On Tuesday, I wrote UAE, Israel, And The Hexagon Alliance which illuminated Israel’s duplicity in relation to Hamas, and the understated but very strong alliance between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel. And Israel’s agenda to divide and rule the ‘Middle East’ by creating its own encircling alliance; and setting up two rival Muslim axes (a Shia axis, and a Sunni axis) which Israel would like to see weaken and damage each other.

Here I begin with other candid comments, by recent Israeli leaders, from the Australian 2024 documentary The Forever War. Themes include a mix of empathy and contempt for the indigenous Palestinian population, Benjamin Netanyahu’s trustworthiness, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich as “messianic” “terrorists”, Israel’s hold over the United States, and Israel’s self-inflicted diminishing security.

Excerpts from the Australian ABC documentary

TZIPI LIVNI, FMR FOREIGN & JUSTICE MINISTER: They hate us. We saw the results. The idea of eradicating Hamas completely from Gaza is a just cause.

YEHUDA SHAUL, FMR ISRAELI ARMY COMMANDER: That the IDF is doing everything to avoid civilian casualties is a blunt lie. Straight lie.

YEHUDA SHAUL, FMR ISRAELI ARMY COMMANDER: Y’know, [in the] the beginning I was also full of rage. I also had the feeling that these are animals, we need to go there and bomb the hell out of them. But then you stop for a second and you think, you say to yourself, what did we think is going to happen after 16 years of siege.

AMIRA HASS, OCCUPIED TERRITORIES CORRESPONDENT, HAARETZ: I was surprised and not surprised because I kept warning that people cannot stand the accumulated cruelty accumulated over so many decades. And somehow there will be an explosion. Somehow there will be an outburst. I couldn’t imagine what it would be, but there it came.

…

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: You’ve spent a lot of time studying this obviously as head of Shin Bet. Could you describe what is the reality for Palestinians here?

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: It was a life of people who dream about freedom, and don’t see it. Whether we liked it or not, we control the life of millions.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: If you were a Palestinian living in the West Bank or Gaza, what would your view be of Israel?

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: I would fight against Israel in order to achieve my liberty.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: How would you fight? How dirty?

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: I would do everything in order to achieve my liberty. And that’s it.

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: Look, I once was asked some 30 years ago what I have been doing if I were a Palestinian and 30 years ago. I was new enough in politics to tell the truth that if I were born Palestinian probably would’ve joined one of the terror organisations.

…

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Israel’s famous for its targeted assassinations. I mean you yourself dressed as a woman famously and went into Beirut and met up with Mossad and went and killed a Palestinian leader. Israel’s done that over the years. Why couldn’t they have tried to strategically target Hamas leaders rather than kill those thousands of children?

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: I never deluded myself to believe that by killing any individual you solve the problem, you give them a blow and they will recover in a way it just delayed the real decision. Real decisions at the end are not about how to kill mosquitoes more effectively. It’s about how to drain the swamp [my emphasis].

…

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Do you trust Benjamin Netanyahu?

TZIPI LIVNI, FMR FOREIGN & JUSTICE MINISTER: Never.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Can there be peace while Benjamin Netanyahu’s the leader here?

TZIPI LIVNI, FMR FOREIGN & JUSTICE MINISTER: No. No.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Can the world trust Benjamin Netanyahu?

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: I don’t think that anyone can trust him. So basically, he lies to everyone and no one trust him.

…

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: BenGvir and Smotrich, the two racist messianic guys that seems to be to very strong leverage on Bibi. They want to turn it into a major religious war between Israel and the Islam.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Are they dangerous?

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: Sure, they’re dangerous.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: How powerful are BenGvir and Smotrich and what do you think of them?

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: I see them as terrorists and as Jewish messianics, they represent only a small minority within the Israel society, but they get their power because of our coalition system.*

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: But can I just check something? Are you calling the Minister for National Security and the Minister for Finance in Israel? Are you calling them terrorists?

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: Of course. They are.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Is the brutal reality that Benjamin Netanyahu wants to continue this war for his own political survival?

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: Look, I cannot penetrate his soul and tell you for sure, but it’s clear that he acts as if the main objective of this whole event is his survival. He understands that if fighting will have a pause for six weeks or two times six weeks, the Israeli republic will demand accountability in spite of the fact that there is no word in Hebrew for accountability. It was not needed in our culture, but the public will demand it and he might lose his role, the prime minister.

…

excerpt from U.S. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The state of Israel was born to be a safe place for the Jewish people.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: President Biden is a lifelong supporter of Israel.

excerpt from U.S. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: If Israel didn’t exist we’d have to invent it.

EHUD BARAK, FMR PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: Israel cannot fight this regional war without having close relationship with the Americans. We need their support, not just in munitions that we do not produce in a high enough space to supply the needs of such a regional war, but we need them also to protect us in the UN Security Council. We needed them at the beginning of the crisis to deter Iran from getting involved or from activating the Hezbollah against us. And we will need them even in the Hague, to block the prospect that… Israeli commanders or even politically, they might find themselves as a criminal in the Hague or demanded to be broke. Only America can help us to avoid all this.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Pro-Israeli lobby groups in the US wield immense power.

NATHAN THRALL, FMR DIRECTOR INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP: Every politician in the United States knows that they can pay a major price with their jobs for not toeing the line. And the level of devastation that we are seeing now has so horrified the world and has so horrified the American public that now we have half of the people who voted for Biden saying that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza.

…

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: Do you now fear for the future?

TZIPI LIVNI, FMR FOREIGN & JUSTICE MINISTER: I am worried. I am worried about the future of Israel. Yes, more than ever.

AMI AYALON, FMR HEAD OF SHIN BET: You cannot deter a person or a group of people if they believe that they have nothing to lose. We Israelis, we shall have security only when they will have hope.

JOHN LYONS, REPORTER: What’s the future for Palestinians

AVI DICHTER, CURRENT ISRAELI CABINET MINISTER: Supporting death will not bring you anything. If you don’t believe that the Jewish presence here between the Mediterranean and Jordan Valley is forever, you are going to lose more than you’ve lost till now.

*Coalition System

All electoral democracies – ie with parliamentary or congressional elections – face the problem of a very close electoral result in a partisan House. And, as Keir Starmer is finding out, political parties in traditional duopoly systems (generally ‘First Past the Post’) are themselves coalitions. In 1984, under FPP, New Zealand went to the polls early, because a minority faction of two within the governing National caucus – Marilyn Waring and Mike Minogue – had (or seemed, to Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, to have had) gained the effective balance of power. In Israel today, it is BenGivr and Smotrich who have that balance of power within the parliament, the Knesset.) In the US Senate under Joe Biden’s presidency, it was Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

In the Israel case, Netanyahu is the bigger problem. The BenGivr and Smotrich tails are not wagging the Netanyahu dog.

Ehud Barak and Jeffrey Epstein

Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post episode The anatomy of the Epstein network (9 Feb 2026) noted this 15 Jan 2026 article – “Praise Allah, There Are Still People Like You”: Jeffrey Epstein Nurtured Israel-Emirates Ties Before Abraham Accords – from Drop Site News, and then interviewed one of its authors, Murtaza Hussain. As well as emphasising Israel’s links with UAE, it also outlines Jeffrey Epstein’s longstanding links to both UAE (especially Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, former head of DP World) and to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Yes, the very Ehud Barak who intimated that Gaza and the West Bank (and presumably much of Lebanon to the south and west of Beirut) were swamps in need of draining.

Barak, Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001, was the most recent Labor Party leader of Israel. Labor-constituent parties led Israel from 1948 to 1977, and also for some years in the 1990s. Yitzhak Rabin, a Labor Prime Minister, was assassinated by a Zionist terrorist on 4 November 1995.

From Wikipedia: “According to Barak, they first met in 2003, and no evidence of an earlier meeting has been published to date. Barak stayed at Epstein’s apartments in New York several times over the years. … A large portion of the funds invested by Barak was supplied by Jeffrey Epstein. … In 2023, it was revealed that Barak had visited Epstein around 30 times from 2013 to 2017. … Barak said [in 2015 that] he currently earns more than $1 million a year.”

From the Drop Site News article:

“In the last two decades of his life, American financier Jeffrey Epstein acted as an informal diplomatic bridge between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.”

“Epstein’s … claim of having an intimate friendship with Sulayem is now corroborated by a flood of his emails from the House Oversight Committee, a U.S. federal court case, and the hacked inbox of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.”

It appears that much of Epstein’s correspondence with Sulayem was cc.ed to Ehud Barak; keeping Israel – if not Netanyahu – fully in the loop of UAE’s deepening links with Epstein, a man sufficiently notorious as a child sex offender to bring down the likes of the former prince, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. (The Epstein Affair has close parallels with the 1963 Profumo Affair, which brought down the British government and also came close to entangling the Royal Family; as viewers of The Crown will appreciate. I’m surprised that the Andrew-obsessed British media seems to downplay this parallel.)

The article adds:

‘In a November 2022 interview about the Abraham Accords, Epstein’s close friend Ehud Barak told journalist Afshin Rattansi, “I’m glad that the Emirates and Bahrain went ‘out of the closet’ and are ready to formalize relationships with us [Israel], and I hope that others will follow. It’s a positive development; of course, it’s not a real peace, it’s not a major breakthrough. We know these people for 25 years, and we have a very intensive relationship with them in many arenas”.

‘The relationship between Israel and the UAE has only deepened in the years since, even as the Israeli genocide in Gaza has provoked global outrage. In December 2025, the UAE signed a $2.3 billion defense deal with Elbit Systems, one of the largest arms sales in Israeli history.’ [What are the odds that the RSF in Sudan are now using some of those weapons?]

‘Although Epstein did not live to see these agreements come to fruition, the private channels he helped cultivate between Emirati and Israeli elites helped make them possible.’

Epstein’s Ponzi Scheme

How did Epstein make his massive fortune and become so influential and entitled? The whole story is of course murky, especially in the years of the 1990s and 2000s. Most of the information we have today relates to the post-2008 period, after Epstein’s conviction for ‘procuring for prostitution’.

I discovered a very interesting story relating to an earlier part of Epstein’s life, when he was working closely with Steven Hoffenberg. From Epstein’s Wikipedia page: “In 1993, [Hoffenberg’s] Towers Financial Corporation imploded when it was exposed as one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in American history, losing over US$450 million of its investors’ money (equivalent to $1 billion in 2025). In court documents, Hoffenberg claimed that Epstein was intimately involved in the scheme.” Epstein worked with Towers Financial Corporation, which perpetrated that Ponzi scheme in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

From CBS (Jeffrey Epstein worked at financial firm that engaged in massive Ponzi scheme in 1980s and 1990s, by Brian Pascus and Mola Lenghi, 13 Aug 2019): ‘Hoffenberg’s financial crimes in the 1990s drew major public attention, as the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme was the largest financial fraud in American history prior to Bernie Madoff’s crimes a decade later, according to The New York Times. … “Jeffrey was my partner in what we did raising the billion dollars. He worked with me every day, seven days a week and he was in the mix with everything that I did,” Hoffenberg told CBS News. “I was the CEO of Towers Financial Corporation, a public company, and Jeffrey was my main assistant, associate, or partner. And the company did do a billion dollars in raising money. And it was criminal”.’

And note How Epstein got so rich, by Timothy Rooks for Deutsche Welle, 16 Feb 2026.

Conclusion

By focussing on Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, we may be letting him and his contacts off lightly.

Epstein was a money man; a miner of money, paying minors while playing majors. An Israel man. A scholar, majoring in influence, with particularly strong links to politicians and businessmen on the right of the political left; people like Peter Mandelson and Ehud Barak. A Hexagon Alliance man, who died ignominiously before his work came to its present fruition. A man trading in big guns and little women. A man serving what has become the world’s most lucrative and secretive industry; the high-tech high-chat world of asymmetric warfare, geopolitics, and draining swamps. Many of Epstein’s many contacts, now distancing themselves from him, will have imbibed the same Kool-Aid.

Epstein was a man who did much towards creating the new circum-Arabia circular economy, whereby Israel facilitates the UAE to supply military tech to the RSF to extract gold and materials from Sudan so that Israel (and its proxies, big and small) can devise, manufacture, and test more military tech to sell to the UAE to supply RSF terrorists …

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

The US has carried out another air raid on Yemen, with targets reportedly including the international airport in the capital city of Sanaa. This comes a day after US and UK airstrikes on Yemen in retaliation for Houthi attacks on Red Sea commercial vessels.

For weeks Yemen’s Houthi forces have been greatly inconveniencing commercial shipping with their blockade, with reports last month saying Israel’s Eilat Port has seen an 85 percent drop in activity since the attacks began.

This entirely bloodless inconvenience was all it took for Washington to attack Yemen, the war-ravaged nation in which the US and its allies have spent recent years helping Saudi Arabia murder hundreds of thousands of people with its own maritime blockades.

Yemen has issued defiant statements in response to these attacks, saying they will not go “unanswered or unpunished”.

The U.S. can have a multi-decade long blockade on Cuba and it’s normalized.

Israel can have a decade and a half long total air, land, and sea blockade on Gaza and it’s normalized.

But Yemenis block some ships to stop a genocide and all the sudden it’s indefensible.

— James Ray 🔻 (@GoodVibePolitik) January 13, 2024

The Biden administration’s dramatic escalation toward yet another horrific war in the Middle East has been hotly criticised by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who argue that the attacks were illicit because they took place without congressional approval.

This impotent congressional whining will never go anywhere, since, as Glenn Greenwald has observed, the US Congress never actually does anything to hold presidents to account for carrying out acts of war without their approval.

But there are some worthwhile ideas going around.

After the second round of strikes, a Democratic representative from Georgia named Hank Johnson tweeted the following:

“I have what some may consider a dumb idea, but here it is: stop the bombing of Gaza, then the attacks on commercial shipping will end. Why not try that approach?”

By golly, that’s just crazy enough to work. In fact, anti-interventionists have been screaming it at the top of their lungs since the standoff with Yemen began.

All the way back in mid-October Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi was already writing urgently about the need for a ceasefire in Gaza to prevent it from exploding into a wider war in the region, a position Parsi has continued pushing ever since.

“Huge Miscalculation”: Biden’s Refusal to Push for Gaza Ceasefire Could Drag U.S. into Middle East War https://t.co/eJuzswi2BJ

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 8, 2024

As we discussed previously, Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza is threatening to bleed over into conflicts with the Houthis in Yemen, with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with Iran-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria, and even potentially with Iran itself – any of which could easily see the US and its allies committing themselves to a full-scale war.

Peace in Gaza takes these completely unnecessary gambles off the table.

And it is absolutely within Washington’s power to force a ceasefire in Gaza. Biden could end all this with one phone call, as US presidents have done in the past. As Parsi wrote for The Nation earlier this month:

“In 1982, President Ronald Reagan was ‘disgusted’ by Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. He stopped the transfer of cluster munitions to Israel and told Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a phone call that ‘this is a holocaust.’ Reagan demanded that Israel withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Begin caved. Twenty minutes after their phone call, Begin ordered a halt on attacks.

“Indeed, it is absurd to claim that Biden has no leverage, particularly given the massive amounts of arms he has shipped to Israel. In fact, Israeli officials openly admit it. ‘All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US,’ retired Israeli Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Brick conceded in November of last year. ‘The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability.… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.’ ”

In the end, you get peace by pursuing peace. That’s how it happens. You don’t get it by pursuing impossible imaginary ideals like the total elimination of Hamas while butchering tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.

You don’t get it by trying to bludgeon the Middle East into passively accepting an active genocide. You get it by negotiation, de-escalation, diplomacy and detente.

The path to peace is right there. The door’s not locked. It’s not even closed. The fact that they don’t take it tells you what these imperialist bastards are really interested in.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Joe Biden’s controversial fist-bump with Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi crown prince, may help New Zealand to forge its own new direction in the Middle East.

The US president’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia showed that despite real concerns over human rights, the Middle East’s strategic importance in the current global geopolitical jigsaw puzzle cannot be ignored.

Biden’s meeting with MBS in the Saudi port city of Jeddah – four years after the horrific killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi – was a triumph of realism over idealism.

In essence, Biden’s trip was all about convincing Saudi Arabia to increase oil production to try to bring down the global fuel prices that have risen sharply since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Biden might have called Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’ for the Khashoggi killing during the 2020 presidential election campaign – but Vladimir Putin is now Washington’s main adversary.

And in the Middle East itself, the threat of Iran – which the US claims is about to supply military drones to Russia for use against Ukraine – is also a higher priority for Biden.

New Zealand policymakers will be watching Biden’s moves in the Middle East.

After all, New Zealand has also been trying to rekindle its own relationship with the Gulf. Foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta visited New Zealand’s lavish, $NZ60m pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on her inaugural overseas trip in November last year – and she also managed to fit in a side-trip to influential Qatar while she was in the region.

Mahuta pointedly avoided a trip to Riyadh, but Biden’s meeting with MBS will be a signal to New Zealand and other Western countries that the time is right to bring Saudi Arabia in from the cold.

The wealthy Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – a six-country grouping made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – is already New Zealand’s eighth-biggest trading partner.

It holds the potential to become an even more significant market for New Zealand exports, especially in the key areas of meat and dairy.

Indeed, the very modest gains achieved by New Zealand for meat and dairy in its recent free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union mean that improving trade with other key markets – such as the Middle East – is more important than ever.

As Western attitudes towards China have soured, New Zealand ministers have been keen to make trade diversification a major priority.

To that end, trade minister Damien O’Connor embarked on a major mission to the Gulf in March to try and restart New Zealand’s troubled free trade negotiations with the GCC.

A deal with the bloc was signed in 2009 but remains unratified from the Gulf side.

The last big push to try and get the deal over the line was in 2015, under the previous National-led government, when Prime Minister John Key toured Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Around the same time, the ill-fated ‘Saudi sheep deal’ was devised by Key’s foreign minister, Murray McCully, in an unsuccessful bid to appease a prominent Saudi investor who was upset by New Zealand’s ban on exporting live sheep by sea. The deal involved New Zealand sending significant amounts of cash and air-freighted sheep, but it largely ended in embarrassment – and did not deliver the FTA that New Zealand sought.

An acrimonious intra-Gulf split in the years that followed – which saw Qatar isolated by several GCC members – subsequently ruled out any further progress on the deal from the Gulf side. But those divisions were largely resolved last year.

Fast forward to New Zealand’s Labour government in 2022, and O’Connor’s trip was surprisingly successful. It resulted in FTA negotiations between New Zealand and the GCC being restarted.

But despite this success, New Zealand made surprisingly little fanfare of O’Connor’s successful foray into the Gulf. While the trip was announced as part of wider international travel plans, no press release on the outcome was issued after the minister’s trip. O’Connor’s report to Cabinet on the travel is also yet to be publicly released.

To be fair, O’Connor did tweet about his visit to Riyadh – calling it ‘productive’ – and he also announced the ‘reengagement with the Gulf Cooperation Council on an FTA’ in another tweet in April.

The minister also touched on the talks with the GCC in a speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (NZIIA) in May. In that address, O’Connor said New Zealand would focus on ‘goods market access’ in the negotiations, but would also be seeking ‘to update and modernise the agreement’ in other areas such as labour and environmental standards.

Arab media provide some further detail about O’Connor’s movements on his March trip.

A report by the Bahrain News Agency from March 8 said a meeting between O’Connor and GCC Secretary General Dr. Nayef Falah Al Hajraf ‘discussed the means to enhance economic and investment relations between the GCC countries and New Zealand’. A few days later, the same outlet reported that New Zealand had signed a ‘strategic food security partnership’ with the UAE.

The Arabic-language Al-Ain news website even produced an elaborate infographic about the food security deal and O’Connor’s visit.

Of course, the Government may have decided that a low-key approach to the talks with the GCC best serves New Zealand’s interests, especially given the difficulties faced in the past.

But another reason for keeping a low profile domestically almost certainly relates to the sensitivities over the involvement of Saudi Arabia, the most populous country in the GCC by far and its driving force.

In addition to New Zealand’s own concerns over the Khashoggi killing in 2018, a political firestorm erupted in early 2021 when it was revealed that Air New Zealand – of which the NZ Government owns 51 per cent – had been repairing engines for the Saudi military, despite Riyadh playing a leading role in the war in Yemen.

At the time, Jacinda Ardern called the arrangement ‘completely wrong’ and said it did not ‘pass New Zealand’s sniff test’. Air New Zealand summarily terminated the arrangement and returned the remaining parts with the repairs incomplete.

Eighteen months later, the GCC seems willing to turn the page and reconsider a trade deal with New Zealand.

But just as MBS expected Joe Biden to meet him in exchange for Saudi Arabia pumping more oil, he will probably expect Jacinda Ardern to personally visit the Middle East to seal any free trade deal with the GCC.

Of course, New Zealand has considerable experience in balancing human rights and trade issues from its careful handling of the China relationship.

And while Joe Biden has received heavy criticism for his trip, the visit also gave the US president an opportunity to raise the killing of Jamal Khashoggi directly with MBS – and to call the murder ‘outrageous’ while Biden was on Saudi soil.

Will Jacinda Ardern now follow Joe Biden’s lead – and give MBS a fist-bump of her own?

Other items of interest and importance today

NEW BOOK ON THE NATIONAL PARTY
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Blue Blood: how the National Party went to war with itself
Andrea Vance (Stuff): The final hours of the last National Government – and the coronation of Jacinda Ardern as NZ’s youngest PM
Steve Braunias (Newsroom): National’s autopsy report
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): ‘We didn’t know how nasty it got’: Andrea Vance on National’s long nightmare
Kelly Dennett (Stuff): Blue Blood author Andrea Vance on getting the inside story of National’s war with itself

COST OF LIVING AND INFLATION
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Grant Robertson extends fuel tax cut to January, with fuel relief now costing $1b
Rachel Sadler and Leighton Heikell (Newshub): Cost of living: Government placing ‘bandaid upon bandaid’ rather than having plan to address inflation – National’s Nicola Willis
Rosie Gordon (RNZ): Fuel tax cut: Road relief measures ‘not targeted to help those who need it most’
Carmen Hall (Stuff): Struggling families will bear brunt if stagflation hits

HEALTH
Claire Trevett (Herald): Health crisis or not? Andrew Little has the worst job in politics now (paywalled)
Lana Hart (Stuff): Arguing about whether it’s a ‘crisis’ isn’t helping the health situation
Rob Campbell (Newsroom): Band-aids for health staffing crisis are only a short-term patch, says new health boss
Brendon McMahon (Local Democracy reporting): Health minister’s leadership ‘sadly lacking’ – former Coast DHB deputy
RNZ: ‘We see the data, we see the challenges’ – Little defends health system
Jem Traylen (BusinessDesk): It’s time govt got out of the corner on migrant nurses (paywalled)
Hannah Martin (Stuff): Just two weeks’ supply of ‘important’ anti-anxiety medication left in NZ

COVID
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Covid-19 is surging big time but the Government is right to not panic
Tony Blakely and Michael Baker (The Conversation): How are Australia and NZ managing the rising Covid winter wave – and is either getting it right?
Jaime Lyth (Herald): Kelvin Davis and top judges cop flak from health expert after going maskless at indoor event (paywalled)
Tess McClure (Guardian): New Zealand seeks to repeat world-beating Covid response in face of surging cases
Tamara Poi-Ngawhika (Herald): Retail expert says mask use has ‘dropped off a cliff’
Herald: Editorial: Eyes wide shut and bare-faced exposure to Omicron (paywalled)
Herald: Editorial: The persistent presence of Covid-19 (paywalled)
Jamie Morton (Herald): NZ’s Covid future: Michael Baker answers our five biggest questions

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Jayden Holmes (Today FM): Prime Minister could travel to Saudi Arabia if trade deal is revisited
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Jacinda Ardern finally gets lucky break on overseas trips (paywalled)
Christine Rovoi (Stuff): Māori vulnerable to US-China fallout in the Pacific, warns Shane Jones
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): NZ cannot afford to be comfortable in the Pacific
Christine Rovoi (Stuff): Leaders push for unity in the midst of a Pacific rift
1News: Nanaia Mahuta sounds alarm on Pacific debt
Mike Smith (The Standard): Militarising the Pacific

ECONOMY, EMPLOYMENT AND MIGRATION
Damien Grant (Stuff): We’re following in Sri Lanka’s footsteps
Brooke van Velden (Herald): We need to stop the Kiwi brain drain
Mike Munro (Herald): The workers are heading our way (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT AND ELECTIONS
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Could we take the politics out of politics, and hand it back to the people?
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): 2023 Election: Who will NZ fear most? A National/ACT Government or a Labour/Green/Māori Party Government?
Phil Smith (RNZ): Parliament’s cooperative team captains
Steve Braunias (Herald): The secret diary of David Seymour (paywalled)

NATIONAL PARTY
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Christopher Luxon’s support fell amid US abortion debate, poll suggests
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): Christopher Luxon’s wrong call – putting NZ business down (paywalled)
Richard Harman: Willis begins to redefine National (paywalled)
Andrew Gunn (Stuff): Explaining is losing with Christopher Luxon
Hayden Munro (Herald): Christopher Luxon’s foot in mouth business faux pas (paywalled)

GOVERNMENT
Rachel Smalley (Today FM): Now is the time for true leadership Prime Minister
Max Rashbrooke (Stuff): Here’s how Labour could outflank Luxon on tax
Steve Braunias (Herald): The rise of anti-Jacinda Ardern ferals, fake news and its advocates (paywalled)
1News: Mahuta hits back at ‘toxic trolling’ after nepotism accusations

LEO MOLLOY CAMPAIGN FOR AUCKLAND MAYORALTY
Jack Tame (Herald): Leo Molloy v Guy Williams backlash – TV interview was comedy but showed Auckland mayoral candidate as he is
Neil Reid (Herald): Rival Wayne Brown calls on Leo Molloy to stand aside from Auckland mayoral race over TV appearance
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Jack Tame vs Leo Molloy vs Guy Williams vs Woke Twitter
Madeleine Chapman (Spinoff): What was Guy Williams trying to do?

LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND ELECTIONS
Simon Wilson (Herald): Auckland mayoralty: Is it the Efeso Collins and Leo Molloy show – or still too early to say (paywalled)
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Latest Auckland mayoralty poll: Winners, losers & predictions
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk): Councils are notoriously stupid and unaccountable
Brent Edwards (NBR): Bigger not necessarily better for local government (paywalled)
Tamati Tiananga (Māori TV): Mahuta says vote to change entrenched racism
Anthony Doesburg (Newsroom): Sage advice for Dunedin’s Green mayor
Erin Gourley (Stuff): Council candidates warned Wellington may need to sell commercial assets
Stephen Ward (Stuff): How to get the ‘local voice’? Community committee trial recommended for Hamilton
Bill Hickman (Stuff): Wellington mayor Andy Foster shares hope for ‘transformation’ of the capital
Stephen Ward (Stuff): Hamilton faces ‘staggering’ array of issues in an ‘extraordinary’ time, CEO warns
Mike Mather (Stuff): Signs of a testy campaign? Hamilton City Council candidates ‘jumping the gun’ on election hoardings
Megan Woods (Herald): Christchurch is already a super city – does it need to become a ‘Super-City’? (paywalled)

CHRISTCHURCH STADIUM
RNZ: Questions raised on who will fund new Te Kaha stadium in Christchurch
Anna Leask (Herald): Christchurch stadium decision – council votes 13-3 in favour of new arena
Steven Walton and Amber Allott (Stuff): ‘Absolutely stoked’: Christchurch to spend $683 million on stadium, following 13-3 vote
Hamish Clark (Herald): Party time in Christchurch – Thank goodness the Stadium will be built (paywalled)
David Williams (Newsroom): Is the new stadium Christchurch’s monorail?
David Williams (Newsroom): In defence of Christchurch’s dissenting three
John Minto (Daily Blog): “Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor”

EDUCATION
Janet Wilson (Stuff): Polytech merger’s ills a harbinger for Government’s other reforms
David Farrar: The mega polytech mega meltdown
Dubby Henry (Herald): Poverty, family background don’t explain Māori suspension, expulsion rates – study (paywalled)

SUPERMARKET REGULATION
Sarah Robson (RNZ): Shopping for change: Busting the supermarket duopoly
Gerhard Uys (Stuff): Supermarket code ‘will not be a silver bullet for vegetable growers’
Martyn Bradbury (Waatea News): Supermarket Duopoly whitewash a missed opportunity for Co-governance
John Anthony (Stuff): Supermarket price promotions a direct response to falling public trust, experts say

MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION
Nicky Hager (Newsroom): Investigative journalism in times of trouble
Duncan Greive (Spinoff): How social media abandoned news – and newsletters became existentially important to The Spinoff
Tim Murphy (Newsroom): Today FM hopes for audiences tomorrow
Herald: Newstalk ZB claims top radio ratings spot for 14th year running
Chris Schulz (Spinoff): Too many jobs, not enough reporters: ‘It is a very good time to be a journalist’
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): The future for Morning Report, without Susie Ferguson
David Skipwith (Stuff): Susie Ferguson will leave Morning Report for new role as senior RNZ presenter and journalist
Colin Peacock (RNZ): The worst of times?
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): NZ on Air just gave Spinoff $160 000 to cover the local elections

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT
Hamish Cardwell (RNZ): Climate change poll: Tolerance dropping for those who build in harm’s way
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): Sticks, not carrots, to cut farm emissions – Climate Commission
Alex Zhou (Stuff): Why housing is the elephant-sized hole in our climate plan
Katarina Williams (Stuff): Public overwhelmingly expects more extreme flooding events, more often, poll shows

TRANSPORT
Justin Wong (Stuff): Porirua, Kāpiti Coast councils support making public transport free
Bernard Orsman (Herald): Auditor-General says it will cost $5.5 billion to enable Auckland’s City Rail Link to open (paywalled)
Andrew Barnes (Herald): A message to Auckland Transport: On your bike — or bus or feet (paywalled)

JUSTICE, LAW AND ORDER
Sophie Cornish (Stuff): Police to spend $2 million over two years to investigate bias and racism
Deena Coster (Stuff): Police, iwi Māori justice initiative fueled by a drive to ‘decriminalise’
Deena Coster (Stuff): Let’s tip the justice scales in favour of people

THREE WATERS
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Three waters IT system project could top $500m, warns National
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Labour asks supporters to back Three Waters in Parliament
Sheryl Mai (Herald): Decision does not compromise our stand on Three Waters reform
Dave Armstrong (Stuff): Fluoride foul-up makes 3 Waters more attractive
Toni McDonald (ODT): Council clear Three Waters process flawed
Georgina Campbell (Herald): Regulator didn’t raise concerns over Wellington fluoride failure

ABORTION
Graham Adams (The Platform): The great abortion beat-up
Caroline Williams (Stuff): Hundreds rally for abortion rights in Auckland after Roe v Wade overturned
Arena Williams; Stuart Smith (Stuff): How easily could the right for an abortion be removed in New Zealand?
Deborah Coddington (Stuff): Abortion is not compulsory, opponents turn a blind eye to facts
Karl du Fresne: Abortion in New Zealand: the statistics

RODEOS
Lynn Charlton (Spinoff): What’s wrong with rodeos?
Virginia Fallon (Stuff): Rodeo is blatant animal abuse and New Zealand must ban it
Newstalk: To rodeo or not to rodeo: Are the rodeo animals safe?
Kate Nicol-Williams (1News): Rodeo legal challenge heard in High Court
Hazel Osborne (Herald): Legality of rodeo challenged in the High Court at Wellington

Some of these “predators of press freedom” have been operating for more than two decades while others have just joined the blacklist, which for the first time includes two women and a European predator.

Nearly half (17) of the predators are making their first appearance on the 2021 list, which RSF is publishing five years after the last one, from 2016.

All are heads of state or government who trample on press freedom by creating a censorship apparatus, jailing journalists arbitrarily or inciting violence against them, when they do not have blood on their hands because they have directly or indirectly pushed for journalists to be murdered.

Nineteen of these predators rule countries that are coloured red on the RSF’s press freedom map, meaning their situation is classified as “bad” for journalism, and 16 rule countries coloured black, meaning the situation is “very bad.”

The average age of the predators is 66. More than a third (13) of these tyrants come from the Asia-Pacific region.

“There are now 37 leaders from around the world in RSF’s predators of press freedom gallery and no one could say this list is exhaustive,” said RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire.

“Each of these predators has their own style. Some impose a reign of terror by issuing irrational and paranoid orders.

Others adopt a carefully constructed strategy based on draconian laws.

A major challenge now is for these predators to pay the highest possible price for their oppressive behaviour. We must not let their methods become the new normal.”

New entrants
The most notable of the list’s new entrants is undoubtedly Saudi Arabia’s 35-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is the centre of all power in his hands and heads a monarchy that tolerates no press freedom.

His repressive methods include spying and threats that have  sometimes led to abduction, torture and other unthinkable acts. Jamal Khashoggi’s horrific murder exposed a predatory method that is simply barbaric.

The new entrants also include predators of a very different nature such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose aggressive and crude rhetoric about the media has reached new heights since the start of the pandemic, and a European prime minister, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the self-proclaimed champion of “illiberal democracy” who has steadily and effectively undermined media pluralism and independence since being returned to power in 2010.

Women predators
The first two women predators are both from Asia. One is Carrie Lam, who heads a government that was still democratic when she took over.

The chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region since 2017, Lam has proved to be the puppet of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and now openly supports his predatory policies towards the media.

They led to the closure of Hong Kong’s leading independent newspaper, Apple Daily, on June 24 and the jailing of its founder, Jimmy Lai, a 2020 RSF Press Freedom laureate.

The other woman predator is Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister since 2009 and the daughter of the country’s independence hero. Her predatory exploits include the adoption of a digital security law in 2018 that has led to more than 70 journalists and bloggers being prosecuted.

Historic predators
Some of the predators have been on this list since RSF began compiling it 20 years ago. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, were on the very first list, as were two leaders from the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko, whose recent predatory inventiveness has won him even more notoriety.

In all, seven of the 37 leaders on the latest list have retained their places since the first list  RSF published in 2001.

Three of the historic predators are from Africa, the region where they reign longest. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 79, has been Equatorial Guinea’s president since 1979, while Isaias Afwerki, whose country is ranked last in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, has been Eritrea’s president since 1993.

Paul Kagame, who was appointed Rwanda’s vice-president in 1994 before taking over as president in 2000, will be able to continue ruling until 2034.

For each of the predators, RSF has compiled a file identifying their “predatory method,” how they censor and persecute journalists, and their “favourite targets” –- the kinds of journalists and media outlets they go after.

The file also includes quotations from speeches or interviews in which they “justify” their predatory behaviour, and their country’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index.

RSF published a list of Digital Press Freedom Predators in 2020 and plans to publish a list of non-state predators before the end of 2021.

Asia Pacific Report and Pacific Media Watch collaborate with the Paris-based RSF.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The local West Papua action group in Dunedin has met Taieri MP Ingrid Leary and raised human rights and militarisation issues that members believe the New Zealand government should be pursuing with Indonesia.

Leary has a strong track record on Pacific human rights issues having worked in Fiji as a television journalist and educator and as a NZ regional director of the British Council with a mandate for Pacific cultural projects.

She is also sits on the parliamentary select committees for Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, and Finance and Expenditure.

Leary met local coordinator Barbara Frame, retired Methodist pastor Ken Russell, and two doctoral candidates on West Papua research projects at Otago University’s National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPCS), Ashley McMillan and Jeremy Simons, at her South Dunedin electorate office on Friday.

She also met Dr David Robie, publisher and editor of Asia Pacific Report that covers West Papuan issues, and Del Abcede of the Auckland-based Asia-Pacific Human Rights Coalition (APHRC).

New Zealand’s defence relationship with Indonesia was critiqued in an article for RNZ National at the weekend by Maire Leadbeater, author of See No Evil: New Zealand’s Betrayal of the People of West Papua.

‘Human rights illusion’
“The recent exposure of New Zealand’s military exports to Saudi Arabia and other countries with terrible human rights records is very important,” Leadbeater wrote.

“The illusion of New Zealand as a human rights upholder has been shattered, and we have work ahead to ensure that we can restore not only our reputation but the reality on which it is based.”

She cited Official Information Act documentation which demonstrated that since 2008 New Zealand had exported military aircraft parts to the Indonesian Air Force.

“In most years, including 2020, these parts are listed as ‘P3 Orion, C130 Hercules & CASA Military Aircraft:Engines, Propellers & Components including Casa Hubs and Actuators’, she wrote.

The documentation also showed that New Zealand exported other ‘strategic goods’ to Indonesia, including so-called small arms including rifles and pistols.

“New Zealand’s human rights advocacy for West Papua is decidedly low-key, despite claims by some academics that Indonesia is responsible for the alleged crime of genocide against the indigenous people,” Leadbeater wrote.

“Pursuing lucrative arms exports, and training of human rights violators, undermines any message our government sends. As more is known about this complicity the challenge to the government’s Indonesia-first setting must grow.”

Massive militarisation
Asia Pacific Report last month published an article by Suara Papua’s Arnold Belau which revealed that the Indonesian state had sent 21,369 troops to the “land of Papua” in the past three years.

Jakarta sends 21,000 troops to Papua over last three years, says KNPB

This figure demonstrating massive militarisation of Papua did not include Kopassus (special forces), reinforcements and a number of other regional units or the Polri (Indonesian police).

Victor Yeimo, international spokesperson for the West Papua National Committee (KNPB), was cited as saying that Papua was now a “military operation zone”.

“This meant [that] Papua had truly become a protectorate where life and death was controlled by military force,” Belau wrote.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Tensions are running high in the Middle East in the waning days of the Trump administration.

Over the weekend, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed Israeli agents were planning to attack US forces in Iraq to provide US President Donald Trump with a pretext for striking Iran.

New intelligence from Iraq indicate that Israeli agent-provocateurs are plotting attacks against Americans—putting an outgoing Trump in a bind with a fake casus belli.

Be careful of a trap, @realDonaldTrump. Any fireworks will backfire badly, particularly against your same BFFs.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) January 2, 2021

Just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the US assassination of Iran’s charismatic General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards also warned his country would respond forcefully to any provocations.

Today, we have no problem, concern or apprehension toward encountering any powers. We will give our final words to our enemies on the battlefield.

Israeli military leaders are likewise preparing for potential Iranian retaliation over the November assassination of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Dr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — an act Tehran blames on the Jewish state.

Both the US and Israel have reportedly deployed submarines to the Persian Gulf in recent days, while the US has flown nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to the region in a show of force.

And in another worrying sign, the acting US Defence Secretary, Christopher Miller, announced over the weekend the US would not withdraw the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its strike group from the Middle East — a swift reversal from the Pentagon’s earlier decision to send the ship home.

Israel’s priorities under a new US administration
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like nothing more than action by Iran that would draw in US forces before Trump leaves office this month and President-elect Joe Biden takes over. It would not only give him the opportunity to become a tough wartime leader, but also help to distract the media from his corruption charges.

Any American military response against Iran would also make it much more difficult for Biden to establish a working relationship with Iran and potentially resurrect the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

It’s likely in any case the Biden administration will have less interest in getting much involved in the Middle East — this is not high on the list of priorities for the incoming administration.

However, a restoration of the Iranian nuclear agreement in return for the lifting of US sanctions would be welcomed by Washington’s European allies.

This suggests Israel could be left to run its own agenda in the Middle East during the Biden administration.

Israel sees Iran as its major ongoing security threat because of its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

One of Israel’s key strategic policies is also to prevent Iran from ever becoming a nuclear weapon state. Israel is the only nuclear weapon power in the Middle East and is determined to keep it that way.

While Iran claims its nuclear programme is only intended for peaceful purposes, Tehran probably believes realistically (like North Korea) that its national security can only be safeguarded by possession of a nuclear weapon.

In recent days, Tehran announced it would begin enriching uranium to 20 percent as quickly as possible, exceeding the limits agreed to in the 2015 nuclear deal.

This is a significant step and could prompt an Israeli strike on Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear facility. Jerusalem contemplated doing so nearly a decade ago when Iran previously began enriching uranium to 20 percent.

How the Iran nuclear deal fell apart
Iran’s nuclear programme began in the 1950s, ironically with US assistance as part of the “Atoms for Peace” programme. Western cooperation continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution toppled the pro-Western shah of Iran. International nuclear cooperation with Iran was then suspended, but the Iranian programme resumed in the 1980s.

After years of negotiations, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in 2015 by Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany (known as the P5+1), together with the European Union.

The JCPOA tightly restricted Iran’s nuclear activities in return for the lifting of sanctions. However, this breakthrough soon fell apart with Trump’s election.

In April 2018, Netanyahu revealed Iranian nuclear programme documents obtained by Mossad, claiming Iran had been maintaining a covert weapons program. The following month, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the JCPOA and a re-imposition of American sanctions.

Iran initially said it would continue to abide by the nuclear deal, but after the Soleimani assassination last January, Tehran abandoned its commitments, including any restrictions on uranium enrichment.

Israel’s history of preventive strikes
Israel, meanwhile, has long sought to disrupt its adversaries’ nuclear programs through its “preventative strike” policy, also known as the “Begin Doctrine”.

In 1981, Israeli aircraft struck and destroyed Iraq’s atomic reactor at Osirak, believing it was being constructed for nuclear weapons purposes. And in 2007, Israeli aircraft struck the al-Kibar nuclear facility in Syria for the same reason.

Starting in 2007, Mossad also apparently conducted an assassination program to impede Iranian nuclear research. Between January 2010 and January 2012, Mossad is believed to have organised the assassinations of four nuclear scientists in Iran. Another scientist was wounded in an attempted killing.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the killings.

Iran is suspected to have responded to the assassinations with an unsuccessful bomb attack against Israeli diplomats in Bangkok in February 2012. The three Iranians convicted for that attack were the ones recently exchanged for the release of Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert from an Iranian prison.

The Mossad assassination programme was reportedly suspended under pressure from the Obama administration to facilitate the Iran nuclear deal. But there seems little doubt the assassination of Fakhrizadeh was organised by Mossad as part of its ongoing efforts to undermine the Iranian nuclear programme.

Fakhrizadeh is believed to have been the driving force behind covert elements of Iran’s nuclear programme for many decades.

The timing of his killing was perfect from an Israeli perspective. It put the Iranian regime under domestic pressure to retaliate. If it did, however, it risked a military strike by the truculent outgoing Trump administration.

It’s fortunate Moore-Gilbert was whisked out of Iran just before the killing, as there is little likelihood Iran would have released a prisoner accused of spying for Israel (even if such charges were baseless) after such a blatant assassination had taken place in Iran.

What’s likely to happen next?
Where does all this leave us now? Much will depend on Iran’s response to what it sees (with some justification) as Israeli and US provocation.

The best outcome would be for no obvious Iranian retaliation or military action despite strong domestic pressure for the leadership to act forcefully. This would leave the door open for Biden to resume the nuclear deal, with US sanctions lifted under strict safeguards to ensure Iran is not able to maintain a covert weapons program.

By Dr Clive Williams, Campus visitor, ANU Centre for Military and Security Law, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Iran attracts an onslaught of negative media in New Zealand and Western media. But is it fair or deserved? David Robie has spent several weeks travelling in the country on sabbatical and finds the media negativity far from the reality of the “most friendly” country he has ever visited in the first of a three-part series.

The headlines were chilling as we flew into Turkey and then Iran. “All out war”, trumpeted The New Zealand Herald, as being an imminent response to last month’s surprise drone attack knocking out almost 50 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil production, blaming the attack on the Islamic Republic without convincing evidence.

President Donald Trump warned that the US was “locked and loaded” if Iran was found to be behind the attacks, and then later apparently backed off and relied on even heavier sanctions.

The next day the Herald belatedly ran the other side of the story, quoting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s response denying the allegations and warning that Iran would defend itself in the case of a US-Saudi attack while offering the “hand of friendship and brotherhood” for overseeing security in the Persian Gulf.

WATCH: Rouhani – US sanctions have failed

President Hassan Rouhani says US sanctions have failed to bring Iran’s economy to its knees. Al Jazeera video

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, in a press conference on Monday, has said US sanctions have failed to bring Iran’s economy to its knees.

Houthi forces in neighbouring Yemen, invaded by a Saudi-led coalition in 2015 that led to widely condemned four-year civil war, claimed to have carried out the drone and rocket attack on the two oil installations at Abaiq and Khurais.

Given the rising geopolitical tensions, as I was about to visit the country for several weeks as a visitor on sabbatical, I was keen to see the realities on the ground in Iran behind the sabre-rattling.

Hadn’t we seen this sort of situation before, attempts at regime change by Washington on the flimsiest of evidence? The unjustified invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, based on the fictitious claims of Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. And look at the chaos and destruction of a nation that resulted from that overwhelming military attack.

Vietnam pretext
And then there was the 1964 manufactured Bay of Tonkin incident that was used as a pretext for US escalation of the war on North Vietnam. What a disaster with the eventual humiliating airlift withdrawal of US combat troops in 1975.

Just a few weeks before the Saudi oil installations attack, Al Jazeera UpFront interviewer and columnist Mehdi Hasan wrote in The Intercept in response to a Washington assessment blaming Iran for an earlier attack on two Saudi oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz:

“Why would you trust the word of a single official on such a sensitive and contentious issue? And why, oh why, would you rely on the testimony of a member of the Trump administration, known globally, of course, for its stringent and unbending adherence to the truth?”

Hasan added this qualification:

“If you’re going to trust the word of a single anonymous official, in this administration of fanatical hawks and shameless dissemblers, why not trust this particular official who was quoted in The New York Times?

One American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential internal planning, said the new intelligence of an increased Iranian threat was “small stuff” and did not merit the military planning being driven by Mr Bolton [then still National Security Adviser before being sacked by Trump]. The official also said the ultimate goal of the year-long economic sanctions campaign by the Trump administration was to draw Iran into an armed conflict with the United States.

Hasan added a rather stinging rebuke about the performance of Western journalists generally.

Lessons for journalists

“Plenty of journalists say they want to learn the lessons of Iraq. But the sad reality is that many of my colleagues in the media are, wittingly or unwittingly, becoming complicit in this administration’s cynical and dangerous attempt ‘to draw Iran into an armed conflict with the United States’.”

Confronted with the tensions and about to arrive in Iran for my first visit – and hopefully not last to this fascinating, friendly and vibrant country with a proud history of ancient civilisations – I consulted our MFAT’s “Travel Safe” website.

Sadly, our government’s advice to travellers is just as flawed as media reports.

Under a large red exclamation icon, the site warns “do not travel within 100km of the border with Afghanistan, within 10km of the Iraqi border or east of the line running from Bam to Jask close to the Pakistan border due to the threat of terrorism and violent crime”.

I won’t quibble about the Iraqi or Pakistan borders – as I did not personally visit those areas, but I suspect the warning is exaggerated, especially when you consider that some two million pilgrims have just been crossing the border into Iraq peacefully, as usual, for the annual Arba’een pilgrimage to Karbala.

However, the Afghan border warning is way off the mark. I have just come back from a week-long visit to Mashhad, Iran’s second city – a beautiful and peaceful metropolis that hosts the world’s third-largest mosque, the Haram-e Razavi shrine. This is only a three-hour drive from the border.

For the next section, “Exercise increased caution”, the NZ government advisory warns: “Elsewhere in Iran exercise increased caution due to the potential for civil unrest and the regional threat of terrorism”.

Laughable advisory
Frankly, this is laughable when you consider what New Zealand suffered on March 15 with a terrorist gunman killing a total of 51 peaceful worshippers at two Christchurch mosques being a far worse attack that either of the Iranian incidents mentioned on Travel Safe – in Ahvaz on 22 September 2018 and the capital Tehran on 7 June 2017.

This does not mean no caution is needed given that the repressive rule under the Shah deposed in 1979 has been continued by the revolutionary regime. But for travellers like us, Iran is an astoundingly friendly country that welcomes tourists with genuine enthusiasm and with few overt signs of the restrictions that rile many (such as the hijab rules that have led to widespread White Wednesday protests and agitation over the tragic death of the so-called “Blue Girl” football stadium protester that gained an interim victory last week).

On September 2, 29-year-old Sahar Khodayari, set herself on fire in front of the Tehran revolutionary courthouse after learning she could face a prison sentence for up to two years following her protest attempt to enter the capital’s Azadi Stadium dressed as a boy.

She was dubbed the Blue Girl because this was the colour of her favourite team, Esteghial FC.

Although attendance by women at football matches has been banned since 1981, sometimes exceptions have been made for matches played by the national Iranian team and some women have posed as men to attend.

After Khodayari’s tragic self-immolation, a ban on women at Azadi Stadium was lifted, but it is unclear whether this is permanent or applies elsewhere in the country.

The White Wednesdays campaign was launched by US-based Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad to oppose compulsory hijab wearing.

No hijab photos
The campaign persuades women to post photos or videos of themselves without headscarves and the journalist publishes them on her social media sites. News reports have cited authorities as saying protesters face up to 10 years, but scores of women have protested anyway.

In recent weeks, the detention of two Australian social media “influencers” for allegedly taking photographs with a drone without a permit – and now set free – and the arrest of a British-Iranian social anthropologist without charge have also contributed to negative headlines. (Another dual citizen academic has been detained since 2016).

No Family Visits or Lawyer Allowed for Detained Anthropologist Kameel Ahmady Two Weeks Into Detention

“We reject these authoritarian rules and I would say 90 percent of Iranians don’t accept them. But we Iranians have become very good at pretending, we are very adaptable people,” says an Esfahan manufacturer, who spent time in New Zealand as a student.

Another Iranian, from Mashhad, who also studied in New Zealand, says, “Our future has been destroyed. For young people like us, we have limited choices.”

However, the country has far more nuanced realities than Western media generally give credit. Back to columnist Mehdi Hasan – what is his advice for journalists in order to provide a more balanced account of the country?

He has four suggestions: “stop the stenography”; get the facts straight; context, context, context; and get better sources.

Under his stenography heading, he condemns “passing along the claims of US officials to readers of viewers, without checking whether they are true or not”.

Getting facts right
Getting facts right – “Iran does not have nuclear weapons. Iran does not have a nuclear weapons programme. Iran has complied with the terms of the nuclear deal.”

It is the US that scuttled the nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – last year while Europe and the UN were satisfied it was working. Trump imposed the punitive sanctions that have rightly been branded by both Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif as “economic terrorism”, especially Washington’s efforts to cut off Iranian revenue from the sale of its oil (a policy currently being defiantly thwarted by China).

Clearly this blunt “maximum pressure” attempt at “regime change” has failed and now the US policy has been exposed as “maximum deceit”, according to the Iranian leadership.

Hasan says journalists ought to provide context by reporting more historical background to the issues. For example, how often do stories report that the US “Eisenhower administration toppled the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Dr Mohammad Mossadegh in a CIA coup in 1953?” He had nationalised the British-owned Anglo-Iranian oil company (later rebranded as British Petroleum).

“Or that the Carter administration offered safe haven to the repressive dictator, the Shah of Iran, after he fled from the Iranian Revolution in 1979?”

And the Reagan administration encouraged Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to launch a surprise invasion of Iran in 1981, a bitter protracted war that lasted eight years with unprepared Iranian conscripts – young and old – suffering most of the estimated one million casualties.

Hasan also urges the use of better sources. Do not simply rely on administration officials, whether in Washington or Wellington. Look to a wider range of sceptical voices and analysts. And Al Jazeera, Turkey’s TRT News and Iran’s Press TV channels are good for more balanced and background perspectives.

Among academics I have talked to, media management social scientist Professor Reza Ebrahimzadeh of the Islamic Azad University at Esfahan, argues that foreign news organisations need to do a far better job in providing “context and history” about Iran to promote global understanding.

More journalists from New Zealand need to go to Iran to see for themselves.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Dian Septiari in Jakarta

The Migrant CARE advocacy group has called on Indonesia’s Manpower Ministry to cancel a recent agreement with Saudi Arabia to send Indonesian migrant workers to the kingdom in limited numbers, following the execution of Indonesian worker Tuti Tursilawati on Monday.

Migrant CARE executive director Wahyu Susilo strongly condemned the execution of Tuti by Saudi authorities and urged President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to take significant diplomatic measures in protest against Riyadh, such as scrapping a pilot project to send a limited number of migrant workers to Saudi Arabia.

“President Jokowi must cancel the agreement between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia on the One Channel System [because the execution is] proof that Saudi Arabia does not fulfill the terms and conditions pertaining to the protection of the rights of migrant domestic workers,” Wahyu said in a statement.

READ MORE: The Saudi state-sponsored murder of Khashoggi updates

The assured protection of migrant workers’ rights was an explicit requirement in documents signed by Manpower Minister Hanif Dhakiri and his Saudi counterpart Ahmed Sulaiman Al Rajhi on October 11, the rights activist said.

The One Channel System was a scheme agreed upon by the labour ministers that would allow Indonesia to send a certain number of workers to the Middle Eastern kingdom, bypassing a 2015 moratorium.

-Partners-

Tuti was sentenced to death in 2011 for beating her employer to death with a stick in self-defence against attempted rape.

She ran away but was raped instead by nine Saudi men before the police brought her into custody, tribunnews.com reported.

She was executed on Monday without prior notification to her family and Indonesian officials.

During a recent joint commission meeting between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi requested the cooperation of Riyadh to provide consular notifications in accordance with the 1963 Vienna Convention on consular relations.

President Jokowi also asked Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al Jubeir for assurances that Indonesian migrant workers’ rights be protected.

“Jokowi must be truly serious in responding to a situation like this. When he met with the Saudi foreign minister, the President asked Saudi Arabia to provide protection for Indonesian migrant workers and work to resolve the [murder of journalist Jamal] Khashoggi in earnest,” Wahyu said.

“It turns out the request was simply ignored.”

Dian Septiari is a Jakarta Post journalist.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

A pair of Indonesian Islamic universities are pushing female students to ditch niqab face veils – with one threatening expulsion for non-compliance – as concerns grow over rising fundamentalism in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, reports Rappler Indonesia.

Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University said it had issued the edict this week to more than three dozen niqab-wearing students, who will be expelled from school if they refuse.

Although niqabs are common in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf states, they are rare in secular Indonesia, where around 90 percent of its 260 million people have traditionally followed a moderate form of Islam.

For many Indonesians, the niqab – a full veil with a small slit for the eyes – is an unwelcome Arab export and some associate it with radical Islam, which the country has wrestled with for years, reported Rappler.

“We are a state university… we’ve been told to spread moderate Islam,” the school’s chancellor Yudian Wahyudi told a press briefing this week.

The school, based in Indonesia’s cultural capital Yogyakarta, has some 10,000 students.

Another Yogyakarta-based institution, Ahmad Dahlan University, has also introduced a new prohibition on the niqab out of fears it might stir up religious radicalism, which has seen a resurgence on many of the nation’s university campuses.

No penalty
There would be no penalty for those who refused, it added.

“But during exams, they cannot wear it because officials have to match the photos on their exam ID with them, which is hard if one is wearing the niqab,” said university chancellor Kasiyarno, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

Indonesia’s reputation as a bastion of progressiveness and religious tolerance has recently been tested by a government push to outlaw gay and pre-marital sex, Rappler reported.

The conservative lurch comes as once-fringe Islamic political parties move into the mainstream.

The niqab has been at the centre of a heated global debate over religious freedom and women’s rights, with France the first European country to ban it in public spaces.

Backers of the schools’ new rules said wearing a niqab is not a religious obligation.

“Education should be about dialogue – open and progressive – and if you wear a niqab it interferes in that dialogue and the teaching-learning process,” said Zuhairi Misrawi, head of the Jakarta-based Muslim Moderate Society.

But others saw the anti-niqab appeal as trampling on individual rights.

It’s “a matter of personal preference and the university has to respect that”, said Fadlun Amin, a spokesman for the local chapter of the Forum Ukhuwah Islamiyah, part of top clerical body the Indonesian Ulema Council.

Several Indonesian universities have issued niqab bans in the past.

Last year, a private Islamic high school in Java was reprimanded by local officials after images went viral online that showed a classroom of sitting female students wearing niqab, violating a national regulation on acceptable school uniforms.

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Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz