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Tjibaou’s party unveils plan for New Caledonia’s future ‘independence’

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Union Calédonienne’s new president Emmanuel Tjibaou (centre) and executive bureau hold a press conference last Thursday 30 Nov 2024
Union Calédonienne’s new president Emmanuel Tjibaou (centre) and executive bureau hold a press conference last Thursday . . . "now is the time to build the road to full sovereignty." Image: RRB/RNZ

By Patrick Decloitre

New Caledonia’s largest pro-independence party, the Union Calédonienne (UC), has unveiled the main outcome of its congress last month, including its plans for the French Pacific territory’s political future.

Speaking at a news conference last Thursday in Nouméa, the party’s newly-elected executive bureau, now headed by Emmanuel Tjibaou, debriefed the media about the main resolutions made during its congress.

One of the motions was specifically concerning a timetable for New Caledonia’s road to independence.

Tjibaou said UC now envisaged that one of the milestones on this road to sovereignty would be the signing of a “Kanaky Agreement”, at the latest on 24 September 2025 — a highly symbolic date as this was the day of France’s annexation of New Caledonia in 1853.

‘Kanaky Agreement’ by 24 September 2025?
This, he said, would mark the beginning of a five-year “transition period” from “2025 to 2030” that would be concluded by New Caledonia becoming fully sovereign under a status yet to be defined.

Several wordings have recently been advanced by stakeholders from around the political spectrum.

Depending on the pro-independence and pro-France sympathies, these have varied from “shared sovereignty”, “independence in partnership”, “independence-association” and, more recently, from the also divided pro-France loyalists camp, an “internal federalism” (Le Rassemblement-LR party) or a “territorial federation” (Les Loyalistes).

Charismatic pro-independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Emmanuel’s father who was assassinated in 1989, was known for being an advocate of a relativist approach to the term “independence”, to which he usually preferred to adjunct the pragmatic term “inter-dependence”.

Jean Marie Tjibaou
Founding FLNKS leader Jean Marie Tjibaou in Kanaky New Caledonia in 1985 . . . assassinated four years later. Image: David Robie/Café Pacific

Negotiations between all political parties and the French State are expected to begin in the next few weeks.

The talks (between pro-independence, anti-independence parties and the French State) are scheduled in such a way that all parties manage to reach a comprehensive and inclusive political agreement no later than March 2025.

The talks had completely stalled after the pro-indeoendence riots broke out on 13 May 2024.

Over the past three years, following three referendums (2018, 2020, 2021, the latter being strongly challenged by the pro-independence side) on the question of independence (all yielding a majority in favour of New Caledonia remaining part of France), there had been several attempts to hold inclusive talks in order to discuss New Caledonia’s political future.

But UC and other parties (including pro-France and pro-independence) did not manage to sit at the same table.

Speaking to journalists, Emmanuel Tjibaou confirmed that under its new leadership, UC was now willing to return to the negotiating table.

He said “May 13 has stopped our advances in those exchanges” but “now is the time to build the road to full sovereignty”.

Back to the negotiating table
In the footsteps of those expected negotiations, heavy campaigning will follow to prepare for crucial provincial elections to be held no later than November 2025.

The five years of “transition” (2025-2030), would be used to transfer the remaining “regal” powers from France as well as putting in place “a political, financial and international” framework, accompanied by the French State, Tjibaou elaborated.

And after the transitional period, UC’s president said a new phase of talks could start to put in place what he terms “interdependence conventions on some of the ‘regal’ — main — powers” (defence, law and order, foreign affairs, currency).

Tjibaou said this project could resemble a sort of independence in partnership, a “shared sovereignty”, a concept that was strongly suggested early November 2024 by visiting French Senate President Gérard Larcher.

But Tjibaou said there was a difference in the sense that those discussions on sharing would only take place once all the powers have been transferred from France.

“You can only share sovereignty if you have obtained it first”, he told local media.

One of the other resolutions from its congress held last weekend in the small village of Mia (Canala) was to reiterate its call to liberate Christian Téin, appointed president of the FLNKS (Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front) in absentia late August, even though he is currently imprisoned in Mulhouse (north-east of France) pending his trial.

Allegations over May riots
He is alleged to have been involved in the organisation of the demonstrations that degenerated into the May 13 riots, arson, looting and a deadly toll of 13 people, several hundred injured and material damage estimated at some 2.2 billion euros (NZ$3.9 billion).

Tjibaou also said that within a currently divided pro-independence movement, he hoped that a reunification process and “clarification” would be possible with other components of FLNKS, namely the Progressist Union in Melanesia (UPM) and the Kanak Liberation Party (PALIKA).

Since August 2024, both UPM and PALIKA have de facto withdrawn with FLNKS’s political bureau, saying they no longer recognised themselves in the way the movement had radicalised.

In 1988, after half a decade of a quasi civil war, Jean-Marie Tjibaou signed the Matignon-Oudinot agreements with New Caledonia’s pro-France and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur.

The third signatory was the French State.

One year later, in 1989, Tjibaou was shot dead by a hard-line pro-independence militant.

His son Emmanuel was aged 13 at the time.

‘Common destiny’
In 1998, a new agreement, the Nouméa Accord, was signed, with a focus on increased autonomy, the notions of “common destiny” and a local “citizenship” and a gradual transfer of powers from France.

After the three referendums held between 2018 and 2021, the Nouméa Accord prescribed that if there had been three referendums rejecting independence, then political stakeholders should “meet to examine the situation thus generated”.

On Thursday, Union Calédonienne also stressed that the Nouméa Accord remained the founding document of all future political discussions.

“We are sticking to the Nouméa Accord because it is this document that brings us to the elements of accession to sovereignty”.

Patrick Decloitre is RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Israel and the ICC: A legal scholar’s response to The Washington Post

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The Washington Post editorial about the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for Israeli officials published on 24 November 2024
The Washington Post editorial about the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for Israeli officials published on 24 November 2024 . . . "full of misinformation and misrepresentation of facts," says a legal scholar. Image: WP screenshot APR

ANALYSIS: By Abdelghany Sayed

On November 24, The Washington Post’s editorial board published an editorial in which it laid out its views on the arrest warrants for Israeli officials recently issued by the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Reading it as a legal scholar, I found it full of misinformation and misrepresentation of facts. It is unclear whether the editorial was an attempt to mislead the readers or reflected the board’s significant lack of knowledge and research abilities on ICC-related matters — or both.

In any case, the article merits a response that lays out the facts and points out the misrepresentation.

Did the ICC ignore other grave situations?
At the outset, the article suggests that the ICC has failed to address international crimes in Syria, Myanmar and Sudan. This is manifestly nonfactual.

The default grounds for the ICC to exercise jurisdiction is the commission of international crimes on the territory or by the nationals of either a state party to the ICC or a non-state party that has accepted the jurisdiction of the court.

The three states referred to neither joined the ICC nor accepted its jurisdiction.

The court exercises jurisdiction in Sudan based on a United Nations Security Council resolution that referred the case to the court in 2005 — as is its right under the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. Since then, the ICC has actively engaged with the situation in Sudan, issuing seven arrest warrants and pursuing six cases.

The Post is concerned with the conduct of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces but mentions nowhere in its editorial that Ali Muhammed Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, one of the leaders of its constituent militia, the Janjaweed, is already in ICC custody and standing trial. It also omits ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan’s assertion that his office is still investigating ongoing crimes.

On Myanmar, the Office of the Prosecutor opened preliminary examinations in 2018. After only one year, the Pre-Trial Chamber authorised it to open an investigation. On November 27, the Office of the Prosecutor applied for an arrest warrant against the head of Myanmar’s military government, Min Aung Hlaing.

To do this, both Khan’s office and the Pre-Trial Chamber pushed the limits of the legal text to adopt unorthodox, precedent-setting interpretations of the law with a view to overcoming the jurisdictional challenge in the absence of a UN Security Council referral.

Both ICC organs concurred that although the crimes of “deportation” and “persecution” were perpetrated by nationals of a non-state party and on the territory of a non-state party (Myanmar), the “conduct” constituting the crimes forced the victims into the territory of a state party (Bangladesh); consequently, the ICC should have jurisdiction because the crimes have been committed “in part” on a territory of a state party.

Despite the lack of grounds to exercise jurisdiction in Syria, former Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda indeed strived to address these crimes. Her office came up with a creative approach to examine acts committed by nationals of states parties but ended up with a very narrow scope of perpetrators and crimes.

There is no ICC “failure” to address crimes committed in Syria; rather, there is a Security Council failure to refer the Syria case to the ICC, as it did with Libya and Sudan. It is appropriate then to criticise the Security Council system, including the decades-long US abuse of its veto powers, for instance, to shield Israel.

Should the Israeli system be entrusted with prosecution?
The Post uncritically reproduces a regular Israeli and US talking point: that Israel as “a democratic country that is committed to human rights” is capable of investigating its own security forces. The ICC should not put “elected leaders of a democratic country with its own independent judiciary in the same category as dictators and authoritarians who kill with impunity”, it argues.

This argument misrepresents the law of the ICC and conceals substantive facts.

Even if Israel and its institutions could be deemed “democratic” and “independent”, international law requires a lot more than that.

The principle of complementarity means that the ICC complements, rather than replaces, national jurisdictions. Thus, the ICC prosecutor may intervene only when the state that has jurisdiction is “inactive” in investigating the crimes.

Complementarity in no way means that the elected officials and independent judiciary of a democratic state shall enjoy immunity from ICC prosecution. Instead, it means that Israel needs to show it has active investigations.

The fact of Israel’s inactivity in relation to war crimes and crimes against humanity by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in and of itself already means that the complementarity assessment has been exhausted and the court may proceed.

And even if it were active, Israel would need to demonstrate the willingness and ability to genuinely prosecute the perpetrator and conduct. The law of the ICC allows it to intervene if the “investigative activities undertaken by the domestic authorities are not tangible, concrete and progressive”, as laid out in a decision in the case of Ivory Coast first lady Simone Gbagbo, accused of crimes against humanity.

Proceedings designated to shield the perpetrators or crimes in question warrant an ICC intervention. This, for instance, requires Israel to investigate the same person for substantially the same conduct.

The Post conceals that for decades, Israel has failed to hold to account its officials and members of its armed forces for crimes. These failures have been repeatedly documented by the UN and human rights organisations.

The 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry, for example, addressed the “procedural, structural and substantive shortcomings, which continue to compromise Israel’s ability to adequately fulfil its duty to investigate”. Palestinian and Israeli NGOs have repeatedly scrutinised Israel’s tendency to whitewash its own crimes, and Amnesty International considered “an ICC investigation [to be] the only way” to uphold international law.

These reports are in no way unknown or recent. Human Rights Watch, for example, has documented Israel’s failure to prosecute war crimes as far back as the 2014 war on Gaza, the second Intifada, the first Intifada and even the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, after which the Israeli government created the Kahan Commission to cover up then-Defence Minister Ariel Sharon’s responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

The Post’s omission of these facts does not seem to be mere negligence.

Do the arrest warrants give credence to accusations against the ICC?
The editorial also claims that the arrest warrants “undermine the ICC’s credibility and give credence to accusations of hypocrisy and selective prosecution”. This maliciously misrepresents the facts to intentionally deceive the readers.

There are indeed longstanding, well substantiated and almost undisputed accusations but not of a bias against countries like Israel. During the first 20 years of its operation, the court sought to prosecute people solely from the African continent. As a result, it was criticised for having an “Africa problem” and channelling the “assertion of neocolonial domination”.

The ICC’s negligence regarding Western armies’ atrocities was consistently brought up, especially in relation to Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. As Valentina Azarova and Triestino Mariniello and I have previously argued in two articles, the court’s action on crimes committed against Palestinians could help it redress its problems with effectiveness and legitimacy.

As a legal scholar, I have not come across any rigorously justified accusation against the court that it is biased against “elected leaders” of “democratic states”, as The Post suggests. US attacks on the ICC — starting with the 2002 Hague Invasion Act, which threatens US invasion of any state complying with an ICC arrest warrant for US citizens — have been crude expressions of US hegemony and unpolished thuggery.

Israel itself has engaged in similar activities, as an investigation by +972 Magazine, the Local Call and The Guardian revealed in May. According to these publications, Israel ran a nine-year, state-orchestrated espionage and intimidation campaign against the ICC to shield its nationals from prosecution.

In the end, even in its decision to proceed with prosecution in the Palestine file, the ICC is doing the bare minimum of what it should be. And it is not its “bias” — as The Washington Post argues – that compels it to act, but rather the Israeli conduct — its magnitude, degree of cruelty and unprecedented availability of conclusive evidence.

Abdelghany Sayed is a researcher in international law at Kent Law School. He previously worked as an assistant legal analyst at the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

Wenda calls for West Papuan unity in the face of Jakarta’s renewed ‘colonial grip’

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Fiji protesters supporting decolonisation of West Papua, Kanaky - and Palestine
Fiji protesters supporting decolonisation of West Papua, Kanaky - and Palestine - standing at the offices of the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre (FWCC) today for a Morning Star flag-raising after issuing a statement yesterday from 25 Pacific NGOs and movements calling on Pacific leaders to "take their responsibility" over self-determination. Image: FWCC

Asia Pacific Report

An exiled West Papuan leader has called for unity among his people in the face of a renewed “colonial grip” of Indonesia’s new president.

President Prabowo Subianto, who took office last month, “is a deep concern for all West Papuans”, said Benny Wenda of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP).

Speaking at the Oxford Green Fair yesterday — Morning Star flag-raising day — ULMWP’s interim president said Prabowo had already “sent thousands of additional troops to West Papua” and restarted the illegal settlement programme that had marginalised Papuans and made them a minority in their own land.

“He is continuing to destroy our land to create the biggest deforestation project in the history of the world. This network of sugarcane and rice plantations is as big as Wales.

“But we cannot panic. The threat from [President] Prabowo shows that unity and direction is more important than ever.

Indonesia doesn’t fear a divided movement. They do fear the ULMWP, because they know we are the most serious and direct challenge to their colonial grip.”

Wenda’s speech
Here is the text of the speech that Wenda gave while opening the Oxford Green Fair at Oxford Town Hall:

December 1st is the day the West Papuan nation was born.

On this day 63 years ago, the New Guinea Council raised the Morning Star across West Papua for the first time.

We sang our national anthem and announced our Parliament, in a ceremony recognised by Australia, the UK, France, and the Netherlands, our former coloniser. But our new state was quickly stolen from us by Indonesian colonialism.

ULMWP's Benny Wenda speaking on West Papua while opening the Oxford Green Fair
ULMWP’s Benny Wenda speaking on West Papua while opening the Oxford Green Fair on flag-raising day in the United Kingdom. Image: ULMWP

This day is important to all West Papuans. While we remember all those we have lost in the struggle, we also celebrate our continued resistance to Indonesian colonialism.

On this day in 2020, we announced the formation of the Provisional Government of West Papua. Since then, we have built up our strength on the ground. We now have a constitution, a cabinet, a Green State Vision, and seven executives representing the seven customary regions of West Papua.

Most importantly, we have a people’s mandate. The 2023 ULMWP Congress was first ever democratic election in the history. Over 5000 West Papuans gathered in Jayapura to choose their leaders and take ownership of their movement. This was a huge sacrifice for those on the ground. But it was necessary to show that we are implementing democracy before we have achieved independence.

The outcome of this historic event was the clarification and confirmation of our roadmap by the people. Our three agendas have been endorsed by Congress: full membership of the MSG [Melanesian Spearhead Group], a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to West Papua, and a resolution at the UN General Assembly. Through our Congress, we place the West Papuan struggle directly in the hands of the people. Whenever our moment comes, the ULMWP will be ready to seize it.

Differing views
I want to remind the world that internal division is an inevitable part of any revolution. No national struggle has avoided it. In any democratic country or movement, there will be differing views and approaches.

But the ULMWP and our constitution is the only way to achieve our goal of liberation. We are demonstrating to Indonesia that we are not separatists, bending this way and that way: we are a government-in-waiting representing the unified will of our people. Through the provisional government we are reclaiming our sovereignty. And as a government, we are ready to engage with the world. We are ready to engage with Indonesia as full members of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, and we believe we will achieve this crucial goal in 2024.

The importance of unity is also reflected in the ULMWP’s approach to West Papuan history. As enshrined in our constitution, the ULMWP recognises all previous declarations as legitimate and historic moments in our struggle. This does not just include 1961, but also the OPM Independence Declaration 1971, the 14-star declaration of West Melanesia in 1988, the Papuan People’s Congress in 2000, and the Third West Papuan Congress in 2011.

All these announcements represent an absolute rejection of Indonesian colonialism. The spirit of Merdeka is in all of them.

The new Indonesian President, Prabowo Subianto, is a deep concern for all West Papuans. He has already sent thousands of additional troops to West Papua and restarted the illegal settlement programme that has marginalised us and made us a minority in our own land. He is continuing to destroy our land to create the biggest deforestation project in the history of the world. This network of sugarcane and rice plantations is as big as Wales.

But we cannot panic. The threat from Prabowo shows that unity and direction is more important than ever. Indonesia doesn’t fear a divided movement. They do fear the ULMWP, because they know we are the most serious and direct challenge to their colonial grip.

I therefore call on all West Papuans, whether in the cities, the bush, the refugee camps or in exile, to unite behind the ULMWP Provisional Government. We work towards this agenda at every opportunity. We continue to pressure on United Nations and the international community to review the fraudulent ‘Act of No Choice’, and to uphold my people’s legal and moral right to choose our own destiny.

I also call on all our solidarity groups to respect our Congress and our people’s mandate. The democratic right of the people of West Papua needs to be acknowledged.

What does amnesty mean?
Prabowo has also mentioned an amnesty for West Papuan political prisoners. What does this amnesty mean? Does amnesty mean I can return to West Papua and lead the struggle from inside? All West Papuans support independence; all West Papuans want to raise the Morning Star; all West Papuans want to be free from colonial rule.

But pro-independence actions of any kind are illegal in West Papua. If we raise our flag or talk about self-determination, we are beaten, arrested or jailed. The whole world saw what happened to Defianus Kogoya in April. He was tortured, stabbed, and kicked in a barrel full of bloody water. If the offer of amnesty is real, it must involve releasing all West Papuan political prisoners. It must involve allowing us to peacefully struggle for our freedom without the threat of imprisonment.

Despite Prabowo’s election, this has been a year of progress for our struggle. The Pacific Islands Forum reaffirmed their call for a UN Human Rights Visit to West Papua. This is not just our demand – more than 100 nations have now insisted on this important visit. We have built vital new links across the world, including through our ULMWP delegation at the UN General Assembly.

Through the creation of the West Papua People’s Liberation Front (GR-PWP), our struggle on the ground has reached new heights. Thank you and congratulations to the GR-PWP Administration for your work.

Thank you also to the KNPB and the Alliance of Papuan Students, you are vital elements in our fight for self-determination and are acknowledged in our Congress resolutions. You carry the spirit of Merdeka with you.

I invite all solidarity organisations, including Indonesian solidarity, around the world to preserve our unity by respecting our constitution and Congress. To Indonesian settlers living in our ancestral land, please respect our struggle for self-determination. I also ask that all our military wings unite under the constitution and respect the democratic Congress resolutions.

I invite all West Papuans – living in the bush, in exile, in refugee camps, in the cities or villages – to unite behind your constitution. We are stronger together.

Thank you to Vanuatu
A special thank you to Vanuatu government and people, who are our most consistent and strongest supporters. Thank you to Fiji, Kanaky, PNG, Solomon Islands, and to Pacific Islands Forum and MSG for reaffirming your support for a UN visit. Thank you to the International Lawyers for West Papua and the International Parliamentarians for West Papua.

I hope you will continue to support the West Papuan struggle for self-determination. This is a moral obligation for all Pacific people. Thank you to all religious leaders, and particularly the Pacific Council of Churches and the West Papua Council of Churches, for your consistent support and prayers.

Thank you to all the solidarity groups in the Pacific who are tirelessly supporting the campaign, and in Europe, Australia, Africa, and the Caribbean.

I also give thanks to the West Papua Legislative Council, Buchtar Tabuni and Bazoka Logo, to the Judicative Council and to Prime Minister Edison Waromi. Your work to build our capacity on the ground is incredible and essential to all our achievements. You have pushed forwards all our recent milestones, our Congress, our constitution, government, cabinet, and vision.

Together, we are proving to the world and to Indonesia that we are ready to govern our own affairs.

To the people of West Papua, stay strong and determined. Independence is coming. One day soon we will walk our mountains and rivers without fear of Indonesian soldiers. The Morning Star will fly freely alongside other independent countries of the Pacific.

Until then, stay focused and have courage. The struggle is long but we will win. Your ancestors are with you.

West Papua: Once was Papuan Independence Day, now facing ‘ecocide’, transmigration

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Tamariki raising the West Papuan independence flag Morning Star
Tamariki raising the West Papuan independence flag Morning Star - banned by Indonesian authorities - at St Marys Bay, Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau, today. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report

On Papuan Independence Day, the focus is on discussing protests against Indonesia’s transmigration programme, environmental destruction, militarisation, and the struggle for self-determination. Te Ao Māori News reports.

By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson

On 1 December 1961, West Papua’s national flag, known as the Morning Star, was raised for the first time as a declaration of West Papua’s independence from the Netherlands.

Sixty-three years later, West Papua is claimed by and occupied by Indonesia, which has banned the flag, which still carries aspirations for self-determination and liberation.

The flag continues to be raised globally on December 1 each year on what is still called “Papuan Independence Day”.

Region-wide protests
Protests have been building in West Papua since the new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto announced the revival of the Transmigration Programme to West Papua.

This was declared a day after he came to power on October 21 and confirmed fears from West Papuans about Prabowo’s rise to power.

This is because Prabowo is a former general known for a trail of allegations of war crimes and human rights abuses in West Papua and East Timor to his name.

Transmigration’s role
The transmigration programme began before Indonesia gained independence from the Dutch colonial government, intended to reduce “overcrowding” in Java and to provide a workforce for plantations in Sumatra.

After independence ended and under Indonesian rule, the programme expanded and in 1969 transmigration to West Papua was started.

This was also the year of the controversial “Act of Free Choice” where a small group of Papuans were coerced by Indonesia into a unanimous vote against their independence.

In 2001 the state-backed transmigration programme ended but, by then, over three-quarters of a million Indonesians had been relocated to West Papua. Although the official transmigration stopped, migration of Indonesians continued via agriculture and development projects.

Indonesia has also said transmigration helps with cultural exchange to unite the West Papuans so they are one nation — “Indonesian”.

West Papuan human rights activist Rosa Moiwend said in the 1980s that Indonesians used the language of “humanising West Papuans” through erasing their indigenous identity.

“It’s a racist kind of thing because they think West Papuans were not fully human,” Moiwend said.

Pathway to environmental destruction
Papuans believe this was to dilute the Indigenous Melanesian population, and to secure the control of their natural resources, to conduct mining, oil and gas extraction and deforestation.

This is because in the past the transmigration programme was tied to agricultural settlements where, following the deforestation of conservation forests, Indonesian migrants worked on agricultural projects such as rice fields and palm oil plantations.

Octo Mote is the vice-president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP). Earlier this year Te Ao Māori News interviewed Mote on the “ecocide and genocide” and the history of how Indonesia gained power over West Papua.

The ecology in West Papua was being damaged by mining, deforestation, and oil and gas extraction, he said. Mote said Indonesia wanted to “wipe them from the land and control their natural resources”.

He emphasised that defending West Papua meant defending the world, because New Guinea had the third-largest rainforest after the Amazon and Congo and was crucial for climate change mitigation as they sequester and store carbon.

Concerns grow over militarisation
Moiwend said the other concern right now was the National Strategic Project which developed projects to focus on Indonesian self-sufficiency in food and energy.

Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) started in 2011, so isn’t a new project, but it has failed to deliver many times and was described by Global Atlas of Environmental Justice as a “textbook land grab”.

The mega-project includes the deforestation of a million hectares for rice fields and an additional 600,000 hectares for sugar cane plantations that will be used to make bioethanol.

The project is managed by the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Agriculture, and the private company, Jhonlin Group, owned by Haji Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad. Ironically, given the project has been promoted to address climate issues, Arsyad is a coal magnate, a primary industry responsible for man-made climate change.

Recently, the Indonesian government announced the deployment of five military battalions to the project site.

Conservation news website Mongabay reported that the villages in the project site had a population of 3000 people whereas a battalion consisted of usually 1000 soldiers, which meant there would be more soldiers than locals and the villagers said it felt as if their home would be turned into a “war zone”.

Merauke is where Moiwend’s village is and many of her cousins and family are protesting and, although there haven’t been any incidents yet, with increased militarisation she feared for the lives of her family as the Indonesian military had killed civilians in the past.

Tamariki with the Morning Star flag of West Papua
Tamariki with the Morning Star flag of West Papua and the Kanak independence flag in Tāmaki Makaurau today. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report

Destruction of spiritual ancestors
The destruction of the environment was also the killing of their dema (spiritual ancestors), she said.

The dema represented and protected different components of nature, with a dema for fish, the sago palm, and the coconut tree.

Traditionally when planting taro, kumara or yam, they chanted and sang for the dema of those plants to ensure an abundant harvest.

Moiwend said they connected to their identity through calling on the name of the dema that was their totem.

She said her totem was the coconut and when she needed healing she would find a coconut tree, drink coconut water, and call to the dema for help.

There were places where the dema lived that humans were not meant to enter but many sacred forests had been deforested.

She said the Indonesians had destroyed their food sources, their connection to their spirituality as well destroying their humanity.

“Anim Ha means the great human being,” she said, “to become a great human being you have to have a certain quality of life, and one quality of life is the connection to your dema, your spiritual realm.”

Te Aniwaniwa Paterson is a digital producer for Te Ao Māori News. Republished with permission.

Raising the West Papuan Morning Star flag in Tamaki Makaurau in 2023
Raising the West Papuan Morning Star flag in Tāmaki Makaurau in 2023. Image: Te Ao Māori News

COP29: Pacific takes stock of ‘baby steps’ global climate summit

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John Taukave (left) from the Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport and Miss Samoa Litara Ieremia-Allan (second from left) with Pacific youth delegates at COP29
John Taukave (left) from the Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport and Miss Samoa Litara Ieremia-Allan (second from left) with Pacific youth delegates at COP29 this month. Image: John Taukave/MCST/BenarNews

By Sera Sefeti in Baku, Azerbaijan

As the curtain fell at the UN climate summit in Baku last Sunday, frustration and disappointment engulfed Pacific delegations after another meeting under-delivered.

Two weeks of intensive negotiations at COP29, hosted by Azerbaijan and attended by 55,000 delegates, resulted in a consensus decision among nearly 200 nations.

Climate finance was tripled to US $300 billion a year in grant and loan funding from developed nations, far short of the more than US $1 trillion sought by Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States.

COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024
COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024

“We travelled thousands of kilometres, it is a long way to travel back without good news,” Niue’s Minister of Natural Resources Mona Ainu’u told BenarNews.

Three-hundred Pacific delegates came to COP29 with the key demands to stay within the 1.5-degree C warming goal, make funds available and accessible for small island states, and cut ambiguous language from agreements.

Their aim was to make major emitters pay Pacific nations — who are facing the worst effects of climate change despite being the lowest contributors — to help with transition, adaptation and mitigation.

“If we lose out on the 1.5 degrees C, then it really means nothing for us being here, understanding the fact that we need money in order for us to respond to the climate crisis,” Tuvalu’s Minister for Climate Change Maina Talia told BenarNews at the start of talks.

PNG withdrew
Papua New Guinea withdrew from attending just days before COP29, with Prime Minister James Marape warning: “The pledges made by major polluters amount to nothing more than empty talk.”

20241117 SPC Miss Kiribati.jpg
Miss Kiribati 2024 Kimberly Tokanang Aromata gives the “1.5 to stay alive” gesture while attending COP29 as a youth delegate earlier this month. Image: SPC/BenarNews

Fiji’s lead negotiator Dr Sivendra Michael told BenarNews that climate finance cut across many of the committee negotiations running in parallel, with parties all trying to strategically position themselves.

“We had a really challenging time in the adaptation committee room, where groups of negotiators from the African region had done a complete block on any progress on (climate) tax,” said Dr Michael, adding the Fiji team was called to order on every intervention they made.

He said it’s the fourth consecutive year adaptation talks were left hanging, despite agreement among the majority of nations, because there was “no consensus among the like-minded developing countries, which includes China, as well as the African group.”

Pacific delegates told BenarNews at COP they battled misinformation, obstruction and subversion by developed and high-emitting nations, including again negotiating on commitments agreed at COP28 last year.

Pushback began early on with long sessions on the Global Stock Take, an assessment of what progress nations and stakeholders had made to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C.

“If we cannot talk about 1.5, then we have a very weak language around mitigation,” Tuvalu’s Talia said. “Progress on finance was nothing more than ‘baby steps’.”

Pacific faced resistance
Pacific negotiators faced resistance to their call for U.S.$39 billion for Small Island Developing States and U.S.$220 billion for Least Developed Countries.

“We expected pushbacks, but the lack of ambition was deeply frustrating,” Talia said.

20241119 SPREP fiji delegate Lenora Qereqeretabua.jpg
Fiji’s Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Lenora Qereqeretabua addresses the COP29 summit in Baku this month. Image: SPREP/BenarNews

Greenpeace Pacific lead Shiva Gounden accused developed countries of deliberately stalling talks — of which Australia co-chaired the finance discussions — including by padding texts with unnecessary wording.

“Hours passed without any substance out of it, and then when they got into the substance of the text, there simply was not enough time,” he told BenarNews.

In the final week of COP29, the intense days negotiating continued late into the nights, sometimes ending the next morning.

“Nothing is moving as it should, and climate finance is a black hole,” Pacific Climate Action Network senior adviser Sindra Sharma told BenarNews during talks.

“There are lots of rumours and misinformation floating around, people saying that SIDS are dropping things — this is a complete lie.”

20241119 SPREP Pacific negotiators meet.jpg
Pacific delegates and negotiators meet in the final week of intensive talks at COP29 in Baku this month. Image: SPREP/BenarNews

COP29 presidency influence
Sharma said the significant influence of the COP presidency — held by Azerbaijan — came to bear as talks on the final outcome dragged past the Friday night deadline.

The Azeri presidency faced criticism for not pushing strongly enough for incorporation of the “transition away from fossil fuels” — agreed to at COP28 — in draft texts.

“What we got in the end on Saturday was a text that didn’t have the priorities that smaller island states and least developed countries had reflected,” Sharma said.

COP29’s outcome was finally announced on Sunday at 5.30am.

“For me it was heartbreaking, how developed countries just blocked their way to fulfilling their responsibilities, their historical responsibilities, and pretty much offloaded that to developing countries,” Gounden from Greenpeace Pacific said.

Some retained faith
Amid the Pacific delegates’ disappointment, some retained their faith in the summits and look forward to COP30 in Brazil next year.

“We are tired, but we are here to hold the line on hope; we have no choice but to,” 350.org Pacific managing director Joseph Zane Sikulu told BenarNews.

“We can very easily spend time talking about who is missing, who is not here, and the impact that it will have on negotiation, or we can focus on the ones who came, who won’t give up,” he said at the end of summit.

Fiji’s lead negotiator Dr Michael said the outcome was “very disappointing” but not a total loss.

“COP is a very diplomatic process, so when people come to me and say that COP has failed, I am in complete disagreement, because no COP is a failure,” he told BenarNews at the end of talks.

“If we don’t agree this year, then it goes to next year; the important thing is to ensure that Pacific voices are present,” he said.

Republished from BenarNews with permission.

Climate protests to continue despite 170 charged in Newcastle ‘protestival’

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Despite Australia’s draconian anti-protest laws, the world’s biggest coal port was closed for four hours at the weekend with 170 protesters being charged — but climate demonstrations will continue. Twenty further arrests were made at a protest at the Federal Parliament yesterday.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Wendy Bacon

Newcastle port, the world’s biggest coal port, was closed for four hours on Sunday when hundreds of Rising Tide protesters in kayaks refused to leave its shipping channel.

Over two days of protest at the Australian port, 170 protesters have been charged. Some others who entered the channel were arrested but released without charge. Hundreds more took to the water in support.

Thousands on the beach chanted, danced and created a huge human sign demanding “no new coal and gas” projects.

Rising Tide is campaigning for a 78 percent tax on fossil fuel profits to be used for a “just transition” for workers and communities, including in the Hunter Valley, where the Albanese government has approved three massive new coal mine extensions since 2022.

Protest size triples to 7000
The NSW Labor government made two court attempts to block the protest from going ahead. But the 10-day Rising Tide protest tripled in size from 2023 with 7000 people participating so far and more people arrested in civil disobedience actions than last year.

The “protestival” continued in Newcastle on Monday, and a new wave started in Canberra at the Australian Parliament yesterday with more than 20 arrests. Rising Tide staged an overnight occupation of the lawn outside Parliament House and a demonstration at which they demanded to meet with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

News of the “protestival” has spread around the world, with campaigners in Rotterdam in The Netherlands blocking a coal train in solidarity with this year’s Rising Tide protest.

Of those arrested, 138 have been charged under S214A of the NSW Crimes Act for disrupting a major facility, which carries up to two years in prison and $22,000 maximum fines. This section is part of the NSW government regime of “anti-protest” laws designed to deter movements such as Rising Tide.

The rest of the protesters have been charged under the Marine Safety Act which police used against 109 protesters arrested last year.

Even if found guilty, these people are likely to only receive minor penalties.Those arrested in 2023 mostly received small fines, good behaviour bonds and had no conviction recorded.

Executive gives the bird to judiciary
The use of the Crimes Act will focus more attention on the anti-protest laws which the NSW government has been extending and strengthening in recent weeks. The NSW Supreme Court has already found the laws to be partly unconstitutional but despite huge opposition from civil society and human rights organisations, the NSW government has not reformed them.

Two protesters were targeted for special treatment: Naomi Hodgson, a key Rising Tide organiser, and Andrew George, who has previous protest convictions.

George was led into court in handcuffs on Monday morning but was released on bail on condition that he not return to the port area. Hodgson also has a record of peaceful protest. She is one of the Rising Tide leaders who have always stressed the importance of safe and peaceful action.

The police prosecutor argued that she should remain in custody. The magistrate released her with the extraordinary requirement that she report to police daily and not go nearer than 2 km from the port.

Planning for this year’s protest has been underway for 12 months, with groups forming in Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra Sydney and the Northern Rivers, as well as Newcastle. There was an intensive programme of meetings and briefings of potential participants on the motivation for protesting, principles of civil disobedience and the experience of being arrested.

Those who attended last year recruited a whole new cohort of protesters.


Newcastle climate protest.             Video: Al Jazeera

Last year, the NSW police authorised a protest involved a 48-hour blockade which protesters extended by two hours. Earlier this year, a similar application was made by Rising Tide.

The first indication that the police would refuse to authorise a protest came earlier this month when the NSW police successfully applied to the NSW Supreme Court for the protest to be declared “an unauthorised protest.”

But Justice Desmond Fagan also made it clear that Rising Tide had a “responsible approach to on-water safety” and that he was not giving a direction that the protest should be terminated. Newcastle Council agreed that Rising Tide could camp at Horseshoe Bay.

 

Minns’ bid to crush protest
The Minns government showed that its goal was to crush the protest altogether when the Minister for Transport Jo Haylen declared a blanket 97-hour exclusion zone making it unlawful to enter the Hunter River mouth and beaches under the Marine Safety Act last week.

On Friday, Rising Tide organiser and 2020 Newcastle Young Citizen of the year Alexa Stuart took successful action in the Supreme Court to have the exclusion zone declared an invalid use of power.

An hour before the exclusion zone was due to come into effect at 5 pm, the Rising Tide flotilla had been launched off Horseshoe Bay. At 4 pm, Supreme Court Justice Sarah McNaughton quashed the exclusion zone notice, declaring that it was an invalid use of power under the Marine Safety Act because the object of the Act is to facilitate events, not to stop them from happening altogether.

When news of the judge’s decision reached the beach, a big cheer erupted. The drama-packed weekend was off to a good start.

Friday morning began with a First Nations welcome and speeches and a SchoolStrike4Climate protest. Kayakers held their position on the harbour with an overnight vigil on Friday night.

On Saturday, Midnight Oil front singer Peter Garrett, who served as Environment Minister in a previous Labor government, performed in support of Rising Tide protest. He expressed his concern about government overreach in policing protests, especially in the light of all the evidence of the impacts of climate change.

Ships continued to go through the channel, protected by the NSW police. When kayakers entered the channel while it was empty, nine were arrested.

84-year-old great-gran arrested, not charged
By late Saturday, three had been charged, and the other six were towed back to the beach. This included June Norman, an 84-year-old great-grandmother from Queensland, who entered the shipping channel at least six times over the weekend in peaceful acts of civil disobedience.

The 84-year-old protester Jane Norman
The 84-year-old protester Jane Norman . . . entered the shipping channel at least six times over the weekend in peaceful acts of civil disobedience. Image: Wendy Bacon/MWM

She told MWM that she felt a duty to act to protect her own grandchildren and all other children due to a failure by the Albanese and other governments to take action on climate change. The police repeatedly declined to charge her.   

On Sunday morning a decision was made for kayakers “to take the channel”. At about 10.15, a coal boat, turned away before entering the port.

Port closed, job done
Although the period of stoppage was shorter than last year, civil disobedience had now achieved what the authorised protest achieved last year. The port was officially closed and remained so for four hours.

By now, 60 people had been charged and far more police resources expended than in 2023, including hours of police helicopters and drones.

On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of kayakers again occupied the channel. A ship was due. Now in a massive display of force involving scores of police in black rubber zodiacs, police on jet skis, and a huge police launch, kayakers were either arrested or herded back from the channel.

When the channel was clear, a huge ship then came through the channel, signalling the reopening of the port.

On Monday night, ABC National News reported that protesters were within metres of the ship. MWM closely observed the events. When the ship began to move towards the harbour, all kayaks were inside the buoys marking the channel. Police occupied the area between the protesters and the ship. No kayaker moved forward.

A powerful visual message had been sent that the forces of the NSW state would be used to defend the interests of the big coal companies such as Whitehaven and Glencore rather than the NSW public.

By now police on horses were on the beach and watched as small squads of police marched through the crowd grabbing paddles. A little later this reporter was carrying a paddle through a car park well off the beach when a constable roughly seized it without warning from my hand.

When asked, Constable Pacey explained that I had breached the peace by being on water. I had not entered the water over the weekend.

Kids arrested too, in mass civil disobedience
Those charged included 14 people under 18. After being released, they marched chanting back into the camp. A 16-year-old Newcastle student, Niamh Cush, told a crowd of fellow protesters before her arrest that as a young person, she would rather not be arrested but that the betrayal of the Albanese government left her with no choice.

“I’m here to voice the anger of my generation. The Albanese government claims they’re taking climate change seriously but they are completely and utterly failing us by approving polluting new coal and gas mines. See you out on the water today to block the coal ships!”

Each of those who chose to get arrested has their own story. They include environmental scientists, engineers, TAFE teachers, students, nurses and doctors, hospitality and retail workers, designers and media workers, activists who have retired, unionists, a mediator and a coal miner.

They came from across Australia — more than 200 came from Adelaide alone — and from many different backgrounds.

Behind those arrested stand volunteer groups of legal observers, arrestee support, lawyers, community care workers and a media team. Beside them stand hundreds of other volunteers who have cleaned portaloos, prepared three meals a day, washed dishes, welcomed and registered participants, organised camping spots and acted as marshals at pedestrian crossings.

Each and every one of them is playing an essential role in this campaign of mass civil disobedience.

Many participants said this huge collaborative effort is what inspired them and gave them hope, as much as did the protest itself.

Threat to democracy
Today, the president of NSW Civil Liberties, Tim Roberts, said, “Paddling a kayak in the Port of Newcastle is not an offence, people do it every day safely without hundreds of police officers.

“A decision was made to protect the safe passage of the vessels over the protection of people exercising their democratic rights to protest.

“We are living in extraordinary times. Our democracy will not irrevocably be damaged in one fell swoop — it will be a slow bleed, a death by a thousand tranches of repressive legislation, and by thousands of arrests of people standing up in defence of their civil liberties.”

Australian Institute research shows that most Australians agree with the Council for Civil Liberties — with 71 percent polled, including a majority of all parties, believing that the right to protest should be enshrined in Federal legislation. It also included a majority across all ages and political parties.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is a fear of accelerating mass civil disobedience in the face of a climate crisis that frightens both the Federal and State governments and the police.

As temperatures rise
Many of those protesting have already been directly affected by climbing temperatures in sweltering suburbs, raging bushfires and intense smoke, roaring floods and a loss of housing that has not been replaced, devastated forests, polluting coal mines and gas fields or rising seas in the Torres Strait in Northern Australia and Pacific Island countries.

Others have become profoundly concerned as they come to grips with climate science predictions and public health warnings.

In these circumstances, and as long as governments continue to enable the fossil fuel industry by approving more coal and gas projects that will add to the climate crisis, the number of people who decide they are morally obliged to take civil disobedience action will grow.

Rather than being impressed by politicians who cast them as disrupters, they will heed the call of Pacific leaders who this week declared the COP29 talks to be a “catastrophic failure” exposing their people to “escalating risks”.

Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was the professor of journalism at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is a Rising Tide supporter, and is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.

The ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu is also an indictment of US policy and complicity

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a map of "The New Middle East" -- without Palestine -- during his September 22, 2023 address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Image: Common Dreams

ANALYSIS: By Jeffrey D. Sachs

It’s official now. America’s closest ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the one accorded more than 50 standing ovations in Congress just months ago, is under indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

America must take note: the US government is complicit in Netanyahu’s war crimes and has fully partnered in Netanyahu’s violent rampage across the Middle East.

For 30 years the Israel Lobby has induced the US to fight wars on Israel’s behalf designed to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian State.

Netanyahu, who first came to power in 1996, and has been prime minister for 17 years since then, has been the main cheerleader for US-backed wars in the Middle East. The result has been a disaster for the US and a bloody catastrophe not only for the Palestinian people but for the entire Middle East.

These have not been wars to defend Israel, but rather wars to topple governments that oppose Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel viciously opposes the two-state solution called for by international law, the Arab Peace Initiative, the G20, the BRICS, the OIC, and the UN General Assembly.

Israel’s intransigence, and its brutal suppression of the Palestinian people, has given rise to several militant resistance movements since the beginning of the occupation. These movements are backed by several countries in the region.

The obvious solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis is to implement the two-state solution and to demilitarise the militant groups as part of the implementation process.

Overthrow foreign governments
Israel’s approach, especially under Netanyahu, is to overthrow foreign governments that oppose Israel’s domination, and recreate the map of a “New Middle East” without a Palestinian State. Rather than making peace, Netanyahu makes endless war.

What is shocking is that Washington has turned the US military and federal budget over to Netanyahu for his disastrous wars. The history of the Israel lobby’s complete takeover of Washington can be found in the remarkable new book by Ilan Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic (2024).

“Rather than making peace, Netanyahu makes endless war.”

Netanyahu repeatedly told the American people that they would be the beneficiaries of his policies. In fact, Netanyahu has been an unmitigated disaster for the American people, bleeding the US Treasury of trillions of dollars, squandering America’s standing in the world, making the US complicit in his genocidal policies, and bringing the world closer to World War III.

If Trump wants to make America great again, the first thing he should do is to make America sovereign again, by ending Washington’s subservience to the Israel Lobby.

The Israel Lobby not only controls the votes in Congress but places hardline backers of Israel into key national security posts.

These have included Madeleine Albright (Secretary of State for Clinton), Lewis Libby (Chief of Staff of Vice President Cheney), Victoria Nuland (Deputy National Security Adviser of Cheney, NATO Ambassador of Bush Jr., Assistant Secretary of State for Obama, Under-Secretary of State for Biden), Paul Wolfowitz (Under-Secretary of Defence for Bush Sr., Deputy Secretary of Defense for Bush Jr.), Douglas Feith (Under-Secretary of Defence for Bush Jr.), Abram Shulsky (Director of the Office of Special Plans, Department of Defence for Bush Jr.), Elliott Abrams (Deputy National Security Adviser for Bush Jr.), Richard Perle (Chairman of the Defense National Policy Board for Bush Jr.), Amos Hochstein (Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State for Biden), and Antony Blinken (Secretary of State for Biden).

“Netanyahu has been an unmitigated disaster for the American people, bleeding the U.S. Treasury of trillions of dollars, squandering America’s standing in the world, making the U.S. complicit in his genocidal policies, and bringing the world closer to World War III.”

Plan in Fighting Terrorism book
In 1995, Netanyahu described his plan of action in his book Fighting Terrorism. To control terrorists (Netanyahu’s characterisation of militant groups fighting Israel’s illegal rule over the Palestinians), it’s not enough to fight the terrorists.

Instead, it’s necessary to fight the “terrorist regimes” that support such groups. And the US must be the one to lead:

“The cessation of terrorism must therefore be a clear-cut demand, backed up by sanctions and with no prizes attached. As with all international efforts, the vigorous application of sanctions to terrorist states must be led by the United States, whose leaders must choose the correct sequence, timing, and circumstances for these actions.”

As Netanyahu told the American people in 2001 (reprinted as the 2001 foreword to Fighting Terrorism):

“The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states.

“International terrorism simply cannot be sustained for long without the regimes that aid and abet it… Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into dust.

“The international terrorist network is thus based on regimes—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Taliban Afghanistan, Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, and several other Arab regimes, such as the Sudan.”

Music to neocon ears
All of this was music to the ears of the neocons in Washington, who similarly subscribed to US-led regime change operations (through wars, covert subversion, US-led colour revolutions, violent coups, etc.) as the main way to deal with perceived US adversaries.

After 9/11, the Bush Jr. neocons (led by Cheney and Rumsfeld) and the Bush Jr. insiders of the Israel Lobby (led by Wolfowitz and Feith), teamed up to remake the Middle East through a series of US-led wars on Netanyahu’s targets in the Middle East (Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria) and Islamic East Africa (Libya, Somalia, and Sudan). The role of the Israel Lobby in stoking these wars of choice is described in detail in Pappe’s new book.

The neocon-Israel Lobby war plan was shown to General Wesley Clark on a visit to the Pentagon soon after 9/11. An officer pulled a paper from his desk and told Clark: “I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defence’s office.

“It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years — we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

In 2002, Netanyahu pitched the war with Iraq to the American people and Congress by promising them that “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region [. . .] People sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots, is gone.”

A remarkable new insider account of Netanyahu’s role in spearheading the Iraq War also comes from retired Marine Command Chief Master Sargent Dennis Fritz, in his book Deadly Betrayal (2024). When Fritz was called to deploy to Iraq in early 2002, he asked senior military officials why the US was deploying to Iraq, but he got no clear answer. Rather than lead soldiers into a battle he could not explain or justify, he left the service.

The neocon-Israel Lobby teamwork has marked one of the greatest global calamities of the 21st century.

In 2005, Fritz was invited back to the Pentagon, now as a civilian, to assist Under-Secretary Douglas Feith in the declassification of documents about the war, so that Feith could use them to write a book about the war.

Spurred by Netanyahu
Fritz discovered in the process that the Iraq War had been spurred by Netanyahu in close coordination with Wolfowitz and Feith. He learned that the purported US war aim, to counter Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, was a cynical public relations gimmick led by an Israel Lobby insider, Abram Shulsky, to garner US public support for the war.

Iraq was to be the first of the seven wars in five years, but as Fritz explains, that follow-up wars were delayed by the anti-US Iraqi insurgency. Nonetheless, the US eventually went to war or backed wars against Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Lebanon. In other words, the US carried out Netanyahu’s plans — except for Iran.

To this day, indeed to this hour, Netanyahu works to stoke a US war on Iran, one that could open World War III, either by Iran making the breakthrough to nuclear weapons, or by Iran’s ally, Russia, joining such a war on Iran’s side.

The neocon-Israel Lobby teamwork has marked one of the greatest global calamities of the 21st century. All of the countries attacked by the US or its proxies — Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria — now lie in ruins.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza continues apace, and yet again the US has opposed the unanimous will of the world (other than Israel) this month by vetoing a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution that was backed by the other 14 members of the UN Security Council.

The real issue facing the Trump Administration is not defending Israel from its neighbors, who call repeatedly, almost daily, for peace based on the two-state solution. The real issue is defending the US from the Israel Lobby.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Dr Sachs is the author, most recently, of A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2020). This article was first published by Common Dreams and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

Eugene Doyle: Has World War Three started?

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Over in a flash
Over in a flash. A volley of missiles hit Dnipro at 12,000 km/h. A sobering warning to the West. Did they pay attention? Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

In the space of a couple of days last week two completely unprecedented attacks occurred that have the potential to rewrite world history.  The US and UK directly attacked Russia and, for the first time ever in war, an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile was fired — by Russia.

Naturally, most people in the West paid little attention.

Within moments of the silo opening at the Kapustin Yar rocket base in Russia on Thursday, American eyeballs were on it.

They had received a warning from the Russians a few minutes before, through the joint nuclear risk-reduction channels, but no one on the Western side could actually guarantee what payload the rocket carried, what the destinations of its multiple warheads really were, or what would happen when those warheads struck their targets travelling at 12,000 km/h.

If nuclear-armed, one such missile has the ability to destroy several of the major cities of Europe.  Thankfully, the warheads were conventional and all were concentrated on a military-industrial complex in Dnipro, Ukraine, 800 km away.

They struck about 5 minutes later.

Stephen Clark, writing on the US tech site Ars Technica says the attack portends a new era of warfare.

Hot on the heels
Wednesday: The strike came hot on the heels of another major and historic escalation, this one undertaken by the US and UK, using their long-range ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles, to hit inside Russia for the first time, reportedly targeting sites that included the headquarters of Russia’s Army Group North.

Le Monde reported that 12 British Storm Shadow missiles were fired.  Pause and think about that: the British military using their own targeting experts, inputting proprietary coding data, top-secret weapon initiation sequences, real-time satellite coordination, etc, fired missiles into Russia.

A bit like cutting a ribbon, some Ukrainian might have been allowed to push a bright red button to get things moving.  Not even at the height of the Cold War was either side reckless and brainless enough to do such a thing.

President Putin says the war has now been “globalised”. The Russians lost no time in counter-striking.

Thursday’s attack on the Yuzhmash military-industrial complex was the first use of a new generation of missile, the Oreshnik, which the Russians say is now in serial production. They travel 6000 km/h faster than US Patriot missile interceptors and are almost certainly unstoppable.

The footage is staggering: the sky lights up and a volley of warheads strikes at Mach 10 (12,000km/h).  Nima Alkhorshid from Dialogue Works asked a very sensible question about the Russian strike on Dnipro and Putin’s speech that followed: “Did the West receive the message?”

Typically, Western leaders say any Russian warning is bluffing and sabre-rattling but I hope they are sitting up and paying attention.  Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case.

Jean-Noël Barrot, the French Foreign Minister, said France had no “red lines” in terms of escalation and reiterated that the project was still on for Ukraine to be part of NATO.

Time to ‘kick the Chihuahua’
Russian-American military analyst Andrei Martyanov says it may be time to “kick the Chihuahua”.  If the West fires more missiles into Russia, the next targets for the Russians is likely to be military installations on NATO territory, possibly in Poland or Romania, but equally likely British naval vessels or bases either in the UK or places like Cyprus.

Martyanov says the British seem to want to experience real war first hand.

“What was demonstrated to the United States, as well as to those Chihuahuas like Britain and France, was that they have no means of intercepting anything like this and they can be dealt with when Russia decides to.”

Bellicose language but Russians are furious at being attacked by the UK and US.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of a “qualitative shift” in the war.  “We will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia and we will react accordingly.”

With US strategy in Ukraine increasingly incoherent, US officials admit the “permission” to use long-range missiles “is not a game-changer”; yet it represents the kind of escalation President Biden had previously said could lead to WWIII.  Is he just trying to hand a poisoned chalice to Trump?

The war’s tempo is clearly quickening.  Also this month, President Putin outlined a change in the country’s policy for employing nuclear weapons in conflict, lowering the threshold.

Shattered dream
In military terms this week’s dramatic events are about  “moving up the escalation ladder”.  Leopard and Abrams tanks were first kept off the battlefield, then included. Cluster munitions were suddenly used, including on civilian targets; F16s were considered too dangerous a signal to Russia, then they were permitted.

This and more all took a couple of years, one rung at a time. Now we are moving up the escalation ladder in leaps and bounds.  Where will it end?

“Russia holds overwhelming conventional escalation dominance,” Martyanov said. “But if they [the West] want to go nuclear, we’re all pretty much done.”

But here’s the crazy thing: the hope of defeating Russia, taking back all Ukrainian territory, dealing a deadly blow to the Russian economy, placing NATO missiles in Ukraine, and achieving regime change is all-but-certainly a shattered dream.  Russia has won the war in Ukraine; the West must accept this and negotiate or drive us all to the precipice.

The winds of disappointment are blowing through the capitals of the West. In a piece, “Ukraine Morale Falls”, Deutsche Welle reported this week that 30,000 Ukrainians have deserted this year; the judicial system is so clogged that the Rada (Parliament) passed a bill saying deserters who returned would be forgiven.

The long suffering of the Ukrainian people, the deaths and mutilations, their shattered economy, blasted infrastructure and all the misery that comes with defeat in war will not be alleviated by escalation, it will only be made worse.

Anatol Lieven, visiting professor at King’s College London and senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote an excellent article last week calling on the Democrats to fundamentally reorient their foreign policy — to summon the courage to break free of the “Blob”, the permanent state within the US state, that has disastrously misguided US foreign policy.

Lieven says, I think wisely, “The US needs to abandon its messianic strategy of spreading ‘democracy’ through US power, which has become in practice little more than a means of trying to undermine rival states.”

He goes on to recommend, as many of us have for years, that peace with Russia must be pursued, that the NATO expansion project must be abandoned, and that the US must get out of the planetary hegemon game.

Ukraine is simply the latest in a string of national projects that were fatally captured by a great power in pursuit of its own ends.  The US has as little concern for Ukrainians as it does for Iraqis, Libyans, Palestinians, Syrians, Afghans or Vietnamese.  So many of those who drank the US Kool Aid and shackled their national projects to the US geopolitical juggernaut eventually got crushed and left in the dust of their own countries as the Americans moved on to their next project.

Back in 1618 Europe started to tear itself to pieces in the geostrategic contest known as the Thirty Years War.  Once the continent was devastated, its leaders signed the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 ushering in an era of diplomacy and recognition of the importance of balancing the security interests of all parties.

They had cannons, swords, pikes and muskets.  We have nuclear weapons.  We all need to evolve our psychology and think more like statesmen and stateswomen — and less like nutters.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

ICC’s arrest warrants for Israeli war crimes: Netanyahu is certainly a criminal, but …

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Wanted for war crimes . . . Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and former defence minister Yoav Gallant
Wanted for war crimes . . . Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. Image: Palestine Online

ANALYSIS: By Belén Fernández

The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, “for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024”, as per the ICC press release.

An arrest warrant was also issued for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, although this particular detail will continue to be entirely ignored by the Israeli establishment, which prefers to remain up in arms over its allegedly singular victimisation.

In the eyes of Israel, the ICC decision constitutes a horrifying display of anti-Semitism and even support for “terror”.

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Among the war crimes charges against Netanyahu and Gallant are that “both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity, from at least 8 October 2023 to 20 May 2024”.

The latter date refers to the day that the ICC prosecutor filed the applications for the arrest warrants and is not, obviously, an indication that Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip have abated over the past six months.

Officially, the Israeli military has killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, although the true death toll is undoubtedly many times higher. And while a United Nations committee recently found Israel’s methods of warfare in the Gaza Strip to be “consistent with genocide”, the ICC has stopped short of calling Israel out on this front, instead specifying that the court “could not determine that all elements of the crime against humanity of extermination were met”.

Of course, any and all international recognition of Israel’s criminal behaviour is morally significant given the country’s modus operandi, according to which international law is made to be broken – but only by Israel itself. It’s no accident that neither Israel nor the United States, Israel’s primary backer and current accomplice to genocide, are not parties to the ICC.

US would have its own war crimes to answer
Were international “justice” not completely selective and governed by an egregious double standards, the US would have its own plethora of war crimes to answer for — like the wanton slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq under the guise of the so-called “war on terror”.

Meanwhile, it’s not quite clear why the ICC has stopped short of detecting “all elements of the crime of against humanity of extermination” on the part of Netanyahu and Gallant. After all, knowingly depriving a civilian population of everything “indispensable to their survival” would seem to be a pretty surefire way of ensuring, well, extermination.

It’s also kind of “indispensable to survival” to not be bombed to death while having your entire territory pulverised.

And to that end, perhaps, the ICC has “found reasonable grounds to believe” that both Netanyahu and Gallant “each bear criminal responsibility as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population”.

But assigning such individual guilt is a mere drop in the bucket of “justice”. At the end of the day, the state of Israel as a whole bears “criminal responsibility” for usurping Palestinian land and engaging in 76.5 years (and counting) of ethnic cleansing, displacement and massacres.

All of this while driving a sector of the Palestinian population to armed resistance and thereby converting them into targets for continued Israeli criminality.

Given Israel’s lengthy history of flouting United Nations resolutions, the country’s presumption that it should also be immune from ICC rulings comes as no surprise.

While Israel does not recognise ICC jurisdiction domestically, Netanyahu and Gallant could in theory be arrested if they travel to any of the court’s 124 member states. Needless to say, this is not an eventuality that will be encouraged by the world’s reigning superpower.

Not Israel’s first ICC run-in
And yet this is not Israel’s first run-in with the ICC. Back in 2019, after nearly five years of “preliminary investigation”, the court announced that then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda was “satisfied” that there was a “reasonable basis to initiate an investigation into the situation in Palestine”.

This did not mean, of course, that said investigation was set to commence – eternal bureaucracy and foot-dragging being the hallmark of international criminal law.

Rather, it had simply been established that there was a “reasonable basis to believe that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip”.

Well, yeah. And that “reasonable basis” had already been around for, oh, seven decades or so.

Anyway, Bensouda’s ruminations were still more than the Israelis could handle. The Jerusalem Post, for example, ran a dispatch by Israeli attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner — titled “Refusing to Play the Palestinians’ ICC game” — in which the author accused the court of serving as a “concealed weapon” against Israel.

Contending that there was “nothing sexier for Bensouda than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, Darshan-Leitner concluded: “We knew that Bensouda was tired of pursuing African dictators and brutal tribal leaders, and wanted to show that the ICC was a court with a truly international reach”.

Speaking of sexy, Al Jazeera has noted that, as a result of Bensouda’s ongoing perceived insolence, Israeli spy chief Yossi Cohen “intensified the covert war on the court that Israel has been waging since Palestine joined the ICC in 2015”.

The Mossad went about intercepting Bensouda’s communications, and she reported being “personally threatened”. She stepped down as prosecutor in 2021, the same year the “investigation into the situation in Palestine” finally got under way.

Now, it remains to be seen just what the Israelis have up their sleeves in this latest international legal showdown. But as the “situation in Palestine” proceeds apace and genocide rages, there’s a reasonable basis to believe justice is not ultimately an option.

Belén Fernández is the author of Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Center (OR Books, 2022), Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021), Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019), and other books. She is a columnist for Al Jazeera, contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine, and has written for The New York Times, Middle East Eye, among numerous other publications.

Protest photographer John Miller records Hīkoi mō te Tiriti with his historic lens 

By
Cafe Pacific Publisher
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0
John Miller's photograph of the 1975 Land March held up in the same location at the 2024 Hīkoi
John Miller's photograph of the 1975 Land March held up in the same location at the 2024 Hīkoi mō te Tiriti in Pōneke Wellington. Image: © 2024 John M Miller

RNZ National

For almost six decades photographer John Miller (Ngāpuhi) has been a protest photographer in Aotearoa New Zealand.

From his first photographs of an anti-Vietnam War protest on Auckland’s Albert Street as a high school student in 1967, to Hīkoi mō te Tiriti last week, Miller has focused much of his work on the faces of dissent.

He spoke of his experiences over the years in an interview broadcast today on RNZ’s Culture 101 programme with presenter Susana Lei’ataua.

John Miller at RNZ with his camera
John Miller at the RNZ studio with his Hīkoi camera. Image: Susana Lei’ataua/RNZ

Miller joined Hīkoi mō te Tiriti at Waitangi Park in Pōneke Wellington last Tuesday, November 19, ahead of its final walk to Parliament’s grounds.

“It was quite an incredible occasion, so many people,”  74-year-old Miller says.

“Many more than 1975 and 2004. Also social media has a much more influential part to play in these sorts of events these days, and also drone technology . . .

“I had to avoid one on the corner of Manners and Willis Streets flying around us as the Hīkoi was passing by.

“We ended up running up Wakefield Street which is parallel to Courtenay Place to get ahead of the march and we joined the march at the Taranaki Street Manners Street intersection and we managed to get in front of it.”

John Miller's photograph of the 1975 Land March held up in the same location at the 2024 Hīkoi mō te Tiriti in Pōneke Wellington.
John Miller’s photograph of the 1975 Land March held up in the same location at the 2024 Hīkoi mō te Tiriti in Pōneke Wellington. Image: © 2024 John M Miller

Comparing Hīkoi mō te Tiriti with his experience of the 1975 Māori Land March led by Dame Whina Cooper, Miller noted there were a lot more people involved.

“During the 1975 Hīkoi the only flag that was in that march was the actual white land march flag — the Pou Whenua — no other flags at all. And there were no placards, no, nothing like that.”

1975 Land march in Pōneke Wellington
The 1975 Māori Land March in Pōneke Wellington. Image: © John M Miller
Black and white image of Maori land rights activist Eva Rickard
Māori land rights activist Tuaiwa Hautai “Eva” Rickard leads the occupation of Raglan Golf Course in February 1978. Image: © John M Miller
1975 Land march
The 1975 Māori Land March Image: © John M Miller

There were more flags and placards in the Foreshore and Seabed March in 2004.

“Of course, this time it was a veritable absolute forest of Tino Rangatira flags and the 1835 flag and many other flags,” Miller says.

“Te Mana Motuhake o Tuhoe flags were there, even Palestinian flags of course, so it was a much more colourful occasion.”

Tame Iti on the 1975 Land March
Activist Tame Iti on the 1975 Māori Land March. Image: © John M Miller

Miller tried to replicate photos he took in 1975 and 2004: “However this particular time I actually was under a technical disadvantage because one of my lenses stopped working and I had to shoot this whole event in Wellington using just a wide angle lens so that forced me to change my approach.”

Miller and his daughter, Rere, were with the Hīkoi in front of the Beehive.

“I had no idea that there were so many people sort of outside who couldn’t get in and I only realised afterwards when we saw the drone footage.”

The Polynesian Panthers at a protest rally in the 1970s.
The Polynesian Panthers at a protest rally in the 1970s. Image: © John M Miller

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and Asia Pacific Report.

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