
You cannot sink a rainbow.
This month we mark 40 years since the French terror attack which sunk the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour. It is also 40 years since the Warrior evacuated the people of Rongelap in the Marshall Islands. Had the peace ship not been sunk it would have travelled to French Polynesia to protest scheduled nuclear testing. What have we learnt in the past forty years? Below are two articles on these events.
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Stockholm. Benjamin Netanyahu’s nomination of Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize means that for the first time in history a political figure involved in a genocide will be nominated for the prestigious award by a leader who has an arrest warrant out for him for the crime of genocide. Netanyahu’s move, however, has triggered a flood of nominations from across the globe.
Within a year of the US assuming trusteeship of the islands another pillar of international law came into effect: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) – which affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans. Exposing colonised peoples to extreme radiation for weapons testing is a racist affront to this.
Immediately after murdering Fernando Pereira and blowing up Greenpeace’s ship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, several of the French agents went on a ski holiday in New Zealand’s South Island to celebrate. Such was the contempt the French had for the Kiwis and the abilities of our police to pursue them. How wrong they were.
If Iran falls, war in our region – intended or unintended – becomes vastly more likely. Mainstream New Zealanders and Australians suffer from an understandable complacency: war is what happens to other, mainly darker people or Slavs. “Tomorrow”, people in this part of the world naively think, “will always be like yesterday”.
The US-Israeli surprise attack on Iran is literally and figuratively designed to unleash centrifugal forces in the Islamic Republic. Both Iran’s nuclear programme and its government – in fact, the whole edifice and foundation of the Islamic Republic – is at the beginning of the greatest stress test of its existence.
“JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” Trump said. The Western media described Trump’s and Netanyahu’s threats after the first wave of attacks on Iran as “warnings”. They were, in fact, expressions of genocidal intent.
I won’t mince words: what we are witnessing is the racist, genocidal Israeli regime, armed and encouraged by the US, Germany, UK and other Western regimes, launching a war that has no justification other than the expansion of Israeli power and the advancement of its Greater Israel project.
Eugene Doyle interviews CIA veteran and veteran activist Ray McGovern. “I was alive for the entire World War II, and I heard what was happening to the Jews. I said,”When I get big, I will never let something like that happen. Well, I'm big now! I'm big and to my dying breath, I'm going to do everything I can to rally support for ending this oppression, this terrible, forced, starving of the people of Gaza.”
Eugene Doyle shares a writer’s journey – of living and writing through the Genocide.
“Following events in Palestine closely, it still comes as a shock when a journalist I have read, seen, heard is suddenly killed by the Israelis. This has happened several times. When it does I take a coffee and walk up the ridiculously steep track behind my house and sit high above the bay on a bench seat I built (badly). That bench is my “top office” where…
The U.S. is seemingly hell-bent on war with China. It is, however, increasingly likely the U.S. will lose such a war for two reasons: advanced computer chips and total production capacity. For reasons of self-interest alone neither Australia nor New Zealand should join a US-led alliance against China.
RNZ is failing in its duty to inform the public of an entirely preventable humanitarian catastrophe.
Radio New Zealand is without a doubt one of our very best media outlets. We want it to be even better and a far more detailed investigation of its Israeli-Palestine coverage is needed. This would cover systemic bias, media sourcing and reliability, bias in coverage scale, compliance with code of ethics, comparative coverage analysis, cultural identification bias (proximity), other reasons why some stories aren’t told, the overall framing of the conflict, genocide recognition, and overall balance.
They are part of a countercultural movement intent of calling out what is and what ought to be, in the tradition of those who’ve used their art to critique society.
Guardian: The campaign group Defend Our Juries, which organised the demonstration, said “a priest, an emeritus professor and a number of health professionals” were among those arrested.
In their own words, not twisted by the mainstream media: “We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs, or any other race or group of people,” the duo wrote in a post on Instagram on Tuesday. “We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine — a machine whose own soldiers were told to use ‘unnecessary lethal force’ against innocent civilians waiting for aid. A machine that has destroyed much of Gaza.”
Not all of Mamdani’s policies could be/should be adopted here intact. But they go to show that politicians on the left can lead and provide positive solutions that – if anything – are less expensive, once all of the longer term socio-environmental costs of mainstream centre-right policies are factored into the equation.
Trump revoked rule that closed the revolving door loophole and who's benefitting? Lloyd Austin, Brett McGurk join army of DC's top 'consultants'
In July 1985, Australia’s Pacific territory of Norfolk Island (pop. 2188) became the centre of a real life international spy thriller.
Four French agents sailed there on board the Ouvéa, a yacht from Kanaky New Caledonia, after bombing the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.
The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) has released a new report mapping the corporations aiding Israel in the displacement of Palestinians and its genocidal war on Gaza, in breach of international law. Read on.
Britain’s Labour government has secretly allowed at least three Israeli Air Force (IAF) planes involved in the bombing of Gaza to land in the UK since it took office, according to flight data reviewed by Drop Site News. Read on.
The Israeli genocide in Gaza, along with the escalating regional wars it has ignited, has brought two chilling truths into our focus: first, Israel is deliberately and aggressively undermining the security and stability of the entire Middle East and, second, Israel is utterly incapable of surviving on its own. Dr Ramzy Baroud Read on.
When future historians look back on our age, they will almost certainly mark ‘Liberation Day’ as the end of the American Century. That was the day on which Donald Trump put an end to 80 years of global economic leadership, accelerated US relative economic decline and irreparably diminished the US’ international standing and soft power, bringing to a close the most prosperous and, for the most part, peaceful period in history thus far.
The war on Iran feels eerily familiar – from justifications that hold no water to the uncritical reporting in the media.
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