As people celebrate World Press Freedom Day, recognising the right of journalists and media groups to report without censorship, violence or hinderance, I’d like to take the opportunity to point out we have very little to cheer on.

The event was launched by the United Nations in 1993 to highlight the importance of a free and independent media around the world and to raise awareness of the threats facing it. The theme this year is Shaping a Future at Peace, which advocates for a journalism that plays a key role in peace-building.

A conference in Zambia is now being co-hosted by the UN to look at how journalism can achieve this, namely through presenting accurate information and building public trust, by encouraging dialogue instead of conflict and by holding power accountable to prevent instability in the world.

Delegates will look at how journalism intersects with technology, human rights and what it calls ‘global security challenges’.

This theme is timely, for if we look at how mainstream media in the West continues to operate, it is clearly failing to push a preferential option for peace in any meaningful sense.

In particular, it continues to report in a manner that fails to contextualise the imperial conflicts now raging across the world.

This is no more evident than in the way media reports on west Asia, where Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza and continues to ethnically cleanse Lebanese from their land as part of its greater Israel project. This of course is being done with the full support of the collective West, as the US pursues broader geostrategic interests.

It is evident in the way an illegal war of aggression against Iran and its people has been presented. No mainstream media, including our public broadcasters, have used this correct terminology without unneeded attribution, as if ‘aggression’ is merely one claim among many. Our state broadcasters continue to refuse to adjudicate what they call contentious claims, even though the evidence exists, in this case by simply referencing the UN Charter.

The war against Iran constitutes the ‘supreme international crime’, as the Nuremberg Tribunal called it. Acts of piracy targeting oil tankers leaving the Strait of Hormuz are also acts of an illegal war, now threatening to wreck the global economy, a situation that will impact on the most vulnerable in every nation, including our own.

The media is failing to report in a manner that points to an overarching strategy to maintain US imperial hegemony over the planet, as other nations seek to pursue their economic sovereignty in an emerging multipolar world.

This broad omission is a failure to hold power to account, obscuring the nature the so-called ‘rules-based international order’.

Far from our media maintaining institutional distance from this system, it acts as its epistemic tool.

To this end, our news room leaders impose institutional practices that masquerade as standards, as balance and impartiality, but in effect put insidious structural constraints on what reporters can and cannot state in reporting. This is what the Gaza genocide has revealed and what the latest aggression against Iran and Lebanon is teaching us further.

In the years since October 7, one example among many remains with me. In late 2023 our Palestinian brother Tameem Shaltoni was interviewed by Radio New Zealand (RNZ) as part of a podcast on the conflict in Palestine.

After it went on air, Tameem complained that several references to what he called ‘unfolding genocide’ had been removed. When an activist platform reached out directly to the public broadcaster’s head of content Megan Whelan for an explanation, they were told that including the references “would have stolen valuable time”.

Whelan said it would have involved contextualising the claim and explaining to listeners what genocide was.

Over a year later, our broadcaster commissioned a report into its coverage of Gaza. Its author found nothing wrong with RNZ’s coverage, including its use of foreign news copy.

He glibly explained that Western media’s pattern of reporting of Israeli perspectives above those of Palestinians’, was due to Israel’s western ‘alignment’, giving it greater ‘news proximity’ to a New Zealand audience, something editors took into consideration.

The idea that it we are naturally more interested in the lives of European colonial settlers, than the lives of oppressed Palestinians, deeply offends our humanity. It reveals a sickness within our societies that permeates our newsrooms.

In acting in this manner, media do not build public trust, as they justify overlooking the real sources of instability in the world. They have failed to inform the public of genocide and colonial domination in the way that could have created a moral and practical compulsion to hold our politicians to account over foreign policy. It is clear they are not fulfilling the informational needs of democratic citizenship here, or anywhere else in the West.

To make matters worse, they uncritically platform those on thinktanks aligned with Washington, many funded by the military and US agencies.

How is this helping to build peace and stability?

The last time I addressed this rally, I referred to the work of Palestinian Anas al-Sharif, a journalist who was assassinated along with four of his Al Jazeera colleagues last August. Since then, other journalists have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli war criminals, killed because their reporting contradicted and confronted Zionist, US and European propaganda.

Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil was another exemplar of professional truth telling, targeted in a follow-up airstrike in south Lebanon last month as she took shelter alongside colleagues.

Amal was reported to be the ninth journalist killed in Lebanon this year.

These journalists maintained a fidelity to the truth and to the public’s right to know. They therefore knew they risked assassination. In this sense, they enjoyed little media freedom, yet choose to risk everything.

Such steadfastness contrasts sharply with the journalism here in New Zealand, where there are much more protections for journalists.

To coincide with World Press Freedom Day, NGO Reporters without Borders presents indexes each year pointing to far greater press freedoms in western countries, than in the Global South, in places like Iran, Pakistan, or China.

Yet, when we look at the coverage, media in these Global South nations have covered events in west Asia for more accurately, many contextualizing conflicts around the globe based on an implicit structural analysis that correctly puts imperialism at the centre of events.

Any assumption that these stated media ‘freedoms’ automatically bring more accurate and less skewed reporting, is patently false. The situation is much more nuanced. Such narratives rest on the assumptions and prejudices of liberal imperialists who occupy our political and information spaces.

We need to be very careful here, least we fall prey to the old western Orientalism that assures us that we are democratic standard bearers to the rest of the world. Many still labour under a false idea that our liberal democracies are superior to other systems in the world, even as heavily-propagandised countries like Germany, the UK and Australia, become increasingly war-like, repressive and our societies crumble.

The words of US scholar Michael Parenti come to mind. Parenti famously said: “People who think they’re free in this world just haven’t come to the end of their leash yet.”

How many journalists in this country have never seen the end of their leash? I’d argue quite a few and that’s increasingly unacceptable.

The US is preparing a new assault on Iran as it attempts to gather a coalition to help it, including NZ.

Europe’s vassal states continue to push escalation and a direct confrontation with Russia, risking nuclear war, instead of pursuing peace through diplomacy. Our government is supporting it.

The US is devising a naval choke chain across China’s key trade routes to contain its peaceful and legitimate economic growth, pushing militarisation in the Asia-Pacific region hoping to use countries like New Zealand to yank on that choke chain when the time comes.

Japan is being encouraged to remilitarise, a country previously sworn to pacificism after its horrific crimes as part of the axis of fascism.

Reporters should be running furiously with these stories, dragging their complicit news managers behind them on the other end of their leashes.

History will judge them harshly if they don’t in some manner attempt to break through the constraints that exist within their institutional media settings.

They must use language and present stories free of the narrow and distorting lens of our extremist ideologies - of neoliberalism and imperialism.

The fact is New Zealand is falling in line as the US attempts to shore up its hegemony in much more brutal and direct ways.

If journalists do not have the space to frame events in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Europe, as the structural violence of imperial power, there is no authentic press freedom.

It is instead, the freedom to self-censor, the freedom to obscure, the freedom to present false balance, the freedom to decontextualize, the freedom to sit on the fence. Press freedom does not then serve the public interest. It serves interests of a tiny western power elite that cares little for humanity or peace.

The West’s reaction to a joint Israel-US act of aggression against Iran has revealed once again how selectively it treats international law and that its Five Eyes member states are among the most dangerous countries on Earth.

The unprovoked attack on February 28 (NZT) involved hundreds of Tomahawk missiles launched from US warships, while US stealth fighters and drones joined a reported 200 Israeli fighter jets in targeting 500 sites across Iran.

The first day of the obscenely-named Operation Epic Fury killed top Iranian military and political leaders, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as civilians, including 165 girls when their school was bombed in the city of Minab in Hormozgan Province.

Iran’s overwhelming counterattack has included targeting dozens of US bases located in every neighbouring Gulf state, closing the Strait of Hormuz after attacking ships carrying oil, and directing sustained waves of missiles and drones to targets in Israel.

In doing so, Iran is exercising an inherent right to defend itself, as Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told an incredulous ABC news anchor. The right is affirmed by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

The joint Zionist forces had declared the actions “pre-emptive”, claiming Iran was about to launch an attack against Israel, without offering any credible evidence. At the time of the attacks, Iran’s negotiators were engaged in talks with US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Geneva over the future of its nuclear program. The talks, mediated by Oman, had been reported as close to a breakthrough, with assurances over no stockpiling of nuclear materials being given by Iran.

It was the second time such talks were used as cover to attack Iran. In June last year, amid similar diplomatic efforts to resolve tensions over Iran’s nuclear activities, Israel attacked the Islamic Republic. The US ended that so-called Twelve Day War by bombing three nuclear sites in Iran. The Trump administration deemed these destroyed, accounting for why many saw the renewed nuclear concern by the US as part of a pretext for attacking the country. Khamenei had forbid the development of a nuclear weapon on religious grounds for decades.

Five Eyes statements

The most vociferous defenders of the aggression were those states attached to the US-led Five Eyes intelligence network, which is also made up of the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Anglosphere countries cooperate closely on signals intelligence, surveillance and national security.

The countries’ responses to Operation Epic Fury were so similar in language it suggested all were individually crafted from a US boilerplate statement. It points to fact the Five Eyes is not simply a security pact, but an arrangement imposing foreign policy obligations on members states superseding their UN obligations.

All statements backed the aggression, justifying it by claiming Iran was a source of instability and terrorism, that it sought nuclear weapons and that it had killed thousands of its own citizens during protests in January.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on March 1 backed the US-Israel attack and revealed that British military aircraft were assisting with “defensive operations”. The UK is allowing the US to use its bases in Cyprus, giving material support to the war of aggression. The other Five Eyes partners are also suspected of giving military assistance and the extent of any involvement will inevitably become clearer in the weeks and months ahead.

A statement by New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the attack was “designed to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international peace and security”.

“We recognise too the courage of the Iranian people who have taken to the streets in recent weeks to demand change, only to be met by violence and murder,” it said. “The Iranian people must be allowed to determine their future.”

The statement condemned “in the strongest terms Iran’s indiscriminate retaliatory attacks” against Gulf states.

Far from being indiscriminate, Iran’s attacks have been focused on dozens of US bases located in the jurisdictions of the family dictatorships installed by the West. Notable targets hit include the US Fifth Fleet naval base in Bahrain, the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait and the Al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.

Peters, like his other Western counterparts, called for a “resumption of negotiations and adherence to international law” so that Iran returned to “the community of nations”.

The day before Peter’s statement, Australia’s Anthony Albanese released probably the most venal of the statements. Welcoming the attack, he repeated Iranian protest atrocity propaganda, as well as listing unsubstantiated claims made by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) that Iran was behind several attacks on Jewish property in Australia in 2024.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney repeated the same formula of words, calling Iran “the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East”, while also backing “Israel’s right to defend itself”.

Carney was lauded by some for calling out the hypocrisy and neo-colonial nature of the post-war rules-based order at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, where he pointed out politicians had been “living within the lie” because it suited their Western countries. Over the weekend, he found himself within that same lie, stating that his country “stood with the Iranian people” - diplomatic code for backing regime change.

The comments revealed Carney’s insight came without capacity. His statement reeked of hypocrisy - of imperialism thinly packaged in the tatters of Western human rights and universal values he had previously critiqued.

European leaders were less epistemically violent, but just as evasive and disingenuous, with EU bureaucrat Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron keeping their criticism directed against Iran’s defensive military response.

Merz called the counterstrikes “unjust” and “harsh” and said it “was not the time to lecture partners and allies”.

EU chief foreign policy diplomat Kaja Kallas condemned “the Iranian regime’s indiscriminate attacks against its neighbours,” which she said carried “the risk of dragging the region into a broader war”.

In the inverted world of Western leadership, cause and effect no longer hold any meaning in diplomacy, while official propaganda positions are adhered to regardless of how ridiculous these may sound.

They live in a pathological environment where indoctrination through media and academia feeds on fear and orientalist prejudice, affecting the public’s ability to discern truth and meaning.

Much of the Five Eyes statements also relied on such ignorance.

Regime change playbook

For months, Western publics have been fed a simplistic narrative of good versus evil, authoritarianism versus liberal democracy, as Iran faced down violent street protests in January, violence orchestrated by Western intelligence agencies, including Mossad and the CIA.

The evidence for this is already out in the open. US and Israeli officials have admitted Mossad operatives were on the ground during the protests. The head of CIA’s regime change arm, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Damon Wilson, told a Congressional hearing last week (February 24) his organisation had brought hundreds of Starlink units into the country.

The US had for several months exerted maximum pressure to choke off Iranian revenue, plunging the rial into a severe, sustained collapse. The currency crisis led to the protests. Hundreds of police and civilians were killed by suspected agent provocateurs, sparking an Iranian crackdown. The death toll figures remain greatly contested.

The chaos was similar to manufactured protest violence seen in the run-up to the coup attempt on Venezuela’s leader Hugo Chavez in 2002 and the Maidan Square violence that preceded the ousting of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. It is reasonable to presume the orchestrated violence was an attempt to spark civil conflict and soften the country up for regime change.

The US and Israel would have hoped to attack the country while it was in serious internal chaos. However, the Zionist forces underestimated the country’s social cohesion and the state’s ability to resist foreign interference. Iran shut down the internet, while its security forces employed technology to track Starlink units used by suspected foreign intelligence agents.

The US is seeking to install a puppet regime under the “interim” dictatorship of Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah, who resides in Washington, DC. Pahlavi’s father, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, had been installed after a military coup orchestrated by Britain’s MI6 and the CIA in 1953, overthrowing the democratically-elected and secular government of Mohammad Mosaddegh. Under Mosaddegh, the country’s oil industry was nationalised, much to the chagrin of British Petroleum (BP), which took control of the sector after Pahlavi’s instalment.

The Five Eyes statements decontextualised and reframed the situation as simply the unbridled use of violence by an Islamic dictatorship to crush popular dissent. Western media did little to challenge the narrative and everything to amplify it, as indeed have many left-leaning liberal critics of the US-Israeli aggression.

The Islamic Republic’s support for Palestinian liberation and its backing of other anti-imperialist groups in the region, as part of a Shia liberation theology praxis, was likewise reframed as support for terrorism.

Resource wars and Greater Israel

The Five Eyes nations’ backing for the aggression reflects deep entanglement with a US regression to old school colonial conquest and occupation, as outlined by US secretary of state Marco Rubio at Munich Security Conference last month.

To the cheers of European leaders, Rubio lamented the loss of Western empires and urged its allies to unapologetically join it in rebuilding Western dominance.

He said: “We do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization.”

The Five Eyes nations’ statements were certainly not shackled by guilt or shame.

These states have once again categorically rejected genuine multilateralism and international law, as they had throughout the Gaza genocide. The ‘rules-based order’, supposedly based on the United Nations Charter and its institutions, has been exposed time and again as a liberal ideological construct, part of the Western empire’s false self, its pathological lies hiding exploitation, entitlement and an extractive relationship with the rest of the world. They are part of a lawless imperialism now exerting itself more openly across the globe.

The aggression waged against Iran is part of 21st century resource wars, envisaged many decades ago by thinktank hawks and critics alike. Iran also stands in the way of a Greater Israel, an expanded Zionist territory upholding US hegemonic interests in the region, which would involve further displacement, murder and a more decisive lurch towards totalitarianism within the West, as those protesting foreign policy face increasing state repression.

Iran’s fall to US regime change would be a major blow to China, which relies on its oil imports, and neighbouring Russia, another BRICS ally that has also signed multiple co-operation agreements across commerce, science and military spheres in recent years. The development of a peaceful multipolarity itself would suffer a setback.

The war triggered by US-Israeli aggression may now have immediate implications for the West. With the Strait of Hormuz partially blocked, energy prices are expected to rise substantially and with it inflationary pressures. It will intensify the prolonged cost of living crisis that has caused misery to millions across the Western Hemisphere. It will once again underline the contradictions inherent in aligning with a hegemonic power that can only maintain its primacy by perpetuating imperial wars and global instability.

First published by Consortium News

As Ireland’s new President Catherine Connolly settles into office this week, there are clear signs her landslide victory has intensified efforts to undermine the country’s neutrality and neuter its efforts to punish genocidal Israel.

Connolly (68) was elected after winning over 63 percent of the vote in a landslide victory last month, her robust defence of anti-war and anti-genocide positions resonating with the Irish electorate, while causing concern in Western corridors of power.

Former White House national security advisor, Robert C O’Brien, writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, warned the Trump administration would “no longer tolerate countries that reap the benefits of America’s economic strength and military power, while pursuing policies that undermine American interests”.

“Ireland’s President-elect embodies the antagonism towards American interests,” he wrote.

“Ireland is finding its voice in international affairs, but it’s one that seems increasingly hostile to US interests. Ireland is the most antagonistic country to Israel in the Western world… Ireland was one of the first Western democracies to recognise a Palestinian state unilaterally, and it is at the forefront of allegations of “genocide” against Israel. Meanwhile Dublin courts Chinese investment with no mention of Beijing’s human rights record, economic coercion or regional aggression.”

In January, Ireland formally intervened in South Africa’s case brought against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which alleges a breach of the Genocide Convention and has remained out of NATO, refusing to militarise with most of the rest of Europe.

Ireland is indeed facing growing pressure over its refusal to align with the imperial West. Even its civil society bodies are coming under scrutiny from US neo-conservatives.

Republican lawmaker Lindsey Graham over the weekend threatened consequences after the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) voted overwhelmingly for its board to request that UEFA immediately suspend Israel from European competitions.

Members of Irish soccer’s governing body had cited violations by Israel’s Football Association of two UEFA provisions - to implement and enforce an effective anti-racism policy and the playing by Israeli clubs in occupied Palestinian territories without the consent of the Palestinian Football Association.

Graham promised to “make those who participate in this effort to marginalize Israel in sports, and elsewhere, pay a heavy price when it comes to access to the American economy”.

In July, Graham also joined US envoy to Israel Mike Huckabee and other US lawmakers in criticising the Irish government’s plans to ban trade with businesses operating within illegal Israeli settlements.

The Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill 2025 was first tabled in 2018, passed by majority votes in both the Seanad (upper house) and the Dáil (lower house), but had been stalled by successive governments after “veiled threats” of economic consequences by US lawmakers, which have included Irish-Americans like Peter King.

Graham in July said he hoped “Ireland will reconsider their efforts to economically isolate Israel.”

“I do not believe these efforts would be well received in the United States and they certainly would not go unnoticed,” he said on X.

The bill is expected to be watered down by the centre-right Irish coalition government, to head off coercive moves by the US.

Connolly a formidable anti-war voice

What they may not be able to water down is the voice of Connolly. She will be sworn in as the 10^th President of the Irish Republic during a ceremony at Dublin Castle on Tuesday (local time).

She replaces Michael D Higgins, another former Irish Labour Party member, who served two seven-year terms and whose criticism of Israel over the past two years contributed to Israel withdrawing its ambassador in December 2024.

Connolly may prove even more strident in her public foreign policy positions.

In the lead-up to the vote on October 24, she had pointedly criticised NATO “warmongering” and Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as well as voicing support for a border poll over Irish reunification, as outlined the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement that brought an end to decades of political violence in the north of the partitioned island.

She told an often hostile media that Hamas formed “part of the civil society of Palestine” and that only Palestinians should choose who governs them, a rebuff to the Trump administration’s 20-point neo-colonial ‘peace’ plan. Connolly bluntly stated that Israel was an out-of-control state committing a genocide.

When scrutinised over her attitude to the Western proxy war in Ukraine, the former barrister and psychologist said the conflict could only be resolved by diplomacy and that German rearmament reminded her of the military build-up in the 1930s.

Her elevation to Ireland’s constitutional figurehead and its moral voice on the world stage was the result of a disparate opposition’s ability to form a collective voting bloc, possibly learning from previous mistakes.

In June last year, Connolly joined a panel alongside other veteran activists, including former northern civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin Aliskey, in support of Clare Daly’s failed bid to retain her European Parliament seat. The staunch NATO critic lost her seat, disadvantaged by smears carried by media outlets that suggested she was a Russian asset and by several other leftist candidates also standing.

This time, unity among the left saw Ireland’s biggest party Sinn Fein, as well as Labour, People Before Profit and the Social Democrats, getting behind Connolly.

Getting her elected to what is largely a ceremonial role should may prove vitally important as a means of countering pro-war and anti-genocide narratives in the country, which are being pushed heavily by establishment media.

From Threats to Threat Inflation

These narratives are now coming thick and fast.

A report entitled Peak Ireland by security-state aligned London thinktank Policy Exchange, released on October 30, argued Ireland was freeloading “off the security umbrella provided by the US, the UK, and other European states”. But, it said, the country was vulnerable to US tariffs and trade negotiation shifts, as it continued to challenge Washington’s foreign policy settings. Its contents were covered by Ireland’s major news outlets.

Interestingly, O’Brien’s wrote the foreword to the report.

In his Wall Street Journal editorial, O’Brien too criticised Ireland’s “pitiful investment” on defence, which amounted to 0.2 percent of GDP.

“Ireland lacks key technical defences, like radar systems and efficient cyber and human intelligence networks, leaving the country open to espionage and cyberattacks from Russia, China and extremist nonstate actors,” he wrote.

Several media outlets found ways of writing stories around these talking-points, referencing concerns by unnamed Irish and European military and security leaders about the country’s ability to carry out security operations after it takes up the six-month rotational EU Presidency from July next year.

Of specific concern was Ireland’s lack of radar and defence capability when hosting the European Political Community summit next year, usually attended by up to 50 leaders. It was reported that a delegation from an unnamed Baltic country raised concerns about security with Irish officials at a meeting in Dublin last month.

The stories were hinged, or maybe unhinged, on a manufactured fear that Russia is sending drones deep into European airspace to probe nations’ defences as part of a hybrid warfare campaign.

Claims that drones were being launched from tankers used by Russia to transport its oil - its so-called ‘shadow fleet’ - were repeated uncritically. No evidence has been presented for this.

Mystery drones have recently closured Brussels Airport, with similar issues reported in Denmark in September.

The reporting forms a long line of narrative-driven stories seemingly designed to engineer fear and justify a more militarized and NATO-aligned stance by Ireland.

Ironically, Irish Defence Forces gave away its key radar systems used to direct anti-aircraft missiles, known as Giraffe, to Ukraine earlier this year. The Irish Times reported the Government is now purchasing at speed a multi-million Euro counter-drone system.

Neutrality Under Threat

What lies at the centre of these propaganda pieces is a desire to bring Irish politicians and the public to an intellectual position the logic of which would undermine the rationale to retain the country’s neutrality, a position it has maintained since the state was established in 1921.

In widely reported remarks in early November, Ukraine’s first deputy minister for foreign affairs, Sergiy Kyslytsya, said neutrality was “a thing of the past”.

Speaking at the European Commission’s offices in Dublin, he warned Russia could flood a far-off nations with drones or bring its systems down with cyberattacks. He suggested Ireland should follow the path of former neutral countries Finland and Sweden in helping to confront the threat.

Others have been even more forthright, expressing utter contempt for not just neutrality, but Irish sovereignty itself.

A former senior NATO commander, British Rear Admiral Chris Parry, last week told Westminster MPs and House of Lords members in a briefing that any future united Ireland would pose a strategic threat. He said the loss of Northern Ireland would deepen the threat to Britain posed by China and Russia submarines and also recommended NATO hold naval exercises in Irish waters, whether Dublin agreed or not.

In a country like Ireland, with its bitter colonial legacy and where many keenly recognise Western war propaganda, comments from the likes of Parry may put accumulative pressure on the Irish government to compromise on neutrality, but such remarks will also likely antagonise large sections of the Irish public.

Unpicking Triple Lock

Key to dragging Ireland into NATO-captured EU security arrangements is the unpicking of its Triple Lock, designed to keep the nation out of Western imperial interventions.

The Triple Lock means no more than 12 Irish Defence Forces members can be sent on an overseas mission, unless there is a United Nations mandate, approval from the Irish government (Cabinet), and approval from Dáil Éireann (the Irish parliament).

The Irish government therefore cannot move unilaterally, even if it manages to get a majority vote through Parliament and regardless of how much pressure is exerted from the EU and powerful NATO countries to circumvent the UN.

European NATO nations are pushing plans to insert ‘peacekeepers’ into Ukraine, an arrangement Russia has signalled it will likely reject as part of any negotiated peace settlement.

Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Micheál Martin discussed peacekeeping and prospects for a ceasefire with Zelensky by phone in September.

Although the Irish Government has not linked the two issues, it may not be a coincidence that it is bringing forward legislation to ditch the need for a UNSC mandate for peacekeeping missions, making it a Double Lock instead.

Connolly herself could speak out over the issue, putting pressure on the Government to agree to a referendum to change the Triple Lock, something the Government claims is unnecessary, as it supposedly does not compromise neutrality.

Connolly cannot legislate, only exercising discretional powers like the ability to send a bill to the Supreme Court to test its constitutionality. But there is nothing in the Irish Constitution that restricts anything she says in public.

One Irish outlet has reported the Government is planning for a visit from Zelensky, possibly in December. It remains unclear whether Connolly would receive him in the event of any such visit. If she did, there would be a risk for both parties.

A public engagement would invariably be used to put further pressure on Connolly to assume a more NATO-friendly position.

However, Zelensky risks being told some home truths in front of any cameras, primarily that diplomacy is the only way forward and that any other approach, including inflating threats posed by Russia, carries the unacceptable risk of an all-out war between European nations and Russia.

Connolly will likely act as a necessary and principled political bulwark against attempts to further propagandise Irish society and browbeat its population into renouncing its anti-colonial and anti-war instincts, as NATO threatens to consume it.

Australian psychiatrist and author, Dr Niall McLaren, says civil disobedience presents a means of stopping domination hierarchies in society spiralling towards outright fascism.

McLaren believes humans have a natural disposition towards forms of domination and if left unchecked, a political system of ‘narcisso-fascism’ arises.

“We see this playing out in the world every day, but none clearer than in the US, where their president is obsessed to the point of mania with forcing everybody to do as he tells them: ‘Do as we say or we’ll slap tariffs and sanctions on you, we’ll deport you or blow you up’,” McLaren told In Context.

“He doesn’t care how much he damages people or even his own country, as long as he can order people around, he’s happy. As is typical, he constantly tests the limits…

“Similarly, in order to block criticism of the Israeli genocide, the UK government has proscribed a non-violent organisation, Palestine Action. Citizens are outraged and are deliberately flaunting this unjust law to get arrested. However, instead of admitting they made a mistake, the government has intensified its efforts to suppress opposition.

“Civil disobedience is based in the ancient idea known as lex iniusta non est lex - an unjust law is not a law. Any individual law must be consistent with the over-arching principle of universal justice.

“Civil disobedience is the last, inalienable right and duty of citizens to prevent the growth of tyranny.”

Zombie societies marching towards Doomsday

Championing civil disobedience as a means of arresting civilisational collapse and barbarism goes back many decades.

In the 1950s, psychoanalytic theorist and author Erich Fromm argued civil disobedience was a necessary virtue and that our capacity to criticise and disobey may be all that stands between human progress and the end of civilization.

His concept of “bureaucratic Man” describes an alienated conformist who has lost the capacity for critical thought and genuine feeling or conviction, whose behaviours are managed and manipulated by powerful forces of the state propaganda and market advertising.

Fromm argues in part that conscientious acts of civil disobedience challenge the deadening and dehumanising effects of a bureaucratic, consumerist society, having the potential to jolt citizens out of their collective slumber to build a more democratic and humanistic society. He warned that blind obedience to authority, on the other hand, could lead to humanity’s annihilation, with nuclear war posing a particular danger.

That danger is increasing today. NATO is pushing Western nations to militarise their societies, as it plans to confront ‘strategic adversaries’ across what it calls a ‘multi-domain’ environment.

In other words, it is making the social, economic, political, informational and educational realms of society arenas of war, as the Western power bloc attempts to challenge new ‘multipolar’ centres of power now taking shape, which challenging the US-led imperial ‘rules-based’ system.

For anyone who wants to appreciate the unhinged and dangerous nature of this strategic vision, watch informational videos released by NATO itself.

Such a totalising vision of war is beginning to have devastating effects on Western societies, as propaganda, censorship, state surveillance and criminalisation of protests and dissent erodes basic civil liberties.

Annual threat assessment reports from across the Five Eyes partner nations, of Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, make clear domestic spy agency concerns of increasing social unrest among their own populations, as domestic political systems fail to implement policies in their interests of ordinary people.

Massive increases in military spending at the expense of social programs will likely increase such tensions. In the case of countries like the UK and Germany, this militarism poses a threat to the very existence of their welfare states.

Wide-ranging propaganda campaigns are now underway to convince Western publics of the necessity of military spending hikes amounting to 5 percent of GDP of NATO members, grossly inflating threats posed by Russia and China.

Western thinktank papers that have informed US geopolitical policy over decades advocate strategies of containment of rising powers like China and Russia, as their economies grew, alongside a corresponding ability to defy the diktats of Western institutions imposing policies of neo-colonial extraction and under development.

These strategies have led to an escalating proxy war with Russia, genocide in defence of Israel’s apartheid settler colony in West Asia, encirclement of China by NATO-aligned frontline states, and regime-change operations against sovereign nations like Venezuela and Iran.

With the collapse of any semblance of a functioning UN multilateralism and instruments of international law, as well as severe democratic deficits within Western states, acts of civil disobedience by citizens are increasing.

From the student encampments that started across US universities protesting the Israel-US genocide of Palestinians, to the damage of arms manufacturer sites in the UK by the terror-designated group Palestine Action, ordinary people are making their voices heard.

This trend is evident in New Zealand.

Civil disobedience and the courts

Young people like Joseph Bray have been engaged in protests that have included occupying defence contractor sites and damaging property (see Part I).

In a written affidavit to the court used by Bray’s defence team, Professor of international studies and political science at the University of Canterbury, Jeremy Moses, said violence in Gaza had “unsurprisingly prompted large-scale global protest that has taken many forms” and that Western states’ failure to intervene had increased a sense of injustice and need for citizens themselves to act.

The statement added: “It is to be expected that many young people will engage in these actions in defence of basic principles of human rights and anti-genocide sentiment. While there will be limited cases where those actions cross the bounds of legality, I believe that larger values of human rights and human conscience should be at the centre of decision-making and that leniency toward these protestors will, in the long-term, be viewed as serving justice.”

Moses isn’t the only scholar who believes leniency is appropriate in such cases.

US legal scholar and theologian, Professor Gary Chartier, told Mick Hall In Context that civil disobedience to what people take to be unjust laws or policies seemed “understandable, often defensible, and in some cases laudable”.

The Distinguished Professor of Law and Business Ethics and Associate Dean of the Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University said: “Sometimes, this kind of activity will involve no injury to persons or to non-state property and in this case, I would absolutely encourage judges to be as accommodating as possible.

“In particular, I hope judges would take seriously the ways in which symbolic violations might be primarily expressive in nature and thus merit protection as communicative acts - say, for instance, when someone symbolically “trespasses” onto the grounds of a missile base to protest war.

“The challenge obviously arises in connection with the occurrence either of violence or of civil unrest with the serious potential to give rise to violence. Judges certainly need to be sensitive to the need to restrain the violent and those who might recklessly foster violence.”

Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, Michael Dorf, said prosecutors and judges in the US typically had considerable discretion concerning, respectively, charges and sentencing.

A similar discretion is evident in other Western countries, including New Zealand. In 2010, those involved in the Waihopai spy base attack case were found by a jury not guilty of intentional damage and entering a property with intent to commit a crime. Adrian Leason, Fr Peter Murnane, and Sam Land had argued they had acted to save lives.

On the other hand, Auckland District Court denied barrister Hannah Swedlund a discharge without conviction in September after she was charged with intentional damage to several government officials’ electorate offices in 2023, including that of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

Swedlund had been arrested in February 2024 with two others after several actions protesting New Zealand complicity in genocide.

“One sees a spectrum of attitudes,” Dorf says.

“Some prosecutors and judges show leniency to those engaging in civil disobedience, recognizing that those who engage in it do not pose a general threat to public safety and are acting out of public-regarding motives. At the other end, some prosecutors and judges use the full force of the law to punish and, they hope, deter future acts of civil disobedience, which they regard as at best a nuisance.

“Less commonly, one sees an intermediate attitude rooted in the tradition of civil disobedience itself, as exemplified by Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In that tradition, a person engaging in civil disobedience willingly accepts punishment as part of the civil disobedience itself. Judges who sentence persons for acts of civil disobedience in this tradition typically impose light but non-trivial sentences.”

Suffering and conversion

Professor of Law at West Virginia University, Charles DiSalvo, points out it may be more beneficial for the causes of those engaged in civil disobedience to be treated harshly by the justice system.

From a strategic point of view, the leveraging of suffering endured as a consequence of civil disobedience and direct action may ultimately drive a new mass political and moral consciousness in society.

DiSalvo distinguishes between direct and indirect civil disobedience, one aiming at the laws that are being broken and the other aimed at targets which typically have nothing to do with the laws being broken.

“In the United States, think of the Freedom Rides and the lunch counter sit-ins in the 1960s,” he told In Context.

“The laws blacks broke - prohibiting them from using buses and restaurants open to all other members of the public - were the very evils they were attacking. In these instances, courts had to make decisions as to whether the laws the blacks were prosecuted for breaking were valid. As you know, the courts, in the end, found the laws unconstitutional and invalidated the convictions the blacks sustained in the lower courts.

“With indirect disobedience, disobedients need to understand that their disobedience will have little if any effect without suffering. It actually would be counter-productive on their part to seek leniency.”

A case in point is the US women’s suffrage movement, he says.

“The women were arrested and shown no leniency. They were made to suffer in prison. The result of that suffering? The public sympathised. That put pressure on the politicians. The politicians converted and enacted a curative institutional measure – in this instance an amendment to the US Constitution giving women the right to vote.

“There’s one formula for successful indirect civil disobedience: suffering, sympathy, conversion, curative institutional change.

“If the judges adjudicating the charges against the women had acted with leniency, rather than applying the law, the women would not have suffered. No suffering, no sympathy. No sympathy, no pressure on politicians to convert. No conversion, no change.”

Like other Western nations, New Zealand is witnessing acts of civil disobedience by those who see their government as increasingly democratically unaccountable in the face of militarism, increasing inequality and genocide.

Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has been one the main drivers of such protests. Successive New Zealand governments have supported Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ against armed resistance to its occupation and has refused to intervene with sanctions - a diplomatic position that has given Zionists huge lateral movement to carry out their colonial expansionist project.

Massive military spending at the expense of social programs has been another. New Zealand has agreed to be a regional node for a US military industrial complex that finds itself unable to produce weaponry needed to sustain wars with its competitors, including China.

Forms of civil disobedience include the unauthorised leaking of documents in the public interest, unauthorised demonstrations, sit-ins, occupations and the destruction of property.

The standard definition of civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies.

Mick Hall in Context spoke to individuals recently engaged in protests.

Joseph Bray

Joseph Bray (22) and Jackson Duguid (18) were charged with trespass and wilful damage after a protest at a commercial facility used by Australian arms manufacturer NIOA International in Rolleston, Christchurch on March 3. They are awaiting sentencing.

The pair were part of a group of protesters who arrived in two vehicles, cut barbed wire fencing and entered the compound and sprayed red paint over the facility’s windows. Bray and Duguid climbed on to the roof and draped protest banners off it, with one that read: ‘NIOA supplies Genocide’.

The pair padlocked themselves to a downpipe with chains and surrendered to police after 9 hours of negotiations. NIOA International said the action cost it a full day’s loss of business.

Bray was also arrested on October 7 when activists protested outside the New Zealand Aerospace Conference in Christchurch.

The University of Canterbury student believes the actions were important, as a means of making the public aware of New Zealand’s increasing involvement in the military tech industry and its role as a US node of empire.

“There’s a need to shift public perception and really enlighten people as to the technology we are now producing, the launches we do with Rocket Lab for example, and where that’s going,” Bray says.

New Zealand’s Rocket Lab has contracts to launch satellites for geospatial intelligence firms BlackSky Technology, Capella Space, and HawkEye 360, all of which have links to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

The company has launched Blacksky satellites from New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula on the East Cape since 2019 with approval from the Government and despite opposition scrutiny in Parliament. The satellites likely give Israel geospatial intelligence used by its AI systems to select targets in Gaza, Lebanon and other countries in West Asia.

For Bray, civil disobedience is a way to campaign for change outside of a Parliamentary system that has proven incapable of ensuring the Government abides by international law or implements policies reflecting the popular will of ordinary people.

“The ways we’ve understood democracy to work, and the ways we’ve understood populism and the ‘views of the majority’ being legislated for, has been proven false,” Bray says.

“In reality, the only language that power speaks is profit and if you’re profiting from genocide, then we’ll stop you profiting, full stop.”

Bray believes his actions are morally legitimate, given the issues at hand, even if the illegality of his actions has seen him spending nights in police cells and going before the courts.

“Laws that are designed to protect the interests of capital above people, with economic benefits for the few,” Bray says.

“Of course, some laws are moral, upholding human value and justice. But once we disentangle those two ideas of morality and legality, it just becomes so clear, that not only is this type of protest justified, but it’s warranted because there is nothing that can change through what our ruling class would consider nonviolent means. I would never consider violence against property violence. I don’t believe that framing, that it is an inherently violent act.

“If I went through my whole life without doing what I thought was moral and just, then I haven’t lived a life or a life that I’m okay with having lived. But you know the consequences. I’m very privileged to be in a position in life where I can choose what my consequences will be”.

Fr Gerry Burns

Ordained in 1985, Wellington-based priest Fr Gerard Burns (67) serves in both Ohariu and in Te Ngākau Tapu parishes. He is Vicar-General of the Catholic Arch Diocese of Wellington.

He was one of six clergy who chained themselves to the door of Cabinet Minister Nicola Wllis’ Wellington electorate office for 32 hours in mid-September.

They were demanding the Government impose sanctions on Israel and recognise the state of Palestine. Other clergy simultaneously staged a sit-in at Health Minister Simeon Brown’s electorate office in Pakuranga, Auckland.

“I got invited to be part of that through Christians for Peace in Palestine, an ecumenical group, also linked with the Anglican group Common Grace,” Fr Burns says.

“They believe a key way of pressuring Israel is through boycott, divestment and sanctions, a campaign we bring a particularly Christian tinge to, I think, in terms of language and symbolism employed, something distinctive.”

Fr Burns says the group had been prepared to be arrested during their action. “That was one of the things that was canvassed in terms of the preparation of the group,” he says.

“Like a lot of these things, there’s grades of what people are prepared to do and be involved in. The idea was to gain access to the office, set up a little prayer circle, with the expectation we’d be asked to leave… If the police said, ‘oh, well, we’ll arrest you now because of all this’, then we would accept that, but not necessarily fight being taken out of the place.”

Burns comes from a Catholic tradition with a rich history of civil disobedience, from Fr Daniel Berrigan who raided US draft board offices during the Vietnam war in the US, to philosopher and celebrated saint Thomas Aquinas, a key figure in the natural law tradition, who argued that unjust laws have no binding moral force, which we are in fact obliged to actively oppose.

“I suppose, I became interested in things like liberation theology, which we studied a little bit when I was in the seminary,” Fr Burns says.

“And then, of course, in the mid-80s, the ‘structural sin’ idea got taken up in one of the papal encyclicals. So, it kind of became officialised in a way, even if it wasn’t made particularly prominent, but at least it was recognised.

“Those different levels of opposing evil, whether it’s in the individual situation or the communal situation, became very much part of my thinking and way of looking at the world.”

He was also influenced by Fr John Curnow, a liberation theologian based in Christchurch during the 1970s and 80s.

One concept taken up by the reforming Second Vatican Council in the 1960s was the idea that the type of society people lived in either made it harder or easier to live good lives and win personal salvation. Many argued capitalism and other systems of domination made it harder and that systemic injustice was a grave affront to God.

Fr Burns says there is a need to employ more structural analysis within the Church to complement its spiritual mission of salvation, to help it accompany people in their daily struggles and better identify and call out injustice.

He says there are signs people desire the Church to take this approach in the turbulent political times we live in.

“One chap came along to the protest and he sort of said, ‘well, this is great, but I did feel a bit of anger that you hadn’t done this earlier’,” Fr Burns says.

“You know, that there hadn’t been more speaking up from the Church earlier, because now it just looks like you’re getting on the wave of public opinion and so now it’s okay to do this.

“I could understand it. We are late on this. There is a groundswell of opinion around this issue, so it can look like that. But that also spoke to me about a sort of yearning, with people asking ‘why hasn’t there been a stronger moral voice’, say, from the churches, or my particular Church, and I understand that. I think in among our own bishops, there must be some strong division about speaking about this thing…”

New Zealand has a largely forgotten history of Christian protest against war and conquest, including Christian conscientious objectors like Archibald Baxter, forcibly sent to Europe during World War I and tortured for two years on the frontlines, documented in his book We Will Not Cease.

Fr Burns says there is space to protest non-violently as part of Christian faith and to speak up within the Church, although some are hesitant about doing so.

“I work for the bishop, representing him personally and he hasn’t told me he can’t have me in that role,” he says.

“Within my own community, I’ve had tonnes of people express support, sometimes they just come up and say, ‘I really appreciate what you did’. I said to one, ‘you don’t have to whisper’.”

Inaction ‘kills our humanity’

In Context spoke to a student who partook in direct action involving damage to property, which would be deemed illegal. The name of the individual and details of the action are being withheld from publication.

Tactics used overseas, particularly those of Palestine Action in the UK, inspired the person’s actions. A protest in April 2008 by the Ploughshares at New Zealand’s Waihopai spy base, where Catholic peace campaigners slashed an inflatable dome covering a spy satellite, also left an impression.

“I just felt that what we are currently doing isn’t enough and isn’t working,” the individual says.

“We have this genocide being live streamed 24/7 and our institutions and governments are complicit.

“Because we live in such interconnected times, every time we see a child die because of systematic hunger or by a laser-guided bomb and we choose to do nothing or choose to not do what we know is necessary, it kills off a little bit of our humanity.

“Every time we choose to look away, it does that, and you can only do that so much before there’s no humanity left to lose. I think we live in a time where we as communities, and society as a whole are slowly losing our conscience and humanity. And I feel that if things continue to go the way it has been, it won’t be long before all that’s left is a world where we’re only concerned about stepping on somebody’s neck to get ahead right before somebody else steps over our necks.”

The student points to a failure of government in respecting the UN’s Genocide Convention, which compels signature states to intervene to stop a genocide taking place and punishing its perpetrators with concrete measures like sanctions.

Gaza has, for the individual, exposed democratic deficits in New Zealand and moral bankruptcy of its government, as well as the collective West.

“They couldn’t even do the symbolic act of officially recognising Palestine, which materially meaningless, but they wouldn’t even give that much of a concession,” the individual says.

“We protest, we write our MPs, we call people, we raise awareness and those in power are supposed to give concessions to us. But that social contract we were brought up to believe existed is broken, or perhaps it was never real. That social contract is falling apart.”

The barbarity of the Gaza genocide may have been the emotional catalyst for the person’s action, but a deeper existential angst and societal estrangement is also evident.

“I get the sense that our generation don’t see a future for ourselves. We feel that the people in power have pulled out the ladder, and we don’t feel like there’s a place for us in society any longer,” the individual says.

“And that’s why I think that a lot of young people either fall to fascist, reactionary movements, like the Manosphere, that kind of stuff, or they choose to isolate themselves and dissociate and drown themselves in narcotics and alcohol. It’s perfectly understandable.

“The global economic system is leading us to a point where things are going to change either way. We live in a time of dying empires desperately clinging to power, where society gets more restrictive and authoritarian and the more the power slips, the more they will want to grab on to it by more and more extreme means…

“I just think that I would sleep better at night knowing that I did something that makes things a little better than worse.

“We need to do something different to change how things are, because the status quo no longer has a place for us to live anymore.”

- Part 2 will be published tomorrow

The Nobel Peace Prize has been ridiculed by critics for years, who rightly see it as an instrument of Western soft power, with a history of recognising dubious characters for their supposed achievements in the cause of peace and humanity.

Whether it be National Endowment for Democracy-backed (NED) journalist Maria Ressa spreading liberal values in the Philippines in 2021 or the optics of US President Barack Obama conducting the War on Terror more progressively in 2009, the prize has served as a means of inculcating the public with a moral narrative about what came before. The Nobel Committee, established in Norway in 1897, began bestowing awards in 1901.

This year however, the prize took on a decisively more sinister function, serving as a propaganda foil for hard power, a means of preparing Western populations for what may be about to come, namely a US war against Venezuela.

US naval assets continue to build around the Caribbean, which now include four destroyers and one nuclear-powered attack submarine. The United States has bombed several vessels it alleged were smuggling drugs off the coast of Venezuela in recent weeks, after it accused Maduro’s government of being a narco-terrorist regime.

The moves suggest preparations are well underway to commit an act of aggression and initiate a regime change operation.

On Saturday (NZT), it was announced Far Right Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Corina Machado won the 2025 Nobel prize, a woman who has repeatedly called for US intervention in her country to depose elected President Nicolas Maduro. It is hard to believe the Nobel announcement was a coincidence.

“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the Nobel Committee said in its citation.

The prize elevates Machado’s voice and will serve to give the former deputy of the National Assembly of Venezuela a semblance of gravitas when she inevitably backs any acts of US aggression. In Orwellian fashion, the instrumentalisation of the Nobel Prize means peace is war.

In one of the more memorable plays for Western intervention, Machado in December 2018 sent a letter to Argentina’s then President Mauricio Macri and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, requesting they support efforts to get the UN Security Council to adopt “effective measures to protect Venezuela by promoting regime change, a measure that necessarily entails strengthening international security”.

Machado, a staunch backer of Israel, promised Netanyahu co-operation and strengthening of ties between the two countries.

US regime-change activities have been ongoing against Maduro since he came to power in 2013, replacing deceased president Hugo Chavez.

Chavez had led a popular ‘Bolivarian’ revolution of socialist reforms that involved the nationalisation of the country’s natural resources, including gaining majority stakes in its massive oil fields, a legacy Maduro strived to protect and expand upon, amid crippling US sanctions and internal agitation by Western-sponsored civil society groups and individuals like Machado.

Using organisations like The Organisation of American States (OAS), the US and its Western allies have waged a sustained campaign of delegitimising Maduro and his government, while seeking opportunities to oust him.

In September 2018, the New York Times reported the Trump administration had conducted secret meetings with military officers in Venezuela to discuss overthrowing Maduro. That followed a failed assassination attempt on Maduro, using a suicide drone the month before.

Trump told media in 2023 that Venezuela “was ready to collapse” when he ended his first term in January 2021. “We would have taken it over and we would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door,” he said.

In 2019, National Assembly opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, declared himself interim president of the country after accusing Maduro of attempting to usurp the constitution with his efforts to create another layer of democratic participation, in the form of a new ‘constituent assembly’.

He wasted no time urging the military to lead a coup against Maduro, an unlikely prospect given its loyalty to the government since elements close to Chavez reversed a short US-backed coup in April 2003. Guaidó’s abject failure to act as a lightning rod for discontent saw him eventually exiled to Miami.

Maduro’s presidential election win in 2024 was disputed by the opposition, with the collective West again refusing to recognise him as the country’s legitimate leader, a diplomatic position that left his government more vulnerable to a US military attempt at regime-change. Maduro himself had a US$15 million bounty placed on his head in August by Washington.

His United Socialist Party (PSUV) won landslide victories in this year’s regional and Parliamentary election results, disputed by right-wing opposition parties, which have strategically boycotted elections, claiming fraudulent counts.

It is clear Machado will continue to present these arguments as justifications for US intervention.

However, there is a possibility such aggression will serve to reveal the Nobel Prize Committee as a mere propaganda tool of naked Western power, in the similar manner by which the genocide in Gaza has exposed the West’s professed commitment to genuine multilateralism and human rights as ideological cover for imperial hegemonic dominance.

Shaping and managing Western public perception is now more difficult in light of Gaza and two years of genocide denial and obfuscation by media and political elites. There is as sense of heightened distrust and awareness that Western politicians and media present lies and distortions to justify US political violence.

What should be of concern however, is the powerlessness to assert democratic control over US foreign policy, both within the US and within the states that ally with its rules-based order.

That situation is made more fraught due to Western foreign policy arguably becoming informed, not just by the cold, calculated strategic pursuit of dominance and containment of competitors, but also by the intellectual and emotional derangement of political elites, as they back genocide and prepare for catastrophic war with leading nations in a new world of multipolarity.

One of the more disturbing aspects of Machado’s prize was the choreographed manner in which Machado’s prize was announced, where this type of derangement seemed evident.

A clip widely disseminated on social media and across news platforms showed an emotional Secretary of the Nobel Committee, Kristian Berg Harpviken, phoning Machado minutes before a public announcement.

Harpviken’s voice faltered and his bottom lip quivered, as he struggled not to cry when informing her in English of the Committee’s decision. His sentimentality betrayed a break from reality shared by much of Europe’s ruling class, blinded by its perceived political and cultural superiority to barbarous autocracies across the world.

That Harpviken was talking to an extremist advocating an act of aggression against her own nation, by a resource-hungry hegemon lurking in the Caribbean with 10 percent of its naval assets, didn’t seem to register.

“Oh my God… I have no words,” Machado replied to him. “I thank you so much, but I hope you understand this is a movement, this is an achievement of a whole society. I am just one person. I certainly do not deserve it.”

It also seems highly unlikely Harpviken would have rang Machado in the middle of her night, in front of a camera, if she had not been there expecting the call. The clip will likely be studied by future generations in the same way sociologists study crude war propaganda films made by German Nazis.

Although Machado dedicated her prize to Trump, her sycophancy didn’t stop the grandiose narcissist, through a White House spokesperson, accusing the Norwegian committee of “putting politics over peace” by focusing on Venezuela.

Days before, Trump had announced a breakthrough in talks between Israel and Hamas, a development that would have come too late in the day for the Committee to consider any nominations for Trump’s neo-colonial ‘peace’ plan for Gaza. The development was likely inconsequential for neo-cons in his administration.

US Secretary of state Marco Rubio had nominated Machado for the prize in August last year, alongside other long-term proponents of Venezuelan regime change in Congress, only too aware of her propaganda value in any plan to destroy Venezuela’s sovereignty.

The partner of a New Zealand-born doctor abducted by Israel in international waters and denied medicine while held under degrading conditions has criticised a lack of official response from his government.

Stephen Rowe, partner of Bianca Webb-Pullman, told Mick Hall in Context the Melbourne-based GP’s mental condition had deteriorated after being without medicine and access to a doctor, as well as being deprived of clean water and sleep by prison guards with menacing dogs.

Three other New Zealanders - Rana Hamida, Youssef Sammour and Ōtaki teenager Samuel Leason - were also seized during the same Israeli operation to intercept the Sumud Flotilla, 100 nautical miles from Gaza. They were forced at gunpoint to the Israeli port of Ashdod on Friday morning.

Speaking from his home in Raumati South, Rowe expressed concern for his partner’s wellbeing. He said the abductees had been treated inhumanely following far-right Israeli Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s promise last week that those taken from the flotilla would be treated as “terrorists”.

“No human beings should be treated in the way they have been,” he said.

“From what we’ve heard of Bianca’s treatment, her initial assessment has been consistent with other reports of those released from Israeli prisons - the prison water being contaminated, so that nobody is drinking it, lack of food and prison guards coming into cells with attack dogs every few hours so they can’t sleep.”

He called for the governments of both New Zealand and Australia to speak up and to pursue action against Israel.

“The fact that Ben-Gvir engaged in psychological warfare, saying they would be held for months, parading them in propaganda videos, is degrading and in itself in violation of the Geneva Convention. I find it hard to believe this is being allowed to happen,” he said.

“What’s really shocking to me is the lack of any official statements from the Australian and New Zealand governments over the matter.”

He said his partner was reliant on medicine, which she was given no access to, causing her considerable distress.

“I don’t want to go into it too much, but from the reports we’ve received from the Australian side, she’s not in particularly good condition, from stress, from concern about her medication and the way they’re were being treated.

“She has described it as a frightening and humiliating experience.”

On Friday, Ben-Gvir visited Ashdod port and boasted that activists would be given “the minimum” while being held in Israeli captivity.

A video clip posted on social media shows him in a large holding room berating hundreds of activists seated on the floor.

“These are the terrorists of the flotilla,” he said, speaking in Hebrew.

Rowe last spoke to his partner late on Thursday, three hours before her boat ‘Florida’ was rammed and boarded by an Israeli naval vessel. During the incident Webb-Pullman threw her mobile phone into the ocean to avoid it being confiscated, as part of ship protocol.

It was expected she would be deported to Turkey, before being able to fly back home.

Flotilla activists abused

The first deportees, four Italians, arrived at Istanbul Airport on Saturday, where they told media of their abuse.

Journalist Lorenzo D’Agostino said climate activist Greta Thunberg had been “wrapped in an Israeli flag and paraded like a war trophy”. Later, Turkish activist Ersin Çelik told the Anadolu news agency Thunberg had been dragged by the hair, beaten in front of other activists and made to kiss the flag.

Both said flotilla participants had been deprived of fresh water for between 32 and 46 hours and some had not been given food for two days.

Web-Pullman has lived between Australia and New Zealand since taking up a job in Melbourne three years ago. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has been in contact with its Israeli counterparts over her case.

Rowe had contacted New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) over concerns for her safety, but at the time of publication had not received a reply.

MFAT has been in talks with Israeli officials over the abductions of the three other New Zealand citizens.

Many of those on board the 45-strong flotilla were brought to the Ashdod port, before being transferred to prisons to be processed for deportation. Six Australians were among those held. Some of the 450-plus activists ended up in Crete.

The activists had been attempting to bring food and other aid to Gaza after Western states failed to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade after nearly two years of genocide and the forced starvation of the population.

Under the Genocide Convention, signatory states, including New Zealand and Australia, are obliged to intervene to stop a genocide taking place and to punish its perpetrators. The failure of states to do so prompted the global flotilla, as a peaceful, citizen-led maritime initiative to intervene and break the illegal siege.

MFAT told media at the weekend that its advisory had explicitly warned New Zealanders against any attempt to enter Gaza by sea “in breach of Israeli Navy restrictions, including participation in flotillas to deliver aid”.

The statement did not acknowledge that these ‘restrictions’ were illegal and had been characterised by human rights groups as a part of the machinery of the genocide.

MFAT said it expected “any New Zealanders in the flotilla to be treated in a manner consistent with international law” and that Israel had said they were safe.

When asked about the plight of the New Zealanders at the weekend, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon repeated the MFAT advisory that no one should have been travelling to Gaza, the logic of his position suggesting the activists had brought it upon themselves.

Amnesty International NZ criticised Luxon and his far-right coalition government, urging it to “immediately condemn this interception, demand the immediate and unconditional release of all those on board, including any New Zealand nationals, and insist that Israel ends its unlawful blockade and allows unrestricted humanitarian access to occupied Gaza”.

New Zealand should punish Israel

Rowe said New Zealand should open an investigation into the abductions and pursue legal action against Israel on behalf of its citizens. There may be compelling grounds for doing so.

The flotilla was surrounded and its participants seized outside Israel’s 12-mile territorial sea and therefore had no jurisdiction when it took them.

The Israeli maritime blockade has been in place for 17 years and forms a structural part of Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory, which an International Court of Justice advisory opinion finds illegal and that UN resolutions condemn as such.

As former UK diplomat Craig Murray observed on Friday, “the blockade is not a short-term measure in time of armed conflict, as specified in the San Remo manual [on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, 1994].

Murray, an expert on maritime humanitarian law, added: “In any event the San Remo rules explicitly state that humanitarian supplies may not be blockaded. The UN Commission of Inquiry has already determined that Israel is committing genocide. The blockade is plainly a part of the machinery of such genocide and so for these reasons the Israeli attack on the flotilla is plainly illegal”.

Senior law lecturer at the University of Auckland, Dylan Afaso, said Israel had clearly breached the Geneva Convention and that New Zealand had an obligation to punish Israel.

“Israel has clearly engaged in physical violence and inhuman treatment by using water cannons against peaceful civilians on the high sea, in clear breach of Common Article 3 (prohibiting violence against civilians) and Article 5 (prohibiting torture and cruel treatment), he told In Context via email.

“Therefore, New Zealand has an obligation to ensure Israel’s compliance with these obligations, which inevitably includes investigating and punishing Israel for its breaches and taking measures necessary to prevent ongoing and further breaches.

“New Zealand also has an obligation under the Genocide Convention and customary international law to punish and prevent acts of genocide.

“It is undeniable that Israel’s actions in abducting, detaining and punishing individuals seeking to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people facing genocidal violence, form part of its genocidal conduct. Therefore, New Zealand has obligations to take action to punish Israel for this and all other parts of its genocidal conduct, and to prevent this conduct as well.”

Government double standards

When asked if New Zealand had an obligation to investigate and pursue legal action, the Ministry of Justice referred the matter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT).

MFAT refuses to engage with this journalist, so no questions were able to be fielded to the Ministry.

Peace activist and University of Canterbury academic Dr Josephine Varghese accused the government of hypocrisy and neglecting the rights of its own citizens.

She told In Context: “The New Zealand government has for two years demanded the release of Israeli hostages. They went to lengths to clarify their position regarding this, proscribing Hamas as a terrorist organisation, for instance.

Right now we are in a scenario when Israel has illegally taken New Zealand citizens hostage, yet the New Zealand government has made no similar demands. They are yet to condemn Israel for its genocidal actions or proscribe the IDF as a terrorist force. This double standard is glaring.”

Flotilla support across the globe

The intercepted flotilla, launched at the end of August, had come under repeated attack by drones, dropping incendiary devices, blast and smoke bombs in previous weeks.

US intelligence sources told media that Israel was behind the September 8 incendiary attack on a Portuguese-flagged vessel Family in Tunisia.

Spanish and Italian naval assets that had accompanied the flotilla after the attacks, amid fears Israel would kill activists as they approached Gaza, pulled back before the Israeli piracy took place, suggesting assurances had been given to Western states by Israel.

There were protests across the world in solidarity with the flotilla at the weekend. The biggest took place in Italy, where a day of action involving an estimated three million people caused mass disruption across rail, road and airport networks.

It formed part of a general strike called by unions in more than 100 cities. Police fired tear gas outside Milan to disperse stone-throwing demonstrators and the Tuscan port of Livorno was closed by protests.

Demonstrations and disruption continued on Sunday (October 5). Other demonstrations took place in Europe, with hundreds of people in the UK arrested for showing public support of non-violent group Palestine Action under repressive anti-terror laws.

Diplomatic action was taken by several nations, including Colombia, which expelled its Israeli diplomat and cancelled a trade agreement with the Zionist state.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) announced on Friday that a new flotilla of 11 ships was heading towards Gaza to challenge the blockade. Two other New Zealanders, Ava Mulla and William Alexander, are sailing on the ‘Conscience’ after it left Otranto, Italy on Tuesday, 30 September.

New Zealand’s refusal to recognise Palestinian statehood at the weekend not only revealed how much it is aligned with US foreign policy, but also the level of political extremism of its coalition government.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced the decision during an address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on Saturday, September 27.

“With a war raging, Hamas still in place, and no clarity on next steps, we do not think that time is now,” he said in his address.

“We have, ever since the October 7 attacks, repeatedly demanded a ceasefire, the release of the remaining hostages, and for Israel to allow vital aid to flow into Gaza. That is where our focus remains.”

The speech was praised by Israel’s ambassador to New Zealand, Alon Roth-Snir, who said the decision sent “a clear message to Hamas terrorism: violence will not be rewarded.”

Peters’ speech was remarkable, not only because these set forth a rejection of traditional partners positions on the issue, but because of the colonial racism and hypocrisy expressed.

In the lead-up to the 80^th meeting of the UNGA, French President Emmanual Macron had set in motion an initiative that brought genocide-enabling countries like Canada, Australia and the UK together to recognise Palestine as a state and set out conditions for peace talks after Israel ends its destruction of Gaza.

Conditional on this recognition was an envisioned future governance of Palestinian territory where Hamas was excluded and Palestinian armed resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory effectively defeated.

The issue of recognition itself – something the vast majority of the world had already committed to - was also a way of distracting public attention away from the fact their governments had failed to abide by the Genocide Convention and intervene in stopping the genocide, through sanctions and other concrete steps, including stopping arms sales to Israel.

Macron’s initiative was basically an attempt by the wolves to put on sheep’s clothing and absolve themselves of their complicity in the genocide, breaking from the diplomatic position of the United States.

The decision of Peters and his coalition partners to not do so signalled their instincts were too rabidly imperial, their loyalty too fanatical to pack leader Donald Trump and his Lieutenant Benjamin Netanyahu to don Macron’s costume.

Peters would not step out of line with Washington for a statement of recognition that he told the UN would amount to “little more than an existential act of defiance against an unalterable state of affairs”.

In doing so, New Zealand joins vassal nations in the Pacific Islands like Micronesia, Nauru and Palau, dependent on US aid via compact agreements, who also refuse to recognise Palestine, as well as side with Israel at the UN. New Zealand also joins Japan, Germany and Italy - countries that already know what it is like to be on the wrong side of history - in failing to confer full diplomatic status to Palestinian representatives and offer even symbolic solidarity to a people under occupation and suffering a genocide.

The New Zealand coalition government had made the decision ‘in principle’ to avoid recognition on September 15, during a Cabinet meeting. It left the public in the dark over that call, citing a need to consult with partners at a UN Two State Conference last week, before a final decision was announced. The move seems to have been a stalling tactic, to avoid criticism and pressure in the lead-up to the UNGA week of high-level engagements.

Stalling tactics have been the name of the game for Israel, the United States and the collective West for decades. Peters’ talk of backing a two-state solution and recognising Palestinian statehood “when the time is right”, should be understood in this context.

It is instructive that he praised “the courageous leadership” of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in addressing the Israeli Knesset in 1977 “to extol peace”, the type of leadership, Peters told the UN, that was needed now.

Two years after Sadat’s speech, the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel were signed. That agreement excluded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from the talks and Israel never attempted to resolve the Palestine question with Egypt and other neighbour Jordan’s involvement.

The agreement, lacking any mechanism to enforce it, never permitted Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, as promised, or ended Israeli settlements.

Decades later, the Oslo Peace Accords, signed after talks with the PLO, did largely the same. It allowed nominal self-government and set out a roadmap to long-term talks towards a Palestinian state, but only served to buy time for Israel to intensify illegal settlement building, making the two-state solution impossible, as Western leaders stood idly by.

Now, the West seeks an interim Gaza Authority headed by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in a post-genocide situation, leading to an expanded Palestinian Authority, elections that exclude Hamas and a roadmap to Palestinian statehood that leads nowhere. Such an arrangement would leave Palestinians once again disenfranchised, abandoned and powerless, as Israel continues its expansion and annexations of territory.

Peters’ cynical claim that statehood will be recognised when there is no Hamas and when there exists a “fully legitimate and viable State of Palestine” that controls its own territory means it will never be recognised.

Part of Peters’ argument for rejecting recognition of Palestinian statehood is based on the contention that doing so would embolden Hamas and make Israel more resolute in its actions.

He told the UN it would “likely prove counterproductive”.

“That is, Hamas resisting negotiation in the belief it is winning the global propaganda war, while pushing Israel towards even more intransigent military positions.”

He added: “Those countries who hoped their earlier signalling of Palestinian statehood recognition would protect and promote the two-state solution have instead seen the Israeli Government snap and continue its widely condemned military actions in Gaza while continuing to develop illegal settlements on the West Bank, in defiance of international law.”

There is no evidence or reasonable indication that Israel would have been more willing to stop its destruction of Gaza, end its annexations in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, or be more willing to engage meaningfully in ceasefire talks if Palestinian statehood wasn’t recognised by Western states like France and the UK.

Israel has already ruled out tolerating the existence of a Palestinian state and its attitude over ceasefire talks was summed up by its attempted assassination of Hamas peace negotiators in Qatar earlier this month.

Peter’s entire position for refusing to recognise Palestinian statehood is erroneous. He is simply saying he does not believe any intervention by the rest of the world, however symbolic, should be undertaken.

He also suggests removing Netanyahu and excluding Hamas would “shift the current calculus away from conflict and towards peace”, creating a political environment “more conducive for recognising Palestinian statehood”.

If one thing the past two years of genocide have demonstrated, it is that the vast majority of Israeli society is racist and genocidal. Removing Netanyahu will not change the intrinsic nature of Zionism and the inbuilt structural injustice of Israel’s ethno-supremacism. Hamas is a political movement that has broad support within Palestinian society and disenfranchising its supporters will also not create the conditions for peace.

New Zealand is not and never was a supporter of a two-state solution and Palestinian self-determination in any real sense, regardless of which government has been in power. But the extremism of its current coalition government differentiates it from previous administrations. Its far-right deputy prime minister, Act Party leader David Seymour, is an arch Zionist, as are most of his senior colleagues.

Prime Minister, National Party leader Christopher Luxon, is cut from the same cloth as other Western leaders like UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a neo-liberal without conviction or principle, there to serve corporate interests and US hegemonic power.

The extremism of New Zealand’s position was reflected within Peter’s address to the UN. It included several orientalist tropes, language that dehumanised Palestinians and repeated Israel’s October 7 atrocity propaganda.

Criminalising armed resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation, he called Gaza “a terrorist breeding ground” asserting his opinion that Hamas “only know hate”.

Emphasising that Gaza’s governing party can have no place in any future state, he condemned the “barbarity of Hamas’ attack on Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023, the worst massacre in Israel’s history” and the fact Israeli hostages are still being held in Gaza.

Conversely, he softened his language to express shock at “harrowing images of famine in Gaza” and condemned “a grossly disproportionate response from the Israeli Government”.

For Peters and his government, there is no genocide in Gaza, no forced starvation of a population, just a disproportionate military response by Israel.

New Zealand’s reputation within the global community will have been dented by Peters’ announcement and his speech, his foreign policy extremism a sign of what positions his country is capable of taking in other geopolitical arenas, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, as the US continues to prepare for war with China.

What was remarkable too was Peters’ complete lack of self-insight into how New Zealand would be perceived globally, as he lectured from the podium on the UN’s need to reform “to regain standing of members”.

Sounding the alarm over the erosion of a functioning multilateral system, while refusing to intervene in a genocide in Gaza and backing an imperial hegemon that undermines UN institutions, showed breathtaking hypocrisy.

The US continues to threaten members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for pursuing Israeli ministers over war crimes and its rules-based international order continues to assert a false universalism and usurp genuine multilateralism.

His comments on Syria showed similar lack of self-insight. “Nearly 17 million people require humanitarian aid in Syria, with a similarly large number displaced”, he remarked. The current horror in Syria is a situation the US and its European allies brought about via Operation Sycamore and the replacement of the Assad regime with that of Islamic jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Peters’ observation that the world needed “leadership that appeals to our better angels, not our worst instincts”, in the same breath as effectively ignored Israel’s genocide, will be seen by many as one of the most grotesque and duplicitous lines ever to come out of a New Zealand politician’s mouth on an international stage.

This week, at the 80th sitting of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, Western leaders complicit in genocide in Gaza will pontificate over human rights, peace and a need to recognise Palestinian statehood.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said last week his Cabinet had made an “in principle” decision on Palestinian statehood but would wait until this week before fully committing to it.

Before flying to the US on Sunday, September 21 his Foreign Minister Winston Peters said New Zealand had approached the “complex” issue of Palestine “cautiously and deliberately over the month”, adding that this week’s engagements and up-to-date information would help finalise his position.

Approximately three quarters of the world already recognises Palestinian statehood.

The UN summit this week comes after several reports both by the UN itself and scholars over Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Last week, a UN-appointed commission of inquiry formally concluded that Israel had been responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza.

Its chairperson, Navi Pillay, concluded Israel had committed four of the five acts defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention, including killing, inflicting serious harm, imposing destructive living conditions, and measures preventing births.

Earlier this month, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) found Israel's policies and actions in Gaza met the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948.

Under the Genocide Convention signatory states are required to intervene to stop genocide from taking place.

New Zealand, like other Western states, has refused to do so. It has instead given diplomatic cover for the genocide, while keeping up its charade of promoting a ‘two-state solution’, as envisaged under the long-ignored Oslo Peace Accords of the 1990s.

To this end, Western states like France, Australia and Canada have joined the UK in recognising Palestinian statehood as the UNGA meets this week.

A Two State Solution conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, will resume today (September 22). Pushed by France’s Emmanuel Macron, it is supposedly designed to add impetus to a ‘peace’ plan after the destruction of Gaza is finished, compelling Israel into long-term negotiations about establishing a Palestinian state along its border. It focuses on achieving the largely symbolic and ultimately meaningless gesture.

It is in actuality designed to distract from a failure to abide by obligations under international law to sanction Israel and an attempt to achieve absolution from responsibility for enabling the unfolding genocide.

The peace plan demands the demilitarisation and disempowerment of Hamas as a political force and is therefore also a diplomatic effort to defeat Palestinian resistance.

With Gaza in ruins, de facto annexations of the West Bank and East Jerusalem ongoing, and the US-Israel intent on denying real sovereignty for Palestinians, a Palestinian state has been rendered practically impossible.

What is sought by the West is a repressive client statelet under US and Israeli control, administered by the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas.

Without diplomatic and economic pressure, and the withdrawal of weapons supplies to Israel, Israeli’s system of apartheid and ethnic cleansing is likely to continue, with the eventual complete displacement and disintegration of Palestinian life under the occupation.

New Zealand has been hesitancy to even entertain the optics of Macron’s plan over the past month, which may suggest unease among extreme Zionist elements within the coalition.

Internal emails show no interest in ‘concrete steps’

Refusal to adhere to the Genocide Convention and intervene in the Gaza genocide has been a consistent response from New Zealand and other Western states.

In one recent example, internal emails released under the Official Information Act show legal and diplomatic advisors with New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) advising Peters to decline an invitation by Colombia to attend an emergency Summit of the Hague Group in July.

The emails, seen by Mick Hall in Context, reveal diplomatic discussions over how best to refuse the invite.

A senior advisor with the Middle East and Africa Division (MEA) tells MFAT officials in Wellington that “the purpose of the meeting is to ‘announce concrete measures to Israel’s violations of international law (redacted, s6a)… and New Zealand is not part of the Hague group. We do not recommend the MFA (Minister for Foreign Affairs) attend this event…”

In another email, Peters’ Private Secretary tells the Americas Division – Latin America, that he is happy for them to “send a polite decline”.

An unnamed official, in a further email, says a colleague had “conducted a straw poll” and found that several countries, names redacted, were not attending the event. He concludes: “On this basis, I think we are in good company not to attend”.

The casual dismissal of the invite from Bogota reflects a banality of evil in the way Western states have prioritised maintaining international relationships over respect for international law and human life, as Israel continues to cruelly exterminate men, women and children in Gaza.

The Hague Group summit announced six measures, which included preventing the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel and dual-use items to Israel and preventing the transit, docking or servicing of vessels if there is a risk of vessels carrying such items.

The countries agreed to “commence an urgent review of all public contracts, in order to prevent public institutions and public funds, where applicable, from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territory”.

Countries making much of their moves to recognise Palestine continue to reward Israel with business deals and trade in weapons. Australia has been exposed for having supplied F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, while the UK not only supplies munitions, but also intelligence from spy planes launched from bases in Cyprus, as well as other military aid. New Zealand has greenlighted the export of dual-purpose technology without appropriate guarantees that these will not be supplied to Israel.

Without concrete steps to strip Israel of its impunity to commit genocide, states recognising Palestine this week are engaging in obscene theatre, buying time as Israel and the US continue erase any possibility of statehood, just as they did at Oslo decades before.

The question of whether or not western states recognise Palestinian statehood deliberately distracts the public from demanding an end to their enabling of genocide and normal relations with Israel. As this plays out, expect legacy media to play its role in facilitating it.

Media and Pacific views on Palestine

Media self-censorship, its colonial mis-framing and a wilful failure to adjudicate between contended claims between Israel and its victims post-October 7, has likely helped create apathy and distortions around the issue in the Pacific, as has happened elsewhere.

Last week, a poll carried out by public broadcaster Radio New Zealand (RNZ) suggested 22 percent of the population didn’t think New Zealand should recognise the state of Palestine, while another 35 percent didn’t know and presumably didn’t particularly care too much.

Among the other statistics, over 10 percent of those questioned believed New Zealand should be doing more to support Israel.

The weekend before, this genocidal sentiment had been expressed in London by Destiny Church’s ‘bishop’ Brian Tamaki and his assembly of Christian fascists, who put on a haka at the mass rally of the Far Right and ripped apart a Palestinian flag to the raucous cheers of those watching.

A similar diabolic inversion of Christian values was on display closer to home, on September 18, with Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka opening his nation’s new embassy in Jerusalem, embracing Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “brother” at the event.

According to UN Resolution 478, Israel's declaration of Jerusalem as its capital violates international law, as East Jerusalem is occupied territory.

“Our similarities, faith and common values continue to strengthen us together in unity and solidarity,” Rabuka told Netanyahu.

Netanyahu and Zionist genocidaires have managed to cement support from elements of the Christian right by claiming Israel and the West are united in a battle for Judeo-Christian civilisation.

One exponent of that narrative, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was also in Israel, ostensibly to pull Netanyahu in line for attacking its vassal Qatar in an attempted assassination of Hamas senior peace negotiators. Before meeting Qatari officials while in Doha on September 16, he called Hamas “barbaric animals” and claimed the reason civilians were being killed in Gaza was because Hamas was using them as human shields.

His genocide-enabling comments came as Israel began a renewed, all-out attack on Gaza City, with reports yesterday (September 21) of a further 91 deaths after attacks by the IDF.

The Pacific has been declared an Ocean of Peace in a document endorsed by the region’s leaders, but analysts say its ambiguity won’t stop spiralling militarisation and undue influence by foreign powers.

A 54^th Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders Meeting ended in Honiara on Friday (September 12) after five days of talks over some of the most pressing issues facing the region for decades.

Among issues discussed were a new mechanism for the region’s top consensus body to deal with external partner states amid great power competition, a restructure of its political architecture to better deliver a 2050 Blue Pacific Strategy development plan and a shared commitment to address the region’s increasing militarisation.

The summit, attended by leaders of the 18 nations that make up the PIF, was hosted by the Solomon Islands this year amid the backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions, as the US, its allies and China seek to build partnerships and influence governments.

The US has been militarising and securitising existing bilateral and multilateral relationships in the Asia Pacific region as part of preparations for war with its peer economic competitor China, which NATO sees as a strategic adversary and primary threat to Western hegemony.

The Ocean of Peace Declaration was drafted in part to address these issues, seeking to prevent militarisation, protect Pacific sovereignty and its environment, and promote regional stability.

First floated by Fiji in September 2023, the concept gained traction among Pacific leaders, who saw it as a modern extension of the Boe and Biketawa declarations, which framed security broadly in terms of resilience to emerging threats like climate change and a need for peaceful conflict resolution processes.

Former senior adviser to the PIF Secretariat, Sione Tekiteki, told Mick Hall In Context the declaration was a high-level political commitment that reaffirmed the legitimacy of international law and anchored Pacific peace in universal norms. But he said its ambiguity had made it vulnerable to being co-opted by states pursuing military activities in the region.

“The ambiguities leave space for diverging interpretations and inevitably possibilities of co-optation and that same dynamic exists with the ‘Blue Pacific’ framing as well,” he said.

“The Ocean of Peace does strengthen the region’s normative capacity to hold external powers accountable, while also underscoring the climate-security and addressing nuclear legacies as central to peace in the Pacific.

“It is an important normative step, but without clearer parameters there is a risk that middle and major powers may commit rhetorically to it, while maintaining that their defence and military activities fall outside its ambit.”

While the document emphasises the importance of national sovereignty, its formulations confirm the PIF as the “apex of the regional architecture” and champion integration and “Forum-endorsed mechanisms” as a means of building peace.

Tekiteki, a senior law lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT), refers to Section 17(v) of the document, which references the “responsible use of technology”, without definition, as an example of its problematic, studied ambiguity.

It is an important point. Uncrewed autonomous weapons systems (UMS) and lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) are increasingly being deployed in the strategically important waters of the Pacific, with tasks including submarine detection, reconnaissance and sabotage.

The development of commercial ports, humanitarian warehouses, refurbishment of airstrips and other donated infrastructure could also double up as military assets. The setting up of policing, maritime surveillance and disaster relief arrangements also establishes networks that can be utilised in the event of military conflict.

The secretive use of such technology and dual purpose infrastructure has prompted calls for greater transparency, oversight and guidelines, largely absent from the document.

The absence almost certainly reflects a lack of consensus and the inherent tension between Pacific nation interests and priorities with the interests and priorities of sub-imperial powers on both sides of the Tasman.

As the PIF meetings took place, Australia announced a $1.7 billion project to build a fleet of underwater Ghost Shark drones in partnership with the US. It is spending AU$12 billion on a facility in Western Australia to expand its navy, while its AUKUS deal to acquire nuclear submarines alone is expecting to cost up to $390 billion, if it goes ahead.

Defence Minister Richard Marles in a television interview said Australia planned to spend an additional AU$70 billion on defense over the next decade under the current Labor government compared to projections made under the previous government.

New Zealand is also busy building its military capacity to act as a ‘force multiplier’ with Australia and its other Western allies in the region. In the lead up to the PIF Leaders summit it announced the $2.7 billion acquisition of a fleet of MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and long-range Airbus A321XLR aircraft to travel to the Pacific and to “international events”.

It forms part of a $12 billion defence budget to be spent over the next four years to implement its Defence Capability Plan. Foreign Minister Winston Peters told media last month the $9 billion increase was just the start and that defence spending should increase from 1 to 2.5 percent of GDP.

As the summit reached its end on Friday, Australia’s federal government also said it had approved the extension of the massive Woodside's North West Shelf gas project’s operating life to 2070, expected to cause the release of 6.1 billion tonnes of emissions.

These types of announcements may reduce the declaration to a mere set of aspirational platitudes used to mask the agendas of Canberra and Wellington.

Tekiteki points out New Zealand will play a significant role in the Oceans of Peace implementation plan as it becomes a PIF Troika member next year by virtue of being hosts the Leaders Forum in 2027.

“That means it will have a lot of influence in driving this work with the Troika for three years,” he said.

“As expected, the Declaration omits referencing decolonisation - a priority raised by civil society organisations - and avoids the term ‘demilitarisation’, despite intensifying militarisation across the region.”

Senior Law lecturer at the University of Auckland, Dylan Asafo, told In Context the omissions were a reflection of influence exerted by New Zealand and Australia.

Asafo said, while the declaration referenced the anti-nuclear Treaty of Rarotonga and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it failed to advance popular support for a demilitarised Pacific Ocean, free from the undue external influence of colonial powers like the US.

“It fails to explicitly address major threats to peace in the region, including foreign military exercises, basing and weapons testing,” he told In Context.

“The only slight acknowledgement of threats like AUKUS is found in the Leaders Communique, which states: ‘Recognising that the region is in a period defined by both heightened political transitions and increased global attention, Leaders were cognisant that matters such as nuclear legacy issues continue to test the integrity of the Blue Pacific’s long-standing nuclear-free identity’...

“This weak language and the failure to include strong demilitarisation provisions in the Declaration indicates that Australia and New Zealand have once again successfully exerted their influence as colonial powers in the Forum to advance AUKUS and other related military interests of the US and West.”

Asafo said fundamental issues important from the Pacific perspective were also left out of the equation, including the need to liberate West Papua, Kanaky-New Caledonia and Ma’ohi Nui from violent settler-colonial regimes.

“The Communique’s reaffirmation of the ‘Forum’s ongoing recognition of Indonesia’s sovereignty over West Papua’ undermines the Declaration’s supposed commitment to “cultivating a culture of peace grounded in the Pacific Way,” he said.

Pacific concerns about Australian, New Zealand and Fijian support of Israel’s illegal occupation and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza was also not expressed.

“A genuine Ocean of Peace Declaration required the affirmation of states’ obligations under the Genocide Convention at a minimum, as clarified in the International Court of Justice’s provisional rulings last year,” Asafo said.

“In this respect, the Communique and Declaration should have recognised the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which affirmed States’ obligations not to recognise as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“It is unacceptable for the Communique to commend the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change and urge all Forum Members to utilise it, while remaining silent on the ICJ’s other advisory opinions and rulings regarding the ongoing threat Israel and its allies pose to peace in the world.

For Asafo and others, New Zealand and Australia are not only ensuring an Anglocentric worldview bleeds into the Leaders Meeting final communique. They are ultimately being successful in pushing a western-aligned stability model for the region, envisaging the Ocean of Peace to be part of a security architecture undergirded by them on behalf of the US, facilitating peacekeeping to maintain the existing regional order.

Co-director of progressive foreign policy group Te Kuaka, Marco de Jong, questioned New Zealand’s objectives in helping to draft the declaration, amid its so-called foreign policy reset with ‘traditional partners’, the US and UK.

“The declaration comes at a time when New Zealand is shifting its regional security strategy from denial through diplomacy and development, towards deterrence through defence,” the AUT law lecturer told In Context.

“Its Defence Capability Plan delivers hardware to provide ‘enhanced lethality’ and ‘extended strike’ capabilities, towards an integrated Anzac force and revived ANZUS security pact.

“There has been a concern that New Zealand and Australia could co-opt the Ocean of Peace declaration, using it to bring the parallel security architecture developed outside of Forum auspices—initiatives such as the Pacific Policing Initiative or Pacific Response Group of the South Pacific Defence Ministers Meeting—under the PIF in order to control regional peacekeeping and align it with broader geostrategic objectives.”

He said if this approach was taken, the Ocean of Peace declaration would not act as an effective bulwark against militarism, but would instead prove a lost opportunity to advance an alternative Pacific-led security model, focused on peacebuilding through human development, climate action, and nuclear disarmament outside of intensifying major power competition.

“The declaration shows signs of a struggle, with hooks left in both ways. So while we might appreciate the inclusion of language supporting responsible innovation and bold climate action, for example, success there will rest on what ‘Forum-endorsed mechanisms’ are used to take the agenda forward.

“An instrumental and securitised approach to Pacific regionalism, one that seeks to prevent genuine peace by facilitating further militarisation, that fails to address the drivers of insecurity, will backfire.”

Friction remains over a decision to block foreign ‘dialogue partners’ attending this week’s Pacific Island Forum Leaders Meeting in Honiara, where far-reaching decisions over how the region’s top consensus body operates will be taken.

The move excluded 21 partner states from the five-day summit that began on September 8. The partners include the United States, the UK, France and the EU, as well as China.

Although New Zealand’s opposition to the ban has been presented in terms of lost investment opportunities, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) briefing paper obtained by In Context suggests strong geopolitical reasons for its disapproval.

Last month, hosts of this year’s annual summit, the Solomon Islands, successfully pushed for a ban on outside partners taking part, as Pacific leaders prepared to discuss proposals to revise the Pacific Islands Forum’s (PIF) regional architecture. The Review of Regional Architecture is geared towards more effectively delivering its 2050 Blue Pacific Continent policy plan and to better engage with dialogue partners.

The Leaders Meeting will discuss a proposed two-tier mechanism for future engagements with dialogue partners, allowing some states more access to the PIF than others. Any decisions over which partners to include in Tier One and Tier Two will not be simply based on which align with Pacific priorities, but also on geopolitical considerations and the amount of pressure exerted.

In August, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele defended his intention to have partner states excluded, arguing it was necessary so that Pacific leaders could make important decisions over the recommendations in the review without distraction.

Leaders entered this week’s summit amid growing geostrategic competition and fears of undue influence over regional decision making.

The Solomon Islands managed to convince most present at the Pacific Islands Forum Foreign Ministers' Meeting (FFMM), held in Suva in mid-August, to defer a Partners Dialogue Meeting until next year, when the revised mechanism for dealing with dialogue partners would be in place.

Peters says any division fault of Solomons

The thorny issue of Taiwan also played a role. Like most other Pacific nations, the Solomon Islands recognises the One-China Principle, which sees self-governing Taiwan as an integral part of China’s territory and not a country. There were reports of Honiara attempting to abide by the principle by refusing visas for Taiwan officials earlier this year, while in the lead-up to the PIC Leaders Meeting, Honiara declined to confirm whether Taiwan would be invited.

Peters linked the visa controversy with a subsequent decision to ban all dialogue partners from attending, to avoid splitting the PIF over the Taiwanese issue. Taiwan as been recognised as a ‘development’ partner since 1992.

“It's been outside influence and pressure on the Solomon Islands not to invite certain countries, and as a consequence, no countries are being invited,” Peters told the Pacific Media Outlet’s Pacific Mornings last month.

Manele rejected the comments. He has so far refrained from commenting on Peters’ latest outburst over the weekend, when the Foreign Minister told New Zealand media any division within the PIF would be the fault of the Solomon Islands.

“The blame lies squarely with the decision by the Solomon Islands government, who knew that over the years and decades, we've invited dialogue partners to come along because it expands our capacity,” Peters said.

“Had we known that, the question is whether we'd be having it in Honiara next week, or in some other country where we can get dialogue partners to be interested.”

Peters’ remarks however ignored the fact that Manele went through all appropriate channels to gain agreement among Pacific neighbours over the move.

Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji had opposed Manele’s plan, with Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka warning the move could “fracture” the PIF. In the end, only one of 18 Pacific nations’ heads scheduled to attend the PIF Leaders Meeting this week did not do so - associate member and New Zealand dependent territory Tokelau, due to “urgent consultations".

Western countries like the US and France have expressed disappointment and concern with the move. Some analysts fear retaliatory action from the Trump administration, a response that would further undermine US credibility in the region after recent trade tariffs imposed on nations, development funding cuts and a US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords.

Most Pacific states recognised the prudence of sidelining states jockeying for position as deliberations during this week’s summit take place.

New Zealand ‘conduit between Pacific and US’

Why New Zealand government failed to take this view may be due to Manele’s move effectively stymying powerful NATO-aligned states from seeking to entrench Western interests within revised PIF structures at the Leaders Meeting.

Although New Zealand and Australia publicly emphasize Pacific regionalism and the centrality of the PIF, a declassified document reveals how New Zealand sees its role in the region as a sub-imperial power, eager to accommodate US interests.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) briefing paper entitled ‘Visit to Vanuatu Parliament and engagement with Speaker’ was drawn up ahead of Peters’ visit to Tonga, Vanuatu and Hawai’i in April, part of a sustained bid to renew relationships across the Pacific to counter Chinese influence.

In a section, ‘Background Brief: United States in the Pacific’, it said: “New Zealand can play an important role as a conduit between the Pacific and the United States”.

“We have a strong interest in supporting the US to succeed in the Pacific,” it added.

“Where US interests align with ours, our collective actions can deliver outcomes for the region that New Zealand cannot otherwise achieve.”

Former director of governance and engagement at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Sione Tekiteki, writing in E-Tangata on September 7, observed that partnerships rather than Pacific priorities continue to define the shape of Pacific regionalism.

“Beyond the Pacific Islands Forum, partners are deeply entrenched in every layer of Pacific regionalism. They sit inside regional institutions, dominate multilateral engagements, and shape bilateral arrangements. Increasingly, in some countries, they effectively exercise sovereign rights through exclusive security agreements, using aid as leverage,” he said.

New Zealand has already helped increase Western influence within the PIF.

Last year it played a pivotal role in encouraging the PIF to take a more defence-orientated position against China, by having it structurally linked with the heavily Western-aligned defence body, the South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting (SPDMM).

The SPDMM annually sees regional Defence Ministers, and senior defence officials, meet in what it describes as “the only ministerial-level defence and security forum in the South Pacific”. It is broadly focused on maintaining US hegemony by “coordination of actions against security threats in the region”. The PIF’s Secretariat now attends those meetings.

The MFAT briefing document noted that China pushes its own mini-lateral architecture in the region, which it says is “duplicative and undermines the region’s existing approaches and organisations – for example, the China-Pacific Islands Foreign Ministers Meeting… [redacted]”

It states that New Zealand’s public position on such regional meetings is that “engagement should take place in a way that advances Pacific interests, supports regional institutions and that the PIF is encouraged to participate in any forum”.

However, a former regional diplomat told In Context that, behind closed doors, Pacific leaders are encouraged to minimise engagement with bodies outside the Western sphere of influence.

“There is an implicit understanding in talks with Pacific leaders that engaging with China too much risks their existing bilateral ties with New Zealand and Australia,” he said under conditions of anonymity.

Leaders see exclusion as breathing space

For most Pacific leaders, the exclusion of both China and NATO-aligned Western states gives temporary breathing space needed to make Pacific-centred decisions this week.

The Office of Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr has acknowledged the decision to exclude Dialogue Partners allows leaders to “focus on the critical intra-regional issues at this year's forum, including the High-Level Political Talanoa, the Ocean of Peace Declaration and the Pacific Resilience Facility”.

Palau, one of only three Pacific nations to recognise Taiwan as a country, alongside the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, will host next year’s PIF Leaders Meeting.

In agreeing with the dialogue partner meetings deferral, Samoa's caretaker Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata'afa told media the PIF needed “some more time for the region to put a new process in place, so that we can effectively engage with our partners going forward, not now, but the later stage”.

Significant members of civil society also recognised the need for the deferral.

Pacific Conference of Churches General Secretary Reverend, James Bhagwan, told Pacific journalist Nic Maclellan over the weekend: “I think the incoming chair of the Forum, the Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, has been quite wise. I see this as an act of Pacific self-determination: this is a space now for the Pacific to talk.

“I know there are those who would wish to be here, but this is now really a Pacific Islands Forum. Our leaders will have no distractions, apart from what civil society and the media bring to them, but we hope that adds to their conversations.”

A PIF High-Level Persons group charged with overseeing the review of regional architecture had travelled around the Pacific in the lead-up to the PIF Leaders Meeting, getting feedback from nations about how the PIF could be improved and how best it should engage with states outside the region.

Common themes recorded were a need for PIF agencies to support national governments and not replicate or compete with them, as well as the need for robust mechanisms to safeguard against foreign pressure to act against Pacific nations’ interests.

A statement by the Cook Islands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration (MFAM), after engaging with the Group in June, said participants in the process, had “reaffirmed the Cook Islands’ commitment to regionalism but stressed the importance of reforming existing institutions to improve delivery, align with national priorities, and enhance accountability.

“They also highlighted the need to preserve Pacific political leadership and ensure space for Pacific Island countries to deliberate and make decisions free from undue external influence.”

Analysts and commentators this week will be looking at whether foreign states with a diplomatic presence in the Solomon Islands will seek bilateral engagements with those present at the PIF Leaders Meeting, disregarding the move to sideline them.

Media coverage of this week’s military parade in Beijing, marking 80 years since the surrender of imperial Japan and defeat of fascism, was striking for both its ignorance and hostility.

New Zealand and Australian news outlets focused almost exclusively on covering criticism of former leaders who attended. Ex-New Zealand Prime Ministers Helen Clark and John Key accepted invitations, as did former Victoria state premier Daniel Andrews.

The Sydney Morning Herald featured a photo of Andrews on its front page posing alongside dozens of heads of state, including Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, with a headline reading: ‘Dan and his dictator mates’.

The ABC, in an analysis piece, questioned Andrews’ motives, asking why a luminary of the Australian Labor Party would sully his career legacy, as well as his reputation as a private citizen.

The state broadcaster, like other media, gave prominence to Liberal Party foreign affairs spokesman Angus Taylor’s questioning of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese over Andrews’ attendance. Taylor said Andrews had brought eternal shame to Australia by attending the anti-fascist commemoration, although Taylor seemed to have no issues with his country giving military and diplomatic support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

This week’s event offered an opportunity to recognise China’s role as an indispensable ally during World War II.

As former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr observed, China’s bloody engagement with Japan stretched its forces and this would have likely prevented opportunities to attack Australia. Carr had attended talks surrounding the commemoration while in Beijing this week.

Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 resulted in atrocities like the Nanjing Massacre, indiscriminate aerial bombing campaigns, biological warfare, sexual violence, famine, forced labour and a scorched-earth policy.

Civilian and military deaths in China during the Sino-Japanese conflict were estimated to be between 15 to 20 million, enormous losses second only to the Soviet Union’s in its fight against Nazi Germany.

In a normal society where NATO imperatives have not bled into the body politic of society, informing media framing and political discourse, sending serving government ministers over would have been normal diplomatic protocol. Instead, former leaders attended to avoid the fallout.

Public broadcaster Radio New Zealand (RNZ) led predictably with criticism of Key and Clark for attending, with its digital story ‘Helen Clark, John Key at China military parade along with Putin, Kim’ rehashing comments made by arch China hawk and NATO-aligned think tank fellow, professor Anne-Marie Brady, in an opinion piece published in Newsroom. Brady warned of Chinese nefariousness and said the former leaders had “sent the wrong signals” by attending the Beijing event, as they offered legitimacy to dictators.

For Brady and other critics like Defence Minister Judith Collins, Key and Clark were disrupting NATO messaging about China being a dangerous strategic adversary that must be contained and isolated.

This week’s news coverage reflected a political and media elite captured by hegemonic narratives, unable to see the world in terms other than through the puerile and distorting lens of ‘autocracy versus democracy’.

Such an approach drastically lowers the standard of news and fails to offer the public any real sense of what is currently taking place in the world. RNZ’s digital story stated the parade had “capped a week of diplomatic grandstanding by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his allies against the West”. The simplistic summary was astounding for its lack of balance and context.

What came before the parade was an important summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), which brought together leaders representing 40 percent of the world’s population, while Xi’s address at the parade pointedly cautioned against a repeat of the mistakes that led to World War II.

The cutting-edge military hardware on display was itself a warning to the West that China would stand up to imperial aggression again.

Xi told a 50,000-strong crowd the world faced a choice of "peace or war” and that China would “never be intimidated by bullies”.

“Only when all countries and nations treat each other as equals, coexist in peace, and support each other can we uphold common security, eradicate the root cause of war, and prevent the reoccurrence of historical tragedies,” he said.

“Today, humanity again has to choose between peace and war, dialogue and confrontation, win-win cooperation and zero-sum game. The Chinese people firmly stand on the right side of history and the progress of human civilization. We will remain committed to the path of peaceful development and join hands with all peoples around the world to build a community with a shared future for humanity.”

In the days before the parade, a meeting of the SCO in the northern city of Tianjin saw China and Russia outline a vision of a new international order, free from a Western imperial ‘rules-based’ system.

Like BRICS, the expanding 10-member SCO, which includes Russia, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Belarus and most of central Asia, is working towards an alternative global financial and trading framework, not because it is “anti-West”, but because this offers a stability and fairness that the US hegemonic order doesn’t.

With an unrelenting genocide conducted against Palestinians in Gaza and moves to seize $300 billion of Russian assets held by the EU, the desire for an alternative multipolar system to ensure predictability and trust within the global community has grown.

“Global governance has reached a new crossroads,” Xi Jinping told the summit on Monday.

“We must continue to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practise true multilateralism.”

Economic coercion by the West is a key driver of the speed and depth of change. The ability to exercise sovereignty while avoiding punitive treatment for doing so is highly sought after by nations in the Global South and it is not hard to see why.

According to research published in The Lancet Global Health, unilateral US and EU sanctions from 1970 to 2021 were associated with 38 million deaths. The research began with a study of sanctions imposed on Chile’s Salvador Allende government, designed to make its economy ‘scream’, according to US President Richard Nixon. Allende was eventually killed during a US-backed coup in 1973.

Most recently, Trump’s tariff scheme - the latest weaponisation of the financial system - is expediting global realignments.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s presence and his side-line bilateral talks with Xi at the SCO is a case in point, after his country was hit with a 50 percent tariff for continuing to buy Russian oil in its national interests.

Modi and Xi announced after talks they would strive to resolve their differences. The two countries have seen periodic and deadly border skirmishes, the latest in 2020.

Xi said: “It is the right choice for both sides to be friends who have good neighbourly and amicable ties, partners who enable each other’s success, and to have the dragon and the elephant dance together”.

Modi said the countries would proceed “on the basis of mutual respect and trust”.

Photographs of Modi, Xi and Putin together in a diplomatic show of unity further underlined the counterproductive nature of Western coercion.

As the summit progressed this week, news broke that the Power of Siberia II pipeline, from Russia to China, would largely replace Moscow’s European market, after Western sanctions and an act of eco-terrorism that destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline. Western elites seeking to contain Russia compelled Putin to look eastwards and left the EU’s industrial base deeply compromised, after its decision to import expensive US liquefied petroleum gas instead.

These events reflect further fundamental shifts towards multipolarity and the inexorable decline of Western hegemony.

Most of the paupers at the global dinner party – for so long pickpocketed, denied food, beaten and lectured by the racist grandiose narcissists at the head of the table - have left to form their own table. Threats will not bring them back and may only stop the most servile and deluded from moving tables to join them, in “sovereign equality” as Xi puts it.

Yet media outlets, from their predictably shallow reporting this week, seemed oblivious to it all. It demonstrates how few journalists have a handle on the momentous developments now taking place, while the general public is fed stories of dangerous, autocratic regimes uniting in hatred towards the West.

Many repeated the “axis of upheaval” label given to the SCO and those involved in its engagements this week, apparently blind to the fact there exists no ‘order’ under the existing ‘rules-based’ system to upheave - that genocide, inequality and social instability, and perpetual war are its structural expressions.

With this level of insight, it seems likely Australian and New Zealand newsrooms will remain uncritical echo-chambers of Five Eyes narratives, promoting the ideological self-justifications of hegemony, as preparations for war against those leaving the table continue. The long-term consequences for the public could end up devastating.

New Zealand is currently spending over 60 percent of its defence budget on US military hardware, a document released under the Official Information Act confirms.

The news comes on the back of an announcement in August that it is spending $2.7 billion on a fleet of US-made MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and long-range Airbus A321XLR aircraft.

It follows a pattern across the Asia-Pacific region, as the US government seeks to maximise profits to its military-industrial complex after compelling global allies to drastically increase military budgets, in many cases at the expense of their social spending.

The procurements are part of a four-year $12 billion Defence Capability Plan announced on April 7 by Defence Minister Judith Collins. It amounts to a $9 billion hike, putting the country on track to raise defence spending from 1 percent to more than 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) within the next eight years.

On April 17, just over a week after her announcement, Collins accompanied Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters to a meeting in Auckland with a US Congressional Delegation on a visit to explore US military export opportunities with regional partners.

A briefing document for Collins and Peters entitled, Event Brief – Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Defence Meeting with US Congressional Delegation, under a ‘Defence procurement’ section, states: “The United States Government is the largest supplier of military capability to New Zealand. By value, over 60 percent of the $6 billion currently under acquisition is being procured using US Foreign Military assets.”

The US delegation was led by Rep Young Kim, a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and chairman of the East Asia and Pacific Subcommittee. They visited several countries in the Pacific region, travelling to Palau after the engagement.

The document not only reveals how much of its new defence budget is currently being spent on US weaponry, but also how deeply enmeshed the country is becoming in US military schemes in the region.

One of the objectives of the ministers, it said, was to “highlight New Zealand’s value to the US as a close partner in the Indo-Pacific”.

It characterised its Defence Capability Plan as a means of making New Zealand a “force multiplier with Australia”, a country that has committed itself firmly to US military posture against China, particularly through the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact.

In announcing the procurement of five MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and the Airbus A321XLR last month, Collins emphasised that these would not only allow New Zealand’s military to respond to “international events” but would enhance interoperability within an “integrated Anzac force”.

She said it was important to have the extra long-range Airbus aircraft, as these were “capable of such things as returning safely from Antarctica if it is unable to land due to conditions on the ice”.

The declassified briefing document obtained shows one of the discussion points with the US delegation being “the strategic importance of Antarctica to New Zealand and the high value we place on our co-operation with the US”.

Other issues listed to discuss were “New Zealand’s increased commitments to security in the Indo-Pacific” as well as Five Eyes collaboration and “our excellent collaboration in critical sectors such as space and defence”.

New Zealand is involved in a US initiative to militarise space as part of Operation Olympic Defender. The Royal NZ Air Force’s new number 62 Squadron, based in Auckland, is implementing New Zealand Defence Force space operations alongside the US.

The country has also agreed to act as a regional node in the US defence industry.

The overall tone of the document presents a need to emphasise New Zealand’s usefulness as a security partner in the region.

Most significantly, in a section entitled ‘Pacific region’, which presumably sets out New Zealand’s commitments in the region, all eight bullet points are completely redacted for national security reasons. This points to the level of secrecy around the country’s role in the Pacific as a US partner.

Collins made her $12 billion defence spending announcement in April, less than a month after her attendance at the Munch Security Conference in February, where the main topic of discussion was a need for defence spending hikes.

New Zealand is not the only NATO partner in the region spending big on US weaponry as it signs up to new bilateral security agreements.

Japan’s ¥8.8 trillion (US$60 billion) defence budget request for the 2026 fiscal year includes several military systems from the US, including two Boeing KC-46A Pegasus tanker aircraft and 12 more Lockheed-Martin F-35 fighter jets. It has committed to raising its defence spending from 1.2 percent to 2 percent by 2027.

On August 21, Taiwan announced a massive 22 percent hike in its 2026 defence budget of T$949.5 billion (US$31.27 billion), bringing its military spending to 3.32 percent of GDP.

After pressure from the US, it agreed to upgrade its navy and buy more US-made fighter jets and missiles, although selling fifth-generation F-35s to the self-governing island may remain off the table over fears of Chinese spies obtaining its technology.

The Philippines is increasing its defence acquisitions, as it deepens its alliance with Washington by expanding US troops’ access to Philippine bases too. In a major provocation to China, in December last year it agreed to buy Lockheed Martin’s land-based Typhon missile launcher, with a range of 480km.

Although South Korea is increasingly coproducing arms with the US in the region, it continues to buy F-35s and its components, spending 2.8 percent of GDP on defence.

Australia has also committed hundreds of billions on US weaponry over the next decade, with an estimated $390 billion being spent on its troubled AUKUS nuclear submarine deal with the US alone.

The developing arms race in the Asia Pacific region mirrors the situation in Europe.

At a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit in late June, member states committed to enormous defence spending hikes to 5 percent of their GDP, after pressure from US President Donald Trump.

The militarisation is beginning to impose serious social costs on Western taxpayers funding it.

Germany’s Chancellor stated last month that his country’s welfare state was ‘unsustainable’ in light of the need to rearm to face down supposed threats from Russia and China.

The United Kingdom and France were reported last week to be on the verge of needing an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan as the respective nations’ economies continued to suffer. Many analysts point to their de facto dominion status under US hegemony and the consequences of their support for a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine as causes of decline.

The Europe Union (EU) last month agreed to buy hundreds of billions of US weaponry as part of a trade deal announced in July, according to US President Donald Trump - a figure questioned by some analysts sceptical of US industrial capacity to fulfil demand.

Ukraine’s de facto president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was reported to have offered Trump a $100 billion deal to buy US weaponry, paid for by a consortium of European countries, in return for a security guarantee after any peace deal with Russia.

Both the previous Labour government, as well as the current hard-right coalition, have repeatedly justified military spending increases by referring to “a deteriorating geopolitical environment”, a situation itself created by the United States attempting to maintain its primacy in the face of rising multipolarity.

This story was first published by Consortium News

News Analysis:

The expulsion of Iran’s ambassador to Australia over accusations his country directed anti-Semitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne may yet backfire on intelligence agencies behind the move.

The expulsion of Ahmad Sadeghi and three other officials followed a briefing from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) on August 26, which Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese concluded had presented credible evidence of Iran’s involvement.

According to some analysts however, a significant proportion of the public are not convinced and the diplomatic attack on Iran may have further eroded confidence in the spy agency and their government, which uncritically accepted its conclusions.

“These were extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil,” Albanese told media on Tuesday. “They were attempts to undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community.”

Albanese did not explain what Iran would have to gain from such activities.

ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess claimed his organisation had unpicked a complex network of criminal proxies used by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to attack a kosher restaurant in Sydney and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne. No one was injured in those attacks.

He said Iran was “likely” to have been involved in directing other anti-Semitic attacks, although the four diplomats being expelled were not involved.

“They’re just using cut-outs, including people who are criminals and members of organised crime gangs to do their bidding or direct their bidding,” he said.

Mostly tellingly, Burgess confirmed his organisation’s investigation had been carried out with help from foreign partners. A Jerusalem Post report suggested Mossad was one of the likely intelligence partners involved, while analysts said the US had most likely played a role as well.

“It is quite clear that a large proportion of people, of different backgrounds, no longer accept the pronouncements of these ‘intelligence’ organisations without questioning,” Warwick Powell, an adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology, told Mick Hall in Context.

“A cursory glance across the independent media and social media spaces tells us as much. The centrality of ambiguous words like ‘likely’ and ‘possible’ as part of the rationalisation of the diplomatic expulsion don’t help, raising scepticism amongst people as to motives and judgement. Put plainly, the credibility of these agencies has been severely damaged over the past couple of decades.”

Politically Tainted Report

Israel’s likely involvement in Australia’s move against Iran - while Israeli diplomats remain in the country amid a genocide being committed in Gaza - is a damning indictment of a politically-tainted report weaponised against a country the Zionist state is attempting to destroy.

This week Western publics witnessed the live bombing of the Nasser Hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip, a “double-tap” strike that killed 21 people, including emergency responders and five more journalists. It brings the number of journalists killed in Gaza over the last 22 months to 247, according to UN statistics.

“Compounding this scepticism is the fact that many across the community are highly critical of the government’s reactions to the situation in Gaza,” Powell says.

“While the government made the announcements to expel Iran’s ambassador on the back of undisclosed and seemingly tendentious ‘intelligence,’ we were all aware that another hospital in Gaza had been bombed by Israel, with journalists and civilians amongst the casualties. A question of standards is therefore naturally raised. Disgust at the apparent hypocrisy is deserved.

“If Australia wanted to remind the world that its foreign policy priorities are often or largely shaped by those of other countries, then it is hard to think of a better way than this.”

The IRGC will now be designated a terrorist organisation by Australia, following designations by the US and Canada. Other Five Eyes partners, including New Zealand, are expected to do the same.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters condemned Iran following Albanese’s announcement.

“New Zealand is gravely concerned to learn of Australia’s announcement on Iran’s role in antisemitic attacks against the Australian Jewish community,” Peters said.

“New Zealand unequivocally condemns Iran’s actions, including through proxies, in Gaza, the Red Sea and around the Middle East and the world. State-sponsored attacks designed to sow discord are completely unacceptable.”

The language used by Burgess and Albanese plays to the widely-disseminated distortion of Iran directing “proxies” in West Asia to create trouble for geopolitical gain, including using Hezbollah, an independent regional ally of the Islamic Republic.

This Western projection has been a feature of Five Eyes’ annual ‘threat assessment’ reports in recent years, warning that Tehran and Moscow are using criminal proxies to carry out its violent attacks across Europe.

In October 2024, MI5 chief Ken McCallum claimed Russia was on a mission to generate “sustained mayhem on British and European streets” and that the agency had also responded to 20 plots backed by Iran since 2022.

The New Zealand Security and Intelligence Service (NZSIS) earlier this month warned of heightened threats posed by Iran, Russia and particularly China, repeating themes of its Tasman neighbour and other Five Eyes partners.

The report provoked a stern rebuke from China, evidently becoming less patient with the country’s increasing alignment with US hegemonic narratives and machinations in the Asia Pacific region.

The latest move by Australia may also see public patience wearing thin.

In the wake of the expulsion announcement, Albanese told media his government would give whatever powers it needed to carry out its work.

“I think Australians can take confidence from our security agencies, know they have a government that backs our agencies and says ‘whatever power you need, we will give you’.”

Although, instances of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have increased since October 7, 2023, according to some surveys, there have been a number of high-profile fake anti-Semitic attacks in Australia too.

In March, police found a caravan with explosives, no detonator and an address of a Sydney synagogue and eventually concluded it was part of a fabricated plan by an organised crime network in order to divert police resources.

Albanese’s colleague, New South Wales state Premier Chris Minns, is currently the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry for his role in using such anti-Semitic hoaxes as a pretext for draconian anti-protest laws aimed at pro-Palestine rallies that have attracted unprecedented numbers in the past month.

Although the Iran probe may serve to attempt to condition the public to accept more powers being given to the state agencies, it may also be useful in positioning Australia on the Israeli side in a renewed war with Iran.

There has been heightened expectancy that Israel’s act of aggression against Iran in June, which resulted in a 12-day war, will be followed up with more provocations and attacks on the Islamic Republic.

Director of the Sydney-based Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, Dr Tim Anderson, said Australia’s spy agency was almost certainly assisted in its probe by Mossad and the US.

“It is very clear to me, as a researcher and author of several books on the Middle East wars, that the Israelis played a determining role in Canberra’s expulsion of the Iranian ambassador from Australia,” he told Mick Hall in Context.

“This demonstrates the ongoing reality of foreign interference [US-Israeli] in Australian politics.

“These are the same agencies that fed us a steady stream of fake war propaganda including the supposed WMDs in Iraq, claims of Hamas bases under Gaza hospitals and fake stories about Iran being on the verge of producing nuclear weapons.”

Anderson believes the diplomatic move against Iran not only puts Australia on good terms with Israel and the US again, after a spat over its purely symbolic recognition of Palestine on August 12, it may also be aimed at making its public more amenable to any military support given to Israel.

“Canberra’s diplomatic attack on Iran comes as the Israelis prepare for a second round of aggression against Iran and while the Australian public, through huge rallies, has been expressing its outrage at the Albanese government’s collaboration with the Gaza genocide and demanding punishment of the Israelis,” he says.

“After presenting ASIO with a catalogue of claims about a supposed IRGC role in ‘anti-Semitic attacks’, he says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has now forced Albanese’s hand, denouncing Iran so as to maintain support of his big brother in Washington. This may also help align Canberra with Israel’s upcoming second round attack on Iran.

“Netanyahu seems to be further embedding Canberra in his war against Iran as part of his US-backed plot to destroy Palestine and control the entire Middle East.”

Australia Citizens Party spokesperson Robert Barwick compares the intelligence report on Iran to the erroneous “weapons of mass destruction” dossier used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, which arguably left public trust in intelligence agencies in the US and UK at an all-time low.

“Some people, especially politicians, seem to think intelligence assessments by the ASIO are like weather bureau information – objective, accurate reports from an impartial government agency. Nothing could be further from the truth. Intelligence is highly politicised,” he told Mick Hall in Context.

“Initially, Australia’s top intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments (ONA), assessed that Iraq might have been reviving its WMD program.

“Then, after September 13 2002, the ONA hardened its intelligence to align with the CIA and MI6 fabrications, claiming that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction — a clearly politicised move to falsify evidence to suit the government.”

For Barwick, the move against Iran should highlight the dangers of a US-aligned intelligence community strongly influencing national government policy.

“We should be demanding evidence, not ‘intelligence’,” he says.

After five more journalists were among 21 people killed during an Israeli attack on Nasser hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip on July 26, I am republishing a speech I gave to a Palestine solidarity rally in Auckland at the weekend. The demonstration commemorated the deaths of over 240 journalists in Gaza since October 7, 2023. It was also addressed by veteran journalists Dr David Robie and Malcolm Evans.

I’d like to start by saying it’s a privilege to address this rally, brothers and sisters here to affirm their humanity by showing solidarity with the Palestinian People and those in Gaza now in the final stages of a genocide.

It is sickening that the New Zealand government, alongside other Western states, supported and continues to support Israel’s onslaught - the mass killing of so many men, women and precious children, which has been livestreamed for all to see.

Although there are many of us here this afternoon, there should be many thousands more protesting this obscenity. The way the media have covered these crimes has undoubtedly affected public opinion.

I want to take this opportunity to contrast the life and work of reporter Anas al-Sharif, who was assassinated along with four of his Al Jazeera colleagues on August 10, with the way those in Western establishment media have operated and continue to operate.

Anas was a man of faith and of duty. For Anas, God, love and truth were one. This is what drove his career and why he risked his life reporting, bearing witness to Palestinian suffering, day in and day out. Like so many others targeted by Israel, a kind of Socratic love of truth animated Anas.

As Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza devolved into a full-blown genocide, our media, by contrast, continued to be driven by radically different career considerations. They continued to frame Israel’s attack on Gaza as a war against Hamas, while they uncritically recorded Western leaders’ claims that Israel was exercising a right of self-defence.

Daily reports by Anas and hundreds of his colleagues killed in Gaza contradicted these narratives and that’s the reason they were targeted.

Our news outlets continue to present an ahistorical account of what has transpired since October 7, shorn of context, ignoring Israel’s history of occupation, of colonial violence against the Palestinian People.

An implicit understanding that violence and ethnic cleansing forms part of the organisational DNA of Zionism should have shaped how news stories were framed and presented over the past 22 months.

Instead, newsroom leaders took their lead from our politicians, from the foreign policy positions of those in Washington. In doing so, newsrooms have not been taking a value neutral position here, nor have they been attempting to help us develop informed opinions.

They failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice. By wilfully declining to adjudicate between contested claims of Israel and its victims, they failed to meet the informational needs of democratic citizenship in a most profound way.

They failed to give the public information that would have allowed us to hold our politicians to account over foreign policy. They ensured that pressure on the government to sanction Israel and meet our obligations under the Genocide Convention, didn’t reach a critical mass.

In doing so, they lowered the standard of news, instead of upholding it, as they so sanctimoniously tell us they do.

They have in effect served the interests of power, not truth or the public interest.

The uncritical use of international news wire agencies by local media has played a major part in this, here in New Zealand.

It should be noted that Reuters and AFP, agencies that our national broadcaster uses, were launched at the turn of the century to control the form and flow of information from the colonies to Western centres of power, in Paris and in London. Back then they were blatant epistemic nodes of empire, many of their reports written in a way that dehumanised subject races, serving to justify colonial subjugation.

These agencies evolved over time, with concepts like ‘due impartiality’ introduced as touchstones of new editorial standards. Today these agencies are held up as the gold standard of unbiased news gathering and presentation.

Their function however has largely remained the same.

Through the horrific martyrdom of Palestinians, we see that these self-professed standards are not universally applied. These are instead selectively used, according to the prerogatives of our informational gatekeepers.

These agencies are not neutral, they insidiously reflect the prevailing positions of the United States of America, just as they once reflected the prevailing ideas and colonial imperatives of England and France.

In a despicable reportage on the assassination of Anas and his colleagues in Gaza, it was no co-incidence that Reuters led with Israel’s justification, that Anas was a Hamas member, however absurd that claim was.

The US and its Western allies, including New Zealand, have enabled this genocide and these war crimes and it has been the media’s job to obscure it.

Not only should we continue to hold our media to account for publishing stories that present false balance, giving Israeli claims parity with verifiable facts, for ignoring the atrocities happening every day in occupied Palestine, we should continue to build our own alternative information channels.

But as Israel’s final push to expel and murder Gaza’s residents intensifies, I appeal to those in mainstream media who still take their jobs seriously - use whatever opportunities you have to write stories that shine a light on what is happening in Gaza.

I urge you to use contested terms like ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘war crimes’, ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’, and by all means attribute these to the United Nations, Amnesty International and other human rights organisations. But use them and use them frequently.

If you see gaps in their systems that allow you to push through whatever truth you can, use them. History will be on your side.

The public’s right to know is the overriding ethical principle for all journalists. It is the principle that Anas and his colleagues lived and died by. The public’s right to know overrides the self-censoring and propagandised practices of our newsrooms.

And if you’re given a reprimand for applying this principle, given a written warning or even the sack, so what. Wear it as a badge of honour, in a profession that has very little honour left.

The opening of a Federal Bureau of Investigations standalone office in New Zealand has caused widespread alarm, sparking a protest outside a US consulate and vows by opposition parties to have it closed.

FBI Director Kash Patel announced his organisation’s upgraded presence in the South Pacific nation on July 31, during a visit to Wellington, standing alongside senior government officials in its parliamentary building, The Beehive.

He told media:

“Some of the most important global issues of our times are the ones that New Zealand and America work on together — countering the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] in the Indo PACOM theatre, countering the narcotics trade, working together against cyber-intrusions and ransomware operations and, most importantly, protecting our respective citizenry.”

The FBI operates legats, or legal attaches, across the world, allowing the organisation to coordinate with domestic law enforcement agencies, government officials and intelligence partners. The bureau has maintained a presence in Wellington since 2017, with its main regional office based in Australia’s capital, Canberra, since 1999.

The Wellington legat would “address shared priority areas through joint investigations, information sharing, and capacity-building,” the FBI said.

It will oversee FBI activities in Antarctica, Samoa, Niue, the Cook Islands and Tonga, as well as in New Zealand, with the Australian legat looking after the rest of the Pacific.

Government ministers were taciturn and visibly uncomfortable when asked questions after Patel made clear one of the office’s main concerns would be China, New Zealand’s top trading partner.

In the wake of the news, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun on August 1 warned that “cooperation between countries should not target any third party.”

He added:

“Seeking so-called absolute security through forming small groupings under the banner of countering China does not help keep the Asia-Pacific and the world at large peaceful and stable.”

Labour, New Zealand’s main opposition party, questioned why the office was needed and said more information would be sought before commenting further. Others were clear in expressing disapproval.

Approximately 300 demonstrators assembled outside the US consulate in Auckland on August 2 to highlight the dangers posed to New Zealand’s sovereignty and judicial system.

Officials from the other main opposition parties, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, drew cheers from the crowd after vowing to have the office shut down. Other groups, including Palestine Action, designated as a terrorist organisation by the UK government, also addressed protesters, warning the FBI’s increased presence was a threat to civil liberties and freedom of speech.

There were reports of posts on X (formerly Twitter) critical of the government’s decision being removed.

Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick had posted on social media that the opening of the office signalled New Zealand was “tying itself to an increasingly unstable Trump administration.”

“We are not, nor should we allow ourselves to be, pawns in a power struggle between the US and China,” she said.

Patel met Foreign Minister Winston Peters, Defence Minister Judith Collins and Police Minister Mark Mitchell, as well as the country’s intelligence chiefs, while in the country.

US Grip Tightening

The Wellington upgrade is a sign of increasing Western focus on the Asia-Pacific region. The US and Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partners Australia and New Zealand have been preparing for war with China, focusing on the militarisation of existing bilateral and multilateral arrangements in the region, as well as pushing narratives through annual security threat assessments that inflate threats posed by what NATO calls has called the West’s greatest “strategic competitor.”

As many analysts observe, the real threat is the rise of multipolarity, as Western neocolonial hegemony is challenged by the expanding BRICS trading group, led by China, Russia and emerging nations in the Global South. The Asia-Pacific region is relatively peaceful, with an increasing BRICS presence dovetailing with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an organisation of 10 countries in Southeast Asia, promoting economic, political, and security cooperation.

The Western power bloc sits uncomfortably alongside the two groups amid Great Power competition, with small Pacific nations finding themselves increasingly stuck in the middle.

One such nation is the Cook Islands, a protectorate of New Zealand that found itself in the Five Eyes crosshairs over its signing of a comprehensive strategic partnership deal with China in February.

A series of agreements over development and exploration of its vast seabed mineral wealth were signed, infuriating Wellington over a perceived lack of consultation. Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced an NZ$18 million cut to its budget, which he said would be reinstated when certain conditions were met, widely understood to be acceding autonomy to Wellington.

The FBI’s Wellington office may take a keen interest in it.

Dan Duggan Case a ‘Cautionary Tale’

Patel’s presence in New Zealand had been unannounced, until a media outlet spotted him inside the Beehive, where he was meeting with senior officials, leading to speculation as to why he was there.

The day after Patel departed New Zealand, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) revealed Patel had a secretive meeting with Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke in Sydney. No government statement announcing the engagement had been released and it only came to light after the ABC made an inquiry.

It is possible that among the issues Patel discussed while in Australia was a Federal Court of Australia hearing scheduled for August 26, when the extradition of Australian pilot Dan Duggan to the US will be challenged.

For some, Duggan’s case highlights the risks posed by New Zealand allowing the FBI to expand its reach.

Duggan was arrested in November 2022 based on a 2017 US grand jury indictment that accuses him of training Chinese military pilots in violation of a US arms embargo. He faces up to 65 years imprisonment if convicted.

Duggan, who has been held at a high security prison in New South Wales since his arrest, says he was only ever aware of training civilian pilots while employed by the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA) in 2012.

While later carrying out aviation consultancy work in China, Duggan says he discussed his work with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and a US intelligence official. He claims his work activities were never flagged as breaching any laws during these interactions, but that he was asked to act as a spy while in China.

He returned to Australia in 2022 after the ASIO gave him security clearance to take up employment in aviation. On return the clearance was withdrawn before he was arrested. Media have speculated he was lured back to Australia so he could be extradited to the US.

There is no hard evidence the FBI was involved in a plot to entice him back or set him up for arrest, but inducing someone into a situation where they can be arrested for an alleged crime is a common FBI practice in the US.

Duggan’s legal team have argued a law change in 2018 was unduly made retrospective, so that the US extradition request could be approved. It made training foreign military pilots illegal in Australia too, creating “dual criminality”, a condition that needed to be met under the US extradition agreement with Australia.

Australian Citizens Party spokesman Robert Barwick told Mick Hall in Context Duggan’s treatment should be seen as a cautionary tale, pointing to the dangers FBI and Five Eyes intelligence influence over a country’s domestic agencies and political system pose.

Barwick said citizens in Australia and New Zealand were being conditioned by their politicians and media to remain blind to US foreign interference in front of their noses, while China was being portrayed as a quiet boogie man, intent on threatening democracy.

“It’s interesting to contrast the recent hysteria about a Chinese ‘overseas police stations’ operating in Australia — basically overseas cops operating with approval of the Australian authorities, handling licensing renewals and other such mundane services – with the FBI legat in Canberra, beavering away with activities that really do warrant public scrutiny…

The FBI and the OSIO co-ordinate very closely and I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case with Dan Duggan.”

Like Duggan’s lawyers, Barwick argues Duggan has been caught in the middle of geopolitical tensions between the US and China.

FBI Presence ‘Terrifying’

Activist group, Peace Action Wellington, an affiliate of the US Peace Action group, points to another extradition case in New Zealand with similar themes — that of internet entrepreneur and activist Kim Dotcom, who had his home raided by anti-terrorism special tactics teams in 2012 at the behest of US authorities.

“What we learned from that was New Zealand’s intelligence agencies engaged in illegal surveillance for the FBI, and the charges brought against Dotcom were not even things that are illegal in this country,” spokesperson Valerie Morse said.

New Zealand signed off on Dotcom’s extradition to the US on fraud charges related to his defunct website Megaupload last year. He is still fighting to remain in the country.

Morse called the FBI’s presence in the country “terrifying” in light of its role suppressing protests and dissent in the US.

“The FBI anti-terrorism units have been involved in numerous raids and arrests of student activists at universities across the US. These brutal investigations have nothing to do with criminal actions by anyone and everything to do with student support for Palestine.

“That a key area of collaboration is anti-terrorism is therefore extremely alarming… We want no US police presence here.”

Such fears may be well founded. There is evidence suggesting New Zealand is not only enhancing the interoperability of its military with US and NATO forces, but also aligning its laws with those of other Five Eyes partners.

A leak from the Ministry of Justice in July shows that New Zealand has been secretively consulting over plans to revise the Terrorism Suppression Act to make public statements deemed as material support for a proscribed organisation an offence. It further reveals the government wants to widen the criteria for proscribing organisations, putting it in line with other increasingly repressive Western countries.

It is also seeking to push through draconian legislation on foreign interference, considered so wide ranging that critics say it could be used to suppress foreign policy dissidents and environmental activists.

The increased presence of the FBI will only heighten concerns around these issues further.

Deepening Commitment to Washington

Auckland-based geopolitical analyst Trevor Johnston told said a series of diplomatic moves, law reforms, defence reviews and military pacts on top of the FBI upgrade all pointed to a deepening commitment to Washington:

“Patel was quite explicit that ‘countering the CCP’ in the Indo-Pacific was a primary objective of the office. The presence of dedicated senior FBI staff in Wellington, with frequent high-level access to our political leadership and personnel in our police, defence departments and intelligence agencies, will significantly increase US influence.

When you join all the recent milestones together, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion New Zealand is now very deeply enmeshed in US security interests and posture, as in Australia with the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal, which ties it to US strategic interests, destined to be a belligerent in any US war with China.”

New Zealand has begun implementing military upgrades and expansion plans envisaged in defence reviews written after NATO consultations and direct engagements with the US.

It increased its four-year military budget by $9 billion, to $12 billion this year, after Defence Minister Collins signalled a big hike at the Munich Security Conference in February.

New Zealand has sent defence personnel to defend Israeli-bound shipping in the Red Sea and help select targets in Yemen as part of a US-led coalition. Diplomatically, it has failed to recognise the state of Palestine and refused to speak out against Israel’s act of aggression against Iran in June, or condemn Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.

It trains Ukrainian soldiers and has deepened its involvement in the Western Russia-Ukraine proxy war.

It is making moves to join a US initiative to militarise space and has agreed to act as regional node in the US defence industry.

This year Wellington signed new bilateral security and defence agreements with Japan and the Philippines after attending a NATO meeting in Washington in July 2024, where the details were discussed.

In October last year, its navy transited through the Taiwan Strait in an act of provocation with NATO-aligned partners.

It participated in US-Australia biennial Talisman Sabre military exercises in Australia that started in July, involving 30,000 troops from 19 nations, designed to gain combat readiness in the Indo-Pacific region.

“The US’ long-run intent to contain its adversaries is clearly manifest in conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, as well as in parallel preparations for conflict with China,” Johnston says.

“It looks like we are being drawn into yet another conflict not of our making, with an enemy not of our choosing.”

A joint statement of Western nations yesterday expressing a willingness to recognise Palestinian statehood presents a formula of words ignoring the fact Israel’s long campaign of displacement and illegal settlement building makes it practically impossible to achieve a viable state.

The statement, published on July 30 (NZT), offers no solutions and can only be seen as part of Western diplomatic efforts to establish a glorified colony under effective Israeli control, an administrative structure with little real autonomy.

Its framing ignored the genocidal nature of Israel’s actions in Gaza, as it continues with its planned forced displacement of the remaining population. Instead it expressed “grave concern over the high number of civilian casualties and humanitarian situation in Gaza” and condemned the “terrorism” of Palestinian resistance.

The Joint Statement of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of 14 countries, which included France, New Zealand and Australia, was another cynical diplomatic exercise with little to offer. It presented proposals that will not bring a justice and lasting peace in West Asia and did so in lieu of meeting obligations under international law to intervene to stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The states who signed up took their lead from French President Emmanuel Macron, who announced last Thursday (NZT) that his country would formally recognise a Palestinian state during a UN meeting in September.

Macron has flip-flopped on a decision to recognise the state of Palestine, not just for the past number of months, but for decades.

Indeed, the Oslo Accords, which set out a road map for Palestinian statehood in the mid-1990s, were ignored by the entire international community, allowing Israel to entrenched its system of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories, while cranking up its de facto, creeping annexation.

The latticework of 250 illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where over 700,000 Zionist extremists now reside, stand as a ‘facts-on-the-ground’ bulwark against a two-state solution. Settlers will not be forced to leave, while Israel has already openly rejected the idea of a Palestinian state.

The intent of Western governments seems to remain the same as it was in Oslo’s wake - prevaricate and drag out a process of diplomatic engagement until it runs out of steam, hoping to force the Palestinians once again to accept their lot.

The statement did however, set out moves it expects from the Palestinian Authority (PA) and neighbouring Arab countries in return for their token support for Palestinian statehood.

It noted that the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas had agreed to hold elections within a year, end social security payments to political prisoners’ families and commit to a demilitarised Palestinian state and the disarmament of Hamas. It stresses the importance of the intensely unpopular PA taking over all of the occupied territories, including Gaza, while stating its determination to have Hamas excluded from any future government.

It also calls on neighbouring nations that do not already maintain ‘normal relations’ with Israel to do so and further called for these states to integrate Israel into the region.

To call on states to effectively resurrect the Abraham Accords at a time when Israel is starving a population to death as part of a two-year genocidal assault not only seeks to normalise Israel’s crimes, but also goes against the Genocide Convention. It flies in the face of an International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory that urges countries to discontinue diplomatic links with Israel over its actions.

The idea that a state guilty of aggression against Iran, mass pager-bomb terrorism and the continued bombing and occupation of parts of Lebanon and Syria, can be integrated into West Asia is not one based in reality.

It seems this latest statement was designed to buttress further pressure on Arab states to back a peace on Israel’s terms.

Today (July 31, NZT) the 22-member Arab League, which includes Saudi Arabia and Egypt, signed up to a joint statement calling for Hamas to disarm and relinquish power in the Gaza Strip. All EU nations and 17 other states backed the declaration, signed at a UN conference co-hosted by Saudi Arabia and France in New York yesterday. The meeting was convened to outline what steps the signatories thought should be taken next to achieve peace.

It proposed the deployment of “a temporary international stabilisation mission” upon invitation by the PA and “under the aegis of the United Nations”, an initiative that will be opposed by Israel and the US.

Palestinians should expect little from Western states signalling their willingness to recognise Palestinian statehood when the UN General Assembly meets in September.

Yesterday’s statement was signed by Andorra, Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Slovenia and Spain.

The latest flurry of diplomatic activity seems to form part of a wider Western attempt to rehabilitate Israel and deliver its security, sans its perceived excesses, in a region it has set on fire and by all indications will continue to do so.

Contempt for Palestinians suffering under occupation is nothing new, but genocide during the age of social media seems to be bringing it to its fullest expression.

As Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza enters its 22^nd month, with the effects of the blockade of Gaza and the destruction of its means of sustaining life creating increasingly horrific scenes as forced starvation kills off its inhabitants, Western media has begun to highlight the images.

It led two public figures in the South Pacific to openly mock those scenes in a manner that defies belief, making you question how someone could be so disconnected from their humanity. It also raises questions as to how it was that they felt so comfortable publicly deriding a people facing an agonizing extermination.

New Zealand journalist Sean Plunket, founder of digital news talk site The Platform, posted on X (formerly Twitter) at the weekend: “I’m really concerned about the mass outbreak of anorexia in Gaza.”

His Tweet has been lodged with the Accountability Archive, a crowdsourced record of journalists, politicians, and public figures endorsing or encouraging the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and/or defaming pro-Palestinian activists.

The Platform was, until recently, openly funded by the Wright family, who maintain a majority shareholding and whose net worth was put at $400 million by the National Business Review last year. The Platform has about 68,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Plunket has been a public figure in New Zealand for decades, having been a host at public broadcaster Radio New Zealand (RNZ), fronting its flagship news programme Morning Report for 13 years, as well as being a political reporter for TV3 and a host at Newstalk ZB.

He has regularly hosted New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Labour opposition leader Chris Hipkins on The Platform.

The ease of his whimsical diabolism this week suggests Plunket did not fear a backlash from his listeners, nor the prospect of politicians like Hipkins and Luxon boycotting his show. Maybe he had reason to trust his assessment.

Both politicians seek to attract the votes of Plunket’s listeners and a bit of genocide mockery probably won’t stop them pragmatically agreeing to future interviews, unless a massive public outcry changes the calculus.

Plunket is known for his Zionism and callous, provocative remarks and his latest comment is likely to be met with semi-indifferent eye-rolling, more than mass revulsion.

This is in no small part due to popular perceptions of Israel and Gaza having been clouded by newsroom leaders’ decision to not adjudicate ‘contentious claims’ around genocide and war crimes, ignoring the available evidence of UN bodies, preeminent genocide scholars, human rights groups and Israel’s history of colonial dominance, with ethnic cleansing as its raison d'etat.

In doing so, under the guise of maintaining ‘due impartiality’ and editorial standards, media outlets have brought into disrepute the very concept of public interest journalism.

New Zealand’s outlets, including the two state broadcasters, have also platformed Zionists just as extreme as Plunket as sources of expert opinion in their cowardly pursuit of false balance, adding another layer to their failure to meet the informational needs of democratic citizenship. Public clarity over these issues may have increased pressure on the government to meet its international legal obligations and sanction Israel.

The same applies across Tasman, in Australia, where security analyst and former Liberal Democrats federal elections candidate Daniel Lewkovitz compared a starving Gazan child to a photo of sickly ET, a reference to a scene in Steven Spielberg’s ET, the Extraterrestrial movie. He quipped:

“This is a 3 year old Palestinian infant named Iti. Iti is in a Gaza hospital where he has been starved and hasn’t been able to phone home thanks to the IDF.

Please tell the New York Times, NBC, The Age and the BBC. The world needs to know.”

Lewkovitz, himself an alternative media figure, was apparently responding to a harrowing front age photo in The Age newspaper showing a woman holding a skeletal child.

The fact he was put forward by the main centre-right opposition party in an election is a disturbing reflection on the current state of politics in that country.

The belated treatment of Gaza as an issue of moral salience by Western media outlets came with herd-like synchronicity, after a collective call by Western leaders to end “the war” in Gaza, as the sight of Gazans blatantly gunned down at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) pseudo-aid hubs demanded a diplomatic shift of optics.

The mere recognition of Palestinians as human, after 22 months of wall-to-wall dehumanisation as a means of greasing the machinery of Western support for Israel’s onslaught, was evidently too much for Lewkovitz and Plunket.

For them, scenes of children starving elicit feelings of hatred and twisted contempt, not empathy, remorse or disgust for what has been allowed to take place. They project their own darkness onto their victims, while refusing to acknowledge their pain.

Their obscene comments should be recognised as part of Western pathology, a growing condition that may be bringing us closer to civilisational breakdown or worse.

Although these characters are nowhere near representative of public opinion, their vileness cannot be divorced from Western society.

Dozens of research papers over the past decade have found empathy, to varying degrees, dropping across the West.

Some put it down to a selfish individualism running parallel with neo-liberalism, society’s dominant ideology. Many trace its roots back much deeper, to a Euro-Atlantic civilisation based on colonial extraction and capitalist expansion, one marked by periodic internal wars over rights of conquest, with human empathy lost through dehumanisation of subject races and competitors, as well as domestic class hatred.

Both seem true. By the 1990s, the rise of neoliberalism had destroyed communities and even to an extent the memory of what it was like to be part of one, with society reduced to atomised individuals, economic units seeking fulfilment through consumerism. The remarks of UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, that ‘economics are the method: the object is to change the soul’, encapsulates a drive to destroy the very notion of the common good.

The sale of state homes and the rise of a landlord class - ‘mum-and-dad’ investors, as the ideologues like to describe them - reflected this trend. Many members of this expanding group grew up in poverty, while protected by the relative safety net a state house afforded their struggling parents.

These formative experiences didn’t translate into a type of class consciousness or conviction that change was required to deal with such precariousness and misery in society. They sought personal salvation instead, entering into a financialised housing market that offered, with the connivance of governments and banks, the chance of owning a second home or maybe even a dozen.

These types of new societal relations, coupled with media indoctrination bringing a fragmented sense of the world, partly account for the fact street demonstrations in support of Palestine across Western capitals did not reach the critical mass or intensity necessary to move their governments to act against Israel and defy the US hegemon overseeing its violence.

The public’s ability to see beyond narrow interests and their precarious situations is being contained, along with their capacity to engage in collective action for a wider common good. Student protests that began on US campuses and direct action by other groups like Palestine Action, which challenged this trend, have been met with increasing state repression.

Layered on top of this is a legacy issue of centuries of imperialism, which has brought a pervasive sense of Western cultural superiority, used by governments to justify neocolonial relations with the rest of the world. The sad truth is racism remains part of the organisational DNA of mainstream Western political thought and culture.

For many, the Palestinian question is about the ‘other’s’ inability to live by reason and abide by Western values and democratic norms, a wider Arab problem going back centuries. This racist, deluded, Eurocentric position takes Israel as the embodiment of these supposed values. It is a view accepted by much of the Western establishment, as well as by Plunket and his unhinged Zionist friends.

Despite evidence of genocide and ethnic cleansing now busting through establishment narratives, many still cling to the position that Israel has a right to defend following October 7, 2023 and that unintentional ‘collateral damage’ is simply the sad reality of war.

This ahistorical position, presented by Western governments and their media stenographers, helped enabled Israel’s genocide, which is now in its later stages as remaining Gazans face expulsion and their land colonised, a constant experience of Palestinians during 77 years of occupation.

So long as imperialism and its ideological justifications find structural expression through our political and media establishments, conditions will remain rife for ghouls like Plunket to flourish and troll with impunity.

A leaked document reveals secretive plans to revise terror laws in New Zealand so people can be charged over statements deemed to constitute material support for a proscribed organisation.

It shows the government also wants to widen the criteria for proscribing organisations to include groups that are judged to ‘facilitate’ or ‘promote and encourage’ terrorist acts.

The changes would see the South Pacific nation falling in line with increasingly repressive Western countries like the UK, where scores of independent journalists and anti-genocide protestors have been arrested and charged under terrorism laws in recent months.

The Ministry of Justice consultation document, handed over to the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties (NZCCL), reveals the government has been in contact with a small number of unnamed groups this year over plans to legally redefine what material support involves, so that public statements or gestures involving insignia like flags can lead to charges if construed as support for proscribed groups.

As part of a proposal to revise the Terrorism Suppression Act, the document suggests the process for designating organisations as terror groups should be changed by “expanding the threshold to enable more modern types of entities to be designated, such as those that ‘facilitate’ or ‘promote and encourage’ terrorist acts.”

The Ministry of Justice has been contacted in an attempt to ascertain which groups it has been consulting with and why it believed the changes were necessary.

NZCCL chairman Thomas Beagle told Mick Hall In Context his group was concerned the proposed changes were a further attempt to limit the rights of New Zealanders to engage in political protest.

“When you look at the proposal to expand the Terrorism Suppression Act, alongside the Police and IPCA conspiring to propose a law change to ban political protest without government permission, you really have to wonder what's going on,” he said.

A report by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) in February proposed to give police the right to ban protests if they believed there was a high chance of public disorder and threats to public safety.

That would potentially mean bans on Palestinian solidarity protests if far right counter protestors posed a threat of violent confrontation.

The stand-alone legislation would put New Zealand in line with other Five Eyes and NATO-aligned security jurisdictions such as Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Beagle points out proposed changes to terror laws would suppress freedom of speech and further undermine freedom of assembly and the right to protest.

“We've seen what's happening with the state's abuse of terrorism suppression laws in the UK and are horrified that they have sunk so far and so quickly,” he said.

Over 100 people were arrested across the UK on suspicion of supporting Palestine Action, a non-violent protest group proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the British Government earlier this month.

Social media clips showed pensioners aggressively arrested while attending rallies in Liverpool, London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol and Truro over the weekend.

Independent journalists and academics have also faced state repression under the UK’s Terrorism Act.

Among those targeted was Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley, who had his home raided and devices seized in October last year as part of the opaque counter-terror drive Operation Incessantness.

In May, the country’s Central Criminal Court ruled the raid was unlawful.

Journalist Richard Medhurst has had a terror investigation hanging over his head since being detained at Heathrow Airport in August last year and charged under section 8 of the Terrorism Act. Activist and independent journalist Sarah Wilkinson had her house raided in the same month.

Others have faced similar intimidation and threats of jail. In November 2024, Jewish academic Haim Bresheeth was charged after police alleged he had expressed support for a ‘proscribed organisation’ during a speech outside the London residence of the Israeli ambassador to the UK.

Meanwhile, dozens of members of Palestine Action are in jail facing terror charges. The vast majority are being held on remand where they may wait two years before going to trial – a common state tactic to take activists off the street and incarcerate them, knowing the chances of conviction are slim when they eventually go to court.

The document says the Government wants to progress “targeted amendments” to the Act, creating or amending offences “to capture contemporary behaviours and activities of concern” like “public expressions of support for a terrorist act or designated entities, for example by showing insignia or distributing propaganda or instructional material.”

It suggests that the existing process for proscribing an organisation is slow and cumbersome, noting that: “Specific provisions need to be followed to designate entities not on a UN list, but the decision-making process is lengthy and the designation period is short. This impacts timely decision-making and the usefulness of designation as a tool to prevent terrorism.”

It proposes to improve “the timeliness of the process, by considering changes to who the decision-maker is” and extending the renewal period from three to five years.

The document suggests consulting the Attorney-General over designation-related decisions to ensure legal requirements are met may not be required and questions whether the designation process requiring the Prime Minister to review decisions twice is necessary. It asks whether others, like the Foreign Minister, should be involved in the decision-making process.

Beagle believes the secretive proposals pose a threat to New Zealand’s liberal democracy.

“Political protest is an important part of New Zealand's history,” he said.

“Whether it's the environment, worker's rights, feminism, Māori issues, homosexual law reform or any number of other issues, political protest has had a big part in forming what Aotearoa New Zealand is today. It's a right protected by New Zealand's Bill of Rights and is a critical part of being a functioning democracy.”

The terror laws revision forms part of a wider trend of legislating to close down dissent over New Zealand’s foreign policy, now closely aligned with NATO and US interests.

The government is also widening the definition of foreign interference in a way that could see people who ‘should have known’ that they were being used by a foreign State to undermine New Zealand’s interests prosecuted.

The Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill, which passed its first reading in Parliament on November 19, would criminalise the act of foreign interference, while also increasing powers of unwarranted searches by authorities.

The Bill is effectively a reintroduction of the country’s old colonial sedition laws inherited from Britain, the broadness of the law having allowed it to be used against communists, trade unionists and indigenous rights activists.

Collective measures to confront Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people have been agreed by 12 nations after an emergency summit of the Hague Group in Bogota, Colombia.

A joint statement today (July 17, NZT) announced the six measures, which it said were geared to holding Israel to account for its crimes in Palestine and would operate within the states’ domestic legal and legislative frameworks.

Nearly two dozen other nations in attendance at the summit are now pondering whether to sign up to the measures before a September deadline set by the Hague Group. New Zealand and Australia stayed away from the summit.

The measures include preventing the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel and dual-use items to Israel and preventing the transit, docking or servicing of vessels if there is a risk of vessels carrying such items. No vessel under the flag of the countries would be allowed to carry this equipment.

The countries would also “commence an urgent review of all public contracts, in order to prevent public institutions and public funds, where applicable, from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territory which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory…”

The countries will prosecute “the most serious crimes under international law through robust, impartial and independent investigations and prosecutions at national or international levels, in compliance with our obligation to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes”.

They agreed to support universal jurisdiction mandates, “as and where applicable in our legal constitutional frameworks and judiciaries, to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes in the Occupied Palestine Territory”.

This will mean IDF soldiers and others accused of war crimes in Palestine would face arrest and could go through domestic judicial processes in these countries, or referrals to the ICC.

The statement said the measures constituted a collective commitment to defend the foundational principles of international law.

It also called on the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to commission an immediate investigation of the health and nutritional needs of the population of Gaza, devise a plan to meet those needs on a continuing and sustained basis, and report back before the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Following repeated total blockades of Gaza since October 7, 2023, Gazans have been dying of starvation as they continue to be bombed and repeatedly displaced and their means of life destroyed. The official death toll stands at nearly 59,000, mostly women and children, although some estimates put that number at over 200,000.

The joint statement recognised Israel as a threat to regional peace and the system of international law and called on all United Nations member states to enforce their obligations under the UN charter.

It condemned “unilateral attacks and threats against United Nations mandate holders, as well as key institutions of the human rights architecture and international justice” and committed to build “on the legacy of global solidarity movements that have dismantled apartheid and other oppressive systems, setting a model for future co-ordinated responses to international law violations”.

Countries face wrath of US

Ministers, high-ranking officials and envoys from over 30 nations attended the two-day event, from July 15-16, called to come up with the measures. It is now hoped some of those attendees will sign up to the statement by September.

For countries like Ireland, which sent a delegation, signing up would have profound implications. The Irish government has been heavily criticised by its own citizens for continuing to allow Shannon Airport as a transit point for military equipment from the United States to be sent to Israel.

It would also face the prospect of severe reprisals by the United States, as would others thinking of adding their names to the collective statement. The US is now expected to consult with nations that attended and warn them of the consequences of doing signing up.

The summit had been billed by UN rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, as “the most significant political development of the last 20 months”.

Albanese had told attendees that "for too long, international law has been treated as optional—applied selectively to those perceived as weak, ignored by those acting as the powerful”.

"This double standard has eroded the very foundations of the legal order. That era must end,” she said.

Co-chaired by Colombia and South Africa, the Hague group was established by nine nations in late January at The Hague in the Netherlands to hold Israel to account for its crimes and push for Palestinian self-determination.

Colombia last year ended diplomatic relations with Israel, while South Africa in late December 2023 filed an application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide, which was joined by nearly two dozen countries.

The ICJ has determined a plausible genocide is taking place and issued orders for Israel to protect Palestinians and take measures to stop genocide taking place, a call ignored by the Zionist state.

Representatives from the countries arrived in Bogota this week in defiance of the United States, which last week sanctioned Albanese for attempts to have US and Israeli political officials and business leaders prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it an illegitimate “campaign of political and economic warfare”.

It followed the sanctioning of four ICC judges after arrest warrants were issued in November last year for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Last week at meeting in New York, US State Department legal adviser Reed Rubinstein told ICC’s oversight body, the Assembly of State Parties (ASP), that if all investigations and arrest warrants against the US and Israel were not dropped, then “all options remain on the table”.

Ahead of the Bogota meeting, the US State Department accused The Hague Group of multilateral attempts to “weaponize international law as a tool to advance radical anti-Western agendas” and warned the US would “aggressively defend” its interests.

Signs of division in West

Most of those attending came from nations in the Global South, but not all.

Founding Hague Group members Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa attended the Summit. Joining them were Algeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Indonesia, Iraq, Republic of Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

However, in a sign of increasing division in the West, NATO members Spain, Portugal, Norway, Slovenia and Turkey also attended.

Inside the Summit, former US State Department official Annelle Sheline, who resigned in March over Gaza, defended the right of those attending “to uphold their obligations under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”

“This is not the weaponisation of international law. This is the application of international law,” she said.

The US and Israel deny accusations that genocide is taking place in Gaza, while Western media have collectively refused to adjudicate the claims or frame stories around Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the strip, despite ample evidence by the UN and genocide experts.

Since October 7, 2023, US allies have offered diplomatic cover for Israel by repeating it had “a right to defend itself” and was engaged in a legitimate defensive “war against Hamas”.

Israel now plans to corral starving Gazans into a concentration camp in the south of the strip, with many analysts expecting the IDF to exterminate anyone found outside its boundaries, while preparing to push those inside across the border into Egypt.

Asia Pacific and EU allies shun Bogota summit

Addressing attendees at the Summit Yesterday, Albanese criticised the EU for its neo-colonialism and support for Israel, criticisms that can be extended to US allies in the Asia Pacific region.

Independent journalist Abby Martin reported Albanese as saying: “Europe and its institutions are guided more by colonial mindset than principle, acting as vessels to US Empire even as it drags us from war to war, misery to misery.

“The Hague Group is a new moral centre in world politics. Millions are hoping for leadership that can birth a new global order, rooted in justice, humanity and collective liberation. It's not just about Palestine. This is about all of us.”

The Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was asked why Foreign Minister Penny Wong did not take up an invite to attend the Hague Group meeting. In a statement to Mick Hall in Context, a spokesperson said she had been unable to attend, but did not explain why.

She said Australia was a “resolute defender of international law” and added: “Australia has consistently been part of international calls that all parties must abide by international humanitarian law. Not enough has been done to protect civilians and aid workers.

“We have called on Israel to respond substantively to the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

“We have also called on Israel to comply with the binding orders of the ICJ, including to enable the unhindered provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale.”

When asked why New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters had failed to take up the invitation or send any of his officials, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) spokesperson simply refused to comment.

She said MFAT media advisors would only engage with “recognised news media outlets”.

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, as well as a number of his ministers, have been referred to the ICC by domestic legal teams, accused of complicity in the genocide. Evidence against Albanese was accepted into the ICC’s wider investigation of crimes in Gaza in October last year, while Luxon’s referral earlier this month is being assessed by the Chief Prosecutor’s Office.

Delegates told humanity at stake

Delegates heard several impassioned addresses from speakers on what was at stake during the two-day event in Bogota.

Palestinian-American trauma surgeon, Dr Thaer Ahmad, told the gathering that Palestinians seeking food were being met with bullets, describing aid distribution facilities set up by the US contractor-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as “slaughterhouses”. Over 800 starving Gazans have been killed at the GHF aid points so far.

“People know they could die but cannot sit idly by and watch their families starve,” he said.

“The bullets fired by GHF mercenaries are just one part of the weaponisation of aid, where Palestinians are ghettoised into areas where somebody in military fatigues decides if you are worthy of food or not.”

Palestinian diplomat, Riyad Mansour had urged the summit attendees to take decisive action to not only save the Palestinian people, but redeem humanity.

“Instead of outrage at the crimes we know are taking place, we find those who defend, normalise, and even celebrate them,” he said.

“The core values we believed humanity agreed were universal are shattered, blown to pieces like the tens of thousands of starved, murdered and injured civilians in Palestine. The mind and heart cannot fathom or process the immense pain and horror that has taken hold of the lives of an entire people. We must not fail - not just for Palestine's sake - but for humanity's sake.”

At the beginning of the Summit, Colombian Deputy Foreign Minister Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir told summit delegates the Palestinian genocide threatened the entire international system.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote in The Guardian last week: "We can either stand firm in defence of the legal principles that seek to prevent war and conflict, or watch helplessly as the international system collapses under the weight of unchecked power politics."

Meanwhile, EU foreign ministers, as well as Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, met in Brussels at the same time as the Bogota summit, to discuss Middle East co-operation, but also possible options for action against Israel.

At the EU–Southern Neighbourhood Ministerial Meeting, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas put forward potential actions after Israel was found to have breached the EU economic cooperation deal with the bloc on human rights grounds. As expected, no sanctions, restricted trade or suspension of the co-operation deal were agreed.

The EU has been one of Israel’s most strident backers in its campaign against Gaza, with EU members Germany and France in particular supplying weapons, as well as political support.

The UK government continues to supply arms and operate spy planes over Gaza over the past 20 months, launched from bases in Cyprus, while its military has issued D-Notices to censor media reports that its special forces have been operating inside the occupied territories.