In the era of President Donald Trump in the US, CAFCA’s Murray Horton provides a hard look at Aotearoa’s place in the world. And he asks the question – why are we still a loyal member of the American Empire?
The global “Free West Papua” movement, fuelled by inspired and continuous social media exposes and debate, has been growing exponentially in recent years. But you wouldn’t know that if you merely relied on the parochial New Zealand media.
Demonstrators from the Papuan Student Alliance (AMP) and the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-West Papua) have staged protests across Indonesia, demanding the right to self-determination and the closure of the PT Freeport gold and copper mine. This is the mine that the $20 billion NZ Superannuation Fund was forced to pull out of in 2012 after sustained protest about its “unethical” investment in the US-based company.
A survey of New Zealand professional journalists, published in Pacific Journalism Review, shows for the first time that women journalists are paid less than men, despite making up the bulk of the workforce. Female journalists, despite predominating in the profession, are significantly disadvantaged in terms of promotion and income.
The inaugural Pogau Award for courage in journalism: “Every year this award will always remind us about the human rights abuses never addressed in Indonesia since the 1965 massacre.”
Quote: “They continue a pattern of white supremacist immigration exclusion in colonial settler countries like the United States. Bill English refusing to call it for what it is – racist – is a dangerously weak response and doesn’t represent the people of Aotearoa.”
People have a sense of some hope, some improvement. The “change of style” introduced by the Democracy Coalition to Tonga’s politics is something the people can still support despite the “hiccups”, says ‘Atenisi’s Dr Michael Horowitz.
What has struck me most is that several key issues have barely been covered in the media soul-searching, topmost being the bizarre gun culture itself.
Fundamental rights – the right to food, education and health – need to come before a narrow Western concept of human rights.
“Our job was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers. That’s what we did. We killed people almost every day.” Allegations of a former hit man in Senate testimony about life with the new Philippines president.