Nobel Peace Prize winner Navi Pillay has received worldwide praise amid derision from Israel and the US, while the Australian and New Zealand governments remain silent. Michael West Media reports.

COMMENTARY: By Professor Stuart Rees

The Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee awarded this year’s prize to Navi Pillay for her lifelong commitment to human rights, justice and accountability.

Following a long and distinguished career as a human rights-focused jurist, South African-born Pillay was appointed chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory in 2021.

Quite predictably, within hours of the announcement of her award, President Trump said he should have won eight “Noble” (sic) prizes, that the decision was an indelible stain on Norway, and he would impose fresh sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) established to prosecute individuals accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

• READ MORE: Nobel Peace Prize honours Navi Pillay for lifelong commitment to human rights, justice and accountability
• A triumph for global justice – why Navi Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize is beyond reproach

Happy to do his master’s bidding, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US would punish the choice of Pillay by “dismantling the ICC brick by brick, … we will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate”.

In lockstep with his US patron, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu declared the choice of Pillay “a gross weaponisation of the Nobel Peace Prize…  If there was an award for lies, hatred and blood libel, Navi Pillay wouldn’t just be a contender, she’d be a front runner”.

Meanwhile, the Australian government has said nothing. Despite repeated claims to respect international law, a fearful silence is the best Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong can offer, a tactic suggesting a

cowardly sheltering behind the diatribes from Trump and Netanyahu.

A champion of human rights
In complete contrast to the Netanyahu criminality invective, Judge Pillay has promoted universal human rights, advocated respect for humanitarian law and, through her kindness and generosity, has represented the ideals of a common humanity.

Citations explaining Navi Pillay’s record explain why she is regarded as a champion of peace with justice and why so much is at stake in this controversy over her Nobel Prize.

The Nobel Committee explained their choice: “For her efforts to promote peace and international law.” … “History has shown that a world operating without the rule of law is unjust, unwise, and inhumane.”

A year earlier, Navi Pillay received the Sydney Peace Prize whose citation included reference to “a lifetime of advocating for the fundamental human rights of women”, due recognition of Judge Pillay’s campaigns to abolish female genital mutilation and forced child marriages.

Where is the gratitude?
Navi’s lifetime work has included a period as a judge on the ICC, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and chair of the UN Commission inquiring into war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Ever since her appointment as the first coloured, female judge to be appointed to the South African High Court, Navi Pillay has spoken and acted courageously.

Such a virtue has prompted ire from Israel and silence from Australia.

In her report to the UN, Judge Pillay concluded, “The State of Israel bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Reference to Australian human rights abuses
Judge Pillay has also condemned Australia’s mandatory detention policy, repeatedly criticised offshore processing arrangements and the Northern Territory’s “imperialist, discriminatory attitude towards Indigenous communities”.

To tolerate criticism and still manage to act generously usually requires a touch of courage. In which case Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Wong still have a chance to congratulate Navi Pillay, if only because they regard themselves as champions of international humanitarian law.

Penny Wong’s silence is particularly notable, given her support for Venezuelan 2025 Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, who handed her prize to Donald Trump.

An Australian government statement of support for the UN, for the Nobel Committee and for Navi Pillay’s humanity-saving achievements would still be invaluable.

But support for the Nobel choice of Navi Pillay cannot be expressed by silence.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/13/nobel-peace-prize-winner-navi-pillay-praised-pilloried-ignored-by-australia/

By Kaya Selby of RNZ and Johnny Blades of RNZ Pacific

Details are emerging of violence which left at least eight people dead at Porgera Valley in Papua New Guinea’s Enga Province, in an incident for which local people have pointed blame at PNG’s Kumul 23 elite tactical police unit.

The police have denied that Kumul 23 are behind the killings, which reportedly occurred on September 23, but the incident has raised serious concerns about ongoing efforts to target illegal miners at the Porgera gold mine, which has been a magnet for lawlessness and violence for decades.

A local official claims Kumul 23 forces came to Porgera’s Kulapi villages, setting fire to houses and reportedly firing into a crowd of people.

• READ MORE: ABC Pacific on the September massacre in PNG’s troubled Porgera
• Other Porgera reports

Porgera District Administrator Jerry Maku said that eight people were known to have been killed, with one critically injured.

PNG Police deny this allegation and say Kumul 23 forces were not behind the killings, but were in the area to respond to fighting by groups invoved in a tribal conflict.

PNG Police deny this allegation and say Kumul 23 forces were not behind the killings, but were in the area to respond to fighting by groups invoved in a tribal conflict.

The Commissioner of Police, David Manning, said the police operation followed the recent murder of nine people and destruction of houses by opposing clansmen.

Manning released a statement today, announcing that “24 male criminals have been arrested and two armed men killed during a police operation targeting a violent criminal group in Porgera, Enga Province”.

“Specialist tactical police deployed discreetly into the area, conducted surveillance and, once the gunmen had been located, initiated the operation that resulted in 24 arrests and the deaths of two armed men.

“This operation should serve as a clear warning to those engaged in tribal conflict or holding illegal weapons: the law will reach you, and you will be held accountable,” the commissioner said.

RNZ Pacific has seen footage — taken at the end of that day — of bodies adorned with blankets and flowers, surrounded by grieving locals. In the footage, a voice says in Tok Pisin that “all our houses have been burned down” and that “many of our tribesmen are missing”.

Maku said that six people spotted near the Porgera gold mine, suspected of being illegal miners, were shot and killed by police officers, while two landowners were killed in their homes.

It is the latest incident in a long string of violence linked to efforts to relocate people who have been living on or near the Special Mining Lease (SML) area.

The owners of the mine, mining company Barrick Niugini Limited and the PNG state, have been trying to crack down on ongoing illegal mining at the mine site, but the ensuing displacement of local villagers has added to the problems.

“Frightening things are happening, and we are failing, the government is failing its own people,” Maku said.

“They have no place to go, that’s why they are just hanging around with illegal miners… but you know, they start shooting.”

Teenager killed, police refusing to allow burial
Richard Yope, a 16-year-old student, is reported to be among those killed in the incident. According to his family, he was simply passing by the area.

A letter written by Pulumani Tribe spokesperson Andreas Wabiria, addressed to authorities and supplied to RNZ Pacific, said the officers were wearing military fatigue uniforms and black masks covering their faces.

“They ordered villagers to assemble, razed Kulapi Villages 1, 2, 3 and 4, burnt houses belonging to Pulumani Tribe landowners, and discharged firearms indiscriminately into the crowd.

“Many other persons remain missing and are presumed dead,” Wabiria said.

Afterwards, officers cordoned off areas of the district and formed a roadblock on the Highlands Highway towards Mount Hagen, whose hospital had been willing to autopsy bodies.

Wabiria said it stopped most relatives of the deceased from taking the bodies for post-mortem examination – but they managed to get Richard out.

Thirty family members accompanied Richard’s mother Rachel to Mount Hagen General Hospital, a four-hour drive from Porgera, where they still remain.

Wabiria told RNZ Pacific they were told over the phone by Maku on Saturday that officers were refusing to let them return with Richard’s body for the sake of a traditional burial at the village.

“I couldn’t really help them much, because Kumul 23 is going to get on me if I try to,” Maku told RNZ Pacific.

Wabiria said that many in the group feared for their lives if they re-approached the entrance to their homes.

“This is two deaths in two years suffered by the same family, at the hands of the same mine, under the watch of the same government… they are becoming a spectator on their own land.”

“The morgue fees is also exorbitant, every day it costs her dearly to keep the body in the morgue,” he said.

“All 30 of them, they are hungry. They have no whatever means of surviving.”

Mine disturbances
Enga Province has been plagued by violence for years — both election-related conflict and tribal fighting.

Lawlessness in and around Porgera, particularly in relation to illegal mining, has also been a problem that Engan authorities have struggled to contain over many years.

“The company doesn’t want illegal miners to stay close to the mine, every day they go in and disturb the mine operation,” Maku said.

“They suspect that the landowners are harbouring the illegal miners.”

Earlier this year, Enga’s governor Sir Peter Ipatas told RNZ Pacific that people in his province had taken lawlessness to another level using modern guns, with no respect for authority.

The national government has responded to the problem by resourcing police on the ground. In recent months, Kumul 23 intensified its ground patrols across Enga as part of operations targeting illegal firearms and violent offenders, and as part of an intelligence-led policing strategy.

The unit was established last year, in the wake of new anti-terrorism laws in PNG — its forces were given unprecedented “shoot to kill” powers.

PNG’s former Deputy Prime Minister Don Polye, an influential Engan political leader, said he had concerns from the outset about the use of the “terrorism” tag in a PNG context.

The latest events have deeply concerned Polye who told RNZ Pacific that a grieving father had approached him about the death of his teenage son.

“The father who lives in Port Moresby, he came to me crying. I said what happened. He said ‘my son has been killed and murdered’… he said ‘it was the police that shot my son’.

“Kumul 23 just went in and burned down houses and started shooting at this line of houses and this compound, that the intelligence told them that they were illegal miners.”

“They started shooting at them, and some of them were running. And one student who I know personally, he went into the wrong direction, and the Kumul 23 shot him and he died.”

Police have denied the claim.

Failure in resettlement efforts
Polye said in the absense of a proper relocation plan, a volatile mix of different communities has increased in Porgera while associated law and order problems have grown out of control.

“There is the soup of locals, immigrants, illegal miners, warlords, warriors, mercenaries — all squatting on the SML land,” Polye explained.

“For addressing the 30 years of outstanding SML relocation issues, funding will have to have been provided.”

“When no such relocation is taking place and (with) the gold price being at the highest peak in history, the SML area is breeding the chaos witnessed in Porgera at present.”

Wabiria said the Pulumani tribe were seeking just restitution from the government, noting a 700 million kina (NZ$280 million) budget set aside for the relocation of his people that thus far has been untouched.

The deal — which has yet to be settled between landowners and Prime Minister James Marape — included more than K200 million (NZ$80 million) in ‘equity-related’ funding that is currently being held in a government trust.

Marape could start by rebuilding the houses that the violence has destroyed, Wabiria suggested.

“They should just have the courtesy and the respect, the human dignity, to at least bury the dead and facilitate the land.”

He added that as things stand, once the 30 locals return from Mount Hagen, none of them will have a home to go to.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/13/eight-dead-in-september-violence-at-papua-new-guineas-troubled-porgera/

COMMENTARY: By Youssef Sammour

Millions of people asking the same question: How is this still happening?

For three years, we have watched the destruction of Gaza. Homes, hospitals, schools and churches. Entire families erased. Children killed, maimed, orphaned and left to starve. Premature babies intentionally left to die in their incubators.

The videos. The images. The screams.

• READ MORE: Aotearoa marches, vigils kick-off ‘global day of action’ for Palestine with mass protests in dozens of countries
• Other Palestine reports

What we have witnessed is worse than any horror film I’ve ever seen—and these are real people. Our people.

And our history did not begin on October 7th.

For 78 years, Palestinians have been fighting for their freedom, dignity and the right to live in our own land.

What is happening to Palestine is the tip of the spear of so much that is wrong with our world: hypocrisy, double standards, selective accountability, and political agendas placed above human lives.

And it has spread to Sudan, Yemen, Congo, Haiti, Lebanon, Syria, Iran.

Dystopian world
We live in a dystopian world. A world where the Epstein class get away with pedophilia and human trafficking and worse, while those speaking up against the murder of children are deemed problematic and extremists.

A world where wealth buys access, power buys protection, and accountability depends on who you are.

And that is why we are so frustrated.

We have presented the evidence. We have marched. We have petitioned. We have appealed to our governments and international institutions.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.

A UN commission concluded that Israel had committed genocide, and later reported the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children.

Journalists have documented it. Doctors have testified. Palestinians have shown the world their own suffering, day after day.

And still, it goes on.

Biggest atrocity of our time
What more do our leaders need? How many more reports? How many more testimonies? How many more children?

Governments lecture us about human rights, international law and so-called “Western values” — then turn a blind eye to the biggest atrocity of our time.

Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly in New York last month despite an ICC arrest warrant.

And in the West Bank, Palestinians have faced killings, displacement and the destruction of their communities.

We are exhausted by the distance between what our leaders say and what they are prepared to do.

We are done with statements of concern without consequences. Of accountability that reaches the powerless but stops at the powerful.

Palestinian lives cannot remain the price of somebody else’s profit.

Independent access denied
Now, one year into a so-called “ceasefire”, Israel continues to deny international journalists independent access to Gaza, while Palestinian journalists continue to risk their lives to show us what is happening.

Palestinian voices suppressed online. Artists face consequences for speaking out. Prominent figures pressured into silence.

Yet our stories continue to reach people.

They have killed our journalists, but they have not buried the truth.

And despite every effort to silence us, look around you. Across the world, people are listening, organising and marching beside us.

They cannot make the world unsee what it has seen.

Demonstrators gathered at Parliament Lawn in Wellington, New Zealand, on Saturday for the Hikoi for Palestine / Global March for Palestine, marching to Te Ngakau Civic Square. https://t.co/5iOylRtBqv

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 11, 2026

There is no going back. But awareness alone will not free Palestine.

We hold them accountable
Now we hold them accountable. Our politicians. Our representatives. Our leaders.

They talk about “fixing the basics”, but where is their action against the deliberate killing of children?

Start with the basics of humanity. From this October until the next, we escalate our peaceful pressure.

We demand sanctions. We boycott Israeli products. We demand the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador and the cutting of political and economic ties with Israel. We demand visa restrictions on those responsible for atrocities.

We are done asking for accountability. We demand it as our right. We demand commitments, deadlines and action.

Hardest year in life
On a personal note, this year has been without a doubt the hardest year of my life. This year we lost Roger Fowler to cancer, one of our most just leaders and advocates for humanity in here in Aotearoa.

During the last moments I had with him, he was still pushing for us to continue the fight for people in Palestine.

My father, who was born in the Nakba on May 15, 1948, is currently continuing his 2 year battle with cancer, leaving me with the ever-growing pressure to uproot my life here and move to Australia to be with him and my mother, both of whom can only be described as angels on earth and I count my blessings everyday that I was lucky enough to have them as my parents.

This year we also lost my grandmother Elena at the age of 96. One of the last things she told me was how much she wished she could go back to her home in Palestine. The place where she played with her friends, where she grew up, where she got married.

We should not have had to wait 78 years. We cannot let another generation inherit this same abandonment.

This year I also witnessed and experienced a cancer of a different kind, a cancer within our movement both locally and internationally. Where bullying, personal agendas and censorship were allowed to thrive while our shared values of transparency equality and fair treatment were cast aside.

How can we push and demand accountability externally when we cannot practise that internally? I understand it’s because we are all frustrated, but there’s no room for that here.

Collective power
Let us turn our collective frustration into collective power. Stand up against bullying against personal agendas and saviour mentalities. We’re all in this together, and silence is the ultimate killer.

I do not want to live in a world where a child’s life is negotiable. And I know I am not alone.

We are the closest we’ve ever been to a better world. Even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Let us take our world back — and make it a world where every child can live in freedom and safety.

Free Palestine.

Youssef Sammour is a Palestinian Christian and a construction project manager who has been on board three Gaza Freedom Flotilla humanitarian aid missions for the besieged Palestinian enclave. This article is adapted from a speech he made at the Global March for Palestine last Saturday and is republished with permission.

THE LARGEST GLOBAL MOVEMENT IN THE WORLD…
Today marks the 37th national pro-Palestinian protest in London, joining more than 250 demonstrations across 60 countries worldwide.

UNPRECEDENTED.
Over the past three years, at least 51,000 pro-Palestinian protests have been documented across the world.

— Earth Hippy (@hippyygoat) October 10, 2026

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/12/what-is-happening-to-palestine-is-the-tip-of-the-spear-of-so-much-that-is-wrong-with-our-world/

By Anish Chand in Suva

The Fiji Times has reaffirmed its commitment to serving as the voice of the nation and championing freedom of expression, access to truth and the rights of every Fijian.

In his Fiji Day message on Saturday, Fiji Times Pte Limited chairman Kirit Prabhudas Patel said the newspaper was humbled to have journeyed alongside the people of Fiji for more than a century and a half.

“At The Fiji Times, we remain deeply humbled to have journeyed alongside the people of Fiji throughout the years,” Patel said.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji Times reports

“For more than a century and a half, we have remained committed to serving as the voice of the nation, championing freedom of expression, access to truth, and the right of every Fijian to be heard.”

Patel, who is also chairman and chief executive officer of the Motibhai Group of Companies, said the newspaper’s longstanding “Your Voice Since 1869” message represented more than a slogan.

“‘The Fiji Times — Your Voice Since 1869’ is more than a slogan; it is a promise that has endured through generations,” he said.

“Through periods of change, challenge, and celebration, we have stood with the people of Fiji, sharing their stories, reflecting their aspirations, and supporting the principles of truth, fairness, and accountability that are essential to a vibrant democracy.”

Enduring spirit
Patel said The Fiji Times would continue that commitment under the enduring spirit of “For Fiji, Ever Fiji”.

“We reaffirm our pledge to continue serving the people of Fiji with integrity and purpose,” he said.

Reflecting on Fiji’s 56th anniversary of independence, Patel said every citizen had a responsibility to contribute towards the country’s success.

“Progress is achieved not by the efforts of a few, but through the collective commitment of all.”

He called on Fijians to honour the country’s past while working together towards a peaceful, prosperous and inclusive future.

“Let us honour their legacy by upholding the values they cherished and by working together to ensure an even brighter future for generations to come.”

Anish Chand is a senior Fiji Times journalist. Republished with permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/12/fiji-times-reaffirms-commitment-to-truth-fairness-and-accountability/

RNZ Pacific

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/11/stranded-solomon-islands-ferry-passengers-adrift-at-sea-brought-on-shore/

This book launch speech today for Ponsonby People’s Union: At the Frontline of Community Activism in the 1970s, by Roger Fowler, whānau and fellow activists, at the Whare Wānanga, Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero — Auckland Central Library.

COMMENTARY: By Nick Bollinger

I have to confess to a degree of imposter syndrome.

I was the wrong age and in the wrong place to be any part of this visionary organisation.

When the small group first gathered in the 1970s to plan what would be the foundations of the Ponsonby People’s Union (PPU), I would have been 12 or 13 and just starting secondary school at Onslow College in Johnsonville, near Wellington.

• READ MORE: From Resistance to the Ponsonby People’s Union, a courageous tale of struggle for justice — David Robie
• Honouring the people’s fight against hardship, repression and racism — Tony Fala
• Other Ponsonby People’s Union reports

But even then, it would have been hard not to notice that there were things going on, out in the world beyond our school walls, that were challenging the way society was being run; that sought fairness and justice and peace.

For the past five or six years New Zealand had been involved in a war, waged by America against the Vietnamese, and it didn’t take much to see that this was completely wrong. There were marches through town on Friday nights, organised by people just a few years older than me; some who our government were trying to force into military training, perhaps even to fight in this unjust war.

And these were some of the first activities that me and my Onslow friends would join in on, that could be seen as part of the challenge to the powers that governed our society.

There were other things happening too that I wanted to be part of. Some were , like the movement against nuclear weapons or apartheid in South Africa. And there were others that just looked like more fun than the mainstream version of life in New Zealand that was being offered – rock concerts and festivals, communes, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.

Hope, ideas, action
It was a time of hope, ideas, and action.

It was, however loosely, like a movement.

It looked to me like an attempt to change the world.

And in many ways I think it did.

Sometimes that things that changed would change back again, as the forces of the establishment regrouped. Some things may have had destructive side-effects that no one really questioned enough at the time.

But there were also lives that were meaningfully improved, perhaps even saved, because of the ideals and the efforts of people who, in different ways, made up this movement.

It would take me a good few decades to get around to it, but a few years ago I set out to write a history of all of this, which I loosely term” (because that is how other historians around the world had defined it — and versions of this movement did take place all over the world.)

Just too young
As I had been just too young to really be more than an observer, I wanted to fill in some gaps in my experience. I wanted to know more about the people who had driven the movement in this country, where their ideas had come from, how they had developed them and put them into action and, ultimately, what had happened as a result.

I began interviewing people who had been involved – whether it had been in the protest activities, or the early bookshops, or the music festivals.

And I would always ask these people who they thought I should talk to; who else had been involved and might have valuable stories to share?

A name that would come up with amazing frequency was that of Roger Fowler.

Now as I’ve said in the introduction to this book, Roger would no doubt have been embarrassed to find his name in the first sentence because – as I discovered when I met him – his ethos was always one of co-operation, the power of people working together to achieve a common goal rather that the celebration of the individual.

As I worked on my project I began to see that sometimes a shared energy and sense of purpose can help unite a group of likeminded people who might not otherwise have found a focus for their own energies.

And I’m sure that for many people that is what Roger provided, and that was one of his great gifts.

Roger was involved in many, many causes and projects, both before and after the PPU, but it’s the PPU that we’re celebrating here today and it is a great example of something he achieved and how it was achieved.

Jumping Sundays
When I completed my book about the counterculture in Aotearoa, I named it after something else Roger was involved with, something perhaps more frivolous but which seemed to me to be a symbol of those times: I called it Jumping Sundays, which was the name by which people referred to the Sunday afternoon people’s festivals that took place in Albert Park, and where Roger would often perform with his band, the Frank E. Evans Memorial Lunchtime Entertainment Band.

In Jumping Sundays, I attempted, perhaps over-ambitiously, to look at all the aspects of this movement and show some of the connections and even contradictions between its different facets. So there’s a chapter on the Vietnam War but also one on communes; a chapter about alternative media – the underground newspapers and the Resistance Bookshop (something else Roger was involved with) – but there are also chapters on drugs and sex and rock’n’roll.

To fit it all in, I had to compress an awful lot of information. I believe that in the index to Jumping Sundays there are four entries for the People’s Union, but really it adds up to just a couple of pages in which I couldn’t do much more than outline how this organisation came about, who was involved and a few of the things that they did.

So I’m very glad that this new book has been put together from the memories and stories and writings and photographs of the people who were actually there. It’s like zooming in on those few paragraphs I wrote and expanding it to show us all the detail and colour that I could only hint at.

I’m hoping other people today will talk about some of the specific things the Ponsonby People’s Union achieved – whether it was providing cheap food for hungry families or staging occupations of substandard housing when landlords needed an extra nudge; the bus visits to prisons, or the way they worked with other groups like the Polynesian Panthers to fight racism on this city’s streets.

But the final thing I’d like to say is that, looking back on the counterculture era, in all its different dimensions, which ranged from the revolutionary to the ridiculous, the PPU for Survival and Freedom stands out as perhaps the most practical, principled, and inspiring example of countercultural ideals put into action.

This book is a reminder of what is possible. I believe that back then they used to call it “survival pending revolution”.

And we’ve never needed that more than now.

Nick Bollinger is a Wellington-based writer, historian, broadcaster and critic. He was a music columnist for The Listener for more than 20 years, has written for Mojo and been the voice of Radio New Zealand’s music review programme The Sampler.

Ponsonby People’s Union: At the Frontline of Community Activism in the 1970s, overview by Roger Fowler, and contributors (Steele Roberts), 2026, 102 pages.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/11/a-reminder-of-what-is-possible-in-community-empowerment-survival-pending-revolution/

COMMENTARY: By Maher Nazzal

Thousands of people took to the streets across Aotearoa New Zealand on Saturday, standing in solidarity with Palestine as part of the Global Day of Action. Yet where was the media coverage?

From Auckland to Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, and communities across the country, people turned out to demand justice, freedom and an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people.

These are not insignificant gatherings. These are people exercising their democratic right to protest, raising their voices against injustice and demanding accountability.

• READ MORE: Aotearoa marches, vigils kick-off ‘global day of action’ for Palestine with mass protests in dozens of countries
• Tens of thousands join pro-Palestinian march in New Zealand — coverage in 2025
• Death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza rises to 74,370, says Health Ministry
• Other Palestine reports

When thousands take to the streets for Palestine, that is news. When their voices are barely heard, that raises serious questions about media priorities.

Whose voices are being amplified, and whose are being pushed to the margins?

New Zealanders deserve journalism that reflects what is happening in their communities — not selective silence when the issue is Palestine.

The media cannot claim to represent the public while overlooking thousands of people demanding justice.

Palestine is not going away. Our voices are not going away. And neither is our demand for justice.

Do your job. Cover the protests. Let the public see what is happening.

Maher Nazzal is chair of the Palestine Forum of New Zealand.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/11/maher-nazzal-shame-on-new-zealands-mainstream-news-media/

Asia Pacific Report

Mass pro-Palestine protests across at least 60 countries in more than 250 locations worldwide were launched as part of a Global Day of Action beginning in Aotearoa New Zealand today.

Thousands of people took part in solidarity rallies and marches in the three largest cities, Auckland, Wellington and Chistchurch — and vigils and actions happened at least 23 other places around the country.

An estimated 15,000 people, including representives of more than 50 organisations and movements backing the global action took part in the march up Queen Street from downtown Te Komititanga Square next to the Waitemata transport hub to Albert Park.

• READ MORE: Death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza rises to 74,370, says Health Ministry
• Other Palestine reports

Giant banners proclaiming “Genocide is a crime — Free Palestine” and “Global March for Palestine – NZ Sanction Israel now” were carried by lead marchers, and posters displaying slogans such as “The genocide feeds on the silence”, “Freedom for Palestine”, and “Bombing and shooting kids is not self-defence — Free Palestine” were carried throughout the crowd.

One cardboard poster said “The intifada is global now” and another “The Epstein class are killers”, referring to allegations in the United States against members of the elite, including President Donald Trump.

A counter-protest was staged by supporters of Israel and the Shah’s regime in Iran — waving Israeli, Lion and Sun flags of the ousted monarchy, Stars and Stripes and Union Jack flags — but this was dwarfed by the pro-Palestine rally.

Police kept the peace and 1News reported just one minor incident.

Detained and tortured
Before the march began, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and a coalition of groups, two protesters who had been on Gaza freedom flotillas in humanitarian aid efforts to break the siege and had been detained and tortured by Israeli security forces talked of their experiences.

Hāhona Ormsby (Ngāti Maniapoto) condemned a recent “Indigenous” delegation from New Zealand hosted by Israel and said this was undermining Tangata Whenua solidarity with Palestinians.

“We know what settler colonialism is,” he said.

In Albert Park, representatives of opposition parties pledged their support for a change in government policy in active support for Palestine if elected on November 7.

The Labour Party foreign affairs spokesperson Vanushi Walters told the crowd that New Zealand could not stand by in the face of genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and ongoing violations of international law.

The party has made it clear that a Labour-led government would recognise the State of Palestine, including diplomatically with presentation of credentials, impose economic sanctions on Israel via new laws similar to the Russian Sanctions Act, support South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice, and ensure our Super Fund and ACC divest from companies identified by the UN as operating in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Today was the third anniversary of protests against the Israeli genocide.

Major global protests
Meanwhile, the Middle East Eye reports that capital cities across the globe will see major protests and actions in support of Palestine today, according to the Global Alliance for Palestine (GAFP).

The statement says that more than 200 organisations will be mobilising for a mass “synchronised Global Day of Action”, involving civil society groups, trade unions, student federations and human rights networks across 60 countries.

The global event is organised by GAFP alongside the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) and Global Coalition Against Occupation of Palestine (SANED).

The Global March for Palestine action in Christchurch Ōtautahi today. Video: PSNA

“As governments actively fund, arm, and protect Israel from any legal accountability, grassroots movements are refusing to allow this genocide to become normalised as the status quo,” GAFP wrote.

It added that the event “marks a decisive shift, moving beyond symbolic protest toward direct civil intervention to shut down public complicity and demand systemic accountability for Israel’s war crimes and genocide”.

Anas Altikriti, secretary-general of the Global Alliance for Palestine, said that the third anniversary marking Israel’s continued genocide in Gaza was a “stark, devastating reminder of the unbearable terror and suffering that the Palestinian people had been forced to endure every single day for three years”.

“As world powers remain silent and complicit, civil society is rising,” he added, saying that the global demonstration is a a direct response to “this ongoing horror”.

‘Global conscience’
Altikriti described the event as a “declaration that the global conscience will not stand idly by as a genocide is normalised”.

“We are taking to the streets to demand total accountability, an immediate end to the siege, and a free Palestine.”

Participating organisations in more than 250 locations worldwide are expected to shut down civic squares, encircle government buildings and blockade corporate entities directly tied to military supply chains.

“The objective is clear: render normal commerce and political diplomacy impossible while Israel’s genocide continues uninterrupted.”

As well as mass protests in major capitals worldwide, in cities like Athens and Modena, the coalition indicated that “actions will extend across multiple days with cultural sit-ins, public teach-ins, and large-scale visual projections highlighting Israel’s war crimes directly onto government and corporate buildings”.

“Three years into Israel’s genocide, the global movement for Palestine has grown in power, unity, and resolve,” the statement added.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/10/aotearoa-marches-vigils-kick-off-global-day-of-action-for-palestine-with-mass-protests-in-dozens-of-countries/

COMMENTARY: By Iqbal Jassat

The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay is a monumental victory for international law, universal human rights, and the global rules-based order.

At 85 years old, the eminent South African jurist represents the absolute pinnacle of legal integrity – a career forged in the crucible of the anti-apartheid struggle and elevated to the highest chambers of international justice.

From defending anti-apartheid freedom fighters under a brutal regime to serving as the first black female judge on South Africa’s High Court, Pillay’s foundational years were defined by a refusal to bow to institutionalised oppression.

• READ MORE: US sanctions International Criminal Court in major escalation
• Who is Navi Pillay, winner of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize?
• Other international law reports

Her subsequent contributions to global jurisprudence are historic. As president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), she pioneered the landmark ruling that recognised rape as an element of genocide, forever altering international criminal law.

Her tenure as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and her service at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) have consistently reflected a single, unwavering principle: that international law must apply equally to all nations, regardless of their size, wealth, or geopolitical alignment.

Predictably, this well-deserved recognition has drawn sharp, vitriolic condemnation from the Israeli government and its allied lobby networks.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s categorisation of the award as a “grotesque weaponisation” and allegations of political bias are desperate attempts to deflect from Pillay’s objective application of international humanitarian law.

Disgruntled reactions
These disgruntled reactions focus heavily on her leadership of the UN Commission of Inquiry into violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Gaza. Yet, the work of that commission was not driven by prejudice, but by a rigorous adherence to the Geneva Conventions and established legal frameworks — the very standards the world relies on to prevent atrocities.

The claims of bias leveled by these detractors fall flat against the sheer breadth of Pillay’s lifelong body of work. She has spent decades holding perpetrators accountable across the globe, from Rwanda to Myanmar.

To suggest her record is a product of personal prejudice is to reject the very concept of objective international justice.

The backlash from Netanyahu and those currently under the scrutiny of international legal bodies reveals more about their own discomfort with accountability than it does about the character of the laureate.

At a moment in history when international legal institutions face immense geopolitical pressure, the Nobel Committee has sent an unmistakable message.

By honoring Navi Pillay, the world community reaffirms that accountability is non-negotiable and that universal human rights must be defended without fear or favour.

The desperate noise from spoilers cannot diminish the brilliance of her career or the profound justice of this prize. The world stands with Navi Pillay — a true titan of international law.

Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of the South Africa-based Media Review Network. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle and it is republished with permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/09/a-triumph-for-global-justice-why-navi-pillays-nobel-peace-prize-is-beyond-reproach/

COMMENTARY: By Ian Powell

27 February 1933 was a momentous turning point in German history; a lightning rod for what was to follow.

It enabled Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party to quickly transition Germany from a formal democracy (Weimar Republic) to a fascist dictatorship (inspired by Benito Mussolini’s fascist takeover in Italy).

On that day, an unemployed Dutch construction worker named Marinus van der Lubbe set fire to the Reichstag (German Parliament) building, causing considerable damage.

• READ MORE: Trump says US will not strike Iran before midterm elections
• Other Donald Trump reports

The Nazis first falsely blamed the communists for the fire and then claimed emergency powers to crush all opposition, not just those it blamed.

The event was contrived by the newly formed Nazi government to turn public opinion against its opponents and consequently to successfully achieve these fascist objectives.

This began with the emergency law decree for the Protection of the People and State which restricted free speech and freedom of the press, and allowed the imprisonment of enemies without trial.

Scene setting for US-style ‘Reichstag Fire’
Fintan O’Toole is an advising editor at the New York Review of Books (NYRB). An award-winning journalist and recognised public intellectual, he is a former editor The Irish Times where he still continues as a longstanding columnist.

On 25 July 2025 he began an article (paywalled) in the NYRB on the direction of the United States under President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement with the above-mentioned “Reichstag Fire”: A show of force stepping stone towards a ‘Reichstag Fire’.

O’Toole analysed Trump’s endeavours to militarise American politics and politicise the American military describing them as unfinished business. This meant:

“…defining all those who do not conform to his version of normality as mortal enemies to be confronted as though they were hostile foreign nations [and] … dismantling its self-image as an institution that transcends partisan divisions, is broadly representative of the US population, and owes its primary loyalty not to the President but to the Constitution.”

This analysis continued on to the much reported brutally derogatory narrative and actions (including armed force) against immigrants (which got much worse since the article was published) and Trump’s dishonest delusional endeavour to portray himself as having known “military life”.

This delusional military self-image contrasts with Adolf Hitler’s actual record of being a decorated (Iron Cross) German soldier in the First World War.

It also contrasts with other past dictators; in particular, Benito Mussolini (Italy), Francisco Franco (Spain) and Augusto Pinochet (Chile).

O’Toole refers to Trump’s speech to his supporters at the 6 January 2021 insurrection;

“And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Language and form to achieve absolute military obedience
At the time of the article’s publication in the NYRB, Donald Trump’s militarism was primarily about language and form, including supporting references to the Confederate insurrectionists of the American Civil War in the 1860s.

Pointingly, Fintan O’Toole notes that Trump:

“… is offering soldiers what fascist leaders have always offered their followers: a peculiar amalgam of the thrill of transgression and the submissive surrender to absolute obedience.”

This is the opposite of the military non-partisanship that is necessary in order to defend the US Constitution.

Fintan O’Toole has convincingly outlined an analysis that under Donald Trump’s presidency this emerging authoritarianism in the United States is evolving towards fascism.

In this process, Trump is seeking his own “Reichstag Fire”. This includes seeking in various ways to use his position to rig the mid-term elections in early November for the Congress (House of Representatives) and one-third of the Senate.

Currently he controls both but is likely to lose the former and possibly the latter. Losing control of both is a realistic outcome given popular feeling and mobilisation.

Desperation to seize mid-term US elections
Thirteen months after the above NYRB article was published, the UK newspaper The Independent discussed this endeavour further (August 18): Trump desperate to seize elections.

Journalist Alex Woodward outlined the Trump administration’s numerous roadblocks with courts in his attempts to seize control of these federal elections by establishing a national voter registration list that would be used to decide who is eligible to cast a ballot.

Trump has also not dismissed the idea of declaring a national security emergency to unilaterally enforce his takeover of federal elections. In his reported words:

“Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK. I’ll leave it at that.”

Woodward reports that Trump could also threaten to use federal troops or law enforcement “…to seize voting equipment or ballots, which would disrupt ballot collection and vote-tallying and insert a hunt for alleged fraud to satisfy his conspiracy theories.”

In another measure to rig the mid-term elections, the Trump administration has abruptly removed the three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission, an independent agency tasked with supporting election officials.

The practical effect is to leave the key bipartisan agency effectively paralysed weeks before election day.

Election officials are behind-the-scenes public servants. However, they are increasingly on the frontlines of conspiracy theory-fuelled threats.

Woodward reports an annual poll of elections revealing that at least 38 percent of election officials have experienced threats, harassment and abuse because of their job, with more than 60 percent of those threats delivered in person. More than half feared for their safety.

Now is the right time to compare US politics to Nazi Germany
In response to the question “when is the right time to compare US politics to the Nazi era”, The Guardian said “now” on October 3: US politics today compares with Nazi politics in Germany.

Washington DC based British Guardian journalist David Smith writes about a book on the declining white Christian influence in the United States managing to fuel an alliance with Trump and working to reshape its “democracy”.

The book, Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation after the Christian Turn against Democracy, is by Robert P Jones arising out of a consideration of studied US demographic numbers, Christian nationalism, and Trump’s use of the language of racial purity. This led him to his inescapable conclusion that “This is our 1933”.

Jones began with the rise of the Nazi party and the complicity of the German people, including German Christians and churches.

He cites a Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller, who was eventually imprisoned for opposing Hitler. Niemöller is famously remembered for the powerful poem “First They Came”.

For the first four years of Hitler’s reign Niemöller did not fully oppose the Nazis. He later regretted that he and the Protestant German church did not speak out sooner.

Revival of white Christian nationalism strengthens drive to US fascism
David Smith argues convincingly that US democracy is experiencing a severe “backslide” that is directly aided and abetted by an “apostate” white Christianity, including Donald Trump’s language on the campaign trail. Further:

“This dehumanising language, talking about immigrants as vermin, and this racial purity language, like they’re ‘poisoning the blood of our country’. What does that mean? If they’re poisoning the blood, what’s the pure blood? We know where that story goes.”

Smith then refers to Trump’s repeated use of the concept of genetic inheritance. Addressing a mostly white crowd in Minnesota in 2020, Trump declared:

“You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory, you think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”

In his diagnosis, Jones links Trump’s language to the influence and activism of white Christian nationalism:

… white American Christianity has committed a profound act of apostasy by trading its spiritual core for political dominance. By endorsing anti-democratic tactics, white Christian institutions have become the primary engine behind the country’s autocratic slide.

Jones notes that whereas in 2008 white Christian Americans constituted 54 percent of the US population, by 2026 it had dropped to 41 percent. The decline among white evangelicals is even steeper. In 2000, they represented 25 percent of all Americans; today it is 13 percent.

Jones then observes:

“Trump loves to talk about the art of the deal and, in many ways, there’s been a massive quid pro quo deal struck between a declining white evangelical population and Trump. His big appeal to them was less about policy and more anti-immigrant: I’m going to restore an America that looks like you, and I’m going to restore power to the Christian churches.

“He was literally saying on the campaign trail: this is a quid pro quo deal. Give me your votes and you won’t even have to vote again. I’ll fix it so you don’t have to vote again.”

And now for Gleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung is an interesting German word meaning synchronisation or coordination.

In the context of German history it was used to describe the process of Nazification in the mid-1930s; that is, establishing a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society.

On 1 June, I posted on Gleichschaltung in Political Bytes: Gleichschaltung and the far right momentum:

“The NZ First party is a toned-down version of the MAGA movement with deputy leader Shane Jones the loudest proponent of its rhetoric.”

In the context of Aotearoa New Zealand, my narrative in this post includes the following observation:

“New Zealand is a long way away from Nazi Germany in 1933. We are also long way away from having a Gleichschaltung. But, when certain stars align, the unexpected can occur very quickly.

“Donald Trump has succeeded by both synchronisation and coordination over the past nearly 18 months in turning immigrants in the United States into the Jews of Nazi Germany in 1933-35.

“A tipping point leading to our own Gleichschaltung should not be dismissed out-of-hand even if the recipe’s ingredients might be different.”

‘First they came . . .’
It is appropriate to come back to Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem (English translation of the original German version):

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I kept quiet; I wasn’t a communist.
When they came for the trade unionists, I kept quiet;
I wasn’t a trade unionist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I kept quiet;
I wasn’t a social democrat.
When they locked up the Jews, I kept quiet;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to protest

In terms of Donald Trump’s “1933 trajectory” towards the mid-term elections, should he succeed then he will be well-placed to control the institutions necessary to ensure authoritarianism’s success.

This may well include declaring a national emergency based on a false manufactured pretext as was the case with the Reichstag fire in 1933.

However, his vote rigging attempts, along with the growing unpopularity of his presidency, appear to be arousing much public contempt; sufficient for him to lose control of both the Congress and Senate.

As a narcissist who is devoid of empathy, Trump sees strategic and tactical decision making through a limiting narrow lens.

Anything is possible over how responds to such a plausible mid-terms defeat; attempted dictatorial actions stronger than declaring a state of emergency should be anticipated.

In these circumstances concerted political opposition within the Congress and Senate are important, including impeachment moves and investigations into illegalities and corruption.

However, what will be most decisive is popular mobilisation against this drive towards a fascist state in the world’s strongest military power, whether or not Trump’s electoral vote rigging succeeds.

Organising the popular will is the critical task. “Power to people” as the old but permanently relevant slogan goes.

The final word
Meanwhile let’s leave the final word to Robert P Jones. In the epilogue to his above-discussed book he writes:

“Just as God asked Niemöller where he was between 1933 and 1937, God will ask us where we were between 2025 and 2028. Just as Germans who backed Hitler and the Nazi Party after 1933 were fully aware of what they were joining, so Christians who have backed Trump and the MAGA movement a second time know and bear responsibility for what they are now endorsing.”

Not just powerful words; very timely and directly relevant words as well. Time will tell whether Trump and his MAGA movement will achieve this endorsement; but it is not inevitable.

History does not have to repeat itself nor even rhyme a lot. Germany 1933 does not have to be United States 2025-28.

Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/09/donald-trump-in-search-of-a-1933-reichstag-fire-moment-for-the-us/

By Kelvin Anthony of RNZ Pacific

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/09/fijian-teachers-association-heads-threat-to-roast-critics-in-earth-ovens-sparks-political-storm/

Fiji’s Online Safety Act raises important questions for journalism, but also freedom of expression more broadly. The current review of the Act presents an opportunity to better safeguard the media’s democratic role, writes Dr Shailendra Singh.

ANALYSIS: By Shailendra Singh

In his address at last month’s Pacific Media Summit, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka highlighted his government’s repeal of Fiji’s Media Industry Development Act 2010, saying that it was in the interest of democracy.

While the Rabuka government has been rightly recognised for scrapping that Act in 2023, another piece of legislation with potential significant implications for journalism remains in force — the Online Safety Act 2018.

Like the Media Act, the Online Safety Act was enacted under the FijiFirst government and gives the state a role in regulating expression.

• READ MORE: Special fijivillage Straight Talk public forum on online safety
• Other Fiji online safety reports

The Online Safety Act was tabled in Parliament in 2018 in response to escalating social media abuse, but was controversial from the outset, especially the breadth of its provisions.

The backlash was such that the entire opposition voted against it, arguing that it undermined democracy. Rights groups were similarly alarmed, describing the Act as a “Trojan horse” for censorship.

However, because much of the attention focused on the draconian Media Act, and relatively few people were being charged under the Online Safety Act, the latter escaped sustained scrutiny.

That changed in 2025, as the unabated abuse of digital platforms and a spate of charges laid under Section 24 of the Act, which criminalises the posting of electronic communication that causes harm, brought it back into the spotlight.

Expecting stronger legislation
Currently, the Act is under review and Information Minister Lynda Tabuya, under whose ministry the Act falls, has told Parliament to expect stronger legislation by the end of this year.

To some extent, Tabuya’s call for tougher laws is understandable. The misuse of social media platforms is a global problem, but the threat is considered greater in fragile democracies with multiethnic societies, such as Fiji.

The Online Safety Commission received 1609 complaints in 2025 alone, with more than 50 percent involving cyberbullying, harassment and defamation.

More broadly, policymakers have warned that online misconduct poses a serious national security threat.

In March 2026, Tabuya flagged the increased prevalence of misinformation and disinformation, stating, “A single lie can divide a nation”.  Likewise, Fiji’s National Security Strategy 2025-2029 warned the malicious use of emerging technologies for misinformation and disinformation posed a threat and could “undermine the credibility of national leaders and erode public trust in governance structures”.

Even before the proliferation of social networking platforms, there were concerns in Fiji about the mainstream media’s alleged role in fomenting societal conflict, with some analysis even suggesting that the media acted as a catalyst in the 2000 and 2006 coups.

The increase in digital penetration has added a new dimension to these security challenges.

Young people particularly, the most avid consumers of online networks, risk exposure to disparaging and damaging online discourses, including racism and hate speech.

While these trends are serious and require a firm response, they do not negate legitimate concerns about the flaws in the Online Safety Act.

Implications for media and press freedom
While the aim of the Act is not specifically to regulate media — Section 4 stipulates the law applies to the “whole of Fiji” — media are, nonetheless, caught in its crossfire.

The Act contains no protections for the practice of journalism. Professional journalists using social media platforms in the public interest are lumped with ordinary citizens who may be using them with malicious intent.

This renders journalists and media organisations particularly vulnerable to the Act due to the broad provisions of “electronic communication” that causes “harm” (defined in the Act as “serious emotional distress”), as most of their work is published online and can require critiquing the actions of private individuals and public officials.

The Act also does not differentiate between public and private individuals. In general, public figures such as politicians enjoy a lower level of privacy compared to private citizens. The scrutiny can extend to their private lives should they overlap with, or endanger the fulfillment of, their public duties.

Under the Online Safety Act, media could be held culpable if their reporting causes individuals “serious emotional distress”, which could be a consequence of, for example, news coverage of actual or alleged wrongdoing.

Then there is Section 2’s treatment of electronic communication as “any information, whether truthful or untruthful…”. This suggests journalists publishing legitimate and verified information in the course of their professional duties could face the same criminal liability as bad actors posting untruthful content with malicious intent.

Section 6 raises concerns about the independence of the Online Safety Commission, including the ministerial-appointed Commissioner, which introduces the risk of a political appointment.

Indeed, the appointment of Anne Dunn as the first Commissioner by the then Communications Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum was controversial for this very reason. Dunn contested Fiji’s 2018 election under Sayed-Khaiyum’s FijiFirst Party.

The potential conflict of interest could render the Commission vulnerable to political pressure, and have consequences for the Commissioner’s role as an independent and unbiased authority.

The Act does outline seven factors the courts may use to determine whether an offence has occurred, including: the extremity of the content; the age and characteristics of the victim; whether the posting was anonymous; the repetitiveness and extent of circulation; and its truth or falsity, along with the context in which it appeared.

However, it does not provide specific defences based on public interest, truth, reasonable error, or the absence of malice.

An opportunity for reform
The fact that no journalist or media organisation has been charged under the Act in the eight years since its inception is of little consolation. No journalist or media organisation was charged under the now-repealed Media Act, but we are all aware of that legislation’s deleterious effect on the media sector as a deterrent to robust journalism and a catalyst for self-censorship.

Some criticisms of the Online Safety Act — including its open-ended provisions, the Minister’s role in appointing the Commissioner, and the potentially chilling effect on freedom of expression — are uncannily similar to those expressed about the Media Act.

Against this backdrop, Rabuka’s remarks at the Pacific Media Summit are pertinent. The Prime Minister emphasised that the media are “not a threat to democracy” but a “part of” it.

The reviewers of the Online Safety Act would do well to heed his words, as well as those of Rabuka’s deputy, Manoa Kamikamica, at the same event. Kamikamica stated that while this government was committed to media freedom, there was no guarantee future governments would share the same mindset.

In other words, the weaponisation of the Online Safety Act might not be a present danger, but it cannot be ruled out as a future one.

Associate Professor Shailendra Singh is head of journalism at The University of the South Pacific. This article is derived from his submission to the review of the Online Safety Act 2018 and was first published by Pacific Security. It is republished with the author’s permission. Dr Singh’s views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of his employer.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/08/fijis-online-safety-act-why-it-poses-risks-for-journalism/

DOnald Trump, nosediving in the polls and bristling over a disastrous war on Iran, needs a scapegoat — and the Israeli prime minister best fits the bill, writes Jonathan Cook.

COMMENTARY: By Jonathan Cook

Benjamin Netanyahu’s whirlwind visit to the United States late last month to address the United Nations General Assembly was further evidence that the Israeli prime minister is now a universal pariah.

He is being abandoned even by his closest allies.

It was perhaps not surprising that 77 nations, including a handful of European states, walked out of the chamber in protest that a wanted war crimes suspect — a fugitive from the International Criminal Court (ICC) — was being given a platform to speak on the world’s largest stage.

• READ MORE: Map of Middle East redrawn after October 7
• Other Gaza, West Bank reports

Far more notable was what happened — or rather, didn’t — away from the podium. Netanyahu spent just eight hours in the US before heading back to Israel. It is hard to believe that that was his choice.

He was denied his usual moment in the sun with US President Donald Trump at the White House, and could not even secure a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

There was no invitation to address the US Congress, and with it familiar scenes of legislators rapturously celebrating his anti-Palestinian incitement.

Israel’s former Ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, told Reuters: “I don’t recall a time when the prime minister came to the United States and didn’t meet with the president.”

Stark contrast to Xi
The shunning of Netanyahu stood in stark contrast to the reception of Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader was personally greeted at the airport by Trump with a red carpet and military flyover.

Netanyahu’s UN visit was exploited by both sides — by Israeli officials and Western leaders — to advance their separate, and conflicting, agendas.

Netanyahu is less than a month away from a hotly contested general election in which, for the first time, his failures to prevent Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023 are under intense scrutiny.

According to a growing number of recent reports, he was warned by Egyptian and Gulf leaders of a major event — an “earthquake” — coming from Gaza in the days and weeks preceding Hamas’ breakout, but failed to act.

Netanyahu had scheduled his UN speech for Israeli prime time, to attract the largest domestic audience possible. He took the opportunity to call out other world leaders as “moral cowards” and “hypocrites”.

As Israeli analyst Jonathan Ofir notes, Netanyahu also used the UN platform to smuggle in a biblical phrase in Hebrew that was designed, for listeners back home, to serve as a dog-whistle: a call for Israel to carry out genocide to the bitter end.

Netanyahu’s goal was to demonstrate to voters that he is still a force to be reckoned with on the international stage, and that he alone can make Israel safe from a world supposedly mired in “antisemitic”, anti-Israel sentiment.

Nudging Netanyahu out of office
Western leaders, by contrast, wish to demonstrate the precise opposite, hoping to nudge Netanyahu out of office by suggesting to Israelis that their leader is a spent force, that he has gone too far.

Time to be rid of him.

This may prove no simple matter. Netanyahu is the great political survivor, serving a record near-two decades as his country’s prime minister — longer even than Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion. He has used that time to whip up much of Israeli society into an ever greater, ultra-nationalist, genocidal fervour.

The current antipathy in Western capitals to Netanyahu is most certainly not based on any kind of ethical assessment of Israel’s recent actions: a three-year genocidal rampage through Gaza; the violent expansion of Jewish settlements and ethnic cleansing in the Occupied West Bank; the bombing and ethnic cleansing of south Lebanon; and the Israeli leader’s starring role alongside the US in launching a catastrophic war on Iran whose fallout has destabilised the global economy.

Washington — backed by its European client states — has been an ardent partner to these crimes, supplying the munitions, intelligence and diplomatic leverage to help Israel carry them out.

But Netanyahu now looks to be a political liability, even for Trump.

The US President, nosediving in the polls, needs a scapegoat — and the Israeli prime minister appears the only one suited for the role.

The antagonism is, in part, personal.

Netanyahu seduced Trump on Iran
A number of recent reports indicate that Netanyahu pulled out all the stops to seduce Trump, against the advice of his generals, into launching an unprovoked and illegal war on Iran.

The promise of a decisive victory persuaded Trump he could secure his place in the history books as the president who “remade the Middle East”. Once Iran was out of the picture, the US would enjoy unchallenged control over the region’s oil.

And all of this would supposedly take place weeks after Trump had cemented his command over Venezuela’s oil, following an illegal operation at the start of the year to kidnap President Nicholas Maduro.

With Iran’s defeat, and Venezuela subjugated, economic rival China would find itself utterly dependent on the US for access to the main lubricant of the global economy. Trump could avoid a direct military confrontation with Beijing, bringing it to heel simply by threatening to turn off the oil spigot.

But, of course none of this came to pass.

Washington is now in an unwinnable war with Iran that has clarified to Tehran the extent of its power over the Strait of Hormuz — and of the parallel power of Ansar Allah, its allies in Yemen, over the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Together, they can inflict unmitigated damage to the world economy.

Soaring petrol prices on US forecourts are likely to be a critical factor in the collapse of the Republican vote in November’s mid-term elections and the likely loss of both Houses to the Democrats, turning Trump into a lame-duck president.

Supremely vulnerable
Meanwhile, the war has educated Washington’s client states in the Gulf that they are supremely vulnerable to any retaliation from Tehran and from Yemen — a fact they are reminded of every time Trump orders another reckless round of strikes on Iran.

For all its military might, Washington has shown it is unable to defend its Gulf allies.

But Netanyahu is not facing a reckoning just because of his role in engineering a disastrous war on Iran.

Despite the best efforts of Western political and media classes over the past three years, the reality of Israel’s destruction of Gaza — and the murder and maiming of many tens of thousands of Palestinian children — has become ever harder to hide or rationalise.

Even among those parts of the public little interested in world affairs, the truth is gradually sinking in, aided by battles in mainstream cultural spaces that have swung conclusively against Israel.

NAZA standing ovation
NAZA, a new documentary on Gaza made by Israeli film-makers, won a record, 25-minute standing ovation at last month’s Venice Film Festival. In it, anonymised Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers document in detail how they engineered genocide in the tiny enclave. It is scheduled to be available to stream for free in November.

Ireland’s team, forced to play Israel in the Uefa Nations League at the weekend, did not hide their feelings. They wore black armbands in a show of solidarity with Israel’s victims in Gaza and refused to shake hands with their opponents. Irish captain Dara O’Shea pledged to donate his match earnings to humanitarian causes in Gaza.

Superstar musician Ed Sheeran has found himself unexpectedly painted as the bad guy for failing to stand by his support act, the rapper Macklemore, over the latter’s comments opposing genocide in Gaza.

Predictably, when faced with pro-Israel stadium owners threatening to pull the plug on the tour, Sheeran caved and dropped Macklemore. But Sheeran is reeling from a widespread backlash that clearly took him by surprise.

And leading British politicians, such as former prime minister Keir Starmer and foreign secretaries David Cameron and David Lammy, are for the first time facing serious critical scrutiny in the mainstream over their conduct towards Gaza.

Last month, a Channel 4 documentary, Britain’s Gaza Secrets Exposed, revealed that British officials had imposed a deeply flawed methodology, apparently so they could ignore mounting evidence of systematic Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

As a result, they were able to duck out of their legal obligations to take action against Israel, including by ending arms sales.

Rising tide of revulsion
Western capitals are finally realising this rising tide of revulsion at the Gaza genocide cannot be staunched.

In the US, where bonds to Israel are invariably described by politicians as “unbreakable”, 62 percent of respondents told Pew in July they had a negative opinion of Netanyahu’s government.

Meanwhile, a poll last month found 60 percent of American Jews want the Israeli prime minister voted out at the forthcoming election.

As Israel’s Haaretz newspaper observed: “Trump is well aware of the consistent, dizzying decline in support for Israel among Americans.”

Which is why he and other Western politicians are desperate to reframe the conversation. Singling out Netanyahu over Israeli atrocities in Gaza does not get them off the hook because they so obviously partnered with him every step of the way.

Instead Western leaders want to switch focus to the West Bank, where their role is more easily obscured and Netahyahu’s law-breaking is unmistakable.

Since October 2023, he, along with his self-confessed fascist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have given both violent Jewish settler militias and the Israeli military greater freedom to terrorise Palestinian families off their land in preparation for the West Bank’s annexation.

Illegal West Bank settlements role
In the West’s new, self-serving narrative, Netanyahu isn’t a pariah because he is sought by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in starving the people of Gaza.

Nor because the International Court of Justice is currently investigating his government over “plausible” allegations that it is committing a genocide in the enclave.

Nor because his government has overseen the killing of at least 21,000 children there — and most likely, far more.

Nor because he continues to violate a sham “ceasefire”, one in which Israel has killed more than 1400 Palestinians penned up in the ruins of their enclave since the fighting supposedly ended. A further 4900 of Gaza’s residents have been maimed over the same period.

No, Netanyahu is not a pariah in the eyes of Western leaders because of any of these savage crimes — crimes they have been fully complicit in.

His offence — the one they are now determined to focus attention on — is Netanyahu’s role since October 2023 in intensifying the building and expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank to expel Palestinians from their lands.

But this narrative works only if Western politicians and media studiously ignore the context: that for more than half a century, all Israeli governments sponsored settlement expansion, with the aim of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population.

Exploited the opportunity
Netanyahu is not an outlier in doing this. He simply exploited the opportunity to accelerate West Bank expulsions on the back of world sympathy after Hamas’s single-day attack in October 2023.

The most likely explanation for why Britain and 11 other Western states, including France and Canada, declared their intention last month to impose sanctions on West Bank settlements is that they had received signs from the Trump administration for the first time that there would be no serious repercussions for doing so.

Britain’s new government under Andy Burnham also dared to describe what Israel has done to West Bank Palestinians as “ethnic cleansing”. Notably, and paradoxically, the UK has avoided using the term to describe Israel’s even more brazen ethnic cleansing in Gaza — a campaign of expulsions that have all too clearly been aided by Western bombs and logistics.

Officials under Mike Huckabee, the fervently partisan US ambassador to Israel, reportedly drafted a stinging rebuke in preparation for the British announcement of sanctions. It accused London of replicating the “playbook of the antisemitic boycott, divestment and sanctions [BDS] movement”.

That expected line of attack, favoured by Israel lobby groups, was presumably the reason why Ed Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary, went to such exaggerated lengths to publicly distance his new policy from BDS.

But in fact, no attack materialised from the Trump administration. Instead, Marco Rubio, Miliband’s US counterpart, stated innocuously: “I don’t have any comment on it [the sanctions policy] right now.”

The next day Trump appeared to buy time with a uncharacteristically non-committal response: “I want to find out why all of a sudden has that [the announcement of UK sanctions] happened.”

Trump and Rubio have said nothing more of substance on the matter.

Failure to listen to warnings
Then there is the recent flood of media reports suggesting that Netanyahu personally failed to listen to multiple warnings from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates that an unprecedented attack was coming from Gaza in the days before Hamas’ break-out on 7 October 2023.

Netanyahu has called on Abu Dhabi to deny the leaks. But it has so far failed to help out by doing so.

The two countries, among Washington’s closest client states in the region, have always appeared anxious to avoid openly defying a notoriously vengeful Trump.

In his address to the UN, Burnham noted the dilemma facing Western governments: “We live in an age of low trust in politics. If we were to continue to talk about the two-state solution, but fail to back those words with deeds, that trust will fall even lower — and our enemies will seek to exploit the alienation that follows from that.”

Burnham seems oblivious to the reality: that part of the reason trust is so low is because a succession of British governments have not only colluded in the genocide in Gaza but arrested critics of the genocide as supporters of terrorism.

Miliband demonstrated precisely the kind of hypocrisy Burnham had warned is alienating the public when he told the Labour Party conference last week — to great applause — that “millions of people in this country”, opponents of the genocide, “were right”.

The previous day dozens of protesters had been arrested outside the conference venue for silently holding signs stating: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

Burnham and Miliband wish to have their cake and eat it. Neither has indicated that there is any intention to scrap the previous government’s decision to use terrorism laws against anyone who holds such a sign — or is “right”, as Miliband now admits.

Cynical theatre of distraction
What Western leaders are engaged in here is the cynical theatre of distraction.

The declarations of “You were right” and “We feel your pain”, the promises of sanctions and urgent calls for two states, amount to nothing more than virtue-signalling. They are designed to divert public indignation over Israel’s atrocities away from the complicity of Western capitals and direct it exclusively at Netanyahu.

The new spin suggests the gun-wielding, religious zealots in the West Bank settlements who have been growing ever more violent and politically powerful for over half a century — under successive Israeli governments — are solely Netanyahu’s creation.

The new spin argues that the growing confidence of these pogromists, who have long worked hand in glove with the Israeli military, is entirely unrelated to the West’s unconditional support for Israel over many decades.

In absolving themselves, however, Western leaders are necessarily crafting a new lie to deceive their publics: one that suggests the “settler terrorists” are some kind of personal Netanyahu militia that stands or falls with his premiership.

The implication of this new narrative is that, were Netanyahu to be prised from power, a more empathetic leadership would emerge, one that could be cultivated by Western powers to make peace with the Palestinians.

This is all patent nonsense.

Supremacist political spectrum
Like the Israeli public, leaders from across Israel’s narrow Zionist, ethnic supremacist political spectrum shared the genocidal logic that propelled forward the past three-year erasure of Gaza.

None dissented. All engaged in genocidal incitement.

There is no hope of their making peace with the Palestinians under illegal occupation when Israeli leaders cannot even allow their own Palestinian “citizens” — a much-oppressed minority comprising a fifth of Israel’s population – a meaningful voice in next month’s general election.

The central elections committee, a political body whose members are drawn from Israel’s main parties, voted to ban from standing all four factions representing the Palestinian minority.

Whoever wins next month’s election, whether Netanyahu again or one of his rivals, will keep the country heading on the same ethnic supremacist track Israel has been on for decades. Trump, Burnham, Macron and other western leaders understand this.

They want Netanyahu out of the way not so there is real change but simply so they can revert to what constituted business as usual before the Gaza genocide: a slower, more incremental pace to the eradication of the Palestinian people.

Rebranding the Gaza genocide
They want to be able to rebrand the Gaza genocide as one man’s historic folly, a tragic catastrophe that cannot be reversed but can be mitigated if he is gone.

They want us looking resolutely forwards, to real-estate deals and a distant two-state solution, not backwards: to their active role in levelling the homes of more than two million people – with mostly US munitions that unleashed eight times the explosive force of the atom bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Trump administration has already okayed the shipment of vast numbers of these mega bombs to replenish Israeli stocks, even before the result of the Israeli election is known.

Notably, the same Trump administration that allowed Netanyahu, a war crimes suspect, to travel to the UN in New York blocked the putative leader of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, from doing so.

In announcing his new sanctions policy targeting Israel’s illegal settlements, Miliband was keen to stress that it would in no way affect intelligence sharing with Israel — the kind of intelligence coordination that saw British planes carrying out surveillance operations over Gaza throughout the genocide.

And while Miliband promised a “double lock against arms exports” to Israel as part of the UK’s sanctions package, in practice not a single existing arms export licence has been revoked or suspended since.

The current fight is not against a genocidal Israeli state or for some illusionary Palestinian state — let alone for justice for the endlessly abused Palestinian people.

Engineering a reset
It is about engineering a reset in which the West gets Israel’s old guard back in charge.

Western leaders have been embarrassed by the froth-mouthed rantings of Netanyahu’s government. This week Smotrich called for Israel to unleash its genocidal Gaza policies on the West Bank — presumably using the very bombs Trump is about to ship them.

He told the Israeli media: “We should do there what we did in Gaza.”

Western leaders fear what that would do to their sinking credibility. And they have allies in Israel, among its opposition, whose vision — at least for the moment — is not Smotrich’s of a Gaza-style eradication of the West Bank.

Rather they envision continuing the current trajectory of gradually turning the West Bank’s small, surviving Palestinian ghettos, trapped in a sea of illegal Jewish settlements, into mini-concentration camps — replicas of Gaza before it was destroyed.

Those are the competing visions among Israelis for the West Bank: the absolute confinement of Palestinians in a series of cages versus their extermination.

That is what is really at stake — nothing more — in the West’s struggle to unseat Netanyahu and uphold its fabled two-state solution.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/08/jonathan-cook-the-west-wants-netanyahu-gone-so-palestinians-can-be-killed-more-quietly-again/

Asia Pacific Report

Labour will recognise Palestine, put in place economic sanctions on Israel, and join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

These are among highlights of Labour’s foreign policy stance and the action the party says it will take if elected as the government next month.

Labour’s foreign policy spokesperson Vanushi Walters made that clear in her recent speech alongside the Labour leader, Chris Hipkins, as part of Diplosphere’s foreign policy election series at Parliament.

• READ MORE: Labour sums up its foreign policy approach as ‘independent, principled and unafraid’
• The full Labour foreign policy speech
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Explaining what was meant by “restoring our independent foreign policy”, she said independence was pivotal to New Zealand’s foreign policy approach.

Independence was about agency.

New Zealand’s silence this term on breaches of the United Nations Charter “has been noticed” globally.

“This government’s silence as one after the other States recognised Palestine has been noticed.”

Silence over Palestine
She said the National-led coalition government’s “silence in failing to stand up [with] a sanctions regime, following the ICJ [International Court of Justice] decision on the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, continues to be loud”.

“New Zealand’s abstentions this term, on the floor of the UN whether it be about the reappointment of the High Commissioner of Human Rights or a vote abstaining on indigenous participation at the UN, have been met with confusion by our colleagues in the international space.

“We do not grow our agency if we stand for nothing because that too is a choice that has consequences.

“We lose our reputation as an honest broker and a consistent champion of international law. Make no mistake, the choice to shrink from the moral challenges we face will diminish our agency not expand it.”

Walters said a Labour government would “make full use” of the foreign policy tool box.

“There is a time for quiet diplomacy and there is a time when quiet diplomacy must bend to moral clarity — that is undeniably the case when the scale of human rights abuses is so stark that it amounts to genocide, to ethnic cleansing.

“Labour will recognise the State of Palestine. Labour will place economic sanctions on Israel and ensure the NZ Super Fund and ACC divest from holdings on the UN list of companies operating in the occupied territories.

Labour to join South Africa at ICJ
“Labour will intervene in support of South Africa’s case at the [ICJ] in respect of a breach of the Genocide Convention.”

Walters said that in this time of tension, “we must also remember there are seeds being planted”.

“International Courts continue to perform with diligence the duty of their statutes, people protest with astonishing courage in defence of their rights, humanitarians place everything on the line in the pursuit of development and peace for all, like-minded countries have begun acting on their desire to revisit creative diplomacy in defining new alliances,” she said.

She acknowledged Foreign Minister Winston Peters for his service during this term and under prior governments.

“We disagree on critical aspects regarding the role New Zealand must play in a fraught world, but not on all aspects of foreign policy, and I want to acknowledge in particular the breadth of his travel and the relationships he has maintained in the Pacific as hallmarks of his time in the role.”

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/08/labour-will-not-shrink-from-moral-challenges-it-will-recognise-palestine-statehood/

By Kaya Selby of RNZ Pacific

The United States has designated a prominent Chinese businessman in Fiji for “significant corruption” on behalf of China-based actors.

Zhao Fugang, owner of the Yue Lai Hotel in Suva and the Overseas Chinese Service Center located within it, is alleged to be a senior member of a syndicate involved in drug smuggling, money laundering, and human trafficking, according to the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

In a statement on Wednesday (Thursday NZ time), the US State Department said Zhao actively pays bribes to Fijian citizens to “advance China-based government, business, and criminal interests”.

• READ MORE: Chinese Communist Party-backed businessman in Fiji is a top Australian criminal target

“His actions constituted significant corruption and adversely affected US interests in Fiji,” the statement read.

The designation renders Zhao and his immediate family ineligible for entry into the US.

An OCCRP investigation in 2024 revealed that the hotelier has been in the crosshairs of Australian and other Western intelligence agencies since mid-2023.

It said his business interests stretch from tourism to property development, and his personal relationships have extended as high as former Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.

Stayed silent
Zhao has stayed silent on those allegations.

He has established himself as a prominent figure in Fiji’s social scene, often seen at Chinese cultural and celebratory events alongside key government figures — both during the Bainimarama era and under the current administration.

RNZ Pacific has asked Zhao via his hotel for comment. RNZ Pacific has also requested comments from the Chinese Embassy in Fiji and the Chinese Association of Fiji.

Meanwhile, other US corruption designations in the Pacific this year have included Palauan politicians Hokkons Baules — also for alleged links to China — and Anderson Jibas.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/08/us-designates-prominent-fiji-businessman-for-advancing-china-based-interests/