COMMENTARY: By Michelle Pini, managing editor of Independent Australia

With President Donald Trump now into his second week in the White House, horrific fires have continued to rage across Los Angeles and the details of Elon Musk’s allegedly dodgy Twitter takeover began to emerge, the world sits anxiously by.

The consequences of a second Trump term will reverberate globally, not only among Western nations. But given the deeply entrenched Americanisation of much of the Western world, this is about how it will navigate the after-shocks once the United States finally unravels — for unravel it surely will.

Leading with chaos
Now that the world’s biggest superpower and war machine has a deranged criminal at the helm — for a second time — none of us know the lengths to which Trump (and his puppet masters) will go as his fingers brush dangerously close to the nuclear codes. Will he be more emboldened?

The signs are certainly there.

So far, Trump — who had already led the insurrection of a democratically elected government — has threatened to exit the nuclear arms pact with Russia, talked up a trade war with China and declared “all hell will break out” in the Middle East if Hamas hadn’t returned the Israeli hostages.

Will his cruelty towards migrants and refugees escalate, matched only by his fuelling of racial division?

This, too, appears to be already happening.

Trump’s rants leading up to his inauguration last week had been a steady stream of crazed declarations, each one more unhinged than the last.

He wants to buy Greenland. He wishes to overturn birthright citizenship in order to deport even more migrant children, such as  “pet-eating Haitians” and “insane Hannibal Lecters” because America has been “invaded”.

It will be interesting to see whether his planned evictions of Mexicans will include the firefighters Mexico sent to Los Angeles’ aid.

At the same time, Trump wants to turn Canada into the 51st state, because, he said,

“It would make a great state. And the people of Canada like it.”

Will sexual predator Trump’s level of misogyny sink to even lower depths post Roe v Wade?

Probably.

Denial of catastrophic climate consequences
And will Trump be in even further denial over the catastrophic consequences of climate change than during his last term? Even as Los Angeles grapples with a still climbing death toll of 25 lives lost, 12,000 homes, businesses and other structures destroyed and 16,425 hectares (about the size of Washington DC) wiped out so far in the latest climactic disaster?

The fires are, of course, symptomatic of the many years of criminal negligence on global warming. But since Trump instead accused California officials of “prioritising environmental policies over public safety” while his buddy and head of government “efficiency”, Musk blamed black firefighters for the fires, it would appear so.

Will the madman, for surely he is one, also gift even greater protections to oligarchs like Musk?

Trump has already appointed billionaire buddies Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to:

 “…pave the way for my Administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal agencies”.

So, this too is already happening.

All of these actions will combine to create a scenario of destruction that will see the implosion of the US as we know it, though the details are yet to emerge.

What happens Down Under?
US allies — like Australia — have already been thoroughly indoctrinated by American pop culture in order to complement the many army bases they house and the defence agreements they have signed.

Though Trump hasn’t shown any interest in making it a 52nd state, Australia has been tucked up in bed with the United States since the Cold War. Our foreign policy has hinged on this alliance, which also significantly affects Australia’s trade and economy, not to mention our entire cultural identity, mired as it is in US-style fast food dependence and reality TV. Would you like Vegemite McShaker Fries with that?

So what will happen to Australia once the superpower we have followed into endless battles finally breaks down?

As Dr Martin Hirst wrote in November:

‘Trump has promised chaos and chaos is what he’ll deliver.’

His rise to power will embolden the rabid Far-Right in the US but will this be mirrored here? And will Australia follow the US example and this year elect our very own (admittedly scaled down) version of Trump, personified by none other than the Trump-loving Peter Dutton?

If any of his wild announcements are to be believed, between building walls and evicting even US nationals he doesn’t like, while simultaneously making Canadians US citizens, Trump will be extremely busy.

There will be little time even to consider Australia, let alone come to our rescue should we ever need the might of the US war machine — no matter whether it is an Albanese or sycophantic Dutton leadership.

It is a given, however, that we would be required to honour all defence agreements should our ally demand it.

It would be great if, as psychologists urge us to do when children act up, our leaders could simply ignore and refuse to engage with him, but it remains to be seen whether Australia will have the mettle to be bigger than Trump.

Republished from the Independent Australia with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The man behind the 2000 coup in Fiji, George Speight, and the head of the mutineers, former soldier Shane Stevens, have been granted presidential pardons.

In a statement yesterday, the Fiji Correction Service said the pair were among seven prisoners who has been granted pardons by the President, Ratu Wiliame Katonivere, after recommendations by the Mercy Commission.

“These pardons were formally granted on 18 September 2024. As a result, the named individuals have been officially discharged from custody today, Thursday, 19 September 2024,” the statement said.

“The Fiji Correction Service and the government remain committed to the principles of justice, rehabilitation, and the rule of law, and the Mercy Commission plays a vital role in ensuring that petitions for clemency are considered carefully, with due regard to the circumstances of each case.”

Speight was serving a life sentence for the charge of treason while Stevens was serving a life sentence for the charge of mutiny.

Also released are Sekina Vosavakatini, Nioni Tagici, James Sanjesh Goundar, Adi Livini Radininausori and John Miller.

Speight sought pardon
In June 2023, Speight had applied for a presidential pardon under a mercy clause, raising the possibility of his release from prison after serving more than 20 years of a lifetime sentence.

Speight’s 2000 coup was the only civilian to raise an armed group to overthrow the government.

In 2002, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka — who started the coup culture in Fiji with two coups in 1987 — had stated a pardon for Speight would be a catastrophe and could pave the way for more coups.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Jean-Marie Tjibaou, a revered Kanak visionary, was inspirational to indigenous Pacific political activists across Oceania, just like Tongan anthropologist and writer Epeli Hao’ofa was to cultural advocates.

Tragically, he was assassinated in 1989 by an opponent within the independence movement during the so-called “les événements” in New Caledonia, the last time the “French” Pacific territory was engulfed in a political upheaval such as experienced this week.

His memory and legacy as poet, cultural icon and peaceful political agitator live on with the impressive Tjibaou Cultural Centre on the outskirts of the capital Nouméa as a benchmark for how far New Caledonia had progressed in the last 35 years.

However, the wave of pro-independence protests that descended into urban rioting this week invoked more than Tjibaou’s memory. Many of the martyrs — such as schoolteacher turned security minister Elöi Machoro, murdered by French snipers during the upheaval of the 1980s — have been remembered and honoured for their exploits over the last few days with countless memes being shared on social media.

Among many memorable quotes by Tjibaou, this one comes to mind:

“White people consider that the Kanaks are part of the fauna, of the local fauna, of the primitive fauna. It’s a bit like rats, ants or mosquitoes,” he once said.

“Non-recognition and absence of cultural dialogue can only lead to suicide or revolt.”

And that is exactly what has come to pass this week in spite of all the warnings in recent years and months. A revolt.

Among the warnings were one by me in December 2021 after a failed third and “final” independence referendum. I wrote at the time about the French betrayal:

“After three decades of frustratingly slow progress but with a measure of quiet optimism over the decolonisation process unfolding under the Nouméa Accord, Kanaky New Caledonia is again poised on the edge of a precipice.”

As Paris once again reacts with a heavy-handed security crackdown, it appears to have not learned from history. It will never stifle the desire for independence by colonised peoples.

New Caledonia was annexed as a colony in 1853 and was a penal colony for convicts and political prisoners — mainly from Algeria — for much of the 19th century before gaining a degree of autonomy in 1946.

Here are my five takeaways from this week’s violence and mayhem:

1 Global failure of neocolonialism – Palestine, Kanaky and West Papua
Just as we have witnessed a massive outpouring of protest on global streets for justice, self-determination and freedom for the people of Palestine as they struggle for independence after 76 years of Israeli settler colonialism, and also Melanesian West Papuans fighting for 61 years against Indonesian settler colonialism, Kanak independence aspirations are back on the world stage.

Neocolonialism has failed. French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to reverse the progress towards decolonisation over the past three decades has backfired in his face.

2 French deafness and loss of social capital
The predictions were already long there. Failure to listen to the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) leadership and to be prepared to be patient and negotiate towards a consensus has meant much of the crosscultural goodwill that been developed in the wake of the Nouméa Accord of 1998 has disappeared in a puff of smoke from the protest fires of the capital.

The immediate problem lies in the way the French government has railroaded the indigenous Kanak people who make up 42 percent pf the 270,000 population into a constitutional bill that “unfreezes” the electoral roll pegging voters to those living in New Caledonia at the time of the 1998 Nouméa Accord. Under the draft bill all those living in the territory for the past 10 years could vote.

This would add some 25,000 extra French voters in local elections, which would further marginalise Kanaks at a time when they hold the territorial presidency and a majority in the Congress in spite of their demographic disadvantage.

Under the Nouméa Accord, there was provision for three referendums on independence in 2018, 2020 and 2021. The first two recorded narrow (and reducing) votes against independence, but the third was effectively boycotted by Kanaks because they had suffered so severely in the 2021 delta covid pandemic and needed a year to mourn culturally.

The FLNKS and the groups called for a further referendum but the Macron administration and a court refused.

3 Devastating economic and social loss
New Caledonia was already struggling economically with the nickel mining industry in crisis – the territory is the world’s third-largest producer. And now four days of rioting and protesting have left a trail of devastation in their wake.

At least five people have died in the rioting — three Kanaks, and two French police, apparently as a result of a barracks accident. A state of emergency was declared for at least 12 days.

But as economists and officials consider the dire consequences of the unrest, it will take many years to recover. According to Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) president David Guyenne, between 80 and 90 percent of the grocery distribution network in Nouméa had been “wiped out”. The chamber estimated damage at about 200 million euros (NZ$350 million).

4. A new generation of youth leadership
As we have seen with Generation Z in the forefront of stunning pro-Palestinian protests across more than 50 universities in the United States (and in many other countries as well, notably France, Ireland, Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom), and a youthful generation of journalists in Gaza bearing witness to Israeli atrocities, youth has played a critical role in the Kanaky insurrection.

Australian peace studies professor Dr Nicole George notes that “the highly visible wealth disparities” in the territory “fuel resentment and the profound racial inequalities that deprive Kanak youths of opportunity and contribute to their alienation”.

A feature is the “unpredictability” of the current crisis compared with the 1980s “les événements”.

“In the 1980s, violent campaigns were coordinated by Kanak leaders . . . They were organised. They were controlled.

“In contrast, today it is the youth taking the lead and using violence because they feel they have no other choice. There is no coordination. They are acting through frustration and because they feel they have ‘no other means’ to be recognised.”

According to another academic, Dr Évelyne Barthou, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Pau, who researched Kanak youth in a field study last year: “Many young people see opportunities slipping away from them to people from mainland France.

“This is just one example of the neocolonial logic to which New Caledonia remains prone today.”

5. Policy rethink needed by Australia, New Zealand
Ironically, as the turbulence struck across New Caledonia this week, especially the white enclave of Nouméa, a whistlestop four-country New Zealand tour of Melanesia headed by Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who also has the foreign affairs portfolio, was underway.

The first casualty of this tour was the scheduled visit to New Caledonia and photo ops demonstrating the limited diversity of the political entourage showed how out of depth New Zealand’s Pacific diplomacy had become with the current rightwing coalition government at the helm.

Heading home, Peters thanked the people and governments of Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Tuvalu for “working with New Zealand towards a more secure, more prosperous and more resilient tomorrow”.

The delegation is now heading home ✈️

Many thanks to the people and governments of Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu & Tuvalu for their kind hospitality – and for working with New Zealand towards a more secure, more prosperous & more resilient tomorrow.

🇸🇧🇵🇬🇻🇺🇹🇻 🤝 🇳🇿 pic.twitter.com/ZciN70cNP6

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) May 16, 2024

His tweet came as New Caledonian officials and politicians were coming to terms with at least five deaths and the sheer scale of devastation in the capital which will rock New Caledonia for years to come.

News media in both Australia and New Zealand hardly covered themselves in glory either, with the commercial media either treating the crisis through the prism of threats to tourists and a superficial brush over the issues. Only the public media did a creditable job, New Zealand’s RNZ Pacific and Australia’s ABC Pacific and SBS.

In the case of New Zealand’s largest daily newspaper, The New Zealand Herald, it barely noticed the crisis. On Wednesday, morning there was not a word in the paper.

Thursday was not much better, with an “afterthought” report provided by a partnership with RNZ. As I reported it:

“Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, finally catches up with the Pacific’s biggest news story after three days of crisis — the independence insurrection in #KanakyNewCaledonia.

“But unlike global news services such as Al Jazeera, which have featured it as headline news, the Herald tucked it at the bottom of page 2. Even then it wasn’t its own story, it was relying on a partnership report from RNZ.”

New Zealand Herald finally catches up with the Pacific’s biggest news story after 3 days of crisis #CafePacific #kanaky #newcaledonia #nzherald #media #insurrection #stateofemergency #franceinpacific @KanakySuport @cpcflnkspt @westpapuamedia @anaisduongp https://t.co/TZZ2JDE6nr pic.twitter.com/52bJDECU2g

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) May 16, 2024

Also, New Zealand media reports largely focused too heavily on the “frustrations and fears” of more than 200 tourists and residents said to be in the territory this week, and provided very slim coverage of the core issues of the upheaval.

With all the warning signs in the Pacific over recent years — a series of riots in New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga and Vanuatu — Australia and New Zealand need to wake up to the yawning gap in social indicators between the affluent and the impoverished, and the worsening climate crisis.

These are the real issues of the Pacific, not some fantasy about AUKUS and a perceived China threat in an unconvincing arena called “Indo-Pacific”.

Dr David Robie covered “Les Événements” in New Caledonia in the 1980s and penned the book Blood on their Banner about the turmoil. He also covered the 2018 independence referendum.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Every four years on January 20, the US exercises a key tenant of democratic government: the peaceful transfer of power. This year, the scene looks a bit different.

If the last US presidential inauguration in 2017 debuted the phrase “alternative facts”, the 2021 inauguration represents their deadly consequences.

After conspiracy-theory inspired violence laid siege to the Capitol Building where lawmakers met to confirm the election results, more than 20,000 troops now patrol the US Capitol to ensure the transition goes ahead smoothly against calls for insurrection.

The threat of disinformation and alternative facts has taken many forms over the past several years, from conspiracy theories about climate change to covid-19, culminating in a 2019 FBI memo warning about the threat of “conspiracy-theory driven domestic extremists”, particularly around elections.

It follows years of warnings from national security practitioners and scholars about the growing risk of domestic extremists. More recently, as reported by the FBI and ASIO, these groups have used the global pandemic to recruit and radicalise new members, seizing on the isolation and uncertainty to offer a sense of community and clarity of purpose.

The conspiracy theory that drove the violence at the Capitol Building has been building for the past four years. During this time, US President Donald Trump has decried any contest he does not win as fraudulent.

More recently, he has called his supporters to action, warning that there will be “no God” and “no country” without him as president. Though the attack only lasted a few hours, the consequences will linger for years.

As Joe Biden prepares to become the 46th president of the United States, managing the fallout from it will be one of his gravest challenges.

The long-standing threat of right-wing extremists
This threat appears to have been taken seriously by long-standing national security experts and scholars. But action against it was hindered under the Trump administration.

Starting in 2017, federal funding for tackling white nationalist and other far right extremist activity was cut, including university research and non-profit deradicalisation organisations such as Life After Hate

Last year, a whistleblower report from the Department of Homeland Security alleged senior intelligence officials were instructed to modify intelligence assessments to match Trump’s rhetoric and modify the section on White Supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe.

During 2020, diverse groups stormed state legislative buildings to evade covid-19 mitigation efforts and intimidate lawmakers at the behest of Trump.

Despite these public signs of growing extremist violence, even some lawmakers appeared to be caught unaware by the Capitol insurrection. In an opinion piece just after the event, Republican Senator Susan Collins wrote she first assumed the attack was coming from Iran.

Trump has demonstrated that conspiracy theories can drive electoral and fundraising success. Having started his political campaign with the “birther” conspiracy theory, challenging the citizenship and eligibility of American-born Barack Obama, Trump also cast shadows over his Republican rivals, including Ted Cruz, by accusing Cruz’s father of being linked to the man who killed JFK.

Similarly, Trump will end his administration on a conspiracy theory, one that has already cost five lives. Despite recent backlash from business leaders in America, Trump fundraised more than $200 million after election night on the basis of his refusal to concede defeat.

Recent Congressional races have further demonstrated the success of Trump’s template. Holocaust-deniers in three states ran for office in 2018 (all as Republicans). Two of the newest members of Congress are members of QAnon, the inheritor of the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory, in which all who oppose Trump are deep state members of a international child sex trafficking cabal.

The challenge ahead for Biden
Where then, does this leave policy-making on national and global issues that require sober reflection and good judgement?

Alternative facts have no place in good governance. Their purpose is only to destroy and divide. This is why disinformation has been pursued so aggressively by hostile foreign actors against the US, with Russian active measures detailed extensively by the Republican chaired Senate Intelligence Committee reports.

Voter fraud, one of the key narratives of Russian efforts in election interference in 2016, has now become mainstreamed in the Republican base, with nearly half of respondents expressing doubt about Biden’s win.

Public assurances by Republican secretaries of state have had limited impact, culminating in Trump’s taped conversation in which he asks the Georgia Secretary of state to “find” 11,000 votes for him (to win).

Joe Biden should focus on repairing Americans’ frayed trust in institutions and rehabilitate America’s battered reputation. At the same time, he should lead with science and fact, most immediately in tackling the nation’s covid crisis.

Where conspiracy theories go hand in hand with corruption (such as Trump soliciting an election official to tamper with results), state authorities should pursue charges. Where disinformation has proven lucrative, tools should be explored to remove financial rewards.

For instance, non-profit organisations that participated in or fundraised what the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared as “sedition and insurrection” could be stripped of protective tax status.

Some of these remedies lie firmly with Congress. Impeachment proceedings are already underway which could remove Trump’s ability to run in 2024. The 14th Amendment could be applied to expel or bar current office holders who participated in the insurrection from running for election again.

Trump has recently condemned the violence done in his name. But he has not disavowed the rationale for it. His supporters within the Republican base, media and elected ranks continue to repeat his conspiracy theories on Fox “entertainment” shows, on AM radio, and now the halls of Congress.

More than 100 US Representatives voted against certifying the ballots on which they themselves were elected.

The next few years will see investigations, commissions and reports detailing the failures that led up to the Capitol attacks. Any delay in accountability could see even more lives lost to conspiracy theories and those who profit from them.

By Dr Jennifer S. Hunt, lecturer in national security, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

President Donald Trump is extremely unlikely to capitulate to pressure to resign in the final days of his presidency. And his Cabinet is equally unlikely to force him out by invoking the 25th amendment of the Constitution, despite calls from the Democrats to do so.

So, in the wake of last week’s insurrection at the US Capitol, which left five people dead and the Trump White House in free fall, the final option available to lawmakers who want to punish the president for his role in encouraging the rioters is impeachment. Again.

The House Democrats introduced an article of impeachment against Trump yesterday for “inciting violence against the government of the United States”.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the Democrats “will proceed” with impeachment proceedings this week if Vice-President Mike Pence does not respond to a separate resolution calling for the Cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment.

This will no doubt be a complicated task in the waning days of the Trump presidency. No US president has faced impeachment twice. And there are many questions about how the process will play out, given Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the US in just nine days.

Impeachment: a two-step process
This is how the impeachment process works under the Constitution. (Trump will be familiar with this since he has already been through it before on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.)

Impeachment requires both chambers of Congress — the House of Representatives and the Senate — to act. The House has the “sole power of impeachment” for federal officials, and all that is required is a simple majority to initiate proceedings.

The House essentially takes on the role of a prosecutor, deciding if the charges warrant impeachment and a trial.

The Senate is where the actual trial takes place. Under the Constitution, the chamber acts like a court, with senators considering evidence given by witnesses or any other form deemed suitable.

Impeachment managers appointed by the House “prosecute” the case before the Senate and the president can mount a defence. The chief justice of the Supreme Court acts as the presiding officer.

While these proceedings have many of the trappings of an actual court, it is important to bear in mind that impeachment is a political process.

Under the impeachment clause of the Constitution, a president may be removed from office “on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

This language has been the source of considerable debate, with some legal experts, like Trump’s first impeachment lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, arguing that impeachable offences are limited to actual crimes. Others (correctly) disagree.

Conviction requires two-thirds of senators — a deliberately high threshold to prevent politically motivated impeachments from succeeding. No previous impeachment of a president has ever met this bar: Andrew Johnson (1868), Bill Clinton (1998) and Trump (2019) were all acquitted.

Even though some Republican senators have indicated they would vote in favour of impeachment — or at least be open to it — the number is likely nowhere near enough for conviction.

Complicating factors: time, shifting majorities and a difficult process
With only days left before Trump leaves office on January 20, time is of the essence.

The Constitution does not mandate any particular timeline for the proceedings to take place. Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated a Senate trial could not begin before January 19, as the Senate is in recess until then.

Moving that date up would require all 100 senators to agree — an unlikely prospect.

But this may not be an obstacle to starting the process. The Constitution is silent on the question of whether a Senate trial can be held after a president has left office. The 1876 impeachment of War Secretary William Belknap for graft after he left office may serve as precedent.

So, if the House votes to impeach Trump before January 20, a trial could theoretically happen after that date. The maths also change slightly in the Democrats’ favour on that day.

The Democrats will take back control of the Senate, albeit on a 50-50 split with incoming Vice President Kamala Harris casting any tie-breaking vote.

Democrats are pushing for impeachment because the Constitution not only allows conviction, but also provides for barring Trump from holding federal office again. This would thwart his ambitions to run for president in 2024 — a prospect not lost on Republicans with the same goal.

The Constitution does not stipulate how many senators need to vote in favour of disqualifying an impeached official from holding office again, but the Senate has determined a simple majority would suffice.

This tool has also been used sparingly in the past: disqualification has only occurred three times, and only for federal judges.

The bigger hurdle, however, is that it still requires Trump to first be convicted of impeachment by a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

Political implications of impeachment
Biden has remained lukewarm at best to suggestions of a Senate trial after January 20. Such proceedings would allow Trump to style himself a political martyr to his followers even more than is already the case.

This would distract from the critical goals Biden has for his first 100 days and beyond: tackling spiralling COVID infection numbers and the country’s lagging vaccination program, providing immediate financial relief to struggling families, rejoining international climate action efforts and repairing the damage done to the fabric of government by the Trump administration. Last, but not least, it would make confirmation of Biden’s Cabinet picks more difficult.

Achieving these goals while Trump sets off the political fireworks he so cherishes is implausible.

The Democrats have floated the idea of impeaching Trump before January 20, but not sending the article of impeachment to the Senate for trial until weeks later — or even longer — to give Biden a chance to get started on these initiatives. But a distraction is a distraction no matter when it happens.

Democrats would also do well to remember that political fortunes can change. It’s understandable to want to punish Trump for his actions, but
rushing into a political trial in the Senate, which Democrats are bound to lose, may have unintended consequences for the future.

What’s to stop the Republicans from pursuing impeachments of future Democratic leaders they disagree with, even in the face of certain defeat in the Senate? This could poison the political atmosphere even further.

Democrats may also want to consider the fact that Trump could face federal charges for allegedly inciting the violence at the Capitol or state charges for urging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat to Biden.

While this outcome is far from certain, the chances of conviction in a court of law would likely prove to be less toxic politically for both Democrats and Republicans alike.

This story has been updated to add Democrats formally introducing an article of impeachment on January 11.

By Dr Markus Wagner, associate professor of law, University of Wollongong. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The governors of Pacific US territories the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas and Guam have denounced the violent protests in US Congress.

In a statement, CNMI’s Governor Ralph Torres said he was disappointed and saddened to see the nation’s senators and representatives threatened and law enforcement officials overwhelmed by this unprecedented act in the US capital.

Governor Torres said that a peaceful transfer of power was one of the hallmarks of a great republic.

“[The] lawless and violent attempts to disrupt the certification of the electoral college was an affront to our American democracy,” he said.

“At a time when democracy has shown its fragility, I am thankful that the CNMI, as a young democracy, has maintained positive civil discourse in order to progress together as one island community.”

Guam – storming of the Capitol ‘disturbing’
Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero said the storming of the Capitol Building was disturbing.

“As a society, we are united in our love of democracy and our pride in that for more than two centuries, the American experiment has persevered.

“We had a great example of democracy in action just yesterday as Georgia elected its first African-American senator,” she said in a statement.

“Today, our nation experienced another trying moment as a mob attempted to terrorise and prevent the democratic process from moving forward at the US Capitol. The sight of this was disturbing to all of us,” she said.

“We need to come together and stand strong for the values we all share as people.

“I therefore ask all of you to join me in uniting in support of our democracy and in support of our new President, Joe Biden, as he takes on the monumental task of healing the soul of our nation and uniting us all as Americans,” she said.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

On Wednesday, from behind a wall of bulletproof glass, outgoing US President Donald Trump told a crowd of his supporters to be brave and incited them to march on the Capitol Buildings where the electoral college votes were being counted.

They stormed it and in the chaos many were injured and five people – including a police officer – died.

The mayhem Trump encouraged and the grandstanding of some Republican senators on the floor of the Senate, however, only delayed the inevitable.

The votes were finally counted. Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States come January 20 and charged with the responsibility of governing a nation politically divided and ravaged by a deadly pandemic.

Why should we, here in New Zealand, concern ourselves with what happened this week in America?

Three answers
The answers to that deceptively simple question could fill a book, but this is a Facebook post so I’ll offer you just three.

1. What happens to the US economy has a direct impact on the world economy and therefore on our own immediate economic future.
2. The longer covid-19 remains uncontrolled in the USA the longer international travel will be disrupted and that does not bode well for us as an island nation geographically isolated as we are from Northern Hemisphere markets.
3. The huge issue of climate change requires immediate action to be taken on the dire warnings of science about global warming and not the conspiracy ramblings of social media.

So where is the hope?

It lies in what also happened earlier that day in the USA.

When the votes were counted in the Georgia run-offs, Raphael Warnock became the first Black American in that state to be elected as a senator for that state and, along with Jon Ossoff, it gives the Democrats the control of the Senate as well as Congress.

Mandate for progressive policies
So the Biden administration now has a mandate to introduce progressive policies that will improve the lives of a great many of his fellow Americans.

Here in New Zealand Jacinda Ardern leads a government that has a mandate to introduce progressive policies in our own country and narrow the gap between the rich and the poor and thereby improve the lives of the majority of New Zealanders.

We can’t do anything about what happens in America but we can do everything about what happens in our own country.

We need to accelerate our thinking about how to be more self-sustaining as a country and foster the idea of sharing the nation’s wealth instead of the selfishness promoted over the last 30 years of neoliberal economic policies.

And we need to keep the Ardern government on task by giving praise when praise is due and speaking up when we see fault and injustice.

Bryan Bruce is an independent filmmaker and journalist. Asia Pacific Report is publishing a series of occasional commentaries by him with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Amid the chaos in the US Capitol, stoked largely by rhetoric from President Donald Trump, Twitter has locked his account, with 88.7 million followers, for 12 hours.

Facebook and Instagram quickly followed suit, locking Trump’s accounts — with 35.2 million followers and 24.5 million, respectively — for at least two weeks, the remainder of his presidency. This ban was extended from 24 hours.

The locks are the latest effort by social media platforms to clamp down on Trump’s misinformation and baseless claims of election fraud.

They came after Twitter labelled a video posted by Trump and said it posed a “risk of violence”. Twitter removed users’ ability to retweet, like or comment on the post — the first time this has been done.

In the video, Trump told the agitators at the Capitol to go home, but at the same time called them “very special” and said he loved them for disrupting the Congressional certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s win.

That tweet has since been taken down for “repeated and severe violations” of Twitter’s civic integrity policy. YouTube and Facebook have also removed copies of the video.

But as people across the world scramble to make sense of what’s going on, one thing stands out: the events that transpired today were not unexpected.

Given the lack of regulation and responsibility shown by platforms over the past few years, it’s fair to say the writing was on the wall.

The real, violent consequences of misinformation
While Trump is no stranger to contentious and even racist remarks on social media, Twitter’s action to lock the president’s account is a first.

The line was arguably crossed by Trump’s implicit incitement of violence and disorder within the halls of the US Capitol itself.

Nevertheless, it would have been a difficult decision for Twitter (and Facebook and Instagram), with several factors at play. Some of these are short-term, such as the immediate potential for further violence.

Then there is the question of whether tighter regulation could further incite rioting Trump supporters by feeding into their theories claiming the existence of a large-scale “deep state” plot against the president. It’s possible.

We are locking President Trump’s Instagram account for 24 hours as well. https://t.co/HpA79eSbMe

— Adam Mosseri ? (@mosseri) January 7, 2021

But a longer-term consideration — and perhaps one at the forefront of the platforms’ priorities — is how these actions will affect their value as commercial assets.

I believe the platforms’ biggest concern is their own bottom line. They are commercial companies legally obliged to pursue profits for shareholders. Commercial imperatives and user engagement are at the forefront of their decisions.

What happens when you censor a Republican president? You can lose a huge chunk of your conservative user base, or upset your shareholders.

Despite what we think of them, or how we might use them, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube aren’t set up in the public interest.

For them, it’s risky to censor a head of state when they know that content is profitable. Doing it involves a complex risk calculus — with priorities being shareholders, the companies’ market value and their reputation.

Walking a tightrope
The platforms’ decisions to not only force the removal of several of Trump’s posts but also to lock his accounts carries enormous potential loss of revenue. It’s a major and irreversible step.

And they are now forced to keep a close eye on one another. If one appears too “strict” in its censorship, it may attract criticism and lose user engagement and ultimately profit. At the same time, if platforms are too loose with their content regulation, they must weather the storm of public critique.

You don’t want to be the last organisation to make the tough decision, but you don’t necessarily want to be the first, either — because then you’re the “trial balloon” who volunteered to potentially harm the bottom line.

For all major platforms, the past few years have presented high stakes. Yet there have been plenty of opportunities to stop the situation snowballing to where it is now.

From Trump’s baseless election fraud claims to his false ideas about the coronavirus, time and again platforms have turned a blind eye to serious cases of mis- and disinformation.

The storming of the Capitol is a logical consequence of what has arguably been a long time coming.

The coronavirus pandemic illustrated this. While Trump was partially censored by Twitter and Facebook for misinformation, the platforms failed to take lasting action to deal with the issue at its core.

In the past, platforms have cited constitutional reasons to justify not censoring politicians. They have claimed a civic duty to give elected officials an unfiltered voice.

This line of argument should have ended with the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, when Trump responded to the killing of an anti-fascism protester by claiming there were “very fine people on both sides”.

There have been good arguments for private companies to not silence elected officials, but all those arguments are predicated on the protection of constitutional governance.

Twitter and Facebook have to cut him off. There are no legitimate equities left and labeling won’t do it. pic.twitter.com/Nji6A4sJum

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) January 6, 2021

An age of QAnon, Proud Boys and neo-Nazis
While there’s no silver bullet for online misinformation and extremist content, there’s also no doubt platforms could have done more in the past that may have prevented the scenes witnessed in Washington DC.

In a crisis, there’s a rush to make sense of everything. But we need only look at what led us to this point. Experts on disinformation have been crying out for platforms to do more to combat disinformation and its growing domestic roots.

Now, in 2021, extremists such as neo-Nazis and QAnon believers no longer have to lurk in the depths of online forums or commit lone acts of violence. Instead, they can violently storm the Capitol.

It would be a cardinal error to not appraise the severity and importance of the neglect that led us here. In some ways, perhaps that’s the biggest lesson we can learn.

This article has been updated to reflect the news that Facebook and Instagram extended their 24 hour ban on President Trump’s accounts.

By Dr Timothy Graham, senior lecturer, Queensland University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

American expats are feeling grateful to be living in Aotearoa after watching the chaos and violence unfold at the Capitol building in Washington.

Madeline Nash, her husband, and her two children looked at moving to New Zealand after the 2016 presidential election.

Her eldest child was just about to start school and during the hour-long school tours they went on, 20 minutes were spent explaining the school’s shooter protocol.

They finally made the big move to Auckland from Austin, Texas, in 2018.

Although she is not surprised, she said what was happening in Washington, DC, was far worse than they had ever imagined.

“To actually see that people have taken it so far that they are willing basically, I would say to hop over the line to sedition and treason, they’re really just trying to tear down the country.”

Nash said partisan politics had become extremely polarising in the US but living in New Zealand was like being in an alternate reality.

“I’m glad that we have this ability to be here and our children are a bit sheltered from what’s going on, but as an adult it is very hard to be straddling both worlds right now.”

US ‘in shambles’
Jade De La Paz is an American citizen who moved to Dunedin to complete her PhD at Otago University.

She has been feeling stressed and can’t take her eyes off the news.

“We just had this huge victory and now the whole country is falling apart, but there’s nothing I can do from here except for vote.

“You’re sitting here thinking my country is in shambles,” De La Paz said.

Katie Smith moved from Southern California to Auckland in 2017 with her New Zealand partner and is flabbergasted.

“I want to know what alternate reality these people live in.”

While Smith is a Democrat, much of her family are Republicans, but even they don’t agree with what is happening.

“It’s not about and it hasn’t been about politics for a very long time. it’s about being a decent human being.”

Smith said that everything that has been happening in the US has been affecting her mental health.

“I can’t see things getting better for the States any time soon.”

She said she is grateful to be living in Auckland here at the moment and wishes she could move her friends and family living in the US to New Zealand.

In the 2018 census more than 16,000 people living in New Zealand identified as American.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

After weeks of President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about voter fraud and other improprieties costing him the presidential election, Washington erupted in chaos today as his supporters stormed the Capitol during a joint session of Congress to certify the results.

While shocking to watch, in hindsight, today’s riots feel almost inevitable.

Trump has spent weeks insisting the election was stolen, with very little push-back from the Republican Party. There have been some notable people who have challenged him, but even while this riot was going on, there were more than 100 Republican lawmakers trying to block certification of the election.

This has been a highly opportunistic process on the part of Republican legislators.

For Trump, this is the whole game; at this point, it seems there is nothing else he cares about. He is desperately trying to hang on to power.

Amid all of this, it was inevitable at least some Americans would take the word of their current president very seriously. Having fired them up in this way, it becomes much harder to control mob behaviour.

Trump’s belated tweet telling protesters to go home and go in peace (now removed by Twitter) was far too little, too late.

Looking at some of these images coming in from Washington, there is almost an element of “cosplay” (“costume play”). A lot of the rioters were dressed up in bizarre paraphernalia.

On some level, I think they know they can’t actually seize power. There’s almost this carnival element to it of these people delighting in causing complete chaos.

Whether it’s Trump or his rioting supporters, if they can’t get their own way, if they can’t win, they’ll just create as much chaos as possible and revel in the absurdity of it.

Another thing that’s very obvious is these protesters didn’t fear the police. They were able to push their way past the police, they were able to force entry into the Capitol building and they’re then making jokes with reporters.

They believed the police would not retaliate against them fatally — although four people died, including one woman who was shot by police.

The contrast with the Black Lives Matter protests is striking. A Black Lives Matter protest would never have been allowed to get that close to the Capitol. These are people acting with all kinds of impunity.

I can’t even put into words how this makes me feel when I personally know the anxiety felt by Indigenous people, Black people & the prep undertaken when there’s an #Indigenous or #BLM rally knowing there will be a combo of violence, batons, dogs, water hoses, tear gas & guns! https://t.co/wT1xL5ruNZ

— Bronwyn Fredericks (@BronFredericks) January 6, 2021

Undermining election results at all costs
In storming the Capitol and trying to stop a legitimate process of certifying the election, the rioters are following the lead of Trump and many congressional Republicans. It’s been a trend for a while for Republicans that if they lose an election, they do as much as possible to nullify the results.

This is not necessarily trying to overturn the result. But if you look at recent elections in North Carolina and Wisconsin where Democratic governors won, that was followed by Republicans in the legislatures stripping as much power as possible from the governorship.

This idea that an election is only legitimate if we win has been put into practice by Republican legislators across the country for quite a while now.

With Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in November, there have been very few Republicans who have actually acknowledged this was the will of the people.

Part of that is because Trump’s victory four years ago was so unexpected, a lot of Republicans believe this was a new era in American politics. Part of that was the ability of Trump to win without actually winning the popular vote.

Now that Biden has won, there’s a real unwillingness to acknowledge elections can still be lost legitimately by Republicans.

A failure of leadership from senior Republicans
From the beginning, Kevin McCarthy, the number one Republican in the House of Representatives, was absolutely behind these ridiculous stolen election claims. He’s never backed away from them.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, let these things go on for weeks before he made the most minimal statement that the Electoral College had spoken. It is no surprise that McConnell was then completely unable to control Republicans in the Senate who wanted to contest the certification of the election results.

Republicans have learned the lesson that the way to get the most attention, the way to further your career, is to take the most pro-Trump stance possible. So, it was no surprise so many lawmakers would back this effort to block certification of the election. They’re raising money off this, they’re creating YouTube videos to show their supporters.

It’s become Trump’s party. A lot of people see the path to political advancement backing Trump at every point.

There were a lot of Republican legislators who hoped Trump would eventually give up. In the days after the election, some were saying we should let Trump play out his legal options, he will do the right thing eventually and he’ll step aside for the good of the nation.

But he was never, ever, ever going to step aside or concede. What he does is he just keeps people on board with him. Anyone who waits for Trump to do the right thing inevitably ends up supporting him when he does the wrong thing.

This is a lesson Republicans should have learned, but they’re scared of his supporters. None of them have supporters who would potentially risk their lives to storm the Capitol building.

The best check on power? The people
There have been surprises in both the strengths and weaknesses of America’s institutions over the last few years. For example, federalism has turned out to be quite an effective check on presidential power when it’s been exercised by someone like Trump, which is perhaps not something Democrats would have necessarily believed before.

On the other hand, we’ve seen this massive erosion of norms, especially in Congress. This has been going on for quite a while and McConnell has been one of the major eroders of norms for a long time.

Congress was never really an effective check on Trump.

Ultimately, after the election, it was local and state officials like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Aaron Van Langevelde, a member of Michigan’s board of state canvassers, who said enough is enough when members of Congress weren’t doing it.

And despite the fact Trump has packed the federal courts and Supreme Court with conservative judges, none of his legal challenges went anywhere.

But in the end, the lesson is the most effective check is the election. It is the voice of the people. For every norm that Trump broke, for every anti-democratic thing he did, there was a bigger backlash.

We saw an election with one of the biggest turnouts in history. We had four years of pretty consistent protests in the streets. And in the end, this is the most important check on the presidency that there is.

Dr David Smith is associate professor in American politics and foreign policy at the US Studies Centre, University of Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz