For most of the past week, any consumer of this country’s management of covid-19 would think New Zealand was actually Brazil, or Texas.

The media language has been full of claims of “botches” at the border, and laxness and inexcusable errors that amounted to a “national disgrace.”

Amid all this talk of “fiascos” and ”chaos”, anyone could be forgiven for failing to grasp that as yet, not a single person has become ill, let alone died as a result of these allegedly calamitous lapses in border security and quarantine testing. For weeks, no community transmission of the virus has occurred, anywhere, in New Zealand.

READ MORE: Two new coronavirus cases in NZ, taking active total to 22 – no community spread

This discrepancy is puzzling. Normally, the New Zealand media is proud to inform us if a Kiwi wins an OK dinghy contest in Scandinavia, or creates something that goes viral on social media.

Why are we not celebrating the fact that New Zealand is the safest place on the planet to be right now, in the midst of the worst global pandemic in a century? After all, it hasn’t been by accident that this country has become a safe haven in a world of carnage.

It has been the direct result of the actions taken by the same people now being denigrated – ie. everyone from the political leadership to the health and border security staff on the front lines.

It has been their hard work that has delivered this high level of security now being enjoyed by all New Zealanders. Unlike the citizens of other countries, New Zealanders do not feel they are taking a deadly risk every time they go out beyond the front gate. Politically though, that’s always the risk with managing public health – when it goes well, it is as if nothing has happened.

Past mistakes identified, rectified
I’m not suggesting that border lapses should not be reported. Some of the past mistakes – probably born of complacency about our early success – have been identified and rectified. Yet on the current evidence they have been corrected so far, without any serious consequence for anyone.

Again, why has the media – presumably through naivete rather than complicity – been so willing to piggy back on the Opposition attack lines in lieu of doing its own reporting on and evaluation of our response to the pandemic? Sure, good news tends to be boring, but the readiness to blow some of the lapses that have occurred right out of proportion has been inexcusable, and is of advantage to only one side of the political debate.

As things stand, National cannot win the election in September if the response to covid-19 is seen by voters to have been a success. National has a vested interest in diminishing that success.

The media surely, has to retain a healthy scepticism and a semblance of distance from this entirely sectarian political effort – rather than being such an avid accomplice of it.

The claims of laxness at the border are particularly rich coming from a National Party that has been enabled to cry crocodile tears unchallenged in news bulletins about the alleged carelessness and subsequent risk to public health created by how we’ve been treating returnees, and the entry of skilled migrants.

What? From the outset of this pandemic, National has criticised the government for going in hard and early and putting public health goals ahead of economic goals. It has made bogus claims that Australia has suffered lesser economic harm than we have, through being more sensitive to the needs of commerce.

It has also alleged that Australia has achieved better public health outcomes at the same time by doing so. None of this is true.

National alternative not credible
The alternative management approach to covid-19 that National has been promoting has no credibility, yet it has not been held to account on that score.

This is deeply unfortunate in the light of Election 2020. We can safely assume that a National-led government would have followed the example of Australia.

Thank goodness we dodged that bullet. We have 13 active cases, but Australia recorded nearly three times that number of new cases last Wednesday alone, and has 494 active cases in all. On Wednesday the state of Victoria called in the military to help it handle the 141 active cases in Victoria alone.

Comparing New Zealand with the outcomes in Victoria is a useful exercise. Victoria has a population of 6.3 million, half of it concentrated in Melbourne. It has had 1884 cases of covid-19 to date, and in 241 of those cases the infection occurred somewhere else in Australia, but where and how the infection was contracted in those 241 cases is not known. (No-one is calling that failure of tracing a fiasco, or a scandal).

Victoria has community transmission. We do not.

As of Wednesday, the reported transmission rate in Victoria was a frightening 1: 2.5 people.

Meanwhile and on the economic front… Qantas has been described last week as the kangaroo in the coalmine when it comes to the economic impact of the virus on Australia overall. On Wednesday, Qantas sacked 6000 of its staff, and indicated that the airline’s recovery plan might require the standing down of a further 15,000 staff.

Australia doing worse
In sum, and on the evidence, Australia has done no better than us in economic outcomes, is doing worse than us in public health outcomes and is headed in the wrong direction in controlling the disease.

Yet this failed model is what the National Party has been promoting all along, and is what would have adopted had a National government been in power here.

Perhaps the media could begin to raise this credibility problem, now that we’re on the verge of an election campaign where National’s main pitch to voters is that it is a safer pair of hands in a crisis, and is a better manager of the economy. In its dreams.

For the past three decades there is absolutely no evidence that has been the case, beyond its provision of an occasional sugar hit to the economy in the shape of tax cuts and asset part-sales. Sure, you can always keep warm for a while by burning the furniture, but this isn’t a sustainable way of running the economy.

There’s more. The last time around, even the hallowed Key/English administration ignored glaring social problems and serious infrastructural needs, while also hiding its head in the sand about the looming challenges posed by climate change.

Even so, the media has not held National to account for its years of neglect to anything like the same degree, and with nothing like the same accusatory tone we’re seeing today.

IMO, it was the social deficits that the coalition government has had to grapple with that constitute the genuine “National disgrace”.

Gordon Campbell’s article is republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

BACKGROUND: By Lois Griffiths of Scoop Independent News

Once again, a small number of individuals from several countries are trying to break the illegal siege imposed on the people of Gaza by sailing from Europe to Gaza on four small Scandinavian boats: Al Awda (The Return), Freedom, Falestine (Palestine) and Mairead (named for Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire)

But this year? After what’s been happening, the killing and maiming of unarmed marchers – 140 dead since March 30, including children, medics, journalists – by expert IDF snipers?

Why don’t they give up?

Who are the activists, where do they come from and why are they doing this?

READ MORE: Gaza protests – all the latest updates

Uneasy calm in Gaza after Hamas-Israel deal

Two New Zealanders are on board the flotilla. Kiwi-Palestinian Youssef Sammour, an experienced sailor, has been with the flotilla for the entire long journey, beginning at Copenhagen.

He has sent many photos of the friendly welcomings they have received at ports along the way.

Unite Union organiser Mike Treen has joined the flotilla for the last leg, from Sicily to Gaza. Both Kiwis can be followed at the Kia ora Gaza website.

Does New Zealand genuinely have an independent foreign policy?

Challenge to NZ
If so, I challenge the New Zealand government to demand that Israel allow the Freedom Flotilla to enter Gaza.

The flotilla hopes to deliver basic medical supplies – gauzes and sutures – to Gaza where the doctors have been overwhelmed by the number of direct killings and serious woundings from skilled Israeli snipers.

The Freedom Flotilla is on a humanitarian mission. They pose no threat to Israelis.

At least three of the participants are Americans.

One of them, Joe Meadors, is a survivor of the 1967 Israeli deadly attack on the USS Liberty, that killed 34 American servicemen.

President Lyndon Johnson and his Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara, declared that the bombing was an “accident”. They refused to conduct an inquiry but the survivors have never forgotten what they believe really happened.

Meadors is a past president of USS Liberty Veterans Association, founded in 1982. In a Common Dreams interview on July 12, Joe Meadors said,

“This trip is happening right after the protests called the Great March of Return, when so many people in Gaza were killed and wounded because they were demanding the right to return to the villages they were forced to flee in 1948.

“The Great March of Return is part of a 70-year struggle for the Palestinians’ right to live in the ancestral lands their families left behind.”…

“I want to show the people of Gaza that we care, that we are willing to put our lives on the line for them. We are willing to face the risks that they face every day. I hope we make it to Gaza but even if we don’t, our effort will inspire the people there and help bring world attention to their cause.”

Ex-CIA analyst
Elizabeth Murray is a retired CIA analyst. She specialised in Middle Eastern political and media analysis. She is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Writing in Consortium News on May 22, Elizabeth Murray explains:

“I feel proud and privileged to join a group of international passengers aboard the Norwegian ship Al Awda.

“Along our route we hope to raise awareness and educate people about the plight of Palestinians, especially in Gaza, who are denied the basic freedoms and human rights the rest of us take for granted.

“As the Freedom Flotilla embarks on its peace odyssey, it is our hope to bring a light of hope and solidarity to the people of Gaza, who deserve the peaceful, dignified and joyful existence that is their right.”

Ann Wright is a retired US Army colonel and diplomat. She received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone. She is one of three State Department officials who publicly resigned in direct protest against the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

She has been active in Palestinian solidarity since 2009 helping take groups to Gaza. Ann Wright took part in the 2010, 2011, 2015 and 2016 Gaza Flotillas

“As a US citizen, I must challenge my own government’s complicity in the horrific conditions imposed on Palestinians by Israel,” she said.

First Nation activist
One of the Canadians taking part is Ron Rousseau, First Nation activist from Yukon, Canada. Rousseau is president of the Whitehorse Local of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Aboriginal vice president of the Canada Labour Congress.

When interviewed by journalist Dimitri Lascaris, Ron Rousseau said:

“You know, as an Indigenous activist, as you know, it is, we feel that it’s necessary to be defending and making people aware of what’s actually happening inside of Palestine, and the people that live there, and how they are under siege.

“As we look at our history, you know, we were some 200 million in North America. And you know, our people were slaughtered.

“Our people were, had bounties on us, and even up to the point of where they were moved onto reservations where we needed a pass system to leave the reservation, even to go off for medical, you needed to ask permission to leave.

“So we were inside like a landlocked jail as well, up until the ’50s.”

Ron Rousseau explained that he learned about Palestine  through union activities.

“The first article I read was probably 10 years ago. It was a full bulletin put out to all members that went out to every postal worker in Canada, and then I went to an intensive four-week education for unionism, and we spent the whole day talking about Palestine.

“And I was, I was shocked, and I couldn’t take it off my mind, and been following it all the way along and making sure that people understood what was going on with family, friends, and everybody I talked to.”

Israeli participant
At least one Israeli is taking part. Zohar Chamberlain Regev is an Israeli citizen (born and raised in Kibbutz Kfar Hahoresh, near Nazareth) who has lived in Spain for the last 14 years. When asked why she was taking part, she replied,

“As a human being first of all, but also as an Israeli of Jewish origin, I am appalled by what is being done by Israel in Palestine in general and in Gaza in particular. We have always been told ‘how could the world be silent during the Holocaust’, now we know how…we have to stand by our Palestinian sisters and brothers in Gaza to save our own humanity.

“As an amputee, I can only begin to imagine what it is like for people in Gaza who have lost their limbs in the brutal attacks and are still waiting to be fitted with prosthetic limbs, as one of the many consequences of the illegal Israeli blockade.”

Malaysian Dr Fauziah Mohd Hasan is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at a hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She has received international recognition for her medical humanitarian work in many countries including Kosovo, the Moluccas islands, Acheh Indonesia, Afghanistan, Gaza, Syria and Bangladesh.

Before departing to take part in the 2016 Women’s Boat to Gaza, Dr Hasan explained,

“My participation is not in my individual capacity but representing my family, my women folks, my nation and all Muslims and humanity the world over.

“This humanitarian mission involves women only, just to show that there is a united voice in ending the blockade of Gaza, beyond gender, race, religion and geographical boundaries. It is purely a humanitarian mission to ensure freedom is given to all, for as Nelson Mandela once said:

‘We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

“To the people of Gaza, you are always in our prayers.”

Every participant – the Scandinavians, the two MPs, from Spain and Algeria – has a story to tell.

I’ve chosen the ones I thought would be most interesting to New Zealand readers.

Someone should write a book someday, about all the participants in all of the attempts to reach Gaza by sea, since the siege was imposed.

It’s inspiring to learn of humanitarian people from many parts of the world. Some efforts to reach Gaza have been successful.

The late Italian journalist Vittoria Arrigoni was overjoyed when his boat reached Gaza in August 2008 (see Freedom Sailors, edited by Greta Berlin).

History is us

History is not cowardly governments

with their loyalty to whoever has the strongest military

History is made by ordinary people

everyday people, with family at home and a reular job

who are committed to peace as a grat ideal

to the rights of all to staying human.

History is us who risked our lives

to bring utopia within reach

to offer a dream, a hope, to hundreds of thosands of people

Who cried with us as we reached the port of Gaza

Our message of peace is a call to action

for other ordinary people like ourselves

not to hand over your lives

to whatever puppeteer is in charge this time round

But to take responsibility for the revolution

First, the inner revolution

to give love , to give empathy

It is this that will change the world.

We have shown that peace is not an impossible utopia

Or perhaps we shown that sometimes

utopia can be possible

Believe this

Stand firm against intimidation, fear, and despair

And simple remain human.

Lois Griffiths is reporting for Scoop Independent News on the Freedom Flotilla. Other flotilla articles and images are at Kia Ora Gaza. Asia Pacific Report is sharing coverage with Kia Ora Gaza and Scoop.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz