A rift within French Polynesia’s ruling party Tavini Huiraatira deepened during Easter weekend with a mass resignation from a group of 14 members.

The resignation was tendered by a group of young members of the local Territorial Assembly.

In their resignation letter, the members of the local parliament, writing to Tavini’s historic 81-year-old leader Oscar Temaru, insist that their decision was “carefully considered” and “does not question the respect we have [towards Temaru].”

• READ MORE: Other French Polynesia reports

The mass resignation reduces Tavini’s majority to 22 within the Territorial Assembly (out of a total of 57 MPs).

This also means Tavini no longer has an absolute majority within the House.

The Assembly is scheduled to convene at its next sitting this week on 9 April 2026.

Crucial Assembly meeting on Thursday
Any motion of no confidence requires the approval of at least 35 MPs.

The other components of the Assembly include 16 from the opposition pro-France (autonomists) and 5 others who are independents.

The 14 resigning MPs belong to a group of “moderate” members of the Tavini, who were mostly elected at French Polynesia’s last territorial elections in May 2023.

Tensions have since surfaced between the newly-elected members of the “new generation” and the founding members of the Tavini, including party president Oscar Temaru and the party’s number two, Antony Géros (who is also the Speaker of the Territorial Assembly).

At the recently-held municipal elections, Géros lost his position of Mayor of the small city of Paea and in the capital city of Pape’ete, pro-autonomy figure Rémy Brillant won — well ahead of two pro-independence figures, Tavini-backed Tauhiti Nena (who secured 11.03 percent of the votes) and 25-year-old Tematai Le Gayic, 25 (who scored much better with 23.3 percent).

In the wake of the municipal elections, Le Gayic was the first to signal the split with his party.

The next territorial elections are scheduled to be held in 2028.

The group of dissident MPs is perceived as close to Brotherson, 56, who became French Polynesia’s President in May 2023.

Géros was not chosen at the time.

Less confrontational approach
Brotherson has since embodied a less confrontational approach, especially with regards to his perceived good relationship with the French government, as opposed to a more confrontational approach from his party’s historic leadership.

Among the most often cited causes of the rift between Tavini’s old guard and the younger group of MPs are such issues as French Polynesia’s undersea mineral resources exploitation (which Temaru favours, as a key to the French Pacific territory’s independence).

The younger Tavini MPs, as well as French Polynesia’s Tavini President Moetai Brotherson (who is also Temaru’s son-in-law), are opposed to this exploitation of resources.

This anti-deep sea mining exploitation is also the official stance of the French government, which is warning of potential environmental damage from such operations.

Brotherson’s general stance over independence is also more nuanced and contrasts with the party’s support for a short timeline and process.

Since the resignation, Tavini has held several “emergency” meetings in a bid to reconcile the two opposing factions.

But none of those have been conclusive.

Some of the views expressed by militants support a resignation from Brotherson, which he is opposed to.

Others recommend a one-on-one meeting between Temaru and Brotherson to try and iron out their differences.

“If nothing comes out of this meeting, then Tavini Huiraatira will take action on April 9,” the party wrote on social networks at the weekend.

“If we start entertaining diverging views of the party’s objectives, we’re in trouble”, an irate Géros told local media.

Biblical references
Temaru and his son-in-law have separately commented on the Easter weekend crisis.

On Good Friday, they both used biblical, religious metaphors and direct references to Easter.

“Forgive them, for they know not what they are doing” said Temaru, quoting crucified Jesus Christ during his Easter martyrdom.

But he also admitted there were “reasons to be worried”.

Meanwhile, Brotherson posted on social networks: “While some are meeting in tribunal mode, on this Good Friday, I prefer to leave it to God.”

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

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.

A Constitutional Reform Bill dedicated to New Caledonia was rejected on Thursday by the French National Assembly (Lower House) without debate, by a gathering of opposition parties by a score of 190 to 107.

The rejection came in the form of the endorsement of a preliminary Bill filed by a left wing opposition, Emmanuel Tjibaou, on behalf of the GDR group (Gauche démocrate et républicaine).

The “prior rejection motion” means that if the rejection motion is adopted, then it closes the current sitting on the matter and the Bill would then have to come back to the other House of Parliament, the Senate, following the “shuttle” rule.

• READ MORE: Thousands take to Nouméa streets ahead of French Parliament debate on New Caledonia
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Tjibaou, who is an indigenous Kanak pro-independence leader, is one of the two MPs representing New Caledonia in the Assembly.

The text was originally tabled for a vote to be held on 1 April 2026, but this was later delayed by one day, following an announcement by Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet.

However, on Thursday, during a sitting that only debated motives from the government and its Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou, the rapporteur Philippe Gosselin and representatives from all parties present, it quickly became clear that most of the opposition parties were going to support the rejection motion, and vote against the text without further debate.

The sitting only lasted 01 hour 40 minutes.

Tjibaou, speaking in support of his rejection motion, stressed that the Constitutional Bill, in his view, was “not consensual”, because his party, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) was opposed to the text and that the Bill “did not seek to reach a compromise” between all stakeholders.

Tjibaou said this was in contradiction to the previous Matignon-Oudinot (1988) and Nouméa Accord (1998), which initiated a decolonisation process for New Caledonia.

The present Constitutional Bill derives from talks held in July 2025 and January 2026 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 palace of Élysée, and the French ministry of Overseas territories in Rue Oudinot.

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

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.

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).

They have 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).

Tjibaou: ‘a logic of assimilation’
But the BEO text, in August 2025, was unequivocally opposed by the FLNKS, one of the main components of the pro-independence movement.

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

Tjibaou said on Thursday the text was at best “symbolic”.

“To us, this amounts to a perennial status within France… It’s a logic of assimilation… It cannot be compared to a decolonisation in accordance with the UN resolutions and the international law”, he told MPs.

He called on local elections to be held sooner than later, currently no later than 28 June 2026.

Tjibaou said it was ironic that “a pro-independence” should tell the Minister that “when our Kanak country is damaged, it is also France that is damaged”… Because “when you make decisions that are leading us to chaos, you are also jeopardising France’s place in the Pacific”, he said at the tribune.

Moutchou: ‘There is no other agreement’
Moutchou, in her reply, said the rejection of the Bill would have repercussions on New Caledonians’ everyday life.

She stressed what New Caledonians needed, after the riots of May 2024 and a severe economic downfall since, was “visibility”, especially on the part of economic stakeholders who needed stability in order to restore confidence and investment.

“There is no other agreement. The Bougival process was approved by 5 of the 6 political parties of New Caledonia.

“Some are mentioning the absence of FLNKS. I’ve always maintained the principles of transparency, dialogue information for all. And the door was never closed”, she said.

“And the politics of the empty chair cannot dictate the future of a territory.

“So what do we do? How much longer do we have to wait… To be responsible, we move on with those who are here… Consensus does not mean unanimity, consensus is not perfection, it’s a point of equilibrium”, she replied to Tjibaou.

“And while we have this text that is not perfect, but opens a way, those who say, ‘we will wait and see later’ risk bringing us back to a confrontational situation”.

Metzdorf’s disappointment
The other MP for New Caledonia, pro-France Nicolas Metzdorf, also took to the tribune to express disappointment.

“I don’t know what more we should do. After the 2024 riots, you asked us to find a political agreement. We did this and we made big concessions, we, the non-independentists. We did this for the good of New Caledonia.

“Then you said we had to meet again to further clarify… On Kanak identity and the self-determination process. So now we are back with two political agreements.”

“And now you are sending us back home without a debate… You know, New Caledonia may be far from Paris, but tonight, many are watching this debate on TV and they’re thinking ‘What will happen to us?”

“Many have lost their home, their work, but even worse, they have lost hope to live in peace in New Caledonia”.

“What I am asking (MPs) today is just to have the common decency to debate on this (Bill)… These agreements are being supported by the majority of New Caledonia’s political class (including the moderate pro-independence parties within the Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance), but also by the economic and business sector.”

“I’m asking for a vote on these accords and I’m asking to organise a consultation of New Caledonia’s people, because at the end of the day, we are the only legitimate ones to decide on our future.”

What now?
Following the rejection vote on Thursday, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said all parties that had signed the Bougival-Elysée-Oudinot Accord would meet “next week”, because this is what was agreed in case of a deadlock.

Commenting on future options, Metzdorf told French media in Paris that “all options are now on the table”.

After the National Assembly’s rejection, another possibility was to bring the text back to the Upper House (the Senate).

Another option (that was almost implemented a few months ago, but later abandoned) would be to bring back a process of “consultation” directly in New Caledonia in the form of a de facto referendum for or against the Bougival process.

But the sensitive issue of who is eligible to vote at local elections remains for the looming provincial elections (which would now have to be held no later than 28 June 2026).

Pro-France parties are still determined to have those restrictions changed to allow the “frozen” electoral roll to be more open, if not fully “unfrozen”.

This could be the subject of separate negotiations between New Caledonia’s opposing parties in the coming days.

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.

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.

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
• US-Israel war on Iran: What’s happening on day 29 of attacks?
• Why is the West dancing to Israel’s tune? What’s leading us to disaster
• Other war on Iran and Palestine reports

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.

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.

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
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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.

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.

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
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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.

A global coalition of activists is preparing to launch the largest ever flotilla of aid ships aimed at breaking Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), made up of civil society and grassroots groups from South Africa, Spain, Ireland, Türkiye, Norway, Brazil, France — and Aotearoa New Zealand — is planning to sail again in spring this year.

In October 2025, Israeli forces kidnapped the crew members of 41 aid ships as they approached the shores of Gaza.

• READ MORE: Kia Ora Gaza and NZ’s contribution to the blockade busters
• Activists announce new, bigger aid flotilla to set sail for Gaza in March
• Other Gaza Freedom Flotilla reports

Activist Greta Thunberg and Novara Media contributor Kieran Andrieu were among those detained for several days and subjected to violence and abuse by guards that they said amounted to torture.

Organisers did not specify how many ships would be involved this time, but in February the Nelson Mandela Foundation said there would be more than 100 boats.

Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, was among those who took part last year.

“Following the sailing of FFC’s Madleen boat in June 2025, a wave of new initiatives emerged, expanding the movement into a broader international effort to send not just one boat, but fleets, and not just a mission, but a coordinated, sustained challenge to Israel’s siege and violent settler colonial policies,” the FCC said in a statement.

“Our actions aim to uphold international law and to support the Palestinian people’s rights to freedom of movement, self-determination, and dignity.

“With our governments fueling genocide and failing to uphold their legal and moral obligations, the people of global civil society are rising together in larger and larger numbers.”

Despite agreeing to a ceasefire in October last year, Israel has continued its genocide in Gaza, attacking and killing civilians there on an almost daily basis, while severely restricting the entry of food, medicine and other essentials into the strip.

“This flotilla is collective action on a massive global scale — uniting activists, legal experts, parliamentarians, medical professionals, engineers, artists, journalists, and other people of conscience across the world,” the FCC said.

Joshua Carroll is a writer and journalist, and a contributor to Novara Media.

#MyAgendaSumud#GlobalMovementtoGaza#gazzesanageliyoruz#globalsumudflottilla pic.twitter.com/NX1mdhC0Vo

— GlobalSumudflotilla (@1ElegantFriends) October 1, 2025

Every week, health prevailing, I march with our Palestinian friends and their supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand. And my country is one which — under Britain — was colonised.

Colonisation perpetrates injustices against indigenous people. This legacy is still felt by Indigenous people today.

All around the world we must dismantle our unfair systems. A fair system ensures that everyone has a flourishing start in life. But our systems are linked to Israel — and Israel demonstrates that colonisation is still practised.

• READ MORE:  As Israel keeps bombing Iran, Palestinians face growing violence in West Bank
• Trump scolds allies over Strait of Hormuz operation; UAE closes airspace
• Chris Hedges: The world according to Gaza – it’s only the start
• War on Iran: Australia should put trust in its neighbours not a modern Titanic rogue state
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

Israel headed by megalomaniacs ruling with a muscular thug army is proof that the Empire has not stopped because the Western Empire has supported this.

Far too many Western journalists report from the perspective of the abuser rather than the victims. They need to ask, “what if it was my child, my wife, my mother, my brother, my grandfather, suffering like this? What if I was forced from my home?”

Journalists must report from the perspective of people who are pleading for the right to breathe rather than reporting from the perspective of the landlord killing people when they resist eviction.

They must use their imagination to exercise empathy in reporting. Only then will they report the truth and only then will the real narrative emerge.

Colonisation unchecked
Colonisation is not checked, rather it is supported by countries engaged in Empire building.

Like South Africa under apartheid, Indigenous people are oppressed and if they resist they are dispensed with, in other words, exterminated.

But this system is enabled rather than disabled. The rampant megalomania is enabled by the US, Britain, Germany, and other nations.

Tens of thousands of children, women, and men have been robbed of life and the journalists I once worked alongside in conflict zones are complicit if they do not report this as a human rights atrocity.

We — journalists — must report on the evil that is the expansion of empire and we must report on it from the perspective of the victims not the perpetrators.

The extermination of Palestinians and expansion of Israel is clearly supported by the legs of the octopus — the countries that make up this Western Empire.

Standing by and reporting from anything other than the perspective of the victims is akin to standing by and watching slaves being bound, gagged and shipped under the name of empire.

Journalists must stand up and report with the moral courage of abolitionists. They must have the gumption to attack the rotten policies practiced in our own time.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

The war on Iran and the obliteration of Gaza is the beginning. Welcome to the new world order. The age of technologically-advanced barbarism. There are no rules for the strong, only for the weak. Oppose the strong, refuse to bow to its capricious demands and you are showered with missiles and bombs.

Hospitals, elementary schools, universities and apartment complexes are reduced to rubble. Doctors, students, journalists, poets, writers, scientists, artists and political leaders — including the heads of negotiating teams — are murdered in the tens of thousands by missiles and killer drones.

Resources — as the Venezuelans know — are openly stolen. Food, water and medicine, as in Palestine, are weaponised.

• READ MORE: Trump threatens NATO if allies fail to help with reopening Strait of Hormuz
• War on Iran: Australia should put trust in its neighbours not a modern Titanic rogue state
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

Let them eat dirt.

International bodies such as the United Nations are pantomime, useless appendages of another age. The sanctity of individual rights, open borders and international law have vanished.

The most depraved leaders of human history, those who reduced cities to ashes, herded captive populations to execution sites and littered lands they occupied with mass graves and corpses, have returned with a vengeance.

They spew the same hypermasculine tropes. They spew the same vile, racist cant. They spew the same Manichaean vision of good and evil, black and white. They spew the same infantile language of total dominance and unrestrained violence.

Levers of power
Killer clowns. Buffoons. Idiots. They have seized the levers of power to carry out their demented and cartoonish visions as they pillage the state for their own enrichment.

“After witnessing savage mass murder over several months, with the knowledge that it was conceived, executed and endorsed by people much like themselves, who presented it as a collective necessity, legitimate and even humane, millions now feel less at home in the world,” writes Pankaj Mishra in The World After Gaza.

“The shock of this renewed exposure to a peculiarly modern evil — the evil done in the pre-modern era only by psychopathic individuals and unleashed in the last century by rulers and citizens of rich and supposedly civilised societies — cannot be overstated. Nor can the moral abyss we confront.”

The subjugated are property, commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure. The Epstein Files expose the sickness and heartlessness of the ruling class. Liberals. Conservatives. University presidents. Academics. Philanthropists. Wall Street titans. Celebrities. Democrats. Republicans.

They wallow in unbridled hedonism. They go to private schools and have private health care. They are cocooned in self-referential bubbles by sycophants, publicists, financial advisers, lawyers, servants, chauffeurs, self-help gurus, plastic surgeons and personal trainers.

They reside in heavily guarded estates and vacation on private islands. They travel on private jets and gargantuan yachts. They exist in another reality, what the Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank dubs the world of “Richistan,” a world of private Xanadus where they hold Nero-like bacchanalias, make their perfidious deals, amass their billions and cast aside those they use, including children, as if they are refuse.

No one in this magic circle is accountable. No sin too depraved. They are human parasites. They disembowel the state for personal profit. They terrorise the “lesser breeds of the earth.” They shut down the last, anemic vestiges of our open society.

‘Intoxication of power’
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life,” as George Orwell writes in 1984. “All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

The law, despite a few valiant efforts by a handful of judges — who will soon be purged — is an instrument of repression. The judiciary exists to stage show trials. I spent a lot of time in the London courts covering the Dickensian farce during the persecution of Julian Assange. A Lubyanka-on-the-Thames. Our courts are no better. Our Department of Justice is a vengeance machine.

Masked, armed goons flood the streets of the United States and murder civilians, including citizens. The ruling mandarins are spending billions to convert warehouses into detention centers and concentration camps. They insist they will only house the undocumented, the criminals, but our global ruling class lies like it breathes.

In their eyes, we are vermin, either blindly and unquestionably obedient or criminals. There is nothing in between.

These concentration camps, where there is no due process and people are disappeared, are designed for us. And by us, I mean the citizens of this dead republic. Yet we watch, stupefied, disbelieving, passively waiting for our own enslavement.

It won’t be long.

The savagery we face
The savagery in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza is the same savagery we face at home. Those carrying out the genocide, mass slaughter and unprovoked war on Iran are the same people dismantling our democratic institutions.

The social anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls what is happening “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is “geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalisation, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers.”

Oh, the critics say, don’t be so bleak. Don’t be so negative. Where is the hope? Really, it’s not that bad.

If you believe this you are part of the problem, an unwitting cog in the machinery of our rapidly consolidating fascist state.

Reality will eventually implode these “hopeful” fantasies, but by then it will be too late.

True despair is not a result of accurately reading reality. True despair comes from surrendering, either through fantasy or apathy, to malignant power. True despair is powerlessness. And resistance, meaningful resistance, even if it is almost certainly doomed, is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It confers agency. It is the only action that allows us to use the word hope.

The Iranians, Lebanese and Palestinians know there is no appeasing these monsters. The global elites believe nothing. They feel nothing. They cannot be trusted. They exhibit the core traits of all psychopaths — superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and the inability to feel remorse or guilt.

Virtues of empathy
They disdain as weakness the virtues of empathy, honesty, compassion and self-sacrifice. They live by the creed of Me. Me. Me.

“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane,” Eric Fromm writes in The Sane Society.

We have witnessed evil for nearly three years in Gaza. We watch it now in Lebanon and Iran. We see this evil excused or masked by political leaders and the media.

The New York Times, in a page out of Orwell, sent an internal memo telling reporters and editors to eschew the terms “refugee camps, “occupied territory,” “ethnic cleansing” and, of course, “genocide” when writing about Gaza.

Those who name and denounce this evil are smeared, blacklisted and purged from university campuses and the public sphere. They are arrested and deported. A deadening silence is descending upon us, the silence of all authoritarian states. Fail to do your duty, fail to cheerlead the war on Iran, and see your broadcasting licence revoked, as the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr has proposed.

We have enemies. They are not in Palestine. They are not in Lebanon. They are not in Iran. They are here. Among us. They dictate our lives. They are traitors to our ideals. They are traitors to our country.

They envision a world of slaves and masters. Gaza is only the start. There are no internal mechanisms for reform. We can obstruct or surrender.

Those are the only choices left.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This commentary was first published on the Chris Hedges Substack page and is republished with permission.

• The Chris Hedges Report

I came across this statement from an independent media source this week:

“The mainstream media is doing what it always does in wartime: manufacturing consent, sanitising atrocities and platforming war criminals.”

It came to mind immediately when I read The Times newspaper obituary for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei which was reprinted in the Christchurch Press at the weekend.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was murdered by the US-Israel in the initial strikes of their illegal bombing and killing campaign in Iran — an assault that rips up international law and trashes the United Nations Charter.

• READ MORE: Oil tankers hit in Iraq, Tehran sets 3 conditions for peace
• Why Trump is in so much danger with his illegal Iran war
• Ramzy Baroud: Israel’s greatest weapon was fear – and it’s now failing
• An anti-war meeting in Auckland that was protested against by pro-Israel/pro-American Iranians
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports
• Other images and video fromthe Stop Wars meeting

The obituary was a straight piece of Western propaganda which did nothing to hide its blatant disinformation (deliberate misinformation). It may as well have come straight from an Israeli propaganda unit — it may well have for all I know — with its demonisation of the Iranian leadership.

The Times claimed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had “…approved the development of a clandestine nuclear weapons programme that could, if ever completed, threaten Israel’s very existence, destabilise the Middle East and imperil global oil supplies”.

This is an obvious lie. Israel’s Prime Minister — and well-known war criminal — Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying for 30 years that Iran is just a few weeks or months away from producing a nuclear weapon.

The fact is that all credible analysts, including inside US intelligence, agree Iran never decided to pursue nuclear weapons and the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has never detected such a programme. In fact, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared nuclear weapons to be “religiously forbidden under Islamic law”.

The rest of the obituary is riddled with similar untruths and distortions in a ham-fisted justification of US/Israel’s assault on Iran. If The Times has set out to undermine confidence in Western media reporting on West Asia (Middle East) this would be an excellent example.

Platforming war criminals
How much Western media time and space has been given to Trump and Netanyahu in the past 11 days to spread lies and disinformation direct to Western audiences? And how much time has been given to the Iranian leadership, UN officials or international experts to debunk the US/Israeli justifications for war?

Meanwhile, the media have platformed Iranian New Zealanders, who oppose the Iranian leadership and support the appointment of the former Shah’s son Reza Pahlavi, to lead the country.

The previous Shah’s rule was a brutal dictatorship where tens of thousands were murdered or imprisoned by the Shah’s secret police, the Savak. The Shah’s dictatorship was backed by the US and Western interests till its overthrow in 1979.

The new proposed Shah is no different from his father, posing with Netanyahu and celebrating the bombing and killing in Iran.

So why has our mainstream media given so much attention to Iranians here who celebrate death and destruction in Iran alongside people waving the Israeli flag — a symbol of genocide and apartheid — and inviting Destiny Church to join them. A real horror show!

And when it comes to women’s rights, why is the Western media so happy to denounce restrictions on clothing for women in Iran but ignore Israel’s denial of rights to Palestinian women in Gaza whom Amnesty International this week says face the erosion of health and safety in Gaza in a “deliberate act of war targeting women and girls”.

Sanitising atrocities
And why has the Western media all but ignored the US/Israeli missile attack on the girls school in Iran killing at least 165 children? Imagine if this were an attack on a school in Israel or the US? Imagine the apoplectic outrage. Imagine the rush to sanctions and war?

This attack and murder of Iranian girls is sidelined for the same reason Israel’s genocide in Gaza killing tens of thousands of women and children is being downplayed.

Sanitising atrocities by the US or Israel and finding excuses, justifications or explanations for them is in the Western media’s DNA.

The Press and Western media take all their stories from Western sources such as Reuters and Associated Press news agencies and Western newspapers such as The Times and Daily Telegraph. They would never dream of including stories from Al Jazeera or any Palestinian news sources.

I would once have lamented the loss of mainstream media reporting on issues but it’s no longer possible to pretend it is in any way a force for good.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

The seventh narco sub in Pacific waters was discovered last week as the wave of methamphetamine becomes the latest crisis challenging the region.

1News Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver has spent decades reporting on the region from this country, including the drug battle and subsequent HIV epidemic in some countries.

Dreaver has released her memoir — Be Brave: The Life of a Pacific Correspondent — on covering the Pacific through natural disasters, military coups and criminal activity.

• READ MORE: Barbara Dreaver: I’ve never defended who I am, why should I?
• Other Barbara Dreaver reports

She was detained and deported from Fiji before being blacklisted and not allowed to return for many years during former Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama’s reign.

Bainimarama was recently charged with inciting mutiny over allegations they encouraged senior Fiji Military Forces officers to act against the military commander in 2023.

She is a well known face within in Aotearoa, and in much of the Pacific where 1News is screened.

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

• Listen to her interview with RNZ Nine to Noon

ANALYSIS: By Ramzy Baroud

• Israel’s military strategy has long relied on psychological dominance and deterrence built on overwhelming violence.
• Massacres during the Nakba helped establish fear as a strategic tool to weaken Palestinian resistance.
• Doctrines such as the Dahiya Doctrine and “mowing the grass” reinforced Israel’s image of invincibility.
• The Gaza genocide and regional escalation have severely weakened Israel’s psychological deterrence.
• The war on Iran may accelerate the collapse of Israel’s most important strategic asset: fear.

READ MORE: Hormuz fears spike; Israel kills 19 in Lebanon; Gulf states face Iran raids
Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

Wars are rarely fought only on battlefields. They are also fought in the minds of societies, in the perception of power and vulnerability, and in the political imagination of entire regions.

Israel understood this principle early in its history, and psychological dominance became a central component of its military doctrine.

From the earliest years of the Zionist project, the idea that power must appear overwhelming was openly articulated. In 1923, the Revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote in his famous essay The Iron Wall that Zionism would only succeed once the indigenous population became convinced that resistance was hopeless.

Only when Palestinians realised they could not defeat the Zionist project, he argued, would they accept its permanence.

The Nakba reflected the logic
The events surrounding the Nakba of 1947–48 reflected this logic. Between 800,000 and 900,000 Palestinians were expelled or forced to flee their homes, as hundreds of villages were destroyed or depopulated.

The expulsions occurred through a combination of direct military assault, forced displacement, and the collapse of Palestinian society under war.

Massacres played a crucial role in spreading fear. The killings at Deir Yassin in April 1948, in which more than 100 civilians were killed by Zionist militias, quickly reverberated across Palestine. But Deir Yassin was only one among many massacres that occurred during that period.

Killings in places such as Lydda, Tantura, Safsaf, and numerous other villages contributed to a climate of terror that accelerated the depopulation of Palestinian communities.

The psychological impact of these events was enormous. News of massacres spread from village to village, convincing many Palestinians that remaining in their homes meant risking annihilation.

The lesson was clear: war could function not only as a tool of conquest but as an instrument of psychological domination.

The Doctrine of Fear
Over time, this approach evolved into a broader strategic culture that emphasised deterrence through overwhelming violence. Israel’s wars were designed not only to defeat enemies militarily but to reinforce a perception that resistance against Israel would always end in devastating consequences.

Israeli leaders have frequently expressed this philosophy openly. In the early years of the state, Moshe Dayan, one of Israel’s most influential military figures, famously declared that Israelis must be prepared to live by the sword.

The remark captured the belief that Israel’s survival depended on constant readiness to use force and on maintaining a reputation for military ruthlessness.

Decades later, Israeli leaders continued to frame the country’s identity in similar terms. In the mid-2000s, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak described Israel as a “villa in the jungle,” a phrase that reflected a worldview in which Israel saw itself as a fortified island of civilisation surrounded by hostile and supposedly barbaric surroundings.

This perception reinforced the idea that Israel must always project overwhelming strength. Any sign of weakness, according to this logic, would invite attack.

The doctrine took more concrete form in the early 21st century. During the 2006 war in Lebanon, Israeli strategists articulated what later became known as the Dahiya Doctrine, named after the Beirut suburb that was heavily bombed during the conflict.

The doctrine advocated massive and disproportionate force against civilian infrastructure associated with resistance movements.

The purpose was not only to destroy military targets but to inflict such devastation that entire societies would be deterred from supporting resistance groups.

A similar philosophy guided Israel’s repeated wars on Gaza. Israeli strategists began referring to these periodic campaigns as “mowing the grass.” The phrase suggested that Palestinian resistance could never be permanently eliminated but could be periodically weakened through short and devastating military operations designed to restore Israeli deterrence.

For decades, this strategy appeared to work. Israel’s military superiority, combined with unwavering American support, reinforced an image of invincibility that shaped political calculations across the Middle East.

But psychological dominance depends on belief, and belief can erode.

Gaza and the crisis of deterrence
The first major rupture in Israel’s aura of invincibility occurred in May 2000, when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon after years of occupation and sustained resistance from Hezbollah. Across the Arab world, the withdrawal was widely interpreted as the first time Israel had been forced to retreat under military pressure.

Israel attempted to restore its dominance in the 2006 Lebanon war, but the outcome again challenged the image of decisive Israeli military superiority. Despite massive bombardment and ground operations, Hezbollah remained intact and continued to launch rockets until the final days of the conflict.

Yet the most profound blow to Israel’s psychological doctrine occurred decades later with the events surrounding October 7 and the war that followed.

Israel’s response to October 7 was the devastating Gaza genocide. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed or wounded, and nearly the entire Strip was destroyed,

The scale of violence was unprecedented even by the standards of previous Israeli wars on Gaza. Yet the objective was not merely military retaliation or collective punishment. It was also an attempt to restore the psychological balance that Israel believed had been shattered.

This logic had been expressed years earlier by Israeli leaders. During Israel’s earlier war on Gaza in 2008–09, then-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni openly suggested that Israel must respond in a way that demonstrates overwhelming force: When Israel is attacked, “it responds by going wild — and this is a good thing”.

In other words, war itself functioned as psychological theatre. But the Gaza genocide produced a very different outcome.

The myth begins to collapse
Modern wars unfold not only through military operations but through images that circulate instantly across the world. During the Gaza genocide, countless videos spread across social media showing Israeli armoured vehicles — including the once-feared Merkava tanks — being struck by relatively simple Palestinian anti-tank weapons.

For generations, Israel’s military power had been associated with technological invincibility. Suddenly, millions of viewers were witnessing something entirely different: a powerful army struggling against resistance fighters operating under siege conditions.

The war on Iran has intensified this psychological transformation.

For decades, Israeli society — and much of the region — believed that Israel’s territory was protected by an almost impenetrable defensive shield. The sight of waves of Iranian missiles striking targets inside Israel has therefore carried enormous symbolic weight.

These images challenge one of the most deeply embedded assumptions in Middle Eastern politics: that Israel is militarily untouchable.

At the same time, other actors are exploiting this shift in perception. Hezbollah continues to maintain significant military capabilities despite repeated Israeli attacks. Palestinian resistance groups remain active despite the devastation of Gaza.

Meanwhile, Ansarallah in Yemen has disrupted shipping routes in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, demonstrating how even non-state actors can reshape strategic realities.

Existential frame
Israeli leaders themselves increasingly frame the current confrontation as existential. Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly described the war as a struggle for Israel’s survival, echoing earlier language about living by the sword.

Yet the deeper crisis may not be purely military. Israel remains one of the most heavily armed states in the world. But the aura of invincibility that once magnified that power is fading.

Once fear begins to disappear, restoring it becomes extraordinarily difficult.

And that may be the most important consequence of the war on Iran — not the destruction it produces, but the collapse of the psychological doctrine that sustained Israeli power for decades.

Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of eight books. His latest book, Before the Flood, was published by Seven Stories Press. His other books include Our Vision for Liberation, My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Dr Baroud is a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). This article was first published by The Palestine Chronicle and is republished here with permission. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

French Polynesia’s President Moetai Brotherson says growing global instability is a reminder that Pacific nations must strengthen cooperation within the region.

Speaking to PMN News in an exclusive interview, Brotherson said the Pacific must focus on deeper partnerships with neighbours such as New Zealand to build resilience against external shocks.

“When we see the turmoil in the world, it’s a reminder to us, as all the Pacific Island nations, that our first and foremost vicinity is our region,” Brotherson said.

• READ MORE:  Iran says US, Israel have hit nearly 10,000 civilian sites since war began
• Other Pacific geopolitics reports

“We have to increase cooperation between ourselves to make us more resilient to outside crises.”

Brotherson has held the presidency since 2023 and previously represented French Polynesia’s third constituency in the French National Assembly from 2017.

He made the comments following discussions with New Zealand Foreign Minister Vaovasamanaia Winston Peters during Peters’ visit to French Polynesia.

Peters described the meeting as a unique opportunity to strengthen ties between Pacific neighbours.

“We had a very good, quite unique discussion,” he said.

‘Pretty special’
“Where in the world would you sit down like that, with a president, and have a friendly New Zealand-type discussion, or Pacific-type discussion? It’s pretty special.”

Peters said New Zealand must place greater importance on its relationships in the region.

“We underrate the value of this. Because when we talk about the Pacific, it’s not our backyard like we used to say decades ago,” he said.

“It’s our front yard. And the sooner we understand that, the better.”

Brotherson said the historical, cultural, and genealogical ties between the two nations provided a foundation for closer cooperation.

He said collaboration could cover areas such as climate adaptation, maritime and air connectivity, digital infrastructure, and economic development.

“We have many areas of cooperation that needed to be discussed, and these were the topics that were addressed during our meeting,” he said.

Geopolitical competition
The French Polynesian leader also raised concerns about the growing geopolitical competition in the Pacific, particularly between the United States and China.

“We don’t want to align with anyone. I mean, either China or the US,” he said. “We want to be able to discuss with everyone and to have relationships, be it cultural or economic relationships with everyone.”

The Pacific has become an increasingly contested strategic region in recent years, with China expanding its economic and infrastructure partnerships with several island nations.

The United States and its allies have also increased diplomatic engagement, development funding, and security cooperation.

Climate change remains another major concern, particularly for the low-lying atolls of the Tuamotu archipelago — the world’s largest chain of coral atolls, located in French Polynesia northeast of Tahiti.

The French territory consists of 118 volcanic islands and coral atolls across five archipelagos in the South Pacific. Comprising 78 low-lying atolls (like Rangiroa and Fakarava) spread over 3.1 million sq km, this destination is renowned for its remote, pristine lagoons, world-class scuba diving, and black pearl farming

“They are facing the same issues as Tuvalu or other Pacific island nations that are at the forefront of climate change and the sea level rise,” Brotherson said.

‘Salination of water’
“What we are seeing currently is a salination of the water lentils on those atolls, rendering life very hard. It’s not impossible.

“So water management is going to be a real issue in the upcoming years related to climate change but you also have the coastal erosion that we have to tackle.”

The President of the Government of French Polynesia and the Foreign Minister of New Zealand.

pic.twitter.com/z8QeiVsagB

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) March 8, 2026

For communities on these low-lying atolls, the impacts of climate change are already being felt through declining freshwater supplies, erosion, and pressure on traditional food sources.

Brotherson also reiterated his support for greater political sovereignty for French Polynesia. He said economic development and resilience must come first.

French Polynesia enjoys a high degree of autonomy under France, which retains control over defence, currency, and aspects of foreign policy.

Brotherson said the pathway toward greater sovereignty must be gradual and carefully managed.

He added that economic resilience will be key before any move toward full independence and said the territory could achieve political sovereignty within the next 10 to 15 years.

“It’s all about interdependencies, that’s how we’re going to build independence. When it comes to strengthening our economy, you know, we still have a lot of work to do on food security, on energy transition, and then we’ll be able to be more confident as a nation.”

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

Declining population in West Papua, and critical loss of life through clashes with the Indonesia military raise the question of genocide in a new book by Brisbane writer Dr Greg Poulgrain.

This work, Curse of Gold, published in English by Kompas, as the title indicates traces the roots of subjugation going on in West New Guinea (West Papua) to a cynical grabbing for resources.

The book is a history beginning with the discovery of huge deposits of gold in 1936, deposits more than twice the gold being mined at Witwatersrand, together with discovery of oil just off-shore.

• READ MORE: Grifting Grasberg. The great Indonesian gold-mining ‘mismatch’

The principal mine now, with an Indonesian billionaire as main owner, has 560 km of tunnels and produces 50 tonnes of gold annually.

The existence of the gold was kept secret, awaiting investment and development opportunities, held up by war with the Japanese, known just to Dutch interests, the Japanese, and significant for the future, the Rockefeller petroleum company Standard Oil in the United States.

The writer details the operation of a “Third Force” in a chain of political intrigues and manipulation over a half century: the US company, sometimes officers of the US government, and at all times an early player since the first discovery, Allen Dulles, who came to head-up the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Dulles as the lawyer for Standard Oil had already got a petroleum concession in Netherlands New Guinea before 1936, through forming a joint US-Dutch company with majority US interest.

Heyday of CIA operations
In the 1950s heyday of CIA undercover operations across the “Third World”, Dulles is depicted here manipulating political events in Indonesia, whether spreading disinformation, concealing information from governments, even setting up mysterious, destabilising armed skirmishes.

The objective given is always the same, to secure ownership of resources and a free hand for American commercial interests. At one point covert government help would be provided through some disingenuous work by Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State to Richard Nixon, and the always interventionist US Ambassador Marshall Green.

For people of West New Guinea the intriguing saga has been a catastrophe, seeing their rights, interests, existence and even human identity denied and ignored in the struggles over wealth and power.

The story is in two phases:

In wartime the occupying Japanese encouraged the Indonesian independence movement, as a block against any return to influence by European colonial powers, and naturally wanted Papuan resources themselves.

A Japanese intelligence operative, Nishijima Shigetada, familiar with the region, is given a key role. He had found out about the gold, and persuaded the Indonesian nationalists to include West New Guinea in their demands for a republic — the better to get the trove out of the hands of “colonial monopolies”.

The second phase of developments saw an ugly turn of events with the 1965 military coup in Indonesia, marked by large scale massacre across the country and coming to power of Suharto as President in 1967.

The new regime determined to build on the campaign by its predecessor, President Sukarno, to take over West New Guinea. In the calculus of Cold War rivalries, President John Kennedy had sought to keep him “on side” and the Russians provided guns and aid, in part to best their Chinese rivals.

Dutch gave in
The outcome was that the Dutch who had stayed on in the territory gave in to pressure and pulled out by the end of 1963. It was nominally then put under United Nations trusteeship until an “act of free choice” on independence.

But Indonesian forces moved in, violently put down any Papuan resistance, promulgated theories of an Indonesia Raya, a lost island empire to which all of New Guinea had belonged, and declared the decision on independence would be an issue of “staying” with Indonesia. Neither Kennedy nor Sukarno, who had planned to meet in 1964, is believed to have known about the gold in Papua.

Dr Poulgrain recounts the narrative of bullying and deception, including the sidelining of senior UN representatives, whereby the “act of free choice” became notoriously a series of managed gatherings, no plebiscite of the people ever countenanced. He argues that the “Third Party”, having helped to remove the Dutch, then moved in favour of its own preferred candidate, Suharto, no nationalist from the independence movement, a self-declared friend of US commerce and advocate for untrammelled investment:

“It could be argued that the fiery nationalism so characteristic of Sukarno, the tool that won him the right to enter the harbour of Soekarnopura (Jayapura) on board the Soviet warship renamed Irian, proved to be his own undoing. Under the mantle of Sukarno’s presidency, Indonesia ousted the Dutch from New Guinea, the goal of both Nishijima and the ‘Third Party’, finally bringing an end to the European colonial presence there.

“Only 30 months later, Sukarno was facing his own political demise …”

In case the reader considers this might all be a well-worn path, it should be emphasised there is new material and insight into the origins and enactment of cruelty, appropriation and dishonesty that became the pattern in Suharto’s New Order Indonesia and its captive provinces in West New Guinea.

It is a work of thoroughness and industry, especially where covert activity and actual conspiracy appears; extensive documentation has been provided making the case strong. Much of it is original material, such as diplomatic messaging obtained through libraries, and records of interviews or correspondence with leading figures, viz Nishijima or the former US Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

Well defended
The thesis of the book is consistently propounded and well defended:

“This book is about the ownership of the immense wealth of natural resources in Western New Guinea”.

The colonised inhabitants did not get that ownership or any just share of it, with bad consequences for their culture and welfare. It was a bad beginning in 1963 with Indonesia in a dominating frame of mind:

“Papuan culture is the antithesis of life in Java.”

Where the Dutch colonisers are characterised as a very small population hardly penetrating the hinterland, the Indonesians who took over from them have been aggressive with their industry building, immigration and military occupation.

Papuans today make up barely half the population of 5.4-million, steadily outstripped by arrivals. Population growth in the comparable country, Papua New Guinea, since independence in 1975 has been much stronger, now pushing towards 11-million.

• Curse of Gold, by Greg Poulgrain (Jakarta, Kompas, 2026). ISBN 978, ISBN 978 (PDF)

A Papua New Guinean anthropologist has warned that a campaign by authorities to remove communities from informal settlements in Port Moresby will not solve growing social problems in PNG’s capital.

The government is determined to end the role of settlements as what Prime Minister James Marape describes as “breeding grounds for terror” as part of its law and order reforms, but recent evictions have run into problems.

Almost half of Port Moresby’s estimated population of around 500,000 live in settlements, often without legal title or access to basic services. Some of the settlements have become notorious as crime hotspots.

• READ MORE: PNG govt defends using tear gas, force to evict illegal settlers in capital
• Other PNG settlements reports

However, in late January, police moved into the settlement at 2-Mile, sparking clashes with residents that resulted in two deaths and numerous injuries.

Police then moved to evict another settlement at 4-Mile, but this met with a legal challenge which led to the National Court placing a stay order on the eviction.

While the campaign is essentially paused, Marape has said his government would soon announce a permanent plan to replace unplanned settlements with properly titled residential allotments.

He also apologised to residents affected by the evictions, in recognition that many law-abiding and hard working families have made settlements their home over the years.

Urban drift
Previous attempts at evicting settlement communities did not exactly lay a template for the success of what authorities are trying to do in 2026.

In numerous cases, homes were destroyed or razed to the ground, people were left homeless and then simply moved to other areas of vacant land or ended up living with wantoks in other parts of Morebsy.

A PNG anthropologist who has done extensive work on settlements, Dr Fiona Hukula, noted that settlements are long-established communities, stretching back decades.

“Essentially, people came to work in the towns and the cities, like in Port Moresby, and so where there was low cost housing, or where people weren’t able to afford housing, they started living in settlements, and some of the settlements on the outskirts, there’s stories that they made some kind of connection and deals with the local landowners.”

Dr Hukula said over the decades, migration to the towns and cities had grown significantly, but the available housing had not kept pace.

“People are just now coming into the city, really, to access better services, health and education. Some Papua New Guineans are coming to the city to escape various forms of conflict and violence.

“And this is now where we’ve seen just an influx of people coming into the city, and obviously there’s nowhere to live, and they live in settlements, and many of Moresby settlements are populated by families who have been there for several generations.”

‘Difficult thing I have to do’
Many of Moresby’s settlements are now populated by families who have been there for several generations. Removing people from these communities is a complex challenge.

“An eviction is not going to solve the problem, because people will just go and find somewhere else to stay (in Moresby), especially if they’re generational families who have lived in these settlements, who don’t necessarily have the ties back to their rural villages and their connections to their people in their village,” Dr Hukula said.

Adding to the complexities of the eviction drive are social connections forged in the National Capital District (NCD) over the years.

The head of the NCD Police Command Metropolitan Superintendent Warrick Simitab admitted that for him personally, leading the eviction exercises such as at 2-Mile had not been easy.

“It’s been difficult, because I grew up here. I grew up in NCD. For example in 2-Mile. Most of my classmates that I went to school together with, they live there. So for me personally, it’s a difficult thing that I have to do,” he told RNZ Pacific.

Simitab would not be drawn on when the evictions would start up again, saying things were paused while political leaders decide next steps.

Criminal hotspot
The local MP for Moresby South Justin Tkatchenko said the 2-Mile settlement had become a notorious criminal hotspot, and that the people of the city had had enough of it.

“Hold ups nearly every night and every day, women have been raped, attacked, citizens have been held up, cars stolen, injured, abused for nearly 20 years,” he said.

Things came to a head when police were shot at and those living in 2-Mile refused an ultimatum given by police to hand over the criminals, he explained.

Tkatchenko said the government was steadily working on resettling settlers with proper, legal allocations of land to live on.

“We have already allocated land and sub-divided that land for over 400 families in the 2-Mile Hill area and other areas. Some have already been resettled and moved, and others will follow suit,” the MP said.

Dr Hukula acknowledged that crime linked to some settlements was an issue that the general population keenly wanted addressed.

But she said persisting with displacing communities from other settlements would not address the underlying cause of the problem.

‘Ticking time bomb’
“It is a ticking time bomb. It’s going to be like this, where there’s evictions and then people move. And the thing is that the cycle of violence continues, and that’s what we’re trying to address here, the crime.”

The anthropologist stressed that “not everybody in settlements are criminals”, saying the people who lived in settlements were often working people, “people who are doing the menial jobs in the offices, the office cleaners, the people who are drivers, all of these kinds of people also live in settlements.

“And so when they’re being kicked out, there are people who can’t go to work, children who can’t go to school”.

Dr Hukula has researched and written about how settlement communities have developed informal systems of settling disputes or addressing law and order problems such as through local komiti groups or village courts.

These provided a way in which the communities could maintain order and general respect between their people. But “because the settlements have just exploded now it’s not like necessarily everybody comes from the same area or the same province” she said, making it harder to maintain a social balance.

In Dr Hukula’s view, “the village courts and the community leaders still play an extremely important role in being that bridge” between the authorities and the settlement community, and should be supported to play that role.

She said one of the other main things the government could do to help the situation was “to make sure that there’s affordable housing for all levels, all kinds of Papua New Guineans”.

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

West Papuan diaspora, academics, students and community activists warmly applauded the screening of the new investigative documentary, Pesta Babi (Pig Feast): Colonialism in our Time, in its pre-launch international premiere in New Zealand last night.

It was shown for the first time back in West Papua at the southeastern town of Merauke, which is centred in the vast denuded rainforest area featured in the film, and also in the capital Jayapura on Friday.

Dramatic footage of scenes of village resisters against the massive destruction of rainforest in one of the three largest “lungs of the world”, shipping of barge-loads of heavy machinery, vast swathes of forest scoured out for rice and palm oil plantations, and of a traditional “pig feast” — the first in a decade — gripped the audience from the opening minute.

• READ MORE:  Pesta Babi – ‘Pig Feast’ . . . a vivid new film exposing Papua’s political ecology
• Indonesia suspends participation in Board of Peace initiative

This is the largest forest conversion project in modern history — turning 2.5 million ha of tropical forest into industrial plantations under the guise of “food security” and the “energy transition”.

“It is a powerful film, rich with data and stories drawn from the lived experiences of masyarakat adat [Indigenous people],” comments Dr Veronika Kanem, a New Zealand-based Papuan academic and researcher, who was at the premiere with a group of her students.

“The film is also grounded in research conducted by Yayasan Pusaka, along with other national and local organisations.” She is pleased that her home village Muyu is featured in the film.

The audience was also treated to Q&A session with the film director, Dandhy Dwi Laksono and producer Victor Mambor, an award-winning investigative journalist and founder of Jubi Media, who first visited New Zealand 12 years ago.

Documented collusion
Investigative filmmaker Laksono gained a reputation for his 2019 documentary Sexy Killers, released just before the Indonesian general election year and documented the collusion between the political establishment and the destructive coal mining industry.

He was arrested later that year over tweets he posted about state violence in Papua.

Laksono and Mambor, along with co-director Cipri Dale, make up a formidable investigative team.

The storytelling focuses on the experiences of five Papuans and their communities:

Yasinta Moiwend was startled when, on a quiet morning, a massive ship docked at her village pier. The vessel carried hundreds of excavators and was escorted by military forces.

It was the first convoy of 2000 heavy machines to arrive in Papua under a National Strategic Project for food production, palm-based biodiesel, and sugarcane bioethanol.

Yasinta, a Marind Anim woman in Merauke, never realised that her village had been chosen as the ground zero for what would become the largest forest conversion project in modern history.

Vincen Kwipalo, from the Yei community, was likewise shocked when his clan’s land was suddenly marked with a sign reading: “Property of the Indonesian Army.” Only later did he learn that the land had been seized for the construction of a military battalion headquarters, at the very moment when a sugarcane plantation company was also encroaching on his ancestral forest.

Red Cross Movement
Threatened by the same project, Franky Woro and the Awyu community in Boven Digoel erected giant crosses and indigenous ritual markers on their land.

Known as the Red Cross Movement, this form of resistance has spread among Indigenous groups across South Papua.

More than 1800 red crosses have been planted to confront corporations and the military—both physically and spiritually. Though a Christian symbol is central to the movement, local Church pastors condemned it as not part of the church.

Dr Kanem says the film could have explored why the Awyu and Marind people chose to use the red cross, a symbol strongly associated with Christian values?

“Why did they not use their own cultural attributes or symbols instead?” she adds.

Laksono says: “Pig Feast combines detailed field recordings with in-depth research to examine the power structures behind the operation.

“It exposes how government and corporate entities — collaborating with military and religious groups — advance international and national goals of ‘food security’ and ‘energy transition’ at the expense of Indigenous communities and landscapes.”

Multinational corporations
The documentary illustrates the networks of Indonesian elites, oligarchs, and multinational corporations that benefit from the project, providing a vivid depiction of the political ecology of Indonesian governance in Papua.

Pig Feast reveals how the system of colonialism remains intact today.

Asked at the screening how dangerous was the film making, Mambor described the hardships their small crew faced to “find the truth” under the noses of the Indonesian military.

He said they walked up to 17 km a day at times to get the exclusive footage obtained for the documentary.

International journalists are banned from West Papua and a 2019 resolution by the Pacific Islands Forum calling for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua to investigate allegations of human rights abuses has been ignored by Jakarta.

The film reveals how 10 companies — all owned by one family — gained the backing of three presidents.

The Jhonlin Group, owned by oligarch Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad (aka Haji Isam), ordered about 2000 excavators from Chinese company SANY, considered one of the largest orders of its kind in the world, to clear one million hectares.

‘Second thoughts’ on Gaza
Q&A moderator Dr David Robie, deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), notes the massive military involved in the operations in West Papua — as shown in the film — and how Israel has been counting on Indonesia forming “the backbone” of the planned “International Stabilisation Force” for the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza with about 8000 troops because of its experience in “suppressing rebellion”.

“However, since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran it seems that Jakarta has now had second thoughts,” he said.

Indonesia has suspended all discussions on the so-called “Board of Peace” initiative launched by US President Donald Trump, citing the military escalation in the Middle East, reports Anadolu Ajansi.

Critics had argued that joining a council led by the Trump administration could undermine Indonesia’s longstanding support for the “free Palestinian” cause.

Indonesia’s Ulema Council, the country’s top Islamic scholar body, had also called for an immediate withdrawal from the Trump initiative.

The filmmakers and documentary will now go to Australia for screenings in Sydney, Melbourne and hopefully Brisbane.

West Papua updates
Earlier in the day, at a two-day West Papua Solidarity Forum at the University of Auckland, several speakers gave updates and an analysis on political and social developments in the repressed Melanesian region.

Among speakers were Papuan environmental campaigner for Pusaka Dorthea Wabiser, longtime Aotearoa and West Papua human rights campaigner Maire Leadbeater, Papuan cultural advocate Ronny Kareni , Hawai’ian academic Dr Emalani Case, Ngaruahine researcher Dr Arama Rata, PNG academic at Waikato University Nathan Rew, West Papuan scholar Kerry Tabuni, Green Party Pacific peoples and foreign affairs spokesperson Teanau Tuiono, and forum organiser Catherine Delahunty of the West Papua Action Tāmaki Makaurau and West Papua Action Aotearoa.

Viktor Yeimo, international spokesperson of the KNPB (National Committee for West Papua) and PRP (Papuan People’s Petition), and several Papuan community spokespeople shared messages by video link.

Yeimo spoke about how many students, activists, journalists, church leaders and communities of faith in West Papua faced risks when they spoke about justice and political rights.

“To ignite a large log, one must first find many small pieces [kindling],” he said. “Each piece alone cannot produce a great fire, but together they create enough heat to ignite something much larger.”

He said one pathway involved meaningful political reform within Indonesia, including stronger protection of Indigenous rights and genuine regional autonomy.

Another pathway involved inclusive political dialogue between the Indonesian government and legitimate representatives of Papuan society, like ULMWP (United Liberation Movement of West Papua).

A third pathway existed within international law, “it is the possibility of a self-determination process supervised by an international institution [such as the United Nations].”

He pointed to the progress of the self-determination processes of Bougainville and Kanak New Caledonia for example.

Yeimo said Papuans wanted to build a Pacific future “grounded in justice and solidarity”.

A Papuan rapper spoke on screen saying he wasn’t afraid of the repression of authorities, “but they seem to be afraid of me and my music.”

• Pesta Babi (Pig Feast): Colonialism in our Time, directed by Dandhy Dwi Laksono and Cypri Dale; produced by Victor Mambor (Jubi Media, 2026, investigative documentary 90min).
  

New Zealand’s weak response to the unprovoked and illegal United States and Israel attacks on Iran at the weekend has stirred strong criticism from many quarters.

A former New Zealand prime minister, Helen Clark, who also held a top United Nations position for eight years, labelled the government’s response “a disgrace”.

“In the absence of an imminent threat to the security of the United States and Israel, their armed attacks on Iran are illegal under international law,” she said. “They have no legitimate claim to invoking a right of self-defence.”

• READ MORE: Iran hits back after Khamenei killed in US-Israeli strikes
• Trump starts major ‘regime-change’ war with Iran, serving neoconservatism and Israel
• Israel strikes two schools in Iran, killing more than 100 people
• Marilyn Garson: Waking up to terror in this new world of impunity
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

Clark was a Labour prime minister in New Zealand from 1999 to 2008 and administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) from 2009 to 2017.

Other critics of New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ joint statement today condemning Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel and on US assets in the Gulf States included the opposition Green Party, a geopolitical strategic analyst, and a Palestine justice advocate, warning that Washington and Tel Aviv were risking a risky power vacuum in Iran and chaos across the Middle East with democracy unlikely to succeed.

Luxon and Peters singled out Iran for criticism in their statement while virtually ignoring the fact that Israel and the US had initiated hostilities with their sudden attack, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior regime figures, while Washington was still engaged with Tehran in negotiations about a possible nuclear agreement.

pic.twitter.com/xOrzfHdhng

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) February 28, 2026

“We condemn in the strongest terms Iran’s indiscriminate retaliatory attacks on Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan,” they said. “We cannot risk further regional escalation, and civilian life must be protected.”

In Clark’s response, she also shared on social media a statement from The Elders, an independent advocacy group linking senior public figures including herself, which condemned the military strikes by the US and Israel as a “threat to regional and global security”.

“History shows that wars to force regime change deliver neither democracy nor stability,” said The Elders chair Juan Manuel Santos.

In absence of an imminent threat to security of US & Israel, the armed attacks on Iran are illegal under international law. The Iranian regime is a vicious theocracy which has caused huge trauma to its people. But that isn’t a reason for a breach of Iran’s sovereignty. @TheElders pic.twitter.com/zBeJn9jQ1m

— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) February 28, 2026

“Trump and Netanyahu’s unilateral attack on Iran must be condemned as an illegal and unprovoked act against the people of the region and any genuine pathway to peace,” opposition Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said.

“This latest escalation in aggression is part of a decades-long pattern of behaviour of the US dragging the region into more wars, violence, and bloodshed.”

“First the US kidnaps the president of a sovereign state after killing more than a score of civilians on the open seas without warrant or evidence of wrongdoing,” said 36th Parallel Assessments director Dr Paul G Buchanan. “Now it kills the head of state and supreme religious leader of another sovereign state, teaming up with a regime credibly accused of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank in order to do so.”

He said the “selective unilateral application of force” without imminent threat from either country “demonstrates two things: 1) the US and Israel have gone rogue; and 2) in doing so they have set a dangerous precedent for others to follow suit (think China with regard to Taiwan)”.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-leader John Minto compared the current crisis with 1951 when Iran held its first democratic elections and elected its first democratic government led by Mohammad Mosaddegh as prime minister.

“Two years later the US and UK put in place Operation Ajax which overthrew this democratically elected government because the Iranians had nationalised the extraction and export of Iranian oil.

“How dare the Iranians take control of their own resources!” Minto added in a statement.

“This first democratic government in Iran was replaced by the autocratic rule of the US-friendly Shah.

“Today the US and Israel have attacked Iran yet again because Iran supports the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom from Israel’s genocidal occupation of Palestine and its ethnic cleansing and theft of Palestinian land.

“The US and Israel have never been interested in the democratic freedoms of Iranians. They want Iranians to live under the dictatorship of a US-bought leadership — just as the people of Arab countries across the Middle East suffer today.”

This is a moment of great peril for the small Caribbean nation of Cuba. Nothing less than its sovereignty is on the line as the US drives its knee into the neck of 10 million Cubans by means of a crushing air and sea blockade and a set of secondary sanctions designed to muscle the nations of the world into compliance to the hegemon.

The issues are not particular to Cuba; we are in the midst of a militant US that is determined to assert domination through force.

It was therefore a pleasure to spend time this week with Luis Ernesto Morejón Rodríguez, Cuba’s Ambassador to New Zealand in Wellington.

Amnesty International has condemned Israeli authorities over unleashing a series of unlawful measures deliberately designed to dispossess Palestinians in the occupied West Bank — including East Jerusalem — and to make the annexation of the territory an irreversible reality.

These decisions since December 2025 represent an unprecedented escalation – in scale and speed – in Israel’s project to expand illegal settlements.

They facilitate the takeover of more Palestinian land, authorise a record number of new settlements, expanding existing ones, and formalise registration of land in the West Bank as Israeli state property.

• READ MORE: Other Israeli illegal annexation reports

While successive Israeli governments have pursued policies aimed at expanding settlements and entrenching occupation and apartheid, the latest measures underscore how the current Israeli government has turbocharged these efforts, in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza.

“What we are witnessing is a state, led by a Prime Minister wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, openly gloating about its defiance of international law,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns.

“Despite hundreds of UN resolutions, Advisory Opinions from the International Court of Justice and global condemnation, Israel continues to brazenly expand illegal settlements, entrenching its cruel system of apartheid and destroying Palestinian lives and livelihoods.

“The unconditional support of the USA government, combined with the pervasive lack of international accountability for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, decades of crimes under international law linked to its unlawful occupation and its system of apartheid, has further emboldened Israel to escalate its illegal actions.

‘Formalising land grabs’
“This includes formalising land grabs with full confidence that it will face no consequences.

“The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action.”

— Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns.

“The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action.

“Third states have failed to respect their own legal obligations, refusing to use the tools at their disposal, such as suspension of the EU Israel Association Agreement, to deter Israel from pursuing its unlawful agenda.”

On 10 December 2025, the Israel Land Authority published a tender for 3401 housing units in the E1 area, east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.

The plan seeks to expand the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and create a continuum with occupied East Jerusalem.

This would sever the West Bank in two, permanently rupturing urban Palestinian contiguity between Ramallah, occupied East Jerusalem, and Bethlehem.

Forced transfer of Palestinians
Together with the construction of a bypass road which was set to begin this month, this plan will also lead to the forcible transfer of the Palestinian communities living in the area.

While since the 1990s successive Israeli governments have attempted to implement the E1 plan, it remained largely dormant for decades due to international pressure.

Its current advancement with such speed signifies a government that is brazenly pursuing its settlement expansion agenda amidst insufficient international pushback.

Since its occupation of Palestinian territory in 1967, Israel has introduced and developed an oppressive administrative and legal architecture of dispossession and control against Palestinians.

The current government has been relentlessly accelerating this project by fast-tracking settlement expansion and land seizures.

On 11 December 2025, Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to establish 19 new settlements, bringing the total number approved by the current coalition government to 68 in just three years and the total number of official settlements to about 210.

About 750,000 Israeli settlers currently live illegally in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Retroactive ‘legalisation’
The new settlements include the retroactive “legalisation” of outposts built in violation of even Israel’s own domestic laws.

Credible media reports indicate at least three of these sites sit upon land from which Palestinian communities, such as Ein Samia and Ras Ein al-Ouja, were recently forcibly transferred following state-backed settler violence.

According to Peace Now, an Israeli organisation monitoring settlement expansion, in 2025 alone, a record 86 outposts were established, primarily “herding” or “farming” outposts” which have significantly contributed to the spike in state-backed settler violence and forcible transfer of Palestinian communities.

Protected by the Israeli military and funded by the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, the outposts have turned the lives of Palestinian farmers and shepherds, particularly in Area C, into a “living hell”.

Settlers in the outposts aggressively prevent Palestinian shepherds from accessing their grazing land, depriving them of their main livelihood, as well as seizing land by force, vandalizing property, stealing livestock and attacking Palestinians and their homes.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, 21 Palestinian communities were fully or partially uprooted in 2025 as a result of state-backed settler violence.

A mother of three from Ras Ein al-Ouja, near Jericho, told Amnesty International: “The fear of attacks forced us to put our children to bed with their shoes on, because we might have to flee at any moment.”

Freezing cold
In January 2026, she and her family were driven out in the freezing cold along with another 122 families — in total more than 600 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from this community.

A declaration by the Israeli civil administration on 5 January 2026 designating 694 dunams of land belonging to the Palestinian towns of Deir Istiya, Bidya and Kafr Thulth in the northern West Bank as “state land”.

This was declared along with a series of measures to expand control over the West Bank announced by Israel’s security cabinet on February 8 to mark a further escalation in Israel’s land grabs.

These measures include repealing Jordanian legislation still in force to allow Israeli settlers to purchase Palestinian land without oversight increasing Israeli civil administrative control over planning and construction in Hebron City and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, as well as granting Israeli authorities new enforcement powers in archaeological sites and in issues related to water and environment in Areas A and B.

On 15 February 2026, the Israeli cabinet issued a decision that amounts to annexation under Israeli law.

It allocated more than 244 million NIS (Israeli shekels) for the establishment of a government mechanism to facilitate land registration in Area C, transferring the powers of land registration from the civil administration to Israel’s Ministry of Justice.

Currently, nearly 58 percent of the land in Area C of the occupied West Bank is unregistered, according to Peace Now.

Seized Palestinian land
Israel has already seized more than half of that area through state land designations.

Palestinians face almost insurmountable hurdles to prove land ownership due to Israel’s archaic interpretation of Ottoman land laws which require Palestinians to provide an array of documents, maps and other records that most Palestinians do not have access to.

“Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it. Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions.”

— Erika Guevara-Rosas

“Land registration is yet another Israeli euphemism for land grabs and dispossession. Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it,” Erika Guevara-Rosas said.

“Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions.

“Israel has totally disregarded its obligations as an Occupying Power towards Palestinian civilians and instead has deliberately and consistently advanced its aggressive annexation agenda, in blatant violation of international law, which categorically prohibits annexation and establishment of settlements in occupied territory.

“These measures are in brazen defiance of the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinions of 2004 and 2024, the latter of which unequivocally found Israel’s presence in the OPT to be unlawful.

“A subsequent UN General Assembly resolution set September 2025 as the deadline to end Israel’s unlawful occupation.

“Yet instead of complying, Israel has simply invented new ways to violate international law, further entrenching its unlawful occupation and apartheid — while the international community continues, at best, to pay lip service to Palestinians’ rights and taken no effective action.”

Republished from Amnesty International.

New Zealand activist Roger Fowler, a longtime Gaza solidarity organiser and Palestine Chronicle contributor, who died last Saturday, leaves a legacy of principled resistance.

Roger Fowler was a beloved figure in the global solidarity movement and a steadfast advocate for justice in Palestine. He leaves behind a legacy defined by courage, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to a cause greater than himself.

Born in New Zealand, Roger dedicated much of his life to amplifying the voices of the oppressed and building bridges of solidarity across continents.

• READ MORE:  Roger Fowler, a legend of the Aotearoa solidarity movement, dies at 77
• Roger Fowler’s legacy – and the Polynesian Panthers connection
• Other Roger Fowler reports

As coordinator of Kia Ora Gaza (Aotearoa New Zealand), he played a central role in grassroots efforts to challenge the inhumane blockade of Gaza and to bring aid and hope to its people.

Under his leadership, Kia Ora Gaza organised and supported international aid convoys and solidarity flotillas aimed at breaking the siege and delivering humanitarian assistance to besieged communities.

The most significant international moment connected to those efforts was 2010, during the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which sought to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

Solidarity networks across the world — including activists in Aotearoa New Zealand — mobilised politically, financially, and logistically around that initiative and subsequent flotilla attempts in the following years.

Inspired countless others
His determination and moral clarity inspired countless others to act with purpose and humanity in the face of injustice.

Roger’s voice was both passionate and principled. Even as his health declined, he remained a familiar presence at solidarity rallies across New Zealand, uplifting crowds with his words and his spirit.

To his friends and fellow activists, he was not only a colleague but a guiding light, a man of “great integrity and character with passion for justice”.

Beyond activism in the streets, Roger was also a thoughtful and committed writer. Through his contributions to The Palestine Chronicle, he brought stories of international solidarity to wider audiences.

His work illuminated both the daily struggles of Palestinians and the global networks of activism that stand with them.

In these difficult times, Roger’s work will continue to live on in the movements and projects he helped build. His life stands as a testament to the enduring power of solidarity, conviction, and the belief that ordinary people can make extraordinary differences.

The Palestine Chronicle family joins his loved ones, friends, and comrades in mourning this profound loss, and in honoring a life devoted to justice, dignity, and the freedom of Palestine.

This article was first published by The Palestine Chronicle under the title “Remembering Roger Fowler: A life devoted to justice and Palestinian freedom” on 23 February 2026.

• Roger Fowler’s life is being celebrated today at Ngā Tapuwae Community Centre, 255 Buckland Road, Mangere, 10-2pm, Wednesday, February 25.

Roger Norman Fowler: 12 September 1948 – 21 February 2026

Roger Fowler, an activist legend of social justice solidarity movements from Bastion Point to resisting apartheid and racist rugby tours and freedom for Palestine, has died after a long illness. He was 77.

Described by some as a “true Tāne Toa”, his protest warrior courage and his commitment to a bicultural and cross-cultural vision for Aotearoa New Zealand, was perhaps best represented by his “Songs of Struggle and Solidarity” vinyl album launched last year.

The first of 14 tracks on the album produced by Banana Boat Records, was “We Are All Palestinians”, which has become an anthem for the Gaza solidarity movement for the past 124 weeks of protest against the Israeli genocide.

• READ MORE: Showing their aroha for the activist ‘power couple’ of Māngere East
• Honouring the people’s fight against hardship, repression and racism — Tony Fala
• Other Roger Fowler reports

Ironically, this was sung yet again by a group in Te Komititanga Square yesterday within hours of his death.

It was written by Fowler after the Viva Palestina solidarity convoy from London to Gaza in 2010.

Fowler led the Kia Ora Gaza team of six Kiwis who drove three of 135 aid-packed ambulances – funded by New Zealand donations — into the besieged enclave. This was followed later by two other land convoys and three Gaza Freedom Flotillas.

In April 2026, a massive new siege-breaking Sumud Flotilla to Gaza with 100 boats and carrying some 1000 activists is being planned.

Gaza solidarity rallies
In spite of failing health in recent months, Fowler was frequently seen at Gaza rallies, speaking and singing in his rousing voice.

Close comrade and friend, John Minto, co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), paid tribute to his contribution in a statement today.

“Roger has been a legend of the solidarity movement for many decades as the founder and co-cordinator of Kia Ora Gaza which delivered aid to the besieged Gaza strip by land and by sea,” he said.

“He was a man of great integrity and character with passion for justice. He will remain a guiding light for the solidarity movement here.”

Co-chair Maher Nazzal presented Fowler an award for his contribution to Palestinian solidarity last September.

Another comrade from the 1990s onwards, Tony Fala, recalls his “dauntless courage, tireless optimism, boundless energy, and vast strategic capacity was profoundly inspiring.”

“Roger was one of the humblest and kindest people I have ever met. He could build coalitions and strengthen community bonds with ease. He sought what brought people together, not what kept them apart.

Belief in ordinary people
“He believed in ordinary people and possessed a deep, instinctive understanding of justice. He was strong yet carried no ego.”

Fala praised Fowler’s commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Te Ao Māori community life, describing him as a “born oral historian”.

“He gave selflessly to every cause he committed himself to and would move mountains to achieve victory for the struggles he served.”

“We Are All Palestinians.”                              Video: Banana Boat Records

In the weeks before his death, he and his whanau were working hard to complete a history of the socialist Ponsonby People’s Union, “Struggle and Solidarity”, due to be published soon. Fowler met his future wife, Dr Lyn Doherty (Ngati Porou and Ngāpuhi), then while they were activists campaigning to stop landlords evicting tenants.

Based in the working-class suburb of Ponsonby, the union activists campaigned alongside the Polynesian Panthers and ACORD (Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination)  to defend civil liberties, fight slum landlord evictions, and oppose the Dawn Raids against Pacific Islands overstayers.

Fowler had seen the last proofs of the collaborative book before he died and was very happy.

Activist author Dean Parker once described Fowler as “the Great Helmsman of the legendary Ponsonby People’s Union, brave hero of so many struggles”.

Fowler had lived for almost four decades in Māngere East, a multicultural quarter of South Auckland.

He was manager of the Māngere East Community Learning Centre and an executive member of Out of School Care Network.

Impressive community tribute
In 1999, he was a recipient of the Queen’s Service Medal for his “public services” and the people of Māngere East paid an impressive tribute to him with a daytime concert last November.

One of his best remembered local campaigns was the community coalition in 2010 that saved Māngere East’s Postshop.

A one-time bus driver, Fowler strongly campaigned for public transport.

He was also involved with amateur theatre for several decades, including Auckland Light Opera, “The Aunties” children’s theatre and Manukau Performing Arts.

Fowler was a founding member of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign in the 1970s and he was part of the anti-apartheid movement for 15 years.

In 1969, along with a large group of activists — including Alan Robson, Pat Bolster and Graeme Whimp — he opened the first Resistance Bookshop in Queen Street and he was co-director for a time.

“The bookshop became a focus for radical political actors in Auckland in 1969 and the early 70s,” recalls Robson, now an academic at the University of Papua New Guinea.

‘He gave us hope’
Activist Del Abcede, a supporter of Kia Ora Gaza and the Palestine movement, recalls: “Roger did so much for social justice and humanity and yet he was so humble, gentle, kind and unassuming — one of a kind.

“I’ll always remember with fondness snippets of short but meaningful conversations with him.

“Memories of him will live forever — like a light at the end of the tunnel. He gave us hope.”

In fact, the whole whānau have inspired hope — his wife Dr Lyn Doherty (they were married at the Bastion Point protest), tamariki Tawera Fowler, Hone Fowler, Maia McGregor, Kahutia Fowler, and their mokopuna.

During his lifelong protests, Fowler was arrested and jailed four times and with colleagues he set up a free prison visiting service in 1972 for Paremoremo and Waikeria.

The last track on Fowler’s album is titled “The Final Song” but his music will be long remembered as the hallmark of the legacy and life of an extraordinary community and social justice activist.

• Roger Fowler’s life will be celebrated at Ngā Tapuwae Community Centre, 255 Buckland Road, Māngere, 10-2pm, Wednesday, February 25.

Last week, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said Aotearoa’s immigration settings were “no way to treat our Pacific cousins”.

“All Pacific people want is a fair go, equivalent to what other nations are getting, and they’re not getting it,” he said outside Parliament.

While Peters’ comments were made in the context of the Pacific Justice petition, the concept of the Pacific as “family” has become a common rhetoric used by politicians and leaders across New Zealand.

• READ MORE: Four key facts about climate change and human migration
• UN warns of millions displaced by climate change as COP30 opens in Brazil
• Other climate migration reports

In 2018, former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern spoke on such issues facing the Pacific.

“We are the Pacific too, and we are doing our best to stand with our family as they face these threats,” she said during a talk at the Paris Institute.

At the Pacific Islands Forum last year, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said: “This is the Pacific family and we prioritise the centrality of the Pacific Islands Forum.”

But is Aotearoa doing enough to live up to this “Pacific family” rhetoric in the face of daunting and life-changing threats, such as climate change, continues to reshape the region?

Discussions and comparisons continue to arise off the back of Australia’s Falepili Union Treaty, which saw the first group of Tuvaluan migrants relocate towards the end of 2025.

Australia’s implementation of the treaty has sparked criticism over whether New Zealand is failing its Pacific neighbours when it comes to climate-related migration.

‘Increasingly perilous situations’
For Pacific Islanders hoping to move to Aotearoa, there is a pathway.

Under the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballot, 150 people from specifically Kiribati and 250 from Tuvalu — two of the most vulnerable nations at the forefront of climate impacts — can gain residency every year.

Applicants must pay $1385, pass health checks, meet English requirements, be under 45, and secure a job offer.

Dr Olivia Yates has spent years researching climate mobility from Kiribati and Tuvalu.

She said the tension around climate mobility sits not in a lack of awareness, but in the design of the system itself.

“I think the main takeaway is that New Zealand’s current approach to climate mobility, or at least for the last five years — things are starting to change now — but initially — we do a lot of research, get a lot more information, and leave immigration systems as they are,” she said.

She said Pacific neighbours islands are facing “increasingly difficult” circumstances.

“Disasters are becoming more frequent … the access to food and to water is being challenged because of these creeping impacts of climate change. So as the New Zealand government takes one step forward, I feel like climate change is sort of a step ahead of us,” Dr Yates said.

“It sounds very doom and gloom, but the other thing I would say is that our Pacific neighbours, fundamentally and primarily, want to stay in place. Nobody wants to have to leave.”

In the meantime, people are moving, often through pathways never intended to respond to climate pressure.

“People are using these laws to come to the country and their laws that were not really set up to address climate change and the movement of people in response to climate change,” Dr Yates said.

“They’re primarily economically motivated, and so this creates a whole bunch of issues that are the downstream consequence of using a system for something that is not what it was designed for.”

She said that PAC ballot, created in 2001, has effectively become “the de facto pathway for people from Kiribati and Tuvalu to move here for reasons related to climate change”.

While many migrants cite work, family or opportunity as the primary motivations, these distinctions are becoming blurred.

“It’s kind of becoming increasingly difficult to separate climate change drivers from these factors,” Dr Yates explained.

And the consequences can be significant. When visas hinge on employment and strict eligibility criteria, families can find themselves vulnerable if those circumstances shift.

“Our current immigration laws are being used in a way that they weren’t designed for, and this is having really negative consequences on people, specifically from Kiribati and Tuvalu,” she said.

“On the other side of that, those that wish to stay, whether because they choose to or because they can’t afford to leave, that visas aren’t available to them, and they start to face increasingly perilous situations that breach their rights.”

Lacking a plan
Kiribati community leader Kinaua Ewels, who works closely with Pacific migrants settling in Aotearoa, said the system’s rigidity has left many feeling excluded and unsupported.

She does not believe New Zealand is set up to deal with the realities of climate migration

“I’m hoping the New Zealand government could help the people who are able to move on their own, using their own money, but when they get here, they can actually access work opportunities,” she said.

Ewels said the PAC still feels restrictive, and lacks a plan to help new arrivals adapt or secure employment.

“They pressure them to look for their own job. There’s no plan for the government to help them settle very easily, to run away from climate change and their life situations back on the island,” Ewels said.

“More can be done.”

According to Ewels, the families who do arrive with the hopes of safety and stability, end up struggling to navigate basic systems, such as healthcare and employment, and get no formal support.

“It’s very restricted in the way that it’s not supportive to the people from the Pacific Islands,” she said.

NZ govt ‘not ready to bring climate refugees’

Ewels said that while New Zealand spoke of the Pacific as “family,” those words continued ringing hollow for communities who saw little practical support.

“They use the family name, which is a very meaningful and deep word back home, but the process is not done yet,” she said.

“In reality, the government is not actually ready to bring people over here in terms of climate refugees or people needing to move because of climate change.”

Ewels said if New Zealand truly viewed the Pacific as family, that connection would extend itself into some meaningful collaboration with Pacific community leaders here in Aotearoa, who could help them navigate the complexities of this situation.

“If the government talks about family, they should work with us, the community leaders, so we can help them at least make sure people are warmly welcomed and supported when they come here,” Ewels said.

Dr Yates said the government was making efforts, but warned the the pace of policy was struggling to keep up with the pace of change happening in the world today.

“I would say that the New Zealand government is trying. But as the government takes one step forward, climate change is starting to outpace us.”

Pacific sea levels have risen by as much as 15cm over the past three decades.

There are predictions that around 50,000 Pacific people across the region could lose their homes each year as the climate crisis reshapes their environments.

In the past decade, one in 10 people from Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu have already migrated.

Kiribati community leader Charles Kiata told RNZ Pacific in October last year that life on the Micronesian island nation was becoming increasingly difficult, as it was being hit by severe storms, with higher temperatures and drought.

“Every part of life, food, shelter, health, is being affected and what hurts the most is that our people feel trapped. They love their home, but their home is slowly disappearing,” Kiata said at the time.

Crops are dying and fresh drinking water is becoming increasingly scarce for the island nation.

Kiata said Kiribati overstayers in New Zealand were anxious they would be sent back home.

“Deporting them back to flooded lands or places with no clean water like Kiribati is not only cruel but it also goes against our shared Pacific values.”

In 2020, Kiribati man Ioane Teitiota took New Zealand to the United Nations Human Rights Committee after his refugee claim, based on sea-level rise, was rejected.

The committee did find his deportation lawful, although ruled that governments must consider the human rights impacts of climate change when assessing deportations.

The term “climate refugee” remains unrecognised in binding international law. It is a term Dr Yates has previously told RNZ was always flawed.

“Climate change is this unique phenomenon because what is forcing people out of their countries comes from elsewhere,” she said.

“At face value, the idea of being a refugee didn’t fit.”

Many communities suffering at the hands of climate change do not want to leave their home, their culture, their land, their community.

Dr Yates said the term “climate mobility” was a better fit — describing it as a spectrum that recognises the desire for communities to have options.

Australia’s Falepili Treaty v NZ’s climate pathways
In late 2025, the first Tuvaluans began relocating to Australia under the Falepili Union, a bilateral treaty signed with Tuvalu in 2023.

The agreement creates a new permanent visa for up to 280 Tuvaluans each year, allocated by ballot. Applicants do not need a job offer, there is no age cap, nor disability exclusion.

The treaty has led debate on online platforms around why New Zealand does not offer a similar pathway.

International law expert Professor Jane McAdam is cautious against simplistic comparisons between New Zealand and Australia.

“It has been mislabelled in a lot of the international media as a climate refugee visa when it’s nothing of the sort,” Prof McAdam said.

“There’s often nothing in this visa that requires you to show that you’re concerned about the impacts of climate change in the future,” she said.

Professor McAdam pointed out that New Zealand had never been viewed as “totally useless” in climate-related migration of Pacific peoples.

“Historically, New Zealand has been seen as leading the way when it comes to providing pathways for people in the Pacific to move,” she said, noting the PAC visa and labour mobility schemes as examples.

“New Zealand has been leading the way globally in recognising how existing international refugee law and human rights work,” she added.

That includes influential tribunal decisions examining how climate impacts intersect with refugee and human rights law, even where claims ultimately failed.

In 2023, Pacific leaders endorsed the Pacific Regional Framework on Climate Mobility, the first regional document to formally acknowledge climate-related migration and commit states to cooperate on safe and dignified pathways.

Dr Yates said New Zealand was “furiously involved” in shaping the framework.

“The framework is the first time, put down on paper, that people are migrating because of climate-related reasons,” she said.

However, the document is non-binding.

“It means our government is ready to take this seriously. But I wouldn’t say they are taking this seriously, yet.”

She added a dedicated, rights-based climate mobility visa is needed that can account for a wide-range of people, including those with disabilities and others disproportionately affected.

RNZ Pacific approached the Immigration Minister Erica Stanford’s office for comment on whether New Zealand immigration law does explicitly recognise climate change or climate-induced displacement as grounds for special protection or a dedicated visa category.

We were advised Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was the appropriate person to comment on the issue.

However, a spokesperson for Peters told RNZ Pacific the specific issue “would be a question for the Minister of Immigration, or the Climate Change Minister”.

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

Known globally as one of America’s most prominent and inspiring civil rights leaders, Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr twice ran for US president. He has died at 84.

Throughout his lifetime, he fought to promote social justice, economic equality and political empowerment for marginalised communities — and worked hard to encourage voter uptake from the disillusioned and excluded.

Little wonder he was outspoken against the South African apartheid regime and on Palestine. His six children described their father as a “servant leader”.

• READ MORE: How Jesse Jackson helped empower US Arabs and lift up the Palestinian cause
• Rest in power, Jesse Jackson — he gave peace a chance — Tribute by The Nation
• House Speaker Mike Johnson denies request for Rev. Jesse Jackson to lie in honor in US Capitol
• Te Ao with Moana
• Other Jesse Jackson reports

When I think of Jesse Jackson, I recall the iconic image of him standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in 1968, moments before his mentor Reverend Martin Luther King was assassinated.

I visited the site over a year ago. Now transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum, it documents the Jim Crow era both men were born into; where segregation and racism was formally normalised.

The interactive display was both moving and disturbing. It was also hopeful; a reminder of people-power movements led by those shaped by a Baptist church culture that grew the most compelling orators.

I have a personal memory of meeting Jesse Jackson one special afternoon many years ago in New York, while travelling with Deirdre Nehua and Syd Jackson.

Fearless treaty activist
Syd, one of our most fearless unionists and treaty activists, passed away in 2007. Both men were intelligent, witty and passionately Kaupapa-driven; powerful speakers who used their gifts and life experience to build movements at home and beyond.

They marched and organised sit-ins. They spoke out when it wasn’t popular, put their hands up when others hesitated. They got off the fence and made a difference.

We were introduced by a mutual friend as “Māori activists from New Zealand”. A puzzled Jesse gazed at Uncle Syd.

“Where did you get that slave name from, my brother?”

Deirdre and I glanced at each other. Uncle Syd responded with a deft explanation that referred to his Welsh whakapapa and included the words both “rugby” and “colonisation”.

Afterwards, the three of us bounced around New York beaming. We’d met an inspirational leader and he now knew “Māori brothers and sisters at the bottom of the South Pacific” were in the same waka; fighting the good fight.

In the many tributes to Jesse Jackson, I noted the odd commentator described him as a “populist”. It’s a term that conjures up those who frame themselves as saviours by fomenting division and exploiting fear.

Inclusive and reformist
Yet Jesse was inclusive and a reformist. Their point was about how he built coalitions that brought African Americans, Latinos, unions, rainbow communities, poor whites and working class together to fight for basic human rights inside the existing system. It’s said he frequently used his platforms to highlight Native American and Indigenous-led causes.

This week The Washington Post noted how colleges in the US are dismantling affirmative action stategies designed to overcome restrictions on participation due to race or income. Back here, calls have been made for a referendum on electorates set up to specifically provide a voice for signatories to Te Tiriti, in a system not designed by or for them.

Next week, a champion who railed against inequality will be laid to rest in his beloved Chicago. For us in Aotearoa, it’s an opportunity to reflect on his coalition-building record in this era of division and truly look around; to understand who and what the real threat to our sense of nationhood truly is.

A man of faith and hope, Jesse Jackson’s words are as relevant now as they ever were. Words matter. So does his call to action.

“It’s time for us to turn to each other, not on each other.”

Moe mai ra e te Rangatira.

Moana Maniapoto MNZM is an Aotearoa New Zealand singer, songwriter and documentary maker, and presenter of Te Ao With Moana. This article was first published on the Te Ao FB page and is republished with permission.

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

It was with a sense of disgust rather than despair that I read in The Jerusalem Post today [February 2024]: “‘Antisemitic’ UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese banned from Israel.” We’re being gas-lighted again and this is a chance to push back against the narrative that to support victims of Israel is to somehow be antisemitic.

Back in November 2023 as the Israeli exterminations of Palestinians were ramping up, I had the privilege to hear and speak to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

She visited Wellington as part of a long-scheduled visit to Australia and New Zealand and spoke to government ministers, relief organisations, journalists and packed halls of citizens who shared a sense of horror at what was playing out in Gaza.

• READ MORE: UN staffers back Francesca Albanese, condemn European ministers for attacks
• French filmmaker explains why he backs Francesca Albanese amid pressure to resign
• European states must retract outrageous attacks on UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese
• Other Gaza reports

Her speeches were filled with knowledge and forensic clarity, only matched by her decency and sense of humanity — which extended to great courtesy shown to a lone and agitated Israeli supporter at a meeting I attended.

In issuing the banning order, two Israeli ministers stated: “The era of Jews being silent is over. If the UN wants to return to being a relevant body, its leaders must publicly disavow the antisemitic words of the special envoy.”

This is of course a vulgar lie told by ministers actively pursuing genocide. These two indeed aren’t silent: the scream, roar and boom of their shells, missiles and snipers’ bullets have shouted to the world how far the Zionist state has descended into the bowels of depravity.

The Jewish diaspora are anything but silent too — I have been immensely impressed by the courage and persistence of Jewish people worldwide who have shunned the fiction that to be anti-Zionist is to be antisemitic. I hear them loud and clear chanting with righteous indignation, “Not in our name!”

Francesca Albanese rejects false accusations            Video: Al Jazeera

Albanese’s riposte
What really steamed the ministers and momentarily deflected their attention from the slaughter of innocents was Albanese’s riposte to a casual lie by French President Emmanuel Macron: “October 7 was the largest antisemitic massacre of our century.”

Albanese responded, quite rightly, surely self-evidently: “The victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism but in response to Israel’s oppression.” She also stated her respect for the victims of the attack.

When courageous people are attacked by malign and powerful actors, it takes moral clarity and steely determination to walk into a sea of troubles and oppose the true villains. We all need to do that now — and not remain silent.

In the past couple of months Israel has, with the complicity of the white-dominated Western countries, tried to destroy UNRWA, the primary UN organisation providing relief to the Palestinian people, as they endure this genocidal siege.

Because of Israel’s powerful allies, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has kept mum and ignored the vast number of human rights atrocities committed by Israel. (Editor: The ICC subsequently issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity on 21 November 2024).

The Israelis have also hoicked and spat out their contempt for the International Court of Justice. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir commented, “Hague Smague — The ICJ has only proven what everyone already knew, that it is only seeking to prosecute the Jewish nation”.

Traducing the ICJ in this way is another attempt to gaslight us all. If we can do one decent thing it would be to get our governments to raise their voices in defence of the brutalised and besieged United Nations.

Stuck in settler colonial regime
Albanese told audiences on both sides of the Tasman: “When I speak of human rights, I speak of both the Palestinians and the Israelis, who are stuck in a settler colonial regime; this is what we have to solve together.”

She went on to say, “ I will always stand with the victim.”

There is good reason to try to silence Francesca Albanese. She is an authority in the detail of the dehumanisation inflicted on the Palestinians. She has seen the daily lack of proportionality, the discourse of genocide, the military and administrative controls, the deprivation of sanitary services, food and medicine, the surveillance technology, the casual killings, the financial chocking of a people, the way the Israelis are eating up Palestine inch by inch as the West looks the other way.

In short, more than most people she understands the structural system of oppression that is denying the Palestinians the right to exist as a people — culturally, economically, politically. She is a humanist and the exact opposite of an antisemite.

Albanese is one of legions of good people besieged by Israel and its allies. The racist white elites in Europe and the USA are more than happy to adopt a definition that conflates anti-semitism with criticism of Israel, using the recently-minted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition as a tool to silence (that word again) defenders of Palestinian rights.

When the right-wing of UK Labour set to work to oust Jeremy Corbyn, they succeeded, deploying an antisemitic slur. By the time the purge had finished, thousands of Labour progressives had been eliminated from the party membership, including large numbers of Jewish progressives.

The Labour Files, a must-see Al Jazeera documentary, based on a data dump of internal Labour files, uncovered the astonishing statistic that if you were a Jewish member of the UK Labour party you were seven times more likely to be expelled for antisemitism than a non-Jew.

Dustbin of dirty tricks
It’s high time we kick this ghastly trope, this despicable manoeuvre equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism into the dustbin of dirty tricks. Jewish people have suffered persecution for their faith over the centuries. It does their memory a huge disservice — not least because now it is quite clear that genocide is the highest stage of Zionism.

For the record: I have Jewish friends who I invite to read and critique my articles before publication. They are not self-hating Jews, they are not antisemitic, and nor am I. We stand shoulder to shoulder with Jewish people worldwide who are appalled at what is being done in the name of Judaism.

Francesca Albanese said something else memorable that evening: “History is also made of watershed moments, when things change. Let’s make this one of them.”

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser based in Wellington, publisher of Solidarity and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam war. This article was first published by Scoop on 14 February 2024.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Ben Bohane

We are no more than 5 minutes out of Bethlehem on a crisp December morning when my  Palestinian driver — let’s call him Ahmed — stops and points to a curl of smoke rising in the valley below, near Beit Jala.

“That’s a local restaurant the Israeli’s are burning since last night. They demand permits even when it is on family land. Israel then gives demolition orders, and no one can stop them.”

It’s the day before Christmas. I’m in the West Bank and Israel for a month to see the situation for myself, to try and understand how this comparatively small area continues to hijack history and our news agenda.

• READ MORE: At least 10 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza in past 24 hours
• Other Palestine reports

Gaza remains off-limits to all foreign media attempting to report on Israel’s genocide there, so I can’t go.

The international Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) states 249 media personnel have been killed so far by Israel in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Israel and Iran since the Gaza war began.

Israel has killed more journalists in the past three years than any other government in history,

assassinating more than all media personnel killed in all the wars of the 20th century combined.

Israel has also now banned many reputable international NGOs from operating there. In late January, the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces)  finally acknowledged the death toll tally compiled by Palestinian health authorities as accurate, saying it believed 71,000 people had been killed so far — the death toll is now more than 72,000.

I’ve come to the other front, the West Bank, as Israeli settlers and the IDF establish new illegal settlements and make life difficult for Palestinians just trying to eke out a living.

While I’m there, Israel announces 19 new settlements, bringing to 69 the number of new settlements approved in the past few years.

They are slowly circling and strangling Palestinian towns by taking the high ground on hilltops, establishing their own roads to link up with other settlements, and destroying ancient olive groves which locals have long relied on for a meagre income.

Some of these trees are many hundreds of years old, and their desecration seems somehow symbolic of Israel’s attempts to change history and geography.

“We are trapped here”, says Ahmed. “Ever since October 7, Israel has closed off our access to Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. A lot of businesses are struggling to survive after 5 years of shutdowns — first it was covid, and then the Gaza war. No tourists for years.”

Unless they are employed in one of a handful of jobs, such as in hospitals or working for a Christian organisation, Palestinians in the West Bank can’t leave. Denied both Palestinian statehood and Israeli citizenship,

West Bank Palestinians are caught in a limbo where they can’t travel into wider Israel or beyond.

“Israel controls all our movements, all our water, and controls our petrol supply”, says Ahmed. “The only thing they don’t control is the air we breathe, and if they could control that, they would.”

Bulldozer warfare
We visit a home recently bulldozed by settlers and fields uprooted because they were considered too close to the expanding nearby Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit. As locals lose access to their olive orchards, the only trees safe are those within towns or around their homes.

I see a young boy with a wheelbarrow full of seedlings and uprooted olive saplings moving towards a nearby field. Ahmed translates:

“The boy says that part of their resistance is to immediately replant the olive trees when settlers chop them down. The olives aren’t just an income for us, they are part of our identity on this land.”

We have to be quick when visiting the contested edges of these towns and fields, as settlers are always watching from nearby hilltops and the IDF can be on the scene in less than 5 minutes. On two occasions, my driver yells to get us back in the car for a hurried exit when he spots settlers driving down to intercept us.

Returning to Bethlehem, the annual Christmas parade is underway. Hundreds of Palestinian, Arab and Armenian Christians in uniforms march along roads leading to Manger Square in the heart of Bethlehem.

Palestinian Authority police guard the route and churches, including the Orthodox Basilica of the Nativity, first begun by Emperor Constantine’s Christian mother Saint Helena in the 4th century. Under this Byzantine church is a grotto where Jesus was supposedly born.

This is the first time in two years that Christmas celebrations, including a huge Christmas tree, have taken place. With few foreign tourists, shops in Bethlehem are happy to see many Muslim families from across the West Bank visiting with children to see Santa and the holy sites. It’s a peaceful time with Christian and Muslim families celebrating together.

I met Father Issa Thaljieh, a Palestinian (Greek Orthodox) priest overseeing the Basilica.

“Issa” is the Muslim name for Jesus. He says the number of Christians continues to dwindle, from 10 percent of the Palestinian population during the British mandate period 100 years ago, to around 1 percent today. Most live overseas now, with Israel incentivising their departure.

Apartheid
One thing I hadn’t known until I came here is that Israelis are forbidden from entering any West Bank towns. At the entrance to many towns I visited, including Jericho and Bethlehem, are large road signs in red warning Israeli citizens not to enter.

Although usually framed as a security measure to prevent kidnapping, it has the additional impact of preventing ordinary Israelis and Palestinians from mixing together and stops Israelis from really understanding what is going on across the West Bank. It underlined the sense of apartheid, along with the long winding separation wall that snakes between Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank.

Always interested in art and graffiti as forms of resistance, I cruise a length of the wall, near two refugee camps inside Bethlehem and come across artist Banksy’s “Walled Off” hotel, which had only reopened the week before after 5 years of closure.

Upstairs is a gallery supporting local artists, downstairs a museum about the wall and “occupation”, along with a chintzy piano bar styled like a frontier saloon.

The hotel faces a section of the wall emblazoned with graffiti and promises “the worst views in the world”. The wall began construction substantially in 2002, runs for 810 kms and is Israel’s biggest infrastructure project. Banksy’s museum quotes the man put in charge of the build, Danny Tirza:

“The main thing the government told me in giving me the job was,

to include as many Israelis inside the fence and leave as many Palestinians outside as possible.

Down the road, a number of local stores have popped up selling cheap Banksy merch, and apparently, Banksy is fine with all the rip-offs.

Other days are spent visiting Jericho and Hebron with its shrine containing the tomb of Abraham, patriarch of all the monotheistic faiths.

It is a town often at flashpoint between Palestinians and hardcore Israeli settlers who have moved right into pockets of the town, protected by IDF soldiers. A day trip to Ramallah is aborted when my driver says that Israeli forces had entered that morning to destroy dozens of shops and shot two people.

“It’s too dangerous today to visit, and besides, it would take us 5 hours to get through the checkpoints instead of one hour as normal,” he says.

Every day across the West Bank, Palestinians must navigate security challenges, declining business and hungry families. Given the impunity with which Israel operates in Gaza, Palestinians across the West Bank are still standing their ground, but without much hope that the international community will stop Israel’s encroachment.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government wants to extinguish any hope of a two-state solution, but Palestinians will not cede their homes — or their olive trees — easily.

The Epstein Files were never just about one man.

Jeffrey Epstein didn’t operate in a vacuum. His crimes were grotesque, systematic, and, crucially, protected for decades. That alone should unsettle anyone who believes power is held accountable.

What’s disturbing isn’t only what he did, but what didn’t happen afterwards.

• READ MORE: Struggling to navigate the Epstein files? Here is a visual guide
• Other Epstein Files reports

How does a trafficker move across borders, fly politicians and royalty, launder wealth, avoid serious prosecution for years, and then conveniently die in a high-security facility with cameras malfunctioning and guards “asleep”?

That’s not a coincidence. That’s institutional failure at best, complicity at worst.

The real scandal is the silence.

Names were known. Networks were hinted at. Evidence existed. Yet accountability stopped at Epstein himself, the perfect firewall.

How power protects itself
Once he was gone, so was the urgency. Files sealed. Investigations stalled. Media interest redirected.

This is how power protects itself.

Whether you call it the Deep State, the ruling class, elite immunity, or simply entrenched systems of power, the pattern is familiar:

The powerful are insulated, the truth is managed, and justice is selective.

Epstein wasn’t an anomaly. He was a symptom.

And until transparency replaces secrecy, and accountability reaches upward instead of downward, the question will remain:

Who was Epstein really working for?

And who benefited most from him never speaking?

Maher Khalil Nazzal is a Muslim Palestinian refugee living in Auckland and co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

Citizen journalists bring to our attention the truths that we need to know. Being a witness to such truths is different to doom scrolling. It is about awareness.

This is about knowing the truths that the people who run this deteriorating world, want to hide.

Victims everywhere are begging to be heard and seen. And some people are revealing these truths. Some are trained in journalism, some are freelancing because the mainstream is not the clear clean truth stream, and some are self-trained.

• READ MORE: Amnesty calls for independent probe of ‘shocking’ Australian police violence against peaceful protesters
• Other articles by Saige England

The role of filming and reporting the truth is vital in an era when books are banned, when the names of predators are redacted, when the people at the top are part of an oligarchy that supports murder and rape.

A couple of years ago — almost to the day — I was pepper sprayed by a frontline policeman for filming police brutality against peaceful protesters standing on the footpath in Lyttelton Aotearoa New Zealand.

In that situation police seized people and hurled them to the ground. In other instances, as with human rights activist, John Minto, they seized baffled people and hauled them onto the road.

The men and women in blue vests and black gloves, formed a scrum over each seized civilian. They pummelled and beat them viciously, and hauled them into vans. Minto suffered a gash down his forehead.

Nightmares last longer
Others had similar wounds and thanks to the direct illegal use of pepper spray, many suffered a sense like glass in their eyes. In my experience, those painful symptoms lasted weeks. The nightmares lasted longer.

Early last year, I was banned from my own Town Hall for witnessing the State of the Nation speech by Winston Peters. One of that leader’s loyal fans complained that I was taking notes. I produced my press card. Made no difference.

I witnessed a leader inciting hatred. Witnessing. The security guards banned me. The police upheld the ban. I am a multi-award winning reporter who has reported from conflict zones around the world. And I see the conflict increasing.

In the United States, in Europe, in Australia, in Aotearoa New Zealand, what are we learning?

The right to support the right of all human beings to live on their land is decreed a crime by our leaders. Why? Because some have more than others and they want to protect their “more” and push others to have less, even nothing.

These are the actions of totalitarian capitalist regimes intent on retaining power over the land, the rivers, and all the waterways.

We see it in the US with ICE killing a woman who was poet and a mother, we see it in the killing of a nurse, and all the disappearances, people — including children — hauled off streets and “disappeared”.

Police kicking 2 women
We see it with police kicking and beating two women wearing abayas in the Netherlands. If they are assaulting women in public we can be certain they are also molesting women behind the public gaze.

We see totalitarian push back against human rights in Germany and France, Australia and New Zealand.

Let’s call this flagrant attack on democracy what it is.

It is imperialism. Yes I know, it sounds like I’m recalling Thatcher. But hey she never went away. Her Daddy abused her friends and she loved him. Thatcher was an abuse enabler.

Like Blair. Like Trump. Like other abusers who hold power. It is no surprise that many of these leaders who were raised by power hungry predators, become predators. They exploit others.

Really it is a very simple equation. Democracy is impossible under financial imperialist capitalism.

Imperialism upholds the right of one people to reign supreme over another. We aren’t talking about something that ended over a hundred years ago. We are talking about something that is being perpetuated now.

Shameful exploitation
And by now, those of us who are descended by people who usurped and enslaved, are coming to a difficult conclusion — that it is shameful, this history of exploitation.

As one Quaker researcher said: “What I have learned is that if my ancestors were not as radical for human rights as I have hoped, I can at least be different, be radical for human rights now.”

Greed, predatory behaviour is handed down from predator to predator. It used to favour the oldest son. Now it just faces those prepared to sell out to buy in.

Mercenary capitalist entrepreneurs control society and they govern our countries. The brutes who exploit are connected.

So back to the streets. Back to what some reporters saw and reported and what others who aren’t real reporters, failed to report.

Let’s pick apart the claims of incitement. Incitement for what?

Chanting crime
The authorities in NSW deem that it should be a crime for any citizen to chant these words.

From.

The.

River.

To.

The.

Sea.

What next? Will Jews be told they can no longer chant in Hebrew: le shana haba b’yerulashaem. See the parallel.

Next.

Year.

In.

Jerusalem.

Every year Jews around the world chant — as they have for decades and decades — the vow that next year they will be in Jerusalem. They lived in Europe. They lived in the US.

And this they chanted.

Perhaps that is why it bothers Zionists and supporters of genocide. But it wasn’t a return.

Jews who recite this are Europeans and Americans, New Zealanders and Australians.

When they talk of exile, they are talking in mythological proportions, invoking the Bible and tribalism, Goliath and David.

Zionist regime supreme
But one group is reigning supreme. The Zionist regime has pushed thousands of Palestinians out of their homes, and murdered tens and tens and tens and tens of thousands, and still this genocide continues.

But has New South Wales deemed it a crime for Jews to chant “next year in Jerusalem”?

No.

Nor should it. People have the right to chant.

But let’s understand the real history, rather than the propaganda pumped out by a multi million dollar US-Israeli think thank.

Thanks to very real anti-semitism, Europe did not want to rehome Jewish refugees from the Holocaust. Britain helped out with an imperialist Zionist strategy that pushed Palestinians out of their homes.

Some Jews fled, refused to do what had been done to them. Good on those Jews. And good on those Jews around the world who stand for societies that care and share, that don’t steal and kill.

I am worried about the implications of any law that bans a chant by exiled people. Will it become a crime for any group of people to chant about their desire to return to lands from which they were exiled?

Governments around the world are leaning that way. They stomp down on Indigenous people, on refugees, on immigrants. They protect their excessive power and privilege.

Blaming immigrants
It’s very popular among these regimes to blame immigrants who come from land that was raped and raided by imperialism. Just tune into our ageing playboy Winston Peters.

Make no mistake under regimes such as this, no one is safe. No one.

It is clearly a crime for others to stand alongside those who have been oppressed and exiled, so will it one day be deemed a crime to talk about ALL the stolen children? Like the stolen indigenous children? The children born in a certain place, on certain land, near a river, near the sea.

Will it be a crime to talk about those abused in state homes?

Will the imperialist histories be redacted? Oh they are. The narrative is changed. The victims can barely survive.

I witnessed some of this so I can remind myself and I can remind you.

When I first went to Israel in 1982 the Begin regime invaded Lebanon. Desecrated people dreaming under cypress trees.

The Israeli Offence Force assisted then, in the genocide, of around 3000 children, women, and men — Palestinians — in refugee camps.

Evil massacre
It was a bloodbath, an evil massacre carried out under stealth, at night. The victims did not have a chance. They had no one to defend them. They were murdered by mercenary Israeli soldiers.

One Israeli soldier, Ari Folman, later made a film, Waltz with Bashir which depicts how he came to realise he was among the soldiers who surrounded the camps and fired flares to illuminate the area for the Lebanese Christian Philangist militia.

Like most soldiers, he was only “following orders”. It haunted him.

The ghosts of every massacre carried out by every totalitarian state like Israel haunt the world. And every regime that supports it is responsibile.

Imperialism is the bloodstain that won’t wash out until the notion of super and special entitlement due to race or class or religion is extinguished.

It is racist and classist and it is wrong.

I wrote my novel The Seasonwife because I wanted to show the truth — that people down the bottom rungs of the class system were exploited by those at the top to exploit indigenous people.

Criminalised the poor
We need to know these truths. And they can be proved. Settler colonialism is not a pretty policy, it was dreamed up by a country that created poverty and criminalised the poor. It sent them out to do its dirty work. Oh some rode on those waves but others were submerged. And Indigenous people lost their rights.

Here in Aotearoa a Treaty was forged, a treaty which clearly gives Indigenous people the right to rangatiratanga. And successive legal acts pushed indigenous people down, breached the principles of that partnership.

When one partner is the abuser the partnership is not equal.

We must remember the crimes of imperialism. We must. Because the past is now.

The massacres of Palestinians is an extension of every colonial crime. The crimes are connected: slavery; forced servitude; exile due to poverty; apartheid, assimilation, extermination.

It is a thread from this ocean to that river to that ocean. From here to there. From Europe to the Levant and the Middle East. All the greed-mongers benefit.

The crimes against Palestinians have been going on for more than seven decades. Research the Nakba. Before the British aided and mounted a violent rape-and-kill takeover, Muslims and Jews and Christians worshipped alongside each other in Palestine. It is easy enough to find documentary evidence of this pleasant land on YouTube.

Look at it now. Look at the difference between Haifa or Tel Aviv and Gaza.

Standing against supremacy
Any Jew who has a soul, who has a conscience, will not stand for the slaughter of innocents or for the creation of a white apartheid supremely state. In the US most Jews are against this, and increasingly so are Jews in Australia and New Zealand, standing up against the supremacy of Zionism.

And Christians need to stand too. It is KKK fundamentalist to support the extermination of people. There is nothing holy in supporting theft and expulsion and the gunning down of women, children, and men.

When we invoke laws that support genocide we create a soul-less compassionless society.

A truly Humanist, Animist, any Values-based system will create a society with laws that uphold rather than extinguish, human rights.

It was a white Australian male who used his inheritance to kill 51 people praying at two mosques in Christchurch New Zealand. The Iman who greeted him at the door welcomed him as “a brother”.

It was a Muslim man who risked his life and suffered terrible injuries while tackling two ISIS-inspired extremist gunmen at Bondi Beach in Sydney. That Muslim man stepped in front of a gun to defend Jewish children, women, and men.

I met many such kind, brave, peace-loving men when I lived in the Middle East and I experienced the utmost hospitality from Muslims.

I differentiate between all people and their regimes.

Greed in common
The regimes that uphold human rights violations are all connected. They all have one thing in common: greed.

Their rulers are predators.

Israel is a US-supported state responsible for mass murder, for genocide, for apartheid, for stealing children decade after decade.

Every government that has failed to denounce that State of Hate is acting against the right of people — all people — to real and precious freedom.

Once again, I call down my Jewish ancestors who experienced, as I have, anti-semitism — in standing against the supremacism that is Zionism.

I stand with Jews Against Zionism. I stand with Jews for Peace. I stand with Jews Against Genocide.

I stand with Jews who support the right of Palestinians to return. Yes to the land, yes to that beautiful river, and to that precious sea. I stand with their right to live where they want to live.

Right to protest
And I stand with the right of all citizens to protest. I stand with the right of citizen journalists to film and report human rights violations.

In my social media posts I continually put aggressive impulsive patriarchal police on notice. I let them know that violence by people who are supposed to protect, is unacceptable.
Their actions could lead to them being incarcerated.

Maybe not now, not yet, but one day. Their violent actions could certainly lead to them being jobless.

Their violent actions will be seen over and over again. The truth won’t be erased.

And I say this to mainstream reporters, please do your job. Join a union and oppose the patriarchy that presents propaganda as truth. Some reporters on the ground in Sydney who said they saw violence by the police and no violence from protesters, but the BBC and RNZ changed that narrative.

News presenters who were not present at the scene presented a skewed version provided by their government. They became a mouthpiece for propaganda. And in doing so they supported totalitarianism.

Reporters must not be mouthpieces for what one commentator so aptly described as the Broligarchy. Predators.

Out of police
The policeman who pepper sprayed me, two years ago, when I took footage of assaults against peaceful civilians by violent police, is no longer in the force. Perhaps he has joined the great raft of unemployed.

I would like to think he can be educated into compassion, that he can learn, that the hard look in his eye will one day be softened when he holds a brown grandchild in his arms.

Think twice police. Think twice reporters. Think twice every one who reads this.

Would you want your children to support all human rights? Do you think words like river and sea and return should be banned? Do you think the colour of the grass and the colour of a rose should be denounced as evil?

Do you think people should have the right to live on their land unmolested? Do you think the land and the waterways should be respected or bombed to dust, drained for its minerals?

Do you believe in freedom? If you do, then know that those who are upholding the right of one people to strip the rights of others, will not leave it there.

These totalitarian leaders are united. As one commentator put it, they are the broligarchy. They are connected. They are predators. And they will use force to shut you up and shut you down.

But I hold hope.

Moral weapon — the truth
Every citizen journalist who films human rights crimes being carried out by the arm of the government is armed with a valuable moral weapon: the truth.

Every citizen journalist reporting these truths is a hero.

The truth might be redacted, those who speak it or shout it might become victims, but in calling it out, they fall on the side of freedom and they will be remembered.

Freedom will come. Because it must. The greed mongers who rule must not prevail.

When the truths of victims is heard, the predators lose the narrative, and then they lose their power.

We are all connected in the lifestream of this tiny, precious blue planet. A spark is born and that spark is creativity, it is the spark that rises from destruction and despair.

Never stop witnessing
Harmony. Peace, and Tranquility is possible if our goal is cooperative living.

So be a witness, and never stop witnessing. Raise your voice, raise your heart and your soul. We are all connected and related because we are all brothers and sisters and cousins, spinning on this spinning orb, sparks in the eye of the universe.

Sparks of creativity are born in societies where nurturers are valued rather than predators and exploiters.

In such a world, peace will prevail.

One fine day.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

COMMENTARY: By Chris Sidoti

It’s not too late for Anthony Albanese to withdraw the invitation to the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog. It should be withdrawn for three reasons.

The first is institutional: The President of Israel is a constitutional role that is head of state but not part of the political or military chain of command. The office is similar to that of Australia’s Governor-General, though with somewhat more power.

As head of state, the president embodies and represents the state of Israel.

• READ MORE: Pro-Palestinian group vows protests in 24 cities against Israeli president’s Australia visit
• Jonathan Cook: The criminal elite exposed in the Epstein files are burying the truth about Gaza
• Other Gaza genocide reports

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has found that Israel unlawfully occupies the Palestinian territories, has unlawfully purported to annex parts of the Palestinian territories and unlawfully plants, encourages and maintains unlawful settlements in Palestinian territories.

The court is also trying a case in which Israel is accused of genocide.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and former Defence Minister, citing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The same court is investigating other senior Israeli military and political leaders on similar charges.

The UN Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory has found evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal intent by Israeli leaders and recommended their prosecution. Israel is a rogue state whose head of state, its supreme representative, should not be permitted to visit Australia.

The second reason is about Herzog himself: The Commission of Inquiry has found that Herzog has incited genocide. Herzog made the statement that all Palestinians, “an entire nation”, are responsible for the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.

The commission found that, because as president he is not part of the political or military chain of command, he was not responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity. But the crime of incitement to genocide stands outside the chain of command. It can be committed by any individual. The commission recommended that he be investigated and prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.

Herzog denies this and has qualified his statement, saying “there are many, many innocent Palestinians who don’t agree” with the actions of Hamas. But the UN commission said it viewed that as an effort “to deflect responsibility for the initial statement”.

He has been a vocal head of state and his words have been taken and repeated by Israeli soldiers. Someone who incites genocide does not satisfy the good character test for entering Australia. On the contrary, a person who incites genocide should be arrested on arrival and tried under Australian law and international law for the crime.

Traditionally, a head of state has a special immunity when visiting another country. However, there is now strong legal argument that this immunity does not apply in relation to atrocity crimes, namely war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Australia should not apply immunity in relation to these crimes.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has previously rejected the commission’s report as “distorted and false”, and Herzog has said his comments have been taken out of context, noting he also said Israeli soldiers would follow international law.

The third reason for withdrawing the invitation relates to us, Australia, and our current situation: The Hanukah massacre on 14 December 2025 has shaken us all. It was an atrocity. Immediately political leaders across the spectrum expressed concerns for “social cohesion”. They said steps were needed to restore social cohesion and called for national unity at a time of crisis.

Eventually a royal commission was appointed for this purpose. And yet it’s hard to imagine a single event at this point in time more likely to harden national division and undermine social cohesion than a visit by the Israeli president. It could be the most divisive state visit to Australia since that of US president Lyndon B Johnson in October 1966 when the Vietnam war was at its height and Australian soldiers were being killed.

What was the Prime Minister thinking when he invited Herzog? In the days after the massacre, he no doubt thought inviting Herzog was a good way to express support for the traumatised Jewish community.

But Herzog is a political leader, not a religious leader. He is divisive in Israel and his visit could be divisive in Australia. If the Prime Minister wanted to support the Jewish community, he would have done better to invite a respected Jewish religious leader.

For reasons of law, ethics and social cohesion, this divisive political visit should be stopped.

The prime minister is widely acclaimed for his willingness to recognise mistakes and change course before it’s too late. He should recognise that he made a terrible mistake, in the emotional, traumatic days after the massacre, in inviting Herzog to visit.

It’s not too late to correct the mistake.

Chris Sidoti is Australian and a Commissioner on the UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. Republished from The Guardian on 5 February 2026 and from Pearls and Irritations today with permission from the editor.

Speakers contrasted and condemned settler colonialism strategies in Aotearoa New Zealand and Israel’s illegal occupation and genocide in Palestine at a feisty solidarity rally in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau today — a day after Waitangi Day, the national holiday marking the 1840 signing of Te Tititi o Waitangi between 46 chiefs and the British crown.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto was one of the speakers after attending an earlier rally at Kerikeri and then driving 240 km with four fellow activists to join the Auckland protest.

“Colonisation in the present resonates with every Māori family. So here we are in that process of decolonisation, a slow process — it’s happening within Māoridom, and it’s happening in the Pākehā world,” Minto told the crowd.

• READ MORE: Why the Treaty Principles Bill had to go down
• Isaac Herzog is accused of inciting genocide in Gaza. He shouldn’t be welcomed to Australia
• Other Gaza genocide reports

“I was so delighted that when the Treaty Principles Bill came in we had that huge hikoī in Wellington,” he said.

“For those of you who know Wellington, we were in Manners Street towards the end of the march.

“And we got word that the rally had started in Parliament. We still had a kilometre to go. The streets were jammed with people, Pākehā, Māori, migrant people — Indigenous people from all over the world, all saying ‘no’.

“New Zealand is not a European country. We have an Indigenous people here and we want to work in partnership through the Treaty of Waitangi.

‘Weak prime minister’
“And what we have now, again, we’ve got a government that is — we have a weak prime minister, and we have got leaders of strong rightwing parties, that’s Winston Peters from New Zealand First, and that other guy from ACT . . .

“You know, whatever his name is . . .” Minto said jokingly. The crowd reeled of David Seymour’s name with a mocking tone and cries of “one term government” with a general election due on November 7.

Among other speakers was Janfrie Wakim, a longtime advocate for Palestine and one of the founders of the Auckland-based Palestine Human Rights Campaign founded in the 1970s, which later evolved into the PSNA in 2013.

She gave a “high fives” message of praise for protesters supporting the cause of Palestine justice and self-determination in this 122th week of demonstrations since October 2023.

Wakim also lauded the “kaimahi” — the workers who turned up each week to set up and pack up.

She said the colonisation of Aotearoa and Palestine had similarities — “but also some differences and decolonising is our task here in Aotearoa and in Palestine.”

Wakim paid tribute to Annette Sykes — “a wahine toa and heroic lawyer” advocate for Māori iwi — who wrote recently “decolonising is not erasing history but rewriting who controls the narrative”.

‘Enriching empires’
“Classic colonialists set out to exploit resources and enrich their empires,” Wakim said.

“European imperial powers dominated the past 500 years and they exited when their empires collapsed,” she said, naming Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal and Spain.

However, she added, “settler colonialism is different — it remains and is ongoing. All settler-colonial states seek more territory and fewer Indigenous people by ‘ethnic-cleansing’.”

“Settler colonialists sought to recreate Europe in the lands they invaded and they needed to eliminate the local native populations living there — think Australia.

“That is the story of Palestine.

“Settler colonialism is a structure not an event. And Zionists built their structure on that platform.”

Wakim said early Zionists knew well that Palestine was populated. They knew that the land had to be “emptied” to allow European Jews to establish their settler-colonial project.

Nakba refugees
She referred to the 1948 Nakba — “the catastrophe” — when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled by Israeli militias. They became refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria but with a UN-backed right to return.

More than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed and their land stolen by the Israelis.

Wakim also told of the Zionists’ racist narrative dehumanising the Palestinians and their relationship to the land”.

“But nothing compares with what Israel is doing today — the brutal, ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing we have been witnessing and continue to witness.”

Wakim said the Zionist structure was built on a weak foundation that was crumbling — “not fast enough but the cracks are widening as is Israel’s reliance on one superpower which itself is in decline”.

She said Palestine and Palestinians remained steadfast and resisting the injustices.

“As here in Aotearoa, they are actively working across the world in solidarity with others to expose the lies and change the narrative and unite people of all nations, ethnicities and religions.

BDS movement growing
“BDS — [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement] is growing slowly but surely.”

She said Israel was imploding and she called on New Zealand to renew its “lead on social justice issues”.

“We may be small, but we can be powerful,” she added.

Another speaker, kaiāwhina Kerry Sorensen-Tyrer, spoke of her encounter that day at Te Komititanga Square with three IDF soldiers from Israel “holidaying” in New Zealand. After a brief exchange, she photographed them and reminded the crowd to be vigilant and to report information to the PSNA’s IDF hotline.

“We do not want you in Aotearoa,” she said of the soldiers and their role in a genocidal war on Gaza to loud cheers from the crowd.

Climate change has been a key focus for iwi leaders gathering at Waitangi this week, as coastal communities across New Zealand’s North Island recover from recent severe weather events.

The National Iwi Chairs Forum, representing more than 70 iwi, has been meeting to set priorities for the year ahead, with leaders pointing to the increasing frequency and severity of weather events as a growing concern.

Taane Aruka Te Aho, one of the rangatahi leaders of Te Kāhu Pōkere — the group that travelled to Brazil for COP30 last year — told RNZ that recent weather events across the motu have become a repeating pattern.

• READ MORE: Waitangi 2026: Dawn service in pictures
• Speeches, celebrations and heckling – what happened at Waitangi
• Indigenous and Pacific leaders unite at Waitangi with shared messages on ocean conservation
• Big Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi delegation joins Māori in solidarity over Te Tiriti
• Other Waitangi reports

“The data shows us that these climate catastrophes are going to keep coming, more frequent, more severe. We’ve seen that in Te Tai Tokerau, in Tauranga Moana, in Te Araroa,” he said.

On behalf of Te Pou Take Āhuarangi, the climate change arm of the National Iwi Chairs Forum, Te Kāhu Pōkere attended the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in November 2025.

They were the first iwi-mandated rangatahi Māori delegation to attend a global COP.

At this year’s forum, the rōpū is presenting its findings and what can be taken back to hapū, iwi and hapori.

‘Key learnings’
“One of the key learnings for me was the importance of data sovereignty and data strategies harnessing environmental data to help us in our climate-based decision-making,” Te Aho said.

In the wake of flooding and storms in the north and east of the country, dozens of marae again opened their doors to displaced whānau, providing shelter, kai and serving as Civil Defence hubs.

Te Aho said those responses showed the strength of Māori-led systems of care.

“It’s paramount that we acknowledge our whānau, but also fund our whānau to keep resourcing, because they are the ones opening up their doors,” he said.

“To ensure not only our mokopuna are thriving, but to ensure our people of today can go back to work, that they’re looked after. Pākeke mai, rangatahi mai, kaumātua mai, kei konei te iwi Māori ki te tautoko i a rātou.”

Last month, the government announced a $1 million Marae Emergency Response Fund to reimburse marae for welfare support provided during the severe weather events, allowing them to “replenish resources and build resilience.”

Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka said at the time, the fund “ensures marae are not left carrying the costs of that mahi”.

‘Building resilience’
“Allowing them to replenish what was used, recover from the immediate response, and continue to build their resilience for future events.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon also praised the response from marae.

“Marae have been exceptional in the way they have stepped up to help their communities, providing shelter, food and care to people in need,” he said.

Pou Tangata chairperson Rahui Papa welcomed government support for marae but said long-term planning was needed.

“Back in Cyclone Gabriel, they talked about a 100-year weather event. It’s come up three or four times within the last few years,” he said.

“And I’m picking that, with my weather crystal ball . . .  it’s going to happen time and time again.

“So comprehensive responses have to be employed. Emergency centres at marae have been just absolutely wonderful. I take my hat off to those communities and those marae that have worked together to really find a way to look after the community.”

Climate change key issue
Ngāti Hine chairperson Pita Tipene said climate change was one of the key issues being coordinated at a national level.

“There’s no point in planning for something next week and next month if we’re consigning our planet to the changes that are upon us,” he said.

“We only have to look at the devastation around Te Tai Tokerau, let alone Tauranga Moana and Tai Rāwhiti.”

Tipene also acknowledged the contribution of Te Kāhu Pōkere.

“The young people who went to COP in Brazil and presented back to us said the solutions are in place and led by people. Their messages were very, very clear and the energy and the focus that they bring to those efforts is significant,” he said.

“The National Iwi Chairs Forum comes together because we know we have much more strength together than we are alone. And so coordinating our efforts into areas that will improve the circumstances of our people or protect and enhance the environments of our people, that’s our overall priority.”

Forum members also unanimously backed a legal challenge by Hauraki iwi Ngāti Manuhiri, which is taking the government to the High Court over amendments to the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act. The changes, made last year, raised the threshold for iwi seeking customary marine title.

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

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon faced sustained heckling and had to fend off questions about a revived Treaty Principles Bill as he returned to Waitangi this year.

ACT leader David Seymour predictably attracted his own jeers, and NZ First’s Winston Peters focused on a return serve.

The opposition was not spared criticism either yesterday, with Labour accused of backstabbing, and Te Pāti Māori given a stern word to sort out their internal problems and finish the work it started at Parliament.

• READ MORE: Indigenous and Pacific leaders unite at Waitangi with shared messages on ocean conservation
• Big Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi delegation joins Māori in solidarity over Te Tiriti
• Other Waitangi reports

But Luxon was clearly the one attracting the most ire.

Even before MPs walked onto the upper Treaty Grounds, a group of 40 or so protesters led by activist Wikatana Popata gathered as he made a rousing speech beneath the flagstaff — calling the coalition “the enemy”.

“These fellas are accountable to America, they’re here on behalf of America e tātou mā. Don’t you see what my uncle Shane [Jones] is doing?” he said.

“My uncle Shane, he’s giving the okay to all the oil drilling and the mining because those are American companies e tātou mā. So wake up.

‘Not scared of arrests’
“We’re not quite sure who our enemy is, well let me remind us: those people that are about to walk in, that’s our enemy . . .  we’re not scared of your arrests, we’re not scared of your jail cells or your prisons.

“We’ve been imprisoned . ..  we kōrero Māori to our tamariki at home, we practise our tikanga Māori at home, so you will never imprison us.”

The group performed a haka in protest against the politicians’ presence amid the more formal haka welcoming them to the marae. A small scuffle broke out as security stopped some of the protesters — who were shouting “kupapa”, or “traitor” — from advancing closer.

Speaking from the pae in te reo Māori on behalf of the haukāinga, Te Mutunga Rameka paid tribute to retiring Labour MP Peeni Henare and challenged Māori MPs working for the government, asking “where is your kotahitanga, where is your unity?”.

The next speaker, Eru Kapa-Kingi, acknowledged the protesters outside — saying he had challenged from outside in the past and now he was challenging from within the marae.

“Why do we continue to welcome the spider to our house,” he asked.

“This government has stabbed us in the front, but others stabbed us in the back,” he said, referring to Labour.

“Sort yourself out,” was his message to them, and to Te Pāti Māori, which in November ousted two of its MPs.

Part of ructions
Kapa-Kingi was arguably a central part of those ructions, however, having been employed by his mother Mariameno — one of those ousted MPs — and leading some of the criticism of the party’s leadership.

His criticism of Labour highlighted the departure of Henare, who he said had been — like his mother — silenced by his party.

Henare soon rose to his feet, saying according to custom those named on the marae were entitled to speak — and he spoke of humility.

“We must be very humble, extremely humble. And so that’s why I stand humbly before you . . .  Parliament kept me safe over the years.

“We have reached a point in time where I have completed my work. And so I ask everyone to turn their thoughts to what was said this morning: the hopes, aspirations, and desires of our people.”

Henare and his soon-to-be-former boss, Labour leader Chris Hipkins, have both batted away speculation about other reasons behind his departure — not least from NZ First deputy Shane Jones.

Hipkins himself acknowledged Henare in his speech, saying “our hearts are heavy today. We know we are returning you to your whānau in the North, but you are still part of our whānau. And we know where to find you”.

‘Lot of rubbish’
He later told reporters Kapa-Kingi was talking “a lot of rubbish”, that the last Labour government did more for Māori than many others, and Labour had already admitted it got the Foreshore and Seabed legislation wrong.

Seymour was up next and spoke of liberal democratic values; dismissing complaints of colonisation as a “myopic drone”; and saying the defeat of the Treaty Principles Bill was a pyrrhic victory because — he believed — it would return and become law in future.

Defending his comments on colonisation later, he said it had been more good than bad, as “even the poorest people in New Zealand today live like Kings and Queens compared with most places in most times in history”.

Conch shells and complaints about growing sick during Seymour’s speech clearly fired up the next speaker, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters — who said he did not come to be insulted or speak about politics.

“There’s some young pup out there shouting who doesn’t know what day it is,” he said, calling for a return to the interests of “one people, one nation”.

As the shouting started, Peters repeated his line there would come a time where they wanted to speak to him long before he wanted to speak to them.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson then rose to speak from the mahau, echoing the words of the late veteran campaigner Titewhai Harawira, urging the Crown to honour the Treaty, “it is not hard”.

Green candidates
The party announced during the events yesterday it would be standing candidates in three Māori seats, including list MP Huhana Lyndon, lawyer Tania Waikato, and former Te Pāti Māori candidate Heather Te Au-Skipworth — and Davidson staked out her party’s claim to those seats.

“When the giants, the rangatira of our Green Party — before the Pāti Māori was even formed — were the only party in the 2004 Foreshore hīkoi to meet the people, the masses, to uphold Te Tiriti,” she said.

With the government trampling treaty and environment while corporations benefited, she said giving land back was core.

While her speech was welcomed with applause, the government’s hecklers soon turned up the noise for the Prime Minister.

After skipping last year’s pōwhiri amid tensions over the Treaty Principles Bill, Luxon began by saying it was a tremendous privilege to be back, someone already shouting “we’ve had enough”.

He spoke about the the meaning of the Treaty as he saw it, and the importance of discussing and debating rather than turning on one another.

“It speaks so highly of us that we can come together at times like this, but it is also relevant on Waitangi Day as we think about how we’ve grappled and wrestled with other challenging issues as well,” he said.

Shouts and jeers
Shouts and jeers could be heard throughout, but he ploughed on undeterred.

“. . .  I think we have the Treaty to thank for that, because that has enabled us to engage much better with each other and we should take immense pride in that.”

One person could be heard yelling “treason” as Luxon spoke. He later said it was “typical of what we expect at Waitangi . . .  I enjoyed it”.

Asked if his government was honouring the Treaty, he said “yes”.

“We take it very seriously. It’s our obligation to honour the Treaty, but we work it out by actually making sure we are lifting educational outcomes for Māori kids, we work it out by making sure we are lifting health outcomes, we work it out by making sure we’re making a much more safer community.”

Luxon has been rejecting the idea of a revived Treaty Principles Bill since the day after it was voted down, but his coalition partner Seymour has been pledging its return for even longer.

The Prime Minister has reiterated his stance several times in the lead-up to Thursday’s pōwhiri, and did so again: “David can have his own take on that but I’m just telling you, it ain’t happening,” he said.

Referendum ‘divisive’
Ahead of the 2023 election, he had said redefining the Treaty’s principles was not his party’s policy and they did not support it, that a referendum — as the bill proposed — would be “divisive and unhelpful”, and a referendum would not be on the coalition table.

He was asked, given that, how ironclad his guarantee could be with an election campaign still to come and governing arrangements yet to be confirmed.

“We’ve been there and we killed it, so we’re done,” he said, clearly hoping for finality on the matter.

Te Tai Tokerau kaumātua and veteran broadcaster Waihoroi Shortland bookended the speeches.

Beginning with a Winston Churchill quote — that democracy is a bad form of government but the others are worse — Shortland said it was easy to remark on how divisive Māori were “when you all live in the most divisive house in the country”.

He called for Henare to be allowed to leave politics with dignity, but extended no such luxury for Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi.

“Rawiri, I cannot allow you to come away. Your work is not done. It is crushing to see and to hear what the House does kia koutou, kia tātou, ki te Māori — but we sent you there nevertheless, and that work is not done. Find a way.”

‘Feel the pain’
Waititi had spoken earlier, thanking Eru Kapa-Kingi for what he had said.

“I can hear the anger and I can feel the pain. And the courage to stand before the people and say what you had to say,” he said.

He said the party wanted to meet with Ngāpuhi but had been “scattered” when invited to a hui in November, and indicated an eagerness to meet.

“We are still eager to gather with you but we must make the proper arrangements before we can,” he said.

“It’s alright to have problems. But we must experience those problems in our own house. If those problems go outside, the horse will bolt.”

He said the current government was “nibbling like a sandfly” at the Treaty, and there was “only one enemy before us, and it is not ourselves”.

But that fell short of what Mariameno Kapa-Kingi had hoped for, telling reporters she initially thought an apology was coming.

She said she was disappointed Waititi did not fully address their stoush in his speeches, and she was committed to standing in Te Tai Tokerau — presumably, regardless of her party affiliation.

“I’m not going anywhere until our people tell me otherwise. I’ve got much to do.”

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

Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi, a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawai’ian) initiative for self-determination and self-governance formed in 1987, has sent a 17-member Indigenous delegation to Waitangi to stand in solidarity with Māori in defence of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The delegation is present to “stand alongside Māori leadership, strengthen international solidarity, and affirm the deep genealogical and oceanic ties shared by Indigenous peoples of Moana Nui a Kanaloa”, a statement said.

Members of the delegation participated in a pōwhiri yesterday with iwi taketake at Te Tii Waitangi Mārae, marking a formal welcome and the beginning of their engagement alongside Māori communities and leaders.

• READ MORE: Other Waitangi Day reports

Members of the delegation will speak at the Political Forum tent tomorrow, take part in the dawn ceremony on February 6, and march alongside their whānau in support of Te Tiriti.

The delegation has issued a formal Statement of Solidarity calling on the international community to watch developments in Aotearoa while “political actions continue to seek to weaken and reinterpret Te Tiriti and undermine Māori rangatiratanga”.

The Kanaka Maoli statement raised serious concern that recent New Zealand government actions and political rhetoric had “misrepresented efforts” to address structural discrimination as “racial privilege”.

The government actions had also enabled legislative initiatives seeking to “radically redefine” the meaning of Te Tiriti — triggering widespread national protests, multiple claims before the Waitangi Tribunal, judicial review proceedings, and large nationwide hui of Māori leaders.

‘World should know’
“The world should know what is happening in Aotearoa. As Kanaka Maoli, we know what it means to have our lands, waters, and political future decided without us,” said Healani Sonoda-Pale, spokesperson for Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi.

“We came to Waitangi so the world can see that Māori are not standing alone — and that Indigenous peoples across the Pacific are watching, standing together, and demanding that Te Tiriti o Waitangi be fully honored.

“Our struggles are connected, and our collective liberation as Indigenous peoples of Oceania are bound to one another.”

Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi

The logbook of presidential flights in Indonesia reveals an unusual pattern — from the Merdeka Palace to the Land of the Bird of Paradise.

By 2023, then President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had set foot in Papua at least 17 times — a record in the republic’s history, surpassing the total visits of all previous presidents combined.

Each touchdown of the presidential plane on the land of Papua or at the new airports he inaugurated was more than just a working visit. It was a statement of presence as a political message: Papua is no longer marginalised; it exists on Indonesia’s main political map.

• READ MORE: Indonesia’s development dilemmas – a green info gap and budget pressure – David Robie
• Other West Papua development reports
• Other Laurens Ikinia articles

Yet, behind the roar of the presidential plane and the welcoming traditional dances, lies a critical question: Has the physical presence of a national leader, accompanied by the rumble of massive infrastructure projects, touched the core issues of Papua?

Or has it merely become a grand symbol of integration, while social fractures, injustice, and sorrow continue to flow?

This analysis evaluates the multifaceted impact of President Jokowi’s dozen plus visits and draw crucial lessons for the new administration of President Prabowo Subianto and Vice-President Gibran Rakabuming Raka (Jokowi’s Son) in weaving a more just and sustainable Papuan policy.

The multidimensional impact of Jokowi’s visits
From a national political perspective, the frequency of President Jokowi’s visits to Papua, was a smart and unprecedented political communication strategy. Each landing in the Melanesian land has not merely been a routine agenda but a powerful symbolic political performance.

Handshakes with tribal chiefs, meetings with traditional leaders in public arenas, and speeches amid crowds function as direct counter-narratives to long-standing issues of marginalisation and separatism.

This physical presidential presence is an undeniable visual declaration: Papua is an inseparable part of Indonesia, and the nation’s highest leader is consistently present there.

This presence serves as a potent tool of state legitimacy, shortening the psychological distance between the centre of power in Jakarta and the easternmost Melanesian region, while demonstrating the intended political commitment. However, beneath this symbolism, the legitimacy built through physical presence is temporary if not supported by real structural change.

The critical question often raised by the community, especially Indigenous Papuans (OAP), is simple yet fundamental: “After the president’s planes and helicopters leave and the protocol frenzy subsides, what has truly changed for our lives?”

The narrative of integration through presence and physical development often clashes with demands for self-determination and historical grievances still alive among indigenous Papuans, as reflected in the ongoing armed conflict in the Central Highlands, indicating that this approach has not fully addressed the deep-seated roots of dissatisfaction.

The most visible legacy of the Jokowi era in Papua is none other than the infrastructure revolution — thousands of kilometres of the Trans-Papua Road cutting through wilderness and remote mountains, the magnificent Youtefa Bridge in Jayapura, and airport modernisations like Ewer Airport in Asmat, Wamena Airport, and the construction of the trans-Wamena-Jayapura road, Wamena-Nduga road, and other physical developments.

The government’s logic is that connectivity is an absolute prerequisite for growth. With good roads, the price of necessities in the interior is expected to drop, tourism can develop, and public services like health and education can become faster and more equitable.

Data from the Ministry of Public Works and Housing indeed records significant accessibility improvements. However, behind this physical progress, reports from organisations like the Pusaka Foundation and Greenpeace Indonesia warn of massive and often overlooked ecological impacts.

The opening of certain segments of the Trans-Papua Road is judged to accelerate deforestation, threaten Papua’s unique biodiversity, and disrupt watershed areas.

More profoundly, the issue of community involvement and consent in land acquisition processes often becomes a source of new conflict, sparking tension. As Indonesian human rights activist Usman Hamid has stated, infrastructure development is like a double-edged sword: on one side, it opens isolation and shortens distances, but on the other, it paradoxically erodes customary land rights, damages the environment that is the source of their cultural life and subsistence, and ironically, is enjoyed more by new settlers with greater capital and networks.

On the socio-economic level, the government vigorously distributed various social assistance programmes such as the Indonesia Health Card (KIS), Indonesia Smart Card (KIP), and various forms of Direct Cash Assistance (BLT).

These affirmative policies aim directly at catching up on welfare gaps and, statistically, have succeeded in reducing poverty rates in cities like Jayapura, although they remain the highest nationally. Sectors like Youtefa Bay tourism also show rapid growth. However, the economic growth created is often enclave-like and not inclusive.

Maria, a small business owner in Jayapura, illustrates this reality — large infrastructure projects are handled by contractors from outside Papua, hotels and medium-scale businesses are often owned by non-Papuan investors, while local SMEs struggle to compete due to limited access to capital, training, and marketing networks.

The structural gap between OAP and non-Papuans in ownership of means of production and access to quality job opportunities remains wide. Consequently, many Papuan sons and daughters only become manual labourers or contract workers on the grand projects building their ancestral land, an irony that deepens the sense of injustice.

In the socio-cultural realm, President Jokowi’s presence, often adorned with Papuan cultural ornaments and humbly participating in traditional dances, was a powerful form of symbolic recognition. This gesture sent a national message that Papuan culture is respected and valued at the highest state level.

However, this symbolic recognition on the political stage often does not align with the daily reality in Papua. The late Papuan peace figure, Father Neles Tebay, once described that in Papuan cities, “two worlds” often coexist but do not integrate: the modern world of migrants dominating the formal sector and modern economy, and the world of indigenous communities, often marginalised in culturally insensitive development processes.

Ethnic-tinged horizontal conflicts that have occurred, such as in Jayapura and Mimika, are clear indicators of how fragile social harmony is and how deep the unresolved socio-cultural gap remains.

The darkest and most challenging point of this entire development narrative lies in human rights issues and the unending armed conflict. Although presidential visits often include a conflict resolution agenda, incidents of human rights violations and armed clashes between security forces and the TPNPB (West Papua National Liberation Army) continue to recur, with unarmed civilians often becoming trapped victims, as in the tragedies in Nduga and Intan Jaya highlighted by Komnas HAM and LBH Jakarta.

An approach relying almost solely on physical development, unaccompanied by sincere efforts towards historical reconciliation and fair, transparent law enforcement for past human rights violations, is considered by many in Papua as merely “covering a festering internal wound with a bandage”.

This unresolved historical pain and injustice continues to be the main fuel for resistance and demands for independence, proving that concrete and asphalt roads alone are not enough to build lasting peace and justice felt by all the nation’s children.

Valuable lessons for the Prabowo-Gibran era
The current administration under President Prabowo Subianto and Vice-President Gibran Rakabuming Raka must not continue the Papuan policy with business as usual. The previous administration’s legacy offers a clear roadmap, as well as warnings about dead ends that must be avoided.

Four critical lessons should form the basis for transitioning from symbolic development to substantive, just transformation.

First, policy focus must undergo a paradigm shift from mere physical development towards the holistic empowerment of Papuan people. This means massive investment in quality education with curricula relevant to social contexts and local potential, as well as vocational training that equips Indigenous Papuans with skills to manage the economy on their own land.

Firm and measurable affirmative schemes must be designed to ensure Indigenous Papuans are not merely spectators, but the primary owners and managers of strategic economic sectors, from culture-based tourism and organic agriculture to creative industries.

Without this step, magnificent infrastructure will only become a channel for an extractive economy controlled by outsiders, perpetuating dependency and disparity.

Second, the government must enforce the principle of absolute harmony between development, cultural preservation, and environmental protection. Every major project, especially those touching customary lands and indigenous forest areas, must undergo credible, participatory, and legally binding Environmental and Social-Cultural Impact Assessments (AMDAL & ANDAL).

Development must no longer sacrifice local wisdom and ecosystems that are the soul and identity of Papuan society. Development models imported from Java or Sumatra must be reviewed and replaced with approaches born from dialogue with local ecology and culture, so that progress is not synonymous with environmental destruction and cultural marginalisation.

Third, this new era must open space for conflict resolution through a courageous approach of dialogue and reconciliation. The government needs to initiate inclusive dialogue involving all elements of Papuan society, including pro-independence groups willing to discuss peacefully, to address the roots of historical and structural dissatisfaction.

This complex issue has been comprehensively formulated by the Papua Peace Network. The establishment of an independent and trusted Papua Truth and Reconciliation Commission could be a monumental step to heal past wounds and build a foundation for sustainable peace, recognising that true security is born from justice.

Fourth, Special Autonomy must be revived in its meaning and spirit. A comprehensive evaluation of the implementation of the Special Autonomy Law, along with its trillions of rupiah in fund flows, is a necessity.

These funds must be shifted from physical projects that are often off-target to investments in enhancing the capacity, health, and economy of indigenous Papuans. More importantly, Special Autonomy must be interpreted as a political recognition of the special rights of Indigenous Papuans.

This means strengthening traditional institutions and providing real and decisive participatory space in every strategic decision-making at the provincial and district levels, so that policies are no longer felt as something imposed from Jakarta.

Ultimately, the main challenge for the Prabowo-Gibran administration is to demonstrate that commitment to Papua goes beyond rhetoric and showcase projects. Success will be measured not by the length of roads built, but by the fading of tension, the reduction of disparities, and the rise of self-confidence and economic independence among Indigenous Papuans.

Only by making these four pillars — human empowerment, harmony, dialogue, and living autonomy — the foundation of policy can Papua be truly integrated into the Republic of Indonesia in a dignified and sustainable manner.

A revolutionary approach model
To translate the lessons from the previous era, the current administration requires a radical change in its approach model, moving from a centralised development paradigm towards participatory governance based on Papuan native institutions.

The most revolutionary option is to form a special ministry focused on empowering Indigenous Papuans, inspired by the Ministry of Māori Development in New Zealand.

This ministry is not intended to manage regional administration, but specifically to guarantee the fulfilment of indigenous Papuans’ rights, as mandated in the Special Autonomy Law.

By placing the Governing Body for the Acceleration of Special Autonomy Development in Papua (BP3OKP) and the Papua Special Autonomy Acceleration Executive Committee under it, the government can create centralised, strong, and accountable coordination, thereby avoiding programme overlap and leakage of Special Autonomy funds.

This institutional revolution must be supported by data-based governance and authentic participation. Every policy and fund allocation, especially the massive Special Autonomy funds, must arise from rigorous data studies and in-depth dialogue with the community, rather than just technocratic planning in Jakarta.

Transparency and accountability in fund use must be guaranteed through independent oversight mechanisms that actively involve representatives of traditional councils or institutions, religious institutions, and local NGOs as watchdogs. Only then can the allocated funds truly become an instrument of change, not merely an instrument of expenditure.

Another key pillar is building equal and formal partnerships with Papuan traditional institutions, such as the Papuan Customary Council (DAP) and various stakeholders. These institutions are not merely ceremonial objects but must be recognised as strategic government partners in every stage of development, from planning and implementation to evaluation.

As socio-cultural anchors, understanding the pulse and real needs of the community, their involvement can prevent social conflict and ensure development programmes align with local wisdom and customary rights.

Furthermore, meaningful decentralisation becomes a prerequisite for success. Local governments in Papua must be given substantive authority and massive capacity building to independently manage natural resources and public services.

Moreover, the development approach must start from the grassroots, making participatory development at the village level the standard method. This method ensures that community aspirations are heard directly and the projects implemented truly address their priority needs, not merely pursuing physical targets.

Ultimately, this approach aims to reverse the traditional relationship between the central government and local governments in Papua. From a relationship that has so far seemed patron-client, to a partnership based on the sovereignty of indigenous communities and substantive justice.

Thus, development is no longer felt as something given from above, but something built together from below, creating a sense of ownership and sustainability that will become the foundation for long-term peace and prosperity in Papua.

Indonesianising in the Papuan Way
Reinterpreting the term “Indonesianising” Papua is a main task for the current administration. This concept must no longer be interpreted as an assimilation process erasing distinctive identity, but must transform into an integration that respects uniqueness.

True integration is not homogenisation, but an effort to embrace diversity as a strength. In this context, Indonesia is not a single mould, but a mosaic that gains its beauty precisely from the differences of each piece. For this, a multidimensional approach grounded in four main pillars is required.

First, in the field of education, the national curriculum must become more flexible and inclusive. Enrichment with local content — such as the history and wisdom of Papuan tribes, local languages, and inherited ecological wisdom — should not be merely supplementary, but the core of the learning process.

Schools must become places where Papuan children are proud of their identity while mastering global competencies. Second, in the field of the economy, self-reliance must be built on local strengths.

Easily accessible micro-financing systems, entrepreneurship training, and strong marketing support for flagship products like Wamena arabica coffee, sago, matoa, or high-value marine products will create a sovereign economy that empowers, rather than displaces, the indigenous people.

Third, recognition at the legal level is the foundation of justice. Recognition of the customary land rights of indigenous communities in land and natural resource governance must be guaranteed and integrated into national regulations. This is a concrete step to prevent agrarian conflict and ensure development benefits return to the rightful land owners.

Fourth, building intensive cultural dialogue through student, artist, and youth exchange programs between Papua and other regions, or other countries. This direct interaction will break the chain of prejudice, build empathy, and strengthen a true sense of brotherhood as one nation.

Towards a ‘Just Papua’
The legacy from the previous period is ambivalent. On one hand, there is magnificent infrastructure and symbolic integration strengthened through physical presence; on the other, deep disappointment remains due to unbridged gaps and a persistently pulsating conflict.

The Prabowo-Gibran administration now stands at a historical crossroads. The choice is between continuing the visually spectacular yet often elitist “concrete development” model or taking a more winding yet dignified path: namely, the Papuan human empowerment model, which places indigenous Papuans as the primary subject and heir to the future of their own land.

This strategic choice will be fate-determining. It will measure, later at the end of their term, whether presidential and vice-presidential visits to Papua are still met with cold protocol performances, or with new hope and genuine smiles from a people who feel recognised, valued, and empowered.

Ultimately, genuine national integration can only be realised when Indigenous Papuans can stand tall with all their identity and dignity, not as a party being “Indonesianised,” but as fully-fledged Indonesians who also shape the face of the nation.

The future of Papua is not about becoming like others, but about being itself in the embrace of the Bird of Garuda.

Laurens Ikinia is a Papuan lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Pacific Studies, Indonesian Christian University, Jakarta. He is also an honorary member of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) in Aotearoa New Zealand, and an occasional contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

A decisive hearing before the Israeli Supreme Court on whether the press will have independent access to Gaza is due to take place tomorrow.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will be participating as amici curiae and call on the member states of the Media Freedom Coalition (MFC) to take concrete steps towards guaranteeing unrestricted, independent media access to the Gaza Strip.

For more than two years, free movement in and out of the besieged territory has been prohibited, and more than 220 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli army.

• READ MORE:  Massacre of Gaza journalists triggers RSF’s Black Monday protest
• Other Gaza journalists reports

“But in Gaza, the absence of foreign journalists is depriving the global public of independent information from diverse sources while dangerously isolating Palestinian journalists.

“The inaction of states around the world encourages censorship and sets a dangerous precedent for other conflicts, to the detriment of civilian populations, humanitarian aid and political decisions based on verified facts.

“We call on these governments to act without delay to defend the public’s right to unrestricted, independent and reliable news.”

Having been admitted as an amicus curiae by the Israeli Supreme Court on 23 October 2025 along with the CPJ, RSF will be represented in the courtroom on January 26 by its director-general Bruttin and its Supreme Court lawyer, Michael Sfard.

RSF has emphasised that “the Supreme Court has the opportunity to finally uphold essential democratic principles in the face of propaganda, disinformation and widespread censorship and put an end to two years of the meticulous, unrestrained destruction of journalism in and about Gaza.

‘No excuse, no restriction’
“No excuse, no restriction can justify keeping Gaza closed to international, Israeli and Palestinian media. That is the appeal we are making to the Israeli Supreme Court by joining the Foreign Press Association’s petition.”

More than 220 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the beginning of the war, including at least 68 slain while working, according to RSF data.

On January 20, while the ceasefire, already repeatedly violated by the Israeli army, remained in force, an Israeli strike killed Mohammad Salah Qashta, Anas Ghneim and Abdul Raouf Samir Shaat, three freelance journalists who worked with international news agencies, while they were filming a report in the al-Zahra area south of Gaza City.

The 29 MFC member states that signed the statement on media access to Gaza are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

RSF and CPJ are members of the MFC Consultative Network.

Republished from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) by Pacific Media Watch.

The internationally recognised Lemkin Institute for the Prevention of Genocide has issued severe criticism of Germany.

In a statement dated 13 January 2026, it “condemns the persistent efforts by several high-profile German civil society organisations to deny the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to disseminate disinformation and denialist narratives among German political decision-makers.”

At the same time, the institute accuses major German media corporations of having become “the Israeli government’s most loyal mouthpiece”.

• READ MORE: Rights advocates welcome Canada’s exclusion from Trump’s Gaza ‘Board of Peace’
• Other Gaza genocide reports

German policymakers are likewise criticised for turning away from the “international legal order” — an order “that was created in large part due to the horrors it produced”.

This refers to Nazi crimes, including the Holocaust against European Jews, the genocide of the Sinti and Roma, and the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union.

Systematic denial of the Gaza genocide
The institute denounces the fact that, in Germany, the reality continues to be denied that Israel has been responsible for a genocide in the Gaza Strip lasting at least two years since 7 October 2023.

This criticism is directed not only at governing parties and senior political figures, but also at Germany’s leading media outlets: “Germany’s largest media outlets have abandoned their journalistic responsibilities, threatening critical voices and effectively becoming the Israeli government’s most loyal mouthpiece.”

According to the report, this systematic denial of genocide is driven primarily by political pressure from above as well as by Israeli lobbying and disinformation efforts.

The latter are attributed in particular to the Middle East Peace Forum (NAFFO), the Europe Israel Press Association (EIPA), the German-Israeli Society (DIG), and the European Leadership Network (ELNET), including its Forum of Strategic Dialogue (FSD).

“In this symbiosis, organisations deliver the pseudo-arguments that German politicians rely on to legitimise an otherwise untenable political stance.

“In return, these organisations are rewarded with public funding or privileged access to Parliament.

“By financing, platforming, and politically endorsing actors that discredit UN bodies, ignore well-established legal standards, and engage in genocide denial, Germany has turned its back on an international legal order that was created in large part due to the horrors it produced.“

Call for political reversal
The report points out that both Israel and Germany are currently before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) — Israel accused of genocide, Germany of possible complicity.

The latter, in particular, continues to be almost entirely ignored in Germany’s public discourse.

Against this backdrop, the Lemkin Institute issues an urgent appeal to German state authorities “to immediately halt all active financing, dissemination, and legitimation of genocide denialist propaganda masked as critical expertise.”

It continues: “We further urge the German government to withdraw public funding and end privileged parliamentary access for organisations and initiatives engaged in genocide denial and the systematic discrediting of international legal institutions.

“We remind Germany and all its political bodies of their obligations under the Genocide Convention, including the duty to prevent and punish genocide and any forms of complicity.

“Above all, we call on the German state to end its complicity in the genocide against Palestinians, including through arms exports to and uncritical diplomatic support for the state committing genocide.“

Connecting global grassroots
The Lemkin Institute is an internationally active NGO based in the United States. It is named after Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish jurist and Holocaust survivor who coined the term “genocide”.

The institute’s mission is “to connect the global grassroots with the tools of genocide prevention.”

As early as April 2024, the institute stated that the current Israeli genocide was not confined to the Gaza Strip alone, but affected all of Palestine, including the West Bank.

Leon Wystrychowski is a journalist, historian, Middle East scholar and Palestine activist from Germany.

New Zealand has scrapped a project to build an airport in Tokelau after sinking NZ$3 million into the design phase.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade told RNZ Pacific that the Tokelau government had been advised of their decision.

Tokelau is completely inaccessible by plane, with visitors and its roughly 2600 residents required to travel via boat from Samoa. A return fare on the boat, which runs once every two weeks, is approximately NZ$306, with a travel time of around 24-32 hours.

• READ MORE: Other Tokelau reports

“This decision was made in the context of the high cost of the project and the constrained fiscal environment currently facing the New Zealand government,” MFAT said in a statement.

“We recognise that air services have been a long-held aspiration of the people of Tokelau. ”

The government had spent around $3 million on feasibility, design, business casing and procurement planning since 2020, with funding agreed to the year before. The project faced delays due to COVID-19.

Stuff reported in 2022 that tenders for the project that had been put out for one provider who would be willing to work with the council of elders, or Taupulega, on a design concept.

Intended design
An Official Information Act request from October 2024 confirmed that the intended design included one terminal with an 800m by 30m runway on Nukunonu, the largest of Tokelau’s three atolls.

A tender for a construction contractor had been placed as late as September 2025, with an expected timeline reaching out to 2030, according to MFAT’s DevData tool.

John Teao, former chairman of the Wellington Tokelau Association, said he was personally pleased to see the project come to its end.

“There’s not enough land to have an airstrip . . .  and it’s also the environmental impact — it’s a pristine environment,” Teao said.

“I just don’t see any any justification for an airport.

“Maybe in the future, if they have sea planes or things like that.”

Teao said he hopes to see the money spent on something more useful, such as improving the existing boat system.

Bridging the gap
The New Zealand Labour Party’s Pacific spokesperson, Carmel Sepuloni, said this project was intended to bridge the gap between Tokelau and the world.

“While the details are unclear, it’s disappointing to hear this news,” she said in a statement.

“There are real risks that come with having no access to an airstrip. With a population of about 2500 and almost 10,000 Tokelauans living in New Zealand, travel to and from Tokelau is difficult.

“There’s a clear need and given Tokelau is within the realm of New Zealand, I’d expect the government to offer a clear explanation as to why they’ve scrapped these plans.”

An election in Tokelau for their General Fono is set for January 29. Each village is selecting their candidates for just over a week of campaigning.

The Fono consists of three Faipule, or village leaders, three Pulenuku, or village mayors, and 14 general delegates, elected for a three-year term.

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

The signing of a new agreement on New Caledonia’s political and financial future has triggered a fresh wave of reactions from across the French territory’s political chessboard.

The Elysée-Oudinot agreement was signed on Monday, January 19, in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron as well as most of New Caledonia’s politicians.

But the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), the largest component of the pro-independence movement, had chosen not to travel to Paris.

• READ MORE: New Caledonia’s new Elysée-Oudinot pact signed in Paris – despite boycott
• Pro-France MPs confront Macron over New Caledonia at future talks
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

The new deal, signed by parties represented at New Caledonia’s Congress (its local parliament), including members of the moderate pro-independence PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie), who have split from FLNKS, all signed the agreement.

PALIKA and UPM are formed into a Parliamentary caucus called “UNI” (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance).

The Elysée-Oudinot text was described as being a “complement” bearing “clarifications” to a previous agreement project, signed in July 2025 in the small city of Bougival, west of Paris.

The FLNKS, even though it initially signed the Bougival text, rejected it in bloc a few days after returning to New Caledonia.

As French President Macron called all politicians back to the table to refine the July 2025 talks, FLNKS announced it would not travel to Paris, saying the project which would serve as the basis for further talks did not meet their short-term goals of full sovereignty.

They said the Bougival text and all related documents were in substance “lures” of independence and that they regarded the French state as being responsible for a “rupture of dialogue”.

As the Bougival initial text, its Elysée-Oudinot complement maintains the notion of creating a “state of New Caledonia”, its correlated “nationality” and introduces a new set of commitments from France, including a package to re-launch the local economy, severely damaged as a result of the riots that broke out in May 2024.

The new text also mentions granting more powers to each of New Caledonia’s three provinces (North, South and the Loyalty Islands group), including in terms of revenue collection by way of taxes.

This, the FLNKS protested, could erode the powers of New Caledonian provinces and reinforce economic and social inequalities between them.

Reacting to the signing in Paris in their absence, the FLNKS, in a media release on Wednesday, condemned and rejected the new text “unequivocally”.

FLNKS President Christian Téin, in the release, said the new agreement endorses a “passage en force” (forceful passage) and is “incompatible” with the way the FLNKS envisages Kanaky’s “decolonisation path”, including in the way it is defined under the United Nations decolonisation process.

It also criticises a document signed “without the Indigenous people” of New Caledonia.

The pro-independence party also expressed its disapproval of what it calls a “pseudo-accord”.

“We will use every political tool available to us to re-alert, again and again the public”, FLNKS politburo member Gilbert Tyuienon told public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie La Première at the weekend.

French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou had reiterated, even after the signing in Paris, that the door remained open to FLNKS.

In reaction to the signing, other parties have also expressed their respective points of view.

“Why didn’t they come [to Paris] to defend their positions, since they were invited?” Southern Province President (pro-France) Sonia Backès wrote on social networks.

“Does UNI not represent the Kanak people too?” she added.

French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou said this new set of agreements reflected a “shared will to look at the future together”.

“Now the territory can walk on its two legs”.

Some of the pro-France parties, who want New Caledonia to remain a part of France, have however acknowledged that even though the new documents were signed, the road ahead remained rocky in terms of its implementation in the French Parliament, through a local referendum and related constitutional amendments.

‘We’ve done the easiest part’ — Metzdorf
New Caledonia’s MP at the French National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf said a huge challenge still remained ahead.

“We’ve done the easiest, the hardest part remains . . .  This is to obtain the [French] Parliament’s support, both Houses, to enact the accords in the French Constitution.”

Following a very tight schedule in the coming weeks, the texts will be submitted to the vote of both Parliament Houses, first separately, then in a joint chamber format (the Congress, for constitutional amendment purposes).

Then the text is also to be submitted to New Caledonia’s population for approval through a referendum-like “consultation”.

In a way of foretaste of what promises to be heated debates in coming weeks, with a backdrop of strong divisions in the French Parliament, Moutchou and far-left MP Bastien Lachaud (La France Insoumise, LFI) waged a war of words on Tuesday in the National Assembly.

Responding to Lachaud’s accusations which echoed those from FLNKS, Moutchou denounced the “passage en force” claim and the absence of “consensus”.

“FLNKS was never excluded from anything. It was invited, it was approached, it was awaited, just like the other ones. It chose not to turn up,” Moutchou said.

“The politics of empty chair was never conducive to a compromise,” she said as Assembly Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet had to call the LFI caucus back to order.

Strong financial component
Some of the financial aspects of the deals include a five-year “reconstruction” plan for New Caledonia, for a total of 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion), presented to New Caledonia’s politicians by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu.

This chapter also comes with revisiting previous French loans for more than 1 billion euros, which New Caledonia found almost impossible to repay (with an indebtedness rate of 360 percent).

The loans, under the agreement’s financial chapter, would be renegotiated, re-scheduled and possibly converted into non-refundable grants.

Meanwhile a two-year repayment holiday (2026-2027) would be applied, while a far-reaching reform programme is expected to be pursued.

“What people really expected was [economic] prospects. This is the main part of this accord, the economic refoundation,” commented Vaimu’a Muliava, from Wallis-based Eveil Océanien party after the Paris talks.

The new financial arrangements would also provide a much-needed lifebuoy to critically threatened mechanisms in New Caledonia, such as its retirement scheme or the power supply company.

More injections for the nickel industry
Another 200 million euros is also earmarked to bail out several nickel mining companies facing critical hardships.

This includes assistance aimed at supporting business and employment for French historical Société le Nickel (SLN), Prony Resources and NMC (Nickel Mining Company, which has ties to Korea’s POSCO).

The French government has also pledged to follow-up on a request to New Caledonia’s nickel mining and refining declared a “strategic” sector by the European Union.

“The agreement’s economic chapter was as necessary as the political one,” said New Caledonia’s President Alcide Ponga after the signing.

Another cash injection was directed to this year’s budget for New Caledonia, which benefits from a direct cash injection of 58 million euros.

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

Donald Trump is a classic example of why you don’t let bullies prosper. “Trump is cutting the last threads of the tattered cloth of ‘the rules-based international order’  — the self-serving system that touted international law as long as it didn’t apply to the US and its allies.

The Canadians, the Danes, the Panamanians and the rest of us should wake up to reality and see we are objects, we are mere “things” to the Americans, not allies with some deeply shared “values”. 

I wrote that in January 2025 in this article that I reproduce today. It provides a useful backgrounder, including historical precendents, to help us navigate through the times we are living through right now.

• READ MORE: Denmark sends more troops to Greenland amid tensions with Trump
• Other Greenland reports

What do Panama, Canada and Greenland have in common? Could Trump be getting the US back to brass tacks, to a core strategy of dominating the Western hemisphere? Possibly, and he may be blowing away the fraudulent rhetoric about rules-based international order, territorial integrity, international law and the crusade to expand democracies.

Trump said this week that the US is prepared to use military force to assert control over Panama and Greenland.

“We need Greenland for national security purposes.  People don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it but even if they do they should give it up because I’m talking about protecting the free world,” Trump said.

The world’s largest island is bigger than France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and Belgium combined. It’s literally bigger than Texas (300 percent bigger) — and the US wants it.

A greater risk
Think about that.  The US may pose a greater risk to the territorial integrity of the European Union than the Russians do. If they get antsy with the US, Trump will “tariff them”.

The Danes, like the rest of Europe, are frightened of the US. In response to Trump’s Greenland gambit, Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen timidly said this week that Denmark was “open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can cooperate, possibly even more closely than we already do, to ensure that American ambitions are fulfilled”.

To ensure American ambitions are fulfilled. And this was the country that gave us the Vikings. If Ragnar Lodbrok, Eric Bloodaxe or Bjorn Ironside had been around when Donald Trump Junior swooped into Nuuk for his photo op, his skull would have been used as a drinking tankard for a blót sumbl feast that same evening.

Top independent strategists have for years despaired of the strategic brainlessness of US foreign policy — the Midas Touch in reverse, as Professor Mearsheimer calls it.  Wherever they went — from Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Gaza — Americans embroiled themselves in conflicts of little strategic worth and left behind piles of bodies, millions of implacable enemies and a litany of failures.

Trump’s rough woo-ing of Canada to become the 51st state, and his threat to use military force to seize both Greenland and the Canal, speak to a back-to-basics focus for American imperialism — a shift in US policy that will bring it closer to its core strategic interests.

That’s quite appropriate for a man who counts President Teddy Roosevelt (1901-09) as a role model. There is a whiff of the Rough Rider (Roosevelt’s cavalry which kicked over the Spaniards in Cuba in 1898) about Trump’s recent utterances.

Outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York you could see a magnificent statue of Teddy Roosevelt, cowboy kerchief around his neck, six-shooter hanging off his hip, astride a proud steed with two bare-chested Noble Savages — an African and an American Indian — walking on either side of the Great White Man.

Punkish metal spikes
I particularly like the slightly punkish metal spikes sticking out of his hair to stop birds crapping on his head.  After 82 years, the City finally woke up to the fact that this was a racist, colonialist trope and took the statue down in 2021.

It is ironic that just four years after doing so an even bigger monument to Roosevelt is going up: Trump redux is lifting entire passages out of the Roosevelt playbook.

Roosevelt greatly increased the influence and interests of the United States, building on the recent seizures of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawai’i, Cuba and Guam.  He wanted to Make America Great and to do so he would,”speak softly and carry a big stick”.

Big stick diplomacy – the willingness to use the military – was increasingly unleashed to assert US hegemony and business interests.

General Smedley D Butler, author of War is a Racket, spent his entire 33-year career (1898-1931) enforcing the rules as defined by Theodore Roosevelt and his successors. Smedley eventually realised he was fighting as “a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Like thousands of Marines he fought for the US in countries up and down the Americas, Caribbean and Asia, including Cuba (1898), Venezuela, Panama, Dominican Republic, Mexico, the Philippines, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and China.

President Roosevelt’s greatest legacy was the building of the Panama Canal. The US intervened militarily in Panama to drive out the Colombians and “liberate” Panama so the US could build the Canal.

‘Literally as one man’
He said that the people of Panama rebelled against Colombia “literally as one man” — to which a senator retorted, “Yes, and the one man was Roosevelt!”

Is history repeating itself — as tragedy or comedy?  If Trump’s threats all sound either nuts or 19th century it’s because it is both those things — which doesn’t mean they won’t happen.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  I think Trump has a very good point for a number of reasons (clue: none of them relate to international law or respect for the sovereignty of nations).

Greenland has a ton of energy, fishing and mineral resources the Americans would love to lay their hands on. The Arctic maritime routes are slowly opening and if you look at a map of the Arctic you’ll realise the USA has very little real estate, to use Trumpspeak, up there and Russia has a vast amount.

The third reason is equally important: incorporating Canada and Greenland into the US would give the country an enormous boost at a time when it is slipping behind China in all critical areas.

According to the IMF, the Chinese have already overtaken the US in share of global GDP based on purchasing power parity (19-15 percent).  By 2035 this gap will likely explode out to 25 percent to 14 percent in Beijing’s favour.

How should the US respond?  Its current China containment strategy of sanctions, tariffs and threats are failing as China’s manufacturing and tech sectors greatly outperform the US.

Losing its proxy war
Military planners say the US would almost certainly lose a conventional war against China over Taiwan; the US is already losing its proxy war in Ukraine. A course correction seems inevitable.

Trump is cutting the last threads of the tattered cloth of “the rules-based international order” — the self-serving system that touted international law as long as it didn’t apply to the US and its allies.

The Canadians, the Danes, the Panamanians and the rest of us should wake up to reality and see we are “objects”, we are mere things to the Americans, not allies with some deeply shared “values”.

Trump is refreshingly candid: he wants stuff and he’s prepared to dispense with the preachy posturing that we got with Blinken and Biden.  America is not your friend.

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

This article was first published at Solidarity on 11 January 2025 under the title “A man, a plan, a canal:  Trump might be on to something”.

Talks on New Caledonia’s political future have been underway in Paris after French President Emmanuel Macron launched a fresh roundtable on Friday, despite the absence of one of the French territory’s largest pro-independence group, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS).

During a first meeting with New Caledonia’s political stakeholders, Macron “regretted one of the political partners did not wish to respond to our invitation”.

But he said more talks were needed to “reach an agreement to get out of an already too long uncertainty”.

• READ MORE: FLNKS sends in late request to join Paris talks on New Caledonia remotely
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

“Today, the State wishes to continue to advance on stabilising New Caledonia’s institutions, as part of a dialogue respectful of everyone, without any forceful passage, but without any paralysis either,” the French President said.

New Caledonia’s Congress (Parliament) Speaker Veylma Falaeo (Wallisian-based Eveil Océanien party) echoed Macron’s remarks, saying she too regretted the absence of the FLNKS absence “but it’s now time to move forward”.

Eveil Océanien leader Milakulo Tukumuli suggested politicians should agree on a “new period of stability of 15 to 20 years to rebuild and reform [New Caledonia], after which a new referendum could be held on a new common project or even an associated state”.

“[Macron] has now considered that one could not eternally wait for people who are not here around the table and that therefore we had to move forward because, and we told him once again, either we move forward or New Caledonia is sinking,” Pro-France Virginie Ruffenach (Rassemblement-LR) told French media.

The FLNKS, which last week decided not to travel to Paris for the talks, had however formulated a late request to join in remotely.

The request was declined.

Hardline pro-France politicians confront Macron
During the same opening session dedicated to each party’s statement, the most confrontational ones came from the two main pro-France MPs, who have also recently become increasingly critical of the French President.

“We have done our part. We have negotiated; we have made concessions; we have taken our responsibilities. Now it’s on you to do your part,” Les Loyalistes leader Sonia Backès told the gathering on Friday.

“Those who don’t want any agreement have already made us lose precious time.

“We are here because the [French] state did not engage sufficient forces on 13 May 2024.”

She was referring to the riots that killed 14, damaged or destroyed hundreds of businesses and the loss of thousands of jobs for a total of some 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion) in damages.

She said the text, even if it was to be modified, was about “choosing what kind of society we want . . .  Either it’s the rule of the strongest or it’s a victory for democracy,” she told Macron.

Another pro-France outspoken politician, New Caledonia’s MP in the National Assembly Nicolas Metzdorf, said: “Mr President, I don’t really know what we are doing here today. We never requested this meeting . . .  Because as far as we’re concerned, we did everything that had to be done. We have worked. We have negotiated. We have made concessions.

“Instead, you should have convened the [French] ministers and parliamentary groups who remain . . .  paralysed by fear.”

‘Basic principles of democracy’
Metzdorf went further in accusing France of being “unable to enforce the basic principles of democracy when it comes to one of its own territories”.

“As far as we’re concerned, we have reached the limits of what is acceptable. Now things are simple and perfectly clear: either we come out of this sequence [of discussions] with a precise text, a clear schedule and endorsement by Parliament or we will radically change our strategy and we’ll turn against our own state by using all means available to us.”

He was alluding to suing the French state in the European Human Rights Court of Justice, in reference to current restrictions to New Caledonia’s electoral roll at provincial elections, as prescribed under the previous 1998 Nouméa Accord.

This is the criteria that limits the number of eligible voters at provincial elections to those born or residing before 1998 and their descendents.

“Mr President, we have nothing left to lose . . .  Because we can see the Republic has no more promise left for us,” Metzdorf added.

However, he appeared to remain optimistic: “With [pro-independence] UNI, we’ll find a point of equilibrium in the next few days.”

Moderate pro-independence leader Jean-Pierre Djaïwé, who belongs to the UNI (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance, a gathering of PALIKA — Kanak Liberation Party — and UPM — Union Progressiste en Mélanésie), which broke away from the FLNKS and supported the Bougival text, said in Paris his aim was to “improve what can be improved”.

Financial backing needed
But other party leaders, like Philippe Dunoyer (from moderate pro-France Calédonie Ensemble), said any new agreement would remain meaningless without substantial French financial backing.

New Caledonia’s MP in the French Senate, Georges Naturel, made an outright call to Macron, asking him to be “lucid” and recognise that it is “impossible to implement” the 12 July 2026 agreement project within its original schedule.

Macron did not respond to the comments before departing the session.

After an initial sequence on Friday, marked by declarations by Macron and the main political parties in attendance, both pro-France and pro-independence, the session then split into workshops hosted by the French Ministry for Overseas, under the supervision of its Minister, Naïma Moutchou.

The talks are focusing on several aspects of the implementation of an earlier project agreement signed in July 2025.

The text, in its initial form, was mentioning the creation of a “State of New Caledonia” with its correlated “nationality” and a mechanism of gradual transfers of more powers from France to New Caledonia.

The specific themes discussed this month include the notions of the transfer of powers from France, self-determination, defence, security, external relations, the recognition of the indigenous Kanak identity and further financial assistance under a “refoundation pact” proposed by France for a total of 2.2 billion euros over a 5-year period.

Revised pact with ‘clarifications’
The final aim remains to arrive at a new document with “clarifications” to the initial Bougival pact signed in July 2025.

But the Bougival text has since faced several major obstacles in its implementation process.

This includes its outright rejection by the pro-independence FLNKS, while all other New Caledonian parties have decided to support the project at various levels.

FLNKS calls the July 2025 project a “lure of independence” because it does not address its demands for a short-term full sovereignty.

Another major obstacle was the division within the French Parliament, still faced with the absence of a clear majority, which has also delayed the endorsement of the French 2026 Appropriation Bill (budget).

Another objective of the talks is to have the revised project quickly endorsed by the French National Assembly (Lower House) in February and by the Senate (Upper House) mid-April and a final joint meeting of both House, under a “Congress” format to have the final document approved to modify the French Constitution.

If all those modifications eventuate, the next document would be renamed “Elyséee-Oudinot” and the original name of “Bougival” scrapped.

FLNKS reacts from Nouméa
Speaking on Sunday, FLNKS political bureau member and member of Union Calédonienne, Gilbert Tyuienon, denounced the Paris talks, saying this was not in line with the previous agreement signed under the name of “Nouméa Accord” in 1998, which paved the way for a decolonisation process for New Caledonia.

He said even if the Paris talks produced a new, revised document, it remained highly doubtful that it could be endorsed by French MPs “because President Macron doesn’t have a majority in Parliament”.

Another difficulty, he said, was that under the revised roadmap, New Caledonia’s provincial (local) elections could be postponed for the fourth time to sometime in September 2026.

But he pointed out that, when it gave its final green light to the former postponement to no later than 28 June 2026, the French Constitutional Council made it clear this should be the last time the crucial poll was rescheduled.

Back in Paris, talks were scheduled to continue on Monday and possibly conclude on another session supervised by Macron, should a new document emerge.

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

COMMENTARY: By Ramzy Baroud

A shock and awe. The phrase is apt in describing what Israel has done in the occupied West Bank almost immediately following the events of 7 October 2023 and the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein defines “shock and awe” not merely as a military tactic, but as a political and economic strategy that exploits moments of collective trauma — whether caused by war, natural disaster, or economic collapse — to impose radical policies that would otherwise be resisted.

According to Klein, societies in a state of shock are rendered disoriented and vulnerable, allowing those in power to push through sweeping transformations while opposition is fragmented or overwhelmed.

• READ MORE: Trump’s ‘board of peace’ appears to seek wider mandate beyond Gaza
• Other Palestine reports

Though the policy is often discussed in the context of US foreign policy — from Iraq to Haiti — Israel has employed shock-and-awe tactics with greater frequency, consistency, and refinement.

Unlike the US, which has applied the doctrine episodically across distant theatres, Israel has used it continuously against a captive population living under its direct military control.

Indeed, the Israeli version of shock and awe has long been a default policy for suppressing Palestinians. It has been applied across decades in the occupied Palestinian territory and extended to neighboring Arab countries whenever it suited Israeli strategic objectives.

In Lebanon, this approach became known as the Dahiya Doctrine, named after the Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut that was systematically destroyed by Israel during its 2006 war on Lebanon.

Disproportionate force
The doctrine advocates the use of disproportionate force against civilian areas, the deliberate targeting of infrastructure, and the transformation of entire neighborhoods into rubble in order to deter resistance through collective punishment.

Gaza has been the epicenter of Israel’s application of this tactic. In the years preceding the genocide, Israeli officials increasingly framed their assaults on Gaza as limited, “managed” wars designed to periodically weaken Palestinian resistance.

These operations were rationalised through the concept of “mowing the lawn,” a phrase used by Israeli military strategists to describe the periodic use of overwhelming violence to “reestablish deterrence”. The logic was that Gaza could not be politically resolved, only indefinitely managed through recurrent destruction.

What unfolded in the West Bank shortly after the start of the Gaza genocide followed a strikingly similar pattern.

Beginning in October 2023, Israel launched an unprecedented campaign of violence across the West Bank. This included large-scale military raids in cities and refugee camps, the routine use of airstrikes — previously rare in the West Bank — the widespread deployment of armoured vehicles, and a surge in settler violence carried out with the backing or direct participation of the Israeli army.

The death toll rose sharply, with hundreds of Palestinians killed in a matter of months, including children. Entire refugee camps, such as Jenin, Nur Shams, and Tulkarm, were subjected to systematic destruction: roads were torn up, homes demolished, water and electricity networks destroyed, and medical access severely restricted.

Israeli forces repeatedly laid siege to communities, preventing the movement of ambulances, journalists, and humanitarian workers.

Accelerated the ethnic cleansing
At the same time, Israel accelerated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities, particularly in Area C. Dozens of Bedouin and rural villages were forcibly emptied through a combination of military orders, settler attacks, home demolitions, and the denial of access to land and water.

Families were driven out through sustained terror designed to make daily life impossible.

Yet the most violent period of Israeli aggression in the West Bank since the Second Intifada (2000–2005) has been largely overlooked, in part because of the sheer scale and horror of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The annihilation of Gaza has rendered the violence in the West Bank seemingly secondary in the global imagination, despite the fact that its long-term consequences may prove just as devastating.

At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition succeeded in presenting themselves to the world as reckless, unrestrained, and ideologically drive — willing and able to expand the cycle of destruction far beyond Gaza, into the West Bank and across Israel’s borders into neighboring Arab countries.

This performance of extremism functioned as a political strategy.

The consequences are now unmistakable. Large areas of the West Bank lie in ruins. Entire communities have been shattered, their social and physical fabric deliberately dismantled.

12,000 displaced children
According to UNRWA, more than 12,000 Palestinian children remain displaced, increasingly suggesting a displacement that may become permanent rather than temporary.

History, however, offers a critical lesson. The Palestinian struggle against Israeli settler-colonialism has repeatedly demonstrated that Palestinians do not remain passive indefinitely.

Despite the paralysis and fragmentation of their political leadership, Palestinian society has consistently regenerated its capacity for resistance.

Israel understands this reality as well. It knows that shock is not infinite, that fear eventually gives way to defiance, and that once the immediate trauma begins to fade, Palestinians will reorganise and push back against imposed conditions of domination.

What is underway, therefore, is a race against time. Israel is working to consolidate what it hopes will become an irreversible new reality on the ground — one that enables formal annexation, normalises permanent military rule, and completes the ethnic cleansing of large segments of the Palestinian population.

For this reason, a deeper and more sustained understanding of current events in the West Bank is essential.

Without confronting this reality directly, Israeli plans will proceed largely unchallenged. To expose, resist, and ultimately defeat these designs is not only a matter of political analysis but a moral imperative inseparable from supporting the Palestinian people in restoring their dignity and achieving their long-denied freedom.

A pro-Palestian campaigner today accused the Israeli military forces of “once again trying to sanitise its” image in Aotearoa New Zealand, condemning a “shameful” visa programme enabling soldiers to holiday in this country.

Leeann Wahanui-Peters branded the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) “more accurately as the Israeli Offence Force (IOF) because it is the illegal occupier of Palestine” at an Auckland rally condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza in spite of the “ceasefire” declared last October.

“For the next two months, members of this military force, including reservists, will be in Aotearoa under a visa programme that shamefully grants 200 working holiday visas to Israeli soldiers annually,” the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) activist told the crowd at Te Komititanga Square.

• READ MORE: Hind Rajab Foundation files criminal complaint in Austria against Israeli soldier Yonatan Akriv
• Gaza death toll rises by Israeli raids since ceasefire, Trump names ‘Board of Peace’
• Other protest images, video clips today
• PSNA ‘genocide holiday’ hotline

“These are not tourists. They are individuals complicit in a military apparatus that enforces a brutal apartheid and perpetrates genocide against the Palestinian people.

“They are war criminal suspects seeking to rest and relax after their crimes, welcomed with open arms by a New Zealand government that has chosen to be complicit.”

Israeli forces have killed more than 71,000 Palestinians — 84 percent of them civilians, mostly women and children — since the onslaught on Gaza began in October 2023.

The country is under investigation by the world’s top judicial body, the International Court of Justice, for “plausible genocide” — while United Nations agencies and global human rights watchdogs have already accused Tel Aviv of genocide.

War crimes warrant
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted under an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant on war crimes and crimes against humanity over the policies of starvation against the besieged enclave.

The influx of Israeli soldiers into New Zealand was not a simple cultural exchange, Wahanui-Peters said.

“It is a calculated public relations exercise by a desperate and isolated rogue state.

“Israel, condemned globally for its war crimes and crimes against humanity, is desperate to maintain a facade of normalcy and international acceptance.”

Wahanui-Peters said that by embedding its soldiers within New Zealand communities as “tourists,” “workers,” or even as “athletes” in sports teams and competitions, Israel sought to “whitewash its crimes” and forge political connections with what it viewed as “fellow colonial-settler states”.

It was an attempt to use Aotearoa New Zealand as a stage — whether a beach, a tennis court, or a volleyball court — to “pretend it remained a legitimate member of the international community”.

Wahanui-Peters recalled that Israel was being investigated for genocide by the ICJ and its leaders under the ICC.

‘Tool of genocide PR’
“We must see this entire [holiday] effort for what it is — a tool of genocide PR, and we must reject it utterly.”

She said the demand for accountability was non-negotiable.

“Accountability is the cornerstone of justice. When states fail to act — as our own government has by welcoming these suspects — the people must.

“The principle of universal jurisdiction means that crimes against humanity concern all of humanity,” Wahanui-Peters said.

“These soldiers and reservists are part of a chain of command carrying out a documented genocide; their presence here, in any capacity, is an affront to every victim, every survivor and every advocate for human rights — and especially Palestinian rights.

“We will not allow Aotearoa to be a holiday resort, a sporting venue, or a training ground for war criminal suspects. We will not allow our country to be used to launder the reputation of a murderous military.”

She referred to how four coalition government leaders — Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins — had been referred along with the CEOs of Rocket Lab and Rakon by PSNA to the ICC for alleged complicity in July last year.

Hind Rajab Foundation example
Wahanui-Peters praised the Hind Rajab Foundation for its an “excellent example” of direct legal action “holding these deranged sick individuals accountable”.

This week, for example, the foundation had filed a criminal complaint in Austria against an Israeli soldier accused of war crimes.

Yonatan Akriv of the 8717th “Alon” Battalion was accused on January 13 of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts contributing to genocide during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

“The Israeli military’s PR campaign takes many forms. Watch for them not only as tourists but also as purported ‘athletes’,” Wahanui-Peters said.

She appealed for information to be referred to the PSNA hotline at: 027 4 APARTHEID or email: israeligenocide@psna.nz 

Other speakers also condemned the “genocide sportswashing”.

Another PSNA activist, Achmat Esau, originally from South Africa, reminded the crowd of New Zealand’s “proud opposition” to the 1981 Springbok tour to help break apartheid.

“No normal sport in an abnormal society” was the powerful slogan of the South African Council on Sport (SACOS) at the time, he said.

It highlighting that sport in apartheid South Africa could not be separated from racial segregation, leading to international boycotts against the country until apartheid ended in 1994.

Normal sports could not exist under such discrimination and he said the same applied to Israel, where many of the football teams came from illegal settlements in occupied West Bank.

“No normal sport in an abnormal society,” he said, adding that it should apply to Israel.

The cost of telling the truth from inside a society that has become “completely genocidal” is very high, says Yuli Novak, executive director of the human rights watchdog B’Tselem.

Novak, one of the most uncompromising dissident voices within Israel, speaks frankly in this latest episode of Zeteo’s Beyond Israelism with Simone Zimmerman in a “deeply honest and impactful conversation about political rupture and moral clarity”.

She reflects on her journey from an upbringing shaped by patriotism and belief in Israeli democracy to a painful reckoning with what she now calls an apartheid regime — and with the conditions that enabled mass complicity with genocide.

• WATCH: The full Beyond Israelism B’Tselem episode podcast at Zeteo
• The Beyond Israelism with Simone Zimmerman playlist

“Genocide is never done by a small group of people. It is always done with the cooperation, and often the support, of an entire society,” she said.

Novak also revisits her years leading Breaking the Silence — a group of former Israeli soldiers that documented abuses under occupation — which became the target of an all-out smear campaign involving government officials, mainstream media, legal harassment, and infiltration by right-wing groups.

That experience, chronicled in her memoir Who Do You Think You Are?, marked a turning point — she realised she had become a dissident against the regime.

Today, as head of B’Tselem, Novak explains why the organisation chose to name Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide in its report “Our Genocide”.

Regime needs ‘taking down’
“This regime needs to be taken down and replaced with something just and democratic — because a regime that commits genocide is an illegitimate regime,” she says.

Novak insists that facing reality honestly is the only path toward justice, equality, and collective liberation.

Zimmerman and Yuli grapple with fear, trauma, and complicity, but refuse despair. In a moment when fascism feels ascendant and denial remains loud, this conversation offers something rare: an unequivocal insistence that another future is still possible.

Beyond Israelism with Simone Zimmerman is a provocative new video podcast series from Tikkun Olam Productions, the team behind the viral and award-winning 2023 film Israelism.

In this series, Simone hosts bold and inspiring conversations that face the growing global reckoning with Zionism, the debates over Jewish identity, and the urgent struggle for Palestinian freedom.

Republished from Zeteo under Creative Commons.

If you want to understand what’s going on in Iran, abandon what the Persians invented centuries ago: Manichaeism. We use the term today to denote political framing which is simplistic, black-and-white, two-dimensional — a world of Angels (us) and Demons (them).

This article recognises multiple perspectives, including those of an activist associated with the anti-government Woman Life Freedom movement whom I interviewed this week.

First, however, let us look at the geopolitical manoeuvres at work and “The Invisible Hand of Israel”.

• READ MORE: Gulf countries gear up diplomacy to stave off US-Iran escalation
• Israel tries to drag US into ‘fighting wars on its behalf,’ says Iran’s foreign minister
• Other Iran reports

The invisible hand of Israel
Former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told Israeli army radio this week that Israel must be ready to act when the Iranian “regime” is ready to fall.

“At this moment, when what matters most is the mass action on the ground, we need to stay in the background and steer things with an invisible hand,” said Gallant, who is the subject of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant.

Former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted this week: “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”

The Iranian regime is in trouble. Bringing in mercenaries is its last best hope.

Riots in dozens of cities and the Basij under siege — Mashed, Tehran, Zahedan. Next stop: Baluchistan.

47 years of this regime; POTUS 47. Coincidence?

Happy New Year to every Iranian in the…

— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) January 2, 2026

I don’t believe this was a case of letting the cat out of the bag; I think this is both true and a form of psy-ops (psychological warfare), trying to unnerve the Iranian government and encourage the kind of harsh crackdown that regimes resort to when they feel cornered.

MI6, CIA and Mossad are active in Iran, much to the frustration of many of the large numbers of anti-government protesters determined to end the rule of the clerics.

According to Israeli and Western sources, tens of thousands of Starlink terminals were smuggled into Iran to bypass any internet shutdown. Yet the government — apparently using sophisticated Chinese “kill switches” — were able to disable most of them, thus decoupling people within Iran from external coordinators.

Trump: ‘Help is on the way’
“Help is on the way,” Trump said menacingly on January 12.  How did that kind of “help” go for Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan or so many other countries going back to the Guatemalan Silent Genocide or the Vietnam War?

American “help” resulted in the overthrow of the democratically-elected Mossadegh government and the installation of authoritarian rule under Shah Pahlavi in 1953. The West got their hands on the oil.

This time if they cannot get regime change they will be happy with regime destruction, civil war and the end of the multi-century project for a unified and sovereign Iranian state. So far, things have not gone to plan.

Long-standing Israeli security analyst Ehud Ya’ari told Israeli Channel 12 this week that the Iranian government remained firmly in control and that there was no evidence of momentum in the protests.

“I want to say things that disappoint not only the viewers, but also me,” he said. “At the moment, we do not see a continued expansion of the uprising.

“It is not taking on new and larger dimensions, as it did in 1978–1979 before Khomeini returned to Tehran.”

This is inconvenient if the West indeed plans to launch a war.  The first Gulf War was partially sold on the killing of imaginary Incubator Babies, the Second Iraq War was sold on imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction, the genocide in Gaza was launched amid lurid tales of imaginary Beheaded Babies.

War propaganda peddled by our mainstream media demands worthy victims.

Western contempt for international law could get a lot of people killed

As shown in Palestine and in Iran, the West tends to have a spitting contempt for international law if it is their team that tramples on it. Two cornerstones we should never forget are:

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter – Prohibition of Force: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

And, yes, that does include powerful white countries. And yes, that does include Russia.

Secondly, we should never forget the 1965 UN Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in Domestic Affairs.

Back in the 1980s the Reagan Administration secretly sold weapons to its enemy Iran to secretly fund Nicaraguan Contra death squads. In the 1984 Nicaragua Case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), international law was clarified by reaffirming that the principle of non-intervention “involves the right of every sovereign State to conduct its affairs without outside interference”.

Alastair Crooke, a former high-ranking member of Britain’s MI6, an expert on Islamist revolution, says Mujahedeen-e-Khalq fighters trained by the CIA in Albania, along with Kurdish fighters trained by the US in Syria, infiltrated Iran recently and played an important role in the violence.

“We’ve had demonstrations periodically in Iran but these were much more violent.” He suggests the ploy was to provoke retaliatory regime violence which could act as an accelerant to further popular escalation.

Some important truths about what is happening in Iran
There is a large anti-government portion of the population which has long-standing and genuine grievances.  I know and admire a few of them. There have also been equally large pro-government protests, largely unreported in the Western media.

Foremost among the anti-government protesters are women and, for that reason, I interviewed Aida Tavassoli, an Iranian women’s rights activist with the Woman Life Freedom movement.

“I think the people of Iran are just so fed up right now,” she told me. “I’ve always said Iran is like a pressure cooker. Each uprising is like you put more steam in the pressure cooker. Eventually it will explode.”

Aida became active in advocacy for women’s rights in Iran in 2022 when Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in a Tehran hospital after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly improper hijab wearing. Her death sparked major protests inside Iran and around the world.

The circumstances of her death are, typically, contested.

“The whole world basically erupted into protests over the lack of women’s rights in Iran,” Tavassoli says. “The entire legislation of Iranian law is against women; they treat us as second-class citizens. We have basically no right to divorce, to the custody of children, to say no to child marriage. There’s a lot of honour killings in Iran, which we think are perpetuated by these discriminatory laws.”

This time around the most prominent anti-government groups rally around Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah, who lives in the US, is endorsed by Israel, the US and powerful parts of the Iranian diaspora. According to Iran watchers I follow, his popularity within Iran is limited.

Pahlavi is in direct contact with Trump.  He publicly supported the American bombing of his own country last year.  He has expressed a desire to be in Tehran sooner rather than later.

“We will soon be by your side.” he tweeted to protesters, urging them to stay on the streets.

Images of rallies around the Western world in support of the anti-government action inside Iran typically show three flags prominent in the protests – the Lion and Sun flag of the Pahlavi regime, the Israeli flag, and the US flag.  This alliance between the monarchists, the Israelis and the Americans is concerning for many Iranians, including anti-government people like Aida Tavassoli.

“It almost feels like Reza Pahlavi and his dear friends — the Israelis and Americans — are stealing our revolution,” Tavassoli says. She emphasises any change should come from civil society inside Iran not external actors.

London-based Middle East Eye, with reporters on the ground, says “Iranian protesters reject US and Israeli interference”.

MEE quotes one of the protesters, Sara: “We want regime change, but we do not want our country to be destroyed. And given Israel’s record, it would not be surprising if they tried to exploit this situation.”

Not in any way discounting the validity and determination of many anti-government protesters, the events of the past month show all the tell-tale signs of a US “colour revolution”.

The Islamic Republic is under the kind of pressure that the West has become adept at applying.

The US reneged on the JCPOA nuclear agreement in 2018. Subsequent sanctions and further isolation are powerful. US-Israeli assassinations and missile attacks triggered the 12-day War last year.

Some believe the sharp decline in the Iranian currency this month was part of an orchestrated destabilization campaign. Combine this with corruption and what is widely assessed as incompetent economic management and you have all the ingredients for serious discontent.

Ordinary Iranians are suffering and frustrated; many are turning against the government.

The US is moving more attack assets into the region; Israel apparently wants to try its luck again. Here we go, yet again.

Professor Glenn Diesen: “The result is always the same — from the Arab Spring onward. The country which was to be liberated is instead destroyed. So we’ve all seen this movie before.”

Government incapable of reform?
Protesters make the valid point that the Iranian government has shown itself incapable of the kind of reform that would recognise the pluralistic nature of Iranian society. Whether it is capable of reform is a moot point but all regimes crack down on dissent in the face of serious external threats and that is why I believe the US-Israel-EU approach is disastrous and counterproductive.

Change must come from within and not be imposed by powerful hostile countries — not least by ones actively pursuing genocide in Palestine.

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

The lives of children will always tell the past and future of any community. My colleague Estelle and I will never forget the day we met Ximena*.

Last month, I lived alongside the Aeta community of the Philippines, observed their daily lives and human rights issues in the area. Life was different here, a peaceful pace; with locals who loved and trusted us so much.

Aeta culture is the oldest continuous culture in the Philippines. The people come from an earlier migration than Austronesians. They are dark skinned, many have curly hair and they speak a different language to Tagalog.

• READ MORE: A Filipino tribe fights to stay as a ‘Smart City’ rises on a former US base
• Other Indigenous reports in the Philippines

Amid turkeys, fire ants and lizards, we’d notice Venus in the starry sky, as if watching over the village. Ximena was a teenage girl who would frequent the local convenience store and would help out around the village. She had a particular spirit which transcended language.

Ximena was dignified and thoughtful, there was something about her which made us think that she carried herself like a leader.

Do you remember what it was like to be 14 years old? It is formative, nostalgic, freeing and stressful all at the same time.

I remember what it was like being 14 — rock and roll Catholic school, friend group fights, the dawning feeling that your hometown and parents would not have all the answers you were seeking. Fourteen for many of us was the time which we would start to develop our own political crust and values which could shape us forever.

Unique insight
With Ximena, I knew that I would have a unique insight, to find out what it was like to be an Indigenous girl in the Philippines. On paper, things seemed to be going well for Ximena. She was a dance champion, athletics team member and honour roll student.

But nothing prepared us for the heartbreak to come.

Estelle and I bonded with Ximena with a conversation of things which dominate teenage life — pop culture idols and how much Ximena loved to study makeup skills online. Ximena loved Marian Rivera. It is not hard to see why. Marian is a skilled dancer, she played Marimar in the Filipino telenovela of the same name. This show is symbolic of the Filipina maiden, a poor but resilient and devoted woman who works hard for her happy ending.

As soon as I asked Ximena, “how is school?”, Ximena’s sunny expression faded, as if her confidence sank.

“Honestly, I don’t like it. I don’t have any friends there. Sometimes I just cry behind the school buildings because I can’t take it. My mom tells me not to worry, that bad people get what’s coming to them in the end. But it’s hard.

“People tell me at school that my family and I will go nowhere in life. I even had someone say, ‘I wish you wouldn’t even exist’. I see other Aeta kids but I try not to mingle with them because I already feel so different”.

Ximena tells us that the students’ comments come from people looking down on the poor in Philippine society. For example, she tells us a story of when she found a group chat where students had taken photos of her lunch, which was steamed taro and rice.

Typical meal
This is a typical meal in the Aeta world, but to the students, this was a desperate meal of the poor. They all laughed.

We were horrified to hear that Ximena found that a teacher was in this very group chat too.

On other days, students would throw her lunch away or tamper with it. My eyes start welling up and it’s Ximena who strokes my hair and gives me a hug. I respond by saying that I understand what it is like to feel put down and hurt, I also had difficult teenage experiences.

“High school is not forever sweetheart. People love and care for you. Keep that love alive. Believe in yourself and speak confidently.”

“Thank you Ate (an affectionate term for ‘big sis’). You’re cute. It’s hard to fight back and to know what to do. I just cry at the back of the school. I want to focus on what is good for me. I like learning at school and I want to focus on that.”

Estelle explains to Ximena, that it’s ok to feel hurt and that there are many ways to fight back; even just learning, being clear when people make you uncomfortable and being her same loving self is a form of staying strong in that situation.

That being said, Estelle and I did give a chuckle and cheer when Ximena said that one day, she was so sick of the bullying, that she said to her tormentors, “What the hell is your problem?! We’re both brown! Your skin darkens in the sun too!”.

Open racism
“It’s more fun in the Philippines”, the tourist taglines say, and we all know Filipinos for the soft power of happy go lucky and kind locals. This was shattered by Ximena’s stories of the town; which were dotted with experiences of open racism which reminded me of stories of how people  Riovera.

Randoms trying to instigate physical fights, people making a huge deal about your skin colour and hair texture and how people openly belittle you. For this reason, Ximena and other Aeta teens avoid walking around town on their own.

Does Filipino society accept Aeta people? For Ximena, she hoped so with her former friend group. That was until the day where they blackmailed her into smoking two packets of cigarettes in one go.

Ximena passed out and had to be rushed to hospital for severe nicotine poisoning. Due to her lack of oxygen and organ damage, her father was her blood transfusion donor.

Ximena’s father later passed away due his own health complications after this transfusion.

“After that, I vowed that I would do everything to take care of my family and to think about my studies and life most of all. I need to be around people who are good to me.” Ximena may not have friends at school anymore, but we were pleased to hear that Ximena was one in a friend group of 15 girls outside of her school in the neighbourhood, including non-Aeta girls who would stick up for Ximena.

In times like that, we always remember those who stood by us and those whom we stood with. Ximena remembers her new friends fondly. I think they will remember her too for what she has guided them to learn; the meaning of integrity as a friend.

Dreaming big
High school is also the time of part time jobs and a taste of independence. Ximena dreams big and makes those dreams come true. With her job as a nanny, she sends most of her money to her family, but I’m glad to know that she finds time to be a teen too.

She saved enough money for an iPhone, makeup and matching shoes and clothes for herself and her friends. We loved hearing that.

Life is more than grades too, what stays with us are the memories we have with friends and how we grew as people. This is stored in certain textures of pizza dough, nail polish shades, the music we listened to on commutes, mall perfume testers and the thrilling feeling of being about to choose and buy our own clothes.

For Ximena, these memories are stored in pink trainers, eyeliner, Budots electronic music and trying to figure out if a TikTok video is AI or not. But for Ximena, her part time job casts a shadow over her freedom.

“I nanny and help out at another house. The kids are naughty but the mother is kind. I like them but it’s not my real dream. My dream is to go to university and study English.”

Estelle notices a certain hesitation with Ximena. We learnt that while Ximena’s mother has since remarried and life continues nicely in their village home, Ximena’s mother is also having health problems.

Ximena tells us that it is somewhat inevitable that she will have to drop out of school later, to focus on working full time to support the family.

Special connection
Society debates about what it means to be Indigenous and what makes up the legal definitions of indigeneity, with all points being areas of controversy. These include being an originating group in an area, a history of violence, war or subjugation, cultural distinctiveness, a special connection to land, separate authority structures and/or realities of poverty.

But who wins from this controversy? And how do we adequately address the more urgent experiences of Aeta people? Ximena tells us of a time where she was hospitalised after 4 days of eating nothing but salt water. There was simply no food at home.

Aeta people have low school retention and literacy rates; due to adverse experiences at school, geographic barriers and poverty. This means that many Aeta are itinerant workers and are often exploited at work. Families are in cycles of poverty due to how prevalent discrimination is.

Despite everything, Ximena is hopeful that she could be the one to break free and guide her siblings too; Estelle and I felt that she was an articulate, loving and thoughtful girl with immense potential.

We all talk through what we all love, what gives us hope and what we like to work on outside of work and school. “My favourite subject is math. I like art too. But most of all, in my spare time, I write stories about my life.” We ask if she is comfortable to share one. It is a prayer about her family and how much she loves all of them.

Ximena was able to excel in her life despite all odds. It is like she has a guiding star with a compelling power. “When I’m exhausted, when my body wants to give up in a running race, I just close my eyes and think about my family. That makes me continue, and then, I win.”

* Name changed

Keeara Ofren is a law, politics and international relations graduate based in Aotearoa New Zealand. She writes a “cheeky, vibrant and provocative” blog at K For Kindling where this article was first published after a recent human rights exposure visit to the isolated Indigenous heartland of the Aeta people in Luzon, Philippines. Republished with permission.

More information and a call to action:
International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines
A global network of churches, trade unions, environmentalists and NGOs aiming to inform the world about the human rights situation in the Philippines. ICHRP carries out human rights fact finding, human rights education for communities and moral support for Philippine grassroots organisations.
https://ichrp.net/donate/

Karapatan
Karapatan is a Filipino human rights NGO alliance carrying out rights documentation and research as well as providing legal aid for communities facing human rights violations. Karapatan also provides engagement with international mechanisms for peace and reporting human rights issues in the Philippines.

Website: https://www.karapatan.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karapatan/
Karapatan Central Luzon, an area where many Aeta communities are based: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555246921656

Michael Beltran
Filipino journalist active on Al Jazeera writing about the human rights situation in the Philippines, including of the Aeta people.
https://www.aljazeera.com/author/maykel-beltran

A West Papuan advocacy group has condemned Indonesia over taking up the presidency of the United Nations Human Rights Council, saying it was “totally unfit” and the choice  “makes a mockery” of the office.

Indonesia was the sole candidate for the Asia-Pacific bloc at the council (HRC), which also includes China, Japan and South Korea. It was the group’s turn to propose a leader.

Ambassador Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro succeeds Switzerland and will now lead proceedings at the UN forum for a year after his nomination last week.

• READ MORE: Human Rights Council elects Indonesian candidate President for 2026
• Other West Papua reports

However, a statement by a senior official of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), interim president Benny Wenda, has challenged the nomination, asking: “How can Indonesia lead on human rights, when they are hiding from the world their 66-year occupation of West Papua, with 500,000 men, women, and children dead?”

“How can Indonesia lead on human rights, when their President is a war criminal who is complicit in genocide in East Timor and West Papua?

President Prabowo Subianto “personally tortured East Timorese men, and presided over indiscriminate massacres of Indigenous people from Kraras to Mapenduma”, claimed Wenda whose allegations have been documented in various human rights reports.

‘No apology’
“He has never apologised or been held accountable for his crimes,” said Wenda.

He said Indonesia had not won the presidency due to its human rights record.

“The position rotates around the world, and Indonesia was the only candidate from the Asia Pacific region to put themselves forward,” Wenda said.

“Nonetheless, this appointment makes a mockery of the UN and its claim to uphold international law and human rights.”

Wenda said 105,000 West Papuans were currently displaced due to Indonesian military operations.

“Indonesia holding the presidency of the HRC in 2026 is akin to apartheid South Africa leading it in 1980.”

Instead of leading the HRC, “Indonesia should be a global pariah,” said Wenda.

Refused to admit UN
“For seven years, they have refused to admit the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [to the Papuan provinces], ignoring the repeated demand of over 110 countries, including all members of the EU commission, the United States, the Netherlands, and the UK.

“In that time, with West Papua closed to the world, they have launched countless military operations in Papua, killing thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people.”

Indonesia’s Minister for Human Rights is a West Papuan, Natalius Pigai.

Wenda said Pigai had stated that Indonesia would use the HRC position to “counter breaches of international law in Venezuela and elsewhere”.

“What about your own people, Mr Pigai? What about Indonesia’s own back yard?” asked Wenda.

Until the world intervened to stop such “egregious hypocrisy” and recognised the “ongoing occupation, apartheid, and genocide”, there would “be no peace or justice in the Pacific.”

Principal defender
The UN Human Rights Council is the world’s principal defender of vulnerable people worldwide. This is the first time that an Indonesian diplomat has been elected president of the forum.

After his confirmation last Thursday, Ambassador Suryodipuro said Indonesia had been a strong supporter of the council since it began its work 20 years ago, and of the Geneva forum’s predecessor, the Human Rights Commission.

“Our decision to step forward is rooted in our 1945 constitution and that aligns with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter which mandates Indonesia to contribute to world peace based on independence, peace and social justice,” he told delegates.

At the same meeting, delegates also agreed to the appointment of Ecuadorian candidate Ambassador Marcelo Vázquez Bermúdez as vice-president of the council for 2026.

ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

I have seen the masked goons who terrorise our streets before. I saw them during the “Dirty War” in Argentina, where 30,000 men, women and children were “disappeared” by the military junta.

Victims were held in secret prisons, savagely tortured and murdered. To this day, many families do not know the fate of their loved ones.

I saw them in El Salvador, when death squads were killing 800 people a month. I saw them in Guatemala under the dictatorship of José Efraín Ríos Montt.

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I saw them in Augusto Pinochet’s Chile and in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I saw them in Iran under the rule of the ayatollahs where I was arrested and jailed twice and once deported in handcuffs. I saw them in Hafez al-Assad’s Syria.

I saw them in Bosnia, where Muslims were herded into concentration camps, executed and buried in mass graves.

I know these goons. I have been a prisoner in their jails and spent hours in their interrogation rooms. I have been beaten by them. I have been deported, and in several cases banned, from their countries. I know what is coming.

Terror is the engine that empowers dictatorships. It eliminates dissidents. It silences critics. It dismantles the law. It creates a society of timid and frightened collaborators, those who look away when people are snatched off streets or gunned down, those who inform to save themselves, those who retreat into their tiny rabbit holes, pulling down the blinds, desperately praying to be left in peace.

Terror works.

The iron doors have not yet shut. There are still protests. The media is still able to document state atrocities, including the January 7 murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross.

Doors closing fast
But the doors are closing fast. ICE has deported over 300,000 people and detained nearly 69,000 others — as well as been involved in 16 shootings, including four killings — since Trump began his campaign against immigrants.

ICE, our Americanised Gestapo, is being birthed.

Resistance must be collective. We must assert not only our individual rights, but economic, social and political rights — without them we are powerless. Resistance means organising to disrupt the machinery of commerce and government.

It means preventing arrests by patrolling neighborhoods to warn of impending ICE raids. It means protesting outside detention facilities. It means strikes. It means blocking streets and highways and occupying buildings. It means providing photographic evidence.

It means sustained pressure on local politicians and police to refuse to cooperate with ICE. It means providing legal representation, food and financial assistance to families with members detained. It means a willingness to be arrested. It means a nationwide campaign to defy the state’s inhumanity.

If we fail, the dimming flames of our open society will be snuffed out.

Authoritarian states are constructed incrementally. No dictatorship advertises its plan to extinguish civil liberties. It pays lip service to liberty and justice as it dismantles the institutions and laws that make liberty and justice possible.

Sporadic resistance
Opponents of the regime, including those within the establishment, make sporadic attempts to resist. They throw up temporary roadblocks, but they are soon purged.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago” notes that the consolidation of Soviet tyranny “was stretched out over many years because it was of primary importance that it be stealthy and unnoticed.” He called the process “a grandiose silent game of solitaire, whose rules were totally incomprehensible to its contemporaries, and whose outlines we can appreciate only now.”

“What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?” Solzhenitsyn asks.

“Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

“After all, you knew ahead of time those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”

Czesław Miłosz, in “The Captive Mind,” also documents the creep of tyranny, how it advances stealthily, until intellectuals are not only forced to repeat the regime’s self-adulating slogans but, as our leading universities did when they caved to false allegations of being bastions of antisemitism, embrace its absurdism.

Manufactured fear engenders self-doubt. It makes a population — often unconsciously — conform outwardly and inwardly. It conditions citizens to relate to those around them with suspicion and distrust. It destroys the solidarity vital to organising, community and dissent.

Effective state terror
The historian Robert Gellately, in his book “Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany,” argues that state terror in Nazi Germany was effective not because of omnipresent state surveillance, but because it fostered a “culture of denunciation”.

Rat out your neighbors and coworkers and survive. If you see something, say something.

The worse it gets, the more established institutions, desperate to survive, silence those who warn us.

“Before societies fall, just such a stratum of wise, thinking people emerges, people who are that and nothing more,” Solzhenitsyn writes of those who see what is coming. “And how they were laughed at! How they were mocked!”

The Austrian writer Joseph Roth, whose early warnings about the rise of fascism were largely dismissed, and who told fellow intellectuals to stop naively appealing to “the remains of a European conscience,” saw his books tossed into the bonfires in the spring of 1933 during the Nazi book burnings.

So far, we have not burned books, but have banned nearly 23,000 titles in public schools since 2021.

The authoritarian state cannibalises the institutions that foolishly aid and abet the witch hunts. It replaces them with pseudo-institutions populated with pseudo-legislators, pseudo-courts, pseudo-journalists, pseudo-intellectuals and pseudo-citizens.

Columbia University is a shining example of this willful self-immolation. Nothing is as it is presented.

Violent kidnappings
There are increasing numbers of violent kidnappings by masked ICE agents in unmarked cars on our city streets. People are ripped from their vehicles and beaten. They are arrested outside schools and day care centers. They are raided at work, thrown onto the floor, handcuffed, driven away in vans and shipped off to concentration camps in countries such as El Salvador.

They are seized when they appear at court for a green card application or interview to finalise a visa.

Once detained, they disappear into the labyrinth of over 200 detention centers, where they are moved from one facility to the next to hide them from family, lawyers and the courts. Due process, once a constitutional right afforded to everyone in the United States, no longer exists.

“Laws that are not equal for all revert to rights and privileges, something contradictory to the very nature of nation-states,” Hannah Arendt writes in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “The clearer the proof of their inability to treat stateless people as legal persons and the greater the extension of arbitrary rule by police decree, the more difficult it is for states to resist the temptation to deprive all citizens of legal status and rule them with an omnipotent police.”

The FBI, in an example of how justice is perverted, refuses to cooperate with local law enforcement agencies in Minneapolis, blocking access to any evidence that would allow them to file criminal charges against Jonathan Ross.

Killing of unarmed citizens by the state is carried out with impunity.

ICE has more than doubled the size of its force since early 2025 — to 22,000 agents — hiring 12,000 new officers in four months from a pool of 220,000 applicants.

It plans to spend $100 million over a one-year period to hire even more recruits, part of the $170 billion for border and interior enforcement, including $75 billion for ICE, to be spent over four years. Salaries for these new recruits, poorly trained and often haphazardly vetted, will range from $49,739 to $89,528 a year, along with a $50,000 signing bonus — split over three years — and up to $60,000 in student loan repayments.

New detention centres
ICE is building new detention centers nationwide in 23 towns and cities. It promises that once it is fully operational, it will go door-to-door as part of the largest deportation effort in American history.

ICE agents, intoxicated by the licence to kick down doors while wearing body armor and firing automatic weapons at terrified women and children, are not warriors as they imagine, but thugs. They have few skills, other than weapons training, cruelty and brutality. They intend to remain employed by the state. The state intends to keep them employed.

None of this should surprise us. The repressive techniques used by ICE and our militarised police were perfected overseas in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Occupied Palestine, and earlier in Vietnam.

The ICE agent who murdered Good was a machinegunner in Iraq. A night raid in Chicago, with agents rappelling from a helicopter to storm an apartment complex filled with terrified families, does not look any different from a night raid in Fallujah.

Aimé Césaire, the Martinician playwright and politician, in “Discourse on Colonialism” writes that the savage tools of imperialism and colonialism eventually migrate back to the home country. It is known as imperial boomerang.

Césaire writes:

And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss.

People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind—it’s Nazism, it will pass!”

And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civiliSation in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.

Democracy’s last gasps
During the interregnum between the last gasps of a democracy and the emergence of a dictatorship, the nation is gaslighted. It is told the rule of law is respected. It is told democratic rule is inviolate. These lies mollify those being frog-marched into their own enslavement.

“The majority sit quietly and dare to hope,” Solzhenitsyn writes. “Since you aren’t guilty, then how can they arrest you? It’s a mistake!”

Maybe, the fearful say, Trump and his minions are only being bombastic. Maybe they don’t mean it. Maybe they are incompetent. Maybe the courts will save us. Maybe the next elections will end this nightmare. Maybe there are limits to extremism. Maybe the worst is over.

These self-delusions prevent us from resisting while the gallows are being constructed in front of us.

Authoritarian states start by targeting the most vulnerable, those most easily demonised — the undocumented, students on college campuses who protest genocide, antifa, the so-called “radical left,” Muslims, poor people of color, intellectuals and liberals.

They strike down one group after the next. They blow out, one by one, the long row of candles until we find ourselves in the dark, powerless and alone.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article was first published on the Chris Hedges Substack page and is republished with permission.