in the other side of the Caucasus Mountains in Dagestan.

So you wonder what reason they had for putting this ethnic group that doesn’t exist in Iran as one of the ethnic groups, unless there’s some sinister idea the Israelis have of a civil war in Iran, where they will recruit, actually, mercenaries from the other side of the Caucasus to bring into Iran.

Of course, this sounds far-fetched, but this is what actually happened in Syria. You had a lot of Chechens actually brought in to fight against Assad. So, the Israelis may be thinking in those terms of actually a long civil war in Iran, where they would be bringing in mercenaries from outside. So, for this reason, I think Iran sees this as a real, serious, existential war. It’s not just a question of a minor sort of fine tuning of relations with the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve written about oil in Iran a great deal. Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, tweeted on Sunday, “Enjoy the current pump figures. With the so-called ‘blockade’, soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4-$5 [per gallon] gas.”

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the price could go up to $200 a barrel, even more than that, if, basically, the Gulf oil — it’s not just Iranian oil, but the whole Gulf oil and gas — is actually cut off from the world market.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about what Iran wants right now and what the US wants. Ten o’clock am — we’re broadcasting right before that — Eastern time is when the US Navy blockades, apparently, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

What exactly does this mean? How will the Gulf nations be affected? How will Iran be affected? Because it both exports oil, but, of course, it needs oil and makes a great deal of its own oil.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yeah, I mean, it won’t break Iran, because it has — Iran has other ways of actually exporting oil. It’ll obviously be a hardship, but it’ll be a much worse hardship on the Gulf states, if Iran actually dismantles their oil installations.

And that affects directly United States economy, because so much of Gulf oil money, gas money actually goes into high-tech United States. And much of the American, basically, modern technology is funded by subsidies from the various Gulf states. So it would have drastic repercussions on US economy.

AMY GOODMAN: What does Trump want? His latest, and what Vance said — right? Vance leaves the Hungarian prime minister, campaigning for him, Orbán, who was soundly defeated, and then goes to Islamabad to lead this negotiation. He says it’s all about nuclear weapons. Vance said, “The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them [to quickly] achieve a nuclear weapon.” Your response?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Exactly. I mean, that’s exactly what the Obama agreement was.

AMY GOODMAN: That Trump pulled out of.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yes, which Trump pulled out of. But if you look at that agreement, basically, it said Iran had the right to enrich, but it had to be supervised to make sure it couldn’t enrich to the level of nuclear weapons.

So, Netanyahu cries it was vague agreement. In fact, it was very precise. Iran could enrich to 3.67 percent of uranium. That’s as precise as you can get. It was limited to 200 grams of enriched uranium. And also, it was — everything was supervised.

There were 140 international monitors, including American monitors. So, this was an incredibly tight procedure to make sure that Iran would actually fulfill its promise not to go into nuclear weapons.

When Trump pulled out of that, he basically unwound the whole system. And the best he can get is going back to that. So, demand that Iran should have no nuclear enrichment is a nonstarter. The best he could get is to go back, permit Iran to have enrichment, but with monitoring that it would not be weapon enrichment.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have a minute. In a call with the Russian President Putin, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said a deal is, “not out of reach.” So, if you can talk about whether — where you see this all headed?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, there are people in Iran in the — basically, in the National Security Council, including Pezeshkian, who think that they can make a deal with the United States. And they’ve been there a long time.

But there are also people now, I think, hardliners, who are stronger now than before the war, who are arguing that you can’t make a deal with Trump. Even if Trump makes a deal, he could, the following week, decide he’s going to pull out. So it’s a nonstarter, from their point of view, unless US can actually make full commitments. And I don’t see how they can do that, because Trump is basically untrustworthy.

So, from their point of view, I think the hardliners in Iran could argue, persuasively, the more the pressure they have, the more the prices are going to go up; the more it goes up, sooner or later, the patient will have a heart attack or a stroke. So they have an upper hand at the moment.

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

A group of 39 boats known as the Global Sumud Flotilla has set sail from Barcelona to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, with organisers saying more vessels are expected to join along the route — making this their largest mission so far, reports Al Jazeera.

Israeli security forces illegally intercepted and detained crew from a similar flotilla last year, but organisers say rough sea conditions mean the journey will be slower this time.

The fleet is expected to reach international waters later this week.

• READ MORE: States must ensure safe passage for Global Sumud Flotilla as a civilian mission challenging ongoing genocide
• Other Sumud Flotilla reports
• Kia Ora Gaza website

Organisers accused Israel of repeatedly violating the ceasefire and expanding control in Gaza.

They said the flotilla aims to challenge what they describe as an illegal blockade.

About a total of 80 boats from around the world carrying about 1000 people are expected to join the flotilla.

Al Jazeera reporter Mohammad Saleh said from the dockside in Barcelona: “The aim is to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza and to deliver life-saving aid and relief to a besieged population.”

Global Sumud Flotilla heads from Barcelona to Gaza            Video: Al Jazeera

One of the New Zealand supporter crews, Palestinian-Syrian Rana Hamida, said: “On the Global Sumud Flotilla, resistance songs have proved that encouraging comrades and showing our spirits can’t be crushed IS essential activism.

“Dissent comes from singing our truth, sailing toward freedom, and standing firm in solidarity.

“Every voice, every wave, every stance breaks through the siege. Our strength is collective, and our will is unbreakable.”

#breakthesiege
@globalsumudflotilla
@speakupdotcom

The Territorial Assembly of French Polynesia has for the first time shown a new configuration during its first administrative sitting on Friday, following a mass resignation of a group of young elected members of the ruling Tavini Huiraatira.

This follows the mass resignation of a group of 15 members of the Assembly, now headed by 25-year-old member Tematai Le Gayic.

The mass resignation de facto brings down Tavini’s majority to 22 within the Territorial Assembly (of a total of 57 MPs).

• READ MORE: Rift widens within French Polynesia’s ruling party following municipal election losses
• Other French Polynesia reports

The outcome of the rift within the ruling party is that now, for the first time in its history, it is divided into two groups.

One consists of the remaining “old guard”, headed by historic pro-independence “radical” members such as former president Oscar Temaru, 81, and his closest ally, Antony Géros (currently Speaker of the Assembly and vice-president of the Tavini Party).

On the other side, the breakaway group of Tavini members from a younger generation, called A Fano Tia (Stay the course) now gathers some 15 members.

A Fano Tia is also reported to be close to French Polynesia’s government President Moetai Brotherson, whose father-in-law is Temaru.

To mark their differences with their former party, under which they were elected during the territorial elections in May 2023, A Fano Tia members appeared in the chamber dressed in white in contrast to Tavini’s light blue.

The sitting was marked by heated debates between the two groups, while the opposition “pro-autonomy” (supporters of French Polynesia remaining part of France under the current Autonomy Status) essentially stood as spectators.

‘Independence … can be neither imposed nor rushed’ – Brotherson
As a preview to future debates and local Assembly’s modus operandi, until the next territorial elections, in 2028, questions have been raised as to how a more divided house could function.

There could be more open opposition during debates for future Bills, especially those which are related to points of notorious contention (such as the notion of independence).

Tavini’s hard line, defended by Temaru, favours a short-term process to gain French Polynesia’s independence, including a more confrontational approach towards France.

Speaking last Friday, Brotherson elaborated on the divergence of views regarding independence.

“Independence is not an end in itself . . .  it’s a choice, but this choice can be neither imposed nor rushed,” Brotherson said last week in the chamber.

In earlier statements, Brotherson had favoured a more gradual process within a window of “10 to 15” years.

More than ever, every Bill is likely to be treated on a case-by-case basis and alliances formed accordingly around the vote.

More alliances likely
This could also involve, on the same principle, more alliances between A Fano Tia and pro-autonomy Tapura Huiraatira, as well as a handful of independent MPs.

It could involve more open opposition from the “historic” Tavini, which could oppose future Bills from Brotherson’s government.

The other components of the Assembly include 16 from the opposition pro-France (pro-autonomy) Tapura Huiraatira and 4 others not registered under any party.

No party has an outright majority.

The rules have changed, but no one wants to topple the government

Sometimes floated during earlier Tavini internal debates, the notion of Brotherson’s departure or resignation as president was not regarded as a solution.

“Since we were elected and until 2028, there won’t be any no-confidence motion,” Géros publicly assured.

“We’re asking [Brotherson] to carry the weight of his presidency until 2028,” he told MPs.

Tapura said it was not prepared to “contribute to government instability”.

“We’ll always be here in a constructive way,” Tapura wrote in a release posted on social networks.

However, it deplored that during this session the floor had been “confiscated” by Tavini’s internal bickering.

Any no-confidence motion requires the approval of at least 35 of the 57 MPs.

Crucial legislative committees
At the sitting last week, the allocation of chairs for the Assembly’s influential legislative committees was also renewed.

A Fano Tia said it did not intend to bid for any of them because it did not want to be accused of being “opportunistic”.

As a result, Tavini retained the chair of key committees such as Economy, Finance and Budget, Education, Youth and Sports (which could turn crucial as French Polynesia is hosting the 2027 Pacific Games), as well as Tourism and Culture.

Opposition pro-autonomy Tapura also retains Employment and Public Service and gains one more committee (Health and Solidarity).

Other parliamentary committees (Institutions and International Affairs, Housing, Land and sustainable development, Transport and Public Works, as well as Agriculture and Marine resources — another point of contention between the historic Tavini and A Fano Tia — were allocated to other Assembly groups.

“Unfortunately, today, [Assembly] debates were confiscated by political statements. And at the end of the day it is [French] Polynesians who will be forgotten,” said French Polynesia’s representative at the French Senate Teva Rohfritsch.

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

On the night of February 28, the Israel-US airstrike killed his father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his wife, his brother-in-law and sister-in-law.

According to a recent report from Reuters, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei suffered life threatening injuries and apparently lost his leg and has a disfigured face.

The report said he communicated through written statements read by TV anchors and audio conferences with senior officials.

• READ MORE: US military says it will block all Iranian port traffic in Hormuz Strait
• US delegation ‘failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation’
• Protesters rally across Aotearoa in condemnation of Israel, US ‘warmongering’ and ‘shameful’ NZ​
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

I don’t want to believe Reuters or any puppet media from the West but I would like to believe that the new supreme leader is not in full capacity as expected.

Well, despite all that, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is still grounded, strong and with no signs of collapse.

They lost 40+ senior leaders but still fought two superpower countries to a ceasefire. They still control the Strait of Hormuz and have thousands of missiles and drones left.

This simply points out to the fact that IRGC is in control and guess who is the leader?

Led IRGC for decades
Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of the martyred Ali Khamenei, who led IRGC for decades with a hand injury over a bomb explosion in a tape recorder in 1981.

Imagine you were Mojtaba who has just lost all your family to a brutal attack that claimed even more lives in your country.

In one way or another you survived and you have people taking instructions from you.

At this point I don’t think death scares you anymore because you saw death in its true colours and even had a conversation with it.

Back to myself, what if I was Mojtaba Khamenei? First, no surrender. I would fight to the last microsecond and die fighting but surrendering is where I draw the line.

Second, the Strait of Hormuz is non-negotiable. It is our territorial waters and remains under our control. We do with it what we want. It’s ours, period.

After all, it was open and safe for all until someone decided to attack us and now we call the shots. It’s either you agree with our terms of gerrarahia!

Two options on missiles
On our missile programme, two options. It’s either we maintain our missile programme or develop nukes.

We won’t sit here and be at the mercies of aggressive enemies like Israel and US with no options to protect ourselves.

It’s either we can nuke you or we can missile you one or both options. Imagine just being there and being limited to defensive missiles capabilities yet those asking you to do that are the same people attacking you during negotiations!

Uranium enrichment. Let everyone enrich uranium and use it however they want. It’s either everyone can or no one can’t. No selective privileges.

Lastly, if I was Mojtaba Khamenei, those who murdered my family would definitely pay, not by dollars, not by Shekel and of course not by propaganda but by blood.

What would you do, if you were Mojtaba Khamenei?

Bonface Chisutia is a writer and academic based in Nairobi, Kenya. This commentary is republished from his Facebook account.

Iran’s ambassador has criticised New Zealand’s failure to condemn the US and Israeli strikes on Iran as damaging the relationship between the two nations, reports 1News.

Interviewed on TVNZ’s Q+A programme by Jack Tame, Ambassador Reza Nazar Ahari said New Zealand’s “silence” would be interpreted as tacit support for the attacks.

He said the relationship between the two nations had “shifted”.

• READ MORE: US military to block all Iran-bound ships from transiting the Hormuz Strait
• US delegation ‘failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation’
• Protesters rally across Aotearoa in condemnation of Israel, US ‘warmongering’ and ‘shameful’ NZ​
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Ahari told Tame that New Zealand’s diplomatic “quietness” had damaged the relationship between the two nations, reports 1News.

He said the world had shifted from a “rule of law” to a “rule of the jungle”, where nations had given themselves the right to attack others without authorisation.

“A country like United States [has] made a military attack on Iran, and it is very clear that it is contrary to all international regulations, but New Zealand has not condemned that,” 1News quoted him as saying.

“Then that kind of quietness means that support. In Iranian culture, in many cases, quiet means positive reply,” he said.

Iran ambassador: New Zealand no longer stands up for peace   Video: Q&A

US navy blockade
Peace talks at the weekend between the US and Iran in Islamabad, Pakistan, resulted in no new agreement, after six weeks of strikes on Iran and the Islamic Republic’s retaliatory attacks.

US President Donald Trump has declared a navy bockade on Iran after the failed talks and oil prices have surged again amid a fragile two-week ceasefire.

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) spokesperson told Q+A on Friday: “Just today, New Zealand has signed onto a joint leaders’ statement with Australia, the UK and other world leaders which calls on all sides to implement the ceasefire, including in Lebanon.”

Thousands of protesters took part in the “Stop Wars Aotearoa” rallies across New Zealand today, calling for an end to the illegal war on Iran and the brutal onslaught on Lebanon this week breaching a fragile two-week truce.

While high-powered delegations from Iran and the United States were arriving in Islamabad for historic mediation talks being brokered by Pakistan, protesters in Auckland, Christchurch and other places across New Zealand were challenging the US and Israeli “warmongering” and criticising the New Zealand government’s “shameful” stance.

Led by US Vice-President JD Vance, the Americans arrived to take part in direct talks with their Iranian foes for the first time since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

• READ MORE: Historic Iran-US talks to continue for a second day; Israel pounds Lebanon
• ‘Ten minutes of terror’ – Lebanon death toll tops 300 from Israel’s ‘Black Wednesday’
• Ending Israel’s war on peace – Iran’s 10-point proposal is serious
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Ironically, Americans living in New Zealand were among those protesting in Auckland.

Kelby Dalton of Americans Abroad Against the War told the cheering crowd in Aotea Square that many of his compatriots condemned the US warmongering under President Donald Trump and were leaving the US in droves – not because they hated America, but because “we love America” and want the destructive political direction to change.

Stop Wars Aotearoa organiser Joe Carolan declared the protesters opposed all wars and championed freedom – “We’re going to stand up for the people of Iran, stand up for the people of Palestine, stand up for the people of Lebanon, stand up for the people of Venezuela, stand up for the people of Cuba, stand up for this fight against the American empire.”

Carolan said: “We will not be provoked by those who believe in violence down at the US Consulate, those who say that violence can bring freedom, those who think that Netanyahu can guarantee women’s rights in Iran.

“Are you joking?

Counter-protest
He was referring to a small counter-protest of Israel-supporting and monarchist Iranians outside the US Consulate in downtown Auckland who were calling for resumed bombing of Iran.

“These people are guilty of a genocide where 60,000 people have been killed [in Gaza].

“No liberation for women – or anyone in Iran – can come from the pedophile Donald Trump or the genocider Netanyahu.”

The protesters marched to the US Consulate at the Citygroup Building in Customs Street and staged a “die-in” to mark the targeted slaughter of 168 children at the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in the southeastern Iranian city of Minab by US bombs.

This tragedy took place on February 28, the opening day of the illegal and unprovoked US-Israel war on the Islamic Republic.

Bill Bradford of the Workers First Union and Filipino community advocate Mikee Santos and a group of Filipino union activists spoke out about how the US military machine and imperialism had exploited migrant communities around the world, especially in the Middle East.

A wide range of speakers, politicians, civil society leaders and trade unionists earlier addressed the main rally, including Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa’s co-chair Maher Nazzal — “we cannot all be free until Palestine is free” — Labour Party’s Phil Twyford; Green Party’s Ricardo Menéndez-March, Alliance Party’s Victor Billot, Council of Trade Unions’ president Sandra Grey and the union choir.

‘Standing with peace and justice’
Two displaced Afghani women speakers thanked everybody for “standing up against American and Israeli imperialism — and for standing with justice and peace”.

Miriam Majud recited a 13th-century humanist poem “Bani Adam” (“Sons of Adam” or “Human Beings”) by Iranian Sufi poet Saadi Shirazi, in Farsi (Persian) and in English.

Bibi Amena gave a speech highlighting Iranian achievements for women in contrast to mainstream media reports.

“I am not from Iran, and I have never visited Iran. But I want to talk about what Iran has done for my people,” she said.

“In 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Iran opened its borders for us. In 2001, when American and NATO forces invaded and brutally occupied Afghanistan, Iran once again opened its borders.

“For 40 years, Iran hosted millions of Afghan refugees — not in camps, but in cities among their own citizens. They gave us homes, schools, hospitals. They gave us a life of dignity.

“Now the same America that destroyed my home Afghanistan attacks Iran. The same Israel that bombs Gaza bombs Iran.

Today I stand with Iran because yesterday Iran stood with my people — just as Iran has and continues to stand with Palestine, with Yemen, Cuba, Lebanon, Venezuela and with every other oppressed nation fighting for freedom from the chains of neocolonialism.”

She pointed out that while the regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv “love to pretend they care about women’s rights – it’s only while bombing them”.

“Today, Iran’s female literacy rate is 99 percent, one of the highest in the world. Over 60 percent of Iranian university students in science and engineering are women,” she said.

“Again, one of the highest statistics in the world. 49 percent of doctors in Iran are women.

“Iranian women are engineers, pilots, doctors, judges, parliamentarians, and professors. They lead pro-government rallies, they guard their bridges and power plants against US and Israeli bombs.

“They’re not waiting for permission from Tel Aviv or Washington.”

‘We can bring change’
In Otautahi Christchurch, Iranian-Kiwi columnist and writer Donna Miles told protesters that New Zealand and the world ought to leave Iran to sort out its own future free of global interference.

“We can bring change. We have brought change. And we can do so if Iranians are left alone — if sanctions are lifted, if the middle class in Iran are able to breathe. And if civil society is able to thrive.

“This is what we need. Leave us alone. America needs to get out of the Middle East.

“Peace in the Middle East is possible. It’s not unachievable. Israel needs to end its occupation of Palestine and America needs to end its imperialism.”

Miles also questioned the New Zealand government?

“How shameful it was to see [Foreign Minister] Winston Peters standing next to [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio soon after Trump made those tweets threatening extremist war crimes wiping out an entire civilisation, ending a country in one night, taking it back to the stone age — and we have a minister who stood there silent.”

Her critical comments came just days after her article in The Press warning that US President Trump “can’t kill off Iranians’ resilient spirit”.

AMY GOODMAN: As the US and Iran prepared to hold ceasefire talks in Pakistan today, Israel is continuing to bomb Lebanon.

The death toll from Israel’s massive attack on Wednesday topped 300. More than 1150 people were injured. In a span of 10 minutes, Israel struck 100 sites across Beirut, the Beqaa Valley and southern Lebanon.

The Financial Times described Israel’s attack on Lebanon as, “one of the deadliest single bombing campaigns in the history of a country wracked by decades of war and destruction”.

• READ MORE: Vance in Pakistan to lead US-Iran ceasefire talks; Israel bombs Lebanon
• Ending Israel’s war on peace – Iran’s 10-point proposal is serious
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Israel and the US have claimed the Iran ceasefire deal does not include Lebanon, but numerous other nations disagree — and the ceasefire mediator Pakistan provided written evidence that Lebanon was included.

Foreign ministers of Pakistan and France condemned what they called “serious ceasefire violations made in Lebanon”. CBS News reports Trump initially agreed Lebanon was included in the ceasefire, but his position changed after a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US is expected to host talks between Israel and Lebanon on Tuesday. As Israel continues to attack Lebanon, Hezbollah has retaliated by firing missiles at Israel.

At the United Nations, a spokesperson for the secretary-general spoke.

STÉPHANE DUJARRIC: With the announcements of the ceasefire between Iran and the United States, the ongoing military activity in Lebanon poses a grave risk to the ceasefire and efforts towards a lasting and comprehensive peace in the region.

AMY GOODMAN: Since the war began in late February, Israel has killed more than 1530 people in Lebanon, including at least 130 children. In Beirut, grieving families gathered at hospitals to identify bodies after Israel’s attacks on Wednesday.

MOHAMMED: [translated] I had dropped off my sister. She went up into the house. I went on a little trip, and they hid. I came back and didn’t find the building.

I didn’t find my sister, and I didn’t find my family, any of them. I found my brother, and his son was in the rubble.

AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Beirut, where we’re joined by Rania Abouzeid. She’s an award-winning Lebanese Australian journalist and author based in Beirut. Her books include No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria. Her latest piece in New York magazine, headlined “The Iran War Is Not Over: Scenes from a day of carnage in Beirut.”

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Rania. Why don’t you describe those scenes of a day of carnage in Beirut? We have a four-second delay, so we will wait.

Lebanon death toll tops 300 from Israel’s Black Wednesday    Video: Democracy Now

RANIA ABOUZEID: It was 10 minutes of terror, a day that the Lebanese are calling Black Wednesday. It was hard to tell what was blowing up where, because those hundred or so attacks were all happening simultaneously, and not just in the capital Beirut, but also in other parts of the country.

They targeted very densely populated parts of the capital, neighbourhoods in the capital that were themselves hosting people who had been displaced from other parts of the country. In the Beqaa, mourners at a funeral in a cemetery were targeted. In Beirut, workers at a well-known roastery were removed by Civil Defence personnel as charred corpses.

So, it was a very, very ugly day. And as we speak, the — I can’t say “rescue,” because there’s — unfortunately, the people are dead, but search teams continue to try and locate and find and retrieve the remains of people who were killed in the rubble of their homes.

AMY GOODMAN: Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said Israel will “continue to strike Hezbollah wherever required,” but later said he’s approved direct talks with Lebanon as soon as possible. Can you talk about what’s happening with these negotiations?

You had the Belgian foreign minister who had come to Beirut to meet with the Lebanese President Aoun, and the bombing hit very close to their quarters, as he was congratulating the Lebanese president on saying that he would directly negotiate with Israel, then condemned the attack and said Lebanon had to be included with the ceasefire.

Can you take it from there? What’s happening now? Where do you understand these talks will take place?

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, the first thing is that the talks remove Lebanon from the wider ceasefire talks that are due to take place between Iran and America tomorrow. That has many Lebanese worried, because they wonder: What sort of leverage does Lebanon have? It doesn’t exactly have a Strait of Hormuz, whereas Iran seems to have a stronger negotiating position.

Yesterday, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam made it quite clear. He said that Lebanon, the Lebanese government, will negotiate for Lebanon, and that nobody else will do so.

So he has very clearly drawn the line between whatever Iran negotiates and what he hopes his government will be able to negotiate with the Israelis. Now, the Iranian foreign minister has made a ceasefire in Lebanon a condition of tomorrow’s talks, so it’s unclear whether or not they are going to go ahead.

So, in addition to the question of what sort of leverage does Lebanon have, some Lebanese are also worried because there is a precedent. There is a 15-month so-called ceasefire, where the — this is the second war in less than two years — and there was a 15-month ceasefire between the two.

During that period, the Lebanese government was supposed to negotiate indirectly with Israel, through something called a “mechanism” — which was US and French-led — to ensure that each side fulfilled its requirements under the terms of that ceasefire. During those 15 months, Israel continued to occupy five hilltop positions that it had newly seized in the war.

It was supposed to withdraw from them under the ceasefire. It didn’t. It was supposed to withdraw its troops back across its border under the ceasefire. It didn’t. So the Lebanese government was unable to get Israel to adhere to any of the conditions of the ceasefire. So some Lebanese wonder what it will be able to achieve now.

In addition, I have to say that the — just the mere fact of direct talks not only breaks a taboo here in Lebanon, it also breaks a very longstanding law. Since the mid-1950s here, it is considered an act of treason to have any direct interaction with an Israeli.

But the Lebanese president himself, General Joseph Aoun, about a month ago, called for direct talks with Israel, breaking that massive, massive taboo. He had four conditions for these talks that were supposed to be followed sequentially. The first condition was an immediate and complete ceasefire.

Condition number two was that the Lebanese Army is strengthened. Third was that the Lebanese Army would continue its efforts to disarm Hezbollah.

And then fourth was the direct negotiation. So it looks like the Lebanese state has jumped over the president’s own — you know, three of his conditions to go straight to the fourth one.

So, Hezbollah, for its part, has said it does not think that Lebanon should be negotiating under fire, because it puts it in the weaker position. Some Lebanese fear that this is a ploy by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prolong the war under the pretext of, you know, having these talks under fire.

The proponents of the talks, I have to say, say that it is an issue of Lebanese sovereignty that Lebanon will negotiate any sort of deal with the Israelis. They also say that Lebanon is not a card for the Iranians to wield or to use in any negotiations. And they point out that, well, you don’t exactly talk to your friends to make deals; you talk to your enemies.

So, it’s a very, very divisive issue. The Hezbollah secretary-general is due to give a speech where he will, no doubt, address the issue of the talks. And there’s supposed to be a protest here in Lebanon, just behind me, actually, in front of the Grand Serail, which is where the prime minister’s office is, against the idea of these talks.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me turn to the questions you raise in your latest New York magazine piece, “The Iran War Is Not Over: Scenes from a day of carnage in Beirut.” First of all, “How much of Lebanon is Israel prepared to destroy while claiming to target Hezbollah and its infrastructure, and will the world just watch as it does so?”

And your second question: “Can Israel even defeat Hezbollah militarily or is it, as many Lebanese suspect, trying to exact so painful a price from fellow Lebanese that they turn on the group, plunging the country into civil strife?”

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, the Israelis have made no secret of what they want to do in Lebanon. Officials, from the defence minister, Smotrich, the finance minister, they have all talked about Lebanon being part of their Greater Israel project. They have talked about seizing and occupying southern Lebanese territory up to the Litani River, which, at its deepest, is about 30 km away from the Israeli border.

Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, said that he wants to turn that area, that lush, verdant agricultural area, into a wasteland that resembles what the Israelis did in Gaza. He has threatened that the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who have been displaced from there will not be allowed to return.

So, that’s what the Israelis have indicated that they want to do.

In terms of what they’re able to do, they have, according to Israeli media reports, had to scale back some of those ambitions because of the fierce resistance that they’re facing on the ground from Hezbollah fighters.

Let me give you the example of a town in southern Lebanon called Khiam, where there are Israeli forces in this town, but they have been fighting for weeks and weeks to try and take control of it, and they have been unable to.

So, according to the Israeli media reports, they now say that they want to occupy about a three-to-four-kilometre strip of territory. And Hezbollah will, no doubt, fight and try and prevent them from doing that, too. So, that’s what the Israelis want to do.

In terms of Lebanese turning on each other, Israeli officials called up — there are a couple of Christian villages down in the south. There are also Sunni. There are Druze, as well as the Shiite villages down south. It’s a mixed area.

And the Israeli officials called up some of those Christian towns, where the people refuse to leave their territory, and told them, “Listen, do not shelter your Shiite neighbours; otherwise, you will come under attack.”

So, that’s a very clear sort of indication of what the Israelis are sort of hoping to foment in terms of civil strife and turning, literally, neighbour against neighbour.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me play a clip from a Beirut resident. Naim Chebbo survived a bombing on Wednesday, said he’s now afraid to sleep. He said he wants the fighting to stop, and blamed Hezbollah.

NAIM CHEBBO: [translated] We want peace. We don’t want problems with anyone anymore. Eighty percent of Arab countries have peace with Israel. Why doesn’t Lebanon have peace, so that we can end all these problems?

As long as Hezbollah is in Lebanon, Israel will strike Lebanon. That’s it. Hezbollah is not defending Lebanon. It’s defending Iran’s agenda. That’s it.

AMY GOODMAN: Rania Abouzeid, how common or typical is this comment of a Lebanese who survived the bombing on Wednesday, Israel’s bombing?

RANIA ABOUZEID: The Lebanese are very divided over the issue of Hezbollah and its weapons, and they always have been, but more so now in this recent war, because it started on March 2, and Hezbollah lobbed about six rockets into Israel, claiming that it was in retaliation for the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as, “in defense of Lebanon.”

So, many Lebanese saw it as a war of choice almost by Hezbollah.

Now, Hezbollah and its supporters say that after those 15 months of a ceasefire — that wasn’t really a ceasefire, because, according to the UN, Israel violated Lebanon’s sovereignty about 15,000 times during that period. There were thousands of attacks, resulting in the deaths of more than 350 Lebanese.

So, Hezbollah supporters say they were patient for those 15 months, and now they have chosen to respond.

But, certainly, there are Lebanese who are very angry with Hezbollah. They don’t want any war. I mean, no Lebanese wants war, even the hundreds of thousands of displaced, many of whom might be Hezbollah supporters. Everybody wants to go home.

You know, war is not the option for anybody. But it’s a question of: Under what circumstances, for example, will Lebanon negotiate with Israel? Will it be under the Iranian umbrella in these talks tomorrow, or will it try and forge another path? And which is better?

I mean, look, there are some Lebanese who don’t care if aliens will negotiate on behalf of Lebanon as long as it can secure a ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to, finally, ask you about what’s happening on the ground. According to the World Health Organisation, some of Lebanon’s hospitals may run out of lifesaving medical supplies within days and attempt to treat patients wounded by the Israeli airstrikes. This is WHO representative in Lebanon, Dr Abdinasir Abubakar.

DR. ABDINASIR ABUBAKAR: There are some shortages, some of those essential chronic medications, the insulin, but also some of the, you know, dialysis supplies.

If the current situation and the current demand actually continue and the current escalation continue, probably the country may be facing a very real risk of critical shortage, including trauma supplies, surgical materials, blood products, chronic medications.

And any other further disruption could seriously hinder the ability of providing timely, adequate care for both emergency and ongoing health needs.

AMY GOODMAN: Rania Abouzeid, your final comments on what you think is about to happen? And do you think Iran will insist on including this in the ceasefire, joined by many countries around the world who are saying Lebanon has to be included, or, as you write in your column, “many Lebanese are wondering whether Iran will forsake Hezbollah and allow Lebanon to be pounded”?

RANIA ABOUZEID: Very difficult to tell, Amy. That’s the honest truth. But, you know, Iran also has its considerations. If it does forsake Hezbollah and goes it alone, well, then, you know, Hezbollah is part of Iran’s Axis of Resistance. There are other allies in the region who will see this and wonder if Iran might forsake it, too.

So it’s a question of its broader network. There are the Houthis in Yemen. There are various militia groups in Iraq who will be watching very carefully to see what Iran does, if it stands by its ally, Hezbollah, or if it doesn’t.

There are also — it also has domestic considerations. You know, Iranians have been pounded now for weeks and weeks. They want a reprieve. They don’t want to return to war.

So, the Iranians will be juggling those, their own sort of conditions, as well, in terms of what their ultimate stance is with regard to heading to the negotiations with or without a ceasefire in Lebanon.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Rania, I mean, you are there in Beirut. Israel struck central Beirut, southern Beirut, gone beyond the Litani River to the Zahrani River, some are wondering if they’ll take over that whole land, about a fifth of Lebanon. But you, yourself, are you afraid to walk in the streets?

RANIA ABOUZEID: It depends on what streets, Amy. It depends on where, what part of Lebanon, because that’s the thing about Wednesday’s attack, is that it shattered the sense that any place is safe, because you just don’t know.

The neighbourhoods that were targeted were very far, for example, from the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah has some institutions — not that that justifies striking a very densely, you know, populated area. The southern suburbs are home to hundreds of thousands of people.

But it was anybody’s guess. Like, why target a street with a roastery? Why target during rush hour when children were leaving school and civil servants were heading home? So, that’s the thing. The sense of safety anywhere has been shattered.

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

ANALYSIS: By Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares

A two-week ceasefire has partially halted the Israel-US war on Iran. The war accomplished precisely nothing that a competent diplomat could not have achieved in an afternoon.

The Strait of Hormuz was open before the war and it is open again now, but with more Iranian control.

Meanwhile, the chaos continues. Israel is intent on blowing up the ceasefire, as this was Israel’s war from the start.

• READ MORE: This illegal US-Israeli attack on Iran is also an assault on the United Nations
• Israel says no ceasefire with Lebanon, US-Iran talks due
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Israel dazzled Trump with the prospect of a one-day decapitation strike that would put Trump in charge of Iran’s oil. Israel, in turn, was out for bigger prey: to bring down the Iranian regime and thereby become the regional hegemon of Western Asia.

The foundation of the ceasefire is Iran’s 10-point plan, which Trump (perhaps unwittingly) called a “workable basis on which to negotiate.” The plan makes sense, but it is a major climbdown for the US, and probably a redline for Israel.

Among other points, the plan calls for an end to the wars raging in the Middle East, almost all of which have Israel at their root cause. The plan would also resolve the nuclear issue, essentially by going back to the JCPOA that Trump ripped up in 2018.

The Iran War, and the other wars raging across the Middle East, trace back to one core Israeli idea, that Israel will permanently and steadfastly oppose a sovereign Palestinian state and will topple any government in the Middle East that supports armed struggle for national sovereignty.

It is crucial to note that the UN General Assembly has passed multiple resolutions, such as Resolution 37/43 (1982), affirming that political self-determination is so vital, that armed struggle in the quest for self-determination is legitimate.

The UN was born, in part, out of the determination to end the centuries of European imperial domination over Africa and Asia. Of course, there would be no cause for armed struggle if Israel would accept a political solution, notably the two-state solution that has overwhelming support throughout the world.

The peace is within reach, if the US grasps it.
Netanyahu’s core goal may be summarised as Greater Israel. This means no Palestinian sovereignty, and no clear boundaries for Israel even beyond the boundary of historical Palestine under British rule after the First World War.

Zionist extremists like Netanyahu’s political allies, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich favour Israeli control over parts of Lebanon and Syria, as well as permanent control over all of what was British Palestine.

America’s Christian Zionists, exemplified by the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and a strong voter base of Trump, speak of God’s promise to Israel of the lands between the Nile and the Euphrates. Crazy stuff, but these are real beliefs, nonetheless, and they are conveyed in the White House.

Israel’s strategy is therefore regime change in every country that resists Greater Israel, a plan already foreshadowed in the famous political document “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” written by US Zionist neocons as a platform for Netanyahu’s new government in 1996.

We’ve had constant wars in the Middle East since then to implement the Clean Break vision. This has included the war in Libya to overthrow Moammar Qaddafi, the wars in Lebanon, the war to overthrow Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, the war to overthrow Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, and now the war to topple the Iranian regime.

This is not to say that the US lacks its own grandiose ideas. Israel wants regional hegemony, this is not a secret. Netanyahu confirmed these ambitions in his recent remarks about Israel becoming “a regional power, and in certain fields a global power.”

On the other hand, American officials dream of global hegemony. And Trump dreams of money. He craves the Iranian oil and repeatedly said so.

In any event, it’s clear that this war was Netanyahu’s creation. He and the Mossad chief came to Washington to sell Trump a bill of goods. It’s not hard. Trump was suckered, while everybody else had their doubts about Netanyahu’s claims of an easy one-day decapitation strike — essentially a replay of the US operation in Venezuela.

It’s pathetic to “listen in” on the White House discussion, as revealed by the New York Times. Netanyahu, a con man, presented rosy scenarios of regime change that US intelligence contradicted, yet Trump foolishly accepted.

Trump and Netanyahu were cheered on by Christian Zionists (Hegseth), Jewish Zionists and real-estate developers (Kushner and Witkoff), a faith healer (Franklin Graham), and high-level sycophants (Rubio and Ratcliffe).

Trump himself who was begging for a ceasefire
Until Tuesday evening, it looked like Trump might lead the world blindly to the Third World War. The vulgarity and brutality of his public rhetoric was unmatched in US presidential history.

Now we know that he was desperately seeking an off-ramp and using Pakistan for that purpose. While Trump was telling the world that Iran was begging for a ceasefire, it was Trump himself who was begging for a ceasefire. The Pakistani leader delivered it.

The ceasefire is good, and the 10-point plan is good, even if perhaps Trump didn’t know what was in it when he said that it was a good basis for negotiation. Israel will, in any event, work overtime to break it, and has already started to do so, with carpet bombing of Beirut that is killing hundreds of civilians, and with other strikes.

A permanent US-Iran agreement is the last thing that Netanyahu wants. That would end his dream of Greater Israel.

Yet there is a way to peace and that is for the US to face reality. Israel is the real “terror state,” waging perpetual war throughout the Middle East for a wholly indefensible reason — to have unchecked freedom to terrorise and rule over the Palestinian people and to expand its borders as Israel’s zealots see fit.

To make lasting peace in the Middle East, the US must end its blank check to Israel’s perpetual wars and join with the rest of the world to force Israel to live within its internationally recognised borders of June 4, 1967.

Iran’s 10-point plan can be the basis of a comprehensive regional peace — if the US accepts the reality of a state of Palestine. In that case, Iran would likely agree to stop funding non-state belligerents, and Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the entire region could live in mutual security and peace.

That outcome should be the basis of a negotiated agreement of the US and Iran in the next two weeks.

American views clear
The American people have made their views clear. A 2025 Pew survey finds most Jewish Americans lack confidence in Netanyahu and back the two-state solution. Most Americans now view Israel unfavourably, the highest unfavourability in history. Sympathy for Israel has hit a 25-year low. Now the political class must catch up with the public.

The peace is within reach, if the US grasps it. Iran’s proposal is serious and the ceasefire is a fragile opening for a comprehensive settlement.

The question is whether the US will, once again, allow Israel to destroy the peace, or rather this time stand up for America’s interests and the world’s interests in a lasting peace.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed the Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. Sybil Fares is a specialist and adviser in Middle East policy and sustainable development at SDSN.

Republished under Creative Commons.

An hour before Trump said he’d cause the death of a “whole civilisation” if Iran didn’t open the strait of Hormuz, an Iranian official said the shipping channel would be reopened for two weeks if the United States stopped bombing Iran.

The US has now stopped bombing Iran.

So we’re back to the status quo before Trump began his war.

• READ MORE: Israel’s Lebanon attacks threaten US-Iran ceasefire as negotiations near
• Trump claims ‘success’ in Iran in just 32 days compared to lengthy US wars
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Only now, Iran can credibly threaten to close the strait if it doesn’t get what it wants from Trump — thereby causing havoc to the US and world economies. Trump’s only remaining bargaining chip is his threat of committing war crimes.

In other words, Tuesday’s showdown was a clear victory for Iran and a clear defeat for Trump (although he framed it as a victory).

The Iran fiasco is only the latest in a host of examples revealing how to defeat Trump.

In addition to Iran, similar strategies have been used by China, Russia, Canada, Mexico and Greenland.

Inside the US
Inside the United States, the people of Minneapolis have used them, as have Harvard University, comedian Jimmy Kimmel, writer E Jean Carroll and the law firms Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, and WilmerHale.

What’s the strategy that connects them all? All refused to cave to Trump, despite his superior military or economic power.

Instead, they’ve engaged in a kind of jiujitsu in which they use Trump’s power against him, while allowing Trump to save face by claiming he’s won. Consider:

Iran knew it was no match for the superior might of the US (and Israel). So it used cheap drones and missiles to close the Strait of Hormuz and incapacitate other Gulf oil installations, thereby driving up the prices of oil and gas at the pump in the US, which has put growing political pressure on Trump, months before a midterm election. Hence, Trump has been forced to pause his war.

China knew what to do when Trump imposed a giant tariff on Chinese exports to the US: it put restrictions on seven types of heavy rare earth metals and magnets, crucial to US defense and tech industries. Beijing continues to use these rare earth restrictions as tactical levers in ongoing negotiations over trade, rather than demand complete surrender by Trump on his trade policies.

Russia has leveraged its vast deposits of oil and natural gas in gaining leverage over US allies. It has also demonstrated its potential ability to intrude into US elections (the Mueller report detailed a “sweeping and systematic” campaign by Russia to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election, primarily favouring Trump).

Canada and Mexico have won tariff showdowns with Trump by leveraging the US’s substantial economic dependence on them for components and raw materials, but without crowing about their victories.

Greenland has leveraged public opinion globally and in the United States — overwhelmingly against an American invasion or occupation — to curb Trump’s ambitions there.

Minneapolis resistance
Now, as to what’s happened inside the United States:

The citizens of Minneapolis and St Paul have leveraged their asymmetric power against Trump’s ICE and border patrol agents by carefully organising themselves into a force of non-violent resistance to protect immigrants there.

Harvard University’s strategy for resisting Trump’s interference in Harvard’s academic freedom has been to leverage its influence with the federal courts in Boston and the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, to get rulings that stopped Trump (although he’s still trying).

The comedian Jimmy Kimmel turned a political crisis into a ratings victory by using the public backlash against his suspension from ABC, which Disney owns. Since ABC reinstated him, Kimmel has continued to target Trump, and secured his contract through 2027.

The writer E Jean Carroll defeated Donald Trump in two civil cases over sexual abuse and defamation, ultimately securing over $88 million in damages from him — verdicts that have been upheld by federal appeals courts.

Carroll’s lawyers used a civil lawsuit, requiring a lower burden of proof than proving a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. They presented the jury with Trump’s Access Hollywood tape and testimony from other Trump accusers. His depositions, where he called her a “whack job”, were played for the jury.

The law firms Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, and WilmerHale refused to follow Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms that had represented causes or clients that Trump opposed.

First Amendment rights infringed
The firms leveraged constitutional arguments with the federal courts — arguing that the orders infringed on their First Amendment rights to advocate whatever causes they wished, violated the constitution’s separation of powers because the orders would prevent the judiciary from considering challenges to executive authority, and violated their clients’ rights under the constitution to be represented.

The Justice Department ultimately dropped its fight against these firms in March 2026 after federal appellate judges also found Trump’s orders unconstitutional.

What’s happened to the countries and organisations that have caved to Trump?

All have strengthened Trump’s leverage over them. Europe seems incapacitated, fearing Trump will leave Nato (despite a US law prohibiting it), but unable to decide where to draw the line with him.

The media network ABC continues to lose viewers, while being subject to Trump’s next whims. CBS was purchased by the Trump allies Larry Ellison and his son, David, and is hemorrhaging talent.

Columbia University has been racked by dissent from both students and faculty. The Trump regime continues to make demands of it.

The law firms that caved in to Trump’s executive orders have seen lawyers exit who felt the deals betrayed the firms’ values and principles.

Microsoft dropped Simpson Thacher to work with Jenner & Block — a firm that fought Trump. Students at elite law schools have also reportedly begun to shun firms that struck deals with the Trump regime.

Bottom line: there’s now a clear blueprint for how to defeat Trump. It’s available to any country, organisation or person on which he seeks to impose his will: reject his demands and then use your own asymmetric power — a form of jiujitsu — to turn Trump’s power against him.

Robert Reich, a former US Secretary of Labour, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and he blogs at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK. This article is republished from his Facebook page — other Robert Reich articles at Asia Pacific Report.

Yesterday began with Donald Trump issuing genocidal threats against Iran on social media and ended — just ten hours later — with the announcement of a 14-day ceasefire, on Iran’s terms.

Even by the volatile standards of Trump’s presidency, the whiplash is extraordinary. What, then, have the two sides actually agreed to — and what might it mean?

In a subsequent post, Trump asserted that Iran had agreed to keep the Strait of Hormuz open during the two-week pause in hostilities. Negotiations, he added, will proceed over that period on the basis of Iran’s 10-point plan, which he described as a “workable” foundation for talks.

• READ MORE: ‘Killing machine’: Lebanon mourns as Israeli raids shake US-Iran
• Iranians breathe a ‘ceasefire’ sigh of relief as all sides claim victory
• Ignoring genocide – the bill for Australia’s silence has arrived
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Those 10 points are:

1. The US must fundamentally commit to guaranteeing non-aggression.
2. Continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz.
3. Acceptance that Iran can enrich uranium for its nuclear programme.
4. Removal of all primary sanctions on Iran.
5. Removal of all secondary sanctions against foreign entities that do business with Iranian institutions.
6. End of all United Nations Security Council resolutions targeting Iran.
7. End of all International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions on Iran’s nuclear programme.
8. Compensation payment to Iran for war damage.
9. Withdrawal of US combat forces from the region.
10. Ceasefire on all fronts, including Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The United States has not, of course, signed on to all 10 points. But the mere fact that Iran’s framework will anchor the negotiations amounts to a significant diplomatic victory for Tehran.

More striking still, according to the Associated Press, Iran will retain control of the Strait during the ceasefire and continue — alongside Oman — to collect transit fees from passing vessels. In effect, Washington appears to have conceded that reopening the waterway comes with tacit recognition of Iran’s authority over it.

The geopolitical consequences could be profound. As Mohammad Eslami and Zeynab Malakouti note in Responsible Statecraft, Tehran is likely to leverage this position to rebuild economic ties with Asian and European partners — countries that once traded extensively with Iran but were driven out of its market over the past 15 years by US sanctions.

Also strategic
Iran’s calculus is not driven solely by solidarity with Palestinians and Lebanese. It is also strategic. Continued Israeli bombardment risks reigniting direct confrontation between Israel and Iran — a cycle that has already flared twice since October 7.

From Tehran’s perspective, a durable halt to its conflict with Israel is inseparable from ending Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. This is not an aspirational add-on; it is a prerequisite.

The forthcoming talks in Islamabad between Washington and Tehran may yet falter. But the terrain has shifted. Trump’s failed use of force has blunted the credibility of American military threats, introducing a new dynamic into US-Iran diplomacy.

Washington can still rattle its sabre. But after a failed war, such threats ring hollow.

The United States is no longer in a position to dictate terms; any agreement will have to rest on genuine compromise. That, in turn, demands real diplomacy — patience, discipline, and a tolerance for ambiguity — qualities not typically associated with Trump.

It may also require the participation of other major powers, particularly China, to help anchor the process and reduce the risk of a relapse into conflict.

Above all, the ceasefire’s durability will hinge on whether Trump can restrain Israel from undermining the diplomatic track.

No illusions
On this point, there should be no illusions. Senior Israeli officials have already denounced the agreement as the greatest “political disaster” in the country’s history — a signal, if any were needed, of how fragile this moment may prove to be.

Even if the talks collapse — and even if Israel resumes its bombardment of Iran — it does not necessarily follow that the United States will return to war. There is little reason to believe a second round would produce a different outcome, or that it would not once again leave Iran in a position to hold the global economy hostage.

In that sense, Tehran has, at least for now, restored a measure of deterrence.

One final point bears emphasis: this elective war was not only a strategic blunder. Rather than precipitating regime change, it has likely granted Iran’s theocracy a renewed lease on life — much as Saddam Hussein did in 1980, when his invasion enabled Ayatollah Khomeini to consolidate power at home.

The magnitude of this miscalculation may well puzzle historians for decades to come.

Dr Trita Parsi is the executive VP of the Quincy Institute and an award-winning author. Washingtonian Magazine has named him one of the 25 most influential voices on foreign policy. Noam Chomsky calls him “one of the most distinguished scholars on Iran”.

There is a bitter truth that must be spoken before we can talk honestly about what is happening to us now. Michael West Media reports on Australia’s quiet complicity in the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

When the bombs fell on Gaza, Australia was quiet.

When the hospitals were destroyed, when the aid was blocked, when children were pulled from rubble in pieces, when the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and humanitarian organisations with decades of credibility in conflict zones used words like genocide, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, Australia was quiet.

Not uniformly. Not entirely. There were protests in every major city, sustained over months, of a size and seriousness this country has not seen since the Iraq War.

• READ MORE: Iran accepts ceasefire after Trump says it will pause bombing for two weeks
• Synagogue in Tehran ‘completely destroyed’ in US-Israeli attack
• Top university says US-Israel attack targeted Iran’s progress, AI learning
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

There were independent senators who stood in Parliament and said what needed to be said, in plain language, without diplomatic hedging. There were journalists, academics, former diplomats, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians who signed petitions, marched in the streets, and wrote letters that went largely unanswered.

Palestinian-Australian, Muslim-Australian, Arab-Australian communities, and many others with no personal connection to the conflict beyond a functioning conscience, screamed into a political void and were told, in effect, to calm down.

Or apprehended for wearing a t-shirt.

“I’m offended by crocs,” says man apprehended by many police & special ops for wearing “F… Israel” t-shirt

The footage #andrewbrown #legend #auspol pic.twitter.com/fc1p3f911d

— Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz) April 6, 2026

The country, as a political entity, its government, its major institutions, its official voice to the world, was quiet.

The cost of silence
That silence had a cost. Not just a moral cost, though the moral cost is staggering and will take generations to fully reckon with.

A strategic cost. The cost of allowing a logic of unchecked military impunity to establish itself as the operating principle of the US-Israeli alliance. A logic that, once normalised in Gaza, did not stay in Gaza.

It never does.

More than 72,000 people killed so far. More than 171,000 injured. An entire civilian population, in one of the most densely populated places on earth, was systematically starved, displaced, and destroyed.

Journalists were killed in numbers that constitute, by any honest accounting, a deliberate campaign to eliminate witnesses. Paramedics were bombed. UN peacekeepers were struck.

Aid workers from Australia’s own partner organisations were killed in strikes so precise they could not have been accidental.

Australia expressed concern.

Calibrated, diplomatically worded, operationally meaningless concern.

And then, when the same alliance, emboldened by 18 months of zero meaningful consequence, turned its weapons on a sovereign nation-state, on Iran, on February 28 of this year, Australia expressed support. Called it constructive. Offered the American justification back to its own people as sovereign Australian policy.

Warnings ignored
The people warning loudest about Gaza were not merely warning about Palestinians. They were warning about a system. A system in which American military power and Israeli strategic ambition, freed from the constraints of international law and serious allied pushback, would expand. Would find new targets. Would come, eventually, for the stability of every country caught in its orbit.

They were right. And they were called antisemitic for saying so.

Iran did not come from nowhere. The assault on Iran is the direct and logical extension of the impunity normalised in Gaza. If you can destroy a civilian population with no meaningful consequence, you can bomb a sovereign nation.

If the ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu means nothing, then international law means nothing. And if international law means nothing, then the only operating principle is force.

And the consequences of force are distributed not just to the combatants but to every country whose government chose alignment over principle.

Australia chose alignment over the people of Gaza. It chose it again over Iran. And now it is discovering, at the bowser and the checkout and the business bank account, exactly what that choice costs.

The war came home
Here is what makes this moment different from every protest march and every unanswered letter that came before.

The pain is no longer abstract.

When Gaza burned, the average Australian, cocooned by geographic distance, insulated by a media that kept the most confronting images off prime time, reassured by politicians who described it as heartbreaking while doing nothing, could maintain the fiction that this was someone else’s tragedy.

Terrible, certainly. Distant. Manageable. Something that happened over there, to people over there, in a conflict that had been going on forever and would presumably continue

without any particular bearing on the school fees or the mortgage or the quarterly business figures.

That fiction is now dead.

The fuel price spike is not over there. The supply chain disruption is not over there. The investment uncertainty showing up in superannuation statements, in business loans that just got harder to service, in the job that exists today and may not exist in three months.

None of that is over there.

The war came home. Not in body bags. Not in the specific grief of a military family. It came home in the way that imperial adventurism always eventually comes home to the countries that enable it.

Through the economy. Through the slow, grinding, distributed punishment of a population that was never consulted, never warned, and never honestly told what their government’s choices would cost them.

Australia’s complicity
Australia was a participant in Gaza’s destruction. Not with weapons. Not with soldiers. With silence. With diplomatic cover. With the specific, material legitimacy that flows from a liberal democracy declining to formally object. And with the arms adjacent, intelligence and security cooperation that flows through Five Eyes and has never been seriously interrogated in the Australian public domain.

Complicity is not passive.

When you have the power to intervene, to sanction, to condemn, to withdraw diplomatic cover, and you choose not to, you are not a bystander. You are a participant. And participants, eventually, share in the consequences.

The Palestinian people could not make Australia listen with their suffering alone.

Not because Australians are cruel. They are not. But because the suffering was made distant. The media made it complex. The politicians made it delicate. The lobby groups made it professionally dangerous to say in plain language what was plainly happening.

The whole architecture of managed consent did its job with brutal efficiency for 18 months.

But a 40 percent fuel price increase cuts through managed consent, as does a wave of small business closures. And young Australians told to absorb the economic consequences of a war their government endorsed without their knowledge or consent. That cuts through everything.

The people who protested over Gaza, who were dismissed and belittled and accused of antisemitism and told they were being naive about geopolitical complexity, understood something that the political class is only now beginning to grasp: That the world does not offer permanent non-involvement. That the wars you enable reach you. That the impunity you excuse comes back denominated in currencies you understand personally.

Fuel. Food. Jobs. Mortgages. Businesses. Futures.
This is that reckoning. The genocide in Gaza did not wake Australia up, the bill for enabling it will.

And when Australia wakes, fully, clearly, with the focused fury of people who now understand exactly what was done to them, the politicians who called it constructive and the media that told them to blame the Energy Minister are going to find that managed consent has a shelf life.

That shelf life has expired.

Vietnam survived Nixon’s madman theory and the world survived the era of mutually assured destruction. Now we face the moment of two super-empowered shitheads. There is nothing nicer to call them.

Who will stop two self-obsessed, very old men, already dedicated to tearing down humanity? Today Trump openly declares his intention to destroy a civilisation. They are apparently only able to see war personally, Netanyahu as the climax of 40 years of dreaming, and Trump as his arbitrary prerogative.

In lockstep they destroyed Gaza’s homes, places of learning and culture, health and modernity. They murdered civilians with abandon and drew pictures of capitalist castles on the beach — and still they failed, just as their over-armed predecessors have failed from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

• READ MORE: Iran accepts ceasefire after Trump says it will pause bombing for two weeks
• Synagogue in Tehran ‘completely destroyed’ in US-Israeli attack
• Top university says US-Israel attack targeted Iran’s progress, AI learning
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

People still live, in great need of our action.

The scorched-earth vision of Trump and Netanyahu rolls onward. Now in Iran and again in Lebanon, they make war on civilian homes and infrastructure. They destroy families and livelihoods, places of beauty and culture, the bridges that connect us, the industries that rebuild and the energy that lights the darkness.

They desecrate all of our religions. The list of their crimes grows daily.

These two evil despots are content to erode the world’s supplies of power, fertiliser, manufacturing components. They are oblivious to the lives they imperil in Iran, Lebanon and Palestine — and countless other people who they will kill around the world by hunger and hardship.

Anything to rule, even over a landscape of bones and dust. They will fail but they must not be allowed to play this out.

We are beyond disgust. We are witnessing the end of an order indeed: America’s empire is flailing in its death throes. How many people will Trump take down with it?

Weighed down with dread, we have no words but these: someone, everyone, stop them!

Republished from Sh’ma Koleinu — Alternative Jewish Voices.

Trump may have backed down for now, but he’s shown how unhinged he is by threatening the death of a “whole civilization.”

I’m heading back to DC to try and get answers for the American people. Congress needs to return to the Capitol immediately and vote to end this war. https://t.co/vZLXb0anhq

— Senator Andy Kim (@SenatorAndyKim) April 8, 2026

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

Here is a reliable indicator that you are being managed rather than informed.

When the story gets complicated, when the real cause of your pain points uncomfortably toward power, toward allies, toward the architecture of foreign policy that cannot be questioned, the Murdoch press reaches for a scapegoat.

And so, as Australians watch fuel prices surge by approximately 40 percent, a direct consequence of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, as ABC News has itself reported, the editors and columnists of News Corp’s Australian outlets have a different culprit in mind.

• READ MORE: Monsters of war – the men who have put the world at risk
• ‘Complete demolition’: Trump repeats Iran ultimatum as deal deadline looms
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Not Netanyahu. Not Trump. Not the war that has sent energy markets into convulsions and supply chains into chaos. Not the illegal military campaign that blocked one of the world’s most critical shipping arteries and sent insurance premiums for tankers into the stratosphere.

No, their preferred villain is Chris Bowen.

Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who did not bomb Iran. Chris Bowen, who does not set the global price of oil. Chris Bowen, whose energy policies, right or wrong, are entirely debatable on their merits, has precisely nothing to do with a US-Israeli military campaign that closed the Strait of Hormuz and triggered the worst fuel price shock in years.

The Bowen beat-up is not journalism. It is misdirection of the most deliberate and dishonest kind. It is the Murdoch press doing what it does most reliably and most effectively — running cover for power, redirecting the public’s legitimate anger toward a safe domestic target, and keeping the real architecture of the crisis, the geopolitical decisions, the alliance commitments, the illegal war, safely out of frame.

Because here is what the Murdoch press will not tell you, and what the mainstream media in general has failed to say with anything like the clarity the situation demands.

Australians are paying more for fuel because a war closed the Strait of Hormuz.

Doh!

That war was launched on February 28 of this year by the United States and Israel against Iran.

It was not sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council. It was not authorised by any provision of international law that serious legal scholars recognise as applicable. It was not preceded by any meaningful consultation with allies, including Australia, whose economies would absorb its consequences.

It was a unilateral act of military aggression by the most powerful country on earth and its primary regional client, conducted because they had the weapons to do it and had calculated, correctly, that nobody with the power to stop them would try.

Puppet on a string
And when it happened, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese went on the ABC’s 7:30 programme and told Sarah Ferguson that what Australia supported was the American decision to stop Iran getting nuclear weapons and to address Iran’s role in destabilising the region.

Read that answer carefully. It is not an answer about Australian interests. It contains no reference to Australian sovereignty, Australian economic security, or the fuel price increase already beginning when those words were spoken.

It is a recitation, clean, fluent, almost word for word, of the American and Israeli justification for the strikes, delivered in the Prime Minister’s voice, on Australian public television, as though it represented Australia’s own sovereign and independently arrived at conclusion, which it didn’t.

He later described Australia’s contribution to the conflict as “constructive”. He has since said he wants more certainty about the war’s objectives and acknowledged there needs to be an end point.

This is the man who endorsed the war before its objectives had been defined, now asking what they are.

Managed complicity and Murdoch
This is what managed complicity looks like up close. You sign on. You use the ally’s language. You call it constructive. And then, when the consequences arrive in the form of 40 percent fuel price increases and small businesses collapsing under freight surcharge pressure, you allow the media ecosystem you have never seriously challenged to redirect the public’s fury at your own Energy Minister.

The Murdoch press is doing its job. That job is not to inform Australians.

That job, in this specific context, on this specific story, is to protect the US-Israeli alliance from the accountability it deserves and to ensure that the legitimate rage of a population being economically punished for decisions made in Washington and Jerusalem never finds its proper target.

The proprietor of that press empire has spent decades cultivating proximity to exactly the power centres that prosecuted this war.

Murdoch newspapers in the United States were among the most consistent cheerleaders for the military adventurism that set the conditions for what is now unfolding. His Australian mastheads take their foreign policy cues from a worldview that treats American and Israeli strategic interests as essentially synonymous with the interests of the English-speaking world.

That worldview is not Australia’s sovereign foreign policy. It is an ideology dressed as common sense, distributed at scale through the country’s most-read newspapers, and deployed most aggressively when the connection between geopolitical decisions and domestic pain threatens to become too obvious to ignore.

Chris Bowen did not block the Strait of Hormuz. A war did.

An illegal war. Conducted without Australian consent. Endorsed by an Australian Prime Minister on national television, using the language of the people who started it.

And the newspapers owned by a man whose commercial and ideological interests align entirely with the people who started it are telling you it is the Energy Minister’s fault.

That is not a coincidence; it is the system working exactly as designed.

The question is whether Australians are going to keep letting it work.

Minister,

You are about to meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a time of real global tension.

Moments like this define countries.

My great-grandfather fought fascism.

• READ MORE: ‘Complete demolition’: Trump repeats Iran ultimatum as deal deadline looms
• Monsters of war – the men who have put the world at risk
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

In 1935, when fascist Italy invaded my country of birth, Ethiopia, then Abyssinia, Emperor Haile Selassie warned the world at the League of Nations. Many countries hesitated. New Zealand didn’t.

Under Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage, we called for sanctions. We chose principle over power.

We used to be clear about our principles in international politics. We stood against apartheid. We stood against nuclear testing in the Pacific.

In the 2010s, New Zealand went across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia asking for support to sit on the UN Security Council — not as a powerful country, but as a voice for the powerless.

Many countries trusted us and backed us. And for a time, we honoured that trust.

On 23 December 2016, under [then Foreign Minister] Murray McCully, we backed a UN resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal under international law. There was pressure. We stood firm.

On 25 March 2026, the UN voted to recognise slavery and the transatlantic slave trade as among the gravest crimes against humanity. Most countries supported it. New Zealand stepped back.

And as of 2026, we still refuse to recognise the State of Palestine while genocide unfolds in Gaza.

Minister, the current global tensions make this even more important. New Zealand is clear on international law when it comes to Iran. We must be just as clear when it comes to the United States and Israel.

As a small trading nation, our economic, diplomatic and security interests depend on international law being applied consistently. If we pick and choose, we weaken that system and we weaken ourselves.

Our reputation was built by standing up and punching above our weight, even when it was uncomfortable.

That is where our soft power came from. We have the potential to be a superpower in soft power.

Right now, we risk losing that by moving closer to powerful countries, even when they are in the wrong.

Minister, take that history with you into that meeting. Be clear. Be consistent. Stand for international law everywhere, not just where it is easy.

People in New Zealand and around the world are watching. And history has a long memory.

Nureddin Abdurahman is a Tangata Tiriti from Addis Ababa 17 years ago and a Wellington City Councillor. He first won a seat as a Paekawakawa/Southern Ward councillor in 2022 and was re-elected in 2025.

New Zealand’s Finance Minister says she has “never felt so dependent on the actions and feelings of one administration and its leaders”, as concerns grow about the fuel shock triggered by the US-Israel war on Iran.

And the Prime Minister has called the US President’s foul-mouthed threats to Iran “unhelpful” and the US’ goals and objectives in Iran “unclear”.

Few ships carrying stock have been allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz since Iran effectively closed it just over a month ago, in retaliation for the attacks.

• READ MORE: Monsters of war – the men who have put the world at risk
• Iran’s ceasefire proposal response significant but ‘not good enough’: Trump
• NZ’s Peters called on to stress Palestine ‘open wound’ with Rubio
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

That has triggered a global spike in prices at the pump, and New Zealand — wholly dependent on importing refined fuels — has not been spared.

At the weekend, US President Donald Trump issued an expletive-laden threat at Iran, telling it to “open the F*****’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell” or its civilian infrastructure would be attacked.

He followed that up on Monday (US time) with a claim the “entire country can be taken out in one night”.

The comments come as Foreign Minister Winston Peters heads to the US to meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Asked about Trump’s comments today, Finance Minister Nicola Willis first was diplomatic.

‘Acting with restraint’
“We actually want to see all parties acting with restraint, moving toward a negotiated solution so the crisis can end,” she told RNZ Morning Report.

“And it’s simply the fact that the longer the conflict goes on, the more severe the impact. And once again, we call on the US, Iran, all actors in this conflict to uphold international law.”

Asked again, she replied: “Well, I have reflected that never have I felt so dependent on the actions and feelings of one administration and its leaders as New Zealand is right now.

“And I see the pain that so many New Zealanders are experiencing as a result of this fuel shock, and I wish for it to end.

“And the sad reality is that it’s not in New Zealand’s hands, that lies in the hands of countries very far away.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, appearing on Morning Report shortly after Willis, said Trump’s rhetoric was “unhelpful”.

“I think the bottom line is that the focus needs to be on not seeing this conflict expand any further. It is critical that the US and Iran find a way to de-escalate. Absolutely critical for the world and certainly for us in New Zealand.

“But, you know, yeah, I mean, unhelpful — because more military action is not necessary.”

‘Comply with international law’
He said he expected “all parties to comply with international law, as you’d expect, and international humanitarian law”.

‘Totally unacceptable’
On Trump’s social media comments, Labour leader Chris Hipkins told Morning Report, the threats he made were “totally unacceptable” and there was no justification for it.

“It would be an attack on innocent civilians and not something New Zealand should in any way condone.

“Threatening to blow up innocent civilians is not the sort of thing you would expect to see the president of the United States engaging in — it’s totally unacceptable and New Zealand should condemn it.”

Steady as she goes
Willis was resisting the temptation to cut fuel taxes and road user charges (RUC) as prices spiked — particularly for diesel — saying it would make no sense to encourage fuel consumption at the same time as calling for restraint.

According to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) latest data national fuel stocks are stable, with sufficient stock levels — for now.

Diesel levels have dipped slightly since the last report, while jet fuel and petrol levels have risen slightly. There is now just 17.5 days’ worth of diesel in the country, with more on ships headed this way — 12 outside our exclusive economic zone and four inside.

“We haven’t had any reports of any issues with those shipments that are in international waters,” Willis told Morning Report. “We would expect to get reporting from fuel importing companies if they were seeing any issues with those. They seem to be safely on their way.”

Gaspy figures show diesel is now more expensive than 91 at more than $3.70 a litre, while its users also have to pay RUC.

“That price is really, really tough on many, many businesses in our economy, and also individuals and families who use diesel,” Wilis said. “We’re used to seeing diesel at the pump cheaper than 91.

Prime Minister Luxon said he was “gravely concerned” that the longer the conflict went on, the “harder it gets for Kiwis here at home”. Just how long it would take to get back to normal was “unknown”, he said, but no restrictions on use were yet planned.

Supply challenges
“Even if we’ve got a ceasefire miraculously and a quality one tomorrow, there clearly will be supply challenges as production has ramped back up again, as storage is always put in storage and it’s transported out through the Hormuz out into the refineries around the world.”

Luxon said Peters would be making it clear to Rubio the conflict was impacting New Zealand and “pushing them to deescalate”.

“I think the goals and the objectives from the US administration have been somewhat unclear. For us, that’s why the world is suffering, everybody around the world. I’ve spoken to a number of world leaders.

“Some of those developing economies are doing it incredibly tough. I know it’s difficult for our New Zealand folk here at home as well, dealing with higher prices at the pump.

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

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

Two men are mainly responsible for the war on Iran. And then there are those — such as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — who wilfully acquiesce to their murderous whims.

It’s the men. Not their press releases. Not their carefully managed public personas. Not the language their communications teams have stress tested for maximum palatability.

It’s the men themselves.

• READ MORE: Tehran says response to ceasefire proposals formulated, no direct talks
• NZ’s Peters called on to stress Palestine ‘open wound’ with Rubio
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Their records. Their legal jeopardy. And the extraordinary, historically unprecedented fact that the two primary architects of a war now costing ordinary Australians their livelihoods are both, in their own ways, running from accountability while simultaneously running the world.

Benjamin Netanyahu
Netanyahu is not merely a controversial leader prosecuting a controversial war. He is a criminal defendant. An accused man.

A person who, under the laws of his own country, not the laws of his enemies, not the laws of international tribunals, he can dismiss as biased, stands charged with fraud, breach of trust, and bribery.

His trial has been grinding through Israel’s courts since 2020. It has not concluded. And critics, serious critics, within Israel’s own legal and political establishment, have made the case, with mounting evidence, that the prolongation of this war serves Netanyahu’s personal legal interests at least as much as it serves Israel’s security ones.

Think about what that means.

A man facing prison. A man whose political survival depends on remaining in power. A man for whom a ceasefire, a negotiated peace, a return to normalcy could mean the resumption of court proceedings that his wartime emergency has conveniently disrupted. A man whose far-right coalition partners have made clear they will collapse the government the moment the guns fall silent.

This man, this specific man, in this specific legal and political predicament, has been handed a blank cheque by Washington. Unlimited weapons. Diplomatic cover.

A US veto at the Security Council every time the international community tries to intervene.

And Anthony Albanese calls the objectives of his war appropriate.

ICC arrest warrant
The International Criminal Court did not call them appropriate. It issued an arrest warrant.

A warrant that sits unrequited and unenforced as Western governments, including Australia’s, conduct business as usual with a man the court has found reasonable grounds to prosecute for war crimes. This is not a technicality. This is not a diplomatic inconvenience. It is the most fundamental possible test of whether the rules-based international order that Australia constantly invokes as a guiding principle means anything whatsoever.

And Australia is failing that test, quietly, daily,

with a smile and a press release about shared values.

This is the casus belli we are never allowed to examine. Not the security rationale. Not the stated military objectives. The actual human being in whose name and for whose benefit this catastrophe is being prosecuted. And what that human being is running from.

Donald Trump
Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 carrying more legal and personal baggage than any president in American history.

A convicted felon. Civil judgments in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And something else, something the mainstream press, particularly in America and Australia, has handled with a caution so extraordinary it constitutes institutional cowardice — the Epstein files.

Jeffrey Epstein was not a lone predator. He was the centre of a network. A procurement and blackmail operation, almost certainly intelligence connected, that ran for decades across the highest levels of American, British, and Israeli power.

The files released in dribs and drabs, fought over in courts, partially suppressed and heavily redacted, point toward a system of leverage that compromised some of the most powerful men on earth.

Trump’s name appears in those files thousands of times. His association with Epstein was long, documented, and by his own prior admission, enthusiastic. In a 2002 interview, he described Epstein as terrific fun, noting approvingly that he liked beautiful women, many of them on the younger side.

That statement was made publicly. It has not been retracted.

It has simply been absorbed into the general noise of a political culture that has lost the capacity for appropriate disgust.

But the Epstein connection is not merely a personal scandal. It is a geopolitical one.

Epstein’s operation did not exist in a vacuum. Ghislaine Maxwell, his co-conspirator, convicted and imprisoned, was the daughter of Robert Maxwell, the media baron confirmed after his death to have been a Mossad asset.

The intelligence dimensions of the Epstein network have been reported by journalists of unimpeachable seriousness across multiple continents. The suggestion that a blackmail operation of this scale, running through the power centres of American political and financial life for decades, had no connection to the intelligence services that specialise precisely in this kind of leverage is not a serious position.

It is wilful blindness.

The Mossad connection
Mossad is Israel’s foreign intelligence service and one of the most operationally aggressive intelligence agencies on the planet. It has assassinated scientists in foreign countries. It has conducted sabotage operations across the Middle East. It has run networks of influence, surveillance, and covert pressure in Western capitals for decades.

This is not conspiracy. This is its known, partially acknowledged, historically documented record.

What the Epstein network, the Mossad connection, the Maxwell lineage, and the drip feed of suppressed files collectively describe, if you follow the thread honestly and without flinching, is a Western political order in which deference to Israeli policy is not entirely or even primarily explained by shared democratic values and strategic alignment.

Some of it is explained by fear.

Some of it is explained by leverage.

Some of it is explained by the quiet, unspoken, never to be uttered in polite company reality that powerful men in Washington, London, and Canberra have made themselves vulnerable. To networks of kompromat, to relationships they cannot fully disclose, to the specific kind of coercive power that intelligence operations specialising in the exploitation of human weakness have deployed for as long as intelligence operations have existed.

This is why the charge of antisemitism is deployed so rapidly against anyone who raises these questions.

Not because the questions are antisemitic.

They manifestly are not, being questions about the conduct of specific governments, specific intelligence agencies, and specific individuals, not about Jewish people as a whole.

But because the charge works. It silences. It ends careers. It redirects the conversation. And the people with the most to lose from honest answers have every incentive to ensure the conversation never reaches those answers.

The International Criminal Court has issued its warrant. The Epstein files are dripping into the public domain. The Maxwell Mossad connection is confirmed historical record.

The leverage that may explain a generation of Western politicians who cannot bring themselves to say a single word of meaningful criticism of Israeli state conduct is no longer the province of conspiracy forums. It is the subject of serious investigative journalism on three continents.

And Australia’s answer, apparently, is to look away.

Anthony Albanese will not be the one to look squarely at any of this. He has already told us where he stands. On national television, he endorsed the war. He called it constructive. He offered the American justification back to an Australian audience as though it were Australia’s own sovereign conclusion.

It was not. It was obedience dressed as policy. And the men who benefit most from that obedience, a defendant in Tel Aviv and a felon in Washington, are laughing all the way to the next airstrike while ordinary Australians pay the bill, while journalists are prosecuted.

• Tomorrow: How the Murdoch press is running cover for a war and pointing your anger at the wrong man entirely.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has appealed to Foreign Minister Winston Peters to stress to the Palestine genocide “open wound” in his meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington this week.

Co-chair Maher Nazzal of PSNA said in a statement the international crisis in West Asia “must be reined in” and New Zealand pressure should be part of this.

He blamed the US-Israel war on Iran on resistance to the genocide in Gaza in which almost 73,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed.

• READ MORE: Foreign Minister Winston Peters off to meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
• Tehran slams Trump threats over Strait of Hormuz closure
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Nazzal also warned in the letter to Peters against New Zealand being “recruited” for the US war effort.

“The US will want to recruit New Zealand into the US and Israel war on Iran, and try to get Peters to offer something crazy, like dispatching the New Zealand frigates Te Kaha and Te Mana to help force the Straits of Hormuz,” he said.

‘But the open wound of Palestine remains the single greatest threat to peace and stability across the entire world.”

Nazzal said PSNA was urging Peters to press the US to demand equal rights for everyone living “between the river and the sea”.

“This means confronting the apartheid state of Israel head-on. The world can no longer tolerate a genocidal and racist state in West Asia, which is armed to the teeth by the US and hell-bent on attacking its neighbours to capture territory.

Stoking ‘the flames of hatred’
“Israel continues to stoke the flames of hatred and eternal war by last week passing legislation to execute Palestinians convicted of what Israel calls ‘terrorism’.”

Nazzal said the racist apartheid law did not apply to Jewish Israeli settlers who were killing Palestinians daily.

It exclusively applied in the military courts, which were only used to try Palestinians.

“They have a conviction rate of over 96 percent,” Nazzal said.

“Racist Israeli ministers and Knesset members celebrated the inflammatory racist law with champagne. There was barely a peep from Peters.

“New Zealand has played an important role in helping resolve international conflicts in the past — we can be part of the solution now,” Nazzal added.

An Easter message. There’s no mystery about why wars start. They happen because someone, somewhere, decides that negotiation is more dangerous to them than to the people being bombed.

Look at what was happening this “Good” Friday. Iran. Gaza. The West Bank. Lebanon.

Thirty-six days of missiles and a Strait of Hormuz sealed shut while oil companies post record profits and defence contractors book forward orders through 2031. No one in those boardrooms is losing sleep over a negotiated settlement.

• READ MORE: Iran slams Trump’s Strait of Hormuz threats as ‘incitement to war crimes’
• Eugene Doyle: Who will pay billions in reparations to Iran? We will
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

That would be the one outcome they cannot monetise.

The choice of war over negotiation is always deliberate. It’s what happens when the institutions built to make negotiation workable — the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the mechanisms of international law — are systematically defunded, vetoed into paralysis, or simply disregarded by those states powerful enough to ignore them without consequence.

When accountability is optional, war is always cheaper than compromise. For the people making the decision, not for the people paying for it in blood.

And here is what makes this moment different from others: we’re not even pretending anymore. Israeli ministers speak of erasure openly. American officials wave away civilian casualties with the language of collateral necessity.

Actions become shameless
The international community issues statements of concern and then approves the next arms shipment. The gap between what is said and what is done has closed — not because the words have become honest, but because the actions have become shameless.

Negotiation requires recognising the humanity of the other party. That’s precisely why it’s rebuffed. You can’t negotiate with someone you have spent 20 years or more dehumanising. Make them monstrous enough and war stops requiring justification. It becomes necessary.

But nothing about this is inevitable. Wars end when the people with the power to end them decide the cost of continuing exceeds the cost of stopping.

That calculation is being made right now, every day, by people who are not dying. The question is not when they will choose peace. It’s when the rest of us will make their continuing refusal untenable.

Richard David Hames is an Australian philosopher-activist, strategic adviser, entrepreneur and futurist, and he publishes The Hames Report on Substack. This article is republished with the author’s permission.

As tensions rose ahead of Easter, US President Donald Trump publicly criticised Pope Leo XIV, accusing the pontiff of “interfering in political matters he does not fully understand”.

During a rally, Trump reportedly said: “The Vatican should focus on religion, not tell strong nations how they should defend themselves. America will always put its security first.”

The remarks quickly drew global attention and prompted a calm but firm response from the Pope.

• READ MORE: Pope: Easter drives out hatred and brings down the mighty
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Speaking at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV responded: “The Church cannot remain silent when power is used without moral responsibility. Faith must guide humanity toward peace, not justify conflict.”

Following the exchange of statements, many Catholic faithful around the world also began voicing their opinions.

Many believers expressed support for the message of peace and moral responsibility emphasised by Pope Leo XIV, arguing that faith should be used to bring people together and promote peace, rather than to justify conflict.

Across religious forums and social media platforms, Catholics called on political leaders to respect the spiritual role of the Church, while also encouraging dialogue between politics and religion to be conducted with humility, reconciliation, and mutual respect.

Many also expressed hope that the Pope’s message would continue to inspire efforts toward peace around the world.

New Zealand’s government was taken to task today for its lack of a principled stand against Israel’s Gaza genocide and the illegal and unprovoked US-Israel war on Iran.

Several speakers at a rally in the heart of Auckland expressed disappointment and anger at Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s failure to condemn the war of aggression against Iran, one of the major supporters of Palestinian self-determination and justice.

The speakers from several cultures were scathing about New Zealand’s weak stance in the rally at Te Komititanga Square with a theme of “Welfare not warfare”.

• READ MORE: US-Israel attacks hit petrochemical, nuclear sites in Iran
• President Trump, don’t listen to your sycophants on Iran, this isn’t reality TV
• US bombing targets bridges and Pasteur Institute – ‘symbols of Iran’s scientific strength’, says spokeswoman
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

The criticism comes as US President Donald Trump is reportedly seeking a record $1.5 trillion in “defence” spending for the coming year along with massive social cutbacks, according to a White House details released yesterday, while New Zealand’s budget allows for an unprecedented NZ$12 billion four-year plan to overhaul the country’s military.

Bibi Amena, a twice-displaced refugee from Afghanistan who has experienced the devastation of war and lost family members while resisting the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, said the illegal assassination of a high profile head of state and respected figure among Shia Muslims around the world should have been condemned.

“At the very least our government should have condemned America and Israel in the strongest words possible,” she said.

New Zealand should have distanced itself from America and Israel “and their crumbling empire”.

Helen Clark quoted
She quoted former prime minister Helen Clark who at the beginning of this war described New Zealand’s response as “a disgrace” and that it was in the country’s best interests to keep advocating for international law.

“New Zealand is not a mighty country, and if we trample international law and forego an independent foreign policy, we are left at the mercy of countries far bigger and far stronger than us,” Amena said.

“Let’s be loud and clear when we say that Israel and America’s war on Iran is illegal — it’s illegitimate, unprovoked and immoral.”

A Tehran-born psychology student, Ali Reza, who migrated to New Zealand in 2013, was also strongly critical of the government’s weak stance over the war.

“Some politicians seem to have trouble with their spines. Iran has many excellent spinal surgeons who could help them with that.”

He praised the Palestinian resistance in the face of the 76th years “brutality, occupation, mass murder and mass displacement” by Israel.

“Meanwhile, the Sudanese people were suffering through a devastating civil war caused by the UAE (United Arab Emirates) and its master Israel. The enemy’s lies set records displaying psychotic levels of manipulation and exploitation,” he said.

“The enemy renewed their specialisation in the discipline of evil wrongdoings, pioneering in numerous fields, followed by their murderous campaign in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Iran, all funded by the United States.”

Choice for Aotearoa
Leeann Wahanui-Peters of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) called for a choice for Aotearoa — one between “the security of our whānau and the lies and profits of warmongers and their masters in Wall Street, the City of London, and the shadow bankers of Black Rock and company”.

“A choice between a home, a warm home and weapons,” she said. “A choice between a future of justice, peace and prosperity for all and a past of war and exploitation for the few.

“For decades, we have been told that the world is dangerous and that the only way to be safe is to spend more on the military.”

“This is a lie,” Wahanui-Peters said.

“The greatest threat to the safety of a child in Aotearoa isn’t a missile from a distant land. It is the coldness of a house their parents can’t afford to heat, or living in a car.

“It is their hunger in their stomach because their school lunch has been cut. It is the despair of a future with no jobs and no hope.”

And yet, said Wahanui-Peters, New Zealand’s “coalition regime” chose to be “fiscally irresponsible” and chose military assets ahead of the best interests of the country’s people.

‘Gateway for hell’
Bibi Amena said New Zealand’s silence over Israeli crimes in Palestine “opened the gateway for hell” in Iran.

“In the past 30 days of aggression, Israeli and American bombs have slaughtered over 3000 innocent Iranian children, women and men.

“They have attacked and destroyed energy and water supplies, civilian infrastructure, oil facilities, schools and hospitals. All of these attacks are illegal under international law.

“So why has our government remained silent? Why do we allow America and Israel to commit war crime after war crime with impunity?”

Amena referenced the first day of the illegal war on Iran, an American Tomahawk missile targeting a girls’ elementary school in the city of Minab, killing more than 160 girls aged between 7 and 12.

She ended her speech with a short quote “which went viral on social media” by Professor Foad Izadi from the University of Tehran: “Iran is fighting the Epstein class of the world, that either rapes little girls, or bombs little girls.”

Organisers of the Stop Wars Aotearoa coalition said there would be a major rally with the theme “No More Wars” in Auckland’s Aotea Square and a protest march to the US Consulate next Saturday, April 11, at 2pm.

Mr Trump, may I have a word?

Bad enough for you to insist — in the face of all evidence to the contrary — that you “won” the 2020 election.

But it’s another thing for you to pretend — in the face of mounting deaths and injuries, ballooning expenses, and rising prices — that you won, or are winning, the war with Iran you began on February 28.

“Let me say, we’ve won,” you told a rally in Kentucky on March 11.

• READ MORE: US ‘hasn’t even started’ attacks on Iran’s infrastructure, Trump warns
• US bombing targets bridges and Pasteur Institute – ‘symbols of Iran’s scientific strength’, says spokeswoman
• ‘No kings’: What Americans can learn from other nonviolent civil activism movements
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

“I think we’ve won,” you said on the White House South Lawn on March 20.

“We’ve won this war. The war has been won,” you said in the Oval Office on March 24.

“We are winning so big,” you told a fundraising dinner on March 25.

“We’ve had regime change,” you told reporters just a few days ago. “The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead.” Iran has now moved onto its “third regime,” and American negotiators are now speaking to “a whole different group of people” who have “been very reasonable,” you said.

You’re making this up
You’re making all this up. In fact, you’re losing your war. And so is America and much of the rest of the world.

After a month, your war has already cost 13 American lives, cost American taxpayers more than US$30 billion, cost American consumers at least a dollar more per gallon of gas than they paid a month ago, pushed up food prices and mortgage rates, and pushed down the value of 401(k) retirement plans.

It’s mangled supply chains for industries that rely on items such as fertiliser to grow food or helium to make computer chips. It’s also wreaked havoc across the Middle East with at least 1574 civilians killed in Iran, including 236 children, and at least 50 killed in Iran’s attacks on other Gulf nations.

You assumed Iran would give up its nuclear programme. Wrong. After more than a month of bombing by the United States and Israel, you’ve most likely stiffened the regime’s resolve to produce a nuclear weapon.

In this respect, too, America is worse off — more endangered than we were in 2018 before you withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama. In that deal, Iran agreed to restrict its nuclear programme — reducing uranium stockpiles by 98 percent and capping enrichment at 3.67 percent, and allowing inspections — in exchange for relief from UN, EU, and US nuclear-related sanctions.

Iran now holds a stockpile of approximately 970 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60 percent purity, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. That’s close to weapons-grade. No one knows where it’s stored.

You thought winning this war would be as easy as abducting Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela and setting up a puppet regime there. Wrong again. The old ayatollah is gone, but the new one and his regime are even more radical and hard line.

Embraced asymmetric warfare
You assumed America’s military might would weaken Iran’s military capacity. Wrong. They’ve embraced asymmetric warfare — using cheap drones and missiles and blocking the Strait of Hormuz — rather than take on America’s and Israel’s superior forces directly.

You thought the regime would soon cave. Wrong. It’s been over a month and they’re the ones playing the waiting game. They think they can withstand the mounting political and economic pressures better and longer than you and America can. They may be correct.

Reportedly, you’ve told aides you’re now willing to end the war even if Iran continues to block the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe this is your best option at this point. But it will allow Iran to decide in the future how much oil gets through and for whom, and could cause the economic damage to the US to grow exponentially worse.

Mr Trump, do you really believe you won this war? Do you really believe America is better off than it was when you began the war?

Maybe the people around you are telling you that you’ve won the war and we’re better off because you punish the bearers of bad news and reward those who tell you what you want to hear. Presumably you’re hearing the same fictionalised good news from Republicans in Congress, from sycophantic leaders abroad, from other assorted lackeys and suck-ups.

Or maybe you think that if you can convince enough people that you won and we’re better off, you will have won and America will be better off. Because for you it’s always about public perceptions of reality rather than reality itself.

No truth, only belief
Everything depends on hype, spin, exaggeration, and outright lies. For you there’s no truth, only belief.

Or maybe you think that if you keep saying you won or are winning, and America has come out on top, your magical thinking will in fact come true.

But this isn’t a game, and you’re not a magician.

This is real blood and guts. Real pain. Real deaths and injuries. Real price increases at the gas pump. Real hardships for real people — in America, in the Middle East, and elsewhere.

You can’t pretend, sir. This isn’t reality television. This is for real. And the reality is Americans are worse off now and less secure than we were when you started this.

Robert Reich is an American professor, writer, former Secretary of Labour, and author of The System, The Common Good, Saving Capitalism, Aftershock, Supercapitalism, The Work of Nations. He is also co-founder of Inequality Media. This commentary was originally published on his Facebook page and is republished under Creative Commons.

This is a war of narratives with the United States administration trying to push forward its narrative of “victory” while the Iranian administration or establishment is trying to push its narrative of being suppressed and under attack.

The Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian, has clearly said in an open letter to the American people that Iran has never started a war, and that Iran has no hostility towards American citizens.

He invited the people of America to look beyond politics and rhetoric and reconsider the realities of the past and present.

• READ MORE: ‘Which interests being served by war?’ Iran’s Pezeshkian asks US public
• Is Iran war really ‘America First’, Iranian president asks in letter to US public
• Trump vows to bring back Iran to the ‘stone age’
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

He said that as the Iranian people harboured no enmity towards other nations, including the people of America, Europe, and neighboring countries, attacks on Iran’s infrastructure and the targeting of our people would have consequences beyond the country’s border.

“What we do in response is based on the legitimate right of self-defence, not an act of aggression,” he said.

So, given the fact that the Iranians have already denied that they’ve asked for a ceasefire, now we see the president is trying to present a narrative, a complete different narrative, and at the end, showing and preserving Iran’s right to defend itself.

President Pezeshkian urged a shift away from confrontation with Tehran, questioning both US policy priorities and the “machinery of misinformation” about his country.

“Is ‘America First’ truly among the priorities of the US government today?” Pezeshkian asked.

Judge Iran on experience
He also called on Americans to judge Iran by the experiences of those who had visited the nation of some 90 million people and the achievements of Iranian immigrants.

“Observe the many accomplished Iranian immigrants — educated in Iran — who now teach and conduct research at the world’s most prestigious universities, or contribute to the most advanced technology firms in the West.

“Do these realities align with the distortions you are being told about Iran and its people?,” he asked.

President Pezeshkian said “the world stands at crossroads”, and argued that continuing on a path of hostility toward Iran was “more costly and futile than ever before”.

He described the choice between confrontation and engagement as “both real and consequential,” warning that its outcome will “shape the future for generations to come”.

The Iranian president questioned whose interests were being served by US military action against Iran, framing it as costly for both Iranians and Americans.

“Was there any objective threat from Iran to justify such behaviour?” he asked.

Iran President’s open letter to the American people          Video: Al Jazeera

“Does the massacre of innocent children, the destruction of cancer-treatment pharmaceutical facilities, or boasting about bombing a country ‘back to the Stone Age’ serve any purpose other than further damaging the United States’ global standing?”

President Pezeshkian also questioned the role of Israel in the war, asking, “Is it not also the case that America has entered this aggression as a proxy for Israel, influenced and manipulated by that regime?”

“Is it not evident that Israel now aims to fight Iran to the last American soldier and the last American taxpayer dollar — shifting the burden of its delusions onto Iran, the region, and the United States itself in pursuit of illegitimate interests?”

Ali Hashem reports for Al Jazeera.

The full open letter by Iran’s President Pezeshkian to the American people:
To the people of the United States of America, and to all those who, amid a flood of distortions and manufactured narratives, continue to seek the truth and aspire to a better life:

Iran — by this very name, character, and identity — is one of the oldest continuous civilisations in human history. Despite its historical and geographical advantages at various times, Iran has never, in its modern history, chosen the path of aggression, expansion, colonialism, or domination.

Even after enduring occupation, invasion, and sustained pressure from global powers — and despite possessing military superiority over many of its neighbors — Iran has never initiated a war.

Yet it has resolutely and bravely repelled those who have attacked it.

The Iranian people harbour no enmity toward other nations, including the people of America, Europe, or neighboring countries. Even in the face of repeated foreign interventions and pressures throughout their proud history, Iranians have consistently drawn a clear distinction between governments and the peoples they govern. This is a deeply rooted principle in Iranian culture and collective consciousness — not a temporary political stance.

For this reason, portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts. Such a perception is the product of political and economic whims of the powerful — the need to manufacture an enemy in order to justify pressure, maintain military dominance, sustain the arms industry, and control strategic markets. In such an environment, if a threat does not exist, it is invented.

Within this same framework, the United States has concentrated the largest number of its forces, bases, and military capabilities around Iran — a country that, at least since the founding of the United States, has never initiated a war. Recent American aggressions launched from these very bases have demonstrated how threatening such a military presence truly is. Naturally, no country confronted with such conditions would forgo strengthening its defensive capabilities. What Iran has done — and continues to do — is a measured response grounded in legitimate self-defence, and by no means an initiation of war or aggression.

Relations between Iran and the United States were not originally hostile, and early interactions between the Iranian and American people were not marred with hostility or tension. The turning point, however, was the 1953 coup d’état — an illegal American intervention aimed at preventing the nationalisation of Iran’s own resources. That coup disrupted Iran’s democratic process, reinstated dictatorship, and sowed deep distrust among Iranians toward US policies.

This distrust deepened further with America’s support for the Shah’s regime, its backing of Saddam Hussein during the imposed war of the 1980s, the imposition of the longest and most comprehensive sanctions in modern history, and ultimately, unprovoked military aggression — twice, in the midst of negotiations — against Iran.

Yet all these pressures have failed to weaken Iran. On the contrary, the country has grown stronger in many areas: literacy rates have tripled — from roughly 30 percent before the Islamic Revolution to over 90 percent today; higher education has expanded dramatically; significant advances have been achieved in modern technology; healthcare services have improved; and infrastructure has developed at a pace and scale incomparable to the past.

These are measurable, observable realities that stand independent of fabricated narratives.

At the same time, the destructive and inhumane impact of sanctions, war, and aggression on the lives of the resilient Iranian people must not be underestimated. The continuation of military aggression and recent bombings profoundly affect people’s lives, attitudes, and perspectives. This reflects a fundamental human truth: when war inflicts irreparable harm on lives, homes, cities, and futures, people will not remain indifferent toward those responsible.

This raises a fundamental question: Exactly which of the American people’s interests are truly being served by this war? Was there any objective threat from Iran to justify such behaviour? Does the massacre of innocent children, the destruction of cancer-treatment pharmaceutical facilities, or boasting about bombing a country “back to the stone ages” serve any purpose other than further damaging the United States’ global standing?

Iran pursued negotiations, reached an agreement, and fulfilled all its commitments. The decision to withdraw from that agreement, escalate toward confrontation, and launch two acts of aggression in the midst of negotiations were destructive choices made by the US government — choices that served the delusions of a foreign aggressor.

Attacking Iran’s vital infrastructure — including energy and industrial facilities — directly targets the Iranian people. Beyond constituting a war crime, such actions carry consequences that extend far beyond Iran’s borders. They generate instability, increase human and economic costs, and perpetuate cycles of tension, planting seeds of resentment that will endure for years. This is not a demonstration of strength; it is a sign of strategic bewilderment and an inability to achieve a sustainable solution.

Is it not also the case that America has entered this aggression as a proxy for Israel, influenced and manipulated by that regime? Is it not true that Israel, by manufacturing an Iranian threat, seeks to divert global attention away from its crimes toward the Palestinians?

Is it not evident that Israel now aims to fight Iran to the last American soldier and the last American taxpayer dollar — shifting the burden of its delusions onto Iran, the region, and the United States itself in pursuit of illegitimate interests?

Is “America First” truly among the priorities of the US government today?

I invite you to look beyond the machinery of misinformation — an integral part of this aggression — and instead speak with those who have visited Iran. Observe the many accomplished Iranian immigrants — educated in Iran — who now teach and conduct research at the world’s most prestigious universities, or contribute to the most advanced technology firms in the West. Do these realities align with the distortions you are being told about Iran and its people?

Today, the world stands at a crossroads. Continuing along the path of confrontation is more costly and futile than ever before. The choice between confrontation and engagement is both real and consequential; its outcome will shape the future for generations to come.

Throughout its millennia of proud history, Iran has outlasted many aggressors. All that remains of them are tarnished names in history, while Iran endures — resilient, dignified, and proud.

Thousands took to the streets of the capital Nouméa on Tuesday — hours ahead of a scheduled French Parliament debate in the National Assembly in Paris to discuss the French Pacific territory’s political future.

An estimated 2500 came in support of local Association Un Coeur, une Voix (UCUV–One Heart, One Voice) to oppose the prospect of the next local elections (to elect New Caledonia’s three provinces) being held under the current “frozen” electoral roll, which excludes people who have not resided in New Caledonia before 1998 or their direct descendents.

During a one-hour peaceful march in downtown Nouméa, the participants were brandishing tricolour blue-white-red flags and other placards denouncing what they described as “second-class citizens” treatment and their perceived condition of self-styled “victims of history”.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

The march was designed to send a clear message to French MPs ahead of debates on New Caledonia later this week.

“I’m sorry for using harsh words, but it’s like we’re being robbed [of our rights],” UCUV president Raphaël Romano told local Radio Rythme Bleu.

“And now we have those MPs who are going to decide for us. They’re going to use New Caledonia for their own national political gains . . .  and make a mess”.

“If [MPs] can’t find an agreement, then they should let New Caledonians choose.

“It’s a shame for democracy, it happens nowhere else in the world”, Romano told local media.

His movement is strongly supported by several prominent pro-France parties, including Le Rassemblement and Les Loyalistes.

He said the situation affected all ethnic communities in New Caledonia.

“Those who can’t vote are men and women from all walks of life, all ethnic groups who live together in peace, every day,” he said.

“It’s hard enough to try and recover from the May 2024 riots, where people have lost their businesses and their job.”

The 2024 riots caused 14 deaths and more than 2 billion euros (almost NZ$4 billion) in material damage.

They were also initially triggered by peaceful protests against a plan to have the French constitution modified, especially regarding the electoral restrictions.

The protests turned violent and out of control in Nouméa on the very day debates started in Paris.

The “freeze” was enforced in 2009, as part of the Nouméa Accord, signed in 1998.

Originally designed as a temporary measure, the restriction currently excludes up to 40,000 people, many of them born in New Caledonia.

‘Counter demonstrations’
Meanwhile, pro-independence movements have called for other “counter-demonstrations” outside of Nouméa.

One gathering took place on Tuesday, including in the outer Loyalty Islands of Lifou, while another demonstration is scheduled on Wednesday, in Koné (North of the main island, Grande Terre).

The voting restriction measure was originally included in the 1998 Nouméa Accord as a measure to prevent any erosion of New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak population’s voice.

The proposed text derives from talks held between New Caledonia political stakeholders and the French government.

This was on two occasions: in the small city of Bougival in July 2025 and later in January 2026 in Paris, at the French Presidential Élysée Palace and the French Ministry of Overseas Territories, Rue Oudinot.

Hence the name of Bougival-Élysée-Oudinot (BEO) for a text and an expanded project.

But the BEO text, in August 2025, was unequivocally opposed by the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), the main component of the pro-independence movement.

Other participating parties — pro-France and pro-independence (two pro-independence members of FLNKS have since split to create their own “UNI” [Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance]) — have since maintained their commitment to the BEO process, including their legislative adaptation (in the form of a Constitutional Amendment and an “organic Law, which would de facto become New Caledonia’s constitution).

The project also envisions the creation of a “State of New Caledonia”, with a correlated “New Caledonia nationality” available to people who are already French citizens.

The FLNKS later explained it saw these, as well as a planned process of transfer of more powers from Paris to Nouméa, as just a “lure” of independence.

Reacting to the UCUV march, FLNKS said the “freeze” was ruled constitutional by France’s Constitutional Council in September 2025 and could only be changed if a “consensual” agreement was found.

But FLNKS considers the BEO-derived text “is not a logical continuation of the Nouméa Accord”.

The BEO-derived Bill, if adopted, could eventually replace the Nouméa Accord.

But it is now still undergoing legislative process.

The French Senate endorsed it on February 24, with a comfortable right-wing majority.

But this week, the same text is to be debated in the Lower House of Parliament, the National Assembly, which has been divided since the July 2024 French national snap election following President Macron’s decision to dissolve Parliament.

Current predictions are that since there is no clear majority within the Lower House, the Bill, which comes in the form of a Constitutional Amendment (with the capacity to replace the Nouméa Accord) is likely to be rejected.

The opposition to the current right-wing group comes from the left (far-left La France Insoumise -LFI-, the Socialists (who say the Bill is “heavy with threats and dangers”), the Communists, the Greens) and Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN).

Last week, the Constitutional Bill came before the National Assembly’s Law Committee and suffered an initial rejection.

Parliamentary debates in the National Assembly are scheduled to begin on Wednesday (1 April 2026, Paris time) and could last for the next three days.

‘Barrage’ of three thousand amendments
Some opposition parties, especially the democratic and republican left (GDR, Gauche démocrate et républicaine, to which the pro-independence New Caledonian Kanak MP Emmanuel Tjibaou belongs) have already filed on the agenda a “prior rejection motion” to withdraw the Bill.

Some of those expressed strong reservations because the process and ensuing Bill was opposed by FLNKS and that, therefore, there was no unanimity.

Meanwhile, since last week, in a previously used barrage tactic, LFI has also filed over 3000 amendments.

Restrictions still apply under Nouméa Accord — French Constitutional Council
UCUV has been fighting for years to defend their rights, in front of what they term a “denial of democracy”.

Last year, they took their case to the French Constitutional Council, which ruled that in the present situation, the electoral roll “freeze” for local elections was part of the Nouméa Accord which was part of the French Constitution.

UCUV president Raphaël Romano said they now have no other option but to take their case before the European Court of Human Rights, even though they admit their hopes are “very weak”.

He said the deadline was 4 April 2026.

If the Constitutional Bill is rejected by Parliament, a new proposed calendar for implementation will automatically become obsolete.

And local provincial elections that have already been delayed three times since May 2024 will have to be held not later than 28 June 2026, instead of the proposed December this year.

If the BEO-derived text is rejected, then the Nouméa Accord applies again and the planned provincial elections will have to be held under the restricted — “frozen” — electoral roll system.

“The provincial elections will not be held under a frozen electoral roll. It’s just not possible”, Romano said.

Deadlock, imbroglio: what now?
Other possible alternative scenarios could include re-submitting a new, revised Bill, dedicated to the electoral roll, or organising a “consultation”, a de facto referendum with eligible New Caledonians.

Under the French parliamentary principle of the “shuttle”, the text could be sent back to the Senate.

Under the BEO text, people eligible for voting at local provincial elections can either be born in New Caledonia or having resided there for an uninterrupted 15 years (for the first five years of enforcement, then the minimum residence period would be reduced to 10 uninterrupted years).

From the French government’s point of view, an agreement on New Caledonia’s institutional future is the only solution to bring back stability and economic “visibility” for local and foreign investors.

“Everything is on the table to get things moving”, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told French media last week.

Overseas Minister Naïma Moutchou is still advocating for the benefits a parliamentary approval would bring to New Caledonia in terms of a “framework” for economic recovery.

France has earmarked some 2 billion euros in a “refoundation” pact, structured to put the economy, social services and the crucial nickel mining industry back on track, provided necessary reforms are carried out.

“Let’s give a chance to this process, because in New Caledonia, the alternative to an open political process is never quiet: it’s uncertainty and, over there, it always ends up weakening civil peace,” she told Parliament last week.

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

New Zealand’s national Māori radio network, Te Whakaruruhau o Ngā Reo Irirangi Māori o Aotearoa, is considering litigation over a potential loss of government funding which it says threatens the survivability of iwi radio stations.

Chairperson Peter-Lucas Jones (Ngāti Kahu, Te Rārawa, Ngāi Takoto, Te Aupōuri) — who was also chief executive of Far North iwi broadcaster Te Hiku Media — told current affairs series RUKU Māori radio was a right under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, not a government handout.

Recent and proposed actions targeting iwi stations, implemented primarily through Te Māngai Pāho (TMP), disregarded the treaty and exposed the Crown to credible legal risk, he said.

• READ MORE: Other Māori broadcasting reports

“This issue is not about resisting change, iwi radio stations have themselves funded transitions to digital platforms and new media without Crown support.

“The issue is whether the Crown can, through an intermediary, dismantle a treaty remedy without Māori consent.”

There are more than 20 iwi radio stations across New Zealand, from Te Hiku in the North to Tahu FM in the South.

Stations receive funding through Te Māngai Pāho to promote Māori language and culture.

Time-limited funding
TMP currently has $16 million of time-limited funding, equal to almost 25 percent of their total annual funding, which is due to expire on June 30.

Te Māngai Pāho said that while 2026/27 appropriations would not be confirmed until the Budget announcement in late May, the impact of this funding loss would be felt across the whole Māori media sector.

“Te Māngai Pāho is consulting with the Māori media sector, including iwi radio, on the future of our funding allocations. We have requested feedback to understand how any reduction of funding will be felt across the sector.

“Feedback will inform the board’s final decisions around funding allocations. We understand that the stability of iwi radio stations and content creators is threatened by this funding cut.”

Jones said iwi stations unanimously agreed at a special general meeting they would not accept any decrease in funding and would consider legal action in response to any cutbacks.

“Decisions taken by TMP that materially affect iwi radio funding, structure or autonomy remain Crown actions for treaty purposes.

“The Crown cannot discharge its Treaty obligations by delegation and then rely on that delegation to insulate itself from responsibility.”

Rapidly changing audience
The iwi radio network said it had been grappling with a wide range of issues including, rapidly changing audience expectation and emerging technologies, numerous siloed media outlets and an inadequate investment in workforce development affecting the ability to grow and retain a skilled workforce.

Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka said Māori media, including iwi radio, played a critical role in supporting te reo Māori revitalisation and connecting whānau and communities across Aotearoa, shaping public understanding by sharing Māori stories and te reo directly with whānau.

He said no final decisions had been made through the consultation between TMP and the Māori media sector and it was premature to confirm impacts on funding levels, services, or jobs, including claims about specific percentage reductions.

“Earlier financial support of $16 million in time-limited funding was put in place under the previous government and is now coming to an end. The current consultation process is focused on how best to manage that transition within existing funding,” he said.

“As Minister, I do not direct or intervene in Te Māngai Pāho’s operational funding decisions. Those are matters for the board.”

Potaka said the Crown’s role was to ensure a strong and sustainable system for te reo Māori revitalisation.

High quality content
“I expect the consultation process to reflect the importance of Iwi radio and the role it plays in communities across the country, while ensuring funding is used effectively to deliver high-quality content on platforms that meet audience preferences.

“Māori media entities continue to adapt to changes in funding and audience behaviour, and I expect decisions to prioritise value for money while supporting strong te reo Māori outcomes.

“Any organisation is entitled to raise concerns or seek legal advice. However, there is an established independent process underway, and it is important that process is allowed to run its course.”

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

Israel’s Parliament has approved a one-sided death penalty measure to execute Palestinians.

It is one of the most extreme laws in the nation’s history, and will exacerbate the far-right government’s illegal system of apartheid.

Some members of the Knesset, including ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, were seen wearing noose pins in the Knesset yesterday, and celebrating with champagne on live TV after the bill passed.

• READ MORE: ‘Dangerous escalation’: World reacts to Israel passing death penalty law
• Other Palestine genocide reports

Ben-Gvir said hanging is “one of the options,” as is execution by the electric chair or euthanasia.

The law was passed with 62 votes to 48 in its final reading.

The bill drew international condemnation ahead of its passage, including from the European Union, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, and Amnesty International. Human rights groups have vowed to challenge the bill in Israel’s Supreme Court.

The legislation, which has garnered broad public support in Israel, authorises executions for “terrorists” who kill “with the intent to deny the existence of the State of Israel,” according to Haaretz — effectively ensuring it won’t apply to any of the settlers who routinely murder Palestinians.

‘Confessions’ by torture
In military courts in the occupied West Bank, execution by hanging will now be the default punishment for terrorism. Only Palestinians are tried in these courts, and 96 percent of people are convicted, though cases are largely built on “confessions” extracted through torture.

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians condemned the bill yesterday ahead of the vote as an “extreme escalation in Israel’s genocidal policies against Palestinians”.

“The progression of the legislation marks not just a profoundly unjust and illegal act of discrimination under international law, but a far more sinister escalation of Israel’s apartheid legal systems,” the center wrote.

Israeli Knesset death penalty for Palestinians.       Video: Al Jazeera

Israel is currently imprisoning about 9500 Palestinians, according to the human rights group B’Tselem, and about half of them are held under administrative detention.

According to the group, the Israel Prison Service has already started to prepare designated execution facilities.

B’Tselem on Sunday called the bill “another official killing mechanism” that will further normalise the slaughter of Palestinians, as Israel continues its genocide in Gaza and intensifies attacks in the occupied West Bank.

Human rights violation
“The death penalty is a total violation of the most basic human rights, primarily, the right to life,” B’Tselem wrote.

“Israel enforces a comprehensive policy of killing and oppression against the Palestinian people in all the territories it controls. The Death Penalty Law gives Israel’s apartheid regime yet another tool for advancing that policy.”

On top of Monday’s bill, the Knesset is also considering another death penalty measure to impose on alleged October 7, 2023, attackers.

According to Amnesty International, that bill would effectively expand the unilateral powers of military judges and eliminate judicial safeguards.

From time to time, I post transcripts I’ve come across of particularly insightful conversations. Here’s one that’s particularly relevant to the US “No Kings” Day protests at the weekend.

Recently, The Conversation hosted a webinar in which executive editor and general manager Beth Daley interviewed John Shattuck, professor of practice at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and Oliver Kaplan, associate professor at Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs at the University of Denver and a visiting scholar at Stanford University.

Shattuck is the former president of Central European University in Hungary, where he defended academic freedom against a rising authoritarian government. Kaplan is the author of Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves. This interview has been condensed and edited for print.

• READ MORE: ‘No Kings’ protests erupt across the US, with a Minnesota focus

BETH DALEY: What is an authoritarian regime, and what are their characteristics?

JOHN SHATTUCK: The authoritarian, often referred to as a “king,” is the ideal role from the point of view of the king, but certainly not from the point of view of the people. Authoritarian characteristics include centralised unlimited power, the opposite of democracy; no accountability and no rule of law; no independent courts; no checks and balances on how the king operates; rule by fear and coercion, and when necessary, in order to carry out the king’s orders, rule by by force.

There are no individual rights or civil liberties except those the king decides to allow those who are loyal to him to have, at least until he decides to take them away.

That’s a nutshell informal description of an authoritarian regime. A special threat today is that an authoritarian can emerge from a democratic election, and, indeed, a democratic election can be used to turn a weak democracy into an authoritarian regime.

But when this happens, it opens the door to challenge the authoritarian in a subsequent election if civic activism can defend the electoral process by which the authoritarian was elected.

BD: What are we seeing and not seeing in the US that other countries have gone through in terms of authoritarian government?

OLIVER KAPLAN: I think we are heading toward an autocracy, if not there already. In their 2026 report, the Varieties of Democracy Project writes that the US is no longer a liberal democracy and is moving into “competitive authoritarianism,” marked by executive overreach and erosion of judicial and legislative checks. The report notes that US democracy is being dismantled at a speed that is “unprecedented in modern history”.

We are seeing shifts in terms of concentration of power to the executive branch and a disregard of the rule of law, things like ignoring court orders and difficulty with holding the executive branch accountable. We are also seeing the militariSation of law enforcement, monitoring of US citizens, and what some refer to as the dual state — that the state is working for some people while causing more challenges for or oppressing other people.

One of the things we’re not seeing at full force yet is a complete shutdown of civic space. We’re able to hold this kind of conversation, and people are still able to dialogue and go out on the street.

There are some efforts at curtailing free speech, and I think there’s some self-censorship possibly happening. But there’s still this open space and a powerful mass movement growing in this country.

USA today:

7 million Americans in the streets today protesting for freedom.
3,000 cities and towns. Every single state. “No Kings” protests against the authoritarianism of the Trump. This is one of the largest demonstrations in American history.

pic.twitter.com/cLAwlXK69f

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) March 28, 2026

BD: John, you were on the front lines, particularly in Hungary as the head of Central European University. What did you see there that has parallels today to the US?

JOHN SHATTUCK: There’s certainly a parallel between Hungary and the US, even though the countries are very different in size, history and background. What I saw in Hungary when I became president of Central European University in 2009 was a weak, new democracy that was only established in 1990 after 70 years of fascism and communism.

I was in Hungary from 2009 to 2016 and, despite the differences, I could begin to see some parallels. Many people had grievances in Hungary about how their economy was operating, particularly after the global financial crisis that affected Hungary more than any other Eastern European country.

Then there was an urban-rural divide, the urban elite versus the rural majority in the country.

Along came a cynical populist-nationalist politician, Viktor Orbán. Orbán started manipulating these grievances, and did so to significantly divide Hungarian society. He attacked many of the institutions of democracy, which were increasingly unpopular because of people’s grievances.

He went after elites, and foreigners, and migrants, and the media. And he blamed all of them for the country’s problems. He then was able to ride these grievances into office.

Once in office, Orbán amended the constitution and laws relating to the Parliament. He undermined the independence of the media and the judiciary so as to centralise power. All of this happened while I was running an international university in Budapest, which remained independent because it received no funding from the Hungarian government.

We were able to resist the increasingly authoritarian regime over issues of academic freedom. The government tried to shut down our programmes of migration studies and gender studies, and tried to censor aspects of our history department.

These authoritarian attacks are similar to what we’ve seen happening in the US, and in fact, Viktor Orbán was greatly admired by Donald Trump, and a lot of the playbook that Orban has followed was mirrored in Project 2025 in the US under Trump.

BD: How do communities respond in different ways to authoritarian regimes?

OLIVER KAPLAN: Pro-democracy movements and protection types of movements at the local level often co-occur. For example, in Colombia there have been various leftist movements and political parties that have pushed for greater democratic opening while communities mobilise to keep people safe and help them cope with repressive conditions.

In places like Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala, communities built trust and support networks to provide aid, such as for people who needed food assistance. This provides space to independently operate and preserve the community.

The US has parallels, such as innovating early warning networks to get advance notice of risks and threats, by communicating using the Signal app. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, villages set up radio networks, and in Ukraine they have sophisticated early warning networks to get word of airstrikes and drone attacks.

Fact-finding and countering stigma are important, and in the US we’re seeing that in the form of the video recording and publicising of harmful actions. This has played out similarly in Syria with fact-finding to protect nongovernment organisations.

There’s also accompaniment where outside actors come in to provide support to communities. Around the world, church organisations play important accompaniment roles. We’re seeing clergy in the US step up and visit places that are at risk.

And then, there are protests, the most visible kind of action. In Minnesota, we’ve seen communities actually setting up community barricades, which has also happened in Mexico, Colombia and Northern Ireland. Communicating the nonviolent nature of these movements is important to avoid any pretext for additional crackdowns.

I think Americans have been taking similar actions to other places around the world in part because there are some similar background conditions: repression and strong social capital networks. Those two things come together to produce these strategies.

BD: Could you speak more about the need to build a clear narrative and a positive one?

JOHN SHATTUCK: There are two basic rules for how to resist authoritarianism that I’ve learned from experience: Build a diverse coalition and develop a unifying theme. You need a diverse coalition in order to appeal to a broad range of the public, and in order to do that, you need agreement on the goal and values of what you’re trying to accomplish.

You need a clear and unifying narrative. The narrative often involves economic issues and issues of corruption, since there’s often a great deal of corruption in authoritarian regimes.

Hungary will have its next parliamentary election in April in which Orbán will seek his fifth term as prime minister. The opposition has developed a broad coalition and a unifying theme, while Orbán is using the centralised instruments of government and media that he controls to try to manipulate public opinion.

The opposition coalition is headed by Peter Magyar, who was once a major supporter of Orbán’s government. Magyar’s name can be magical in Hungary — sort of like a “Joe America” in the US.

With Magyar as its head, the opposition is aiming to peel off supporters of the regime. It’s campaigning on economic grounds, with a positive message and on moderate terms. And most importantly, it includes parties from the left, right and center.

Poland has succeeded in doing what the Hungarian opposition is attempting. It managed to vote out an authoritarian government by putting together a broad coalition to defend the independence of the Polish judiciary. That became a coalition to elect parliamentarians in 2023, and that succeeded in changing the government.

BD: How important is the preexisting social fabric of a community to the success of a protest movement?

JOHN SHATTUCK: It’s important, but complicated. Hungary had a very weak civil society after 70 years of totalitarian fascism and communism. When I was there, the very word to “volunteer,” which we think of as the essence of community action and service, was seen to be a bad word in Hungarian because it was closely associated with collaborating with the regime.

In the US, we’re the opposite in a sense, although the US is now slipping on this. We have a long history of volunteerism, we have all these civil society organisations, we have a tradition of barn raising, people getting together with their neighbours and doing things in their communities. This is very much a part of the American spirit and a core value.

But today, I would say a combination of consumerism and economic individualism coming out of decades of economic deregulation has caused our civil society to fray. But the authoritarian challenge that we face now, and the way in which we are beginning to respond to it, is in fact bringing communities back together again.

I think what happened in Minneapolis is an example of that. And this may reflect a growing capacity to resist an authoritarian regime.

Republished from Robert Reich’s Substack, originally published by The Conversation. Republished under Creative Commons.

Robert Reich is an American professor, writer, former Secretary of Labour, and author of The System, The Common Good, Saving Capitalism, Aftershock, Supercapitalism, The Work of Nations. He is also co-founder of Inequality Media.

Public trust in Fiji’s mainstream media has significantly declined, a journalism academic has told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, citing decades of political upheaval, censorship and institutional pressure.

At its third expert hearing in Suva, the commission heard from University of the South Pacific’s associate professor of journalism Shailendra Singh, who detailed how censorship, intimidation and political pressure had weakened the media landscape over decades.

Dr Singh, who is contributing to the commission’s media chapter, told the TRC that repeated disruptions — including the 1987, 2000 and 2006 coups — had lasting consequences on press freedom and public discourse.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji media reports

Drawing on more than 30 years of experience, he outlined how newsrooms faced closures, financial strain and the loss of skilled journalists, contributing to declining editorial independence and professional standards.

He said journalists were often forced into difficult ethical positions, navigating threats and highly polarised environments, which led to self-censorship, and, at times, uncritical reporting aligned with dominant political narratives.

He described the 2000 and 2006 coups as defining moments for the industry.

The 2006 period, he noted, brought the most stringent controls, including the introduction of the Media Industry Development Act 2010, which entrenched censorship and self-censorship in newsrooms.

Steady decline in public confidence
The long-term impact, he said, had been a steady decline in public confidence.

Dr Singh told the commission that perceptions of bias and compliance had contributed to the erosion of trust, with some members of the public even supporting tighter media control.

At the same time, restrictions on traditional media created space for alternative platforms such as blogs, social media and diaspora outlets — opening new avenues for expression but also raising concerns around misinformation and accountability.

Despite the repeal of the MIDA legislation in 2023, Dr Singh said the sector continued to grapple with its legacy, including financial instability, skills shortages and the risk of renewed political interference.

He recommended stronger legal protections for press freedom, improved training to lift professional standards, greater media literacy and independent regulatory mechanisms.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

Former Fijian President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau died on Thursday, aged 84.

Ratu Epeli, a chief and former Fiji military commander, served as president from 2009 to 2015.

He also served as Speaker of Parliament from 2019 to 2022.

Local media reported Ratu Epeli died at the Suva Private Hospital after being admitted earlier on Thursday evening.

• READ MORE: Ratu Epeli Nailatikau is no longer with us

In Saturday’s frontpage story titled “Nailatikau is no longer with us”, The Fiji Times described the late president as “widely respected for his leadership and dedication to the people of Fiji”.

The Fiji Sun described him as a “respected chief, soldier, diplomat and statesman”.

A former opposition leader and high chief, Ro Teimumu Kepa, said Ratu Epeli’s death had left many people in shock.

“The flowing tributes on social media shows how his personality touched many lives that he came in contact with,” she wrote in a social media post.

The ‘people’s president’
Fiji’s former Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum described Ratu Epeli as “the people’s president”.

“Ratu Epeli Nailatikau lived his life among his people, not above them. We see that in the countless stories coming in from across the country about his personal interactions with everyday people,” Sayed-Khaiyun said.

“He put his belief of the dignity of every Fijian into practice every day, including the day he promulgated our Fijian Constitution in 2013 which granted every citizen an equal voice in our democracy while concomitantly protecting everyone’s specific rights including the marginalised and the vulnerable.

“And as if God hadn’t given the man enough rare qualities — he had both a wonderful singing voice and the wits to know when to close out a long night in song and send us all home on a high note.”

The Fiji Labour Party said that as the great-great-grandson of Ratu Seru Cakobau — one of Fiji’s most significant figures — and the grandson of King George Tupou II of Tonga, “Ratu Epeli was undoubtedly a scion of royal lineage”.

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

A French senator walked into the Luxembourg Palace, opened his mouth, and basically set the whole room on fire. Politely. In a suit.

Claude Malhuret didn’t yell nor wave his arms. He just listed things… calmly, methodically, like a doctor reading a very long and very depressing diagnosis.

And by the time he was done, the entire Trump administration had been reduced to a punchline that wasn’t even trying to be funny.

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He started with an apology. Why? Because a year ago, he said, he had compared Trump’s presidency to Nero’s Court. He was wrong.

“It’s the miracle court,” he corrected himself on Friday.

And then he started naming names.

A former heroin addict running the Ministry of Health. A climate skeptic in charge of the economy. A TV host with a drinking problem commanding the armed forces. A lobbyist who used to work for Qatar now sitting as Attorney General. A woman who openly admires Putin in charge of national intelligence.

‘Clown in a palace’
Malhuret quoted a Turkish proverb for the occasion… “When a clown settles in a palace, he does not become king — it is the palace that becomes a circus.”

Nobody needed to ask who or what he meant. They just smiled.

And you know what? He wasn’t even being cruel. He was just being truthful and very accurate. Which, somehow, made it worse.

Then came the part that made people’s jaws drop a little.

Every time the Epstein files resurface, he said, bombs go off somewhere in the world. A new military strike. A fresh crisis.

Convenient timing. Every single time.

Malhuret didn’t call it a conspiracy. He just pointed at the pattern and let everyone draw their own conclusions.

Gulf investments
The US$400 million Boeing jet from Qatar got a mention. The Gulf investments. The stock market moves that only a small circle of insiders seemed to profit from.

Any one of these, Malhuret said, would have triggered impeachment proceedings in France.

“But we are not here,” he added. “We are in MAGA’s America.”

Here’s what makes this 5 minute speech different from the usual political noise. Malhuret didn’t just wave his hands and say “America bad.” He went person by person, scandal by scandal, conflict by conflict — and built a picture so complete that by the end of it, you couldn’t really argue with any individual piece without defending the whole rotten structure.

It’s the kind of speech American senators could give. If they wanted to. If they weren’t so busy trying not to offend anyone.

The world is watching. While Americans debate whether the speech was fair or too harsh or whatever, the rest of the planet has already formed its opinion.

One man. One very powerful seat. And a world that keeps catching fire while everyone argues about the Epstein files — which, funny enough, never quite get released fully, do they?

“Trump, the Mar-a-Lago golfer, is the only bull in the world who walks around with his own china shop. When a clown takes over the Palace, he doesn’t become King. It’s the Palace that becomes a circus”

French senator Claude Malhuret once again nails it. You won’t hear a better… pic.twitter.com/q2mpL7XFtK

— Alex Taylor (@AlexTaylorNews) March 27, 2026

Who is in charge of this war: Israel or the United States?

One side believes Israel lured Trump into a trap from which he cannot extricate himself. The tail is wagging the dog.

• READ MORE: US-Israeli war on Iran widens with first attack from Yemen
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The other believes that the US, as the world’s sole military super-power, is the one that writes the geo-strategic script. If Israel acts, it is only because it serves Washington’s interests as well. The dog is wagging the tail.

Certainly, the idea that the tail, the client state of Israel, could be wagging the dog, the military juggernaut that is the US, seems, at best, counter-intuitive.

But then again, there is plenty of evidence that suggests advocates for the tail wagging the dog scenario may have a case.

They can point to the fact that Trump launched this war of choice on Iran despite winning the presidency on an “America First” platform in which he promised: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Rushed into war
His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, openly stated that the administration was rushed into war, finding itself apparently unable to restrain Israel from attacking Iran.

Joe Kent, Trump’s top counter-terrorism official, noted in his resignation letter that the administration “started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.

Addressing the Israeli Parliament last October, Trump appeared to confess to being under the thumb of the Israel lobby. As he praised himself for moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the illegally occupied city of Jerusalem, he repeatedly pointed to his most influential donor, the Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson, before observing: “I actually asked her once, I said, ‘So, Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more, the United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That means, that might mean, Israel, I must say.”

A video from 2001 shows Benjamin Netanyahu, now Israel’s Prime Minister, caught secretly on camera, telling a group of settlers: “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”

Former US president Barack Obama, who ran up against Netanyahu repeatedly as Obama tried and failed to limit the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements, thought the same.

In his 2020 autobiography, he wrote that the Israel lobby insisted that “there should be ‘no daylight’ between the US and Israeli governments, even when Israel took actions that were contrary to US policy.”

Any politician who disobeyed “risked being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election”.

Obscuring the relationship
But any rigid, binary way of framing the relationship between the US and Israel obscures more than it illuminates.

I addressed this issue in my 2008 book on Israeli foreign policy, titled Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iran, Iraq and the Plan to Remake the Middle East. My conclusion then, as now, was that the relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv was better understood in different terms: as the dog and the tail wagging each other.

What does that mean?

Israel is Washington’s most favoured client state. It must, therefore, operate within the “security” parameters for the Middle East laid down by the US.

In fact, part of Israel’s job — the reason it is such an important client state — is because it has, until now, been able to enforce those parameters on others in the region.

But the story is more complicated than that.

At the same time, Israel seeks to maximise its ability to influence those parameters in its own interests, chiefly by shaping military, political and cultural discourse in the United States, through the many levers available to it.

Mobilised by Zionist lobbies
Zionist lobbies, both Jewish and Christian, mobilise large numbers of ordinary people to support whatever Israel claims to be in both its and US interests.

Mega-donors like Adelson use their wealth to cajole and intimidate US politicians.

Think-tanks with murky funding write legislation on Israel’s behalf that US politicians wave through.

Legal organisations, again with opaque funding, weaponise the law to silence and bankrupt.

And media owners, all too often in Israel’s camp, mould the public mood to stigmatise as “antisemitism” anything that opposes Israeli excesses.

This makes for a very messy arrangement.

The trouble with the idea that the US simply dictates to Israel — rather than that the two are constantly bargaining over what constitutes their shared interests — becomes apparent the moment we consider the two-and-a-half-year genocide in Gaza.

Desire to ‘disappear’ Palestinians
Israel has long had a fervent desire to disappear the Palestinians, whether through ethnic cleansing or genocide.

It wants the whole of historic Palestine, and the Palestinians are an obstacle to the realisation of that goal. Should the opportunity arise, Israel is also keen to secure a Greater Israel that requires grabbing and annexing substantial territory from neighbours, particularly Lebanon and Syria — as it is doing again right now.

After the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, Israel seized on the chance to renew in earnest the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians it began in 1948, at the state’s founding.

It carpet-bombed Gaza, creating a “humanitarian crisis”, to force Egypt to open the floodgates into Sinai, where it hoped to drive the enclave’s population. Cairo refused.

As a result, Israel tried to increase the pressure by slaughtering and starving the people of Gaza. In legal terms, that constituted genocide.

But the idea that the US was deeply invested in Israel carrying out a genocide in Gaza, or directed that genocide, or had any particular interest in the genocide taking place, is hard to sustain.

Washington — first under Biden, then under Trump — gave Israel cover to carry out the mass slaughter of the Palestinian population, and armed and financed the genocide. But that is very different from it having a geostrategic interest in the mass slaughter.

Indifferent to Palestinians’ fate
Rather, the US is and always has been largely indifferent as to the fate of the Palestinians, so long as they are contained. They can be locked up permanently in occupation prisons.

Or ethnically cleansed to Sinai and Jordan. Or given a pretend statelet under a compliant dictator like Mahmoud Abbas. Or exterminated.

The US will bankroll whichever option Israel believes best serves its interests — so long as that “solution” can be sold by pro-Israel lobbies to western publics as a legitimate “response” to Palestinian “terrorism”.

What Israel could get away with changed on 7 October 2023. The US was prepared to approve Israel shifting from a policy of intermittently “mowing the lawn” in Gaza — short wrecking sprees — to the incremental levelling of the whole of Gaza.

In other words, Israel worked all its levers to persuade Washington that it was the right time for it to get away with genocide. It sold to the US the plan that Gaza could now be destroyed.

To present that as Washington’s plan is simply perverse. It was decisively Israel’s plan.

That doesn’t diminish in any way US responsibility for the genocide. It is fully complicit. It paid for the genocide. It armed the genocide. It must own it too.

Similar Iran war analysis
A similar analysis can be applied to the Iran war.

The US and Israel share the same larger policy towards Iran: they want it contained, weak, unable to exert influence. But they do so for slightly different reasons.

Israel demands to be regional hegemon in the Middle East, an invaluable client state with privileged access to Washington policymakers. Its supremacy and impunity, therefore, depend on Iran — its only plausible rival in the region — being as weak as possible and incapable of forging effective alliances with armed resistance groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Equally, Washington wants Israel unthreatened, leaving its ally free to project US imperial power into the Middle East.

But it has a more complex set of interests to consider. It needs to ensure that the Arab monarchies remain compliant, and it does so by both wielding a stick — threatening to unleash the attack dog of Israel on them should they disobey — and proffering a carrot — promising to shield them under its security umbrella against Iran so long as they stay loyal.

The ultimate goal is to guarantee unchallenged US control over the flow of oil and thereby the global economy.

In other words, the US has to weigh far more interests in how it deals with Iran than Israel does.

Effects on the global economy
Unlike Israel, Washington has to consider the effects of an attack on Iran on the global economy, to assess any impact on the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and protect against rival powers like China and Russia exploiting strategic missteps.

For those reasons, Washington has traditionally preferred maintaining a degree of stability in the region. Instability is very bad for business, as is being demonstrated only too clearly right now.

Israel, by contrast, regards its struggle against Iran in existential terms. Many in the Israeli cabinet view it as a religious war. They are not interested in simply containing Iran – a decades-old policy they believe has failed. They want Iran and its allies on their knees, or at least in so much chaos that they cannot pose any kind of challenge to Israeli regional hegemony.

That point was highlighted by Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s former national security adviser, this week in an interview with Jon Stewart. He cited recent comments to him by Israel’s former military intelligence lead on Iran, Danny Cintrinowicz, that Netanyahu’s aim is to “just break Iran, cause chaos”.

Why? “Because,” says Sullivan, “as far as they’re concerned, a broken Iran is less of a threat to Israel.”

In other words, Israel wants to engineer instability in Iran, which is sure to spread instability across the region.

Those two agendas, as should be clear by now, are not easily compatible. Which is why Netanyahu has spent decades working every lever at his disposal in Washington to create an appetite for war.

Had war been self-evidently in US interests, his efforts would have been superfluous.

Israel deployed its lobbies
Instead, Israel has had to deploy its lobbies, marshal its donors and recruit sympathetic columnists to slowly shift the public mood to the point where a war was conceivable rather than patently dangerous.

And most importantly of all, Israel nurtured an intimate, ideological alliance with the neocons — hawkish, zealously pro-Israel US officials — who long ago gained a foothold in the inner sanctums of Washington.

Each recent administration has been a cat-fight over whether the neocons or more “moderate” voices would win out. Under George W Bush, the neocons dominated, leading to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Israel’s short war on Lebanon in 2006, and a failed plan to expand the war to Syria and then Iran.

I documented all of this in Israel and the Clash of Civilisations.

Under Obama, the neocons were forced to take more of a back seat, which is why his administration was able to sign a nuclear deal with Iran that held until Trump ripped it up in 2018, during his first term as president. Biden, as with so much else, dithered.

In Trump’s second term, the neocons seem to be firmly back in charge, again weaving their mischief. The result — an illegal war on Iran — is likely to be a strategic catastrophe for the US, and a potential, if short-lived, victory for Israel.

So isn’t this the same as saying the tail wags the dog?

Sole repositories of power
No, not least because that assumes the visible realm of US politics — the President, the Congress, the two main political parties — are the sole repositories of power in the system.

Even in this visible sphere, support for Israel has dramatically waned since the Gaza genocide. As the illegal war on Iran grows ever more costly, both in treasure and lives, support for Israel among US voters is going to fall off a cliff.

Israel is for the first time a deeply partisan issue, dividing Democrats and Republicans, as well as a generational divide between the young and old. It is even splitting the MAGA base Trump depends on.

This political polarisation will continue to get much worse, ultimately freeing braver figures in US politics to start speaking out in franker terms about Israel’s nefarious role.

But power in the US isn’t just wielded at the formal, visible level. There is a permanent bureaucracy, with an institutional memory, that operates out of sight. We have gained brief glimpses of its covert operations from the work of Wikileaks, Julian Assange’s publishing platform for whistleblowers, and from Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who revealed illegal mass surveillance by the US state of its own citizens.

Both suffered serious consequences for their efforts to bring a little transparency to a profoundly corrupt system of secret power. Assange was locked away in a London high-security prison for many years as the US sought to extradite him on trumped-up “espionage” charges, while Snowden was forced into exile in Russia to evade arrest and long-term incarceration.

That bureaucracy — sometimes referred to as the Deep State, or the military-industrial complex — doesn’t play or fight fair. It doesn’t need to. It operates in the shadows.

Curtailing Israel’s influence
Were it to so choose, it could undermine the Israel lobby, and thereby curtail Israel’s influence over the visible realm of US politics.

It could effectively do to the leaders of the lobby — AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Zionist Organisation of America, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, Christians United for Israel, and others — what it did to Assange and Snowden.

It could, for example, influence public discourse to begin questioning whether these groups are really serving US interests or acting as foreign agents. That would, in turn, free up space for the media and legislators to call for tighter restrictions on these groups’ activities, requiring them to register as such.

The permanent bureaucracy is doubtless capable of doing much darker, underhand things too.

The fact that it hasn’t chosen to do any of this yet suggests Israel’s goals are not seen so far to be significantly in conflict with US goals.

But that could be about to change. In fact, the current, all-too-public debates about Israel driving the US into a war against Iran — an idea already seeping into popular consciousness — may be the first salvoes in the battle to come.

If the war on Iran turns out to be a catastrophic misstep, as it gives every appearance of being, there will be a price to pay — and leading US politicians are likely to scramble to shift the blame on to Israel. It may be that they are already getting in their excuses.

The all-too-visible freedom Israel has enjoyed in Washington to buy, bully and silence could soon become a central liability. It will not be hard to argue that a system so clearly open to manipulation that the US could be bounced into a self-sabotaging war needs to be remade, to prevent any repeat of such a disaster.

This may be the biggest lesson Washington learns from the war on Iran. That it is time to stop the tail wagging so vigorously.

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 on the author’s Substack and reepublished with permission.

The Middle East is in flames. Britain is being dragged into an illegal war, the aims of which are entirely unclear, reports Richard Sanders of Double Down News.

“It’s a war of choice, and the man who chose it is Benjamin Netanyahu. Why, yet again, is the West dancing to Israel’s tune?

“I’ve made a number of videos exposing Israeli crimes. This one is different. It’s directed at conservatives and people generally who support the state of Israel.

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“I believe our indulgence of Israel is not just morally wrong. It’s against the interests of the US and the UK and ultimately against the interests of Israel itself.

“It is leading us all to disaster. Palestine is the place you come thundering, crashing into the buffers, the limits of the Western liberal moral imagination.

“The tragedy and complexity of Israel is that it’s both a product of the most unspeakable racism and a cause of it. Zionism was born from the suffering of Jewish people in Europe, culminating in the Holocaust, from a desire for a safe haven, a territory where Jews would for once be the hosts and not the eternal guests.

“It was framed as a return to a historic biblical homeland. and for its supporters. These two factors give it an entirely different complexion morally from other enterprises where predominantly European populations have settled far-flung parts of the world.

Dispossession and subjugation
“There’s no doubt that the Zionist dream has enormous emotional power. The problem, of course, is the other side of the equation, the people. It was inflicted upon the Palestinians whose experience of dispossession and subjugation was no different from that of countless other peoples subjected to European colonialism.

“In fact, arguably, it’s been considerably worse than many, precisely because of the licence and indulgence granted to the Israeli state.

“Let’s lay out the bold, indisputable facts. In 1948, more than 80 percent of the Palestinian population of what became Israel fled their homes. Now, if you want to believe this was not an act of deliberate ethnic cleansing, fine.

“What’s undeniable is that they were never allowed to return. In 1947, they were there. In 1949, they were not. The granting of the vote to that small fragment of the Palestinian population that remained provided a democratic fig leaf for the new state, one that was blown away once the Israelis occupied Gaza and the West Bank in 1967.

The End of Israel                                     Documentary: Double Down News

“There Palestinians have no right to vote for the political entity, the state of Israel that controls their lives. Jewish settlers, on the other hand, occupying the same territory do.

“Even in East Jerusalem, which as far as the Israeli government is concerned has been formally annexed to Israel, Palestinians cannot vote. Political rights depend upon ethnicity. That is not democracy.

“Israel is and has always been a state whose defining feature is that it’s structured to ensure the domination of one ethnicity over another. What else does the term a Jewish state mean?

‘Elephant in the room’
“This is the elephant in the room. the simple, blindingly obvious, undeniable fact that the Western political media class has decided that we must never mention or acknowledge, despite the fact that all of the world’s leading human rights organisations, including the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, have denounced Israel as an apartheid state.

“Now scour the history of the modern world. No people has ever resigned itself to being second class citizens in their own country. Spend just 10 minutes at a checkpoint in the West Bank and you get it.

“The disfiguring dehumanisation, the humiliation of elderly men and women forced to stand in the sun for hours waiting for 18-year-olds to search them.

“The brutalisation of young men in particular, the daily control of rage that is the lot of every Palestinian. It is simply emotionally, psychologically intolerable.”

• Watch the full Double Down News video

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: An Israeli court has closed an investigation into the death of Walid Ahmad, a 17-year-old from the occupied West Bank who died in an Israeli jail six months after he was arrested, held without charges and accused of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.

An autopsy showed Ahmad likely starved to death after suffering extreme weight loss, muscle wasting and untreated scabies. Human rights groups say nearly 100 Palestinians have died in Israeli jails since October 2023.

Meanwhile, local and international media outlets report Israeli forces recently tortured a Palestinian toddler in Gaza to coerce a confession from his father.

• READ MORE: Trump talks up deal with Tehran as Iranian missile, drone attacks continue
• Other US-Israeli attacks on Iran, Palestine genocide

According to reports from Palestine TV, Al Jazeera and others, the child’s father, Osama Abu Nassar, was detained near the al-Maghazi refugee camp after he came under fire from Israeli soldiers.

He was forced to approach an Israeli checkpoint, where he was separated from his 18-month-old son, stripped naked and forced to watch as soldiers used a cigarette to burn one of the toddler’s legs while using a nail to puncture the other.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as a new UN report warns Israel is systematically torturing Palestinians on a scale that “suggests collective vengeance and destructive intent”.The report, titled “Torture and Genocide”, was written by Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.

In July, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on her over her report naming dozens of companies she says are profiting from Israeli occupation and genocide in Gaza. Amnesty International blasted the sanctions as a “shameless and transparent attack on the fundamental principles of international justice”. Francesca Albanese’s new book is When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine. She joins us from Geneva, Switzerland.

Francesca, thank you so much for being with us. Why don’t you lay out what you found in your new report, “Torture and Genocide,” that you just presented at the U.N. Human Rights Council?

Torture and Genocide — a new UN report.     Video: Democracy Now!

Transcript

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Thank you. Thank you, Amy and Nermeen.

I’ve been investigating genocide for over two years now. So, five out of eight reports I’ve produced for the United Nations focus on genocide, acts of genocide, the context in which a genocide happens, why the genocide is not stopped, the layers of complicity from states and private companies, which is the reason why also I’m sanctioned by the United States, against which now my 13-year-old daughter, who’s an American citizen, is the only one to take action suing the Trump administration.

But of all the investigations I’ve carried out, this has been absolutely the most excruciating, that led me to say that Israel uses torture in a systematic and widespread fashion, intentionally and sadistically, to break the spirit of the Palestinians, not just as individuals, but as a people, considering the scale and intensity of torture.

And I monitored torture behind bars, collecting hundreds, hundreds of testimonies, directly and from Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, but also analyzing what experts call torturous environment, meaning the cumulative impact of all the practices, of all the crimes that Israel has massively inflicted on the Palestinians — again, beyond the torture, sodomisation, raping in jail, the enforced disappearance, which is touching 4000 people.

This is new. This is a new crime, including for Israel, toward the Palestinians. But also starvation, constant forced displacement, not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and home demolition, the fear of being always threatened with death or other crimes, it creates a torturous environment for the Palestinians, which is an essential element of genocide.

And it is genocide.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Francesca, if you could elaborate on this point that you’ve just made and that you make in the report, namely, that torture has effectively become state policy for Israel since October 2023? So, what are the kinds of transformations you’ve seen, both in terms of Israeli security personnel, as well as settlers, against the Palestinians?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, I have to say that what I’ve investigated is something on which even the United Nations Committee Against Torture and the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on Israel/Palestine had shed light already, the fact that Israel, after October 7, has massively used torture to punish the Palestinians vindictively.

In fact, the concept of torture has become a state policy is something that the Committee Against Torture found out recently.

I have zoomed in: What does it mean, and where does it come from? Surely, one of the main engineers or architects of this, what’s been called — what he has called the “prison revolution,” is Itamar Ben-Gvir, was — immediately after October 7, has declared that the Palestinians in jail will not be afforded luxury treatment or five-star treatment anymore, as if it was a five-star hotel, what the Israeli prison system afforded Palestinians before October 7.

By the way, in 2023, in July 2023, I produced a report showing how widespread and systemic was the arbitrary treatment of Palestinian detainees, so, just to give a context.

But the conditions have become more and more brutal, and intentionally so. What does it mean? Palestinians have routinely been abducted — I mean, detained without charge or trial. They’ve been arrested, because Palestinians, if they were specific professionals, like journalists and doctors or headed medical personnel, all the more.

Seventeen hundred Palestinian healthcare personnel have been killed. Hundreds remain in jail. And they have been shackled, blindfolded, beaten, humiliated, stripped naked, photographed, filmed, exposed to Israeli civilians, including settlers, coming in to document and to film, to participate into this orgy of depravity, of how a person can be humiliated.

But the most painful, excruciating thing — and I’ve read some of the testimonies — is how Palestinian women and men have been sodomised, have been raped, with bottles, with knives, with metal rods. Even the prisoner who was sodomised through — was raped with a knife, brought to the hospital.

Five Israeli officials were identified and pressed charged against, and now the charges have been dropped. And the person who leaked the video from within the military apparatus is under house arrest on top of it.

So, not only that I’ve documented the vindictiveness toward the Palestinians, the humiliation, the continuous abuses against them in jail, really to break their spirit once and for all as a people, but also the fact that there has been almost something celebratory against the mistreatment of Palestinians in jail among the society.

The legislative power, the Knesset, has been discussing the right to rape Palestinians, and so other members of the executive. The judiciary has not looked into it. And as I said, even those who were found, caught on video, committing this crime were released.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesca, in this last 30 seconds, what are you calling for?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Oh, for justice. Justice. Israel must be stopped, because, Amy, I can’t even use the past tense. As we speak, there are still over 9000 Palestinian hostages, hostages to an unlawful occupation in Israeli jail.

The only thing this — International Court of Justice has spoken. Israel must withdraw the occupation, the troops, the colonies. And the exploitation of Palestinian resources must end.

Meanwhile, the settlers continue to terrorise people. Very few Israelis are engaged against this. So member states must intervene, cut ties and stop weapons transfers to Israel once and for all, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesco Albanese, we thank you so much for being with us, UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory. We’ll link to your report, “Torture and Genocide,” and have you back on to talk about your book.

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

A rift within French Polynesia’s ruling Tavini Huiraatira party has widened this week, pitting the leadership “old guard” against a younger generation embodied by the territory’s President, Moetai Brotherson.

The main reason for the rift is the outcome of the recent French municipal elections, especially in the capital city of Pape’ete.

Since the Tavini party came back to power after the 2023 territorial elections, Brotherson brought with him a new wave of young MPs, who sometimes were questioning the traditional political line.

• READ MORE: Other French Polynesian reports

This was often regarded as “radical” (in favour of a quick independence process), defended by the party’s iconic 81-year-old president Oscar Temaru and his close associates, including Territorial Assembly Speaker Antony Géros.

At the recent municipal elections, Géros was one of the most symbolic of Tavini casualties. He lost his stronghold city of Paea at the first round of votes to pro-autonomy Tapura Huiraatira leader Tepuaraurii Teriitahi, who secured more than 50 percent of the votes, making it unnecessary to hold a second round of polls.

Even though Temaru was re-elected Lord Mayor in his stronghold of Faa’a at the first round, other Tavini-held municipalities also suffered significant setbacks.

But it was in Pape’ete that the divisions between the two Tavini antagonistic trends materialised most visibly.

Two Tavini candidates
While no Tavini member was in a position to claim the lead (the new Lord Mayor remains an “autonomist”, in favour of continuing the current relationship with France under an “Autonomy” status), there were two Tavini candidates and lists — one officially endorsed by the party, under the name of Tauhiti Nena, who secured 11.03 percent of the votes.

The other was not officially endorsed but it fared much better. It was led by 25-year-old Tematai Le Gayic and received 23.3 percent of the vote.

Since the kick-start of the municipal elections campaign, Le Gayic’s list (Tutahi ia Pape’ete) was openly backed by Brotherson.

In his already long political career, despite his young age, Le Gayic’s was French Polynesia’s representative MP (2022-2024). He was once known for being the youngest French MP ever elected in the French National Assembly.

This week, the debate is now out in the open, sparking a controversy between the two antagonistic Tavini trends.

Adding fuel to fire, in an open letter to Temaru earlier this week, widely publicised through social networks, he announced his decision to leave Tavini and, as a member of the Territorial Assembly, will from now on sit as an independent member.

Family business
Brotherson reacted to the decision, saying Le Gayic’s move was a “responsible” decision.

Brotherson also belongs to the Tavini Huiraatira, a party led by his father-in-law Temaru (Brotherson’s wife, Teura, is Temaru’s daughter).

Since 2023, other young, newly-elected Tavini MPs had already voiced their questions about the party political line.

This was the case of Hinamoeura Cross-Morgant, a young female MP who has tried to get a few bills tabled in the Assembly.

She was later subjected to sanctions from the party, ranging from suspension to outright eviction.

Since then, she has been sitting as an independent MP.

Reactions from the other side (pro-autonomy) of the political spectrum were also swift.

Nicole Sanquer, who heads “A Here Ia Porinetia” party (and leader of the opposition in the current Assembly), said there were many subjects of discord within the Tavini Huiraatira which were never addressed.

“What we’re expecting now is the creation of a new group within the Assembly. You ask me, I call this the beginning of a political crisis”, she told local media.

Brotherson ‘not surprised’
Brotherson, 56, regarded as a moderate, favours a non-confrontational approach to the independence subject, vis-à-vis France.

He said the recent municipal election results were “catastrophic” and that the Tavini party he belongs to was now disconnected from reality.

He said he was not surprised at Le Gayic’s resignation.

“It was predictable. Tematai Le Gayic has been asking for Tavini’s support for months in his bid to contest (the municipal elections) in Pape’ete.

“He’s not the first one and unfortunately I think he won’t be the last if the party doesn’t react.”

“You don’t win elections through posturing,” he added, stressing the need to stay in touch with bread-and-butter issues when it comes to elections, especially municipal ones.

“Because voters simply don’t feed on ideology.”

He warned that as new territorial polls will take place in 2028, if the Tavini does not address the issue, it would face more “explosive” results and setbacks.

Speaking to local media Tahiti Nui Television on the recent municipal election results, Temaru admitted a few “tactical and strategic mistakes”.

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

COMMENTARY: By Eman Hillis

Displaced from my home in northern Gaza, I sit reading reports of the Iran war as my little sister, 6, struggles to walk across the room. Two months into the ceasefire, an Israeli soldier shot her in the head.

On my phone, a video of US politician Tommy Tuberville criticising the Iranian regime for “treating women like dogs” plays.

Another follows, showing Matt Schlapp suggesting the girls killed in a school bombing in Iran are better dead than living a “barbaric life”. To top it all, Israel celebrated International Women’s Day in Persian, posting an AI video of fake US, Israeli, and Iranian women frolicking together.

• READ MORE: US demands Iran accept ‘defeat’ as Tehran rejects talks, vows to fight on
• Epstein cabal play games with human lives in Iran while grasping for unearned riches
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Watching these statements and videos from Gaza, where women have been subjected to relentless violence throughout the more than two-year genocide, the sudden concern for women’s rights is difficult to take seriously.

I was among the hundreds of thousands of women displaced by Israel in Gaza. I experienced the suffering that Israel, backed by the US, subjected us to, and watched other women endure.

One month before the third US veto of a proposed ceasefire in Gaza, a sudden midnight strike hit the apartment next to where I was sheltering in Khan Younis. Human remains were scattered about — half of one man’s body was hanging on what had been a window on the seventh floor, the other half on a bus in the street.

No women were killed, but I watched them weep for loved ones, denied the chance to mourn them or even gather and bury the remains.

Fleeing women dragged children
The tanks then rushed in. Dozens of women, children, and men ran through the street — some women still weeping for those who had just been killed. Most of them dragged two or more children by the hand.

I was running with a woman who held a baby she had given birth to one week earlier, crying and gasping for breath. The tanks were advancing toward us, firing shells at a hospital nearby, while drones above us strafed us indiscriminately.

The violence did not stop with the killings and displacements. Israel made life even more miserable for women, without using missiles. It cut off water, then prohibited the entry of sanitary pads and painkillers, turning women’s periods into a living hell.

Israel’s policy of starving Gaza has raised miscarriage rates among women to 300 percent.

Israeli soldiers set dogs on Palestinian women, assaulted pregnant mothers, and threatened them with rape — all of this with US support and under the protection of six US vetoes.

“Terrorist organisations have brought disaster upon you,” was one of the most common statements that Israeli leaflets repeated in Gaza and Lebanon before launching a brutal attack on a certain area. The line was often followed by “for your safety, leave the place” or “the IDF has no intention of harming you”.

The language is moral and protective, suggesting the action about to follow is a “rescue mission,” not an act of war.

US uses similar rhetoric
The US has long used similar rhetoric to justify its political ambitions abroad. In Iraq, it claimed to be saving the international community from “weapons of mass destruction.”

It claimed to be saving civilians from oppression by “terrorist organisations” when it backed Israel in its wars against Palestine and Lebanon.

In Afghanistan, the US-led invasion was often justified from a “feminist” lens to “rescue” women oppressed by the Taliban.

Now, the same strategy is being deployed against Iran. Women’s rights are weaponised as a pretext for airstrikes, sanctions, and military invasion.

Hundreds of Iranian women, including pregnant mothers, have been killed in US and Israeli strikes. Hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed, displacing millions of women and their loved ones within the country.

This is not to suggest that Iranian women enjoy full rights in their country, but feminism cannot be achieved through bombs.

This US and Israeli rhetoric contradicts a fundamental principle of feminism. By assuming that women are unable to fight and speak up for their rights, they deny women’s right of self-determination.

Struggling to address women’s rights
Notably, the same governments that attempt to act as the “saviours” of women struggle to address women’s rights at home. Israel, which struggles to curb incidents of sexual harassment against women, has been commodifying female soldiers to garner public sympathy during the Gaza war.

Meanwhile, one in five women in the US has experienced completed or attempted rape in their lifetime.

For women who have lived through US and Israeli wars, claims of defending Iranian women ring hollow.

The blood of more than 16,000 Palestinian women killed during the two-year genocide has not yet dried, yet the US and Israel present themselves as the guardians of women’s rights.

Those who kill and oppress other women cannot claim to defend women’s rights elsewhere. True feminism cannot defend the humanity of women in one place and ignore it in another.

Eman Hillis is a Gaza-based journalist and fact-checker reporting on war and disinformation from the ground during Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This article was first published by The New Arab.

Anti-apartheid campaigner Terry Bell has died at the age of 84. A lifelong activist, journalist, and educator, Bell’s life was defined by his unwavering commitment to justice and democracy.

His early journalism career spanned several South African newspapers, where he also helped found the non-racial South African Journalists’ Union.

Bell was deeply involved in underground activism, editing the clandestine publication Combat. Detained under the 90-day law in 1964, he fled into exile in Zambia the following year. There, he worked as chief reporter for the Times of Zambia before being granted asylum in the UK.

• READ MORE: Terry Bell, struggle stalwart and journalist of ‘impeccable principles’, dies at 84

In London, he studied international affairs, edited Anti-Apartheid News, and worked at the Daily Worker.

Bell’s activism took him across continents, from Zambia to New Zealand, where he helped launch the Anti-Apartheid Movement in 1972.

In 1979, he and his wife, Barbara, established the primary division of Somafco in Tanzania, drafting the ANC’s first primary school curriculum. Disillusioned by abuses within the ANC, the Bells resigned in 1982 and later supported striking miners in Britain.

Returning to South Africa in 1991, Bell settled in Cape Town, choosing not to rejoin the ANC. Instead, he advocated for democratic socialism, urging citizens to “Vote ANC, but build a socialist alternative”.

From 1992, he edited Africa Analysis and contributed incisive labour columns to Business Report, Fin24, and City Press.

He was also a regular contributor to Radio 786’s programming, and was a staunch voice advocating for the rights of Palestinians.

His writing combined sharp analysis with a deep empathy for workers and marginalised communities. Bell remained a freelance journalist and commentator until his final years, never ceasing to challenge injustice.

Terry Bell’s life reminds us that resistance, even in exile, can shape nations and inspire generations.

Republished from Radio 786 in Cape Town, South Africa.

Tributes are pouring in from across the region for “fearless” and “formidable” Vanuatu journalist Dan McGarry, who died on Wednesday.

McGarry, 62, fell ill after a trip to Papua New Guinea earlier this month, from where he had to be evacuated to Brisbane to undergo a heart bypass.

But he faced complications during his recovery and had remained in critical care for the past few weeks.

• READ MORE: Dan McGarry’s articles on Asia Pacific Report
• OCCRP mourns the loss of Dan McGarry, pioneering Pacific editor and investigative journalist

McGarry, who was a former editor of Vanuatu’s only national newspaper, the Vanuatu Daily Post, and Pacific editor of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) at the time of his death, has left behind his wife and children.

“It’s with great heartbreak that I have to announce that the legendary Dan McGarry passed away earlier today,” Aubrey Belford, who was a co-editor with McGarry at OCCRP, said in a Facebook post.

“Dan was an absolutely dominating presence in Pacific journalism and in the region more generally.

“Dan was compassionate, sharing, and always motivated by a sense of justice and the common good. He was driven but also understood the importance of patience, friendship, and community.

‘A shell or more of kava’
“When home in Vanuatu he loved nothing more than finishing his day with a shell or more of kava, satisfied in the knowledge he had found his place in the world.”

Belford added McGarry’s loss was devastating not just for his family but for all journalists working in the region.

“He will be missed, and he will never be replaced.”

Another friend and colleague, Andrew Gray, said McGarry was “a good man”.

“After a hard life he finally found happiness in Vanuatu, and he did a lot more for the country than people appreciate. Last time I saw him he was planning his retirement at Lalwori.

“Condolences to Line McGarry Watsivi and their daughters.”

InsidePNG described McGarry as “more than just a colleague, a titan of regional journalism and a tireless advocate for the truth”.

‘Wealth of experience’
“As the former editor of the Vanuatu Daily Post, he brought a wealth of experience and a fearless spirit to every project he touched. Dan was absolutely instrumental in the birth of our investigative centre in Port Moresby.

“He didn’t just help set the foundation, he guided and mentored InsidePNG through our most critical work, building a lasting connection with our team that went far beyond professional duty,” the news outlet said in a social media post.

Kiribati journalist Rimon Rimon, who worked with McGarry, described him as “one of the brilliant minds I had the privilege of working closely with in our OCCRP investigations!”

The University of the South Pacific’s head of journalism associate professor Dr Shailendra Singh said McGarry’s passing is “profoundly felt across the Pacific media community, where his contributions as journalist, trainer and mentor have made a lasting impact”.

“He will be greatly missed. My thoughts are with his loved ones during this difficult time.”

RNZ Pacific manager Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor said McGarry’s presence would be missed.

“Dan McGarry was one of the best – a champion of the truth.”

Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie said: “Vale Dan McGarry. A stunning loss to investigative journalism and media courage and integrity in Vanuatu and the Pacific. A friend and mentor to all.

“Farewell Dan and many thanks for your inspiration and mentoring. Deepest condolences to whānau. RIP.”

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

Political leaders and institutions have paid tributes for Lionel Jospin, the “father” of the 1998 Nouméa Accord, who died at the weekend aged 88.

Jospin was a socialist prime minister who played a significant role in supervising the signature of the 1998 Accord, which paved the way for increased autonomy for the French Pacific territory.

Ten years after the signing of the 1988 Matignon-Oudinot agreements which contributed to restoring civil peace after half a decade of quasi civil war, the Nouméa agreement was more focused on furthering the process.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Its emphasis was to ensure a gradual transfer of more powers from Paris to Nouméa, the creation of a local “collegial” government, the setting up of three provinces (North, South and Loyalty islands) and the notion of “re-balancing” resources between the North of New Caledonia (mostly populated by the indigenous Kanak population) and the South of the main island, Grande Terre, where most of the economic power and population are based.

There was also the embryonic concept of a New Caledonia “citizenship”. One of the cornerstones of this re-balancing was the construction of the Koniambo nickel processing factory, in the North of the main island.

But the project is now dormant after its key financier, Glencore, decided to mothball the plant due to a mix of structural cost issues and the rise of other global nickel players, especially in Indonesia.

In 1988, the Matignon Accord was negotiated and signed by then French Socialist PM Michel Rocard.

Agreement signed
A decade later, it was under Jospin that the Nouméa agreement was signed between pro-France leader Jacques Lafleur and pro-independence umbrella leaders, including Roch Wamytan (Union Calédonienne).

The Nouméa Accord also designed a pathway and envisaged that a series of three referendums should be held to consult the local population on whether they wished for New Caledonia to become independent.

The three referendums were held between 2018 and 2021.

Although the pro-independence FLNKS called for a boycott of the third referendum in December 2021, the three results were deemed to have resulted in three refusals of the independence.

Since then, under the Accord, political stakeholders have attempted to meet in order to decide what to do under the new situation.

Since July 2025 and later in January 2026, negotiations took place and produced a series of the texts since referred to as “Bougival” and “Elysée-Oudinot”.

But the FLNKS has rejected the proposed agreements, saying this was a “lure” of independence and only purported to make New Caledonia a “State” within the French realm, with an associated “nationality” for people who were already French citizens.

Celebrated accord preamble
One of the most celebrated passages of the Nouméa Accord is its preamble, which officially recognises the “lights” and “shadows” of French colonisation.

The approval of the 1998 text came as a result of tense negotiations between the pro-independence FLNKS and, at the time, the pro-France RPCR was the only force defending the notion of New Caledonia remaining part of France.

RPCR has since split into several breakaway parties.

FLNKS has also split since the riots that broke out in May 2024, materialising a divide between the largest party Union Calédonienne (now regarded as more radical) and the moderate PALIKA and UPM pro-independence parties.

In 1998, some of Jospin’s key advisers were Christian Lataste and Alain Christnacht, who later served as High Commissioners of France in New Caledonia.

“He was someone who was negotiating, was discussing and who respected his interlocutors and the Kanak civilisation,” Nouméa Accord signatory Roch Wamytan told local public broadcaster NC la 1ère.

‘Obtaining solutions’
“He also had this method for obtaining solutions and a consensus, out of a contradictory debate”.

PALIKA party (still represented by one signatory, Paul Néaoutyine) also paid homage to Jospin, saying they would remember the late French leader as a “statesman”, a “man of his word” who managed to foster a “historic compromise”.

“Through the Nouméa Accord, he managed to see the realities of colonial history and open the way for emancipation,” the party stated in a release.

“The historic (Nouméa) accord was a major step in (New Caledonia’s) decolonisation and re-balancing process,” New Caledonia’s government said in an official release on Tuesday.

“It allowed to set the foundations of a common destiny between (New Caledonia’s communities, founded on the recognition of the Kanak identity and the sharing of skills”, the release went on, stressing the importance of a “climate of dialogue, respect and responsibility, which are essential for New Caledonia’s institutional and political construction”.

‘One of its greatest’ — Macron
In mainland France, tributes have also poured from all sides of the political spectrum.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed “a great French destiny”.

“France is aware it has lost one of its greatest leaders,” former French President François Hollande wrote on social networks.

Manuel Valls, who was Overseas State Minister between December 2024 and late 2025, said as a young adviser in the late 1980s and later on, he had been inspired by both PMs Michel Rocard and Lionel Jospin when he was fostering negotiations and the resumption of talks between New Caledonia’s antagonist politicians in 2025.

The Nouméa Accord is still deemed valid until a new document is officially enshrined in the French Constitution.

Attempts to translate the Bougival-Elysée-Oudinot into a constitutional amendment are still underway in the coming days, this time through debates at the French National Assembly (Lower House), with a backdrop of parliamentary divisions and the notable absence of any conclusive majority.

In February 2026, the French Senate endorsed a Constitutional amendment bill to enshrine the project into the French Constitution.

But the text now required another endorsement from the Lower House, the National Assembly, and later another green light, this time from the National Assembly, then both Houses of the French Parliament (the Senate and the National Assembly, in a joint sitting of the French “Congress”.

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York, joined by, for the first time in six years except for yesterday, Juan González, also in New York. It’s great to be with you again, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Thanks, Amy. And welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.

As the US and Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran enters its 25th day, President Trump is claiming that Iran has begun negotiations with the United States, but the Iranian government has dismissed the claim as “fake news”, accusing Trump of trying to manipulate financial and oil markets.

Over the weekend, Trump threatened to, quote, “obliterate” Iranian power plants if Iran did not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz by Monday night. But on Monday, Trump reversed course, extended his deadline to five days and repeatedly claimed the US was now in productive conversations with Iran.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “With Iran, we’ve been negotiating for a long time. And this time, they mean business. And it’s only because of the great job that our military did, is the reason they mean business. They want to settle, and we’re going to get it done, I hope.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Earlier in the day, President Trump claimed he might personally take joint control of the Strait of Hormuz with Iran’s next ayatollah.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “It will be jointly controlled.”

REPORTER: “By whom?”

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “Maybe me. Maybe me.”

REPORTER: “You want the United States to be in control of the Strait of Hormuz?”

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “Me and the ayatollah, whoever the ayatollah is, whoever the next ayatollah — look, and there’ll also be a form of a — a very serious form of a regime change.

“Now, in all fairness, everybody has been killed from the regime. They’re really starting off. There’s automatically a regime change.

“But we’re dealing with some people that I find to be very reasonable, very solid. The people within know who they are. They’re very respected.

“And maybe one of them will be exactly what we’re looking for. Look at Venezuela, how well that’s working out. We are doing so well in Venezuela with oil and with the relationship between the president-elect and us. And maybe we find somebody like that in Iran.”

AMY GOODMAN: Despite Trump’s claims of US-Iran negotiations, US Central Command says US forces, “continue to aggressively strike,” Iran.

Meanwhile, Iran has retaliated by striking other Gulf nations and Israel. Israeli officials said Iran has launched seven missile barrages since midnight, targeting Tel Aviv and other cities. The Israeli military said one of the missiles that hit Tel Aviv carried a 220-pound warhead. Israel’s Health Ministry said nearly 4800 people have been injured by Iran’s attacks on Israel since the war began.

We go now to London, where we’re joined by Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. His recent piece for Zeteo is headlined “Why Netanyahu Duped Trump Into the Illegal War With Iran.”

Well, Daniel Levy, thanks so much for being with us again. Why don’t you explain that headline?

DANIEL LEVY: Well, good to be with you, Amy and Juan.

Netanyahu himself and other Israeli leaders, although he’s been at the helm for much of the last three decades, have, during an awfully long period, told us Iran is at the precipice of becoming a nuclear power.

By the way, we should always remind ourselves, Israel is the only nuclear-armed state in the region. But they’ve been telling us, “It’s imminent. We have to act now.” And they’ve been trying to pull successive American presidents into that war, to launch such a military campaign.

They’ve never succeeded. You have had American presidents across the decades, from whichever party has been in power, who have created an extremely indulgent, permissive environment for Israel in the region, and in particular when it comes to Israel’s consistent war crimes against the Palestinians.

What you have not had is a president who could be led into this kind of a military operation. And we’re seeing right now, in almost the last month of this war, precisely why. But this president is made of different stuff, less serious stuff, apparently, and Netanyahu saw his opportunity.

But the reason, I think, why this was of such significance for Netanyahu is we are in a new era. It’s not an era of a Pax Americana with — alongside all that indulgence of Israel, there were still certain brake mechanisms. This time, Israel sees us in an era of what I would call a Pax Greater Israel.

This is about how far Israel can extend its dominion, how much of a hard-power, dominant hegemon it can be in the region, seizing parts of Syria or of Lebanon, trying to finish an eradicationist approach to the Palestinians. And crucially, to do that, you have to weaken Iran militarily, to remove some kind of deterrent.

You can only do that with the US, so you need to pull the US into this war. If that means further accelerating American decline and even accelerating Israel’s loss of support in America, then it’s a price to pay. It’s kind of “use it or lose it,” because those things are happening anyway.

In saying all of this, I don’t want to suggest that America has no agency in this. There are things to do with the Trump administration, the neocons, the people who still have positions of influence in the US that have brought them into this. But that’s what Netanyahu is trying to achieve, to achieve Greater Israel, domination in the region, including the weakening of the Gulf, which is intentional, at the expense of America bleeding further reputational, political, economic assets in this war.

Trump’s ‘Israel First’ Iran War                       Video: Democracy Now!

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Daniel Levy, you’ve also written that, quote, “The idea that this is a war to serve American rather than Israeli interests resonates primarily in three spaces: the gullible, the true believers (especially of end times religious [thinking]), or those who are paid-up members of Israel’s echo chamber.” Could you elaborate?

DANIEL LEVY: Yes. I think there is a lot of attention being paid to this question of who does this serve. Now, you can make the case that you also have a US government that is locked into its own kind of logic of war.

You have, if I may suggest, a decline anxiety in the US. You have an attempt to reassert primacy and preponderance. I don’t think that is or can go well. You have Marco Rubio, for instance, telling the Europeans, “Join us in the next Western century of imperial domination.”

That can perhaps play out in the Western Hemisphere — the crime committed with the kidnapping of a leader in Venezuela, the illegal blockade on Cuba. But if you travel too far afield to find monsters to slay, and if you have an incoherent strategy and an incompetent administration implementing that strategy, then things are going to go very badly wrong, which was entirely predictable in this illegal war of choice launched by the US and Israel.

And therefore, if you look at this, and even if you factor in the attempt to assert American interest, this war would not have happened if Israel’s leader had not been there whispering in the president’s ear, making the case.

[There were] seven bilateral meetings in the first 13 months of the second Trump term between Trump and Netanyahu, two meetings in the eight weeks leading up to the launching of this illegal war, daily phone calls, we are told, now information coming out in The New York Times that the Mossad apparently bamboozled Americans with the idea that if you could decapitate some of the regime leadership, the Mossad could foment a coup on the streets, that you could arm Kurdish groups from the outside to take geographical parts of Iran to start dismantling the central state.

You really have to be, therefore, either extremely gullible, as I suggested, or a true believer that, well, this is high risk, but it’s worth it, because what maybe you’re ideologically committed to, the Greater Israel cause, maybe that comes from a place of evangelical dispensationalist belief in the end times, or you simply are part of an echo chamber whose wheels are greased very consistently.

And we see that play out over so many years in American politics. That’s what I’m suggesting. And I do think that the attempt to suggest this is more than Israel first, that somehow this serves America’s interest, are not going to go well, and Israel will pay a tremendous price for that over time.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you also — there appears to have been a shift in the last few days in how the Israeli government permits damage within Israel from Iranian attacks to be publicised by the press, because, clearly, during the first two weeks of the war, Israel essentially prevented any kind of images, from the US media especially, going out to the world.

Now, in the last few days, it’s almost as if Netanyahu and the government want their own people and the rest of the world to see some of this damage. I’m wondering your thoughts about this. Has there been a change in approach or tactics by the Israeli government?

DANIEL LEVY: So, I’m not so sure. I think it’s an interesting question to dwell upon. But what one might be seeing is an inability, and therefore a degradation of credibility if Israel tries to claim that none of this destruction is happening — in other words, an inability to prevent those images from coming out — when those strikes are now causing very significant damage. I don’t want to exaggerate that, either. I don’t think that is what causes this unnecessary war to come to an end.

But what one perhaps has to look to is, if you remember, early on in the war, one of the real questions, as this became a war of endurance, almost a war of attrition, was: Could the US and Israeli side sufficiently deplete Iran’s missile-launching capacity before Iran both sufficiently degraded the interception capacity on the Israeli and US side — so they have to be a bit more selective in terms of what they use the interceptors for, because they can’t take everything out and they are going to run out — and also Iran apparently holding back some of its heavier kit, because in its strategy, it assumed this could go on for a long time, and it had to have a plan for week one, week two, week three? And so, I think, to the extent to which we’re seeing more images, it is likely because that equation hasn’t played well for the US and Israel, and because we’re seeing more damage being done.

I think you have a war where Israel has a strategy. It’s an extremely ambitious overreach strategy in terms of not regime change, but regime collapse, state collapse, implosion, the dismantling of the Iranian state, where Iran has a strategy of escalating horizontally, testing American endurance and holding out and winning that way.

But I think you’d be really hard pushed to find a coherent strategy on the US side.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a clip of President Trump speaking to reporters about US aims in negotiations.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “No nuclear bomb, no nuclear weapon, not even close to it, low key on the missiles. We want to see peace in the Middle East. We want the nuclear dust.

“We’re going to want that, and I think we’re going to get that. We’ve agreed to that. … If this happens, it’s a great start for Iran to build itself back, and it’s everything that we want.

“And it’s also great for Israel, and it’s great for the other Middle Eastern countries.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, Daniel Levy, you are a former Israeli negotiator under two Israeli prime ministers. If you can respond to what he’s saying, and also to what Iran is saying, that the idea that there’s any negotiation going on is fake news intended to “manipulate financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire in which America and Israel are trapped,” said the speaker of Iran’s parliament?

DANIEL LEVY: So, there are a couple of things going on here, and I want to try and disentangle those. First of all, the question of: Are negotiations taking place? And what I think is very clear is that there are channels of communication via third countries.

Those have been available all the time. Partly, one has to understand that countries in the region, who were not a party to launching this war nor to the decision to go to war, who, in fact, cautioned against this war, in the Gulf and elsewhere, they are feeling tremendous blowback and taking hits from this war, and they are keen to bring it to an end.

There may be some who, for some reason, still believe America can do the job and that they should trust America’s competence and coherence in attempting to do so. I think most are not in that camp. They know the cost is too high, and they are experiencing daily what it means to rely on America for your security, and the answer is not good.

So, there are a number of states, also beyond that — Türkiye has been super active, Pakistan, for instance, Egypt — who are maintaining open channels with both parties and obviously sending messages, because, by the way, the whole world is suffering from this — higher fuel, food, fertiliser prices, etc. So there are active channels. Are they talking directly? I don’t know. I doubt it. But I also think it doesn’t matter very much.

What matters is the question you kind of raise there, Amy, which is: Are these talks, first of all, intended to produce an outcome? Was this another American deployment of diplomacy as a ruse?

We saw in the lead-up to this war that America played with negotiations, attempted that as a distraction, but actually intended to go for the military option. So, is this trying to buy some time while the US waits for a third aircraft carrier, more of your taxpayer dollars, to be deployed in the West Asia-Middle East region?

Was this a Monday-morning pre-stock market intervention on the part of the president? Because if there’s one thing he does pay attention to, it’s that. So, was he trying to calm the markets, give himself a few more days, or is this a serious attempt to chart a path to deescalation?

If it is the latter, then that would have to include an acknowledgment that in negotiations you have to listen to the other side. You have to take into account their interests. If you go in with maximalist positions, often designed by the worst elements of maximalism in your administration and by the Israelis intentionally trying to make sure that talks cannot succeed, then — guess what — the talks won’t succeed.

So, if you think you can impose on Iran in these talks things that you couldn’t achieve in your military assault or things that they weren’t willing to accept beforehand, then the talks are doomed to fail.

The one thing that may be working to our benefit is not who might host these talks. It’s certainly not the fact that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff might be involved, because that would be very bad news indeed, given their record of failure, if they’re the only people.

But the one piece of good news is that the loose and perhaps nonexistent relationship between what Trump says and the realities out there in the real world, that relationship means that Trump can claim what he likes, because what we’re probably looking for is three victory speeches, given in Tehran, Jerusalem and Washington, DC.

They won’t align. They won’t match up. But they might allow for a cessation and then for some of these issues to be addressed afterwards.

But as long as that doesn’t happen, we still have to contend with the fact that Israel has been driving a lot of the escalatory logic in this war. It will continue to attempt to prevent a ceasefire. It’s not alone. There are certainly American sources trying to do that, as well.

Israel is still on the impunity high from its Gaza genocide, which has led us here. And we have to contend with the fact that each time you try and get a “mission accomplished” victory image, you might escalate, leading to a further cycle of escalation, and then that can collapse any putative path out of this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Daniel Levy, we only have about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you — while the war is continuing in Iran and Israeli forces are in Lebanon, the settlers in the West Bank continue to perpetuate violence against Palestinians, and the IDF continues to attack Palestinians in Gaza. I’m wondering your sense of how this has basically faded from the international view while the war against Iran continues.

DANIEL LEVY: Well, I wish I could say that it needed the war in Iran in order to shift attention away from this, in order for Israel to be able to continue to not be held accountable and to get away with these daily violations of international law and with these appalling atrocities against the Palestinians, but it didn’t take the war.

Israel is doing that, and it will continue to do that unless and until it is held to account, it is contained and deterred. And, of course, you also see 1 million displaced in Lebanon and the attempt, apparently, to reestablish a zone of Israeli domination there, still in control of territory in Syria, as well.

But I also want to challenge this notion that the problem in the West Bank is the settlers. There is no armed settler militia without the IDF. The settlers roam the West Bank with the active backing of Israel’s military.

Occasionally, they may call a handful of people to account and say, “No. Stop.” But most of the occupation and the entrenchment of a matrix of control and an apartheid regime, that is run not by lone settlers. That is run by the Israeli state. That is run by the IDF.

It is the IDF and the Israeli state that run that regime of control, that also, as you mentioned, despite the so-called ceasefire, are in control of about 60 percent directly of Gaza, carrying out daily military assaults, daily killings of Palestinians in Gaza, still not allowing the necessary humanitarian assistance or shelter into Gaza, and, in parallel, conducting the largest military intervention in the West Bank, the largest displacement and destruction, often focused on refugee camps, like Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur al-Shams, that we have seen since 1967.

I think this will ultimately end very badly for Israel and generate tremendous blowback. But in the meantime, it is again the Palestinians bearing the brunt.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Levy, we want to thank you so much for being with us, president of the US/Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. We’ll link to your piece in Zeteo, “Why Netanyahu Duped Trump Into the Illegal War With Iran.” You can follow Levy’s writings on his Substack.

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

The legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific is unfinished business. From the 1997 disappearance of journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud to the 2025 return of the Rainbow Warrior, these stories are part of a continuous struggle for justice.

In the Pacific, the “Atomic Age” and the climate crisis are not competing issues, they are the same fight for habitability and truth. To face our future, we must first address the lingering shadows of the past.

In “French” Polynesia, there are concerns about the mysterious fate of former anti-nuclear investigative journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud, known as “JPK” (his byline),  who was editor of the now closed Les Nouvelles de Tahiti newspaper.

Early in 2015, a judge upheld prosecution against three men accused of a kidnapping that led his death in Tahiti in 1997.

More than a decade earlier, JK’s family lodged an allegation of murder with the police following claims that he had been assassinated by a (now disbanded) local presidential militia. An investigating commission had alleged that three men, Rere Puputauki, Tino Mara and Tutu Manate, had abducted JK and dumped his body at sea.

• READ MORE: Other Eyes of Fire reports
• The Rainbow Warrior bombing 40 years on: re-energising for global peace
• Eyes of Fire website (Little Island Press)

Twenty two years later, the family are still waiting for justice, and fed up with France’s “investigation”. When the Rainbow Warrior bombing on 10 July 1985 is set against its broader political context in the Pacific, it can be seen that this event was much more than the dramatic, isolated episode against the Greenpeace flagship as portrayed by most New Zealand media.

An “Eyes of Fire” video project in 2015, which included more than 40 student journalists, also demonstrated the importance of a continuing interpretation of these events for the future of Aotearoa New Zealand and its citizens. The students looked back at the past, but were asking questions relevant to the present and future when they interrogated me and my Greenpeace colleagues involved in the Rongelap voyage.

My own baptism in French nuclear arrogance and perfidy was thanks to the late Swedish activist, researcher, and writer Bengt Danielsson, who was awarded the 1991 Right Livelihood Award for “exposing the tragic results… of French colonialism”. He and his wife Marie-Thérèse Danielsson wrote the classic and chilling books Moruroa, Mon Amour and Poisoned Reign.

In 2021, a French investigation team published a book and website that introduced new revelations about the nuclear testing programme and its health and environmental harm inflicted on Tahitians. The book, Toxique: Enquête sur les essais nucléaires français en Polynésie, by Sébastien Philippe and Tomas Statius, and the associated website Moruroa Files, were a forensic analysis of about 2,000 French government documents declassified in 2013.

Consistently lied about the tests
According to former Auckland University of Technology scholar Ena Manuireva, who was born in Mangareva (an atoll near the French nuclear testing sites of Moruroa and Fangataufa), these publications confirmed what Tahitian people already knew: “That since 1966, the French government has consistently lied about and concealed the deadly consequences of their nuclear tests, which they now seem to acknowledge, to the health of the populations and their environment.”

Following the third test after French nuclear bombs began in the Pacific, on 7 September 1966, local Tahitian lawmaker John Teariki challenged then French president Charles de Gaulle by saying: “No government has ever had the honesty or the cynical frankness to admit that its nuclear tests might be dangerous. No government has ever hesitated to make other peoples — preferably small, defenseless ones — bear the burden.”

“May you, Mr President, take back your troops, your bombs, and your planes.”

De Gaulle ignored the advice. And it took another 30 years and 190 further tests before France stopped its ruthless nuclear pollution in the Pacific.

France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) was reported in early 2025 to have spent 90,000 euros in a big public relations campaign in a vain attempt to discredit the research in Toxique and the Moruroa Files, according to documents obtained by the investigative outlet Disclose.

The CEA published 5000 copies of its booklet, titled ‘Nuclear tests in French Polynesia: why, how and with what consequences’ and distributed them across Oceania.

The Rainbow Warrior bombing, with the death of photographer Fernando Pereira, was a terrible tragedy. But a greater tragedy remains in the horrendous legacy of Pacific nuclear testing for the people of Rongelap, the Marshall Islands and “French” Polynesia; associated military oppression in Kanaky New Caledonia; and lingering secrecy.

New Zealand and the PIF states should now require full investigation of nuclear testing in French Polynesia and seek a more robust compensation programme than currently exists. New Zealand and the PIF states also need to take a less ambiguous position on decolonisation in the Pacific, give greater priority to that issue and seek a “re-energising” of the activities of the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation.

This is especially important in relation to “French” Polynesia, Kanaky New Caledonia and the end of the Bougainville transitional political autonomy period with a unilateral declaration of independence slated for 1 September 2027.

Decolonisation is also a critical issue that has a bearing on New Zealand’s relations with Indonesia, particularly over the six Melanesian provinces that make up the region known in the Pacific as “West Papua” and Indonesia’s growing politically motivated role in the region over climate change aid.

A massive new transmigration programme under current President Prabowo Subianto is taking place at the same time as Jakarta’s “ecocidal” deforestation regime intensifies in the Melanesian region with the destruction of millions of hectares of tropical rainforest.

“The wealth of West Papua — gas from Bintuni Bay, copper and gold from the Grasberg mine. Palm oil from Merauke — has been sucked out of our land for six decades, while our people are replaced with Javanese settlers loyal to Jakarta,” says a West Papuan leader, Benny Wenda.

Taking the lead
It is critically important that New Zealand and the PIF states take a lead from the Melanesian Spearhead Group — at least those states other than Fiji and Papua New Guinea, which have both been co-opted by Indonesian bribery through economic aid.

They should take a more pro-active stance on West Papuan human rights and socio-political development, with a view to encouraging a process of political self-determination and a new, more credible United Nations supervised vote replacing the 1968 “Act of No Choice”.

With regard to climate change issues, it is essential to address the lack of an officially recognised category for “climate refugee” under international law. It is also important to seek an international framework, convention, protocol and specific guidelines that can provide protection and assistance for people crossing international borders because of climate change.

The existing rights guaranteed refugees — specifically the right to international humanitarian assistance and the right of return — must be extended to “climate refugees” or climate migrants.

This issue should be acted on systematically and with a practical vision by the PIF with the Australian and New Zealand governments. Australia and New Zealand need to respond to Pacific Island States’ (PIS) concerns over climate change and global warming with a greater sense of urgency and resolve.

Regional and country specific climate change plans and policies are needed to deal with large numbers of Pacific refugees or climate-forced migrants, in the event of worsening climate-change scenarios in the future.

This is especially important for New Zealand, as a country with a significant Pacific population (442,632 — 8.9 percent, 2023 NZ Census) with island communities well integrated into the national infrastructure and as a country that is well placed to welcome more Pacific Islanders.

In April 2025, the New Zealand government announced plans to double defence spending as a share of GDP over the next eight years under its long-awaited Defence Capability Plan.

Trump-inspired global arms race
However, the priority appeared to be New Zealand joining a new Donald Trump-inspired global arms race while the country faced no threat, at the expense of the climate crisis, nuclear free and Pacific peace-making capacity that have forged the country’s global reputation.

Speculation was also rife about the possibility of New Zealand joining a second tier of the controversial AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK and the US, which would raise geopolitical tensions with little benefit for the Pacific region.

As Marshall Islands Journal editor Giff Johnson has remarked, the people of Rongelap changed the course of history for Pacific nuclear justice by taking control of their destiny with the help of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior.

However, the relocation of the islanders four decades ago has revealed that the legacy of nuclear tests remains unfinished business.

“In the current global turbulence, New Zealand needs to reemphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament,” says former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark.

“New Zealanders were clear — we did not want to be defended by nuclear weapons. We wanted our country to be a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering.”

“On the fateful last voyage,” reflects Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Dr Russel Norman, “the crew of the Rainbow Warrior, look at us in black and white through the lens of time, and lay down the wero — the challenge. They faced down a nuclear threat to the habitability of the Pacific.

“Do we have the courage and wits to face down the biodiversity and climate crises facing humanity, crises that threaten the habitability of planet Earth?’

To Ngāti Kura kaumatua Dover Samuels, the Rainbow Warrior was “probably the biggest battleship that ever traversed the oceans of the world. But she wasn’t armed with guns, she was armed with peace”.

An edited extract from the final chapter of New Zealand journalist Dr David Robie’s recent book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior marking the 40th anniversary of the bombing. He sailed with the Greenpeace crew to Rongelap Atoll for the evacuation of the nuclear health-damaged community and remained on board for 11 weeks. This article was first published by Greenpeace Aotearoa.

• David is speaking about the Rainbow Warrior and nuclear justice tomorrow, 24 March 2026, at Grey Lynn Library, 6-8pm, as part of EcoFest.

Both my son Franz and I have been arrested, separately, for suspected thought crimes relating to Palestine and Israel.

We dared to display in public the words, “from the river to the sea”, using or displaying such words now being illegal in Queensland.

I say “thought crimes” because neither of our displays mentioned Palestine or Israel. So obviously they can only conclude we must have been illegally thinking the “wrong thoughts” about this conflict.

• READ MORE: Dorothy Day House raided by police over ‘From the River to the Sea’ banner
• ‘From the river to the sea’ is being outlawed in Queensland. How will the slogan’s ban work, and will it be challenged?
• ‘From the river to the sea’: What does the Palestinian slogan really mean?
• Other Palestine reports

For nearly two years a group of us have been gathering weekly outside the office of Boeing in Brisbane, to draw attention to their terrorist activity in making missiles, fighter jets, attack helicopters and other weapons of mass destruction, used in present conflicts, especially the Gaza genocide.

When the Queensland government made it illegal to use the words “From the River to the Sea” in public, I went to the usual Wednesday action with a large placard saying “From the River to the Sea, Brisbane will be Free — of Boeing”.

Eventually police came and arrested me. My arresting officer asked me what the words on the banner meant. I gave him a good rave about Boeing and why we wanted them nowhere in Brisbane, from the river to the sea.

He took a while trying to get me to “incriminate” myself by making reference to Palestine etc. Eventually, after exposing the farcical nature of the law, I was happy do so.

Interrogated by ‘anti-terrorism squad’
He took me to the watchhouse where I was interrogated about my thought crimes by the “Anti-terrorism squad” (that is not a joke by the way).

This gave me a good chance to explain why we wanted Boeing out of Brisbane, and a lot more — about free speech, terrorism, nonviolence, etc. After an hour and a half they let me go.

I go to court on the April 14.

Now, 42 hours later at 7am, the same ever vigilant anti-terrorism squad raided Dorothy Day house of hospitality, with a team of eight officers.

Franz immediately confessed to his thought crimes, and actual crimes of displaying a banner on the side of the house reading, “From the river to the sea — come and get us [Premier] Crisafulli”.

Now I guess it is an exaggeration to call this elite squad “ever vigilant”, as the banner had been on the wall of the house for over a week. And, being on a main road and very visible from said road, there is no telling how many innocent citizens may have been infected by the thought crimes emanating from it.

Once at Dorothy Day house, the police searched all the rooms for? Hmm, illegal thinking maybe.

Phone and laptop confiscated
Anyhow, as I said, Franz broke down and confessed, so they eventually left everyone else alone. They confiscated Franz’s phone and laptop — probably the main reason for the raid.

They also took the banner and the very paints used to commit the crime. I asked Franz if they took the paper placed under the banner during the painting process. But they did not.

Now, they could find out a lot of information from Franz’s phone and laptop. They could find out who were being infected by these thought crimes, and how far they were spreading.

Perhaps they could investigate the words of the songs on Franz’s laptop sung by his church choir, to see if there was anything about rivers or seas. Perhaps, with names and phone numbers of his fellow choir members they could instigate more raids. (I know for a fact some choir members weren’t even born in Australia!)

In the end the police told Franz they would let him know next Tuesday, if or what he would be charged with.

You can read the ABC news report of the raid of Dorothy Day house here. You can also see him interviewed on Brisbane’s Channel Ten news on March 20 (if you can find it — ABC Tiktok video removed).

So there you have it. Another week in the state’s never ending battle against terrorism. Or is it a battle against a few pathetic people who believe they are the ones resisting terrorism?

Is it terrorism to say “from the river to the sea”, or is it terrorism to slaughter tens of thousands of innocents with the help of Boeing, Pine Gap and the Australian government? You decide.

Jim Dowling is a human rights, free speech and anti-war activist from Brisbane, Australia.