REVIEW: By David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report

I have watched the most disturbing film in my lifetime — a warning to the world of a horrendous dystopian future when human life and death is being decided by remote AI-assisted control warfare weapons. The problem is that this dystopian future is already with us now and has been unfolding for three years — with genocide in the Israeli besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

Unlike the Venice film festival premiere last month when the audience gave an unprecedented 25-minute standing ovation for The Guardian-produced NAZA: A Window into Systems of Mass Killing, the New Zealand preview audience at Auckland’s Rialto Cinemas sat in shocked silence for minutes at the end, unsure how to respond to this harrowing documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. NAZA won the Venice Special Jury Prize.

So stunned was the Auckland audience that there was not a single clap.

This is a chilling visual testimony (surely likely evidence for future war crimes trials of Benjamin Netanyahu and others?) of what Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein wrote about in his landmark 2023 global book The Palestine Laboratory. At least 75,000 Palestinians have now been slaughtered (the real total is bound to be far, far higher) in the more than 1000 days since the genocide began — mostly women and children (some 25,000 of the latter).

And a Republican congressman, David Valadao, has just been reported as gloating about the US “benefits” of the war on Gaza in that weapons “are tested there; we are able to learn from that”. “We”? Sickening!

Ironically, the standing ovation in Venice eclipsed by a couple of minutes another Gaza film last year, Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, a dramatised feature film about the cold-blooded murder of a five-year-old girl by an Israeli tank crew, who also ambushed and assassinated the two ambulance responders sent to rescue her.

The Hind Rajab film was heart-rending and tragic, whereas NAZA is so deeply disturbing because of the sheer callousness and remoteness of the killing carried out by 24 intelligence agents and soldiers at the push of a button through their AI applications known by Orwellian labels such as “Lavender”and “Where’s Daddy?” Yet to their credit, perhaps, they must have at least had tugs at their conscience to agree to being interviewed for this film (anonymous and with disguised voices) in secret to expose the industrial level killing.

Acceptable kill ratios
One of the interviewees tells of approval to kill 500 civilians as acceptable to target one Hamas resistance fighter. Others spoke of 200 killings at a time for one target as “acceptable” – or even “expected”. The gloves of revenge were cruelly off.

The official Naza documentary trailer.                  Video: Madman Films

The location is eerie, even ghostly, as the narratives explore remote killings during the interviews on (presumably) Tel Aviv rooftops. In the background, are the lights from Israeli apartments as people go about their mundane lives — a far cry from the terror experienced by Gazan families as they are targeted, often during the night, by quadcopters, missiles or bombs — or “Whoops”, mini drones designed especially for attacking inside homes.

“It’s so insanely fun. . . ” “It’s like a video game . . . ” “You understand that your goal is to destroy . . . ” are some of the reflections of the death dealers under the cover of darkness. The “whistleblowers”, if we can call them that, spoke to co-director Abraham under the expectation of complete anonymity for fear of retribution from the system they were once — or possibly still are — embedded in.

The film title NAZA is an acronym standing for the Hebrew term Nezek Agavi, which means “collateral damage”.

This documentary has provoked an immediate and savage response by the extreme rightwing Netanyahu regime. Responses began with Culture Minister Miki Zohar calling the film “despicable” and saying he would “act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators on the grounds of treason against the state”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, who is wanted on an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, was the next to attack the filmmakers. He declared he would introduce two legislative bills targeting those who “defame” the Israeli military. According to him, the first bill would enable revoking the citizenship of “anyone who defames soldiers”. The second would boost “twentyfold” the amount in damages in lawsuits for defamation.

The military itself has also threatened action. Chief-of-staff Eyal Zamir ordered punitive legal steps against the filmmakers with the help of the internal intelligence agency Shin Bet.

Punishing the filmmakers
The documentary is not an outlier in the allegations it makes, and it is revealing that the Israeli establishment should seek to punish the filmmakers rather than examine the abhorrent rules of engagement that have blighted this war on Gaza (in response to the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 – a “breakout” from their 23-year prison enclave).

Just this week, the German news magazine Der Siegel has published accounts from 10 Israeli soldiers describing how troops killed Palestinian civilians in Gaza and branded them as “terrorists”. The soldiers recounted war crimes in their testimonies, including slaughtering unarmed Palestinians and destroying entire neighbourhoods to prevent families returning. One infantry reservist described how he was encouraged to kill unarmed civilians, saying: “The Arabs must be punished.” Collective punishment is a war crime.

The Israeli authorities are so desperate to minimise the political damage from this documentary that a hurriedly produced “counter” film as part of the $1 billion hasbara propaganda programme has been released — but this is littered with lies and disinformation and is unlikely to have the desired impact.

For an accurate exposé of the Gaza breakout itself that triggered the genocide following more than seven decades of occupation and repression since 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their own land during the 1948 Nakba (“the Catastrophe”), it is hard to match the Al Jazeera investigation October 7.

• NAZA: A Window into Systems of Mass Killing, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor (Madman Entertainment). The film has been released in 55 countries, including New Zealand, but is banned from screening in Israel. It will be streamed for free on The Guardian’s website in late November.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/gaza-mass-killing-documentary-a-warning-of-global-dystopian-future/

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/

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 Stephen Prager

Seeking to discredit reports of its unprecedented killing of journalists in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces last week published a list of 170 slain Palestinians it claimed were not legitimate media workers but members of “terrorist groups”.

Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, reviewed every single entry on the list.

He called it “the most sloppy shameless fraud possible.”

• READ MORE: Al Jazeera rejects Netanyahu’s attack on journalists in UN speech
• Silencing the messenger: Israel kills journalists, while the West merely censors them — David Robie
• West Bank: RSF condemns Israeli army over escalating violence against Palestinian journalists
• Other Gaza media freedom reports

Israeli officials and Western supporters have trumpeted the IDF’s list as a counter to findings by groups like the International Federation of Journalists, which has described Israel’s nearly-three-year-old-war in Gaza as “the deadliest period in the history of journalism” and cataloged at least 240 journalists and media workers killed.

Other global media watchdogs have cited an even higher number while the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news channel has reported at least 270 killed — 12 of them being its own journalists.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has found dozens of cases in which it concluded journalists were targeted deliberately because of their reporting and filed multiple complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging war crimes against the press.

The database, which the IDF refers to as the “Press Files,” says “that claim does not tell the full story” and alleges that “individuals presented as innocent journalists were, in fact, militants in the military wings of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and other terrorist organisations.”

Investigating war crimes in Gaza                     Video: Al Jazeera

Claims ‘in-depth’ list
The IDF claims the list was the product of an “in-depth investigation” consisting of open-source information, documents recovered by Israeli forces in Gaza, interrogations of alleged Palestinian militants, and intelligence gathered during military operations.

But as Shehada explained in a thread posted to social media on Sunday, “in the overwhelming majority of those listed, the IDF presents ZERO credible evidence. In most of them, their pages are literally blank”.

In 59 cases, Shehada found that the IDF did not provide any evidence for its claim that a journalist was a member of Hamas or PIJ other than that the claim was “based on multiple intelligence sources”.

Shehada said this amounted to essentially saying “trust me, bro,” which is especially insufficient given the numerous instances in which the IDF has been found to have misled the public about its responsibility for certain attacks, like the killing of 5-year-old Hind Rajab in 2024.

In another 42 cases, Shehada found that the IDF provided only decontextualized “snippets” of files, which were “undated and unspecified”. Without more information, Shehada said, this is “not… evidence of anything”.

“Those snippets could be taken from random files; they could be outdated or fabricated,” Shehada said, pointing to previous cases in which purported Hamas intelligence circulated by Israeli sources was later revealed to be misleadingly presented as fabricated.

Shehada pointed to specific cases in which Israel’s allegations against specific journalists have been undermined by the underlying evidence.

Israel claimed that Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul, whom the IDF killed in July 2024, was an operative with Hamas’ elite Nukhba wing and released a supposed Hamas personnel document as proof.

Debunked by RSF
But as Reporters Without Borders has previously explained, the document says al-Ghoul, born in 1997, received a military rank in 2007, when he was 10, while elsewhere saying he joined in 2014.

It also identifies him as an engineer, contradicting the IDF’s description of him as a Nukhba fighter. Israeli troops also detained al-Ghoul at al-Shifa hospital months before he was killed but released him after 12 hours.

The case of Anas al-Sharif, another Al Jazeera journalist killed in 2025, is similar. As Shehada documented for +972 magazine last year, al-Sharif was seriously injured in 2017, listed in a military context in 2019, but described as “suspended” and “unassigned” by 2023 — while another document nevertheless portrays him as an elite Nukhba fighter. He was also reportedly detained and released by Israeli forces during the 2024 al-Shifa raid.

In other cases, the IDF’s evidence outright debunks the military’s own claims. For instance, Israel labeled photojournalist Hassan Aslih — killed by an airstrike at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in May 2025 — as a “military operative.”

But the 2019 Hamas document provided as evidence for this lists him as a “photographer” involved with “media services”.

While the document, if authentic, does establish a relationship between Aslih and Hamas’ Qassam Brigades at least six years before his death, this does not make him a legitimate target under international humanitarian law, which distinguishes between those who have a “continuous combat function” and those who provide political or other indirect forms of support, like media coverage.

Shehada found at least seven cases in which the only evidence provided by the IDF was photos of slain journalists holding guns. In another 12 cases, the IDF provided undated photos of journalists allegedly taking part in Hamas or PIJ military activities.

Israeli journalists’ military service
Shehada noted that many prominent Israeli journalists also have past military service, such as Axios correspondent Barak Ravid, who was an IDF reservist until 2023. “Does that make him a ‘legitimate target’? or a non-civilian forever?” Shehada asked.

The distinction between past military affiliation and active combatant status has been a repeated source of dispute for press freedom groups that have attempted to tally the number of journalists killed.

Last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) completed a sweeping review of 229 deaths after Hamas and PIJ published obituaries identifying some people listed as journalists as members of armed groups.

CPJ ultimately removed 22 people from its list, including some it found had participated in combat — but retained others despite militant obituaries, gun photos, or past organisational ties when the evidence did not establish active combatant status.

The “Press Files” database contains 49 cases in which the main piece of evidence is one of these obituaries. Among them are people who CPJ examined and concluded were not active combatants, such as photojournalist Amr Abu Odeh — a 26-year-old freelance photographer for the Anadolu Agency and Reuters — whom the IDF database labels a Hamas “squad commander”.

CPJ examined photos of Odeh wearing a military uniform, which came from a 2021 military training course with Gaza’s Ministry of the Interior. The group noted that “No armed factions in Gaza have claimed Abu Odeh as being affiliated with them, and the IDF has not alleged he was involved in combat”.

‘NOT engaged’ militarily
“In multiple cases, despite obituaries by Hamas/PIJ, the Committee to Protect Journalists investigated thoroughly and concluded those journalists were NOT engaged in any militant activity during the genocide,” Shehada wrote.

“They may have in the past. That doesn’t make them combatants forever.”

He added that the flimsiness of the IDF’s evidence was more striking given the sophistication of the intelligence unit it uses to “dig up dirt” on journalists to provide post hoc justification for their killings, which has been referred to internally as the “Legitimisation Cell,” which was revealed in a +972 investigation.

“If that’s all they can provide as ”evidence“ (e.g. blank pages, random snippets, outdated docs) despite having formidable resources,” Shehada wrote, “then it’s a vindication of Gaza’s journalists!”

Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Republished under Creative Commons.

The post Palestinian researcher exposes Israel’s list of so-called ‘terrorist’ journalists slain in Gaza as smear appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/07/palestinian-researcher-exposes-israels-list-of-so-called-terrorist-journalists-slain-in-gaza-as-smear-2/

REVIEW: By David Robie

The seeds of resistance and later community empowerment began in Tāmaki Makaurau in a humble but lively bookshop in a rundown two-storeyed shop at 436 Queen Street. Called the Resistance Bookshop, it became the headquarters for protesters in 1969 for three years as anti-Vietnam War action grew and grew.

This was where many students, workers and radicals gathered — including the young Roger Fowler — to plan their protest action. Many of them lived in dilapidated inner-city flats within a stone’s throw of the bookshop.

As the anti-war movement gained momentum, many young men faced conscription into the New Zealand army and there were fears that conscripts would be drafted to fight in Vietnam — as was their fate in the United States and Australia.

• READ MORE: Other Roger Fowler reports

Fowler, an icon of Aotearoa protest and community empowerment, recalled how those men whose “number came up” in the archaic Compulsory Military Training (CMT) “lottery law” were ordered to report to a special train at Auckland Railway Station.

They were “transported to the Waiouru army camp to endure a harsh, three-month course of military training plus follow-up camps,” wrote Fowler.

“My number was drawn and I refused to go; instead burning my draft card at a demonstration at the US Consul’s Paritai Drive mansion.

“I organised a protest at the railway station, where fellow Resistance supporters and I handed out leaflets, encouraging the young conscripts on the train to disembark and refuse to go.

“I was later arrested for refusing to attend the army call-up, then locked up in Mt Eden prison for about three weeks for refusing the pay the fine.”

Fowler recalled that this period of “defiant non-compliance” by conscripts led to the founding of the Organisation to Halt Military Service (OHMS). Eventually, the pressure paid off when the Norman Kirk-led Labour government was elected in November 1972 — and it immediately scrapped CMT.

This saga is one of many stories of the people’s resistance that are recounted in a new book being launched tomorrow, Ponsonby People’s Union: At the Frontline of Community Activism in the 1970s, with an overview written by Roger Fowler in the months before he died earlier this year. Many activists from the era, including his wife and fellow campaigner, Dr Lyn Doherty (Ngati Porou and Ngāpuhi), have also contributed.

Arrested 20 times
He was arrested or charged more than 20 times “during those turbulent years”, and was imprisoned four times for refusing to pay fines — a political prisoner.

Reading about this period was particularly poignant for me because in 1969 I was living in Melbourne as the young activist editor of the independent Sunday Observer and being threatened with prosecution for writing an editorial urging young Australians to burn their draft cards.

I didn’t know Roger, Lyn and their whānau then. This came many years later, especially when we crossed paths over our Palestine activism with Roger founding and campaigning with the Kia Ora Gaza project in a sustained effort to break the cruel Israeli siege of the Gaza enclave to deliver humanitarian aid.

Veteran activist Roger Fowler, co-founder of the Ponsonby People’s Union and a founding member of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, died on 21 February 2026, aged 77. His whānau have put in tremendous mahi in their effort to try to complete this remarkable book before his death, and it is a compelling testament to his life, and to the comrades and activist supporters.

Fowler’s “vision, energy and guitar helped sustain a remarkable initiative in collective action” for a fairer and better community.

Back to the Resistance Bookshop.

In fact, there were three of them – one each in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. They were at the “forefront of this vibrant groundswell of protest and rebellion”. Young people, including many students, spearheaded new forms of activism such as “sit-ins, street theatre, graffiti, leaflets, protest songs and pickets”.

‘Bowels of the underground’
Countless leaflets and screen-printed posters were produced from what was dubbed “the bowels of the underground”.

Auckland’s Resistance Bookshop was also a popular rendezvous for Australian and US draft dodgers who had fled to New Zealand to escape the Vietnam War.

The Progressive Youth Movement (PYM) was at the forefront of street protests venting outrage at the pointless slaughter in Vietnam and the “brutal oppression in apartheid South Africa”.

Within walking distance of the Resistance Bookshop — few protesters had cars back then — were two popular hangouts: the Babel restaurant in Victoria Street, and the Kiwi Tavern pub in Symonds Street.

The Vietnam War protests peaked with about 35,000 taking part but eased off as NZ troops were gradually withdrawn from 1971 onwards. Committed activists began looking for a fresh “meaningful direction”.

Many of the serious radicals who had left the bookshop formed an inner city Marxist study group exploring works by Mao Zedong and Lenin, and other more modern authors analysing class struggles against capitalism.

“PMY activist and secretary Cliff Kelsall and I became friends and workmates as labourers on various building sites,” wrote Fowler. ”We started exploring ideas about urban activism, especially inspired by the appeal of Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and George Jackson to ‘bring the war back home’, by Newton’s concept of grassroots community organising, building a global network of ‘revolutionary intercommunalism’, and by Seale’s clarion call to ‘Seize the time’.”

North Vietnamese meeting
In 1972, a group of the “young radicals” were invited to meet a visiting North Vietnamese delegation, including the mayor of Hanoi, at the Auckland University Student Union building.

“Among issues discussed,” recalled Fowler, “I asked about the idea that had been quietly floating about, of organising an international militia to support the Vietnamese struggle — similar to the International Brigades that about a dozen young Kiwis had joined up with in the 1930s to fight Franco’s fascists during the Spanish Civil War.”

Several New Zealand medics had volunteered then too, explained Fowler, including the activist and late Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt’s aunt, Rene Shadbolt.

“The startled visitors politely responded: “Thanks, but no thanks.” The Vietnamese suggested that the New Zealanders should instead support their struggle by building a “homegrown revolutionary movement”.

“Advice some of us took to heart,” noted Fowler.

This led to the foundation of an urban movement to organise around “real life struggles and developing survival skills” — useful for the then working class neighbourhoods of Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Freeman’s Bay and Newton.

From the Resistance Bookshop, the movement had now graduated to become the Ponsonby People’s Union for Survival and Freedom (PU, for short), with its headquarters at 15 Ponsonby Road in a rundown block of shops skirting Western Park, a block long since demolished to provide more space in the reserve.

‘Clear sense of purpose’
“We decided we needed to start with a clear unified sense of purpose,” wrote Fowler. “A Ten Point Statement of Direction evolved, inspired by the Ten Point Programme adopted earlier by the US Black Panther Party.

“This statement was to become our set of guiding principles for positive practical actions and for addressing the key issues facing our community – such as substandard housing, police harassment, poor education and health services, racism, women’s rights, costly food, arbitrary evictions, and the isolation of prisoners, often in faraway prisons, from their families and loved ones, and advancing social cohesion.”

As Fowler summed up the problem-solving objective, “we aimed to advance the wellbeing, resilience, social cohesion and survival of our community and to strive for civil liberties and freedom from oppression”.

Although clearly influenced by Newton and the Black Panthers — but never a “copycat” movement, PU often operated as a “sister organisation” cooperating with the Polynesian Panthers — of anti-Dawn Raids fame — the Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ), PYM, Ngā Tamatoa, ACORD and “other left activist groups of the day”.

While deciding on PU’s programmes, Cliff Kelsall and Fowler met Polynesian Panthers leaders at their office in Three Lamps, Ponsonby (honoured today with a pavement panther tile), and forged a warm rapport and community partnership that lasted for the seven-year life of the union and beyond. First up for collaboration was a community food co-op.

“We wanted the co-op to engage with people and encourage them to work together as volunteers around the common goal of sustaining our households with fresh, low-cost food,” wrote Fowler.

And the movement introduced itself in 1972 through leaflets as “a community-based group of people getting together to try to solve common problems and build a real community with control over its own destiny”.

Borrowed old trucks
The Ponsonby headquarters had four upstairs bedrooms and a meeting room (plus garage space and a courtyard), so Kelsall and Fowler immediately moved in with others to help pay the rent — at $15 a week!

To get the food co-op underway, the collective borrowed old trucks from their networks, collated food orders and bought fresh vegetables and fruit in bulk from the downtown Turners & Growers markets each Monday morning.

“By cutting out the middlemen, up to half of the retail prices were slashed. And we knew the goods were fresh,” Fowler wrote.

“We would choose to buy – at rock bottom prices – spotted apples and misshapen pumpkins that no retailer wanted on their display shelves.”

The co-op was an ideal platform for supporting other struggles, especially during the 1977 Timber Workers’ Union dispute — “when we dispatched our truck packed to the roof with donated food to support workers on the picket line at Kawerau”.

The PU also helped about 300 locked out workers at the NZMC Honda car assembly plant and set up a co-op distribution depot at the Panmure Town Hall.

People’s Union activists carried on taking part in anti-Vietnam War protests and over “other issues of the day”. One of the memorable banners read: “Learn from the Vietnamese — unite to defeat our common enemies”.

China ‘educational tour’
In 1975, the NZ China Friendship Society facilitated a “workers’ educational tour” of China, which included six People’s Union activists — including Roger Fowler, his wife Lyn Doherty, and the late mayor Tim Shadbolt of Invercargill: “We visited communal farms, big worksites, and met renowned NZ author Rewi Alley.”

This was six years before I also — now living back in Aotearoa after several years in Paris, France, following the 1968 student riots — went on a Friendship Society visit to China and wrote a series of articles for The Auckland Star.

Now as a semi-retired journalist with also strong beliefs about community-owned and independent media, I was heartened to read Roger Fowler’s chapter on the PU’s independent information efforts.

Fowler wrote about this PU initiative saying: “The People’s Union started to attract the interest of some established media, though unlike other left organisations, we never courted the media. We believed it was more important for people to develop our own independent ‘people’s media’.

“However, a journalist from the Women’s Weekly followed the food co-op for her scoop one day and wrote a sympathetic article.”

In 2016, Roger Fowler and former Polynesian Panther Party members Tigilau Ness and Tuu’ulenana Iluli attended the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California.

In 2025, Fowler and Ness collaborated with a vinyl album, “Songs of  Struggle and Solidarity”.

Prison whānau bus trips
Among the many projects of the PU was in 1972 starting a visitors’ weekly free bus run to Pāremoremo maximum security prison near Albany, and a monthly bus trip to Waikēria Borstal near Te Awamutu.

“These services were very popular, as both prisons were purposely located far away from any viable public transport, making family or community relationships difficult for many,” Fowler wrote.

“We once crowded about 80 people into a 55-seater bus to Waikēria. Polynesian Panther Party leader Tigilau Ness brought along his guitar and would get a big singalong going from the back seat – his ‘American Pie’ got everyone joining in the chorus, ‘Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie . . . “

The People’s Union food co-op became a key organising tool and platform, recalled Fowler, for another important “problem solving” programme – defending tenants. The PU centre became the “go-to place for local people facing issues inflicted by rapacious landlords, a major problem that plagued the area”.

Fowler pays tribute to community activist Betty Wark and her 1976 Tole Street “tent city” occupation of a public park in Ponsonby in protest for “decent housing”.

In a page devoted to her campaigning, Helene Connor is quoted saying; “Housing the homeless and utilising the buildings to their full extent became a passion for Betty. The Tole Street tent ‘village’ kept going for several months while Betty continued to look for suitable accommodation to house the group.”

Vasau family eviction
Fowler recalled “one of our most high-profile housing cases was the eviction of the Vasau family from their home in Norfolk Street, Ponsonby, in 1974”.

“A new owner had told the family to leave their family home of five years, so he could bang the rent up. They had nowhere to go, so had no choice but to stay and fight.

“One day when nobody was home the landlord seized the chance to break in and toss the family’s furniture and belongings outside.”

The People’s Union was called and activists along with neighbours moved the family’s belongings back inside and barricaded the house. Eventually, six months later the landlord returned along with a senior police officer and a court order.

The good news was that the court order along with community support actually helped the family gain a new state house in South Auckland for their home.

Police harassment “was often a problem for some of the people we worked with,” recalled Fowler. A police “task force” would parade through the streets and stop outside local pubs.

“They would intimidate people, usually in an arrogant, racist manner. They called this ‘team policing’, but the People’s Union newspaper compared them to an invading army.”

Defining historical event
The Māori Land March in 1975 “was a defining event in the history of Aotearoa — People’s Union members supported the march in many ways, whether joining with the marchers on the road, feeding them, or supplying the bus so that kaumatua could rest when they needed to”.

Fowler devoted an inspired chapter to the struggle of Takaparawhau–Bastion Point. On 6 January 1977, Ngāti Whātua’s Ōrākei Action Committee “put out an urgent call for supporters to join a tent protest” at Takaparawhau, Bastion Point.

“The vast area of open fields was under direct threat by the Muldoon government, which intended to develop the land as elite real estate for upmarket housing.”

Fowler quoted Sharon Hawke, one of the protest occupiers and the daughter of Joe Hawke, one of the leaders, declaring in Takaparawhau, the people’s story: “This was to become one of the greatest shows of strength in modern [NZ] history.”

“The protest camp evolved into a formidable village occupation that stood firm on the disputed land, until evicted by 600 police 506 days later. The uniting catchcry was: ‘Bastion Point is Māori Land’.”

People’s Union activists were there in the protest from the beginning. The land was “unprotected, windswept terrain exposed to the elements which can be very harsh”. The PU advocated the need to build shelters and huts rather than relying on tents. Some people were able to bring on caravans.

Activists from the PU hired a large rotary hoe to help dig vegetable gardens and the protest community rapidly grew into a “living village” — it was “transformed into a vibrant marae”.

Lyn Doherty and Roger Fowler lived in the protest village “in a little tin shack at the rear of Arohanui [the wharenui] — cooking toasted sandwiches for breakfast on a small methylated spirits burner each morning”.

Shameful Bastion Point raid
On 25 May 1978, a massive police operation moved to evict and demolish the village. On that fateful morning, 222 Ngāti Whātua and supporters were arrested and all the buildings were demolished and removed in a shameful repressive action by the state.

“But although we lost the battle,” recalled Fowler, “we won the war — the land remains as public space under Ngāti Whātua control.”

The Ponsonby food co-op grew until about 600 local households were taking part by the end of the 1970s. But the inner Auckland suburbs of Ponsonby and Grey Lynn and their demographics were rapidly changing. Old houses were being sold and renovated as the suburbs were being “gentrified” and rundown shops were being converted into cafes, restaurants and fashion boutiques.

Sadly, the final edition of People’s Union community newspaper in April 1979 announced the closure of the Ponsonby People’s Union, saying “the need for an ‘umbrella’ organisation to coordinate a wide range of community action (from prison visiting to food co-ops) is no longer necessary”.

However, Roger Fowler and whānau expanded their community activism to their new home in Māngere East, where Roger drove buses and was an Engineers Union delegate before managing the Mangere East Community Learning Centre.

In 1999, he was awarded the Queens Service Medal for community service.

Roger and Lyn have four children — Tawera, Hone, Maia and Kahutia — and 11 mokopuna.

Besides the book’s overview by Roger Fowler, there are 22 contributed chapters by activists in an 18-page section titled “Other activists’ voices”. This includes essays by Sir Bob Harvey, David Williams, Dr Lyn Doherty (“The shooting of Daniel Houpapa – a gross miscarriage of justice”), Vivian Hutchinson, Wayne Toleafoa, Rod Davis, Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua, Anna and Barry Lee, Catherine Manning (a profile on her mother Pat Hammond), Joris de Bres, Fuimaono Norman Tuiasau, and Tigilau Ness (“A legacy to pass onto our children”).

As well as the historical record of a remarkable era in the 1970s, the book is adorned with a superb gallery of photographs and graphic art. The Fowler whānau have worked extraordinarily hard to bring this publication to fruition after Roger’s death. A labour of love.

Something new that I learned from reading the book is that along with being such an influential activist and strategic organiser, protest entertainer and singer, Roger Fowler was also a gifted political cartoonist. Such extraordinary talent.

In the foreword, Nick Bollinger sums up: “Even though Roger writes in this book that ‘we never considered ourselves as part of a “youth culture” or so-called “alternative counterculture”, when I look back the People’s Union for Survival and Freedom stands out as perhaps the most inspiring application of countercultural ideals. I am very glad its story — and Roger’s — is at last being told in these pages.”

And so am I.

• Ponsonby People’s Union: At the Frontline of Community Activism in the 1970s, overview by Roger Fowler, and contributors (Steele Roberts), 2026, 102 pages.
• Two book launch events: Saturday, 3 October 2026, 1pm-3.30pm, The Ponsonby Community Centre, 20 Ponsonby Terrace, Auckland.
  Sunday, 11 October 2026, 1-4pm, Whare Wānanga, Level 2, Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero – Auckland Central Library, 44/46 Lorne St, CBD.

The post From Resistance to the Ponsonby People’s Union, a courageous tale of struggle for justice appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/01/from-resistance-to-the-ponsonby-peoples-union-a-courageous-tale-of-struggle-for-justice-2/

ANALYSIS: By Raewyn Kapa

The recent trip by a group of Māori individuals to Israel — publicly framed as a “Māori delegation” — has raised significant contention across Aotearoa and rightfully so.

At a time when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has found Israel’s actions in Gaza plausibly constitute genocide, and the United Nations has determined Israel’s
occupation of Palestinian territory to be unlawful, the optics and implications of this visit is fundamentally flawed.

This was not a Māori delegation. It was a political act dressed in cultural clothing — and ALL New Zealanders deserve an explanation of why that matters.

• READ/VIEW MORE: Te Ao with Moana programme on the delegation to Israel
• Māori delegates defend controversial ‘Indigenous’ trips to Israel
• Other Gaza genocide reports

The individuals who travelled to Israel did so without any formal Māori mandate. They were not appointed by iwi, hapū, or national Māori organisations. They did not carry the
authority of Māori governance structures, nor were they empowered to speak on behalf of Māori people.

They were Māori individuals, not representatives of Māori.

Yet their hosts presented them as if they carried the collective voice of Māori. This misrepresentation is politically dangerous. It allows foreign governments to claim Māori
endorsement where none exists, and it undermines the integrity of Māori political autonomy.

It is a responsibility. When individuals allow themselves to be framed as representatives of an entire Indigenous people, without consent or mandate, they participate in a distortion of
democratic and cultural legitimacy.

Turning a blind eye to genocide
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) findings regarding Israel are unequivocal:
1. 26 January 2024: Order on Provisional Measures:
The ICJ found that South Africa’s genocide allegations against Israel were plausible, and ordered Israel to comply with the Genocide Convention, prevent genocidal acts, and allow humanitarian aid.

2. 28 March 2024: Second Order on Provisional Measures:
The Court reaffirmed its January orders and added further measures, including requiring Israel to ensure humanitarian access and prevent destruction of evidence.

3. 24 May 2024: Order Modifying Provisional Measures (Rafah Offensive):
The ICJ ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah, maintain open humanitarian corridors, and allow UN investigative bodies access to Gaza.

4. 19 July 2024: Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian Territory:
The Court ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory — including East Jerusalem — is unlawful, that Israel must end its presence “as rapidly as possible,” and that all states must refrain from recognising or supporting the occupation.

Recent International Findings (2025–2026): What the delegation also ignored, ICJ Compliance Reviews (2025)
Throughout 2025, the International Court of Justice issued several compliance reviews confirming that Israel had not complied with the provisional measures ordered in January, March, and May 2024. These reviews found:

• Humanitarian access was still blocked.
• Civilian displacement and death rates continued to rise.
• Israel failed to demonstrate any meaningful adherence to the Genocide Convention.

These findings strengthened the Court’s earlier conclusion that Israel’s conduct remained in breach of international law.

ICJ Clarification on State Responsibility (Late 2025)
In late 2025, the ICJ clarified that:

• States providing military, financial, or political support to Israel may themselves breach the Genocide Convention.
• States must actively prevent genocide, not simply avoid participation.
• All states must distinguish between Israel’s sovereign territory and the occupied Palestinian territory.

This clarification directly addresses the risks of political legitimisation, including diplomatic visits framed as Indigenous endorsement.

UN Human Rights Council Findings (2025–2026)
The UN Human Rights Council issued two major reports:

• 2025 Report: Concluded Israel’s actions meet the legal thresholds for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and domicide.
• 2026 Report: Found Israel’s occupation policies constitute apartheid, persecution, and systematic demographic engineering.

These findings align with and reinforce the ICJ’s conclusions.

UN General Assembly Resolution (December 2025)
The UNGA reaffirmed the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion and called on all states to:

• Cease military, economic, and political support enabling Israel’s occupation.
• Sanction entities involved in settlement expansion.
• Uphold obligations under the UN Charter and international humanitarian law.
  This resolution passed with a significant majority, demonstrating global consensus.

UN Security Council Statements (2025–2026)
Despite ongoing vetoes blocking binding resolutions, the UNSC issued Presidential
Statements acknowledging:

•  Israel’s non‐compliance with ICJ orders.
• The catastrophic humanitarian collapse in Gaza.
• The threat Israel’s occupation poses to international peace and security.
  Presidential Statements reflect broad Council agreement, excluding the vetoing state.

CERD Findings (2026)
In 2026, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found:

• Israel’s treatment of Palestinians constitutes racial segregation, apartheid, and systematic discrimination.
• Israel is in breach of Articles 2, 3, and 5 of CERD.
• States must avoid legitimising discriminatory practices — including through diplomatic visits that imply endorsement.

This highlights political risks of the Māori delegation’s visit.

UN Special Committee on Israeli Practices (2026)
The Committee reported:

• Israel’s occupation is now the longest ongoing military occupation in modern history.
• Settlement expansion accelerated in 2025–2026 that forced displacement in the West Bank increased by over 40 percent.

These findings further confirm the unlawfulness of Israel’s occupation.

What does this mean?
1. Israel must comply with the Genocide Convention.
2. Israel must allow humanitarian aid and prevent genocidal acts.
3. Israel must halt its military offensive in Rafah.
4. Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory — including East Jerusalem — is unlawful.
5. Israel remains in longstanding breach of international law compliance of genocide to Palestinian state.

These are not fringe opinions. They are the highest judicial determinations in international law. Yet the Māori individuals who travelled to Israel chose to ignore this.They attended with pre‐existing biases, accepted a curated narrative, and returned with statements that contradict the findings of the ICJ, the UN, and global human rights bodies.

To turn a blind eye to genocide is not neutrality — it is complicity.

Why Tangata Whenua/Zealanders should be concerned
1. It undermines New Zealand’s international credibility

• New Zealand has historically upheld international law and human rights.
• When individuals present themselves as Māori representatives abroad — without mandate — they risk creating the false impression that Māori communities support positions that contradict New Zealand’s obligations under the UN Charter and the Genocide Convention.

2. It misuses Māori identity for political propaganda

• Indigenous identity carries moral weight.
• When Māori identity is used to legitimise a state currently under ICJ scrutiny for genocide, it becomes a political tool — not a cultural expression.

3. It risks silencing Māori who oppose genocide

• Many Māori have expressed solidarity with Palestinians, drawing parallels between Indigenous dispossession in Aotearoa and the occupation of Palestinian land.
• The unauthorised delegation’s visit risks drowning out these voices by presenting a false narrative of Māori consensus.

4. It erodes trust in Māori governance

• If anyone can claim to represent Māori internationally without mandate, then the authority of iwi, hapū, and national Māori organisations becomes vulnerable to political hijacking.

What those who attended must now reconcile

• For the Māori individuals who travelled to Israel, they must now confront the reality that presenting themselves — even implicitly — as representatives of Māori, while acting in a private capacity, carries consequences.
• They must now explain better how their personal impressions align with the overwhelming international consensus that genocide is occurring in Gaza.
• If they reject that consensus, they must articulate why — and on what authority — they believe their curated tour outweighs the findings of the ICJ, the UN, and global human rights monitors.
• Collectively they need to redeem themselves better or hand in their iwitanga. Perhaps extreme; but you get what I mean. They shouldn’t have gone and this is why. Because if they didn’t go to offer peace‐change agency committed to alleviating suffering only to be a PR propagandist team of incognisant kumara from the māra (which is seemingly possible!).
• The reality is they were simply tourists of torture, tragedy, and torment, walking through the other side of Gaza Strip devastation without regard for humanity, covered with a temporary state of convenient dismissal of the responsibility that comes with claiming Indigenous representation.
• That surely is not the tikanga on any account.

Raewyn L. Kapa writes from the standpoint of legal research in public international law, international Indigenous law, Treaty of Waitangi, Ngā Tikanga Māori / Māori Customary Law. Her research includes analysis of the International Court of Justice’s genocide findings, the legal status of occupation under international humanitarian law, and the obligations of states under the UN Charter. This article is republished with the author’s permission.

The post Māori identity is not a political access pass: Why the recent delegation to Israel demands accountability appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/26/maori-identity-is-not-a-political-access-pass-why-the-recent-delegation-to-israel-demands-accountability/

Asia Pacific Report

Thousands took part in today’s Greenpeace-led March for Nature in the heart of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Tāmaki Makaurau.

Critics of the coalition government’s controversial proposed Conservation Amendment Bill say this would allow selling off of conservation land, weaken environmental protections, and put short-term profit ahead of people and endanger the future of the planet.

“If Prime Minister Christopher Luxon wants a fight over conservation land, he has one,” said Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Dr Russel Norman, a former Green Party MP.

“This huge turnout today shows people are not prepared to stand by while a government tries to rewrite conservation law to make those places easier to exploit.”

Organisers of the rally — partnered by Forest and Bird — in Albert Park followed by a march down Queen Street say 35,000 people took part.

Placards and banners declared “Honour Te Tiriti [of Waitangi],”More hoot, less loot,” “Hands off conservation land”, “You can’t rehabilitate exploited land”, and “I’m $hane . . . bribe me!” in apparent reference to an unpopular minister.

Plenty of Palestinian flags were among the marchers. This rally coincided with the 155th consecutive week of protest over Israel’s genocide in the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

• Photographs: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
  
• More images/videos

Greenpeace March for Nature

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Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/19/gallery-save-our-land-sell-luxon-instead-message-at-nz-greenpeace-nature-rally/

By Susana Suisuiki of RNZ Pacific

The 9/11 attacks on the United States claimed thousands of lives, stunned the world, and triggered responses that continue to shape global politics, security, and public life today.

A series of coordinated attacks in the United States killed almost 3000 people, with planes hijacked and crashing in Pennsylvania, the Pentagon in Washington DC, and most prominently, the World Trade Center in New York City.

While the world watched in horror at the unfolding events, the memories of 9/11 are etched in the minds of those who survived or witnessed the attacks. That day is especially personal for Samoan Papali’i Mele Maualaivao who was living in Brooklyn at the time.

• READ MORE: How 9/11 permanently reshaped US and global security
• ‘Everything changed’: The human cost of 25 years of US wars
• Freedom of speech: From 9/11 to Fiji coups, a shocking and devastating tragedy — David Robie
• Other 9/11 reports

Papali’i, who is now living in Samoa and championing women through her work with United Nations Women, still vividly recalls one thing above all — the smell.

Speaking to Pacific Waves Papali’i said she first saw the smoke billowing from one of the Twin Towers on television that morning, believing a helicopter had crashed into the building. However, the situation became more devastating when both towers had collapsed, sending a vast cloud of ash and debris that engulfed the streets of New York.

The debris reached Brooklyn, right through the neighbourhood and onto the home Papali’i lived in.

“I remember seeing it raining down in my house, out around my house,” she said.

Incinerated remains
“So, you would see little bits of paper that were obviously from offices, ash and there was just the smell of like incineration. At the time, we didn’t realise that we were smelling, you know, the incinerated remains of everybody who’d been trapped in that building.”

Papali’i said in the days after the attacks, the weight of the tragedy started to set in and she had set off to donate blood at the Red Cross but was told that no bodies had yet been pulled from the wreckage. New York became a surreal landscape of profound grief, thick dust and heightened security.

The aftermath of September 11 dominated news coverage, with Papali’i recalling seeing people interviewed on television making desperate appeals for information about their missing loved ones.

“This is before social media was really big right. So on the news every day, there’d be somebody being interviewed saying, ‘have you seen my mother?’ ‘have you seen my father?’ ‘have you seen my brother?’ ‘have you seen my sister?’ and there were people putting up posters up everywhere of relatives in hopes that some way or some how they were still alive.”

Sadly, Papali’i knew of two individuals who died in the building and said the loss of lives had affected everybody even if they had not personally lost a close family member.

Twenty-five years later, Papali’i has not visited the memorial site despite making trips to New York since and said she doesn’t know if she’ll ever stop by as she feels the space is meant for families of those who died.

The events surrounding 9/11 has given Papali’i a greater appreciation of community and service which has continued on in her work in Samoa.

Sense of unity
Living in a city of millions where people usually kept to themselves, the tragedy created an unexpected sense of unity. Papali’i said she now recognises the bravery of first responders, firefighters, police officers and other emergency workers who put themselves in dangerous situations to save others.

Her hope is that remembering the loss brought on by 9/11 will encourage people to be kinder instead of using it as fuel to hate.

“I hope people realise that these moments, while they can be really scary and horrific and because of social media, you have so many more images of what’s occurred. I hope it causes one to be kinder in just your everyday life.”

Mele’s experience was one of the Pacific connections to the attacks.

Two New Zealanders were among those killed — Auckland-born environmental lawyer Alan Beaven, who was aboard Flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania, and US-born John Lozowsky, a dual New Zealand citizen who worked in New Zealand during the 1990s, died in the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Their names are among the nearly 3000 people remembered at the 9/11 Memorial in New York.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/12/pacific-remembering-september-11-25-years-on/

The Zionist Federation of Australia has withdrawn its case of “racial hatred” against Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis, who called it a victory for free speech, reports Consortium News.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Joe Lauria

After a two-year legal battle to punish a prominent Australian journalist for her public criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) has withdrawn its case.

“This is a win for every Australian who values our democratic right to freedom of political expression,” Kostakidis said on X. “Zionist zealotry has had to beat a retreat from what was going to be a highly damaging trial.

“The purpose of journalism is to get to the truth — fearlessly — and to hold power to account. This is a win for press freedom, which has prevailed.“

Kostakidis, who anchored the SBS national news for nearly 20 years, was a high-profile target for the Zionist Federation in its quest to silence outrage over Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Alon Cassuto, the ZFA chief executive who brought the case against Kostakidis, claimed on X that he withdrew it on Thursday to deprive her of a platform. He wrote:

“I do not intend to spend another year taking Ms Kostakidis’ repugnant commentary from the dark corners of the internet and giving it a Federal Court platform in her pursuit of martyrdom. My job here is done.”

The majority of his statement was a continued attack on the journalist. He claimed that the action he brought against Kostakidis was satisfied by an apology she had issued. But that was two years ago and he pursued his case against her nonetheless.

What he did not mention is a recent series of court decisions in Australia by judges who upheld the right to criticise Zionism, which appears to have weakened his chances of winning.

Kostakidis had also won approval for full discovery of ZFA communications.

In claiming victory, Kostakidis wrote:

“Watching a people live stream their own genocide while the international community responsible for creating this mess offers the victims sympathy and the perpetrators bombs, diplomatic cover and impunity, has been disgusting.

“Thank you to the Jewish and Israeli people all over the world raging against this in recognition our common humanity trumps any form of tribalism.

“Australia must stop disregarding the Orders of the International Court of Justice which were clear: we are obliged under international law to take meaningful action to prevent genocide in Palestine and to do all in our power to bring about an end to apartheid.

“Hypocrisy, double standards and a lack of courage are aiding the destruction of a framework intended to protect against the worst excesses of state power.”

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London.

Breaking: Zionists legal proceedings against me have been withdrawn after a 2 year battle.

This is a win for every Australian who values our democratic right to freedom of political expression. Zionist zealotry has had to beat a retreat from what was going to be a highly…

— Mary Kostakidis (@MaryKostakidis) September 10, 2026

In citizen responses to this article published by Consortium News:

The post Australian Zionists drop case against ‘truth’ journalist Mary Kostakidis appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/11/australian-zionists-drop-case-against-truth-journalist-mary-kostakidis/

COMMENTARY: By Martyn Bradbury, editor and publisher of The Daily Blog

This New Zealand general election on November 7 has an enormous amount at stake.

If this hard-right coalition government gets re-elected to cement into place 19th Century Settler White Privilege using an anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-beneficiary, anti-worker, anti-renter and anti-environment agenda for their donors interests, NZ society will be irreparably damaged.

So who do you watch for Fourth Estate Journalism for your election coverage matters this year?

If you give a damn about NZ politics, here are The Daily Blog’s picks of best NZ media and journalists to follow as we face the most consequential election of our generation:

1: Barbara Dreaver – TVNZ

There’s a bloody good reason she was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in 2024.

Bab’s is a national cultural treasure.

Her body of work every single year marks her journalism and her ability to pull NZ’s attention towards the current affairs of the Pacific as the benchmark for Fourth Estate values in this country.

The range of issues Barbara Dreaver covers from natural disasters to geopolitical machinations to domestic internal dynamics, her spectrum and skill as a journalist is true dedication to the craft.

She is such a humble person and her stories are always focused on the ignored voices.

We need her quality of journalism more than ever before.

Standing ovation for the Queen!

Her journalism is the benchmark for Fourth Estate accountability.

2: A View From Afar Podcast – Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan

Honestly the best critique of foreign policy in New Zealand. You can watch the podcast here live when it goes out or find them on Evening Report. You learn more in 30 minutes with them than you will ever glean from the mainstream media.

Why the hell NZ on Air is not sponsoring this astounds me, they do more explanation of what’s actually going on than any other NZ media network.

3: Werewolf Blog – Gordon Campbell 

Gordon remains the best political Blogger in New Zealand. His Werewolf blog is a weekly must read and he does more independent researched journalism than anyone else in the game. If you are not reading Gordon Campbell each week, you shouldn’t be commenting on politics.

4: Bryan Bruce Investigate Substack

Bryan Bruce is an investigative reporter who works tirelessly for a civil debate on the issues of inequality and poverty. His documentaries remain some of the most important popular critiques of neoliberalism and capitalism in NZ.

5: Ben Morgan Substack 

Our very own military strategist Ben Morgan has his own Substack account. He has been blogging for TDB for over 2 years, updating strategic movements in the Pacific and the Ukraine/Russia conflict. He is readable and gives a far better regular insight to what is happening than any other mainstream media commentator.

6: Nick’s Kōrero – Nick Rockel Substack 

Nick offers a wicked and sharp critique of the Political right. His skill and fluidity of writing marks him as an artisan blogger who is an important artist and underrated blogger who deserves far greater recognition.

7: Waatea Digital 

During an emergency, the Marae always becomes one of the central points of the community response; the same is happening in media. As the media emergency occurs, it is the Māori media that step up and become the central point of journalism.

Waatea Radio has recently expanded into digital journalism and the new power of that journalism is providing a real alternative to the dying mainstream media monoliths. Waatea is the ONLY media company that is growing!

8: Against the Current blog 

Our comrades over at the Against the Current blog offer weekly insights and criticism into the weeks events from a staunch socialist perspective. It is always well researched and well reasoned.

9: No Right Turn Blog – Idiot Savant

Idiot Savant is one of the OGs of NZ blogging. They are a must read weekly blogger with some of the best criticisms of government policy with a deep focus on policy and the counter productive outcomes of that policy. Fearless with the strongest values in NZ Blogging, the NZ Blogosphere would be a lesser place without No Right Turn.

10: RNZ Politics 

You cannot deny that the RNZ Politics team have been producing some of the best journalism this year. They have become the benchmark and the record of choice for NZ journalism. Sure there are constant screw ups (Mick Hall should never have been sacked), but that’s management issues from people who are never held accountable, but the journalism they have been producing this year has been mana enhancing for the profession.

11: Guyon 30 Podcast 

I’m not a personal fan of Espiner, but you can’t question the journalism he provides. His relatively new Podcast does hold the powerful to account and it’s probably the sharpest political interview in NZ. You can’t ignore his intelligence or how well researched he is.

12: Chris Lynch Christchurch’s Newsroom – blog

No one is going to pretend Chris Lynch is left-wing, but this isn’t a list of left-wing media to follow, this is a list of good journalism regardless of political persuasion. Lynch has a deep entry to Christchurch and is the first person to turn to when an issue hits NZ’s second largest city.

13: Te Ao with Moana – Māori TV

It’s simply the best current affairs show on NZ Television. Week after week they produce the most insightful and interesting content and I honestly believe that if this show was prime time TVNZ, our country would actually be a smarter place to love.  This amazing piece on Willie’s Oxford Speech is the best thing you will see on TV this year…

14: The Bradbury Group podcast

Our first episode was name checked in Parliament! Who else has the Speaker of the House and a Knight of the Realm appearing as guests?

15: The Kaka with Bernard Hickey Substack

He is simply the best economist in NZ. If there are only 3 NZ news organisations you can fund, he is one of them. He brings new facts and critiques to government policy that is actually the best in the game. You have to follow him daily or you have no place thinking you know anything. If there is a debate on economics and Bernard Hickey isn’t here, it isn’t worth engaging with.

16: Newsroom 

Newsroom, without a doubt, now generates the best daily journalism in NZ. Their critique of the economy and politics is probably the best in the country. It is super intelligent and presents coherent well thought out and reasoned counter points to government babble. If there is a news source worth supporting, it is Newsroom.

17: The Knightly Views – Gavin Ellis blog 

Gavin is an old school editor and his arguments are always focused on a better public broadcasting model. His observations on where the media landscape is going are some of the best in NZ. He is a weekly must read to understand what is happening in the media eco-system.

18: Mountain Tui Substack 

Finally a reason to read The Standard. The Left have lacked any true muscular champions and Mountain Tui is finally that voice. Excellent political criticism and insight all from behind an anonymous veil that allows for honesty. Widely rumoured to be Shane Te Pou.

19: SpiderHoof Twitter 

Part of a new class of left-wing commentator who has sprung up on the social media platforms, Spider Hoof is funny, clever and always worth checking out on Twitter.

20: Mata with Mihingarangi Forbes podcast 

One of the best political podcasts in the country, Mihi is one of our political journalist treasures and her team bring the best criticisms. They were the first media outlet to really expose the Atlas Network and its influence on our political system, no one else had the courage to do that.

21: Gerard Otto Facebook 

Parts of the new wave of commentators who use social media platforms to communicate with, he is another incredibly sharp critic of the government and well worth reading.

22: Scott Hamilton Twitter

Very talented historian who has the ability to connect the past with what is happening in the present. One of the few people you genuinely learn something new everytime you read them. Incredible knowledge of NZ’s hidden history.

23: Clint Smith Twitter 

Clint is one of the best political twitter accounts you can follow. Up to the minute critiques on government policy, he is one of the few whose hot takes are 99 percent right. He is an excellent starting position for anyone wanting to keep up with the news cycle.

24: Verity Johnson – Stuff columnist

She articulates liberal Auckland better than anyone else in the game. Her insights into the largest city are always politically relevant!

25: Simon Wilson – Listener columnist

Ever since Mayor Wayne Brown tried to shut down having to do any interviews with Simon, he has become a must read to understand what is happening in Auckland City. He is a talented writer with a real ability to move the dial on Auckland politics. He’s the reason you get a Listener subscription.

26: John Campbell – RNZ

The public broadcaster is free of the commercial and political constraints other broadcasters face, the public broadcaster can speak truth to power and has the obligation to do so!

John Campbell is not writing opinion pieces, he’s writing analysis and thinking deeper than the current shallow mainstream media allows for.

Attacking his journalism and his analysis under the guise of balance is a false narrative designed to strangle his voice off.

If people of insight and oversight can see the looming social carnage this hard-right racist climate-denying government is manufacturing, they have an obligation to speak out.

John speaks out.

27: Andrea Vance – Stuff senior journalist

She’s just so good and a weekly must read. Probably the best political journalist in front at the moment, her critique of ACT this year has been next level.

28: BHN – Youtube

The BHN boys, Pat and Chewie, have created a whole new late night online news audience and are the masters of this new medium. Always interesting, always challenging, they are the future of media in this country.

29: Café Pacific – David Robie

Dr David Robie is one the great Pacific journalists and provides a news source focused on the Pacific and what is happening in our geopolitical neighbourhood. We are fortunate to have him guest blog on TDB regularly and he also publishes Asia Pacific Report.

30: Mick Hall – Consortium journalist

Forced out by RNZ for telling the truth, Mick Hall was pushed into the spotlight after he correctly inserted context to international wire stories. He should never have been forced out, and now writes at the very excellent Consortium News.

Sean Ackland, Brie Elliot, Dr Harpreet Singh, Samual Hudson

All left-wing commentators you should be following this election.

Media to Avoid:

Not all media are created equally. There is some media you just want to avoid.

1: ZB 
If you want to be a rich prick with rich prick attitudes that make you a dickhead, ZB is for you. The ZB Troll Farm are always malicious and frustrated, like a parking warden who hasn’t had an orgasm for a month.

These are literally people you would not piss on if they were on fire. With Alt-Right Culture War Billionaire Jim Grenon taking over NZME, it’s only a matter of time before Cameron Slater gets appointed editor of the Herald.

2: The Platform vs Reality Check Radio Schism
On one side you have a cross burning, redneck banjo twanging witch hunter who believes in science and on the other side you have a cross burning, redneck banjo twanging witch hunter who doesn’t believe in science. The great schism of contrarian media between The Platform and Reality Check Radio is more akin to twins trying to eat each other in the womb. It’s like watching a death cage match between Voldemort and Trump in that you aren’t sure who to cheer for, you just want them to both kill each other.

3: Seven Sharp 
There is a reason this nation is as thick as pig shit, and it’s 7 Sharp. The manner in which TVNZ have bastardised the 7pm current affairs slot into a lightweight infotainment project is why we can’t have nice things.

Oh we all love Hill’s and her latest battle with what some male viewer thinks she would wear, but it’s dross fronted by private school kids who have never gone without. It’s as intellectually anaemic as it is banal. How does this stay on while actual current affairs gets cancelled?

4: The Centrist – Alt Right Culture War Malice 
Nothing screams “bad faith” quite like the new “unauthorised” book about Jacinda by David Cohen…

Media Insider: Unauthorised Jacinda Ardern book – the journalists behind it and the prominent broadcasters who have been interviewed

…I had originally agreed to being interviewed but pulled out after I got a weird vibe from him, I’m bloody glad I did because it turns out that the book is being supported by alt-Right hate blog The Centrist…

Du Plessis-Allan asked Cohen about the Centrist link and whether he was worried that “would possibly lend your book to becoming a bit fringe?”.

…The Centrist, as TDB has pointed out, is the new alt-Right hate blog started by alt-Right culture War Canadian Billionaire Jim Grenon, the same alt-right Billionaire who just took over NZME.

The Centrist was behind the insinuation Benjamin Doyle was a sex fiend, they publish anti-Trans hate, anti-Māori hate, anti-Treaty hate, anti-vaccine hate, and are climate deniers.

That they are behind Cohen’s Jacinda smear book is like finding out your local kindergarten is run by the Nazgul.

5: Bluesky
If you are woke and pay a subscription to The Spinoff, you are on Bluesky, and that is where you should stay! The woke are great for mummy blogger free the nipple vegan cycling protests, not so good at the neoliberal economic hegemonic structure. The woke are great at chasing voters all the way into our enemies arms. If you are on Bluesky – STAY ON BLUESKY

You are what you read
The truth is paywalled, but the lies are free

We need to think of the media not as another commodity, but as “the commons” and a de-commercialised structure demands we see journalism as a common good.

I love how it’s always a great time to buy a house according to the NZ Herald because the Herald’s advertising is so dependent on real estate. There is NEVER a genuine attempt to challenge what a class of Landlords forever screwing renters will actually create in this country, because, according to the NZ Herald, it’s never been a better time to buy a house.

Trust in news has dropped to 33 percent in 2024 from 53 percent in 2020.

From the social contract theory, trust has fallen because people don’t believe the media are upholding their end of that contract.

Part of this is driven by the politicians themselves. Winston’s attack on the media is unhinged madness which works because he is so reliant on low news engaged voters who get their news off Facebook.

This ocean of criticism against the media goes beyond fair criticism to open hostility and abuse.

There is a correlation between distrust and unfair criticism but I also want to see the correlation between loneliness and believing bat shit crazy stuff you’ve read on Facebook.

The social contract of the Fourth Estate has been sold off in favour of a consumer media network.

They examine the way the Public Journalism Fund has been twisted into state propaganda by Winston’s lies.

Our drop in trust has been more extreme than many other countries.

It’s an interesting argument but my sense is that the reason this attack on the media has been so successful is because the mainstream corporate media had been screwing the interests of working people for many years. The first editorial the NZ Herald ever ran was begging white New Zealander’s to go to war against Māori.

Trump’s use of “fake news” was popular because the mainstream media had been selling capitalist values, not Fourth Estate journalism, to Americans for decades.

Social media allowed the legacy media gatekeepers to be overthrown and the resulting anarchy has led to a world of fractured realities.

Winston’s big lie that the entire mainstream media were bought off because of the Public Journalism Fund appeals to the conspiracy electorate New Zealand First need to stay over 5 percent now.

I wrote many bogs critical of the funding notes that NZ on Air put forward that stipulated that if you wanted public funding for Māori media that you couldn’t breach basic tenants of Treaty value because it created the impression of an editorial direction that wasn’t there, but to conflate what were funding notes to mean the entire media had been bribed is Winstonian in its deceitful manipulation.

What Winston chooses to miss is that there was a follow up response by NZ on Air on those funding notes stating that ultimately editorial control was with the content producer.

So yes, there were stupidly woke Wellington guidelines but those notes were superseded by the reminder of editorial independence.

What he also failed to acknowledge is that a large chunk of that Public Journalism money was for positions and training.

By claiming that amounts to the entire media being bribed is not disingenuous or just false, it is malicious.

Winston is channeling Trump with his “Big Lie”.

The “Big Lie” by Winston is that the entire media were bribed.

This has caused enormous damage which he has benefited from.

But again, I think it’s deeper than just Winston AND the righteous cynicism many have towards mainstream media.

Covid was a universal experience, we all sacrificed equally in an unequal world, it has had enormous impacts on us and one of those enormous impacts has been crippling loneliness.

More and more of us are lonely and it was kicked off by being forced to stay home during the pandemic.

That loneliness is desperately corrosive to the spirit and to the person, and the dichotomy of intense loneliness combined with mass 24/7 social media connectivity has made many of us insane with a level of anger and feral hate that is the call signs of a terribly tortured individual.

We have been brainwashed by hate algorithms for the profit margins of vast Tech Gods.

The media you consume ultimately changes the way you think.

Be selective this election.

Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury is a New Zealand media commentator, former radio and TV host, and former executive producer of Alt TV. He edits and publishes The Daily Blog, the largest and leading left-wing political commentary and analysis website. He was given the nickname “Bomber” by a former Craccum editor, reputedly to describe his bombastic personality.

The post Top 30 NZ news media you should follow this election and the Top 5 you should ignore – The Daily Blog appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/02/top-30-nz-news-media-you-should-follow-this-election-and-the-top-5-you-should-ignore-the-daily-blog/

Rick Sahar, a former board member of the New Zealand Holocaust Centre, soldier in the IDF, and son of concentration camp survivors had me on his Alternative Jewish Voices radio show to talk about last week’s decision to include the Holocaust in the New Zealand school curriculum. The op ed that follows grew out of the conversation.

COMMENTARY: By Jeremy Rose and Rick Sahar

Professor of Holocaust studies at the Hebrew University Amos Goldberg, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, a former deputy director of Mossad, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Israel’s leading human rights group B’Tselem, a UN commission of inquiry and UN special rapporteurs have all described Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

One of the panel of experts advising the ICC was Theodor Meron, an Israeli survivor of a Nazi labour camp and leading international jurist.

• READ MORE: Comedian’s Australian visa sabotaged, war crimes suspects cheered through
• Genocide training for NZ teachers by Israel a ludicrous idea — Tracy-Moana Campbell
• Other Gaza genocide reports

And yet the New Zealand Holocaust Centre — an organisation set to play a leading role in developing a new year 10 Holocaust curriculum — remains shtum.

This week the centre was to have hosted a talk by Israel’s former honorary consul to New Zealand, David Zwartz, on “Hitler and the Arab Connection.”

Thankfully the talk was cancelled. It was an offensive choice of topic on many levels.

That there were some Arab leaders who supported the Nazis is uncontroversial; as is the fact that there were many prominent Arab leaders who opposed fascism, some of whom, at great personal risk, saved Jewish families from the Nazis during the occupation of North Africa.

Sadly an outrage
That the Holocaust Centre chose to highlight the former during an ongoing genocide being committed by Israel is an outrage that sadly doesn’t come as a surprise to us.

On its webpage the Holocaust Centre says its work “bridges history with the present day, inspiring New Zealanders to stand against prejudice, discrimination, and apathy”.

The centre can’t be accused of apathy, but by promoting talks like the one mentioned while Israel is committing war crimes against Arabs, it is stoking prejudice and engaging in genocide denial.

The Jewish world is currently divided between those who believe “never again” means never again to anyone and those willing to either turn a blind eye or actively support Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza and pogroms and ethnic cleansing of those in the illegally occupied territories.

The Holocaust Centre is firmly in the latter group and has a track record of supporting Israel no matter what crimes are being committed by it.

The idea that the centre is to play a pivotal role in writing a new Holocaust curriculum and that New Zealand teachers will travel to Israel to learn about genocide is as ironic as it is offensive.

It will also feed into the antisemitic trope that Jews control the narrative.

Horrified by Gaza crimes
Kiwi teenagers aren’t empty vessels waiting to be filled with one-sided stories of good versus evil. Like young people the world over, many of them will be aware of and horrified by Israel’s crimes in Gaza, the occupied territories and Lebanon.

There’s a very real risk that a curriculum that turns a blind eye to an ongoing genocide will be dismissed in its entirety by many of our most politically engaged rangatahi as propaganda and lies.

The Holocaust and its place in the history of genocides is far too important to be used as a geopolitical football.

Israel’s former foreign minister Abba Eban — who quipped “there’s no business like Shoah business” — said: “One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is no distinction at all.”

That’s nonsense of course but it’s been a high effective strategy.

For decades the Holocaust — one of history’s most horrific crimes — and accusations of antisemitism have been weaponised to shut down voices supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and basic human rights.

Israel has gone into overdrive with its hasbara — literally explaining but more accurately propaganda — campaign, spending US$1 billion since 2023.

A meaningful genocide curriculum
There are many Jewish thinkers, writers, activists and jurists who would be included in any meaningful genocide curriculum.

First and foremost, Raphael Lemkin, who created the word to describe both the Shoah and the Armenian genocide.

The great polymath and orthodox Jew, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who declined the Israel Prize after calling on young Israelis to refuse to serve in the IDF.

He warned the occupation would lead to fascism and the birth of a “Judeo-Nazi” mindset. A prophetic warning if there ever was one.

And Andrew Feinstein, a former anti-Apartheid activist, ANC MP and son of an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, who has lectured widely on the topic.

He recently tweeted: “Between October 7, 2023, and August 2026 Israel killed: 73,387 Palestinians; 21,700+ children; 11,200+ women; 5,200+ elderly; 35,000+ men; 260+ journalists; injured 174,250+, and thousands still remain under the rubble. Call it by its name: genocide.”

Holocaust denial is a terrible thing; denying an ongoing genocide that can and must be stopped is far worse.

Rick Sahar is a former board member of the Holocaust Centre, served in the IDF, and is the son of concentration camp survivors. Jeremy Rose is a Wellington journalist whose grandparents fled Nazi Austria with his enfant mother in 1939. Both are members of Alternative Jewish Voices. This article is republished from Jeremy’s substack Towards Democracy with permission.

The post Never again for anyone: Why the NZ Holocaust Centre shouldn’t be involved in developing a new curriculum appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/08/27/never-again-for-anyone-why-the-nz-holocaust-centre-shouldnt-be-involved-in-developing-a-new-curriculum/

ANALYSIS: By Johnny Blades of RNZ Pacific

We could be about to find out whether a part of the Pacific Islands will become the world’s newest nation.

After a seven-year wait, Papua New Guinea’s Parliament is today (Thursday, August 27) expected to finally table the question of whether to approve of independence for the country’s autonomous region of Bougainville.

In a 2019 referendum, an overwhelming 97.7 percent of Bougainvilleans voted for independence — but the referendum was non-binding and PNG’s national Parliament has the final say in whether to ratify this result.

• READ MORE: ‘This is a difficult task’: PNG parliament to finally address Bougainville vote
• Flashback: Bougainville: New Zealand’s part in a guerilla war — David Robie
• Other Bougainville independence reports

They are to debate the matter from today, before later putting it to a vote, with support from a three-quarters majority of MPs being the threshold required for ratification.

The decision is no small thing. Bougainville is around 2 percent of PNG’s total landmass, or 2.7 percent of PNG’s total population.

It may seem small, but in the New Zealand context, this would be a bit like giving up, in land mass terms, the Auckland region or, in population terms, like letting go of Dunedin City.

So it is a big call for a bunch of MPs to make.

Brutal civil war
No country is comfortable with ceding some of its territory. But in this case, the context is the legacy of a brutal civil war and ensuing crisis that played out during the 1990s, which brought not just Bougainville to its knees, but PNG too.

New Zealand played a central role in mediating a lasting peace — 2001’s Bougainville Peace Agreement ultimately provided for the referendum that took place in 2019, in which over 200,000 people from an overall population of around 300,000 cast their vote.

The tabling of the referendum result in Parliament has been a long time coming, and follows a series of consultations over the years between the PNG government and the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) over how the result would be processed.

It is already clear there is some reluctance among PNG MPs to set a precedent for other parts of the country to look to break away. But it is not easy to ignore the clear call for independence from almost 98 percent of Bougainvilleans.

However, PNG’s Prime Minister James Marape has pointed out that without economic independence, Bougainville would not be able to stand on its own feet. He has hinted at allowing for a period of time in which the region works on developing that economic self-reliance before the Parliament might then revisit the question of political independence.

In the eyes of many, economic self-reliance means re-habilitating Bougainville’s large Panguna copper mine, conflict over which sparked the civil war in the first place.

Development of Panguna
ABG President Ishmael Toroama is already pursuing the development of Panguna, and has signalled Bougainville’s intention to declare independence in 2030.

The Burnham Accord, signed by both parties last year in Christchurch, included an agreement for PNG and Bougainville to be bound by any decision of the Parliament and to maintain dialogue after that over the way forward.

So if Bougainville is not granted independence now, it does not necessarily mean it will not get independence at a later point. Either way, it could be the world’s next new country.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/08/27/long-time-coming-after-decades-of-struggle-is-bougainville-on-the-brink-of-statehood/

COMMENTARY: By David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report

Some years ago when I headed the Pacific Media Centre that I founded at Auckland University of Technology, we ran a postgraduate internship programme at the China Daily in Beijing.

It was part of a professional development exposure platform that also included Jakarta in Indonesia and the Philippines, along with several media and university journalism campus outlets in the Pacific, including the University of the South Pacific.

There was nothing else comparable at other journalism programmes in New Zealand, and now there are no opportunities of this kind after the closure of the PMC in 2021.

• READ MORE: China’s growing grip on the Solomon Islands’ fragile media sector
• New Zealanders’ Perceptions of Asia 2026
• Other reports on China and media in the Pacific

But there was some eyebrow raising about our collaboration over China Daily’s soft diplomacy role at the heart of Chinese media as part of its growing outreach into the Pacific along with the global Belt and Road development policy.

Linked to our Asia Pacific journalism studies course with support by the Asia NZ Foundation, these three-month internships provided a good insight into how Chinese media operated for New Zealand journalists graduating with an eye on an Asia-Pacific media future.

“Advanced studies in comparative journalism and media globalisation” and the “political economy” of the countries studied were important parts of our course.

A glimpse of how some media operate outside of the Western bubble.

‘Polishers’ of reports
The journalistic role that the students faced while they were at the China Daily were initially of a subeditorial or copy-editing nature — they were called “polishers” of English-language reports. But as time when on, the opportunities grew, including reporting assignments, feature writing, and broadcasting.

On exchange, we also hosted professional journalists from the China Daily on our journalism papers. Overall the collaborative experience was positive. But the stakes are much higher now.

The China Daily was founded as an English daily in 1981 and although it is owned and published by the Chinese Communist Party’s Publicity Department — the “Propaganda Department” — it is not an “official mouthpiece” of the CCP establishment.

In 2011, it celebrated 30 years of publishing during our collaboration.

China Daily has usually enjoyed a more “liberal” face than most other Chinese state media.

For example, coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre was generally sympathetic to the student protests and at least one account claims that some of its journalists joined in the demonstrations. Also, the paper’s coverage of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2002-2004 was more fact-driven and balanced than the “official” state media.

China Daily has also published sponsored inserts in such global newspapers as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal in the US and Le Figaro in France.

Massive operation
Published out of a large headquarters in Chaoyang district, it is a massive operation by New Zealand standards, publishing the best part of a million copies daily, two-thirds of the copies via special editions reaching at least 150 countries.

But the most visible face of the newspaper in New Zealand and the Pacific these days is online at the China Daily website.

China Daily has often framed its Pacific outreach through official editorials, youth forums and diplomatic rebuttals. It publicises green energy ties, criticises “foreign alarmism regarding regional expansion”, and argues that organisations such as the Pacific Islands Forum must back the one-China policy.

As the Chinese media outreach into the Pacific has been growing in recent years, the rivalry between Beijing, Washington and Canberra has been ratcheted up with accusations of “editorial interference and influence” in some countries, such as Kiribati and Solomon Islands, at least until the change of government in Honiara in May when Matthew Wale ousted the pro-China leadership in a general election.

In an in-depth report just two months before the election, the Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders warned that since Honiara had established diplomatic relations with China in 2019 the Pacific country had become a “strategic arena for Beijing’s influence”.

“By capitalising on the economic fragility of the local media sector, China has stepped up conditional funding, editorial partnerships and influence programmes to disseminate its narratives, RSF said, calling on the Solomon Islands’ government to make the viability and independence of the media sector a priority.

Outreach invitation
The China Daily has stepped up its outreach initiatives in the Pacific lately as evidenced by an email to me four days ago inviting me to write an op-ed for the publication’s Opinion section. And the deadline is tomorrow.

Signed by an editor of the newspaper’s Opinion Department, the invitation said: “In early September, a high-level forum on media cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region will be held, bringing together senior media professionals and experts to discuss how the region’s media can better foster dialogue, trust and mutual understanding.

“We would be honoured to invite you to contribute an opinion article of around 800 words for publication in China Daily.”

The invitation continued:

“As a reference, we have outlined several possible directions:
1. In the age of AI, how can Asia-Pacific media rebuild public trust?
2. From ‘reporting Asia’ to ‘telling Asia’s stories’: Can Asia-Pacific media move beyond Western narrative frameworks?
3. From “information competition” to media cooperation: How can Asia-Pacific media promote greater mutual understanding across the region?

These topics are only suggestions. We would be delighted if you chose to write on another angle that better reflects your current research or interests.

“Rather than opening with abstract concepts or institutional frameworks, we encourage authors to begin with something timely and tangible: a recent news event, a real-world development, or an everyday experience that readers immediately recognise.

‘Drawing in’ readers
“Once readers are drawn in, the article can naturally expand to explain the broader policy, economic, technological or geopolitical forces behind it. In our experience, this narrative structure makes complex issues far more engaging for a broad international audience.

“The strongest pieces usually build around one central argument, moving from the concrete to the conceptual, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, and from today’s headline to its longer-term implications.

“We particularly value articles that combine the immediacy of current events with original analysis, clear storytelling and practical insights, rather than offering a comprehensive survey of every aspect of the topic.

“In addition to the written article, we would also be delighted if you could record a short video commentary of around one minute.

“A simple self-recorded video using a mobile phone would be perfectly fine. A vertical format with a clean and quiet background would be ideal; there is no need for professional filming or editing, as our team will handle the post-production.”

The invitation continued in the same vein.

Concluding, the email said: “As our production schedule is quite tight, we would greatly appreciate it if you could send us both the article and the video by August 25, 2026.”

My reply? You are reading it right here on Asia Pacific Report.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/08/24/china-daily-collaborations-media-education-and-pacific-outreach/

By Johnny Blades of RNZ Pacific

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/08/20/snowfall-in-west-papua-while-severe-drought-hits-other-parts-of-new-guinea/

COMMENTARY: By Saige England

Failing To Report for Duty

I’m feeling guilty at not writing down
all the speeches: the speeches by people
whose voices I recorded, the speeches by
people whose notes I photographed, like
the speech by Mark the impassioned unionist,
who pointed out that the bastards on the top
floor are still meeting behind closed doors,
or
the speech by Josephine the impassioned
professor who pointed out that the leaders
who don’t listen to the people are pushing
the people towards a revolution.
or
the speech by Claire who spoke about
the doctor in Gaza who has been imprisoned
and tortured for treating the victims shot in the
chest and between the eyes, little children,
a doctor who kept on trying to save the
children after his own child died. Imprisoned
now. What was his crime?

I’m feeling guilty about not getting it all
down, not writing each speech into a story,
for a news stream that would reach everyone
that would lead to the biggest change ever –
one story that would topple the tyrants and
change the world.

Like one of those stories I thought I would write
when I wanted to become a journalist and then
I became a journalist and I tried to write down
all the speeches and nothing
changed nothing
at all.
— Saige England

Okay, so that’s the poem. And though it sounds a tad hopeless we did have a success last week. So I do have hope. It’s a struggle but we must unite and not give up.

We spoke truth to power and the powerful folded.

Thanks to rallies
Organised by NZDE – New Zealanders for A Democratic Economy, the protesters continue to protest against the attempted privatisation of assets including the port, and the erosion of democracy modelled by the Christchurch City Holdings Limited (CHCHL).

Fortunately some other journalists did manage to write up a report on the protest on Friday outside the CHCHL building.

And thanks to Dr David Robie who published my report about DP World for Asia Pacific Report:

Thanks to Dr Josephine Varghese who lectures in languages and political studies at the University of Canterbury, who rallies time and again for the people who are oppressed.

Thanks to Claire Coveney from Amnesty International, who rallies for the oppressed.

And thanks to Maritime Transport Union’s Lyttelton branch secretary Mark Wilson and Maritime Union Lyttelton branch secretary Gerard Loader who rally for the people.

I learned the lesson a long time ago that people need to join together for change. It’s a great catch cry and it is a cry that has been uttered over and again. As people rise up against wrong:

The people united will never be defeated.

Boosting your spirits
So here are some SONGS to boost your spirits. (I will long remember seeing Palestinian men dancing when Destiny Church members challenged them with racist hatred. The Palestinian men danced against hate. Kicked up their legs and danced).

In similar spirit, here’s a clip when thousands of people of the “Sardines Movement” in Italy rose up against rightwing parties and sang Bella Ciao.

Thousands of people sing Bella Ciao in Turin, Italy.   Video: Luca Dibattista

Breaking unions is a way to break the people. Here’s a clip of the old hit song (banned by the British government at the time) that rings true today (though I would add “woman” into the lyrics, because I’m a staunch union-supporting woman)

A big shout out to all healthcare workers — support the nurses!

Strawbs — part of the union.                 Video: Top 40 1973

Thanks to Sara Campbell and Marney Ainsworth and John Minto and Keep Our Assets (Murray Horton) who rally for a fair deal for the people and the environment, and thanks to Harry Robson and other members of NZDE.

Thanks to all the people who protest against oppression and who stand with the oppressed. Free free Palestine!

Toitū Tiriti!

And thanks to all the journalists, here, there, and everywhere, who risk their livelihoods or their lives to report the truth.

Everyone who does something. Every reporter, every petitioner and protester and letter writer, every poet, every one who rallies for community with community, we do see you!

Saige England is a humanitarian journalist and activist for community and the environment. She was present at the Lyttelton public meeting last week in support of community action. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/08/03/saige-england-we-spoke-truth-to-power-and-the-powerful-folded/